@KorvinStarmast In traditional lore yes they are separate planes. In my world the Shadowfell is a growing corruption of the feywild. There's some story elements tied into it and one of my players took the Fey Foundling feat and is heavily tied to the fate of the feywild.
I play pretty loose with the traditional lore and steal things from pretty much any setting. Keeping what I like and discarding the rest. Elements of my feywild are drawn from Matt Mercer's version, but also from the Kingkiller Chronicles (Name of the Wind), and a number of other sources.
@linksassin Reminds me a bit of 4e's implications about the Feywild and Shadowfell each being manifestations of possible alternate versions of the Material Plane.
4e was always kinda hand-wavy about the exact nature of planes and their relationships to each other, and that led to some really cool potential.
I kinda went with the aesthetics of the Feywild being a prelapsarian vision of the Material Plane, and the Shadowfell being a post-apocalyptic vision of it, but I never let that get in the way of a cool setpiece or story opportunity.
And they failed to notice any of the hints I dropped them that the mage was actually there. Even when they all rolled really high on a wisdom save that I didn’t give them a reason for (it was a compulsion)
@linksassin instead of, I don’t know, checking out the strange blue, silver, and black magical light slowly growing out of the first floor or where the NPC they’re babysitting went, they spent most of the session trying to steal the books out of the tower. And the tower itself.
It’s going to explode soon though... I’m a mean gm
@BardicWizard Last session my player's ignored 4 different NPCs telling them to explore the town and stock up on supplies. Instead rushing straight to the main quest thinking it wouldn't be that long.... Now they are in the feywild. After the session they all said "Guess we missed some hints there..."
The rules for mounted combat (PHB, p. 198) give direction in the following cases:
Mount moved against its will: rider makes Dex save vs falling off and landing prone
Rider knocked prone: rider makes Dex save vs falling off and landing prone
Mount knocked prone: rider uses reaction to dismount st...
@BardicWizard The bigger loss they don't even know about. There is an NPC travelling with the party who has lied about who they are and what their intentions are. The party missed every opportunity to learn the facts about the town that would have seen through their disguise.
So now they just blindly trust this person because they have no reason not to. The few deliberate inconsistencies in their story the players don't even notice.
@linksassin same with my players! I gave them a journal (which they didn’t bother to read), a lot of hints, and even the warnings about “girl of flame changes name” to warn them and they’re now following the BBEG around
Yeah, I eventually decided that if I wanted my friends to know something, I'd just tell them because it's more fun for everyone to be making informed decisions than for one person to watch others stumble around in the dark.
And if it's not important for them to know a thing, maybe I can just leave it out.
No two players (or GMs) will have the same mental understanding of their shared fictional world. They're not going to conceptualize or prioritize every detail in the same way that you do. They'll ignore a clue even if you know it's important. They can't read your mind. Assume that the players' total knowledge is bounded by whatever has been explicitly confirmed, either in-game or out-of-game.
If you really find that the players keep missing your clues, you should consider the possibility that your clues are failing to communicate whatever it is you want the players to figure out.
@MikeQ fair. I’ve got 2-3 players that pick up on everything and 4 or so that usually would prefer to blow things up or do “anything but my plot”
I try to reward my 2-3 attentive players by giving them little mini story hooks like “you’ve noticed this symbol on all your enemies lately, what are you going to do” that they can do to help the group
It works really well and gets others to pay more attention because they want to have their own little moments of putting the clues together and doing something about it
It's also possible for players to get overwhelmed by the information, even if they're genuinely interested, and forget about details that you know are important.
Odds are, they probably forgot they have that journal.
@MikeQ They pulled it out today. They just didn’t read it. (I know one player did, at most, and only bc they gasped when the npc introduced themself to the group so recognized the name from the journal)
@MikeQ Fully agree with this advice. In this case though I was planning/prepared for them to miss them. Getting the clues was kind of a bonus for being particularly clever and paying attention.
Anybody struggling with how to distribute clues effectively without just feeding characters answers, I recommend studying Gumshoe's attitudes toward mysteries: you get the clues you need easily, but you have to put them together yourself. However, the player is signaled when something they've learned it important so they don't disregard something significant.
There's a lot of variation in the different Gumshoe releases, and most of them are, in my opinion, clunky and over-dense. But the core concept is really solid and I wish there was more innovation of the system outside of L*vecraftian influences.
I'd generally recommend more recent Gumshoe manuals, as they're doing more interesting experimentation and have let go of some of the more "tradition just because we couldn't bear to change that much" bits from its source material (specifically Call of Cthulhu).
