@MikeQ how're things going?

Not too bad. No new wacky player stories, I'm afraid.

Some of the players have given me their ideas for their characters, and so I'm going through my notes, looking for places where I can add hooks for their individual sidestories and motivations.

ah. I'm looking for a sheepy to help me with some minotaur-maze-gardening ;)

Er, what? Is that a metaphor for something? I'm confused.

it's a reference to nitsua's avatar :P

@Shalvenay quoi?

ah, there you are :) so, I'm looking at making a fractal-maze for a dungeon I'm working on, actually...been going over your answer, and tried generating a random "netlist" for the base fractal, but I'm not sure what constraints your approach places on the fractal or how to handle some things that popped out of my random generation approach

@Shalvenay Oh, geez. You're a brave one, trying out that answer =)

I have had success with any randomly-drawn base-maze.

Dead-ends are a feature, not a bug, in the narrative.

What sorts of things popped out that were surprising?

my random generation approach produced a very...densely connected maze

the only deadend that showed up was at the "outside" level

(I believe so strongly in the awesome utility of that concept, and admit freely that the answer, even though I spent weeks working and re-working, is not good in the sense of "communicates well and convincingly.")

@nitsua60 Did you look at that graph, btw?

@nitsua60 aye, which is why I want to talk to you about it

@Miniman Yes, I did, and I looked up the user I was interested in--thanks.

@Shalvenay Was that troublesome in practice?

@nitsua60 I have not tested it yet

@nitsua60 You're welcome! Was it useful?

what constitutes a "state" in the maze if you will? I understand keeping a stack of states, but I'm not 100% sure what an element on the stack looks like

@Miniman Jain? I'm not sure. But it's no fault of your own. It's one where the user in question had an uptick in comment-activity recently, but small enough that I still can't really tell if it's an intentional uptick on their part or observation-bias.

@Shalvenay I think of the stack as a list of "entry"s.

@nitsua60 ah, so like A2 or C0?

(For those who don't know the context: Shalvenay and I are discussing this:

)

@Shalvenay Yes. Then exiting a copy of the maze is a matter of crossing off the last entry in that list.

The length of the current list of entry-points gives you a "depth," if it matters.

But wait @nitsua60, do the fractal copies of the maze also contain fractal copies of the creatures inside it?

@MikeQ homunculi, you mean?

=D

(Or, was that a serious question?)

As serious as infinitely fractal mazes

@nitsua60 yeah -- for the exit criteria, I'm thinking of "you find the connection to Start, but past once you've reached a certain depth in the maze, it's really a Finish"

@MikeQ (that's pretty serious)

@Shalvenay Yeah--I feel like the end-condition's got to be a meta-construct, since it's practically intractable to even decide whether a solution exists, never mind find it!

@Shalvenay having run them on three occasions, my one edit would be this: instead of labeling the nodes 0-7 on the outer rim I'd probably label the connected nodes on the three inner copies with one-word descriptors: "pens, pits, treasury, hangar." The table can still be there to look up details, but it's sometimes hard (in my experience) to keep one's head in the narrative while tracking the fractal. Cutting out one abstract bit of nomenclature in favor of setting-names would treat me better.

@nitsua60 hrm...this is supposed to be a bit easier to get lost in, so the clues as to where one is are supposed to be more subtle

I'm thinking some flowers, sculptured plants, and color-coded lampposts

@Shalvenay I'm just thinking of the cognitive load for the person running--you can still convey as little or as much as you like =)

I.e. make the inner monologue "okay, they went to the pens, which means their choices are now {hangar, treasury, balcony}" rather than "okay, they went to the pens which is A3 which means their choices are now {A0, B4, B7} which are {hangar, treasury, balcony}."

@nitsua60 ah, I see :)

(And for anyone following along: I'm not actually looking up those entries: they likely disagree with the post.)

I like reading that ^^ as an if-then-else statement. Because those who aren't following along probably disagree with the post. =)

Grr... I just heard a member of Congress refer to a "Constitutional right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." I'd like to give them a pass for speaking extemporaneously, but I feel like that's one you've got to get right =\

Have you considered a non-Euclidean maze? /troll

@nitsua60 Dare I ask which one?

