>DMing a 5e superdungeon
>Party consists of
>Dwarf wizard/fighter, Woodelf rogue, Halforc fighter, Human cleric, Dragonborn barbarian
>group is returning from fighting a drider in not!Blackreach region of the dungeon
>Going up a wooden, hand-cranked lift that goes back to entrance of dungeon
>Little do they know a mercenary group has a trap set up for them at the top
>Party has killed too many of their men to ignore
>And the leader of the group is an intelligent golem in full plate with a warhammer the size of a fucking person
>DMlaughter.jpg
>Intend to just have the mercenary leader cut the ropes and let them plummet to their 'deaths' which they survive against all odds
>They'll fight him later when they gain a few levels
>He does this after a little monologue
>Dragonborn barbarian burns inspiration to grapple mercenary leader and pull him down with the party
>Dwarf wiz thinks fast and casts floating disk
>Fuck, commence improvisation
>Figure out a good estimate of the lift shaft's height, around 270 feet
>Figure they'll fall about 60ft per round when free-falling, 30ft when they do something to slow down(ie floating disk)
>fell a little before we figured this out, so I give them around 7 rounds slowed down
>Only 4 in freefall
>Make diagram of the shaft for keeping track of height, draw square for where minis are in the shaft
>Commence epic fight in midair as they rapidly descend toward the bottom of the shaft
>This boss has 4 class levels on them and twice the health of the tankiest player
>Con'td.
DMing a 5e superdungeon
>Party manages to slow themselves down while the fighter and barb tag-team the boss
>Inspiration and spell slots being burned like they're Torahs and this is Nazi Germany
>Rogue throwing knives at boss just out of spite
>Fighter burns Action Surge to get 4 attacks in, knocks off a quarter of his health
>Barbarian smashes his grappling hook into the shaft wall and holds onto the rope to slow down, almost burning his hands off
>He ragin' tho
>Wizard and cleric keepin' most of the party falling slower and throwing cantrips at the boss
>mfw they're kicking my boss's ass
>mfw the fighter rides the boss all the way to the bottom without slowing down
>mfw we roll the fall damage it totals to 90
>mfw boss dies and all but one of the party survives and stabilizes
>mfw players tell me it was the coolest boss fight they had ever played
When did your DM plans falling through and improvising something else work out for the better?
>To get evidence the local lord is corrupt, the party needs to do some forceful extraction on an informant that's currently hiding in a bar.
>Specifically, a yakuza saloon bristling with weapons and very dangerous men that know how to use them.
>Give the place three stories: a large bottom floor for boozing and ogling the showgirls, a gambling hall on the second floor, and a penthouse on third floor.
>Informant is on the first floor near the stairs and ready to flee up; fighting through the crowd would be quite the ordeal.
>However, the party's storyteller steps up on the stage between acts and starts spinnin' a yarn, weaving subtle magics into it to enthrall the entire saloon.
>The informant is yanked out of the bar ASAP with no fuss (successful rolls all around and I placed him where no one could see him while staring at the stage).
>Move the mercs from the top floor to street-level because I'm not letting the storyteller's clever idea circumvent the *entire* challenge.
>Sniper merc takes the shot, but the party sniper hits the deck.
>Sniper merc retreats to find a new hiding spot; party sniper leaves as well in pursuit. They ended up going on an (game-time) hours-long game of cat and mouse trying to snipe and countersnipe each other.
>This leaves the the martial artist and big guy to fight the ronin swordsman.
>While both PCs were useful in combat, the martial artist focused on supernatural chi abilities and the big guy focused on raw strength; the swordsman was all skill though.
>The street was host to a brief but intense fight with the PCs unable to land a hit on the bastard and the ronin playing it safe (if the big guy got lucky with a swing, it'd be curtains for the ronin).
Though the players were ultimately unsuccessful, everyone had lots of fun, way more than they would have fighting dozens of boring mooks for two hours. I really lucked out because my initial plan was ass.
Fuck, that's beautiful. Sounds like the sort of thing that couldn't have been as cool if you'd planned it.
Best part came shortly after they confirmed the boss was dead
>Couldn't revive the rogue, cleric was out too long
>RIP rogue, mourn his loss for a second
>Dwarf wizard yells up to mercenaries at the top of the shaft
>Says something to the effect of:
>"We killed your leader. If you disband your group now, we won't pursue you."
>"If we ever see anyone with your banner or your orange cloaks again, we'll kill them."
>"If you acknowledge this and renounce your loyalty, throw down your cloaks now."
