gerusz @ gerusz @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

I tried restraining the paladins before.

Any restraint that can be escaped with a save is useless. They all have very high strength scores, not too shabby DEX, and there's the Aura of Protection. And when I tried any other restraint, they just misty-stepped out of it because, hey, why have a class that can tank, heal, buff, DPS, and be the face of the party when you can have a class that can tank, heal, buff, DPS, be the face of the party, and can jump in the face of any ranged enemy who tries to abuse their one weak spot? "Party balance? Dafuq is that?" - WotC, probably. (I'm just glad there's no fighter in the party, they would feel absurdly useless.)

I know about The Monsters Know... but if the monsters knew what they were doing, it would be a reeeeeeeeeally boring campaign, because the monsters know not to be where this party is.

Thanks anyway!

Any fireballs?

Worse. One of the other players is a Forge cleric. Wall of Fire, Guardian of Faith, or Spirit Guardians all make mincemeat out of minions. Then there's a hexblade who can treat minions like medkits on legs. And a ranger who can use hail of thorns to cluster bomb them.

My goal of course isn't a TPK, it's to make them sweat for their victory, for once. And in that, I'm feeling like a failure. Combats should feel meaningful, after all, with real stakes and uncertainty. But as of now the only uncertainty about them is whether the paladins will finish it in 3 turns, or 2 because they roll a crit.

(I do have a mindflayer encounter prepped in the near future, but it won't last long either. If any of them make the save vs. the mind blast - and some will, because 1) Aura of Protection, and 2) Their dice loathe me - then they will turn it into calamari in about 0.00234 nanoseconds. Whatever minions I throw in won't matter at that point.)

Thanks for the tips! Though I'm not too sure how to implement them more than I already am:

1. It's a homebrew campaign and I'm trying to use the encounter balance tool from 5e tools. But it's still worthless; I threw "absurd" encounters at them and they still obliterated it.
2. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to create an alternate objective for a combat encounter that isn't also achieved by just destroying the enemy in 2-3 turns. Kind-of like Counter Strike; sure, you can try to rescue the hostages or plant the bomb but it's often easier to just kill the opposing team. Sure, I did manage to run a boss fight that lasted longer because they had to complete secondary objectives (get some of his blood with a special dagger, then defend the allied casters conducting a ritual that would turn off his insane regeneration) before they got to nuke him, and the fight had two more phases after that. But that's not an amount of prep that I'm willing to do for any run-on-the-mill difficult encounter, it was the arc-villain of one of their backstories.
3. Misty step. :(
4. Sure, if they murder the shit out of a gang of bandits who gave them some trouble in the second session, that's fine. The problem is when they take down the homebrew CR17 fire giant lord in less than two turns in-game, and less time IRL than it took to actually homebrew it. (At least I learned that 3 legendary actions are only adequate for a party of 4; for a party of N the number of legendary actions for a boss should be N-1.)

The next big quest they will probably undertake is slaying a dragon. (They know about the dragon, it's a known problem in the region, and they expressed interest in slaying it both in and out of character.) I plan to introduce the dragon by having it wreck a related side mission they are sent on, but I can only hope and pray to Tymora, the Lady, and any other deity of dice rolls that I won't have to tear up the prep for the next 9-10 sessions thanks to some lucky dice rolls from the players' part.

Check out rejectedprincesses.com, it has a great collection of powerful women. Not all of them are "bad", per se, but many of them are; there's a whole collection of female criminals for example. Or you can just use the "personality" search on the sidebar.

The smite damage isn't even the biggest of my problems. (It's up there, yes, but not in the #1 slot.) The passive auras are more annoying. Seriously, no-resource spell damage resistance? Whose brilliant idea was that?! Was it even playtested?

Though either way, any ideas about tossing in a lot of enemies without turning the game into a slog? I already had to break out the hourglass to keep turns under 10 minutes (6-player party...)

Yup. My best idea at this point is to toss a mindflayer at them, not a single one of them have a positive INT modifier.

Too much math for 5e's design philosophy, and with bounded accuracy it would need a crit on the strongest enemies anyway.

The actual implementation of that system could take a number of forms:

• PB/LR for every class that is proficient with the given weapon. (The most basic implementation, but also screws over pure martials in favor of half casters.)
• PB/LR for every class that is proficient, but fighters regain PB/2 uses when they use Second Wind.
• PB/LR for every class that is proficient, PB/SR for fighters, monks, and barbarians.
• PB/LR for every class that is proficient, fighters regain all uses when rolling initiative.
• Etc...

For now it's just a fourth wall break because none of the players questioned it.

