gerusz @ gerusz @ttrpg.network

Posts

4

Comments

75

Joined

2 yr. ago

Ah, yes, the good old days when the level 1 wizard became useless after the first two rounds of the day.

Not really, it replaces the attack stat with the spellcasting stat, kind of like shillelagh but only for a single attack, and then stacks some radiant damage on it at higher levels (+1d6 from level 5 then cantrip leveling). It can also replace the damage type with radiant. Useful for any weapon-using caster class that doesn't get multiattack:

• Clerics would be a great target audience for this, except it's not on their spell list. sigh Magic Initiate (Druid) it is.
• It could be useful for non-hexblade warlocks too.
• It's a great damaging cantrip for bards who severely lack those.
• It's good for even a sorcerer or a wizard, it turns the light crossbow into a long-range radiant-damage cantrip.
• Arcane tricksters: could be useful depending on the build, probably pairs really well with a headband of intellect. (Edit: Or an extremely INT-focused Arcane Trickster with a 2-level wizard dip for the bladesong.)
• Eldritch knights: really useful at levels 1-4 if you're running into some monster that resists or is straight-up immune to nonmagical damage. Markedly decreases in usefulness once you get multiattack and/or a magic weapon.
• Probably good for artillerist artificers (they are not in the UA so it's unknown whether they'll get this cantrip), might be good for alchemists, OK for battlesmiths until they get multiattack, and redundant for armorers.

How I'd improve it further:

1. Make its casting time 1 attack and limit it to once per turn in the fluff. That way it stays useful for eldritch knights, bladesingers (scratch that, bladesingers can cast this in place of an attack already), valor and swords bards, and the two multiattacking artificers (less so for the armorers, but even then, it gets them a good ranged attack in a guardian suit or a good melee attack in the infiltrator).
2. Add it to the cleric spell list. They are the full casters most likely to go into melee even without the multiattack.

Yeah, he was a condescending sexist prick to the Kiyoshi warriors (initially), and while it did earn him some beatings, it didn't get him a restraining order and he even got with Suki in the end. That's high CHA alright.

A typical person not looking for the paladin, yes, they wouldn't notice that person. (Passive perception.)

Guards who are actively looking for infiltrators? They might very well do that, especially if there are multiple guards. (Rolled perception checks.)

The basic setup will be quite simple: after ruining the country's plans to set up proper anti-dragon defenses in the capital, he will land on top of the city hall and tell them that he is bored of random raids and now demands the respect and tribute that a dragon deserves. Namely, one million gold pieces and 20 of "their young" per month. First delivery expected in 15 days.

Diplomacy would be viable, if the party could somehow convince the country to give up a significant chunk of their GDP and 20 children per month. But I doubt they would do that.

After which, they will have those two weeks to cross the frozen northern wilderness (a hex crawl with 100 traversable tiles) and confront the dragon directly. There are a number of set encounters and locations on those hexes (the most notable is Clawhold, the only permanent settlement of the Tabaxi tribe who populate the north, and the 13 abandoned mountaintop fortresses that they might come back and clear out even after they take care of the dragon). The dragon himself is nesting in the far northeastern corner of this map (the party starts from the southwest, obviously) in a mountain named the Pillar of Lights.

Not a global reputation yet because he is fairly young (he is growing much faster than the average dragon due to the great nutrition he receives, namely a steady stream of adventurers from the nearby city) but he has been the bane of a small country (~the size of Luxemburg) for the last few months, and killing him is getting urgent because it's already spring but the fields are still frozen solid due to his influence on the local climate.

Though a famed dragonologist did notice that his behavior changed considerably; instead of randomly raiding villages he started targeting Skyfleet installations up north, pushing the city's Skyfleet back and getting them away from his mountain.

Well, I don't think my players are here but I'll put it in spoiler tags anyway. Those playing in a world called Yphilios, don't expand this.

You can get something like 75-76 with the appropriate buffs.

• Level 20 Rogue, expertise in Stealth, 22 DEX (Manual of Quickness of Action), nat 20 = 38
• +Pass Without Trace = 48
• +Bardic Inspiration from a similarly high-level Bard, max roll = 60
• +Weal from a Stars Druid, max roll = 66
• +Guidance from someone (maybe even the Stars Druid), max roll = 70
• +Flash of Genius from the Artificer = 75 or 76 if they also read the appropriate +2 book.

Anyone who has played any of the Divinity games knows that Speak with Animals is a must-have. Pet Pal was also the best perk in DoS / DoS 2.

Hm...

