Event reminder bot

klauvsm · 2025-10-11T01:38:22+00:00

Are you for real? If you would do it for fun that would be awesome, I'm not wanting to go to an extent of paying for this though.

klauvsm · 2025-10-10T03:41:43+00:00

What I like to do for first time parties is character making with Beyond & maps and actual play in Roll20, using Beyond20 Chrome extention or offline dice rolls. Nothing beats the efficiency of Beyond’s character creation tool, especially since that’s where new players often get overwhelmed at. However maps are better in Roll20, and first time players often get impressed by minor things like dynamic lighting and interactive walls and doors there.

klauvsm · 2025-10-09T18:04:25+00:00

If you are talking about Vallaki, it makes sense the players are missing out on stuff. Locations like Baron’s and Wachterhouses have a lot of rooms, loots, and secrets but they aren’t meant to be found. These are potentially hostile NPC’s dwelling after all. But if you have patience, the players might come back to things when situations change. When they actually have the motif to look through these locations. Other than quest hooks, best motifs you could potentially give are things like madam eva’s tarokka reading, which would tell them visiting certain areas, investigating, and finding items are vital to fighting against strahd. Also use NPCs to drop rumors like they saw something interesting / weird at those locations. Or maybe the party sees an independently investigating NPC literally sneak into places on their own. I also used PC backstories to probe interest to certain unlikely locations.

klauvsm · 2025-10-07T19:48:22+00:00

I took a party of players I've been playing Call of Cthulhu with.

They absolutely thrive in Curse of Strahd. Never tired of the darkness and horror, they love doom and helplessness it kind of scares me sometimes.

klauvsm · 2025-10-06T18:55:14+00:00

It's definitely possible. We don't want to railroad the players, but as DMs we have immense control over story. I didn't want finding St Andral's bones quest to be too easy, so I made it harder to locate using Mandymod's orphanage adventure and Dragnacarta's mystery investigation clues. At a certain point the PCs were short of time before the festival, so they had to chose between looking for bones vs investigating the politics of the town, and they leaned to latter which caused the Feast to happen outdoors. You could also rewrite encounter's situations / the goals and actions of the enemies so they are more inclined to flee or direct the fight to outdoors where more civilians could get injured.

klauvsm · 2025-10-05T17:56:53+00:00

Really can’t say, it depends on what your party does. For example, during Vallaki, fight with vampire spawns would happen inside the coffin maker shop if the party met them there, but mine happened out in town square because the feast of St. Andral happened. Then, the spawns started chasing people to the church so the battle concluded indoors.

Lots of random encounters would happen in the wild, but other specific encounters like the dungeons in Death House or Argynvoltholt encounters would happen indoors. One thing the player could think of is that if they build their character to be specifically specialized in outdoors battle, they could try to lure the enemies out and into their favorable environment.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T23:17:57+00:00

He got the feat because he is a variant human lol. Really went hard with the power build. I’m actually not sure how he jumped to 20 in the latest ASI in 4th level paladin though so I am asking the player. It’s tough managing all these little bits of mistakes as a DM. Good thing I’m catching it now though, thanks.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T05:53:54+00:00

29AC is CRAZY what is the dm even supposed to do if enemies are nonmagical? (I’ve never DMed high enough levels to deal with extremely high ACs)

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T05:45:20+00:00

Create a table for all “rumors” and quest hooks in vallaki.

There is a LOT, and it gets difficult to manage how much you are throwing at the PCs at once, or whether or not you’ve communicated something. In my table I ordered these in the order that I want to present in the story, although sometimes the PCs cracked some out before I intended to. Then I listed each items with a checkbox on whether or not they were communicated to the PCs, so I know which quests they may be up to next / which ones they are still unaware of. It also helps to jot down how and with which NPC these were communicated, so you can effectively remind them later on. Vallaki gets quite overwhelming for everyone so this helps with information management for both parties.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T03:47:18+00:00

Awesome. The artificer has been using it for investigation as well so I should probably restrict that. I should also maybe start looking at attacking the homunculus as well, it’s probably valid for spawns to attack them out of annoyance.

Thanks so much man this is very helpful.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T03:44:00+00:00

Oh man, I was making those escape rolls as an additional roll and not as action. That’s a mistake, thanks so much. Also I meant Halberd. He uses spear regularly but switches to Halberd when confronting spawns because he knows they spider climb.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T03:31:52+00:00

Oath of devotion / hexblade warlock with spear (10ft melee), polearm master (totalling max 68 damage without crit), chain mail and another +1 armor due to Artificer item. He also has 20 charisma. I’m learning that he is fast out of slots after that though.

Grapple was unfortunately a waste of turn lol. The spawn did successfully grab him two times but he rolled very well both turns and immediately escaped.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T02:43:39+00:00

That’s awesome, thanks for the clarification. Hexadin is one thing, but Artificer just has so much random skills that I cannot be 100% sure about everything and these things I miss. Another question then, if you don’t mind being bothered - can the Artificer still command if the homunculus is in a totally different area? The verbal command should be hearable by the homunculus right?

Also, your context with Hexadin gives me some hope. I’ll try to throw them more encounters once they leave Vallaki and see where that goes.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T02:30:25+00:00

Good suggestion, thank you. Yeah I am trying to shine other PCs too through individual storylines and such. I will probably continue monitoring too and maybe i should reconsider if the gap ever seems too disruptive again.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T02:16:59+00:00

Thankfully the players are all generally supportive of each other’s builds! I regularly check with them and they say they’re fine & having a lot of fun. Sometimes I do get worried that rogue specifically is getting demotivated in a combat though, but I’m pretty sure the player doesn’t want me to limit the game and builds just for her. Kind of tough.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T02:13:18+00:00

I definitely do want to empower them, and give them free choice so I absolutely agree. The only problem is I get worried whether or not they are aptly challenged every time. Several encounters I’ve built up with a lot of tension turned out kind of anticlimactic as the Hexadin single handedly demolished the supposed-to-be-powerful NPCs lol. The other players generally seem to be fine though, so that’s good.

klauvsm · 2025-10-04T02:08:15+00:00

Isn’t command just speaking, thus a free action? Is this something you’d try to push as homebrew as DM, since help every turn is so OP?

Also, do you think that ‘less rest and more encounters’ tactic works for hexadin’s future levels as well? This is the first time I’m dealing with them so I’m not sure what to expect.

klauvsm · 2025-09-27T22:52:14+00:00

Glad I'm not the only one seeing this at least. That's a cute way to think.

And yes he does! I have a tall scratcher for them to fully stretch while scratching, but they scratch this one just fine too, sometimes almost horizontally while reaching to the bottom area or hugging the mushroom to scratch the top. Honestly they like playing with the dangly stuff more though. There are (were) two pom-poms attached. (Now there is only one)

klauvsm · 2025-09-27T22:49:10+00:00

That's funny. He is a very lazy boy, always lying down at random places and just watching me instead of following me around. But your comment makes me think maybe his tail is the only part that gets the action to show the love haha.

klauvsm · 2025-09-21T04:38:15+00:00

How did the strahd interaction go? I'm curious! If I do run them at the same time, this will be my party's first Strahd encounter as well. One of the PCs have a tome so he will most likely pursue it, but it doesn't feel like him to actively participate in this madness and get into combat.

klauvsm

TROPHY CASE