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Dungeons and Dragons Megathread

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Nemuikougi said:
I'm gonna run my first 5e game in a couple of hours, this is my first time being GM and for two out of four players the first RPG they have ever played and none of us have ever played 5e.
We're going to using the starter set (Phandalvar), any suggestions on pitfalls to avoid and things to do?
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There is a falling rubble trap in the first dungeon that doesn't really have any way for the players to spot or avoid it aside from just not walking through that corridor. Consider letting anyone with a Passive Perception of 15 or more notice that the path looks unsafe.

More generally:

Make certain that at least one PC has Spare The Dying or Proficiency with Heal checks. With those on hand you can feel free to knock out PCs with relative impunity since PCs can recharge back most of their HP after a short rest and all of it after a long rest.

Players should be strongly encouraged to take the flat HP per level since the amount given is actually above average for what they would roll.

There are no explicit rules for it, but allow players with Knowledge (Arcana, Religion or Nature) identify monsters and their resistances/immunities and vulnerabilities. A roll versus 10+CR should be good if you want to make them roll for it.

Encourage PCs to negotiate by allowing them to succeed quite often, and have the NPCs honor their agreements even when dealing with monsters. Give the PCs full XP for overcoming the encounter if they talk their way out of it. There are several encounters which would be very dangerous especially at low levels, allowing PCs to bribe, intimidate, fast talk or otherwise use diplomacy is worth more than fights to the death. Similarly, if the PCs decide to take prisoners don't make the bad guys constantly fight back. Let them interogate and decieve captured opponents into revealing more about future encounters.

Have thugs and goblins run away.

Never punish fun ideas. If the entire party seems to think a certain tactic or method or move is really cool, let it be cool. Give Inspiration away liberally and encourage PCs to spend it liberally as well.
 
Aaron Peori said:
There is a falling rubble trap in the first dungeon that doesn't really have any way for the players to spot or avoid it aside from just not walking through that corridor. Consider letting anyone with a Passive Perception of 15 or more notice that the path looks unsafe.

Players should be strongly encouraged to take the flat HP per level since the amount given is actually above average for what they would roll.

There are no explicit rules for it, but allow players with Knowledge (Arcana, Religion or Nature) identify monsters and their resistances/immunities and vulnerabilities. A roll versus 10+CR should be good if you want to make them roll for it.
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Dear god WotC sucks at game design these days. What the hell happened?
 
Blake Hannon said:
So, I've been thinking of posting a (very successful) campaign I ran a few years ago here on SV, in a form that makes it usable for DM's. Not sure if I should convert it to third or fifth edition first though; I ran it in fourth, but that doesn't seem to be very popular on here.
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Stick with 4e. Most of the anti-4e nonsense is just Grognardom.

I mean, I still prefer 3.5, but that's because I like absurdly high magic settings. 4e is fine.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Stick with 4e. Most of the anti-4e nonsense is just Grognardom.

I mean, I still prefer 3.5, but that's because I like absurdly high magic settings. 4e is fine.
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Yeah, what I've seen so far of 5E is not as bad as I feared, but certainly not better than 4E. I don't think I'll be switching over unless they patch it considerably, unless I can't find any fellow 4rries.

Its too bad. There's some stuff in 5 that seems like a really good idea (closing the absurd power gap between low and high level combatants being the most significant, and more out-of-combat stuff), but my 4E houserules already go a way toward fixing that anyway.
 
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Blake Hannon said:
(closing the absurd power gap between low and high level combatants being the most significant, and more out-of-combat stuff.
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Am I the only one who actually liked it when magic was really powerful and so were the rare high level heroes.

I think the problem was that people assumed that levels were linear, when the magic was build around getting much more powerful with each level of spell, and even medium level folk were absurdly rare by explicit statement in 2/3e. So they gave people what they wanted and toned down magic and reduced scope and made even high level folks fairly mundane. Which probably makes the game more playable for wider audiences, but well.... If I wanted to play low magic, I could have bought iron kingdoms.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Am I the only one who actually liked it when magic was really powerful and so were the rare high level heroes.

