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

Seems like the GM is punishing you because you used something he thought of to outsmart him. There's smarter ways to deal with that (like building in a clause into the description, such as the stone may not grant the wish if it doesn't find it worthy/interesting, etc.).

[QUOTE=Archimedes;51458233]The entire party was suffering from the negative effects of a strenuous Wish Spell (Strength set to 3, 1d10 Necrotic to self on spells cast at varying levels) because a few sessions prior in the campaign we all placed our hands together on the stone and wished that the final magical item we needed appear in front of us. It was basically most of our characters being willing to sacrifice themselves so that the surviving party could construct a magical item to help fend off the BBEGs attacking army before a siege. A sort of finale heroic gesture as the campaign is in its finale. In response the DM teleported us into the tent of the BBEG (who had the item, unbeknownst to us) and ended the session, explaining that he hadn't fully heard us and then disregarded our complaints because we'd tried to break the game. He then texted us later mentioning we were all afflicted by the post-wish debuff. Next session the Paladin wished us back to five seconds earlier, then attempted to use the stone one final time to cast Greater Restoration on all of us because we were still afflicted.[/QUOTE] Should have teleported the BBEG and his tent into the center of the town you were in tbh.

[QUOTE=Camundongo;51458571]Seems like the GM is punishing you because you used something he thought of to outsmart him. There's smarter ways to deal with that (like building in a clause into the description, such as the stone may not grant the wish if it doesn't find it worthy/interesting, etc.).[/QUOTE] The smartest thing to do in that situation as the GM is to just let it happen and move on. If you're really so salty about your players outsmarting you then you don't deserve to be a GM imo.

tbqh my players outsmarting me is one of the joys of being a DM in the first place. It just means I have to try harder next time.

My players outsmarting me is enjoyable. My players outpacing me, on the other hand, gets on my nerves. I meant to have the last run they did in Shadowrun be a bit more difficult, and have locks on the entrances so the Decker would have something to hack, but the Adept went from dodging the turrets outside the door to running in quick enough that I completely forgot about the doors. [sp]The good news is I'm actually writing down security plans on the GM layer in roll20, for the next run, so I hopefully won't forget shit.[/sp]

The player whose character is currently the [I]de facto[/I] leader of the recently liberated dictatorship has actually drawn up quite extensive plans for defending the territory, as well as recruiting the retired general follower that I'd left in their inn. I don't know if he expects to win, so much as to hold off any invading forces until they can get support. They have two local allies - one merchant state based loosely off of the Hanseatic League that is happy to have the business of the liberated territory and promised to support their independence; and my world's only "functional" democracy, which desperately wants to annex the territory. It has a strategic port and vast mineral reserves, so it's quite valuable to them. That said, between the two allies and the territory's own armies they have 55,000 soldiers. The alliance that is currently poised to invade them has 130,000 soldiers, and that's assuming the neighbor to the north decides to not join in, which would add an additional 40,000 + a small army of sellswords and spies. Also, the players decided it was a good idea to release all 2,000 political prisoners held in the dictator's palace. A number of them are monarchists, there's a small republican minority, and the rest are basically anarchists. So that's going to go well. Right now they've got a diplomatic interlude as a couple of political players are trying to desperately avoid a massive war; this whole affair is tied up in a web of alliances, spiraling quickly to continent-wide conflict. And like, this isn't a war that will be over cleanly or quickly. This shit is going to get bad, real fast. We have a militaristic human kingdom (Mericia) [I]and[/I] the Elven republic (Eldathan) being invaded by a Dwarven theocracy who're essentially stooges of [I]something[/I] in the Underdark. The Elves of my world aren't strong in a one-to-one military confrontation compared to the Dwarves. Mericia is handicapped by the fact that they've invested a huge chunk of their forces into maintaining a garrison surrounding a 100x100km ashen deadland full of monsters. Think the Wall from ASOIAF, but square-shaped and with worse things inside of it. King Royce II of Mericia, is a absolutely ruthless and highly competent and wouldn't be above trapping some of the more destructive monsters and just releasing them on the Dwarves. There's a giant centipede-like parasite in there called The Scourge that he'll likely try and weaponize. The players fought them before. They're an all-good party, but they let 70 people die just to wipe out the brood they encountered. It's that horrifying. To the northwest, you have what is essentially a fantastical slavic-inspired empire (it's where I put my eastern-European mythology inspired things) going to war with another human empire (a cognate of the holy roman empire) over the region's local breadbasket. The nations absolutely despise one another, and this is going to be the third time they've gone to war. The conflict started at the crowning of a new Emperor, who is brash, arrogant, and quite unstable. He ardently believes he can beat back the Czar and bring the other empire to heel, something there is barely the resources or manpower to even try. It will be a long, drawn-out slugfest with no likely winner. One significant wildcard here, is that there's a dragon who owes the players a favour. What they'll do with that in this circumstance I couldn't venture to guess. Crapsack World, here we come!

