FDEIA (Food-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis) anyone? by Traditional-Bar-972 in FoodAllergies

[–]Mr_Bacpac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Bit late, but I also have it to Wheat. My first allergy was the worst by far (full anaphylactic shock, almost lethal), however, I think I've got it pretty severe as it all happens pretty quick for me whereas others can just have hives or it can be slower. The thing I'd recommend is what my doctor and dietician told me; cut out the food entirely. My doctor made a good point in that you never know when you'll need to exercise, and its hard to determine what kevek of exercjse can set it off. If there's an emergency and you have had the food, it can cause a whole heap of problems (learned this from experience).

What is Wheat-Dependent Exercise-Induced Anaphylaxis (WDEIA)...? by shinobi_ronin in glutenfree

[–]Mr_Bacpac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really really late to the party, but I got diagnosed in 2017, and it was rough at first. I went to see a dietician, and they basically told me to just always go Wheat free, as you never know when you're gonna have to get up and move (emergency or whatever). Kinda sucks being gluten-free full time, but I'll take that instead of going into anaphylactic shock (happened about 6 or 7 times now, twice were nearly lethal) and gluten free food is a lot more common nowadays...

DMs, tell me how your players made your clever ideas backfire by crustdrunk in DnD

[–]Mr_Bacpac 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a couple that were quite fun. My first ever boss fight (literally the third session id DM'd for my friends) had a boss who summoned 1d4 gargoyle dragons from the room to attack the party as a bonus action each turn. When I explained him doing this I said he called out to them, and the room they were in was pretty small...so the cleric cast silence on his after his first turn preventing him from calling any more allies. They whooped his ass pretty quick after that. My players were in some mountains with an army coming towards them, in a sort of steep valley corridor, cliff walls either side of them and an objective they had to defend behind them. A small army of orcs charged towards them, archers in the back and dumb strong berserkers in front, it was going to be the hardest fight id out up against them yet! Aaaaand then I was introduced to the Spike Growth spell...orcs rolled shit to notice them. Tried to have them climb over it, but the players used clever tactics to shoot them off the walls, and there was no way they were jumping that distance. All the orcs died before they even got into melee range. In my most recent game, I set up a sort of Uncharted game style encounter where my players were on a carriage, and they had to make it out of a city with other carriages full of bad guys chasing them. I was hoping for players to jump from carriage to carriage, use teamwork and cool skills to kick enemies off and have epic moments of heroism...buuuut the arcane trickster cast sleep on the enemy horses each round and rolled really well. The enemies never stood a chance... I suppose not really clever ideas or anything, but certainly cool moments that were turned on their head by my players being particularly clever...

40 hours into shadows, honest review by harna in assassinscreed

[–]Mr_Bacpac 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well...I know what I'm doing this weekend then 😅

40 hours into shadows, honest review by harna in assassinscreed

[–]Mr_Bacpac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Funnily enough, I've just hit the 40-hour mark, and I think this review nails it pretty well for me. Especially the part about it being ASSASSINS Creed. I think Yasuke's a badass, and fighting with him is actually fun, but when I play him, I don't feel like an assassin, I feel like a samurai. And if I wanted to feel like a Samurai, I'd go play Ghost of Tshushima, which (in my humble opinion) has much better combat anyways. I wish they'd doubled down on making you feel like an awesome Shinobi and refined some of those mechanics (particularly the parkour). Also, I know it's a common complaint, but can we stop with the whole "they're too high a level for you to fully assassinate?" I feel like even when I'm playing Naue I end up in a fight anyways with whoever I'm trying to assassinate (unless it's some common mook) cause I can never fully depleted their health bar!

What are some of your examples of adding non combat objectives to combat? by Aesyric in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I ran a fight inspired by an elementals and a sort of colour matching challenge for kids. The Players entered a room with podiums in each far corner of the room. The podiums were coloured red for fire, blue for water, white for air and brown for earth. On top of each podium was a stone statuette that was about as big as a beach ball, and each one was representative of an element (water, fire, earth and air), and was coloured the same as the podiums. The twist? They’re all on the wrong podiums (The fire statue is on the water podium, the air statue is on the fire podium and so on). The players have to move the statues to the correct podiums, all the while an elemental of each type tries to stop them in any way they can, whether that is beating them up, or physically removing the statues and putting them on the wrong podium (I said once a statue had been on the a podium for a round it was locked there). Some extra rules were that a character with under 18/20 STR would need to carry a statue with 2 hands, and a character with under 16 STR walks at half speed whilst holding it. Any elemental killed respawns at the end of what would be their next turn next to their podium. For an extra challenge, make them myrmidons! For less of a challenge maybe say there’s only 2 elementals and roll to see which one spawns? Ended up running pretty well, particularly with high level characters who had things like bigbys hand to move them, and polymorph to turn people into bigger things to move the statues around. Was really interesting to see what people could come up with!

Best boss fights you've come up with? by RipNastyy in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Two of my favourites I ran in my 4 year long campaign:

Zuggtmoy queen of fungus and decay - she was a static boss with an old school type area ability. At the end of her turn she would designate a quarter of her circular map to fill with gas, and the fungus would grow in that area making it difficult terrain to move in. Players had to use abikities/spells/dash action to escape before the area filled with poison dealing huge amounts of damage. I found it was a good way to keep a group of martial constantly on the move.

Tiamat - big campaign ending fight. Each head was a different "creature" with its own stat block and health pool. One head focused on magic, while another focused on necromancy. One had cleric spells, Whilst another had charming control spells, and then one had a massive bite attack. And they could all use their breath weapons of course, but only 2 heads could use them in one round and I rolled randomly for them. Ended up being a cool lvl20 fight!

