I like it, because it can also work as a conspiracy. The initial quest giver can be an evil lieutenant posing as an ally. The loop can be hinted at by clues in the dungeons themselves. Maybe there are errors left behind that hint at a dungeon/s they’ve already finished. I could see a lot of ways to mess with the PCs.
Also, this reminds me a bit of the Kineticist from Pathfinder 1e. Not a copy at all, just some of the same ideas. Which is cool because I really loved the Kineticist.
One thing to mention: The saving throw type should match the means used to resist the effects.
Charisma represents your force of personality, your sense of identity, and your ability to interact with the world around you. This effect targets none of those things, nor can it be reasonably assumed to be counteracted by any of those things. Thus, this should not be a Charisma save.
Examples of effects with Charisma saves are possession (resisted by your own ability to be in control of yourself), Zone of Truth (resisted by your ability to interact with others), and forced planar travel (This makes sense with a longer explanation, but can’t really be summarized.)
This should be resisted with Constitution. It withers the bodies of those trapped within it, so naturally should be resisted by how healthy that creature is to begin with. Dexterity is an option, too, but that’s typically represented by effects that can be dodged with a split-second reaction without leaving your space.
Hmmmm, I picked CHA because I considered it to be a contest of willpower. I was originally going to make it a contested roll rather than a save against DC. But you’re right, I’d have to jump through hoops in the (already complicated) description in order to justify having a CHA save. CON makes the most sense. Since this can be used even by non-casters and casters from other schools, how do I say that your normal DC stat is ignored and DC is calculated from willpower? Is that even a reasonable thing to do?
You would simply say “The spellcasting ability modifier for this spell is Wisdom.”
Wisdom is the stat that represents your willpower, your experience, and your ability to perceive the world around you. If something attacks your mind, it is most often resisted with Wisdom for this reason.
Realistically, it probably shouldn’t be a spell, and it definitely shouldn’t be this complicated. Spells used to have this level of granularity in earlier editions, and 5e specifically moved away from that for clarity and speed of play.
My recommendation is to decide if the person this item was created for (not necessarily the PC using it) is supposed to die or not when using it. If they are, then the item just kills them. If not, they fall unconscious at 0 HP, then suffer one failed death save as normal when the item detonates. Don’t mess about with charging it with death saves or exhaustion levels, just have it do some damage.
That’s fair. I think that this is probably beyond saving; it loses a lot of it’s flair without the ability to decide how many death throws to sacrifice (like chosing to cast at higher level).
I might try to salvage the exhaustion thing into a ring that allows you to extend the range or AOE of a spell by using exhaustion levels instead of charges or something.
FWIW most of what I read online seems to indicate that charisma most closely aligns with force-of-will. But it’s pretty murky, since like you said a lot of mind control magic is WIS save.
Most of what you read online is incorrect, then, or at least misleading. Willpower isn’t actually a stat in D&D. When your character asserts their will, they succeed at doing so, full stop. The save is for whether or not the character has an opportunity to do so.
What you have instead are Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
Intelligence saves are how much your character knows. An example here is illusion magic. Illusions are imperfect, and better understanding of nuance lets a character see an illusion as false, and then exert their will to disregard it.
Wisdom saves are about how much you can perceive and intuit. When someone attempts to control you, it’s subtle, and the saving throw is about noticing that something is wrong. Once you notice it, your character exerts their will and shrugs it off.
Charisma saves are about your force of personality and sense of identity. When someone attempts to possess your body, they are attempting to change who you are, and is directly opposed by how strongly you believe in yourself, and how strongly you believe in who you are. Once you resist the attempt, you then exert your will and drive the spirit out.
I’m aware that there is no stat for willpower, which is why finding something to roll for it is unclear. I’m not an expert but I’m not a complete beginner either.
To me, the biggest argument against rolling for willpower is that we don’t want to take away player agency for things that are internal to their character. But the counter to that is people can’t always control things internal to them, like mental disorders. A roll to see if your player stops procrastinating could be pretty entertaining, for example. Or more likely a roll to see if you give into a temptation that you know you shouldn’t, like if you’re a reformed thief presented with a great crime of opportunity. Sometimes it’s fun to add some chaos. It’s why we roll to begin with.
It’s worth noting that your description of charisma sounds a lot like willpower. That whole bit about believing in yourself 😜. I know it’s not what you meant by it, but I think it’s a pretty salient regardless.
I use the rules as is, but I’d love it if there was something less complicated (so adding a clause for spell level is not an option to me). If DnD 5.5 would go for “one spell slot per turn”, I’d welcome it, even if it’s a slight nerf for casters.
Playing in person, I made a lot of papercraft maps and items to get a very 3D feeling on the cheap. It was a lot of work, but my players loved it.
My current game is fully remote, and I’m finding I like creating digital stuff for Foundry even more than I liked papercraft. For non-combat stuff I set up splash screens with a piece of art showing the location, and then pop-up insert images with portraits of NPCs they meet. When it comes to combat, there are lots of really quality battlemap creators out there, with a lot of free options.
I tend to do theater of the mind for probably two thirds of my play sessions.
