@MarkWells Having secrets from the rest of the party in character is fine. Having secrets that are both in character and ooc can cause isues, depending on the game
Of course, it can also be the whole point.
Having secrets from the DM though, is probably a bad plan
The only real issue is if having your secret be secret is actually relevant in game, the rest of the party needs to be really good about not metagaming it
@AncientSwordRage Oh, well btw, I took 3 levels of Antipaladin
I actually did the anti-pally one. Although to be fair, I was LE from the start, and took an archetype to be an LE instead of CE Antipally, so it didn't really impact my character much. And then the single ability I took the class for didn't even work the way I thought it did :/ Shoulda just dipped 3 levels in Mesmerist instead
I was doing an Intimidator Rogue build and wanted Aura of Cowardice so I could hit things that were Immune to fear. Unfortunately, that basically only affects a very tiny set of creatures, since most creatures that are immune to fear are immune to mind affecting, which the aura doesn't bypass.
Which I found out to late
But Mesmerists get a special ability that lets them select one target to be affected by their spells and abilities even if mindless, and that would have done what I wanted it to
But I didn't find out about that until it was way to late
and the campaign was over
the -4 penalty to save vs my fear effects was nice though
I was the GM for that sort of thing once. Me: “so, the easiest way to sneak would be as an animal, she tells you” Player-I-thought-was-playing-a-Druid: “oh yeah I forgot to tell you I made a ranger instead of a druid” Me: “oh that’s why you have a familiar. I thought it was just a pet”
(everyone in our group gets one non-combative, low-CR creature as a pet is a house rule retroactively, since like 3 players really wanted an animal friend. Only those with actual class features or similar could bring them in combat though)
Is anyone gonna be playing Icewind Dale: Rime of the Cool Girl?
Not gonna spoil anything but will mention a mechanic: The secret system has already worked phenomenally at our table and we haven't even started playing. Apparently for everyone, the secret system has made everyone's character backstories far more vivid and everyone's way more excited than we normally are for a new module.
I had prepared a backstory for my character before the book released and when I was given my secret, I was floored by how well it worked with what I prepared.
I hope those of you who will play are just as excited.
@Axoren I will probably not play it, but I will heartily endorse it for anyone who's running D&D5e and enjoying the hardcovers. The atmosphere and the situation and the adventures are, in my opinion, maybe the best of all the APs WotC has published during 5e.
I think I might suggest to our group that we all keep a journal of when our secrets were relevant so we can have an Ocean's Eleven-style reveal of the campaign at the end with everything out on the table.
The rules is written as
A ranged weapon attack automatically misses a target beyond the
weapon’s normal range. Even against a target within normal range, the
attack roll has disadvantage unless the weapon is a crossbow, a net,
or a weapon that is thrown like a javelin (including a spear, trident...
We've been throwing around the idea of system-agnostic heist rules.
And just using them with any game
Haven't come up with anything solid, but we feel like before anyone even starts describing plans for the heist, dice need to be rolled ahead of time and players decide when to use what rolls.
DM rolls a bunch in secret and decides when to use those.
Something happens somehow, and then the story starts getting told
Because at the end of an Ocean's Eleven, the whole of everything is happening. So it would be great if the players were telling the story fresh and live.
I've also heard secondhand stories of Oceans Eleven style heists in Shadowrun, since each character basically specializes in a different skill (e.g. hacker, pilot, magic, face, acrobat, muscle, etc). But last I checked the system was very very crunchy.
