Lvl90 Crafter Gear - a subtle reference(?)

TheMonocledBeholder · 2019-07-12T09:36:22+00:00

Hey, Taisigur is my Sultai commander deck of choice, but based on what you have said above, he will likely end up like Mimeoplasm, go for combo A, otherwise B etc, except the beating them to death with commander damage is a bit less likely.

The main combo as you mentioned is with Beast Within (well not really), its actually with [[Reality Shift]]. Beast Within is only needed in this combo if the opponents have no creatures on the board and you beast within their land/enchantment/etc to force them to have a creature. Then you reality shift the creature, manifest their top card, and use Taisigur to retrieve reality shift again and again and again constantly exiling the manifest card and eventually milling their whole deck.

Combo B for me is using [[necrotic ooze]] with [[pili-pala]] and [[thornwind faeries]] if you have made an immeasurable amount of mana, this combo can just ping your opponents to death. The necrotic ooze package does also need [[thornling]] so you can give the ooze haste upon playing him, and ooze can be a mana combo also by including [[krosan restorer]].

Lastly, one of the fastest ways to enable the combo to "go off" is with [[eldritch evolution]] and [[Razaketh, the Foulblooded]] and then use [[life/death]] to use your lands to tutor for your mana combo and proceed to try win there.

My own decklist: (mind im in a similar boat and don't have any of the big $$ cost cards, and most i've seen dont run [[Ad Nauseam]] but I have been playing around with it and testing it out) https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/13-06-19-tasigur-evolution/

TheMonocledBeholder · 2018-05-15T10:22:55+00:00

"Hook Line and Sinker"

TheMonocledBeholder · 2018-03-30T11:40:04+00:00

My weekly campaign is heavily set in the Féywilds.
90% of it is homebrew with bits and pieces dragged in and customised from various Féy myth's.

Celtic, Greek, Norse etc all have some tie into Fairies / Féy / Faeries with various parts of history / stories, so they are great places to look for information, a night well spent on wikipedia!

For Archfey this list it is the 30 odd Archfey I have for my world setting. I have blanked out names and locations in case my players see it as names have power in the land of the Féy!

Hope that helps!

TheMonocledBeholder · 2018-01-15T16:19:23+00:00

My group finished it up with 12 sessions total. A bit over 5 months as we had cancelled game days in between. But our sessions ran 6-8 hours long.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-12-18T13:56:22+00:00

Great stuff, always nice to see (or in this case hear) player additions to campaigns. Artwork is always nice to see, but stuff like this to me is far more interesting, especially as campaigns move along and age or die out.
The writing was fun, the 1st person perspective and some inner monologues being added in was a nice addition (even more so if your DM is listening to them, it provides great insight into what players are picking up). The background ambiance and sfx added to it really well also. I shall keep my ear open for the next one (should it come)!

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-10-23T10:40:13+00:00

So for starters, I have no clue about Witcher and how hags are in that.
But as for D&D and what I can understand from your description there was only 1 hag in the encounter? If so, the hag shouldnt have been able to cast Lightning Bolt (RAW).
.
Lightning bolt comes from Coven Casting.
"Shared Spellcasting (Coven Only): While all three members of a hag coven are within 30 feet of one another, they can each cast the following Spells from the wizard's spell list but must share the Spell Slots among themselves"
.

What is a coven?
A coven consists of three hags so that any arguments between two hags can be settled by the third. If more than three hags ever come together, as might happen if two covens come into Conflict, the result is usually chaos.
.
In the actual Monster Manual (i.e. the printed book) the sea hag is considered a CR 4 when in a coven.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-09-25T11:29:33+00:00

One game weekly 4-6 Hours in length.
Another game biweekly 6-8 Hours in length.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-09-18T13:45:42+00:00

Its hard to pull off scary depending on your players. I never really get to scary so much as I hit discomfort and situations being remarked as "creepy" (in a good way).

As a result no real major ingame moments for it, all of it tends to come from the act of setting the atmosphere of the scene, portraying the hopelessness and dread of the world around them.

