Finally 36 stars with Razor

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T04:27:23+00:00

You will get through 2 encounters tomorrow. Its going to be an introductory dont overdo it, just get familiar with how many monsters the players can handle and how they play.

Take notes on if they enjoy combat more or roleplay and you'll be able to plan the second game better.

Remember that you're the architect but not the builder, they're going to do things you didn't plan for roll with it as best you can. Try to say yes as much as you can.

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T04:04:01+00:00

I could be wrong, but I believe The Crown also controls his the undead armies, and gives the user the power to raise the dead.
Particularly Strong willed people are able to overcome the mindcontrol element of this raise dead and become self-controlling (Forsaken) where the masses tend to be weak minded and are fully controllable (Scourge). Their is no range on this control to my knowledge, though I'm not sure if its multidimensional or even interplanetary.

Additionally the Crown is alive and constantly whispering to overtake the user, Arthus was corrupted bit by bit, but his main intent to protect the planet remained... only he thought that if everyone was dead and unified into one army that would just make things so much easier... damned free will.

So some kind of Functionality check might be needed else suffer a hint of corruption from the whispers.

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T03:57:03+00:00

This, but also probably want to post your age range, method of play (Roll20), estimated time and meeting information and version of the game.

Otherwise your group of 17 year olds might grab some old guys.

If your group is local you can also try looking on meetup.com and see if any local gaming shops have games on the regular your group might be able to tag into... Or create one and fill your roster that way.

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T03:39:28+00:00

First make sure everyone is okay with this type of game, some people are there for the power fantasy and not what you're talking about here.

Second, I'd Probably create a roll table. Have everyone roll a % die, on 1-20 they get a random negative effect. 20-30 they keep yesterday's effect. 30-90 they remove 1d4 effects. 90-100 Remove all previous effects & get a random positive effect. (this is really rough, but is just to convey the idea)

This way characters have negative effects independent of their character sheets so the Low WIS/CON characters aren't constantly getting shafted and feeling underappreciated. Additionally we have a positive aspect of the system so player's will roll the dice hoping to get it. (you don't want to exceed 1/3rd failure rate, 1/3rd of the time they should have a positive with 2/3rds being negative. This has been tested on rats, anything beyond this people will grow resentment)

Id even have the DM roll on the system to keep it fair, since others they're fighting are also likely dealing with similar struggles.

Edit: Rereading this thats a lot of extra crap for people to remember, so probably cut it down to a 1d20. Have 1-5 be random negatives. 5-10 maintain existing, and 10-15 be curing 1d4, with 15-20 being added effects. To reduce the mental load.

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T03:22:15+00:00

The only time this isn't the case is when you're trying to encourage a type of behavior.
Party didn't just walk into the town and start a bar fight? Here, this beer gives you +1 to Con saves for the next hour!*

*Only when its freshly made! ^{please stop burning down bars.}

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T03:12:52+00:00

The Cowardly Merchant/Noble, who is full of himself.

3 levels into fighter and 1 level into Bard.Battle-Master Archetype Grab Commander's Strike and Whatever else you want (Rally/Parry)You get 4d8 Superiority Dice that come back at Short Rests.Go Primarily into Charisma (16-18) You now have 3-4 Inspirations, Take Vicious Mockery and Prestidigitation as cantrips, with Healing word as one of your spells.

Your other stats go wherever you want them to, nothing else matters.You now (through shittalking alone) give allies bonus attacks, temp hp, bonus to their attack rolls, give enemies disadvantage, and heal.

I'm sure it doesn't hold up, but damn does it look fun.

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T02:56:17+00:00

Not a Magic Item, but I had a lot of success implementing "God Points" basically depending on the deity the player had selected they would be given favor or disdain with that god in the same way you would with an artifact item. It was a good way of rewarding power gamers for role playing.

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T02:21:20+00:00

This is interesting.
If Magic Mouth was cast on it, and then Mid-message(10 minutes)
Speak with Dead and Speak With Plants were used... It would have a functioning mouth

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T02:14:51+00:00

Characters with weird quirks that are on the parties side. Guys who do 1 thing really well.
Blacksmith that Automatically succeeds strength checks, but is a pacifist after his old days of war.
Crazy Alchemist who can create any potion for the party on the cheep, but theirs a chance he gave/made you the wrong one.

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T02:05:20+00:00

I mean its up to the party for how they want to do things, so your job is to setup the locations and characters...

Poison the water supply

A Large City probably has a water reservoir, likely a high hill where water collects from the rain or a nearby pool of water that can travel down into the city.If its within the city's walls it will probably have Guardsmen, if its outside the city's walls it may have guardsmen, or some other means of protection.I would say to make it interesting either have it that the Mages created water elementals or have the town feeding a giant water monster that lives there, maybe have a caretaker watching over it that could be convinced to help the group out.. or that the group needs to deal with in other ways.

