TRPG General Chat

12:02 AM

when I was little I would occasionally wake up early to rebelliously read the kiddie magazines parents conveniently left in the bedroom

Hot RPG Questions

2:04 AM

6

Q: What is "fantastic melee", and "non-fantastic melee"?

I was reading about some original DnD editions today and came across an excerpt of combat that mentioned non-fantastic combat. The excerpt in question was Assume the following dice score by the Hero. Note that he is allowed one attack for each of his combat levels as the ratio of one Orc vs. the...

BESW

3:18 AM

@HotRPGQuestions An attack of +6 is Fantastic, of course.

Ben

4:33 AM

> Which Dagger?: Legendary item. Whenever the dagger is referred to out loud, it changes location.

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: Which type of dragon is depicted in the middle of the cover art for this chapter of the "Rise of Tiamat" published adventure?

Episode 6 of the Rise of Tiamat adventure (chapter 14 in the combined Tyranny of Dragons book), "Metallic Dragons, Arise", has cover art featuring 3 metallic dragons. The art (full-resolution image here) depicts a gold dragon (the big one on the left), an unknown dragon that I'm trying to identi...

dnd-5e dragons art rise-of-tiamat

bobble

4:59 AM

@Ben how is its new location determined?

Ben

5ft in a random direction, or DM's discretion :P

bobble

Can it change location to be inside a person/other object?

Ben

Ii is legendary, so I dunno... maybe :P

bobble

New plan: run far, far away from dagger

Ben

I'm often inspired to create flawed legendary items. Maybe the idea was to make a dagger that would teleport into other people, but it ended up just being shy and instead it just freaks out and moves.

Other such items are:

> Legendary Dud: this item has no extra value, use or special qualities, other than the fact that it is legendary

> Bag of Scolding: anytime you interact with the bag, it berates you

bobble

5:04 AM

(slightly relevant shameless self-promotion)

Ben

> Hygrophobic Alchemy Jug: any time the jug creates liquid, it spurts out instead.

> Sock of Stopping: when jammed into something, it stops all effects passing through the hole this sock is jammed into (found with the above)

@bobble lol

Bardic Wizard

@bobble I still basically write fanfic — it’s just that eventually I put in the same characters into a thousand settings so they became more and more developed

And then I broke it into its own world

BESW

5:43 AM

@BardicWizard Done that!

Almost every D&D campaign I've ever run (and a few that weren't D&D) have included a grumpy old librarian-priest, and a town called Stone's Throw because that's how big it is.

Ben

@BESW So.. saying "A Stone's Throw away" makes people think "ok we definitely need to hire a cart"?

BESW

Within a certain radius around Stone's Throw, I suppose so.

The librarian-priest was an early PC of mine, and he was popular with my friends so I made him an NPC in a lot of my games afterward. Sometimes a friend, sometimes an antagonist, sometimes integral to the plot and sometimes a cameo.

Ben

I guess though, it depends on where you come from. If you're talking to an Australian, "A stone's throw" is ~2 day's travel on foot :P

BESW

6:01 AM

And I totally rip off stuff from whatever fiction I'm interested in for my campaigns. The Witch Queen was named for a character from the Wizard of Oz sequels, the three hags were lifted directly from the Prydain Chronicles right down to lines of dialogue, I quoted Walt Whitman for catfolk marriage and funeral rites....

Ben

@BESW I think a lot of us do that. I made the Hag from Voltron as a villainess.

AncientSwordRage

7:46 AM

@Ben sounds like when I was a kid... 😁

@bobble same though I've taken to setting myself maths/physics/world building puzzles

@BESW the last larp I played at someone swapped out the +30 damage call with just "Lovely" because that ended up being insta-gib territory

@bobble sounds like a certain ex-chair I know of

BESW

9:53 AM

"The creators of horror anthology RPG Campfire talk shop" interview by Chase Carter for Dicebreaker. Cryptkeeper, eat your heart out.

Card Mech Jam Hosted by Zuhayri Mohamed. Write a TTRPG in which playing cards play a major role.

The Devil's Almanac by Sohkrates. Devil's Bargains for Blades in the Dark.

Hot RPG Questions

11:13 AM

3

Q: Is there a reason for Searing Blade to have a standard action as an initiation action?

Both Inferno Blade (stronger) and Burning Blade (weaker) have a swift action as the initiation action, which make sense, as the boost only lasts until your turn ends, however, Searing Blade stands out as it's the only one that requires a standard action. I've looked up the errata but this maneuve...

dnd-3.5e actions tome-of-battle action-economy

AncientSwordRage

11:38 AM

@HotRPGQuestions You could maybe use Searing Blade to make infinite rare steaks if it wasn't limit this way, it's too over powered otherwise.

