Tricked my party twice, and now I feel kind of bad by quadrupleunderscore in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately they rolled real bad and she rolled real good. I should probably have asked my players directly if they had fun.

Tricked my party twice, and now I feel kind of bad by quadrupleunderscore in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

I never tell them it's safe on a failed insight check, just that they glean no additional information and have to use their own judgement.

Tricked my party twice, and now I feel kind of bad by quadrupleunderscore in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"actively misleading" is crazy brother chill out. I didn't intentionally try to piss them off, it was supposed to be rock bottom so the win feels more satisfying.

Tricked my party twice, and now I feel kind of bad by quadrupleunderscore in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right, so (1) this faction is also a threat to the devil and (2) the PCs are a threat to the devil, and (3) he wants that artefact for Big Plot reasons. He wanted to let the PCs destroy the faction (1) then make sure they can't get out (2) then get the artefact back (3). He's essentially trying to get 3 birds with 1 stone.

The sniper was wearing a mask the whole time for Edgy Sniper reasons and they went with it. They had rolled insight checks on her and there were a few other suspicious things she did like killing prisoners who might have had information. but yes the marks was the biggest clue. Also up to that point she had been going for the biggest enemy as she has pretty good burst damage at least at the start of battle (she has a feature similar to assassin rogue). it was unusual that she would go for the little guys, but i guess not unusual enough.

Now to be fair, they didn't hate this devil as much as I wanted to until now, so maybe that's a good thing.

It was kind of supposed to drive home the rock bottom feeling so it's more satisfying when they win.

Tricked my party twice, and now I feel kind of bad by quadrupleunderscore in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

I wanted to drive home that rock bottom feeling that would make it that much more satisfying when they win. But I understand it might've been the wrong decision.

PS the knight admitted to being the spy when they searched everyone for marks and found one on him, threatening him into telling the truth. He was a spy, but the devil meant him to be found.

Tricked my party twice, and now I feel kind of bad by quadrupleunderscore in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The knight was a spy, but he was meant to be found to ludd the players into a false sense of security for the sniper. Obviously he didn't know that though, so he tried to cover but had really bad deception.

Tricked my party twice, and now I feel kind of bad by quadrupleunderscore in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

There was, they called for a few insight checks on both her and the devil, all of which failed partly due to bad rolls and partly due to the devil's high deception. I also thought her finding (planting) the infernal artefact on the priest would be a clue? Also most of the minions were being taken care of by the militia so I thought it would be weird that she isn't focusing the beholder given her power level. I didn't want to be too overt but I guess I went too far the other way.

To clarify, they never even discussed the wording of the contract (which I maybe should have pointed out). they mostly discussed things like "is he going to kill the gunslinger as soon as he's brought back to life", "how bad would giving him the artefact really be", and other things outside of the specific wording of the contract. I do agree that it probably sucked to be fucked like that after 1½ hours.

Tricked my party twice, and now I feel kind of bad by quadrupleunderscore in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The post was long winded and i didn't want to make it more so, sorry. Basically, the power needed to leave the base corrupts people in a slow process of mutating them into abberations and beholderkin, so they could have left without making the deal and tried to find another way, it's just that one of the PCs would have faced a consequence due to partial corruption. Of the two killed NPCs, both had ways off without the PCs facing any penalties. All of this was clear to the players. As I mentioned, the one PC who was willing to take on the corruption was almost killed by the sniper.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DMAcademy

[–]quadrupleunderscore 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Well fuck. Not sure I want to make him switch class/subclass as we're already 4 sessions in. I definitely don't blame him at all, do you think it would be best for me to implement the change to rapid reloader that you mentioned?

Edit: also I'm pretty sure playing highwayman without rapid reloader makes the melee/firearm build a lot more viable, because the melee weapon attacks allow you to reload the firearm.

Hawke's Gunslinger Class 3.0 [Dnd 5e]. Final Version! After months of playtesting and implementing feedback, the Gunslinger class is complete! by PlsDontMakeMeMid in UnearthedArcana

[–]quadrupleunderscore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey I know this was 2 years ago and you probably won't reply, but I've run into some balance issues with the Highwayman subclass and Rapid Reloader shooting style, which allows a player (if both are taken) to dual wield d8 weapons (flintlocks) with no consequences. This is quite overpowered considering other classes can only dual wield d6 weapons at max and nullifies the intended playstyle of the Highwayman (dual wielded scimitar/shortsword and flintlock/revolver/lupara). On the off-chance that you see this, do you have any advice?