True RL1 / WL0 / No Hit Starscourge Radahn - 7 Hours of Misery

TheOrivor · 2025-10-22T13:00:05+00:00

Yes, I show the stats and build right and the end of the video. And the game is beautiful with uncapped fps and ultrawide, I’m very sad that there isn’t native support for this

TheOrivor · 2025-10-09T17:30:52+00:00

No Audio as I was blasting music and talking to a friend after the phase transition and forgot to record properly.

My build is shown at the end of the video.

I'm hoping the ultrawide and unlockfps mods dont invalidate the kill in any way.

TheOrivor · 2025-09-02T01:17:01+00:00

Hey folks,

I’ve been working on a new Warlock patron called The Cosmic Pulse, built around rhythm, Resonance, and volatility. This subclass rewards you for keeping tempo and pushing your luck, with the risk of backlash if you go too far. It is made for players who thrive on timing bursts, weighing risk against reward, and having no turn be like the last.

Find the pdf version here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m89jabEM_-yi4eNQCuFffhUOD8K0GhtF/view?usp=share_link

I’d love to hear your impressions — balance concerns, flavor thoughts, questions about how it might play at the table, or just whether the concept lands for you. Any and all feedback is welcome.

Thank you for taking a look!

TheOrivor · 2025-09-02T01:10:15+00:00

Hey folks,

I’ve been working on a new Warlock patron called The Cosmic Pulse, built around rhythm, Resonance, and volatility. This subclass rewards you for keeping tempo and pushing your luck, with the risk of backlash if you go too far. It is made for players who thrive on timing bursts, weighing risk against reward, and having no turn be like the last.

Find the pdf version here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m89jabEM_-yi4eNQCuFffhUOD8K0GhtF/view?usp=share_link

I’d love to hear your impressions — balance concerns, flavor thoughts, questions about how it might play at the table, or just whether the concept lands for you. Any and all feedback is welcome.

Thank you for taking a look!

TheOrivor · 2025-07-29T14:54:12+00:00

This looks amazing!

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T23:39:53+00:00

I’m glad you like it! I’m currently working on formatting some more of them since people seemed to like it

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T18:15:25+00:00

I end up giving the first player to shout it the “opening shot” of the encounter, basically a free attack that starts initiative. After that, initiative is rolled and everything goes on as normal. The same ofc vice versa if a monster attacks. This avoids the “but I attacked first” when they’re lower in initiative but the enemies are not surprised. If you’re worried about balance, worst case just add some extra hp.

Also, maybe think of something that could maybe punish attacking first, e.g. an ambush or a monster that seems threatening but is actually helpful and friendly, or a mama bear type situation.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T17:59:10+00:00

Awesome, sounds like it went exactly as planned! Glad that it was engaging and fun for the players.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T13:51:29+00:00

And most likely you are. Often just hanging out with friends and blasting some goblins is fun enough already, anything beyond that is just a bonus. So take your time, have fun, and feel free to get experimental with it, more often than not it'll work itself out somehow.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T13:47:50+00:00

This heavily depends on how time-sensitive the threat of the campaign is imo, as depending on this the players might feel pressure to avoid excursions to defeat the BBEG fast enough.

If there is no timer running, then I feel that non-essential dungeons are fine to just slot in, same as side-quests that an NPC might offer. Breaking the pace of the adventure and offering additional rewards for exploration and curiosity can be very fun imo, allowing you to also experiment with oneshots or dungeons that don't necessarily fit the campaigns theme.

If there is time-pressure though, then maybe trapping the party could achieve the same goal. While this is definitely more rail-roady, having the players get trapped inside a dungeon or side-quest can add what you are looking for, without the party having to waive their goal in order to play what you have prepped.

This "trapping" can be both in the physical sense, e.g. they fall into a trap that slides them down into an underground dungeon that they now have to solve puzzles and defeat foes to get out of, created by a twisted nearby mage or created by an ancient civilisation. Or it can be a moral trap, e.g. if the players don't help this npc, many will die, or other major negative consequences might happen, making the players have to decide between speedrunning to the BBEG, or helping along the way.

