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 Easy E wrote:
3 sessions into Curse of Strahd and I am enjoying it. The Horror/Psychological aspects of it are very enjoyable and a change of pace for my normally combat focused fellow players.

I'm glad to hear you are enjoying it, I constantly hear good thing about Curse of Strahd.

I am currently crafting the stuff to play "Blue Alley" a Waterdeep Dragon Heist expansion WoTC gave away for free earlier in the pandemic. I'd say it's a fun house dungeon, so very different from Strahd.

I am (finally) setting up my first time DMing a game of dnd, and it's shaping up to be some really good fun!
Thus far I have a half-elf monk who is (possibly) the key to the ressurection of an ancient gold dragon, I have an Orc Artificer who is obsessed with becoming stronger so he can return to his tribe (from which he was exiled for being weak - strength 18, go figure...), and the third character is a sentient ooze who lives in a bucket hanging from the Orc's backpack. There is also a chronurgy wizard whos backstory isn't done yet, and a fifth character who I expect will be a druid.

It's a homebrew module I've been writing, where they are lookign to find the cause of the endless rains in the town of Greyhold, which has been rained on for some 237 years!

They will be meeting in the tavern of the town - the "Always-Rain Inn"!

Congrats! Just a word of warning, be careful if the druid ends up going moon subclass as it's really unbalanced in combat at low levels once they unlock wild shape with the subclass.

Sentient Ooze...... that player sounds like one you will need to watch out for!

warboss wrote:Congrats! Just a word of warning, be careful if the druid ends up going moon subclass as it's really unbalanced in combat at low levels once they unlock wild shape with the subclass.

I'm aiming to build my campaign largely around goals and time limits rather than purely combat - whilst sometimes "kill everything" is the answer, I want players to have challenges beyond using their number-rocks to reduce enemy numbers to low numbers whilst keeping their numbers as high as possible!

Easy E wrote:Sentient Ooze...... that player sounds like one you will need to watch out for!

Honestly, I'm more concerned with the monk who wants to be the reincarnation of an ancient golden dragon! The ooze race & class is, after a thorough look through, underpowered by comparison to most races & classes, though it has some tricky things to work around (blindsight in 60ft and blind beyond this, inability to use weapons or armour (magical or otherwise), and the inability to speak (being mitigated through Message cantrip)).

But for now, we face the great and dreaded demon that is Scheduling!

Kill everything campaigns are boring, while the occasional episode of 'Kill Everything" is okay.

That is like.... my opinion, man.

From what I've heard, Artificers are wildly OP, so can be quite unfun if allowed to get out of control. But hope you campaign goes well :-)

 Kroem wrote:
From what I've heard, Artificers are wildly OP, so can be quite unfun if allowed to get out of control. But hope you campaign goes well :-)

Current thought is that if one character becomes exceedingly powerful, I will start arranging encounters which, if they descend to combat, will play against that character's weaknesses. EG lack of ranged, or susceptibility to wisdom saves. That sort of thing. I've gotten the gist that just upping the encounter difficulty will make other players feel obsolete, so I'll be thinking of tactics and such to counter these things rather than just making it more dangerous!

currently the artificer has a returning hand axe and Armour of Magical Strength (Scale Mail), both of which seem fairly unproblematic.

I need some help regarding illithid thrall lore please!
would someone who had been enthalled by an illithid....
1. be aware they had been enthralled
2. remember what happened during their enthrallment
3. still be sane afterwards

I've been lore-diving myself but wasn't able to find an answer - i've been stalling the end of the campaign i'm running because these questions are key to the 'final interaction' moment i set up, but this sunday is basically the final session and i'm still lacking.


HALP!!!

1-i would say would depend on how they stopped being a thrall
2- probably broken fragments, like they had been subject to some of the memory altering spells from the handbook
3- would base on how much they remember/what they did

Nice one, thank you.
The subject was cut off by the death of the controlling illithid so i wasn't sure if they would go into a holding pattern, become hyper-suggestible or turn complete vegetable.

 SirDonlad wrote:
Nice one, thank you.
The subject was cut off by the death of the controlling illithid so i wasn't sure if they would go into a holding pattern, become hyper-suggestible or turn complete vegetable.

An example that springs to mind is the old 'voidmind' template from 3.5 - the flayers could sense any changes in the creatures condition and take control of it at will but normally it operated under its own will (albeit servile to its masters).
https://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/voidmind.shtml

Thats a really good callback A.T.
Plot fixed - thank you!

Anyone with suggestions with a campaign that wanders through the fae wilds?

