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2018/05/08 23:40:41
Subject: Re:Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
@krodarklorr: Wow, critical mode sounds intense! I'm guessing you have pretty seasoned players? It should certainly affect the pack-rat habits of so many players. I'm sorry to say that i didn't get the Kingdom Hearts reference. The game looks really good, and I've been meaning to pick up a copy and play for so many years now, but I never have.
@Da Boss: Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed my blog. I'm looking forward to seeing this new dungeon tile you're making in your blog.
Da Boss wrote: That's an interesting choice. I think the book keeping would probably wear on me unless I developed some smooth way to do it or had players who were into it. I'd probably abstract all that sort of stuff to something easy to track.
I think when you make changes to these sorts of things though you often see interesting aspects of play emerging. We always had a house rule in 3.X that you had a "round's grace" to save someone who died.So if someone drops below -9, then you get a round to get to them and heal them before they are officially dead. When I eventually removed that rule, it really changed combat - players became a lot less complacent about dying characters, and the death rate went up, which changed how the game felt significantly.
For the same reason in 5e I make my players roll their death saves in secret and keep the results to themselves. That way, people don't artificially "know" that they have another round before they need to stabilize someone, making things more tense.
As for me, I'm working on making a special dungeon tile for the upcoming boss fight in my barrowmaze campaign. Pretty excited about it! I was inspired by seeing Syro's blog.
Honestly, a lot of people mention the bookkeeping, and I don't think it'll be a problem. I've made an additional character sheet to go to each player that tracks exhaustion, lingering injuries, carrying capacity (and the formulas for figuring each one out), Spell points, etc. And I have a large packet of information detailing and summarizing all of the variant rules and how they interact with eachother and how they are intended to work. The players will just need to remember to use their resources sparingly and tell me who has a torch when they enter a dungeon, how much food they bought in town, who's foraging for the day, etc.. Other than that, it's just normal stuff of remembering to check for traps and secret doors and the like, but they have to be extra careful with everything.
I like the idea of not telling each player what their saving throw was. I'm putting a heavy emphasis on all skills, so I want Medicine to be used, even at higher levels. If you don't know if your friend is dying, you would run your butt over there as soon as he drops to try to save him. I might use that.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Syro_ wrote: @krodarklorr: Wow, critical mode sounds intense! I'm guessing you have pretty seasoned players? It should certainly affect the pack-rat habits of so many players. I'm sorry to say that i didn't get the Kingdom Hearts reference. The game looks really good, and I've been meaning to pick up a copy and play for so many years now, but I never have.
Well, I'll be building a new group of players through networking and the white board at my local shop. My normal group of friends are casuals and are enjoying our current campaign (they're so close to level 11 they can almost taste it). The game they play is more heroic and narrative, with Hero Points, tons of magic items, and dungeon delving. All while I'm striving for an interesting overarching plot. So far so good.
Kingdom Hearts is a lot of fun, and Critical Mode is what a lot of people say is "how the game was meant to be played", though I disagree. You can find all the games redone in HD with extra content for the PS4/PS3 for like, 25 bucks. If you're a Final Fantasy fan, it's worth it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/05/09 10:39:02
40k:
8th Edtion: 9405 pts - Varantekh Dynasty
2018/05/09 11:07:05
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
An organised extra character sheet sounds like a good idea for that sort of game. I didn't mean any criticism of the concept, I genuinely think it is interesting and I wonder how it will change the feel of your game - I expect it will make "survival" based play more important and make spells that contribute to survival much more relevant. I ran a 4e Darksun game where the number of "days" of water or food was important, but I deputised a player to manage it for me.
I just hate in game book keeping quite a bit, but that's just my own preference.
Da Boss wrote: An organised extra character sheet sounds like a good idea for that sort of game. I didn't mean any criticism of the concept, I genuinely think it is interesting and I wonder how it will change the feel of your game - I expect it will make "survival" based play more important and make spells that contribute to survival much more relevant. I ran a 4e Darksun game where the number of "days" of water or food was important, but I deputised a player to manage it for me.
I just hate in game book keeping quite a bit, but that's just my own preference.
I don't blame you, haha.
