Dungeons and Dragons Megathread

[Bel]

Usually in DnD/Pathfinder, Humans are considered very diverse. They have relatively short lifespans (compared to Elves/Dragons/Dwarves) and often have more than one child. So to find room to grow crops, humans sometimes leave their birthplace and go somewhere else...and over a few hundred years the language mutates until it might as well be a distinct thing.

Compare that to the Elves who have much fewer children, but also live a lot longer. It takes much longer for a language to mutate from the Elven language because even 2-3 hundred years after the group moved, there would still be living people who could speak the original language. Sure it would mutate but much slower than if a human had done the same thing.

Dwarves of course live longer than humans, if not quite so long as an elf and usually they live in extensive mining villages. I would expect that there are multiple dwarven tongues but the same thing that slows the mutation of the elven language would apply.

In the Planes of course, the various kinds of Celestial or Infernals are all effectively immortal and usually have the gift of tongues on top of that. Their language is liable to change very slowly if at all.

A dragons language. in may campaign settings has a lot to do with magic which proabbly slows the mutation of the language...plus of course the 1000+ year lifespan of dragons plays a part as well.

Of course this is just a guess, but its what I would assume plays a part.

 

[SinisterPorpoise]

Usually in DnD/Pathfinder, Humans are considered very diverse. They have relatively short lifespans (compared to Elves/Dragons/Dwarves) and often have more than one child. So to find room to grow crops, humans sometimes leave their birthplace and go somewhere else...and over a few hundred years the language mutates until it might as well be a distinct thing.

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Of course this doesn't explain why Goblinoids and other "Monstrous Humanoids" usually have the same, or at least very similar, languages.
Personally I think it may have something to do with Racial Deities and Humanities' distinct lack in that department, as well as their diverse assortment of non-Racial Deities.

 

[Vejut]

Also, don't elves and dwarves in Forgotten Realms have multiple languages each? Granted, doesn't help your generic d&d fantasy setting, or your note about monstrous humanoids.

 

[Kylar]

Serious question from the Pathfinder FB Page: Is there a way to be a swashbuckler with a firearm?

ffs

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Swashbuckler, I am not familiar with. For this sort of thing, I'd just run a Privateer template from Path of War. Running around with a rapier and musket is the only way to do this sort of thing.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

Swashbuckler, I am not familiar with. For this sort of thing, I'd just run a Privateer template from Path of War. Running around with a rapier and musket is the only way to do this sort of thing.

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Swashbuckler is basically a melee adpatation of gunslinger and shares the "lack of power progression" issue. It has a few neat tricks though.

I can now confirm that akasha is pretty nifty at low levels much like incarnum.

I had psionics and maneuvers, but i basically got through the combat on just LPSoL and Stormcaller band.

Though to be fair, rolling 19 out of twenty on both bullrush rolls probably helped a lot.

(I kept forgetting about my abilities, but good rolls and LPSoL cover a multitude of sins)

 

[Q99]

Usually in DnD/Pathfinder, Humans are considered very diverse. They have relatively short lifespans (compared to Elves/Dragons/Dwarves) and often have more than one child. So to find room to grow crops, humans sometimes leave their birthplace and go somewhere else...and over a few hundred years the language mutates until it might as well be a distinct thing.

Compare that to the Elves who have much fewer children, but also live a lot longer. It takes much longer for a language to mutate from the Elven language because even 2-3 hundred years after the group moved, there would still be living people who could speak the original language. Sure it would mutate but much slower than if a human had done the same thing.

Dwarves of course live longer than humans, if not quite so long as an elf and usually they live in extensive mining villages. I would expect that there are multiple dwarven tongues but the same thing that slows the mutation of the elven language would apply.

In the Planes of course, the various kinds of Celestial or Infernals are all effectively immortal and usually have the gift of tongues on top of that. Their language is liable to change very slowly if at all.

A dragons language. in may campaign settings has a lot to do with magic which proabbly slows the mutation of the language...plus of course the 1000+ year lifespan of dragons plays a part as well.

Of course this is just a guess, but its what I would assume plays a part.

