Seananigans
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You have to roll 4d6 (drop lowest) for their stats, and roll hit points for each one. Should probably pick alignments too.
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The D&D thread
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
You have to roll 4d6 (drop lowest) for their stats, and roll hit points for each one. Should probably pick alignments too.
Indyocracy
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Nah, they are a monster in the monster manual and last like an hour or till they hit 0hp. Stats:
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Hoss
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I was thinking along the lines of barbarians who took the path of the beserker, which would mean all kinds of extra skills to figure out. Frenzy and rage would be nice additions. So if you have summoned creatures like this, can you let them borrow better weapons and armour?
Indyocracy
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"You can use an action to blow this horn. In response, 5d4+5 warrior spirits from the Valhalla appear within 60 feet of you. They use the statistics of a berserker. They return to Valhalla after 1 hour or when they drop to 0 hit points. Once you use the horn, it can't be used again until 7 days have passed.
If you blow the horn without having proficiency with all martial weapons, the summoned berserkers attack you. If you meet the requirement, they are friendly to you and your companions and follow your commands."
They are spirits so to me that implies some level of intagiblness but obviously they can hit and be hit by creatures on the material plane so that is gonna be a dm call on what gear they can equip or accept. They don't really have ghost stats so I'd argue that it seems fair, you also have to find the gear so the power level isn't nutty. Lastly doning armor takes time so it isn't gonna happen mid combat so you are eating into your summon time and if you try to have 20 dudes put on medium armor outside the bbeg's lair it may not go how you think lol
Hoss
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Wish spells is interesting, but I probably wouldn't even use the weapon. I use a greataxe now that's already +1 or +2. Are there level requirements to use these items? One list I found makes it look like you need to be 17 for a legendary item.
I'm thinking the sword of answering or the horn of valhalla so far.
You gain a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this sword. In addition, while you hold the sword, you can use your reaction to make one melee attack with it against any creature in your reach that deals damage to you. You have advantage on the attack roll, and any damage dealt with this special attack ignores any damage immunity or resistance the target has.
I don't see the damage dice on the sword of luck or sword of answering. Is it going to be a standard longsword damage (plus the bonus)? I can't find a any cool axes at all. A great sword would be nice too. It looks like a lot of the swords can be any sword type, but that's not true for the sword of answering.
Hoss
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Got a question about the Axe of Dwarvish Lords.
dnd5e.wikidot.com
It says it also functions as a belt of dwarvenkind, a dwarven thrower and a sword of sharpness. There is no requirement to be a dwarf to wield the axe. In fact, if you're not a dwarf you get a curse that makes you look like a dwarf. But the dwarven thrower is a warhammer that requires you to be a dwarf to attune. So if I'm not a dwarf would I be able to use the throwing property of the axe? I would ask my DM but he said he wants us to surprise him with the item we choose.
Axe of the Dwarvish Lords - DND 5th Edition
dnd5e.wikidot.com
It says it also functions as a belt of dwarvenkind, a dwarven thrower and a sword of sharpness. There is no requirement to be a dwarf to wield the axe. In fact, if you're not a dwarf you get a curse that makes you look like a dwarf. But the dwarven thrower is a warhammer that requires you to be a dwarf to attune. So if I'm not a dwarf would I be able to use the throwing property of the axe? I would ask my DM but he said he wants us to surprise him with the item we choose.
Indyocracy
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A luck blade per dmg can be a greatsword, longsword, rapier, shortsword, or scimitar
Sword of Answering is a grey hawk artifact long sword so d8 or versatile d10.
As to Axe of Dwarven Lords, the only part that is Dwarf specific on the thrower is attunment. The Axe doesn't require it so I would argue it is only inheriting the functions not the requirements, if it wanted you to be a dwarf it would say so on its attunement line.
There shouldn't be a level limit as none of these involve spellcasting, but a wish spell under 17 is nutty if for no other reason than guaranteed 8th lvl spells which can be game changing even without needing dm approval.
The deck of many things will always be maximum chaos lol
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Hatorade
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Yes, you just don't get the blessings.Got a question about the Axe of Dwarvish Lords.
