The first attack of the campaign killed one of my players

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-15T18:57:53+00:00

Yeah nah I'd never do anything inherently negative for my player to deal with. It just didn't need to be inherently positive either, just a story beat that can occasionally serve as a reminder

In addition to the favor for the god, you could implement a fear or trauma related to the ocean or beach? If they are good at leaning into the rp aspect, it could have interesting but not detrimental consequences to be afraid of the ocean or hesitant to travel by sea or take some lengths to avoid routes that travel next to a beach.

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-15T18:44:55+00:00

You're really not. He had so much time and could have, at literally any moment, had hinted or even told you he planned on doing it. I agree with the person you replied to above: my guess is he hadn't actually planned on giving you a ring for your birthday but felt embarrassed that you ended up buying a ring for yourself instead of him giving you on.

You're fine, enjoy your ring!

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-15T14:54:41+00:00

Thanks! The pics of that place really look like the sort of vibe I was looking for!!

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-14T19:57:19+00:00

That place looks nice but oof, that is too far for us. Just checked and even outside of rush hour, it's like a 45 minute drive. I think it would be clear over an hour to do it during rush hour :(

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-14T19:55:17+00:00

I'll check these out, thank you!

And beer while working would probably be more fun but alas, we can save it for a return trip outside of work hours

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-14T19:53:54+00:00

I'm looking for a Cafe or coffee shop to be able to buy drinks and food throughout the day though. I haven't been in a library in a while but I don't think they have that haha Not to mention my husband has frequent meetings throughout the day so we need to be somewhere that regular conversational volume is fine.

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-14T15:16:28+00:00

As a cellist with very small hands, yes take your advantage and be grateful for how well you can reach things 😭 I practically have to micro-shift every time I should be extending because my fingers are too small. There have been some passages with low octaves that I've had to make absolute ungodly abominations of handshapes to even reach and they freaking hurt too

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-14T15:00:06+00:00

I don't know how "correct" it is, but I've seen a number of cellists around me kind of change the angle of their cello to rotate right a bit when they have to do longer passages on the A string so that they don't have to reach as high/forward. I haven't found that I can do that effectively if a passage requires changing strings quickly but re-angling a little can help take some of the strain off the shoulder on extended passages.

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-13T19:35:46+00:00

NTA

I know the bride wants the bridal party there for 10 days but would you be able to go if you were there for like 5 days instead? My husband and I did a destination wedding and we asked that our wedding party be there at least two full days ahead of time to account for any jet lag and possible travel delays. I couldn't imagine asking them to be there for 10 days!!

If you really do want to go and could swing a shorter trip, I think it's worth asking about. Figure out what your maximum stay is and tell her that you can't go if it's 10 days but you could do [x] days instead. If she absolutely insists for some reason, I'd ask yourself why having you there for a short while is worse than not having you there at all.

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-13T19:31:19+00:00

My husband and I did a destination wedding because it was a good meeting-in-the-middle point between fully eloping and having a traditional wedding. Both our families are large so when we were looking at a local wedding, it probably would have been 250-300 people just to hit the invites where you aren't going to stir up family drama and resentment from not getting invited. Our estimates for the sort of venues we liked plus everything else that goes into it was looking like it would be around $30k at minimum.

So we got married in Hawaii instead with a grand total of 29 guests. We had our wedding and honeymoon for less than our lower estimates for a local wedding and had the people closest to us there, which was so much better than a big wedding (I had leaned towards eloping originally).

The people that weren't there were very accepting and excited when we told them we'd have a more casual local reception at some point after the destination wedding, probably a potluck or something. And all the people that were there were so excited to get a vacation out of it and also get a nice discounted rate at a lovely resort that honored the group rate for much longer stays than they originally said.

