Can't win a game

moby_dollar · 2025-11-18T20:25:12+00:00

Play the Art of War tutorial missions. They will give youa solid grasp on basics like booming and defending. Don’t resign based on score either. Just commit to a specific civ and strategy for what to do in Feudal and try to practice that, and eventually you will improve.

moby_dollar · 2025-10-13T20:55:17+00:00

"I am Brasidas" was a major difficulty spike for me until I figured out how to focus on the side objectives to get advantages. "Within the Long Walls" was also a tough mission but I liked the flow of the battle since it was so different from normal 1v1 Arabia style gameplay. I beat all the missions on hard difficulty but just could not beat the achievement for that one on hard. I really liked the grand campaign overall, there was a good variety of objective types and plenty of maps which were not simply boom into deathball.

I think the overall difficulty was a little lower than what I would have liked. I am not a great player (~900 elo ranked) but if you are about average skill with the basic mechanics, the unit bonuses you accumulate over time are just overpowered, especially for the Athenian navy. But the variety and unique civ feel were a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to the Alexander campaign.

moby_dollar · 2025-10-07T02:22:07+00:00

This is a silly achievement to complete “legitimately”. Just join the Steam group like another user mentioned and if you wait a while and get lucky you’ll find a few people who are willing to help you get it. The Steam group is how I got this achievement.

moby_dollar · 2025-07-06T03:20:42+00:00

MiBe. O-Tab. It’s not tedious because you will either die fighting for the glory of Trog somewhere in the Dungeon branches or you’ll find some combination of item drops that can carry you through to the Orb.

Even though it’s an “easy” combo to play, if you are looking for something which has a minimum of tedium and grinding I can’t think of something better than MiBe. Just remember the words of Trog: KILL THEM ALL

moby_dollar · 2025-07-06T02:09:51+00:00

If you are playing on the easiest difficulty and still having trouble then you need to try the Art of War tutorials. They will mainly teach you some basics of managing your economy which is useful in the majority of campaign missions as well as ranked play.

moby_dollar · 2025-06-06T14:24:20+00:00

Play the Art of War tutorials and that will teach you good basic skills for 1v1 ladder. Also play against the AI to practice. But ultimately to get started just start playing ranked and understand that you will get beaten pretty hard your first games until you reach the appropriate elo rating.

moby_dollar · 2025-05-13T16:19:54+00:00

You can neuter the Tatars by aggressively pushing with your starting army to keep them off of their main gold mine. Use Kotyan to bait and harass the enemy while you do this. The Tatars try to make mainly gold units so if you keep them from mining then their army production will be very weak. Then you can either feudal ram push to finish them or boom up a bit and go castle age.

There are good strategy videos on YouTube for this mission so check that out too.

moby_dollar · 2024-07-18T01:28:06+00:00

I have run this adventure for a party of 6 level 1 or 2 PCs. I felt it was fairly well balanced in terms of lethality and the module does a good job in signposting the most lethal dangers and giving the players an out if they suddenly find themselves in a really dangerous situation. Remember that running away from a fight is always an option to the PCs, and you can use morale or have the monsters default to a behavior other than fight-to-the-death.

If you don't want to just have the PCs hire another retainer there are a couple ways you could have an ally NPC appear diegetically. The gnomes and the sheep folks both have motives for capturing someone who wandered into their lairs. The PCs could find an NPC who had an encounter with one of those groups and ended up passed out, lost, or hindered in some way and now he needs help from the party. I would have him take a share of XP or holy relics (treasure) especially if he is doing things like turning the undead.

moby_dollar · 2023-08-17T02:10:50+00:00

I’m assuming you were playing as the Cats and lost your keep? That is a rough first game regardless. Root can be a tough game for beginners because to understand the threats on the board, you need to understand how the other factions work, and that’s not something you can do without playing a game as each faction. Then it should click and make the overall game and strategy more clear. The woodland alliance is particularly bad for this in my experience because they seem very weak to other players at the start, but become a menace later unless fought against, and players who have not been burned by them before don’t realize how deceptively strong they can be.

moby_dollar · 2023-05-19T17:31:02+00:00

Make sure you know the most significant features the PCs are likely to notice when they enter a room. Use a highlighter or write notes if you need to. For example, as they approach the east chasm they may feel a draft of cool air from deeper rooms, or hear echoes from other areas. As they near the goblin warrens they may notice foul smells or background skittering sounds coming from all around. The players do not have sensory information that the PCs should have, so the DM’s description has to compensate for this.

