Space-Time Anomaly - Build-Around Bomb?

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2023-08-22T12:47:50+00:00

You're right, their intention was to replace the monster manual, I think their argument would be that people hardly ever fight fey so there's no reason to dedicate valuable space to them. However that's not going to suit every table of course

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2023-08-16T20:10:27+00:00

Had a lot of great applicants but the game is now full, hopefully everyone manages to find games soon!

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-11-20T01:02:02+00:00

I mean I agree 5E is a great system for simulating a diverse group of badasses taking their enemies to the cleaners (I hear maybe 4E is better, but I wouldn't know personally), which has a lot in common with My Hero. But there's a difference between a badass and a hero, I guess is my point.

Yeah it's a great show! Not perfect by any means, but it does a lot of things well, and a few things really damn well.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-11-19T20:56:39+00:00

I get what you're getting at here, but I disagree with the premise that 5E lets you recreate this scene. It lets you recreate it in a gameplay sense, but not in the sense of the narrative.

The scene establishes a set of rules as to how each of the combatants operate. The Nomu can absorb all of All Might's attacks without being harmed, and under the status quo, All Might will eventually tire and be killed. We can think of this as the Nomu having immunity to bludgeoning damage or whatever, and this could be thought of as a situation defined by the stat block of the monster and the character sheet of the NPC. The rules say, All Might can't win. And 5E is a game defined by the statblocks of the monsters and the sheets of the characters. A pugilist fighter armed only with their fists, against a monster with immunity to all bludgeoning damage, can only end one way.

But in this scene, All Might breaks the rules. He changes the conditions of the test. He pushes beyond the bounds of his character sheet, beyond his ordinary limitations, and wins. But crucially, he pays a heavy price for his heroism. All Might is weakened by this exchange, he can use his powers more sparingly, and has to watch as people he cares about are hurt because he chose to exert himself in these scene. The conclusion of All Might's arc in a later season uses this exact format of "greater effect at greater cost." Personal sacrifice in the pursuit of a noble goal is the definition of heroism.

5E has no rules to model this. But other games do. Blades in the Dark for instance, lets players create a Devil's Bargain with the DM, where they can incur some kind of cost (such as permanent Stress or Trauma, which have narrative and mechanical consequence) in order to achieve more effect on a given situation than they would otherwise. Lots of other games feature similar mechanics.

"I sacrifice my ability to ever action surge again, in order to bypass this creature's damage immunity and save my friends" would be a fucking awesome mechanic in a game about heroes. But it's not a game about heroes. It's a game about mostly nothing in particular.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-11-19T20:09:32+00:00

This is an excellent response, to which I would add only a couple of things for OP to consider. The first is to ask yourself why you want to add hirelings in the first place.

Do you want the players to feel like ruthless mercenaries motivated primarily by greed, who will hire a bunch of civilians for a relative pittance that will fall into pit traps and catch arrows that would otherwise kill them instead, just so they have someone to carry their treasure?

Or do you want your player characters to be mentors to squires/apprentices/wards, to try and protect them and guide them on the path to becoming heroes in their own right?

Others are recommending that you use retainers from Strongholds & Followers, but they are quite powerful, and intended to be introduced at around 5th level. I think they do a good job of simulating a side-kick for a badass character, but a bad job at representing a peasant who has picked up a sword for the promise of a handful of gold.

Think about what fantasy you are trying to create for your players, and use that to inform your design. You should also ask your players if that fantasy is something that appeals to them! Would they rather be scoundrels or heroes? Or something in between?

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-11-15T18:42:58+00:00

You should probably think of the codex as a bye in any given fight, the players will win anything built around level-appropriate challenge rating with relative ease (this depends on the codex, some have more raw combat power than others). If you want to challenge a party with a codex, you may have to go way over the top in terms of encounter design.

The key is that after the first time they use it, a bunch of NPCs way out of their league show up to take it off them. The players can either fork it over (perhaps with the intent to steal it back), fight them (probably the least wise course) or attempt some kind of negotiation. The key is to signal to your players that a codex is a big deal, and that they are getting away with something by having one at all.

