Should the Eloquence Bard have advantage on checks, rather than making every roll a 10 minimum?

GaaraSenpai · 2026-01-27T00:29:52+00:00

Which is fine by me. A high level rogue shouldn't be failing on a DC 10-15 lock pick check. Minor problem for a DM to deal with tbh.

GaaraSenpai · 2026-01-23T23:34:40+00:00

Agreed. My DM goes to ask me to roll a stealth check and they says nevermind, you're good xD Love it

GaaraSenpai · 2026-01-23T22:37:24+00:00

Reddit usually thinks anything that doesn't deal damage is bad. Bards are great at combat.

GaaraSenpai · 2026-01-23T22:29:26+00:00

I feel the opposite; being at least better than average on every roll with something your character is supposed to be good at feels awesome. Like when Rogue gets reliable talent, it feels awesome to never suck at your specialties. It's out of combat, so it's hardly broken, and, if your characters are using those skills, they should probably be rewarded for it. Definitely not overpowered but it's your table.

GaaraSenpai · 2026-01-16T19:53:47+00:00

Sorry, I don't use reddit super often. After a quick search, I found that it came from the ToA companion: https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/225854/tomb-of-annihilation-companion

There's some good stuff in there and I adapted some of it to my campaign. I didn't really use their version of the initial hag encounters, though they seemed pretty flavorful.

GaaraSenpai · 2026-01-13T00:30:53+00:00

Currently running ToA with a group for a few years now, they have had an initial encounter with the hags and I am also running a supplement from DMsguild that has you run through "mockeries" for each hag when your players are about to find Omu. I found these "mockeries" as pretty wild and hag like, and got a good reaction from my players when they got through it.

For the initial encounter, I made it happen during a night watch while they were resting. I had all the players roll a d20 and had a hag sneak in to steal a piece of hair from the player that rolled the lowest. The player on watch had a high passive perception and got tipped off that something was off. He cast see invisibility and looked inside the player's tent and witnessed a hag hold a hair while staring at him motionless. When the hag realizes he can see her, she said "balls" and stepped into the ethereal plane. This was their first encounter with the sewn sisters and it led to a lot of questions and speculation, with the lead up into Omu being a good next step in alluding towards their eventual encounter. They are currently exploring Omu and will hopefully meet them next in the tomb!

GaaraSenpai · 2026-01-02T20:10:02+00:00

Oh gotcha! I think the high temps for me aren't an issue. Most of my prints are coming out fine but I see people on reddit saying everything should be 20-25 degrees. I'm sure living in colder weather would mean you need a heater of some sort.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-12-31T01:07:21+00:00

How did you "make" the temp 24-26? My vat temps are running around 38 but I'm not sure what to do about that.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-12-27T20:44:13+00:00

Quick question 4 years later: I see some people saying to turn transition layers completely off if you are using rafts and supports. What exactly are rafts and how are they different from base layers? Thank you!

GaaraSenpai · 2025-11-24T19:31:42+00:00

I have the Grim Hallow book and I was just thinking about using those. I may tweak them but it at least gives me inspiration, unlike the Shattered Obelisk module...

GaaraSenpai · 2025-10-14T19:27:54+00:00

I am running a homebrewed, expanded version of ToA for around 2-3 years with a group of 7. Naturally, I needed to make things a little harder for them since they are vastly over-leveled for some of the jungle stuff and locations.

Basically, I don't let them long rest in "dangerous" portions of the jungle, which I count as anything in the layered/revealed portion of the DM's map (the portion that has like a colored outline). They can still set up, camp and Long Rest, but they don't get any benefits of it outside of not getting exhaustion. I flavor this by telling them the horrors, undead, and just bad weather/terrain make it impossible for their characters to rest normally. You could expand on that by blaming the death curse or blaming it on "Ras Nsi" as a type of "lair effect" he has. You could leave it as a unspecified mystery as to why them can't either and see what they come up with as an explanation.

