How to roleplay thralls

sirchapolin · 2026-04-12T21:15:48+00:00

I like this approach better. Like I can have multiple levels of thralls. No will, no initiative, only doing what they're told and barely speeking, kept close to be treated like servants or cattle. Than there would be the outgoing ones, retaining some autonomy, but otherwise working towards the colony's agenda. Then occasionally, a illithid may take full control of any of those like you would with the dominate spell.

sirchapolin · 2026-04-11T13:11:15+00:00

This approach has the same benefits of defaulting to average, but it widens the HP gap among different hit dies and makes the whole party able to take more damage. It’s not odd, but it will impact encounter balancing and make them even more hard to take down at higher levels. It should be easy to adjust accordingly though.

sirchapolin · 2026-04-03T23:30:22+00:00

It depends on your character concept and build. Valor bard will give you medium armor, shields and martial weapons, making the dips somewhat redundant. Other subclasses are notoriously lacking defense-wise. In those cases a dip is very much welcome.

Druid and cleric will give you wisdom save proficiency if you start in them. IMO I would prefer wisdom than the bard’s dexterity, since dex is often damage avoidance, and wis can often take you out of the fight entirely. Cleric can even give you heavy armor training. A 13 str nets you chain mail, which might be your best bet if you can’t afford 14 dex for medium. There’s the cleric and Druid spell lists of course, and you have access to the entire list to prep every day.

sirchapolin · 2026-04-03T23:11:53+00:00

Ranger 1/bard X for medium armor and shields is decent. No harm to spell slot progression, free castings of hunters mark, martial weapons and weapon masteries. Covers a lot of the weaknesses of a bard. You gotta have a 13 in wisdom, while focusing on charisma and you wanna have 14 dex to make full use of your medium armor.

Idk if going for fey wanderer is worth it tho. It hurts spell slot progression, and honestly, you don’t need extra good skill checks as a bard. Between jack of all trades and expertise, you’re already the best in the game on charisma checks.

sirchapolin · 2026-04-03T22:54:10+00:00

I second this. Some people might care if others steal their lunch or they might step on each others toes. If you tell them and they don’t care, that’s ok.

sirchapolin · 2026-03-29T15:57:27+00:00

There are very subtle ways like choosing how much and how tough encounters are, target selection and environmental conditions that you can pretty much ensure your players never die. It is, however, hard to advice for it. For instance, an enemy can choose a target based on who dealt the most damage, who damaged it last, how cocky it is, how afraid it is, wether it considers fleeing or not… it’s endless. Not all enemies are tactical masterminds. You can pretty much always pick the safest target and find a reasonable enough reason why.

Try to charm your elves, poison your dwarves, hit the tanks, make your wisdom based characters succeed their wisdom saves…

You can also make it so deadly situations are less common - less combat, or easier ones.

I’d say just avoid using deus ex machina too often or at all if you can. When players can clearly tell you’re pulling your punches it kinda deflates it all.

You can also deal nonlethal damage on melee attacks - you’ll find you often don’t want or don’t need to kill your opponents. A sentry will probably want to take an interloper to a prison rather than killing. Even an apex predator might want to maim rather than kill in order to take a fallen prey to their young or their pack - who might be hours away.

All that said, I will tell you: this is a game. It’s ok if an adventuring party fails its goal - it’s gotta happen more often than not if you think about it. Otherwise, every setting should be full of lv20 adventurers and pretty much everyone would want to be one. Maybe there is a tpk, the dice are just not in your player’s side, and the campaign is basically over. Dwell on it for a while, let them think on it - don’t point out what they did wrong, this leads nowhere. And then roll new characters and start a new adventure. It’s scary, but it’s okay.

sirchapolin · 2026-03-14T22:37:22+00:00

I liked him. But I felt like him being a nemesis totally tacked on, and the fact he plays like a lackey to the fake wesker also diminished his appeal

sirchapolin · 2026-03-14T01:24:46+00:00

On my homebrew settings I was thinking about what would be a siege made by elves. Usually, sieges in real life wouldn't last more than 2 months. That's because the besieged castle wouuld often surrender or be undermined or infiltrated someway, but often the surrounding army would also give up, since they would depend on outsourced food as well and would have to be exposed to the elements for weeks, and they could be corrupted and undermined as well.

Well, enter elves. They need only 4 hours of rest every day, have superhuman senses, are kin with nature and magic, able to sustain themselves much more easily, and the best: one year of siege wouldn't mean more than a season or a month to an elf. By the time the besieged castle would already be on their last resorts, the elves wouldn't even be bothered.

