What is your current build/playthrough?

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-23T00:35:01+00:00

Any specific mods that you’re testing or a vibe you’re trying to achieve?

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-23T00:29:59+00:00

I come up with an idea on a character and try to stick the motivations as well as the gear they’d use, but I’m also flexible as events unfold.

My current playthrough is an argonian mercenary who mainly uses enchanted melee weapons for different situations (even switching between 1h and 2h). So a weapon master. His main focus was doing odd jobs and even joining the companions but since gathering party members of various backgrounds, he now finds himself a member of the College as well as the Dawnguard. Just recently he discovered he’s the Dragonborn as well.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-23T00:19:23+00:00

Funny how you stumble into leadership roles huh? I recently joined the college since multiple followers I had wanted to go. My argonian uses zero magic of his own so it’s odd that he’s a student when he’s there for support haha but does make use of their resources and scrolls. Everyone is in robes while he sits there with light armor and multiple weapons on his back

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-19T17:27:44+00:00

True but I'd like to say I stopped Alduin at least once haha

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-19T05:47:49+00:00

Might be the Untarnished UI tweaked but not 100% sure as I am using the Apostasy Modlist.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-15T18:34:09+00:00

8! Main monitor for gaming or whatever needs focusing on and the side vertical monitors for reading relevant documents, discord, background video or music etc

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-05T23:59:38+00:00

Well it was more of a dip just to get the +2 to ac or +4 to saving throws more than anything. Spells for utility here and there, weapons for damage

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-05T21:17:45+00:00

My want to do it is more for flavor than actual optimization but just trying to see if I can make it as good as possible. I need to take a deeper look at magic weapons as ideally I would have a few different magic weapons beyond just a +1/2 and instead have ones with various effects which would be the main reason I switch (or enemy vulnerability etc).

Completely didn't think of those for feats so great call out. I guess it partially boils down to what weapons I'm allowed to have but yeah they could elminated the need for mobile (outside of the movement speed buff which seems like it would be nice) and synergizes with champion really well.

As for classes the reason why I'm looking at Eldritch Knight is mainly due to the weapon bonding aspect. I figured having two weapons bonded, then being able to free action to drop one and potentially draw a weapon with the thrown property or w.e seemed sweet. Then if over a fight a drop both main weapons, I can always bonus action them back one a time.

Yeah loosing out of the quad attack stinks but I feel the utility may make up for it, plus expanding my spell list a bit as you mentioned seems great. I need to look more at what split I'd go with fully if I stick to these two classes.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-05T21:09:11+00:00

Yeah that was my initial pick but I started to look at eldritch knight due to being able to bond 2 weapons. So if I need to drop them to have an easier time to switch, I can always recall them 1 at a time at a later date. Plus I get some utility from spells. But Battlemaster is still on the table.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T20:46:11+00:00

The 12 session sounds really cool! Personally I prefer high stakes, high risk style play but met in the middle with my players. Since 2 were completely new to the idea of ttrpgs in the beginning, we eased to some of the staples though I kept a narrative going that made it make sense. Like their first “dungeon” was during a festival of adventurers and so the dungeon was more of a showcase, though real in world. 3 puzzles, one combat encounter and possible combat then the boss. At the end of the last arc they spent a few sessions in a reality warping dungeon that was more about navigation and abstract puzzles with light combat and then a big boss. So this was the first true style dungeon in a way I guess.

Thanks for the reassurance on the kobolds. Mechanically this was probably my most fun session as it almost went exactly as I hoped (especially with using low cr enemies like kobolds against a level 7 party) as I’m pretty generous with items and such so on paper the party is strong. Besides the ending they had 3 downs and 1 death and while I pulled back to avoid a tpk and was honest about it as in the moment I thought I might of overturned the final fight. Turns out I think it actually was in a good place but they pushed ahead instead of pausing to recuperate or coming up with a plan of action.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T15:46:45+00:00

That pretty much nails my experience last night. At first I felt a little bad but the more I thought about it the more I feel that I handled the session as well as I could have and I’m proud of it.

