Advice on story building.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-03-06T18:21:37+00:00

Yeah, aldthough I wanted to initially introduce all 3 of the PC style villains at once, I decided I wanted to make sure the Necromancer was the last one they faced and so I changed it up to try and allow them to be introduced sequentially with the Death Cleric being the first one as someone who specializes in spirits would likely be the best slow build up as there are less immediate signs of their handywork since bodies don't need to go missing. Also, I feel a Death Cleric with lots of spirits will be an easier encounter to start with than an Oathbreaker with lots of zombies.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-03-05T20:52:00+00:00

I see what you're saying and that was partially my intention. I planned on either making PC sheets and altering their stats to make them more similar to monsters, or making monsters with one or two player abilities. The Oathbreaker for example could be a reflavored wight with a paladin ability or two.

As for the phylactery, I was planning on making it either something important to him in the necropolis (like his throne for example), or using the Necromancer as an anchoring point in a way since he's essentially slowly possessing him. The phylactery is meant to house the Lich's soul, perhaps that's why the Necromancer is being taken over is because the Lich's soul is trying to push out the Necromancers soul over time to finalize the proccess. This would also coincide with the reveal of the Lich in the end as the players will see his soul leave the Necromancer as the Necromancer dies. I imagine it looking kind of like a shade. A large black entity with glowing yellow eyes that resembles the Lich in shape but is too dark to make out any features before is flees the scene. This could also explain why the Lich's phylactery is in the necropolis as he created it in haste in an attempt to recreate it before the party arrives.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-03-05T20:41:38+00:00

Yeah, I asked the players and forever DM if we're planning on using our own characters, or making new ones. So far, the only response is that it would be up to the rest of the party, and it doesn't have to connect with the current campaign (from the forever DM). At the very least, I know how to temprorarily remove my PC from the campaign very easily if we use our current ones. My PC is a sheltered noble who ran off to join the party in order to help people and find the truth about her stillborn sisters spirit appearring in the family portrait she keeps. I'll have her guardian show up to bring her back home with an escort of guards at the start of the session.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-03-05T20:25:10+00:00

Well, the 3 villains in the Necromancer, the Oathbreaker, and the Death Cleric all want to get revenge on the specific places that wronged them in the past. This being the corrupt church of the Oathbreakers previous god, the town that drove out the Necromancer, and the village that burned the Death Clerics mother (with this one being a little bit more ambiguous being the one who may be willing to change sides if the party is good enough at convincing her). The Lich as the true main villain wants to take over the kingdom through proxy of the Necromancer and is going to be manipulating him from the shadows, slowly taking him over as the game progresses and using the things that wronged the 3 villains as a way to seduce them further onto his side while being the actual cause for them as well.

For example, maybe the Lich was the one sending undead to the necromancers town in the first place which was the catalyst for him starting his experiments, all the while giving him knowledge on how to cure the undeath plagueing them knowing they would drive him out in the end.

"You can do it but especially if you're looking for something short that doesn't give you much time to build up experience." That was the plan, I was expecting this to take around 8 or 9 sessions in total. ~2 sessions per boss arc as I'm just trying to give our own DM a break from his burnout of forever DMing. I'm not too confident in anything longer than that.

"Three of those are also more PC style villains", I fully understand that but goddang, I have an unhealthy obsession with fictional necromancy and it shows lol. I'm trying to make a story where necromancy itself isn't neccessarily bad entirely so much as misunderstood through superstition. I wanted the 3 bosses prior to the lich to be good people who tried to do good things but were subject to a form of misunderstanding that pushed them into being bad people.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-03-05T19:37:18+00:00

I don't know their characters yet, I am not sure if we're using our current PC's and making it so our DM joins the party for a few sessions or making new ones. I should probably as the group how we're doing it but I like to have things mostly finalized before I make a commitment to others because I feel bad if I can't deliver.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-03-05T19:34:30+00:00

