The General D&D thread

I would also suggest getting the main villains involved in some way so they have a stake in the plot and the P Cs have reason to want to confront them personally.

One of the things a lot of official adventures do is keep the big bad as far away from the players as possible, which makes sense if you don't want a TPK early on, but there's lots of ways around it. The P Cs should at very least get to see them in action, get a sense that the villain is powerful and intelligent and has real influence on the world.

If I ever get around to running Shadow of the Dragon Queen, that's a change I'm going to make is getting the high ranking NP Cs of the Dragon Army directly involved so the P Cs don't view them as "obligatory end of area boss fights."

Like them constantly showing up in various ways, like flying in to check on progress but leaving before the characters can confront them? Like, actually giving them story presence.

I´m building a somewhat atypical Barbarian, the idea being that he´s an academic that rages because the papers he writes keep getting rejected. I´m going for Path of Wild Magic, but would like some more magic in the build that i potentially could also use during combat (but not a necessity). So far i have only found Telekinetics push/pull effect and arguably the racial abilities of Half-Orc ("Necromantic" revival) and Goliath ("Abjuration" damage reduction). I´d prefer to keep things within the races typically associated with Barbarians, but that´s not a high priority.

Any ideas, including ideas for reflavor?

Any race that has a decent concentration spell to cast pre-rage can get you what you want, since you can maintain concerntration on a spell while raging.

This doesn´t sound like one can maintain concentration on spells while raging?

Yes, they need to be involved in the story in some way, so they're not just "another cultist enemy, but stronger."

Like I said, this is something lots of published adventures are bad at, and it might work for some tables, but it helps to avoid a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere vibe.

Witchlight I think does it best with the Hourglass Coven—a group of villains we learn about early on, whose presence affects the major three areas of the adventure and have the ability and the smarts to dip in the face of immeadiate death and regroup as a team while also having very strong story reasons for not just doing that immeaditely.

Shadow does it well too, because the Dragon Armies have always been pretty flavorful as villains thanks to Takhisis and being able to cross the line just away from cartoonish villainy.

4X

That sounds fun. There a few wizard subclasses that could gel mechanically and maybe thematically.

• Divination wizard would give you 2 rerolls, no spellcasting needed, which is just universally useful. RP wise, when they enter combat their instincts become tuned to the raw prophetic currents of the universe, letting them manipulate fate.
• Abjuration has the Ward feature, and it'd let you build up the temp HP prior to raging by using "fire and forget" buff spells to help your Barb's defense. (or, RAW, beef up the ward "free" by Ritual casting spells like Alarm prior). Popping a Mage Armor before combat would let you be less multi-attribute dependent, too.
• War Mage is just great, bonus to initiative and a Reaction ability to give you bonus AC or Save at the "terrible" cost of not casting spells.
• Chronurgy is Divination, plus bonus Initiative. In this case, the RP is they get so angry they bully time into slowing down around them, like an anger based Flash.
• I wanted to pitch Conjuration for the visual of your PC conjuring a weapon born of their anger as they enter a Rage, but a conjured weapon would dissapear if it deal damage. Not a deal breaker, and would make an amazing ambush weapon in situation the barb / party are unarmed for some reason, but otherwise too niche.

RP wise, when I made a Wild Magic Barbarian I actually used the original art, and made their Rage be euphoric happiness that feels no pain and takes no prisoners, a sort of adrenaline rush. You could also probably get mileage out of patterning the Rage as a Girl Genius "Spark" surge of creative mania.

Late edit: This might sound bland, but the Ritual Caster feat might be the best way to go. It lets your character gain more spells, and your character can flavor learning new rituals in terms of academic experimentation. The fact they aren't a Wizard with "traditional" spellcasting being just one of many reasons the academy rejects their research.

Edited by Earnest on Nov 5th 2023 at 10:47:23 AM

Hello!

Reading through the old Van Richten's guides, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Van Richten hasn't been statted anywhere in 2nd Edition material right? I mean, I REMEMBER him being a level 10 character, but that might just be me misremembering things.

Which is to say I'm one of those that find Wo TC's choice of making him a level 9 Cleric in both the Curse of Strahd and the new Guide to Ravenloft odd. In the guides, whenever there's spellcasting involved, it's NEVER by Van Richten, but by someone else in his party at the time.

So why Cleric, and not something like Rogue, which would fit the skill-monkey, pragmatic, and very practical Dr. Van Richten better?

