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Dungeons and Dragons Megathread

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Kay, time to crowdsource

My party just found itself grabbed by the Jotun Ran, primeval goddess of the nastier aspects of the ocean. And the world's worst hoarder.

I want you to picture Ariel's collection from the Little Mermaid, with a thousand years for the collection to take over the undersea halls like a cancer, rotting wood and metal at a thousand levels of being reclaimed by the sea.

And then I want you to help me come up with some stuff that can be found amongst the refuse. I'm drawing a blank. Spoons and Ring of Water Shift (Res Water, Weak Lightning)
 
The Narrator said:
It seems like Friday evening was the preference? How early and late are you available? Since 4pm Pacific is 9am in Australia, I can't imagine we'd be starting much earlier than that.

Do we want to try for this weekend, @shepsquared ?

Can you guys send me your characters?
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I'll get my characters sorted tonight, but I can't do this Saturday. My weekend is now going to be spent helping my cousin move state at short notice, so yay. But I will be available for next week, 100%.
 
maskedanddanger said:
Kay, time to crowdsource

My party just found itself grabbed by the Jotun Ran, primeval goddess of the nastier aspects of the ocean. And the world's worst hoarder.

I want you to picture Ariel's collection from the Little Mermaid, with a thousand years for the collection to take over the undersea halls like a cancer, rotting wood and metal at a thousand levels of being reclaimed by the sea.

And then I want you to help me come up with some stuff that can be found amongst the refuse. I'm drawing a blank. Spoons and Ring of Water Shift (Res Water, Weak Lightning)
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Which edition?

Rod Of Tentacles(5E) could be fun. It's not actually a great item but I've gotten some solid times out of it.
 
maskedanddanger said:
Kay, time to crowdsource

My party just found itself grabbed by the Jotun Ran, primeval goddess of the nastier aspects of the ocean. And the world's worst hoarder.

I want you to picture Ariel's collection from the Little Mermaid, with a thousand years for the collection to take over the undersea halls like a cancer, rotting wood and metal at a thousand levels of being reclaimed by the sea.

And then I want you to help me come up with some stuff that can be found amongst the refuse. I'm drawing a blank. Spoons and Ring of Water Shift (Res Water, Weak Lightning)
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I have no idea what edition, so, general ideas:

Nonmagical:
  • Skeletons of various animals from ship holds (four legs, you say? No fins at all?)
  • Lanterns (what are they for?)
  • Ship Figureheads, (hundreds arranged by type: Horse, woman, dragon, griffon, serpent, I have no clue what this is)
  • Ballast (How are these red rocks so uniformly rectangular?)
  • Glass/gemstone Eyes (these eyes did not decay, why?)
  • Ground transportation - chariots, carriages, carts.
  • Statues (arranged by subject: some kind of creature, some kind of person, I have no clue what this is.)
  • Stone tools - adzes, axes, clubs, pounders, knives, tables.
  • Bronze tools - swords
  • Brass tools - spyglasses, sextants
  • Rusted iron tools
  • Rusted steel tools

Magical:
  • Magic versions of tools and weapons - (but THESE ones don't rust or gather barnacles.)
  • A pair of intelligent figureheads. They're supplementary navigators and helmsmen for different styles of ship separated by time and cultures, and argue constantly about sailing minutia. They're also each other's only companionship, so they talk anyway even when it's just arguing. They don't want to be left behind and will shout over each other to convince the party they're a useful tool to haul along.
  • Rings of Freedom of Movement (These rings were all on bodies that looked crushed.)
  • A variety of phylacteries, soul gems and other imprisonment devices that contain people and demons that were sealed and then hurled into the ocean.
  • An mostly intact ship crewed by golems that still try to work the rigging and navigate. A skeleton sits on a throne above the tiller.
  • An entire wing full of items that aren't necessarily magical, but are haunted by the ghosts of their owners.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Well, just a warning that based on the first review alone I think that many DMs will not allow it, since that talks about it directly refuting the fluff and rules from Mordenkainen and Volo.
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Mordenkainen's tome and Volo's guide are both in universe, though, and thus neither are meant to be an omniscient,3rd person, 100% correct guide to the setting.
 