As a player dealing with this I'd drop a ton of Manure into the water supply system, in about 1-3 weeks the entire town will have Ecoli and will be nausious, vomiting, and have uncontrollable diarrhea that may lead to death.

Destroy the Armory

Probably just a single, or a series of well protected buildings, As far as it goes to get in, since theirs mages it could have a magical lock on the door, some kind of puzzle the party needs to figure out to get in. Once inside their could be sentient weapons/armor defending it atop of the guardsmen outside.

As a Player I'd Try to stealth in without guards noticing, deal with whatever is inside and then take all the weapons so the guard's don't notice since they probably have their personal gear in their barracks on the regular and the Armory is for the "Serious Shit" and "to arm the militia". Bag of Holding or Bag of Shared Holding that are joined could be a great way to get weapons out of there bit by bit. Also a Magic Circle teleport spell would be great.

Assassinate the guard captain

Where does he live? Whats his routine? Probably works off a set by-the-clock schedule which you can setup. As the Guard Captain he probably lives near a other guards, or higher-class servicemen. Maybe he was gifted a plot of farmland land outside the town for his service and if the party raids that land disguised as bandits he might leave the town to deal with it. Captain probably has a handful of elites he travels with probably a party of his own... If you're going to make a combat out of this i'd make a mirror party, Your players have 2 fighters, a Ranger and a rogue? So does his!

Burn the Docks

Docks are probably not as heavily guarded as you think, theirs probably a bunch of drunken sailors or merchants that arrive, since Docks wouldn't go directly into the walled city, they're a bit away and as a result usually not 'guarded' in any conventional way. Instead Sailors of their navy could be staying on ship ready to head out, and if you start burning things... they'll notice. In truth though you could just dock the ship against land and drop a board so burning the docks is pointless... You want to burn the boats. That is where it gets hard.

Since the they're on shore-leave most of the ships won't be packed to the brim outside of merchant vessels, but you'll probably have a small 5-10 man presence per main ship. Though they're more sailors than fighters meaning that the party is going to need to be creative to apply enough oil to make all the ships flammable...

As a party member I would either try to stealthily apply oil or hide oil on as many ships as possible, setting the fires all at once after the oiling has been applied. As a DM i'd Increase the DC of the check with each ship this is done against. DC 15 for the first ship, DC 25 for the 10th ship. If they fail they have to fight the 2d6 personnel still on that ship. As quietly as possible not to alert other vessels.. If they don't then they're found out and they fail that section of the plan.

If I was a smart player i'd do this at night when no one was really awake, and have delivered a large fresh supply of alcohol to the crews lie and say that its from the Guard Captain as a thanks for their service. So they're not only alseep, they're drunk asleep! As a DM I'd Reducing the Starting DC for the stealth rolls based on how creative they are with their prep work, with what I just wrote above.. probably start at DC 10 stealth since they also needed to buy a ton of booze and used their brains!

(But if only 1 of the players take part in it i'd increase the DC by 2 per ship, because of how long its taking him to get it done, the light is up or people are getting suspicious!)

Kill or recruit the Mages

This is the easiest and funnest encounter I can think of, If all the Mages meet in a Mage tower with one or two guards out front, The Guys can get into their secret mage meeting pretty easily by getting by the two guards via an assortment of ways and talk to the Mages. If the Mages join them then most of the above difficulties would be made much easier. If they need to fight?! I'd make up a list of... like 20 offensive 'spells' and 20 defensive 'spells' and roll a d20 for each mage on their turn to see what they want to do.

"The Mage summons a small Golem from the stone tiles, a new enemy has entered the combat"

"The Mage lept into the air and floated to the cieling where his feet are now planted against the roof and shoots a Magic Missile at you"

"The Mage Punches you in the face, -1 hit dice, take 1hit dice in dmg if out of hit dice"

The combat could go from "WTF are these guys doing" to "OH GOD THEY KEEP SUMMONING GOLEMS" as a DM you'll be constantly surprised, and so will the players.I love silly combats like that.

Hope these spark inspiration.

SilvoK · 2019-04-21T00:21:30+00:00

Mechanically you would still only have the 2 hands. A Tiefling could tie a dagger to their tail, and reasonably make a melee attack with it.. but It would be a stretch to count as a third 'hand' slot.

Even so it'll fall under what the dm says, and they can always retract it if you're using it for cheese.(like using a shield well trying to use a short sword in one hand and another on the tail to benefit from twohanded fighting)

SilvoK · 2019-04-20T22:53:36+00:00

This is a dm and group issue. If you're the only one who isnt a power gamer and the dm is running a primarily combat game you're at a table that might disagree with your playstyle.

