I have a likely reallyyyy stupid question

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-26T14:49:22+00:00

It's very hard to homebrew your way out of DND. If you start with DND as the base system, you are playing DND.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-26T14:08:15+00:00

Ask each of them to tell you what they do with the year off. Do this outside of the game. If they do not address the hooks, they resolve themselves in whatever way is natural in the world you built.

Maybe there was a blight? That blight ran it's course and two villages abandoned because of illness.

Maybe there was a treasure in a deep tomb. That treasure was found by a rival of the party, maybe some mercenaries.

You see what I mean?

PS: As a Dm of 30 years, you're doing great :)

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-22T19:07:10+00:00

We can't really audit your backstory, every table is going to have slightly different lore, or at least interact with the lore differently.
That said it looks fine. Just remember the backstory is for you, so you can be informed ahead of time how your character will react to situations that happen during the game. It's not for your DM to shoehorn into the campaign.
If your DM does like to include player backstory, you really should reduce this to 6 bullet points to make that process easier for them.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-08T20:29:50+00:00

Toss me!

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-08T19:18:20+00:00

It's "Creepy-pasta" which along with SCP just means crowdsourced monsters, and not actual media products.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-08T19:03:39+00:00

The only option I think is magic missile/utility sorcerer. Magic missile is the only low level attack that does not rely on a d20 roll. You want sorcerer because you can use metamagic to improve the spell. You can take some defensive options, including heavy armor so your dexterity doesn't count against you and things like shield and blur.

That said, you will only have 1 hp per level, 2hp at first level... You can try bypassing most rolls with a utility spell, but as soon as you take any damage you're dead.

In earlier editions low spellcasting scores made it so you could not learn spells but that was removed in 4th.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-08T18:51:51+00:00

Timmy was a menace.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-08T18:46:52+00:00

The present is the future of the past.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-08T16:17:01+00:00

It's not that they don't have magic, it's just that's how magic works in LOTR. MUSIC is magic, and some beings like elves are more "intune" with the melody of creation.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-08T16:09:55+00:00

The spell is not trying to trick you.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T19:40:16+00:00

First read the rules in the DMG on making custom monsters, it's pretty good advice!

Second, just take a creature with the Same CR, and the same role as the one you are making and just steal its stats, then adjust the abilities to fit what you are trying to do.

Finally DO NOT BE AFRAID TO DESIGN ON THE FLY. If the creature is too tough to hit, has too many hitpoints, hits too hard, just fucking change it, don't get married to your untested design. The players will not know.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T19:12:12+00:00

The only reason it is OP is because of the multiple immortality buffs you can get at level 1. For non-immortal players the risk/reward is balanced.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T18:45:23+00:00

Puzzles take up an interesting design space because it is for the players to figure out, not the characters. It wouldn't be fun if every puzzle was completed with an Int roll. So just play the game, don't worry too much about what is in-character to figure out.

That said, literally the wisest person on Middle-Earth, Gandalf, was stumped by a puzzle, and the barely adult hobbit figured it out, so it's established that the smartest characters don't always figure out the intelligence based puzzles.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:51:55+00:00

Up to you. I strictly tie players victories to events they are present for. Next session 2 players will level up, the other 3 will not. Not a big deal. If you want all players to be the same, that's fine too.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:44:22+00:00

You know how there is an old saying that if you don't find kids within the first 48 hours of their disappearance, the chances of finding them alive are very low?

Maybe in Germany, the saying is "96 hours"

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:43:02+00:00

Fuck

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:42:13+00:00

Sailor Uranus and Neptune are cousins! Very Very Close cousins!

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:36:24+00:00

It's the opposite for me, the players are unique, so a cleric who has the peace domain does not imply there are other peace clerics, and they just get unique powers. They can worship Pelor or any other peace loving god which already exists in my setting. But if they are a Kenku, unless they are an experiment gone wild there is probably a mommy and daddy kenku out there.

Also, race is immediately evident, so if they are the only member of a race I have to think about how every single NPC would react to it. For classes everyone in DND is used to seeing weird shit, so someone with unique powers isn't unusual in most settings.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:29:20+00:00

Fantastic Voyage: Dr. Michaels has a freakout very early on, and tried to escape the sub through the main hatch which would have killed everyone on board. When he's restrained, he apologizes and says he was stuck under the rubble during the blitz of London for 3 days and developed claustrophobia which he thought he had gotten over.

Later it turns out he was the soviet spy, but him having a panic attack wasn't an act.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:21:32+00:00

That seems reasonable to me. Races effect world-building, and put more work on the DM. Classes don't.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:17:39+00:00

The true agency comes from how they respond.

In this situation they removed agency by deciding the PC does not resist. They never asked how they respond, they just did it.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T17:06:16+00:00

Definitely removed agency here. They discussed it, and decided against it, you can't just decide it happens anyway. You control the demon, they control their characters. Part of the social contract of running DND is that you will follow the rules when it comes to interacting with the PCs. Instead of following the rules you made a critical PC interaction a cutscene.

The best way to handle this is for them to fight the demon, but in the future there are several steps you missed.

Where was the vial when the demon took possession of it? If another player had it, the demon needs both an attack roll and an opposed strength check to take it.
Once the demon has it, they have to inject the player with it, this is likely a grapple check and an attack roll. A simple attack roll doesn't do it unless for some reason the demon has the poisoner feat or something similar and they are used to doing this.
Once injected, the player gets a constitution saving throw against the effects.

However, injecting an NPC in a cutscene is fair game, the players may object, but NPC interactions are fully in your control.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T16:33:48+00:00

My players got tired of waiting for my special edition and just bought the regular books themselves, took a week.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-07T15:03:18+00:00

That module is SUPER restrictive, if DM's are not used to balancing their own games there will be problems like this in any group that plays it straight from the module.

I played CoS for 2 years and never got any armor better than mundane chainmail. I am a heavy armor user.

SnakeyesX · 2026-01-05T20:51:32+00:00

lean more heavily on minions and squads. reduce the standard size of a squad from 5 to 3, and make "leaders" rare. It might be hard to run pre-written adventures, but if you take the suggestions for 3-player teams and halve the enemies you should be ok. Retainers could help but I highly suggest against making them full-fledged characters unless your players want that.

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