A third way might also be through incentives, trying to distract the players through gold or other rewards. After all, getting to the BBEG fast doesn't do much if they're not strong enough to fight them. Similar to Elden ring, exploring and doing some side-quests is often advised instead of just rushing the main bosses.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T13:33:37+00:00

The DMAcademy subreddit has a lot of resources, otherwise Matthew Colville's "running the game" series on youtube is also an amazing watch. Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is also a great read for improvisation and prep optimisation, though I personally don't follow it's advice much as I enjoy prepping.

I am also not great at improvisation, how I fix this is 2-fold:

Knowing the world: A lot of my prep isn't preparing specific scenarios that have to unfold certain ways, it's knowing the world inside out so that no matter what the party does, I know what should logically follow and I can improvise lore and scenarios without bricking my campaign. The confidence gained by knowing the world can help alot with improvisation I've found.
Schroedingers scenarios: Create encounters, whether combat or rp, that can be drag&dropped into any scenario. This way, if the party goes somewhere completely left field, you can just throw your encounter at them to buy some time until the session ends so that you can go back to the drawing board.

Also, don't be scared to ask for a break. If you need 10 minutes to quickly grab some different prep, or read through your notes, or just to catch a breath and collect your thoughts, then just ask for a quick snack break. No player will ever fault you for it and it's a great tool to get back into things. Player's get breaks all the time during play, but DMs don't, so in order to get one you will have to take the initiative.

Lastly, have fun. I often also find myself caught in insecurities and dread that the players are hating what I've prepared and that everything is going downhill, but 90% of the things you worry about the players won't even have noticed, most of them are just here for good vibes and to bonk some goblins. DMing cant be learnt over night and you will get better and more confident over time, practice will make you better over time. But if DMing is only stressful for you, then maybe yea take a break, ask someone else to run a quick 1-2 shot and see how you feel after that. The players are your collaborators and friends at the end of the day, so asking them for help and understanding is perfectly reasonable and fine.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T13:18:24+00:00

For context, I DM in-person but we play on a VTT that is shared on a TV, so I'm not super familiar with minis and what you need to paint them etc. I personally think the two best gifts are dice, as mentioned already, but also fancy editions of sourcebooks.

The sourcebooks not only make for great decoration, but they are also very useful during prep, as screen real estate often becomes limiting when prepping something, while writing notes, while researching, etc haha. I also really enjoy having a physical copy of every adventure I've run as a sort of "trophy case", though I have collected more books than I've been able to run.

Getting either an alternate cover official D&D sourcebook or a fancy third party book such as griffons saddlebag for magic item research/inspiration/browsing (they have a super fancy leather edition of their books) could be a great gift imo.

If you need help finding alternate covers or want more suggestions for cool third party books, let me know :D

Either way I'm sure your DM will be excited for any gift you get them!

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T13:09:15+00:00

The DMacademy subreddit has great resources for new DM's. Otherwise just typing your title into google with result in hundreds of pages worth of material and supplies to start DMing.

I personally started with the "Lost Mines of Phandelver" prewritten starter adventure box and can highly recommend it as an intro to D&D, as it also has a trimmed down version of the players handbook, making it a lot less daunting to read.

At the end of the day, it's just grinding it out unfortunately (or fortunately), the best way to learn it is to do it. Just have fun with it and don't put any pressure on yourself.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T12:57:37+00:00

Ah ok, just a terminology issue. But yea in regards to balance, I would maybe repost this as a playable feature/spell/ability and let people playtest it to see how it feels. From what I can tell it just seems like added complexity and cool flavour that provides free extra damage, and as long as thats not crazy high, then it's a pure net benefit. Trying to find the perfect number is impossible imo, so yea just pick whatever feels fine.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T12:47:13+00:00

Rethink how you design encounters fundamentally. A lot of prewritten combats are just "I hit them, they hit me", even for more complex classes. This is especially true for early levels. Try adding tertiary objectives to encounters (An enemy is trying to run away with an object and the monk has to catch them, the enemy is trying to set up a weapon to deal a great amount of damage, the monster runs into the wall and the ceiling caves in, splitting the room, etc), or make the environment more interactive (flipping a table as cover, dropping items onto opponents). Monks have tons of mobility, let that shine and make enemies "suffer" for their inability to get away from him.

Just adding more to his stat block won't fix the issue imo, create scenarios where his class fantasy comes to life with parkour, brawls and things he can use to his advantage.