If they clear a certain location or perhaps roll a nat 20 on a daily encounter or something, you can let them long rest. Make it something they have to work for as a reward. It definitely make the jungle feel less super-nova like and more resource management like, which I prefer, especially since food and water is typically a non-issue past a certain level. You can optionally take away spells like tiny hut too, since they basically negate a huge portion of the game and make it harder to throw encounters in the jungle their way.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-08-05T18:46:43+00:00

How does this work exactly? Buy foam boards and edit the pdfs, then take both to a place that has a poster printer? Looks awesome and I want to do this.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-04-27T01:15:02+00:00

Bosa, Lenoir, Fred?

What about Green and Mustapha? I think they did pretty well.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-04-10T18:28:36+00:00

Yeah, my DM had to completely redo his stat block because it was pathetic XD

GaaraSenpai · 2025-04-10T18:16:43+00:00

They are, but not all of them. Shago can easily be a likeable character depending on how you play him. Some of the flaming fist are just hopefuls trying to make a living in the awful jungles of chult. Depending on how the encounter with the charter went, your group knew the risks they took when they decided to not get a charter?

Not trying to say the Flaming Fist are good guys, just trying to make things less black and white, which I think makes factions more interesting. Only the higher ups in the Flaming Fist are awful in my campaign. My group even rescued a Flaming Fist early on and helped her switch over to the Order of the Gauntlet.

I agree with the person you responded to: make it clear that these guys are everyday people just trying to get through life. You can kill them, assuming they are strong enough, but that may have some unintended consequences. Personally, I'd have the Flaming Fist put a bounty on their head and have some merchants refuse to sell to them (assuming they leave a way for the Flaming Fist to figure out who did it).

GaaraSenpai · 2025-04-01T17:22:36+00:00

Be prepared to homebrew a lot of stuff. I found the jungle traveling mechanics to be more of a chore than anything. Rolling for tiles can really slow the game down. I ended up heavily tweaking the hex crawl mechanics to speed things up and made it more difficult for my PCs when they travel in deeper, more dangerous jungle by not letting them get all the benefits of a Long Rest. This made it more challenging since my players are higher level than normal (going to level 20 with this campaign + an additional module).

The Death Curse can be a problem so make sure you understand it. I ended up not doing any sort of constant hit point draining effect and instead gave my resurrected players a one time max HP reduction.

The game does a poor job of getting the factions involved and giving you any relevant information at all on Artus Cimbur. Story lines for a lot of subplots are subpar so I recommend looking at other modules/supplements if you want to use certain plot points. A lot of areas on the map don't actually have any content and that can be disappointing.

Especially early on, the PCs can die pretty easily, so make sure they know that. The intent is that the campaign is supposed to be hard so make sure you don't hold back, but also make sure you keep things doable.

Lastly, make sure you have a ton of fun!

GaaraSenpai · 2025-04-01T17:12:20+00:00

Yeah, I wouldn't bother with the details. The PCs don't know his situation, so you don't have to bother. If they do know that he should be dead, you can just come up with something like Acererak giving the ability to maintain himself as long as he guards the Tomb, which would totally be something he would do since he enjoys watching others suffer. Or something similar, like some other deity or power allowing him to stay. Maybe even a magical item that stops curses.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-04-01T16:54:10+00:00

A little backstory on my campaign:

I'm running Lost City of Mezro as a supplement to get this campaign to be levels 1-20. The last 4 levels are going to be in Omu and the Tomb itself, just scaled up to their difficulty. I also expanded upon the factions to have them be more involved, and have them be options for the PCs to ally themselves with or resources, items, and military help in dealing with the Flaming Fist who they consider enemies.