 RegularGuy wrote:
Anyone with suggestions with a campaign that wanders through the fae wilds?

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare?

 RegularGuy wrote:
Anyone with suggestions with a campaign that wanders through the fae wilds?

How much do you want to do yourself, and how much are you hoping will be pre-made? I don't know of any actual Feywild campaigns.
DMsGuild has a few things for free that might be useful for you, and one product.

"Faylark Meadow" is a free 11 page micro-dungeon taking place in a forest at the edge of the Feywild.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/185893/Weekly-Micro-Dungeons--Faylark-Meadow

"The Feywild Exorcism" is a free 3 page adventure/encounter.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/257471/The-Feywild-Exorcism?term=Feywild+Ex

There is also a free supplement for Fey character races:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/195445/Fey-Character-Races?term=Fey+character+races

"Through the Veil: Tales of the Feywild" has 10 Feywild adventures. $15 PDF
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/310616/Through-the-Veil-Tales-of-the-Feywild?affiliate_id=31065

Thanks for those. I'm actually planning to adapt the old "Up the Garden Path" module into a situation where a fae festival has been disrupted by getting linked to an ancient earth festival happening in close proximity to a particle physics experiment (and the linking of these things is a side effect of something the players did earlier). Thus in their current fantasy world, the alternate worlds are getting pulled too close together and spilling into each other. They have to go into the faire and get rid of the probability elemental per the adventure module for everything to snap back in order.

So that's the backbone. So resources helping to sprinkle characters, situations, and events into the mix are perfect. So far I had them run into some fairy dragons who are going on vacation while their home is in turmoil, and the Nac Mac Feelge from disc world trying to steal someone's sheep. I'm planning to throw a pooka or kelpie in there as well.

Sounds cool, I hope the adventure goes smoothly for you.

I have been asked by the Artificer and Ooze characters in my campaign if I can work out a way for them to build a portable cannon and use it to fire the ooze at their enemies.

This is made more difficult because the artificer wants to be an armorer and so won't have a cannon as standard.

I am thinking of making a set of feats to make this work, and would appreciate some feedback on what people think (as artificers can become overly powerful, I don't want to be making a monster!)

Feat 1 - Dabbler: The artificer can take a second specialization. Each time they would level-up their specialization, they pick which one to level up. As such, a level 20 artificer who took this feat can't get their specialization to full power. Would this be OP? It's aimed at getting an armorer with a "level" of artillerist.

Feat 2: The Artificer can make custom ammunition which can house potions/liquids/ooze, for their cannon. The ammo will be consumable and expensive, so will prohibit them using it for every encounter.

Feat 3: The Ooze player can make a tiny ooze as a companion, which survives as long as it's within 100ft. of the ooze and turns into an acid puddle when it dies. They can telepathically communicate, and it'll have a weak statblock.

The combination is that, by multi-specializing into artillerist, making custom ammunition that can hold liquids, and producing their own little ooze who can fit inside, this will fulfil their requests.

What can go horribly wrong with this? The first feat is my most concerning one, as I know that specializing is an important balancing aspect of the game. Should I instead look to make a non-magical cannon for them to use, with ammunition, powder bags and such for limited uses?

I'll appreciate any help you can offer with this! I've promised nothing so I won't disappoint too much if I tell them no!

I warned you to look out for that slime character!

You could house rule the Catapult spell to work on the Ooze companion. Or base a new spell off of it.

Currently I'm saying that the Artificer will have to explain to me how they intend to build this cannon, and how they intend to safely fire a living thing out of it! I will support them on what would & wouldn't work (I am actually an engineer so this sounds really fun to me!) and I will let them decide how they will test it, transport it etc., and then I will give them time, costs, limitations etc. for it to make it useable but not something the game revolves around!

As for the Ooze, I can see why they would want some racial feats as the generic ones don't fit all that well for an Ooze! I've come up with a few:

• Make an ooze familiar, which has a weak attack, and can be absorbed & ejected from the oozes body
• Grow an eye, so they can see 120ft.
• Miasmic glow, to generate dim light up to 30ft.
• Mimicry, to be able to imitate inanimate objects as well as terrain, revealed if physically interacted with
• Stealth Crawl, to be able to move slowly whilst using Living Terrain

I'm also considering making a Feat for each type of Ooze, which would adjust their racial traits slightly, but haven't yet worked out exactly what I'm doing with this!

4th session of Curse of Strahd and we finally got into a fight. It was not our choice per se either, more of an ambush.

5th session tonight, but I continue to have fun with this campaign.