The goal I have is that every ability that you may possess will grant you a benefit somehow. Like, your background features that grant free lifestyles is a huge deal because it saves you precious gold in the long run. The Noble has access to higher social classes by default when it comes to Carousing, which is very handy to have. Tools can literally be used to make a living wage during downtime. Each skill and Ability Score has very heavy uses (my players typically dump Intelligence and Charisma. Like, 90% of the time).
I've also gone to lengths to make sure that Rangers get to feel awesome, while also not glossing over navigation completely. Moon Druids and other powerful subclasses are toned down because of the resting variant, and things like Land Druids or Path of the Totem Barbarians or Thief Rogues seem like much more attractive options. Heck, Eldritch Knights are pretty good because of Spell Points, and having someone else with the Identify spell is handy (magic items can't be identified just by taking a short rest in this game, as per the DMG variant).
Overall, Survival will be difficult and the players have to be smart about it, but I don't see it adding too much bookkeeping. At most, they might buy a mule and just keep track of its inventory separately for carrying capacity. And if they're in the wilderness and don't have someone with the Outlander background, someone just has to forage everyday, which takes care of their food for the day so on the paper the numbers don't change.
40k:
8th Edtion: 9405 pts - Varantekh Dynasty
2018/05/10 17:21:42
Subject: Re:Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
Had a really fun session last night - probably the most fun I've had in game in months. My players are preparing for the endgame of my megadungeon, which is a maze of passages and chambers under a field of barrow mounds. They'd noticed some harpies flying around one of the mounds in an above ground area they had not explored. Fearing the harpies would intervene on the side of the cult of orcus, they went to attack the nest. The nest is a caved in barrow mound that goes 40 feet into a chamber below, with ledges around the interior. The players did well in the first rounds, killing several harpies. But then the harpies took the the air and began singing, and my players began to dash off the edge of the pit and fall 40ft. I found this hilarious Here's a shot of the battle:
Spoiler:
(I only had 4 harpy miniatures, so the giant bats are subbing in for bow armed harpies)
(The red pen represents the above ground map, the green lines are the underground chamber)
In the pile of rubbish and offal on the floor, there lurked a giant scorpion. It ate one of the henchmen they'd brought with them. The battle ended with the queen of the harpies in desperate battle with the PCs who'd fallen into the pit, while the druid who had never failed her save got mugged by the remaining two flying harpies. They lifted her above the pit and screeched down at the PCs to surrender and retreat or they would drop her. The PCs refused, and they dropped the druid. The players managed to save her (just about) by using Tenser's floating disk. I ruled the disk could break her fall, meaning she took damage, but broken into steps rather than all at once, which would have killed her outright. Instead, she autofailed two death saves. She'd already rolled one in secret, so the tension as the players waited to see if the second impact had killed her was immense.
Really fun and dynamic combat taking place over a pretty interesting 3D battlefield. The players have destroyed the harpies as a faction, and have found another entrance to the barrowmaze, much further into the western half than they've gone before.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/05/10 17:23:22
Thanks. I'm looking forward to hearing how things go in your campaign. Seeing your cardboard dungeon layout got me really excited about doing dungeon tiles myself, and I'll probably run out of steam, but I was daydreaming about making a layout for the Caverns of Thracia megadungeon, which is probably my favourite that I've run.
Thanks, that makes me happy to hear. Making my cardboard dungeon layout was much more time consuming than i expected, but it did leave me with pieces I'm happy with (still not finished yet though). If you can find the time, I hope you do give making your Caverns of Thracia a try. The pit of chaos turned out great after all.
Cheers. Yeah my daydreams are infested with the idea of tiny miniature rope bridges and faux marble patterns. Caverns of Thracia is a really fun adventure from the late seventies (early eighties?) that has death cultists, gnolls, lizardmen and minotaurs, as well as a bunch of undead and other weirdness, fighting it out in ancient macedonian/greek themed ruins and caverns. It's got some excellent dungeon design - the entire environment is really non-linear and fun to explore.
Because of you speaking highly of it, I'll check it out. I just grabbed one of the many free PDFs of it available online. You have a good memory for the date, it says 1979. I recently went looking for "Against the Cult of the Reptile God" and "the Village of Hommlet" that Matthew Colville talked about in a video. This one is quite a bit larger.
