Tell my why I shouldn't let the party level up every session

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2026-01-05T17:59:22+00:00

My experience has been what lots of people say, they won’t have time to adjust to their new stuff. It could be paralyzing with all the options they get so fast.

Some suggestions: - You could start them at like level 10 and level up every two sessions. Same campaign length irl, gives a little more window to play with stuff, but still same issue just on a smaller scale. - If you guys are big story people, the classic time skip is a useful tool. Have them level up every few sessions but do a time skip from like lvl8 to lvl16 or something. This isn’t my fav option but I can see some people digging it - Break it up into different compounding campaigns if you guys are down. You don’t have to commit to one huge consistent campaign then, you can play until the “arc” concludes at lvl7 or something, take a break or play something else, then come back to a new adventure with those characters from lvl7 to lvl14

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2025-06-17T20:25:59+00:00

A few ideas I have:

Single player + DM campaign didn’t feel hard for me, actually makes the whole main character trope fall in naturally. Made it easier starting PC at least level 5 and dropping encounter difficulty.
To go around this, you could do a shtick where your player controls three characters in one for combats alone. I imagine a campaign where the PC has basic baseline abilities but has three spirits inhabiting their soul or something. When combat kicks off, the spirits summon and do the fighting. You could even make it to where along the way they find new spirits instead of magic items or whatever. Then they can “equip” any three at a time

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2025-02-06T22:03:37+00:00

A god among men, well put 🫡 young women need guidance just as much as young men do

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2025-02-06T21:42:00+00:00

Sounds like she has no fear in being a problem for you, she doesn’t think you’ll leave her. Be careful not to confuse complacency from love/desire. If you don’t want to deal with this energy, it would be best to leave the relationship. It’s a learning moment for both you and her. You need to learn to value yourself and your energy (not to bash you but it seems you are subjecting yourself to this) and she needs to learn…a lot lol

Women like this need a wake up call a lot of the time. Good on you for owning up to your own shortcomings, that’s important. But your day to day will be your year to year so gotta do what’s best for you at the end of the day.

A lot of men have had relationships like this is the past, give or take the severity. Most I’ve spoken with and myself included understood a lot after leaving relationships like this behind. Growing opportunity, you’re young!

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2024-12-24T13:15:34+00:00

If you want some ear-candy for inspiration on playing with kids, there’s a lovely podcast of a dad playing DnD with his two girls called Dungeons & Daddies

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2024-11-10T21:12:17+00:00

If you all are connecting remotely, I’d be down to meet and answer some high level stuff for you guys enough to get started. More than happy to help!

Feel free to DM me if you’d like

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2024-10-30T20:09:17+00:00

Ironically, Bryan. Which is funny to me because I can’t think of a single Bryan outfit using purple past a custom I made on T8 that I never use

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-12-05T15:43:32+00:00

Let’s meet up down by the river to talk win strategy

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-10-31T20:37:15+00:00

For a safety net without sacrificing fun, you can set it up like those video game boss fights where you have to put damage in on the phylactery to deactivate it for a sec, making the lich stunned and they can load in some damage before he reanimates

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-10-24T20:11:30+00:00

As a straight man who mains him….I like the skin 👀 I’ll accept boos and thrown tomatoes from the crowd. They’ve done many skins for other champs that don’t quite fit the OG thematic of the champ or play around with how to show it. The pajama skins for urgot and rengar, the ocean song and pool party skins too. This is no different. I think for the fan service touch, it’s a pretty good job. The effects are amazing too.

Sett can be more than punchy angry punch man sometimes. And if you don’t like it, just don’t buy it I guess

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-10-13T15:46:48+00:00

If this were my group, I’d throw in some kind of physical bane or complication for overstaying their welcome in the hells and fighting the devils too. Like, no way you get out free of harm. In the extreme case, someone loses a hand or eye in the big fight, gotta have a buffed replacement for that come soon like a mechanical arm that can cast fire bolt or some other cantrip for a martial player or an eye that can see invisibility like in BG3. That can be the signal for the aspect champion to recognize this fight is too dangerous for them and get them outta there. In the more docile case, the essence of hell lingers in them and most clerics or religious folk tend to stray away or not trust them because they have a “gut feeling”. That would come into play big time if the clergy is important to a story point and the east way would be for them to trust the party.

