Works for some groups. I kinda prefer the chaos of the dice rolls. My storytelling style is to setup the situation and then let things fall where they may.
If I have a strong feeling for how something should happen it happens that way. But situations like falling off a cliff is rarely one of those.
Its things like you throw something out a window. Did it hit someone? Was there someone there to see it? Roll d100 for luck basically.
They managed to uncover a rebel plot, meet with the militia commander (telling him nothing of the plot), purchase a potent neurotoxin, testing that neurotoxin MULTIPLE TIMES on random vermin, poison the town's drinking water supply with it (with the intention of committing a completely different totally-not-genocide), awakening a vampire, and then leaving town to assume new identities.
Their original quest? Deal with the local goblin population.
In my experience having to ask "are you sure" multiple times usually means there's an underlying communication failure in calibrating the group's expectations for the game.
@Axoren I feel you. I have players like that. Last week they were supposed to get rid of the ghost the bad guy summoned and then head back to home base. Thanks to somebody, they ended up arguing about leaving the king on a rafter for an hour and then stole coffee beans.
My latest idea in my worldbuilding. A group of powerful dragons used to have an empire. They created dragonborn to be soldiers, craftsmen, scholars, etc. They created kobolds to be menial servants. There was conflict between the dragons, leading to civil war. The surviving dragons fled to distant lairs. Dragonborn fled to villages on the edge of the empire. Kobolds hid in the empire's tombs and monuments. They passed "the old ways" to later generations, but details got lost over time. Modern kobolds follow their teachings in a "cargo cult" fashion - eg, gathering shiny things to make a drag…
What's the purpose of this bit of worldbuilding? I feel like you could probably achieve similar effects without indulging in the pejorative fiction of cargoism.
If it were me, I'd probably want to walk away from the D&D's notion of kobolds as a race of willing servants. I'd maybe make them either co-equals trying to bring back their friends, or freed servants engaged in creating their own post-empire draconic culture.
Maybe have a small but vocal minority sect that thinks they're better off under dragon rule, and are opposed by other kobolds who want to live on their own terms?
@BESW Then you end up with one group of Kobolds stealing shinies to summon the dragons. And another desperately trying to give it away to adventurers to stop the dragons coming.
I always like it when I can break monolithic cultures into diverse identities that share commonalities but are also not completely in agreement. And if I can give them more self-actualization and agency by doing so, all the better.
So we're looking at two groups of Kobolds, one that is a mixture of bandits and a low-grade cult, the other of which is basically a group of merchants who are perfectly fine without their masters around, thank-you-very-much.
My dragons are strongly influenced by the novel The Dragons of the Cuyahoga. Among other things, they don't like gold and jewels; they like power, and gold and jewels are the easiest, most universal way to have power over humanoids.
@MikeQ Now I'm picturing a dragon issuing gold notes backed by its hoard. Some damn fool adventurers kill the dragon, then discover its accounting records and realize they have to keep its death a secret or they'll cause a bank panic.
I'm just imagining a group of kobolds sneaking into the camp of a different group of kobolds to steal some of the loot they've built up so they can dump it inside of some crusty old liches tomb to prevent the hoard from getting to large
@MikeQ I used "dragon hoard" as a unit of measurement in game recently. It was meant to mean "a lot" but my player's were like "Just one dragon hoard? Do you know where a dragon is?"
@BESW The oldest dragon in my world would agree with this. They have amassed a vast hoard but realised that the humans were still terrible. So now they are rewarding humans for good acts with treasures from the hoard in the hope of improving the world. Benevolent Ancient Red Dragon.
Or, conversely, dragons stockpile precious metals, jewels, and magical artifacts because they don't trust the humanoids' economy. As magical dinosaurs who get stronger as they age, they can afford to wait a few centuries until the market improves.
In my D&D 4e campaign, dragons formed a confederation of nation-states where each dragon considered its own nation-state to be its treasure, evaluated by the quality of its citizens' lives and crafts.
In Mystara, there's a single dragon Empire, and one of the boons you can pick up in one of the adventures is basically that they owe you a favor, which amounts to you being able to call in a unit of (roughly) 50 adult dragons of various types as a fighting force for you, for one battles worth of service
Oh, and this boon? everyone in the party gains one use of this favor.
@BESW Pretty sure strength of arms is the most universal way of exerting strength over other nations. Take Germany prior to WWII. They had next to 0 economic power, but they had lots of military power
Do you want dragon slayers? Because that's how you get dragon slayers. Best case scenario you'll get an adventurer infestation, and there goes your real estate.
@MikeQ Pretty much. In the Cuyahoga world, dragons are absolutely supreme individuals--but that is also their weakness: they consider the idea of a "tribe" to be inherently weak because it means subjugating yourself to others. Humanoids willingly band together into armies and nations that can overpower a single dragon.
