What're Veeky Forums's opinions on Shadow of the Demon Lord...

You get "spells per level" which are across all of the spells of that level instead of memorizing.
ie. let's say you have the level Arcane Sight and Arcane Shield and you have a Power score of 2.
That means you can cast level 1 spells 2 times which means you can cast both spells 2 times in a day instead of memorizing the spells ahead of time.
You also get a very limited amount of spells which prevents someone from having a spell for every situation, and your spellcasting schools are really customizable (for example, I can make a magic caster with Arcana, Air, and Battle and you can make one with Rune, Shadow, and Time and even though we are the same class we play a completely different style)

>ie. let's say you have the level
1, level 1

>Power allows you to have more spell casts of varying rank per day. You don't memorize spells to slots. Instead, you expend casts of X spell rank from your casts available after using a spell.
>Classes have you pick to learn new schools or new spells when you gain the chance. You get a single Rank 0 Spell when you learn a new school, but learning new spells lets you learn from any school you already have access to.
>Some schools are considered 'evil' by nature, and learning them or their spells possibly gives your character Corruption, but also provides Boons against Insanity for each spell you learn.

Magic also isn't as instant win as it is in most systems, and you won't be able to learn all spells of all schools you know within the allotted levels. But it does allow players to feel powerful with their magic all the same, so it strikes a good halfway.

The talk about spells does remind me that the system strikes a good balance between pure spellcasters and pure martial characters. They all have their place in the game and they are not overwhelming the other.
Also, you can easily make a mixed character (for example, Magician/Berserker/Exorcist) and it doesn't feel limiting at all.

bump

I just finished running a session minutes ago. It's fast and lethal, my players love the magic.

I've played a campaign of that. Some of the most fun I've had with a system. The Boons and banes are fun and well integrated into the system, the high lethality of the system leads you to a different style of play, and most of all magic is not an instant win button, but rather an addition to the capabilities of other players. Highly recommended, and would love to play again at some point.

Anyone got a pdf? This thread has me intrigued

only core set www4.zippyshare.com/v/PXalKqpm/file.html

mega link
#F!Q5BGWaaI!e86d2Ax35BG_YXDfMz9E8g

I do but I'm not at home. I think you can find it in the Archive.

Having played the game extensively I can tell you its great.

The only thing missing is that it does not accommodate long campaigns well. They added rules for higher than level 10 but they are not great to say the least.

you can cast a spell that makes a SKELETON WALK OUT OF A PERSON'S BODY

Spooky Scary Skeletons send shivers down my spine....

Best Class system I've seen in a TTRPG in a long time, interesting integration of social skills into other cerebral skills instead of saying 'Niceness is a stat'. Their magic system is Vancian and a little restrictive but highly malleable. It's going to be the crunch basis for a coming Innistrad game idea I had with rewritten racial profiles.

I got to play a game with the creator as a GM, and he gave me this piece of advice, "If at least one of your players isn't mildly uncomfortable, you're not doing it right." It's edgy, but a kind of edginess that revels in the absurdity of edginess while still leaving room for Dark'n'Gritty fantasy if that's your thing instead.The turn order system is really fun, and I love their spin on how the actual cosmology of the established setting is at odds with how Divine magic works and that Rob and his team found a way to balance having Divine magic while keeping the gods and their existence ambiguous. A lot of the ideas that SotDL proposes are definitely getting homebrewed into other systems for my future games.

For people that have played it, what's the best way to elevator pitch it to a new group that's used to D&D 3.5/5e?

Also, how do professions work? Is it assumed if you have a profession relevant to a challenge you just automatically succeed if it makes sense? Or do you roll a "skill check" and get a boon if you have a relevant profession?

>elevator pitch
It's simple for both the GM and players but complex enough in the choices the player makes that almost no two characters would be the same.

>profession
Both, if it's something redundant for you to know there is no roll but if it's something with a risk associated with it (like picking a lock) you get a boon for it.

You get boon from relevant profession IIRC.

I'd honestly pitch it as a better 5e. More variety mechanically, but also paradoxically more streamlined in many places (using "stat-10" as modifier instead of the steps of 2, no initiative roll, etc.).

Or, if your group has a penchant for it, you could put emphasis on the dark-fantasy themes it has, or some of the more unique (again, compared to D&D) stuff, like access to techno-magic that lets you summon flamethrowers.

So I'm looking to run this for my group, capture a bit of the old DnD glory days without having to play DnD and I had a question. I see that characters don't start at level 1, but after the first adventure, is there a precon level zero adventure I'm not seeing?

There's a few. Slavers Lash I've played and I like. Mortality is high amongst level 0s tho.