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Aside from life span, communication plays a role. If your elven cultures interact with each other, then while they develop different accents, they also may have enough cross pollination to prevent total drift. In Pathfinder, Elves only returned to Golarion in one group around 5,000 years ago, so it's not *that* much time to diverge- with the exception of the Jinin elves, who until quite recently were a small group with tight cultural ties to the past, so they have less reason to shift, and the Drow, who did allow shift and who's language is now considered Undercommon. Of some note, Druidic is partially descended from elven, but now incomprehensible to each other, and Sylvan is the root language of Elven.

Similarly, Dwarves arose from the Darklands in a single group around the same time (and for similar reasons- "meteor caused darkage over"), so we could easily assume that while there *used* to be more languages, the process of coming together made them form one. When they came up and formed their 'Sky Citadels' (sky in this case meaning 'not undergroup'), they'd in turn keep track of each other and in contact. As many Sky Citadels fell and they spread out more, that may change, but in turn that's made there be a couple of 'main' centers of Dwarven culture that fit the norm. While other worlds often have longer histories, it's not that rare that there's often a 'main' Dwarven kingdom in modern times and it may be that modern dwarvish is simply their language, while in the past when they- or elves, or whatever- were more spread out they had more languages that got absorbed by the dominant one.

Dragons, I think draconic is purposefully designed not to shift much so that you can still talk with someone you won't see for centuries. If you allow too much mutability, pretty soon you won't have a language.

And one other thing- we may think of a language of being a 'human' language, but if a fair number of another race live there, is it really 'human' language or is it the language of (country), formed by the input of all races there including but not limited to the human majority? Other species who've moved into other countries may simply have adapted to these culture languages as their main language and if they do speak elven/dwarvish, it's just to read old stuff and to talk with foreigners, not what they use among themselves. Again in Golarion, the elves of the Mordant Spire don't even *speak* elven at all, they speak Azlanti, a so-called 'human' language... which no current human nation speaks.

 

[KageX]

Okay so here is a question.

Dracula was statted up way back in ADnD days as a very powerful Nosferatu, a Vampire that drains Constitution instead of Levels.

He also had some very strong powers, notably very good Magic Resistance (25% Resistance and any Magic Weapon short of +3 did not harm him at all) resistance to Running Water, and notably could walk around in Daylight with no damage, albeit without most of his vampiric powers, but still retaining his physical strength.

So all in all pretty damned powerful.

I am thinking of doing him with this and a modified Vampire Lord Template to explain such powers (which means taking some of the things away from Vampire Lord Template).

Now here is a question.

What Class would be appropriate for Vlad the Impaler to have had in life?

Honestly he would likely be a Warrior or Paladin, but does any other Martial Class fit him?

And since Dracula having so many more "Supernatural Powers" in fiction then other Vampires is a thing, what form of Magic would he probably take up the study of as he lives throughout the centuries?

Would he simply be a Wizard, trade his service to some Fienf to become a Warlock, or is it possible that yes he the Tepesh line did have some Nonhuman Blood and he eventually awoke as a Sorcerer due to his gorging on so much Blood?

Or maybe he would have some different spells-casting class.

In short what Classes would be appropriate to make Vlad Dracula be the Biggest Baddest Vampire in a setting?

 

[SinisterPorpoise]

Dragons, I think draconic is purposefully designed not to shift much so that you can still talk with someone you won't see for centuries. If you allow too much mutability, pretty soon you won't have a language.

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It's also iirc at least partially sourced from genetic memory.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

Okay so here is a question.

Dracula was statted up way back in ADnD days as a very powerful Nosferatu, a Vampire that drains Constitution instead of Levels.

He also had some very strong powers, notably very good Magic Resistance (25% Resistance and any Magic Weapon short of +3 did not harm him at all) resistance to Running Water, and notably could walk around in Daylight with no damage, albeit without most of his vampiric powers, but still retaining his physical strength.

So all in all pretty damned powerful.

I am thinking of doing him with this and a modified Vampire Lord Template to explain such powers (which means taking some of the things away from Vampire Lord Template).

Now here is a question.

What Class would be appropriate for Vlad the Impaler to have had in life?

Honestly he would likely be a Warrior or Paladin, but does any other Martial Class fit him?

