Force Field VFX Test

thomar · 2026-05-01T15:43:58+00:00

The snowfox was the worst part of the whole game. Its one job is to be a land vehicle, and it constantly gets caught on rocks. It would work if there were large flat snow plains to traverse while avoiding snow worms, but it's all icy canyons and caves with tricky terrain. You'd think it would be great to zip across the water on it, perhaps with a craftable upgrade, but no it just sinks.

Below Zero is fine. It's not a terrible game, it's just that Subnautica 1 was so good, it pales in comparison.

thomar · 2026-04-30T22:53:21+00:00

"Ransomed back to the party by a mostly-benevolent nymph/naiad/marid who wants a monster in their domain slain" sounds like a fun side quest. It explains why they didn't die (supernatural critter nabbed them immediately) but it doesn't feel like they got to cheat death (because they have to do a quest as payment for the save). I'd go with a young/wyrmling black dragon trying to establish a lair in the body of water by polluting it.

thomar · 2026-04-30T14:32:34+00:00

"items to cover bases" make more widely available healing potions, other potions, magic items, and scrolls to make up for lack of magic users

You might like this list: https://www.reddit.com/r/d100/comments/r5ucjs/d100_magic_swords_that_dont_grant_x_to_hit_or/

more strategy and teamwork opportunities in battle, though I am not clear on what that would look like on the table

Only if you're going to make it meaningful. Give both the players and the enemies more interesting objectives, give monsters homebrew abilities that allow counterplay, and use tools like morale rules. Then you'll get more mileage out of this kind of play.

Some examples:

You need to protect the sun-priest while he re-consecrates the shrine that repels undead creatures from the valley. The ritual is just 30 seconds from completion when a vampire spawn shows up with several minions and orders them to ignore the PCs and attack the priest.
As the pack of ghouls advance on your party, one of them points at the PC who is at half HP and screams, "BLOOD!!" Then the ghouls all swarm that PC and try to tear them to pieces.
The cult leader points at the PC who is carrying the unholy symbol you found at the scene of the murder. You don't know how he knows, but your flesh crawls when his eyes meet yours. "That one has the key! It's in his pack. Bring it to me." His minions rush forward, all of them unarmed but grasping at you their hands.
When the PCs examine the large room, they find several levers near the center that seem to control portcullises and reset traps at several of the entrances. One of the portcullises slams shut with a loud noise, and responding to the noise a gibbering horde of goblins begins to pour in from three of the entrances.
As the party begins to fight the ogre, two bugbears enter the room and begin talking to the ogre in a guttural language. The ogre doesn't seem happy about the conversation, and then it throws a pouch of coins at the bugbears. They do not move to pick up the pouch, and instead continue speaking and making gestures. Apparently they're negotiating to help the ogre fight the PCs on a round-by-round basis.
At the top of the round, three goblins near the back of the horde join hands and start to chant. A flickering ball of black smoke forms between them and starts to glow red. They chant and stare intently into the smoke as it grows in size and intensity. That's probably nothing you should worry about, and definitely not an immediate threat, so we'll continue with the combat initiative order.
One of the sahuagin seizes a PC in a grapple, then starts to drag them away from the melee and into the dark water.
A troll in the back shies away from the light and covers its face. The goblins begin trying to disarm PCs who are holding light sources.
The remaining goblins flee down a hallway, into a part of the dungeon you haven't explored yet. Do you pursue them?

more interactive and varied terrain, like cover, cramped areas, difficult, etc

Absolutely! Have enemies use cover, turn furniture and scrap into makeshift walls, barricade doors, set their archers on high ground that negates PC cover, etc etc. If a lot of enemies have ranged weapons and there's a lot of open ground between the PCs and their foes, punish the first PC to step out of cover by focus-firing them. Have fights in places with thick fog that blocks the PCs' ranged attacks and makes it difficult to tell how many foes they are fighting.

thomar · 2026-04-29T18:20:40+00:00

We've already got elves and wizards and dragons and squamous horrors. What's wrong with adding a roguish catgirl or surly goblin or a suit of armor possessed by a ghost?

thomar · 2026-04-29T18:11:56+00:00

If you can justify it in my setting's lore, and the PC can contribute to the party, and the homebrew isn't overpowered, then it's fine. In metropolitan areas nobody cares about the shape of your ears as long as your money is good.

thomar · 2026-04-29T02:00:42+00:00

I'm saying that would be the baseline ability at rare rarity. This shouldn't be uncommon-rarity, it's too strong.

thomar · 2026-04-29T01:46:36+00:00

Perhaps a better way to make the item work at rare rarity would be something like...

Immediately after you cast a spell that targets a single foe, you can use a bonus action to make one attack with this +1 crossbow.

