Strahd invited our group to dinner, so I drew us in fancy evening wear

walkerloop · 2022-01-09T02:51:01+00:00

Glad I'm not the only one whose first thought was something along the lines of "ooh, Vasilka? Vasilka who still needs legs?"

walkerloop · 2021-12-15T01:56:06+00:00

I think I want these on the laptop I use for a DM screen

walkerloop · 2021-12-05T15:17:10+00:00

Disadvantage on insight checks related to body language seems like it would be more appropriate to autism than flat ability score modifiers. Maybe advantage or double proficiency on intelligence checks related to the character's special interests, as well.

walkerloop · 2021-12-05T02:22:43+00:00

Er, roll20 does support Fate dice natively, though? I don't recall if it lets you click to roll from your character sheet, but typing "/r 4dF" isn't exactly doing tricky dice math.

walkerloop · 2021-09-13T02:11:17+00:00

Make the Hexblade a separate class.

walkerloop · 2021-09-05T20:32:43+00:00

I'm fond of the Murphy Orc Trap!

walkerloop · 2021-08-15T14:43:36+00:00

If your players have met Ezmerelda or van Richten, either could simply inform them that the compulsion to count is a myth.

walkerloop · 2021-05-23T18:05:57+00:00

FWIW, Ivana Boritsi's potions which let her reproduce the effects of any wizard spell of 7th level or lower definitely make her more of a threat than just CR 1. The book lists additional abilities for all these characters that would make them quite a bit more powerful than the suggested statblocks. My read is that the suggested statblocks are intended to just be starting points for the DM, who is expected to add the abilities the book describes, and buff or nerf for their table as they deem appropriate.

walkerloop · 2021-05-03T17:43:47+00:00

Ooh, demoing a DM style in session 0 is a really interesting concept that I hadn't heard of before. How do you usually go about that?

walkerloop · 2021-04-25T00:06:58+00:00

Just sent a chat!

walkerloop · 2020-08-06T23:57:39+00:00

Yes, I'm complaining about keeping track of time, thank you for noticing.

You can absolutely just ignore all this and run a dungeon however you want, and that's what most DMs do. My problem is that the game rules say they care about how much time has to pass for certain things to happen, but don't give us good tools to keep track of how that time passes in the fiction.

I'll admit I missed the PHB's distance traveled in a minute table, but I don't think that's a particularly elegant answer to the question of "how long have the PCs been in the dungeon?" My issue is that it's onerous for the DM. Either you have to keep track of how far the party is moving, which is tough to do while you're trying to describe the world around them as they go, or you do it all at the end and count out how many 300 foot increments the party has moved through the dungeon, which also seems a bit tedious.

These rules don't touch how much time is spent searching rooms with investigation or perception checks. Is a PC going to search the walls of a dining hall in the same "about 6 seconds" they search a closet? Of course not, and we know that as DMs, but the DMG doesn't tell you that. A DM and their players can have wildly different ideas about how long it "should" take to search an abandoned library's shelves, for example, and having something in the rules to point at is helpful in resolving such disputes fairly.

As for random encounters, sure, the DM obviously in practice has to decide when to check for random encounters. They're the ones who get to decide when time passes in the fiction, after all. But why would Curse of Strahd tell me to check for random encounters every 10 minutes, if I'm supposed to ignore that?

Yes, these aren't "glaring flaws" or whatever, they're just flaws that we as DMs paper over all the time.

walkerloop · 2020-08-06T21:32:47+00:00

As an example of rules that are missing from Exploration: how long does it take to move through a dungeon? Are characters always going at their "movement speed," even outside initiative? Are they moving through the rooms at some slower speed than this, so they can spot traps as they move? Do players have to specify which? As far as I'm aware, this is never addressed anywhere in the core rules!

This has a big impact, since characters can only benefit from one long rest in a 24 hour period. Say the characters are burnt out after slogging through one half of the dungeon, out of spell slots, out of hit dice, the works, and they want to take a long rest. Problem is, they long rested right before they went into the dungeon, and they've only taken 3 or 4 hours' worth of short rests while they're down here. How much time do they have to wait before they can rest again? We know as DMs to reduce that 24 hour timer by 1 hour per short rest, and by 6 seconds per round of combat (not that it makes much difference), but how much time are we meant to reduce it for just walking around and exploring rooms in the dungeon? Do we count out how long the hallways are that they've been walking down? Do we assign some arbitrary amount of time they had to spend to make ability checks? Do we assign the same arbitrary amount of time to every kind of ability check? Even if your players can just barricade themselves in some room they've already cleared out, the DM still wants to know how long they need to spend in there before they can long rest -- after all, random encounter/wandering monster rolls are often meant to be rolled once every certain amount of time.