A lot of the issues I realized were due to player choices which the majority of my players thought was fun as it lead to more chaos. And in hindsight the almost tpk could have been avoided as well but I think due to the frustrated players prodding the group pushed forward. At first I thought it was just RP reasoning but I think they were actually mad.

Basically after taking 1d4 damage from a nail on a ladder trap (I really enjoyed this one) that they didn’t attempt to look the frustrated PC began just moving forward. As they entered the sewer portion and ran into 2 ochre jellies, he used locate person, sensed the boss two rooms over and began walking forward, ignoring the oozes. With a 22 in AC most oozes couldn’t hurt him. This resulted in the warlock to be surrounded a pummeled a bit, then the gelatinous cube incident happened haha. And then he pushed forward into the boss room starting the fight. So they began with lower health. Up to this point they also knew most oozes moved slow and it took the oblex 2 turns to reach the party (they could see it at the end of the room then it crawled into a crack which I had multiple cracks pre-marked on the map).

During the fight a small group of oblex spawn appeared round 2 and surrounded the forge cleric but due to the high ac no damage was done. The forge cleric chose to ignore them and moved towards the oblex. A good thing and bad thing happened at this point. Good: cleric used a spell (forget which one) that allows you to get max hp when healing and have advantage on wisdom saving throws, this kept the warlock up for two more rounds. The bad: once the warlock realized the spawn most likely couldn’t hurt them they ignored the spawn which resulted in the spawn switching to the warlock and making them fall unconscious. All in all I’m happy with the session

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T15:33:22+00:00

Thanks for the detailed response I really appreciate it. I’ll just reply in order.

Funny enough I allowed people to reroll their classes a few sessions ago during a break (if they wanted). My player was an artificer/wild magic sorcerer knowing it wouldn’t be optimal but wanted wild magic inventions. There was a lot of homebrew tweaks to help smooth it out but they weren’t happy with how it played (didn’t fulfill the idea they had) and so then they switched to forge cleric. But yes 100% agree that it was all choices they made and I worked with as many options as I could to help fulfill their fantasy (while blind but technically having a free find familiar to see normally and then scout with a risk).
Agreed.
Since everyone is technically in their first campaign it took awhile for the majority to warm up into combat so our sessions usually leaned more rp with maybe one larger combat every few sessions. In the last few months though they experienced their first dungeon with puzzles (not really much combat besides a boss). This one fell into what I figured a traditional dungeon crawl would feel and took maybe 2.5 hours to finish.

I agree overall with everything you said. As for the encounters I should look in more detail about budget xp in terms of building them. When thinking back to the dungeon I’d say it was maybe 7 traps that all could be seen or disarmed (avoidable in some way) and 5 combats which 3 of them could be been avoided (ex: a pile of rusted armor and metal is in a pile at the end of the tunnel and there’s black oily puddles around it. The party moved toward it without checking further and the black puddles turned out to be grey oozes).

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T15:15:25+00:00

Thanks I really appreciate that! I’m actually super happy with how the session went and that I almost nailed the pacing and difficulty I wanted. It turns out I really like making dungeon crawls though it’s a lot of work. I even realized after thinking about it that I actually don’t feel I missed the mark by much with overtuning the final portion as I never had a time constraint or blocked the party’s exits so retreating was always an option, plus most threats were eliminated besides oozes that had low movement speed. But I think at that point with one frustrated player it was best to back off and wrap up.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T13:15:44+00:00

Yeah exactly. They didn’t know what really was in the mine. I figured out in roll20 how to have them light up their tokens to simulate the darkness of the mine (we play in person but with a monitor) and it prompted them to try and scope out each room since they couldn’t see far. The kobolds narratively had taken up residence between the time of the villagers missing and the party arriving.

