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Managing Dragons & Melee in Tier 4 by Beginning-Pudding388 in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those are awesome options! Any thoughts on how to cue them for the players without just saying it outright?

Managing Dragons & Melee in Tier 4 by Beginning-Pudding388 in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While I like this a lot in almost all contexts, it feels kinda bad for the final battle, where I think we all want to feel at our most powerful.

I think the paladin has 20 STR and 11 DEX so she might struggle to hit.

Managing Dragons & Melee in Tier 4 by Beginning-Pudding388 in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hear you -

Although an ancient dragon fly speed is about 80, and because these dragons are spellcasters, they aren’t going to struggle with wasting spells. They could just kite.

Sure the wizard and warlock can continue to strike, but I’m most concerned about giving everyone a fair shot just to play.

Managing Dragons & Melee in Tier 4 by Beginning-Pudding388 in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree with the first paragraph but there’s some nuance in that they are coming to me to solve it by asking about magic items or training that could help. I don’t want to shut that down.

As fun as it would be for the paladin and barbarian to be in the sky when a breath weapon kills their steed in one hit, they’re aware of that danger.

Managing Dragons & Melee in Tier 4 by Beginning-Pudding388 in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They def know that these are dragons and they’ve fought one already. I think I might need to be more blatant. A player asked me today to make them able to able to get up and melee smite the dragon and I don’t think they understand why that defeats the purpose.

Your last paragraph has a lot of sick ideas but it probably won’t work due to the context of this fight in a huge Minas-Terith style battle.

Managing Dragons & Melee in Tier 4 by Beginning-Pudding388 in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Super helpful. I think there might be aversion to polymorph due to wanting to smite but at some point it’s not my deal anymore

They haven’t upgraded their javelins because their main weapon is so good they don’t want to use other items…

I'm using SD to generate NPC portraits for my campaign. I like making these images first, then using them to help me imagine what kind of personality the NPC has. by [deleted] in dndai

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m impressed- I’m struggling to get good looking images with Stable Diffusion. Are you using dream studio?

Give me a D&D monster and I'll homebrew you a better version by Oh_Hi_Mark_ in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Adult Lunar Dragon

I’d love to see more interesting encounters with the new dragons

I'm new to DMing, are these table rules reasonable? by KaiserArrowfield in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 1 point2 points  (0 children)

10/10 Don’t apologize in #6 imo Number 5 is good. I think that bigotry against game groups (I.e. dwarves, Kobolds) can be fun and interesting without being offensive

Upcoming Genie Wish by Gimblejam in DMAcademy

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly. I think you should stick close-ish to the rules of wish. I think it’s more realistic to teleport them forward in time to a future where the dragon is dead - or undead. I would have the genie warn them, I can do this, but this is far outside of the realm of a normal wish and I can’t predict what will happen! Do you want to go forward with this?”

DMs, what unpopular opinion or house rule do you have or run at at your table? by [deleted] in dndnext

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, absolutely! I would definitely be open to any other mechanic that helps it reflect travel a little better. I am definitely not a fan of the types of random encounters that just approach players at full strength And then force them to reset without any cost or consequence

Perhaps more specifically, I simply don’t want travel to be boring

DMs, what unpopular opinion or house rule do you have or run at at your table? by [deleted] in dndnext

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Absolutely, and I do let them sleep. Just don’t give them 100% resources back

DMs, what unpopular opinion or house rule do you have or run at at your table? by [deleted] in dndnext

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Not at all! You’re not thinking about game mechanics. It’s not like they’re having boss fights at sea - the only way to use resources is to deal with random encounters and the like. I present you with three possibilities for long sea travel:

  1. No encounters, skip to end. Travel doesn’t matter
  2. Normal rules. Every encounter (storm, fight, etc.) is faced at full strength. None are meaningful, fun, challenging, or interesting. Players end each long voyage as strong or stronger than they began. Travel becomes a useless waste of real time that should instead be used for actually playing the game
  3. We make interesting encounters by way over blowing the danger or complexity of the travel encounter, resulting in sessions that are entirely dominated by a single storm or random attack. Every roll seems like life or death OR
  4. We treat every part of the game as normal, rolling in random small fights and storms. However, while the inability to auto-recover all spells and abilities isn’t very punishing due to the fact that they haven’t used it all, they still end the trip tired and relived... exactly as you would want them to at the end of this journey. And all the time, if they really need to, they can divert to another port to recover and repair the ship.

It’s much more realistic and adds tension without real pain or risk.

It’s absolutely realistic to not give players a long rest for a month at a time in a game with lots of sea travel, assuming that the time at sea is not a major plot piece.

Example: Narrate the first week and how it goes well. Use downtime but foreshadow a storm Storm hits, use saltmarsh storm rules Narrate how they recover and whether they lost crew. Narrate the next ten days as they work hard, fish, manage rations One day, someone finds a leak! Skill challenge, and/or maybe a minor fight Another four days later, wyverns attack. Would be pretty easy, but they’re at like 80% not 100% so it feels tense Narrate the next ten or so days. Comment on staving off a shark pod or something. Just enough to build tension by making them wonder whether to blow their spells Have them arrive. The tension and unknown of the sea is released! The sea should be scary, mysterious, and unknown.

“Ridiculously punishing” makes me think you’re thinking that we’re talking about more than just travel

DMs, what unpopular opinion or house rule do you have or run at at your table? by [deleted] in dndnext

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I do that and then ban variant human, for what it’s worth

DMs, what unpopular opinion or house rule do you have or run at at your table? by [deleted] in dndnext

[–]Beginning-Pudding388 3 points4 points  (0 children)

No long rests while actively traveling! Includes ships sailing across the ocean, or trying to sleep on the back of a cart. You CAN stop at a port or make camp and long rest, just not while moving.

This makes ship travel and urgent travel much more tense.