I'm glad (no sarcasm). I just found out we're missing our second consecutive session so am a bit bummed out myself.

Are you doing a combat light campaign on purpose or just a happy accident? I don't think it's ever taken me as a player or GM four sessions to have a first combat for a campaign.

 warboss wrote:
I'm glad (no sarcasm). I just found out we're missing our second consecutive session so am a bit bummed out myself.

Are you doing a combat light campaign on purpose or just a happy accident? I don't think it's ever taken me as a player or GM four sessions to have a first combat for a campaign.

More of a Happy Accident as our characters tend to solve problems with words more than with weapons so far. This is NOT normal for our players, so I am unsure what happened exactly! Our DM has given us opportunities but we have solved them with social interaction, or used other methods to avoid the combat.

Setting up the campaign, our DM did say this campaign had more investigation, social, and political intrigue than we normally had. Perhaps our players then over-compensated too far the other way!

I've now gone from DMing my first campaign to also DMing a solo campaign for my partner. I'm really enjoying both and I really hope I don't bungle it up and accidentally mix the two!

The group campaign has just arrived on board a ghost ship in the mountains, and the next session is booked in for Sunday!

The solo campaign has just found the mayor dead in his home after he failed to attend the harvest festival. I'm hoping this might continue tonight, but I'm not certain if we'll have the time!

So far I'm enjoying them both an awful lot! Also only had one combat per campaign, but then it was session 1 for both of them! Only one could be avoided though, to be fair - the other was an ambush on the road, so it opened with javelins being thrown at the party! The other was a shadow assassin who was still in the room with the Mayor, who only attacked because the character was investigating too much!

I'm working on a 4e campaign at the moment, a hexcrawl in the Nentir Vale. I'm aiming to use later monster manuals and tweak the monster math to fix my main issues with the system (low threat, high HP monsters at mid high levels) and I'm working on meaningful wilderness survival rules and a new take on skill challenges to make them fun (hopefully).

It's a consequence of me burning out on the terrible class balance in 5e, and re-reading my old 4e setting books and remembering how much I love the base setting for 4e.

Kinda doubt I'll have much buy in from players though so I'm ready to switch to 5e if I need to. 4e is more complicated and some of my players struggle a bit with 5e as it is.

While I disagree with your relative assessment of the editions, I wish you luck in finding likeminded players. It's almost always more difficult to find a group for an older edition (dnd osr and Shadowrun 5e being the exceptions I can think of off hand) and it's already hard enough to begin with for a lot of people.

I'd recommend playing to the strengths of the edition and going minis heavy with lots of figs, terrain, and maps. The extra visual aids might also attract people who are completely new but interested in role-playing but who are hesitant about their own abilities. Those are also going to be the type of players that likely don't already have a preformed opinion on which edition is best and are most open to different ones.

Yeah, I'm aware I'm definitely making the unpopular choice here. I'll definitely be using minis and terrain for my games, either way. 5e may end up being the easiest sell because it is more accessible at low levels.

I'm one of those people who likes all the D&D they've played. I enjoyed 3rd, 4th and 5th and I've enjoyed dipping my toe in the OSR (in fact a lot of my current DMing is heavily OSR influenced). I think 4e had a lot to offer in certain ways, but I can also see why it put a lot of people off and even it's strongest point in my view, the rules balance, was wobbly out the gate due to the first monster manual not following their own monster design guidelines.

I'm just tired of spellcasters being the stars of the show in 5e and how half finished some of the classes and subclasses seem to me, especially out of the box without the 50 euro fix books released years later (I'm thinking here of stuff like Assassin getting a poison making kit that does nothing etc, it's like "here's some homework for your DM to make a homebrew system for you, or you can buy this additional book for the complete rules for your class) while spellcasters get a complete and extremely developed set of rules.

I think if you guide players away from the bad options then 5e works okay. I still find the CR guidelines pretty useless, player AC is too easy to break rendering bounded accuracy null and void and the monster design is very boring and essentially relies heavily on adding spellcasting to monsters, which seems to be the only developed system in the game. Every other system they add to the game seems to be really handwavey and undercooked.

Of course, it has a lot of good sides too, like the accessibility, better balance than 3.X which is what people compare it to, faster combat, and certain mechanical changes that make the game flow better. It has a lot to recommend it, but after 7 years and multiple campaigns the flaws have just built up to the point where I want to take a break.

Just for the record, I wasn't trying to edition shame you. Play what you like/enjoy! I'm relatively new to 5e but I know how you feel as I burned out (despite really liking it) on 3.x after years of playing weekly both DMing and playing.