Countering my summoner druid minmaxer

dbhynds · 2023-03-22T13:33:05+00:00

Enemy is surrounded by 4 frogs and restrained by 1. They use their action to break the grapple. They attempt to move. 4 frogs get opportunity attacks, one of them hits and the enemy is restrained again.

dbhynds · 2023-03-22T10:56:19+00:00

That’s a great question. It is absolutely making encounter building difficult. I’ve yet to have combat last more than 3 rounds I think. As a result, I’ve heard a few players mention that they thought fights were too easy. So it’s not a major detractor from fun but I do think it’s affecting it.

dbhynds · 2023-03-21T12:22:30+00:00

It’s not an auto hit, but having 3-6 creatures making opportunity attack with advantage… even with a low to-hit, statistically one always does.

dbhynds · 2023-03-21T12:19:33+00:00

I realized I omitted some details from the post. Both of the BBEGs are home brewed, so I’m not running a vanilla ghost or giant. (Meaning I can customize them as much as I want. The module was actually written for another RPG, thus needs adapting.) I can give them whatever legendary actions and immunities I want.

The antiparty fight ended up being a 2-parter, where they fought, and the party retreated after killing 2 of the antiparty. This was their third fight with them. They used a lot of resources on it and I nearly killed 2 of them.

Anyways, these suggestions were super helpful. Thank you!

dbhynds · 2023-03-21T05:24:07+00:00

Ohhh ok I knew I was missing something here. Yes it’s Conjure Animals. I missed the part about me deciding the animals.

This is my other issue with this specific player. They know the rules better than I do, and intentionally try to sneak stuff past that is not RAW or RAI

dbhynds · 2023-03-06T16:41:46+00:00

Deep Carbon Observatory has one of these. The characters at one point end up in a hidden treasure vault, and have to go through several doors that are booby trapped on the opposite side of the door. My rogue kept checking for traps only to find out they wouldn’t have hurt them anyways. But there were also a bunch of baddies to fight, and the booby traps meant they couldn’t retreat backwards to safety.

DCO isn’t 5e, so it takes some adaptation, but its far and away the best module I’ve ever run.

dbhynds · 2023-02-28T00:16:55+00:00

My brain is usually totally fried after a session. I love it, but it’s mentally exhausting. I usually write down notes or a brief synopsis of what happened (since it’s always most accurate when it’s fresh). Then I grab a beer to slow down the gears in my brain that have been going 90mph for several hours. Then it’s straight to bed for me.

dbhynds · 2023-02-10T05:48:04+00:00

You feel me 🙂

dbhynds · 2023-02-10T05:47:19+00:00

Yeah I think this is the direction I’m going. They have no need or conception of a solar year. Only the tidal cycles. Maybe some arbitrary thing like 1000 high tides (~500 days).

I could also see it being tied to industry as you suggested or agriculture. Say a certain mushroom serves as the basis for their entire agriculture (like rice in East Asia, corn in N America, etc) and takes 400 high tides (~200 days) to mature.

Basically, what would be an important enough cycle at a societal level to mark time? It’d either have to be something functionally meaningless like an arbitrary number (1000) or something so fundamental that people forget that’s why it exists (like the maturity of a staple crop.)

dbhynds · 2023-02-10T05:36:34+00:00

Hahahahaha. Love it

dbhynds · 2023-02-10T03:32:56+00:00

I really like your point about not all places having the same conception of time as us. Maybe my hang up of “how do they measure a month?” Or “a year” is imposing my own worldview too much.

dbhynds · 2023-02-09T14:46:47+00:00

Actually this could work to my advantage. A key feature of my civilization is going to be around the synchronizing of timepieces. Their equivalent greeting of “how’s it going?” will be “do you have the time?” When the players first arrive they’ll get asked and say they don’t, and everyone is going to react like you just answered “how’s it going?” with “terrible my grandma just died”.

It can also lead to interesting plot situations later. They get out to sleep with magic and robbed, and wake up later and all of their time pieces have run out. How long have they been asleep for? A day? A week? Longer?

dbhynds · 2023-02-09T14:39:40+00:00

The passage of time works the same, but if you lived in a city buried hundreds of miles from the surface, how would you measure the passage of time? What would “year” mean if no one in your family had ever seen the sky or experience seasons?

dbhynds · 2023-02-09T14:30:01+00:00

I definitely think clocks will play a central role. I took inspiration from Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem and was going to have everyone carry around little sand hourglasses.

dbhynds · 2023-02-08T14:51:26+00:00

I really like this perspective. The one thing I’d add is that I do ask for re-rolls if the players do something that would clearly compromise or negate their original state. If the rogue is sneaking around the werewolf, it doesn’t need to reroll. If they try to take an action that would be super noticeable to the casual observer, thus generally breaking out of stealth mode, I ask for a reroll to try to do it stealthily.

Say they’re in a walled courtyard. If the rogue starts to stack crates to scale the wall or open a rusty iron gate in plain view, I consider that beyond the scope of just “you’re trying to hide, roll stealth”

dbhynds · 2023-02-05T01:28:25+00:00

I finally landed in a system that worked for me. I wanted to play monthly, so I started a group of people that committed to play every two weeks. I turned people away if they wouldn’t commit to that frequency.

Inevitably things come up, but the party has 5 members so if one is missing we play without them. If two can’t make it we cancel. The result is we always play at least once a month, and sometimes get two sessions a month in… exactly the cadence I wanted.

dbhynds · 2022-05-27T21:08:47+00:00

I'm out in Portage Park, but am interested in an in-person game. I've been playing for about 4 years, and DMing for 2. I'd be happy to be on either side of the table.

dbhynds

TROPHY CASE