RevanantBacon

12:34 PM

@AncientSwordRage No! My dreams of being the owner of the best steakhouse in all Faerun! Dashed in an instant

nitsua60

1:31 PM

@Ben Would buy.

nitsua60

1:46 PM

An updoot to get this querent into chat might be useful.

Thomas Markov

@nitsua60 done

BlueMoon93

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/188515/how-to-i-run-the-tomb-of-horrors-better?noredirect=1#188516
Twilight Clerics are considered broken? I had no idea this was a common opinion :P

It looks like a good subclass, and there's one on my party rn, but maybe because he rolled poor stats, it doesn't seem out of place with the rest of us

Thomas Markov

I don't think its broken, just on the strong end of the subclass spectrum.

Twilight Sanctuary is a stupid good feature.

KorvinStarmast

2:07 PM

@bobble updoot complete

@nitsua60 updoot also completed

@nitsua60 I also retracted the close vote, since A stated in a comment under my answer what they were looking to try and do, so I edited that into the question, and corrected the prose in the process

@BlueMoon93 300' radius dim light is a ridiculous feature, for starters ...

If it was 60 or 120 at least it would be close in scale to other class features.

Thomas Markov

@KorvinStarmast You can also give it to everyone else for an hour

Once per long rest for free, or by dropping a 1st level spell slot on it

Also Twilight Sanctuary scales with your cleric level.

Also you can fly for a minute as a bonus action

KorvinStarmast

2:28 PM

@ThomasMarkov Yeah, many issues with that domain, I have no idea what the folks in the back room were smoking when they decided that it was ready for release in final form.

@ThomasMarkov Oh, wait, does the dim light overwrite the darkness spell? I think we have a Q&A on that, checking .. nvm

Thomas Markov

@KorvinStarmast That's the thing, it really appears quite polished. To me it's well written, there aren't any weird rules interactions immediately evident, but it's just really strong.

KorvinStarmast

@ThomasMarkov Balance: what a concept. Maybe Mike Mearls came back and worked on that one with them ...

bobble

@BardicWizard ah, I used to use pre-existing settings but don't anymore. I do take inspiration from other fiction: there was a scene in Loki I thought was cool, but it would be cooler tweaked a bit, so I plopped the general idea into a fresh works and made up some characters that would take the story in the direction I wanted

KorvinStarmast

darkness, it overwrited darkvision, yes it does. We just don't see it used often enough, I need to do something about that.

bobble

I world-build during the story as details become interesting or necessary; my settings tend to be low fantasy or current-world-but-magic.

nitsua60

2:41 PM

Headdesk: you're running ToH, not ToA. 'S'okay, though, because I know at least a couple regular chatizens have run 5e's ToH, too. — nitsua60 43 secs ago

(cc: @ThomasMarkov @KorvinStarmast)

Thomas Markov

1

A: Which type of dragon is depicted in the middle of the cover art for this chapter of the "Rise of Tiamat" published adventure?

Hey everyone this is Marcel Mercado, the artist behind the art. As many have pointed out, that is another silver dragon. The brief called for one Gold dragon, and two silver dragon. Quadratic Wizard nailed it on the head.

I love it when this happens.

nitsua60

2:54 PM

Creator of work asked about in question stops in to answer ^^. As such, deserves many upvotes!

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 did I spell that wrongly in my answer?

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast Debating about posting my own ToH frame challenge. But hopefully they'll come in here.

KorvinStarmast

3:11 PM

@NautArch You've got the experience base for a fine answer (not sure how many new players you had)

NautArch

@KorvinStarmast No new players, but I would never do this with new players. Unless those 'new' players were 1e players.

And even then...

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 in roll20, how do you overlay the darkness spell using dynamic lighting? You ever done that? I was messing with it last night and I am not sure if I have to go into each PC's sheet and mess with the settings?

L Cooper

3:48 PM

@nitsua60 Y'know, it's nice to know that I'm not the only one that gets these two mixed up. In my mind, it always seems like a dungeon that's specifically designed to kill people should be the Annihilation one, since that's what it does... (Still haven't found a group willing to bite to let me run it. I like the idea of playing it almost like Paranoia, just slapping characters into the meat grinder until fun comes out.)

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast No, I just had noticed that both you and Thomas had interacted with the question, and might have noticed my earlier (erroneous) comment.