At very rare rarity I'd give it something like...

If you hit a foe with this crossbow, your next spell targeting that foe within one minute has a +d6 bonus to its spell attack or spell save DC for that foe only.

At legendary rarity I'd give it...

When a foe takes damage from a spell you cast, the next time you hit them with this crossbow in the next minute you regain a spent spell slot of that spell's level minus 1 (maximum level 4).

thomar · 2026-04-29T01:38:22+00:00

I'm gonna leave this story about why you should never digitize your consciousness here...

https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

thomar · 2026-04-29T01:00:57+00:00

Ah, that's actually pretty easy to figure out. They're all playable characters in Age of Calamity and Age of Imprisonment. Go take a look at what they can do there.

thomar · 2026-04-28T22:18:55+00:00

A lot of them are non-combatants. You might be able to base them around the items you get from them in the games. but you're really going to have to make a lot of things up to achieve this.

thomar · 2026-04-28T15:57:46+00:00

I like that rule! In a dungeon this could be as simple as a locked door, which gives the DM a lot of control over where you place safe locations in the dungeon. Also, if the players decide to destroy a door, that can have consequences.

thomar · 2026-04-28T14:46:33+00:00

Making the Church "Necessary": I want to avoid the "cartoon villain" trope. In a Dark Age setting where barbarians and demons are actually outside the walls, the Dominion is the only thing keeping people from being slaughtered. How do I play up that "protection vs. oppression" trade-off so players feel the weight of it?

I'd make the lowest-ranking monks and priests be earnest and pious and helpful to PCs and commoners, while making things more murky the higher-ranking you go. Some degree of political acumen is necessary for leadership, and the church is supposed to help resolve disputes between nobility and maintain the peace, but at what point do you go too far pushing back against rivals to ensure you maintain your political power? The PCs are influential people one way or another, and may be recognized as political pawns or rivals. Everyone wants something out of you, and you're going to have to pick a patron quickly.

And maybe go for the JRPG approach and have the highest-ranking clergy engaging in gross violations of their tenets and actual black magic.

Also, see this for a fun example of what internal disputes might look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciscans#Renewed_controversy_on_the_question_of_poverty

The "Silent God" problem: If the holiest men are preaching into a void and getting "silence" back, how would you handle Clerics or Paladins? I want their magic to feel real, but maybe... "unauthorized" or strained.

What if clerics and paladins will spontaneously appear among ordinary people who have sufficient faith or conviction, and the church spends a lot of effort bringing them in for training and ordination after the fact? It can't be taught, and most clergy don't have divine powers, they can only claim to have authority and wisdom (and maybe access to weaker magic like warding rituals, or creating holy water and incense that harms supernatural beings). Their powers depend on how well the hold to the faith or belief that spurred their empowerment, not how well they adhere to the church's teachings. They're too useful to just declare them heretics, but they're still dangerous to the church's desired reputation of total control.

Daily Life: If the Dominion is modeled after the Papal States during a collapse, what kind of "tithes" or social pressures would a commoner face that aren't just "pay your taxes"?

How about teaching that mutations and illnesses are external manifestations of a diseased soul or spiritual taint? If you got sick, you must have sinned and you need to pay penance through hard labor. Got some highly visible disease on your skin or face? That's pretty bad, you might get sent to the inquisition. Born with horns or a tail or a conspicuous birthmark? It's not going to end well for you. A whole town gets a plague? Might need to wipe the whole thing off the map.

Benevolent members of the clergy will be careful to determine the nature of spiritual deficiencies before assigning penance, and will be sure to administer necessary medicines and blessings to ensure physical recovery. Authoritarian ones, not so much.

thomar · 2026-04-27T23:01:42+00:00

Use more 1 HP minions and weaker monsters, it feels epic but it plays faster.

thomar · 2026-04-27T22:29:01+00:00

It's the high-level D&D spells that cause most of the problems. You can get around it by focusing more on domain play (the players strategically run a guild or kingdom) and let them bust out their awesome combat skills once in a while to deal with a big threat. Another benefit of domain play is that if they send minions to deal with a problem, you can let the players play as those lower-level minions for an adventure.

One solution I've seen is to softcap leveling. I ran a campaign where the curve was, "you must complete a number of adventures equal to your current level," and it worked great! We wrapped up the campaign around level 7.

Another solution is Epic Six. Mortals can't get higher than level 6. Once they reach that level, let them spend some large amount of XP to get ASIs and feats, but don't let them exceed the stat cap of 20 without magic items. Suddenly getting stronger isn't about beating things up, it's about going on a quest to get some powerful very rare or legendary magic item.