Cool! Yeah, I'd say it's a real classic. It doesn't get as much of a spotlight thrown on it because it's Judges Guild rather than TSR. The 1979 version is pretty fun, but I would say there are some small issues with the maps. I use the 3.0 Necromancer Games re-issue, which tidies up the maps a little bit.
It's not my favourite edition, but I think it has a lot of good design that I actually steal for my 5e games. I think some of the problems with it were the art design and some of the mechanical innovations they came up with not being close enough to what people expect.
They produced some excellent setting supplements though - I love the Darksun stuff they released and the Underdark supplement. I ran a 15 level 4e campaign in Darksun and it was a lot of fun. I also liked that they tried to differentiate humanoids mechanically.
I just found that combat got very bloated and took a long time at higher levels. To be fair, 3e also breaks down at higher levels and I've yet to run a 5e game past 7, so it may be an omnipresent problem.
I actually think it could be quite fun as a miniatures game - just take an XP budget and make characters or select monster groups to taste, sprinkle in some environmental effects and have at it.
Da Boss wrote: It's not my favourite edition, but I think it has a lot of good design that I actually steal for my 5e games. I think some of the problems with it were the art design and some of the mechanical innovations they came up with not being close enough to what people expect.
They produced some excellent setting supplements though - I love the Darksun stuff they released and the Underdark supplement. I ran a 15 level 4e campaign in Darksun and it was a lot of fun. I also liked that they tried to differentiate humanoids mechanically.
I just found that combat got very bloated and took a long time at higher levels. To be fair, 3e also breaks down at higher levels and I've yet to run a 5e game past 7, so it may be an omnipresent problem.
I actually think it could be quite fun as a miniatures game - just take an XP budget and make characters or select monster groups to taste, sprinkle in some environmental effects and have at it.
My current running campaign (that will be going for quite some time in the foreseeable future) is almost level 11 and combat actually doesn't take as long in 5e, even at those high of levels. Then again, my players are quite powerful, but even if I maxed the health of the enemies it wouldn't drag out too much longer.
40k:
8th Edtion: 9405 pts - Varantekh Dynasty
2018/05/14 13:37:13
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
One thing I outright lifted from 4th (even though 5th was my first edition) is the concept of extended Skill Challenges; a series of player-selected skill checks with a running success/failure tally to run dramatic events that the normal combat framework doesn't suit. Tense escapes, complex interactions such as heists where people are in multiple locations, chases after/away from enemies, that kind of 'action sequence' stuff that the combat mechanics don't really cater to very well.
Here's a short paraphrasing of the rules (as I use them, I made a few tweaks), they're definitely something I'd recommend using next time you want to run a rapid, tense sequence where the players feel like they have their life and death in their own hands.
Spoiler:
- In short, the DM describes an event, but instead of asking a player to make a certain check, they let the player choose how they react and make the appropriate roll. The goal is to get X number of successes as a party before Y number (usually 3) of failures, which will ultimately determine the success or failure of the whole sequence. Note that a failure doesn't need to mean a TPK, it could mean the party just takes a few major body blows as the mine collapses around them, or their clumsy infiltration means there are more guards on alert by the time they break into the keep ect.
-The key difference between this and just a set of linked skill checks is that the players are choosing the skills they want to use, rather than waiting for the DM to ask for a particular roll- so long as the player can justify how the chosen action is appropriate, the DM should allow it.
- A character can only ever use a skill once during a single challenge. For example, if they choose to use Acrobatics to leap a chasm, they can't use it later in the same sequence to dodge an arrow so would have to use something else, such as attempting to get their shield up to block it (straight Dex) or Athletics to outrun the archer's aim ect. Thus, the 'game' here is for the players to select the skills they're best at, use them to move the party as a whole closer to overall success, and not rely on a single good stat to save them.
- Non-skill actions, such as using Feats, weapons or equipment can also be taken if the players can explain how they'd be useful. For example, if rocks begin to fall and a Warlock has already used Acrobatics to leap a barrier earlier in the scene, they could instead cast Eldritch Blast to try and shatter some of the incoming debris. Conversely, they might defer to their Fighter who has Great Weapon Master to try and smash the rocks away, or the Ranger might use Perception to spot a hidden path that leads the party away from the immediate danger altogether.