The Imperator said:
Mordenkainen's tome and Volo's guide are both in universe, though, and thus neither are meant to be an omniscient,3rd person, 100% correct guide to the setting.
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Generally anything with actual mechanical rules is considered to be 100% correct. That's why the old Volo's Guides back in 2e had anything with game rules be Elminster's annotations where he "corrected" Volo.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Generally anything with actual mechanical rules is considered to be 100% correct. That's why the old Volo's Guides back in 2e had anything with game rules be Elminster's annotations where he "corrected" Volo.
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I meant more with lore. Since neither character is omniscient, it's really easy to get away with lore inconsistencies between things. Like IIRC Volo's guide says gnolls were created by that demon lord, but other lore from other sources said that that was just propaganda that Yeenoghu spread to keep gnolls under its control.
 
The Imperator said:
I meant more with lore. Since neither character is omniscient, it's really easy to get away with lore inconsistencies between things. Like IIRC Volo's guide says gnolls were created by that demon lord, but other lore from other sources said that that was just propaganda that Yeenoghu spread to keep gnolls under its control.
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Yeah, they need to do like before with that and make sure that books with both "definite" and "not so much" content keep it separate like they used to by having the authoritative stuff either in, or confirmed in, footnotes or something similar (ravenloft's "van richten guides used sidebars)

Also fluff for gnolls has been inconsistent. They were originally purely brutes, without even the "witch doctors" that other primitive evil species got, and patriarchal. They even had them have an ancestral hatred for kobolds and goblins. Then they got Yeenoghu and became demon worshippers with clerics. Pathfinder has them as matriarchal religious fanatics.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Yeah, they need to do like before with that and make sure that books with both "definite" and "not so much" content keep it separate like they used to by having the authoritative stuff either in, or confirmed in, footnotes or something similar (ravenloft's "van richten guides used sidebars)

Also fluff for gnolls has been inconsistent. They were originally purely brutes, without even the "witch doctors" that other primitive evil species got, and patriarchal. They even had them have an ancestral hatred for kobolds and goblins. Then they got Yeenoghu and became demon worshippers with clerics. Pathfinder has them as matriarchal religious fanatics.
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Well, yeah, but given the consistently inconsistent gnoll lore in DnD, taking any book that is ostensibly written with an in universe PoV as completely accurate is not necessary :p

I actually like the Sat'un gnolls in PF more than the normal gnolls, and DnD's gnolls that weren't originally demon servitors is solid too.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Also fluff for gnolls has been inconsistent. They were originally purely brutes, without even the "witch doctors" that other primitive evil species got, and patriarchal. They even had them have an ancestral hatred for kobolds and goblins. Then they got Yeenoghu and became demon worshippers with clerics.
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"Then"? Yeenoghu was associated with gnolls in, like, 1e AD&D :)
 
Muhkat Lomorki said:
Yeah.

Anyway, I WAS wondering which of the ideas the thing has that you find interesting.
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I'm happy to see playable ThriKreen again. And playable quaggoths give me an idea for a campaign where the players are escaped slaves of the drow navigating the underdark while evading pursuit

Conversely, I think we need less variant humans not more. Humans shoukd be blandy mcgeneric statwise, unable to be better than another race at that race's specialty
 
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Eh no innate dark/low light vision can suck, and not every class needs that feat. My alchemist loves his elven-ness, +2 to both prime stats and some nice immunities to go with it.

But let's be honest, we're humans ourselves, they are the easiest race to play.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Humans shoukd be blandy mcgeneric statwise, unable to be better than another race at that race's specialty
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I mean, if humans can do that I would say the race probably isn't very good at their "specialty" to begin with.
(Which is actually generally accurate; aside from prereqs, most races haven't had a significant enough impact for their fluff specialty to be mechanically reflected.)
 
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