D&D V6 - Edition jokes don't really make sense anymore - Games

[QUOTE=Plattack;52896757]I'm not blaming the DM in this case. I totally get attacking the squishbag who is running his mouth. My issue lies with my teammates who won't back me up. I've specifically asked at some points if someone could stand between me and the enemies after combat breaks out but everyone runs past their front line and seems to ignore any kind of tactics (and not like "WAAAH STAND BETWEEN ME AND THEM" but more like "hey could we not all attack one person because it leaves us wide open"). And as far as I can tell, people do like my character. He's become close friends with one of them, he got the entire party a free stay at the local tavern because he told a wonderful story about a milquetoast NPC that the party had encountered earlier, I haggled a trader into giving us a permanent 20% discount on items. But the moment we get close to combat everyone just kind of like backs off and forgets how to act.[/QUOTE] Admittedly my bardic strategem is a bit unorthodox, but ironically enough charging right on in with the rest of the party has worked out pretty stunningly well for me on my bard. It gives you the protection of big guys with swords being next to you, and at the same time you're not directly threatening enough that you're worth focusing down, because then the real heavy hitters can go to work without a care in the world. Puts the enemy in a damned if they do/if they don't situation, on top of giving you great fodder for your stories ("Hey guys remember that time I charged past two blood elementals to shiv that mage in the gut for the kill? Good times") Failing that, like everyone else said, actually talk to the other players and your GM. A lot of times in combat people do really get caught up in the rush and just kind of forget any real strategy, but it's not difficult to address that if everyone is willing to come to the table and sort of recognize that and what everyone's specialties are so you can cover for each other

[QUOTE=_Maverick_;52897750]Tips for making a wizard antagonist who [I]doesn't want to[/I] [U]KILL[/U] the players still seem like an absolute fucking asshole cunt? I was thinking stuff like, as they run at him, he uses mage hand to pull their pants down and trip them up in public Throw mud in their eyes, cast annoying spells on them like a constant stink bomb. Stuff like that, ideas?[/QUOTE] My DM had this prick illusionist wizard who just taunted the shit out of us throughout the course of the game in the background. He was legitimately infuriating. Our first quest was to obtain this book filled with dastardly necromancy to bring back to some wizards who ""wanted to cleanse the evil"" (insight check plz) out of it. We slaughtered through a few waves of enemies and eventually come upon the abandoned keep that the item is supposed to be in. Hooded figure comes out, yells "IT'S ME, FLAG" and then disappears into a puff of purple smoke leaving behind a flagpole with some insignia on it. We look up and he's riding a griffin cackling and shortly thereafter accidentally drops the book that we wanted. Wizards & townspeople say they know of the dude and that he's notorious in the area, no one know where he lives, what his goals are, what he wants. All he does is appear, yell "IT'S ME, FLAG" and then disappears into a cloud of purple smoke leaving behind a flagpole. We do a few more sessions, clear out some skellys and undead, etc etc. A few one-off villains of the week. Few sessions later we get a quest from a random NPC in a tavern, another retrieval deal. Come back after completion, he hands us a chest, we open it, stick our hands in to grab our gold, and it evaporates into a purple cloud of smoke leaving behind a little baby-flag of the same description as that which we saw at the keep. We look up, the NPC yells "IT'S ME, FLAG" and poofs away in purple smoke. We broke into his room and stole everything left behind. this fucker kept randomly appearing throughout the sessions we did. not every one, but often enough to make us wonder with each session whether he would. he would pose as various NPCs, squelch on gambling bets at fighting tournaments just to fuck with us, we'd hear stories from other characters who had gotten involved with him. He was a one step ahead sort of character. If Flag ever made an appearance, it would always be near the end of the session, at which point I'm drunk and thinking about all the murdering/rp-ing with people that we've been doing, and every time it's caught me off guard. I [I]hated[/I] this asshole because he always showed up out of nowhere and took our well-earned rewards (I was also our face, so I'd usually be the one speaking with him). Flashing gold and taking it away pissed us off, especially because the combat encounters our DM had made were [I]grueling[/I] because he miscalculated our CR and gave us encounters for parties 3x our level. When we finally managed to get him to not immediately disappear into a cloud of smoke, he spoke in fully fledged rhyme, damn near every line. He hadn't actually done anything to hurt us and because we were all good we weren't gonna hurt him, just pissed that every time he'd run off with the gold we'd been promised. He did point out that we usually came out on top with some magical items that he'd leave behind or whatever that we'd gain in our adventures. Fair point, dick. Our DM made us suspicious of everyone giving us quests eventually. the character ended up being a good dude working behind the scenes against the bad wizards we were unwittingly working for. tldr: pull some dumb shenanigans and then [img]https://78.media.tumblr.com/0a516b110fe39814267b3f3440ac494b/tumblr_ofxywoXRK91uk5pr5o3_500.gif[/img] robbing players of gold and rewards was the best way to piss us off

