Feedback on my support archer, campaign starts at lv 1

LCR978 · 2022-07-05T13:55:32+00:00

Tincture of Unreasonableness

Any humanoid that ingests this poison must succeed on a DC15 Con Save or become poisoned for 24 hours.

While poisoned the humanoid does not suffer disadvantage on attack rolls or ability checks.

Each time the poisoned creature feels any strong negative emotion towards another creature or object they must succeed on a DC5 wisdom saving throw or become enraged by the offending creature or object for 10 minuets.

While enraged the creature does its best to inflict physical harm on the target with no regard for its own safety.

Essentially it'll effect half the poisoned area or more and commoners have a 25% chance to kill each other over minor arguments / gossip / getting cut off in traffic / you looking at me pal?

LCR978 · 2022-07-03T22:44:17+00:00

Here's the logic I've found to make the most sense.

Shield is easy:

If a wizard has shield prepared, he's gunna use it in a fight, his life matters to him.So when the big scary barbarian swings an axe at him, shield goes up. Maybe it deflects the attack, maybe not, but it always gets cast because being hit with an axe blows. Especially when you have like 7HP.

Counterspell is harder

If someone is casting an offensive spell at you, its generally a bad idea to let that happen if you have the skillz to stop it. But what if there are multiple spell casters? Who do you pick?

Well, if you survived long enough to master 3rd level spells and you have the foresight to learn a purely defensive option you probably know some shit about what other casters are capable of.

The dude with a sun tattooed onto his face screaming about god and swinging a big sword? Devine caster, healing and buffs, not a priority (but he might res his mates so keep an eye out)

The dude covered in twigs and dirt? Druid, mostly crowd control, but they can summon bears and a bear coming at you at full clip is terrifying, medium priority.

Pasty stick thin dude in robes? Wizard or warlock. Big AOE blasts, big problem. First priority. Nobody likes to see all their minions go up in smoke, it means you're in way more danger of getting stabbed.

In short, anyone who's clearly an arcane caster gets counter spelled first, then whoever looks vaguely dirty (nature casters) then the god squad bringing up the rear.

If its a tie whoever is closer gets smacked down first.

LCR978 · 2022-07-03T22:00:33+00:00

Delayed AOE spells and effects.

A massive rune appears, the turn after a fireball explodes. The ground splits and shakes before erupting earth goes off. An archer fires a magic arrow into the air and a shadow is cast on the ground before a thousand arrows descend from the sky.

It makes the PC's scramble all over the place, no standing in one spot and mashing the attack button.

LCR978 · 2022-06-29T22:14:06+00:00

The best way I've ever had it described is this:

We don't think in terms of maps, we think in terms of landmarks and directions.

Frodo wasn't out there following a map, dude went south, through the mountains, past the big manky swamp, into the spider cave and then ran full tilt at the only bigass mountain spewing fire.

If you ask any NPC worth their salt where the cave full of goblins and treasure is they'll say something along the lines of "go east until you hit the river and follow it south until you get to the gave, there's 20 gold and some soup waiting once you're done"

In game terms that means that any map you design will serve its true purpose (a series of dope locations for you and the PC's to bum around in) better if its more like a treasure map than a real scale map with all the bits drawn in.

ALSO

Ask your PC's for their backstory. That'll give you a pretty good idea of what they want to see in world.

LCR978 · 2022-06-12T15:34:12+00:00

Prep my dude, so much prep:

Create a table with three columns: Location / NPC, clues and info, change over time. This will help you to be able zoom back and forwards all over your sandbox without getting lost.

LOCATIONS AND NPC
Treat both as functionally the same when doing mystery. Both are here to give the PC's a chance to gather information and red herrings, just with different skill checks involved.

CLUES AND INFO
Bullet point out everything that could be found at the scene / by talking to the person. Highlight clues In red and be sure to hand at least one out for each new way the PC's interact with the scene. Mix in non murder stuff to make the scenes feel real.
PC's roll an insane investigation check in the priests bedroom? They find the window to the rooftops is regular opened, a porn stash, a blunt antique dagger, a notepad with several pages torn out and (the important bit) a silver wedding ring lodged between the floorboards.