I think the problem was that people assumed that levels were linear, when the magic was build around getting much more powerful with each level of spell, and even medium level folk were absurdly rare by explicit statement in 2/3e. So they gave people what they wanted and toned down magic and reduced scope and made even high level folks fairly mundane. Which probably makes the game more playable for wider audiences, but well.... If I wanted to play low magic, I could have bought iron kingdoms.
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The problem with that is what it does to worldbuilding.

If there are civilizations of creatures like mind flayers and giants, and high level heroes are rare, how could humans and elves and dorfs ever have self-ruled polities? Hell, even non-organized monsters like beholders and dragons would quickly subjugate humanoid societies to the point where every humanoid town is a tyranny ruled by a monster.

That would make an interesting campaign setting, actually, but its pretty far from the default assumption.

Then there's the issue with challenges scaling to the characters' level. At low levels, you walk around and find orcs and goblins causing trouble. At medium levels, suddenly drow and giants start showing up. Get higher level, and suddenly demons and dragons and shit all over the place. How is it that the party consistently finds enemies that are an appropriate challenge to their current level, when those monsters would realistically have conquered most of the world going by early game power levels? It makes the whole thing feel like a video game, where high level monsters spawn in response to player levels.

I think the best/worst example of this I've seen was the third edition mini-adventure "The Thunder Below." The premise; undead orc shaman has assembled an army of orcs and other thugs to recapture an ancient temple and reawaken an evil god. Okay, pretty standard DnD fair. The problem? The adventure is designed for 17th level PC's. As a result, the orc shaman is level 19 or so, he has dozens of orc minions who are ALL level 12 barbarians, and a unit of hill giants for when that's not enough. An army of level 12 barbarians. How the actual fuck is that not worldbreaking? With that army, he doesn't even NEED to awaken the stupid Great Old One. He can just conquer half the continent with brute force. There's also a random encounter with an advanced Assassin Vine with 24 hit dice; well gee, thank Pelor the PC's didn't randomly stumble into this patch of forest when they were level 3.

The adventure would make infinitely more sense if the bad guy's henchmen were just normal (or slightly higher level than normal, if he assembled an army of elites/veterans from various tribes) orcs, and the game was designed so that a large number of low level orcs can still be a threat to high level heroes, and so that low level heroes - with planning, tactical skill, and a bit of luck - can survive/escape a random encounter with giant overgrown plant monsters if said monsters can indeed be just stumbled into in the woods.
 
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Game designers fail to communicate with each other. News at 11.

The intent was that past a certain point, you were too damn big for the small pond, and you either retired to a wizard tower to be a sort of MAD nuke/setting element or you went interplanar to go play in the big pond.

Lots of the writers missed the memo of D&D being high magic and did GOT esque plots that did not fit the setting.

eventually the mechanics dev's realized that the fluff writers were never going to get with the high magic and made the mechanics low magic as well.

which I think is a pity, because there are already so many low magic settings.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Game designers fail to communicate with each other. News at 11.

The intent was that past a certain point, you were too damn big for the small pond, and you either retired to a wizard tower to be a sort of MAD nuke/setting element or you went interplanar to go play in the big pond.

Lots of the writers missed the memo of D&D being high magic and did GOT esque plots that did not fit the setting.

eventually the mechanics dev's realized that the fluff writers were never going to get with the high magic and made the mechanics low magic as well.

which I think is a pity, because there are already so many low magic settings.
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Then what are the PC's expected to do at low level, and why haven't these overpowered death laser spewing monsters conquered everything if high level characters are rare?

What you're suggesting works if you always start your campaigns out at level 8 or so, but in that case you might as well design the game so that level 1 is equivalent to that and scale from there.
 
Blake Hannon said:
Then what are the PC's expected to do at low level, and why haven't these overpowered death laser spewing monsters conquered everything if high level characters are rare?

What you're suggesting works if you always start your campaigns out at level 8 or so, but in that case you might as well design the game so that level 1 is equivalent to that and scale from there.
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Given that scaling issues made high level d&D 3e almost an entirely different game than Low level...

