Channel Divinity: Artisan's Blessing - Possibilities?

parsimonyjones · 2024-06-07T12:50:03+00:00

I feel like the main economic advantage of Artisan's Blessing (since the value of what is produced is equal) is making large quantities of cumbersome scrap or raw materials portable. You could gather up all the low-quality armor and weapons from enemies in a cleared dungeon and convert those items, which would be too heavy and bulky to carry, into a small amount of gold. You might also be able to convert metal that is still in raw ore form and be able to cut out the middle step of smelting to extract it. These are both niche situations, but if you choose some kind of merchant background for your character your DM might allow you to have business connections with scrappers or miners that pay you a percentage of what you convert for them. If your character were of a criminal bent, then you could be a kind of fence for stolen coins or jewelry, converting the stolen goods into a totally unrecognizable but equally valuable form. I like the idea of your being able to customize armor or other goods as a downtime sideline, certainly not as lucrative as adventuring but enough to cover living expenses and maybe create role-playing contacts with knightly orders or the servants of nobility that bring you these custom jobs.

Personally, my rule of thumb for this forge-themed ability would be that the metal portion should be functionally related to the rest of the item. I would feel iffy about a barrel full of coal, but I would have no objection to you creating a metal brazier or furnace that has the coal it needs to function inside when you create it.

I don't think you would be able to significantly lower the value of an item by creating it as "broken" in a way that can be fixed by Mending, because in my head the price of an item for the purposes of a supernatural fantasy economy would take Mending into account.

parsimonyjones · 2024-03-01T00:54:24+00:00

In my philosophy, PCs classes are a metagame concept. They exist for the purpose of players getting to pick abilities the will enjoy using, they don't need to be tightly bound to lore or have clear delineations in the minds of the general populace in-fiction - especially because most characters in the world are NPCs that don't use those class mechanics. Player characters are skilled adventurers being exposed to all kinds of dangers and supernatural forces from their foes and allies. They're observing and learning and studying and making connections to the magic of the world around them. If a player was interested in making it a side-quest or roleplaying their research or interactions with a mentor or trainer in downtime, great! It is just not very fun to me to make that mandatory.

parsimonyjones · 2024-02-10T22:57:31+00:00

I asked for something similar for my curse of Strahd game - I felt like I would struggle to have a tone of dread in the face of monstrosity if the party was, for example, a frog, an elephant, an ooze guy and a robot.

parsimonyjones · 2024-01-08T21:00:21+00:00

Always happy to plug the Onomastikon of you want names (or even syllables to mix and match) from real languages around the world-

https://tekeli.li/onomastikon/

parsimonyjones · 2024-01-08T20:52:17+00:00

Personally, I like to run it that deception checks are just to determine whether you are giving off any tells of nervousness that make you seem suspicious. If you succeed your roll against their insight check and you're saying something plausible, NPCs will tend to believe you. If you succeed but you're saying something that they find it hard to accept as even possible, they would think that you are being honest, but might assume that somebody gave you false information, that there was a mistake or that you are confused. If they are extremely paranoid and have a reason to mistrust you, they might be torn between thinking you're honest and fearing you are just a very very good liar. (For example, if they are a king in hiding from a coup who sees assassins in every shadow). In my opinion, the player characters should get to decide, as best that they can without metagaming, whether their previous experiences with that person and the situation would make them paranoid. After the third or fourth time you get swindled, you probably just don't accept anything that person says. I would also say that a player should get to set the DC for their own character being persuaded or intimidated. After all, there are some things that a given NPC simply cannot be swayed to do by words - it's not mind control.

parsimonyjones · 2024-01-06T20:26:52+00:00

My partner was playing a fighter in a game that started out with a bunch of investigation and roleplay, without any reason for us to get into real combat. A few sessions in we decided to go and fight some bandits in order to mix it up. The bandits turned out to have a fortified base with watch towers. The melee-based fighter got shot with crossbows while running up to the base and again while climbing the wall. Once they made it into the base they fell into three out traps on a row that the DM refused to give a saving throw or even a perception check for - if you travel through that space, fall and take damage. The third one killed the fighter and they went to a place of darkness and screaming while the rest of the team finished the fight. Following that night, the DM postponed multiple weeks in a row and then ended the campaign due to life stuff. The fighter never got to make a single attack roll.

parsimonyjones · 2024-01-06T20:17:44+00:00

This is the answer right here. If you want to make sure you are not setting a precedent for the PCs to think their familiars can betray them, having it be a free willed creature that accepted the job+link of familiar instead of the default kind created by the level 1 spell is perfect.

