DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

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Adiwan
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 4:38 pm

Yesterday I had the first session of the new campaign.
It took too damn long to agree upon a date, and the DM had to prepare and plan the world.
We take only the first core books and Xanathar's Guide to Everything as a basis for the rules including some house rules regarding building houses and businesses. The standard rules are prohibitively badly designed for a place far from civilization and keeping a business in the long run.

In the village of Donkey Passage (or Donkey Ford?) (German: Eselfurt), far away from civilization, our characters live and reside.

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My character Sam (Changeling name)(class Bard), or better known as Varrick Blackstone works as a barkeep at the tavern "The Drunk Unicorn", and is secretly also the mayor and owner of the tavern disguised as the old man Garrick Trueman. His wife Pon (Alana Blackstone) is also employed there and both share the personality of the mayor when needed.

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Frederik Mannstein is the local hunter (class Rogue Scout) that earns a bit of money selling meat he has hunted to the tavern or the local citizens, or he trades the meat for other goods. Frederick was together with Yelena at the same boarding school but was kicked out because drugs were found in his room.

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Morten Ikharad is a necromantic wizard and keeps the graveyard afloat. His house is filled with the spirits of his past relatives that he brought there. He doesn't raise the dead but he keeps a special connection to the spirits of the deceased.

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Sik Silverscale (Silberschuppe) (class Fighter) was found and raised by Frederick and Varrick. Very quickly he grew up and got a silver star (therefore the surname Silverscale). As the village expanded a sheriff was needed and Sik was available and popular among the citizens, so it was reason enough for the mayor to give him the job.

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Raya van Gallandi (class Cleric) has a small temple and has the job to spread her religion and is the voice of reason. From time to time she resolves conflicts between the citizens and has become a de facto judge and everyone respects her decisions.

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Yelena van Gallandi (class Rogue Warlock multi-class) is the new girl in town and the punk that turns the village upside-down.
She was dealing with drugs at the school and was shortly married with Raya in their wild years. She heard that Raya "earns" money and wants to scrounge it from Raya because they are technically still married. Her first appearance resulted in a big verbal fight at the marketplace in the presence of Yelena's new friend, an aristocratic Warforged with a tophat.

The first session began with a report from a pig farmer that a griffon grabbed a few pigs and the verbal confrontation between Yelena and Raya. Then a horse with a broken-off carriage walked onto the scene and displayed various signs of a fight, but it couldn't be discerned whether the cuts came from a griffon claw or a sword.
So the mayor assembled a team with people with attitude (or people who were stupid enough knowing too much about griffons or resembling to be competent enough for this task or being married to him (or her because it was Varrick's wife in this instance)).
The heroes followed the trail left from the broken-off carriage to the other part of the carriage.
There they were attacked by goblins, that were quickly defeated but some ran away.
Then they followed the goblins into a cave where the fight continued.
A small stream of water ran through the opening of the cave that made movement harder (besides the darkness).
A bit deeper into the cave the goblins' trap has sprung and they opened a gate to a dam inside the cave.
Because it was a good place for a cliffhanger and it was very late we decided to end the session here.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by W.T. Fits (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 7:41 pm

West Filly wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:26 pm
I built an elf that is basically pearl as a 5th edition character at 5th level and I'm not even ashamed.

Spears are quarterstaffs but strictly better, that's the main weapon right there.

Dual wielding swords works because finesse means she can use dex on the damage even though it's not her monk weapon. Yes that means she can't do monk weapon things, but it's there purely to maximise the amount of melee weapon attacks in a turn. The stunning blow class feature doesn't specify that it has to be a monk weapon, just that you can apply it after a hit on a melee weapon attack, so dual wielding gives you a third melee weapon attack in the turn with the potential for delivering stuns.

It's tricky to pull off, but one day I will stun three separate enemies in a single turn.

Edit: shortswords are monk weapons anyway :-D
What school is your monk?

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 8:06 pm

Open hand. The elementalist stuff sucked. The shadow stuff would have been more Pearl (minor illusion as a cantrip) but I have to justify that this character is 'totally a wood elf from a forest tribe' and not a crystal gem.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by W.T. Fits (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 8:33 pm

There's a monastic tradition called the kensei that lets you pick extra weapons to treat as monk weapons and gives you additional benefits when fighting with them.

