When we last left our heroes, they had defeated the half-dragon Langdedrosa Cyanwrath and a pair of his lackeys. That fight left us a little drained, so we took a short rest in his chamber. The hour passed uneventfully, and Thok took the lead, climbing up a rope ladder down a short passage. He was followed by Censura, and I was at the base of the ladder while Sandi guarded the rear. Thok made a stealth check with advantage. A canvas topped a portal at the top of the ladder.
Thok moved aside the canvas and came face-to-face with a woman in purple robes brandishing a halberd. Thok tried to intimidate her, but failed. Then Censura tried diplomacy, also with limited success. The clincher came when I followed them up the ladder to make sure I could support them when the guards the woman called would enter the room. We would later learn that this was one of the cult's lieutenants in the area: Frulam Mondath.
We were soon swarmed by low level cultists, but fortunately they used their actions Dashing (this edition's equivalent of taking a double move). Only one slightly stronger guard appeared. Mondath cast an area spell with an initial effect of slowing enemies in its area, and it required concentration. Sandi used his hail of thorns spell to drop some of the low level cultists, and even managed to injure Mondath, causing her to lose concentration on the spell. This was good, because the DM let us know that Mondath's spell would have done more nasty things at the beginning of her turn.
We managed to kill a few other cultists before laying fully into Mondath. I ended up contributing one of the bigger lump sums of damage with a 2nd level inflict wounds, which does 4d10 necrotic damage. Afterwards, Mondath fled. Shortly afterwards, between thaumaturgy assisted intimidation from Censura broke the moral of the remaining cultists and most fled.
Once we had killed the stragglers, we searched for treasure, finding some valuables on the cultists, and some clues on a desk in the room: a map and letter indicating that the treasure the cult was gathering was headed north to a place called Naerytar.
We then barricaded ourselves in the room and took a much needed long rest.
When I return, I'll finish my discussion of the DMG.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Magic Items (Yes!)
I think even the stingiest, most flint-hearted DM knows how important magic items are to the game of D&D and its players. Finding that perfect item for your character is a little like getting a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas, which is to say, AWESOME!
A little bit of background. Magic items have been in D&D since the beginning. The first edition I'm familiar with is 2nd, so we'll go from there. In that one, magic was rare treasure from bygone empires, but necessary to hurt higher level monsters. So you scrambled over it whenever you found it, and struggled to save it. Weapons and armor had bonuses, as did rings of protection, and those capped at +5.
Again in 3e, magic items were a bit rare but necessary to deal with higher level threats. In fact, it was assumed that the party would amass items and the associated bonuses at a certain rate to keep pace with the threats they encountered at higher level. Again, weapon items and protective items capped at +5 bonuses, but weapon and armor abilities were designed to be modular, so a particularly optimizing player could build his perfect weapon and suit of armor. But 3e introduced something new: a magic item economy. A character built a certain way could make magic items. But almost no one ever built a character like this-part of the cost of building an item was your character's precious, precious Xp. That could be a steep cost for disposable items like scrolls and potions! But it was assumed that NPCs could be built to make items, so players could buy and sell them. In fact, the setting that premiered in 3e, Eberron, assumed that this magic item crafting was common enough that it replaced technology.
And 4e took this to its logical conclusion-something many people (sticks in the mud, in my opinion)-took issue with. Magic items were part and parcel of the treasure PCs received (and I do mean parcel, that was 4e's term for a unit of treasure). Again, the pluses received from magic weapons and protection were built into the growth of threats the PCs faced. The caps this time, however, was +6. Also, you wouldn't have bonus armor, a ring with a plus, and a cloak with a plus, 4e featured a very detailed breakdown of what you could equip where and what kinds of benefits you could get. And it still had the magic item economy. Players could buy and sell items to their black-hearts' content, and even make them without too much effort-no Xp was required to be expended. While armor and weapons were no longer modular, generally a weapon or armor only had one ability, each ability was assumed to fit on a variety of different kinds of weapons or armor, anyway.
The new edition seems to be trying to find a balance between the older method and the newer. The baseline assumption is that magic items are still the relics of bygone empires, but there still seems to be an economy for minor consumable items-potions of healing are available in the PHB. And, as I've already mentioned, the DMG includes optional rule for players to use character downtime to make magic items of their own. They've added a rarity mechanic, so items are (like Magic cards!) common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or legendary. Legendary items cover what 3e would have called minor artifacts, really powerful stuff that is in somewhat limited supply. Abilities are no longer officially modular, but suggestions for customizing items later in the book suggests switching abilities to different items. This time the bonuses cap at +3 for weapons, armor, and even shields. The item slots are left up to the DM and common sense to govern, but 4e does have a limit: attunement.
Attunement was introduced in 4e, and it required the character to spend some time with an item before being able to get the benefit from it. In 5e, you spend a short rest with the item (an hour), and it is attuned. In 5e, you can have up to three items attuned. How does that work in play? Most of the basic items don't require attunement, so if you're lucky enough you could carry around however many +1 weapons you want and use them, but the nicer items, the ones that let you have a +1 sword that shoots fire and the armor that lets you turn invisible, require attunement. So more than likely, rather than being able to layer their ten cloaks, the character will really only be able to use one of them. And you might have to choose between attuning that shield that makes you immune to everything and that sword that lets you kill everything if you already have the armor that lets you turn invisible, those boots that let you fly, and that ring that summons fire elementals.
