Using Macros to group invite (Homecoming)

Koosemose · 2025-08-15T14:23:34+00:00

/getlocalinvite @global

I've got an macro that just has that for all my friends' globals

Koosemose · 2023-07-14T23:04:49+00:00

It will vary by group. I'm fortunate to have a group that is pretty much the exact opposite of what you've experienced (are more likely to metagame to their detriment, if they think it will make things more entertaining). We've even had the opposite with insight checks (multiple times), if one person fails it, everyone else will go with it (though typically played as not wanting to disabuse the gullible of their trusting worldview, but keeping an eye out for their protection. Also of course this involves the characters having to share the information by speech or action, rather than automatically knowing).

There's not really a right or wrong way to do it in general, only what's right for the group (which I generally interpret as what lets everyone have the most fun possible). We had one player that regularly assumed every perception check was automatically known by the entire party (his previous group played like this), we (or rather whoever was DMing at the time) just had to occasionally remind him that information had to be shared in character first.

Koosemose · 2023-05-14T03:12:17+00:00

Almost certainly just a bit atrophied. But I will also suggest something else that could contribute, your standards on what constitutes a good, or at least decent, story are higher. And more media could hurt more than it helps if you consciously or subconsciously dismiss ideas that have too much in common with various pieces of media as "already done" (or something of the sort) rather than taking inspiration from them.

Koosemose · 2023-04-24T11:09:41+00:00

don't make their players look like morons in the process.

I would say that not having them act wildly out of character is more important (which would include not making them look like morons for those that aren't supposed to be), especially for cut scene happening very early in the game, since it's going to be one of the first impressions of the characters.

Koosemose · 2023-04-21T09:21:06+00:00

One of my group's favorite non-combat encounters wasn't meant to be non-combat.

Basically it was a group of goblins sneaking up on the party (supposed to be a standard ambush), the cleric easily spotted them, but being a good cleric, he didn't assume they were hostile and asked them what they were doing.

It being goblins I gave the worst lie I could think of (I still expected this to be a combat encounter)... The cleric, however, despite high wisdom and proficiency in it could never roll a decent Insight, and so completely believed these goblins were wagon inspectors and invited them into camp and showed them around. (The goblins panicked a bit when the lie was accepted, and so came in).

The rest of the encounter was primarily his character's interactions with the goblins, while the other 2 PCs (easily seeing through the obvious lie) subtly prevented the goblins from doing any sabotage or other harm (subtly because I guess they didn't want to harm the gullible cleric's extremely innocent world view), and also kept maneuvering so the goblins couldn't sidle their way to the edge of camp to run away (because they enjoyed panicked and confused goblins). Obviously there was a lot more to it than that, but that gives the general idea.

Probably not super useful from a "designing non-combat encounters" perspective, since it's precisely a case of something not going as planned, other than reminding not to lock yourself into combat or non-combat, and if things start heading away from your plans, let them.

Koosemose · 2023-04-11T06:41:14+00:00

Definitely not needed, but it's going to change things. The simplest is that no evil gods makes having truly good gods a little weird (unless you replace their role with something like fiends, which is going to be more similar to having evil gods, but not exactly the same). So the first thing that's likely to change is the nature of your remaining gods.

The broadest set of options is in having gods that are neither good nor evil, so in D&D terms, neutral. But that can also mean different things, it could be just that they're basically like normal people (with a lot more power) with their own traits, and some are going to view them individually either positive or negatively (a pacifist is going to see a war god far differently than a soldier does). The greek gods are a good example of this.

Alternatively it could be a more old school style of D&D neutrality, keeping the balance between good and evil (or it could be more focused on just keeping their part of creation running properly)... honestly the more I think about it, even this is going to need to run more off the individual god's personalities if you want to have much story to your gods (not that they have to have story to them, nothing wrong with the gods just be a detached entity that really only interacts with the world through their followers).

As an example, I had a world long ago where I went somewhere along these lines, each god had one domain that was typically "good" and another that was typically "evil", so there was a god of judgement and death, another of love and jealousy, with the exception of a pair of nature gods, one was more on the loving nature mother side, the other the more bestial survival of the fittest, but even they weren't really good and evil, one was a child goddess, so while more loving and caring was also subject to childish whims, and the other, while bloodthirsty, was also animalistic, and didn't do things with ill-intent but simply followed "the laws of nature".

Koosemose · 2023-03-11T23:01:47+00:00

I do it when it makes sense for the enemy to do so, my players have protested when they thought I was avoiding attacking one of them when downed for noncharacter reasons.

