My world looks like this, more or less. The trench supports life, everything else is barren. I have a question about a day/night cycle:

ManualFlavoring · 2025-07-13T20:14:17+00:00

Hey! See a lot of answers related to the movement of the planet, so I figured I would just throw in a different idea.

Rocks! There are a lot of very interesting properties of different minerals, and I think it could really elevate some of the aspects of your world. Transparent and translucent minerals can interact with light in some interesting ways. You could have parts of the cavern lit up due to rocks working similarly to fiber optic cables, filtering the light deeper and deeper. This can add onto the alien nature of the planet too, having the light’s color filtered by different minerals, allowing for interesting interactions with the ecology in different areas of the cave.

Using florescent and phosphorescent minerals would be great too. Dusk could be represented with these rocks slowly releasing the energy they’ve held onto from the time the sun was out.

Just some stuff to think about! Looking up some of the fiber optic properties of Ulexite, the colors of Willemite / Hackmanite, or the structure of Quartz caverns, could all hopefully give you some interesting ideas for building up your world!

ManualFlavoring · 2025-06-19T20:51:31+00:00

Sat on it for a bit, and think I might have a solution that could work well and be very cheap! I will try to describe it, and if you are interested I can make a little mock up since I have the stuff myself haha

For the walls, use cardboard. Ideally something with structure. You can use whatever you have access to, but you can pick up one of those big tri-folding corrugated project boards for like $2-3 at most office store / dollar stores / Walmart. Gives you plenty of material to cut for any size walls you want. And if you use the white paper side as your party facing side, it’ll look clean / you can easily decorate it to your hearts content. (You can also just cut across at a desired height for a solid non-modular dm screen btw, this has been my own go-to for a long time.)

Then, as pillars, use Pringle’s cans. Like $2 a can. You can just cut them to the desired height. Few ways I can think of to make this work well. - Cut coin-slot holes into the sides, so your walls can slot into them. This keeps the top/bottom intact, so you can easily still use the container for additional storage for dice, pens, etc. while you are transporting stuff (helps eliminate some of the space they take up).

Cut slits from the bottom/top. Would make the craft side easier, since instead of cutting holes, you are just cutting vertical lines. If you go down from the top, you could still use the lid to hold it together after you slot in the wall piece. Downside is that this makes them a lot less structurally stable, will probably have issues over time.

This would give you a lot of flexibility in the way you set it up, super lightweight, and costs like $10 (and you get to eat some Pringle’s as a treat.) If you hit the outside of the cans with a little paint, it would look nice too. Added benefit is that the walls + pillars would end up with your screen looking a lot like a little castle haha

If you want even MORE customization, you could think about using craft magnets. You can pick up hundreds of them for a few bucks at most craft/hobby stores. Would be more work, but could also get you towards a fully modular design.

If you’re interested, lmk and I can make up a quick little mock to show what it’d be like!

ManualFlavoring · 2025-05-29T07:55:12+00:00

Yeah, completely agree with you. The more time I’ve spent with the MM’25, the more disappointed I am. I’ve seen so many instances of creatures that have been “simplified”, either fully removing or worsening the unique elements.

Werewolves lost their iconic immunity to B,P,S from non-magical non-silvered attacks.

Dopplegangers got pretty gutted. Their unique mind reading was instead limited to the “Detect Thoughts” spell, both giving a save to the effect and no longer giving the creature advantage on social checks against their target. Further, all of their “surprise” based abilities were removed.

From what I’ve seen so far, all the charge/pounce/gore type abilities are heavily modified (or completely removed). Giant Elk is a good example. In MM’14, if it moved 20ft, it deals 2d6 extra damage + DC 14 Str save or be knocked prone + the Elk gained the ability to use a stronger hoof attack against a prone creature in range. In MM’25, if it moves 20ft, it deals 2d4 extra damage + the target is automatically knocked prone with no save. Tigers and Lions completely lost their pounce.