>A minute passes in silence, but slowly they see something coming down from the shaft
>A shower of dozens of orange cloaks falls around the party
the best boss that my players have fought was one that I didn't even throw much though into and was quite a stupid idea I had in the spurr of the moment
Playing a homebrew game based on Daggerfall but with lots of retarded shit I made a character that wasn't even supposed to be a mandatory fight or had no fight to pick up with the party
The boss was a pair of siamese twins joined by the hips in the legs of a giant centipede (they have come to accept that my magical realm is monster girls) that was taking a bath inside a natural hotspring pool inside a cave and was pampered by some local cultist to not induce her wrath and allow them to use the cave for rituals
They first met the girls taking a bath and described as "twins with unnerving and odd black bug eyes whose lower part you can't see under the green steaming water" and left them alone, then they found that the girls may hav been holding a key item that they needed and although n agreement could have been reached they decided to storm the room and begin an encounter by shooting arrows
The encounter was dinamic, with the boss, being basically two persons, casting poison spells and devastating attacks every turn while having high agility and resistance due to the centipede tail. The hot water added difficulty because it was a hazard for the heavily armored characters and also caused burn damage due to th high temperature.
The funny thing is everytime I create a monstergirl character for my homebrew I base a lot of things of them on the monster girl encyclopedia or the MGQ series. One of the players recalled having obtained a book of monsters in a previous adventure and spent two rounds looking for the entry of this particular girl in search of weaknesses to exploit.
according to the monster girl encyclopedia centipede girls are weak to human saliva, it acts as a powerful paralysing toxin to them
so they ended the last three rounds of the encounter by taking turns kissing the girls
Motherfuckers
>using MGE/MGQ as a source
ABORT ABORT
>using MGE for inspiration
N-nani sore?!
By taking out the gross parts and making the monster girls feed on human flesh rather than the retardation of semen, they are quite fitting to the setting, considering Daggerfall has harpies, lamias and centaurs
They make interesting characters and encounters like that example and my players either like them too or do not mind
So the rapist lolis are just really shifty fey that lure people to their deaths now?
Those are obviously not included
But not that you mention it that actually sounds like an interesting idea that represents pretty much how the monster girls are handled
Instead of "come here lil shota so I can succ your penis" it is the usual "come here and gaze upon my sexier upper body so that I can kill you mercilessly and then eat you"
>Changing monsters that originally were said to kill people that had been changed to fuck them, back into using their powers/beauty for killing people
Full circle.
I know this kind of seems like a randumb moment, but my players liked it.
>Party is killing the shit out of dumbass frogfolk to save some fey
>Frogfolk miss time and time again, one of them nearly critsplatters a PC but his hit gets Luckied away when the player sees the 20
>It turns one-sided in the party's favor
>Down to the last two frogfolk,one poison dart frog and one tree frog attack the paladin as he's climbing a tree they're roosted in
>Tree frog misses, poison dart frog rolls a critfail
>Tree frog leaps and gets shot by the poison dart frog, falling into the brambles surrounding the tree and killing him dead
>The bard decides to intimidate and taunt the final frogfolk for his teamkilling shot, gets a 20 total
>Roll to see how well the poison dart frogfolk resists
>Of course it's a natural 20, part of me isn't even surprised
>There was a frogfolk shaman later on, he's off the table now. This guy is the new shaman.
>The frogfolk, rather than breaking morale as the last enemy left after killing his ally, gets madder than he's ever been before
>Clouds start forming around the location, some god of chaos has decided to favor this strange avenger
>The other frogfolk shaman is fried within his lair, his powers and staff transferring to the poison tree frog, who has now turned completely yellow out of rage.
>With a ear-splitting froggy scream, the new shaman raises three of his dead allies as zombies and successfully casts Hold Person on the paladin as soon as he reaches the platform the frogman is on
>This just turned from a one-way slaughter into an actual boss fight
>The party starts freaking out when the zombies just won't die due to Undead Fortitude
>It's up to the paladin to squash this frog before the zombies get a lucky hit in
(CONT)
>Burns inspiration
Stopped right there.
You don't have any idea how 5e works.
Can't wait to see what I'm sure is an ebin NAT 20 story on reddit!
>Player has Inspiration saved for a critical moment
>Decides that grappling this boss guy is worth using it to gain advantage on this vital ability check
Where's the beef?
