Tabletop Games Thread

[Five_X]

Busy in the salt mines rn, post later

[Snow]

Spoiler:

It was a lot of fun! The in-party conflict was interesting, and does kinda make sense in the story: we're complete strangers, and while Polly's character is probably wanting to collect what she has to as soon as possible, the rest of them are probably shocked by the bloodthirst, for various reasons (Evelyn working a demon's bidding is probably the last thought on their minds). For the gnome it's a hassle, if for no other reason, then because she's probably not used to so much direct confrontation. Even so, I'm not entirely satisfied with how I presented my reasoning in-character. Better luck next time, me.

The reason I mentioned rest wasn't in the actual rest sense, but having to take a potion or something before the next fight, having 9HP left and all.

Also werewolf wrestling was quite a thing to visualize. Thank you, Tank!

[mAc Chaos]

Post-session thoughts, since you asked:

I guess spoilers in case anyone else from the other groups happens to be reading?

Which Dagon is Dagon? You described him as a devil, and I know there is one (I remember an old issue of Dragon in which the ancient, paper Sage Advice column was queried on the issue of multiple Dagons in the planescape because they'd forgotten they'd already used the name) but the demon one was my immediate thought because he's an actual Demon Prince.
Either way, Polly's character mouthing off to him terrified me. He can very literally kill you with a thought.

(I admit to spending a bit of time browsing the Strange Fake thread to catch up while intermittently checking on the solo sections, but I think that's kinda unavoidable, as long as I'm not permanently making OOC jokes).

Yet again I fail to hit some mook guard with my +6 attack bonus. Grr.

Looool forgot to update my character sheet last session and still had the bracelet.

Wrestling the werewolf was fun. My character worked as she was meant to mechanically, in terms of making big strength checks and in terms of a bit of grappling; it helped the others even if I wasn't doing damage (support Barbarian!); and it was a cool thing in-story. I'm wrestling a werewolf! I'm winning! The descriptive text I got to write for this made me very happy.

Still occasionally having trouble getting Ist's voice down, partly because she was designed as a rather more quiet character. Raging kinda simplifies things in some ways, but it's also another voice to get a handle on. Not sure if I'd have done the "DOG. LIE DOWN" bit if I'd been playing her longer and settled down more, even if I did think it was funny. Is it her being very direct, or insulting, or joking? Hmm.

Intra-party conflict was ... interesting, and I mean that pause and that adjective very sincerely, not as a synonym for "bad". It surprised me, is the big thing I'm conveying here. I guess I'm in this sort of paradigm, both learned myself and reinforced by the internet, that characters actually fighting and making opposed rolls is either a really serious thing, a big story moment, or something totally trivial that won't change characters' ideas of each other. (I dunno, a singing contest in a tavern or something). If it does happen among us IRL, it's almost always something we've set up from the start of the campaign - we've agreed there'll be PvP in it - or it's because someone has failed their sneakiness attempts to avoid being caught doing something the rest wouldn't approve of. Polly just directly going to blast the dude in plain sight of us was totally outside my expectations.
Another substantial part of my surprise was me suddenly having to query what Polly's alignment was, because I had difficulty imagining that mAc had approved a group with two starters and a rusty grognard having both Good and Evil members. But, no, he had, and Polly was just rightly (evilly?) going with her personality.

Roll20's sound was persistently dropping out on me, possibly because of the programme, possibly because the sound in general on this laptop is not in a great state atm. I had no music or notifications for probably the last hour, which made things like the end-of-session change entirely pass me by.

Melina wanted to rest, and I'm kinda thinking, "How long have been been here, chronologically? I guess we arrived, like, late evening? It's now ... ? How long have we been awake including, like, before the session technically started? What rest makes sense?" (Also I may have used a Rage for wolf/ghost/wolf because they all looked boss-fight-y and therefore be tapped. But I think I've taken all my damage while Raged, which is good, because 20 more damage would mean I'd be next to dead. Also also, please thank your tank, because I've absorbed the equivalent of 40 damage for you so far and I'm still over half).

My response:

Spoiler:

I was actually tempted to use /that/ Dagon, because he associates with the Demogorgon and having Polly tied to that would be fitting given her fandom of Stranger Things.

But this Dagon is actually an outcast Duke of Hell, and once a member of the court of Asmodeus. He is listed in page 36 of the Fiendish Codex II and page 21 of Dragon #91. I am impressed you remembered that. Now you know why he was so hungry for devil names. His original name was actually something else but Asmodeus renamed him to Dagon deliberately as an insult to the Demon Prince.

Ah, that's unfortunate. That tends to happen in combat, when you basically have nothing to do until it is your turn. I find it stops being as much of an issue when people can still banter about IC, and I encourage that.

