Poll of the Day > DMed my second game of DnD yesterday.

(+) Yeah! (+)

krazychao5 posted...

I never understood DnD

Reading this doesn't help

Listening to people talk about D&D with other people who play D&D or (as is the case here) targeted towards other people who play it is possibly the WORST way to try to understand it. If you actually want to understand it, I suggest you read the intro to an RPG book. Quite a few are available for free online, so there's no real cost to it.

shadowsword87 posted...

PMarth2002 posted...

Stone to flesh is basically just the counter to flesh to stone and other petrify effects, thats why people rarely use it. I mean you could turn a stone wall into flesh but most of the time why bother? You've got a ton of better uses for that high level of a spell slot.

That's my point?
How do you get players to use it and other high level super weird spells?

Honestly, if your players are the type to rarely, if ever, step outside of a few pre-determined attacks / actions, there's very little way to get them to use some of the more interesting options.. They're going to stick with what's familiar, comfortable, and (at least in their minds) optimal.

Honestly, both typse of spellcasting kind of discourage it, in a way. Prepared spellcasting requires you to pick out your spells for the day, so even if the player has access to the more interesting spells, they're going to stick to preparing the "safe" options. Whereas spontanous spellcasting limits the number of spells the character can know at all, so they are even more likely to stick with the safe options.

KthulhuX posted...

krazychao5 posted...

I never understood DnD

Reading this doesn't help

Listening to people talk about D&D with other people who play D&D or (as is the case here) targeted towards other people who play it is possibly the WORST way to try to understand it. If you actually want to understand it, I suggest you read the intro to an RPG book. Quite a few are available for free online, so there's no real cost to it.

Yeah, we weren't exactly being polite to anybody new here. DnD requires it's own unique language, in fact all roleplaying games do and they're all different. Like you can easily find someone saying this:
Two handing a weapon's attack goes like this: 1d20+Str+BAB-PowerAttack (if you have it, and use it up to BAB) to hit, and damage is WeaponDice + Str x 1.5 + PowerAttack (if you used it).

If you ever are curious about where to start though, I actually recommend podcasts to learn it because even if you don't understand the mechanics you can still enjoy the roleplaying that goes on.
You can understand the base mechanics and then read the books once you get the language down.

KthulhuX posted...

Honestly, if your players are the type to rarely, if ever, step outside of a few pre-determined attacks / actions, there's very little way to get them to use some of the more interesting options.

It's actually pretty easy as the GM to make the players stray away from their Plan A. Just make Plan A not work!

If their normal strat is to hit it with a stick, then easy ways to block that include swarms, DR, concealment/darkness, high AC, incorporeality, huge size plus mobile (players will provoke AoOs to get to it), STR damage, overstrong full attacks (players won't risk staying close), "burning blood" retaliation upon being cut, flying, burrowing, range enemies that kite, etc etc etc etc. That's all just off the top of my head, there's likely more.
Mix and match and apply all of the cool, weird things this game has against your party's weaknesses on the occasion when you want to force them to come up with an improvised strategy.

Counters are neat, but don't predictively counter an improvised strategy unless you're just trying to get them to retreat. That's a level of difficulty that a lot of players can't handle, or don't want to.
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Anyone cast magic missile at the darkness yet?

I am in a new 3.5 game, I am a Half or Cleric of Torm, bit different for me as I normally play rogue all the time

ParanoidObsessive posted...

shadowsword87 posted...

No because there's not 20 minutes of bitching about rules.
In theory, yes that's how it can work, but it's entirely dependent on the group of people who run it

To continually reemphasize my usual accusation that a lot of your perceptions are colored by playing in shitty groups, I've never actually had a 20 minute argument or complaint about how the rules work in any game I've ever played.

If anything, I think I've played with precisely one rules lawyer-y type player out of every group I've ever been in.

Simple rule to remeber about rules in any RPG. The GM is right.

@ParanoidObsessive posted...

PMarth2002 posted...

The DM doesn't have to tell you the odds. You've got a character sheet and will generally add a number to the die based on how skilled your character is. After you roll the die, the DM will tell you if you succeeded or not.

In some games, and for some rolls (like "Insight", "Sense Motive", "Perception", etc), they won't even give you that much - they'll roll for you where you can't see the number, and then give you information accordingly.

There are some rolls which are WAY too easy to metagame just from the result ("I rolled a 1, I'm totally not going to trust anything the GM tells me!"), where it can actually be way more fun if the GM rolls for you so you have no idea whether you rolled low or high, and if you roll low, they can actively lie to you.

"Yes, while you were initially suspicious of Mr. Sinastrov McEvilface, in retrospect you get the feeling that he's actually quite trustworthy, and is probably telling you the truth about the Definitely Not a Trap Inn, and how you should go there to meet with his contact, Bob Absolutelynotgoingtotryandkillyouson."

Some GMs may do the same thing if a bad guy is using spells like Charm Person or something similar, where rather than having you roll your saving throw (and thus knowing for sure something bad likely just happened if you roll low), they'll just roll for you and then subtly encourage you to like/trust an NPC by how they play them, or just slip you a note so YOU know what happened but the other players don't.

In all honesty, only bad roleplayers need DM's to lie to them/ roll for them. I have been in many a game where people who acted out the outcomes perfectly. Recently in a roll20 game I got "Commanded" by a evil item to kill my friends, being a sneaky bluffing rogue who used bluff in combat, I walked over to the leader, asked him to look at an item I found then back stabed him (I missed, Doh!), he slapped me so I bluffed the party that really the Paladin had gone crazy and was attacking for no reason, the turned on the pala and fun times ensued!

Babbit55 posted...

In all honesty, only bad roleplayers need DM's to lie to them/ roll for them

If the only goal is to put on a show for like a podcast then sure. I can pretend I'm having fun so it looks realistic enough.
If you actually like mystery, intrigue, suspense, solving puzzles, or thinking at all, then sometimes it's nice to not have the solution given to you.

