The D&D thread

Paizo is absolutely filled with libcucks, and some of it does seep into the lore of the world, but it never bleeds into game mechanics and in spite of all their "wokeness," they released a 6-book adventure path where the players play as city cops who beat the shit out of criminals and confiscate their property as loot... which began releasing in July, one month after the George Floyd incident.

In other words, the amount of self-own that happens to them makes the mostly-ignorable amount of their politics that happen to make it into the setting worth putting up with.

Dom said:

D&D's new Senior Designer

View attachment 322272

Are you ready for some fun representation and intersectionality?

Click to expand...

Fuck this gay Earth.

slippery said:

Fuck me. I'm sitting here wide awake with a massive campaign idea and all sorts of ideas running through my head. Meanwhile I haven't played in years, and I never DM'd something that wasn't a module. Creative juices are flowing on this one though, but I feel like it would potentially take me years to flesh out a world and build things out to my satisfaction.

The basic premise is at least a 1-20 campaign loosely based on the Agatha Christie book And Then There Where None. At least just generally on the riddle. The idea in my head being you start finding pieces of a riddle that portends the end of days, and as you progress you find more and more pieces that lead you to more pieces. In my head I have it as a full world building exercise, something I have literally 0 experience with and no clue how to really do.

Click to expand...

Write down as many ideas about it as you can while it's still fresh and while your creative juices are still flowing. Even if you think you might not ever use it, write it down.

slippery said:

Fuck me. I'm sitting here wide awake with a massive campaign idea and all sorts of ideas running through my head. Meanwhile I haven't played in years, and I never DM'd something that wasn't a module. Creative juices are flowing on this one though, but I feel like it would potentially take me years to flesh out a world and build things out to my satisfaction.

The basic premise is at least a 1-20 campaign loosely based on the Agatha Christie book And Then There Where None. At least just generally on the riddle. The idea in my head being you start finding pieces of a riddle that portends the end of days, and as you progress you find more and more pieces that lead you to more pieces. In my head I have it as a full world building exercise, something I have literally 0 experience with and no clue how to really do.

Click to expand...

Seriously, as someone else said get that stuff down no matter what. If you don't want to write it then record yourself talking it through. Don't waste a possible opportunity because you might not be able to pull it off, it shouldn't even be a consideration in this instance.

Just using this post to kind of think out loud.... how do people here judge an encounter? Is a CR 9 for a party of 5 level 6 players a good challenge?

Running Descent Into Avernus and my party has been smashing everything. They are newly level 6. Five characters: Wiz, Warlock, Paladin, Fighter, Cleric, and the Holyphant from the adventure is with them.
I'm throwing this at them:



It's a CR 9 encounter. It's extremely smart. My plan is to give them an option... fight it or do what it's asking them to do.
If they fight it, this thing has 4 attacks, can fly, grapple, and can Power Word Stun once per day. I can for sure perma kill someone. Possibly TPK. Or they might win if they blow everything on him and roll well.

I'm trying to engineer it so this is something they meet now, have to deal with, and fight in a level or two. I already have one returning monster they keep encountering, this will be another that I want them to be able to fight and have a satisfying kill.

I already gave them a mysterious sword hilt. The Glabrezu will have a crystal needed to power it into a Sun Blade

Dashel said:

Just using this post to kind of think out loud.... how do people here judge an encounter? Is a CR 9 for a party of 5 level 6 players a good challenge?

Running Descent Into Avernus and my party has been smashing everything. They are newly level 6. Five characters: Wiz, Warlock, Paladin, Fighter, Cleric, and the Holyphant from the adventure is with them.
I'm throwing this at them:

Glabrezu

Innate Spellcasting. The glabrezu's spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 16). The glabrezu can innately cast the following...

www.dndbeyond.com

View attachment 324165

It's a CR 9 encounter. It's extremely smart. My plan is to give them an option... fight it or do what it's asking them to do.
If they fight it, this thing has 4 attacks, can fly, grapple, and can Power Word Stun once per day. I can for sure perma kill someone. Possibly TPK. Or they might win if they blow everything on him and roll well.

I'm trying to engineer it so this is something they meet now, have to deal with, and fight in a level or two. I already have one returning monster they keep encountering, this will be another that I want them to be able to fight and have a satisfying kill.

I already gave them a mysterious sword hilt. The Glabrezu will have a crystal needed to power it into a Sun Blade

Click to expand...

The best advice I can give you is to understand that in 5E, action economy is king.