The original version of it can be found in this Unearthed Arcana pdf from the WotC D&D site. It was also later included in Xanathar's Guide to Everything with a few revisions.

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 9:42 pm

That's a cool monk archetype but something feels off about it. It's like there's nothing particularly flavourful going on and whoever made it just wants to have strictly better weapons with strictly better hit chance and even strictly better AC. There's no flavour to it other than cheese. From a numbers perspective it's good but I guess what I'm saying is it doesn't give you more options for things you can do in your turn, it just makes attacks more likely to happen and more painful for the victim. My inner power gamer loves the idea but I also feel like I'd have less shenanigans than I do with, say, the ability to knock people prone.

I'm not against cheese per se. I've plotted out this character's progression in my mind and they will dip into fighter at some point, so it'll be good for finesse weapons given that I don't really need a monk weapon specifically for most of the monk's abilities. I'm going to beg my GM to allow her to take the mariner fighting style on the basis that wood elf monks climb trees erryday, but I'm really just looking for that level 2 action surge. 6 attacks in one turn and I can move between each of them.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by ToastGhost (?) » Tue Mar 13, 2018 10:27 pm

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I've been playing D&D since I was 8. 5e is pretty solid. That's my report. :v:
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Logicgate (?) » Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:28 pm

In 13th Age my character had improvised weapons as her monk weapon and was a professional wrestler thank you for listening bye

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Mon Mar 19, 2018 1:28 pm

How hard could she get hit?
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Logicgate (?) » Mon Mar 19, 2018 3:42 pm

I actually picked the notably worse monk option where you can use Charisma instead of Wisdom for your Monk abilities because it was flavorful, when it's obviously numerically worse since Wisdom is used in calculating both AC and Mental Defense and Charisma is only in Mental Defense

She was very charismatic, but, uh, Wisdom was not her strong suit. One of her persistent character flaws is that she was very gung-ho about any solution that involved fighting or putting on a show, but really didn't think about the consequences beyond that. Good at punching evil, bad at any sort of long-term solution.

also bad at determining who in the room is evil, if I'm being honest

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Aramek (?) » Tue Mar 20, 2018 8:50 am

She's Rainbow Dash.
Image There was a link here, it's dead now and I'm sad.

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Logicgate (?) » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:23 am

She liked to go off the top rope a lot (or to jump off whatever tall things there were around) and had several abilities that let her temporarily fly, so you're not wrong

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by W.T. Fits (?) » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:38 pm

Was she a luchadore?

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Strangething (?) » Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:34 am

Luchadore monks are the best monks.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Logicgate (?) » Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:34 am

Not a luchadore. She was a sort of classy, smug, foreign superiority heel, due to being an elf in a gnome-owned promotion that worked in human territory

The owner was Vincent McNohem.

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Captain Rufus (?) » Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:08 am

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If you aren't Tunnels and Trolls you aint nothin!

And now on Amazon in handy starter kit form with MANGA. For when you want to see where Console RPGs got much of their mechanics from in the Famicom days. (TnT not DnD.)

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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:43 pm

I'm in a 5e DnD game, we meet IRL. We take it in turns to GM and the baton has been passed to me. I'm here asking for any ideas you might have to make my thing more interesting.

At the minute all I have done is reveal that there are dragonborns who go around intimidating the nobility of this part of the world for money and riches, as they are the children of dragons who have the capability to burn places down. They don't burn places down often because you get more riches from places which are alive. They have learned that the dragons live in a mountain range on our campaign map.

I've also mentioned that there are mages in a tower location on our campaign map, including a famous abjurer who invented a device that can be used to ward mass graves against necromancy.

That's all I have confirmed.

The Player Characters are:

Yuri Scissorfiend - Tiefling Cleric4. Ignoring his name completely :-I , he's a cleric of loki with trickster powers to boot. He's very talkative, hyperactive and likes to stir things up. The character proselytises for Loki in the campaign while also acting as a clown. He often draws NPCs into his card tricks in order to try and bamboozle people into giving him discounts or what have you. Sometimes he even tricks enemies in combat into fighting against one another. With a high score in Deception and Persuasion, Yuri is the party's diplomancer. His player's natural personality is very outgoing and cunning, making Yuri our party leader and chief of making things interesting if not difficult.