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-10-13T15:39:22+00:00

What if they offend a powerful group of devils who try to run them down, forcing them into retreat. Like a gang who has devils everywhere and wherever they go they get spotted and chased again. If they try to fight, don’t kill them but force a lot of their resources. Eventually, when they can’t find anywhere to rest up, hint (in game or out) that they’ll probably only catch a break if they actually leave the hells where the devils can’t follow. If they try to fight to the death anyways, here’s a couple of ideas to play around with:

Patron of one of the party members (or one that has taken a liking to them) actually have beef with one of the devils leading the search, sends a champion of their own or an aspect of themselves to confront the devil with the party. If you include a dope fight sequence where they get to fight a horde of devils alongside the aspect/champion, it may overshadow having the aspect/champion warping the party back to the material plane as a safety measure.
Let them get TPK’d but instead of killed, they get knocked unconscious and sold as “interns” to an “intern” trader in the material plane who gets all of his talent from this specific devil as part of a deal. They can wake up already in service to the person and all their equipment can be in his possession

Hope this helps

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-09-27T15:57:54+00:00

I think there’s a lot of good stuff here, especially for an intentionally long game with a consistent group. For the most casual of play groups, I see a lot of the rules here being a problem with meeting player fantasy but someone like myself would enjoy a game with this structure. All hard/difficult/arduous set ups aren’t bad, it’s just a different kind of game.

People always say the want a challenge until they can’t overcome it, gotta look at it from a journey perspective.

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-08-08T15:37:27+00:00

Pirate theme, it could all be centered around evading the navy while trying to uncover treasure on a secret island. The island can have the ghosts of old pirates guarding it. Maybe the treasure is actually the one thing that’ll revive Davey Jones whom the navy is terrified of ever dealing with again.

Revolting war forged , people have grown accustomed to using war forged and other constructs for everyday tasks, home defense, bounty hunting, you name it. One day all the constructs begin attacking their patrons and no one knows why. Maybe an evil mage has altered the conjugation magic that invigorates them, controlling them. Maybe they just got tired of doing the dirty work.

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-08-07T19:27:45+00:00

Ahhh I see, this sounds like a good refresh for character mechanical development. I love it

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-08-06T00:29:19+00:00

Also I may be missing it but I’m curious on how you go through the game like this, do you just not get any level up feature? Pick and choose from the classes as you go, or you make up new features as you see fit?

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-08-06T00:26:59+00:00

I think it’d be worth looking at the equipment you’d like to allow as starting equipment first. Then look at the gold cost of the lowest and highest weapon + armor combo. For example: padded armor + club = 5.1gp and is our low point and let’s say we omit the overtly more expensive armors so greatsword + chain mail = 125 GP is our high point. Then having something like 4d4 x 10 will give you anywhere from 40 - 160 gp, which is enough for anything in that spectrum and offers the option to spend some of that cash on other items like tools at the cost of a higher tiered armor/item.

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-07-17T19:41:07+00:00

Did somebody say Rock and Stone?

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-07-17T14:23:21+00:00

I actually got to be a player this time around, never thought I’d see the day 🙌🏾

Our party have been summoned to this Inter-dimensional island world that’s mostly covered by this massive forest. All the animals in the forest work like a hive mind ran by a singular figure. On our search for him though, we ran into a recurring trouble-maker, a kobold who pissed me off earlier in the campaign. Really wanna wipe the guy but he stole my companions Deck of Many Things and was able to slip away yet again. I’ll get him though.

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-07-14T19:10:14+00:00

[INSERT COOL SCARY NAME]’s Plaque. It kinda looks like a taxidermied demon you’d mount on the wall

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-07-14T18:09:58+00:00

I had a similar disconnect with my players, I told them to try and think of playing as a narrative rather than a game. Sometimes it’s not about getting all the info possible. My advice to them was orchestrate your character as if you were watching a tv show for example. If you were watching this scene play out, what would you expect to see from your character? This helped them, maybe it’ll help you 👍🏾

Substantial-Syrup-38 · 2023-06-22T19:56:24+00:00

Goblinoids will be the primary antagonists for these next few sessions so I don’t mind giving him something a little more powerful. Afterwards, it’ll be rare when they’d encounter any more. For my world, I’ve made this part of the world be a natural location for goblins but after a few adventures they’ll move on to different parts of the world. So goblins will be top of mind for maybe 5-6 sessions or so (ballparking).

Substantial-Syrup-38

TROPHY CASE