Bluff is something I very rarely have the players roll themselves any more, after Father Donnagin. One of my favorite NPCs was a Cleric of good/healing who had a knack for always catching the (evil) PCs with their pants down. He led the investigation of the PCs' first murder and managed to counterbluff them, making it seem like he believed the PCs' lies (or at least left enough doubt that they didn't kill him before he could investigate, and trust me they wanted to). If the player had seen his roll on Bluff, he would have known that the Cleric didn't believe him, and then goodbye suspense!

Hell, even your own story would have been more interesting if the party didn't know ahead of time via public rolls that you were fooling them.
That said, I don't let PCs roll Bluff against PCs anyways. Diplomancers tend to override the party's will when allowed to use CHA skills on allies (so... exactly what happened but all the time).
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Lightning Bolt posted...

KthulhuX posted...

Honestly, if your players are the type to rarely, if ever, step outside of a few pre-determined attacks / actions, there's very little way to get them to use some of the more interesting options.

It's actually pretty easy as the GM to make the players stray away from their Plan A. Just make Plan A not work!

However, if they are that type of player, their plan B is likely to be just as bland as their plan A.
Plus there is the fact that, if you are talking about spells, it's not always an option to immediately switch to the "super weird spells". Because they likely do not have those spells prepared or known.

@Lightning Bolt posted...

Babbit55 posted...

In all honesty, only bad roleplayers need DM's to lie to them/ roll for them

If the only goal is to put on a show for like a podcast then sure. I can pretend I'm having fun so it looks realistic enough.
If you actually like mystery, intrigue, suspense, solving puzzles, or thinking at all, then sometimes it's nice to not have the solution given to you.

Bluff is something I very rarely have the players roll themselves any more, after Father Donnagin. One of my favorite NPCs was a Cleric of good/healing who had a knack for always catching the (evil) PCs with their pants down. He led the investigation of the PCs' first murder and managed to counterbluff them, making it seem like he believed the PCs' lies (or at least left enough doubt that they didn't kill him before he could investigate, and trust me they wanted to). If the player had seen his roll on Bluff, he would have known that the Cleric didn't believe him, and then goodbye suspense!

Hell, even your own story would have been more interesting if the party didn't know ahead of time via public rolls that you were fooling them.
That said, I don't let PCs roll Bluff against PCs anyways. Diplomancers tend to override the party's will when allowed to use CHA skills on allies (so... exactly what happened but all the time).

Not disagreing with you, just saying public rolling to really good roleplayers won't change things up too much, though it does depend.

I agree on the rolling things like Bluff PC vs PC though this was a unique case and I did roleplay the bluff in a believable way, but since she had seen the attack rolls she new ooc that I had initiated combat hence the GM decided to go with a contested bluff roll

KthulhuX posted...

However, if they are that type of player, their plan B is likely to be just as bland as their plan A.

A fully realized and consistent Plan B is actually pretty rare in my experience. Dedicating too many resources away from your Plan A makes you weaker, in specialization-focused games like Pathfinder at least. A "switch hitter" of dramatically different styles is rarely a good idea.

So Plan B usually becomes something improvised and non-repeatable. Maybe it uses a special consumable they've been saving, maybe it's taking advantage of this one specific fight's qualities (enemy type, terrain, etc). These are the fights where the martials form a protective circle around the wizard and pull out bows because they can't reach the enemy safely. Or the cleric empties his bag on the ground trying to find that one scroll of Stone to Flesh because his meatshield is suddenly less meaty than advertised. Or where the sword and board fighter has to leave the squishies he's protecting to go save a valuable NPC/macguffin being taken away ("You're the only one who can make it!").

When their Plan A is countered, D&D characters aren't usually versatile enough to have a grand Plan B ready (except high level wizards ugh). They usually have to drop their Plan A and adapt a new plan using the exact same ingredients as Plan A's.

That said, don't counter in the same way too often. You can imagine it would be super annoying to have to guard your wizard with a shitty bow more than once or twice.

KthulhuX posted...

Plus there is the fact that, if you are talking about spells, it's not always an option to immediately switch to the "super weird spells". Because they likely do not have those spells prepared or known.

I have an issue with Vancian magic for that reason, and I don't really use it any more in my games.
I allow it, but I introduced the Spheres of Power magic system and all my players just gravitated towards that naturally, so yay.

Babbit55 posted...

Not disagreing with you, just saying public rolling to really good roleplayers won't change things up too much, though it does depend.

It won't change the story, no, but it'll change the game. Often, especially when the challenge they're facing is information-based, giving the players tons of free information is just way less fun for them.

It's the difference between solving a puzzle and pretending you're solving a puzzle. The former is obviously more fun, right?
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Lightning Bolt posted...

It won't change the story, no, but it'll change the game. Often, especially when the challenge they're facing is information-based, giving the players tons of free information is just way less fun for them.

It's the difference between solving a puzzle and pretending you're solving a puzzle. The former is obviously more fun, right?

Not saying no blind rolls at all in a game, sure some things should be blind roll, I just mean all rolls of a type being blind, like Bluff and spot ect.

Like I said, not disagreeing, just doesn't need to be a blanket is all

Lightning Bolt posted...

It's the difference between solving a puzzle and pretending you're solving a puzzle. The former is obviously more fun, right?

I would say puzzles shouldn't be reliant on dice rolling at all though

Babbit55 posted...

Like I said, not disagreeing, just doesn't need to be a blanket is all

Ohh.
Well that is totally not what I got from "only bad roleplayers need their GM to roll for them".
Mkay!
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Lightning Bolt posted...

Babbit55 posted...

Like I said, not disagreeing, just doesn't need to be a blanket is all

Ohh.
Well that is totally not what I got from "only bad roleplayers need their GM to roll for them".
Mkay!

Yeah, I get you, my language was perhaps on the strong side. I mean people who cannot roleplay something if they have ooc information are bad rollplayers by my statement.

Lightning Bolt posted...

It's actually pretty easy as the GM to make the players stray away from their Plan A. Just make Plan A not work!

Huh, that's a pretty good idea actually.
As long as I remember to give them scrolls of weird spells, I could totally see that happen.