How do I politely tell my GM they need to shut the fuck up sometimes? It's starting to get really frustrating that our sessions keep turning into 2 hour plus in-character conversations between her and one of the party members and whenever the rest of us try to have our characters do something else while they talk or get involved with the conversation we're just ignored. It's causing everyone including the one person she's talking to to clock out completely and one player even just straight up leaves the session partway through, but she still doesn't get it and keeps talking.

[QUOTE=TacticalBacon;52902191]How do I politely tell my GM they need to shut the fuck up sometimes? It's starting to get really frustrating that our sessions keep turning into 2 hour plus in-character conversations between her and one of the party members and whenever the rest of us try to have our characters do something else while they talk or get involved with the conversation we're just ignored. It's causing everyone including the one person she's talking to to clock out completely and one player even just straight up leaves the session partway through, but she still doesn't get it and keeps talking.[/QUOTE] Maybe she should just do one-on-one roleplay sessions if that is what works best. It is hard to engage with multiple people and have none feel excluded! That, or if the players aren't proactive enough, though I've had some players who even IRL go way too far the other way and TRY to monopolize all conversations and such. I've since stopped playing with them, because they never got the message. Even after talking to them repeatedly to stop doing that shit they kept it up. You should probably let the GM know that you feel excluded when they do that, and to try to engage the other players more, reminding them that it's a group game not a solo session with cheerleaders.

[QUOTE=TacticalBacon;52902191]How do I politely tell my GM they need to shut the fuck up sometimes? It's starting to get really frustrating that our sessions keep turning into 2 hour plus in-character conversations between her and one of the party members and whenever the rest of us try to have our characters do something else while they talk or get involved with the conversation we're just ignored. It's causing everyone including the one person she's talking to to clock out completely and one player even just straight up leaves the session partway through, but she still doesn't get it and keeps talking.[/QUOTE] Honestly, if it's that bad, I don't see any obligation to be polite. Just bluntly tell her what you think, and if things don't get better or she doesn't understand, then it's prolly not worth sticking around. I know it kinda sucks when it comes to situations like these, but sometimes there's not really much you can do about it.

I'm always surprised how bad people can GM. Like there are some people that annoy me because for the most part they're good, but they'll have a few bad habbits or an odd way of thinking[I] (If you're going to have my meticulous plan to fatally fuck someone over twisted to only half work for the sake of cinematic conveniences like a final showdown, or to avoid a character you crafted die off screen or to grunts, stop and consider why I go to the effort to make plans like that. Alternatively, If you're proud that I haven't worked out a mystery after exhausting all logical options, maybe your mystery is shit.)[/I] but there are some GMs that just... Why would you even volunteer, we all hate you now. Has anyone played Legend of the five rings?

[QUOTE=SiberysTranq;52899788]Admittedly my bardic strategem is a bit unorthodox, but ironically enough charging right on in with the rest of the party has worked out pretty stunningly well for me on my bard. It gives you the protection of big guys with swords being next to you, and at the same time you're not directly threatening enough that you're worth focusing down, because then the real heavy hitters can go to work without a care in the world. Puts the enemy in a damned if they do/if they don't situation, on top of giving you great fodder for your stories ("Hey guys remember that time I charged past two blood elementals to shiv that mage in the gut for the kill? Good times")[/QUOTE] I found this worked extremely well for me when I played a Bard. Admittedly we had a great group who worked together well, but my Bard was always the first one charging in like a maniac. We were a group of border guards so I figured I would ramp up the 'heroics' to maximum to juxtapose him against the more pragmatic party members. On one occasion I charged into a group of hobgoblin slavers with my arms bound to my sides by a lasso, on another I used a catapult to throw myself up into the air to grab a gargoyle that was harassing the Paladin. TL;DR: Sibs is right. The party can't leave you alone if you charge in first.

[QUOTE=The Jack;52903250]Has anyone played Legend of the five rings?[/QUOTE] Not yet, but soon. Hoping to hear about such tomorrow.

It's enjoyable but can be fairly restrictive in certain ways, both mechanically and in terms of setting. If you're the kind that feels confined by rigid social structures or rulesets that steer you towards one particular kind of play you might feel overly restricted.

snip, i'll post the finished map at some point!

