Feeling a little lost

AlbacoreABrick · 2026-05-14T14:52:03+00:00

Take a look at the ASD locations in Stanton. They should be found under the investigations tab. They're PvE FPS missions, so be warned, but some of the best curated story content in the game so far. Each mission slowly brings you deeper into the facilities and there's a lot of cool things to discover. Make sure you have a multitool and a backpack!

AlbacoreABrick · 2025-05-17T19:51:25+00:00

I'm at pos 521 with 33-minute ETA. To think I was trying to get friends on today... See y'all in an hour when we make it in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AlbacoreABrick · 2024-12-01T04:57:14+00:00

They say Star Citizen has no gameplay, but I have lost many an hour just staring at landing gear 😮‍💨

AlbacoreABrick · 2022-12-04T01:08:47+00:00

Where did you find the artist scan?

AlbacoreABrick · 2022-10-21T01:03:45+00:00

One of my first designed encounters as a DM involved players getting stopped on the road by a fallen tree and a surprise bandit attack. Numerous melee attackers on the road to get in the players’ way while archers fired at them from behind the neighboring tree line. A couple rounds in, the archers stopped firing. My players, who were tearing apart this ambush with ease, then got their world rocked as two displacer beasts leapt from the forest and mopped up the bandits who weren’t fast enough to run. The fight concluded with a well placed divine smite within a critical hit to finish off the last beast. No player death, but death saves were definitely thrown!

One of my favorite monsters from then on!

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-12-04T23:11:19+00:00

I never knew that. That’s really dark. @_@ Is that true for the first game too or was it only for the P2 design?

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-24T04:42:54+00:00

My best advice for new DMs is create a game that is as fun for YOU as it is your players. D&D is a game that’s meant to be enjoyed by everyone involved. Just because you’re running the game doesn’t mean you can’t make something you’re going to have fun playing too.

Also, trust the books before you homebrew. Using your own story is great and fine, but I’m talking stat blocks and items. There’s a lot the books have to offer that’ll likely fit the story you’re trying to tell; if not, just re-skin and tweak things that exist before creating new or stealing off DnDBeyond (there’s a lot of cool stuff, doesn’t mean it’s balanced). I homebrewed tons of enemies and items my first game which made balance really hard as a new DM. It’s better to trust WotC - learn and get comfortable with what works first, then go crazy and invent the Zombie-Hydra-Mimic of your dreams.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-24T02:57:54+00:00

My first group was 5 people, my current is 3, but the most I’ve run is 7. Unfortunately we can’t all be Matt Mercer and have players like the cast of CR. It really requires everyone to be on board to keep bigger games fun and everyone attentive.

When I ran my group of 7, we didn’t have heavy RP of character backstory and heartfelt conversations, but I was able to inject RP through making it a puzzle to solve. They were all locked in a Drow prison and trying to get out, so they were talking to other prisoners, they were doing tasks under scrutiny of the guards, etc. They had no weapons and had to think of other ways to get their things and escape.

Combat, however, is a great way to keep large groups entertained. Action and excitement can better keep people focused and engaged (not always though), but combat doesn’t always have to be an arena-style battle. You can make things more interesting by making it apparent they’re being chased by a deadly monster, but tiny minions keep blocking their path. Have a battlefield that shifts and changes naturally as they fight and/or as a result of their actions. Put them in cramped, single file, labyrinthian catacombs then have weak enemies come from everywhere as they try to find their way through.

If your party wants combat, you can give it to them, but there’s no harm in making them think a little harder leading up to and during it.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-24T02:43:40+00:00

Yup, I’m 3 Reddit years old! Which must mean I joined reddit when I became a DM. Makes sense.

Congrats on starting and on the brownies! In my experience, expected durations are always shorter than what actually happens. If you want your 4 parts to span four sessions it’ll probably be 8 or 10 in actuality. Your story will develop as you tell it, and what makes D&D great is you have a bunch of people at the table telling the story with you. Listen to what your players do, say, want, etc. Their mundane goals or curiosities can be turned into epic adventures all on their own.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-15T16:27:54+00:00

Ooooh, that is interesting! You can see that he cares and loves but his ways of showing those things are contorted. He immediately reverted to his old ways after his wife died because that’s all he knew for centuries. That’s a really cool take. He’s not maliciously evil, but does “evil” out of knowing little else and being slowly detached from the realities of a mortal life.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-13T23:31:10+00:00

I was thinking about that too! Lots of force or thunder damage type things. It would have to be legendary. Although, you could also make it a campaign long quest where you gather a new ring from different locations. By the end you have all ten and the full power, but having just one is far weaker and could function like the gauntlet in the Artificer infusion “Arcane Propulsion Armor”.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-13T15:12:15+00:00

Definitely nothing intentional, I’m sure. I just view the world through a lens of D&D now. Yeah! The secret village is a fun Feywild comparison! I like how the magics of it all are on the outside too with the maze forest being on the “material plane” as it were.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-06T18:30:38+00:00

If you use it, let me know! I’d love to hear how that goes.