And since Dracula having so many more "Supernatural Powers" in fiction then other Vampires is a thing, what form of Magic would he probably take up the study of as he lives throughout the centuries?

Would he simply be a Wizard, trade his service to some Fienf to become a Warlock, or is it possible that yes he the Tepesh line did have some Nonhuman Blood and he eventually awoke as a Sorcerer due to his gorging on so much Blood?

Or maybe he would have some different spells-casting class.

In short what Classes would be appropriate to make Vlad Dracula be the Biggest Baddest Vampire in a setting?

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What edition/sources are you using?

 

[Morphic Tide]

In short what Classes would be appropriate to make Vlad Dracula be the Biggest Baddest Vampire in a setting?

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Two levels of Lifedrinker, Book of Vile Darkness page 63, gives a 6-point pool that gains two points for each negative level bestowed and one point per point of Constitution drained. The first level lets them spend one point for 1d6 temporary HP that lasts 24 hours, the second level lets them Empower their spells for four points without spell slot increase. Ur-priest makes up for lost casting by being accelerated progression, so you have 10 total levels to work with if you are statting Vlad as having 20 class levels. Fluff-wise, it's very much "screw all the Gods," which is fitting for Dracula-as-monster.

For when Vlad was alive, he'd probably be a Martial. He was a rather high ranking noble who led sizable armies in life, so he'd have group-support skills and social skills. Martial is one of the few classes where the two intersect. A level or two of Crusader would give access to some White Raven and Divine Spirit Maneuvers to boost both survivability and group combat ability, and Crusader has Diplomacy and Intimidate on the class skill list to put ranks in, as well as Knowledge(Religion), which is an Ur-Priest prerequisite.

 

[KageX]

What edition/sources are you using?

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The Masque of the Red Death Gothic Earth ADnD setting is Ravenloft Addition Setting which has the Real World in the late 19th Century as a Base.

Basically it takes characters from famous literature of the time an reinterprets them as DnD Characters.

So for Dracula is a DnD Nosferatu, and Professor Moriarty is a Rakshasha who became fascinated by English Culture, only to end up ostracized by his kin in India for trying to build an Empire in England.

Notably it has an entire book devoted to Transylvania and Dracula himself, appropriately titled "A Guide to Transylvania".

So that setting was the first truly "Dedicated" effort to import Dracula into DnD.

It also has the Red Death as a sort of Elder Evil squatting on the Earth's Weave and messing up both Arcane and Divine Magic.

The Red Death has cut off most Planar Travel, exorcised most of the Old Gods, and literally causes anyone using Magic of any kind to risk becoming Corrupted or Die to due Spell Failure.

While the Gods an most Non Evil Magical Creatures are no more, Mystics can still access Priestly Powers, which are fueled by Faith and "answered" by Nameless Spirits but since both Arcane and Divine Magic draw upon the Weave even this Magic can still be twisted by the Red Death.

Finally the Red Death Empowers certain individuals, such as Dracula, making them Psuedo Domain Lords similar to the Dark Lords in Ravenloft, but they can pick up and leave for new lands and eventually their powers extend to wherever they have settled.

That I would probably leave out but admittedly the Red Death would admittedly make for a good Elder Evil for a Campaign as it tries to corrupt the Magic of a World.

But in all the Masque of the Red Death is honestly an interesting setting.

One wonders what would happen if it's characteristics were fused with Modern DnD stuff like Urban Arcana.............

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

The Masque of the Red Death Gothic Earth ADnD setting is Ravenloft Addition Setting which has the Real World in the late 19th Century as a Base.

Basically it takes characters from famous literature of the time an reinterprets them as DnD Characters.

So for Dracula is a DnD Nosferatu, and Professor Moriarty is a Rakshasha who became fascinated by English Culture, only to end up ostracized by his kin in India for trying to build an Empire in England.

Notably it has an entire book devoted to Transylvania and Dracula himself, appropriately titled "A Guide to Transylvania".

So that setting was the first truly "Dedicated" effort to import Dracula into DnD.

It also has the Red Death as a sort of Elder Evil squatting on the Earth's Weave and messing up both Arcane and Divine Magic.

