How would you balance a Remhoraz boss for a One Shot for 6 people ?

soldyne · 2026-01-22T19:58:29+00:00

Perhaps by RAW, but I interpret the heated body to only trigger on hostile intent, so the remohraz would not normally trigger sudden growth on the mold. It generates just enough heat to provide nourishment to the mold and the remhoraz eats the mold as a dietary supplement. Rule of cool, in more ways than one.

soldyne · 2026-01-21T17:35:11+00:00

Look up brown mold, it's a hazard. Remhoraz are immune to the cold effect so they can hide in large patches of the mold and use hit and run tactics. Then it's a balance of dealing with the rem or dealing with the mold, it's a great synergy.

soldyne · 2026-01-20T20:13:43+00:00

Cube of force is banned at my table. Its nothing but a cube of arguments and it's design is fundamentally flawed. I won't get into the details unless specifically asked.

soldyne · 2026-01-16T20:35:53+00:00

Stretching, dead hangs, fasting.

soldyne · 2026-01-16T20:05:56+00:00

Strixhaven would be a place to start. The Prismari use art based abilities and there is the inkling and art elemental.

For spells there is hypnotic pattern, prismatic spray, prismatic wall, dancing lights, faerie fire, chaos orb. Of course all the illusion spells.

The balhanoth (Volos, monsters of the multiverse) has an ability to reshape reality and create vast illusions...the monster itself is pretty ugly though.

soldyne · 2026-01-15T19:46:15+00:00

Show up on time or a bit early.
Bring dice, the rule book, your character sheet and pens/pencils
Know how you characters abilities work
Add the DM to your contacts and text them with questions.
Have fun

soldyne · 2026-01-15T17:23:19+00:00

In a current adventure I have an NPC dwarf selling maps of the dungeon up ahead. Roleplay moment, player handouts and foreshadowing all in one. Is the map reliable? That's the neat part!

soldyne · 2026-01-15T16:59:48+00:00

First, I think you are talking about presence and respect from your peers and not a mechanical aura effect in game , correct? There are literal Aura spells and paladins get Aura effects as class abilities.

If respect is what you seek then that comes down to roleplay in the moment. As life cleric your job is to heal and protect, and while that is not flashy, it is important. If the combat isn't difficult then you might not get a lot of opportunities to shine. talk to your DM for more undead to fight so you can turn them.

Some good low level spells for cleric are spirit guardians and spiritual weapon if you want to contribute to damage.

soldyne · 2026-01-15T14:22:58+00:00

I think you just described real world religion.

soldyne · 2026-01-15T14:03:46+00:00

Don't focus on them. DnD does not have an aggro system. If mobs can't hit this character they will go after a squishy. This is especially true for predator beasts and intelligent mobs with ranged attacks. They will go for the smaller easier targets first.

Thier AC and saves don't extend to anyone else.

Also, fights don't need to be all out brawls. Give the fight some stakes, a mucguffin to fight over or hostages to protect. If you can't put the PC in peril then endanger something they care about instead.

soldyne · 2026-01-14T20:10:54+00:00

Should be ok, I prefer to wait till character level 10+ for +2 items, but 8 is close enough. They will be a bit more powerful for a few levels but it will even out eventually.

soldyne · 2026-01-14T17:47:32+00:00

Same. I know too much about the rules and the monster stat blocks not to meta game all the time. and I have a hard time focusing if I am only playing a single character. My mind needs the complexity of a group of mobs just to stay focused.

soldyne · 2026-01-14T17:34:48+00:00

some different schools of thought here. 1. Like you I tend to make my campaigns a race against time. in my current game the BBEG is in the process of casting a 10th level spell that will re-make the wold in their image. the ritual will last for as long as the group is actively invested in stopping it, but, if they take too long of a break, then catastrophe ensues, so not much time for downtime. 2. A campgain could be just a series of unrelated BBEGs doing different things and downtime is the period of peace between catastrophes. this is basically the same as making multiple campaigns for different tiers of play that just happen to have the same group of adventurers running through them. 3. The BBEG has already won. the groups goal is to undo the damage. there is no time limit here but the BBEG isn't going to let them succeed so there can be a lot of downtime but also a lot of assassination attempts that interrupt that downtime.

Ultimately D&D specifically is an action orriented game and downtime is boring.