There are currently 6 stand alone precon adventures for level 0 players, A Year Without Rain, Dark Deeds in Last Hope, Dead by Dawn, Survival of the Fittest, The Slave's Lash, and The Witching Wood. As well as those the Tales of the Demon Lord campaign book also has a level 0 adventure.

Out of all of them I would say Slaver's Lash, Survival of the Fittest, or A Year Without Rain are all great places to start. I would advise against running Tales of the Demon Lord for your first time as the lethality of the starting adventure is much higher than the standalone ones. Even with a 5 person level 1 party, and level 1 is a decent jump in strength, only 1 person survived it.

A Year Without Rain also has a version for levels 1-3 s be sure you use the Starting adventure and not the Novice adventure version for your first run

Thanks for the advice. Now for the obnoxious part, links?

No problem, I was a little lost with which adventure to start with too. I am just glad I didn't run Tales like I was going to at first.

This trove has everything up to date, and is updated as new stuff comes out, which is most Mondays h1v3 am /SOTLD it is usually a snip link but you can always check the share thread to see which shortener is being used for it.

The G+ community for SotDL is currently the most active place and the creator is active there too and typically answers most players questions about the game if no one else there does so you might want to check that out too, you'll also be able to find out when new things release for it and stuff like that. plus.google.com/communities/115188020895299223511

You wouldn't happen to have A year without rain as a pdf would you? asking for a friend.

A couple more things I forgot to mention. The update core book from the 13th of September has some problems right now so you should probably avoid it.

The Demon Lord's Companion is part 2 of the core book, and while it isn't 100% needed I would say it certainly worthwhile using even for your first game.

The Victims of the Demon Lord folder contains more information about the races and a more fleshed out character creation for all of them. These are also worth using on your first run through if it's the sort of thing your players like. They contain a lot of tables for you to roll on for background and appearance stuff most of which you could just pick, but some give you some positive and negative things to begin with so you might want to roll for those. If you don't feel like using any of the expanded tables I say you should still use the profession tables you'll find in those books because they give characters extra starting gear based on the profession and given the lethality of the starting adventures it's useful to have a little extra. Some also contain new racial talents which you can choose at level 4 and some include new paths and spells too.

Paths of Shadows includes updates to some of the core games Paths and makes them more enticing to play as. This is also something you might want to use to begin with as it fixes some balance issues.

Poisoned Pages include a whole host of new things and expanded things, none of this is super needed but you might want to use some of it.

Monstrous Pages is what it sounds like new and expanded monsters to use for making your adventures, and some include rules to make you own custom monsters.

The Supplements you can more or less ignore but I would say if you have a player that wants to play a Priest you let them use Uncertain Faith because it introduces Priest Paths for all the major gods and makes them all feel unique which is something the core game really lacks.

Sure, use this link it's in the adventures h1v3 am /SOTLD

Doesn't seem to work for me.

You should replace the 1 in h1v3 with an i, and the 3 with an e, and replace the with a period, and also remove all the spaces. If you do all of that it should work fine

Yeah that worked, didn't know about the 1 and 3. Thanks user.

Any game that has a spell in it called "Hateful defecation" gets my vote

>6666

Nice try, Super-Satan, but nobody is buying into your bullshit.

>Setting is bland
Fair
>Monsters are bland
Completely incorrect in my personal opinion.

>Everything else is quite good
I dig it, I really do.

...

...okay, I just came here randomly browsing Veeky Forums, but I am interested as fuck right now

Don't like the setting, the tone, or the people behind it, but it does things D&D hacks really should have by now. Mostly class agnostic prestige classing, the skill tag system, and going to four stats.

The caster/fighter disparity in affecting the world is still bad, but the game ends at 10 and is lower power than 3.X so it's not game wrecking.

what's wrong with the setting, the tone, the people?

It's a great game and while you should certainly check it out don't expect a huge amount of stuff in that sort of tone. There is certainly more of it than most games but it's usually a fair deal tamer than that

Thanks for all the help and resources user.

Don't mention it. I had enough trouble finding everything when I first started playing it. If I can help someone start enjoying SotDL quicker than it took me I don't see why I shouldn't

Is this game a 3.5 derivative, or is it its own thing?

It's a new system.

It is it's own thing.