There's a lot more, but this is only a blog. When we return, we'll see how our heroes fare against the remaining inhabitants of that cave.
A little bit of background. Magic items have been in D&D since the beginning. The first edition I'm familiar with is 2nd, so we'll go from there. In that one, magic was rare treasure from bygone empires, but necessary to hurt higher level monsters. So you scrambled over it whenever you found it, and struggled to save it. Weapons and armor had bonuses, as did rings of protection, and those capped at +5.
Again in 3e, magic items were a bit rare but necessary to deal with higher level threats. In fact, it was assumed that the party would amass items and the associated bonuses at a certain rate to keep pace with the threats they encountered at higher level. Again, weapon items and protective items capped at +5 bonuses, but weapon and armor abilities were designed to be modular, so a particularly optimizing player could build his perfect weapon and suit of armor. But 3e introduced something new: a magic item economy. A character built a certain way could make magic items. But almost no one ever built a character like this-part of the cost of building an item was your character's precious, precious Xp. That could be a steep cost for disposable items like scrolls and potions! But it was assumed that NPCs could be built to make items, so players could buy and sell them. In fact, the setting that premiered in 3e, Eberron, assumed that this magic item crafting was common enough that it replaced technology.
And 4e took this to its logical conclusion-something many people (sticks in the mud, in my opinion)-took issue with. Magic items were part and parcel of the treasure PCs received (and I do mean parcel, that was 4e's term for a unit of treasure). Again, the pluses received from magic weapons and protection were built into the growth of threats the PCs faced. The caps this time, however, was +6. Also, you wouldn't have bonus armor, a ring with a plus, and a cloak with a plus, 4e featured a very detailed breakdown of what you could equip where and what kinds of benefits you could get. And it still had the magic item economy. Players could buy and sell items to their black-hearts' content, and even make them without too much effort-no Xp was required to be expended. While armor and weapons were no longer modular, generally a weapon or armor only had one ability, each ability was assumed to fit on a variety of different kinds of weapons or armor, anyway.
The new edition seems to be trying to find a balance between the older method and the newer. The baseline assumption is that magic items are still the relics of bygone empires, but there still seems to be an economy for minor consumable items-potions of healing are available in the PHB. And, as I've already mentioned, the DMG includes optional rule for players to use character downtime to make magic items of their own. They've added a rarity mechanic, so items are (like Magic cards!) common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or legendary. Legendary items cover what 3e would have called minor artifacts, really powerful stuff that is in somewhat limited supply. Abilities are no longer officially modular, but suggestions for customizing items later in the book suggests switching abilities to different items. This time the bonuses cap at +3 for weapons, armor, and even shields. The item slots are left up to the DM and common sense to govern, but 4e does have a limit: attunement.
Attunement was introduced in 4e, and it required the character to spend some time with an item before being able to get the benefit from it. In 5e, you spend a short rest with the item (an hour), and it is attuned. In 5e, you can have up to three items attuned. How does that work in play? Most of the basic items don't require attunement, so if you're lucky enough you could carry around however many +1 weapons you want and use them, but the nicer items, the ones that let you have a +1 sword that shoots fire and the armor that lets you turn invisible, require attunement. So more than likely, rather than being able to layer their ten cloaks, the character will really only be able to use one of them. And you might have to choose between attuning that shield that makes you immune to everything and that sword that lets you kill everything if you already have the armor that lets you turn invisible, those boots that let you fly, and that ring that summons fire elementals.
There's a lot more, but this is only a blog. When we return, we'll see how our heroes fare against the remaining inhabitants of that cave.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Encounter Building 101
The new edition has an interesting encounter building system. Like in 3e, monsters have Challenge rating, indicating roughly how difficult it is for a group of 4 or so equal level characters. Like in 4e, monsters have a fixed experience value. In 3e, you used the Encounter Level table in the DMG along with the monster's challenge rating to gauge about how many monsters to stick in the encounter based on the party's level. Harder encounters would have ELs over the PCs level, and easier ones has lower ELs. In 4e, you had an experience budget based on the party's level, and used the budget to "buy" monsters. Again, you would move to a higher level for harder encounters and a lower level for easier ones.
In 5e, you create a budget based on the levels of the PCs, with thresholds for easy encounters, normal encounters, hard encounters and deadly encounters. However, 5e seems to acknowledge that larger groups mean more attacks against the PCs, leading to harder encounters. So as more monsters are added, the monsters' xp value gets multiplied for the purposes of determining the encounter's difficulty. In other words, mobs are considered a bigger threat.
