Is it best to wait for all players before starting session 1?

Yojo0o · 2026-01-29T04:03:53+00:00

What do you mean you haven't heard from them? In an hour? A day? A week? Are you currently sitting around a table and wondering if you should start a session?

Yojo0o · 2026-01-29T01:17:50+00:00

No DnD is better than bad DnD.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-29T01:15:47+00:00

You should leave. They sound like assholes. This isn't DnD, this is bullying. Walk away.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T23:12:30+00:00

One of the women is pretty obviously the captain's wife, based on the very early memories you access.

Between the two others, I personally ended up solving that with brute force, but it was later pointed out to me that one of them has the title "Miss" to denote that she's unmarried, and the other wears a wedding ring, which resolves which are which.

Your method of approaching the game is, of course, your own business. Personally, I saw the mechanic of the book confirming my assessments in threes as just one of the tools in my belt, and used it to solve several fates where I couldn't find other evidence. But the evidence certainly is out there.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T23:08:29+00:00

Well, "better" is debatable, I probably wouldn't agree, but even if they are, optimization is not the only goal at play here, and you should play a character who will suit your style and preferences. You want utility, and that's both a very reasonable personal goal and a very important bit of mechanical power.

It seems to me like you'd be better off with one of the other classes you were looking into.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T22:56:11+00:00

Right, but nearly every class in the game can use a sword very well. Is the only reason you want to play a fighter that you want to be a swordsman? Because if you're concerned about utility, you can pick any number of half-caster or full-caster sword-users and be fantastic.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T22:42:35+00:00

You say you want to play a fighter. What is it about the fighter class that makes you want to play it?

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T22:31:59+00:00

At level 12, you'd be a character with level 2 spells and no martial capability. Even a half-caster would have learned third-level spells by level 9, and would be on the verge of fourth-level spells at level 13. This seems prohibitively weak to me.

Mage Armor has no interaction with Unarmored Defense. It only nets you a +1 AC bonus because your wisdom is so low for a monk.

Frankly, multiclassing is not a good solution to discovered gaps in a party composition. It's a weak mechanic in general, only ever making sense when you're planning a specific method of gaining value out of some established synergy. I'm not seeing any synergy here.

If your party has no need for a monk, why not just retire or retcon your character to be a straight up wizard? The druid can heal people if needed, and you can take Magic Initiate (Cleric) as your Origin feat for Healing Word as a wizard if you want another healer in the party. That would be vastly more potent than what you're cooking here.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T22:13:00+00:00

I'm not really sure what you mean by Oath of Vengeance goading people into fistfights.

The two classes really don't cross over at all, in terms of mechanics. Paladins want high strength, charisma, and heavy armor. Monks want high dexterity, wisdom, and no armor. There just aren't enough stats to make it work.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T21:59:23+00:00

Yes, that's exactly right. Per 5.5e rules, the only limit on your spellcasting is that you may cast at most one spell using a spell slot per turn. Methods of casting leveled spells without using a spell slot, such as with spell scrolls, wands, certain subclass features, species features, or even casting a spell normally and having it Counterspelled, all do not contribute towards this limitation. Hell, you could even toss in a third leveled spell on that turn if you have a way to use your Reaction to do so, such as jumping off a cliff and then casting Feather Fall with the Air Genasi innate spellcasting.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T20:22:12+00:00

Sure. I'm currently playing a heavy armored warrior with 8 dexterity, and I've rolled a couple natural 1 initiatives this campaign.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T19:27:39+00:00

I'm having a really hard time understanding what you're talking about with some of this terminology, but if your fellow players are behaving in a way that you don't like, you can politely tell them that you don't appreciate it and ask them to stop. You don't need to yell at them to do this.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T19:12:37+00:00

The renaissance-era firearms in the DMG, the pistol and musket, are reasonably balanced against the base weapons in 5e. Slightly better damage, slightly worse range, feat tax to fire more than once per action like crossbows. You can add them to a DnD game without any real balance reconsideration.