Bumperino.
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How would you make a Zelda style dungeon work in a DnD/Pathfinder game?

Maybe comparing anything to Zelda is unfair, but Zelda dungeons feel like they were designed very differently from DnD ones.

That is, DnD dungeons usually feel like "gauntlets". You get the occasional hidden room or transforming space, but for the most part it's just room after room with self-contained puzzles or fights. "Left or right?" ceases to matter because each room has no apparent external context.

Compare that to OoT's water temple, where you go back and forth through the maze, raising and lowering the water level of the whole place. You would have to remember a room, picture what it'd be like if you pulled the lever in the other room, and maybe even need to find a new way back, encouraging a strong understanding of the dungeon as a whole. Maybe the water temple specifically was a little too hard for the target age, but I like the idea of dungeon connectedness, and of mastering the dungeon as a whole rather than room by room.

Or the earth temple from Majora's Mask! With the huge, layered, stone pillar in the middle room, and you had to approach the pillar at various heights in the correct order to knock out damaged layers. Then you'd walk on top of the pillar when it was the right height. That's cool stuff!

But these example puzzles are obviously best run by computers since they rely on precise calculations and physics simulations. So... what do you think a human-run Zelda-style tabletop dungeon would look like?
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First things first - each dungeon needs a special mechanic that mainly helps you get through that dungeon, but is mostly useless outside of it (theoretically, you could just revoke it once the adventurer's leave).

Example - Zelda II has a dungeon where you have to find a Power Glove that allows you to smash blocks, which you can then use to gain access to parts of the dungeon you couldn't otherwise get to. You could theoretically replicate this by having Gauntlets of Giant Strength that make them strong enough to punch through walls, or that are just designed to specifically siege-smash a very specific type of wall that only exists in that dungeon (or the gloves technically work on anything, but becoming depowered if removed from the dungeon). Conversely, a more magical option might be to have the dungeon filled with false walls that feel solid normally, but which visually appear to anyone holding a specific amulet, which also allows the bearer to pass through the wall as if it were mist.

You could add in extra complexities - Zelda II has a couple dungeons where you basically need to find an item somewhere in the world before you can access it, or where you need to cast a specific spell to get the entrance to appear. It wouldn't be extremely difficult to incorporate something like that into the mix.

Example - Zelda II has a dungeon where you can only beat the boss if you cast Reflect on your shield and redirect his own attacks against him. While in the dungeon, the players discover a shield that can reflect magic, and must use it against the boss (say, make a Dex roll as a reaction to all attacks, with a lower DC success protecting them but a higher DC success reflecting it back at the caster).

There are tons of puzzle-type dungeons people have come up with over the years, so it wouldn't be that hard to find a bunch of different designs, then just come up with backstory about some long-forgotten culture or insane mage who built a system of booby-trapped dungeons scattered across the world, each of which contains one part of something that needs to be reassembled for some reason (something akin to the Rod of Seven Parts, only preferably less evil).

Also, physical mapping would pretty much be a must. If you're going to have a puzzle like you mentioned, where players have to double back into previous rooms to trigger switches, you pretty much straight up need a reference for them to work off of, because otherwise it will quickly become hellishly frustrating for them to remember what's where and in which rooms, and how they get back to things.


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The more I think about it, the more I think an idea like that would work well if the players were dealing with some sort of previously (mostly) undiscovered magitech sort of culture that was able to build fortresses that were powered by some sort of internal magical power source, which allows certain tools or weapons to function within their bounds but which are effectively rendered inert outside of their range for lack of power. That would allow the DM to introduce almost any functionality or ability in an item that can be extremely useful in its "home" dungeon but more or less useless anywhere else.

But that would also allow items from previous dungeons to be used in future dungeons as well, as that laser-sword you picked up in the first magi-dungeon that has been a dull lump of metal for years suddenly flares back to life the moment you cross the threshold of the second magi-dungeon. Or maybe you need the crystal orb you find in dungeon three to reach the end of dungeon four...

Then again, I'm probably thinking along those lines because I've been thinking about magitech-type settings recently (ie, sort of a steampunky sort of setting, only minus all of the steam technology aesthetic and replacing it with something closer to Atlantis in the Disney cartoon from 16 years ago, or even how "technology" is handled in Breath of the Wild to some degree). So the idea of dungeons with pulsing lights in the walls and magical Tron-lighting just appeals to me.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

First things first - each dungeon needs a special mechanic that mainly helps you get through that dungeon, but is mostly useless outside of it (theoretically, you could just revoke it once the adventurer's leave).

Actually, I think I'll be using monsters and traps for puzzles. Items are the Zelda progression system, so it makes sense to hand out new powers there, but DnD has its own and it'd be weird to layer them. I think.

So instead of the "Magic Lens To Look At Things You Need This Lens To See" and associated invisible things, I can use enemy weaknesses. Like a troll in flammable gas. If you attack its weakness without thinking, you'll blow yourself up, but with good planning you can instead blow the troll up with little effort. That's a weak idea alone, you'd need to introduce the gas elsewhere in simpler conditions and let the PCs learn about it first, and possibly add in another confounder, but you get it.

The way I view it is that I'm shoving Zelda-style puzzles into the DnD progression system. Or really, just modern puzzle design, which is puzzle themes that train the player with increasingly complicated puzzles using the same elements. I think.



BUT! But but but! That isn't the part of Zelda dungeons I meant!
The puzzles are all well and good, but I'm more interested in (or I guess what I need more help with) is the dungeon layout being a challenge on its own. Easy example, seeing a chest on a high ledge and a door next to it. You gotta find where the other side of that door is, don't you? So you keep that in mind as you explore, and it gives direction to your choices. You gotta beat the dungeon not just by beating the individual puzzles, but by understanding the whole dungeon's layout and function.

Or maybe it's less about understanding the dungeon as the challenge, and more about that "directed exploration" thing. After all, once you see a chest on a high ledge to your left, you'll be looking for both stairs and paths on your left. I've never been a fan of navigation being an uninformed choice.
Uhhh... I'm not sure really what the essence of this is. Send help.