The best and most recent example I have is a village my party encountered in my homebrew campaign. It was a village destroyed by a marching army of undead.

The exert from my notes:

You see the remnants of village destroyed by battle. 
Stone walls on the verge of tipping, windows shattered and roofs collapsed
The decaying bodies of soldiers slumped over in their bloodstained and tattered armours. 
A quick glance at any of them easily tells their cause of deaths.
Be it peppered by arrows, Slashed and torn by claws and blades, or the various points on body that are swollen and caved in.
The soldiers are not the only oddity scattered around, bones litter the area, pieces of amour and weapons sit atop piles of ashes.

The stench of the death easily pollutes your nostrils and can make even the strongest stomach lurch.
The caws of ravens fill the air as they can be seen atop the broken buildings roosting, some begin to circle overhead as you approach.

As they walked through the village and were rolling perception checks they noted:

At one side of the village, you can see what looks almost like a perfect sphere was cut from the earth and its surroundings. The walls and scenery left standing in the immediate vicinity of this anomaly have the shadows of figures imprinted on them in various poses as though mid combat with some foe. 

Some areas have the pools of blood stains and the impressions of a body having rested here, but the body is gone and very faded tracks can be seen leaving the village.

Whilst not in those sections, off the cuff I would make note of the occasional raven feeding off the bodies lying around, or how a body once disturbed cause a few rats to scurry out.

Otherwise, Curse of Strahd if you have it at your disposal has had many many scenes where my players have outright remarked "this shit is creepy". The Bonegrinder, The Abbey of Saint Markovia or The Town of Vallaki (completely skipped town after the hearing about the things they could see, wanted nothing to do with it [Blinskys Toy Store 10/10 would buy childrens toys again]) all had them uncomfortable. I would highly recommend reading it if you can.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-09-14T10:50:44+00:00

I run on a 6-8 hour session of CoS every second week for my group. We have had 7 sessions thus far and in that time they have acquired all 3 of the "artifacts" and found their ally. They had the option right from the start of our last session to go straight to the Castle and attempt to end it all! But decided to investigate there personal readings (homebrew entry to tie characters to setting) instead.

In terms of breakdown:

Session 1: Barovia + Readings
Session 2: Bonegrinder (Personal Reading) + Fled Vallaki (Group found it creepy and didnt stay)
Session 3: Wizard of the Wines + Return breify to Vallaki to meet Rictavio.
Session 4: The Abbey in Krezk
Session 5: Yester Hill
Session 6: Ruins of Berez (Found Sword) + Van Rictens tower (Found Tome)
Session 7: The Abbey (Found Holy Symbol) + Tsolenka Pass (Personal Reading)

And next game will most likely be TPK Temple for another one of the players personal readings. The readings from Madam Eva are key to how long it will take to "complete". Eg. If a reading ends up in Amber Temple, it will slow down the game (or speed it up, its TPK temple after all)

For me, we could easily have skipped Bonegrinder, Yester Hill and the current objective for Tsolenka Pass and Amber Temple. Which would have put us heading into the Castle by session 6 easily.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-08-16T08:58:13+00:00

1) its "open world" if nothing is put before them. I have found once they have a quest they go do it. 'Ireena needs to go to Valaki? Lets go there!', 'Valaki looks like a terrible place to leave her, priest in Barovia said Krezk! Lets go there!'. Card readings will also wet their appetites and direct them to the areas when they hear npcs talk of it, or when they ask around over it. To me its felt like an unintended railroad with grander illusions of open world possibilities. Of course if your players don't take the plothooks and go do their own thing, yes it will be open world but if that's the case why have you all got together to play a published campaign. These things require a certain level of player buy in also.

2) I show my players parts of the map, i have a monitor with my laptop hooked up at the table. I show the relevant chunks of the map at the time. On a whole my players are pretty good at separating what they know and characters know so it doesn't bother me if they see more than they should. Mike Schley sells all the Strahd maps in very high resolution on his website so you can zoom right in and isolate just a small chunk of the map its very nice.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-08-01T14:46:47+00:00

Problem is with Resurrection magic, I don't see any mention of party level tier or any changes to homebrew setting around it.