@JoelHarmon I forget. Wasn't mine, was a mostly-bald middle-aged man wearing a light grey suit. Ring a bell?

Not a specific one, no.

IIRC might have been from your neck of the woods. (D-NY)

uh, the woods is a big place

But it wasnt Kirsten or Chuck or Anthony Wiener, so I'm tapped for NY congresspeople =)

Serrano. He's D-NY, I think? Wasn't him, either.

I was going to guess Schumer, as he's a Democrat bigwig, from NY, and seems to be talkative recently

Also, for some reason, I assumed Senate. Opening the field to "more than two" is a bit of a change

But yeah, it turns out the only qualifications for Congress are being old enough and getting elected.

One of those I almost consider a disqualifying event =)

... nobody over the age of 18 should be allowed in congress?

:P

There was a great line in Hitchhiker's Guide that went something like "Anybody capable of getting themselves elected President should by no means be allowed to have the job."

Good thinng Zaphod didn'r really get himself elected...

@nitsua60 Is that not it?

mechanic idea

I have these refuge points in my maze, which have a lightable lamp and a fountain of fresh water

@Miniman We [US citizens] hold the truth to be self-evident that certain inalienable rights, among those the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are described in the Declaration of Independence, not in the Constitution.

@nitsua60 Ah, right.

Wait, so those rights aren't actually included in a legal document?

I'm thinking that lighting the lamp manually causes it to light, but it goes out after X hours, where X is determined by some die roll that gives the party a chance of a longrest without harassment as the light keeps the monsters at bay

I'd never hold it against a mere mortal (that's a lie, I totally hold it against people when they conflate founding documents), but if (a) your job is defined by one of the two and (b) is to execute duties described in one of the two and (c) my taxes pay your salary as described in one of the two, let's make sure we know what's in which =)

@Miniman nope, just the near sacred founding document that was held as legal by the people who made it

@Miniman They are in many ways in many legal documents. (Though let's not get Shalvey started on "takings"!) But in those terms, not so much.

the one that gives any right in the country at all to make laws

at least as I interpret it

Huh, I never thought about it like that.

if we didn't have a constitution,.... we wouldn't ever have had a senate or a congress

what should I make the chances-of-an-uninterrupted-longrest be in such a system?

@Miniman 5th amendment says "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." 14th extends that stricture to apply to states.

@Miniman also, if you go far back enough, our country is illegal according to the British :P

@trogdor cough not the Constitution that's the whole point of this conversation cough

@Miniman oh sorry

I thought you were talking about that

@Shalvenay How frequently do you want the long rests to be achievable, and what variability do you want?

@trogdor No, but your point applied nicely to the Declaration of Independence - if you haven't declared yourself an independent country, there's no point having a constitution.

@Miniman both of them were important yes

@nitsua60 1 in 3 chance was my initial thought?

@nitsua60 So then US citizens have no legally mandated right to the pursuit of happiness? :P

@Shalvenay d10 hours, then?

I just didn't realize the Declaration of Independence was even in the conversation was all

@trogdor Neither did the congressman in question =)

because I had only read what was already on the page

@nitsua60 well I would like to think he made a bigger mistake than I did

@trogdor you mean: running for congress?

I had waaaaaaay less context and research time than he did

(ugh... I gotta stop it with the cheap shots)

@nitsua60 in one sense yes, if he can't tell the difference

@nitsua60 Just because it's an easy target doesn't make it a cheap shot.

Otherwise rangers wouldn't be able to shoot at anything!

</rimshot!>

(which the ranger would miss)

I on the other hand, have not run for any kind of office, and my mistake was not knowing which exact article two guys on the internet were talking about based off of only having a few seconds of reading time/information

:p

@nitsua60 If it helps, I legitimately snorted my drink when you said this.

He had his whole life to actually,... I dunno, read the document he was quoting before running for a high office in the government

That makes me feel good. I'm going to go grade, and burn off the good feelings =)

this is why I hate politics

people get into it and then do stupid stuff anyway

> Just give them all B- !

and yes, everyone does stupid stuff, but we pretend in some way politicians are not like other people

but they are

@trogdor Incidentally, I keep seeing your avatar and thinking the sheen on the windscreen is the actual picture.