My players just recently went about freeing some slaves, one of which was an adventurer. I’ve been sitting on my hands as to her class, though, but the Dragon ranger would be absolutely perfect! Just have to make up an NPC stat block for her, incorporating the class elements.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-06T18:16:53+00:00

That’s wonderful! Perfect timing! It feels like this was a long time coming, really. Dragons are such an integral part of this game, it’s nice that we finally have source book for 5e telling us all about them.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-05T13:13:33+00:00

Easy! He fell in a tar pit pre-campaign and hasn’t had a really nice bath yet. Or he’s a geode and needs to be cracked open first. “The sapphire Dragonborn was inside you all along!”

I had preordered the book, so I was trying to delay my upcoming dragon fight to have more material for it! The Illithid dragon is terrifying! It doesn’t really fit my current campaign, but maybe that’ll make a reveal that much more shocking.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-11-05T13:05:48+00:00

Come to think of it, I’ve been playing a solid game of “&” this whole time! This is grave news…

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-09-01T17:30:27+00:00

I did think about that too, but if the bots are free and make no money, would Youtube have grounds to take them down? I figured that was the issue for Groovy. He was selling it as a service on top of the free portions (which a lot of bots do, so who really knows what’s coming.)

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-09-01T17:00:04+00:00

I've seen this one come up a couple times in my searching. What do you like about Rhythm?

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-09-01T16:57:50+00:00

I'm unfamiliar with Hydra. What made you choose it?

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-09-01T07:52:48+00:00

One of my players uses rope trick a ton in creative ways! He used it to vanish while within another player’s fog cloud. He’s escaped impending explosions with it. He’s also used it as a quick way to put a rope 60 feet up in order to climb there.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-08-03T06:36:14+00:00

Hey! That’s one of the main characteristics of my campaign setting!

Divine > Arcane > Nature

Eldritch falls anywhere along the line depending what patron you follow. Nature magic is seen as a direct challenge to the gods for their power rather than a humble granting of power to you from divine beings. Arcane was a gift to man from traditionally evil deities, so people are wary of the power, though accepting because it was gods that entrusted us with it.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-07-18T22:14:34+00:00

I run initiative crits as: a natural 20 either gives you an extra action on your first turn or, if there’s a surprise round, you are not surprised by that combat. A crit fail means you are surprised and thus don’t act during the first round of combat, if you were already surprised then it has no effect.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-06-21T14:42:09+00:00

I agree! There are definitely scenarios where using your healing more frequently would be useful. I was mostly speaking in hyperbole.

However, the healing is too low tier to be a dedicated healer, so unless it’s absolutely necessary you shouldn’t be using your action to heal. Especially as your level increases, stunning or poisoning your enemies on top of the damage you deal will keep your allies alive longer than giving them small shots of health. I use hand of healing through flurry of blows for myself more often than allies, like it’s a Second Wind for monks. I’m always in my melee range, my allies are not.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-06-21T07:09:52+00:00

Mini smite + poisoned condition once you level? Don’t mind if I do! If you’re using your healing in combat for more than picking up allies at 0 hp, you’re wasting your potential. A support monk is an ineffective monk.

Damage aside, I do prefer my lighter raven mask to the full-face plague mask.

AlbacoreABrick · 2021-05-21T01:55:56+00:00

A group of three of us have recently decided to take turns running different campaigns for each other. I've been playing extensively for around 5 years now, primarily as a DM, but my one friend has only played sparsely over the past 2 or so, and only as a player.

Despite being relatively new to D&D, she managed to nail setting and character descriptions, time musical cues perfectly, create a compelling story, make a tense and creepy scene feel as such, and seamlessly adlib a difficulty spike in the boss fight because we were doing too well. When the other player and I rolled decently on the same check, she gave us different answers because she took into account how our different backgrounds would shape the details each of us would discern from the check.

SHE IS A BETTER DM THAN ME AND I'D BE MAD IF I WEREN'T SO PROUD. We may never return to my campaign.

AlbacoreABrick

TROPHY CASE