SwiggitySwole

joined 2 years ago
[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago

Technically, though Arena was all of Tamriel and Daggerfall was High Rock, northern Hammerfell and the disputed territory of Orsinium

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Somethin' stupid in my ass

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

It's not up to me, as the GM it's my job to interpret the players actions and ideas through the lenses of both the rules and the world.

Also we discussed it after it happened and everyone including the player who sacrificed themself wanted the plot to go forward that way.

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Why is true resurrection out of range but plane hopping isn't? This seems like a great opportunity to have them complete a quest for some high level NPC who does have access to true resurrection

There are a few reasons for this that I left out of the post because the context required would have bloated the post, the first is simply that I try to avoid high level spellcaster NPCs because players tend to see them as the solution to everything, the closest thing they have is a wizard friend who studies magic but doesn't like to use it aside from things like identify.

Secondly the deceased character is from our previous campaign, which soft-ended when that character died because around the same time one of the other players had to leave the group but we got a new player who had never played before who wanted to join, we didn't want to slap them with an 8th level character sheet though so we started a new campaign with the understanding that around 8th level the two campaigns would converge and the new players character would join the old party. The player with the dead character is fulfilling the role of character who can enable the plane shifting, giving me a convenient way to write the character out when the time comes. The other 2 players will get to choose if they want to continue as their new or old characters. (This was all discussed with the players before starting the new campaign in very big picture terms)

Thirdly, plane hopping just feels more fun to me than standard resurrection and it adds to the weight of the moment. That character died by sacrificing themself. If you've played the 5e spelljammer adventure you'd be able to guess exactly how it happened. A running gag of the previous campaign is that no matter what misfortune befell them they'd always weasel their way out of serious consequences (despite my best efforts) and this would be the ultimate no consequences moment.

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

The backup plan is always just to make it up, but I prefer to stick to established lore with the hopes that 50 years of ironing out (or retconning) has made it internally consistent enough to get by.

 

So in my campaign a character died in a way where the body is entirely destroyed, but the players wanted to revive them anyway. The only spell that they can possibly access can fix this for them is true resurrection which is way out of range for them. The backup plan was to go find their soul and figure out a new plan from there. I'm fine with that with my understanding of what happens when you die in Forgotten Realms lore (as follows)

Step 1. You die.
Step 2. You go to the fugue plane and get judged by Kelemvor.
Step 3. Your soul is sent to whoever has a claim to it in cases of warlockery, religious beliefs or other deals.
Step 3a. In case the above doesn't apply your soul gets sent to it's alignments plane.
Step 4. You either become a native being of the plane (lesser devil, demon, planetar, etc) or are a spirit that resembles your original body.

This character was chaotic good, meaning they're in Arborea/Olympus. My players are on a crash course to getting into that plane and finding this character, but Olympus is a plane of heroes and has lots of things to fight, what happens if this character dies? Do they get rejudged and just end up where they are again? Are my assumptions wrong and I'm missing something?

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

It's a fairly realistic medieval adventure rpg, sword fighting is stance based and very hard, you also suck at everything to begin with because you start off as an illiterate blacksmiths son. The sequel is a continuation of his story. It's pretty story focused but you can definitely have a ton of fun just wandering around stealing shit and fighting people if you want to, once you get good at stealing and fighting

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 11 points 7 months ago

We were playing blades in the dark, they were sneaking into the back of a warehouse to steal some blood while the rest of the party made a distraction out front, the dog was right there and he didn't think he'd be able to sneak past it. He could have stabbed it but chose not to I guess. Maybe he thought that would be more cruel?

375
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee to c/rpgmemes@ttrpg.network
 

Comic creator link: https://bsky.app/profile/sarahcandersen.bsky.social

In my last session, a player gave a sleeping dog heroin to cause it to overdose. Horrific stuff really

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

My players aren't murder hobos, but the tavern is in a bad part of town and suddenly has a bunch of magic items

 

Early on in my current campaign my players were sent on a quest by a wizard friend of theirs, he gave them a sending stone so he could keep in contact with them. After that quest ended my players got a nice big downtime, 1 month. One of my players, who owns a tavern, asked to dedicate that downtime to finding some more sending stones, one for each player and the pairs to be held by the barkeep NPC she employs. I rolled on the tables in XGtE and got a price that they could afford.

Are there any unforeseen downsides in letting them spend all their money on sending stones? I know this effectively gives them party wide telekinesis but since they're using this NPC as a telephone switchboard (literally how they pitched the idea) I can reserve the right to say he's busy and can't forward their messages.

I decided to give them the stones and then ran a session, they got separated for a few minutes and spent most of it talking through that npc to each other instead of trying to solve the problem that separated them. They've implemented a rule that he needs to write down what they say and relay the message exactly. 10/10 it was quite funny. Try doing this with your players.