Tina Beans - Gnome Ranger3/Druid1. Tina went to the same orphanage as Yuri. She spends a lot of her time drinking rum and talking to small animals. She tries to use small animals as her eyes and ears in any location. The player themselves has stated that Tina's character is based on Vicky Pollard, who is a character from an awful UK based comedy show who can only be described as the purest caricature of a chav. She often steals alcohol, but apart from that she does actually do good. She gets all up in NPCs faces and makes a big scene if someone's doing wrong, suggesting a sense of morality even if she has no tact or class. Her player is very good at roleplaying and has a good sense of humour.

Tara - Human Ranger3/Rogue1. Tara also went to the orphanage with Yuri and Tina. She spends a lot of her time gathering information from NPCs and often makes the logical or safe decision. She's the party's sensible one. She's the first to run from combat if it looks like people will start dying. She often encourages people to sneak or work to a plan which gives the party an upper hand in combat. Her ranger abilities give her an incredible damage output vs single opponents. Her player tries to make sense of the story while also using the scenery to her advantage. She'll remember obscure details from way back in the past.

Syndri - Gnome Wizard(conjurer)4. Syndri is new to the party, and we have yet to see his character exactly. He seems to have the typical wizard trait of wanting to "find out more about magic" and "find magical things" which is usually code for "feed me spells and magic items plz" :v: . His player comes from a war gaming background and seems to have a limit for social or conversational roleplaying. He is good at thinking outside of the box, at one point he even sought to resolve a combat encounter by reading from an ancient text he found about a creature we were fighting. My best guess is that he's one to try the most direct/efficient route at all times. This is particularly in the context that this player had a character before Syndri who was a barbarian.

????? - Dragonborn ?????. This character has only been in one session before, and we definitely don't have anything to their character. All I know is that they're capable of fire magic and will often detect good/evil. I know that their player has self confessed to being a power gamer, and in the session he played beforehand it was as though they were using their detect good/evil to get the party in a fast march toward the combat encounters.

My player character isn't relevant as she won't be joining the party for my adventures.

Plans?

The players say they want to investigate the mages first and head to the dragons later. I'm thinking this could be a chance to have adventures where rumours of the dragons will slide in, and maybe they'll find things to arm themselves against the dragons.

Tina made a scene where she exposed herself as being strongly against the dragonborn clan. A lot of people in the world were watching at the time and maybe an NPC could approach her offering their support for her views.

Yuri has also pissed off two of the dragonborns by being Yuri to their face. It surprised me because I was expecting him to want to join them or swindle them out of their riches. Their player and I have both independently mentioned that an assassination attempt is on the cards.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Apr 07, 2018 4:48 am

2nd D&D session and my character was killed by a ravaging griffon, being slashed and then carried away by said griffon and being freed by a crossbow bolt of a party member and then definitely killed splashing on the ground.

After a short talk with the DM afterwards there will be a way to revive my character, however I won't be a changeling anymore because the revival will be done by a druid. In better terms it's the reincarnation spell. At least it's locked that my character will take the exact same appearance as he did beforehand when being transformed.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by West Filly (?) » Sat Apr 07, 2018 8:21 am

I find that 5e is a little bit heavy on the character death compared to other editions. Given that our game is one where we take turns to be GM, I can't be sure resurrection will be possible. My strategy is to make two characters that I love. The death of the first becomes an opportunity to play the second, at which point I'd prepare a third.

It's the cirrrrrrcle of liiiiife.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Apr 07, 2018 8:46 am

Funnily enough I didn't die in the previous D&D 5e campaign with my ranger (Level 3 - 12).
In 4e my characters died like the flies. In the last 4e campaign I had 5 characters.
Otherwise I totally agree that the characters in their first 5 levels are quite squishy.
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Re: DUNGEONS AND ALSO DRAGONS THREAD

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sun Apr 29, 2018 8:08 am

My character is alive again!!!
But it was paid very dearly. The powerful "druid" who was supposed to resurrect/reincarnate my character was in fact a druid, so that's the good news. The bad news is that this druid was a green dragon and the players have become its subservient little pawns and our town is somewhat in danger of becoming a target when we won't deliver on its demands.
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