Wait wait wait. I've been seeing clips of this shit non stop. And you have to pay for it? People pay for this? Good lord....
The D&D thread
- Thread starter Kovaks
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So I'm old and blind. So do we have a pathfinder 2e thread? Or can I just talk with you guys here? Lol
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Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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Grabbit Allworth
Confirmed J6 Insurrectionist
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Yeah. I don't see any reason why we can't cover it here. D&D is basically synonymous with TTRPG.
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Yeah so my group wanted to start a pf2e game. So I made a goblin alchemist. It just spoke to me. We just finished up hellknight hill. I think that's what it was called.
Quite fun. Right now we're all lvl 5. I'm doing alchemist, oracle, beast master maybe? I dunno. There's alot of archetypes.
We're doing that free archetype thing. Which is kind of just like multi-classing. Which is cool.
Mechanics are fun. Though I do feel like I miss a lot.
Oh its also my friends first time ever being a DM. So it's very by the book. Which is fine. It is funny when I do very out of the box stuff and he's like omg what do I do. Lol
Quite fun. Right now we're all lvl 5. I'm doing alchemist, oracle, beast master maybe? I dunno. There's alot of archetypes.
We're doing that free archetype thing. Which is kind of just like multi-classing. Which is cool.
Mechanics are fun. Though I do feel like I miss a lot.
Oh its also my friends first time ever being a DM. So it's very by the book. Which is fine. It is funny when I do very out of the box stuff and he's like omg what do I do. Lol
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Djay
Trakanon Raider
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We're almost done with Dungeon of the Mad Mage. The guy that was supposed to run a campaign after this is sounding like he's too busy to run his campaign and the current DM wants a break.
I have Tomb of Annihilation and was planning on running it at some point, but I don't want to commit to a year-long campaign as a DM right now either.
I told them I'd consider running a smaller module from the TMNT books, but then I found Dawn of Defiance for the old Star Wars RPG, so I'm leaning towards that. Neither of those are supported by any of the Virtual Tabletops from what I've found, though. (We live in different parts of the country.) Might just do it mostly theater of the mind style just to do something for a few months to give the other DM a break.
With that said, I started reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl books and they just started a kickstarter for their RPG, which will be supported by a couple of the VTTs...I just don't think it's going to be released by the time we finish DotMM. I'd love to run that, though.
Since our group got together we've only played D&D 5E, so I'm not sure if there will be any friction to running a different system with them, but figure it's worth a shot.
I have Tomb of Annihilation and was planning on running it at some point, but I don't want to commit to a year-long campaign as a DM right now either.
I told them I'd consider running a smaller module from the TMNT books, but then I found Dawn of Defiance for the old Star Wars RPG, so I'm leaning towards that. Neither of those are supported by any of the Virtual Tabletops from what I've found, though. (We live in different parts of the country.) Might just do it mostly theater of the mind style just to do something for a few months to give the other DM a break.
With that said, I started reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl books and they just started a kickstarter for their RPG, which will be supported by a couple of the VTTs...I just don't think it's going to be released by the time we finish DotMM. I'd love to run that, though.
Since our group got together we've only played D&D 5E, so I'm not sure if there will be any friction to running a different system with them, but figure it's worth a shot.
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Ohhhh my group just finished tomb of annihilation. Though I changed a lot of stuff. And added in quite a bit that I felt the book skipped.
Spoilers
So it's got dinosaur racing. But it doesn't have mechanics for hoe to actually do it. So I had to make all of that up.
I made up how to travel by map via zeplin. Because again it didn't have mechanics.
I also wrote a back story for the atropal. Because it didn't have one. I ended up looping it into our paladins epic arc. Where it was the dead fetus of a slain God that was betrayed and killed in tthe end room. And he ended up purifying his cursed necrotic energy arm into a radiant energy arm that is also his sword. It's the2nd artifact weapon my groups gotten.
Spoilers
So it's got dinosaur racing. But it doesn't have mechanics for hoe to actually do it. So I had to make all of that up.
