The D&D thread

"dnd spells" is helpful for casters. you can build characters and give them spells so you don't have to fiddle with writing down all the spells you have learned/prepared and what they do. it's also helpful for leveling when picking new spells as they are categorized by class. as far as class abilities/progressions go, i don't have any insight as all my characters are on fantasy grounds... i mean, you could use dnd beyond but it only has SRD unless you pay for it... but honestly, unless you already have physical copies, might as well go digital

Played again tonight, first time in a long time. I had forgotten about some of the annoying aspects of the people I play with: playing other games on phone, not paying attention, PDA, taking a phone call! (I could hear it, was about nothing), the party split at least 3 times. In the big bad battle 2 of the 4 didn't even participate and I, the sorcerer, tanked 30! ghouls. I just turned 6, so fireball plus careful casting. I got out at 4 HP, and metagaming, so much metagaming. "Oh! I know what this is. How do you not know where we are?" -- uh because I've never played before and this is a homebrew world? Even if the DM took elements from various books doesn't mean you have to divine from your memorization of the books to reveal what everything is. DM could have changed things. - I almost wished the DM didn't even use the books it was so overwhelming. Instead the DM played into it and included cameos from their past campaigns.
It was like watching a movie with somebody who had already seen it and they blurted out the scenes before they happened.

There was still fun to be had, though, and laughs were elicited all around. My minotaur got drunk for the first time and in the middle of a speech I interrupted by banging my hand on the table and saying, "They call me, Mr. Moo!" (nobody calls me that)

we're generally pretty good about not meta-gaming and our dm will help us make the right decision if we think we're getting too caught up in meta-gaming. we were fighting a coven earlier today and one of them cast phantasmal killer on me. *i* knew what the spell was but my character had never encountered it so there was no reason for him to think it wasn't just some summon spell. i asked the DM, "i'm having a hard time playing by the rules right now. i KNOW i can save out of this if i make an intelligence check, but i don't know if my character has any reason to MAKE an intelligence check..." the DM said, you took a swing at it, you hit it but it didn't seem to do much damage at all, your brother right there gave you a weird look for swinging at nothing, and the thing you are fighting has chosen NOT to make several attacks of opportunity when the other players walked right by it's square. you don't automatically know it's an illusion, but you definitely have reason to make an intelligence check.

we've also all (well, most of us) have been playing some form of d&d for decades so we are generally pretty familiar with the creature's we're fighting. the DM said a long time ago that BECAUSE of that, one of the main problems in his world is that some people a while ago started experimenting with teleportation magic and it basically broke the world. teleportation magic now is fairly limited. the more complicated the spell, the bigger the chance that something wrong happens, including TPK (though there's PLENTY of warning before that happens). but it ALSO means the creatures we're fighting might be just a random 8 hp goblin, or it just looks like it and it actually is something that got sucked into a portal from some far away place with different rules. THIS goblin is immune to non-magical weapons, can breathe lightning and cast slow as a bonus action. he calls him the God-blin.

those kind of changes are obviously few and far between but when we fight something we're all aware that just because it looks like something the players are familiar with, doesn't mean we actually are.

My main issue is that the purpose of this homebrew campaign is a start from scratch. Like literally. We started as primordial pseudo-doppleganger cavemen from different geographical regions and are slowly mutating ourselves and the world around us. Everything is new to our characters. Yet they're bringing in all this outside knowledge, feels like "baggage" feels immersion breaking.
They're people to have fun, but sometimes I really get into the story and when I get snapped out of it, sometimes I respond negatively to that.

Split parties is actually an annoying reality for pnp RPGs. Sometimes the natural course of the story (and people being true to their characters) results in the party splitting up. As a GM, it's annoying having to cut back and forth between two groups. You can do things to encourage party cohesion, but I'm a really hands-off GM when it comes to influencing character actions, so I don't like forcing the issue. Definitely had a couple campaigns end with the players failing because the party was separated in two different places at the wrong time.

If my party splits some if not all of them die. In ANY other medium that tells a story party splitting is entertaining, in pen and paper it is a slog for those the DM isn't interacting with and a huge pain in the ass for the GM. Only time a party split is cool is for scouting, 1-2 people go on ahead to scout and most of it is a few dice rolls and hand waved.

I could definitely feel the DM pulled punches sometimes due to the fuckers. We just don't have enough DPS. The rogue, who's roleplaying a disinterested cat person hasn't participated in a real fight yet.. well she did in one and her damage output was impressive, which is why it's infuriating when she refuses - also refuses to scout, btw.
We have a barbarian that's badass, but she has been sick in RL, so that character has been on a sidequest.
So it's me and the warrior. There was another fighter, who has been a force to be reckoned with (warforged are dumb.) But he unlocked the ability to release his spirit and do stealthy things and that's what he did. He technically kept the evil wizard occupied (dps cc) but at the time it was super obnoxious. This is also the same player who has 60% reduced attention span if Wi-Fi is available.

