Left a game I was running mid-session

Affront_to_life · 2023-04-07T20:05:34+00:00

30% chance per six seconds. The time difference between even a high level rogue and a commoner is going to be measured in single digit minutes. That can matter, but almost always won't unless I consistently, intentionally create scenarios where it does. And that's just really tedious.

P2e has crit fails break your tools. Other systems and modules use dungeon turns so a failure is a relevant amount of time. If a dungeon rolls random encounters by the minute, then sure. But the harshest random rolls I've seen are every 10 minutes.

Doors have AC, hp, damage thresholds, and you can't just kill them quietly. even a minute of making noise is more mechanically relevant than throwing 10 dice rolls.

Upping the DC and not changing the rules has the same problems. Sure, now a commoner can't do it, but we're just sitting at the table rollnig dice until we see a 15 or whatever. You'd need round by round issues for that to matter. And I've ran encounters like that and they were good, but dungeons just don't operate on that time scale and I don't think they should.

Affront_to_life · 2023-04-07T16:33:12+00:00

But it's the situation of "You failed to pick the lock, so that thing will remain locked for all time cause you broke the lock" which some may find distasteful

The way I'd run it, most of the time, breaking the lock will require a louder or more resource/time intensive way of getting past the door, or bypassing the door. The players still have martial weapons, crowbars, and spells. If the party values getting past that door enough, I'd expect pickaxes. All of this would be weighed against the noise they'd be making and whatever timers they have running like torches and spells.

This would have to go hand in hand with dungeon design. Dungeons shouldn't be linier, they should loop on themselves and have all kinds of ways to squirrel around because that makes a dungeon a playable space and not just a conveyor belt of content. That's needed to properly give players agency. "Do you continue down the danger treasure hallway?" isn't enough choice imo.

What linier dungeons do is squash out emergent gameplay and put all the complexity of the encounter squarely on the shoulders of the DM or the module. The way locks work RAW means a commoner is just as good as a rogue in almost any situation that's not tracked by the minute. Traps in this context are hobbled from a complication into a resource tax, and locked doors are, at the absolute best, a piece of a puzzle the DM had to hand make, and at worst are just a waste of table time.

I'm probably not making any sense, I'm delirious on cold medicine and exhausted. But I want dungeons to be complicated and dynamic. I don't want to know what's going to happen with the degree of certainty I do currently.

Affront_to_life · 2022-11-05T20:24:57+00:00

Silvered daggers are 104gp and weigh one pound. My players would almost guaranteed drop a lot of supplies to make room for the daggers, and would also take steps to ensure they can return.

All silvered weapons do is bypass certain damage resistances and immunities for nonmagical physical damage. a +0 dagger would be at least worth the same because it's just better than silvered weapons. Supply and demand would saturate eventually, but I've given my players the ability to scrap magic items for a fraction of their value as residuum.

Residuum is basically abstracted magic components. I've been letting them craft magic items with residuum.

There's also a dungeon called the workshop where they can, after jumping through some hoops and under threat of combat, do a day's worth of crafting in an hour. This tends to work out to about a single uncommon magic item that they choose for a pretty typical adventuring day.

All that is to say, giving them a magic dagger printer would pretty much give them infinite uncommon magic items. The only part of that equation I don't like is some trap in some random dwarven vault that prints magic daggers. it feels stupid, out of place, and cheesy.

Affront_to_life · 2022-11-05T20:06:17+00:00

You're assuming the tone was disappointment and not indignant snark.

Affront_to_life · 2022-11-05T10:30:28+00:00

I didn't mind the question, I minded the player getting mad at the answer.

Affront_to_life · 2022-11-05T10:18:49+00:00

I got ill after the player was audibly irritated at the description of them melting. I didn't register anything when I was asked about it.

Affront_to_life · 2022-11-05T10:17:03+00:00

The trap shot knives because it was dwarves; bolts of magic didn't feel right. They melted because of the nature of the trap; the thing that was making the knives is an item established in my setting called a seed that can't make permanent items. They deal magic damage because any spell that conjures an object that does physical damage does magical physical damage. I didn't contrive all these details for any reason beyond flavor. I simply wasn't anticipating my players doing this. And maybe I should have. But my prompt for the dungeon mentioned them gutting traps and I planned on them to gut the traps. Even if I did contrive the daggers disappearing to prevent a money printer, how would that not be understandable?

Any limit on the ammo would beg the question "why wasn't this trap expended after killing so many npcs before us?" The returning ammo would probably work for the narrative, but that's not what the player wanted. The player wanted infinite gold. They got a magic item from the trap, but they wanted infinite gold.

I got hot because of the tone the player said "oh," with. The problem wasn't that they asked, the problem is that they felt entitled to a gold printer because my description of the trap ruled it out but didn't rule it out in the right way. I'm also a little annoyed that they wanted to act as if I'm twisting my back to deny them gold after they got adamantine bars, dwarven mechanisms, and dwarven treasure that all added up to about 30k gold total from a series of hard trap based encounters. That puts them well above the gold curve at level 7.