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That was how it worked in the playtest. The sidebar saying "pick a race you really are and pretend to be half the other race" is gone from the 2024 PHB. Rules as written, you can only be fully one race, this of course doesn't actually matter as the whole thing is imaginary bullshit but in organised play it'll sometimes come up.

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago

One time I was just trying to do my money laundering restocking in GTA:O (iirc it was money laundering, it was whatever business you got when the game went free on epic games) and a guy on the flying motorbike killed me for no reason and it wasted a ton of time, eventually I killed him back and he spawned in the desert in front of me so I spawn killed him until he apologized.

I'm not saying what I did was right, I did it in the heat of the moment. But man, that game is really good at making you mad at people.

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 9 points 11 months ago

Also be careful of the shield spike, the dwarf in the diagram would have just stabbed himself

[–] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Demiplane is dndbeyond for RPGs other than dnd*, currently pathfinder 2e, alien RPG, avatar legends, the 2 critical role RPGs, and some others.

*They're also adding 5th edition soon, but it's currently just the dnd 5e SRD and kobold presses Tales of the Valiant, not the full dnd 5e

 

As a hardcore roll20 hater, I'm not too happy about this. Hopefully this at least makes R20 better and demiplane won't just be killed off in 6 months.

 

I recently watched the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode in which they did a parody of "The Island of Dr Moreau" and thought a mad scientist trying to turn people into animals could make for a fun minor character in my campaign. My players are en route to a dungeon and should be there in a few sessions, I'm thinking of making the dungeon the lab of a mad scientist who has gotten locked out of the lower levels due to a containment breach.

The details I have so far is that he is a gnome, currently named Prof. Moreau, who has created mongrelfolk while trying to turn a human into an animal.

The mongrelfolk are safely contained in the lower levels and have started to create their own society, I think the boss of the dungeon should be a Gibbering Mouther called One, as in Attempt One.

I think the Mongrelfolk should worship one as their leader and hate Moreau for keeping them locked in the lab.

What I'm stuck on now is what life is like for the mongrelfolk, what they believe and how they have organised society.

 

last post linked here: https://lemmy.world/post/15519782

First of all, thanks for all of the advice on the last post. You all definitely got the gears turning for me. I just had the session and wanted to make an update post on how it went.

I started the session off with the players moved into a cell and restrained. the core members of the cult remained behind to deal with the issue while the majority of the cult left to get set up somewhere else. meanwhile Sorcerer arrived at Clerics tavern and told the barkeep, who grabbed some weapons and some roughnecks and headed to the cults hideout with Sorcerer. The cult pumped the party for information, using a zone of truth spell (whole party beat the save DC so the cult got no useful information out of this, except one player let slip the name of Sorcerer). The cult then decided to sacrifice these party members which took some time because its a whole ritual. Just as they finished the Sorcerer showed up, interrupting the sacrificial ceremony. A fight broke out, Druid and Rogue managed to slip their bonds and Cleric was freed by the barkeep who also dropped a bag of weapons so everyone was armed. Temporarily outgunned, the core cult members made an escape, leaving behind a few clues explaining their master plan. the party is now firmly in control of the situation with the villains having to bide their time and regroup while the party looks for a macguffin that should spoil their plans. (now to decide what that macguffin is...)

this isn't going to become a campaign diary or anything, I just wanted to say thanks again to everyone for letting me leech your ideas.

 

The following all happens in a town and the nearby surrounding area.

So my party, hereby referred to as their classes are currently third level and have infiltrated a cults hideout, they went there looking for Rogues friend and snuck in with disguises and managed to bluff their way into where the friend was being held. She was in a holding cell. After some deliberation they devised a plan to cast silent image and sneak her out, they couldn't manage to pick the lock and Cleric smashed the door in, this was heard by nearby cultists and they decided to just make a break for it. The cult massively outnumbered them and the party got surrounded. Sorcerer, who is an Aasimar and can fly at 3rd level, flew past everyone and escaped while the rest of the party surrendered. We ended the session there and Sorcerer told me after the session that they plan to go to Cleric's tavern to get the barkeep and any tough looking patrons to form a quick mob.

The conundrum here is that I can't think of a good reason for these cultists to not just kill the party aside from that's not fun. The cult is aware that one of them escaped is probably going to bring the law down on them, so they'll also want to leave. If I was them (and in a way I am) I'd probably kill the witnesses and bail.

Any advice?

 

Hey everyone, I'm looking for any tips or advice with running exploration, as a recent example my players recently came across an abandoned ship and decided to climb aboard and look for any treasures that were left behind. They went room to room and I made an effort to describe each room in detail but the whole process felt very drawn out and repetitive. Especially if there's no special encounter in that room.

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