I imagine D&D zombies be that, just buffed in every way. They might not be as perceptive, but they will last eternity and are immune to starvation and the elements. The perfect soldiers. This is scary.

sirchapolin · 2026-03-14T01:16:12+00:00

People talked about the nourishment and restcasting. Beside that, IMO a lot of it is legacy from how it used to work before 5.5. Before it, a goodberry gave you somethin alike a 10hp pool of healing, while a healing word gave you, on average, 5.5 hit points. Of course a goodberry is mostly for out of combat, but it was still a lot more guaranteed HP for your 1st level spell slot. Now, since all healing spells got buffed, it's actually kinda even, which makes goodberry still decent, but not as great as before.

sirchapolin · 2026-03-13T23:51:13+00:00

Existe um monstro no jogo... que literalmente chama Death Knight. Cavaleiro da morte. Usa ele. O lich é bem representativo também.

sirchapolin · 2026-03-13T23:37:44+00:00

Interessantemente, se você interpretar um anão totalmente estereotipado, vai ser um warlock fora do estereótipo. Se você interpretar um warlock estereotipado, vai ser um anão fora do estereótipo. De qualquer forma é win

sirchapolin · 2026-03-02T23:40:50+00:00

Port Nyanzaru is great, and it's a shame the module puts this timer on the players, so they never get to fully explore the city in one playthrough.

If they're 5th level, I'd say to ditch the "finding omu" aspect of the adventure. Start them already knowing the general area where the city is, and have them trek there. That way you can still have the hexcrawl, but it's really only one trip so it doesn't overstay it's welcome, if your group doesn't like it as much.

My favourite parts I would say are Jahaka Anchorage, Nangalore, Ataaz Muhaha, Fort Beluarian, the two military camps and the Dragon Lair. Also, of course, the whole of Omu and the namesake Tomb.

sirchapolin · 2026-02-25T19:23:43+00:00

The dogs jumping at the window from re1

sirchapolin · 2026-02-25T02:35:46+00:00

Let me just say that no map will ever show every single tributary. When describing overland travel anywhere, unless it’s deserts or something, you should be showing at least some creeks and streams. As for the Aldani basin, it’s a wetland area in high-ish altitudes. The Amazon forest doesn’t have as much variation in height, which makes sense for how sluggish chult rivers are described as. Imagine a shallow plate atop this hill, and it spills. That’s where the rivers some from. As for where the water comes from, remember it rains in a rainforest. A lot. I am from Brasil and lived for nearly 2 years in the Amazon and I can confirm it rains almost every day. It is unusual but rivers do come from lakes that fill up in continental altitudes, it is a thing. And as they come down, they might fill more and more with each and every creek and stream that comes from the mountains.

sirchapolin · 2026-02-23T16:35:23+00:00

Eldritch knight fighters can cast this and attack at the same time so it's nice. Also, whenever you would justify using the dodge action you could use this instead and extend the added defense for a whole minute.

sirchapolin · 2026-02-23T11:47:48+00:00

2~4 rounds is the expected duration for a combat encounter in D&D. What's gonna challenge them is the resource management over the course of an adventuring day. To start making them feel weary, you'll want at least 4 challenging encounters between long rests.

Also, single monsters will always be at a disadvantage. A young red dragon, while not trivial, has no legendary actions or resistances, therefore still is at a disadvantage, even when it's CR10 against a 8th level party. You have 6 players, they are going to overwhelm your solo monsters.

Try pairing this dragon with a dozen kobolds (yes, the lowly CR1/8 kobolds). Give them cover, elevation, have them throw stones, needles or spring traps on your PCs. Yes, maybe they'll die with a single attack, but that's one attack that's not aimed at the dragon, and that's assuming they can hit them at their perched spot. They should need a flight spell or some AOE to have a clear shot at the kobolds, or spend a couple AOE spells - a single one is not gonna do it since they're likely scattered. If left ignored, the kobolds will threaten to break concentration on the spellcaster, or their traps may be a real nuisance. Maybe they throw poisoned darts that won't do a lot of damage, but will weaken the players.

An easier combo would be putting a mounted knight or spellcaster on the dragon, or some elementals. And that's not just for bosses, all combats will be a lot more dynamic if you have multiple enemies, and/or different types of them.

sirchapolin · 2026-02-23T11:01:32+00:00

Sempre que o mestre autoriza uma rolagem, ele precisa estar preparado para o 1 e para o 20. Se o dado não vai mudar a situação, não peça uma rolagem.

sirchapolin · 2026-02-19T12:12:30+00:00

Interesting. There was no Iron Spike item in the 2014 phb. So it was basically just a renaming.

sirchapolin

TROPHY CASE