I think it's a sort of confluence of both Van Richten and the original OD&D cleric class were based on Van Helsing. Over the edition the class has gotten farther and farther away from the original inspiration, but this is their way of closing the loop.

Edited by Xeroop on Nov 8th 2023 at 8:01:08 PM

Alright, I'll think about what I can do for the Dragon Cult then.

You can also think of Rudolph's magic less as waving his hands and casting a spell, and more ritualistic magic, the gathering of key ingredients, potion making, and knowing how to use the existing magic environment and objects in the various Do Ds.

Turns out I remembered right, in Vab Richten was a level 10 Thief, then level 5. The fluctuating levels were explained by the permanent level drain in older editions.

The shift to cleric was still weird though but I guess it was to give him self sufficiency.

My players are going to go through a sewer dungeon this weekend, and I was wondering if it would be challenging or just annoying if sections of it gave Disadvantage to the players wielding long or large weapons. The sewer is divided between normal height areas and the actual pipes that are short roofed and narrow (6 foot diameter). This would impact 2 of the 4 players, those with a Polearm and a Maul.

I'll admit, part of this is to give the player boasting of his "perfect Polearm Master Fighter" a big "Oh, Crap!" moment when he enters the tunnels. Yeah, I'd tell him his character instantly realizes he's going to be disadvantaged in the tight corridors with his big ol' polearm. While it seems perfectly reasonable to me, I'm self aware enough that I don't want to slip into being arbitrary or petty.

While looking this up online I ran across the rules for Squeezing, and at the least I'm now going to modify a couple of locations to turn them into choke points, which if they fail Stealth / Perception rolls will split them up prior to an ambush. That at least may be more fun / tactical.

Edited by Earnest on Nov 17th 2023 at 4:08:53 AM

So last session my players made it through a dungeon I'd laid out for them. They nearly lost several party members to Mimics because they split up and the Mimics rolled very well, but managed to make it all the way to the boss. Afterwards (a great deal richer and with the party Magus now sporting a +1 Longsword) they also caught a glimpse of one of the BBEG's chief servants, leaving after being the one responsible for summoning the undead that had attacked them in multiple instances.

That would be my concern too, that the player doesn't feel like their DM is out to get them. And I guess that would depend on your relationship with them and how well you know them, as well as whether the player went with that polearm build because they liked the idea of a martial character locking down a part of the battlefield, or because they like the notion of min-maxing to arrive at the "perfect" melee build. In the latter case, they're probably more likely to take a tight dungeon segment personally.

It might also depend on whether you've done something like this before, saying that a part of a dungeon is imposing Disadvantage on specific characters instead of the party as a whole. Maybe to balance this out, you edit another part of the dungeon to penalize other party members? "Sorry shortstacks, the sewer water is up to your waist here, you're moving slower than the longshanks." Or you could make it up to the polearm master by setting up an encounter where they're able to use their weapon and skills to their fullest, give them a moment to shine to make up for the earlier awkwardness.

Though I mean, if you are out to get that polearm player, and your group is okay with the thought that they're battling both monsters and a DM that is going to use the rules to make things as challenging as possible, that must be an interesting campaign.

Tangent time - one place suggesting using the rules for confined places was the Heroes of Horror book offering ways to rattle the players. Like have the big, tanky fighter squeezing sideways through a crack in the wall where they can barely move and certainly can't fight, then have a Tiny monstrous spider drop down on them. The Confined Space rules would also be great for an encounter with kobolds, with the little draggos designing their warrens so that they can scuttle around bent double, but any Medium-sized invader has to literally crawl through the tightest passages. That would get a lot of bang out of their Challenge Rating and make Tucker proud.

Thanks. We do talk a lot, and have a good relationship. I've told him a couple of times that encounters were designed to include things to challenge his PC so he doesn't get overconfident, such as using enemies with Fly-by. Another time, they were fighting an enemy with magic resistance which his main weapon couldn't harm. Part of my— lets call it frustration, is that he was carrying a non-polearm magical weapon, but when he figured out why he wasn't hurting it, still chose not to switch to the magic weapon.

I've talked with him about it, but he remains extremely committed to the narrow band of his build, and won't really adapt in combat when things require it outside of using different Battlemaster Maneuvers. For example, enemies spot the party because of his jangly heavy armor? Never gonna take it off, or strategize around it. He "wants enemies to hear their doom approach!" Which I appreciate from a characterization standpoint, but I don't want to coddle. XD

He's even aware of it and "on notice" for certain kinds of "environmental" consequences, which he considers fair.