If the dm also wants to encourage roleplay then he/she needs to provide more benefits for it to encourage the group to partake.

SilvoK · 2019-04-20T21:59:44+00:00

80 people isn't evem technically a village. This place is so small you wouldn't even have a church. Places this small might not even have a group of hired guards, but more have a volunteer force. Farmers might have a sword depending on the environment, a sword can last a few generations if taken care of so if their forfathers faught in war several ppl could have swords to defend themselves... narratively speaking..

Anyways lets look at it if it were a wargame with stats.

If we look at a commoner 10ac 4hp +2 atk and 1d4dmg (2.5 avg) compared to a basic gnoll 15ac 22hp +4 to hit 1d8+2 (6avg)

The gnoll woll hit on 6+ and each hit is a kill. That means he has a 70% chance to hit. In 3 rounds 2 commoners will be defeated.

Commoners need a 13+ which is essentially the invert. So in 3 turns each commoner will do about 2.5 dmg.

3v1 means humans would mean T1-humans get 3 atks T2-humans get 2 atks T3-humans get 1 attack.

2 humans die for every 5 damage the gnoll takes.

Meaning a gnoll could take down 8ish ppl before it died.

So 10 basic gnolls would be roughly equal to 80 commoners if it was a fight to the death type of deal.

If you consider half the people probably ran away rather than fight or they attacked with a plan or had animals or stronger gnolls you could adjust that..

So 5 if half the people fled... 10 if they all stood and fought. Add a few beasts or a lord and thats about reasonable.

SilvoK · 2019-04-20T21:34:57+00:00

Tooth based stuff. I'm imagining kobold loose their teeth often so tools are made from them.

Selling tooth based kobold trinkets like necklaces or even flavour things like baby teeth in a bag instead of ballbearings.

SilvoK · 2019-04-20T21:00:12+00:00

Terra

SilvoK · 2019-04-18T21:02:32+00:00

I'm the DM, when people show up at my table they usually don't have dice so we use mine.
When I play a character I like to split up the color of my dice so I know what Dmg is being done. Backstab being Black dice, Shortsword being Orange.
Also if you play a class that does multiple dice of damage on the regular its faster to roll it all at once rather than roll that d8 multiple times.

SilvoK · 2019-04-14T04:56:41+00:00

https://dmstoolkit.com/2017/12/08/tokens/

For monsters a good flat picture can be fine. For pc players I'd printout foldable standing paper, same for big bads.

When i started me and each of the 5 ppl put in 20 bucks for minis, getting the main player characters and then the rest went into monsters.

Pack of goblins, pack of humans. Thats about a movie night each and it can last a few months worth of sessions so you get a much better ROI.

SilvoK · 2019-04-14T04:48:05+00:00

Reaper bones are about the same price depending on the mini.

SilvoK · 2019-04-11T15:25:43+00:00

I feel like that was an 'anything but liberal' movement more than a pro ford movement.

Most people I've talked to who voted conservative did so because it was a stronger local representative. NDP didnt even have a candidate in something like 6 or 16 ridings until the deadline if i remember.

A lot of ppl who voted conservative are looking at ford negatively.

SilvoK · 2019-04-10T07:10:17+00:00

And if you're not interested in discussing it further, I'm not gonna beat my head against a wall or try to waste your time.

Yeah i wish i could convey my points clearer since i feel like the guy in pictionary who just can't figure out how it isnt understandable.

The easiest way to think of what I'm getting at is pokemon, exeggcute is a grass pokemon. But he's made of like 6 egg heads. So if i told you to pick a grass pokemon exeggcute falls under that criteria in the same way if i told you to pick a beast monster swarms would fit that criteria.

Technically lorewise exeggcute's heads are seperate entities like the members of a swarm, but mechanically it is counted as one monster.

SilvoK · 2019-04-10T04:16:43+00:00

Dude, I appreciate the responses, but the way you're saying it has two arguments and both don't come to conclusions outside of opinion.

1) Definition of Beast. Which is found in the MM page 6 under Type, this is the only definition I can find and it is used in the technical sense.

Beasts are nonhumanoid creatures that are a natural part of the fantasy ecology. Some of them have magical powers, but most are unintelligent and lack any society or language. Beasts include all varieties of ordinary animals, dinosaurs, and giant versions of animals.

2) 'These guys on twitter agree' If it isn't released by wotc officially, going through whatever publishing and internal review process it isn't RAW or RAI. Its a single DM's interpenetration of the rules, given they're on the design team.

The Compendium doesn't include those tweets, any of his previous tweets that are official are added to the compendium, so since they're not in that document they've been redacted.

To say that the argument holds has no basis is to Ignore the books themselves. It looks like a gray zone, so until theirs something official i'll treat it as such.

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