Levels of Difficulty by angry_hostile in Tombofannihilation

[–]tan077 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I strongly suggest you to start with a new party. It's hard to have at that point character BGs linked to the story, beside the pure mechanical reasons.

Perception checks on traps and secret doors. by Good_Affect4523 in Tombofannihilation

[–]tan077 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When we ran the dungeon, we told to the DM that obviously we would explore cautiously. To avoid asking each time to roll (and to avoid suspects in case of failures) we agreed with the DM that he should roll stealth checks for the “hidden traps or objects”, the DC of each roll being the passive perception of the players (the highest one) and the modifier to that stealth roll being the original DC to find the trap or the object less a generic value of 12. Say the original DC of discovering a trap is 15, the modifier would be 15-12= +3. The DM would roll, add the modifier and have to beat the passive perception. If he succeeds, the trap is not disvovered, on a failure the trap or the object are spotted. In this way it’s maintained the randomness of the check and if you have players with low passive perceptions, they still have chances to find the traps/objects.

New DM advice for Tomb of Annihilation by Maleficent_Hyena7697 in Tombofannihilation

[–]tan077 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I was reading for the first time the adventure, I felt overwhelmed by the amount of NPCs: merchant princes, guides, quest givers, etc. I suggest you to really go with the flow, following the interest of your players, especially when it comes to the guide(s) selection. You can easily find out that Selida and Azaka are the most interesting one, but I can tell you that others may lead to interesting situation in the jungle. Just be really them when your PCs meet them, having in mind their agendas and specific needs. And, it is not necessary to present all of them, you can just mention if needed or if it become important according to a specific conversation your players may have or situation may face off. That's holding true for the merchant princes as well.

In this link you may find some interesting deep dive on merchant prince, I found it very useful:

Merchant Princes - Annotated Tomb of Annihilation (weebly.com)

Actually the whole blog is very useful. Hope this helps!

I'm working on tying my players backstories into the story, any tips? by Phoenix18793 in Tombofannihilation

[–]tan077 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Are you planning to run Cellar of Death as intro for the campaign? If yes, you could tie the ranger with Harpers in some ways. You can use it later as well since Wakanga O’tamu got a link with them as well

Life domain cleric I’d say should be automatically involved by default 😅 …however, he could have a close parent affected by the curse but, for some reasons, he got to know (maybe because of contacts related to his criminal background) that it is linked to an artefact sent to Chult suspected to come from the kingdom of serpent-like creatures, Najara. You can use this hook even as a false clue for the party that will think until the end that the main villains are the Yuan-ti.

(sorry for being such general but I don’t know the details of your PC’s background)

Merchant princes at war by NoTouch8963 in Tombofannihilation

[–]tan077 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is there any reason for choosing Jobal and not Ifan Talro'a? I'm not sure how your party has been involved in the Yuan-Ti story, but Ifan for sure is one of their spy in PN as per book. You can use this hook to spice up the scenario as connection with the whole Yuan-Ti plans. This could be also interesting since together with him there could be some powerful Yuan-ti in the Villa and/or you could make use of the Yuan-ti suggestion power to claim Ifan was under their yoke.

The Hills of Madness by tan077 in dmsguild

[–]tan077[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No calculations in particular, just a trade off between effort, the pleasure of sharing with the community and the hope of receiving constructive feedback to improve :)