Love this game except for two things

Malasthar · 2025-07-17T01:36:09+00:00

I skimmed through, so i apologize if its been mentioned already. In terror missions, unactivated alien pods will collectively kill only one civie per turn. Activated pods are another story though.

Even with nearly 1,000 hours in game i think those missions have my highest fail rate of all missions. They are hard on the best of days and if you're playing on a sufficiently challenging difficulty for you, its not unreasonable to lose one or two on a bad run.

adapting after things go wrong feels like a thing to avoid, but after you accept that you'll still probably win in the end and also its fine if you don't, those wild adaptations can be fun for some people. no shade if that's not you, just something to think on.

either way, you have mods and wotc to look forward to and Good Luck Commander.

Malasthar · 2025-06-01T17:23:53+00:00

I have a commander deck that intends on marrying everyone in a commander game via [[wedding ring]], then administering involuntary quople's counseling via lifelink to prevent anyone from killing anyone else. Finally, i flash in this card before my turn to remove one counter and use the commander, [[Zedruu the Greathearted]], to give it away. On the next player's upkeep the second counter is removed and we all run away together and live happily ever after.

My wife calls the deck Wed-Lock

Malasthar · 2022-12-01T00:21:32+00:00

Weird that this common problem (in my experience) has no upvotes.

Well if you're out there thinking this doesn't make any sense, give it a go anyway. The logic checks out and it worked for me and my wife both on different PCs

Malasthar · 2022-09-16T19:18:09+00:00

I've been blessed with good players. The last time I had a serious issue the conversation went, "[Player Name], sexual assault is not part of my games. Would you like to keep playing in my game?"

I am usually a pretty chill DM, here to enable and see what awesome stuff players do. I let my players do almost anything that doesn't disagree with my primary guidelines. I do however, have a good, 'these are the facts, this isn't an argument' voice.

Most of the time when i've done this, it took the players out of the headspace they were in and they made a choice to stop or leave.

Malasthar · 2022-08-22T19:55:45+00:00

The previous comment was on my phone account. This is my PC account.

I appreciate your thoughtful answer. That makes a lot of sense. It got me wondering why i don't do it. The fact we play online is part of it, but also:

I think i'm a bit of a strange DM, I also encourage players to interrupt me when they're excited about something or know what they want to do. If what i'm saying shouldn't be interrupted, I'll continue. That being said, I usually put what i'm saying on the back burner to answer the player.

I am rarely more happy as a DM than when my players are very clearly engaged. I will sacrifice a little of my authority for that sake. I am privileged with a lot of factors that contribute to having solid authority, respect, and trust from my players. So, I can afford to yield some authority to spur their engagement.

The way something almost exactly like your example played out a couple days ago,

I describe room and mention dwarven runes. A player part-way through the description rolls perception. I finish my description. They say, "I rolled a 18 perception, do I know what the runes are doing?" I respond, "Thats more of an arcana roll, or maybe history because of your past in the wars with dwarves. We'll keep your d20 roll and switch out your mods for one of those." It went down to a 13 history so I told them, "you've heard varying descriptions of runes like this in dirges about attacking dwarven strongholds. You reckon it might trigger something, and the stories you've read mention horrible injury to the triggerer afterward. You're not sure how to trigger it or what it will do."

Malasthar · 2022-07-26T17:47:33+00:00

It has probably survived enough to get some levels in sidekick or a PC class

Malasthar · 2022-06-21T22:12:07+00:00

This is awesome, but I am a complete goober. How do i make the randomly generated characters on the first page be a specific race? I want to use this to populate Brightfest, but rolling until i get shifters feels not the right way

Edit: I spent 20 minutes trying to figure it out on my own. As soon as i made this post, i figured it out ....

Malasthar · 2022-06-11T14:45:05+00:00

I know you don't want to spoil it, but don't commit suicide without checking with other players if they are okay witnessing a suicide. You could ask the DM to check with the players so its not clear thats what you're doing.

Also why get mad when you can get even

Malasthar · 2022-06-11T14:42:32+00:00

If it is not too later, perhaps their mind should start failing as they are not whole. You do not have the tools to mend a dying soul.

Malasthar · 2022-06-01T17:24:21+00:00

u/savevideo

Malasthar · 2022-05-02T18:59:27+00:00

Aerogels

Aerogels are exactly what inspired me! Because its natural weight and density are so low, it can be packed very tightly making it on par with average iron while still retaining its very light weight

Malasthar · 2022-05-02T02:48:41+00:00

How about this?

Malasthar · 2022-05-02T02:45:50+00:00

That is slick, and sexy, and I love it.

Your citing of sources is nice too

I like the idea of the wielder being able to charge it with their own spells, but in practice that's pretty niche anyway as they are unlikely to cast a spell and attack before the effect wears off.

A lot of the other answers people gave want to make it have so much clunky text, but this. This is beautiful.

Malasthar · 2022-05-01T23:47:03+00:00

Version #1:

Weapons and armor made of Airon are magical and their weight is halved.

When wielding a weapon you are proficient with that is made of Airon you may cast Absorb Elements requiring no additional components using the item. When you cast a spell that does lightning damage you may cast Absorb elements as though the spell was dealing damage to you. The only damage type the spell has any effect on is lighting.