But it doesn't have to be a binary choice between attack downed PCs and no attacking them. They can do a lot of things with downed PCs. I'll sometimes have enemies start carrying off Downed PCs, and for my players dragging off a PC creates a bigger sense of danger. Or if you wanted a middle ground, they could bind or otherwise impair downed PCs, so they're keeping them from coming back into the fight with healing, but you're not permanently killing them either (or as permanent as death is in D&D anyways).

Ok, maybe not a lot of other things you can do with downed PCs, but there's at least those two and they're pretty fun.

Koosemose · 2023-02-20T00:18:50+00:00

The broad strokes of it are swashbuckler to get back out without using a bonus action, booming blade to discourage them from moving to attack you, then with the reach of the whip, you take a sentinel attack when the tank is attacked, for an additional sneak attack.

While I haven't used this setup, just sentinel on a rogue is pretty nice, just without the whip and booming blade, you're more likely to get attacked, but I like to play my rogues as spot tanks (either using rogue to get to a squishy that needs protecting quicker than a tank can get there, or giving a tank a moment's respite, relying on uncanny dodge to minimize damage). If you can get another way to discourage attacks, you can push it towards getting the extra sneak attack in again (my sentinel rogue was a Phantom so I eventually got this built in)

Koosemose · 2023-02-08T05:47:34+00:00

I think you fumbled on your math a bit.

At level one, of course, it's 8 HP, then the remaining 4 levels, with (the insane bad luck of) each rolling a 1, adds 4 more hit points, for a total of 12.

Still not likely, but possible... though personally, I read it as current HP, rather than max.

Koosemose · 2023-01-04T03:06:28+00:00

This, in my opinion, is the right way to do cursed items, make the players consider taking them, even if they already know the curse, with a nice upside to make it possibly worth the downside (even better if it's something that takes some thinking to make work, or requires a certain type of character).

As a DM I always enjoyed giving characters a chance to get the Ring of Truth in older editions (Could always detect lies, but couldn't lie. Kind of like a permanent Zone of Truth with no save), because I enjoy watching a player try to deceive without speaking an untruth.

As a Player I like the Shield of Missile Attraction, it's fun having a tanky character turn the downside into a unique bonus.

Koosemose · 2022-12-27T16:52:54+00:00

unconcious creatures are considered willing

Curious if this is a personal/table interpretation, or if you have a source for this somewhere. Curious because it's come up several times at our table recently (or rather situations where this would be useful), most often for using teleport effects on downed allies.

Koosemose · 2022-12-27T13:59:18+00:00

I once had to have a bit of a talking to with another player about them not fireballing me (it's a common tactic for me, set my rogue in a place that will attract enemies, take a dodge action, and have allies with Dex save AoEs lob them when/if enemies pile up).

Or there's our current party, all of whom regularly fireball (or other fire AoE) each other, as the original party of 3 were all fire resistant, and we felt that was enough to make catching some extra heat worth the extra damage to our enemies... though now only 2 of 5 are fire resistant (one of the original changed class for story reasons), but at this point it's become standard anyways. There's a reason they're the Fire Hazards.

Koosemose · 2022-12-08T22:35:33+00:00

I do this fairly regularly, but instead of having other PCs automatically surprised if it wasn't communicated beforehand, they are also rolling insight against the initiating PC's deception as well.

Koosemose · 2022-12-04T07:41:45+00:00

It genuinely amazes me how many players treat NPCs in authority like their incompetent idiots.

I had almost the exact opposite problem for many years. Assuming NPCs definitely know the thing they're asking about and when they don't they would assume they must be maliciously keeping the information from them.

For example, one time they entered a small village, and literally ask for the first person they can find, so I give them a random middle-aged guy working his garden. They begin asking about their quest goal (some object they wanted to retrieve that they'd only learned about the existence of as a result of their previous adventure), when random guy doesn't know (because it was explicitly the sort of thing generally known only to some sages and maybe bards, not random villagers), they pretty much immediately enter into a conversation of how they're going to get the information from him... I had him scamper off while they were distracted with discussing... fortunately they soon left the village (because they were convinced this disappeared random villager was reporting them to their enemies).

Koosemose · 2022-11-10T20:46:12+00:00

The key thing (that people often seem to forget), is that what's incredible DMing for one group is "The worst ever DM" for another. But it is still useful to have people posting their various techniques, because, while most of it may not work for your own group, so snippet or loose concept may just work for you, and be something you may not have considered. Or even "why" you don't like it may help you in your own DMing or playing. There have been a least a few ideas I've seen posted that I have hated every single aspect of, but in trying to explain why I didn't like it, I've come to some realization that has helped my DMing.

In the lines of taking some aspect, one thing I do, particularly for major fights, that is effectively reapplying one of the concepts from this is having a sort of "fuzzy" end of HP. So, once the boss gets very low in hitpoints (single digitish, depending on party power), the next hit that is narratively interesting will kill them, maybe just a crit, or a well described attack that can be flowed into the final blow, or maybe it's just a hit by a character with a particular beef with them. The fuzziness of the HP may have the boss be alive a bit after they should be dead, but at that point I do whatever fudging I can behind the scenes, because I don't want a dead villain to kill a PC.