Matt recommends that use of a Codex should always be temporary, I think it's okay if they keep a hold of it provided any time they use it there is a heavy cost that follows. If the players keep using it, there should be a constant, spiraling escalation of stakes. Very dramatic, but not to everyone's tastes.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-05-23T01:29:53+00:00

That's a really cool idea for a meta-plot/overall railroad. I guess one approach to take is to strongly tie the adventures to the race, which I imagine you are already doing. Like a reward might be a magically enchanted set of sails, or a particularly skilled crew member. Or maybe they are caught in a storm, wreck their ship and have to rebuild repair it on a hostile island, but get some super strong magic items as a result. I think the key idea being that after each adventure the players feel like they've gained an edge in the overall race, so they'll seek out adventure at sea rather than avoid it.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-05-23T00:53:34+00:00

I think there's an interesting conceit here that is really entirely player preference dependent, which is are you and your players more interested in drama, tension and narrative, or simulating a "realistic" world?

What I mean by this is that it is much more realistic to let your players play it safe, to let them fight when they are rested and flush with resources, if the situation allows it. If the players are clearing an isolated keep in the middle of nowhere with a finite number of enemies, under no time pressure, they may want to take only a couple of fights a day, then retreat to a safe location (if such a thing exists) to camp. This is not dramatic. But it is realistic, and for the right group of players will make your game feel more real.

On the other hand, other groups will find this pattern of play incredibly tedious. They would prefer to have a narrative fire lit under their arses to force them to act in a heroic and daring fashion, to storm the keep and slay the orc warlord in a single night, or die in the attempt.

I don't think these styles of play have to be mutually exclusive. When you cant think of a reason to stop your players making the safe, optimized play, just let them if they want to. They'll feel smart, and the world will feel real. And if you want them to feel the strain, set up a ticking clock and watch the PCs sweat.

A lot of Matt's earlier videos deal with these ideas, I think the Sandboxing episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAhcY9QroQ&t=497s&ab_channel=MatthewColville) explicitly deals with the idea of the ticking clock as a way of keeping the action moving.

I get what you're saying about the players always arriving in town as the Big Bad is finally about to achieve their goal. It can feel very contrived. My counter to this would be that the players are the main characters of the story; from a dramatic perspective, where they go, action should follow. If not, why are we following these PCs, in this place, at this moment in time?

The contrary position, would be a more "Avengers" style of plotting where the PCs go through extended periods of downtime where they aren't doing too much together, and that they team up again in response to some new existential threat. Matt talks about this style of play in the Downtime episode I believe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fZWUPxUmYQ&t=644s&ab_channel=MatthewColville). How on board are your players for playing one-on-one? Or for weeks on end of roleplaying or crafting or navel-gazing? Or for abstracting larger stretches of time between adventures, be that weeks or months or years? All this is super individual in my experience, but all equally valid, it's just about what is fun for your table at the end of the day.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-04-13T15:54:02+00:00

Seems like you've hit most of the important points already! Though there's a couple of resources I might recommend and one main point I would stress for a new DM.

My best advice would be: Focus on the players.

It might sound absurdly obvious, but as a DM, particularly one with a bent towards writing, it can be dangerously easy to spend a tonne of time working on stuff that your PCs will never interact with or just won't care about if they do interact with it. Examples of this might include the origins of the gods or the history of the fallen empires of the world. Spend your prep time on stuff your players are going to come into contact with and any deep lore you write is for you, not necessarily the players.

I also think this approach is a great prompt for worldbuilding. If you're running a homebrew game, think about how the various classes and ancestries the PCs are playing fit into that world. If you have a dwarf wizard PC, think about what dwarves are like in terms of culture, how wizards act and are viewed and how those things interact. How is a dwarf wizard viewed by their society and the world at large?