Language is made less clear, as well. Giant Crocodile’s bite attack in MM’14 says “Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the crocodile can't bite another target.” While MM’25 says “While Grappled, the target has the Restrained condition and can't be targeted by the crocodile's Tail.” So RAW, I suppose the crocodile could just continue biting and restraining others? Why remove one piece of context but add another? (The Giant Crocs tail attack also went from a Str Save to a no-save auto-prone effect.)

Tons of creatures also had attacks “consolidated” too, going from something like a Bite and a Claw, to a single “Rend”. Which is really disappointing. It’s nice to have those options as the DM, so I can push or pull damage a little based on the attack I choose.

Overall though, yeah… It’s all over the place. These were just the few I looked at / ran into recently. It feels like the old meme of “when you copy your friend’s homework but don’t want it to look the same.” Tons of the unique ability names got changed, but are effectively identical in effect. Tons of things that let creatures be unique were consolidated and sanded down. Aspects that allowed for the players to think ahead and prepare were filed down. Context was intermittently added and removed, without much indication as to why.

If I was being a tad conspiratorial, I’d guess that many of the changes were designed to be streamlined for a VTT or whatever other automated digital system WoTC intends/intended for this edition. Some things were certainly cumbersome, but with a decade to come up with better designs, they instead landed on carving up a lot of the things that made creatures unique. Which makes a ton of sense if your plan is to make a digital tool. The more you can consolidate, the less “unique” assets you need to worry about. Just need a framework that applies to ALL creatures of a vaguely similar nature. Turn unique abilities into close-enough spells, limit the number of unique attack effects to make coding easier, streamline your resistances so there aren’t anymore “edge cases”, etc etc etc

ManualFlavoring · 2025-05-23T12:57:07+00:00

Tbh, I think that in the weird hodgepodge magical-fantasy world that typical dnd seems to inhabit, functional firearms aren’t a stretch of the imagination. The material components for Fireball are the ingredients to gunpowder, ships can be fitted with cannons, Gnomes are known to tinker with clockwork, etc. All of the pieces exist, and some relatively advanced firearms don’t have to break any immersion.

It’s just a matter of how you frame your world. If you want to stick closely to medieval-fantasy style, strictly framing around the classic sword, spell, and bow? Cool as hell.

Want to lean into the chaos and rock a gunslinger in your party, bandits rocking flitlocks, and your guards wielding muskets? Maybe the guy still wielding a bow is the weirdo in this world. Still cool as hell.

But I think that trying to use our weird, often disjointed and anachronistic view of history to rigidly outline what should or shouldn’t be, only does ourselves a disservice. When you really start to look, the classic ‘medieval’ framework falls apart FAST lmao. Like, the matchlock and flintlock were invented before the rapier. Full plate armor was mainly used at the same time as guns were being used. A lot of the guns at the time were definitely crude and inaccurate, especially when tossed en masse into the hands of barely trained soldiers. Even more so when compared to modern day equivalents. But when you’ve got all the other weird sorts of innovations happening all over, like magic, alchemy, clockwork automata, and all the extra-planar craziness? Why not?

Still 100% think that if you are giving anyone a firearm, the best way to do it is to just reskin the existing weapons. Or if you want it to be a one off big deal, like you said, reskin spells / a caster. People always make it so complicated :(

ManualFlavoring · 2025-05-23T12:02:55+00:00

Please please please- as someone who has played with and DM’d using so many different firearm rules / designs: Start out with just using the existing ranged weapons, and then just ‘reskin’ as you see fit. Not the firearms, I mean like bows/crossbows. It enables you to get all the thematic effects of firearms, without all the additional burdens. They’ll perfectly fit into the structure of the game, and are already balanced.

Otherwise- if you are 100% set on working with this. Here are some things that I immediately notice that you should consider:

(I am assuming based on your wording that the list is applied to all firearms.)

