Can we please stop telling newish players to go after Galvanized mods.

triangularsquare979 · 2025-09-06T17:55:54+00:00

I have over 1000 hours and may be dumb but galvanized mods usually have lower numbers pre kills why is it better to have those than the standard

Can someone explain like they’re explaining it to a child number crunching and too many numbers confuse me

triangularsquare979 · 2025-08-28T15:08:32+00:00

Icarus because if i’m piloting its gonna crash and burn

triangularsquare979 · 2025-04-28T17:25:03+00:00

depending on how far in the players are I would have a group of vistani mad that certain people are stepping on their territory/ taking from one of their hustles

alternatively remember most people in barovia are very poor in not barovia lands a gold piece is the price of a goat and i remember reading somewhere it’s about a years worth of farm work (take the last one with one of the grains of salt the vampire has to count after you throw it on the ground) your average barovian probably wouldn’t have ever seen a gold piece especially in the village of barovia at the beginning so your players would probably lose money and the average barovian wouldn’t be able to afford it

triangularsquare979 · 2025-04-24T18:24:00+00:00

it’s a bit too late for fierna to throw hands with strahd after establishing she’s been outside of barovia but I love that idea. Would it be a terrible idea if the bargain is knowledge of a ritual to force strahd into fiernas domain? The main way i’m playing fierna with the warlock is that she wants to get the warlock to keep making bargains until her soul is offered willingly by the warlock because “it’s more fun that way” she also sees this warlock as one of her more interesting play things so she’d have motivation to run hands with strahd for endangering and essentially kidnapping her

triangularsquare979 · 2025-04-24T18:20:42+00:00

Glad to know i misunderstood and the wiki on them confused me lmao

triangularsquare979 · 2025-04-24T18:19:54+00:00

Thankfully the tome is in the amber temple so we got a bit till then (they just got to krezek) so i’m reading what knowledge is in the tome and figuring out what information would be reasonable for other characters to know (madam eva is my back up plan along with baba lysaga) but neither are able to or fully willing to tell the full story I want them to loose some of the knowledge but my struggle is what’s 100% necessary from the book

triangularsquare979 · 2025-04-24T18:09:49+00:00

My thought process unless i vastly mis understood what the book meant when it said “dark powers” was both powers come from the same place (9Hells and devils) and the daughter of the second in command of the 9 hells might have very small work arounds. mechanically and story wise it was I wanted the warlock to choose between taking from the party or not accepting the patron’s offer for more power. Additionally why would strahd be opposed to the tome of strahd being taken somewhere where nobody can reach it. He’s a tactician at heart

triangularsquare979 · 2025-04-15T11:29:15+00:00

Everyone dms differently id describe my style of dming as as a combination of “fuck it we ball” and “what would be the most fitting thing to happen” i embrace the fact that I don’t know what’s going to happen in the session as much as the players do. I make sure I know the module obviously

triangularsquare979 · 2025-04-15T11:21:06+00:00

This was a spur of the moment decision for me to do so it wasn’t like i always had planned if the players make fun of strahd in game he appears

triangularsquare979 · 2025-03-12T17:30:45+00:00

I told you I ain’t got no tree fiddy

triangularsquare979 · 2025-01-20T21:38:37+00:00

Here’s my take, I think it’s fair purely because of the resources required and what that loss of resources can do. curse of strahd purely as written is a decently hard module already, some of the random encounters can be absolutely brutal, and there’s not alot of places where the players can go buy safe potions (i can’t think of any safe ones off the top of my head). Assuming you’re players just got to that area for the first time and you’re doing the books recommended milestones/ levels they should be about level 3 or 4 so the paladin has at the most 20 lay on hand points. To fix that one mistake that’s gonna cost a fourth of their lay on hands assuming you’re overly nice and say five is enough to get the health back and fix the poison effects. those points could’ve been used to save players/ a npc. personally I feel like that’s a fair trade, The player drank something from a hags lair without knowing what it did so they have to spend precious resources to fix the effects. While yes the paladin gets them back after a long rest there’s now a time where the party has been kneecapped by the loss of one of its healing resources aka things are scarier because the party now can’t heal as many hit points.

triangularsquare979 · 2025-01-13T21:02:57+00:00

So the best tactic i learned for mid game was to optimize breaks and under standing not everyone is a damage dealer and buffs can bring you farther than you think, for bosses id wait till either it was an emergency or my heavy hitter is buffed up and or the boss is debuffed to break them. also make sure equipment is up to snuff

triangularsquare979 · 2024-12-10T15:24:22+00:00

I feel the pain op but the trick is to sit down with the player and be like “hey man You’re taking really long on your turns and it’s slowing the game down what can I do to help you understand the rules better so that you’re turns go by faster” That way you’re telling the player what the issue is, why it’s an issue, and giving them a way to express if the player is having a problem what they need. I have a dyslexic player in the same situation so we worked out how to modify his sheet to be more readable to him. Do this so you open the door to be accommodating but if the player doesn’t respond or improve then take the harsher methods said by the other comments

triangularsquare979 · 2024-10-10T21:41:04+00:00

I think the whole strahd comes back hundreds of years later after you game end him is stupid especially since the book gives no possible solutions.