@Miniman ,... I am not entirely sure what you mean by that?

I get the part where you see it

but,..... do you mean you keep thinking it is the whole part of the picture or?

It looks vaguely like a human arm on a red background or something.

ah ok

The small version, I mean.

I can't help but look at it similarly myself

it might be the most personally distracting avatar I have ever given myself

though to be fair part of that is still the fresh thrill I get from seeing I have a different one than the last one I had

I love being able to change this thing when the mood hits me. but yeah that part of the image is an interesting distraction in itself

@Miniman Curiously, Americans have the right to pursuit of happiness, but not necessarily to be happy <evil grin>

@JoelHarmon I would sorta argue they are the same thing

if you are not allowed to attain what you are allowed to pursue, then it's all just a sick joke

I suppose that's not necessarily true. You could value partial success and/or journey over destination.

Remember, of course, the Declaration is a reactionary document. Historically the things that can be done to me by force are to harm/kill me, to restrict my movement (imprisonment or shoving me around), or take my stuff. TJ is flipping that-all on its head: we have rights to life, liberty, and property, and a government needs a stated reason to curtail any of those in his conception.

If you wanted to run a marathon on every continent, but skipped Antarctica, you didn't meet your goal but you certainly accomplished something

@trogdor I mean, that's life, right? You try to be happy but you never really are.

If you wanted to become exceedingly wealthy and only ended up rich, it's some small consolation that you can sleep on a bed of money (even if the rest of the room isn't carpeted in money)

Also, if you had a legal right to happiness everyone could sue the government. Giving people the right to pursue happiness is actually pretty clever, if you think about it.

@nitsua60 btw: will you be around this Thurs or Fri night?

@nitsua60 I don't think you mean Reactionary as a technical term there, do you?

@Shalvenay Thurs yea, Fri is up in the air.

@JoelHarmon probably not? I just mean to consider it in its context--the authors and editors of these documents were all well-versed in then-current and then-historical legal theories.

@nitsua60 coolio -- was figuring I could run my fractal-maze by you then if that'd be good by you?

@Shalvenay Should work.

@nitsua60 Ok. I got thrown for a loop due to the Reactionary movements in contemporary France, which were very much pro-Monarchy

@Miniman I mean, I agree a little, except that the way you say that, or at least the way it is written, implies never being happy at all

which isn't quite right

happy just doesn't last forever if you don't do something to maintain it

@trogdor I didn't mean to imply that - more that no-one is ever truly, completely happy.

@Miniman this is fair, but I would also say you have a legal right to be happy, as in someone can't prosecute you for the simple fact of being happy

not that you can sue someone else for not being so

@Miniman I didn't think you did

just that it could have been implied by accident in what you wrote

Would anyone have any experiences with using illusions in combat in dnd 5e they'd be willing to share? I know my options will be limited and varied based on what is going on in my new campaign but hearing some other ideas could help get me with different takes on how i can use illusions.

Things like subtly that could turn the tide of battle. Or really clever idea you have seen that worked or failed solely due to bad rolls. I got a few myself already but again, hearing other people's ideas and perspectives on it could help expand my own.

It's not just context - how illusions work is basically entirely table-dependent too.

Because the rules for them are depressingly ambiguous and open-ended.

They're also a strange interface with the meta-contract: "I'll tell you about your environment, you make decisions, OH MY GOD I CAN"T BELIEVE YOU WALKED THERE IT WAS REALLY LAVA!!!"