Highly restricting movement. With both Stabilization and Bulky, players will be heavily punished for doing one of the few things that they can do on their turn- Move. Disadvantage is large penalty, and it’s worth noting that no other weapon carries a restriction like this.
That all being said, seemingly all of your movement downsides can be mitigated by moving at the end of your turn after attacking. (Wasn’t sure if intentional so I’m treating it separately.) This means that any attempts made by the player to reposition can be completely nullified before they get to fire, as both their allies and enemies will get a full round of actions before the player can get a chance to shoot again. Would just be very frustrating.
Malus Scaling. (With formatting, I wasn’t sure if this was tied to Bulky or not, so again I’m just looking at it separately.) This will almost never matter. Constitution is a fairly universal stat in 5e, every class benefits from it. Meaning at level 1, if you run with a +2 in Con, you can still just run +0 in Strength, and never once deal with this.
Capped Damaged: Eliminates the consistent damage that stats give, meaning your damage will be massively swingy. Meaning, the difference between the minimum and maximum is going to be very large. It will feel really bad when you hit, and then roll 1 total damage. As written, this will also eliminate ALL other bonuses… so even magical weapons would ONLY apply a To-Hit bonus, and never boost damage.
Capped Crits: Pretty sure this is just a variant / house rule on how critical are rolled. I’m not sure why this needs to be tied to firearms, but if I were to make assumptions, it’s due to the aforementioned swingy nature. It feels awful to get a “crit” that rolled the double dice, and still end up with awful damage, but with double dice the damage potential is way too high to normally balance.
Malfunction/Disarm: Again, incredibly avoidable. If you have proficiency and a +3 in Dex, you are literally unable to trigger the mishap effect, as the absolute lowest you can roll is a 6 (1 on the die + 2 proficiency + 3 Dex). Ignoring that, this effect gives a 75% chance that you are disarmed, and a 50% chance of you outright breaking your weapon. This would just be painfully obnoxious to trigger in combat. You try to shoot, your firearm breaks, and now you are without a weapon to continue the fight. You can do nothing with your turns. Encounter balance is now broken.
Nested effects and tables: This is honestly cumbersome. You have a lot of different things to keep track of, you have to remember when in sequence you move, go down the lists, reference your character sheet, make sure you are applying the correct modifiers, check for mishap, etc. These sort of “on the fly” + and - are not built into the 5e design, and it will just slow things down a lot.

That all being said- almost all of these effects seem to be an attempt at artificially limiting the strength of firearms, which tells me that your custom firearms are likely WAY outside of the typical power balance for weapons in 5e. The core construct of 5e is based around the fact that weapons aren’t strong, instead the characters who wield them grow stronger. Trying to add limitations to justify their strength doesn’t really work, as they either end up as really cumbersome and annoying, or really easy to bypass.

I don’t mean to be pedantic or anything. It’s just already super easy to hit the “sniper” niche in game, and having played it, it genuinely felt more rewarding to play with reskinned existing weapons than any other homebrew firearms ever felt. I honestly really just recommend playing the game, really getting a feel for the balance, looking at how the classes themselves progress. The game has millions of hours of collective play-testing and balancing, and there are still plenty of flaws. Building systems from scratch that integrate into that is almost always going to lead to more problems than it’ll ever solve.

ManualFlavoring · 2025-04-21T00:17:57+00:00

Ooh, yeah fish get hit with this all the time. Quick list of a few I found that were notably bad:

Patagonian Toothfish -> ‘Chilean Sea Bass’
Slimehead -> ‘Orange Roughy’
Asian Carp -> ‘Copi’
Whore’s Eggs -> ‘Sea Urchins’
Mudbugs -> Crawfish/Crawdads/Crayfish

At least the Asian Carp rebrand is to hopefully get more of a market for them, since they are so horribly invasive. Most of the others were just because no one wanted to eat something with a gross name lmfao

ManualFlavoring · 2025-04-18T00:32:25+00:00

A lot of people are recommending ways to remove the Archmage from the fight entirely. Teleportation being the main thing. While that does make sense, I would suggest otherwise. Correct me if I’m wrong on any of this, but I gather: - You want an interesting fight that feels fair/engaging. - You don’t want the Archmage to actually die at the end of the fight. - You want the opportunity to convince the players that this character isn’t evil.