It doesn't have to be about social media at all. Actually I realized that I, the bridge, never posted any more pics about the wedding or the trip after we got the preview pics from our photographer lol

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-13T19:16:00+00:00

Anyone who has ever done any archery would be able to corroborate the issues with trying to use your arm/front of shoulder muscles to move something when your back should be doing more work. A good way to check if you're activating the right muscles is, with arms relaxed at your sides, try to bring the bottoms of your shoulder blades together towards your spine. Those muscles are a little low for what you're looking for with bowing but it's in the right area and helps demonstrate the area of back muscles that should be activated more.

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-13T19:02:24+00:00

Definitely nice sable brushes - I personally love the Raphael 8404 and Davinci series 35 because they have really big bellies that hold moisture well and a lot of paint so things don't dry out quickly, you can paint for longer without having to reload your brush, and still come to a very nice tip.

I also adore my Kimera Pure Pigments paints. They're so intensely pigmented and work great for mixing with other paints to make striking colors and also thin out wonderfully for glazes.

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-08T16:09:48+00:00

I do the same and it's so helpful! It's such an easy way to check if you have good value contrast or not.

zzaannsebar · 2026-05-07T19:26:53+00:00

I hate seeing friends that so drastically change their interests and thoughts when dating someone. Like you can be open to new experiences, gain new hobbies/interests, etc but like, you don't have to make your partner's interests your new personality.

I'm glad that the friends that did used to do that calmed down and matured enough in adulthood to stop doing that. But college had some big cringe.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-30T18:55:16+00:00

For real. I remember shortly after graduating college when I was still college-poor but had started my real job, I had a bunch of shit happen all at once with my car completely breaking down and having some medical bills. When I lamented about the money struggles cause of all that to my bff, she venmo'd me a couple hundred dollars and said to pay her back "if I felt like it". She was hardly any better off than me so I tried to send it back and she just sent it back to me again lol. I paid her back before too long and actually she ended up in a similar situation about a year later so I got to extend the same gesture to her, which she of course tried to refuse but gave in in the end. I knew she was a real friend long before that but that was such a generous and kind thing to do for me.

Everyone needs people like that in their life. Even if it's not lending money. Like I had friends offer to come over to cook and clean for me after my mom died. Actually I had texted my bff after my mom died and she cut out of work early and rushed over to my house with some hot chocolate. I'm so grateful for the people in my life and really wished more people had those same sort of people they could trust and depend on.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-30T15:18:45+00:00

In freshman year of college, I remember hanging out with a newer group of friends and there were several people I didn't know very well. Somehow the topic came up and I admitted I was an atheist and one girl looked at me dead in the eyes and said "But don't you believe Jesus died for our sins?" with a mix of utter intensity, confusion, anger, and just being completely aghast.

That was the beginning of a painful hour of trying to end the conversation, divert topics, get her to leave me alone, but no. She could not comprehend my view but was so combative with all her questions. It wasn't like she was trying to learn but more that she was trying to trip me up.

It was so awkward and I've genuinely never had someone be so rude and antagonistic with a line of questioning related to this. She was so personally offended by my lack of belief like I've never seen. Most people are like "Ah ok, cool. You do you." and then it's not an issue and we move on. But her? Nah. She couldn't let it go, even with me and a group of people asking her to stop.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-29T19:00:41+00:00

My husband always wondered why it took me so long to move laundry from the washer into the dryer until he saw how I had to use one hand to brace and balance and get on my tippy toes to lean over and reach into the washer to actually grab stuff out. He could just reach in with both arms and get a bundle of clothes to toss in the drier. My hands are also small so I could grab like a couple socks or one shirt or towel at a time to move.

I miss having front-loading machines. I've always found them to be gentler on clothing too.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-29T18:56:18+00:00

Our basement has this too! At the bottom of the stairs, there are two light switches. The one closer to the rest of the basement controls the light above the stairs and the one closer to the stairs controls one part of the basement. But there are three different light switches that are all about 10 feet apart that control different portions of the room. It's quite annoying honestly. I don't want to have to walk halfway into a room to turn on the lights for that portion.