In fact, the NPC that gave him that magic weapon demanded it back when they went to him to get another player a magic weapon. The NPC was a mad scientist who explicitly loaned it to get battle data on it, and felt rather cheated it wasn't even used.

That said, yeah, we aren't playing a Gygax giga hard dungeon crawl. I think I'll leave out the Disadvantage areas, but I do like the semi-flooded idea too, just to add difficult terrain and complications. (None of the party are shorties ) I'll just be rolling behind the screen for the enemies to detect the party and have them fall into ambushes. Echoing tunnels and jangly metal will not mix well.

Yeah, I think this just depends on your table.

It's certainly targeted, but maybe your players (if not the P Cs) can roll with that.

It sounds like you've done just about everything possible on your end to keep things clean, and are doing a great job communicating with your players. Guess this is just a case where one of your group has an idiosyncrasy you just have to roll with. I mean, if the guy is going to use a weapon he knows isn't overcoming a monster's DR rather than use something he hasn't taken a feat to enhance, he's probably going to try to brute force through Disadvantage from tight confines as well.

I am curious what the rest of the party thinks of his antics, though, whether they're amused or annoyed when the polearm fanatic isn't contributing in combat due to his stubborn refusal to use anything else. A player exasperating the DM with their playstyle is one thing, but if they're causing friction within the group, that might mean it's time for another serious talk with the player.

Thanks for that. As far as I can tell, the other players don't mind and just roll with it as an eccentricity. So far it's mostly niche cases where he's playing sub-optimally and hasn't gotten any other player close to dying. His build is very effective in most cases.

There's a fun rivalry between him and another player because both have the Noble background. Polearm player would put on airs about his family having a barony, and then "Player Two" just goes "Aw that's cute, you're like a pretend noble." because his noble family is the equivalent of House Targaryen in setting, with actual royals with supernatural powers.

Edited by Earnest on Nov 20th 2023 at 10:39:48 AM

I mean, yeah

If I'm playing a strength based character, I'm not taking my heavy armor off either. That's a death sentence.

I get that, I should probably have phrased that as "switch to armor without disadvantage to stealth" or "stayed out of enemy hearing range."

... huh. That sent me down a weird rabbit hole. I was thinking of crazy things the party could try, between getting him a Cloak of Elvenkind, or casting a localized Silence spell with a radius of 5~10 feet, but there doesn't seem to be any item or metamagic that modifies a spell's area of effect. There's stuff to modify range at which it can be cast, but nothing I can see for effect area.

Edited by Earnest on Nov 21st 2023 at 1:16:38 PM

That also seems odd, though.

Most players I know don't carry two separate sets of armor, one for sneaking, one for combat.

Some characters are going to be bad at sneaking, period.

I don't really see it, though? Stealth missions in D&D are a thing, and beyond always wanting max AC at all times, you want to at least have options to help the big noisy guy through quiet areas, or avoid ambushes.

At present the players have been ambushed or surprised by enemies 3 times, with Surprise round combat, because of the poor stealth while actively hunting beasts with advantage to Perception against heavily armored foes. How should they be responding? Because at present they seem to have just accepted they'll be walking ambush magnets.

Sounds like your players are playing the way they want to.

If I had a group of players who were bad at text based puzzles and riddles, I wouldn't keep throwing riddles at them and saying "You guys should really get this by now."

If your players aren't adjusting to try and avoid ambushes, it's because they don't want to adjust. Sounds like you're trying to enforce stealth sections that your players aren't asking for.

Also, I'm not sure why someone would get Advantage on Perception against heavily armored characters. The armor already gives Disadvantage.

That sounds like you're saying "they're really good at hearing loud things."

Which...yeah. Loud things are the easiest to hear.

Edited by ArthurEld on Nov 21st 2023 at 2:23:50 AM

Thanks for typing that, part of asking here is to check when I'm going overboard. I wouldn't say I'm forcing the sections, though. My players are actively hunting beasts that hear real good, in a campaign where I up front told them this was par for the course for Beast type enemies, and they signed up for. I'd be just as surprised if they started hunting for creatures who have Fire Resistance and used flame based attacks. But yes, they certainly are playing how they like, and I'll try to not get hung up over it, recognizing what is out of my control will make it less stressful.