I was actually surprised by your werewolf wrestling gambit, but was glad that you went for it, since it was something creative and effective. Most of the time people settle into only doing the actions plainly listed on their sheet, and thus it can get boring if you're a Fighter who only does your single attack and calls it a day. But even per the rules, there is the "improvise an action" ability which is an escape hatch to allow all sorts of open-ended actions as moderated by the GM. But really, I just look to see what people try in-character and then present a way for it to happen mechanically.

I thought you guys handled the party conflict as perfectly as you could this session. Good intra-party conflict spawns interesting character interactions.

It is definitely something that has to be approached with care. If you're playing evil, you have to balance your evil against being too disruptive. If you're playing good, you want to uphold justice without being a buzzkill for everyone else in the game.

But when the balance goes bad is when one side never lets up on it, and it reaches the point where they've become such a liability everyone's character ends up asking why they're adventuring together in the first place.

In that case, it makes sense for the black sheep to part ways, and for the player to make a new character.

In other words, just as the evil character has the freedom to be evil, the good characters are not obligated to twist themselves into a pretzel to put up with it.

That means the evil character will want to hide their wrongdoings, just like a serial killer won't just blatantly murder someone in broad daylight in front of everyone.

Generally, I've come from a tradition where we've always just played out the character conflicts, and everyone has been good enough to take it on the chin when things didn't go their way.

For good reason, a lot of groups ban any sort of conflict of that nature, because people can't handle it -- but on the other hand, much like riding a bike, you can never GIT GUD if you don't try.

The best way to look at it in those cases is from the eyes of an audience watching the game like a movie, and relishing in the drama.

I also like for people's choices to make actual real differences in the game. If you play an evil warlock who is pacted to a devil, then that should make a difference and it should affect things. What I love about that scene with Polly is that it demonstrates organically why Warlocks and those like them are feared and reviled in the setting, and the extent such people go to gain their power.

Though really, in that case of Polly trying to off the last guard, it was more about just being picking a bad option out of bad options to survive, than anything warlock related.

Yeah, that sounds like roll20 was being buggy. Refreshing restores the music at least.

As for how long you were all awake, you got into Gersheim the previous evening, around 9-10 PM, and it is probably around 3-4 AM now.

Busy in the salt mines rn, post later

:thinking_emoji:

[Saiga]

The thing about improvising an action, I think the reason most players shy away from it is that it's so DM-dependent. It can be a really inefficient idea to even try with some DMs, who will just defer to RAW or give a result that wasn't worth the effort. We had that a lot in our previous campaign, the Wizard would try to improvise things (including using his spells differently) and often the result would be lackluster for what he put into it (sometimes using several rounds of prep and spell slots). By the time it got to me to DM, no-one wanted to try and improvise, even as I attempted to encourage it.

On the other stuff

One more thing that makes balancing good and evil/amoral characters difficult: it's not just when players push too hard, but when they push too little. My biggest problem with the previous campaign is that we had a bunch of good aligned characters who did absolutely nothing about the player who was doing continuously evil acts. That left me, a Neutral aligned character, needing to go out of my way to have the whole party not be complicit in evil acts. Speaking to the players, they WANTED to be good and play that way, but didn't reflect it in their role playing. Most of the time, they'd just go with the flow, which lead to murderhoboism and me getting very frustrated with my character becoming someone who would just allow this to happen because I couldn't do much else.

[Five_X]

here's your :thonking: you asked for mAc

Spoiler:

[I genuinely was kind of trying to push for some dialogue with NPCs, which is why I wanted to maybe talk with the guards, and then do some proper investigating - which is fairly ironic because I started off the campaign wanting to do more fighting! So, I suppose what that means is that there's a decent balance overall? This session we mostly just murdered people though, especially Snow's coup de grace on that one fellow we could've talked to. I really feel for that other guy, the poor lad really didn't deserve what he was going through, and he was a champ against that werewolf for what it was worth. 10/10 would watch spinoff anime.

The werewolf fight, speaking of, was great. I was completely expecting it to be more dynamic, but then Seika comes in and wrassles the doggo down and we take turns whaling on it. That whole sequence was really well set-up, including the part afterward with the party conflict, which I think everyone handled well. Franceska tried to make people be friends and then stepped away when that didn't work because confrontation isn't fun; then our feisty warlock threatened to (and almost did) blast the unlucky guard and everyone had to step in. And then there's the "twist" - I'll say no more, but next session is going to be very interesting.

I've played in parties where conflict was handled in a meta-game fashion, and others where it ended with someone having a fit and getting mad. This went well, avoided any of those pitfalls, and managed to be not only believable and mature, but also fun. Good times were had by all!]