Having played as and run games for wizards, I'm just glad my players were busy driving trucks through the loopholes in Polymorph.

i know my dm is very open to creative ideas

(As a wizard player, I'm far too considerate of my DM to-nah, just kidding. I was busy levering open the definition of "reasonable" in Suggestion.)

my bard will be using heat metal, silent illusion and minor illusion most of the time.

one of the things i thought of was using illusions to burn the enemy's actions with distractions

like an arrow being shot from behind them

How would that burn their actions?

they spend it towards investigating or something

If your group assumes people don't see stuff behind them, wouldn't they only see the arrow when it emerged from their chest? Or if your group assumes all-around vision, wouldn't they see the arrow appear out of nowhere?

an arrow just missed their head and landed in the ground in front of them

logically at least 1 of a group would put attention towards where it could have come from

im trying to come up with more ideas like that, as well as hoping for more different ideas

I'd go for an illusion of a spellcaster, personally.

why's that

Because it's a threat that's still threatening without physical interaction

Plus no-one will question it appearing from nowhere

how effective would that be as an illusion if he just standing there and not doing anything?

making casting motions but no effects happen

That's why you make it look like he's spellcasting

@Clarus_Nox Hey, I guess you made your saving throw!

all saving throws still do something

The most dangerous spells are the ones with no visual effects

Dominate Monster, Polymorph, etc

@Clarus_Nox Huh?

well all offensive ones from evocation

... Illusion of an illusionist?

oh man

I just imagined like, a really powerful illusionist just making a fortress of silly mirrors and illusions of himself scattered throughout it

@trogdor I've always thought the best use of D&D-style illusions was to make people know that you're messing with them so they doubt the reality of real things.

It's not what you don't know is an illusion, it's what you know is an illusion that isn't so.

How do I create a chat room with someone (and invite them)?

I do not have access to their chat-profile or whatev. why do we even have separate profiles like that?

Make a chat room: go to this page and click the "create a new room" button at the bottom.

Find a person's chat profile: go to this page and type in their name. Click on the name and there'll be an "invite this user to" button with a drop-down menu listing all the rooms you're currently in.

If the person's name isn't there, that means they've never visited any Stack Exchange chat room ever. You'll have to leave a comment on one of their mainsite posts with a link to the room.

(The chat profile also has "start a new room with" which makes a new room AND invites the person to it all in one swell foop.)

Urgh. Why does my party have to be so fixated on DnD...

@BESW Bonus points for getting them to not attack you because they assume you're the illusion

[creates the illusion of a hologram flicker on himself]

I've also heard of a successful illusory wall right in front of an actual wall. Guy with detect magic says "Hey, that one's illusory!" splat

@BESW don't forget your mobile emitter

Ah, yes. I also had a variation where a gnome used prestidigitation on bottles of colored water so they'd ping as magical to basic investigation, then sold them as potions.

I had a player who did something similar with his 5e Transmutation wizard

@kviiri "My DM is just too much into dungeoncrawling."

@eimyr I would be ok with honest hack and slash dungeon crawling. We actually had a really splendid combat-focused session recently and I enjoyed it a lot... but our GM thought it was bad and was like "sorry for having almost nothing but combat this time".

no, you don't get it - there's a bit of irony in saying "party fixated on D&D", same as with "My Dungeon Master is too much into dungeons"

it's like saying that "My Storyteller only wants to run WoD"

Parties are a thing outside DnD too!

are they?

Yep. At least Dungeon World (which is built on many DnD tropes) fulfills the adventuring party trope to the P.

yeah, but DW is D&D (or at least vanilla adventuring genre) facsimile under PbtA

so that's 100% intentional

Doesn't matter to me.

when you say "my party in Monsterhearts" it just means you threw a wicked house party

WoD has Cabals and Coteries I believe...

not sure about Fate constellation

I don't really like the RPG trope where every game has to rename fundamentally same concepts :P

But I guess it's occasionally partially to distance themselves from DnD or some other established system, if the role is significantly different in some way.

Eg. I sorta get calling the GM "Master of Ceremonies" in Apocalypse World if it's intended to highlight that the GM's role is rather different from the more mainstream games.

Well, the intention of "Storyteller" was the same, even if in practice it didn't work that way

@Miniman may be surprised: I pay rangers a backhanded compliment in a recent answer.

mornin

mornin'

how goes it?

other than issues with both employees and children...good :)

I hope it's nothing too serious

not too serious. Employee issue is easier than the kid thing. Just have to learn how to help my 5.5 year old learn to control his emotions. Feel so sorry for him.

@NautArch it's easy. you take your emotions, and throw them in the trash and ignore them

@DForck42 ha. that's not quite the solution I'm hoping for :)

@NautArch lol

men show no emotions. You are a rock!