In combat I use a folding dry erase grid, some coins and markers to whip a board. If I have time to do a bigger fight I might prep some verticality by hot gluing some cardboard together. Having the terrain being low cost and effort gives me the option of breaking it down mid combat.
For dungeons, I do pre-drawn maps on grid paper, glued to cardboard, cut into tiles, per room, that I can place down as my players explore. I think having something like that makes the game more exciting and dramatic. It also lets me build more complex puzzles. My last map had minecart tracks all throughout that the players needed to use to move a piece of mining equipment to a certain spot to unlock a secret area. If I hadn’t had it prepared in advance, describing it specifically, or drawing it on a whiteboard, would have made it too obvious, I think.
For more open stuff though, like exploring a large aboveground region, or minor standalone encounters, I think theatre of the mind works well, and saves prep time, which is important. For games that rely more on the battle map, like PTU, which is what I actually GM, something like a dry erase board with a grid works well in these cases.
Thanks! I prefer it to just covering the map with sheets of paper, because it doesn’t give an indication of which way the dungeon goes or how big it is. It also makes it easy to transport the whole dungeon if I need to, because all the pieces can just go in a folder
Only if people looking at Pathfinder. It's more queer which is terrifying to right wingers. So I give it like 10% chance and up up 25% if paizo gets in on the game
I got my party together through a Discord chat that someone made for anyone living in our city. You should see if they have one where you live. It’s a great way to meet people for gaming and otherwise
I’ve done this before when I wanted to do a “holiday” session. Basically I wanted to run Death House from CoS as a one-shot on Halloween, but only 2 of my players were available on Halloween, and also the whole party was in the middle of an actual adventure in the middle of nowhere in my actual campaign. So what I did is said that during a long rest, those two characters had a shared dreamscape which embodied the experience of going through the Death House adventure together. Side note: Death House becomes extremely scary when you only have 2 PCs, even if they are level 5. If I wanted to be able to do this in a hurry for any time some players couldn’t make a session, I would keep those one-shot compendiums from Kobold Press (“Prepared! [1/2/3]”) handy.
Little One Shots sound like a good idea as well, yeah. I like to take a step back during those sessions and really allow the players to bring out their own ideas and let the main dreamer basically Co-DM the session. I’ve yet to be disappointed with the results!
Did it turn out to be a good session in your case?
It definitely did. I wanted to make the session meaningful for the players that made it, despite the fact that the dream conceit limits the realism of letting them keep any treasure they find. So instead I homebrewed a very minor consumable effect (like a “blessing”) and gave it to them as a reward for escaping the house with their lives. As I said, Death House is brutal for a small party, so the spookyness was reinforced by the deadliness of the adventure for two people.
Prep for the macro and give players full control over the micro. Have a session zero where everyone talks about what they are and aren’t comfortable with.
Gluttony might be an interesting idea. It’s not necessarily necromantic, but the idea of using magic to force a person to eat until they cannot continue and literally rupture.
Or, and this probably sounds stupid, but you could have a modified form of the grease spell that’s just wet noodles. I don’t know if you’ve ever stepped/slipped on wet noodles, but it’s disgusting and traumatic.
As someone who played Runescape and designed a Necromancer Cook specifically because of that, I am prepared!
The Culinaromancer’s tools of trade are the tools of the magic, a component pouch of ingredients that are specially crafted over years of hard work and diligence to the craft of magic.
Animate Dead using the skeleton of a freshly finished meal, imbuing into it the seasoned anger at how the nobles dared to salt it! Send that chicken after them for revenge! (While I am aware that animate dead specifically says humanoid, I had asked and my DM had permitted it, and also you are writing a story like you said so it works). Your master chef uses one of those old styled seasoning wands, a little cannister on a handle that you dust the special bone dust and seasoning that your magical craft is fueled by, forming the entity.
If you want to purely have it be D&D related, the Abyssal Chicken familiar would be perfect as the familiar of choice, tasting like a chicken but having the truly delectable presence of the Hellish realms behind it’s beak. Truly a master chef’s ultimate familiar signifying the willingness to dive to the harshest worlds for the best ingredients.
For some fun flavoring of spells, Toll the Dead as a cantrip, but it is the dinner bell being heard that echoes into the soul, reminding them that they are the meal tonight. The trusty cleaver brought out and cooked with the burning green fire to cook the meat as it carves it from the bone, a beautiful flavor! False Life is powered by alcohol, the seasoning that you spritz over the meal that empowers you with the strength to go further on. A dried pepper is brought out and added to the delectable meal as you breathe Dragon’s Breath, applying a dragon’s touch to the meal. Want to ask the dead how they want to be cooked? Sprinkle some of your graveyard dirt and basil blend before igniting it, letting the lovely aroma that only the dead can bring flavor the corpse as they can speak what they want to be cooked as for your people. Perhaps you want to make a creature be dead before preparing the feast, so that in the middle it returns to life before dying once more, letting the fear of sudden death add that delicious final seasoning, a truly delectable final meal! And of course, if worst comes to worst, feel free to grab your trusty chicken’s heart you keep on hand for adding that bit of flavor of dinosaur blood, and bring a nightmarish fear of being cooked poorly to these wretched souls who dare get in the way of your meal.
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