By the way, I did the math, and at least two of the encounters we've been through (the kobolds with the drake pen and the re-match with Cyanwrath) qualified as deadly encounters. This was even after the DM nerfed Cyanwrath's back-up. And while a super-challenging dungeon may have been what the designers were going for, I do have to tell them, it's frustrating for players (and for certain kinds of DMs as well). My other theory is that the writers of the adventure weren't privy to the full design rules, so decided to over-estimate the capabilities of the players rather than vice versa. I haven't had a chance to actually play or run the starter set adventure (and I would love to), but it seemed to have some similar problems. And sure, a good DM can tweak the encounters (and our DM has), but part of the reason for using published adventure material is to cut down on prep time.
Well, we have another session this week. Hopefully we can handle the next deadly encounter the adventure throws at us.
In 5e, you create a budget based on the levels of the PCs, with thresholds for easy encounters, normal encounters, hard encounters and deadly encounters. However, 5e seems to acknowledge that larger groups mean more attacks against the PCs, leading to harder encounters. So as more monsters are added, the monsters' xp value gets multiplied for the purposes of determining the encounter's difficulty. In other words, mobs are considered a bigger threat.
By the way, I did the math, and at least two of the encounters we've been through (the kobolds with the drake pen and the re-match with Cyanwrath) qualified as deadly encounters. This was even after the DM nerfed Cyanwrath's back-up. And while a super-challenging dungeon may have been what the designers were going for, I do have to tell them, it's frustrating for players (and for certain kinds of DMs as well). My other theory is that the writers of the adventure weren't privy to the full design rules, so decided to over-estimate the capabilities of the players rather than vice versa. I haven't had a chance to actually play or run the starter set adventure (and I would love to), but it seemed to have some similar problems. And sure, a good DM can tweak the encounters (and our DM has), but part of the reason for using published adventure material is to cut down on prep time.
Well, we have another session this week. Hopefully we can handle the next deadly encounter the adventure throws at us.
Saturday, December 13, 2014
DMG, Part 2
Part 2 of the DMG is called Master of Adventure, and it contains the nuts and bolts of adventure design.
The first chapter is called, appropriately enough, Creating Adventures, and it contains all the nuts and bolts of adventure design, including dungeon crawls, wilderness journeys, and event-based adventures, with particular focus on mysteries and intrigue. It includes advice on adding twists and turns to adventures, then gives advice on encounter building (we'll come back to that later) and building random encounter tables. Their sample tables use d12+d8 to generate a 2-20 number. Not sure why not use 2d10, but I guess they figured people should give their dodecahedrons some more mileage.
The chapter after that has details on building NPCs. Rather than being filled with rules, however, this focuses on role-playing elements, such as unique NPC appearances and villain motivations. The chapter does conclude with new options for villainous NPCs using classes out of the PHB: the Death Domain for clerics and the Oathbreaker "archetype" for paladins.
The next chapter is Adventure Design. It starts off with dungeons (of course). It starts off with tables offering suggestions on dungeon locations, dungeon creators, and dungeon history. The funny thing about tables like these, is that I have found rolling on them helps unblock my creativity. It then offers advice on mapping dungeons, then lists some dungeon hazards, such as brown mold and green slime. The next section is wilderness adventures, covering navigation, survival, and interesting things to add to the scenery, as well as advice on covering overland journeys. Next it covers urban adventures, again with plenty of tables to fill random buildings that the characters might go bursting through as their chasing a thief through the crowded cities such as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, or Waterdeep. Lastly it covers underwater environments (I avoid them as a rule), sailing, and even flying. Last but not least, they have traps. Mostly focusing on building traps and scaling the damage rating to the party's level. They even had some examples, including the ubiquitous pit trap, the nasty poisoned needle, cinematic rolling sphere, and the classic sphere of annihilation in a leering devil face.
The next chapter, Between Adventures, has the most interest to the players buying the book (aside from the magic items) because it introduces a whole list of new downtime activities to supplement that slim list in the PHB. It includes building magic items, carousing, and, for enterprising players, running a business or building a stronghold. It also includes more information on upkeep costs.
The last chapter is Magic Items, but that rather long chapter will be getting its own post.
I'll return with a deeper look at the encounter design system, and how the adventure we're playing was clearly written before those rules.
The first chapter is called, appropriately enough, Creating Adventures, and it contains all the nuts and bolts of adventure design, including dungeon crawls, wilderness journeys, and event-based adventures, with particular focus on mysteries and intrigue. It includes advice on adding twists and turns to adventures, then gives advice on encounter building (we'll come back to that later) and building random encounter tables. Their sample tables use d12+d8 to generate a 2-20 number. Not sure why not use 2d10, but I guess they figured people should give their dodecahedrons some more mileage.
The chapter after that has details on building NPCs. Rather than being filled with rules, however, this focuses on role-playing elements, such as unique NPC appearances and villain motivations. The chapter does conclude with new options for villainous NPCs using classes out of the PHB: the Death Domain for clerics and the Oathbreaker "archetype" for paladins.