@NautArch until the last straw breaks our rocky exterior and we crumble into sand

@NautArch That's the goal.

so, last night I may have gotten upset and walked out of my game during the final boss fight...

What happened?

@kviiri so, we go into the last fight fully healed due to DM shenanigans. Imix breaks off a part of himself and summons 3 fire elementals on us. The sorc cast fly on himself and the fighter, who also cast enlarge on himself. fighter and sorc go up to Imix and start wrecking his face while my bard and the artificer are dealing with the elementals. my bard makes a gambit to get the artificer free so she can go pound on Imix.

my bard ends up being surrounded by the elementals, already just shy of bloodied. I decide that the bard had had enough and banish all three elementals, burning a level 6 spell slot in the process. it works and they're all gone for the time being (they were going to return, which I assumed they would). after this happens, imix teleports away, under magma, with the dm's intent that he's going to spam lair actions until the elementals come back.

@DForck42 that's a fairly smart move. no chance for you to counterspell the teleport?

we call bs on that because they have to SEE the lair in order to perform lair actions, and you can't see anything through solid rock. dm starts getting pissy cause if we could we would pull such cheese, and blah blah blah, and that imix was already at 2 hp. at this point I feel that my one awesome thing that I finally got to do with the bard was super cheapened just for the dm to drag out this final fight for no real reason other than he wanted to try and kill us one last time.

so I said I had enough, packed my stuff up and left

That's nasty :<

To be fair to your GM, though, DnD gives a lot of nasty things for the GM to throw against the players but little guidelines about discretion...

@NautArch no, it was his last legendary action

boooo

cause if it was a spell, our fighter with mage slayer would have cancelled it, and killed imix at the same time. which would have been cooler

but that's a good point. ALthough I guess the DM can always do what they want and allow lair actions.

but that's still undervaluing the resource you risked and expended to banish them.

that was an awesome move you made and instead of rewarded for it, you were punished.

@DForck42 and the elementals were still going to come back. Even with expending resources on heals, the fight wasn't over yet.

@NautArch yeah, and I was fine with getting the time to heal everyone. it was the lair action cheese that really cheapened it, and then getting upset when we said he couldn't do that per the rules

have you had issues before with the DM trying to kill you guys? Like, not the "these monsters are trying to kill you, I just have to play that realistically" kind of killing you, but the "I, the DM, personally want your characters dead" type of kill you

even if he had said "yeah, that's what th erules say, but I'm gonna do it anyway" I would have been ok with it, but the way it was handled...

@Adam no, not quite, but 95% of any rule calls always favor the monsters side

he played it mostly as US vs HIM

Ah. Sounds like an awful game. You should never return

@DForck42 Ugh. Is this an experienced DM?

@NautArch apparently

@Adam well last night was the finale, lol. I like the guy personally, and we'll stay friends as long as he doesn't do something stupid. however, I'm never going to play an rpg with him again

@DForck42 while i understand his frustration in that the epic finale wasn't as 'tough' as he thought it would be because of Banishment, that's something you have to deal with as a DM.

So what if the PCs get a minute to rest and prep? Make the return of the BBEG after the minute more epic (more elementals, big spell, other minions, etc). Don't make it seem like the PC did something wrong.

Maybe you should try introducing them to a system that has less potential to becoming an adversarial players-vs-GM struggle.

Yeah, like Paranoia.

@NautArch Sounds to me like the issue wasn't that the PCs did anything wrong. It was that the DM had an idea for this cool move, "the BBEG teleporting away and using his powers to hold off the PCs til banishment wore off" but the players questioned the ruling, and instead of taking it well, the DM acted like a child

@Adam Yeah - and he didn't have to do the lair actions and make the players feel diminished. There were a lot of other options on the table that he ignored and instead chose to go childish.

I wouldn't be surprised if the issue wasn't banishment, but rather that the players called him out on the lair actions and a whole bunch of everyone's frustrations that nobody actively talked about exploded in one instance, killing the game

I don't know about anyone else but the idea of a BBEG needing to run away and hide to summon his minions back doesn't sound like a cool and powerful BBEG to me.

