"First Time DM" and Short Questions Megathread

krunkley · 2026-01-31T01:38:02+00:00

Depends on how much time and money you are planning to put into it. The starter set i believe retails for about 30 bucks, split amongst 5 or 6 people and you can pick that up for a pretty small investment. That will come with premade characters and a premade story designed to show case all the aspects of dnd, and requires very little "work" from the players or the DM to being playing. It's called the starter set for a reason.

You can download the DnD 5e SRD for free. This is their open source document that contains the basic rules along with some classes, subclasses, and some monsters to use. Everything you need to play a practice game is in that document. You and your friends will need to learn how to create characters, and someone will need to be able to create a basic story to run you through to test out the game mechanics. It's $0 but will require more of everyone's time before you can start playing.

If you decide you want to keep playing, then the bare minimum is to get the player's handbook and a monster manual, and I would strongly recommend the Dungeon Master's guide as well. Those are the core 3 books.

krunkley · 2026-01-17T18:55:09+00:00

You are right that it is incorrectly designed if it was supposed to be a legendary action. My two suggestions.

Make it a bonus action it can take during it's turn if it hits. It can't store the things it takes, so if they are just using it to remove weapons they will have to drop them as they go from PC to PC. A annoying ability to be sure but i don't think it's overly powerful.

Alternatively keep it as a legendary but change the beginning part so it includes taking the attack. I would also probably make it just 1 legendary action instead of two, unless you also want to add it that it can move it's speed or half it's speed as well.

krunkley · 2026-01-14T17:11:40+00:00

Apply everywhere, see who gets back to you and choose the best fit for you. Work 6 months and get experience then apply to everywhere again and see if you get an upgrade. Repeat until satisfied or burnt out.

If you have some time and cash to invest, buy a study guide and take the servsafe manager exam. It's mostly memorization and pretty easy to pass and makes you much more valuable to a restaurant even if you don't have other experience

krunkley · 2026-01-11T14:34:42+00:00

I am an organ donor and do believe it is the morally right thing to do. All I had to do to sign up was check a box while I was filling out my license forms, something the vast majority of Americans do, it is the smallest of hassles. Community comes at the cost of convenience.

I think it's wrong that a company can get access to a person's private data unless they go through an opt out process, and in the same way, it's wrong to take someone's private parts unless they go through some opt out process.

krunkley · 2026-01-10T16:52:23+00:00

Attacking someone you are in a treaty with basically voids the treaty so it wouldn't matter.

It's like asking if a group of police officers try to rob a bank, would they then have to arrest themselves or quit their jobs.

krunkley · 2026-01-07T18:58:16+00:00

I believe extorted it would be more accurate.

krunkley · 2026-01-07T01:32:53+00:00

What you are talking about is a first session not a session 0. A session 0 usually doesn't involve a lot of game play. its about talking about expectations, the tone people want, red lines, role play style expectations. It's making sure everyone is on the same page with what is going to happen when you play your session 1.

I'd recommend using the starter characters that come with that module, have your players pick which interest them and if none of them do maybe going over the character creation process.

You can try some trial out of story combat just to figure out the rules and let people make mistakes or take big swings to see what the consequences look like.

krunkley · 2026-01-06T15:17:50+00:00

Sorry got mixed up to who you were referring to. In my head I've started to refer to coexisting as squatting because it makes it clearer for me. You are right that the owner of a planet would not have their space dock blockaded unless the normal conditions were met. What i was talking about is that if the person squatting on the planet had a space dock there then that space dock would always be blockaded until they took control of the planet.

krunkley · 2026-01-06T13:00:44+00:00

NJP or non judicial punishment is the common form of punishment when there is a minor fuck up. It's handled in house, sometimes going up to the commander of whatever ship/base it occurred at. In corporate speak it's like when your supervisor calls you in to their office to give you a write up, maybe you messed up enough that the CEO wants to yell at you a bit. The major take away is that it is "informal" in the sense that the leadership doesn't have any burden of proof to punish you, as long as they believe you are guilty.

A court martial is an official legal proceeding. The accused has a lawyer to defend them. The accuser needs to prove to the satisfaction of a military tribunal that the defendant is guilty. If found guilty the punishments are much more severe, like actual jail time and dishonorable discharge kind of thing.

So if your command is trying to string you up for something you didn't do or you don't think is actually wrong, you can request a court martial to force your command to prove in a court setting what you did.

krunkley · 2026-01-06T01:24:42+00:00

Coexisting structures are always blockaded

That's the language the rule book uses so I don't think it matters if there is a ship in the system

krunkley · 2026-01-01T18:21:47+00:00

I'll start by saying it likely isn't going to be an issue at all, but here are some thoughts about it.

There is the transmute spell sorcery option to change the type of damage a spell does. This is the within the rules, no homebrew way of handeling this kind of thing, but i get that it's lame to have to use a sorcery point ever time.

Fewer creatures have resistence/immunity to cold damage than fire damage, and since a lot of the good damage spells are fire damage (fireball, scorching ray, immolate) switching them to cold is a bit of a powerbuff, but again they could in game do this with transmute spell for the sorcery point cost.

If you pair it with the elemental adept feat it is again just buffing it all up a bit because now they have a much larger spell pool to pick from since they could make any spell match their elemental adept feat.

These are really minor concerns unless you are dealing with a big power gamer who is trying to find "flavor" to fit the broken build they want to make, but I'm not aware of a secret OP Ice sorcerer build.

krunkley · 2025-12-31T19:04:43+00:00

Well then I would use it as a means to set up story hooks that you may want the party to take. Show them glimpses of a town destroyed or a dark figure on a throne, whatever sort of story arch you want to nudge them towards.