Axe of the Dwarvish Lords - DND 5th Edition
It says it also functions as a belt of dwarvenkind, a dwarven thrower and a sword of sharpness. There is no requirement to be a dwarf to wield the axe. In fact, if you're not a dwarf you get a curse that makes you look like a dwarf. But the dwarven thrower is a warhammer that requires you to be a dwarf to attune. So if I'm not a dwarf would I be able to use the throwing property of the axe? I would ask my DM but he said he wants us to surprise him with the item we choose.
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Hoss
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The Rod of Lordly might is pretty fucking baller too. Can turn it into a flametongue, mace, axe, or spear plus it has drain life/paralyze/terrify. Not to mention the 50 ft climbing pole and compass.
I initially skipped over it because I assumed it was a mage wand. But I'm curious, when it's a flametongue does it have no bonus to attack/dmg? Every other weapon version has +3 but I don't see it on flametongue.
I initially skipped over it because I assumed it was a mage wand. But I'm curious, when it's a flametongue does it have no bonus to attack/dmg? Every other weapon version has +3 but I don't see it on flametongue.
Hoss
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Got another question. I remember seeing an ability or something that allowed you to add an extra damage die. I'm pretty sure it would either be a bard or fighter ability because those are the only characters I've played. But it made me want to use great axes 1d12 over great swords 2d6. Thing is, I can't find that ability now. Do any of you more experienced players know what it is?
Grabbit Allworth
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It was likely a Fighter, but a bit hard to pin down without more info.
Do you remember if it was from a sub-class? Also, was it an extra damage die on any hit or on a crit?
It would also be a great help if you knew roughly what level the ability was granted.
Hell, even if you were only able to remember which sourcebook you saw it in would help.
Hoss
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My best guess is that it was with my first ever character which was a pregen lvl 1 fighter and we were playing that spacejam nonsense (never went back to it after that first weekend but I kept playing the character). As I was leveling him up looking for gear I started looking specifically for weapons with bigger damage dice. I can't remember if it came up during a session or if it was something I saw while I was leveling him up.
I don't think it was because of crits because my understanding is that you get to double all of your damage dice on a crit. So a greataxe becomes 2d12 and a greatsword becomes 4d6. There was something I saw that specifically said you got to add 1 damage dice.
Djay
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I first started playing D&D senior year of high school...we only got about 2-3 sessions done. Then a group of friends while I was in college...we played a lot more, but the DM was constantly rebooting or switching games. Several years ago, a friend of mine wanted people for a LMoP campaign that he was streaming on Twitch. We actually completed that one, did a One Shot, and then the group collapsed.
All that to say that I thought that good, long-term groups were a myth or something. A couple years ago I found the r/LFG subreddit and figured I'd give it a try. I got into a Curse of Strahd campaign and there was one guy that was making so many bad decisions early on that I started thinking the DM intentionally planted him in the group to mess with us, but I stuck it out because the DM and other guys were fun. We eventually beat CoS and about 3/4 of the way through, the DM invited me and one other guy to his main game where they were doing Rime of the FrostMaiden.
I had also taken a shot at DMing once in a play-by-post and it ended after a wipe, partially because one of the more experienced players kept second guessing every ruling I made. After RotFM, I asked them if I could try running a small module called Frozen Sick for them, the same one that crashed and burned before. They agreed and it went so well, that we transformed it into Call of the Netherdeep, which I should be wrapping up in the next couple months.
Anyway, TLDR, it took 20 years, but I finally found a good D&D group. Such a better experience when you have a group of people that are reliable and invested. Helps that 3/5 of us can DM a campaign to take the burden off the others, too.
All that to say that I thought that good, long-term groups were a myth or something. A couple years ago I found the r/LFG subreddit and figured I'd give it a try. I got into a Curse of Strahd campaign and there was one guy that was making so many bad decisions early on that I started thinking the DM intentionally planted him in the group to mess with us, but I stuck it out because the DM and other guys were fun. We eventually beat CoS and about 3/4 of the way through, the DM invited me and one other guy to his main game where they were doing Rime of the FrostMaiden.
I had also taken a shot at DMing once in a play-by-post and it ended after a wipe, partially because one of the more experienced players kept second guessing every ruling I made. After RotFM, I asked them if I could try running a small module called Frozen Sick for them, the same one that crashed and burned before. They agreed and it went so well, that we transformed it into Call of the Netherdeep, which I should be wrapping up in the next couple months.