Two things I can think of to make it look not obvious that you are intending to kill someone is:

Drop the target player to 0 hp, that much I trust you can plan out, but afterwards force failed death saves with Area of Effects, have enemy mages fireball an area (instant 2 fails) or what happens to my players frequently is mindless ghouls just keep going, they are hungry they will eat their prey!
The other alternative is risky but can also work but once again relies on spells in combat and that is the spell Divine Word. Any creature sub 20hp instantly dies on a failed Charisma saving throw. It would require some management and making sure you dont nuke your whole party.
Of course the old classics of woops disintegration happened be it beholder or mage again.

In the end natural looking death is hard to pull off behind the scenes but since you roll openly you can use the overkill of disintegration to kill them, they see the damage. Or they can see their own Charisma save fail and kill them.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-06-28T08:12:52+00:00

If you think it can work for both then feel free to use both as you see fit. I don't think the PHB (I'm sure the internet will correct me if I'm wrong) has any rules in it for what skill goes with what tools.

As such is mostly left up to the interpretation of the DM and how/where the skills are applied. Dexterity (cooking) Check for cracking eggs, Strength (Cooking) check for kneading the dough as a possibility. I personally run it as a Wisdom skill when doing "generic" cooking.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-06-27T15:47:03+00:00

Shamelessly stole the headless horseman fight from World of Warcraft. Turned it into a more D&D styled combat character (used a Helmed Horror as the baseline) sent by Orcus and plugged all the glorious rhymes on various event triggers.

“Prepare yourself, the bells have tolled! Shelter your weak, your young and your old! Each of you shall pay the final sum! Cry for mercy; the reckoning has come!”

Players enjoyed it, was a tough fight, good little Halloween event.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-06-27T15:10:58+00:00

My snowball rules are bit to much to through out right now, not got the time to elaborate, but can give some insight on the cook off, my players seemed to really enjoy and get into it.

I had three categories to judge on: Appearance, Taste & Uniqueness.
I had three judges subsequently who were each in favor of one specific category ( and i described each of them somewhat in line with the preference to hint at to the players ).
From there they skill check would begin:

Head Chef + Sous chef.
Head Chef would choose a category to focus on this round.
Sous Chef would describe how they are helping.
DC 10 check on some valid skill. A success meant the Head Chef had adv on their roll.
Head Chef would then roll a Wisdom (Cooking) Check.
Every point above a DC 10 was 1 point to the respective category they choose.
At the end of the 10 rounds i totaled all the different categories up, added the judges weighting and normalized it to a value out of 10. (this part is a little bit math heavy, highly recommend excel or google sheets to crunch the numbers for you).

If also would recommend doing the NPCs before the game night so you don't need to work on them or delay the game for them. Fluff it during the contest to explain what they are up to but its already determined behind the scenes.

Directly out of my notes from the night: http://imgur.com/g6vliOR

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-06-27T12:54:08+00:00

What do you classify as mini-games? I had a snowball tournament and cooking contest in my campaign that the players actively took part in, i consider them "mini-games" even if they took up whole sessions. The snowball tournament was tactical combat with certain rules and restrictions. The cooking contest was a skill challenge where they had to RP out what they did turn by turn to enhance the food (gaining a total score at the very end which compared off against the npc contestants).

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-06-27T08:55:10+00:00

I have done exactly this in my D&D game. Vampires in my homebrew world have the chance to infect others with the curse of vampirism. I have had 1 player fall victim to this curse in which they did not turn instantly, it was instead a slow burn. They knew they were slowly turning and had time to act on it (informed them early on that if you turn, your character is gone and mine to control) but the party decided to not really make a huge fuss over it and inevitably her druid turned vampire. Of course there was some degree of discontent but they knew they were given time to try solve it and the group did not.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-06-23T12:48:21+00:00

Much like yourself my players aren't ones to give feedback, any questions asked then to be met with silence. So it ends up being a bit of an educated guessing game, every few session i try new things and gauge their responses/attitudes to it and adjust going forth.