All I can say is: uhm yes? The high magic gamers have long been starting at level 6, when you're explicitly superhuman.

Low level 3.x has always been "why am I not playing Iron heroes or burning wheel instead?" to me. 3e simulated mundanity decently well, but it was never really any fun to play realistic midevil dudes with no special abilities. I wanna play a hero, not a mook.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Game designers fail to communicate with each other. News at 11.

The intent was that past a certain point, you were too damn big for the small pond, and you either retired to a wizard tower to be a sort of MAD nuke/setting element or you went interplanar to go play in the big pond.

Lots of the writers missed the memo of D&D being high magic and did GOT esque plots that did not fit the setting.

eventually the mechanics dev's realized that the fluff writers were never going to get with the high magic and made the mechanics low magic as well.

which I think is a pity, because there are already so many low magic settings.
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IMO, the problem with going full-on High Magic in D&D is that the developers have to cater to the existing fanbase, and a significant portion of the fanbase wants hack-and-slash adventure in Medieval europe. This means the devs are caught between a few bad choices: Come up with a setting that is high-magic and makes sense, but lose the generic setting many people associate the game with. Go high-magic and traditional setting, but have a world that falls apart when you poke it with any of the more interesting spells (the 3.5 route). Or develop a setting with lower power levels so that you can have a world that makes sense according to the capabilities of its inhabitants.

The other issue, of course, is the question of balance. If you have wizards capable of awesome high magic, you need to design the game so everyone plays some kind of wizard, abandon balance or design it so that the non-magical classes are capable of keeping up with the magic-users. Unfortunately, people are both attached to the classic non-magical classes (fighters, rogues) and determined to keep them down-to-earth in their capabilites (see many DMs reactions to the Book of Nine Swords). And abandoning balance and just letting the party have drastically differing capabilities is pretty frustrating for the people who get the short end of the stick.

Ideally, I'd like to play in a high-magic setting designed from the ground up to take into account the presence of said magic, and provide the non-magical classes with Extraordinary powers allowing them to keep up (i.e. Fighters can throw their weapon so hard it hits everyone in a line, force enemies to make will saves against fear before entering their threatened area, or even get the equivalent of an exalted Perfect Attack). But that's not something that many D&D fans seem willing to accept.
 
tzar1990 said:
IMO, the problem with going full-on High Magic in D&D is that the developers have to cater to the existing fanbase, and a significant portion of the fanbase wants hack-and-slash adventure in Medieval europe. This means the devs are caught between a few bad choices: Come up with a setting that is high-magic and makes sense, but lose the generic setting many people associate the game with. Go high-magic and traditional setting, but have a world that falls apart when you poke it with any of the more interesting spells (the 3.5 route). Or develop a setting with lower power levels so that you can have a world that makes sense according to the capabilities of its inhabitants.

The other issue, of course, is the question of balance. If you have wizards capable of awesome high magic, you need to design the game so everyone plays some kind of wizard, abandon balance or design it so that the non-magical classes are capable of keeping up with the magic-users. Unfortunately, people are both attached to the classic non-magical classes (fighters, rogues) and determined to keep them down-to-earth in their capabilites (see many DMs reactions to the Book of Nine Swords). And abandoning balance and just letting the party have drastically differing capabilities is pretty frustrating for the people who get the short end of the stick.

Ideally, I'd like to play in a high-magic setting designed from the ground up to take into account the presence of said magic, and provide the non-magical classes with Extraordinary powers allowing them to keep up (i.e. Fighters can throw their weapon so hard it hits everyone in a line, force enemies to make will saves against fear before entering their threatened area, or even get the equivalent of an exalted Perfect Attack). But that's not something that many D&D fans seem willing to accept.
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Yeah, I spent page and pages trying to explain all this on SB and got called a dirty munchkin. :(

Well, now you know why I've mostly migrated over to exalted.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Yeah, I spent page and pages trying to explain all this on SB and got called a dirty munchkin. :(

Well, now you know why I've mostly migrated over to exalted.
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Oh definitely. Heck, I've been trying to get into exalted games, but all of the STs here are either running at times I'm working, very dubious on the mechanics (as in, told me that he feels the SMA in Scroll of the Monk are fine since "they're high-essence, they're supposed to be that powerful!" and that he wants to make them available to Dragonblooded, not just Solars and Sidereals), or usually both.
 
