Tabletop Games Thread

[Saiga]

I don't think I've posted progress since my session 0, have I? The first few sessions were pretty uneventful, with minimal/no combat. I was honestly getting bored and frustrated both with the lack of direction we had and stuff like our DM being someone who runs asshole NPCs that are just draining to deal with.

One funny thing that happened in the earlier sessions was that we found Death House, and the players who'd done it as our first one-shot (myself, the Barb and the Cleric) immediately recognize the kids and we're half-laughing half-trying to find a way to avoid going through that again while the two new players (my sister and her partner) were completely clueless and were dragging us into the sidequest. Both myself and the Barbarian got possessed by the children early, so the two big guys of the team are now acting like children (and knowing the background, the DM didn't need to explain to us what happened, so we got to creep out the newies without them having any fucking idea what was happening). Eventually the Cleric went NO WE'RE NOT DOING THIS and used Turn Undead to bugger off the children while we just ditched the house.

I won't go into other details since it's an adventure module and it'd be spoilers, but the latest session ended up being much better, it was very intense. We had a fight with a Hag Coven in a windmill that quickly turned south for the group - we had THOUGHT it'd be too much for us, but the situation that was presented to us was basically impossible to reconcile our characters walking away from. During the fight, I realized it would be a flee or die scenario and didn't want a TPK, so I encouraged everyone to run. The Barb had actually tried running earlier when the Escort NPC (essentially, our main quest) was knocked out and he carried her off, but since no-one followed he didn't actually leave the windmill. Since I was kind of unhappy with my character (I'd been disfigured by a curse earlier and found no way to remove it which was hurting my interest in the character, especially when the DM kept using the NPCs to imply I deserved it) so I decided the last fun thing I might do is hold the line and sacrifice myself while the others escaped.

Our Rogue got hit by some form of paralysis/stun, and the Cleric's attempt to Lessor Restoration that got Counterspelled. So running suddenly didn't seem like an option, and we were getting our asses kicked by the Hags spamming several higher-level spells. Eventually, everyone but me got out of the room with the hags, and I wondered whether it was worth disengaging or running or continuing to attack the mother Hag, who had been described as being in REALLY bad shape for a number of turns. Since I didn't particularly care if my character lived, I thought I'd just stay and slug it out. I actually managed to kill her, and fled the room to follow the party. The two remaining Hags continued spamming spells, especially magic missile which was just hell for the group with the unavoidable damage. My character was knocked out, so was the Barbarian after the others made it out of the windmill with our NPC. The Cleric tried to go back, but with his puny strength could only carry one of us with him (which honestly is the DM being incredibly generous with weight limits) and chose the Barb through odds/evens dice roll. My characters was attacked enough times to die, the Cleric retrieved my harmonica but left the body behind. I'd noticed that once we'd gone outside the Hags stopped following and switched purely to ranged attacks.

Our Shadow Sorceror used Darkness on the doorway and the Hags stopped attacking while the party ran. Once they'd successfully gotten away, we talked over the fight and I was really happy my character was the only one lost (and the way that it got to go down). However when I pointed out that they never moved beyond the door and seemed like they couldn't leave, the Rogue decided to go back and retrieve my body - as a Tabaxxi Rogue he could make up to 180 feet in a single round, so he felt pretty safe. As soon as he got within 120 ft of the windmill he was struck down by Magic Missile from the Hags (who were outside) and left unconscious where the session ended. I felt really bad that the Rogue lost his character because of my incorrect assumption, but also felt that the DM ruled very unfairly for the Rogue to not notice the enemies on a flat plain (as previously described) until he was within Magic Missile's 120ft range and was given no option to turn back before then or even roll initiative before he got dropped.

Right now, I've just got back from Holiday, and we're not ready to have a session this weekend as the DM needs to message myself and the Rogue before we created new characters or whatever. I had planned to make a Warlock, but after the DM mentioned that there would likely be only a few combats per day I am less enamored with the idea and I think I'll make a Bard instead.

This is the first real character death in our group (outside of the PVP one-shot) and my first character death ever!! I'm also glad that the outcome of this fight will give the surviving characters a reason to avoid future battles that they're not ready for -

Curse of Strahd spoilers

Because the Hags had multiple children held prisoner there, and continued to abduct children, our group saw no way in-character to justify turning around and walking away. After the party escaped they could here many screams coming from where the children were held as the Hags took out their frustration on them, so the survivors can see how rushing in half-cocked can make things worse for the people they're trying to help, instead of thinking it's only for self-interest that they'd avoid such a fight. It was a serious issue for the group, I was kind of kicking myself for not coming to that conclusion before I'd seen it happen.

I'm a lot more interested now, as long as we can avoid the dickhead Vistani for most of the campaign it shouldn't be too bad.

[mAc Chaos]

Wait, so was the character actually dead? Otherwise it sounds like you can still save them.

[Saiga]

Mine is dead, the other isn't necessarily but I think they're being made to make a new character. Still waiting on DM messages.

