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DnD is on my Bucket list I have no idea how to play

#21 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 12 August 2018 - 02:41 PM

My campaign is coming on well. Next session we have a puzzle dungeon, after that we have a multiple pathway combat / peril segment culminating in a Remorhaz fight. It's gonna get tense.
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#22 User is offline   Puck 

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Posted 12 August 2018 - 09:17 PM

Aaaand we had out first character death in today's session :p
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#23 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 13 August 2018 - 12:53 PM

View PostPuck, on 12 August 2018 - 09:17 PM, said:

Aaaand we had out first character death in today's session :p


Ooooh, what happene? Dish dish dish.
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#24 User is offline   Puck 

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Posted 13 August 2018 - 06:00 PM

View PostMaark Abbott, on 13 August 2018 - 12:53 PM, said:

View PostPuck, on 12 August 2018 - 09:17 PM, said:

Aaaand we had out first character death in today's session :p


Ooooh, what happene? Dish dish dish.


Let's say it's kind of my fault...

So we were fighting Demogorgon (the Prince of the Abyss), or rather trying to lure him into a portal which we then could throw shut and be rid of him. And he decided to conjure up a balor (like a balrog bur without copyright issues). My character was buried beneath a bunch of rubble and was using Clairvoyance to see outside and snipe ice-themed spells at said balor when the stupid beast managed to locate me and jumped right onto my protective pile of rubble and started digging. Everyone else started panicking at the thought of losing the party's strongest spellcaster and conveniently forgot that I can teleport and always kepp one Teleport spell for special occasions, so they send out our fighter/spellsword to go all melee on the balor (which was not an even match, unfortunately) while I decide to go through with my split-second decision to teleport out of the rubble and, on my next round, turn around and send another Ice Storm the balor's way, which is happily dismantling our spellsword's defenses. So, basically, my spell and the balor's attack hit at the same time, and while I got the balor good, I also got our spellsword even better. So there. My fault. I knew that was the likely outcome, but ingame and outgame knowledge, yadda-yadda :p

This is going to be fun to explain ingame should we manage to revive her :D

This post has been edited by Puck: 13 August 2018 - 06:10 PM

Puck was not birthed, she was cleaved from a lava flow and shaped by a fierce god's hands. - [worry]
Ninja Puck, Ninja Puck, really doesn't give a fuck..? - [King Lear]
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#25 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 14 August 2018 - 07:14 AM

Sounds like that Spellsword should stay dead for silly heroics. Heh.

My next section includes a very hard boss fight (the party will probably lose, but that's written in - if they somehow win they'll get something nice), after which they have a mountain pass with an option of either going through a Frost Giant camp, chancing a slippery cliff edge, or passing the resting ground of a snowbound drake. And after that is the Remorhaz.
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#26 User is offline   Coltaine - 

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Posted 14 August 2018 - 08:22 AM

"Hey, do you remember when I tried to save you unnecessarily and you killed me?" - Sounds like a normal conversation to me

Tried to convince my friends that we should maybe plan our next DSA group together, to give them a common backstory and and avoid a group that nearly completely consists of half-elf mages. Those kind of groups annoy me sometimes a lot when I'm GM cause a lot of skills are missing and the group nearly loses every fight, even after I weaken the enemies. Now we have a gigantic debatte about possible groups and themes for them. What have I done Posted Image

This post has been edited by - Coltaine -: 14 August 2018 - 08:23 AM

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#27 User is offline   Cause 

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Posted 14 August 2018 - 10:14 AM

A gripe I have with DnD is that the character creation almost forces you to be a half elf or a dwarf etc. If you want to be a paladin a half elf paladin is like a human paladin but with bonuses to the primary stat, a free cantrip or something but also very importantly dark vision! On the one hand the lore wants you to remember that half elves and half orcs are rare and on the other hand its basically making you ask why wouldn't I want to be one?

So I played this weekend. I made a conscious decision to be a human because I like the adage 'be an interesting character don't make an interesting character' still the party was a dwarf, a tiefling, a half elf and and a half orc and me. Which is actually better to my previous DnD attempt which was a half orc, a dwarf, a half elf, a gnome and an elf. Still when you look at character creation it basically ebgs you to be anything but a plain old mortal.
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#28 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 14 August 2018 - 11:53 AM

View PostCause, on 14 August 2018 - 10:14 AM, said:

A gripe I have with DnD is that the character creation almost forces you to be a half elf or a dwarf etc. If you want to be a paladin a half elf paladin is like a human paladin but with bonuses to the primary stat, a free cantrip or something but also very importantly dark vision! On the one hand the lore wants you to remember that half elves and half orcs are rare and on the other hand its basically making you ask why wouldn't I want to be one?