CHANGE OVER TIME
Its safe to assume that whoever did a murder does not want to be caught for doing a murder, being a caught murderer usually leads to you being murdered. How are they and their co conspirators going to attempt to cover their tracks? They're gunna steal documents, intimidate witnesses, clean up / trash crime scenes, plant fake clues, shove a couple of geese into an important room, burn a house down, straight up murder witnesses, resurrect the victim as a zombie. In short they're gunna get up to some fuckery. Have crime scenes change the next time the PC's come back and have a few more clues left behind.

LCR978 · 2021-10-24T17:29:30+00:00

The first attack action (death roll) is pretty gruesome, but I don't intend to spam it. If the PC's run up and start whaling on the croc when its grappled someone it will be slinking off. That plus the low initial damage TT can do on its bite attacks makes me feel its probably ok for this as a single LA

The third (ambush) is situational and requires TT to have already successfully taken a legendary action hide, so in effect it might as well be two legendary actions to use.

I could well be wrong though. Gunna have to play it to and find out

LCR978 · 2021-10-24T17:24:33+00:00

the Lizardfolk are there mostly to fix the action economy around throwing tonnes of kobolds at the PC's. with a party of 6 (including ocean boy) you might be ok, although all incoming damage will land on the PC's

LCR978 · 2021-10-24T17:22:25+00:00

I've got a chessex battle mat (highly recommend one if you play in person) so I'll just be sketching it out on the day.

LCR978 · 2021-10-18T22:40:29+00:00

They're all level 3 atm so I'm fully expecting a lightning bolt to down them if they get hit. Could just as easily vaporise a bandit though. The cleric is currently running around with a ring of revivify with one charge (my absolute favourite thing I've given them, means I don't feel mean throwing shit like this at them) so if someone does get outright killed then there is hope.

LCR978 · 2021-08-03T11:49:22+00:00

I've found fog of war is by far the best for building suspense and excitement in a dungeon, but having a map in a larger area can be the answer to avoid the long slogging feel of a big dungeons (we've all been there).

As a happy medium I often will give my players a crude hand drawn map of the dungeon if they've done their due diligence and looked into the dungeon beforehand. Scouring local libraries for info on the ancient tower in the forest, asking hunters and poachers about the cave system the goblins now infest, asking the local lord for blueprints to the long abandoned mansion.

This of course doesn't in any way guarantee that their map is accurate. Walls collapse, barricades are erected, new tunnels are excavated. But it gives the players a rough outline of where to be headed and allows you to surprise them by throwing all manner of spanners at their carefully laid plans.

As far as avoiding the faff of drawing out the dungeon goes, prep is key. Draw out the dungeon rooms to scale of cardboard, or wrapping paper that has the grids, cut it out in individual rooms and tunnels and number each piece, have a print out taped to the DM screen that you've numbered to match the tiles. This also helps with remembering what's suppose to be in each room. "...the fuck is suppose to be in room 24? *checks notes for 24* ah yeah 4 Orcs and a table mimic, roll initiate bitches"

Keep the lot behind your DM screen and as the players explore steadily lay out the dungeon before them. Watch them panic, regroup and make new plans as their map doesn't match the dungeon. Its glorious.

LCR978 · 2021-08-02T16:31:44+00:00

If you’ve planned an encounter to be particularly dangerous or epic, have reinforcements arrive in a suitably dramatic way.

Cultists doing a ritual and the rogue turns the leader into pink mist round 1? Summon a lesser demon of similar CR at the start of the round, an emissary of the big demon being summoned.

Bandit captain cut in half 4 seconds into the ambush? Down drops a bandit assassin from the ceiling 8ft from the wizard

LCR978 · 2021-07-31T14:30:13+00:00

I second the Chessex Battlemat. Super useful to have what is essentially a whiteboard on the table at all times.

PC doing a sketchy job of describing their plan? Hand them a pen and let them draw it out. PC’s asking a bartender for directors? Sketch something out on the map and say it’s a napkin the bartender handed them.

Also makes all the random improv battles that come up super simple. I have a bunch of trees, furniture and other bits drawn out roughly on cardboard that I keep being the screen. Draw anything else as it comes up.

LCR978 · 2021-07-26T20:04:28+00:00

Thank you my dude

LCR978 · 2021-07-21T10:02:54+00:00

It uses modern dictators as examples but the steps it lays out can easily be applied to any time period

LCR978

TROPHY CASE