The Red Death has cut off most Planar Travel, exorcised most of the Old Gods, and literally causes anyone using Magic of any kind to risk becoming Corrupted or Die to due Spell Failure.

While the Gods an most Non Evil Magical Creatures are no more, Mystics can still access Priestly Powers, which are fueled by Faith and "answered" by Nameless Spirits but since both Arcane and Divine Magic draw upon the Weave even this Magic can still be twisted by the Red Death.

Finally the Red Death Empowers certain individuals, such as Dracula, making them Psuedo Domain Lords similar to the Dark Lords in Ravenloft, but they can pick up and leave for new lands and eventually their powers extend to wherever they have settled.

That I would probably leave out but admittedly the Red Death would admittedly make for a good Elder Evil for a Campaign as it tries to corrupt the Magic of a World.

But in all the Masque of the Red Death is honestly an interesting setting.

One wonders what would happen if it's characteristics were fused with Modern DnD stuff like Urban Arcana.............

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I mean, are you using 3.5? pathfinder? 4e? 5e?

if PF, DSP has a whole book devoted to vampires which is, being a DSP product, actually pretty competent.

 

[Strunkriidiisk]

Hey, remember the charr PC race I made a while back? Here's the second draft.

I'm not happy with the Phalanx feature as-is -- it feels kind of lame, but the original version (+1 AC to you and allies when allies are within 5 feet, and gain advantage on Athletics checks to resist shoving) was deemed overpowered.

I've been mulling over a replacement feature:

Feature: Once per long rest, add (1? 2?) to your AC until the end of the encounter. (Other duration?)
ALTERNATE: Spend hit dice (maximum?) to boost AC, +1 AC per die until the end of the encounter. (Other duration?)

 

[Walker of the Yellow Path]

Hey, remember the charr PC race I made a while back? Here's the second draft.

I'm not happy with the Phalanx feature as-is -- it feels kind of lame, but the original version (+1 AC to you and allies when allies are within 5 feet, and gain advantage on Athletics checks to resist shoving) was deemed overpowered.

I've been mulling over a replacement feature:

Feature: Once per long rest, add (1? 2?) to your AC until the end of the encounter. (Other duration?)
ALTERNATE: Spend hit dice (maximum?) to boost AC, +1 AC per die until the end of the encounter. (Other duration?)

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For Phalanx, you could give Charr a Variation of the Protection Fighting Style.

Phalanx: When an ally within five feet of you would be hit by an attack, you can use your reaction to grant them +2 to their AC.

Something like that maybe?

 

[Strunkriidiisk]

I've decided to axe Phalanx entirely. Here are a couple of possible skills that I've worked up with some help:

Battle Roar: Use your bonus action to yell a fearsome battlecry, defying your enemies and inspiring your allies. Until the end of your next turn, allied creatures within line of sight treat all damage dice as having rolled their maximum value. Has no effect on allies who cannot see or hear you. You can't use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Flanking: When you score a critical hit on an enemy creature, you can use your bonus action to direct one of your allies to take advantage of the opening it presents. The next attack made by one of your allies is made with advantage.

 

[FaeGlade Plural]

So the Sacred Servant Paladin is actually pretty good, and one of the stronger cases of minionmancy around.
And it's actually the best way to have a Paladin with a dragon for a mount - while there's the option for Drakes, those are just utterly underwhelming (a medium paladin can only ride a drake at level 13, and it'll only be 40 foot clumsly flight too without having anything like a breath weapon).

So at 8th level, the Sacred Servant gets to cast Planar Ally. But it's the only class that can do so without paying it's cost - as long as the request is reasonable.
Normally, longer tasks always require higher payment - but since you don't pay anything, you can just straight-up go to 1 day per caster level. Since you can use this at 8th level, and once per week - well, you effectively start out with a permanent celestial ally. Later on, it can even be two (due to overlapping durations)

Now, the request has to be reasonable. But that should obviously be up to the creature in questio, as well as your deity. If you don't send them on utterly meaningless tasks or needlessly endanger their lives, but instead use their aid to to noble proper paladin things - well, that's reasonable right?
Obviously, this depends on your roleplaying this well - make some friends! - and your GM not calling shenanigans.

