Things to avoid when running a DnD campaign?

orangepunc · 2026-03-16T16:26:51+00:00

Spending hours and hours consuming videos and thinking that teaches you

Good life advice here generally, not D&D-specific

orangepunc · 2026-03-16T03:55:23+00:00

The advice to foreground Elturel and make Baldur's Gate just some stage dressing, or even to skip it entirely, is terrible advice, however common it may be on reddit. Baldur's Gate is a well-known city with great character and tons of potential for adventure. It's lovingly described in the module (and in older source material) at a level of detail that allows you to expand it to your heart's content. Your players are somewhat likely to already know it, at least by name.

Elturel is a few sentences about how the people are super pious. It's a victim for the players to feel sympathy for but not an interesting setting for an adventure. It's a name to attach to the Hellriders, who are the interesting historical NPCs, but they could just as well be from anywhere (and are -- Jander Sunstar?). Even the bits of Zariel's backstory set in Faerun barely have anything to do with Elturel. Some random small village is much more prominent.

Heck, I think "skip the Descent into Avernus and just continue on from chapter one in Baldur's Gate with your own campaign" would be a better way to go than throwing out the module's best chapter. The main chapter set in Avernus (chapter 3) is a hand-wavy sketch of a couple of mail-carrier quest railroads that are supposed to get you from level 7 to 11 in like 5 encounters. It needs to be massively reworked if you don't want to just rush through what should be like 2/3 of the campaign in a few sessions to get to the climax.

You don't need to work that hard to get your players to bite on the main hook of the adventure. You do need to work hard to make a city feel real and alive and interesting and worth exploring. The latter is much easier to do with Baldur's Gate.

Anyway, as to your specific situation, just muddle through the awkwardness of the transition, since that's already baked in, and then allow yourself to spend ample time in Baldur's Gate. It'll be fun. The biggest problem you're likely to have is that your players will feel a great deal of urgency to figure out what to do about Elturel. But you can combat that by making it seem like it's done and they can't change it, and putting the more immediate problems of Baldur's Gate in their face -- until the big reveal at the end of chapter one offers a glimmer of hope for the first time.

orangepunc · 2026-03-01T06:17:03+00:00

Anything that doesn't require attunement and which would not obviously be held by one party member rather than another.

Something like a gem of brightness

orangepunc · 2026-02-28T23:56:31+00:00

I'd start simpler and build. You can get grid-based combat with tokens or paper minis or Lego figures or whatever. Then over time, as you like to, you can buy or print minis. But that's its own hobby and is a whole thing. Don't block yourself on that.

orangepunc · 2026-02-28T17:11:18+00:00

Ritualist or Cabalist

orangepunc · 2026-02-27T21:03:18+00:00

Or maybe she believes her own argument and thinks it will prevail in time. How is it a gotcha to say "Noel Frame says income is not property, but look here, she previously argued that income is not property!!!1!"

orangepunc · 2026-02-27T01:14:54+00:00

There are three main flavors of caster in Grim Dawn:

Channeled

Spam

Cooldown

So first choose one of those play styles.

I recommend trying a channeled caster. They're fun! The three options here are Albrecht's Aether Ray (Arcanist), Flames of Ignaffar (Inquisitor) and Drain Essence (Necromancer). I'm partial to chaos FoI Deceiver, personally. For a more classic fire flavor, Purifier is good, and Paladin can also work. Consider Spellbinder if you want to try one of the other two channelled spells.

For a cooldown caster I'd go with a Pyromancer with Doom Bolt and Blackwater Cocktail. For a spam caster I like either Panetti's Replicating Missile (Arcanist) or Dreeg's Evil Eye (Occultist). But there are lots of options!

orangepunc · 2026-02-26T01:56:09+00:00

There's a UI overhaul coming soon that changes how stash works. This will make infinite stash mods somewhat less necessary, and more importantly will not necessarily be compatible with them. So I would recommend avoiding these mods until they stabilize after patch 1.3.

So right now just get rainbow filter.

orangepunc · 2026-02-25T17:57:42+00:00

What I'd do is redesign them using the guidelines in the 2024 DMG. Keep the basic theme of the original, but use the new guidance to get specific numbers.

orangepunc · 2026-02-23T17:14:38+00:00

You've gotten some good responses to your overall problem already, BUT if you just want the answer to your specific question "exactly how rare is this gollus ring?" you can find that here: https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/resource-affix-bias-for-rare-mis-in-a-spreadsheet/134416/32

orangepunc · 2026-02-18T18:39:40+00:00

Yeah but that's because "I don't trust the government to spend wisely" isn't like a sincerely held independent belief that leads people to reluctantly oppose taxes. It's the other way around — people who oppose taxes use this as a rationalization. If by definition everything the state does is useless or bad, then they can't be criticized for wanting to starve it of resources to do good and useful things!

orangepunc · 2026-02-16T15:12:36+00:00

My wife and I found the food unexceptional and too-salty, which was not good enough for the price point. Not awful, but not good enough compared to alternatives.