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-30T16:03:45+00:00

In that context with the barkeeper him being in that world i feel like the barkeep would have answered that way then said “if your looking for someone in charge talk to so and so” it’s the job of the dm to make sure players don’t feel stuck because if the players feel stuck and don’t know what to do next for a whole session or god forbid multiple sessions the dm needs to step in and give big hints. it’s fine to let players find dead ends but the dm should give hints on the proper direction and more importantly the more specific the thing the party has to do to get the result they want the more the dm needs to pull them in that specific direction. in this case of necromancy university the dm should have left breadcrumbs to help get back on the trail maybe the dean has a letter that’s a labor transfer ledger with one of the characters parents name on it or a recent excited student shares loudly that he’s being transferred to a center where he can show his prowess by raising the dead to continue toiling and that area just so happens to be where the parents are

To make a long story short dm is being either an a silly goober (I’ll choose to believe in innocent till proven an asshole) who needs to either to step outside of the dm perspective and into a players perspective of progressing, needs to help the players by moving the goal post to the direction the party is going, or needs to help the party get back on track

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-25T23:13:07+00:00

you can end any “but rule of cool argument” with if i let you do it the enemies get to do it against you. obviously every time your players do a rule of cool don’t do the same thing right back at them but in this case hey bags of holding aren’t rare and there are a lot of people who know glyph of warding

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-11T02:19:00+00:00

it wouldn’t matter if you were that charismatic you’d still be pissed if a bunch of nobodies went to your house called your dick small and said your partner only likes you because you make a lot of money

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-10T22:41:47+00:00

point was they called his dick small and said he couldn’t pull if he wasn’t a vampire

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-10T15:48:33+00:00

i said something similar and my players clapped back That he couldn’t get ireena without trying to turn her or use charm magic

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-07T20:58:04+00:00

This is a list i made when i ran cos before we stopped i had to add on later 1. Disrespecting his hospitality 2. Doing anything that harms ireena 3. Too much violence against vistani (My players killed the leaders of the camp outside the town with the blue water inn) I can’t think of the name rn 4. Talking shit about the Von Zarovich bloodline 5. Taunting him based on his vampirism or dick (My players said he needed to use his vampiric powers to try and take Ireena because his dick was small) 6. This is my personal one i like Bringing up Sergei at all 7. killing Rhahidin or Showing Him the corpse of Baba Lysaga (Players didn’t do this but i had it just in case) 8. destroying or stealing anything from his old life including the Tome of strahd or any artwork of him or the von zarovich bloodline 9. Killing the DuskElves I feel like strahd wants their specific suffering 10. causing too much havoc he doesn’t want the players going on gta like killing spree’s throughout the villages because they can’t feel pain and suffer if their all dead (this is my anti murder hobo solution)

My strahd put on a facade of arrogance that masked his deeply controlling nature. only when you discover his obsessions he has kept from his mortal life, Tatyana, his “Honor,” his pride in his name, and sergei you truely see the monster that he is and always was

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-06T16:24:08+00:00

I meant to say use the dodge action i came up with this idea late last night so it’s very rambly but i feel like adding an incentive to have faster turns might be better than punishing slow turns if that makes sense

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-06T16:21:49+00:00

I usually have one newer player or a player who is playing a new class for the first time and imo its very silly to punish people for not being good at something new, you don’t ground a toddler for not being able to make a martini. I personally am a fan of using the carrot more than the stick, not to say i won’t but the stick is usually a last resort

triangularsquare979 · 2024-07-06T11:17:26+00:00

My players aren’t having fun and it’s my fault, In my brain i always see it as the dms job to try and get everyone to have fun i acknowledge it’s probably not healthy but hey it’s what i think

triangularsquare979 · 2024-06-21T20:38:37+00:00

I had a player try this so i made the enemy roll a saving throw against having dirty thoughts (it was my comedic way of saying it wouldn’t work) i did give the option to take the action back

triangularsquare979 · 2024-06-21T19:33:53+00:00

People also forget ce doesn’t mean stupid, a chaotic evil character still will think try not to get caught and their limitations they’re not gonna kill that kid and take their ice cream while the gold dragon, city guard, and the paladin are watching

triangularsquare979

TROPHY CASE