I dish out some damage with the warpick and usually throw it at an enemy or simply drop it in the middle of combat. Sometimes I throw away the shield too or use it to grapple, like topple an enemy and then use the shield to pin them down as a ‘grapple’. I try to flavor it differently, depending on combat situation, as not to make it too boring for everyone while just going “Imma grapple them”.
I mean, if your DM is letting you grapple with a shield definitely keep doing that lol.
But apart from that, remember the old grapple-shove combo. A prone creature cannot stand up while grappled. So if you can do both to the same target, they can’t move until they beat you in 2 athletics contests, and they have disadvantage on attacks while prone.
He only lets me do it when I have one hand free to technically ‘grapple’ and I have to topple/shove them to make them prone. But thanks for the reminder!
I try not to do ‘unrealistic’ grappling and try to use the tools I have to grapple. For example, use the pick to pierce their limbs and keep them in place or pin them down with the shield when prone. But always with a hand free to make the condition to grapple legit.
You said in another comment that you enjoy DMing a game that has unpredictable results for the DM as well. A lot of good advice has already been given, but might I suggest giving your players more agency that you’d most likely see falling into the realm of the DM usually, so they create unexpected events for you as well?
Say you have the character of your friend destroy said Annis Hag, but blast! she had a curse prepared to fall upon anyone who would dare defy her to the point of death. Now instead of throwing your idea of a punishing burden on the player, you could instead go: “You can feel an evil magic engulfing your very being. It muddles your senses and try as you might, you are incapable of escaping its grasp. As it burns itself into your very bones and soul, you feel one of your abilities weaken. Which ability is affected?”
That way the player retains agency, can pick the least punishing option (in their opinion), have consequences but it doesn’t feel like they just got punished for doing well or making a choice just as much as you simply deciding “That’s how it is now. Enjoy!”. Could also add an element of chance and put it down to a roll of the dice, but that might again feel too arbitrarily punishing to that character.
The curse then mightn’t just have that main effect, mind you. But at least the worst one is more down to what the character feels and fears rather than what the DM wants to dish out. It will also give you something to ponder and think about in how to work with whatever the player chose or came up with. You could let them describe how the curse alters their appearance, do they suddenly have a mark on their skin? If so where, what size, shape and color? Now you have a PC with an odd mark of their own imagination and you can build on that. Or the player might come up with horns sprouting from their head, etc. Using this, you can have NPCs react to these changes and really play into them.
Player Agency might help alleviate the feeling of it being a punishing campaign, by giving them some room to breathe in all the pressure and stress.
This seems like a neat idea, although I worry that if it’s not executed right it seems like I’m just making up weird stuff to make the game harder. As it stands, I stick to the RAW pretty closely so that I feel like I’m being reasonably fair. I tend to doubt myself a lot when I homebrew mechanics that work against the player.
I think I mentioned the word in the post but didn’t elaborate: dilemmas. It seems like this is a big part of what you’re suggesting: letting the players take part in deciding what negative consequences they suffer where there is no answer that is strictly positive for the players. I do feel like I have failed to present my dilemmas in a way that gets perceived as fair, it just seems like the players assumed that there must be time to loot the vault and escape from the demon without consequence, when I was trying to make it clear that they can either get away quickly, or loot the vault and have a powerful enemy catch up to them.
And to be honest that’s kind of been the most fun I’ve had is when I offer a choice between safety without maximum reward, or taking a risk that requires a clever solution to escape from. I feel like I telegraph the danger but I can’t overcome this underlying assumption that I’m not actually going to follow through on the threat.
Yeah, alright. Can you provide an example of how you present the choice during a session? Maybe it’s really as simple as being far more on the nose with how you say it?
I’ve found my players often really do not grasp implied information and it just leads nowhere. But I get the feeling you’re already really clear with how you approach it.
I think the rule as is, is fine. Mercers change to allow up to 2nd level is also fine, but borders the balance scale.
Come to think of it, I could see myself implementing the following house rule: Up to level 8, only cantrips, up to level 14 you can do 1st levels too and after that you can use 2nd levels.
When I was a player, my DM would print out whatever battle maps he needed and laminate them for the dry erase marker. An even more adaptable version of that would be a clear plastic sleeve or cover placed over the paper, so you could have a variety of maps handy and swap them out as needed.
Now as a DM myself I use my iPad and the procreate app, which works fairly well. I can have a ton of maps ready to go for both battle and exploration, and a bonus is that I also have an easy way to hide and reveal parts of the map using layers. There’s an iPad app called encounter+ that’s specifically for running combats off of an iPad, but it has some features locked behind a paywall and a bit of a learning curve, so I haven’t used it myself.
For the game I run, we’re just remote, even though we’re all in the same town and could be in person. For the group I’m a player in, we sometimes do remote, sometimes in person. When we play in person, then DM keeps Foundry on the TV. We bring laptops so we can interact with it.
As a side note one of the things I love about Foundry is how well it pairs with Dungeondraft, which is also purchase-once rather than subscription based. Makes it really easy to have custom maps
I haven’t played in person in a while. I have a wet-erase map and some markers, and a small starter set of minis from an old 4th edition box set. If I were to run in person again though, I would probably just find a way of integrating Foundry, like maybe hooking up a TV for the players to look at, and separately using a laptop for the DM view. Foundry just makes things so much easier. Although if I was in person, I’d probably let people roll their actual dice instead of using the virtual dice.
I have it highly configured - content is imported from DNDBeyond. Combat is mostly automated. The players choose a target and click their attack or spell, and Foundry automatically rolls the attack, compares against AC and auto-rolls and applies damage on a hit. AOE effects let the player place a template.