The next chapter is Adventure Design. It starts off with dungeons (of course). It starts off with tables offering suggestions on dungeon locations, dungeon creators, and dungeon history. The funny thing about tables like these, is that I have found rolling on them helps unblock my creativity. It then offers advice on mapping dungeons, then lists some dungeon hazards, such as brown mold and green slime. The next section is wilderness adventures, covering navigation, survival, and interesting things to add to the scenery, as well as advice on covering overland journeys. Next it covers urban adventures, again with plenty of tables to fill random buildings that the characters might go bursting through as their chasing a thief through the crowded cities such as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, or Waterdeep. Lastly it covers underwater environments (I avoid them as a rule), sailing, and even flying. Last but not least, they have traps. Mostly focusing on building traps and scaling the damage rating to the party's level. They even had some examples, including the ubiquitous pit trap, the nasty poisoned needle, cinematic rolling sphere, and the classic sphere of annihilation in a leering devil face.
The next chapter, Between Adventures, has the most interest to the players buying the book (aside from the magic items) because it introduces a whole list of new downtime activities to supplement that slim list in the PHB. It includes building magic items, carousing, and, for enterprising players, running a business or building a stronghold. It also includes more information on upkeep costs.
The last chapter is Magic Items, but that rather long chapter will be getting its own post.
I'll return with a deeper look at the encounter design system, and how the adventure we're playing was clearly written before those rules.
Langdedrosa Cyanwrath Re-match!
We started up again in the bat room. Aside from the corridor that led to the drake pens, the room had two other forward paths we could take: into a pit, and down a short set of stairs. We opted to check out the pit.
It was two 10 foot drops down into a garbage pit. We spotted some narrow crevices down in the pit. We detected a hint of a fouler smell than garbage in the air, so opted to stay on the ledge, and we took a short rest (remember, a short rest is an hour long in the basic rules).
After the hour, a re-cast light on my shield and also on Thok's shield. Then we went down the set of stairs. It ended at a curtain made of over-lapping straps of poorly cured hide. Corrin was about the go through the curtain, but with a successful Dexterity saving throw, back away before being skewered on hooks set in the hides. He ended up using a rusty, discarded spear that the denizens of the dungeon had set aside to push the curtains back to reveal a larder of meat. Once we were content that the larder was empty of anything of value, we went back to the drake pen.
Fortunately, there were no kobolds this time. I grabbed one of the training dummies on the walls of the room down the stairs Lokeo went down. When the dummy was not pelted with sling stones or stabbed by daggers, we ventured down and found the kobold barracks. We spent about ten minutes searching their foul beds and came up with some treasure.
We then followed another set of stairs deeper into the cave. We cam upon a room of worked stone carved with bas reliefs of dragons, including one of a really large dragon with five heads of different colors each-Tiamat. There was a chest sitting in front of the carving of Tiamat. The room also contained some inhabitant: Langdedrosa Cyanwrath, the half-blue dragon Censura "dueled" before, and two dragonclaws, the scimitar wielding fanatics.
Cyanwrath, being a nice guy, offered us a choice. We could let him duel Censura again and he would let the rest of us leave alive, or he would kill us all. We took a third option. I ended up winning initiatives (natural 20s are good for that). I cast guiding bolt on Cyanwrath, a damaging spell that grants advantage on the next attack roll against the target. I ended up using my War Domain feature to grant a +10 to the attack roll (I rolled a natural 7). In retrospect, I should have then engaged on of the dragonclaws and pinned it in place. Instead, Thok went to engage the other Dragonclaw, and missed his first attack, then Dragonclaws surrounded him. Fortunately, their first batch of attacks missed, but the second batch brought a critical hit, which dropped Thok, almost killing him. Then the dragonclaw opted to hit Thok again, resulting an automatic death saving throw failure.
Fortunately for us, Cyanwrath rolled terrible on initiative, so the rest of the party got to act before he did. Corrin used the advantage to deal a sneak attack to Cyanwrath. Then Censura used the "grovel" effect of the command spell to cause Cyanwrath to use his turn going prone.
I used healing word, which is advantageous because it can be used at range is only uses a bonus action, to bring Thok back into the fight. Then I hit Cyanwrath with my hammer. The dragonclaws ended up attacking Thok again, but Corrin got advantage from Cyanwrath being prone and delivered another sneak attack to drop the half-dragon.
While we made short work of Cyanwrath, low rolls on our part and the raw damage output of the dragonclaws ended up being a problem. They dropped Thok, Censura, and myself. However, between a spell called hellish rebuke, a spell that allows a warlock to injure their attacker after being hit, and Corrin's ability to hide and Sandi being squirrelly, we managed to drop the dragonclaws. The party lived. And we had enough healing potions to get everyone conscious again, at least.
That done, we saw to the chest, We couldn't find any traps, but with dragon murals surrounding it, I figured we shouldn't take chances. As an arcane trickster, Corrin has a feature called Mage Hand Legerdemain, which lets him use the mage hand cantrip to pick locks and open chests. We managed to disable the trap in the process of picking the lock anyway, so we looted the chest without getting bathed in super-villain origin story amounts of acid.
Next week will be our last session before Christmas, though we may play New Years Eve. When I return, I'll have more on the DMG, and the Cleric Spell Card deck I ended up splurging on.
It was two 10 foot drops down into a garbage pit. We spotted some narrow crevices down in the pit. We detected a hint of a fouler smell than garbage in the air, so opted to stay on the ledge, and we took a short rest (remember, a short rest is an hour long in the basic rules).