But I've seen very few DnD dungeons that weren't just a large plopping down of rooms with hallways connecting them and zero gameplay reason to ever pay attention to where you are within them. And I'm really not sure why.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Also, physical mapping would pretty much be a must.

Hmmm... mapping how?
I play online, so we pretty much always use maps. Everyone pulls up the same, gridded map and moves their tokens along it. Something like this if a picture helps:

(though I as the GM have the ability to hide as much or as little of the map as I like)

But now I'm wondering if I ought to make them draw their own maps, or at least parts of them. After all, if I want the layout of my dungeon to be the challenge, maybe I shouldn't just give them the whole layout as soon as they see it. Zelda dungeons don't give you the full map and compass until you're well into them (except when they do).
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The more I think about it, the more I think an idea like that would work well if the players were dealing with some sort of previously (mostly) undiscovered magitech sort of culture that was able to build fortresses that were powered by some sort of internal magical power source, which allows certain tools or weapons to function within their bounds but which are effectively rendered inert outside of their range for lack of power. That would allow the DM to introduce almost any functionality or ability in an item that can be extremely useful in its "home" dungeon but more or less useless anywhere else.

I've already got a setting that allows for a bit more contrivance than normal. It's a bit of a "what if". What if a child in our world (2017 real-life Earth, the one with the fidget spinners) gained the powers of a god and used them make the world "perfect" as best as she could?

So, since God Emperor Hannah likes games, she gave everyone DnD-level super powers. Death was an unsatisfying experience and so has been removed. Food, shelter, and indeed all needs are provided, so the only remaining economy is for adventuring loot. Monsters have been spawned the world over to give people something to do (adventure!). And more ostensibly good ideas that really weren't thought out because a child enacted them.

(Full disclosure, I ripped the premise from a webcomic called A Better Place. Here's that world's propagandistic genesis story in one comic-page if you like, though I won't be using the "attach giant thrusters to the earth" plotline https://tapas.io/episode/145338)

So uh yeah, I'm kinda married to that. It's neat!
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Lightning Bolt posted...

Or maybe it's less about understanding the dungeon as the challenge, and more about that "directed exploration" thing. After all, once you see a chest on a high ledge to your left, you'll be looking for both stairs and paths on your left. I've never been a fan of navigation being an uninformed choice.
Uhhh... I'm not sure really what the essence of this is. Send help.

You mean when you see something and go, "I will go do that later"?
The problem is that players are trained to go, "I see something, time to go poke it". Even if there's an unscalable wall, players have actual literal magic and they can figure it out. Then you start throwing invisible walls because they shouldn't be that far, and then things get silly fast.
Zelda is still a videogame, so if for some dumb reason we can't go over a 2 foot tall fence, whatever, it's a game and that's the universe.

shadowsword87 posted...

The problem is that players are trained to go, "I see something, time to go poke it".

I can always retrain them. Set enough fire under a player's ass and they'll do whatever looks wettest. >.>

But yeah, I know that height won't be a gate past level 5 or so. That's about when flight comes online for casters in Pathfinder. And some even weaker PCs could find a way up. So I'll need to design a lot of these dungeons around the player's ever-changing abilities. Shouldn't be too hard, GMs design dungeons based on how strong the party is already. And the overworld is harsh enough in my setting that I should have plenty of warning before they go to a specific dungeon. I think.

Really though, I think I have to accept that sometimes the players will outsmart me and solve something a lot sooner than I guessed they would. That usually feels so good for the players that it's beneficial anyways. At least my players love feeling like they beat the system.
It's a lot less of a problem in DnD than Zelda because humans are so adaptable. Computers can do those complex physics puzzles, but as a GM I can allow for creative solutions to work, expand the play area at will, and adaptively design the game so that a particular sequence break doesn't break anything it shouldn't. I don't need invisible walls to keep PCs out of undeveloped areas, I can just develop what happens on the spot when the PCs go over that fence.
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Reading a dungeon analysis makes me stop and ask myself how to use a feature like the parallel dimensions in Strange Journey in a D&D setting (i.e. you use a specific ability to "slide" into another version of the same dungeon that has alterations to its basic layout, allowing you to get to restricted areas of the original dungeon by going through the parallel version).

Also: Thank you for remembering that Zelda II exists. The Grand Palace is one of my all-time favorite video game dungeons (because of unique enemies, traps, and puzzles that are not found in any other area of the game).
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shadowsword87 posted...

The problem is that players are trained to go, "I see something, time to go poke it".

There is a fairly (in)famous solution to that problem. It's called the Tomb of Horrors. (Although I prefer the sequel, Return to the Tomb of Horrors. The 3.5 edition of the Tomb also is very nerfed, and should be avoided.)

I_Abibde posted...

Reading a dungeon analysis makes me stop and ask myself how to use a feature like the parallel dimensions in Strange Journey in a D&D setting (i.e. you use a specific ability to "slide" into another version of the same dungeon that has alterations to its basic layout, allowing you to get to restricted areas of the original dungeon by going through the parallel version).

My first thought is to make the alternate dimension one that already exists in the rules. Like the Ethereal Plane or the Plane of Fire or something. That way you can draw on a whole new set of rules that the players are already familiar with and that they can already interact with a little bit. How smart is the mage gonna feel when he realizes that he can just use Ethereal Jaunt instead of one of the preset portals to solve a puzzle? Or that Force magic hits both planes at once?

Plus, creatures on the ethereal plane can see the material plane, but not vice versa. I bet you could start using the "surprise" aspect of ethereal enemies to make the party feel really uncomfortable whenever they're in the physical plane. I can also imagine the PCs leaving a lookout in the ethereal plane whenever they return to the physical in case of an ethereal attack. If you're careful with portal placement, you can break this briefly and make them run blind for short bits.

If you start relying on surprises, you could also give the PCs a chance to get the drop on an ambush predator! That could feel like some sweet justice if you've been a little aggressive with the Ethereal Spiders lately.