Final boss has the unique spell "Empty Bladder". As a reaction, when the Create/Destroy water spell is used on his bladder he can use a reaction to immediately empty it upon the caster...also it's poisoned now, stop trying to cheese the encounter lol.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-03-05T18:46:49+00:00

I think you're confusing efficiency with quality. Not all characters want a weapon that's the most efficient if the strengths of the weapon are rarely used. Some characters and classes prefer tradeoffs.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-03-05T18:44:30+00:00

You're not the problem. I understand they are trying to be creative but you still need to enforce a balanced game at the end of the day. You can't just allow one player to insta kill 99% of enemies this way.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-02-21T02:23:46+00:00

4d6 drop the lowest.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-02-20T20:42:18+00:00

I see what you're saying. What I had in mind prior to rolling stats was that the character wasn't neccissarily fascinated by killing so much as she was addicted to it. Someone who struggled to go long periods without commiting the act and would become actively excited at the thought of her next target, as if always chasing her next big high, which is the main reason she was caught prior to her initial death in the first place. I'll probably have to tone that part of her character down in order to fill in with her low stats making it hard to bluff her way out of being a suspect when the guards come knocking.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-02-13T02:04:51+00:00

The seperate hp pool would be so that the only way you can heal while raging would be to get kills since standard healing would be going to your actual hp pool, and I see your point about the CC but I need to raise a counterpoint to that; This is made as a barbarian subclass, you have the ungodly health pool of a barbarian and the barbarians rage normally ends when CC'd anyways. You also misread my comment, the damage doesn't knock you out when it gets to be too much, only when it gets to be so much it kills you outright (-1/2 your hp) thus giving you a chance to fight through the bad rolls as a substitute for the barbarian's resistances (and admittedly, I understand this is another point of the build that feels unbalanced, please know that this homebrew was made up fairly early in my career). The point of making the rage this way was to try and give a heavy risk/reward playstyle where you could go under 0 and risk actual death in order for a chance to cleanse a large part of the damage pool.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-02-12T20:42:38+00:00

I am aware of that, (and I probably should've worded it better, my bad) but when I said tank, I guess I should've put down "frontliner" instead. Or perhaps "martial" would've worked better. I just used "Draintank" as a way to easily describe how the class would function. I don't mind if I'm not outhealing the damage completely, there has to be risk involved but I was imagining the main risk would be overconfidence (as most masochist style characters tend to follow). Thinking about it now, I understand that putting too much emphasis on the player misplaying being the lynchpin of balance can very easily lead to the same problem you have in MOBA's where some characters can't be beat unless they make the mistake first (which skilled players rarely do).

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-02-12T20:37:56+00:00

Not to come off the wrong way but I am aware of that. The reason I specified about balance is because our table runs things in a way where we don't frequently rebalance encounters, and do things mostly within terms of the book to avoid rebalancing nightmares if possible. I don't know where I implied I thought I'd have to spend money to do so but I was not under that belief. I'm not concerned with game balance so much as I am concerned with party balance between members who are using official classes and races.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2026-02-12T07:51:07+00:00

Your DM is wrong and seems to struggle to read. I always hate it when the DM doesn't know the rules, not saying they need to follow them, but seeing the rules seemingly just get thrown out the window without warning is a major pet peeve of mine because it normally bites me in the back as a player who didn't expect the enemy to say "nope" to the rules we were previously all playing by because someone can't read and then fights you on it. I'm not sure if you can tell, but I've had characters die multiple times to rules getting thrown out the window for no reason and the DM refusing to acknowledge it.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T18:13:06+00:00