Anyway, TLDR, it took 20 years, but I finally found a good D&D group. Such a better experience when you have a group of people that are reliable and invested. Helps that 3/5 of us can DM a campaign to take the burden off the others, too.
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Indyocracy
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Are you a half-orc by chance? They have savage attacks which does what you describe.
Hoss
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No he's a boring old human. I never would have played a human unless it was a pregen. But I agree savage attacks sounds like what I was thinking. Perhaps in that first session there was a half orc and that's why it got stuck in my head.
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Grabbit Allworth
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You're absolutely correct.
Because D&D completely depends on social interaction, everyone at the table will make (or break) the game and the difference between a 'good' group and a bad group is night and day. However, in my experience, I've found that 'bad' groups are usually poisoned by one or two cunts that make everyone else at the table miserable. Unchecked, the cunts will start a death spiral as other players start skipping sessions and skipping is a highly contagious malady. Before you know it, the group will have completely fallen apart. It's tough, but the only way to preserve the group is to address the problem(s). Some players don't realize they're being a cunt and a conversation (or two) is enough, but some folks just aren't compatible and they have to be removed. I absolutely hate doing it, but I don't think I've ever been unfair. In fact, in 95% of those situations, the rest of the group will ask me why I didn't kick that person earlier.
As you mentioned, flakey DMs suck. Super strange and/or adversarial DMs are a common reason that a lot of groups fail. I know I'm being Captain Obvious here, but some DMs don't seem to understand that the role of the DM isn't to 'punish' the players or try to kill them because you can do that at literally any moment. The role of the DM is to simply provide an environment for the PCs to explore and interact with. Sometimes the choices of the players come with hefty consequences but I rarely get any pushback when bad things happen because my players know they can trust that I am not out to get them. Whatever happened was a result of the choices they made.
That said, a good group doesn't require people that are rules experts or S-tier roleplayers, they just need to have some common courtesy, buy in to the game, and show up on game night.
I started playing D&D at 12 (34 years ago) and I've seen or played with groups that were total trainwrecks, but I've also been in some amazing campaigns that I mourned like a death when we all eventually went our separate ways.
My current campaign is 30 months old, but we're on the back end and it'll come to an end in 3 to 4 months. Overall, it's been fantastic. It started out a little rocky because I had never used a VTT and Fantasy Grounds has a fairly steep learning curve. Also, having always played face-to-face I take a lot of cues from my players body language, facial expressions, and other non-verbals. It's a lot easier to lean into (or pivot away from) things when you have constant visual feedback from the players and it was difficult getting used to the fact that I didn't have that tool anymore.
Even now, I occasionally learn something new about FG and the platform still has a few problems that irritate me, but now that I've got a firm understanding of the program our weekly sessions are smooth.
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Thats Awesome dude. I love hearing about old groups.
I always felt like playing a char for 2 to 5 sessions was not enough. Like I want to level more and get more awesome stuff and develope my char and tey put all thr cool things I get later. And just go on more adventures and explore new places.
But even as I type that I know. It'll never happen that exact way. Cause I'm the forever DM lol.
But that aside. It's how I approach making content for my players. Three of them are original players from when we started playing 4e back in 2010.
So we have chars that are under a year old grouping with 13yr old characters.
So I've had groups with a level spread of 10th to 21st. But doing much higher content does level lower guys faster. They just have to be a bit more careful is all.
But we've all played with all types of players over the years. It does help were all RL friends before playing. There's 16 of us in total. And we usually have 4 to 7 that show up. 4 of which are solid regulars.
And now that I've typed all this I completely forgot where I was going. Whatever lol
I always felt like playing a char for 2 to 5 sessions was not enough. Like I want to level more and get more awesome stuff and develope my char and tey put all thr cool things I get later. And just go on more adventures and explore new places.
But even as I type that I know. It'll never happen that exact way. Cause I'm the forever DM lol.
But that aside. It's how I approach making content for my players. Three of them are original players from when we started playing 4e back in 2010.
So we have chars that are under a year old grouping with 13yr old characters.
So I've had groups with a level spread of 10th to 21st. But doing much higher content does level lower guys faster. They just have to be a bit more careful is all.