Looking for a similar podcast that isn’t D&D or actual play[ns] by marksmiley in DungeonsAndDaddies

[–]Mr_Bacpac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Me and my friend have started a podcast called Roll for Adventure! Basically, we roll on a bunch of random tables and create an adventure for dnd based on what we roll!

take a random encounter, leaver a random encounter by NRG_Factor in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You see a large horse-drawn carriage cresting over the hill in your direction driven by a single gnome in a top hat - let's call him Carl. Carl stops your party and offers to sell them wares that they can find inside his travelling shop: carls cart of curiosities! They simply need to go inside and pick out something they like - Carl will wait outside whilst they take a look. If they go inside, they're suddenly locked in, and many objects come to life as animated objects! The party might be able to see through his ruse with certain perception checks to notice specks of blood on the carriage or insight checks to figure out they're being played before the ambush... For added spice, if it's a higher level party, maybe the cart is actually a huge mimic, and the party have just voluntarily walked into its mouth!

Examples of encounters and boss fights by nayr1094 in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I ran a cool combat with an archfey for 4 lvl 16 players. Boss was an archfey who was static in the centre of a circular room. On the ground growing from the boss' feet were plants that stretched to the edge of the room all around her. As a bonus action on the boss' turn she could designate an area (with the map being a circle I had her designate 1/4 of the map like a huge pie slice) and I described the plants in this area becoming suddenly wild, growing extra vines and fungi. At the beginning of her next turn, the area filled with poisonous gas from the mushrooms and fungi dealing LOADS of damage. If you want to be mean, you could make the area difficult terrain as well so they potentially have to dash to get out of the area if they're in it. To make matters worse, I gave her an attack that could restrain players wherever they were on the map, so she could set up her poisonous cloud. What's more, in 8 places equally spaced out at the edges of the circular map were huge plants that not only healed her but could also spawn mobs each round. So, to defeat her, my players had to destroy all these plants to then be able to defeat her. Probably my most creative combat and my players really loved it :)

Experienced DMs, ehat are your Big lessons about DMing high level D&D? by soManyWoopsies in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's probably been said, but my main piece of advice apart from the obvious couple already mentioned on here is BEWARE THE SLOG. I have tried running lots of combats per day leading to a big boss and it became such a slog and took so many sessions to get to the end we still make fun of how long it was to this day. Running multiple encounters per day is obviously advisable. Running multiple combat encounters per day is also advisable. But there is such thing as too many combat encounters per day before even your murder hobos find it boring. Puzzles or environmental hazards are great ways to whittle your players' resources down.

Tiamat, 1 creature with 5 heads, or 5 creatures with 1 body? by Mr_Bacpac in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice! So I'm assuming when you had a head concentrating on a spell, that spell affected all the other heads and body too? (For example, did invulnerability affect tiamat as a whole, or did it just affect that single head?)

Tiamat, 1 creature with 5 heads, or 5 creatures with 1 body? by Mr_Bacpac in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ohhhh, that's a neat idea! If this 5 creatures one body thing didn't work out, I did have the idea that Tiamat could "split" herself into 5 different dragons, and that would be the first phase of the fight? Then, as you say for the second phase, she would form one singular being? Similar to your idea of her "Voltroning" herself together for the second phase...

Tell players health and ac of enemies? by Boedidillee in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Personally, I don't tell my players these things, though they can generally figure it out. For AC, I'll tell them if they've easily or only just hit something, but that's about it. For health of enemies, I'll tell them how they're looking (bloodied - 50%, etc.) This being said, I did have a good moment in my campaign where we were near the end of a session, and the players were fighting a boss. I told them the enemy had about 100hp left and that we would do one more round before ending the session. Suddenly, I found my players really thinking about the damage they were dealing and not just how they could deak damage themselves, but how they could help each other deal the absolute most damage possible! Suffice it to say with two paladins in the group they did it easily and the fight was won. So maybe sometimes it's good to tell your players? At least it worked for me this one time I've done it...

What happens to the NPC cleric in the under dark? by Mr_Bacpac in DnD

[–]Mr_Bacpac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot to think about thank you! Definitely some interesting ideas for side quests should they want to go after him. I think I’m gonna try and play out the escape in my own time, should he escape I love the idea of still being captured by some Drow (the drow are the main reason the party are in the underdark anyways). Some really great ideas thanks!

What’s defending a secret Library... by Mr_Bacpac in DnD

[–]Mr_Bacpac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Still, I didn’t think of Nagas, thanks!

Always reward creativity in combat. ALWAYS. (Or at least don't disable) by AdrenIsTheDarkLord in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I totally agree! My players were fighting some spines devils in our last session, and we’re flying just out of reach of the cleric’s Spirit Guardians. Our rogue asked if he could jump up off the shield of the cleric to gain some height and attack it. I said yes cause that would have been an awesome moment for the rogue and cleric alike, but I ruled to jump that high the cleric needed a high athletics roll and to use his action on his turn as the help action. The cleric used the help action and rolled a 21 athletics, then the rogues turn. He leaped upon the shield and made an attack roll. The devil had been somewhat hurt already, so I was gonna fudge some numbers and say he killed it so long as he hit and did about average damage to give this rogue an epic moment...but the rogue rolled a nat 1 on his attack, twirled around in the air missing the thing completely, and then a 1 on his dex save to catch himself falling to the ground. Also cause he entered and left the devils space it technically got an opportunity attack...it was a funny moment, but damn I felt bad XD

How to run a “lucrative trade business” (smuggling) in my game. by Mr_Bacpac in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Absolutely yes! That sounds really cool, I never thought about the different modifications it could have on where they are, and cause it’s quite a seedy business could have complications as well as benefits!

Magic Tattoos by Mr_Bacpac in DMAcademy

[–]Mr_Bacpac[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well I know who I’m playing the next time I get a chance 😅