[QUOTE=Rats808;51460513]My players outsmarting me is enjoyable. My players outpacing me, on the other hand, gets on my nerves. I meant to have the last run they did in Shadowrun be a bit more difficult, and have locks on the entrances so the Decker would have something to hack, but the Adept went from dodging the turrets outside the door to running in quick enough that I completely forgot about the doors. [sp]The good news is I'm actually writing down security plans on the GM layer in roll20, for the next run, so I hopefully won't forget shit.[/sp][/QUOTE] you'll never be able to keep up with fast

[QUOTE=AtomicWaffle;51460474]tbqh my players outsmarting me is one of the joys of being a DM in the first place. It just means I have to try harder next time.[/QUOTE] I was DMing "Mines of Phandelver" one time, and the gang got to that part where there's a young green dragon in the tower. I had this thing planned where it would chase them from building to building around the ruined town the tower was in, but instead they used ice and fire magic to weaken the mortar in the bricks, and the blue dragonborn shot lightning between the cracks into the abandoned alchemical lab in the basement. There wasn't a dragon left to chase them after that. To add insult to injury, one of our party members had a wand of wonder, and sucked the dragon's skull into the etherial plane by means of lucky dice roll. He then accidentally rolled the same number during the last fight, which made the dragon skull drop back out of the plane onto the boss, chunking half his health. My group is very VERY good at screwing with plans. Their most recent weirdness was reaching the cult of the dragon's camp in chapter 2 of "Hoard of the Dragon Queen". The idea in the book is that the group gets spotted in the camp, fails a few intentionally difficult charisma throws, and gets captured, where the person they're looking for breaks them free. The group instead spent FOUR HOURS making a detailed plan to knock out the watchtower guards in one round, without sounding the alarm, and then sending the bard (with stupidly high charisma, so he could convincingly blend in) into camp to find the prisoner tent, before trying to set fire to the tents in the eastern part of the camp as a distraction so they could get the prisoners out without issue. They got captured anyway, so the SIX HOURS of dnd had the end result of finishing a 30 minute chapter of the adventure. My players are crazy, but I love them anyway. I'll type up more of the b.s. they've pulled at a later date.

After many years playing D&D as a player I've started to brew my own campaign. I've googled around for quest ideas. I liked one in particular where the players have to deliver an important letter to the queen, in which the letter explodes when the queen reads it. The players then have to deal with having assassinated the queen. If they figure out the letter is meant to kill the queen before giving it to her, the quest becomes finding whoever made it and why they want to assassinate the queen. I can also see this become an outcome even if the queen is killed, but they manage to convince the queen guard that they didn't know about the letter's purpose. If anyone have done something similar to this, I'd like to know your experience. Maybe I can get some input on what to improve or prepare for. Either way, if they are able to track down the people behind the murder/murder attempt, the party discovers there's a mysterious unknown/forgotten guild planning to set a certain long plan in motion, starting with killing the queen. The group gets offered to join the guild, leave, or fight their way out. Which means the main quest will either be about helping the mysterious guild, or stopping them. I have some ideas for side quests, I'm well aware the players are likely to not get involved in the main quest the way I want. I know some of my D&D buds loves airships, and I plan for them to find an old relic of a airship, that was stolen from someone a long time ago. It's broken, but they can repair the ship by finding the missing parts. Which I want to be a long side quest, since I don't want the players having a functional airship at low level. Besides, I think an adventure where they must find the missing parts is a quest they will invest in. I have a couple of more minor side quests, and an introduction quest for the first session. One of my friends love writing backstories for his characters, and as a DM I want to include some of his backstory in some way into a guest and make it fun for him and the other players. Anyone have any good examples if you've done this in your campaigns?

guys, should i post a "how-to" on how to play online in NWN? there are roleplay servers still active with 50-100 players online at any given time, even though there are no master servers anymore. it's amazing.