That said, a singular monster (even much higher 'level' than the players) is far, far easier to handle than a group of less-difficult monsters.

Judging encounter difficulty comes with experience but some red flags you can be mindful of are # of attacks per round, average damage per hit, exceptionally high AC, does the creature have abilities that are a hard counter to the players (for instance, flight versus a group of characters without effective ranged options), and abilities that deal a lot of AE damage or reliably crowd control one (or more) PCs.

Yeah that's a very good point. Usually the party screws up on encounters with multiple enemies. They don't focus them down, spread out, or clump up for an AoE. I typically keep a few lower level monsters in my back pocket to throw in if they are steamrolling. He will take off flying and Shadow Demons might make an appearance.

Grabbit Allworth said:

The best advice I can give you is to understand that in 5E, action economy is king.

That said, a singular monster (even much higher 'level' than the players) is far, far easier to handle than a group of less-difficult monsters.

Judging encounter difficulty comes with experience but some red flags you can be mindful of are # of attacks per round, average damage per hit, exceptionally high AC, does the creature have abilities that are a hard counter to the players (for instance, flight versus a group of characters without effective) ranged options, and abilities that deal a lot of AE damage or reliably crowd control one (or more) PCs.

Click to expand...

to add to the idea of a single monster vs several less difficult monsters...

understand that with a single target, your players will nova that sucker down. they'll drop smites, they'll use high level spell slots, etc. if you have one creature that has 4 attacks, vs 4 creatures that do 1 attack, you still have functionally the same action economy when everything's at full health. with 4 creatures the fight becomes increasingly easier for the players as they roll out damage and whether or not they THINK that, they will react as if they do. they WON'T use their full power against a group of creatures because they don't think they need to.

they WILL use aoe spells like fireball or spiritual guardians or whatever as long as they can get a couple creatures within range, but players will generally play a little more reserved with their resources against a group. but a single target? they will gang rape that thing and use their biggest spells because they thing they need to. "it's 1 guy against all of us, he's probably gotta be super strong so we need to go at him full bore."

so think about whether you want the encounter to whittle them down with multiple creatures, or whether you want to them to use a ton of their spell slots and other resources. my DMs have a habit of having us fight in ways that trick us into either using using our spell slots too early, so we have nothing left when we need it, or thinking we should horde our resources and not use them when we need them because there's something coming next (but never does).

I get the impression that Hasbro is gonna sell WOTC or at least D&D...

They've been breaking contracts and agreements all over the place and now the Dragonlance lawsuit has poofed with a statement from Weiss and Hickman to 'look for an announcement soon'. This makes me think that they agreed to relinquish Dragonlance as an IP to the pair so they can publish it elsewhere.

D&D is probably at peak popularity right now and so might fetch a decent price.

Qhue said:

I get the impression that Hasbro is gonna sell WOTC or at least D&D...

They've been breaking contracts and agreements all over the place and now the Dragonlance lawsuit has poofed with a statement from Weiss and Hickman to 'look for an announcement soon'. This makes me think that they agreed to relinquish Dragonlance as an IP to the pair so they can publish it elsewhere.

D&D is probably at peak popularity right now and so might fetch a decent price.

Click to expand...

To be fair, Weiss and Hickman are pretty bad writers so they might be breaking that contract because the new book is bad.

Dashel I've found the chart in the book works well for encounter balance most the time. There are some outliers like mobs that drain stats for low level parties but generally the chart works.

Is there a spell that creates a damage shield effect? They strike you they take damage?

Warlock Armor of Agathys

Szeth said:

Warlock Armor of Agathys

Click to expand...

Anything for sorcerer? I have this flame mage and would make so much thematic sense to me

Matt Colville has a new Dragon style magazine, Sounds interesting.

Sanrith Descartes said:

For some reason unbeknownst to me, I just bought the 1978/79 hardback versions of the Player's Handbook and DM's Guide on Ebay. Bidding on a Monster Manual as well. Really just pure nostalgia I believe. I lost mine decades ago during one move or another. I was looking through a storage box in the basement and found all my 40k, Vampire the Masquerade, and Original Runequest books and was like... I want to read the old D&D shit again. Boomers gonna be Boomers I guess.

Click to expand...

Those 1st and even second editions are hard to go back to, I have too much quality of life knowledge to go back. That and reading old stuff when you DM new stuff can get confusing. It is good for story ideas though, sometimes grabbing bits and pieces from the old stuff can really infuse your current campaigns with fresh ideas.