So I played this weekend. I made a conscious decision to be a human because I like the adage 'be an interesting character don't make an interesting character' still the party was a dwarf, a tiefling, a half elf and and a half orc and me. Which is actually better to my previous DnD attempt which was a half orc, a dwarf, a half elf, a gnome and an elf. Still when you look at character creation it basically ebgs you to be anything but a plain old mortal.


If I recall, humans get extra stats that mean that whilst they lack utility they tend to be generally good at anything.
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#29 User is offline   Dolmen 2.0 

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    Waiting till jean gets here.

Posted 15 August 2018 - 06:03 AM

View PostPuck, on 13 August 2018 - 06:00 PM, said:

View PostMaark Abbott, on 13 August 2018 - 12:53 PM, said:

View PostPuck, on 12 August 2018 - 09:17 PM, said:

Aaaand we had out first character death in today's session :(


Ooooh, what happene? Dish dish dish.


Let's say it's kind of my fault...

So we were fighting Demogorgon (the Prince of the Abyss), or rather trying to lure him into a portal which we then could throw shut and be rid of him. And he decided to conjure up a balor (like a balrog bur without copyright issues). My character was buried beneath a bunch of rubble and was using Clairvoyance to see outside and snipe ice-themed spells at said balor when the stupid beast managed to locate me and jumped right onto my protective pile of rubble and started digging. Everyone else started panicking at the thought of losing the party's strongest spellcaster and conveniently forgot that I can teleport and always kepp one Teleport spell for special occasions, so they send out our fighter/spellsword to go all melee on the balor (which was not an even match, unfortunately) while I decide to go through with my split-second decision to teleport out of the rubble and, on my next round, turn around and send another Ice Storm the balor's way, which is happily dismantling our spellsword's defenses. So, basically, my spell and the balor's attack hit at the same time, and while I got the balor good, I also got our spellsword even better. So there. My fault. I knew that was the likely outcome, but ingame and outgame knowledge, yadda-yadda :p

This is going to be fun to explain ingame should we manage to revive her :p



So this happened to me just recently in my first game.

I was trying to snipe what we suspected to be an enemy scout with a magicked arrow and our Rogue jumped onto it's back without doing a perception check. Turns out it was a bear that charged us rogue on it's back. Our Nature mage tripped the bear with a vine and our Rogue rolled a natural one on his acrobatics check.

DM had my arrow hit bear and Rogue alike, pinning them together so there was some bludgeon damage to be had as the bear rolled downhill.

Our rogue didn't make it so we had to double back to get him revived.

Low Level "struggles".
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#30 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 15 August 2018 - 07:34 AM

I remember our first TPK - it was written into the story to end our taster campaign. We'd travelled to Spires (an undersea city) to stop a vampire lord releasing the seal keeping Yeenoghu in his own plane. We killed the vampire lord but he'd been able to awaken a golem which smashed through the glass dome we were in, and Garl Glittergold mugged me off when I tried to ask for his intervention. What a dick.
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#31 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 10:08 AM

Starting out with the new group tomorrow evening - it's a session zero effectively so we can roll characters, look at the adventure hook and just meet each other. I'm quite excited to be playing again :p though still thinking as I'm so rusty I might resurrect my previous character (snarky archery build ranger) so that I have at least a little bit of familiar territory.
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#32 User is offline   Cause 

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:28 AM

View PostMaark Abbott, on 14 August 2018 - 11:53 AM, said:

View PostCause, on 14 August 2018 - 10:14 AM, said:

A gripe I have with DnD is that the character creation almost forces you to be a half elf or a dwarf etc. If you want to be a paladin a half elf paladin is like a human paladin but with bonuses to the primary stat, a free cantrip or something but also very importantly dark vision! On the one hand the lore wants you to remember that half elves and half orcs are rare and on the other hand its basically making you ask why wouldn't I want to be one?

So I played this weekend. I made a conscious decision to be a human because I like the adage 'be an interesting character don't make an interesting character' still the party was a dwarf, a tiefling, a half elf and and a half orc and me. Which is actually better to my previous DnD attempt which was a half orc, a dwarf, a half elf, a gnome and an elf. Still when you look at character creation it basically ebgs you to be anything but a plain old mortal.


If I recall, humans get extra stats that mean that whilst they lack utility they tend to be generally good at anything.


