The D&D thread

Furious as in the enhancement for a weapon. He's banned most books, including Ultimate Equipment. He's made an already impossible to beat dungeon (Not joking) even more difficult, lol.



edit: The thing that pisses me off, is that these are the books he's allowed,

Allowed Books: Core, APG, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Unchained

UNCHAINED! This book is typically not allowed.

I asked him last night if Ultimate Equipment could be allowed via Discord, and this is what he said:

"ITS OUT.

Although it doesnt quite have to be."

What the fuck?

Advanced Archetypes are a banned book.

why is he banning books though?

Best guess is he just doesn't want broken classes (summoner). However, I honestly don't understand banning hardback books such as Ultimate Equipment. It's making character creation difficult, honestly.

Kuriin said:

We had a TPK in Rappan Athuk in the main dungeon (cleared Mouth of Doom) - we were level 5 on level 2. Three people quit because of how ridiculous it is. The dungeon master has banned most of the books, including hardback books. I had played a warpriest and was wanting a barbarian with "Furious" on it...but, again, banned. Have no idea what to play now, lol.

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I have every Rappan Athuk PDF and that dungeon is masochistic. I only read about 45 pages of it before I was like -- "Nope, not running this without some heavy, heavy modifications."

The core book is like 600 pages. Maybe, it gets better further in?

I have the Rappan Athuk book as well, including every map. The DM has made changes to the dungeon (likely without realizing it) and making it more difficult. He literally already told us that "level 20s have wiped in the dungeon," when asked why no one has cleared the dungeon. He basically gave us a reason to stay away from the dungeon, lol.

I don't mind a meatgrind. But, why make it even HARDER than what it already is?

Kuriin said:

I have the Rappan Athuk book as well, including every map. The DM has made changes to the dungeon (likely without realizing it) and making it more difficult. He literally already told us that "level 20s have wiped in the dungeon," when asked why no one has cleared the dungeon. He basically gave us a reason to stay away from the dungeon, lol.

I don't mind a meatgrind. But, why make it even HARDER than what it already is?

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The lore, the 'story,' and the dungeon itself is varied and interesting, but nearly every encounter, DC, loot, etc needs attention and that's what turned me off of running it.

Also, from your experience was it run as a once-you're-in, you're-in" dungeon or were you able to leave/rest/regroup?

*Edit*
As a DM of many years, I suspect it's possible that your DM realized he hates running it and was just looking for an excuse to end it. I don't particularly enjoy DM'ing long dungeon crawls because it requires an insane amount of moment-to-moment creativity and engagement to keep players from getting bored.

The DM really wants to run it. He says he has run it numerous times but we've encountered areas where he has said, "Wow, no one has ever been through here." when it's in the beginning. So dumb. We are able to leave and rest, however, that provokes random encounter table and leaving the dungeon could risk us running into bandits.

edit: Yes, DCs are ridiculous. Starting in the first level of Mouth of Doom, we've had numerous encounters where ability drains have been nearly the death of us.

Kuriin said:

The DM really wants to run it. He says he has run it numerous times but we've encountered areas where he has said, "Wow, no one has ever been through here." when it's in the beginning. So dumb. We are able to leave and rest, however, that provokes random encounter table and leaving the dungeon could risk us running into bandits.

edit: Yes, DCs are ridiculous. Starting in the first level of Mouth of Doom, we've had numerous encounters where ability drains have been nearly the death of us.

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Dirty secret: I've never used a random encounter table in my life.

My players have never been in a combat/encounter that I didn't intend to happen. Personally, I think random tables are lazy and often create unintended consequences. However, I understand why a lot of DMs use them (especially newer ones) because it 'feels' like the bias is being removed.

All that said, combat for the sake of it frighteningly boring. Combat needs to drive the narrative, resolve a conflict, etc. I also use combat to discourage bad behavior, trying to game the system (long-resting outside the BBEG door type shit), and prompting action from an OVERLY indecisive group (for example: they spend a half hour arguing over minutiae -- "X mobs have seemingly heard your heated debate and you only moments to react as the sound of unwanted company grows ever-closer."

Another thing...he misread "Pestilence" - a disease found in level 3C of the Mouth of Doom. He made this disease decrease a person's HP by 1 every hour if they missed the fortitude save. This was a permanent decrease in HP, not like a bleed effect. The real Pestilence? It acts as a permanent bleed effect unless cured, but, it does not remove someone's HP indefinitely. After two of our characters were at a permanent HP of 5 at level 3, two of the more experienced players discussed their displeasure and found the source and confronted the DM. DM didn't realize what a mistake he made.

Kuriin said:

Another thing...he misread "Pestilence" - a disease found in level 3C of the Mouth of Doom. He made this disease decrease a person's HP by 1 every hour if they missed the fortitude save. This was a permanent decrease in HP, not like a bleed effect. The real Pestilence? It acts as a permanent bleed effect unless cured, but, it does not remove someone's HP indefinitely. After two of our characters were at a permanent HP of 5 at level 3, two of the more experienced players discussed their displeasure and found the source and confronted the DM. DM didn't realize what a mistake he made.

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That's a pretty egregious error. How much experience running games does this guy have?