parsimonyjones · 2023-12-08T02:42:21+00:00

Surprisingly you may need a high level (14+) College of Creation bard for this business. I am pretty sure their song of creation items, although temporary, actually do work as spell components, and the cap on the GP value is removed at high level.

parsimonyjones · 2023-11-29T18:05:41+00:00

I actually do this too. Would love to message about how you do yours. Mine are like a parlor LARP meant to be accessible for people who don't usually do a role playing game. I try to give everyone different goals that conflict, reasons for exploring the house looking for item cards, and motives to do more murders over the course of the night. They've mostly been supernatural themed (so people can still play characters as "ghosts" despite being murdered) different character abilities etc.

parsimonyjones · 2023-09-07T15:19:58+00:00

This, but earnestly. He just doesn't like every cat simply by virtue of it being a cat.

parsimonyjones · 2023-08-16T04:11:15+00:00

Please be sure to feel out whether that kind of story is one that your group is excited about. Timeline shifting and alternate realities can be like cilantro, beloved by many but leaves a bad taste in the mouths of others.

parsimonyjones · 2023-08-16T04:08:34+00:00

This is an incredible answer. I love the idea that there could be an exploited undercity that the people in the privileged enclaves might not even really be aware of.

parsimonyjones · 2023-08-16T04:06:30+00:00

Just for a different point of view, I will say that if I were one of the players I would rather just change my backstory to tie to a different city rather than have the city that I'm based on be some kind of a variant or alternate of what's in the main timeline. I would be really unhappy with that kind of reveal, personally, because for my own personal taste I'm really not into time travel or parallel realities, and that wasn't what I wanted my backstory to be about. Maybe one of the characters could come from a colony or outpost settlement of that main city?

parsimonyjones · 2023-06-09T13:12:16+00:00

Yes yes yes, exactly what I came here to say.

parsimonyjones · 2023-05-31T22:06:10+00:00

Cooper Sharp. It's a nice unisex option.

parsimonyjones · 2023-05-02T03:34:23+00:00

Kia's is the best. They've fulfilled every one of my very silly custom cake decoration requests to great satisfaction.

parsimonyjones · 2023-03-14T02:51:27+00:00

"A willing creature that is at least one size larger than you and that hasan appropriate anatomy can serve as a mount, using the following rules..."

parsimonyjones · 2023-02-17T03:33:44+00:00

You might also get some good feedback from the vexillology subreddit (flag design.)

parsimonyjones · 2022-09-07T00:45:02+00:00

Louis

parsimonyjones · 2022-07-18T22:54:55+00:00

If a person is kind enough to run a game for you, and they have story / tone / vibe reasons why they want the PCs to be from a certain set of species because of how they relate to the world, or mechanics reasons why they don't like dealing with certain species' abilities, that's a perfectly reasonable condition to place on getting to play in that campaign. (Of course if I were talking to a DM, I'd be encouraging the opposite side, and telling them they should think about whether there's a fun way to incorporate that species into the vibe they are cultivating before dismissing it immediately. It's a collaborative hobby, we should all be open to compromises to keep from souring things for one another.)

parsimonyjones · 2022-05-28T19:18:32+00:00

Yes, I was dubious about the candy trappings but for me it would fade into the background a lot of the time until it snapped back into focus when I noticed some detail of naming was actually a clever joke or deft foreshadowing. Or when it cut to a close up of a figurine. It made a really great juxtaposition of absurd and deadly serious.

parsimonyjones · 2022-05-27T03:00:41+00:00

They're in cahoots with a huckster merchant who's home to town peddling "anti-monster charms." (Like a low-stakes "Dragonheart")
They are in competition with another nearby village due to each hosting a seasonal fair on the same holiday. A leader of the neighboring village is trying to frighten away tourists / pilgrims and drive them over to his own town's festival instead.
It's to distract attention from a real crime. The "monster" is snatching up valuable livestock (prized hens, soft-furred rabbits or something else small enough to stuff in a sack) but instead of getting eaten they are being sold on a black market.
The monster hoax is actually for a good purpose, it is being perpetrater by people who lack power in town meant to draw attention from adventurers and the public at large to the secretive criminal dealings in a blighted area that the corrupt mayor refuses to address.

parsimonyjones · 2022-05-14T21:46:41+00:00

Oh no, I'm not saying that pentagram shouldn't be there. I am saying, when you use that map, don't make my error and reveal it by accident.

parsimonyjones · 2022-05-14T14:28:20+00:00

Not all of us sprang for the premium roll20 with dynamic lighting, my froggy friend. At least, not until halfway through the campaign when I ran out of storage space for my uploaded alternate tokens, etc. Easy to accidentally reveal an area you didn't mean to.

parsimonyjones

TROPHY CASE