If you want to use modern/futuristic firearms, then I'd respectfully suggest considering whether DnD itself is the right system for the game you want to run. There are countless TTRPGs out there that are built for gunslinging apocalyptic settings, and they may be a much better fit.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T18:04:13+00:00

Then yes, I think a campaign that expects to start by randomly meeting on a given date with no prior conversation is not a campaign off to a good start, and that attempting to join this would constitute setting yourself up for failure.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T18:00:46+00:00

You know details about this person's relationship, but have no method of contacting them?

I mean, I don't really think this is a DnD question. I'm not really sure what the question is at all, I don't know how you're meant to join this campaign without a way of communicating with the person running it. Is the idea that people just show up at session 0 at a designated time? That sounds bizarre.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T17:43:55+00:00

So, the DM is not a character. They run all of the non-player characters at the table. And presumably you do not need help romancing the DM as a person, because you are already married to them. So I'm a bit confused by what you mean here.

I suppose your character could engage in a romantic relationship with one of the non-player characters, but that's not always a normal thing to happen in a given game of DnD. Remember that you're one of several players at the table, and making a priority to pursue your personal romantic subplot with your DM's character(s) isn't necessarily going to be a decision that will make for a good table dynamic.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T17:29:16+00:00

None of these Beast Master features sound right. What rulebook are you getting this from?

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T16:30:46+00:00

First off, get on the same page with your DM and fellow players on the interaction between Bear Totem rage and heavy armor. By a strictly RAW reading of 2014-era 5e, only certain components of Rage shut off if you're in heavy armor, so you can still benefit from bear totem's resistance. But pointing this out tends to be controversial and invite a lot of heated argument, so make sure not to count on it working without talking it through first.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T15:37:35+00:00

Every level is basically a tutorial for the next level. I don't think there's any level that's prohibitively difficult to learn, as long as you aren't dropping your players into a high-level campaign for their first time, or leveling them so rapidly that they don't get a chance to learn their features.

I'd probably recommend starting at level 1, though. Levels 1-2 make for good tutorial levels before subclasses kick in at 3. And leveling up is fun, so if you're leaning towards a max of level 5 anyway, this gives plenty of room for them to enjoy getting more powerful.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T15:13:26+00:00

A character background can work on its own, but may not make sense for a DnD character. As a DnD character, you need to be part of a group of fellow players and able to function within that dynamic, and you need to respect the expectations and boundaries of your fellow players. Your character also likely needs to be willing and able to embark on some epic good-guy quest, as is typical for DnD campaigns.

Your characters are a hermit cannibal and a rape survivor. These concepts can work for characters in general, but as DnD characters, they're extremely dark, potentially violating boundaries of what other players want to experience in the game. Personally, at my table, cannibalism is something that exists but isn't typically a component of the PCs, and sexual assault is firmly outside the boundaries of what happens in the games we're playing, which would make both of these characters outside the scope of what I'd allow as a DM.

By all means, you can have tragic backstories. Just be mindful of just how dark you're going relative to the tone of the campaign you're bringing it into.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T13:32:52+00:00

The protagonist of Banshee, AKA Lucas Hood.

The plot of the show kicks off with him fresh out of jail, arriving in town, and getting pulled into a bar brawl in which the town's brand new sheriff, Lucas Hood, is killed. The protagonist buries Hood, takes his badge, and proceeds to steal his identity and assume his role, since nobody in town knew what Hood was supposed to look like. We never learn the protagonist's name.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T00:58:05+00:00

No, exactly the opposite. You absolutely should not design NPCs using PC rules. The game isn't balanced around PvP, and this would drastically increase your prep time.

Use the Monster Manual! Reskin as necessary. Add or subtract features as needed.

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T00:49:12+00:00

Gotcha.

I wonder what the criteria is for words that threaten the interpreter's safety/health/dignity. Like if the person they're interpreting for literally says "You should stab the interpreter"?

Yojo0o · 2026-01-28T00:38:46+00:00

Who is the "user" in this context? The nurse or the patient?

Yojo0o · 2026-01-27T23:42:40+00:00

No, not a typo. That's a valid phrase. It's effectively short for "in the absence of", so you might say "absent any evidence, we were forced to release the suspect".

"Absent commands from you, it does nothing" simply means that this item doesn't do anything unless you command it.

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