They're also just, better at explaining themselves.
My understanding is that Gumshoe emerged as a direct response to Call of Cthulhu being an "investigation" game without any good support for... investigating...
In particular, CoC's skill action meant that a failed check could leave the investigators missing vital clues with no idea what to do next, and the mystery just withered and died because of some bad rolls.
Gumshoe's core conceit, then, is that if you have the right skill and look in the right place, you will always get the bare minimum needed to move the story forward.
(You can roll, or spend currency, to get more detail or extra bonus info which makes your life easier or solves the mystery faster--but you get the minimum just for being in the right place doing the right thing.)
I reconnected with an old friend recently and he asked me to play a few one-shots of CoC like we did back in the days... no idea if I'd like it anymore xD
You might suggest Gumshoe as an alternative, it's close enough that, for instance, Old Man Henderson is memetically Call of Cthulhu but it was actually run in Gumshoe.
...Hm, I'd still like to revisit that setting's conceits some time, though I'd dramatically revamp its context. There were three paths to supernatural influence: talking with stuff, making stuff, and writing stuff down.
Either the ways you walk the path (like abusing things instead of treating them with respect) or what you do with the power (like making cruel weapons) can be "wrong."
@AncientSwordRage what’s adult stuff? I’m going to (eventually) get out of bed and start on an essay so I can presume it’s not the same thing I’m doing
Heres a bit of an odd question. Are all the forgotten realms adventures canonically set in the same timeline?
My concern is that, if several of the adventures are situated relatively close together in the same timeline, the adventurers who do one of them would conceivably be overpowered for the rest, more than capable of solving the worlds problems.
@ThomasMarkov You're talking about a setting containing a multitude of epic-level characters who have every reason to intervene in these situations.
If you're not worried about Elminster solving all of the problems with a wave of his hand, you probably shouldn't worry about "the party from the last campaign", either.
Not to mention characters like Laeral who actually appear in the adventures in question.
@Miniman I think a lot of the epic level characters are fairly gandalf like in that they have a grander perspective and don't always want to interfere (or have bigger fish to fry)
It seems that whatever motivated the party last campaign should be similarly motivating to them now. It seems odd for them to save the world once then not care to do it again given their power.
@ThomasMarkov Still applies to everyone else. I'm not saying you shouldn't come up with an explanation, just that if you feel the need, it kinda needs to cover every character that's had a book written about them.
Or, you know, just don't worry about it.
Heh, or they're busy dealing with the multitude of epic-level villains running around - that takes care of the other side of this problem.
Where’s it say that if something prevents you from taking actions it prevents you from taking bonus actions as well? I checked the sage advice compendium but couldn’t find it
No, an incapacitated character cannot take bonus actions.
From the rules for bonus actions:
anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action.
And as you have observed, being incapacitated deprives you of your ability to take actions:
An in...
Currently running Storm King's Thunder, and my players just got the conch of teleportation. During the next session they will be using it. The module says that you take pressure damage for being at the bottom of the sea.
I've looked it up and it seems like most people only count that damage when...
Welp our group’s either going to fall apart or end up better friends
The artificer and the GM have been almost constantly arguing the last few sessions, we had to end early last week because the gm broke down, and the rogue and I finally said “this has to stop”
@BardicWizard Though I have to warn about assuming that compatibility as a group necessarily is an approximation of compatibility as friends, or vice versa. It has been my and some of my acquaintances' experience to see groups which work very smoothly IC, but are not friends OOC. Conversely, there are friends with whom I would be wary to RP together (or GM-and-play in either combination), because that seems to not work out well each time we try.
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica we’re friends OOC, which may be part of the problem. The artificer and the GM are old friends, but the artificer has an attitude problem and the GM hasn’t always been emotionally able to take it lately
so the rogue’s player and I have basically said “this needs to be fixed or we don’t want to play anymore. Arguing is not fun for us to listen to”
I hate feeling like they’re just a moment away from ruining the session with an argument
It’s just hard to remember it well when this happens
and I’m already kinda emotionally sensitive with regards to my friends
I hope you can work things out! But also keep in mind that friends don't have to do everything together, sometimes there's activities that just don't work out well with certain group compositions and that's okay, it doesn't change the friendness.
No, an incapacitated character cannot take bonus actions.
From the rules for bonus actions:
anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action.
And as you have observed, being incapacitated deprives you of your ability to take actions:
An in...
