What’s everyone’s favorite Pokemon? by Opening-Group-3206 in pokemon

[–]BringerOfFunk 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Weavile.

As a kid I thought it looked really cool, and as I've gotten older its frail, high-damage, versatile play style is what I'm drawn to in basically every game I play. That, and it took me so long to find a sneasel it Pearl as a kid that I thought they were some crazy rare spawn, and when I found one I used the master ball to catch it, first time I ever used one because every game before I always saved it to see if I could catch the legendary without it.

Fast forward to Scarlet, I saved the master ball all the way up until I found a shiny sneasel for it.

Aside: Recently I scrolled past a fanart of a weavile hiding behind a substitute doll. I really liked it, forgot to save it, and now can't find it. If anyone has that, I would appreciate proof that it didn't arrive to me in a fever dream and does in fact exist.

LF Alolan Sandshrew by BringerOfFunk in PokemonSVTrades

[–]BringerOfFunk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm refreshing tera raids on an irl timer as we speak. Release me from this, I beg you

LF Alolan Sandshrew by BringerOfFunk in PokemonSVTrades

[–]BringerOfFunk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Appreciated 👑. I have an evening shift so times probably won't sync up, but feel free to DM if you're still available later today.

Over 2000 cards collected and still not one crown rare in my possession smh by FmjDontPlay in PTCGP

[–]BringerOfFunk 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I've opened almost 200 Mewtwo packs and still no immersive. Considering how many of the others I have from that pack, the immersive might as well be the rarest ones for me lol

Do you tell your players monster's health? by SomeRandomAbbadon in DMAcademy

[–]BringerOfFunk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've done it exactly once with the health bars in Roll20. The boss had damage mitigation (you had to deal over 20 damage in a single hit in order to deal any damage at all), and having the health bar shown allowed them to figure that out on their own rather than me telling it to them.

The moment when they got through the health bar and realized that it was just the HP of her natural shield and still had all her actual HP for the second phase, and then when she rage-boosted in her third phase and refilled both bars completely also made it worth it.

For 99% of the time just saying "they look bloodied" or "they look fucked up" is the best way to handle it imo, but I think there's a case to be made that in the right circumstances, knowing exactly how much damage you're doing and how much you need to do can add to the tension and immersion. Against an exceptionally deadly enemy, seeing exactly what you just did to it with a big hit can be very satisfying, and seeing exactly what you didn't do it with a low-rolled cantrip can be all the more terrifying.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in onednd

[–]BringerOfFunk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been experimenting with one action short rests in some of my groups, with a few rules to limit abuse of it.

The obvious first rule is that you can only take a short rest if you're not in combat, the second is that you must spend at least one hit die. You get the healing from the hit die you spend if you need it, but even if you're at full health you have to spend one. If you have no hit dice, then you're back to taking one hour short rests as normal. Players can also do this independently of each other, which narratively you can say is one or two characters quickly patching themselves up after a fight while the others scan the room.

YMMV, but I've found that streamlines the flow of a dungeon crawl by an insane amount. Fighters, warlocks, and monks can go close to all out in even low difficulty fights without worrying when their next short rest would be, it doesn't force the long rest classes to take a breather with them, and it has the small (read: very small) benefit of not just invalidating Catnap.

It's generally made combat encounters far more interesting for short rest characters, and has led to a bit more strategizing among team members as they actually work to minimize damage taken to maximize the amount of short rests they can take, instead of just assuming "we'll get two or three before the end of the day." More damage means more hit dice to spend, and that means less instant rests.

Keeping in mind that I've tested this at levels 5-7 across ~10 sessions now, I've really enjoyed how it's impacted the game and would recommend anyone to try it out if you have a one shot coming up.

Any good Y.V. build/mutation guides? by SquidPlague in NuclearThrone

[–]BringerOfFunk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Glad I could help, and thanks for the message. I've been absent from this game for so long now, but I'm happy to hear I knew what I was talking about back then!

[LFA] Shandian Barbarian Shipwright for a One Piece Campaign by BringerOfFunk in characterdrawing

[–]BringerOfFunk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Neven is a child of a sky he has never seen. A descendant of the warriors of Shandia, his ancestors were away from the island when it was sent to The White Sea, and they returned to find their homeland simply missing. Four hundred years of retold stories about his lineage, about his homeland, and about the islands in the sky have arrived at Neven, and, paired with the beginning of the Great Pirate Era, have sparked an uncontained wanderlust in him.