I'm making a home brew with the crew. Wondering if theres any useful tools or tips to get for D&D homebrews.

[QUOTE=Secrios;52905559]I'm making a home brew with the crew. Wondering if theres any useful tools or tips to get for D&D homebrews.[/QUOTE] start small.

[QUOTE=MenteR;52905742]start small.[/QUOTE] Seriously, this. Ease your players into the world you’ve built. Last campaign I was in the opener was us falling asleep in a jail cell and waking up to find that the entire continent had been enveloped in a weird type of flora and we had to rescue the entire strongholds worth of civilians we were in and then had to find a way to remove the plant menace basically the next session. We started at level 3. That campaign fizzled out once the DM realized he had to ease us in to it all but none of us were interested in dealing with the local banditry because - hey the entire continent is at war with plants, we have bigger fish to fry.

You gotta start small. Getting the bandits to stop being dicks and getting them to work with you is the first step towards dealing with the floral fiends!

[QUOTE=Chronische;52906725]You gotta start small. Getting the bandits to stop being dicks and getting them to work with you is the first step towards dealing with the floral fiends![/QUOTE] then you sell the captured floral fiends to a bounty hunter group that hunts magical creatures to salvage them and sell magic components extracted from these creatures to the arcane market. [editline]19th November 2017[/editline] then you go on a quest to hunt displacer beasts for their hide but you find out that the displacer beast popullation in dwelling... is there sorcery behind this? what is killing off the magical fauna?

[QUOTE=ElTacoLad;52903271]I found this worked extremely well for me when I played a Bard. Admittedly we had a great group who worked together well, but my Bard was always the first one charging in like a maniac. We were a group of border guards so I figured I would ramp up the 'heroics' to maximum to juxtapose him against the more pragmatic party members. On one occasion I charged into a group of hobgoblin slavers with my arms bound to my sides by a lasso, on another I used a catapult to throw myself up into the air to grab a gargoyle that was harassing the Paladin. TL;DR: Sibs is right. The party can't leave you alone if you charge in first.[/QUOTE] Speaking of which, last night we had the climactic battle of our current campaign arc I spent most of it chasing two mages around the field, as despite the fact I have almost no major damage output they were so terrified that they blew multiple big evocations on me alone, not the assembled mass of the rest of the party (whom were fighting a bunch of knights) Went through my health bar twice over but thanks to the glory of temp HP and clerical aid I never got downed And I stole the big boss' magical greatsword in a cheeky-ass move too It was a good time

I missed one session of our group's Tomb of Annihilation campaign, and I feel awful about it... I didn't show up because I had only gotten a couple hours of sleep the night before and I didn't want to drive an hour and then sit for 4 hours or so then have to drive back. I didn't feel like I had the energy for it. But now that I did that, I find out that work scheduled me for the day of our next session which is really weird and stupid because I'm supposed to have that day of the week off every week.

[QUOTE=Archimedes;52835517]An update on the Drow pretending to a human Cleric. We're about 10 sessions deep and the ruse is still going strong. I decided that despite speaking in bold, exaggerated old english that the persona should maintain some odd Drow quirks so the characters laugh became a low creepy chuckle. I've done it a few times now and one of the players paused, looked at me and said "Fuck off, no. That can't be his actual laugh". Despite all the weird red flags that's the one people have latched onto.[/QUOTE] Update: Party has finally begun questioning why the hell the Cleric is proficient in Sneak and Persuasion rather than Religion but are all too distracted by demon induced madness to prioritize it.

Final session of our first 'arc' is coming up. I've been trying to kill them towards the end since I went easy on them and let them get away with so much early on. Fought off a Drider Queen and her army of Darkelves who called in a Purple Worm the party managed to barely hold off with no casualties. They then decided to jump the one remaining Darkelf who managed to one shot the wizard and then climbed up a wall. They then stole all of the blasting powder from the southern Kingdom of Dwarves after three out of four of them almost got murdered by an iron golem guarding it, along with an army of Goblins my good aligned party became allies with, led by a Goblin way too smart and sneaky for his own good who plans on using his share of the powder to murder the Goblin king and begin a new empire of greenskins which may or may not end up killing everyone. Now the party has the blasting powder and is going to use it to try and blow up the evil BBEG liche's tower. They're only level 6 or so and it's a full powered lich who became so powerful by murdering all the other liches in the region. He has an army of undead and cultists he's built up and his tower has sucked the life force out of the entire region because the party didn't try and deal with it for too long. They have a few macguffins they don't realize I gave them which could help them stop the lich without getting ganked, hope they realize to use them. They also never bothered researching how to kill a Lich and only vaguelly know what one is, they don't realize the tower that's been growing out of a pile of bodies the Lich's minions have been building is the phylactery! Next session they're gathering up all the allies they've managed to make: a bandit army led by a rogue knight who used to be a comrade of our Paladin while fighting in [I]the war™[/I] who he turned back to the path of good after barely beating him in a duel, a village the party helped at the beginning of the campaign they don't realize the knight has gone to and militarized to try and fight the Lich, a ragtag band of the King's Army that got absolutely smashed by the Lich due to their poor training, a lich they nicknamed Skeletor because of the voice I gave him whose brother they accidentally killed at his behest (another, more clasically evil lich) who is scared shitless of the lich they're going out to kill, and vik- northerners who invaded part of the south and was gifted land by the King to stop raiding that they briefly made friends with. I'm so excited, five months of sessions have led to this.