After the hour, a re-cast light on my shield and also on Thok's shield. Then we went down the set of stairs. It ended at a curtain made of over-lapping straps of poorly cured hide. Corrin was about the go through the curtain, but with a successful Dexterity saving throw, back away before being skewered on hooks set in the hides. He ended up using a rusty, discarded spear that the denizens of the dungeon had set aside to push the curtains back to reveal a larder of meat. Once we were content that the larder was empty of anything of value, we went back to the drake pen.
Fortunately, there were no kobolds this time. I grabbed one of the training dummies on the walls of the room down the stairs Lokeo went down. When the dummy was not pelted with sling stones or stabbed by daggers, we ventured down and found the kobold barracks. We spent about ten minutes searching their foul beds and came up with some treasure.
We then followed another set of stairs deeper into the cave. We cam upon a room of worked stone carved with bas reliefs of dragons, including one of a really large dragon with five heads of different colors each-Tiamat. There was a chest sitting in front of the carving of Tiamat. The room also contained some inhabitant: Langdedrosa Cyanwrath, the half-blue dragon Censura "dueled" before, and two dragonclaws, the scimitar wielding fanatics.
Cyanwrath, being a nice guy, offered us a choice. We could let him duel Censura again and he would let the rest of us leave alive, or he would kill us all. We took a third option. I ended up winning initiatives (natural 20s are good for that). I cast guiding bolt on Cyanwrath, a damaging spell that grants advantage on the next attack roll against the target. I ended up using my War Domain feature to grant a +10 to the attack roll (I rolled a natural 7). In retrospect, I should have then engaged on of the dragonclaws and pinned it in place. Instead, Thok went to engage the other Dragonclaw, and missed his first attack, then Dragonclaws surrounded him. Fortunately, their first batch of attacks missed, but the second batch brought a critical hit, which dropped Thok, almost killing him. Then the dragonclaw opted to hit Thok again, resulting an automatic death saving throw failure.
Fortunately for us, Cyanwrath rolled terrible on initiative, so the rest of the party got to act before he did. Corrin used the advantage to deal a sneak attack to Cyanwrath. Then Censura used the "grovel" effect of the command spell to cause Cyanwrath to use his turn going prone.
I used healing word, which is advantageous because it can be used at range is only uses a bonus action, to bring Thok back into the fight. Then I hit Cyanwrath with my hammer. The dragonclaws ended up attacking Thok again, but Corrin got advantage from Cyanwrath being prone and delivered another sneak attack to drop the half-dragon.
While we made short work of Cyanwrath, low rolls on our part and the raw damage output of the dragonclaws ended up being a problem. They dropped Thok, Censura, and myself. However, between a spell called hellish rebuke, a spell that allows a warlock to injure their attacker after being hit, and Corrin's ability to hide and Sandi being squirrelly, we managed to drop the dragonclaws. The party lived. And we had enough healing potions to get everyone conscious again, at least.
That done, we saw to the chest, We couldn't find any traps, but with dragon murals surrounding it, I figured we shouldn't take chances. As an arcane trickster, Corrin has a feature called Mage Hand Legerdemain, which lets him use the mage hand cantrip to pick locks and open chests. We managed to disable the trap in the process of picking the lock anyway, so we looted the chest without getting bathed in super-villain origin story amounts of acid.
Next week will be our last session before Christmas, though we may play New Years Eve. When I return, I'll have more on the DMG, and the Cleric Spell Card deck I ended up splurging on.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Seriously, Who Makes Blank Hex-Grid Paper?
I've had more time to read through the DMG. The first section is entitled Master of Worlds, and it contains the first two chapters.
The first chapter, "A World of Your Own" is filled with world-building and campaign building advice. It includes discussions of things like Deep Immersion Role-playing v. Kick in the Door play styles, different flavors of fantasy (such as heroic fantasy or dark fantasy, and even includes bits on things like mystery games or games focused on war), and advice on structuring an over-arching campaign structure. It's a lot of broad strokes stuff.
Most interesting, it has a section on mapping your world using hex paper. The advice has you make multiple maps with an expanding scale if you're doing a bottom-up design (make the starting area first then build the world as the PCs travel there, basically). It's pretty decent advice, but read the title of the post. I know I could probably look it up, but if you know a place already, feel free to post it in the comments. If I ever have spare cash, I might even buy some of that hex-grid paper.
The second chapter is "Creating a Multiverse," which talks about building the various planes that make up a D&D world's cosmology. It then discusses the planes that make up the basic D&D cosmology, including the Shadowfell, the Feywild, the Elemental Planes, the Ethereal and Astral, and the various basic outer planes listed in the PHB appendices. It also talks about the Outlands and Sigil, because Sigil is awesome. It has plenty of optional rules to make planar travel more hazardous/interesting. Some of the rules seem to hearken back to older editions and include fun things like alignment changes.