@Yuuki I'm pretty happy that we haven't continued our Paranoia play.

@NautArch you miss the point a bit. I'm not saying that using the lair actions was childish. I'm saying that the way he reacted to the players questioning him on the call was childish and that is the crux of the issue

@Yuuki Maybe not,but a smart one. Almost dead? Minions banished? Take a calculated retreat and come back in a minute to try and finish them off.

@Yuuki To me, it's the mark of a good DM when they portray mastermind-esque, boss level characters that know when they've lost a fight and either try to compensate for it, or retreat to fight another day, rather than pushing through with their "unlimited power"

@Adam Ah, gotcha.

I think the GM picking the best moves for their monsters all the time, even if cheesy, is a valid playstyle. Then the expectation should be that the players plan for it, of course, and getting mad if the players come up with clever tricks of their own would be rather hypocritical.

@Adam Sure but it's definitely not a "cool move".

It's a smart move, maybe, but not "this is my crowning moment of awesome!".

@Yuuki Often times, the last gasp is not a crowning moment of awesome. Nearly defeated and taking a minute to recover and regain some strength is the smart move. Then come back and do something cool.

Not conventionally cool, but I think there are plenty of ways that a tactical retreat can lead to more dramatic, better, and more resounding encounters than the classic "I have unlimited power, you will never beat me! -> No, wait, how am I losing? Die you fools! -> Crap I guess I was wrong and am dead now!" dynamic

In heroic fantasy fiction, it's a cool ending to a battle that the villain retreats, wounded seriously and giving up their prized lair. But that needs to be GM fiat'd to work.

GM fiated in what way?

In the way the villain's non-total defeat would be satisfying even tomorrow, after the villain has had the time to take a long rest to fully recharge their power.

@Adam basically

Although now that I mentioned it, I'm not sure about that - can monsters take long rests in DnD 5e (RAW)?

@Adam yup

@kviiri considering that several of them have powers that regenerate on a short/lost rest specifically, yes. For an example, check out the manticore. Its tail spikes specifically regenerate when the creature finishes a long rest

Hm, I recalled most of the monster abilities being "X uses per day" but it appears to be defined as long rests too, yup.

Aaargh I'm losing my mind! There's a notoriously, err, confusing intersection right next to my office and every single day at least one driver accidentally blocks it. And now I've been listening for non-stop honking for over a minute because apparently someone is really mad at this.

@NautArch well and this was advertised as the LAST session of the campaign, so it felt more like he was just dragging the fight out to make it last longer, rather than Imix being super smart and cunning and stuff

@DForck42 and that can be okay - he just didn't think about it, and had a very bad knee-jerk reaction to being questioned on a mechanic.

@nitsua60 thanks so much for your answer, I had absolutely not thought about not having a DMPC

I am only afraid that she will die easily, especially given my inexperience as DM

@Sosi Hi--glad it helps. (Whether or not you end up going DMPC or no, hopefully this gives you some ways to think about it.)

however, I am planning the beginning of the campaign with a small tournament, to get a feel of how things will go in fight. I will use characters the same as in the Lost Mine of Phandelver, and see if she faints or not

My idea is to level her up to level 3 and then proceed normally with the campaign

do you think this is enough?

(leveling will be done through the tournament)

@Sosi On this note, my best advice is to say exactly that to her. That, then opens up the conversation about what to do? Resurrect? Create new characters? Hit "rewind" and try again? Use companions? Over-level?

@Sosi Sounds good. Starting with a "tournament" or so can be a good way to teach the game mechanics before moving on to actual adventuring with its own nuances.

Any of those are valid, and will lead to different experience, and can be enjoyed. Just a matter of you picking together.

My biggest concern is that she will lose interest if she dies easily

eheh

but you have a valid point! we have to do it together

@NautArch yeah, and he's posted an "apology" on the facebook group

@kviiri yes :) thanks

@DForck42 that's a good thing!

although using quotes doesn't make it sound like an apology

@Sosi that's a nice low-key way to introduce mechanics. It doesn't have to be to the death, either. Just assume everyone is going for knockouts, with the only risk being damage that's twice their max.