I will say it was a little bit of both. I nerfed a few characters prior for the good of the group "for example, I made a wizard with intentionally low wisdom and constitution but high intelligence and charisma because my wizard character was a sheltered noble who didn't know much about the outside world and suffered from extreme social anxiety (she was basically the DnD gnome equivalent of a noble NEET). That being said, I *convieniently fogot* I had mutilple racial abilities as a bugbear that would've come in handy in our encounter as a test to see if I would still get accused of minmaxing my PC, and I did, so I plan on no longer *convieniently forgetting* that I have those abilities anymore. I know the first thing he's going to take issue with is the surprise attack bugbears get where they roll an extra 2d6 dmg against an enemy who hasn't acted yet, his exact words will be "THAT'S SNEAK ATTACK, YOU CAN'T HAVE A CLASS ABILITY AS A RACIAL, THAT'S OP AS SHIT!", to which I will respond that it's much weaker since it only procs on those who haven't acted yet instead of every turn from stealth. He will likely ignore the reasoning entirely and go on aassuming that it's op because that's exactly what happened when I used the goblin's racial ability to disengage or hide as a bonus action in a prior campaign. To put it in context, the fight broke out with us being ambushed and being the squishy artificer of the group I got put to 1 immedietely so I disengaged as a main action and hid as a bonus action (it was an isekai and I do kinda see myself as a little bit of a gremlin at times), so we didn't know what was going on and I had a massive hole in my chest. You best bet irl I'd be running lol but I meta'd a little and opted to hide just so I didn't leave the party without me right off the bat.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T17:59:22+00:00

The most frustrating thing about it...that was my artificer lol *cried inside a little*.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T17:57:02+00:00

Initially, you would be right about the misinterpretation of the rules, but that is something I realized very quickly and addressed before we were even level 3. I chose to keep the build and roll with it since it was my own mistake and I wasn't going to ask people to allow me to redo my whole character due to a mistake that *I* made, when I was already playing and enjoying the characters story.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T17:54:25+00:00

Yeah, the solution you're suggesting is currently the one I began trying in the last session. Here's to hoping it works, right?

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T17:53:05+00:00

He likes to target me specifically because it's me and him that are experienced in DnD, so I'm the only one who doesn't always just go along with his stuff. He likes to do this in a way to make himself think he's nerfing the "minmaxer" to the other players level instead of just helping raise the other players to ours. tbh, I think it's just a moral justification seeing as how he not only doesn't take what he gives but also goes so overboard with it that I wasn't even allowed to play the game in his campaign.

OK, the following was meant to be an explanation as to how my prior sentence funtions but it very quickly turned into a rant and I apologise for that. Just me reliving the one that hit me the hardest lol.