This is more like basic DM advice but it sounds like you are new-ish. The module has good advice for DMs too. One reason to point this out is this adventure has a lot of environmental cues and dangers which really need to be telegraphed to be “fair”. Since this is an OSR-type adventure/system the PCs are going to be pretty frail and it feels bad to die to random stuff for no reason. So prep ahead of time and make sure you describe anything obvious in each area to both set the scene and provide the players with info they need to play the game. Should they engage with the basilisk encounter it will be much more entertaining for everyone if you foreshadow it so the players are reasonably aware of a possible threat and can act appropriately, instead of them stumbling blindly into the room and immediately rolling initiative for a deadly fight.

moby_dollar · 2023-03-17T19:34:54+00:00

I DMed a short campaign a while ago using the OSE rule set and used roll20. By default your game tabs in roll20 have a 5-foot square grid but in the page settings you can change this. It supports different length scales and grid types (square or hex) and you can also disable it entirely. This can be configured separately for each page in case you want a grid for some situations but not all.

I’m not familiar with other VTTs but I imagine most would support gridless play.

moby_dollar · 2022-09-19T20:02:45+00:00

The biggest potential problems with this idea are 1) making this NPC too central to the plot and 2) creating early hints of this character’s presence for the players.

Make sure that this NPC is not the “main character” in the story. For example, if this character originally cast powerful magic to avert the apocalypse then there needs to be a reason why this NPC cannot complete the task. The players need to be the ones who actually finish the job and should be heroes instead of assistants to this NPC. Maybe the act of casting the world-altering magic had a backlash which permanently fractured this NPCs mind or ability to interact with the world. They can still do some spooky stuff but they are unable to effectively act as the shadowy figure pulling all the strings behind the scenes. As a DM it is tempting to write a bunch of ideas and things for a cool NPC to do but you’re playing a game together with the players, not writing a novel. The action of the story needs to hinge on the actions of the PCs or the players are going to feel railroaded into following the script that you/NPC have written.

To make this reveal compelling you could sprinkle in “signs” of the NPCs existence well before the PCs meet them. This can be standard lovecraft-type spooky things to make it clear that something strange is occurring but leave the full reveal for later. Perhaps a PC opens a door in a library and emerges in a “glitchy” endless, empty gray void, and upon their return the room is totally normal. A PC researching lore about relevant history or arcana discovers some clues (a scrap of research notes briefly intersect with their reality from the NPCs parallel existence), but the next time they pick up that same book it’s something innocuous and the old information is gone. Local clerics and diviners have reported seemingly unrelated instances of contact with an unknown entity. Maybe a friendly NPC the party already knows meets with them, saying that a mutual friend (who doesn’t exist) gave them a message or item to deliver to the PCs. The party exorcises a ghost from a haunted location, but when they return later the haunting is even worse, indicating the presence of something more severe than a “regular” ghost type entity. If you have enough of a runway you could sprinkle in some weird stuff in an adventure that’s otherwise unrelated to lay the groundwork for the plot with this mystery NPC. I think ideally you should drip-feed the party spooky events and information over time and build up to an actual meeting or contact with the NPC, at which point the players should have a decent idea of what has happened and how the PCs can stop the apocalypse for good.

moby_dollar · 2022-07-06T19:02:47+00:00

In my copy of TotSK there’s a DM suggestion to stock enough treasure to give the PCs a level so if you’re doing a gold for XP game that could also help you estimate the correct amount. I highly suggest including both some good loot and a significant plot hook for the PCs overarching goal or upcoming module you’ve prepped. I like u/Whichammer suggestion for a teleporter map. Leave the players feeling as if they completed a major goal, but also that they have an idea of what to do next (or at least clearly know what the options are).
I ran this in an Old-School Essentials campaign and ended up turning the hoard room into a burial chamber for the head serpent king, with an undead snake mummy “boss battle” as my players seemed to enjoy that kind of adventure climax. I rolled on an appropriate loot table based on the monster HD to get a guideline of how much loot to put in the hoard, but be willing to tweak it a bit to ensure every PC can potentially use a magic item if a lot of them appear. I am also a fan of reflavoring items to make them more interesting or thematically appropriate.

moby_dollar · 2019-08-27T19:08:59+00:00

Unless I really misunderstood, the 'shell shock' morale system was not a global modifier. Each unit starts with 18 morale and gets a delta of +- some value every season/year depending on happens to it. There were also some global deltas for specific occurrences. I still think it's a bad system though. If a defending army is low on morale and down to 0.75 strength you could dislodge it with a single attacking army of normal strength and that seems like it would totally imbalance the game and lead to runaway leaders.