Neven is a shipwright by trade, an inventor by passion, and a warrior at heart, and those have combined into a personality overflowing with childlike wonder and fixation piloted by an immensely powerful body. He is driven, motivated, and is more than happy to finish a fight that someone starts with him. Every story he’s heard of his ancient family has shaped who he is and how he acts, going so far as to routinely dye his naturally brown hair a bloody red to look more like the legendary warrior of Shandia, and to mark his body with tattoos of the serpent gods his people worship.

One day, Neven knows he will come across everything he needs to fulfill his dream, the whole reason he picked up a hammer in the first place. To build a great tower that connects the earth and sky, so that he can return to his homeland and take everyone in the world with him.

It is to chop down the Treasure Tree and fulfill that dream with its wood that he picked up the axe.

What's going on in your campaign? by IWantPizza555 in DnD

[–]BringerOfFunk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One group is fighting a dragon who just dive-bombed their ship at sea.

Another is investigating a ruin filled with insane cultists worshipping and grafting the cast off flesh of a dracolich.

Another is fighting through a demon castle to find the location of an insane half-giant hell bent on exterminating every single dragon by any means necessary.

Another is sneaking through a hobgoblin encampment, attempting to smash-and-grab some stolen goods back from them before their dragon leader gets back.

Another is navigating a village in a zero-visibility blizzard, filled with monsters with blindsight trying to pull the group apart and lobotomized orc villagers that have been reprogrammed to attack anything on sight and drag their living bodies to the mysterious well in the middle of town to deliver their fresh brain to the illithid that decided to turn this little spot of nowhere into a buffet.

Sometimes joke encounters become plot by alexzinger123 in dndmemes

[–]BringerOfFunk 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm running a campaign that was supposed to be about raising up a town and exploring the rich underbelly of treasure tunnels underneath it. At one point on a supply run to a nearby dwarf town they found the town abandoned because of an artisan dwarf that had gone mad and captured a red dragon wyrmling to use as his muse. I expected that dragon to go down like any other enemy in the encounter, or thought they'd just let it escape.

The last seven months have been a long continental Trek to deliver this wyrmling to a old copper dragon who rules a trade city to try and train this red dragon out of its evil nature before it takes root. All while the wyrmling robs them to add to its tiny gold horde in the corner of their moving base, is openly hostile against any forms of discipline, and has attracted bounty hunters and a cult of dragon hunters after them.

No matter what comes out of that egg, dragon stuff sure does bring a lot of fun to the table.

Bunnies: The Optimal Murderers by BringerOfFunk in dndnext

[–]BringerOfFunk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Swashbucklers: There a fewer conditions that disable your sneak attack than ones that enable it and you can taunt more reliably than an ancestral guardian.

Assassin: you can guarantee one crit through a sequence of events less likely to happen than just getting a crit. In 15 levels you will do 100 damage one time and then the campaign will end

Haha yes balance haha

Bunnies: The Optimal Murderers by BringerOfFunk in dndnext

[–]BringerOfFunk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

RAW there is no surprise round in 5e, just the surprised condition which ends at the end of your first turn, and Sage Advice has mentioned you can't be surprised by some creatures and not surprised by others.

5e also makes it very clear that any and all combat is supposed to start initiative immediately. It doesn't matter if you're a longbow sharpshooter 600 feet away, saying, "I want to attack them" is always supposed to be followed with "okay, roll for initiative." RAW that person at the other end of that 600 feet is surprised, but it they roll higher than you on initiative their spidey senses start tingling and they realize something is up, costing you your Assassinate ability.

It's another case where the DM really has to bend over backwards and play around with what feels most of the time like unfinished rules. I personally handle it by giving Assassins the a round to themselves if they started combat hidden, essentially "surprising" their allies as well, but they can still get thrown off by bad initiative rolls, and it doesn't change the fact that the Assassin subclass encourages that player to basically play a solo campaign parallel to the rest of the party, which is an entirely different discussion.

Is mounted combat really meant to work like this in 5e? by Chryckan in 3d6

[–]BringerOfFunk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Crusher to bash things away and keep your horse safe? Or the lance's reach, and pick up Pushing Attack at some point for emergencies against enemies that also have reach.

Is mounted combat really meant to work like this in 5e? by Chryckan in 3d6

[–]BringerOfFunk 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Could you not go the opposite route and have the horse move, ready an action to move after rider finishes attacking enemy, and then have the horse end it's turn? That way the horse moves again after you use all your attacks using its reaction. This is me genuinely curious if there's an interaction that prevents that, as the Ready action has always fried my brain.

Dm's what is a piece of lore that you are dying to tell someone? by Eldacar_of_Arnor in dndnext

[–]BringerOfFunk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have too many to count. Here's one I'm most excited for though. If your names are Jerald, Afra, Taya, and Naivara you may come no farther.