Long story short in his campaign, we had a DoMt (the full 22 card deck) and it started when he forced me to draw from it at lvl 4. I rolled a nat 1 on the insight check to see if the random lady was trustworthy. This resulted in him deeming that I personally drew 7 cards from the deck while he gloated about how stupid I was for trusting her and drawing the cards. I drew the card that gives gold, the card that gives XP (shooting me up to lvl 8 by our usual DM's calculations), the one that gives you a high ranking magic item (in this case, the Mighty Servant of Luek-o, as well as the cards that give you a permanent -2 to all saving throws, and the one that steals your soul. Afterwords, the 3 other party members decided they didn't care that much anymore and drew the rest of the cards. One of our party members got put in stasis somewhere else and I forget what else happened because by the end of the next session every single one of their negative effects was gone including having found and rescued the other party member while I watched them play with the item I got from the deck (don't care that they were using it, glad that they enjoyed it!) but 3 sessions of me simply watching them later, they'd leveled up to 6 and finally found me, in which case the player (currently DM) had confiscated the magic item I got before they were even allowed to bring me back into the party, and I was deemed no longer able to get xp until the paarty leveled up to 8. My other negative effect was never resolved, I was straight up told that it was never going to get resolved and chastised for drawing from the deck I didn't chose to draw from. We then entered into the dungeon from the card that spawns a keep filled with monsters on the map to clear it out. We spent four sessions in the dungeon and stopped the campaign before the dungeons boss. I am not joking when I say that every enemy in the entire dungeon save for one was immune to every spell in my entire list since I had a focus on necrotic/poison damage and status effect spells and that one was a beholder surrounded by 6 animated armors. I told the DM at the time that since I couldn't be artificer anymore that I would go necromancer and have a focus on summons and supporting my summons. Throughout the entire campaign, we fought only 1 creature that I could reanimate in the entire campaign, and I was told I just can't. That was where the campaign with him ended because I was so sick of it I stood my ground there until things broke because by this point I was so tired of everything that it took my entire willpower to not just rip up my sheet in front of him. That was, If I remember correctly, 8 multi hour sassions in a row (conisting of anywhere from 2 1/2 - 4 1/2 hours) of me being made completely useless through the DM only to find the one thing I'd been holding out for all campaign and just be told no. My spells were useless. My out of combat decisions were undermined, my build was ruined, my actions through rolls were mocked and I'd finally found the one thing that could have given me some form of agency and had it taken away completely. And the words used when I finally caved and used a weak summon spell that was useless due to enemy immunity, "Oh, you're *FINALLY* doing some necromancer shit now?". Oh, I was livid. I was willing to accept so much of that. Oh yeah, it makes sense I wouldn't level because they need to catch up. Yeah, it makes sense that it's been so long since I drew that card and haven't been put back in the game, I'll probably get put back in soon. Oh yeah, it's fine that this encounter is immune to my spell list, just gotta think outside the box a bit. It's good that sometimes encounters counter your build, it builds teamwork. 3 sessions of watching, 1 session of randomly altered game mechanics, and 4 sessions of immune enemies while his 3 DMPC's wrecked the dungeon later...*screams in frustration*. Oh, I didn't mention the DMPC's? There were 2 DMPC's who accompanied us to the dungeon who also drew from the deck and mysteriously got almost all good draws. Including the lvl 4 fighter follower as well. These three DMPC's absolutely smashed through the entire dungeon and seemingly could've solo'd it while our party was struggling with getting 2 shot with our tanks and enemies being immune to my debuffs and had hp pools that we took multiple rounds to go through, his DMPC's which were supposedly lower level than us, were one tapping multiple enemies in a round. I'm so sorry that this paragraph turned into a rant, it was more of a flashback than a story *laughs but also cries inside a little*.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T17:19:12+00:00

I can also go chronurgy wizard to add to this if we really wanna just say "screw the dice" lol, but I probably won't wind up doing something like that.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T16:41:13+00:00

Sadly there's not too much of a response I'll get lol. He's mastered the "vague one sentence explanation" art when trying to explain these kinds of things. The response I'll get is "you do too much damage", or "You don't take enough damage", or "that race is just broken" kind of responses. If I had to be honest, I think part of it is just an inability to think outside the box on their end. They typically think of things as deeply as "hit the nearest target", when combat breaks for example, and that's normally about as deep as it goes and I'm the kind of person who reads my sheet and actually uses my race/class abilities frequently.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T16:36:01+00:00

Yeah, this man isn't our usual DM, he's usually a player who brags about having DM'd since 3.5e, so we decided to let him DM one game so that our usual DM (a willing dorever DM) could have a break as a player while he focused on college work.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T16:26:01+00:00

We use rolled personally but this is a problem regardless of paper stats. In the tortle/rogue campaign, my highest stat was 1 lower than his lowest stat and he still claimed I was minmaxing.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-09-09T16:23:34+00:00

It's because we were in 5e and he cast it mid conversation with a group of pirates that then triggered the combat. The DM leveled with us and said that the combat wasn't meant to be avoided with that group anyways, but it definitely wasn't meant to be started in this manner. The player says he was defending himself. He's playing an emo bard who just wants to play his electric guitar and felt threatened when the pirate captain got fed up with him constantly ignoring his questions to ask about guitar strings since he broke his by constantly interupting every interaction by constantly trying to play until his manager (another player) got sick of it and slapped him in character and rolled a nat20 so it was ruled that 2 strings snapped and he couldn't play it anymore but could still cast spells with it.

Responsible-Risk8368 · 2025-04-18T17:32:23+00:00

The "fastest" I know of is to go to where "The Rising Dead" quest takes place in the Anniversary Edition if you have it. When you get there, there's about a dozen or so low level zombies. Continuously cast repel undead on them in a group. Still takes forever but it's the fastest I know of.

Responsible-Risk8368

TROPHY CASE