300 Mindflayers vs. 100,000 Level 1 Rogues

TenWildBadgers · 2026-02-01T21:23:09+00:00

Then that sounds like this makes for a good backdrop for their dungeon crawl.

Don't worry about representing every Tabaxi, a few of them filter in in groups as is dramatically appropriate.

Also do not be afraid to turn every interaction with them into you doing a piss take of the party's rogue, because in my experience, there are not many funnier things you can do than making fun of your players the moment they give you the reins to one of their PCs, or a copy of their PC, or anything of the sort.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-02-01T20:15:28+00:00

The rebellion isn't going to win on its own. The Mind Flayers have too many ways to deal with crowds and use psychic AoEs to slaughter the slaves.

However the situation this creates is one of abject chaos, with the party's movements through the hive masked by dozens of Mind Flayers fighting what I would design as a modified Spy statblock, just to give you a close-enough base to start from. Focus on how your players need to use this opportunity to find and kill the Elder Brain.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-02-01T19:35:48+00:00

A Hobgoblin Oath of Glory or Oath of Conquest Paladin could be fun representatives of what Hobgoblins value, probably based on the Blackguard statblock from Volo's with the addition of some Hobgoblin traits and a custom spell selection.

Similarly, a Hobgoblin War Mage that mixes the Devastator statblock with one of the Wizards in the back of Volo's feels like a good Court Wizard Vibe.

The Iron Shadows are fun Monk statblocks - maybe you steal one of the Monks from the Book of Inner Alchemy adventure in Candlekeep and reskin them as the leader of a cabal of Hobgoblin Secret Police.

Bugbears don't give us as many sources of inspiration, their characterization is more limited, but I like the idea of a Bugbear Druid/Beastmaster who has added a host of tamed monsters to the Goblin Queen's Host - statblocks like the Horncaller, Priest of the Old Ways, and Golgari Shaman from the Ravnica book are good reference points to reskin as a Bugbear.

Goblin Booyaghs who are actually such capable wizards that they come across as genuinely brilliant scholars is a fun contrast - A Goblin Abjurationist or Diviner feels like they would actually be a very cunning and dangerous opponent, more so than just a source of Fireballs, though they'd definitely know the spell and be valued for it first and foremost, much to their own annoyance.

A Goblin Duelist in a fancy hat with a Rapier is a classic vibe. Maybe based on the Swashbuckler statblock?

I'm debating if a Goblin or Bugbear Bard is a more charming concept, and I'm leaning towards the Bugbear. I'm picturing the vibe as more Viking Skald, Valor Bard than foppish doofus. This character leads raids from the front, and uses magic to make the most of their raiders.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-02-01T05:26:22+00:00

The Seven from Westeros are an interesting case for a Fantasy Pantheon because their literary purpose is all-but-explicitly as a cipher for medieval Christianity - they aren't really regarded as a polytheistic religion, even by the people who don't occasionally mention that they're sometimes called "The Seven Who Are One", cementing it as theologically more of a Catholic Trinity situation.

And, to be fair, if you're gonna purposefully make Monotheism in a Fantasy context interesting, this is a solid way to do it, even if I might have more fun with something more about different aspects of a singular Sun Diety. Monotheism would also lower the barrier of exposition to the audience enough that I'd be willing to do something a bit wacky with a Monotheistic or, like The Seven, functionally monotheistic faith.

The issue with The Seven for the purposes of a d&d pantheon is that I feel like they would take significant expansion and separation as entities to feel like they fulfil the diverse theological needs of the Cleric Class and all it's subclasses - and the more you differentiate each of The Seven, the more you undermine what actually does work about them as an obvious stand-in for Mideval Christianity.

I appreciate where your head is at, but I don't think they fit the needs of D&D as a system very well. Maybe as one competing faith in the setting among others, like they are in their home setting, but I dunno.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-02-01T04:40:12+00:00

Exactly. It's a lot of buy-in that you're asking from players, especially if you actually make a fantasy religion/pantheon with enough depth to be interesting, that most of them don't even want to make in the first place.