So start with an ethereal wall on the entrance, a portal in the room, and a physical wall on the exit. Stick an ethereal treasure chest in there. Introduce the mechanic. And like... continue or something. I may use this but I'd need to build it in tandem with a layout, the way I'm doing things, and not right now. :p

You could probably do a whole (short-ish) campaign with this idea. The Plane of Water mimics the rising/lowering water levels from OoT pretty well. Plane of Positive Energy has that cool rule where you gain health constantly until you hit double your max health and explode. It could be neat if you want to make forays into the other Plane timed without dropping the party to 2 health every time, and it also opens up some funny "breaking the rules" cheese like beating the shit out of yourself with a hammer to extend your time limit. The big limiter is that these Planes actually are other places, unlike the Ethereal Plane which is sort of just an extra layer on top of the normal world.
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Here's a campaign idea I came up with in the shower earlier:

Run a normal game with players whose characters all start out low-level, and do general early-game stuff.

Then, once they hit level 4 or so, they're approached by an older NPC who is obviously (or not so obviously) a grimdark future version of one of their characters (as DM, take one of their character sheets, and then "level" that character up to 19 or 20). Play them as an NPC who shows up during a battle where the PCs are having a bit of trouble and just utterly wreck shop, soloing all of the enemies PDQ.

This NPC eventually reveals that they used a temporal anomaly known as the Timescar to travel backwards into the past, to try and avert a dark future wherein something terrible happens and the world goes to shit. Eventually, a badass Warforged or Golem shows up which has clearly come from this dark future and is trying to kill the future PC (and possibly the past PCs as well, because why the fuck not).

At this point, since you don't want a strong high-level character hanging around hogging the spotlight (which players tend to see as "not fun" or "asshole DM showing off how awesome his DMPC is again"), the Warforged and the future-PC fight and apparently kill each other (bonus points if the PCs never find either body, and the Warforged eventually repairs itself and comes back as an enemy later once they've leveled enough to potentially beat it as a group).

While the future PC is with the group, you can either have them be very talkative about what happens in their version of the future that they're trying to avert (potentially mentioning how the other PCs were killed, how someone they currently consider a minor villain turns out to be a major threat, or how some magical apocalypse or other wrecks the world), or have them be more reticent (because they're too scarred by what they've seen to want to talk about it, and it won't matter anyway once they fix things, right?).

If they're talkative, then once they're gone the PCs have to worry about whether or not they can avert whatever catastrophe happened with their foreknowledge, or if they're more or less doomed to repeat history (or make things worse) by trying to prevent it. Worse, every comment can become a potential threat - if the NPC tells one PC to "avoid Sunstone Gorge, that's where you get killed by a dragon", but it seems like the group is going to have to go to Sunstone Gorge to find something/do something to stop the overall threat, does the PC go and risk dying? Can they rely on the warning itself being enough to alter their behavior slightly and help them overcome their fate? If they deliberately avoid the place (thus weakening the party as a whole), does it potentially result in one of the other PCs getting killed in their place? And if they DO manage to avert the catastrophe, what if they accidentally open the door to something even worse in the process (see also, Command and Conquer: Red Alert)?

If they're reticent to talk about the future, then once they're gone the PCs are left to second-guess every future decision (in-character, anyway). Exactly what did they come back to prevent? Is this next fight the one where you're all going to die? Is THIS the villain who manages to uncork the apocalypse? Or does the simple knowledge that the future needs to be averted set into motion a butterfly effect chain of effects that changes history regardless (meaning the moment the NPC arrived in the past the future was already changed)?


(cont)


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Then you can have the double-reverse twist where it turns out the future NPC is actually lying through their teeth, and the future is bright but THEY have turned evil, and are trying to manipulate the past to help make things worse. In this scenario the PC (either alone or as part of the group) eventually attempts to gain power, only to fail (quite possibly at the hands of his allies if he betrayed them, or at the hands of other heroes if the entire group turned evil). Now, with everyone he once knew dead, all of his influence lost, and on the run, his only option is to start over and try again...

(In this scenario, the NPC might fight the Warforged but fake their own death, moving into the shadows to manipulate events as a villain, after having put the PCs onto whatever path they wanted them diverted to. This NPC may not even want to return to the future at all, but plan on conquering and ruling over the past while either offering to make his past self PC his successor/lieutenant/etc, or eventually killing off his past self entirely.)

And then there's the ridiculous-quadruple-twist where it turns out literally everything was a lie, and the NPC wasn't even the future version of a PC at all, but a powerful current-day villain who changed their appearance and used magic to gain enough knowledge of the PC to fake a convincing future version. The whole thing was a gambit to manipulate the heroes into unsealing some ancient evil or doing something else terrible while retaining a degree of plausible denial.


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Lightning Bolt posted...

My first thought is to make the alternate dimension one that already exists in the rules. Like the Ethereal Plane or the Plane of Fire or something.

*facepalm*

I don't know why I didn't think of that. Thank you. Maybe it's because it's been ages since I've been involved in any kind of campaign involving the Planes? (Still have my old Planescapes big box, though I really like the old 1st Edition Manual of the Planes much more.) But yes, I'll remember that if it comes up.
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Okay, so I (re)played the Majora's Mask water temple yesterday. Very educational.

First thing I notice in the entire dungeon is that, in the first room, there's a water wheel that seems to run something very large, and it's hooked up to yellow and red pipes. The yellow pipe has an on/off switch, but the red is just off with no switch in sight. "That's easy, I'll follow the red pipe to its switch, or whatever it has!" I say.

Next room features a forked path between a door and a huge spinning whirlpool (as well as more clarity on what the water wheel does and how it works). I follow the red pipe into the whirlpool. Etc etc zelda etc, I find the red switch, eagerly use the results of my discovery to alter the whole dungeon back at the beginning machine, and dive back in to explore the bits I just unlocked until I have total control of the dungeon, having noticed an inactive green pipe while I was switching the red one on.

Essentially, I knew why I was exploring the whole time, but I was still exploring. All hail the red pipe!