Kovaks said:

Found out Tomb of horrors is annoying as fuck if your DM isn't that great, it needs some sort of external pressure to add probably a time constraint or a group that really won't metagame, not this group, otherwise you have the player with the best perception and the cleric with bless walking around checking everything for traps and secrets while everyone else waits for direction.

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I generally put some kind of time restraint on every campaign I run.

Kovaks said:

Found out Tomb of horrors is annoying as fuck if your DM isn't that great, it needs some sort of external pressure to add probably a time constraint or a group that really won't metagame, not this group, otherwise you have the player with the best perception and the cleric with bless walking around checking everything for traps and secrets while everyone else waits for direction.

Click to expand...

Tomb of Horrors has the most obscure puzzles in almost all of DnD, from finding the real entrance to the very first hallway line puzzle the player is just fucked. I have run it per request multiple times and a great amount of hints are required each time, they usually fall asleep in a hallway and I fade it to black.

I played tomb of Horrors in 1985 and escaped with no party deaths and all the treasure. I game upon a portal and rather than walk through I cast a spell called magic eye or wandering eye or something like that and sent it through. The portal teleported all living things to one spot that would certainly have got us killed and everything else to the treasure room including my eye spell so I studied the room teleported the party to the room and collected the loot.

So this happened during last nights roll 20 session... I feel so smrat.

I've been through the 1st edition Tomb of Horrors I think twice. One run was serious and the other was a bunch of grabass. Quite a few years after I got myself a hold of the module and started reading through it. This passage here stood right out -



The Tomb of Horrors may be many things but it is most certainly not "a thinking person's module." It's a huge mess of death. Fall in a pit trap? Every spike is coated in save or die poison. Tear a tapestry? It was green slime. Hope you have a Paladin because Cure Disease takes ten minutes to cast otherwise and the module flat out says there's no recourse to that trap - there's too much slime. Turn a key the wrong way? Dead. There's no save sleeping gas in a room with an auto kill steam roller. There's a cursed crown that you remove by taping it with a scepter - one end perma kills the person and the other lets them take it off. The final boss has a list of very specific shit that can effect them and everything else is a no go.

It's original purpose was a game convention tournament module. For that it was probably great. Running it for players in a campaign that has been going on a while where people are invested in their characters and the stories they are a part of it awful. The best way to go about things is a near endless parade of Commune, Augury and similar divination spells. The time I got through it we used Commune so much it eventually just stopped working.

If you're super clever but that's about it. Everything else is a big fuck you.

My first ever campaign (player) came to an epic end last night.

My playgroup has been worst-players greatest hits and the campaign took some unconventional turns to appease them. Many lore leads deadended. In fact, the DM announced before the session that the night would probably be the last due to lost interest by some of the players. (Dang! I was into it and there was so much more to go!) I got angered at that, tbh. I sullenly told myself I wouldn't go. f'em. but I supposed the purpose isn't to be correct, but to be sociable.
Well, to his credit, DM ran the night well and said it would be possible to keep going, that this didn't have to be the last session.
And the players weren't that distracted by phones/laptops to have a good game.
but For the first time I had to call out a player. He was getting upset that his gf wasn't paying attention to him - well the DM was actively dialoguing with her privately. Her rogue successfully did a thing and this intrigue was her reward.. Eventually bf stood up, turned his back to DM and bent down to her face and continued talking (at just loud enough for everybody to hear but soft enough to be unintelligible to me).
DM tried to talk through it and she tried to ignore him looking at DM. but when DM gave up and stopped, and bf continued, I called him out. "I was just quickly telling her I was stepping outside for air." - No. nothing about that was quick.
Of course I was the bad guy and she got up with him and they hung outside for a good 15 minutes - which feels like forever when you're into it and waiting.

fast forward to big bad, bf (not a bad player when he isn't needy/distracted) remembered he had an item still from an earlier session. .. a deck of cards. Each pull would summon a patron to grant a boon. Everybody got to pull. First was good. Second initiated a fun combat. And third triggered big bad, revealing the temple up the hill headed to was a portal and cameos from their last campaign came out (including a RL person surprise entrancing through the RL front door in semi cosplay of their character previously played with the rest of my group.)

Was a fun scrap, but once defeated, the cameos turned on us. The rogue remembered the deck and pulled, which summoned a nasty god. and another from the next player.
My turn. The whole reason why we were in this place was to remove an unidentified dark god, so we could return to our own dimension/world and defeat the outsider there. We learned this outsider destroyed a previous plane/world due to too many gods (on the dance floor).
My sorcerer grabbed the deck and flipped all the remaining cards. One god after another appeared. Then he cast.. Dimension Door, twin-casted to cover everybody in the group and leading to the portal 500 feet away.
We all had to succeed a saving throw at 15 and all failed. But I remembered I could self harm for d4 and plus that result to my save, ending me at 16.

Everybody died. The shitty plane we diverted to imploded. and I stood alone, triumphant. glorious.

So this wendys dnd book is hillarious. It makes for a great read