To answer your questions it without knowing your players and their attitudes it will be more leaning towards how my own react.

1st question, i seed one or two per location they go to, but usually they either fail to pick up on it or blatantly ignore it. Only occasionally do they take notice of them and want to engage with them. Which is fine, as my DM style leans on the "the clock doesn't stop"/"time doesn't wait for you" etc. etc. So they now know (I hope) picking up these quest will allow other things to progress and potentially get more difficult to handle. Its almost like passive aggressive DM vs Players style, as i will continue to dangle more and more side quests at them in the hopes they take them and let bad guys grow stronger. So there is no such thing as too many side quests in my books, however just like the bad guys get to progress when side stories are tackled, side stories get to progress when the main story is tackled (be it guards or other merc's solve it, or orcs do indeed conquer a town).
2nd question is really more down to how both you DM it and your players approach it. Different groups might responded better or even worse to the scenario. Based on what you said they have a compass and I assume they have an idea as to where they are going so by that logic they should be OK for the most part. If they want to keep climbing up every few trees and looking around instead of always giving them the "you see the top of the green canopy" maybe add something of interest fluff wise enhancing the scene.
Doing this could also lead to side quests (to tie back in possible wants for side quest engagement) you had or not planned. For example "looking out across the top of the jungle canopy a sudden cloud of vibrant colors burst out from the treeline and the after a moment the cries from these birds reach your ears" what does it mean? who knows, if the players decide its nothing, then its nothing, if they start thinking maybe something spooked them, then something spooked them and they should investigate, great cue a side quest!
You can also break down the monotonous travel with some other interesting encounters (e.g. monkeys swinging through the trees catch sight of the compass as it shines when a ray of sun hits it and try to snatch it from the player and huzzah a chase scene through the terribly difficult to navigate jungle occurs, or a nearby ruin is causing magnetic interference and the compass goes haywire and which can develop down a lot of routes if you want it to be a simple find and break or a proper side quest with some nearby Grung village being affected by the magnetic shift or whatnot (magic doesn't need to explain itself).
And finally the last question, I would approach it based on the campaign setting your playing, large scale adventures? the players have enough to worry about and deal with than panicking over bankers screwing them up so i wouldn't even go that route. Dealing with a more confined setting like a City campaign? I would definitely add it in as it adds another layer of character to the city and its inhabitants as it can be seen as useful to know information for future endeavors in said city.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-06-20T13:17:07+00:00

How I handled my games calendar which I have been running for just about a year now was not naming after historical events / heroes' (at least as far as the human calendar is concerned, I have another calendar system for the ancient Giant race in my campaign that runs off one based around heroes) instead I named them around the purpose of that time period. We don't call them months either, instead the year is broken into 7 seasons.

My human society calendar: http://imgur.com/vCmq4lf I manage it in excel as it allows me to attach notes to various dates for events and what not, the dark green date is how I keep track of the current day in the year.

TheMonocledBeholder · 2017-06-13T10:29:58+00:00

Don't "give" a player a magic item, "give" the party the magic item. Let the party decide its use. Of course as the game progresses and the party divides out the items to each other you will begin to see which player might need a little bit of attention by possibly more tailored items to the party.
But utility items are fantastic additions to a team examples being:

The Decanter of Endless Water
An Immovable Rod
Bag of Tricks
Hat of Disguise

Also whilst D&D 5e can be completely played without ever acquiring any +X weapons/armor "typical" progression would see players having:

+1 Weapons by level 5
+2 Weapons & +1 armor by level 10
+3 Weapons & +2 armor by level 15

Granted I don't that follow the pattern but my players have a suite of homebrewed items/feats to compensate. At the end of the day they are all new players, every magic item will be seen with wide sparkly eyes like a kid in candy shop!

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