Here cometh the fucktard asshole
>He manages to break the Hold Person
>They're on a platform, he successfully critfishes using Inspiration
>Uses Thunderous Smite to shatter the platform and shove the shaman back over the side
>The 10-ft push is barely enough, but the thunderous smite blows the platform to hell and makes it impossible
>It's a 25-foot fall, but the paladin barely makes his Athletics to cling to the tree
>The shaman has no such luck
>Squealing again in rage, the poison treefrog falls 25 feet to his death, cursing the paladin and the party
>The Thunderous Smite would have been enough, but the extra fall damage and the fact that he landed on the brambles in poetic irony basically liquefies him
>The Bard considers taking his head, but never gets around to doing it
>The End?
...I've got bad news for you.
>House Rulings are unacceptable and so is other people having fun in ways I don't like
Making up stories so that you can feed your ego and get your own ebin greentext and thousand reddit upvotes is unacceptable.
Why
Can someone explain to me how Inspiration is supposed to work? Because I always assumed it was just the Fate Point/Willpower Point that you use to ensure success on a vital action and I've never seen anything to disprove that notion.
>Playing pathfinder
>get blackmailed by half-fiend into assassinating some noble who's close to finding out he isn't the human he's been claiming to be
>playing chaotic neutral assassin so hyped for murder [it was high school, I'd have hated me too]
>we've been building a steam-golem out of cold-iron in secret to kill the half-fiend, but it's not ready yet
>kowtow to the demon and break into the guys house
>me and magus make it to his room
>as we sneak up to his bed while he's sleeping, his young daughter walks in and wakes him
Thisistotallynotgood.png
>hold him and his daughter at bay with swords
>magus is basically Guts so suddenly wants to back out
>I eventually agree and we fake his death and kidnap the guy, shove him to hang out in our basement
>next day our favorite half-fiend knocks on our door
You gain advantage on a roll, or negate disadvantage.
It's a 5e core mechanic; instead of a punch of number crunching, just roll 2d20 and take the higher for advantage, or lower for disadvantage. It doesn't stack either way; no taking the best of 3, and if you have 5 sources of disadvantage and 1 of advantage, it's a normal roll.
It's supposed to be awarded as a DM fiat token to save for interesting roleplaying, striking moments, etc. When the character becomes "inspired" by their actions.
This. That's why it's bullshit to "burn inspiration for a free pass" as was OP's implication. Literally just a roll at advantage.
But the story was bullshit so it doesn't matter.
You burn inspiration points you have previously acquired in order to gain advantage. The players were clearly the sort who hoard such ailities until they really need them. What part of this is confusing to you?
Cont.
>we know he could easily slaughter us so we let him in, I'm making breakfast so I give him some
>fucker throws the food out the window and takes mine
>proceeds to casually upturn the whole house while he calmly states one of his spies saw us leaving the noble's house with an extra rider
>spin some bullshit about hiring some mercy to help us
> eventually comes to the basement, we signal our artificer to go to the shack out back where we're storing the steam-golem and prep it
>as the half-fiend slowly approaches the barrel the noble is hiding in, me and magus sneak-attack
>I crit fail, magus crit suceeds, my sword breaks, his easily slices through demon flesh
>roars out in rage, half-fiend draws out a large sized great sword with a giant glowing red eye in the hilt
>initiative starts, cold-iron golem will reach us in about 2 turns
>cleric casts command, demon somehow manages to fail, and is commanded to drop his sword
>my turn I pick it up, provoke attack of opp
>claw
>I'm fine
>claw
>Is that all you got?!?!
>bite
>crit
>oh, you had quite a bit left there
>drops me from full health to negative 8
>I drop to the ground,still holding his sword
>magus stands over me barely fending off the half-fiend
Distant engine roar.mp4
>steam golem crashes through the floor and grapples demon, pinning him to the wall
>through the luckiest string of rolls I've ever seen, cleric heals me to positive and we proceed to gank a boss we should probably be fighting in maybe 3 more levels
>eventually kill him, artificer scraps the demon sword for parts, nobles heralds us as the city's heroes, magus gets an apprentice, cleric gets a new holy sword made from the leftover parts, artificer finishes his mech, I get flung into a zombie filled wasteland by a wizard riding a fiery tornado before getting a replacement sword
>my favorite campaign to this day
Holy shit that's funny. That sort of thing could never fly in my group though, to obvious a magical realm.
RAW and RAI, inspiration cannot be hoarded. This is explicit in the PHB, you have one or you have none.
You can still save one til you need it most, and it's one per character.
Yup.
Comically enough my group seems to spend it the most on initiative rerolls.
user, this might be hard for you to understand, but none the things you and other players/the DM describe during a session of DnD actually didn't happen. It's called "fiction", user.
>it is impossible for GMs to do whatever the fuck they want with the rules instead of following them anally