Between these two chapters, pretty much all of the previously extent D&D settings have gotten some mention and even example time. This includes the Dawn War (the default setting for 4e), Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Mystara, Dragonlance, Eberron, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Planescape. Even the shorter lived ones like Birthright and Spelljammer got a mention. I'm more familiar with Spelljammer, which was D&D IN SPACE! From what I learned Birthright was D&D with superpowers. It remains to be seen if any of these get a full write up and future releases. So far, the only one signs point to definite is the Forgotten Realms. The two preview adventures (Murder in Baldur's Gate and Legacy of the Crystal Shard) and the first two adventure releases (The Tyranny of Dragons line) used the Forgotten Realms, and it dominates the example lists in the core books.
As a fan of the Forgotten Realms, I'm all for it. Though I do enjoy Eberron's more steam punk feel and have run a fun Dark Sun campaign in the past. I enjoyed the chronicles novels for Dragonlance, but never got to play that setting. I did play some third edition Ravenloft, both the OGL version done by White Wolf and the updated version of the Castle Ravenloft module. Of course, Planescape material (the Outlands, Sigil, and the Blood Wars) has migrated into core products anyway. So if anyone at Wizards is reading this, see if you can fit as many of those as possible into the schedule. And maybe some of the others, too.
Well, I will keep reading the DMG and post more about it.
The first chapter, "A World of Your Own" is filled with world-building and campaign building advice. It includes discussions of things like Deep Immersion Role-playing v. Kick in the Door play styles, different flavors of fantasy (such as heroic fantasy or dark fantasy, and even includes bits on things like mystery games or games focused on war), and advice on structuring an over-arching campaign structure. It's a lot of broad strokes stuff.
Most interesting, it has a section on mapping your world using hex paper. The advice has you make multiple maps with an expanding scale if you're doing a bottom-up design (make the starting area first then build the world as the PCs travel there, basically). It's pretty decent advice, but read the title of the post. I know I could probably look it up, but if you know a place already, feel free to post it in the comments. If I ever have spare cash, I might even buy some of that hex-grid paper.
The second chapter is "Creating a Multiverse," which talks about building the various planes that make up a D&D world's cosmology. It then discusses the planes that make up the basic D&D cosmology, including the Shadowfell, the Feywild, the Elemental Planes, the Ethereal and Astral, and the various basic outer planes listed in the PHB appendices. It also talks about the Outlands and Sigil, because Sigil is awesome. It has plenty of optional rules to make planar travel more hazardous/interesting. Some of the rules seem to hearken back to older editions and include fun things like alignment changes.
Between these two chapters, pretty much all of the previously extent D&D settings have gotten some mention and even example time. This includes the Dawn War (the default setting for 4e), Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Mystara, Dragonlance, Eberron, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Planescape. Even the shorter lived ones like Birthright and Spelljammer got a mention. I'm more familiar with Spelljammer, which was D&D IN SPACE! From what I learned Birthright was D&D with superpowers. It remains to be seen if any of these get a full write up and future releases. So far, the only one signs point to definite is the Forgotten Realms. The two preview adventures (Murder in Baldur's Gate and Legacy of the Crystal Shard) and the first two adventure releases (The Tyranny of Dragons line) used the Forgotten Realms, and it dominates the example lists in the core books.
As a fan of the Forgotten Realms, I'm all for it. Though I do enjoy Eberron's more steam punk feel and have run a fun Dark Sun campaign in the past. I enjoyed the chronicles novels for Dragonlance, but never got to play that setting. I did play some third edition Ravenloft, both the OGL version done by White Wolf and the updated version of the Castle Ravenloft module. Of course, Planescape material (the Outlands, Sigil, and the Blood Wars) has migrated into core products anyway. So if anyone at Wizards is reading this, see if you can fit as many of those as possible into the schedule. And maybe some of the others, too.
Well, I will keep reading the DMG and post more about it.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
OMG DMG!
As I said, I got a shiny new toy: the DMG.
I haven't had a chance for much in-depth reading, but flipping through I've got some general impressions.
Like the other books, it is absolutely gorgeous with some fantastic art (there's a particularly adorable chibi modron march on page 66). Granted, Wizards has had some great art from the beginning. (Admit it; you bought some Magic cards because the picture was pretty/cool!) It features lots of advice on building worlds, adventures, and campaigns, optional rules, and (of course) the copious section of magic items.
Some things I have had time for more in-depth reading. The 4e DMG had a list of player motivations. There's a similar, slightly compressed list in this new one. It includes Acting, Exploring, Instigating, Fighting, Optimizing, Problem Solving, and Storytelling. While the actual player personalities and reasons for playing are more complex than that, it does provide a good baseline, particularly while building or choosing adventures to appeal to your players. My regular group frequently features very take charge Problem Solving players, a fair share of game crunching Optimizing players, the occasional Instigating player, and the odd Storytelling player.
I would say our group has Optimizing and Storytelling players, but the younger players also feature plenty of Instigating and even some Acting (kudos on that, guys). My own runs more toward Storytelling, but I've been known to do some Optimizing and Acting.
I also did some reading of the magic items to track down their bonus curve. Much as with everything else, this edition has flattened that. Bonuses now cap at +3 for basic armor and weapons. This means an optimizing attacking character (either a barbarian with a 24 Str at 20th level or a Dex 20 ranged character with the Archery fighting style) caps at +16. That's a 9 or better to hit the tarrasque or Tiamat (the two toughest monsters published so far).