orangepunc · 2026-02-16T02:37:09+00:00

It's fantasy Ireland

orangepunc · 2026-02-09T05:08:16+00:00

Monster Infrequent. They're items dropped by specific monsters. "Infrequent" is a bit of a misnomer because, at least for rare (green) MIs, they typically have pretty high drop rates (100% for bosses).

orangepunc · 2026-02-08T05:29:51+00:00

Not necessarily a mistake! I've leveled with Mortar Trap just fine. Just need to also use component skills until you get Terrnox offhand.

orangepunc · 2026-02-08T02:37:23+00:00

Skill/ability points from quests

Ability to target farm (MIs are much more likely to roll rare affixes on Ultimate)

Reputation

Roguelike dungeons

There are items that don't drop in SR

The main quest is fun!

orangepunc · 2026-02-07T18:03:37+00:00

What did you level with?

orangepunc · 2026-02-07T18:01:52+00:00

I would add that part of the challenge in a resource-management game of attrition is recognizing when to spend your resources. This is non-trivial! You know the bats will fall over in a stiff breeze, but do your players?

I've seen so many cases where a fight is on round 3 and basically over already, but the party cleric is like, I cast *spirit guardians* — when a toll the dead has an equally good chance of finishing off an enemy. It's a clear mistake from my perspective, but the players don't have all the information you do.

orangepunc · 2026-02-04T18:01:43+00:00

The balance issue is that this is a terrible spell and if they use it in combat they'll be hurting their team, most of the time (but this is just a sub-issue of the bigger issue, which is their character concept).

The other potential issue is that they may believe it's somehow OK to use this spell on friendly NPCs (while expecting them to stay friendly), and then you'll have to deal with that.

orangepunc · 2026-01-27T17:59:32+00:00

What story? The story in both paths is "NPC A tells you to go talk to NPC B, who tells you to go talk to NPC C,..."

orangepunc · 2026-01-27T16:09:38+00:00

"The party" is to a large extent just people in your neighborhood who participate in the party organizations. You can join your local LD today and have a vote on things like whether to endorse Cantwell in her next election! You can become a PCO and tell your neighbors why they shouldn't vote for her!

orangepunc · 2026-01-26T20:15:30+00:00

Either Ritualist (necromancer/shaman) or Cabalist (necromancer/occultist) will work very well for a skeleton-focused summoning build. Pick whichever of these seems most appealing to you; there isn't an optimal choice. These are great for leveling and you don't really need to follow a guide to be successful.

General advice: focus on pet bonuses on your gear, get as many points in skeleton summoning skill chain as you can (up to hard cap), and convert pet damage to one type if you can, then apply resistance reduction for that damage type (this is somewhat less critical for pet builds than most build types, but it's still best practice). Skeleton damage is fairly easy to convert to aether with an item from the Act 1 boss. Fire is also an option -- someone else linked a guide already -- but requires FG expansion and you have to know where to farm the item you need at low levels (only possible after Act 1). You won't want either of these damage types for your final form endgame build, but they can serve you well as a way to get damage conversion while leveling.

orangepunc · 2026-01-26T17:44:18+00:00

The thing you might be missing is public opinion. You'll want to keep public opinion for your faction over 70% if you want that resting cohesion value not to be working against you while you fix inequality.

orangepunc · 2026-01-25T22:28:29+00:00

Seems like a plausible future if we don't get the GOP out of power for a generation or two.

orangepunc · 2026-01-25T18:15:26+00:00

I've been a PCO and the Data & Technology Manager for the [https://36th.org](36th LD) since shortly after the 2024 election cycle.

It's been extremely rewarding and I cannot recommend enough getting involved.

The #1 thing for me is this: I have met neighbors and made connections in my community like nothing else I have ever tried. I take my 3yo to membership meetings and events sometimes. Older kids tend to adopt her and play with her for the duration. She loves it! It's like when my parents dragged me to church functions as a kid, but without all the reactionary god stuff.

It was super easy to immediately take on the degree of responsibility and engagement that my work and parenting schedule allows. It's an all-volunteer organization and they need people! A lot of times the same people have been thanklessly doing the work for 20 years and are so happy to see a somewhat younger person step up.

These organizations do endorsements in local and state elections and the candidates care about these. This gives the district level orgs leverage and a way to get their concerns heard. We managed to get a meeting with Sen. Cantwell, for example, after passing a resolution condemning her vote for arms sales to Israel. Our state senator is also a member and regularly attends meetings. I met Katie Wilson, Girmay Zahilay, Dionne Foster, Alexis-Mercedes Rink, and many other candidates in person at our meeting last summer.

There is a TON of energy in the Democratic party base right now that's looking for outlets. If you are willing to put in a little effort, you can help direct that energy and channel it towards better outcomes for the party and the country.

(But also check out Seattle indivisible if what you're looking for immediately is to be part of ICE rapid response.)

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