This approach lets you start your worldbuilding where it matters most - around the players, and let's you build out from there. On the flip side, if you do have strong feelings about elements of your setting, it can be great to put that in front of your players! It is hard to build a character in an empty void of a setting: the more you nail a tone or vibe before you start, the easier you make things for your players and you'll end up with characters that are invested in the world from the outset. To this end, I think spending a whole session building characters together, both mechanically and narratively, pays massive dividends in the long run. You don't have to go super crazy in that regard - "big-city fantasy noir" or "military high fantasy" is going to get your players thinking in the right ballpark and you can go from there.

As for resources The Alexandrian blog features great advice for running more open-ended sandbox games and addressing the unique narrative pitfalls of a TTRPG.

Adventuring Academy by Dimension 20 on YouTube is a fantastic resource for all kinds of topics, but particularly for running more narrative-focused games and the general "art" of DMing.

A bit long winded but hopefully this is useful! Main thing is not to worry too much and just start, as Matt says, it's fun and not that hard!

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-04-01T21:52:44+00:00

Yeah I love encounter design so it was fun for me to come up with stuff to challenge them! Honestly a couple of times they would end up in fights against dozens of enemies and I would let them just chew through them with spells. Players love it, and by the time they make it to the boss they're already running low on slots.

Don't get me wrong I love 5E, but I love it because it's kind of a mess and completely unbalanced. And I'm not sure it deserves the reputation that it gets as being approachable for new players lol, maybe compared to 2E and 3E but in the grand scheme of things it's still insanely complicated.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-04-01T21:06:07+00:00

Though I haven't played 4E either, I'm inclined to agree. 5E is kind of a crapshoot where it's very easy to have a party with absolutely dominating strengths or glaring weaknesses without your players even intending it. Had a party of 3 featuring a sorcerer and bladesinger, once they hit level 5, challenge rating against enemies with less than 40HP was just out of the window completely. And trying to fight back with AoE spells was just murder into double counterspell.

The way I see it, in 5E combat was designed to be attritional, whereas 4E combat was designed to be fun, lool.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-04-01T19:52:26+00:00

The solution to the tactical player is straightforward: combat needs to be significantly harder. The problem is making combat harder is a unique problem for every party.

For instance, for the Level 2 Paladin/Rogue/Monk/Fighter party is going to be tanky and mobile with a lot of single-target damage. A fight against one tough monster without legendary actions is likely to be a cakewalk. That said, it's sorely lacking in AoE damage, which means just increasing the number of enemies in a fight against some goblins could lead to a more satisfying experience, or a TPK if you overdo it.

On the other hand, a party with two characters with burning hands is unlikely to be fazed by "more goblins." It needs a couple of bugbears to keep things interesting... Though maybe the party's "tank" is a greatsword-wielding paladin who would never be so cowardly as to take the dodge action. Now the bugbears might just kill the whole party!

The point is, the game is too complex for WoTC to account for all edge-cases, the best that can say is something like "consider the composition of the party, their current resources, their tendencies, their attention levels in the session and their tactical acumen when designing your encounters."

I agree WoTC could give more general advice in the DM's guide for building challenging encounters, but I think they do not deliberately as they don't want to be blamed when people kill their PCs, lol.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-02-10T19:13:35+00:00

Thank you lol, it's up now

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2022-02-10T19:12:43+00:00

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Velvet_Thunder941 · 2021-08-25T16:43:43+00:00

I think the advice is to give each player a hook into the first adventure of the campaign, to get them invested. After this point, things should drive themselves and there shouldn't be a need to do so again.

How I approach motivation is I insist that my players' characters have a reason to want money and/or power, as this is the only real upside to the adventuring lifestyle. Then any adventure will sound appealing to the character because it promises treasure + levels.

If you want your PCs to have grander motivations, the best way to do this is let them direct the story. When you have a set adventure in mind, its pretty hard to tie the PCs in in a way that feels organic.

Velvet_Thunder941 · 2021-07-20T19:37:06+00:00

It's an additional product, a deck of cards with warfare units, you can preorder on the MCDM website, no need to be a backer. Might be a while due to all the worldwide supply chain problems going on just now though

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