[aldeayeah]

I've been yearning for character conflict (to experience it, not necessarily to instigate it) for a long time, but my IRL group just can't handle it.

I sorta regret not joining one of mAc's groups now.

[Bird of Hermes]

We managed to have an in-person session instead of over Skype for once.

There were parties, contests, large scale combat against dozens of enemies, multiple dragon attacks antagonists from characters back stories appearing, evil angels and an unpredictable escape plan made by the wizards that saved them and every NPC (they cared about) from a potential TPK.

They said it was their favourite session yet.

[mAc Chaos]

I've been yearning for character conflict (to experience it, not necessarily to instigate it) for a long time, but my IRL group just can't handle it.

I sorta regret not joining one of mAc's groups now.

I find that to be pretty common.

[Saiga]

wait which part

the conflict or the regret (you narcissist)

[Bird of Hermes]

I find that to be pretty common.

Closest thing my group has to in-party conflict is a 1 minute debate over who gets what loot.

[I3uster]

undisputed advantage of 5e over PF:

can be played inebriated at 4 am with previous 8 hours of session without losing track of anything

[Saiga]

my group can't play 5e sober at 10 am and keep track of things

well not our spellcasters anyway

filthy wizards

[mAc Chaos]

What was the session.

Also I noticed that too, Five, that you kind of flipped from "fight fight fight" to investigative mode.

[Saiga]

just got back from the first session I have had in seven weeks!! was getting antsy without my dice rolling heroin

It was the first session of our 2-3 session adventure before Curse of Strahd starts. We're all criminals in a large capital that makes all convicts fight in a coliseum, in team battles. All level 8, I'm an Eldritch Knight who was arrested for assaulting a noble who abused their servants, we've got a Fallen Aasimar Shadow Sorceror who killed a man for abusing his wife, a Vengeance Paladin who killed a corrupt lord, and another Fallen Aasimar, who is a Hexblade that assassinated several political figures on the instructions of our patron.

We were briefed on the rules of the battle (four teams of four go in, one leaves) and told to make things theatrical as the audience members would throw gold to us to purchase magical items with. We are also told that the collars fitted on us prevent us taking any action that would a) remove the collars, b) cause harm to someone without a collar, or c) allow us to escape. In order to get our usual starting equipment, we had to agree with one of the guard dudes to give him ten percent of our earnings, everyone did so (I especially had to since I needed both armour and my sword). For the enemies, the DM told us in this setting most magic comes from enchanted items that give the wielder the abilities of particular monsters, the first we saw was a man with a chestplate that gave him Banshee powers (so he had a Banshee stat block).

In our first fight, we were up against the 'Banshee' and his three peasant teammates, a group of all peasants, and a group of 4 "Chuul" warriors. I got a zero for initiative (1 - 1) with my teammates having 7, 7 and 4. And yet the Chuul team only managed to beat me for initiative.

So the Banshee does the scream, the entire arena is within range for it and everyone but my team fails the save (thanks to our Paladin's aura). So we've got every enemy but the Banshee frightened, and I'm just sitting behind the Banshee so no-one can come close to me. Our Paladin and Sorceror start, the Paladin decides he won't attack unless he sees someone who is unjust and holds his ground, the Sorceror casts Haste on himself and misses with his crossbow attack because he has shitty Dex. Our Hexblade jumps right into the fray, attacking the Banshee and then getting attacked by two of the Chuuls and taken down to half health. One Chuul is already injured, so he just goes after some of the peasants (who have formed a peasant scrum in the corner, punching each other to death) and the last starts going after the Sorceror.

I cast Enlarge on myself and use my action surge to get off a Scorching Ray against a few Chuuls and the Banshee since I couldn't get into melee range. As I'm doing this I'm describing what I do as dramatically as possible for the crowd appeal. The Banshee starts attacking the Hexblade, who is really not doing too well. The Paladin uses Compelled Duel on a Chuul, the Sorceror starts talking with their guide who disapproves of their violence as they hit people with Chromatic Orbs and quickened Firebolts. Our Hexblade casts Blink and is able to phase out to safety. I get into melee with the Banshee and kill it with my Booming Blade, and the crowd goes wild. I am able to reach the Chuul that the Paladin compelled, so I hit it with my bonus action attack, ending the effect. The Paladin is not happy. Two Chuuls go for the peasant scrum, one against the Sorceror and one against the Paladin. Sorceror Misty Steps away and continues pelting the one that hit him, the Paladin uses his Vow of Emnity and smites the Chuul against him.