I'll add more about the DMG as I read through it. Until then, the holidays are upon us. At the risk of preaching, when buying for the gamer geek, remember to patronize your local game store. If you're in Tucson you have Isle of Games on the east side, Hat's Games and Heroes and Villains in the central area, and A to Z Games in the northwest. Why the local local game store? Money you spend at locally owned business tends to remain local, improving the economy. And local game stores provide something big box stores and internet shopping either don't or can't: game space. Many an awesome gamer friend has been made through events at these game spaces.
All that said, I'll return.
I haven't had a chance for much in-depth reading, but flipping through I've got some general impressions.
Like the other books, it is absolutely gorgeous with some fantastic art (there's a particularly adorable chibi modron march on page 66). Granted, Wizards has had some great art from the beginning. (Admit it; you bought some Magic cards because the picture was pretty/cool!) It features lots of advice on building worlds, adventures, and campaigns, optional rules, and (of course) the copious section of magic items.
Some things I have had time for more in-depth reading. The 4e DMG had a list of player motivations. There's a similar, slightly compressed list in this new one. It includes Acting, Exploring, Instigating, Fighting, Optimizing, Problem Solving, and Storytelling. While the actual player personalities and reasons for playing are more complex than that, it does provide a good baseline, particularly while building or choosing adventures to appeal to your players. My regular group frequently features very take charge Problem Solving players, a fair share of game crunching Optimizing players, the occasional Instigating player, and the odd Storytelling player.
I would say our group has Optimizing and Storytelling players, but the younger players also feature plenty of Instigating and even some Acting (kudos on that, guys). My own runs more toward Storytelling, but I've been known to do some Optimizing and Acting.
I also did some reading of the magic items to track down their bonus curve. Much as with everything else, this edition has flattened that. Bonuses now cap at +3 for basic armor and weapons. This means an optimizing attacking character (either a barbarian with a 24 Str at 20th level or a Dex 20 ranged character with the Archery fighting style) caps at +16. That's a 9 or better to hit the tarrasque or Tiamat (the two toughest monsters published so far).
I'll add more about the DMG as I read through it. Until then, the holidays are upon us. At the risk of preaching, when buying for the gamer geek, remember to patronize your local game store. If you're in Tucson you have Isle of Games on the east side, Hat's Games and Heroes and Villains in the central area, and A to Z Games in the northwest. Why the local local game store? Money you spend at locally owned business tends to remain local, improving the economy. And local game stores provide something big box stores and internet shopping either don't or can't: game space. Many an awesome gamer friend has been made through events at these game spaces.
All that said, I'll return.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Dragon Hatchery, Take Two
As you recall, when last we left our heroes, two of them were unconscious, and one was dead. That's not a good recipe for successful dungeon crawling.
So the lead huntress, Tarzi, and her child, Roku, offered to let us stay in the camp overnight. This allowed Corrin and Censura to recover. But I was still slightly dead.
My buddy, Joseph, joined our game with a half-orc fighter that uses the Protection fighting style. He ended up giving his half-orc, Thok, a high Charisma. He currently plans to have Thok take the Battle Master archetype. It turns out, in a case of DM ex Machina, Thok was working for the huntresses as a porter, and (because I helped him make the character) he served in the same mercenary company I did.
In another case of DM ex machina, Reese, Lokeo's player, was absent, so Lokeo went a little moon brained and stayed with the huntresses to participate in a ritual to their god. Corrin offered 4 gold pieces to the huntresses as a sacrifice and Censura gave them a hunting trap.
So, with Corrin and Censura in shape, and with a new half-orc in the party, we hauled my corpse back to town to be raised from the dead by the Lord Alliance. I was given some homework: determine why the Lords Alliance felt compelled to raise me. Of course, that raise dead did have a cost: I lost out on the experience for the previous session.
Once we were back up to full strength, we went back to the cave. Along the way, we had some role-playing, as character shared little details from their background. Sandi's mother, a human, originally wanted him to be named Sandy, but his dad, being an elf, demanded it be Sandi. Sandi's mom said that was fine, as long as his middle name was Beaches. He should be glad it wasn't Cheeks. Corrin, who was trained as a spy, still intones prayers to Cyric, the Forgotten Realms god of lies. Censura mentioned his brother, Talon, whom we're to seek out and inform if something should ever happen to Censura. Thok talked about he got kicked by a cow when he tried to go cow-tipping back on the farm. Alek was mysteriously silent. I ended up cooking up an idea, but never got to share it.
When we reached the cave, we found that the door guards had been replaced, but not with other Dragonclaws (Yes!), but more mundane guards. We managed to drop two of them almost immediately. The third fled down a side passage. We heard him alerting other guards at the bottom of the passage. With clever use of minor illusion and thaumaturgy, we created the image of a rock slide blocking the passage. We heard the guards down the passage going back to drinking. So we moved on.