Yea, when they had more than like...ten people writing on the entire D&D brand. Let's be fair here.
 
AuraTwilight said:
Yea, when they had more than like...ten people writing on the entire D&D brand. Let's be fair here.
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To be also fair, that was three problems I had with a frankly massive adventure.

Also, on the subject of power levels. 5E is pretty damn high magic itself. Just look at the high level spells and abilities of the class.

Meteor Swarm, for example, does 40d6 damage. In a 40 foot radius sphere. Four 40 foot radius spheres. Even on a successful save (DC 20ish) by a level 1 character, minimum damage is going to be 20hp. Ie, enough to kill as many level 1 characters as you can fit into the spheres area of effect. A single Wizard with Meteor Swarm can level entire armies of opponents at once.

Granted, this is only a maximum of once per day in 5E rather than a dozen times per day like you would expect a properly munchinkined 3.5e/Pathfinder character from pulling out of their ass.

High level fighters and barbarians and rogues can pull of the kind of attacks and damage that would make low level characters look like pure chumps as well.

The primary difference is that thanks to the way the game is designed low level stuff never stops being a threat. Granted, not much of a threat and a prepared and wary 17th level + character should have no problem butchering any arbitrary number of CR 1ish goons, but the key word there is wary. Even with a pathetic +4 to hit a common thug could still hit a high level opponent whose AC, even with magic items, is going to be around 20~22. It's not likely, but its still there. A critical hit from an orc is still going to be something that make a PC wince even to very high levels.

You can still romp around fighting dragons and demons and epic monsters as high level characters, but you can also be wary of someone slipping poison into your tea as well. Character feel more like humans who just happen to be capable of taking on superhuman challenges than gods who are slumming it if they decide to live in Waterdeep instead of Sigil.
 
So my group and I broke from 5E, it's okay, but the veterans in our group want to play PF and the new players feel 4E is more suited to learning to play tabletop. We've gotten more people from work to join and have enough to split the groups. Newbies are playing 4E in a custom adventure with the DM's wife while the vets play the Mythic Adventure Path "Wrath of the Righteous".
 
Since Pathfinder is basically DnD 3.5, I figured I'd ask this question here.

Does anyone have the rules to the Sin/Virtue points in the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition? All I have is the original APs, so they don't come with these rules. They sounded interesting, but my google-fu failed me in looking up the mechanics of how they work.
 
Recently dug back into my Al-Qadim handbook since I'm trying to will myself to either:
1) Run one of the box campaigns online at some point
2) Try and "faithfully" adapt it to 5th Edition (note the quotation marks: If I do so my intent would be to represent its thematics and mechanics to the best of my ability and not its balance)

And I've refreshed my memory on some pretty awesome stuff. The Sha'ir Wizard Kit, for example, is pretty awesome. Long story short you are a Wizard… who knows no spells. Totally awesome and game breaking, I know. But what they lose in memorized spells they gain in their unique familiars (called "Gen") and other class-abilities, predominantly relating to Jann and Genies. Interestingly enough this "memorize no spells" goes both ways as the spells they're granted through their Gen are not limited in casting per day, so much as how fast their Gen can retrieve spells and how successful they are in "finding" them (Gen vanish into the Elemental Planes for anywhere from 1d6+[Spell Level] rounds to 1d6+[Spell Level] hours to find a spell, depending on if it's Arcane or Divine and whether it'd normally be within a Wizard's level range or not), so while a Sha'ir cannot fling a fireball followed by a pair of magic missiles in three rounds the Sha'ir can be much more free with their non-combat spells such as "Friends". Regarding stuff like Jann and Genies, Sha'ir also get the ability to do stuff like (attempt to) ask local Jann for support, or make contracts with Genies.
 