[QUOTE=MenteR;51462159]guys, should i post a "how-to" on how to play online in NWN? there are roleplay servers still active with 50-100 players online at any given time, even though there are no master servers anymore. it's amazing.[/QUOTE] Go for it, sounds pretty fun

[QUOTE=Rats808;51460513]My players outsmarting me is enjoyable. My players outpacing me, on the other hand, gets on my nerves. I meant to have the last run they did in Shadowrun be a bit more difficult, and have locks on the entrances so the Decker would have something to hack, but the Adept went from dodging the turrets outside the door to running in quick enough that I completely forgot about the doors. [sp]The good news is I'm actually writing down security plans on the GM layer in roll20, for the next run, so I hopefully won't forget shit.[/sp][/QUOTE] Mobility builds are great fun in SR, even if you aren't great at anything else having a catgirl who can run at 50mph for several minutes at a time and take 90ft drops with no issues on the team is very useful.

[QUOTE=Nerts;51462420]Mobility builds are great fun in SR, even if you aren't great at anything else having a catgirl who can run at 50mph for several minutes at a time and take 90ft drops with no issues on the team is very useful.[/QUOTE] It's less about the character's actual speed, more about the speed at which the player went from rolling enough hits to not get shot to moving his token past the doors and into firing range of a set of drones, which caused me to forget about the doors. He is super fast, though(5 agi, with the agility booster adept power), which is hilarious next to the 1 agi troll who runs at a pace of 4 meters.

[QUOTE=Rats808;51462473]It's less about the character's actual speed, more about the speed at which the player went from rolling enough hits to not get shot to moving his token past the doors and into firing range of a set of drones, which caused me to forget about the doors. He is super fast, though(5 agi, with the agility booster adept power), which is hilarious next to the 1 agi troll who runs at a pace of 4 meters.[/QUOTE] Shadowrun is a slow game, gotta go faster faster fasterfasterfaster

[QUOTE=Rats808;51462473]It's less about the character's actual speed, more about the speed at which the player went from rolling enough hits to not get shot to moving his token past the doors and into firing range of a set of drones, which caused me to forget about the doors. He is super fast, though(5 agi, with the agility booster adept power), which is hilarious next to the 1 agi troll who runs at a pace of 4 meters.[/QUOTE] You call that fast? He needs at least twice as much agility and to replace his feet with skimmers.

[QUOTE=AtomicWaffle;51460474]tbqh my players outsmarting me is one of the joys of being a DM in the first place. It just means I have to try harder next time.[/QUOTE] Usually it's something fairly clever and interesting anyways. That or something so overly stupid that you didn't even think to account for it which is entertaining in its own right. I accidentally derailed an AD&D campaign back in highschool for a couple weeks because of something everyone agreed was clever but turned out not to be. We had to get through a magically locked door and we'd found a shrink person potion. I was only a level 1 cleric but I had 19 wisdom which is a shit load in AD&D and even after a wisdom check my character thought it was a good idea to use the shrink person potion to get into the locked room from the exterior window. This in itself wasn't the issue. The real issue came from when I waited for the potion to run out in order to try and lift a stone trap door to find another way in to the area we needed. Despite having the second highest strength rating in the party (it was something like 18/11 iirc) the trap door was too heavy for me to open by myself. So I got stuck in the room for two weeks, both in-game and out, while our ranger travelled back to the town we came from to get the wizard who commissioned us to go into this abandoned castle and do something to come and unlock the door so I could leave and the party could continue the adventure. We were playing an actual adventure path whose name I forget and the shrink potion was a standard part of the treasure you could get but the authors, as well as our dm, never considered it could be used in a way like this. Kinda sucked at having a clever solution end so badly but it turned out quite hilariously too. Then again the clerics in that campaign were cursed. The previous cleric was my ex-girlfriend and she left the campaign because she accidentally beheaded herself. And I spent a large portion of most sessions unconscious due to doing annoying things such as slipping in monster guts and hitting my head on the stone floor or seriously fumbling an attack and hitting myself in the head with my mace. (Also being impressively useless for healing because I kept rolling nearly as low as I possibly could for healing party members...)

I wonder if stealing the Dynasty Tactics-esque gameplay for mass combat would make a useful tool for escalating political D&D campaigns. Set specific unit types, stat em up, give them a strength/weakness chart, ability slots equal to their assigned officer's experience. Anyone else?

I've always found mass combat to feel a bit lackluster regardless of how it's ruled.

[QUOTE=gufu;51464278]I wonder if stealing the Dynasty Tactics-esque gameplay for mass combat would make a useful tool for escalating political D&D campaigns. Set specific unit types, stat em up, give them a strength/weakness chart, ability slots equal to their assigned officer's experience. Anyone else?[/QUOTE] God no, that's just inserting a war game into a roleplaying game. Roleplaying games are about the characters. Use large battles and wars as a framing device for your story and/or focus on what the characters are doing within it, don't just suddenly unpack your Warhammer set. Unless of course you and your players all want to play a war game instead for a session or two. Nothing wrong with that if it's what you want to do.