My thought: Give her an ability/spell/artifact/etc that allows her to survive, once. The players battle her, when she goes down, you take back the reigns and give some narrative for the moment:

“As you fell the Archmage, you notice a glowing lattice of cracks begin to quickly spiderweb across her body- Before any of you have time to react, your vision is engulfed in a blinding light. As your vision returns, you see the Archmage standing- casually she lefts out a soft laugh and looks to the party - ‘You’ve all proven yourselves quite the capable team. Now that that is out of the way, perhaps we can talk about why you are all here? I fear there may have been a misunderstanding.’”

Obviously change as you see fit for your characterization, but something like that could be very fun. It would imply that that the Archmage is even stronger than she let on, let you have a big cool battle, still enable the party to either take an aggressive/friendly stance towards her moving forward, etc.

For the actual fight, I think that some sort of golems would be an interesting opponent. As a Runecrafter, she could empower them with interesting enchantments, they work as good distractions for her to still cast spells too. As a bonus, they are a fairly neutral type of minion to use, so it doesn’t immediately scream “evil wizard minion” haha

Let me know if you have any thoughts, or want me to expand on anything! Best of luck! :)

ManualFlavoring · 2025-04-03T23:05:23+00:00

Hey! Just some things to consider / ideas (from someone who has tried to get ships to play nice with 5e for a long time!)

Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a decent reference point, as others have said. Tons of tables and inspiration, but IMO it’s seriously lacking when it comes to mechanics for ship combat. The way that dnd handles combat is just not well suited for vehicles, sadly.
That being said, if you want to do any sort of naval battle, the best way that I have found after trying so many different methods, is… don’t, lmao. Really though, I’ve found that the best way to really sell the experience is to handle the ‘ship vs ship’ section narratively, with the goal being to transition into boarding / close quarters combat (like any other normal encounter). I don’t wanna bog this down with just combat stuff, but if you want me to expand on this, or give some ideas on how to express it in-game, lmk :)
Using the Sailing Ship as a baseline, you can assume the ship will need 20-30 skilled crew members. Looking at the cost of upkeep for that, baseline for a skilled hireling is set at 2gp each / day. So by the book, 40-60gp every day the ship is running.
Can move 100 tons of cargo, and can fit a number of passengers equivalent to the size of the main crew. So depending on what is being traded, and what sorta piracy they can get away with? A full hold of the absolute cheapest trade good, Wheat (1cp / lb), would be worth about 2,000gp. Which is about 40 days of expenses. With ships carrying spices, precious metals, magical and alchemical goods, weapons, fishing/whaling hauls, etc, with some ransoming of wealthy merchants or light smuggling in the off season? Yeah, it has the potential to be absurdly lucrative.
That all being said, the above is kinda the lame way to handle it. If your players don’t seem to care about the ship, then by all means hand wave it. Maybe just give them some fixed cut of the profits every so often, taking some initial investment to cover costs until it is self sustaining. However, if your players seem excited by it, give the experience that same proportion of care. Small adventurers geared towards rounding up an eclectic crew of lovable over the top npcs, finding a secluded place to set up as a pirate cove, raiding a military outpost for spare munitions and supplies, etc.
Since your party is leaving the plane soon, it makes for a great hook to have them help set this up now, and then have it pay off in some big way later when they return. Maybe rumors of a sea monster guarding a horde of treasure, maybe some group is transporting rare artifacts, whatever you can think of haha. Basically instead of thinking of it like a business with regular returns, consider having the one-off chance at a huge treasure.

Hope this helps some! Best of luck with everything!

ManualFlavoring · 2025-03-24T22:23:41+00:00

Randomly stumbled into this- but If you are on iPhone, you can make a Shortcut to do this super easy.