I made up how to travel by map via zeplin. Because again it didn't have mechanics.
I also wrote a back story for the atropal. Because it didn't have one. I ended up looping it into our paladins epic arc. Where it was the dead fetus of a slain God that was betrayed and killed in tthe end room. And he ended up purifying his cursed necrotic energy arm into a radiant energy arm that is also his sword. It's the2nd artifact weapon my groups gotten.
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Djay
Trakanon Raider
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Reddit had a lot of recommendations for fleshing it out a bit. The only other campaign I've run was Call of the Netherdeep, so I'm also considering changing location names and having the story take place in Exandria when I run it. Of course, that makes a lot more work for me editing all the files for Fantasy Grounds.
I do want to run it eventually...I just have too much up in the air right now with work and I'd feel bad if I didn't have time to prep.
I've also told them I'm not letting them roll for stats and I'm not giving them vestiges/epics next time we play. Stuff has just been too easy as we've all learned to play with each other over the years.
I do want to run it eventually...I just have too much up in the air right now with work and I'd feel bad if I didn't have time to prep.
I've also told them I'm not letting them roll for stats and I'm not giving them vestiges/epics next time we play. Stuff has just been too easy as we've all learned to play with each other over the years.
If you don’t mind DMing but are looking for something short but using published material , we’ve had some success running mini-campaigns using Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Tales of the Yawning Portal and just “filling in the blanks” with some role playing about what the characters did to get the missing levels between the adventures.
Alternatively Waterdeep Dragon Heist was pretty fun to play in, I believe it goes level 1-7.
I think all of these have VTT support (I know Dragon Heist does).
Good luck! DMs are hard to find so your pals will certainly appreciate it.
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Indyocracy
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So a longtime player of mine started to DM for a new group and invited me to play. The rest of the players are all pretty brand new to ttrpg and my old man era is beginning because the entitlement of these people who are my age but new to to ttrpgs kills me. We made characters and two of the guys just assumed you could roll for stats and did so away from the table.... of course their lowest stat was a 12 and they both somehow had double 18s...
How do people not understand the game is only fun if failure is an actual option.. also rolling an 18 with 4d6 drop the lowest is like a 2% chance... cheat better lol
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Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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Cheating during character creation has such a bad rap.
Picture this. You roll up your character in an honest fashion and it's maybe not the hero of legend you were envisioning. Each week you play you might need to cheat just to keep them alive. As the sessions go on you're fudging rolls regularly just to keep going. There's a time investment, sunk costs, an impact on the story from character death and so on. It's one sin compounded on another. If you just cheated at creation the one time you wouldn't need to cheat all those other times. Cheat once, cheat plausible and wear a halo for the rest of the campaign.
I do have questions though
I've been out of the loop but do people now want to roll characters? How many dice per stat? My first DnD characters were made using 4d6 roll six times place in order. By the time I had moved on to 3.0 the DMs I knew were up to 5d6 roll six times place them anywhere. The point-buy in 4th edition has problems but I was pretty sick of rolling by then. What do the roll and point by systems look like now?
The 1st edition Unearthed Arcana had a much more generous dice system than the baseline
but I only knew one DM that used it.
Picture this. You roll up your character in an honest fashion and it's maybe not the hero of legend you were envisioning. Each week you play you might need to cheat just to keep them alive. As the sessions go on you're fudging rolls regularly just to keep going. There's a time investment, sunk costs, an impact on the story from character death and so on. It's one sin compounded on another. If you just cheated at creation the one time you wouldn't need to cheat all those other times. Cheat once, cheat plausible and wear a halo for the rest of the campaign.
I do have questions though
I've been out of the loop but do people now want to roll characters? How many dice per stat? My first DnD characters were made using 4d6 roll six times place in order. By the time I had moved on to 3.0 the DMs I knew were up to 5d6 roll six times place them anywhere. The point-buy in 4th edition has problems but I was pretty sick of rolling by then. What do the roll and point by systems look like now?
The 1st edition Unearthed Arcana had a much more generous dice system than the baseline
but I only knew one DM that used it.