AuraTwilight said:
Sha'irs are one of my all time favorite classes ever, not gonna lie.
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They're especially neat in that they break one of the big setting rules for AD&D about how certain races can't be Arcane Casters. Like the Abyss they can't, let them fetch their Gen to steal a Wish spell and show 'em who's boss.
 
Drachyench said:
Recently dug back into my Al-Qadim handbook since I'm trying to will myself to either:
1) Run one of the box campaigns online at some point
2) Try and "faithfully" adapt it to 5th Edition (note the quotation marks: If I do so my intent would be to represent its thematics and mechanics to the best of my ability and not its balance)

And I've refreshed my memory on some pretty awesome stuff. The Sha'ir Wizard Kit, for example, is pretty awesome. Long story short you are a Wizard… who knows no spells. Totally awesome and game breaking, I know. But what they lose in memorized spells they gain in their unique familiars (called "Gen") and other class-abilities, predominantly relating to Jann and Genies. Interestingly enough this "memorize no spells" goes both ways as the spells they're granted through their Gen are not limited in casting per day, so much as how fast their Gen can retrieve spells and how successful they are in "finding" them (Gen vanish into the Elemental Planes for anywhere from 1d6+[Spell Level] rounds to 1d6+[Spell Level] hours to find a spell, depending on if it's Arcane or Divine and whether it'd normally be within a Wizard's level range or not), so while a Sha'ir cannot fling a fireball followed by a pair of magic missiles in three rounds the Sha'ir can be much more free with their non-combat spells such as "Friends". Regarding stuff like Jann and Genies, Sha'ir also get the ability to do stuff like (attempt to) ask local Jann for support, or make contracts with Genies.
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This sounds like the coolest shit.

In other news, running two 5e campaigns. One for a bunch of college buddies, one for my six year old sister and my parents. Both groups are made almost entirely of new people and are going really well. Just running Phandalvar, but everyone's having a blast and the mechanics are all smooth and easy to pick up. It plays Sword-and-Sorcery gygaxian smashery very well, hasn't broken yet, and feels right in how it plays.

Also I learned that my sister is a maniac.
 
I'm playing in a 5E campaign right now - I'm a warlock, but we also have a bard, druid, paladin, ranger and wizard (although not everyone makes it to every session).

We're currently facing two sets of problems: In the short-term, the human-supremacist cult of Zarus has taken over several cities, began pogroms against non-humans (which, like, all of our party is), and managed to piss off the goblinoids so much that the goblins, hobgoblins, ogres and other "monstrous humanoids" have banded together to stomp as many human faces as they can reach. Also, it turns out that the family leading the cult of Zarus is either the puppets of a bunch of drow, or possibly a group of drow themselves using "humans first!" as a tool to cause havoc on the surface.

In the long term, it turned out that making my character the adopted daughter of a crazy, "The end is nigh!" street-preacher was a bad idea, cause the DM thought it would be fun if he was right. So yeah, Lovecraftian horrors are going to descend from the skies within, at most, 30 years. We have an artifact that allows us to pull people into the seed of the next world, but A) we all have different priorities on who should get saved, and B) A lot of bad guys see it less as a lifeboat and more as a source of INCREDIBLE COSMIC POWER for them to consume.

When last we let off, we'd arrived in a cult-controlled and hobgoblin besieged city, disguised as a punch of humans and their Dragonborn useful idiot. We'd previously blown up the hobgoblin siege weaponry, and we then set the cult on a self-defeating witch-hunt to find the drow in their midst. Unfortunately, we did so a bit too well, so the drow decided to say "fuck it", blew their covers, used a dark ritual to turn our pegasi into Nightmares while we were resting, and then ran off into the night cackling. On the plus side, the captain of the guard wasn't Drow, and we think we've got him willing to question what they've accomplished.

Anyone have any ideas where we can go from there? Our short-term goal is to get the city out of cult control and prevent the hobgoblins from getting in to murder and/or enslave everyone.
 
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