@nitsua60 does AL allow poisons in general? I've never played AL and thinking I should delete my answer. I went with the assumption that what he did was legal.
AL allows poison. The tricky part comes from the accounting that has to be done for "treasure."
Best I can tell if the player extracts the component, crafts the poison, and uses it all within one session, they're fine.
(But crafting during a session's weird, too, as some would claim it requires a downtime expenditure the likes of which is only supposed to happen at the beginning of a session.)
Going across sessions, though... they've got to log their acquisition in order to have it at the next table. (Even if that table's all the same people as the last.)
@nitsua60 I followed (starred? favourited?) a KS creator, so I could see when they post more. Now, I keep getting notifications about KS's that they back
And the three rooms are all intricately designed with a switch in each that's difficult to get to, but they do nothing (except alert the guards to the shenanigans)
Btw, we've already recorded the first episode, idk if I should link it here when we start posting episodes, but if anyone is interested I'll let you guys know when we get started
Polymorph object doesn't care about mass but only volume. Therefore, planeshift to abyss while holding pebble, then polymorph it to cosmic black hole (volume = 0, mass = 10,000 suns)
it takes not less than 20 minutes for the polymorph to wear off
The fact that this isn't exactly a new idea, and the whole "Polymorph Any Object into x physics concept" has been done to death aside, that won't destroy the Wand, and it's questionable whether it'd work on Orcus.
Artifacts can only be destroyed in specific ways - in the case of the Wand of Orcus, from memory, it can only be destroyed by bathing it in the blood of Tiamat.
And assuming you did this to Orcus, somehow retrieved the wand from the black hole, and then did the same thing to Tiamat, you wouldn't have any blood to work with.
I'm pretty sure if I crushed Orcus once and got his wand I know what I'm doing with it and it's not going after Tiamat. Thor seems a lot more upright and might know what to do.
In the adventure where they got the Wand, they went to Bahamut - way more upright than Thor, way more knowledgeable. And he said to bathe it in Tiamat's blood.
On failing to get good advice I suppose I can just leave the wand in an anti-magic field. (Will have to take the feat for ranged anti-magic field first.)
Not to put too fine a point on it, Orcus is smarter and more devious than you or I could ever be. Killing him is like trying to get the best of Asmodeus in a deal.
Now D&D Next is trying to cater to everyone at once, and their modular system is going to shatter what little sense of "we're all playing the same game" the fanbase has (what with RAW/RAI, houserules, and different playstyles, it was tenuous at best even before the 4e/3.5 split).
I've been building a number of moderately optimised characters... latest one is a wildshape ranger 5 / master of many forms 10 / natures warrior 5. Basically a martial wildshaper. Not sure whether to trade away my animal companion and/or spells for ACFs - both are weak, but without spell access I can't use wands etc. Also haven't decided on feats - I'm thinking wildshape-buffing feats would be best.
(I may actually get to play one of these next year, pending DM approval...)
The only time I would wear it on a Wednesday is once I buy 6 more shirts. Then, for one week straight, with no explanation, I wear them all on the right day.
Tonight's dinner: diced potatoes, tossed in a mix of teriyaki sauce, sesame oil, peanut butter, and cayenne pepper, baked with onions. Served with sunflower seeds on quinoa.
Yeah. Ah well. Just wanted to make sure my logic wasn't silly. Stuff like sanctuary's phrasing makes me real hesitant to assume any brief general statement means more than the further elaboration that follows it.
I've seen it done a few different ways. One is that ^. I know one large group ran ~4 person games (even though the pool was much larger), and then people who were 'too high' rolled new characters at the lowest level of the current playing group, letting them get started on an 'alt'.
I do not get this assumption about keeping people at the same level. When I played D&D in the 70's, we had a core group in college of about 11 people, but on game night we only had (usually) 6-9 snow up for various reasons in the campaign.
Those who showed up tended to advance in level higher since they kept the game going. We had characters from, at one point, level 6 to level 10 in the same party, with the occasional participation of a higher level MU and a very rare appearance by a 10th level illusionist.
It worked. We had fun. people who showed up got XP. We sometimes save a magic item for someone who wasn't there if we found it and knew that it would be perfect for one of them.
@Trish I read the book a long time ago. I have read it again a few times since. Still a good book. I saw the movie when it came out. I am sorry, that movie did violence to the source material from my perspective. I get the imagery. Thanks for explaining.
I have players that are very concerned about their ability to help out in a significant way. These are the same players that would be missing sessions frequently if I were to run west marches, thereby falling behind and limiting their ability to contribute significantly.
@THiebert Depends on the system and group. In some systems level disparity doesn't have a big impact on agency; in others, even a tiny difference can mean the difference between "I'm helping!" and "I'm the load."
Personally I've found that folks stop coming at all if missing sessions reduces their ability to contribute when they do show up--whether because their PCs are lower level, or because they don't know the story anymore, or whatever "ability to contribute" means for that game/group/individual.
@THiebert TNSTAAFL The one campaign I am currently playing in as a player awards a small "RSVP" bonus in XP for committing a few days ahead of time and actually showing up. Incentivize participation however you can. (More inspiration points for those who show up more often?) I'd say that a whole "thing" about RPG's is to participate. Seems to me your westmarch group may need to revisit how the scheduling chaos is being handled.
IRL for adults, that darned scheduling thing is a bugger unless (for us married sorts) the spouse is also into RPGs. If I could only get my wife interested in RPGs ... we could have a weekly game night that she was a fan of.
As it is, sometimes it becomes a source of friction. (Arrggh).
thinks its a nerd thing and that she lacks the imagination
Right now my group is on hiatus, while we get scheduling worked out. West Marches seemed like a potential solution that i wanted to explore to see if we could get going again.
my other idea is to jsut get my fix by going to AL games
my wife loves when i'm painting minis, because she's fine getting involved in that (Ooh, he'd look good with a blue cape), but can't bring herself to play
@THiebert The other thing to do is discuss participation density with your high percentage participants ... and ask them to act in support roles to the ones who can't show up as often (assuming that you are all friends) so that when more schedule deprived get the chance, the more "powerful' players are mentors/supporters.
We did that A Lot in old D&D when someone ran into a string of dead characters (it happened, that genre was sorta lethal) so we got used to mentoring/supporting new adventurers with the higher level characters.
The guys who show up often are the "power players" who intentionally build things to do the most damage, and mostly like just getting in fights and killing stuff
Prior to that, I ran a 4e campaign where I dropped XP entirely and just said "characters who play this adventure are [X] level," and whoever showed up set their levels accordingly.
XP isn't just a participation reward. It's also a way to control what the GM can reasonably do with the adventure, and a way for the group to set the kind of adventure they're having (because most versions of D&D gate certain kinds of gameplay by level).