If they do ask, the lore reason is:

"DM" stands for Dunnusaidu Marudu, an ancient philosopher and the inventor of hedonism in this universe. When he died, he decided that even though he has experienced all the possible sensations that his current body and the current time period can provide, he still hadn't had enough. He had enough followers to become a minor god, and his spirit wanders the world, possessing random people for a short while to gain new experiences. He is not malicious which is why he created this talisman that appears on those possessed by him, he usually doesn't speak much when he does this, and he never makes major life decisions in the given body.

Reminds me of how they incorporated weapon type-specific attacks in BG3. Stealing this one for sure.

Yep, that whole weapon maneuvers system should be backported into base 5e stat, with slight modifications (i.e. they would be PB/LR instead of 1/SR, since short rests in the tabletop version are less regulated).

(Or alternatively they could auto-proc on a crit.)

If one of my players can't make it and it's not possible to remove their character from the group storywise (meaning I'll have to control their character in combat), the character will immediately equip the "Talisman of Protection from DM Stupidity". What it does is:

• When a character holding this item dies, they fall unconscious instead and disappear into a demiplane. While in this demiplane, the character is stable at 0 hit points. When the party takes a long rest, the character will reappear near a random other player character as if they had also taken a long rest.
• If the player retakes control of the character while they are still in the demiplane, the character reappears next to another player character of their choice with 1 hit point.
• If all other player characters die, the character in the demiplane will die too. If the method of their original death would have left a corpse, the corpse will reappear adjacent to a random player character's body. Otherwise, they will disappear alongside the demiplane.

Basically, it makes them immortal unless a TPK happens.

It could be tied to per-rest. Similar to the fighters' weapon mastery in OneDnD, switching stances could be tied to a long or short rest instead. Just call it something else, like katas. (Yeah, yeah, they are trying to move the monk away from the strictly Eastern roots, but they could give this as a flavor option.) You drill one of the katas in the morning and then you can use the basic ability associated with it for free:

• Kata of the Wildfire: aggressive stance,
• Kata of the Mountain: defensive stance,
• Kata of the Zephyr: mobile stance.

I did a bit of googling and I'll be damned, looks like even the official Roddenberry Productions Facebook/Instagram account picked it up. OK, that's it, I peaked, my life is all downhill from there.

Or: Monks have 3 stances: aggressive, defensive, and mobile. Switching stances costs a bonus action, and you can assume one stance freely when you roll initiative.

In aggressive stance Flurry of Blows is free.

In defensive stance Patient Defense is free.

In mobile stance Step of the Wind is free.

This way monks are not just a worse rogue, their basic abilities are now actual basic abilities.

Hey, that's my meme!

(I don't mind, I reaped sufficient karma on the website we don't speak of, just funny coming across it in the wild.)

My players have been having an easy time with the enemies so far, thanks to literally half of the 6-player party being paladins with 20+ AC and a cleric with also 20+. Tomorrow they are fighting a really nasty homebrew fire giant lord with a special armor and shield, legendary actions, and legendary resistances. I gave them an out because defeat will just mean losing a bunch of newly-found magic items and being sworn to the service of said fire giant lord for 10 years, but we'll see how much of a reality check this will be for them.

Edit: they nuked him in less than two rounds. The giant got out a fireball as a legendary action, and rolled really high... except all but one of them saved (with +2 to saves because fucking paladins) and then all but one of them also took half damage (because fucking Ancients paladin). Then he managed to do two attacks which did pretty good damage against a paladin, but not enough to take her out. Then he got out a stomp attack as a legendary action but everybody made the DEX save because, again, fucking paladins so it was useless. Then he got out a Circle of Death... that everybody managed to save against because fucking paladins, and everybody took half damage above that because, again, fucking paladins, so it did a whopping 9 damage to a bunch of them which amounted to jack fucking shit. And meanwhile he got blasted with divine smites, including a critical one (with some assist from a hexblade's critical eldritch smite and a crit from a ranger with a powerful homebrew bow (about as powerful as a Dragon Wing bow) combined with Hunter's Mark and Hail of Thorns (edit2: I see one of my mistakes now, they are both concentration spells and I neglected to enforce this; will do the next time but it wasn't really the deciding factor)).

I don't know what I hate more, paladins or WotC's game design philosophy. Seems like the only way to challenge a level 5+ party in combat is to make it a horrible slog through a dozen enemies. Or, y'know, the FromSoftware design philosophy of slapping down an enemy with 20000 HP and an enormous weapon that deals 20d12 damage in a 90 foot cone or a 90 foot long 15 foot wide line.

The problem with Redemption is that it's an externally-focused oath, trying to redeem others. A conquest paladin having an "am I the baddy" moment and turning into a redemption paladin is like a douchy bully who suddenly finds Jesus then tries to convert people without apologizing for the years of bullying.

D&D needs an Oath of Atonement which would be specifically focused on making up for the shit you did as a previous less-than-moral paladin subclass (mostly conquest, sometimes revenge, occasionally crown or devotion).