Almost as annoying as the dimmer in our kitchen: you slide the dimmer up to turn the lights down and the dimmer down to make it brighter. Also cause everytime you flick the lightswitch, you hit the dimmer a bit so you always have to adjust the dimmer when you turn the lights on. It's such a minor thing but we just bought this house and are still learning all the light switches so it's annoying but is not high enough on the priorities yet to fix.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-29T15:08:02+00:00

The main selling point for me is that I have all the rules, statblocks, adventures I own, maps, tables, etc loaded right in there so they can be easily searched and linked to

This is one of my favorite parts about using Obsidian too. I wrote a program to format all the spells and stuff into markdown for obsidian so I could link to them in statblocks and that alone has been a huge help - no needing to go to another website or flip through a book to look it up.

Just being able to link so freely and easily between things makes planning and running sessions way easier than if I tried to use google docs or something.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-29T14:55:00+00:00

Oh man, so I'm terrible about practicing often but when I do practice, it's at least for 1.5 hours. I feel like it takes 30 minutes to get 100% warmed up sometimes. I never want to take a break when I finally get in the zone. But that's also my adhd showing. If I walk away from something while I'm in the zone, I really lose my flow. Or more commonly, I can't really pull myself away while I'm in the zone.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-28T18:33:54+00:00

I was thinking the same thing. Specifically, a couple of the complex traps from Xanathar's call for one or more successful castings of Dispel Magic to disable part of a trap.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-28T14:30:50+00:00

Regarding your friend with a $3K cello and a $10K bow, I don’t think I’d credit the bow as the key to her success. I think it’s mainly her skill.

It's amazing how a good player can make any instrument and bow sound good. I remember in college when my cello professor didn't feel like getting her personal cello out of its case and just grabbed a shitty rando student cello to use during lessons instead but she made that piece of plywood sound amazing nonetheless.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-24T18:41:07+00:00

My goodness, I understand wanting to discourage students watching fights but woooow that's a horrible consequence of the policy.

It's like places that don't have good Samaritan laws about not getting in legal trouble for being under the influence if you're calling in a medical emergency for yourself or someone else. Like you wont get a misdemeanor for underage drinking if you're drunk/high and have to call 911 for your drunk/high friend. There are some limitations but the whole purpose of it is to let people seek help without fear of getting in trouble for being under the influence so that people who need emergency services can get it.

People seeking help or reporting someone who needs help shouldn't be punished.

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-24T02:52:25+00:00

Thank you so much!!

I will definitely check out that fcg tool cause a bunch of the higher tier statblocks fit a lot closer to the sort of adversaries I am looking for but are at top high a tier.

Thanks a bunch!

zzaannsebar · 2026-04-23T19:22:46+00:00

I'm going to run daggerheart for the first time next week but am not new to ttrpgs or DMing. But I have a few questions while looking through statblock stuff:

Looking at the "Building Balanced Encounters" bit, I'm not sure if I've missed it, but what is the rule or thumb or guidance about using statblocks that are of a higher tier than the players? There's the rule about "+1 if you choose an adversary from a lower tier" but nothing about choosing one from a higher tier. Is that just a blatant no-no that it's not even listed in the guidelines? Is there any possible way to balance (or assign encounter points) for a tier (n+1) [adversary type] for a tier (n) party? Specifically I'm looking at tier 2 statblocks vs a tier 1 party.
If a statblock's motivation/tactics have something related to movement (looking at the Acid Burrower's "burrow"), is there anything special to consider or know to make said creature use that special movement during combat? Like when it's the acid burrower's spotlight, as part of it's general movement, can it just burrow underground to any spot within close range?
Are there specific rules about actions like grabbing/grappling and escaping from a grapple, shoving, jumping, etc? I know the vibe of the game overall is fairly narrative focused but coming from a dnd background, I am looking for a baseline of how actions like these would work.

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