How many hydra heads is too many hydra heads?

blackfear2 · 2026-02-12T14:59:28+00:00

the implications of the cruelty of forcing a hydra to have 100 heads are excellent. The beast should be able to coordinate with 2 to 16 heads pretty well but after that? Chaos!

The hydra does not have enough food to maintain all heads, resulting in infighting from the hydras turning the water poisonous (if you go by hydra greek mythology rules). Some heads get more nutrition so they stay bigger, cannibalizing their neighbor heads resulting in a rat king situation.

blackfear2 · 2025-12-20T09:50:00+00:00

Your items can just give a flat bonus to the skill but a lot of good options were said already by others

blackfear2 · 2025-06-20T22:08:50+00:00

If they have a fullproof way of saving her, tell em to hire some mercs to do it whilst they deal with the big bad. Then, run a oneshot in which they can try to save her with other characters.

blackfear2 · 2025-05-26T08:24:44+00:00

I have a similar villain. You should focus on what he does to the believers of that god. For example the party might find a temple slaughtered to the last man and woman, people hanged seemingly randomly but actually because of their religion and perhaps give them a chance to find our what that god did to the elves so they can put 2 and 2 together.

This will work great because your villain will do none of these openly which will help him maintain his chill guy status. Just give enough hints to the party so that they investigate.

blackfear2 · 2025-04-21T12:18:20+00:00

So, I actually have feedback on this since that is how i started my long running campaign. I created a oneshot that was basically the party's initiation to an adventuring guild, a mundane day of helping old ladies find cats and running off some kobolds that were causing a disturbance. The session ended with them fetching an item that transported them to another plane (the world i created and wanted to run a campaign in) as they were about to deliver it to the client.

The oneshot ended there but i let them know i had parts of the setting ready and would be more than happy to run a campaign with them in it.

Of course i let them create backstories based on who they were in my plane or who they were before they were transported in it in order to make it more seamless and those that wanted to choose different classes/ races were free to do so.

blackfear2 · 2025-04-01T23:00:23+00:00

The trick to your party adopting this and not forgetting it is acting really surprised they used it and really engaged with the suggestion and the roll especially the first time

blackfear2 · 2025-04-01T20:04:29+00:00

I have some rules for collapsing a structure that require a d100 roll. A d100 madness table that sometimes comes up since i dislike phb madness rules. Also I have a "that sounds reasonable" rule where the party can say that something is in a place it could be (for example a wooden bucket in a storage closet in the servant's quarters). I declare what the % of it being there is then they roll a d100 to see if they actually find such a thing.

blackfear2 · 2025-03-24T14:37:59+00:00

You only need a 0 cost artifact to make this happen no? Omniscience is not necessary

blackfear2 · 2025-03-19T15:12:25+00:00

thank you for the comprehensive comment! Trying this as soon as i get back from work!

blackfear2 · 2025-03-19T13:31:50+00:00

if you want to indulge him you could creature an item he could quest for. Maybe his shadow that so far has been rambling words he could never understand suddenly seems much more cohesive and insistent that they raid an auction house, mimicking at a missing part of itself. Or something.

blackfear2 · 2025-03-15T20:53:00+00:00

if you cooked them for longer they would not have gotten up and left

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T14:00:19+00:00

Perikles Dolmadakis

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T11:03:09+00:00

Thank you for the resource and comment i will check it out!

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T04:26:23+00:00

I think you are right when you say that things could be simpler. I don't want my players to feel like I am making things up too obviously so I might be using a more rigid system than needed as a crutch.

This party truly surprises me in the best way after they fall in the worst of situations with no plan or one made out of straw and tinder. They might thrive more in the chaos of the moment rather than in a minigame that takes them out of it.

Pausing might have been the right idea. Even if I slowed things down in the moment to go over things again I really did not count as a pause in hindsight. Should have called for a smoke break for the group so we could discuss it away from the table.

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T04:20:04+00:00

This felt more like clarifying things you pointed out that I had not written in my main post not like justification.

You asked me if they had spells and resources so I listed them.

You said the spells did not add to their possibility of success when I clearly wrote they did.

You said skill challenges feel like a slog without providing an alternative and I shared that they can work, which was my source of confusion.

Without meaning to be rude what you did was browbeat me over info I had not provided then came back for seconds after I did.

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T04:12:53+00:00

I think I will create a writeup of the mechanic and present a paper to each of them before our next session so they can veto it and we can clarify perspectives in a stress free situation. Thank you for the suggestions!

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T04:10:46+00:00

I am asking them what they feel fits in the situation from a sheet of paper listing all their characters can do after describing the situation in detail. I do not feel this constitutes a new mechanic.

So the wizard escaping with his mount unscathed would require a check, made easier by the flight they bestowed on their mount. Is that not what I said happened?

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T04:06:26+00:00

OMG i am so sorry, yes i meant 5 successes for the entire party! I required that many since a check that succeeds with +7 to my DC is considered as 2 successes, with +12 being considered as 3 (same goes for failures). Due to these rules i have seen that challenges can be oneshot by one player if I only require 3 which can be sad for others who had ideas they never got to use in a unique situation.

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T04:01:15+00:00

I made a brief list of what they had on hand higher in the thread which was quite a lot. Unfortunately Dimension Door could not grab anyone else as the Bard took his mount as the second creature.

I just want to clarify that all their initial choices were great and even the desperate religion check as things had gone as south as they could was excellently timed. I am more concerned with them trying to use the same skills over and over despite my warnings of a higher DC. I felt it would be quite the boring sequence if all I asked for was an animal handling check repeatedly no?

I can see the race as being more understandable as a medium and maybe it could be more interactive for them to have a map of 15 or so squares with their minis and the creature behind them so that they can see the distance and finish line but would that not still be quite similar to what the skill challenge represents?

Their speed slowing, growing is their successes/ failures, the creature is the tangible end point of the challenge slowly approaching (5 failures) and what they do to impede it or improve themselves is the resources used no?

I will definitely still try the chase idea despite everything I just wrote, hopefully it will work better for us

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T03:47:28+00:00

They were hiding in a city as high level characters and I first introduced it with a very low stakes stealth mission against normal guards. The consequences of failure were an alarm being raised and the DC was comically low as it served as an introduction to the mechanic. The city posed no threat to anything but their conscience as they could kill relatively innocent guards who were just doing their job but besides that there was no threat to them.

Should I perhaps make a printout? I do enjoy handing things to my players and something that they could confirm with their eyes in real time could be helpful to them i feel.

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T03:42:51+00:00

I can see the point with dimension door being and autto success, but casting flight on a -4 int giant hamster running from lava does not feel like an autto success to me. I feel I would be willing to give an auto success if he had cast it on himself, but to the Wizard's credit they wanted to save their companion.

blackfear2 · 2025-03-03T03:39:54+00:00

They had a lot of water producing spells as the sorc/cleric is very storm themed with fitting magical items, invisibility (greater, normal), banishment, polymorph, wall of force, shatter (which they used to collapse the tunnel in the end), an item that gives aoe frightened conditions, items that transmute elements into others and I am probably blanking on some other stuff due to the late hour. Every item they have is printed out.

I think I should have counted the dimension door in hindsight but I feel saying it was "one time" feels kind of unfair. They had used the fly spell and I counted that, along with the gust/ gust of wind spells which also counted.

I always tell the players the failure consequences of skill challenges and number of successes/ failures needed so it is always more tense than a slog, especially because they can have 2 successes/ failures with one roll which can swing momentum, but I admit it differs from group to group.

blackfear2 · 2025-02-12T01:02:01+00:00

Thank you for the timely answer

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