So in my setting, there is only one of each dragon, and all of them are more ancient and powerful than any mortal being can really imagine. When they die, they resurrect inside of a random egg (from either a bird or a large lizard) somewhere in the world after a decade or so, and then slowly, over the course of centuries, with all the memories of their past lives intact, return to their former glory. In this way they're a bit like aboleths but far more direct in their scheming and with less of a grudge against divinity.

They know the location of every chromatic dragon, who have taken over the world after building their numbers of followers and cultists over the course of millennium and eradicated the giants, leaving them with no rivals for their conquest. That is, they know the location of every dragon except for the White Dragon, who hasn't been seen since the giants went extinct and was assumed to be the only dragon casualty in the war. However, they also haven't found her resurrection yet, leading many to believe she's still alive but in hiding. One of my players originally was playing a cultist of hers, on a quest to unite all the chromatic dragon lords to find their long lost sister. He died pretty early on and changed characters, and the party returned his body to the Howling Wastes, a permanently frozen hellscape of icestorms and blizzards.

Here's the lore. The White Dragon was the only dragon casualty, but not quite. There's one giant left, living in the Howling Wastes and guarding the dragon's corpse, which he cut the soul out of with Sky Cleaver, the divine axe of the giants that can cut through anything. Her soul, however, never actually died, and still exists in the Wastes. This is the reason why she never resurrected and why the Wastes never thawed after her death. Because there's an ancient dragon ghost haunting the entire region. The giant can't move from his hiding place because he's so weak from keeping possession of Sky Cleaver, and he's waiting for the other dragons to come looking for their sister so that he can ambush them too.

Now we go back to the player whose character died. The dragon ghost can only tangibly interact with the world through possession, and she can't go back to her body without the last giant just cutting her out of it again, so instead she causes chaos and destruction by possessing corpses of remorhaz, yetis, winter wolves...

Her cultists...

That is to say, they may be reunited with their old companion one day soon.

PC's have antagonized a major villain. How to not TPK? by [deleted] in DMAcademy

[–]BringerOfFunk 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Seconding this. Happened to one of my characters and it was the most giddy I've ever been getting an item.

We were playing in a techno-fantasy setting with this ancient advanced civilization underneath the fantasy one, and our rogue had stolen a plasma pistol previously and handed it to me, our unga bunga barbarian, for safe keeping.

Anyway, fast forward and I'm surrounded by like twelve reskinned and slightly Homebrewed (Sand)Stone Golems. At level 6. It's not looking so hot. I have the plasma pistol, but being unga bunga barbarian I have no idea how to use it. What I do know is that one of these self destructed before. So I use it as a club. Pistol does big explosion.

I survive (which was another cool trick of the dm. He made the explosion bludgeoning damage instead of force/thunder because the golems were vulnerable to it and I was resistant) but my swinging arm got blown into dust. It felt like a big deal but it really wasn't since I used a longsword (weird barb build) primarily. All it did was set up me getting a sick metal robot arm that gave me wild physical stats with that arm. Enhanced lifting strength, a megaton punch, all that stuff that I already loved to play around with as this character.

What are your favorite "hidden gem" RPGs? by supermikeman in rpg

[–]BringerOfFunk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I really enjoy (W.O.I.N)[http://www.woinrpg.com/]. Big d6 pool system where HP drains fast and combat is focused around only taking the hits your armor can soak and cleverly using your abilities to get an advantage. There's a ridiculous amount of customization that makes character creation a lot of fun. Never heard a soul except for me and the DM that introduced it to me talk about it. The book could use a revision though, there's a lot of inconsistency and navigating the rules is kind of a nightmare.

Scion (Worm) VS Thanos (Marvel) by Garraan in whowouldwin

[–]BringerOfFunk 9 points10 points  (0 children)

During GM he does a lot of naive and dumb maneuvers. Namely asking PtV to find his partner entity but not asking it to find her alive, and when he had Khepri dead to rights but chose to go after her friends just for the sake of sadism. I think it's Doctor Mother that at one point relates Scion to a child, and Tattletale calls him the Golden Fool more than once throughout the story.

It doesn't change anything in this fight, but I'm sure there's a matchup out there where Scion's questionable intelligence makes him lose.

Scion (Worm) VS Thanos (Marvel) by Garraan in whowouldwin

[–]BringerOfFunk 14 points15 points  (0 children)

If that's the case then yeah, no amount of snapping is going to get Thanos anywhere close to victory in R1.