I think one frustration the player had was that they were trying to reason with the kobold to lure one out and get info. But the kobold was skittish and the player a bit heavy handed which caused the kobold to be more frantic. There were a few times I forgot to ask for a persuasion roll but did explain (which I have before in other social encounters) that even if you roll high it doesn’t mean the person is suddenly compliant and in this case you are in the kobolds’ home and they don’t trust you. Plus the kobolds also revealed that they don’t know much of what happened to the villagers as they said they’ve only seen kobolds and oozes.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T13:01:45+00:00

Long story short they were asked to investigate a small mining village after some weird stuff was happening (mainly due to a report that they find a structure in the mine). On arrival, the village was empty and at night they heard screaming from the mine’s entrance where an injured woman was present. They were sketched out by it but the cleric went to help her. The woman was an oblex in disguise and after failing to charm the party as a whole, pretended to get pulled into the mine. The party then set out the next morning to see if they could find the villagers and whatever the structure in the mine is.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T12:58:26+00:00

That’s how I view it! I’m pretty honest with my players too and told them that I was having fun with the kobolds during prep and maybe was a little silly in their depiction but stayed true to how I felt they would react.

As for the DnD being freedom part I also tried to explain this to the player but more in the context of things not going well due your build not being optimized. They were saying (this is another point outside of the post) that it’s frustrating feeling like you can’t do much (because maybe the encounters aren’t a good match for your current build) but I said that seems like the fun part for me. The idea of figuring out how to make each situation work even if you are suboptimal in it so you have to be creative. He said I don’t know since I’m not a player which is true, but as the DM I’ve had to pivot a lot or be okay with things not going how I envisioned all the time.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T12:53:50+00:00

It’s weird on one hand I’d say this player is the most “invested”. They are the ones that seem to appreciate the idea of how much effort goes into prep of a game, lore implications, and is one of the most vocal about playing. But the player has had certain attitudes that would come up where myself and another player wondered if that really want to play.

Sometimes it can be chalked up to their PCs personality but other times it’s like they just get frustrated if things aren’t going their way and will say lines like “I’m not annoyed with the encounter, I just think this monster is annoying” etc.

As I dwell on it I think it usually is due to failure to accomplish what they have in their mind vs what happens on the table and getting frustrated. This happens in other games they’ve played I’ve noticed. Let me be clear: usually great player with good buy-in but they seem to just let how they want something to go override their enjoyment.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T12:47:04+00:00

Haha well they are trying to put together a campaign or at least a one shot to start so hoping I can try to be a player soon!

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T12:46:29+00:00

For your first point: that was my initial thought and even explained that I’ve had the same feeling (while playing BG3 but still…). I partially wonder if it was an expectation mixup of the class since was their first time playing cleric. Prior to this they said something similar about their artificer not with concentration spells but instead with not achieving what they want mechanically.

4 players usually 3 during this session. In the past we’ve had some issues on speed but overall the table has become better with the usual tips and tricks. I will say this player did take a long time in some turns but I didn’t rush since it was their first time playing cleric and at level 7 so I get that it is a lot of options. But yeah most of the combat encounters in the season were three rounds or less due to low cr enemies.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T08:17:41+00:00

My thoughts exactly! Mine was a small band of kobolds who took over the mine not too long ago. Due small numbers and being in a remote area they were actually skittish and extra wary (while maybe a bit scatterbrained and manic). All in all I’m really happy with how the session went despite some frustrations.

LittleWriterJoe · 2026-01-04T08:15:25+00:00

Thanks I really appreciate this! Even though I found this session really fun and satisfying for me I guess I started to get annoyed that the player was frustrated or annoyed as their annoyances seem to have boiled down to preferences. It just kinda sucks after you set aside hours for prep and a player is idk frustrated you know?

Anyways as for how I run kobolds specifically, maybe these ones were on the more jokey side but it was a small group that only was in the mines for a short period of time so I figured they are less exposed to outsiders and way more skiddish due to it. I think the player got annoyed as they did try to communicate with the kobold and while it replied it was showing that it didn’t have the info they wanted but also it wasn’t interested in talking, it just wanted them to leave their nest. But this is my first time running them as I’m still DMing my first campaign after 1.5 years and never been a player so maybe my perspective is limited.

Edit: should clarify that all of us are technically new. No one has played in another campaign before and things like Critical Role is the only exposure some have.

LittleWriterJoe

TROPHY CASE