@NautArch well, he acknowledges that he f**ed up a bit, but never actually says "I'm sorry" and kind of make some excuses

@NautArch thanks, I was thinking about that exactly for the initial tournament. If she loses all HP = faint > wake up somewhere > do something else

what do you mean "with the only risk being damage that's twice their max"

@Sosi That's, by the book, instant death.

ah ya

I really sound like a noob don't I ahah

Although it doesn't have to be a single instance of damage that great - as long as the damage takes you to 0 hit points and the "remaining" damage exceeds one's max hp.

@Sosi It's ok :P

@Sosi not at all. There's a lot of little rules to track!

hopefully it won't happen, but even if it does I guess it's how @nitsua60 was saying: we just have to decide what to do after

@Sosi There's a rule for knocking out creatures though, that basically states that an attack that reduces a creature to 0 hp can always be declared non-lethal and it knocks enemies out instead of killing them. By specific-trumps-general, I'd say it overrides even instant death from massive damage. You could simply rule everyone is doing non-lethal damage in this tournament.

@kviiri ya, it sounds great

I think I'll do that!

Also, outside of the tournament you can ransom people. I normally play my bad guys as: If they don't have much experience with the PCs, they will capture them first, steal their equipment and treasure, and then ransom them back to their patron. Then after that if they keep being a pain, they will kill the party on future encounters. Of course by then, hopefully, the player will be strong enough to win the rematch

One thing to note is technically to deal non-lethal damage it needs to be a melee attack, so if she is a bow ranger she might have some issues there. But you could also say that for the tournament you need to use special 'non-lethal' arrows

Plus, short of max damage crits and big level disparities, I don't think the massive damage rule really comes into effect very often.

@diego Boxing glove arrows!

@Yuuki They always seem to work well in cartoons

@Adam one thing I'm missing: after the party is captured, stolen, and taken to the bad guys' boss, the boss sets them free?

Lots of nice ideas guys!

@diego that sounds nice indeed! ahah

@Sosi It was pretty common in actual Medieval times to ransom important prisoners of war. Just have some NPC be sufficiently interested in your PCs to do it :)

@Sosi I mean, he doesn't just say "off you go". If any of the party survives the battle, and is knocked out, they will ransom them back to the nearest town in addition to stealing their stuff. So the town ends up paying some copious amount of cash and supplies to the bag guys.

@Sosi They could wake up and break out via conveniently placed hole in the wall, a la every Zelda stealth section.

I mean, yeah the PCs are a thorn in the bad guy's operation. But if the bad guys win the fight, they can get more money and power by selling off the survivors and taking their stuff, rather than killing them outright.

this sounds very good indeed! I'm liking this more and more

> "Hmm... this guy keeps breaking out of the cell every time we capture him. Eh, I'll just put him back, what are the chances he escapes again?" - Ganondorf, probably.

You get bonus DM points if the bad guys actually use the stuff that they ransom for the PCs

@Sosi Not free. As long as they're kept alive, they can be ransomed and the villain would benefit from the payment. Also, as an option to make the villain seem evil to the players, maybe he does villain stuff (e.g. interrogating them, lie to the PCs, steal/break their stuff, harm an NPC prisoner to show off his power, etc.) before letting them go.

@Yuuki That exact scenario played out in the original Monkey Island game

eheh I should've come here long ago, you guys give very nice ideas!

The protagonist kept getting captured and placed in a prison hut, which had a loose floorboard

Or make the villains force the PCs to do their bidding. It's another classic.

Looks like we're not going to get our first segment of our DnD campaign finished before one of the players goes on "parental" leave. Expected date of birth is in five days!

@kviiri I had no trouble keeping up with a campaign when we had kids, but we were a monthly group so taking a few hours wasn't such a big deal

@GreySage This player is a the first among our circles to become a father (hopefully), so we sort of went with "no one knows what the first months will be like, so let's not assume anything."

Pshhh, that's easy. Just put the kid in a Rope Trick, it'll be fine.

("hopefully" because another friend is also having a baby and we have bets riding on whose baby is born first. I can practically taste that 15 euros 18 cents!)