Humans get +1 to everything which is not that useful because you only get bonuses at even numbers, 12,14,16,18 and 20. So yes if you rolled or have 13 constitution for whatever reason than an extra +1 helps. Still your likely to end up with many stats on odd numbers, so maybe when you get to improve your stats you can give +1 to 2 different stats to make them both even. However the game mechanics definitely seem to also reward specializing. You def cant be good at all five stats. So if your primary stat is charisma as a paladin Id argue that a bonus +2 to charisma is superior to a +1 to all five. Actually just checked right now. A half elf is +2 to charisma and +1 to 2 stats of your choice compared to a humans +1 to everything. The half elf than also gets dark vision (a god send in most dnd campaigns I would argue) a bonus two skills and a bonus save against mental manipulation magic. So 4 bonus stat points vs 5, Id argue even this is actually in favor of the elf since you cant make use of all 5 stat points but specializing in the 3 you really need is great, plus dark vision and bonuses against being charged. If your primary stat is charisma (Paladin, sorcerer, warlock) you should probably go Half Elf.

The bonuses should come with actual draw backs to make the choice actually difficult. elves are frail so -1 to constitution for example. The lore might say that half orcs are mistreated but that's up to the DM and party to roll play and I find that few people really want to be a dicks to their friends every second in a game and the DM has more to focus on than making sure every NPC turns their nose up on the half-orc
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#33 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:50 AM

View PostCause, on 14 August 2018 - 10:14 AM, said:

dark vision


I cast Darkness
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#34 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:53 AM

View PostCause, on 20 August 2018 - 11:28 AM, said:

The bonuses should come with actual draw backs to make the choice actually difficult. elves are frail so -1 to constitution for example. The lore might say that half orcs are mistreated but that's up to the DM and party to roll play and I find that few people really want to be a dicks to their friends every second in a game and the DM has more to focus on than making sure every NPC turns their nose up on the half-orc


This was something I noticed had been dropped from 5th Edition which was present in older ones (or at least 3rd) - elves had a minus on constitution, half-orcs and tieflings took a charisma hit etc.
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#35 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:58 AM

Playing Tuesday. Got an absolute shit of a boss for the party.

They'll probably die but that's fine as this still progresses the story (they're in a Monastery overseen by dicks who will res them if the boss kills them and say "that was entertaining lul").

I've given the boss a berserk mechanic. Ostensibly it's a rogue with 16AC, 400hp (our party has a ludicrous damage output). At 75, 50 and 25 percent HP respectively, the boss gains an extra multiattack, damage dice and 1 point of AC. Starts off with 2d6 slashing +1d6 radiant on damage dice and has two multiattacks.

IF they beat this boss they'll get some really cool stuff to go with it, including a sword that allows them to perform a blink attack. Chances are they'll die pretty fast though, ehehehehe.
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#36 User is offline   Cause 

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 12:15 PM

View PostMaark Abbott, on 20 August 2018 - 11:58 AM, said:

Playing Tuesday. Got an absolute shit of a boss for the party.

They'll probably die but that's fine as this still progresses the story (they're in a Monastery overseen by dicks who will res them if the boss kills them and say "that was entertaining lul").

I've given the boss a berserk mechanic. Ostensibly it's a rogue with 16AC, 400hp (our party has a ludicrous damage output). At 75, 50 and 25 percent HP respectively, the boss gains an extra multiattack, damage dice and 1 point of AC. Starts off with 2d6 slashing +1d6 radiant on damage dice and has two multiattacks.

IF they beat this boss they'll get some really cool stuff to go with it, including a sword that allows them to perform a blink attack. Chances are they'll die pretty fast though, ehehehehe.


Yikes at 100 hp he will be doing 5 attacks of 6d6 + 1d6 radiant with AC of 20? What level is this party?
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#37 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 01:00 PM

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#38 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 21 August 2018 - 06:59 AM

View PostCause, on 20 August 2018 - 12:15 PM, said:

View PostMaark Abbott, on 20 August 2018 - 11:58 AM, said:

Playing Tuesday. Got an absolute shit of a boss for the party.

They'll probably die but that's fine as this still progresses the story (they're in a Monastery overseen by dicks who will res them if the boss kills them and say "that was entertaining lul").

I've given the boss a berserk mechanic. Ostensibly it's a rogue with 16AC, 400hp (our party has a ludicrous damage output). At 75, 50 and 25 percent HP respectively, the boss gains an extra multiattack, damage dice and 1 point of AC. Starts off with 2d6 slashing +1d6 radiant on damage dice and has two multiattacks.

IF they beat this boss they'll get some really cool stuff to go with it, including a sword that allows them to perform a blink attack. Chances are they'll die pretty fast though, ehehehehe.


Yikes at 100 hp he will be doing 5 attacks of 6d6 + 1d6 radiant with AC of 20? What level is this party?