So, how does that get you a Dragon?
Simple - apply the Half-Celestial template. This can turn basically any creature into an outsider, thus being a valid target for Planar Ally. It doesn't even increase the creatures HD, so you're fine on that account. And several examples are listed on the spells page.
And you can request the aid of a specific creature you know. And there certainly are a good amount of half-celestial dragons - Apsu being the deity of good dragons, after all. So it's entirely reasonable that a Paladin of Apsu can request the aid of a half-celestial silver or gold dragon.

At first, you'd only be able to call a Bronze Wyrmling, which isn't terribly useful compared to some of the other options.
But at 12th level - still earlier than a rideable flying frake, and much more useful until then - you get up to 12 HD. This opens up Juvenile Sky Dragons (200 foot good flight speed, electricity cone), Young Gold Dragons (only poor maneuverability though, but a swim speed), Juvenile Bronze Dragons (also a swim speed) and Young Silver Dragons (200 foot average flight speed, paralzying breath, and cloudwalking).
And at 16th level, you can go up to 18 HD. That's Mature Adult Sky Dragons, Adult Gold Dragons, Mature Adult Bronze Dragons and Adult Silver Dragons.
Of course, that's just the dragons - you can also summon a lot of other things, often providing pretty good spellcasting.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

So the Sacred Servant Paladin is actually pretty good, and one of the stronger cases of minionmancy around.
And it's actually the best way to have a Paladin with a dragon for a mount - while there's the option for Drakes, those are just utterly underwhelming (a medium paladin can only ride a drake at level 13, and it'll only be 40 foot clumsly flight too without having anything like a breath weapon).

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It's like you've never heard of the Supermount. Paladin5/Beastmaster1/Halfling Outrider4/Faith Scion 10

Enjoy your Young Silver Dragon mount with 14 bonus animal HD.

 

[FaeGlade Plural]

It's like you've never heard of the Supermount. Paladin5/Beastmaster1/Halfling Outrider4/Faith Scion 10

Enjoy your Young Silver Dragon mount with 14 bonus animal HD.

Click to shrink...

I have, but that's 3.5 instad of Pathfinder.
Also, as mentioned, the Sacred Servant can summon a lot more than Half-Celestial Dragons. Technically, you could summon anything that is an outsider or can be half-celestial and isn't chaotic or evil, up to 18 HD - a Planetar is already great, but otherwise you could go with anything at all, up to and including just summoning an 18th-level Half-Celestial Wizard or something.
Oh, and you can end up with almost three or such companions constantly - summon one that sticks around for 20 days, then 7 days after that another one that sticks around for 20 days, then 7 days after that the third one that sticks around for 20 days, then 6 days after that your first one vanishes but will be back on the next day.

So, it's really more than just a great mount (the mount isn't even that great), it's much more about minionmancy and being a one-character party.

 

[Gamerex27]

So, I've officially started building a campaign setting. Working through encounters, general story structure, and the basics now.

I have a question about D&D cosmology in general, though.

Is there...a unified cosmology or meta-multiverse that exists in all settings? Like...are there entities which appear in multiple settings, regularly?

I ask because, while I know some official D&D writers preferred to keep settings separate (like the whole Lord Soth debacle), there are still multiple instances of settings blending into each other. Vecna started in Greyhawk, ended up pinballing all over the place from the Demiplane of Dread to Sigil, and eventually became a god who's back in Greyhawk again...

Sigil-and to another extent Planescape and the Great Wheel as a whole-seems to have been welded into the very rules of D&D with the whole planar travel rules and multiple mentions of the City of Doors in spell descriptions and rules and whatnot. Some gods just seem to pop up in multiple settings-mostly the nonhuman gods from what I can tell. That's not even getting into 4E's Dawn War mashup of D&D's Greatest Hits of gods. And while I'm aware of the Demon/Devil separation and the basics of the Blood War, to what extent is that attached to a specific setting, since infernal/hell stuff seems to be glued to one particular setting/cosmology by nature?

D&D has a multiverse, yeah, that much is obvious. But is there some meta-setting omniverse I've somehow overlooked in all this? Or am I trying to connect the dots between stuff that has little to do with anything?