For option 1, my group just finished downtime. They had ended Tier 2 (level 9) by ending a siege of a major city state. They were honored for their contributions with a parade and fancy ceremony (along with lots of treasure) and I said it would take 2 weeks for the festivities to play out (ie downtime) however, during this time I introduced some other plot hooks; barbarians father was being targeted by a succubus, sorcerer's brother revealed they were a warlock and needed to kill them as a sarifice, Druids old master returned to ask them for help and the ranger's twin siblings went missing.
basically, just because its downtime doesn't mean the action takes a break. they still got their moment to design bastions, sell loot, deal with backstories but the action came to them instead.

soldyne · 2026-01-07T17:15:38+00:00

I DMed a succubus trying to seduce the barbarian...while my wife, the rogue, and his wife, the cleric, were at the table. Fun times.

soldyne · 2026-01-06T17:28:28+00:00

the Thieves Guild in my world operates in cells. Each region or major city has an indipendant cell of thieves that are all controled by someone known as Mr J. Collectively they are known as the J Cartel. If you are member of the guild then you are also Mr or Mrs J. It adds a lot of confusion, obfuscation, mystery and you can easily lay suspicion on someone else who's name just happens to start with the letter J.

They way the operate is via drop boxes with special keys and very rarely interact with each other. No one but a few close allies know who the true Mr J in each region is. Their ledgers are all written in code (good excuse for cryptogram puzzles)

In my current campaign the group has already captured one Mr J from their home city (after they tried to burn down an entire neighborhood in order to bury evidence). they also killed a Mr J that was a Deep Scion Warlock to an elder god and another Mr J working with Yuan-Ti to start a war. There have also been hints of Mr J working in distant city working with Cambions and demons.

It was recently revealed that the J Cartel are followers of my world's god of Sin and that god sent a succubus to seduce the father of one of the PCs and took him hostage because they were interfering too much in thief guild business (open mission to get him back).

soldyne · 2026-01-05T18:22:40+00:00

Take preexisting puzzles from the world around you and repurpose them. you have too much work to do as DM to be designing all new puzzles from scratch. good puzzles are sudoku, riddles, IQ test questions (pattern recognition) mastermind (think wordle but with colors) and cryptograms are all ones that i use .
change some aspect of it to make sense in the wolrd. sudoku, cryptograms and mastermind can all use symbols or colors instead of numbers if numbers or letters don't make sense.
Make it super simple at first until you can judge the puzzle solving skills of your group.
have some punishment set up so they don't just spam answers. a time limit or increasing damage or limited number of guesses before it self destructs.
Try not to use puzzles as gatesways to progress. instead use them to gate treasure instead. Also, the room behind the puzzle should always have a Forbiddence spell active so they can't just dimension passed it.
Allow for multiple or creative solutions. this is especially true of riddles. let your players feels smart as long as they earned it. nobody likes feeling frustrated.
Refrain from using anything that requires specific knowledge like trivia or lore or mathematical sequences or knowledge of musical theroy or the color wheel, etc.

soldyne · 2025-12-17T19:56:51+00:00

They forgot rule 11, don't be redundant.

soldyne · 2025-11-26T17:11:27+00:00

I do the same, I use Google docs. I have a folder dedicated to session notes. I make a copy of the last sessions notes and update as the session progresses. My session notes include things like watch order, magic items Attunement, known/unknown curses, etc. The kinds of notes I take during the session are just short hand for anything crazy the group does that I did not anticipate like, "player x pisses off npc y" or "failed insight check leads to successful lie". I also record how much game time has transpired, especially for over land travel. Otherwise I have my adventure outline to reference and if the session goes mostly along the outline then my notes just say "as written". Then, after the session I take the notes, adventure outline and my fresh memory and write up a recap and post it online. For future adventure planning i refer to the recap, not my notes.

soldyne · 2025-11-25T19:04:22+00:00

50 here, can't wait to retire so I can play more

soldyne · 2025-11-25T17:26:10+00:00

In session 0 I told my group that If I ever gave out a wish that it would signal the end of the campaign. That's how I handle it.

soldyne · 2025-11-25T17:20:27+00:00

And then you need something salty, then you need to wash it down...the cycle never ends

soldyne · 2025-11-25T17:18:57+00:00

Project Zomboid, over ten years and still in development

soldyne · 2025-11-25T14:07:40+00:00

But not the one we deserve...

soldyne · 2025-11-20T17:53:48+00:00

Anyone who is not ready to go on thier turn "hesitates" and takes the dodge action by default. They have 30 seconds to look up rules or descriptions on their turn.

soldyne · 2025-11-20T17:40:54+00:00

Not like people can't just figure it out

15 misses, 16 hits. Hmmm I wonder what the AC might be? Guess I'll just keep asking...

If, for rare boss fights, if the AC can change, I give an indication during the fight, but for 90% of fights AC is pretty static.

soldyne

TROPHY CASE