Level 5. The purpose behind it is "to obtain knowledge you must first know death" so it's kind of designed to be unwinnable. If they die, they'll be rezzed by the troll asshole Seers and can progress, but if they somehow beat the boss (and this party's damage output is stupid high), they'll get rewarded handsomely. I may even level them up if they beat the boss tonight (if they don't they'll ding on killing the Remorhaz as we use milestones for levels).
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#39 User is offline   Imperial Historian 

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Posted 21 August 2018 - 07:52 AM

View PostCause, on 20 August 2018 - 11:28 AM, said:

View PostMaark Abbott, on 14 August 2018 - 11:53 AM, said:

View PostCause, on 14 August 2018 - 10:14 AM, said:

A gripe I have with DnD is that the character creation almost forces you to be a half elf or a dwarf etc. If you want to be a paladin a half elf paladin is like a human paladin but with bonuses to the primary stat, a free cantrip or something but also very importantly dark vision! On the one hand the lore wants you to remember that half elves and half orcs are rare and on the other hand its basically making you ask why wouldn't I want to be one?

So I played this weekend. I made a conscious decision to be a human because I like the adage 'be an interesting character don't make an interesting character' still the party was a dwarf, a tiefling, a half elf and and a half orc and me. Which is actually better to my previous DnD attempt which was a half orc, a dwarf, a half elf, a gnome and an elf. Still when you look at character creation it basically ebgs you to be anything but a plain old mortal.


If I recall, humans get extra stats that mean that whilst they lack utility they tend to be generally good at anything.


Humans get +1 to everything which is not that useful because you only get bonuses at even numbers, 12,14,16,18 and 20. So yes if you rolled or have 13 constitution for whatever reason than an extra +1 helps. Still your likely to end up with many stats on odd numbers, so maybe when you get to improve your stats you can give +1 to 2 different stats to make them both even. However the game mechanics definitely seem to also reward specializing. You def cant be good at all five stats. So if your primary stat is charisma as a paladin Id argue that a bonus +2 to charisma is superior to a +1 to all five. Actually just checked right now. A half elf is +2 to charisma and +1 to 2 stats of your choice compared to a humans +1 to everything. The half elf than also gets dark vision (a god send in most dnd campaigns I would argue) a bonus two skills and a bonus save against mental manipulation magic. So 4 bonus stat points vs 5, Id argue even this is actually in favor of the elf since you cant make use of all 5 stat points but specializing in the 3 you really need is great, plus dark vision and bonuses against being charged. If your primary stat is charisma (Paladin, sorcerer, warlock) you should probably go Half Elf.

The bonuses should come with actual draw backs to make the choice actually difficult. elves are frail so -1 to constitution for example. The lore might say that half orcs are mistreated but that's up to the DM and party to roll play and I find that few people really want to be a dicks to their friends every second in a game and the DM has more to focus on than making sure every NPC turns their nose up on the half-orc


The basic human chassis is not one of the top tier races, but in certain circumstances can be good, 1 bonus to each stat if you are using point buy is useful and if you roll a lot of odd numbers, but yes half elf is universally acknowledged to be stupidly good.

The variant human in the PHB which gets +1 to two stats, a free skill and a feat is generated acknowledged to be one of the more powerful options though. 5e deliberate went away from the philosophy some races are bad at things and I generally like it, if you want to make a half orc wizard for example you should be able to and not suffer for it because half orcs are stupid and have -intelligence, sure your half orc is stronger than usual because of his race but he is still a competent wizard.

I love DND, currently dming one campaign "out of the abyss" and playing two others "tomb of annihilation" and a homebrew.

My two main characters at the moment are a bookish gnome wizard/Knowledge cleric who knows everything (+12 arcana and history checks are great)and dreams of the future, and a lizardfolk druid who is very literal (think drax) and whose party trick is to summon 8 velociraptors.
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#40 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 21 August 2018 - 08:33 AM

View PostImperial Historian, on 21 August 2018 - 07:52 AM, said:

My two main characters at the moment are a bookish gnome wizard/Knowledge cleric who knows everything (+12 arcana and history checks are great)and dreams of the future, and a lizardfolk druid who is very literal (think drax) and whose party trick is to summon 8 velociraptors.



They both sound great fun!

My snarky ranger I mentioned above whom I was thinking of bringing out of retirement for this game was essentially a crack shot archer by the end of the campaign. Her thing was getting professionally disappointed with the other side not being able to shoot very well (one encounter where the caravan was attacked ended in her jumping on top of one of the wagons, one shotting the goblin leader and muttering to herself about "See that's how you do it properly!"), and I seem to recall she once shot someone in the leg the party were interrogating because they were being lippy and she'd had enough :p

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 21 August 2018 - 08:33 AM

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