> "For millennia before our contact with elvish, and then human, ‘civilization’ it mattered not to us. The idea of ‘political’ power, ‘economic’ power—manipulating events through proxies, and symbols—were concepts long and hard in coming to us.” Theophane waved back to the pillar, where her computer was showing a stock ticker. “Wealth is the easiest—and the most easily understandable—way to acquire that kind of power.” I scribbled a few notes as I asked her, “You’re saying that you only hoard wealth to be able to influence humans?”
@RevenantBacon Political influence seems far too transitory to hold a dragon's interest. Imagine you paid a bribe of 10,000 gold solidi for a Roman Senate seat back in the day. The Senate seat is now worth nothing, but the gold is still as valuable as ever.
@MarkWells I believe D&D had the theme of dragons playing games with kingdoms and such as the pieces. I want to say it was a 3.5 edition rule book I read that in, but memory escapes me at the moment.
Not specifically d20... but the domain is [1,20] and the functions are a linear function (d20 plus bonus) and a (I think) square root function intersecting at certain points. Going to bet an author was a RPG player at some point cause it looks right.
This homebrew spell for dnd 5e is based largely on the Scry spell and the Dream spell. Conceptually, I wanted something that functions similarly to the "force-bond" that Rey and Kylo Ren share in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Is this spell balanced? Are there any class lists that shouldn't have a...
Does a level 20 druid need components for spells when in another form caused by non-wildshape effects that change their form but still allow them access to their class features, like the spell Shapechange?
@MarkWells The whole point of having the gold is to spend it. If you aren't spending it, it isn't giving you any influence. Sure, you could spend that 10K on, say, a personal standing army instead of a senate seat, but how much influence does a small army have against the influence of a seat on the senate? That one senate vote can influence long-lasting laws that could shape the empire for generations. The small army might be able to influence a couple cities at best.
So it comes down to what's better: a small % influence over a large territory, or a large % influence over a small territory? knowing dragons, the answer isn't going to be in favor of the small territory
Like the old saying goes, "You've got to spend money to make money"
@RevenantBacon But dragons aren't interested in spending it. They hoard. You can effectively hoard treasure. It's much harder to hoard political influence, because mortals die (and so you're constantly having to find new pawns) and their institutions shift around and invalidate the work you've done.
@MarkWells I think you're thinking about this from the humans POV. A dragon would use their wealth to install themselves as the power piece, and considering most of them have at least a little power with which to disguise themselves as human, it wouldn't be too difficult
@MarkWells Well, it should be easy enough to fake your own death and replace yourself as your own successor, especially in the days of Rome, where forensics isn't really a field of study that exists
Even easier if you're something like a King, where the position is hereditary so you don't have to muck about as much with appearing as a different person
The premise was that dragons care about Power For Its Own Sake, and at issue is whether it makes sense for them to get directly involved in humanoid politics.
@MarkWells I think that the dragon would like better being "the power behind the throne" so that it would make moves/changes by exception. Most of the small stuff the dragon has human minions for. (I think that's how Tiamat operates, more or less)
@MarkWells Depends on the campaign setting. I rarely get involved in the politics of squirrels, rabbits, or ants. Usually I put in the effort to keep them out of my hordevegetable garden and house
This is generally the fault of not democracy, but a minor republic. The animals can't consent to running for Mayor, and the people of those towns are aggressively exploiting a population-size loophole to force all those responsibilities onto a poor animal.
@GcL Sure, but generally speaking, those types of creatures are not what one would consider sapient beings, and as such, generally don't have much of politics. Besides, if humans are so far beneath dragons, does holding power over them actually mean anything?
I dunno... I've had some crap mayors in the places I have lived and worked. I'd probably be pretty happy with a mayor that does nothing and is genuinely happy to see me when I walk in.
Would you be happy once you found out all the scandals your animayor got themselves involved in? People suspected for a long time that Duke the Dog had some connections to a ruff crowd.
@RevenantBacon I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head with "does holding power over them actually mean anything?" I don't think sapience adds much to that value proposition.
@GcL Are you sure? Can ants decide that your golden influence in their affairs has gone on long enough and plot to overthrow/slay you? Can ants develop better tools with which to pierce your scaly hide? Can ants be reasoned with and bought off?
Can they even be trained to perform simple tasks that benefit you?
@GcL @RevenantBacon Why not research and curiosity? There are plenty of zoologists and entomologists who are simply fascinated with the "politics" of the species they study. Their goal may not be to get involved with politics for their own safety, but for their own twisted curiosity.
@RevenantBacon The carpenter variety have a vested interest in taking over my abode for their own nefarious purposes. I don't actually care about their technology. I do care to keep them out, and occasionally murder all of them I can find when they don't comply.
I've got my own technology... that's far ahead of the ant technology. Actually, ant technology is pretty interesting in a non-cosmically relevant way. Sometimes I watch them do their thing.
And if you wipe out a colony of ants, can more come by, figure out what happened to the last colony to occupy that place, and change their tactics to prevent annihilation?