Bit of a rant For the first two sessions of a game the Dungeon master describes setting as a tropical archipelago, some time after an elemental war, must cultures are norse based, with the elves being a more aztec exception. I go blond and blue eyed, the paladin goes blond and blue eyed, we've got an aracokra, we've got a japanese pirate from far off with a chinese name. There's a pair of minotaur npcs as a bit of an oddball, but other than that, we've got norse gods, norse tattoos of norse gods, statues of norse gods, jewelery of norse gods. Some of us wash ashore after a huge storm, the first town had defences and no food. The second town had food and damaged defenses, after fish monsters had attacked (probably as a revenge for overfishing) and we suspected they'll attack the foodless village, so we tried to reconcile the two rival fishing villages and move everything into the village that still had defences. The bird was sent to get help from the local lord, who was reputed to be an ass, and then got back. Now the bird's player had an illness or something as such. So we couldn't play for two weeks. coincidentally, The pirate's player had been hyping up legend of the five rings. We got back to playing. The setting is now japanese on an archipelago (no knowledge on if it's still tropical) despite, y'know... fucking everything, but I didn't wanna make too big of a deal about it, so I got some agreement with a short protest, and let it go (the pirate wants to be more indonesian now, to still be foreign) But then we get onto the battle the last session built up to. Oh how it sucked. Firstly, the defences don't exist. The wall is apparently only inland, despite us fucking being really specific about defence questioning with the GM in earlier sessions. Secondly, the (now samurai) lord comes, each of his guards has a naginata, which apparently is mostly used for upwards and downwards slashes. The plan: The lord will remain in the tavern with half his guards. The villagers will form a spear wall The remaining guards will be in front of said spear wall, with our most tanky players. Our one archer will be in awe of the battle and forget his bow. I can't remember where the bird-bard went, but it was fairly safe for buffs, I was on the tower with the bowless archer. Despite possessing overwhelming numbers and a large variation in creatures, The enemy shall come in waves. First a very weak one, a warm up, with some octopus that were first described as giant and then just hobbit height, with some little spear dudes and maybe one bigger guy. The second shall come when the first have been delt with, they will be stronger, as they're not a warm up. They will present us with the XP we need to reach level 3, which the storyteller assures us will refresh are abilities so I don't need to worry about using all my spell slots or sorcery points (twinning the nukes). We defeat this next wave with only a gravely wounded red shirt and some level of injury to our bodies. More waves next session. And the combat felt so slow. I spent most of my time formulating a plan to kill the lord in a duel (because he seems like a dick, and the character has issues with bad nobility) and thinking how, were it to be a japanese themed game from the start, I would've worked in a Sohei or Yamabushi (cause the first, despite being a "monk", is definitely more fighter class, whilst the latter'd be good as a reflavoured barbarian) The storyteller isn't a bad guy, I'm just mad he fucking retconned everything over a two week hiatus, and also just disappointed in the session in general. TL;DR GM drastically changed everything over a two week hiatus, but I suppose it's only the third session and you maybe need a period to get your act together.

Princes of the Universe makes me want to play Exalted. It's a pity the Craft system's (still) a mess and combat can be a bit of a slog apparently, in 3e.

[QUOTE=imadaman;52922295]Princes of the Universe makes me want to play Exalted. It's a pity the Craft system's (still) a mess and combat can be a bit of a slog apparently, in 3e.[/QUOTE] I'm running a game, at the moment. Craft's not that bad, but we did houserule it down to a single craft ability with specialties, instead of the infinite potential abilities that the system would have you use with it. Combat's also been going pretty good, except for the situations where there's 3+ enemies, where it slows down, but that's just a fact of combat in RPGs; more people means things slow down to a crawl. Mechanically, though, it's pretty sound. (Unless you think fluff and crunch need to be exactly identical, since Withering and Decisive attacks are both [I]intended[/I] to hit, fluff-wise, but Withering attacks are only ever near-misses and scrapes, while Decisives are big punches to the gut or leaving a big gash across the chest, or whatever.) [sp]Also, I'm open to a new player, if you're interested. It's on Sundays, at 2pm GMT-7, with discord voice chat for OOC and roll20 text for IC.[/sp]

[sp]Thanks for the offer but that's around 0000 between Sunday and Monday for me :v:[/sp] What do you think of the social system?