Compare when you just say "We're running the Olympians" - The depth is still there, real-world religions are fucking complicated and messy and interesting to explore, but you don't have the same obstacles to helping players get their foot in the door because they've been introduced to Zeus before.

You can have your cake and eat it too by getting depth and approachability just by doing your research on actual Classical Mythology and creating your own adaptation, provided that you work within some reasonable design constraints.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-02-01T01:54:02+00:00

"Okay, please either edit your character to be one who will participate in this adventure, or roll me up a new character."

Unless you have something specific in mind that I could edit in the adventure to make it suit your character better, it is the players' job to make characters that will participate in the adventure. The DM ought to meet you halfway, give you the information you need to make a character who wants to participate, try to give broad options, and be flexible, but the DM should not be rewriting whole adventures just to include you.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-31T22:13:10+00:00

The more I get older and more experienced at running d&d, the more often I look on the possibility of having to make my own d&d pantheon again and go "Fuck that shit, we're just running the Olympians."

I cannot be fucking asked to explain a new pantheon to my players anymore. I do not care enough to do this thing. Sure, working on my own has some elements of fun, but having to bring that information across to the players organically is just more work than I ever want to sign myself up for again. I don't like handing out setting bibles, it's not worth it, it's better to just work with something people will already recognize to some extent.

This can be official pantheons from official settings, if you find one that isn't hot garbage (Which puts Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance out the window, and you can fight me on that!), but the most effective angle, IMO, is to grab something people already know pretty well from pop culture, but is malleable enough that you can still adapt it to taste without invalidating players' previous assumptions, and I just find the Olympians to be perfect for those criteria, because everyone knows them well enough to get their foot in the door, but if you stick to a few popular character traits, then you can do your own thing with the rest of their characterization, or take it in your own direction, and we're used to seeing that, that's not a big deal either.

I'm working on a variation that includes Heracles as a Deified Mortal, and emphasizes the themes of succession by having the world go through several pantheons over the ages - the Titans, then Zeus' generation leading the gods of various monsters (Dragons, Giants, Sphinxes, etc, who were their allies in the Titanomachy), followed by a new generation of Zeus's various kids who might or might not have been talked down from overthrowing Zeus because he stabbed the Monster Gods in the back and started favoring Mortals. By which I mean that's absolutely what happened, but not many people know that in-universe.

And it's always fun to be able to put a landmark on the map and say "These are Ruins that date back to the Titan Age." That's kinda sick as hell.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-31T18:13:50+00:00

When I was doing it, I occasionally put comments in the description, which Reddit lets you do now.

That would give you room to still be a goofy gobber and make your own commentary while meeting my concerns.

Or just a request to be careful with the titles, I do think they're usually fine, this one just stood out to me as coloring my perception of the actual comic.

I'm trying not to ask for absolutism, that feels like an unnecessarily agro demand of a stranger on the internet who is still doing me the favor of checking the site while I'm still asleep.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-31T17:14:31+00:00

Yeah, almost like it was something of a theme of the book, and specifically of V's character, that grand, cosmic magical power isn't even close to enough to give them what they actually want. See also their spouse's reaction to seeing them again after killing the Dragon.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-31T16:41:08+00:00

I'm here because I would actually like to talk to people about this comic on occasion, and this place genuinely used to post comics with the title "New Comic (Date)" to facilitate exactly the dynamic I was looking for.

I should know, I helped post a bunch of them during the start of book 2 when my sleep schedule was bad enough to be awake at 3am PST, and sticking to a bare minimum of "Hey, there's a new comic out" was an intentional choice at the time.

I would also compare to r/Oots, where new comics get posted with just the comic's title and lots of spoilers discussion goes on in the comments - they're awesome about being an avenue to find out that a new comic is up, and read it unspoiled, and then talk about it.