I think that's a super valuable lesson. Immediately upon entering the first room, I not only saw the machine that's central to how the dungeon works, I also saw what I needed to do next. It gave me a starting point, and something to go by when hit with choice paralysis.



That said, Zelda games are totally made to be accessible to kids. These puzzles have good design principles, but are admittedly quite easy. More red herrings, subtler guides, more complicated environments, and more flexible mechanics (a switch can do two things, on or off, which is very straightforward) would probably be more appropriate for my group.

For instance, I very rarely lost sight of the path of a pipe, like behind or through a wall. I never encountered pipes that were hard to distinguish, since they were super clearly colored. All of the pipes simply needed to be turned "on", and there was no nuance where some should be turned off or potentially reverse direction. While charming from a kid's game, I think my players would feel like I was being condescending if I literally just had them following a glowing red pipe.
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I_Abibde posted...

Lightning Bolt posted...

My first thought is to make the alternate dimension one that already exists in the rules. Like the Ethereal Plane or the Plane of Fire or something.

I don't know why I didn't think of that.

Could always go for the Dark World vibe of Link to the Past and have a dungeon where you can slip into the Shadowfell version of the dungeon, and have everything be bleak and dead.

Or, on the flip-side, you slip the other way instead and wind up in the Feywild, where everything is more overgrown and generally weirder.


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You could make a portal maze. Make 10-20 square(ish) rooms with four portals, one in each corner/side. Number the rooms, then write out their numbers 4 times on little pieces of paper and mix them all up in a hat. Then, go through each room, and for each portal pull one number out of the hat, that will be the room that portal goes to. Fill the rooms as you desire. Most, but not all of them should have some kind of a distinctive feature. Figure out the path out of the maze, and maybe make one or two key portals require a special item to use or maybe make the player restore the power and leave the solution in another room.
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Oh, I would like help in something, not mechanics or story, but setting.

So Warforged and Changelings are my favorite races ever. Like I really like them, and I'm curious what you guys think their culture is like. I have my own ideas, but I want to see what you guys think.

For the record:
Warforged are robots, like 100% robots no question. Completely sentient, but robots a wizard made.
Changelings are a race that can shapeshift into other humanoid races within reason, and specific people.

I'm not really sure about warforged, though they are a very cool race. I'd assume that they would be opposed to slavery, because that was their original purpose (right?) but they managed to break free to be their own people. (right?) Maybe their shelters and other creations would be all extremely practical with very little aesthetics to it, but I have no clue outside of that.

Changelings though, I don't believe they would actually have a culture. In Pathfinder at least, they are born when a hag mates with a mortal. After that, they are dropped off at a doorstep to be raised by strangers. So they would likely adopt whatever culture is of the people who raised them. Again, in Pathfinder, they're also always female, so even if this didn't happen, you can't have a solely changeling community to be able to develop a culture because it wouldn't last.
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Mario_VS_DK posted...

I'm not really sure about warforged, though they are a very cool race. I'd assume that they would be opposed to slavery, because that was their original purpose (right?) but they managed to break free to be their own people. (right?) Maybe their shelters and other creations would be all extremely practical with very little aesthetics to it, but I have no clue outside of that.

I mean, this is basically up to you because I don't know.
I do like the idea that there was a wizard who made them so they can go off and build a sweet city, and then because it was a pretty cool wizard who wasn't a big fan of necromancy, died like a normal person. So the warforged, not really all that sure what they wanted to do, just sort of kept going on with what they were doing before. They would occasionally send people out, but they just sort of sit around, waiting and continuing their programming.

Mario_VS_DK posted...

Changelings though, I don't believe they would actually have a culture. In Pathfinder at least, they are born when a hag mates with a mortal. After that, they are dropped off at a doorstep to be raised by strangers. So they would likely adopt whatever culture is of the people who raised them. Again, in Pathfinder, they're also always female, so even if this didn't happen, you can't have a solely changeling community to be able to develop a culture because it wouldn't last.

Assume they are a regular race then in this universe.

shadowsword87 posted...

Oh, I would like help in something, not mechanics or story, but setting.

~twitches~



shadowsword87 posted...

So Warforged and Changelings are my favorite races ever.

No, really?!

~still has your account tagged as Morg~


I keed, I keed.


But I do still have it tagged as Morg.



shadowsword87 posted...

Like I really like them, and I'm curious what you guys think their culture is like. I have my own ideas, but I want to see what you guys think.

Would depend entirely on the setting.

Especially for Warforged, who are literally sentient robots who would presumably either be programmed with or mimic to some degree the culture of whoever built them. Which means a Warforged in Eberron is probably going to (or at least should) have a different outlook than a Warforged in Faerun. Or a Warforged in the Nentir Vale. Or Warforged in a unique campaign setting based on the Exos in Destiny. Or the similar concept of war golems in general.

In both cases, we're not really talking about established trope-heavy races (like how most people would say that elves are lithe and a bit ethereal while dwarves are stout and tough and gruff, with elves being more inclined towards arts and music while dwarves are more into forging shit and fighting shit - and drinking lots and lots of ale), so there really isn't a "canon" stereotype for either. Any given GM or player using them (or concepts like them) in any given setting are more free to adapt them to whatever their needs might be, basing them on whatever outside sources they might find interesting, or just crafting them to suit the needs of a given campaign.

With Changelings, your problem is that they're basically just descended from monsters without a unique, established culture, and humans who can be from pretty much any culture. The Changelings themselves presumably don't build major settlements or otherwise live together, as much as they blend into other people's society and adopt their customs as their own. And while Changelings actually DO have real-world mythological counterparts to draw from, the D&D equivalent is radically different, to the point where it's almost not worth thinking of as the same thing (in the same way that White Wolf's Changelings are sort of a unique entity in and of themselves as well).

At most, I COULD suggest that Warforged might tend more towards Lawful Alignment (like Modrons, except less absolutely consumed by pure logic) while a Changeling's innate tricksterish nature might encourage it more towards Chaotic , but then you would hiss like a scalded cat and spit at me.