@KorvinStarmast I don't remember at all--it's been years since I played with R20 lighting, sorry.

@LCooper We did that a couple of years back when Ready Player One was on the school's summer reading list. (Before the movie.) Another GM and I had a stack of pregens and kids could come to the table, three at a time, make a run at it, and go back to the end of the line when they died. It was hella-fun =)

During fall orientation the director of student activities rented a bunch of arcade games and had us set up in the student center, so the kids could come down and play many of the referent-games in the book.

L Cooper

4:03 PM

@nitsua60 Oh, that sounds like a ton of fun! Mind if I ask how quickly people wound up dying? I was thinking about a marginally less wholesome drinking game variant, because it seems like a grand time, but I'm not familiar enough with the module to know what things would be likely to come up.. (other than the apparently-ubiquitous 10ft pole)

Hot RPG Questions

4:36 PM

2

Q: Increasing chances of successful ranged attacks for a blind Ranger with blind fighting

I have a player who is playing a blind PC. She is a 3rd-level Ranger and she has chosen Blind Fighting as her fighting style, so she has blindsight of 10 ft. (TCE, p.41). From what I gather from the blinded condition, she has disadvantage on ranged attack rolls that are more than 10 feet away. Sh...

dnd-5e conditions ranged-attack blind

AncientSwordRage

4:56 PM

@RevanantBacon any thoughts about the remaining AFR land cards?

GcL

@LCooper I've run into it twice as a player back in AD&D. Do not recommend doing with a character you want to keep. Also, it's a bit gimmicky in that unless you already know the trick of some of the traps, you're pretty much hosed. That should probably be my goto example of why Rogue-like D&D is not fun.

L Cooper

5:09 PM

@GcL That's why I was thinking to maybe do some fiddling with tone and go for a less Rogue-like experience and more of a Paranoia vibe- embrace the chaos and repeated deaths and get a little silly with it (which, knowing my usual players, would wind up happening anyway)

GcL

@LCooper Doing the jump/reset thing removes death and loss of character as a deterrent or bad outcome. Then it becomes a game of escape room where the players are just waving chickens at stuff in order to stumble upon the right trick. At that point, reading the module with the DMs notes and then watching a movie is a better use of time.

If you could replace death & loss of character with something else to serve as a deterrent, that might be interesting.

L Cooper

@GcL Hm, yeah, that's a good point on mechanics-- it seems like a common discussion about TOH is how to handle getting people back into the dungeon and how to make it punishing without being too much of a slog-- which sort of gets us back to Roguelikes.

Maybe take a page from Hades' book and put a gaggle of delightful and sometimes romanceable NPCs outside the dungeon?? (Joking! Mostly.)

GcL

@LCooper I don't think the original players in Gygax's group actually finished it. The story I got is that they noped the heck out shortly after all their henchmen were dead.

L Cooper

@GcL With my current plan of playing it as sort of a drinking game, I suspect that I won't get anyone to the end either! But a few hours of dungeoneering chaos sounds like a worthwhile use for a weekend night to me ;)

GcL

Is there a 5e port of it? I have to imagine someone has done that legwork.

L Cooper

5:27 PM

Yep, it's in Tales from the Yawning Portal!

GcL

Nice.

KorvinStarmast

@GcL Somewhere, Rob Kuntz has posted his brief remembrance of how Robilar handled ToH;

NautArch

@GcL It was an awful experience for me and my players.

GcL

So it was faithfully ported to 5e. At least there's that.

KorvinStarmast

5:52 PM

I think this link shows part of how Kuntz pulled it off

nitsua60

@LCooper Pretty frequently--20 min on average, I'd say?--but keep in mind they were 3-PC parties whose players were high schoolers who (generally) didn't know how to play D&D.

In my experience ToH (5e) was actually pretty easy: I and three other players at an AL table managed the whole thing without any deaths. Or, really, any close calls.

GcL

And without getting stuck? I recall the non-TPK playthrough we couldn't figure out where to go or how to advance beyond some area and just left.

KorvinStarmast

6:08 PM

@GcL If you completely embrace 'this is an exploration pillar challenge' I think the module does what it is intended to do, until the end boss fight.

L Cooper

@nitsua60 Hm, interesting! 20 minute cycles would work really well for my plans, but having everyone get through without trouble would not...

nitsua60

@GcL I think the key was that in the entry hallway we quickly glommed onto one or two things (thematically), and that drove us to be pretty methodical and persistent in finding paths... if that makes sense.

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