I kind of wish they'd just go for full 6e. I have a feeling that these new core books won't sell as well as they hope. Sure it might have a boost from the hard-core market immediately. But what incentive is there for the casual players to upgrade? They said themselves that the old core PHB will still be usable along side the new one. So really as long as the DM has the new book there is no reason for the existing players to upgrade.
I think they were totally going to and decided to back out last minute. It's gone from DnDnext to oneDND, and now it's called DnD 2024. At this point it's just a slight update
Point 1: There's nothing inherently stopping you from starting with 13 warriors. They don't necessarily have to follow the player party. During part 1 your group of 13 warriors might split up to guard two or more parts of the town. This gives your player party one or two red shirts for that fight. It's probably more work for you to play those on top of the enemies but, you can...
Point 2: Nothing dictates that a "warrior" HAS to be a barbarian class melee fighter. If you say that your setting has all kinds of fighting styles and classes then it does.
Point 3: There's nothing saying that your players have to be ready for the adventure when it begins. Particularly if you fill the party up with higher level NPCs you could definitely give your players the same "arc" as the protagonist had. Starting inexperienced before growing into themselves and becoming an integral part of solving the problem. Might require some behind the scenes fudging of rolls until they catch.
Another idea would be to start ALL 13 characters somewhat underleveled and when a player character dies, they get one of the remaining ones to continue.
Yo this campaign sounds cool af. I purchased Eaters of The Dead on paperback a long time ago and it was one of the best books I've ever read. The film based on that book is absolute trash and still a great fucking film to watch.
I’m running an Anything goes campaign soon and one of the recurring enemies will be a variation of a steel golem but one of the incarnations is 5 or 6 mimics forming up Voltron style into one enemy.
In my own homebrew Sword Coast canon, an entire black market network is run by changelings and their mimic masters. They're one of the reasons Xanathar is as paranoid as he is, especially after his spies confirmed their successful infiltration of Acq. Inc. at the exec level during a transplanar expedition.
At this point, the party is slipping into eldritch noir levels of conspiracy theories, and trust in reality itself is worth more than gold. 😶
But they aren't giving you the pdf with it either. They're giving you access to a digitized book that they can cut off access to whenever they want to push the next edition. It's just another example of Hasbro missing the entire point of the community's complaint.
I’m always wary of basing campaigns around movies because there’s always the potential that the players will make radically different choices. Like, if the players decide not to stick around for the next fog, will that be okay?
To answer your question, campaign level is a function of the types of monsters you’re looking to include. Since these seem to be mostly humanoid soldier types, you probably want to stay low enough level for that kind of combat to be a danger.
Starting at level 2 or 3 would probably be appropriate to maintain the challenge. On the other hand, if you’re planning to pit the players against an army of dozens of soldiers, you may want to start at level 5 so they can mow them down properly.
I’m always wary of basing campaigns around movies because there’s always the potential that the players will make radically different choices.
We're doing Lost Mines of Phandelver. Nothing is technically stopping us from just packing up our gear and heading down the coast for shits and giggles. I feel that part of playing a campaign is the commitment to try and follow the story at least in the general sense. And I think part of the allure of DMing is watching your group tackle a story in their own way - which may be very different from what you had imagined.
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 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.
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.
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 🤣
dnd
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.