It sounds like as a DM he's got very limited experience, which could be why he's limiting books as well. Just too much content to read through and figure out. I think thats a common mistake inexperienced DM's make. As a player know your own crap and how it works. As a DM, know the module you are running. The DM doesn't need to know EVERYTHING... Just what they are doing

My party of six has been down to three members for past three sessions. I didn't realize just how much the others added other than firepower. Two of the three that left really kept things going with their decisiveness. One liked puzzles and was determined to see the end, the other was enthusiastic and willing to do just about anything. The two remaining, who previously were quiet except quips, now debate everything even after a decision has been seemingly made. They've pretty much forced my cowardly kobold comic relief character to be the party leader, which wasn't really the playspace I wanted this character in

Conefed said:

My party of six has been down to three members for past three sessions. I didn't realize just how much the others added other than firepower. Two of the three that left really kept things going with their decisiveness. One liked puzzles and was determined to see the end, the other was enthusiastic and willing to do just about anything. The two remaining, who previously were quiet except quips, now debate everything even after a decision has been seemingly made. They've pretty much forced my cowardly kobold comic relief character to be the party leader, which wasn't really the playspace I wanted this character in

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In my experience, keeping a group together for any meaningful period of time is THE hardest part of playing D&D.

It sucks because I honestly enjoy the game the most when we're able to weave a long, sweeping story where the players gradually flesh out their characters, the world develops around them, and there is meaningful impact.

One-offs and wacky/zany stuff just aren't my thing. Give me an epic Dragonlance Cataclysm-like arc and I'd be ecstatic.

The players in my current campaign are level 12 but we've collectively decided to wrap things up at ~15 because two of them have gotten a little bored with their characters and I don't want their attendance to become spotty due to a lack of enthusiasm.

I have a few months before they hit 15 so I've begun the initial stages of creating the major plot points of the next campaign. I'm waffling between a few things that interest me, but I keep coming back to the idea of creating an arc where the very basic idea is for the players to be instrumental in elevating a mortal NPC to Godhood via replacing a god in the existing pantheon. Gods maintain their status in the pantheon based on their number of followers, their level of devotion, the rites/acts performed, etc so I think it would be incredibly interesting for the players to be involved in attacking one 'religion' while simultaneously incubating another.

There are very few new or unique ideas left in D&D so I'm sure something similar has been done, somewhere. However, thoughts or input would be great.

Grabbit Allworth said:

There are very few new or unique ideas left in D&D so I'm sure something similar has been done, somewhere. However, thoughts or input would great.

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Work would have to be done to have players organically care about the newgod

Conefed said:

Work would have to be done to have players organically care about the newgod

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Absolutely.

The "Godhood" plot won't be revealed until a couple months in because it just doesn't make sense for an NPC pursuing such a grand plan to seek out brand new, wet-behind-the-ears adventurers. However, the NPC will be introduced quickly and I'll spend quite a bit of time building the party relationship with him/her.

However, I can't completely depend on the players getting invested in the big ask out of benevolence so I'll likely need to leverage their wants/desires contingent upon success.

Playing a critical role in the ascension of a divine being would be a task greatly rewarded.

Grabbit Allworth said:

In my experience, keeping a group together for any meaningful period of time is THE hardest part of playing D&D.

It sucks because I honestly enjoy the game the most when we're able to weave a long, sweeping story where the players gradually flesh out their characters, the world develops around them, and there is meaningful impact.

One-offs and wacky/zany stuff just aren't my thing. Give me an epic Dragonlance Cataclysm-like arc and I'd be ecstatic.

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we have a community that we play with, i mentioned it the other day... we have about 20 players and 2 or 3 DM's (that are also players in other games). my specific group of 5 (4 players and a dm) have been playing every thursday for 4 years. on holidays we usually just play another day, this past week we played saturday morning instead of thursday due to thanksgiving. it's completely unrealistic for 5 adult players with family and work to be able to consistently play every week for 4 years, and yet here we are. it's pretty amazing.

we are wrapping up our 2nd long campaign in the next few months. first one was 1-20+, this one we started as commoners (reddit had a commoner class idea where you basically play out your background before becoming a lvl 1 adventurer) which added a month or two of weekly sessions, and we are currently lvl 17. we'll probably wrap up at 19 or just before i'd wager...

anyway, i love the long campaigns where you get to really PLAY your character, but we also do semi-regular one-shots. generally they are holiday themed; chrismas and halloween are the for sure ones but we do others here and there. they are nice because they are much more light hearted (even the halloween one shot where we were chasing a serial killer). the one shots are nice because as a rule, we are much less beholden TO the rules. we don't get bogged down in the minutiae of it all and just set out to have a good time. they are also sort of the designated space to make more goofy characters. one of my favorite characters is a big 9 foot tall goliath sorcerer with a 5 intelligence. dude can BARELY speak, but i gave him the inspiring leader feat. so he gathers everyone around and make monkey sounds while drawing in the ground with a stick. he's also a cartographer. i made a point to say that he was drawing everything out as we traveled so we'd have a good map of where we were. finally someone asked to see the map and i showed them a picture of some 4 year old's finger painting.

things like that get super old and played out in a long campaign, but in a one shot you can laugh and move on. but again, because we're doing the long campaigns as well, those silly one shots feel like special episodes as opposed to the baseline experience