@kviiri A fair stance to take. And I must admit my kids were pretty well behaved when they were born, something that can't be taken for granted.

@GreySage That's why you prepare Command every day.

Kids have low WIS saves.

@Yuuki They don't need them they're immune to mind-affecting spells

@Yuuki I'm sure there are plenty of new parents who would prefer a sleep spell

according to the 5e dnd facebook group when responding to handling a party of 6 players, the answer is :don't

@Adam if I could cast sleep on myself, that'd be amazing

We had a party of 6 in 4e, it wasn't too bad.

@DForck42 Our group was six when we started. The only hard part was getting all six to show up at the same time. (We'd run each others' characters when one person could not make it ...)

@KorvinStarmast I'm planning on having 6 and plan on having it super casual

so if someone's late, we'll start without them

or if someone's missing we'll play without them

as long as 2 pc's are there, we'll play

if there's only 2 we might do it anime filler episode style where it has no bearing on what's going on

@NautArch another example of the same dm pulling the rug out from under me last night, and probably played into the events later on. we walked into the room and the henchman of the big bad guy said something along the lines of "the ritual is done, you're out of time." I wanted my bard to retort with "You're out of time" and cast vicious mockery.

well, apparently this guy said this across 140ft (not shouting), and the dm didn't let me do my spell

We had a policy of tolerating one player's absence, but it wasn't unambiguous enough. When someone (unwisely, in my opinion) made a Doodle for an entire month, we ran into the problem of whether we should play with one player missing soon or with full party a week later...

@kviiri made a doodle?

@DForck42 Doodle, as in the scheduling software.

@kviiri never heard of it

so someone had a scheduled absence, and everyone got confused as to whether the game should be skipped? am I understanding that?

@DForck42 It's how we schedule all our games, but I think everyone's using it wrong most of the time. The basic idea is simple: someone starts a poll with a list of dates, they get a link to share, and everyone who gets the link marks each date as available or not. Then you see which date is the best for which people.

And yeah, we had agreed we'd play with one member missing if we'd have to, but "have to" is harder to define in practice.

That's why it's important for the DM to prepare filler sidequests for backup

@kviiri ooooh, I think I did use that once. I didn't like it

Or as DForck put it, "anime filler episode style"

Filler sidequests are nice, except my "Campaign #2" has almost doubled in size because of that.

Just played a wonderfully chaotic and hilarious Roll for Shoes session with RPG newbies. Best first session ever, it had everything: Lizard people, sentient tractors, murderous dogs, zombie bouncers (all played by players) and everyone died in the end. Huge success.

@DForck42 i think DMs can find Bards frustrating :)

@DForck42 It has its flaws, many of them between the chair and the keyboard. For one, people create these jumbo-polls that go a month or more in the future, and then act surprised when people's guesstimates on their availability turn out wrong....

@kviiri maybe it's time for a campaign #3?

@kviiri What I recommend is to write sideplots based on each PC's story and motives. That way, you can make something that feels substantial to the players who attend, and the absent players don't really miss out.

@kviiri yeah. my issue is that people tend to not fill those things out. people are very non-commital

that's why I'm more of the set a schedule and stick to it method, if you have to miss you have to miss we're playing without you

Also, @ACuriousMind what in the world are you talking about because that sounds amazing

"flexible scheduling" is why my 3.5 game hasn't met in 3 months

@DForck42 I've been thinking of canning #2 after the next session (even discussed it here) mostly because I'm not very much into DnD 5e and GMing is becoming a rather burdensome task for me. So far we've settled on playing some other system for a while before continuing #2.

@MikeQ rpg.stackexchange.com/tags/roll-for-shoes/info

@kviiri ahh, yeah I remember that discussion

@MikeQ Roll for Shoes is a microsystem whose rules fit on a small card. I just told the players to make up anything they want to be, and wasn't disappointed, then I let all of them awake in prison on a space station and just watched the mayhem unfold. They ended up getting out of their cell, and almost escaping, until someone with the skill "Red Buttons 2" pressed the self-destruction button...

My plan is to run a few games of the best Apocalypse World ever played so they never want to go back to DnD again, but I'm also considering taking Fate out for a spin with them.