there are bunch, I saw ppl play smth in two(? maybe) already, but isn’t it extreamly wierd to just walk up to a random friendgroup and ask if I could join, especially because dnd needs prep.
I’m not saying this because anxiety, but I’d most certianly turn someone down who just appeared out of nowhere, STRANGER DANGER!
Should I ask the staff, do they handle this sorta thing? Should I put out flyers like on random trees?
I’m sry for spam, but like wdym I can just find ppl at stores?
If I’ve given the party a meaningful choice, I’ll honour it. Having said that, if I’ve prepared an encounter on the path not taken, I’ll reuse/reskin it later.
yeah but not all choices have equal meaning. You go into the left room or the right. It is all the same dungeon, and with out minor choices it just a hallway.
Choice can’t exist without information. If you know nothing, you can’t chose. If two doors are perfectly the same, it’s not a choice. If you have no information on either path in the forest, you’re not really choosing.
Even if it is immediately a false choice, the point of the fork in the road isn’t necessarily one of immediacy.
A poor DM will run the same exact campaign no matter what fork you take.
A good DM will still have the choice you make have impact, even if the immediate result no matter which way you go is a pair of ogres.
Maybe, if you go left you choose to save the prince rather than the princess. Yes, no matter which way you went you were going to encounter the ogres and it’s only the hostage that’s different. However, if the one you don’t save gets killed by the Basilisk-knight, that means you got to make a choice that impacts the campaign.
It just didn’t put you into conflict with the knight that the DM hasn’t written up yet. That’s next week.
Using your example, I meant it in the sense that the DM could have just as easily said 30 minutes of following as a cat instead of 40 and you would have 25% more wildshape resources, an entire box extra.
Things like Ki points can’t be fudged. You either use it or you don’t. This solution, while I enjoy the discourse, is going to end with the druid at my table saying that they’re only turning into a mouse for a few seconds while they scurry under the door. How do we handle that occurring 10+ times a session? At what point do we need too many house rules to govern this one rule change?
In the interest of discussion, I’ll offer an alternative. What if you had Wildshape Charges instead of Wildshape Minutes? Feel free to change the numbers, but let’s say you have 8 charges at level 5, and gain 1 or 2 charges per level. It takes 4 charges to transform into a CR2 animal, 2 charges for a CR 1, and a flat 1 charge for anything below CR 1. The amount of time you can Wildshape stays the same, or is a flat hourly amount. This will allow you to strategically plan out your Wildshape Charges while adding no additional rules for the DM or table. Thoughts?
I like the idea of “charges”. Rather than time directly, my numbers wouldn’t change but the concept would, be 1 charge is worth up to 15 min of wildshape time. It is used when it is used, they can be chained together so no need to re-transform to stay as a bear or a cat etc…
So the transformation cost would be 4xCR, min of 1. CR1 still is worth 1hr of “charge” time to transform then using charges up after that, dependant on how long you are transformed for…
As for the DM saying different time, that is a given in any situation, the DM could have as easily said that you followed for an hour, using 4 boxes.
And yes, the GM can just arbitrarily change whatever depending on how they’re feeling about it. Like is there 1 guard or 10 in the next room? Same thing. They can drain your resources in a thousand different ways, this time issue is no different. If you don’t trust your GM with that then it’s a bad play dynamic anyway.
Another way to solve the time issue could be to count the time when you’re in combat but not out of combat. You could justify it by the stress of combat putting strain on your abilities or something. I know I’d prefer that because having to count 15min intervals constantly would be worse for me than worrying about using up my abilities.
Agreed, the charges idea was a great suggestion by Toaster. It should help prevent the “but I was only wildshaped for 20 seconds” type of complaints.
Either way time is weird in D&D.
Assume that you are involved in a “long” combat at 10 rounds. Wildshape lasts hours, so yes I wildshape into a dire wolf and finish the battle in 1 minute of in game time; but being a wolf is not that useful out of combat…so I “waste” 59 minutes of wildshape time at Lvl 2 and 119 minutes at Lvl 4 etc…you could use some of the time saying that I was scouting the area around the battle for a few minutes…but still, the point stands.
Check out the YouTube channel “Matt Colville” and look for the playlist “running the game”. The first couple videos in that playlist will tell you all that you need to know.
Oooh ok good to know. CoS caught my eye in any case and one of the employees at a local game store has run it multiple times since the 90’s (including in 5e), so I’d have a great source of advice there
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.
What do you mean by “on the longer side”? Do you just mean “no one- or two-shots” or do you mean “big adventure that will last for like a year and go from level 4-10”?
In that case, you’ll need to go with only a couple of publishers. In fact, the only publishers I’m aware of who do such long adventures are Paizo and WOTC. If you want something from WOTC, I can vouch for Curse of Strahd being quite good. I can also vouch for Paizo’s Abomination Vaults, but only the story. They publish it for both D&D and Pathfinder and I’m currently running it in the latter.
Just don’t do what my DM did and forget to tell us how the light sword works after we found the hilt. We assumed it was broken and we needed to find the rest of it. And he didn’t correct us. We ended up spending several levels on a wild goose chase before he was like, “oh by the way, it’s like a lightsaber”. Still though we went to lots of interesting places in that time because there’s so much to explore in Barovia.
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.
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.
This is solved by bringing back Domain Level Play, and making spell components a meaningful resource again.
Most spells have a martial equivalent. Give martials access to those effects.
Most spells also used to cost something to cast other than a spell slot. When your only limitation is 8 hours of rest, magic scales wildly out of control.
Or play a system with better design instead of trying to force the wargame to be anything other than what it was designed to be.
Most spells also used to cost something to cast other than a spell slot. When your only limitation is 8 hours of rest, magic scales wildly out of control.
Something that is talked about a lot but rarely accompanied by practical advice on how to is the very crucial point of remembering:
The story you are co-creating as a DM is the story of the characters.
Want to lore dump? Tie it to one or more of your characters backgrounds. Maybe they are from the bloodline of that ancient king you want them to know about.
Not sure how to fill in the details like what does the place smell like? Ask a player “You smell something odd, describe the smell”
I am currently in the process of making some guide like posts and videos on certain topics aimed at both players and videos. Some are meant to be shared with players that are new, like the basics of tactical combat to help reduce your workload, especially with new players.
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.
dnd
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.