We moved deeper into the cave, and ran into the remaining immature guard drakes and some urds in the cave with the bats. Corrin, once again, used minor illusion creatively, using it to imitate the noise the huntresses made to scare the drakes, making it seem to come from Thok. That hampered one of the drakes, inflicting the frightened condition, which imposes disadvantage on attack rolls. Between that and Thok's protection ability, we managed to pin the drakes effectively while we cleared the Urd.
What does the Protection feature do? As long as the character with that fighting style has a shield, they can use their reaction to impose disadvantage on an attack roll against an adjacent friendly character. That is handy.
Sandi ended up playing a bit of a damage sponge, and ended up dropping. I ended up using my healing to keep Thok up and blocking the drakes.
An example of good strategy and planning and party building helping to make a tough fight much more bearable.
Next time, I'll talk about my shiny new toy: the DMG!
So the lead huntress, Tarzi, and her child, Roku, offered to let us stay in the camp overnight. This allowed Corrin and Censura to recover. But I was still slightly dead.
My buddy, Joseph, joined our game with a half-orc fighter that uses the Protection fighting style. He ended up giving his half-orc, Thok, a high Charisma. He currently plans to have Thok take the Battle Master archetype. It turns out, in a case of DM ex Machina, Thok was working for the huntresses as a porter, and (because I helped him make the character) he served in the same mercenary company I did.
In another case of DM ex machina, Reese, Lokeo's player, was absent, so Lokeo went a little moon brained and stayed with the huntresses to participate in a ritual to their god. Corrin offered 4 gold pieces to the huntresses as a sacrifice and Censura gave them a hunting trap.
So, with Corrin and Censura in shape, and with a new half-orc in the party, we hauled my corpse back to town to be raised from the dead by the Lord Alliance. I was given some homework: determine why the Lords Alliance felt compelled to raise me. Of course, that raise dead did have a cost: I lost out on the experience for the previous session.
Once we were back up to full strength, we went back to the cave. Along the way, we had some role-playing, as character shared little details from their background. Sandi's mother, a human, originally wanted him to be named Sandy, but his dad, being an elf, demanded it be Sandi. Sandi's mom said that was fine, as long as his middle name was Beaches. He should be glad it wasn't Cheeks. Corrin, who was trained as a spy, still intones prayers to Cyric, the Forgotten Realms god of lies. Censura mentioned his brother, Talon, whom we're to seek out and inform if something should ever happen to Censura. Thok talked about he got kicked by a cow when he tried to go cow-tipping back on the farm. Alek was mysteriously silent. I ended up cooking up an idea, but never got to share it.
When we reached the cave, we found that the door guards had been replaced, but not with other Dragonclaws (Yes!), but more mundane guards. We managed to drop two of them almost immediately. The third fled down a side passage. We heard him alerting other guards at the bottom of the passage. With clever use of minor illusion and thaumaturgy, we created the image of a rock slide blocking the passage. We heard the guards down the passage going back to drinking. So we moved on.
We moved deeper into the cave, and ran into the remaining immature guard drakes and some urds in the cave with the bats. Corrin, once again, used minor illusion creatively, using it to imitate the noise the huntresses made to scare the drakes, making it seem to come from Thok. That hampered one of the drakes, inflicting the frightened condition, which imposes disadvantage on attack rolls. Between that and Thok's protection ability, we managed to pin the drakes effectively while we cleared the Urd.
What does the Protection feature do? As long as the character with that fighting style has a shield, they can use their reaction to impose disadvantage on an attack roll against an adjacent friendly character. That is handy.
Sandi ended up playing a bit of a damage sponge, and ended up dropping. I ended up using my healing to keep Thok up and blocking the drakes.
An example of good strategy and planning and party building helping to make a tough fight much more bearable.
Next time, I'll talk about my shiny new toy: the DMG!
Monday, December 1, 2014
Spellcasters and Armor
So Lokeo and Corrin took magic-dabbling archetypes. The best part of that is, neither one will have to give up armor.
While this was sort of true in fourth edition, it remains true in fifth. If your wizard is proficient in armor, they can cast any spell they want while wearing it. Of course, the same is true for non-arcane casters. If your cleric isn't proficient with the armor he's wearing (and clerics don't automatically have proficiency with all armor anymore), he won't be able to cast either. Basically, while the terms of arcane and divine magic exist in this edition, those labels are all fluff.
Purists might have a problem with this, but I like it. It makes it easier to build hybrid characters like the eldritch knight or arcane trickster without having to reach for every supplement under the sun. Plus, spell failure is one more thing to keep track of in a game with quite a lot to keep track of.
When we next return, we'll learn how Alek overcame death.
While this was sort of true in fourth edition, it remains true in fifth. If your wizard is proficient in armor, they can cast any spell they want while wearing it. Of course, the same is true for non-arcane casters. If your cleric isn't proficient with the armor he's wearing (and clerics don't automatically have proficiency with all armor anymore), he won't be able to cast either. Basically, while the terms of arcane and divine magic exist in this edition, those labels are all fluff.
Purists might have a problem with this, but I like it. It makes it easier to build hybrid characters like the eldritch knight or arcane trickster without having to reach for every supplement under the sun. Plus, spell failure is one more thing to keep track of in a game with quite a lot to keep track of.
When we next return, we'll learn how Alek overcame death.
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