If they're held captive by the hags, we probably can't rescue him - even though we killed one, that was so close. No chance against the other two when we're still level 3.

[Xamusel]

Okay, I'll be straightforward about this: I'm a tabletop gamer and part-time Dungeon Master. My current range of experience is one game of Shadowrun (in what I think was 4e Shadowrun) that I played, a few Star Wars Saga Edition games, and the rest would have to be a combination of Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder.

Regarding the whole DM thing, however, I have some failed experience playing the part in a Pathfinder campaign, which was essentially me taking the Reign of Winter Adventure Path and turning it into an abomination that barely resembled the plot... and it also went out of order one time (because I forgot to look ahead in the book to make sure that I was doing things right). Hopefully, I learned my lesson from then, because I'm teaching a friend of mine how to play Pathfinder soon.

[Seika]

Failing in all DMGs except 2e's: there is no section titled "Depopulate At Your Own Risk".

[aldeayeah]

I remember that! It was in the section about hiring NPCs wasn't it?

[Seika]

Yeah. In context, it's an entirely sensible warning that, if you're DMing realistically, the local lord should be concerned about you raising an army by hiring away all their people. But in an adventuring context, it really sounds like an admonition to stop committing genocide on the local monster population.

Speaking of that DMG, recalling a conversation mAc was having on Twitter. I'm pretty sure I already noted this part of the 2.5e rules to him at one point or another, but I know the thread had interesting stuff last time the "what are hit points" thing was brought up.

"When this [you survive going to 0hp at all] rule is in use, a character can remain alive until his hit points reach -10. However, as soon as the character reaches 0 hit points, he falls to the ground unconscious.

Thereafter, he automatically loses one hit point each round. His survival from this point on depends on the quick thinking of his companions. If they reach the character before his hit points reach -10 and spend at least one round tending to his wounds--stanching the flow of blood, etc., the character does not die immediately.

If the only action is to bind his wounds, the injured character no longer loses one hit point each round, but neither does he gain any. He remains unconscious and vulnerable to damage from further attacks.

If a cure spell of some type is cast upon him, the character is immediately restored to 1 hit point--no more. Further cures do the character no good until he has had at least one day of rest. Until such time, he is weak and feeble, unable to fight and barely able to move. He must stop and rest often, can't cast spells (the shock of near death has wiped them from his mind), and is generally confused and feverish. He is able to move and can hold somewhat disjointed conversations, but that's it."

I think something on this model is an interesting look for moments when you really want to create drama around how nearly-lethal the blow was. Stabilisation basically just means getting them stable in the medical sense, with the application of such first aid as an adventurer can quickly manage, but not putting them back on their feet and ready to fight. Then you need actual serious intervention (having it be strictly magical leads to the "healbot cleric is a necessity" problem, so that in itself isn't desirable, but say you also allow potions or healing kit check) to even get them ready to move again.

Not a thing for your random goon skirmish where a lucky crit dropped a character (unless you really want to make a point) but I like it as a tool in the arsenal for telling the players just how dangerous their lives and their enemies are.

[mAc Chaos]

Oh wow, a spellcaster loses all their spells when they get downed? Brutal. And awesome.

The situation came up in a session tonight. The party wizard hit 0; the way HP normally is that it represents your ability to evade a fatal blow. So when you hit 0, that's it, you took something that's going to kill you. I said he got stabbed in the heart and dropped.

Then, he starts bleeding out, and he rolls Death Saving throws as you do in 5e. However, one thing about Death Saves is that it's possible to just naturally stabilize on your own if you roll 3 successes, without any intervention. That works for a wound that might be ambiguous, but when it is getting stabbed in the heart, then it's hard to see how you can roll 3 Death Saves and just be fine all of a sudden.

So with this in mind, that's a good idea; using it on purpose as a way to create a situation where you can't just stabilize without actual emergency help.

[aldeayeah]

Personally, I've found that the standard consequences of losing at combat are enough to keep players on edge.

But when I want to be mean, I bring in status effects

* * *

From a game design perspective, combat in RPGs has to manage 2 variables: variance and snowballing.

Variance is allowing for different results to the same confrontation. Too little variance, and the stronger side invariably wins. Too much variance, and it's rocket tag.

Snowballing is the ability to gain an advantage. Too little snowballing means turning the tide is anticlimactically easy. Too much snowballing means things can quickly become one-sided. In most games, group combat is intrinsically highly-snowballing, as characters and monsters die, or become incapacitated.

Injury penalties, like status effects, are a snowballing mechanic.

Single combat in recent versions of D&D tends to be low-variance, low-snowballing with a few "spice" mechanics to increase variance (critical hits, save-or-lose) and snowballing (status effects).

As for group combat, the system makes it easy for incapacitated PCs to be healed back into the fray, precisely to mitigate the chances of a group of PCs being caught on the wrong side of snowballing.

Realistic game systems are almost invariably high-variance, high-snowballing.