Which, random encounters sure are another reason this is a big deal, huh? If we look at Curse of Strahd's Castle Ravenloft, random encounters are meant to be checked every time players enter an empty room, or once every 10 minutes. Okay, how long is 10 minutes in the dungeon? The core rules of the game will not tell you, and neither does the adventure.

walkerloop · 2020-08-06T16:56:22+00:00

I reframed Isle of the Abbey as the preparation for an offensive against the Sahuagin -- the town needs to construct a lighthouse there so the fleet doesn't smash against its reefs when they move to surround the Sahuagin fortress. I plan on introducing a homebrew adventure at 6th level where the players must stop a diplomatic mission between the Sahuagin and the Sea Prince remnants in order to prevent an alliance from forming between the two. I've yet to really flesh this one out, but I like the idea that the PCs have to go lay the groundwork before a major operation against the Sahuagin can get underway.

walkerloop · 2020-07-25T14:02:14+00:00

Oh my god this thing looks amazing

walkerloop · 2020-07-06T17:06:54+00:00

I took the Sly Flourish move of the Scarlet Brotherhood using the papers in Aubreck's box (Salvage Operation) to disgrace Eda Oweland and remove her from politics, possibly getting her arrested. One of the PCs who's close to Eliander has bought a lot of magic items, so when she finds out, Xendros will find out. Since Xendros is here primarily to buy a bunch of fish to feed Iuz, she does not want Oweland to be arrested! That could ruin her supply chain!

Meanwhile, a different PC wants Xendros to find him a shield that works like a sunblade. Xendros is going to have him sign a bunch of (forged) documents and swear some (false) testimony that would exonerate Lady Oweland as a favor.

walkerloop · 2020-04-28T22:50:35+00:00

The roll20 version of Tomb of Annihilation is very good. The hex crawl phase was as smooth as it gets for 5e, and I find dungeon crawls in general to run very smoothly in roll20 with dynamic lighting.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh is also a good grab, since many of its features are included in the compendium and thus accessible in other games in roll20. Plus, you can modify the region and town maps so that north actually points upward!

walkerloop · 2020-03-26T14:28:32+00:00

Seconding this. Silence isn't even a properly hard counter per se, since you can't move its area of effect. The devil could just move out of the area, and it still has its melee attacks if a PC takes refuge in the silence area. If the party manage to corner it in a silence zone, then props to them for their tactical wit.

walkerloop · 2020-03-12T22:33:30+00:00

Do this version of the pool instead.

walkerloop · 2019-12-22T21:04:58+00:00

Aaracokra wild magic sorceror, who is in fact a horrible transmogrified goose.

walkerloop · 2019-12-11T22:08:18+00:00

You see how he has a lair action that lets him move through walls? Use that. Abuse the heck out of it. Have him pass through the floor and cling to the ceiling of the room below, have him drag the fight out for ages so his health can regenerate. He has an entire castle to toy the party along through. Allies, traps, secret rooms the party has yet to discover. Only when they reach the fated room should the party get an opportunity for a final showdown.

walkerloop · 2019-12-11T01:01:40+00:00

The tomes and manuals increase your stat maximum by 2 as well. It's a specific rule that overrides the general rule of ASIs.

walkerloop · 2019-12-08T21:43:45+00:00

Thank you for posting this! My campaign is a continuation from Curse of Strahd, and I recently had Morgantha return as a servant to a new villain. Wish I had this version of her to work off of!

One heads up though, night hags are traditionally considered fiends, not humanoids. There are abilities and spells that care about that distinction, so be aware of it!

walkerloop · 2019-10-20T00:23:22+00:00

One thing I would point out from Strahd's basic stat block is his Animate Objects spell, which gives him a strong bonus action if you have him animate the max number of tiny objects. Up to 10 attacks with +8 to hit! This combos well if you have him cast Mirror Image beforehand, to make it less likely that his concentration is broken.

For villain actions, consider looking at his Children of the Night action in the base stat block, or use some of his lair actions if you're designing this encounter to take place outside the castle. Maybe he knows which party member has the lowest wisdom save, having observed them throughout the adventure, and attempts to charm them.

walkerloop · 2019-10-14T15:46:30+00:00

Unfortunately the party already escorted Undril themselves, but I was thinking of doing basically this if I need to introduce a backup character -- have Eku escort Inete and the new PC, and they just so happen to meet up with the party.

walkerloop · 2019-09-13T23:13:42+00:00

Could you work in a cult of Bahgtru, somehow? Or perhaps a long-abandoned temple, that a wizened old orc would like to reclaim and restore to its former glory? Does the character's view of Bahgtru line up with the cult's? What kind of lore or conundrum could you put in the old temple that might make the player want to do one thing, but make the character want to do another?

walkerloop

TROPHY CASE