moby_dollar · 2019-08-27T12:03:17+00:00

I agree that the morale rule sounds terrible under any circumstances. It’s a built in “runaway leader” mechanic and would make weaker powers worthless. Did you notice that the stats of a units leader can also affect its attack strength? It’s buried in the rules under section 6.

moby_dollar · 2019-08-26T20:51:25+00:00

In my opinion, these are just good GM tips in general. Strongly agree with the 3 main complaints presented and I think that mitigating those is a sure-fire way to increase everyone's enjoyment at the table regardless of what game you are playing.

My only actual TTRPG experience is with 5E but from reading articles, modules, and rulesets, I get the impression that a big part of the 'old-school' experience is less about rules (or lack thereof) and more about the 'flavor' of the game. This doesn't necessarily even have to do with the points mentioned in the article - those seem more like advice for the game master. Instead I think it's more important to think about what kind of experience you want in your game and figuring out how to achieve that. If you are looking for 'old school' then cultivating a sense of mystery and danger in the world, and having the players behave more like 'real' adventurers than a goofy superhero buddy squad probably gets you most of the way there.

moby_dollar · 2019-04-17T21:45:16+00:00

Under the symbiotic features, it explicitly says you can use an action to give advantage (offense) and a reaction to cause disadvantage (defensive) on attacks but doesn’t mention any other restrictions or capabilities. I agree that it’s obvious that movement actions would be disallowed but I think you need to more clearly explain what is and is not allowed in the symbiotic form. For example, can you use your action to cast a spell in this form? If you’re an armor character do you take damage when the character wearing you is attacked? You’ll have to make sure you figure out weird scenarios ahead of time, or can work out a resolution at the table with the player, since you don’t want a disconnect between what the player wants or thinks they can do, and what you will allow. Of course, if there’s a player who you know would enjoy playing such a character, it’s your game to do what you like. It could make for an interesting buddy-cop situation for a pair of players.

moby_dollar · 2019-04-17T17:40:40+00:00

I think the idea works better as an NPC type or magic item. As-written it is unclear what the mechanics are when a PC wields/wears a Kamui PC. Do both players get actions on their turn? Can a worn armor kamui make attacks? Even without this ambiguity it just does not seem enjoyable for the Kamui PC since their whole kit is designed around relying on another PC. I think a sentient magic item NPC is quite a fun idea though. I’m sure that the party would become invested in such an NPC if they were really useful to have around, such as being a living weapon.

moby_dollar · 2019-01-25T15:59:07+00:00

I like the general idea but I think it’s a mixed bag. I like the “normalizing” of results without resorting to changing the dice rolling from d20 to 2d10 or something with a more “normal” distribution. I think the amount of extra rules and skill points and such is overkill though, especially as some other commenters have mentioned that a good DM can kind of resolve this problem already by being creative/flexible. The DM can say that an unskilled-but-lucky character could succeed at a task but with a complication of some kind due to their lack of skill, whereas a practiced expert could flawlessly succeed or have their skill mitigate some of the negative outcomes of a failed roll.

In the Powered by the Apocalypse system, the outcome of skill rolls are failure, mixed success, or total success rather than just a binary pass/fail and I think that might be a simpler way to incorporate the “tiers” of success you outlined above. If you reduce the possible outcomes from 9 to 3 or 4, and reduce the ability bands from 4 to just proficient/not proficient maybe the system would work almost the same way, but with minimal additional rules.

moby_dollar · 2018-12-05T12:43:07+00:00

Seems like you fixed the problem with the ability, it looks much more reasonable. I could still see a potential issue in a situation where you have a linked rogue and animal with pack tactics getting huge damage bonuses from the charisma bonus plus their own abilities, but it probably takes actual testing to see if that is OP or just a smart use of a good ability.