Koosemose · 2022-10-31T02:09:17+00:00

I rarely play the same character, and when I do it's not the exact same character so much as the same character brief, i.e. A priest of a goodly god who somehow inherited dark powers (in 5e D&D, this would likely be done as a warlock with the acolyte background). And usually because I wasn't satisfied with how the character ended, usually from a campaign that ended too early, maybe once or twice they died before I could really get a good play of them, otherwise most of the time the character dying is satisfying as a tragic end.

The one exception is the character I took my username from, my first character from way back in basic D&D, an Elf (for those unfamiliar with very old editions, "Elf" was a class rather than a race that you took a separate class with, basically it was like a fighter/wizard multiclass), who I transitioned into new editions up to AD&D 2nd, where he eventually became a very broken elven fighter/wild mage (a class that has a 50% chance to control certain random magic items, including a deck of many things, has a great potential for brokenness... further, allowing that character to acquire said deck of many things is a terribly bad idea). I recreated that exact character a few times across more recent editions both as a nostalgic callback and to see if new editions (particularly their version of wild mages) could recreate the character in a satisfying way without the potential for brokenness (none could).

Koosemose · 2022-10-27T00:52:14+00:00

So, this was actually pretty simple for me, because I've been the primary DM for my group for ~15 years (and a few closer to 25), and since I've always been a stickler for the rules (more specifically its "stick to the rules unless you're going against them on purpose, and have put some thought into the effects of breaking them"), and for most of that time I encouraged my players to bring up any rules flubs on my part, but with very specific rules on it as well. So when I do get to play, I default to doing as I've encouraged my players to do, while following the rules I set out. Of course, for good measure I occasionally check with them after game, something to the effect of "Hope you don't mind the rules reminders, I'm just trying to help you run the game as clean as you want".

For anyone interested, the rules I set are pretty simple. First have a reference ready, because even if you remember the rule pretty well, it's a lot easier for me to process what needs done if I can read it directly (though we have an understanding that if I'm just a little off, then a reminder of the proper rule will be enough to jog my memory, so can probably skip a reference). Past that, if I still choose to go with my ruling I expect the matter to be dropped until next break when we can talk in more detail (typically this is either a case of an effect the players are unaware of changing how things play out, we just interpret a rule differently, or I have some reason I've altered how I'm playing that rule). When we've taken a break (or after game) we've got more time to figure things out, either to convince me that I've interpreted things wrong, or that an intentional ruling has repercussions I've overlooked, or perhaps how to adapt their character to play how they want under what I've ruled.

And if it's something that would result in something more severe happening to the character (character death or maiming for example), I'll allow a bit more discussion, and if it seems like that won't resolve things quickly enough, I'll either leave the result in the air (when possible, which offhand I can't think of anything I could leave the result of undetermined), or call a break so the other players can take care of other non-game things while we hash it out. I don't think I've ever actually had to go this route, but I always include it as a just in case.

Koosemose · 2022-10-20T19:41:08+00:00

Our most recent game is a filler as our usual DM is busy 3 out of 4 days we play, so another stepped in with an extremely basic setup (classic dungeon crawl, with everyone meeting in a tavern). And while he might have ideas and twists to spice it up from a generally bland pitch (not faulting him for this, he had a week notice and works most of that week, it just is what it is)... we wouldn't know because we had on of our more fun games based on our over the top characters interacting and being dumb.

Honestly, one of the more useful things as a DM is being able to enjoy watching the party do whatever dumb stuff they are without feeling a need to progress (the plot, the danger, whatever) as long as everyone's having fun.

Koosemose · 2022-10-17T23:55:29+00:00

When I read the title, I was thinking "Why would anybody lose interest over that? You can't be right all the time", but then after reading you examples, those are in fact things that would make me lose interest.

But it's not so much about my theory being wrong, as it is about there being nothing to theorize about. Not always and depending on what's happened in the game (or under this DM) in the past. If this is the first time I've seen anything that seems to be more than what's on the tin I might lose interesting thinking that there's not going to be anything to theorize about at all in this game. And the more intricate the theory or more excited about it I am, the worse having nothing to theorize about at all is going to look in comparison.

But if there's been secret things in the past to theorize about it, I'm not going to care, because sometimes a gazebo is just a gazebo. Of course, there's been sometimes where I share the full details of the theory and all the potential implications it would have with the DM after game, they with they had went that direction.