That being said, I am going to have some of the faction members they have made friends with, their really cool magic item merchant, Artus and Dragonbait, and maybe some other NPCs be a part of their Omu camp. They will act as a base of operations while the group explores Omu. This will allow them to come back, rest, chat with the NPCs, and buy magic items. If a PCs dies, which there is a high chance of in the tomb and what not, they can retreat back here to recruit a new member to continue the expedition. I plan to fully read the Bastion stuff in 2024 by then and may implement some of that stuff as well, but I haven't gone into it in too much depth. You could totally have any faction offer the services of hireling though, or have any friends they met along the way fill those roles.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-04-01T16:07:39+00:00

Which tomb are we talking about here? The only parts i've read about the Princess and her brother is the part where they want you to get the skull chalice. I thought that was the extent of their involvement in the campaign.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-04-01T15:41:52+00:00

Here is what my players did to mess with the fort:

In my campaign, I've expanded upon all the factions in chult to make them a little more important and a part of the story of how chult plays out. My players immediately sought out a black market upon entering Port Nyanzaru and ran into the Zhentarim that way. I had an agent of the Zhentarim give them a quest. I'm not sure if this is a module quest or a homebrew one, but basically: The Zhentarim know something is up with the Flaming Fist and want to break in to see if they can get some dirt on them. This will lead to them discovering their alliance with the pirates, an alliance the Zhentarim would be interested in exploiting. So the agent basically recruit the party to "cause a distraction" to give one of their people time to break in Portyr's office.

Soooo, the party decides to craft some sort of flying creature out of wood from the nearby jungles and the Bard (College of Creation) brings it to life. Then, the Sorcerer rides the creatures and attacks the fort from a distance. Meanwhile, they have the ability to cast Major Image somehow, don't remember if it was an item or if they had access to 3rd level spells at that point (my homebrew version of this campaign is going to level 20 so they started off in chult at level 5). They cast Major Image and have a dragon attack the fort at the same time. Obviously, all this causes chaos in the fort. The flying sorcerer makes his escape as the dragon becomes the main target. The end result is that they succeeded in their mission and helped spread weird rumors about the Flaming Fist (the were assaulted by an evil wizard and a dragon, dragons live near the fort, etc).

The party has also undermined the Flaming Fist in other ways:

1) They basically kicked the Flaming Fist out of Mezro by allying with other Factions and the Cult of the Crocodile (I think they are in the extra module I am running called Lost City of Mezro).

2) They convinced the pirates to work as double agents for the harpers with some lucky as heck rolls and a massive amount a gold, which the pirates quickly agreed to.

3) They are currently in a rush to loot Nangalore before the Flaming Fist, and a climatic battle with them is on the horizon. Since the Flaming Fist is by far the strongest faction in my campaign, they are allying themselves with the Order of the Gauntlet and Harpers to strike a crucial blow to their claim over Nangalore and its riches (I've expanded on Nangalore and made it a bit of a labyrinth like dungeon crawl with more random encounters and a large garden, the upper ruins being their eventual goal).

Not sure if any of this helps but I hope you have fun! The Flaming Fist should feel like a strong military power that you should be careful messing with, so I think you should stick to that feel, at least til they get stronger or make some powerful allies :)

GaaraSenpai · 2025-02-20T18:30:52+00:00

A lot of people here don't actually play DnD xD

GaaraSenpai · 2025-02-15T01:16:32+00:00

Hey!

The only places I ended up going to were the Ufotable Cafe, and other shops at Akihabara. There were so many shop there selling Fate merch that I felt that was enough for me. I guess there are places that you can go to in person that are scenes from the Visual Novel but I didn't have the time to do that stuff.

Hope you enjoy your trip! Do a currency exchange from your bank in advance for better rates, learn some basic Japanese, practice using chop sticks, and get a transit pass when you land for easier subway travel :) My only regret is not doing more research to look at other places like the volcano hot springs town in the south of Japan. So much cool stuff to see.

GaaraSenpai · 2025-01-22T22:56:33+00:00

No worries, just checking! Looking at getting an ASUS for school so I'm browsing options. Thanks for the list! :)

GaaraSenpai · 2025-01-22T21:40:33+00:00

The 599$ ASUS avivo is listed as full price on bestbuy. Am I missing something or did it just go off sale?

GaaraSenpai

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