@RevenantBacon I don't really care if I hold power over them. They're ants. If they're interesting, I might make a little maze for them with a sugar cube at the end to see how they cross the "great chasm of water" from my water bottle.
@RevenantBacon Eventually, through selection. The ones that don't make those mistakes live and the ones that do make those mistakes don't. Eventually, you'll be left with ants that have a low probability of making that mistake.
@Axoren That happens with bees sometimes. You've got to be careful and watch for when a colony makes a new queen. Also, you don't want your hives queens to die. Then you're down a hive.
@RevenantBacon I like power, but the power of ants doesn't interest me. They've definitely got power... but not useful to me, nor in an amount I care about.
@RevenantBacon If you're into cosmic power and moving planetary bodies around... ants don't help you in that endeavor.
@MikeQ Why does a god care about that? In Forgotten Realms, it's because Worship is a kind of cryptocurrency, that's only valuable if people use it. Gods get to spend it at the gift shop or when they ask Ao for a raise in their allowance.
@Axoren Isn't this always the question with deities? I think in-setting you'd have to reason that the deities must care about the world, or they wouldn't have made it in the first place.
(caveat: the many creation myths where they make it more or less by accident)
@MarkWells One DM I had explained away the creation of the world as a fart. A byproduct of a larger process and not one that the deity themselves found pleasant.
"Care" can mean multiple different things. Maybe a deity doesn't really care whether mortals are happy and successful, but they would be concerned if the plane somehow erupted into a larger cosmic problem. Or maybe the plane is some sort of shared cosmic art project.
@Axoren (Counterpoint: None of the spell description is rules text. Any mechanics-looking things in there are suggestions to the players as to how they could mechanically represent some of its effects, if they wanted to.)
Back to the Mansion topic for a second, there was a question someone had about when I searched. "Can the servants be killed?" and all I heard in my head was "100-rat Bag"
"Quick, I need all of you to pile yourselves around me in a 15-ft high and wide cylinder." jumps 5 ft. and casts Sword Burst.
Here's the plan: create a slanted room, such that anything on the floor would roll out the front door. Create the room filled with nondescript spheres so that when you open the door the entire contents of the room spills out of it.
Dunno, maybe the amount of smoke is proportional to the area of the entrance. Or its mass or exit velocity or chemical makeup. Or maybe it's a constant value. Or maybe we need flux equations.
The Storm Sorcery subclass from SCAG is widely regarded as the weakest of the sorcerer subclasses, see here. We - as in my D&D group - mainly play without multiclassing, so combinations like this don't help the problem.
To buff the class I thought of the following:
Include the casting of Cantrip...
@ThomasMarkov Theoretically, a Wizard could also do this. Also, you have discovered the foundation of the Simulacra loop, which is why 5e Adventurers League has a specific rule that says something along the lines of "Simulacra can't cast Simulacra or replicate its effects"
@ThomasMarkov "If you cast this spell again, any currently active duplicates you created with this spell are instantly destroyed." In adventure league, your simulacra casting simulacra counts as you casting simulacra.
Probably a good decision to follow along with organized play rules when something seems like it can get out of hand.
> @ThomasMarkov Theoretically, a Wizard could also do this. Also, you have discovered the foundation of the Simulacra loop, which is why 5e Adventurers League has a specific rule that says something along the lines of "Simulacra can't cast Simulacra or replicate its effects"
Does somebody more experienced with the stack know where I could ask for assistance designing a simple cryptographic system with some specific constraints mostly about transmission and simplicity? Preferably before 4th period...
I’m in 4th period Spanish with a friend and there is a chat-over-video-call feature, and somebody asked me a theoretical question about what do you do when everything is visible to an admin... now I’ve got 7 minutes to make a cryptosystem for use
@RevenantBacon I think you underestimate the command line tools most sysadmins have at their disposal and the relative ease of their use. If it can be piped, conversion is pretty trivial
So i'm looking for fun traps to put into a campaign. Is there a specific place to look or should i ask it in a questin? I know it'll be open to alot of different speculation and opinions. so i was leary
@Someone_Evil I'm looking for a range of not super obvious traps, some that are all but inescapable for one or two. i'm looking for basically a list that i could potentially pick and choose from at will.
@Someone_Evil I have an extremely intelligent group that gets bored with certain things so they like traps that make them think. I had them for about 15 minutes with the countdown trap.
As has been said in other posts, traps can do more than just damage. Why are you just running straight damage traps anyways? If he's metagaming, he's gaming you, not the system.
Here's a big list of other things traps can do, so you can set him straight:
Inflict a condition, such as
poison, ...
As has been said in other posts, traps can do more than just damage. Why are you just running straight damage traps anyways? If he's metagaming, he's gaming you, not the system.
Here's a big list of other things traps can do, so you can set him straight:
Inflict a condition, such as
poison, ...