- (Optional hard mode) characters may only use skills, weapons, equipment that they are proficient in, to represent the talent and ability required to act quickly and decisively. Make sure your party has a decent range of proficiency before doing this though, if everyone has Investigation, Insight and Religion then they're not going to be much use in a sequence limited purely to those skills.
Again, I definitely recommend giving something like this a try, they're a great way to handle big set-piece action sequences in a rapid, exciting and non-clunky manner. Obviously, the DM should make it clear that they are entering a Skill Challenge, but after that it should be quick-fire, immersive action.
2018/05/15 10:34:20
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
Paradigm wrote: One thing I outright lifted from 4th (even though 5th was my first edition) is the concept of extended Skill Challenges; a series of player-selected skill checks with a running success/failure tally to run dramatic events that the normal combat framework doesn't suit. Tense escapes, complex interactions such as heists where people are in multiple locations, chases after/away from enemies, that kind of 'action sequence' stuff that the combat mechanics don't really cater to very well.
Here's a short paraphrasing of the rules (as I use them, I made a few tweaks), they're definitely something I'd recommend using next time you want to run a rapid, tense sequence where the players feel like they have their life and death in their own hands.
Spoiler:
- In short, the DM describes an event, but instead of asking a player to make a certain check, they let the player choose how they react and make the appropriate roll. The goal is to get X number of successes as a party before Y number (usually 3) of failures, which will ultimately determine the success or failure of the whole sequence. Note that a failure doesn't need to mean a TPK, it could mean the party just takes a few major body blows as the mine collapses around them, or their clumsy infiltration means there are more guards on alert by the time they break into the keep ect.
-The key difference between this and just a set of linked skill checks is that the players are choosing the skills they want to use, rather than waiting for the DM to ask for a particular roll- so long as the player can justify how the chosen action is appropriate, the DM should allow it.
- A character can only ever use a skill once during a single challenge. For example, if they choose to use Acrobatics to leap a chasm, they can't use it later in the same sequence to dodge an arrow so would have to use something else, such as attempting to get their shield up to block it (straight Dex) or Athletics to outrun the archer's aim ect. Thus, the 'game' here is for the players to select the skills they're best at, use them to move the party as a whole closer to overall success, and not rely on a single good stat to save them.
- Non-skill actions, such as using Feats, weapons or equipment can also be taken if the players can explain how they'd be useful. For example, if rocks begin to fall and a Warlock has already used Acrobatics to leap a barrier earlier in the scene, they could instead cast Eldritch Blast to try and shatter some of the incoming debris. Conversely, they might defer to their Fighter who has Great Weapon Master to try and smash the rocks away, or the Ranger might use Perception to spot a hidden path that leads the party away from the immediate danger altogether.
- (Optional hard mode) characters may only use skills, weapons, equipment that they are proficient in, to represent the talent and ability required to act quickly and decisively. Make sure your party has a decent range of proficiency before doing this though, if everyone has Investigation, Insight and Religion then they're not going to be much use in a sequence limited purely to those skills.
Again, I definitely recommend giving something like this a try, they're a great way to handle big set-piece action sequences in a rapid, exciting and non-clunky manner. Obviously, the DM should make it clear that they are entering a Skill Challenge, but after that it should be quick-fire, immersive action.
Yeah, I also like the Skill Challenges, as far as the whole mechanic goes for them. As a DM, there are quite a few things I like from 4e, honestly. The Knowledge skills seem directly more in-your-face useful. Like, Arcana allowing Detect Magic, Nature being used for Foraging, and each skill having certain types of monsters they can perform knowledge checks for, with the MM entries actually providing direct knowledge for players based on what they roll.
I also like how traps are done, but that's more of my videogame side talking (I was a big WoW player)
40k:
8th Edtion: 9405 pts - Varantekh Dynasty
2018/05/15 13:03:02
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
To be honest, even in 5th I assumed a mini-Detect Magic was what Arcana was for anyway. In general, assuming the character in question has the necessary knowledge (if your Int 5 Barbarian rolls a nat 20 on an Arcana check, they probably still won't glean much), I'll let them use Arcana to tell if something is magic, though to get the specific type/enchantment ect they'll need to use Detect Magic or Identify as appropriate.