Indyocracy
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People want to roll because having an 18 or 20 before lvl 4 breaks bounded accuracy in 5e. DMs are weak and let people reroll low power characters so people remember their high stat Chads with rose colored glasses.
Point buy does make all the characters the same which sort of sucks as well... the real answer is 3d6 in order!
P.S All my experiences come with a long line of power gamers we have slowly weeded out lol
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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Ah, okay. I was not expecting such a pinpoint explanation.
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Djay
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For the current campaign we got "11 11 14 14 16 16" as starting stats. For the campaign before that (which I DM'd), they had "17, 15, 14, 13, 11, 9". When you add in racial modifiers and everything...we were pretty beefy.
We rolled as a group so everyone had the same base stats...I think it was 4d6 drop lowest. You could place them anywhere. (For reference, standard is "15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8", so in both campaigns every single stat was upgraded by 1-2 points.)
I don't have a problem with that method...it's great for new group and newbies. And maybe even seasoned groups find that fun, but we haven't had a death in nearly 3 full campaigns and very few close calls...and I feel like my group feels like it's more rewarding when it's difficult. The best campaign I've been a part of (with 2 of the people in our core group) was Curse of Strahd where everything felt like we could die at any moment.
I said it kinda bluntly before like it was totally my decision, but when I said "I don't think I'm going to let you guys roll for stats next campaign", everyone was pretty much in agreement that we should just do standard array from now on.
Having everyone roll separately and do a 4d6 drop lowest, but make them keep them in order would be another option, but I don't know if I like the idea of the heroes being unbalanced with each other...or someone wanting to play a certain class that they didn't get the stats for.
Every table is different, so they should do what's fun for their group.
We rolled as a group so everyone had the same base stats...I think it was 4d6 drop lowest. You could place them anywhere. (For reference, standard is "15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8", so in both campaigns every single stat was upgraded by 1-2 points.)
I don't have a problem with that method...it's great for new group and newbies. And maybe even seasoned groups find that fun, but we haven't had a death in nearly 3 full campaigns and very few close calls...and I feel like my group feels like it's more rewarding when it's difficult. The best campaign I've been a part of (with 2 of the people in our core group) was Curse of Strahd where everything felt like we could die at any moment.
I said it kinda bluntly before like it was totally my decision, but when I said "I don't think I'm going to let you guys roll for stats next campaign", everyone was pretty much in agreement that we should just do standard array from now on.
Having everyone roll separately and do a 4d6 drop lowest, but make them keep them in order would be another option, but I don't know if I like the idea of the heroes being unbalanced with each other...or someone wanting to play a certain class that they didn't get the stats for.
Every table is different, so they should do what's fun for their group.
Djay
Trakanon Raider
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Thanks...yeah, one of the guys ran Ghosts of Saltmarsh with another group and the main DM runs the heists as one/two shots when I'm running my campaign, but I have to miss a week.
I can't remember if we've discussed Tales of the Yawning Portal as a group or not.
A couple of them got excited when I mentioned the Star Wars RPG, so I'm leaning towards that, but I'll keep Yawning Portal in mind if one of the other guys confesses that he hates Star Wars or something.
Grabbit Allworth
Confirmed J6 Insurrectionist
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How long have you been DM'ing? Also, if you're running published adventures and not making significant changes to the combat and other potentially 'deadly' encounters, the characters are effectively immortal.
Starting stats for my players really don't matter much to me as long as they're not ridiculous. I want their characters to have as many avenues as possible for growth and improvement.
Anyway, my point is this -- If you have a fundamental grasp of the math of the system, you can easily compensate for PCs with high statistics. Characters with an extra +2 or +3 to rolls is an almost trivial problem to solve and I wouldn't risk hamstringing players with characters that they feel are underpowered or unfun to play.
Furthermore, at nearly every CR, creatures do not do nearly enough damage. 5.5e helped with that some, but it's still not far enough. Campaigns that don't at least threaten the possibility of death get stale very fast.