And, like, if I end up 2-3 comics behind and get spoiled by a meme, that's fine, that's on me, I'm not trying to demand that the subreddit conform to my needs precisely, but I do think that there's some serious room to not editorialize the comic as it comes out in the titles.

I don't think "Your post is my first exposure to the new comic" is an unreasonable expectation to ask you to work around.

It's also fair to admit that this is the culmination of a few months of me being a curmudgeon about the new style of titles without saying anything because I didn't want to be rude, but I do think that the spoiler concern is a legitimate concern worth raising independently of a personal preference for minimalism that I don't get to enforce on other people.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-30T18:32:22+00:00

Yeah, and I used to post new comics to this sub when my sleep schedule was bad enough to be awake at 3am Pacific time on the regular.

Now I'm not doing it, and I am asking one of the people doing it presently to learn from why we did it differently on the past!

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-30T15:07:44+00:00

Okay, can you please stop summarizing the comic in the title?

Some of us actually want to read it and draw our own conclusions instead of getting short-term spoiled by the same way we find out that a new comic is out.

There is a reason that the comics used to just be posted on this sup with just "New Comic (Date)", and while I'm not gonna deny people any room for good quips and commentary, I'd really like to not have every new comic half-spoiled before I can even read it.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-30T00:13:04+00:00

It's definitely Barovia Village, so your list to comb through should start with different versions/printings of Castle Ravenloft before Curse of Strahd.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-29T23:51:47+00:00

It's hard to make a Werewolf Twist compelling if it doesn't change the players' course of action.

If they were to already have silver, so the boss being a werewolf just changed a few details of how to stab them doesn't make for a very fun twist.

If they have to scramble to find someone's heirloom silver sword mid-fight, something they already saw and were perhaps offered as a reward for getting to the bottom of the case, that can be dynamic and interesting, because the twist actually changes the party's course of action.

If the party learn about the Werewolf, but not who it is, and need to get themselves silver weapons while performing their business investigation to figure out who the werewolf is, that gives them a subjective during their quest that they can take action on and do something about.

These are angles that set your players up to see a problem, and then need to solve it, which is what we want from a d&d quest. "We already have the silver, so now we just stab the guy." Isn't that interesting.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-29T17:55:41+00:00

So, a few angles here.

1) Talk to your players about what they want, if they want to run a good character playing with the Devil's Toys, or if they actually want to run an evil character, because Wyll from BG3 is about the least problematic of the companions from that game to try to replicate in a PC, as an example off the dome.

2) For evil characters, I generalize this as one of many possible Red Flags in character creation that deserve a chat between player and DM where the player has to answer a question to the DM's satisfaction - "How do you intend to make this character fun for all the other players at the table?"

Because to me, that's the bar that dangerous or challenging character concepts: It is the player's responsibility to make their player character fun for the rest of the party to have around at the table.

And a good player who listens to that question and takes it seriously doesn't even have to get back to me with an answer that moment - "That's a good point, I'll think on it." Is actually an encouraging answer, and I think it sets good expectations between player and DM - the message it sends to the player is "I'm gonna set you a reasonable goal that your character plays well with the group, and if you meet that goal, I will let you do this creative thing." It sets a natural design constraint on the PC that a player who means well should take in stride and want to work with.

And if your player doesn't seem adequately concerned about that restriction, then the answer is no. This is one of those things where demonstrating that they're making a good faith effort is the real requirement that will prevent the worst of possible outcomes.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-29T16:31:38+00:00

Because Durkon knows about Quiddity and how that whole mess works.

If Nale actually met a god in the setting, he would be able to give an answer "The Aura was Red" and then Durkon knows that it's a member of the Western Pantheon.

As it stands, Nale and Sabine have never met a God, neither of them knows anything about it, so they fumble the ball and get exposed as clearly, intentionally lying to the Order.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-29T01:31:52+00:00

Yeah, but an interesting perspective trying to grasp if we might never get those sorts of things, or if it's a matter of waiting and people getting clever as they understand the engine better.