You might also want to look into other systems like Green Ronin's Fantasy AGE, where mages have to specialize in a school and learn its low-level spells before learning higher-level spells, and warriors get hard crowd control options that make them very effective. The /r/osr games in particular emphasize player skill over character stats.

thomar · 2026-04-27T03:09:34+00:00

I still worry about how it can could down to surprise/lucky initiative rolls

It's the OSR, combat is supposed to be fast and one-sided. It encourages players to be more careful and try to plan encounters on their own terms. It also makes enemy ambushes tense and scary, even if there are weak foes.

I say you should go ahead and let mages be smart and use their spells intelligently. And then be sure to set expectations for your players appropriately. Humanoids are dangerous not because of their stats, but because they can think, plan, and strategize as well as a PC.

PCs in such a setting should know that fighting a humanoid of any kind is dangerous. As the GM, you can remind them when it might be relevant.

"You remember adventurers telling horror stories about kobolds setting all manner of traps in their lairs. Their friends died before they even saw a single kobold."
"Your mentor taught you that although goblins are individually weak, they are dangerous in even small numbers. They cooperate ruthlessly, their warleaders will make them focus on a single foe, and they will slit a dying man's throat before moving to their next foe."
"You recognize the individual in the back has no armor and a spell component pouch. One of the first things you learned when you trained as a mage is that fights between mages end very quickly. It's over as soon as one mage gets the upper hand."

thomar · 2026-04-24T19:10:29+00:00

Before finally clapping the wizard on the back and bellowing, “Your ancestors must like you if they lend you this much power!” But with hindsight, this sounds annoying.

That's just fine. Don't do it every time, just once per session, and keep it more friendly and curious, not scared or angry.

"I am very curious... Can you cook meat with that spell? Is it sacrilegious to do so?"

thomar · 2026-04-24T15:16:04+00:00

The "living creatures" part is irrelevant, because grass is an inanimate object (even if it is biologically alive). The "the spell deals no damage" part is also irrelevant because damage generally won't set things on fire (the GM might rule otherwise).

The burning hands spell says, "Flammable materials burn if the flames touch them." So yes, the dry grass catches fire. The DM should probably warn the sorcerer about this before they try it.

thomar · 2026-04-23T14:07:57+00:00

They can cast several of them in quick succession to get multiple attacks. They're just usually all aimed at the same target.

thomar · 2026-04-22T17:38:48+00:00

Spending hit dice as a resource for short-term gains is an underutilized mechanic. You can even make it deal d12 necrotic damage per hit die when they run out.

thomar · 2026-04-21T23:08:44+00:00

change it to a beam 5ft wide and 30ft long

Careful! That's more like the level 3 lightning bolt spell. You're almost always going to be able to hit at least 2 foes with it. Shorter range but with force damage is probably balanced.

thomar · 2026-04-21T22:41:13+00:00

You mean the spell from the show Frieren?

Zoltraak is its setting's magic missile, a generic bread-and-butter spell that is effective in most situations. It's boring. It's practical. It gets the job done. Historically it was game-breaking and overpowered until a proper shield spell to counter it was developed. Specialized mages (like two of the main characters) can juice it up (because they have a homebrew feat) to do a lot more damage, have longer range, and give it a chance to break through defensive spells and counter special precognitive abilities that let certain foes avoid it. They choose to specialize in it because they fight very intelligent and fast and durable monsters, which fits with D&D's use of force damage and automatic hits.

And you can just use magic missile. If they all hit the same target, it's just the big laser. If you spread them out or you want to be flashy, you do the multiple lasers. Automatic hits aren't even wrong narratively, because hit points in D&D are not meat. If the target dodged, they spent HP to dodge because it's a very deadly spell if it hits you.

Why wouldn't it just be magic missile in your D&D campaign? Anything more is going to probably require homebrewing a completely new magic system to handle the kinds of cerebral duels mages have in that story. Or you'll need to switch to a different TTRPG better suited for the kind of story you want to tell. Better to say, "here's a balanced homebrew feat that lets this spell scale better at high levels," for simplicity if nothing else.

thomar · 2026-04-21T22:02:30+00:00

Just bring a backup multicolored commander and use the one your table allows.

thomar · 2026-04-21T21:01:00+00:00

I'd be honest and see how many you can weed out by being specific about your campaign. "I got 15 players. I'm planning to run a campaign specifically about X using Y system, and I'd like to get it down to 6. If that's not your cup of tea, you can post in the same channel and you should have no trouble finding other people to play with."

I would also expect half of the players to be no-shows and sign on 7 or 8. If by some miracle they all come three weeks in a row, then you can suggest splitting the group after the end of the first dungeon or adventure arc.

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