But we've all played with all types of players over the years. It does help were all RL friends before playing. There's 16 of us in total. And we usually have 4 to 7 that show up. 4 of which are solid regulars.
And now that I've typed all this I completely forgot where I was going. Whatever lol
Djay
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I don't know if I could DM without VTT right now. FG does have a few annoying quirks, but being able to have multiple different sources up in front of me and google saves me a lot of headache. The other experienced players also help a lot, in that they'll often know the rules if I don't. This group is patient when I need to look something up and they respect my rulings even if they don't completely agree, so that helps a lot and would probably be fine in-person, as well.
The CoS group almost fell apart because of the one guy I mentioned. It was mostly me that had a problem with him and it wasn't fixable, because it was just who he was as a person and I knew he couldn't help it. We had already lost one person in the campaign, so we were down to 3 PCs and the campaign probably would have ended if we had kicked him, so I sucked it up until we finished. There were nights I dreaded the game because I didn't want to deal with him...he pushed me over the edge once and I completely blew up on him, but he thought it was all in-game and good roleplaying, so luckily that wasn't the end of the group. I apologized to the DM later and he just said that he knew it was coming. The other group we joined had one guy that apparently had been reading ahead in the module. I didn't realize, but the DM for that game was fed up. There were also Main Character Syndrome issues...if anything wasn't about him, he tried to force himself into the spotlight. Eventually he did something that pushed the DM over the edge and he asked all of us for our opinions, then he kicked him. The game was smoother after that and this group has had zero issues since then.
I've really enjoyed DMing this campaign, but I'm happy that someone else is taking the reins when I'm done and I can go back to just being a player for a bit. I'll probably want to run another one at some point (Tomb of Annihilation probably, unless another Exandria campaign gets released by then), but I'd definitely get burned out as a Forever DM.
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Palum
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My biggest frustration is that the tools are fucking awful. 5th isn't as bad as 4th being MMO on paper 'cast a spell on every turn Mr. fighter!', but it still isn't very RP focused. With the collapse of the skills, this means that basically tons of people get 'irritated' when you're just 'making stuff up'. I know this sounds stupid but I feel like CRPGs and modern pen and paper have really trained people to be 100% reliant on boards, props, instructions and webpages.
I was doing a campaign for over a year weekly with people but had to ultimately stop because it was too much effort between DMing, hosting, etc. One of the perennial problems was just a complete lack of imagination by most of the players. You either seem to have people who will touch every wall in every area just in case there's a hidden door because its a game system to be abused, or people who will just let an NPC lie to his face and say 'oh well nothing we can do' as if it isn't a dialogue option in the game.
I don't know how to fix all this and frankly DnD is kind of a secondary social game for me, not something I really ever invested in other than building a TV gaming table to try and make it easier to use digital maps. In the end, it turned out too difficult to train people to be pen an paper thinkers, and the modern game rules and a grid system just train the fuck out of people to be puzzle solvers with what they can see rather than what is 'reasonable'. I also feel like computer games and modern 'be yourself' nonsense have made it super difficult to get people to RP as 'a character' rather than themselves with abilities which is super degenerate and just makes the game less fun as a DM when you don't have novelty from emergent interactions, and rather just have your friends just roll to hit if that makes sense.
Meh.
I was doing a campaign for over a year weekly with people but had to ultimately stop because it was too much effort between DMing, hosting, etc. One of the perennial problems was just a complete lack of imagination by most of the players. You either seem to have people who will touch every wall in every area just in case there's a hidden door because its a game system to be abused, or people who will just let an NPC lie to his face and say 'oh well nothing we can do' as if it isn't a dialogue option in the game.
I don't know how to fix all this and frankly DnD is kind of a secondary social game for me, not something I really ever invested in other than building a TV gaming table to try and make it easier to use digital maps. In the end, it turned out too difficult to train people to be pen an paper thinkers, and the modern game rules and a grid system just train the fuck out of people to be puzzle solvers with what they can see rather than what is 'reasonable'. I also feel like computer games and modern 'be yourself' nonsense have made it super difficult to get people to RP as 'a character' rather than themselves with abilities which is super degenerate and just makes the game less fun as a DM when you don't have novelty from emergent interactions, and rather just have your friends just roll to hit if that makes sense.
Meh.