The only time I've ever found a massive change in game type to work is Rogue Trader space combat But in my game because of how many ships the players had that basically ended up with everyone had their normal characters and then just picked a ship from the list as their character for space combat :v:

So suggestions on a good item for a Hag to give a player if they bargain for it? Currently I've got a Potion of Fire Giants Strength that contains the trapped soul of a Fire Giant. Upon consuming the potion the giants soul becomes bound to the player as a curse. Really fond of the idea because it doesn't have to be an immediate effect, just something I can sit on and use as either a potential plot hook or for some fun RP.

[QUOTE=MenteR;51455705]guys NEVERWINTER NIGHTS 1 + ALL EXPANSIONS IS FREE ON GOG GRAB IT NOW: [url]https://www.gog.com/game/neverwinter_nights_diamond_edition[/url] only people who played this back in the day, online, on servers where DM's would literally take control of random npcs and interact with you like in a real D&D game know the glory of this. the aurora toolset, oh my fucking god. it's free now my dudes, so grab it while you can![/QUOTE] Ahhh I want it but I already own it on gog! and have diamond physically... and platinum.... i need help

[QUOTE=Archimedes;51464571]So suggestions on a good item for a Hag to give a player if they bargain for it? Currently I've got a Potion of Fire Giants Strength that contains the trapped soul of a Fire Giant. Upon consuming the potion the giants soul becomes bound to the player as a curse. Really fond of the idea because it doesn't have to be an immediate effect, just something I can sit on and use as either a potential plot hook or for some fun RP.[/QUOTE] A potion of beauty [sp]that slowly turns you into a hag[/sp]

A sword that's pretty good, but after any confrontation the wielder is convinced they were both victorious and the only one that actually did anything.

[QUOTE=elowin;51464483]God no, that's just inserting a war game into a roleplaying game. Roleplaying games are about the characters. Use large battles and wars as a framing device for your story and/or focus on what the characters are doing within it, don't just suddenly unpack your Warhammer set. Unless of course you and your players all want to play a war game instead for a session or two. Nothing wrong with that if it's what you want to do.[/QUOTE] Roleplaying games come from war games so it's not exactly a massive leap to go back. I once just played a couple rounds of an RTS against my players to determine how well their battle went. It didn't go so hot for them, that's all I'll say.

[QUOTE=Chronische;51465265]Roleplaying games come from war games so it's not exactly a massive leap to go back. I once just played a couple rounds of an RTS against my players to determine how well their battle went. It didn't go so hot for them, that's all I'll say.[/QUOTE] I strongly disagree, it is a pretty massive leap.

[QUOTE=Chronische;51465265]Roleplaying games come from war games so it's not exactly a massive leap to go back. I once just played a couple rounds of an RTS against my players to determine how well their battle went. It didn't go so hot for them, that's all I'll say.[/QUOTE] It's more fun if you just use small set pieces in a larger battle to determine the result. They're a strike team that needs to lower the bridge after sneaking in through the waterways. They're clearing the archers off the walls, etc.

[QUOTE=elowin;51465051]A potion of beauty [sp]that slowly turns you into a hag[/sp][/QUOTE] I actually had an idea for a Cloak that let you cast Alter Self once per day, but had a significant chance of leaving some kind of deformity based on the spell. I genuinely like this suggestion though, especially if the potion works similarly to a Giant Strength potion where it can boost CHAR to an above average amount.

[QUOTE=elowin;51465481]I strongly disagree, it is a pretty massive leap.[/QUOTE] I mean, we had that guy running an X-Com campaign, and that was doing a pretty job good in-between an RPG and Wargame. Besides, you can still have solid roleplaying, especially if you have larger-than-life characters. In a way, you only change the scale from 1 Goblin to a 100.

Personally, I think if you're going to have a large-scale battle happen in your game(1000 goblins), you rather than working out the mechanics of how the whole fight goes, you should focus on each character and what they're doing in the battle(1-10 goblins), so everyone still gets to do some roleplaying/character development by showing what they'd be doing in a large-scale fight, instead of just being lumped in with 100 other people who do the same thing. Either make them all a single unit in the fight and throw them into a combat like that, maybe with some NPC support(a la Only War), then have the outcome of their fight determine or impact the overall outcome(if you want their side to lose, and they win the fight, then it's an overall loss, but their side held valiantly against the enemy, and vice-versa), or split them up and have them each just say what they're doing to help their side in the battle, maybe run a combat for the martial-oriented characters who are on the front lines, or something.