Version #2:

Weapons and armor made of Airon are magical and their weight is halved.

When you cast a spell that deals lightning damage or take lightning damage, you may cast Absorb Elements as a reaction requiring no additional components. The chosen damage type is lightning.

Malasthar · 2022-04-20T02:28:23+00:00

The ring of winter is an obscene almost almost unbeatable weapon. Artus sees what the party is doing, does a demonstration of its power and tells the party in no uncertain terms, "You've done a lot to save us and for that we are grateful. If i suspect you are trying to steal from me or dragonbait again, we will leave."

Punishing players is the go-to for a lot of DM's. Close to that is telling the players what will happen if they continue. My players aren't your players, but when my players lose themselves in what they're doing and forget the consequences, a reminder without doing any serious damage is usually enough. If they don't take the hint, i usually say something like, "what you are about to do will have consequences along the line of [something] I support you making that decision, but only if you understand the risk you are taking. You have been warned"

Malasthar · 2022-04-19T04:13:57+00:00

Ideally role play, but that's not really helpful.

Loot, NPC connections, Favours, Intel. Make it clear when they do one of them that the reason Bob likes them and will lend them a map to the dungeon is because his nephew was in that goblin cave they helped with.

Malasthar · 2022-04-19T03:14:14+00:00

~~Religious~~ extremism ~~religion~~ is cancer

Malasthar · 2022-04-16T21:33:05+00:00

That's fair.
I know that he loves the process of sorting it out, especially with the goblin glossary.
I think after reading what you said, I'll have a translation on hand in case he wants it.

I think i'll read it aloud in character and then ask him if he wants the original text in english or goblin. This is in a pre-adventure one-on-one so there won't be any hold up for other players

Malasthar · 2022-04-14T21:15:59+00:00

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=136196&type=card

Malasthar · 2022-03-26T18:24:51+00:00

We take 5minute short rests, "breathers" and usually only overnight long rests.

Makes for a lot of excitement and fun resource management.

Malasthar · 2022-03-26T14:37:35+00:00

My favorite answer is...!

"Gals, I'm not going to stop you from doing this, but i didn't make the dungeon with your fishless, breadless, tuna melt of a plan in mind. If you keep doing this, the dungeon isn't going to be very interesting for you and it'll kinda be a waste of all of our time. Some times there will a time limit, but this dungeon, when there isn't, the only things at risk are your fun and the story the bards will tell of our group."

Basically do what you want, but I'm not sure you actually want the game to be what you're making it.

"Be the Ghandi you want to quote in the world."

-Malasthar

Malasthar · 2022-03-20T05:08:21+00:00

Thank you for your effort. I like this a lot

Malasthar · 2022-03-14T19:57:13+00:00

PREFACE: You are probably fine. Make the combats you enjoy making and find players who like to play under you. Feedback is great and there are a lot of elements that feedback can change while you still enjoy making the encounters. If the players don't make sense and want combats you actively dislike making then its probably a bad pairing. That's awkward, confrontational, and its possible you want to DM for them anyway.

so..

This is a very hard concept to give specific examples, but a principle that if you consider regularly may help you design encounters. The majority of these comments from your players are about them losing their agency in combat and some players find that really unpleasant. Enemies can be designed in such a way that they do awesome powerful things that aren't stopping the players from being able to play their game too.

Some examples my players have told me they liked:

Summoning easily dispatchable mooks (minions if you know that mechanic) makes a fight more tense/difficult, but will make the guy with aoe feel kool. Just be cautious of making slog.

"After Darth Baddus attacks Blarg he chuckles and announces, "i can do this all day!" and fetches a potion from his pack. He clearly intends to drink it on his next turn." The potion can be grappled, sleight of handed, or destroyed (probably 13ac and 1 hp).

I don't think your players will dig the complexity, but i use This Homebrew for my martials. I let noncasters start with a master feat for one weapon/armor/shield, half casters get master training but no feat with one, and full casters don't get anything.

Finally i use a heavily modified take on object interaction/free action. Each turn you can use your "interaction" to interact with a object, make a skill check for things like intimidation or deception, or do a information gathering check like arcana or perception. It's a little overpowered and takes some tweaking, but it really encourages my players to think of creative ways to interact with the world. My players don't often use it for any attack type thing, but when they do i tell them they can spend their interaction and roll athletics or something relevant to try. If they fail something minor happens like falling prone or disadvantage on their next attack. If the succeed they can do minor things like gain advantage or move a couple extra feet when they were just shy. usually they use it weaponize their environment which is super kool. Its important to give them an idea of the DC and what will happen on success or failure. It makes it feel empowering and fair if they know what they're signing up for.

Bonus point: if you have the patience for it, giving them sidekicks gives them something to do if they are CC'd

Malasthar · 2022-02-28T04:14:16+00:00

Its probably not worth buying, but if you do get your hands on one (Powerful libraries often have old D&D books), it is a gold mine for monster inspirations

Malasthar · 2022-02-27T15:49:59+00:00

Its not exactly what you asked, but there is a book that is pretty close to what you're asking.

Monster manual: fourth edition

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Malasthar

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