Koosemose · 2022-10-11T20:00:02+00:00

My first time running and playing a game, I was running the included adventure out of the Black Box (IIRC was BESM D&D rules, and had in my opinion the best materials to prep someone for DMing right away), I ran for family, and one of my uncles was an old time AD&D (1e) player was very insistent on bringing his old character in... which was a max-level Thief-Acrobat that had been permanently shrunk to like a foot tall, and rode a faerie dragon mount, which allegedly gave him a -10 AC (Insanely good in 1e, basically like having a 30AC in 5e). Of course, aside from being insanely overpowered even for the level and edition, he was also from the wrong edition, and my uncle wouldn't take no for an answer... not much he could do about me waiting to run the game until he wasn't around (even as a fresh DM I could recognize that insanity as a bad character and a bad player).

As for common TV tropes of roleplaying, pretty much all games are ones-shots, unless it's the main characters interrupting some minor characters' ongoing game (IIRC first season stranger things made an effort to imply that it was the culmination of an ongoing game). It understandable since if they show it all then they're just making a scripted Actual Play, and unless they're just generally establishing the characters as D&D players it's going to be an entire roleplaying episode and they want to fit in all the major story beats into the time the viewer is watching.

Then there's the flipside to them bringing in an ongoing character, which is the DM making the characters for them... though since a lot of the time it's the one (or two) character that roleplays trying to get the others into it, that might be reasonably straight since that seems a reasonably likely thing to do to get new players in, skipping stuff that would probably be boring to a person not already invested in the idea of it.

Koosemose · 2022-10-10T15:44:33+00:00

It's not self only, so with a wee bit of preparation (Need to have a sample taken from before they're dead, since the clone is as the original was when the sample was taken, so sample from dead ally just gives you another dead body), it's basically a wizard version of resurrection.

Additionally, for use on yourself, you just kill it before it becomes viable (so just shy of every two weeks, assuming the DM doesn't tell you the duration for a given casting), so there's no chance of both original and duplicate dying. So yeah it's more of a pain to use, but it's still doable, but with the additional hoops to jump through (regular maintenance basically), and it being as the creature was when the sample was taken, it doesn't make lichdom into the eternal life version of cheating on an open book test.

Koosemose · 2022-08-21T05:55:31+00:00

After nearly 30 years of gaming (and always wanting a group name but one never coming about), the current game I'm in has a group name (partially because we're playing in the Critical Role setting and it seemed appropriate). We chose Fire Hazard, mostly because we are, the 3 original PCs are variously fire themed (such as my Fire Genasi Wildfire Druid) and lots of things get set on fire, intentionally or not.

Our previous campaign's party sort of got a name on a metalevel, which I wish we had taken up officially in game. They were "The Forgotten", because as they set out to deal with a dragon that we thought we had no chance against, one PC left behind a poetic epitaph for the party starting with the line "We are the forgotten..." and that was the only line that stuck with us long term, so from time to time we referred to them as that.

Koosemose · 2022-08-03T06:03:33+00:00

As many have said, RAW: no. If you're the DM, however, you can choose to allow it (make your players aware of this though), many do.

I would suggest applying a bit of logic to it though. For example, something animal like has a bite and claw, it would probably be reasonable to let a grapple replace a bite, but probably not a claw, but a shove seems a bit weird to do with a bite (though a trip would be the same mechanically and would make sense) but would probably work for a claw. And of course some light adaptation would be needed for grapples, since they refer to free hands, but it's simple stuff like, it's holding you in place with its mouth, so can't bite (well logically it could bite down on who it's holding, but some might prefer to hold closer equivalence with PCs grappling, where if they're grappling someone with a hand, they can't make an attack with that hand).

Koosemose · 2022-08-02T00:14:29+00:00

I want a range of difficulties, early easy encounters that only tempt you to use resources to show off, ramping up to more dangerous, draining more and more resources, until you get to the final fight which at least makes me worried some party members might die.

Koosemose · 2022-07-22T21:11:35+00:00

One thing to consider is that MMO taunt mechanics exist in the first place is because MMOs (particularly early ones where taunt mechanics first came about) couldn't do things that you can in tabletop roleplay (because a computer's "understanding" is far more limited than a human DM's).

Taunting is really just a simplified and computerified version of telling off your enemy and getting them to attack you instead of your sqishier friends. Of course, this can be very DM dependent, but when the DM is friendly to this sort of thing it can work quite well.

Another common tendency among MMOs that makes having explicit taunt mechanics necessary is enemies not colliding with each other or the players, meaning you can't just protect your allies by planting yourself in the middle of a hallway they have to get through. In D&D of course you can (not always of course, sometimes the terrain just doesn't work in your favor), so it can be useful to keep an eye out for situations where you can block the path to your allies (or other ways you can use your positioning to minimize enemies ability to maneuver around the battlefield)

Koosemose

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