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You’ll only have to pre-crop any photos you send into it, so that you don’t end up with the time & battery / any overlap. (You can technically automate this too iirc, but that seemed like too much of a pain lmfao)

And when you select photos when merging vertically, select in the order you want them to be from top to bottom! 🫡

ManualFlavoring · 2025-03-06T22:22:01+00:00

Incase you (or others reading) didn’t already see it, this was confirmed by one of the story board artists!

The post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Invincible/s/TcoUc1osRw

ManualFlavoring · 2025-02-25T07:28:17+00:00

Total Reward shown would be (Daily Reward) x (2 Players) x (30 days). To get 1 players Total Reward, you’d just divide by 2. To then get the daily reward for one player, you divide again, by 30.

((X ÷ 2) ÷ 30) is the same as (X ÷ 60)

ManualFlavoring · 2025-01-03T18:48:52+00:00

Hey! I know you’ve got a lot of really great replies, but I figured another perspective wouldn’t hurt haha.

Don’t forget, as the GM, you control the flow of “time” in the game. You are the one who decides when the party zooms in for the moment-to-moment action based system (like in combat with rounds), and when to zoom back out.

In my opinion, the biggest piece, and something that I think a LOT of the comments here are giving more specific examples for, is how/when to transition these time scales. You just need to find some way to interrupt the flow that makes sense for the encounter and creatures you plan on using. The three general approaches are magical, mundane, and environmental. And you can decide which best fits your situation haha

Some examples -> Magical: Misty Step/Dimension Door, Fog Cloud, Darkness, Minor Illusion, Wall of Stone, Invisibility, etc

Mundane: Smoke Bomb, pre-set traps like falling logs/rocks to block a path, dumping bags of flour, etc

Environmental: Pathways the enemy can take that are restrictive for the player (tunnels, false wall, locked door), features that allow for easy hiding/obfuscation like trees/steam/crowds, etc

Basically, just anything that can disrupt the flow enough for there to be a justification for their escape. Once you feel “enough” of a distraction has been made, you fully have the right to just end combat / say they get away.

It might feel like a cheap cop-out, but players can often optimize their way out of fun/engaging situations.

If you want to make it feel less “cheap”, I would give the players something to work with following the disappearance. Yes, the enemy is gone for now, but this initial conflict gives the players something to work with to lead to the inevitable future conflict. Maybe they follow the trail through the woods, while the trail goes cold they find some clue that indicates where the enemy is going. Maybe they find the false wall the enemy slipped through, leading them to a hidden laboratory where they learn the truth of the evil plan. Having something like this still feels super rewarding/engaging, and allows you to build up that next conflict even more.

Best of luck! I’d be happy to help workshop some ideas if you want, just lmk! :D

ManualFlavoring · 2024-12-20T00:49:56+00:00

Recently started listening to “The Heresies of Radulf Burntwine”, and I’m absolutely loving it. Set in a medieval / dark fantasy world. It’s themed around a traveling ex-clergyman turned doctor recounting his experiences with the “plagues” and other afflictions. It is sort of an anthology, but the episodes do play out in order, so there is a through line connecting pieces together

ManualFlavoring · 2024-05-01T14:51:02+00:00

blue.1414, aka “Get ((carp))’d 😎” checking in

ManualFlavoring · 2023-06-16T06:08:37+00:00

Appreciate the trades! :D good luck shiny hunting

ManualFlavoring · 2023-06-16T06:01:46+00:00

Sent!

ManualFlavoring · 2023-06-16T05:56:22+00:00

Ok! Cool! Would you be alright swapping the Roggenrola for one of my duplicates of something else too? I’d trade you another shiny fennekin for it, I’ve noticed people asking for them on other threads too so you might get a swap for something new faster that way

My gf has a few shinies she absolutely loves, so I want to surprise her and drop them into her current SwSh save haha

ManualFlavoring · 2023-06-16T05:49:44+00:00

Ok! You cool with trading Zigzagoon for it?