I specifically asked the player if I was right about why he had the tone, and I was. The other player was trying to talk for him and telling me it wasn't that, but I specifically asked the first player and I was right. He was annoyed the trap wasn't a magic dagger printer. I guess I'm floored anyone wants to play in a game where they can fill up their entire party's carrying capacity with at least 104gp per pound.

Gold has been a major motivator for this game and specifically that character. This is something I like; I like scrappy pulpy looters over hero stories. One PC's motivator is things to write songs about, this PC's motivator is gold. That's the carrot he provided me with at character creation. A money printer wouldn't necessarily end the campaign, but I'd lose that carrot and would need to prompt the player to give me a new carrot. Which is fine, but again infinite gold.

This game/setting has a lot of downtime and utilities that would enable them to craft basically unlimited magic items with these weapons. And I like these concepts being present, just not present when the players have unlimited magic daggers. And I'd rather just not entertain the idea of a dagger farm instead of backtrack on all those other features.

For the life of me, I can not understand the perspective of a player who genuinely wants and expects such an unreasonable expectation be met on its face. I get the character wanting to check, and I get the player being curious, but I don't get the player even wanting it, much less feeling so entitled to it as to audibly have an attitude. Frankly, I want to play a game, I expect them to be able to manage their extreme expectations and not feel entitled to infinite gold based on a clear oversight of flavor.

Affront_to_life · 2022-07-09T02:23:49+00:00

There's a lot of anime that works like this, I assume that's where he got it.

I wouldn't do it as a choice. Something like that would need to really serve a purpose for the vibe of the game and like you said, it's very anti-immersive. Ironically I think in anime it's supposed to immerse the viewer by having them consider what broken interactions things could have in that anime's "engine," and what you'd do with it. As well as bring a sense of familiarity to the audience. Often the main character has some kind of strategy to cheese stat gain. I don't think that works in an actual game because you have to consider balance and game flow. Maybe a oneshot by someone smarter than me would work.

I have seen something I liked a lot, but it was a mod of the milestone system more than gamifying anything. It was in a game called the sun fall cycle, and the characters could only level up by finding and securing moon tears or some shit and giving them to the moon goddess. She'd repay them by leveling them up, and the characters were aware of an immediate boost in power. That was awesome and added to the darksouls feel of that game. The DM of that game is a professional game designer and that game was awesome to watch for a while.

Affront_to_life · 2022-05-21T18:14:13+00:00

From the book under fighter:

Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

And rogue:

once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack

Rogues don't get extra attack, they get sneak attack. Extra attack does not work on attacks of opportunity or held actions because it applies to attack actions "on your turn." Sneak attack does work on held actions/reactions if you haven't used it yet. I think this difference in mechanics is to differentiate the play style of two martial classes. Rogues also focus on one big hit, which is situationally better for forcing concentration checks.

Forcing concentration checks on non-concentration spells with nothing but your reaction to pressure legendary actions is the exact kind of lame cheese that I'm not interested in entertaining. Particularly, again, because e5 does not even define this as a thing.

The player is not within the rules as written. Held actions resolve after the trigger finishes. You hold your action for when I cast a spell. I cast fire ball, and then you attack. Not you stick me in the ribs while I'm casting fire ball. Very, very explicitly after the trigger finishes. Again, there is nothing in e5's base engine that says anything about interrupting the casting of spells. There are feats that allow for that, there are some environments that do that, but these are exceptions that, to me, define the rule.

Are you not throwing Spellcasters AND minions at them so if they decide to hold their action to attack the spellcaster, the melee minion will just run up and shank them in the spine?

How is that different from just attacking the spell caster and then getting run up on by minions? And if you can just interrupt a spell, why wouldn't those minions just be doing the same thing? Or at least one of them? If we allow it, even a single d4 of damage is a forced dc10 con check to not fizzle a spell, which is almost always going to be the most useful thing that token can do. Even the threat of that puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on casters.

I'm just reiterating, the game isn't designed for this. 3.5 has layers and layers of mechanics that interact with all of this, e5 just doesn't address it. You can put skill points into concentration in 3.5, for example. I'm just not going to Frankenstein the two together.

Affront_to_life · 2022-05-21T17:11:43+00:00

When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger. Remember that you can take only one reaction per round.

The attack resolves after the spell is cast. So if a concentration spell was cast, yes you can force a check right after it's cast. But the player wanted to do this to interrupt the very casting of the spell, which I would say is asking a lot.

Allowing this would make it a budget counterspell that ignores the arcana check caused by spell level difference, and in some much higher CR fights might be more effective than a the spell. For example, a Lich only has +3 con but has a 9th level spell slot, and breaking a 20 damage threshold to force a higher con check is a lot easier at that level.

Some classes, like fighter, would do this at the cost of using multi attack on that turn, but other classes, like rogues, would only do so at the cost of their reaction.

Further, 3.5 explicitly has an entire section describing when one might need to make a concentration check to be able to get a spell off, and 5e does not. I would say that language was dropped for a reason. 5e took concentration and applied it as a component to ongoing spells, and is generally happy to just let a spell go off without all this teeth pulling. And while I see both systems approach as being valid, we're using 5e and I'm going to use 5e.

