Other than that, this seems like a chance for your bard to shine! Perhaps they should get the limelight for this one? I’d adjust the DCs with the bard in mind but maybe play up the fact they can only try this because the rest of the party is doing their job in the fight by beating the boss down, etc. ?
Eloquence Bards get to treat any roll on certain charisma skills as a 10, whenever they roll less than a 10. So with expertise and high charisma they can guarantee a roll of 22 or higher in those skills related to eloquent speech.
Usually the DM can set difficulties or even decide if a roll is called for at all, but this module has a chance for diplomacy, and the corresponding DC baked in.
I agree, though, that the correct answer is “Let the eloquence bard do their thing!” The chance to talk the boss down comes in “phases” for a reason. As long as you still have to survive Phase 1 and Phase 2 before you can suggest surrender in Phase 3, you’ll still have an interesting encounter.
And there is always the possibility that by Phase 3, your bard player won’t even think about using diplomacy once the fighting has already been going for a bit.
You could get banned from the alien site for posting this. It is such a useful website; I couldn’t have run 5e without it. Especially using their companion Foundry plugin Plutonium.
I’ll join you in that! Fun to showoff the shelf candy and see some from others
I’ve been playing since the early 2000s, starting with D&D 3.5. Later picked up a few Pathfinder 1e books to help supplement the D&D. Also got Serenity around that time since my group was really into Firefly
That was my collection for a while, then I inherited some D&D Basic, 1e, and 2e sets from a friend’s family who was decluttering. I also inherited my D&D 4e stuff in a similar way
Another break later I got my first 5e stuff and slowly built that as books released. Star Wars got picked up when my 5e group got into an Edge of the Empire game. Around that time Starfinder and Pathfinder 2 were coming out, and Paizo’s books subscription was wonderful, though I did eventually cancel because we just weren’t playing those games
The most recent updates are the smaller indie games like Kids on Bikes, Mork Bork, Cyborg, etc. And also the Cyberpunk/Shadowrun sets
We don’t play nearly enough to actually get to all of these games, but they’re really nice reference and inspiration to have
The Bard player still has to say the right things in the first place to make the check at all, there is not guarantee they will do that. But if they do... LET THEM this is literally their characters big thing! Why not let them do that specific thing? It feels backwards to me to have a "Well this fight has a conversation skill option but I am not going to let the character that has conversation skills participate".
IMO the rolls are not the interesting part of this, the party figuring out how they can get bad the guy to change their mind is.
So this is the question I tend to ask, if nothing else to learn something about your tool. Why should it use it over more established competitors? I am specifically thinking something like Roll20 and FoundryVTT, the former being easily accessible and free with SRD content at your fingertips, and Foundry just being, well, Foundry. Hell even Owlbear Rodeo for a generic and easily accessible tabletop. For campaign management text programs like Notion.so and full on world managers like World Anvil are providing massively powerful tools too.
What it is Dungeon Maker provides that is either missing from these other options and is so useful that losing out on all the other stuff in them is worth the switch, or what does Dungeon Maker do so much better than the others that it is worth switching?
Not trying to be a jerk about it, it looks like you have a solid base, just curious about your ideas on these things.
You can still build maps and use the multiplayer for any system, but you will have to use the manual dice rolls included in the program and manually edit health for those systems right now, since the back end rolls for actions and saving throws use 5e rules.
I do hope to add other ruleset support, but it took me a few months just to get the 5e rules mostly working, so it will be a while before other rulesets are fully supported.
So I just went and checked out the specifics of this battle, and the key phrase is “speak with empathy and compassion”. If the player doesn’t approach the character in question with actual “empathy and compassion”, then they don’t get to make the persuasion check.
If your party actually figures out that someone needs to talk to this guy, and HOW they need to talk to him, then it’s perfectly fine that they automatically succeed on the roll, as long as they let the most eloquent person in the group do the talking.
I imagine most parties will go into default “boss battle” mode and not try diplomacy at all. If you want a party to stop shooting, smiting, and casting, and instead start talking about feelings, in the middle of a boss fight, that’s going to probably take some pretty big hints by you that it’s even a possibility. If they figure it out, then they deserve to win that way.
Alcohol poisoning - drank too much the night before and can’t face the day. They’ll catch up later!
If you must have them with the party you could run them in a supportive role and simply buff the party where possible (bless, guidance) and keep them off the front lines.
If the players trust each other enough you could have one of them run the character in a similar way to lighten your load.
Beyond that others have suggested good ideas: shopping, a job from their holy order, helping someone in town are always classics.
You could perhaps have the guard arrest them for something and have a jail break as well 🤣
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