Man so a few days ago I was wondering to myself, how is it that my players ran so wild in my old Rogue Trader game? Last night I got my answer when, up until the final fight they got into (a mutant leading a swarm of hull-ghasts) it would be completely accurate to say that the players caused more harm to themselves (through high-speed ramming maneuvers on the ship, and the Arch-Militant constantly blinding himself with the blood of his decapitated foes) than I could ever do because my dice seem to have drained to some nether vortex in the warp That was right until on the last round of combat a mutant gouged out the arch-militant's eye thanks to one good roll. And all was forgiven. Also finally got my chance to dick around with flashlight vision cones in a fight, which I personally thought was wicked cool, but alas such fights in lightless space hulks do not occur every day

[QUOTE=imadaman;52922295]Princes of the Universe makes me want to play Exalted. It's a pity the Craft system's (still) a mess and combat can be a bit of a slog apparently, in 3e.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=imadaman;52923714][sp]Thanks for the offer but that's around 0000 between Sunday and Monday for me :v:[/sp] What do you think of the social system?[/QUOTE] I don't know if I'd call combat a slog but it is certainly not a perfect system. The battle groups and trivial opponents rules work great for fighting mooks in any number, as long as the GM actually remembers to use them correctly. The rules for combat between heroic characters are a bit more flawed, they work well most of the time but are abstracted in such a way that there are a lot of situations you could get into that will make no sense whatsoever, which the GM needs to keep in mind to try and avoid. And while having shittons of mooks doesn't really slow things down much, having way too many heroic characters in a single fight certainly can. Trying to play crafting oriented characters is just trash though, can't recommend. It's alright as a minor side thing if you're mostly focusing on mundane crafts, but actually trying to make a character that's a high end crafter making powerful artifacts and shit is just not even worth trying to do. As for the social system, I think the main question is whether everyone is okay with social interactions being systemized, because a lot of people just dislike the concept of having mechanics for social stuff in the first place. The social influence mechanics are quite good and generally make sense, but if you or another player is against the very concept of such rules existing they're obviously just going to be in the way for you.

Last week's D&d session was a success and a useful exercise in understanding and refining my craft. Note to self, a board adds to participant engagement.

My party has entered the main city and discovered that inside, the population is forbidden from casting magic (except, healing spells in churches and any spell while inside the magi guild) And to add to that, the bard's God has issued a decree that he cannot use offensive (does damage) spells for a month. He's bard/warlock With hellish rebuke I have never seen a man panic and swear so much. :v:

For any real reason or this just a case of a gm trying to win?

[QUOTE=UzumakaiPatch;52941889]For any real reason or this just a case of a gm trying to win?[/QUOTE] (I'm the GM) Part of the cities lore, it was unknowingly built in an area of wild magic but by the time people worked that out, it had already become a centre for economic trade, so to stop the rampant use of magic (which could threaten profits or to stop people just going "FUCK IT, SUMMON ALL THE MONEY TO ME!" or robbing a bank with invisibility and magical charming) the "police" of my game ordered that inside the city limits, no spells that can harm or change Men and Mer may be used here. As such, over the years and decades the city grew into a safe haven with a thriving community, however this departure from magic lead the city to become more disrespectful towards magic users (because where someone would cast an innocent spell it would often have dire consequences due to the wild magic.) It was made to offer a [U]safe area[/U] for resting but a bit of an extra challenge for magic heavy people in a [B]MASSIVELY[/B] magic heavy high fantasy world. Where even the dirtiest of farmers often have enchanted tools. (magically toughened trowels are REALLY useful ya know.) As for the no offensive spells? Oh... well that... That's because he (a Gnome bard/warlock) summoned a unicorn, (wild magic) let a [B]DRUID[/B] decapitate it, snapped off its horn, let the fighter turn the severed head into a puppet which he used to sass his God with, then chucked it on a bonfire before deciding to instead use it as a football and mangle it before finally deciding to bury it in the adventures guilds back yard. I think I've been too lenient with them if anything..

..God damn why have I still not played DnD yet