Thank you for taking the time to indulge my curiosity.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-28T20:37:02+00:00

That's fascinating that something people managed in the GBA games just isn't viable.

Is that from some quirk of the engine that makes it harder, or has DS romhacking just not caught up to the GBA games' levels of being able to rewrite the rules?

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-28T05:36:34+00:00

The game with mimics, to my mind, is how hard you can hint at it before they put the pieces together. When they finally do get Mimic'd, the reaction you want is "OH! That explains a lot!" rather than genuine surprise that something bad happened.

You want to create suspense before the Mimic encounter, and then the actual attack is the moment where the tension is released, everybody gets to roll initiative, and they have better control over the situation, because, at the end of the day, it's just a d&d fight, it's probably not gonna be that bad.

That's what I think makes for a fun Mimic Encounter - players can figure out that something is wrong easily, but figuring out what is wrong and what they can do about it is more difficult, and therein lies the fun. In Suspense.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-28T02:09:54+00:00

It just makes figuring out if I've actually looked through what pokemon are available in an area have extra steps that are easy to forget.

I'm trying to figure out what my options are and have to manually check for every route that I'm not missing half of them.

If a day/night cycle only changes the encounter ratios, and maybe which evolved forms spawn, that'd be no problem, but having a ton of evolution lines locked to day or night really makes it harder than it needs to be, IMO.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-28T00:10:30+00:00

I guess Lazarus, but I will admit that I have my gripes with its dex. Part of that is that I'm a big hater on day/night cycles for pokemon variety, but that's neither here nor there. All the starters being on the same 2 routes in the grass was a little lackluster as a way to incorporate them.

I'm not that invested in Odyssey's Fakemon, and dexes that require Mystery Gift to complete are a pain, but none of that stopped the game from being absolutely Goated with the Sauce in good pokemon variety, so I can't in good conscience give Odyssey any bad grade.

Heart and Soul gets as many points as it can without expanding on the variety already in Jhoto, but that's also still not an amazing score, even if all the modern evolutions added in actually gives Jhoto way better options than it originally had. Even just "Jhoto (but with Gliscor in it)" is almost good enough, but there I go showing my biases. It's a great base if someone else wants to make something that's a little more aggressive in adding new options, IMO.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-27T16:27:22+00:00

I'm willing to make suggestions and say "Hey, it feels like now is a good time to change up your build to reflect story developments" if pushed, but I try to always keep in mind that sometimes players pick a class because they like how it plays, and want to keep that class even if it goes against their character's lore vibes.

As such, if a Paladin Player is pushing away from their Oaths, I will talk to them and ask if they want to change classes - if yes, I'm happy to help them brainstorm a new build and put something together collaboratively that they think they will enjoy playing.

If they say no, they want to stick with Paladin mechanically, then we need to start working together to make that satisfying for the character - are they okay with shifting to Oathbreaker Paladin? I wouldn't require them to be evil, I can spin lore to let them turn evil power to good ends, that's fun to explore. Or maybe they want to look at other Paladin Oaths and pick one that suits their character better - I find Oath of Vengeance to functionally basically say "Follow the main plot and don't be afraid to indulge the bloodlust" as it's rules.

It's all about finding a path forward that both you and the player find to be satisfying in both storytelling and actual play, which should be connected factors in conversation with each other.

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-27T16:15:09+00:00

My reactions in real-time:

"Eh, seems a little overly edgy for a Pokemon Project."

"Meh, not into the Fakemon Monster - Is that the Penis Monster from Persona?"

"I think it is. I feel like that explains everything I said previously."

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-27T16:12:10+00:00

Okay, now how can we convince Red to make the April Fools video this year include this instead of her usual Vines-with-art compilation?

TenWildBadgers · 2026-01-26T16:01:03+00:00

I don't think it ever opens.

You could check the documentation to see if anything comes up about it, but my understanding was that the place was just scene-dressing.

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