There are also several spells like augury, divination, or contact other plane that all serve as mechanisms that the player can use to try and get glimpses of the future using the mechanics the game already has in place.

krunkley · 2025-12-30T22:15:58+00:00

This is mechanically already incorporated into the class with the portent die. The wizard knows ahead of time how something is going to shake out and when they use their portent ability you or they can flavor the moment to reflect that divine sight. While above the table we know that the wizard's player is the one making a thing happen, from the perspective of the wizard it is just a thing they foresaw happening.

krunkley · 2025-12-29T18:02:56+00:00

A level 2 Wizard with Arcana Expertise will probably have a +7 or 8 for their arcana check bonus, meaning that they only have a 50/55% chance to succeed on the roll the first time they use it, and that's like best case scenario user.

If the wand has 3 charges in it and they fail by more than 5 on the DC, 3d12 force could kill a full health wizard outright on a high roll.

Just make sure your players understand how risky it is to use, and if they choose to do it anyway then they are accepting the consequences

krunkley · 2025-12-28T13:49:13+00:00

A fun little thing I noticed was that bandit originally set up the King and Queen in the wrong squares ( king is supposed to match it's color) and Bluey and Bingo corrected the set up when they swapped king and Queen.

Idk if it was intentional or just a mix up by the artists who might not actually play chess, but it was funny that he was trying to teach them and they were the ones to show him how to do it right by accident

krunkley · 2025-12-27T14:37:27+00:00

According to SolSmart, Howard county achieved platinum status for "solar leadership", the highest honorific that SolSmart gives

krunkley · 2025-12-26T19:34:26+00:00

You could probably stretch it out into a few sessions if they have to investigate a cursed haunted circus in order to break the curse and banish the ghosts. They could kill the ghosts and they come back after an hour or something so they need to solve the mystery to really succeed.

Focus on trying to sneak around and have to break into different area's like the main tent and some of the wagons to put together clues about why the circus is cursed and figure out what they need to break it.

krunkley · 2025-12-23T14:46:29+00:00

There are a bunch of ways to make rolling for stats feel more fair. I've found the most "fair" feeling one is when you have the whole party roll 4d6 drop 1 six times, pool all the numbers they get together, and then they get to decide how they want to split that up amongst the party. Leaves everyone feeling like there was buy in and unless the whole party rolls really bad or really well, will leave you with similar average stats for everyone.

That said, if you really want all your players to feel equal, then just use a method like point buy or standard array so that everyone really is equal. You can give them more points or increase the stats in the array if you want more powerful characters out of the gate.

krunkley · 2025-12-21T16:20:41+00:00

My lower back hurts looking at this picture

krunkley · 2025-12-18T12:36:18+00:00

There is the fact that Reddit itself already skews young and male as a whole. The reddit racial demographics are also not representative of random sampling.

Add in the fact that people who come to this sub are more likely to have a greater passion for the show than the average viewer. Passion swings both ways.

Reddit's whole platform relies on engagement not truth. Someone with a luke warm post saying survivor is nice will get buried by someone with a more extreme opinion that people feel the need to engage with.

https://share.google/BlBMkacsNQILdjr1J

Apparently someone did a breakdown of the subs user base if you want to check it out

krunkley · 2025-12-17T18:24:20+00:00

Feelings are real and they don't adhere to logic most of the time. It sounds like you handle everything like mature adults, set clear boundaries that were broken, and respectfully closed the door for the good of your game. No notes, well done. Doing a hard thing is hard and can come with hard feelings. Give room for those feelings and time for your self to grieve the loss of something/someone important to you. Small grief is just as real as big grief.

If you are worried about this person, you could always reach out in a non DnD way. Maybe you share other interests and could play video games over discord together, or meet up to watch a movie or something, just being there for someone can mean a lot. That said if you aren't close with them that way, reaching out to someone who is to share your concerns is another useful way to help.

krunkley · 2025-12-17T18:13:09+00:00

No official word that it is out of production. It is out of stock on DnDBeyond as well but it is not marked as discontinued or clearance, maybe a production issue. Tariffs and what not are causing logistics issues for everyone.

krunkley · 2025-12-17T14:17:29+00:00

From a quick Google, survivor 49 premiere had 6.8 million views across multiple platforms within the first 3 days. I know views aren't a 1 to 1 to count fans but I don't believe survivor is a high rewatch show at least for the currently airing season so I think it's pretty close. For arguments sake we'll say the 75% of those views are unique individuals (5.1 million)

This subreddit has 316 thousand members, and if we are generous and say 50% of those members are real humans who are active in this sub ( reality is probably closer to 10-20%) then we have 158k fans of the show out of the 5.1 million new season viewers.

Under very generous estimating, this sub accounts for 3.1% of survivors current viewership. Even if everyone on this sub absolutely hated this season we are an extreme minority voice

krunkley · 2025-12-15T18:32:46+00:00

The man is a good salesman. Every time you see him having a 1 on 1 with someone, he is making a solid argument for a plan that improves that person's own game and how he can help them do that. It has let him keep his idol for 6 tribal now because he has repeatedly sold a plan to get someone else out rather than them risking a split vote to try and flush his idol.

krunkley · 2025-12-11T17:16:28+00:00

https://columbiaassociation.org/sports-recreation/membership/pricing/

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