I'd also probably suggest that if you like the idea of robotic "artificial intelligence" in a fantasy setting you should probably read Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett at least once. But honestly, you should probably read all of his Discworld books because they're all very good.


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I know absolutely nothing about either race except what you just told me, and I also have no clue what your setting looks like so far. >.>
So here's my opinion anyways! Subject more to what's on my mind at the moment than anything else but eh.

A robot society feels most interesting to me when they've freshly gained sentience. Learning to go from calculated efficiency to being able to ask what is valuable is a stark change. I think it'd be interesting to see a few of them stumble with this new "values" thing. In fact, creatures unused to having these values would probably be unused to defending them or distancing from them sensibly. I could imagine factions, but I could also imagine they just have this society thing figured out and run smoothly, but are also extremely aggressive towards change and new ideas.
Robots can also be used to show the perils of excessive logic and how omnipresent observation is bad mhmm. Not as much a fan.


Changelings don't even sound like they would have societies. They sound like pretty blatant ambush predators. Admittedly, "infiltrate a society peacefully and just eat people on the regular" is a pretty weird niche for a species, but there's hardly any other use for such a trait to exist and it's magic so whatever. I guess I could see it developing as a sort of camouflage for a sociable, intelligent creature with poor natural fighting ability. In that sense they're flat out superior to humans, no? Just us but they also transform. That seems like less fun. Neat as their gimmick is, it doesn't really seem very useful for an independent species. Either you're in with society or you're not, why put the effort in and fake it?

I guess from a less logical angle and a more narrative level, they're (again) perfect for infiltrations, but this time intelligent enough to get along with people but malevolent enough to not want to just join the society. Every person you meet has a chance to be one, so you'd better keep on your toes. It plays well into paranoia, and can be used to drive home points of isolation. And just a few pieces of fake information from a "trusted source" can really make players feel like nothing is true when the results of the lies start seeping through.
Complex, successful, hostile infiltrations into intelligent societies suggests a secretive, arrogant (or desperate) culture. They'd take on jobs, trying to make cash to stay afloat because their biology requires literal ground up moon rocks to function I bet. Or they'd just believe in their own superiority, and see their infiltrations as attacks on an enemy they hope to one day conquer when they get their numbers up.

Unless you just copy what Prey did and make them eat human consciousness to breed. That'd give them a reason to infiltrate societies, but I think it might be a little beyond the race's flavor. *sagenod*
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Lightning Bolt posted...

and I also have no clue what your setting looks like so far. >.>

Oh, I'm currently working on building a post apocalyptic fantasy where the good guys managed to barely kill the BBEG and the world is all messed up. The PCs are traders who are trying get by, it's a completely open world (I mentioned that multiple, multiple times, oh god I reminded them of that), so I'm just populating the world with interesting cities.

But my question about these races is just because I honestly really like them and it's a general question of what you guys think. I can easily take ideas and transplant them around, because I like them. They're fun and a lot more interesting than "humans who are angry" or "humans are extra smart" because they fundamentally change how things work.

Post apocalyptic shapeshifters should totally be ambush predators! You meet a traveler on the road, and have to decide whether to blow him up before getting in range of his deadly (insert attack here), or if maybe you think it's a real human and you should be nice.
Receptive to cool changes too. They can fake being injured, fake being attacked by another changeling, plead that they're actually good unlike the others, etc etc. Players will never feel secure when they see another human, and post-apocalypse that's appropriate.
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Reminds me of my love of doppelgangers (and of giving them extra levels to keep them up as a real threat to the party, since they are otherwise relatively low-grade monsters).

Thank you all for your suggestions on dimension-sliding. Will have to incorporate that into my next dungeon design (... which is good, since I am normally terrible at dungeon design and need the practice).
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I_Abibde posted...

Reminds me of my love of doppelgangers (and of giving them extra levels to keep them up as a real threat to the party, since they are otherwise relatively low-grade monsters).

Could always go The Witcher route, and rejigger them to take on the skills, memories, and relative morality of whoever's form they assume, meaning they pretty much become one of the worst threats PCs will ever encounter at any level.


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I_Abibde posted...

Reminds me of my love of doppelgangers (and of giving them extra levels to keep them up as a real threat to the party, since they are otherwise relatively low-grade monsters).

Well, to be fair, they are mechanically very similar.

Also my secondary love: blink dogs.
They're dogs that blink and out of existence! What's not to love.

I prefer the blink cats. Or dweomercats rather.
Any time they're targeted by a magic effect--say you shoot a fireball in their direction--they can teleport right next your face mid-pounce and full attack you.
Just any time you cast, boom! There's a tiger already mauling you!

Take that, casties! Play a real class!
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Quick question apropos of nothing:

Can anyone think of a good fantasy/magical flavor term for the concept of "uplift" (which is generally a science/science fiction premise)?

I've been mulling the idea of a setting in my head in which a superior long-dead progenitor race uses magic to "uplift" multiple primitive races for slave labor (more specifically, I'm pondering the idea that they created humans - and maybe dwarves - by tinkering with halflings, and managed to create elves by experimenting on gnomes), but it feels like the actual term "uplift" is too science-y in a setting which is 100% magic fantasy.



(While I was typing this post it occurred to me that they might refer to the idea as variations on the term "to exalt", but then it also occurred to me that while calling the process "Exaltation" would sound really neat in an ancient occulty magic sense, that would technically make the subjects of the process "Exalted", which leaves a sour taste in my mouth because another system has already called dibs on that name.)


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I guess the question is how it's done.
Druids already have that spell, it's called Awaken. They can do it as a level 5 spell.
Using science-magic you can call it efluvium, or whatever other mcguffin you want that is the progenitor for sentience.
Straight magic, the term could just be whatever weird ass ritual they have to go through, and then they wake up, and whatever their situation is, that's what it's called.

I could use some help btw for writing and chosing specific word choices.
So I am working on re-writing all of the DnD stats to emotional stats.
Like Strength turns into Fury, Constitution turns into Stuborness, and I'm splitting Wisdom into Faith and some sort of emotional-feeling sort of name.
I'm just struggling to find good names for Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, and said half of Wisdom for reading people/animals plus nature stuff.