* * *

But I digress. All of that is just number crunch.

Mechanics exist to maximize fun, and what's fun varies from group to group.

Never let game systems get in the way of THE HEART.

[Saiga]

I quite like the houserule (for 5E) that dropping to zero hitpoints hits you with a level of exhaustion to prevent the whack-a-mole tactics that can happen with cheap heals in 5E. If I DM again, I'm going to use a combination of that and a modified gritty realism rest variant (allowing to remove a level of exhaustion on short rest not to be too brutal) so I can do fewer encounters per rest without the party nova'ing everything.

So we had a one-shot on the weekend so that my best friend could run for one of his friends outside of the group, it was a simple adventure involving our first rape dungeon. But more importantly, after that I got a chance to talk to the DM of the ongoing campaign as we walked home in the same direction. He basically did a minor one-on-one session on the spot determining if my character would come back to life. He did, in an unknown town with a festival going on. My curse has been fixed, and I'm now very interested in seeing where this is going.

[Mcjon01]

I prefer the house rule where the only way to recover from a critical state is if your players are willing to start ERPing in front of everybody to pull off a mana transfer, otherwise you die. It's part of my home brew Nasu RPG.

[mAc Chaos]

That's just FATAL.

rape dungeon

wat

But that's also FATAL.

Also I thought you were more into higher power stuff than grittiness?

I like that exhaustion variant and forgot all about it...

[Saiga]

What do you mean, higher power stuff? Are you talking about the rape dungeon (that was the DM, not me) or the rest variant?

Despite the name of it, Gritty Realism isn't particularly gritty or realistic. I guess it IS more realistic in the sense that it takes longer to heal, but it's more of a balance thing. It can be hard making the recommended 6-8 encounters per day fit the idea you have for an adventure, it's much easier if you can take that level of encounters per long rest and apply it to a longer period of time so you spend more time on encounters or developments that don't tax resources.

Of course, that makes it harder to do dungeon crawls, but from my experience with my group my players (well, my Wizard at least) doesn't like big dungeon crawls because he gets bored of being in the same place for multiple sessions.

[mAc Chaos]

> it's much easier if you can take that level of encounters per long rest and apply it to a longer period of time so you spend more time on encounters or developments that don't tax resources.

What do you mean?

[Saiga]

So like

If you have 6-8 encounters per long rest with 2-3 encounters per short rest, then you only need to fit 2-3 encounters in each adventuring day. The rest of the adventuring day can be used on things that don't eat up player resources (or they're going to die pretty quick with the resources taking longer to get back lol) like story development, investigation, research etc.

[mAc Chaos]

Oh, I see now. You're slowing down the encounters too.

The reason it's called gritty and realistic is you're supposed to keep it going at the usual pace, but now the party has less resources and has to ration them out. As they dwindle, they have to scrounge to survive, and the tension mounts. Especially making it through a longer Long Rest. Mere survival becomes a big question; that's the feature. If I ran that variant I would constantly be pressing them into a corner to make them feel it.

I hadn't thought of the way you proposed though, which could be a good way to change the time scale of the game. Instead of all of the important stuff happening day to day, it's over weeks.

I've never actually seen anyone follow that "encounters per day" rule in practice anyway.

[Saiga]

From the description, I don't think you're meant to run the same number of encounters. The DMG says it means characters can't afford to engage in too many battles, and is good for campaigns where combat is rare. The idea isn't that it makes for a harder game on the players, just that it would be much harder to act the same way.

Kind of like how Epic Heroism suggests making encounters harder and more frequent to compensate.

As for following the rule, I'm pretty sure it's meant more as an average over an adventure but I think it's important. My group has always had an issue with not having enough encounters per day, leading us to usually having incredibly deadly encounters where the full casters don't need to conserve their spells and steal the show. It has just been really frustrating how it never seems to change.

[Seika]

An observation that amused me - I've assigned these flaws I've assigned to two different 5e characters:

A tendency to see things in absolutes. Just because Mechanus and Limbo and Elysium and the Grey Waste exist, it doesn't mean pure Law/Chaos/Good/Evil intrude on the Prime that much.

Insists that power is only power, and what matters is who wields it. This is a dangerous idea in a universe where creatures arise from the Abyss having been spawned by sheer Evil.


(The first being a Druid who is not just Neutral but True Neutral, in the old sense, which makes her rather difficult in daily life; the second being a Warlock who really needs to wake up to the fact that getting your power direct from the Lower Planes does not result in happiness and puppies).

[Seika]

Okay, i'm usually so-so on the pre-gen personality traits, but the ToA archaeologist ones are so good.


"That artifact belongs in a museum"
"I can't leave a room without checking it for secret doors"
"These fists were made for punching"
"When given the choice of left or right, I always go left"
"I can't sleep except in total darkness"
"I'm secretly in love with the wealthy patron who sponsors my expeditions"

[Five_X]

Oh yeah, that's a thing that's out now. I should get it, it sounds pretty alright.