1. One Decanter of Endless Water
2. Two items that you can attack to this decanter
3. Two castings of Magic Mouth on these items:
   1. Condition: "(The decanter is uncorked and thrown, then gets within 1 foot of a creature other than who has thrown it OR six seconds after someone says 'Geyser') AND nobody has said 'Frixfraxfrux' in the last six seconds". What to say: "Geyser".
   2. Condition: "Six seconds after someone says 'Geyser' AND nobody has said 'Frixfraxfrux' in the last six seconds." What to say: "Geyser".
4. Resilient Sphere in a Ring of Spell Storing given to the familiar.

Tell the Familiar to ready an action: cast Resilient Sphere on a given enemy just as the decanter is within 1 foot of them. Then uncork the decanter and throw it at the enemy.

When the Decanter is within 1 foot of the enemy, your familiar casts Resilient Sphere to encase the enemy, and MM1 activates, saying Geyser. The decanter starts producing 30 gallons per round because MM1's activation activates MM2, and MM2's activation activates MM1 again. And so on.

I'll switch to metric because I like units that actually make a modicum of sense. Let's say a medium creature is at most 8 feet tall, that's 2.4 m, the enclosing sphere has a radius of 1.2 m. The decanter produces 30 gallons per round, that's 113 liters. The enclosing sphere's volume is 7.23 m^3 which is 7230 liters. A bipedal medium creature that tall is likely going to weigh around 150 kilos, if it's a humanoid then its density is roughly equal to water's so that's 150 liters of the sphere occupied by the creature. This leaves us 7088 liters to fill which is unfortunately much more than what the decanter can fill in 1 minute. In fact, it would take around 6 minutes to fill the sphere.

Bummer.

Maybe you can tie together 10 decanters?

(Though TBF a bit of alchemy could likely create a CO-producing bomb. Doing that with the familiar-spell-storing-ring trick could work, enclosing the enemy in a sphere of lethal gas for 1 minute. But even that is an awful lot of prep for suffocating someone when you could use the same spell slot to summon an azer and hug the enemy to death or 4 magma mephits and roast them in their armor.)

I'll have to put it in series of comments. Lemmy doesn't seem to have a comment length counter but it has a comment length limit. Even then, this is the TL;DR version of the full document.

Dates are given as BAR meaning Before Auberentian Reckoning, the time in the game currently is 1622 AR.

You're right, though they still have to make the save first. I recommend pairing it with a Ring of Evasion in that case. Though both the ring and the shield master feat use your reaction so even that is less than ideal.

I have a 10-page summary of the rise and fall of the Third Civilization, starting from the Soul War ~500 000 years ago, then the Age of the Giant Kings, the Curse of Forgetting, the antique era, the Age of Conquest, the Dark Age, the Empire of the Diamond Vault, the Arcane Age and the Ascendancy Period, and finally the Collapse.

The game takes place in the Fourth Civilization, 10 000 years after the Collapse.

Shield master doesn't work against fireballs, it only works against single-target spells.

As for tieflings... well, a wizard with the elemental adept feat can just ignore fire resistance (and ensures that the minimum damage on the fireball is bumped to 16). Or a Scribes wizard can just have Spirit Shroud in their spellbook, cast necroball, and be done with it. Or a sorcerer with transmuted spell can use another elemental type too, though for them it costs SPs.

World Tree barbarian looks neat.

The brawler fighter has one glaring oversight: it has no way to apply magic damage while using its class features. They promise to include magic items in the DMG that will allow them to do so (probably gauntlets, rings, etc...) but as it is, the class is essentially useless beyond level 5. Unless you find a magic beer bottle or something.

Warlocks are still gimped. While having Agonizing Blast and Eldritch Spear apply to any cantrip is a great change (edit: though there is a huge oversight still which makes Eldritch Blast still the optimal and obvious choice, namely that you add the charisma modifier to each damage roll, and at the cantrip improvement levels EB gains new damage rolls instead of extra damage dice), they still lost their short rest spell recovery. If they could use the Magical Cunning PB/LR instead of 1/LR, that might be fair but as it is, a level 20 warlock has effectively 6 spell slots. And they can't even claim that it was to get rid of the short rest because the wizard's Arcane Recovery (which at level 20 can restore effectively the same amount and level of spell slots as the warlock's Magical Cunning, btw.) is still tied to it. (Also, while there are many Eldritch Invocations that give warlocks a free utility spell, the wizard's level 18 feature effectively gives them two of these for free, and they get to select any spell.)

She is also a 700-year-old wizard, so she wouldn't be inclined to give a fuck about the "social stigma" of a Tiefling child.

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.