Handouts are neatly organized in the Journal tab and I also make playlists that auto play when I move us to a new scene (e.g. activating a random encounter scene starts my combat playlist on shuffle).
My players love it. With that said, I’m a software developer by profession, and all these things take a ton of work to get going and can be buggy at times.
Other non 5E games sometimes have great official support on Foundry, but for 5E you’re on your own.
As a Player I didn’t like it as much as CoS but that might be personal taste. Our DM said there’s not much detail given sometimes and less external stuff to cover that fact.
I think the more important balancing is just ‘making battlemaster maneuvers resourceless and available to all classes’.
But I’m not against ‘limit break’ as a short rest ‘charge’ available to most martials.
TBH, the above is basically the way PF2e handles martials; at least half of their class feats are more or less ‘resourceless maneuvers’, and many martials have access to ‘focus spells’, which are basically just short rest charges for exclusive class features, that just happen to mechanically be considered spells (though, notably, PF2e doesn’t give fighter focus spells, making them nearly 100% at-will).
Personally, I think the most important fix to the martial-caster imbalance is to nerf casters, who just are too strong, but A) that’s basically what PF2e already did, and its largely complained about (though I love it). And B) Its not strictly necessary, if you buff Martials by a large margin (though, imo, that starts to get into like, demigod territory that I don’t love).
No I absolutely agree with you on both of those points - Martials need more resourceless abilities, and casters are too strong and nerfing them is an absolutely essential step. People are too resistant to nerfs, but PF2e casters are just as competent as ever - they were made less omnipresent because the problem isn’t just in how absolutely shafted martials are(though that is definitely a big, BIG issue that WotC seems to not even be trying to hide anymore), it’s the fact that magic is too cheap for such powerful effects, while martial abilities are just as if not more expensive for less.
Honestly, the main example I turn to regarding both of those points, and WotC absolutely hating martials, is one single ability - Commander’s Strike.
When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can forgo one of your attacks[1, ah ah ah] and use a bonus action[2, ah ah ah] to direct one of your companions to strike. When you do so, choose a friendly creature who can see or hear you and expend one superiority die[3! ah ah ah]. That creature can immediately[This Count Dracula joke doesn’t apply here…] use its reaction[4! 4! Ah Ah Aaaahhh!] to make one weapon attack, adding the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll.
Have you figured out what the muppet vampire was counting? That’s right, Resources spent by this fighter ability! And the total count is FOUR. FOUR ENTIRE RESOURCES SPENT BY THE PARTY, THREE OF THE FIGHTER’S AND ONE OF THEIR ALLY’S, ON ONE ABILITY. SPELLS NEVER COST MORE THAN ONE SPELL SLOT EVEN AT 9TH! WHAT THE FUCK?? Let alone the fact that all you’re getting for it is…A single extra attack from an ally that turn. With a bonus to damage, sure, but that only applies if it hits. And to add insult to injury, it says “immediately,” so the one getting it can’t even delay it to decide the optimal target or save it for a particularly sticky situation.
The game and its players seem to just put more expectations on the non-magical people for them to be able to do anything than casters, who can just do things with no strings attached.
I recommend skim reading any purchased modules to know what to expect before you run them. You’ll quickly find your flow of how much prep you want/need for each session. When it comes to running the actual sessions, I try to keep 2 main points in mind every game regardless of game type:
1- Be descriptive. You are the eyes, ears, noses, and any other sensory organs of your players. And to some extent, their knowledge and intuition as well. They only know as much about interacting with the world as you tell them. Help them experience it. It doesn’t have to be perfect or cinematic or flowery language. Just get the broad stroke ideas across to them however you can and their own imaginations will fill in the gaps. Practice describing multiple aspects of a scene or NPC/monster. What do they see, what do they hear, what do they feel, what is the mood, etc.
2- Default to saying “yes” in game. I don’t mean let them run all over the plot or rules, but if they have an idea, do your best to roll with it. If there’s something they want to do, if its remotely plausible then find ways to facilitate it. Even if it’s not explicitly laid out in your story or within the rules (or even 100% legal as written). This takes getting used to and often involves going off script and ad hoc rule adjudications. That doesn’t mean their idea will always work or that it should be easy, but give them the opportunity to try. The game is collaborative story telling. Players being creative in game can take some of the workload off of you, and make them feel more involved in the story. That means more fun for everyone.
Hey! It sounds like you've prepped a lot with the books and DM screen, which is a good sign!
As a DM, I jumped into running a full year long campaign after just running a couple one shots. It really IS easier than you think!
All you have to do is help your friends interact with the world in the books. That's your only job.
The only tips I have are these:
Make sure both your players AND yourself are having fun! It can be easy to stress and bend to your players every whim so they have as good a time as possible - don't do that. Make sure YOU'RE having fun, too! It'll improve your ability to run the game and everyone will be able to tell.
Don't worry about the tabletop aspect too much. I ran a game for over a year with nothing but my laptop and a map I drew with my friend that had the names of cities on it. I hid my dice behind my hand because there was no room for a DM screen - it really just comes down to you and your players having fun. The objects aren't necessary. Don't worry about not having them.
Nothing big, but I like to make colored cards with NPCs, treasure, mobs/minibosses, and small quests. Sometimes you just need a random mob, so shuffle the mob deck and draw one, if it doesn’t match the situation, draw another.
Regarding tabletop, we started with P&P and used erasing rubbers and such as figures and a square notepad as battle map.
Nowadays we have proper painted figures and nice battle maps, but sometimes we don’t even bring all that up for small battles, as we just do them verbally instead of visually.
I’d probably let them know I need a little bit of prep time, and then print off a one page RPG like Honey Heist. They’re quick to start, and a great way for people to try TTRPGs for the first time. After that, if they decide they like roleplaying, we can get into something more serious
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