 

[Q99]

So, I've officially started building a campaign setting. Working through encounters, general story structure, and the basics now.

I have a question about D&D cosmology in general, though.

Is there...a unified cosmology or meta-multiverse that exists in all settings? Like...are there entities which appear in multiple settings, regularly?

---

D&D has a multiverse, yeah, that much is obvious. But is there some meta-setting omniverse I've somehow overlooked in all this? Or am I trying to connect the dots between stuff that has little to do with anything?

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No. There's multiple cosmologies, the Great Wheel (most things 1st through 3ed, and products that use those settings), the World Axis (4ed points of light setting), and the Eberron setting, but even when there's the same being in multiple, they're pretty clearly different characters with the same name. Great Wheel Zeus is not World Axis Zeus, Asmodeus is different as well, etc..

That said, all the cosmologies have an 'outside' so one can draw some similarities and hypothesis connections easily, but there is no official linking of the major cosmologies.

 

[KageX]

The one thing with DnD to keep in mind is that technically everything exists in the Same Reality and Planar Travel as well as Spelljamming can be used to reach any of the Settings main Mortal Planes.

It's just that while this is Technically True it is all a confusing swamp of contradicting information that is unlikely to be cleared up any time soon, leaving it very much Open to Interpretation.

However the fact that Dragonlance has Multiple Timelines as a thing, and an entire supplement (Legends of the Twins) with about six such Divergence Points to play around in New Timelines offers an Out to this.

All the differences and contradictions between Settings could be said to be due Multiple Timelines being in play, with say the Forgotten Realms and Eberron we see in Official Material being a Seperate Timeline from each other.

So that could be a they Nguyen, but it is not confirmed.

 

[Q99]

The one thing with DnD to keep in mind is that technically everything exists in the Same Reality and Planar Travel as well as Spelljamming can be used to reach any of the Settings main Mortal Planes.

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Not exactly the case. All the earlier edition ones are in the same cosmology, but Ravenloft is a Demiplane in the Ethereal, so Spelljamming won't reach, and Dark Sun is surrounded by the Grey, so plane travel is suuuper hard.

Eberron, on the flip side, is completely disconnected, there's no mention of other campaign worlds- or any planes known to the other campaign worlds for that matter.

All the differences and contradictions between Settings could be said to be due Multiple Timelines being in play, with say the Forgotten Realms and Eberron we see in Official Material being a Seperate Timeline from each other.

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The issue there is even the creator beings of the planes themselves are different! Eberron was made by, well, Eberron, as wel as Khyber and Siberys, while the Great Wheel may have been made by Asmodeus (then going by Ahriman) and Jazirian, two lawful serpents. Neither numbers nor personalities line up, so if one went with divergent timelines, it'd have to go to well before the creation of the planes.

Though I have the headcanon that the progenitor dragons and the two world serpents are all sibling beings...

 

[Bel]

Then you get into Golorion's outer Plane and the various creation myths (aka Asmodeas and his sibling were meant to be the first two beings ever, but no, it was Apsu and Timet who created everything, but no, Chaos was here all along before the world solidified out of it, but no, they were digging and found that the Outer Rifts had existed since long ago etc etc etc.

 

[Q99]

Then you get into Golorion's outer Plane and the various creation myths (aka Asmodeas and his sibling were meant to be the first two beings ever, but no, it was Apsu and Timet who created everything, but no, Chaos was here all along before the world solidified out of it, but no, they were digging and found that the Outer Rifts had existed since long ago etc etc etc.

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Yea, like, we have which plane came first narrowed down to roughly two, maybe three, and then someone's lying about who created the Gods ^^

Also the cosmology that uses beings-from-outside the most, including Pharasma, so even if Asmodeus and Bro made the gods, or alternatively Apsu and Tiamat, then some still popped in outside from that.

 

[The Narrator]

Another thing to keep in mind is that IRL many of these settings are owned by different companies. Any setting information that isn't in the SRD isn't open source, which usually includes any details about the cosmology beyond the basics of the planes. So one setting can't use the same cosmology as another: they'd get sued.

It's a bit like asking why Flash Gordon and Star Wars aren't part of a shared universe, even though they're both space operas.