I want to have a more emotional base for DnD characters, and then shove them in a generic dungeon to see how they do. Do the players roleplay more/differently? Do they have stronger emotions now that they have numbers to them? Do they fight monsters differently?

Any help for this would be appreciated.

Intelligence is Focus.

Wisdom is Calmness (or like serenity or whatever). Technically, Wisdom is "Grab bag of brain things we couldn't fit elsewhere" but that's none of my business.

Charisma is very happy to be described as "force of will". Based on that, I'd go with Dominance or similar. Keeps it from feeling like a dump stat, eh?

Dex I have no clue.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Quick question apropos of nothing:

Perhaps a term like "Dedicated"? As in "The walls cannot build themselves. Dedicate that lot of aboriginals and send them to the quarries."
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shadowsword87 posted...

I could use some help btw for writing and chosing specific word choices.
So I am working on re-writing all of the DnD stats to emotional stats.
Like Strength turns into Fury, Constitution turns into Stuborness, and I'm splitting Wisdom into Faith and some sort of emotional-feeling sort of name.
I'm just struggling to find good names for Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, and said half of Wisdom for reading people/animals plus nature stuff.

Your real problem is that most of them don't really equate well to emotions, because half of them are blatantly physical, two of them are mostly mental, and one of them is less about your own state of mind and more about how other people tend to see you. At best, you could potentially find analogous "mental states", but "emotion" is an awkward label for most of them.

Also, I'd probably drop "Stubbornness" and "Faith", since neither really works well for what they actually are (and "Stubbornness" doesn't really sound suitably fancy/impressive).

I'd probably go with something like "Determination" for Constitution, if we're assuming it's more of a mental gritting of your teeth and pushing on rather than actual physical endurance. "Willpower" might also be a good fit, though if you combine that with using anger for Strength, you might start looking like a Green Lantern/War of Light pastiche (unless you want to straight up embrace that, in which case you should refer to Strength as Rage instead). Though Willpower could also work for Charisma, in the sense that most Charisma saving throws are more like pitting your force of personality and will against that of someone else, and at least part of the social presence you project to others is rooted in your own sense of will. On the other hand, Charisma could also be something like Bravado or Charm (though then you risk getting confused with charm-type spells and effects). You could also go look up synonyms for "chutzpah" or "pizzazz" in a thesaurus.

For Wisdom I'd probably go with something like Enlightenment or Awareness, because are the two sort of states that go with its usual functions (and either can sort of straddle both supernatural and physical knowledge of the world around you).

The problem with Intelligence is that it's more or less the opposite of emotion - it's the clarity of thought you get when emotions are stilled and logic becomes your prime mental state. And on that note, "Clarity" might be a good term for it. "Rationality" or "Intellect" might be other words that imply a mental state.

(And I'll be honest at this point, I'm trying really, really hard not to suggest Arete and Gnosis for Int and Wis. :-P )

Dex is hard because it's the most blatantly physical IMO, but I might steal "Focus" from Lightning Bolt and use it for Dex instead, because it could describe that mindset of pure focus and concentration when you're sort of "in the groove" and everything seems to flow, which is the kind of mindset that would definitely apply when dodging things, shooting bows, or just working on really intricate craft projects.


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shadowsword87 posted...

I guess the question is how it's done.
Druids already have that spell, it's called Awaken. They can do it as a level 5 spell.

Awake only works on plants and lower-level animals, though.

Granted, one could assume power enough magic users might develop a higher-level/ritual version of the spell that also reshapes the physical and mental traits of sapient beings, but that would still need a new name, so we're right back in the original boat.

My idea was mostly that a powerful heavy-magic race/culture (I was thinking about a Githyanki/Githzerai-esque sort of race) that could replicate most "technological" feats with pure magic would eventually decide that it would sure be swell to breed their own slave races to do all of their work for them (in sort of the same way humans are currently developing robotics). So they'd basically send recovery teams out into the wild, scoop up mostly primitive (or even feral) "lesser races" (in this case, gnomes and halflings), magically tinker with them for a bit, and then breed them over time like dogs, preserving strains they consider useful in some way, sterilizing out ones they view as negative traits.

In this specific case, the idea was that this race bred humans and dwarves out of halflings (with humans being the halflings who were bred for height and versatility while dwarves were bred for hardiness and compact strength), while elves and orcs were bred out of gnomes. Then each servitor race gets assigned its own specialized tasks (ie, you don't send an elf to go dig in the mines, you don't ask dwarves to hand you things off of high shelves).

Eventually, there was either a slave revolt that killed all the masters and destroyed their empire, and the slave races all sort of spread out on their own and started establishing their own cultures and kingdoms (and "Common" is probably a pidgin form of the empire's original language, since it's the one they all have in common to begin with, vis-a-vis Latin in Europe), or you go the "killed by decadence" route where the masters became so reliant on their slaves and so averse to personal effort that they eventually die out (like the Spacers in Asimov's Robot novels).

Either way, most of the surviving races would never admit to their own shameful beginnings, so whenever someone discovers an ancient magitech ruin somewhere they all just assume it was their own ancestors who built it "before the fall" or some other false scenario that cast their origins in a far better light (like, say, being the chosen race of the progenitors specifically blessed with their mandate, and thus inherently better than everyone else).


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Well, if a lot of your "awakening" revolves around slavery and making better slaves from inferior species, then the terminology is probably going to be pretty condescending. "Groomed" feels appropriate in that regard, though less fantastic. "Purified", "Refined", "Tamed" and such follow a similar way.

If the term has been written by the former slaves races now freed, they probably want a different picture of it. In that case, something inspired and obnoxiously independent (they're gonna wanna downplay their reliance on the Githyanki) like "Enlightened" or "Successors". "Inheritors" if they still want to respect their pre-awakened history. Moving away from

It's really gonna depend on your themes though. E.g. if you run with emptiness as a game-wide metaphor, maybe call your mindless ones "Hollow". That's what Dark Souls does (though it uses downfall rather than uplift).
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