2018/05/15 13:49:03
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
Yeah, I think that's reasonable. I just made a very cheap magic item available that you can use as sort of a magic geiger counter to detect the presence of magic (a stone that changes colour in the presence of magic) and allow Arcana to tell more about the relative strength, something about the properties etc. Detect Magic allows you to tell the school and with a decent Arcana roll, something about what the spell was trying to do. I kinda see it like Detect Magic and the item allow you to see magic is there, and Arcana is the knowledge base to put it in context.
I just had my second session as a DM today. It went well, and my players got a lot more done than last session. They managed to avoid all the traps, but got caught in every ambush. It was a busy session so I only remembered to take a single picture, but here it is. This is near the end of the session where they just finished following a trail that goblins have been using, which led to a cave mouth.
I'm interested to know what kind of monsters it deals with primarily. Volo's was very much an 'expansion' to the more common stuff with more varieties of the standards like Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls, Kobolds, Ithillids ect. with a few new categories thrown in but not the main focus.
I seem to recall this would be a bit more focused on the humanoid stuff like Drow, Duergar ect, but I might have made that up?
2018/05/18 12:34:31
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
Paradigm wrote: I'm interested to know what kind of monsters it deals with primarily. Volo's was very much an 'expansion' to the more common stuff with more varieties of the standards like Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls, Kobolds, Ithillids ect. with a few new categories thrown in but not the main focus.
I seem to recall this would be a bit more focused on the humanoid stuff like Drow, Duergar ect, but I might have made that up?
No, you are correct. It expands heavily on Duergar and Drow enemies, as well as Demons and Devils. It reprints the Demon Lords from OotA, and has a slew of Archdevil statblocks. There's also big baddies such as the Elder Elementals, and there a lot of stuff that resides on the Shadowfell.
I am disappointed, however, that Lolth still doesn't have stats, and the cover of this book has a Mindflayer on it, but yet not a single new statblock for a Mindflayer is included.
40k:
8th Edtion: 9405 pts - Varantekh Dynasty
2018/05/18 12:56:10
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
More demons is handy, they feature heavily in my campaign. Is there any particular skew in terms of the power level of enemies, or is it fairly mixed? No point me picking it up just yet if a lot of the content is low level or endgame stuff, but if there's a bit more in the CR5-10 level or if it covers the whole scale it might be a handy one to get sooner rather than later.
I'm not sure what else you could do for Mind Flayers. Between the MM and Volo's, you have a fairly good mix of regular ones, magical ones (Arcanist and Alhoon), undead ones (Illithilich) and the Elder Brain... Maybe a more combat-focused one, or some lower level variants, CR4-6ish to use as minibosses?
2018/05/18 13:02:09
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
More demons is handy, they feature heavily in my campaign. Is there any particular skew in terms of the power level of enemies, or is it fairly mixed? No point me picking it up just yet if a lot of the content is low level or endgame stuff, but if there's a bit more in the CR5-10 level or if it covers the whole scale it might be a handy one to get sooner rather than later.
I'm not sure what else you could do for Mind Flayers. Between the MM and Volo's, you have a fairly good mix of regular ones, magical ones (Arcanist and Alhoon), undead ones (Illithilich) and the Elder Brain... Maybe a more combat-focused one, or some lower level variants, CR4-6ish to use as minibosses?
Yeah I don't know what else you could do for Mindflayers, but it's weird that I haven't seen them mentioned yet and they're on the cover. But that's just me.
As far as overall CR, I would say about 70% of the book is CR10+. The demons have CR 2, 3, 4, and 7 creatures, and the devils have a few of the lower CRs too, but most of it is high level stuff. Like, for instance, Molydeus, the demon who is apparently more fearsome than the Balor. CR21 and full of scariness.
40k:
8th Edtion: 9405 pts - Varantekh Dynasty
2018/05/18 13:10:18
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
Paradigm wrote: Ok then, one to pick up down the line then as my players won't be facing much CR10+ for quite some time yet. Cheers again for the info.
The subraces look like a lot of fun though, so even for brand new characters it offers some cool options. But no problem. Happy to share info! Some of the new undead are definitely going into my current campaign, as the party is almost level 11.
40k:
8th Edtion: 9405 pts - Varantekh Dynasty
2018/05/19 10:30:47
Subject: Dungeons And Dakkas! The Dakka DnD Thread!