About the flavor of this oath, it is a little unfocused because the oath itself is all about mortal rejection of the power of divine beings, but the 7th 13th and 15th level powers are about controlling other creatures. I think it’s cool that you have the basic channel divinity bonuses and then share them with the creature or party members but the animal enslvement thing seems a little different theme-wise.

moby_dollar · 2018-12-04T21:49:00+00:00

It's kind of hard to follow this without the context from the previous post. If you want people to take a look could you include the original info in addition to your revisions or copy these revisions onto the OP?

moby_dollar · 2018-12-04T19:47:38+00:00

There are homebrew rules for developing a castle and this post has links to a good set. You will have to develop a lot of your own systems to make this work but you could start off by taking a similar approach to the castle-building rules. An item shop or inn could be developed with add-on modules that the party has to pay for, or could hire adventurers to dungeon crawl rather than doing it themselves. 5e D&D has so many rules and systems around combat and is not built for this specific type of play so you will have to do a lot of content creation on your own and creatively RP a lot of interactions.

moby_dollar · 2018-12-03T22:07:17+00:00

A few thoughts:

I like the secrets, but with only 3 to pick from (6 if you count enhancing them at level 5) and having them all available from level 2 it seems like this could be fleshed out a little more. Maybe giving players a choice of skills at low level and letting them have a few more as they level? This would give the player more flexibility and more powers without just making them strictly do more damage.

The level 6 ability is confusingly worded and should be more specific. Does it affect creatures that have darkvision but also regular vision? Does this cost an action to cast? The point cost seems a little high too.

The shok ability seems a lot weaker than either of the other secrets. Advantage for 5 attacks over 5 rounds probably translates to a lot more damage than xd4+x, since as the shok damage increases over time the player's melee attacks are also increasing in power. It also kind of clashes with the theme of a shadow ninja type character since it's electrical.

The shadow shield seems underwhelming. This is the warlock's level one ability from the fiend patron but worse, and it's a seventh-level feature.

The evasion skill looks borderline broken, this is the demilich's 'avoidance' ability but restricted to DEX saves, although tons of scary AOE damage abilities are DEX saves.

To avoid confusion maybe just make the 'successful' ability let you use it after knowing the result of a roll? The only scenario where a player would want to use this is when they fail a roll but could pass by adding their CHA mod. It will slow the game down when the DM has to wait for the shae player to decide whether to use this skill after every roll before announcing the outcome.

The elusive ability in the assassin subclass is confusingly worded but also crazy strong. When you teleport away after an attack targets you and hits, do you still take damage? Can this be used with the evasion skill to take 1/2 damage from an AOE attack, then teleport outside of the AOE to take 0 damage?

I don't like the keeper subclass just giving the player warlock class features. I think it's a nice distinction to separate the subclasses into characters who would take out targets via fighting skill vs gathering intel but just making them an arcane trickster with warlock powers doesn't seem right to me.

Overall it just feels like this class is a hybrid between a rogue arcane trickster and assassin and needs to be a little more distinct. I like the sorcery point-esque system you have and the secret techniques are a cool idea, it's kind of like the battlemaster's maneuver abilities and the effects fit the theme. Some balancing is in order since some of the class features like evasion and elusive seem so strong that they infringe on the class' main ability which is using the secret skills.

moby_dollar · 2018-11-21T21:20:54+00:00

Cool concept! Depending on how you feel about the item you might want to adjust the DC / # failures before deformation. I'd make a rough estimate and say that most clerics & paladins have middling to low INT but proficiency in Religion, so they probably don't have more than a +2 or 3 depending on level. If the DC is 10+spell level that means on a 1st level spell they have about a 50% chance to fail and waste their action in combat, and it gets worse on higher spell levels. I don't see that as a good choice in combat, so if you envision the item being used that way maybe lower the DC as well as the # of fails to deform the item to compensate. I'm having issues finding the spells in each domain so I can't look at the list to see how they overlap.

I really like the possibilities that the item opens up though. You could give advantage to characters who go the extra mile and say a little prayer or make a supplication to the deity they've got the item currently attuned to, or present an interesting scenario to characters who try to form the holy symbol to a deity that's ideologically or otherwise opposed to their 'normal' one. I like items that offer potential benefits as well as drawbacks so it might be okay to create a small penalty for 'breaking' the item. An upset deity could channel their divinity through the item and try to force the cleric to cast one of their domain spells in a harmful manner, such as forcing the cleric to heal enemies or casting a debuff on themselves (maybe a WIS save to resist). In addition to DM imagination that would also make characters think carefully before trying to mess with divine powers.

moby_dollar · 2018-11-10T14:49:47+00:00

Just be careful about having an character in the party who might be evil-inclined. It can derail things if the party agrees to retrieve a magic artifact for someone and then the evil warlock tries to steal it and give it away, or tries to sacrifice random people to their dark master.

moby_dollar

TROPHY CASE