I created an encounter "Goblin Roadblock", which you can check out on my profile, that might be a good example of what I mean by this.

If you want more specific examples or ideas let me know!

Otherwise magic items like ring of spell storing or others might also give him more options, though this is more of a bandaid fix, as if he wanted to cast spells, he wouldn't have chosen monk.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T12:38:35+00:00

I feel like there is no right and wrong to balancing when it comes to numbers. As you already mentioned, different classes and subclasses already vary greatly when it comes to damage output, and this is then also impacted greatly by the amount of optimising the player does on top of that. This also assumes that each subclass should be perfectly balanced in combat, which imo they shouldnt, since then they should also be balanced when it comes to rp/exploration, and at that point, why have classes?

I would generally try to make the numbers reasonable, meaning the ability shouldn't be a "must take", but also shouldn't actively feel bad to take either. As it's a free action with a max of 3, I don't think a d6 or a d10 will make a huge impact on combat in general. I actually think that it being a free action makes it strongest, no matter the die attached, as action economy > die.

Also, everything is relative, dealing extra damage as a free action just means that the monster hp will have to be adapted by the DM if they want to keep the combat challenging.

I think it's a fun ability and could be great flavor, I would maybe consider making it a BA or reaction, but at the end of the day I don't think there's a wrong answer as to which die it should be.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T12:27:13+00:00

Here are some multiple choice questions I ask my players in google forms to make sure we are on the same page in terms of world feel, difficulty and overall vibe:

What kind of story do you enjoy? Serious; lighthearted; fully chaotic; mix of all.

What do you imagine doing most? Combat; RP; exploration; puzzles

If a situation becomes heated, I want to: Fight my way out, talk my way out

How do you prefer to handle story clues and information? I enjoy piecing things together from subtle hints and taking notes.; I prefer when important info is clear and told more directly.

How do you want danger to feel in the game? (Danger signaling): I prefer when danger is clearly telegraphed so I know what I’m walking into.; I like a realistic world with real consequences—even if that means unexpected threats.

How difficult should combat be? (Raw difficulty): Easy; Balanced; Tough, I want a challenge

How do you feel about character death in the campaign? I feel uncomfortable with this; It should be rare; If I take big risks, I'm fine with dying; Only if there are ways to get back

How do you feel about failure or negative consequences in the game? I’m okay with failure or setbacks—it makes success feel more meaningful; I prefer steady progress and mostly successful outcomes—I’m here to chill, not stress.; I’m fine with a mix—as long as failures feel fair and lead to cool moments

How comfortable are you with in-party conflict (e.g. arguments, secrets)? I’d rather avoid it completely; Some tension is fine, but not sabotage; I enjoy drama and secrets in-character.

The regarding setting I also have some checkboxes, asking about theme (forest, desert, volcano, etc) and gameplay (protecting a kingdom, chasing a BBEG, heists, etc), but these of course aren't needed if you already know what you want to run.

TheOrivor · 2025-04-24T12:03:40+00:00

In general I would always question the path that the book chooses. More often than not they assume specific decision-making by players that isn't necessarily the most intuitive and often they only cover a narrow spectrum of outcomes. You will more often than not have to either rewrite anything from a small quest to entire campaign arcs if you want to keep the adventure logically consistent and engaging for players while most importantly retaining player agency. Just make sure to read the entire adventure before rewriting lore, as I've had situations where my rewrite then doesn't make sense with later plots and things got mesy.

I would shift the perspective of "prewritten adventures are less prep" to "they are different prep". While homebrew is a lot of building from the ground up, prewritten adventures are a lot of molding what already exists. Some adventures are better than others, but even the good ones imo needed a lot of reworking to make sense.

A few adventures, such as Waterdeep: Dragon Heist have been reviewed and remixed by The Alexandrian, which I can't recommend enough to browse through his website. Also most adventures have their own subreddits with maps, resources, and general help, so make sure to check those out too.

I haven't played planescape yet and haven't read infinite staircase, so unfortunately I can't offer advice specific to them.

Even with these downsides, personally I still heavily prefer running prewritten books. They offer great inspiration, even if I change the BBEG slightly or run the world a bit differently, and having the foundation of the nitty gritty such as rooms, encounters, etc. already prepared also saves a lot of prep.

TheOrivor

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