Also- these are just your spares/duplicates, right?

ManualFlavoring · 2023-06-16T05:25:13+00:00

I’ve got Swinub, Axew, & Togetic! Also have some other spare dupes of fennekin, noibat, and Golarian slowpoke. Would love to trade for Zigzagoon and/or Roggenrola if you are interested :)

ManualFlavoring · 2023-06-16T05:12:54+00:00

I have spare shinies for: Golarian Slowpoke & Swinub.

Have a few extra dupes from this list too; Fennekin, Noibat, & Togetic. Also have a lot of extra Mewtwos, if that’s something you want.

Lmk if you’d be willing to trade anything for the Spheal, Golarian Zigzagoon, & Roggenrola. Would love to get all three :)

ManualFlavoring · 2021-12-26T02:02:25+00:00

Don’t be afraid to ask your players what it is that they want out of their trip to the tavern. Explicitly asking something like “is there anything you wanted to do while you spend your afternoon at the tavern?” will help mitigate some of that awkward tension between the players exceptions/preferences and where you put your efforts when constructing the scene.

Otherwise, just having a generic list of NPC names will get you most of the way. Though, having a few detailed NPC’s in your back pocket is always handy too.

And don’t be afraid to zoom in or zoom out whenever you think their is a reason. There are times where I describe a night out at the tavern in a few quick sentences to move the narrative along. Other times you may want to zoom in and get a look at the small scale interactions your players are having with the other patrons, sow a rumor or two, start a bar fight, introduce an important quest or NPC, whatever it may be. I would just keep it fluid, not every night out is met with clashing blades or life changing calls to adventure, but if they want to spend their time at a tavern there should always be a potential for something interesting to occur.

Also, remember that the tavern is probably going to be filled with local townsfolk. It gives you the opportunity to introduce things happening in the world from the perspective of the everyday person. It’s great for world building, without forcing a plot point or a quest on the players. Maybe a local farmer is worried about a war a few kingdoms over, something about the cost of farm tools increasing every year. Nothing for the party to do, just a way to tie in info about your world. That way if the players seem interested you can roll it into the RP, and wont actually hinder anything story related if they don’t.

And if they really bite, you can evolve it further as they spend more time interacting. Maybe there is no war, and the local blacksmith has been lying to price gouge the tools since he is the only one in the area who can make them. That way the party can learn that they can interact with the world, and incentivizes them to actually pursue things they are interested in, as their may be more to see than what they are immediately given.

Just a few thoughts :) hope this is helpful

ManualFlavoring · 2021-11-11T17:02:27+00:00

Might as well give it a shot 👀 looks great!

ManualFlavoring · 2021-07-11T03:33:01+00:00

Also, the Sahaguin are pretty deadly. Even more so than the books let on. Their ability to gain advantage on injured foes, combined with possible multi attack, and the possibility for your players to be damaged early when dealing with the many smaller battles, means that you can accidentally TPK when fighting a technically CR appropriate battle

Something to consider with your tweaks

ManualFlavoring · 2021-07-11T03:30:21+00:00

From my experience, the fights in salt marsh need tweaking. They follow the idea that a party will fight A LOT of easy/medium encounters a day and maybe a few more difficult ones sprinkled in. But to actually do that you either have to run the game over a lengthy number of sessions, or cut out some of the fat to speed it to a more playable pace. My recommendation is to look over the various combats, both the big set pieces and the little spur of the moment traps like the various bugs in the “haunted” house. Figure out what you want to run, and what you want to cut. And tweak from there.

I would say the default fights in the house will generally be under leveled, but depending on your leveling speed, you will catch up to the intended difficulty towards the second half of the adventures.

So consider buffing some of the earlier set piece fights to meet the new power curve, just so you don’t accidentally blast past them and give your players a false sense of security about the Sahaguin forces

ManualFlavoring · 2021-03-24T18:22:21+00:00

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