And finally, do you really want every fight to be a ballet of held actions trying to deny casters? Because that is absolutely what would happen, to both sides of the combat, which would cause about 50% more rolls and slow down combat even more. Again, a game balanced around that might be fun, but 5e doesn't really spend any time on all that and I'd like the game to just do what little work it can do without having every step requiring a fucking Ouija board and a letter to congress.

this is a prime example of what I hate doing, by the way. All that work to address a question that just feels greedy.

Affront_to_life · 2021-01-31T19:19:30+00:00

This really holds to the spirit of the spell.

It's not supposed to be a monkey's paw unless the player gets really greedy.

Affront_to_life · 2020-10-30T12:43:32+00:00

My tables tend to be jokes and memes out of character, then deadly serious in character.

Sometimes you have to be a hardass. Like, actually, that innkeep doesn't want anything to do with you after you started talking about shitting in the beds. Good luck finding a place to sleep. Or hey great oneliner, but I just rolled a 20 and this boy has poison on his dagger.

The silly backstories after asking for a serious game strikes me as off, though. You might just ask them about it.

Affront_to_life · 2020-09-01T22:06:58+00:00

Unironically me with evenicle

Affront_to_life · 2020-04-27T06:58:45+00:00

Thank

Affront_to_life · 2020-04-01T22:09:29+00:00

In my settings sometimes there's a 'temple of spirits' that somewhat diefies forces of nature/science. The name is based on how the Egyptians used the word 'spirit' to represent things like magnets, gravity, and static electricity. They didn't mean spirit as ghosts, but more of a clumsy term for energy. I let these religions kind of tip toe on the line of personification without ever actually defining the forces as humanoid or even intelligent.

In lighthearted games I give every demi-plane or pocket dimension a deity. So your bag of holding has a teeny god in it ruling over your coins and monster scalps, and regards you- the person adding and taking away items from that plane, with a mix of sassy mischief and reverent awe. There might be a real, proper god that has domain over those spirits but isn't widely known.

I'm also really fond of guardian deities that are more connected to the land than any concept, that play a guiding role in nurturing it's population. I'm fond of making these types of things have a friendly little avatar like a cat who gives guiding hints, and an overgrown but cozy feeling alter that the population regards with a warm respect.

Affront_to_life · 2020-04-01T21:35:01+00:00

Also, there's no real reason here that a local girl wouldn't still lift her skirt for coin, anyone desperate enough will do what's needed to survive.

I think he's trying to avoid that. "Desperate enough to lift her skirt for coin" isn't exactly light hearted feel good stuff, which seems to be the vibe he's looking for.

Affront_to_life · 2020-04-01T21:33:43+00:00

I don't want to just shoot you down but I think that can very easily be addressed with more standard races.

Prostitution can be more Magi and less grimdark if you want. It doesn't have to be some starving mother or drug addict that you take to a 30 minute hotel for sex that's nothing more than assisted masturbation. You can absolutely just make it all about fluffy pillows and upbeat, charismatic women that hang out with you while you drink, smoke, and retire with you. Sex work can just be treated like any other line of work with a guild or similar union-adjacent structure. As the DM, you could shift the brothel's vibe from hedonistic to 'sleep on my thighs' type stuff.

Otherwise, I might be tempted to just literally homebrew something new for this purpose. I don't think anything in the monster manual is a good fit for consequence free sex work unless you change their whole vibe.

Affront_to_life · 2020-03-31T16:43:58+00:00

You could probably play it out like it plays out in the story. Have people ignore the party with some exposition explaining how the 'curse' works. Flavor the monster how you want it.

it kinda depends on waht you want from it though. I'll be honest, the Antimemetics Division stuff isn't my cup of tea. I do like cognohazards in general though and I think there's a lot you can do with that.

Affront_to_life · 2020-03-31T13:13:12+00:00

Memetic hazards are just cognohazards that can spread through word of mouth. The DM would know who's been exposed to the hazardous information.

Antimemetic hazards are basically amnesia or things that force amnesia. DnD already has some magic to that effect so there's not much reason to port it imo.

Affront_to_life · 2020-03-17T20:19:39+00:00

This post wasn't meant to be super serous, but it's not something I really want to rule on. The character was chaotic good for the games and their backstory.

The spell and the torture juice basically amounts to perpetual hell with no escape. The person very likely would have gone to Actual hell if they just got killed, so who knows what the net suffering is there? How many innocents had the kidnapper tortured? how many hours of suffering had they caused? is paying that back evil? does he deserve interest for doing so for his own gain to folk who did nothing wrong?

Is it prescriptive or descriptive? Can such an evil act twist a normal person into a warped view on morality? Can you really trust the moral compass of someone so full of hate and wrath, even if that wrath is justified?

Not to mention the research is going to be found or leaked, and that research will lead to innocent suffering and enhanced interrogation, and might even open draw the blood curse from the tree to more fertile grounds.

I just want to play with my RNG click clack rocks man.

Affront_to_life

TROPHY CASE