On my turn, I want to keep hitting the same Chuul, but the Paladin tells me off for taking his kill so I go attack the other one. The Hexblade keeps blinking in and out, attacking the Paladin's Chuul until he kills it. At this point, the Paladin sits out of the combat, saying there is no honour in this and it's just slaughter. I kill my Chuul, the Sorceror also sits out, as his spirit guide is advising him to think harder about his actions. The third Chuul is killed by the Hexblade as the peasant scrum is mostly depleted, leaving one peasant and the injured Chuul left. Our Hexblade then uses his action to insult the Emperor of the capital and the overseer of the arena, who goes from jovial to furious. I toss an axe at the last peasant and behead the Chuul (after asking if he'd fight with us, he tells me to just end it).

The lord wants our Hexblade to bow so that our whole group avoids punishment, he refuses, the guards come and beat us since our collars don't let us fight back. However, I am still declared the crowd favourite and we get our gold. Our Paladin is beating unconscious as he takes the Sorceror's beating as well. Back to our rooms, we pay the corrupt guard our ten percent, except for the Hexblade who originally refuses to do so and only relents after some arguing. Then we get to buy magic items - a stone of luck for the Sorceror, a helm of telepathy for the Paladin, a cloak of protection for the Hexblade, splint armour and an +1 Great Axe for me (that also increases my Max HP by my level). We're given four days before our next match, so the Paladin and I have the exact same goal: try to find out who our next opponents are, and what they're in here for. After finding out that the guards know this, I talk to a pair while the Paladin uses his helm of telepathy to read their surface thoughts. We learn what some individuals are in for, including one guy who is actually innocent.

After that, we're told we can spend the rest of our downtime training a particular skill for a +2 bonus if we succeed (by rolling a 5 or 6 on a D6 after the training). Only I succeed, gaining a +2 to Athletics checks (gonna start grappling people while enlarged). While doing that, I form a friendship with the innocent guy and find out that he isn't fighting as the same time as us, which I tell the Paladin. On the morning of our match, our sleep is interrupted by four other gladiators approaching our room, the Paladin used his helm of telepathy to Detect Thoughts and realized they were out to get us. We left that session there with the initiative roll, and we've decided to put these sessions in-between the Curse of Strahd campaign so we don't have to rush it given that the start was so delayed. For me it was pretty fun, I just enjoy D&D combat a lot but having a high int character meant I could do stuff out of combat that my Barbarian couldn't.

edit: aww jeez this is always such a wall of text

[Five_X]

What was the session.

Also I noticed that too, Five, that you kind of flipped from "fight fight fight" to investigative mode.

got tired of winning

[I3uster]

What was the session.

Also I noticed that too, Five, that you kind of flipped from "fight fight fight" to investigative mode.

In preparation of entering an icy wasteland we had to get furs and supplies so we did some odd jobs. Since I am the skill monkey as Bard it was up to me to get some robbers to think we're tasty prey, had our Paladin who posed as my guard fuck them up, got our cash for that, helped out some farmers to have a place to stay by giving them some furs we got from murdering innocent bear cubs.

This whole part took most of the session

In the wasteland we then had a huge ass monster fight, got acquainted with a dragonborn tribe that was the enemy of my companions tribe so we elected to let them die to said huge ass monster, found a ruin, the entrance of which got fucked up by the huge ass monster.

Exited and now we're stuck in some kind of time loop. Session ended there because the guy who plays my dragonborn companion almost fell asleep.

my main gripe is that i keep forgetting inspiration exists and since im the guy on the table who is the most into not smacking things dead (most of them are TRPG beginners) i always get it and then realize i already have one

- - - Updated - - -

lucky btw is a dumb feat

i already carry skill rolls just fine by having basically all of them semi-trained as a bard with that i just dont fuck up anymore

who thought this was a good idea

[Saiga]

heh

we were talking about builds for CoS

the previous Wizard was going to take Tavern Brawler feat as a variant human druid, but then decided he'd probably just take lucky because it's so good

myself and the two others (including the DM) talked about how powerful the feat was and how it'd be better for a character you want to feel super lucky

he just said "whatever I can flavour myself as being lucky that's easy"

I don't think I'd ever take it myself

[I3uster]

Well, Ability Scores generally seem way more powerful than they are in PF and enough Feats still give you +1 but regardless rerolls on command are just too good.

We at least don't use RAW for Lucky regarding disadvantage and just make it so you can call lucky after your first roll to keep it so it's not quite as stupid, but the way it interacts with even your death saves just makes a character with it much more resilient and better at basically everything whenever it really counts.

[Saiga]

oh yeah raw Lucky is just dumb

I still think it's one of those 5E things are just obviously too good. I really dislike how they made certain abilities just flat out better than your other choices, like Fireball compared to other damaging spells. They've admitted this is deliberate, and it bugs the shit out of me.

[I3uster]

We're pretty well-stacked in the melee department (2 fighters 1 vengeance paladin) so Dissonant Whispers ends up being the real murder spell for me.