Here are some clear differences

>Initiative is broken down into fast and slow rounds with the characters going fist. Fast round you can move OR take an action, Slow you can move AND take an action.
>All damage is based on d6's.
>Attacks are d20's still, but modifiers are brain dead simple. Stat - 10 = modifier.
>Character creation takes less than ten minutes from start to finish for a well made character
>Lethal as all hell
>Classes are basically spell caster, martial, or rouge and customization of those classes is incredibly robust
>The magic system allows for far more spell casting than under most other magic systems, but it is also not as strong as in other systems
>Insanity and horror effects are pretty easy to understand and impliment
>You will never save the world, you are just playing in a world that is dying

All in all, it is STILL just a fantasy RPG and doesn't go far away from that style and flavor, so don't expect it to, but it does enough different that it makes it stand it on its own.

Perhaps the best thing is that you gain a level after every adventure and max level is 10, so a campaign should never go longer than ten adventures or ten segments of one big adventure.

That sounds pretty nice. I like the emphasis on high lethality and quick character creation. I will have to check out the book myself and see what the flavor is like. Thanks user.

>fighter/caster disparity
Yeah this is barely a thing in this game. Both roles have alot of merit and there are very few instant win spells. I infact can't think of any off the top of my head.

>Nice try, Super-Satan
>Super-Satan.
>Implying that it's not The Demon Lord itself.
Fleshbag, please.

>Instant win spells

There are a few that can cause instant death if certain conditions are met, but they won't effect anything big and sure as shit won't effect bosses, but they still cause a lot damage. Those spells are also dark magic and carry a big in game cost for even knowing them, much less using them.

Considering a really high level spell is something that will do 6d6 worth of damage and a martial focused character will be getting close to that each time they attack and have enough defense to shrug off a lot of physical attacks, it is pretty easy for a martial character to be a solid choice for most players.

The spells really shine with the whacky ass utility shit like bringing a copy of yourself from the future back in time one minute to help you fight.

I played it with the devs at a con. It was actually pretty fun, although it takes a quick minute to get a grasp of how the system works. I'd recommend it.

Anybody besides me play the modern day/Mad Max variant called Godless?

I've been meaning too, but haven't had a chance. What does it actually change?

To build upon what was said about classes, because I don't think it was a very good way to explain the system.

Classes, called "Paths", are broken up into tiers, Novice, Expert and Master.

Novice tier Paths are the basic building blocks of your character and are broad archetypes, Warrior, Rogue, Magician, and Priest (With a spellsword like Adept in Forbidden rules)

Expert tiers are more like standard RPG classes, things like Paladin, Sorcerer, Ranger. These give you a more focused skill set and role.

Master Paths are the way your character specialises in something. So if you want to be really good with Air magic you can take Aeromancer or if you want to be a great shot with a bow you can take Sharpshooter.

The best thing about this system is there are almost no restrictions on which Paths you can take. You can go Warrior, Wizard, Sharpshooter, or Rogue, Fighter, Diplomat if you want to do that. And with a total of 183 Paths across all the released content there is a lot you can do

You gain benefits from a Novice Path at levels 1, 2, 5, and 8. Experts at 3, 6, and 9. Masters at 7 and 10. And your Ancestry (Race) gives you something at 4.

You can take a second Expert, instead of a Master if you want to

More importantly your Master path becomes your title. So when you acquire it at level 7 you go from Vigo Tenbranch to Vigo the Destroyer, or Quin Miller to Quin the Healer, Bjorn Wolsbane to Bjorn the Dreadnought, etc.

All of three of these examples were from one of my games.

Here's more wacky spells. I can't possibly envision a time when this second one would be useful.

ah, shame. anything else to sell it on a sick fuck that got hooked on it because you can make people loose balls and explode in shit and blood?

Off the top of my head

>be chased
>turn corner
>use spell and disappear for a minute (it says up to 100 years)
>reappear after pursuers have no idea what the fuck

>Bjorn the Dreadnought

Nice, but how does the hive link work?

Ok going to read one adventure form this thing.
WHat si the best adventure? What is the best splatbook?

Vigo the Destroyer. Yes, they were all jokes.

see

If all you're looking for is a game full to the brim of stuff like that you're looking in the wrong place. If that's all you want in an RPG go play anything with a GM who also wants that.

I'd hardly call that more important, and I also can't recall anything official about it either. I'm not saying you can't do it of course but it works just as well with any of the other tiers of Paths.

You should replace the 1 in h1v3 with an i, and the 3 with an e, and replace the with a period, and also remove all the spaces. If you do all of that it should work fine.

I tried and it did not work.
Maybe it's a server/proxy problem, I'm not in US.

I just tried it again and it's working. I'm not in the US either. SOTLD needs to be all uppercase or it won't work, so that might be it if you typed it out

That's a 5 power spell. Using it to hide is like using a Wish to ask for a sandwich

>title not as important
Fuck you.

I don't even know why you would want to go around announcing what it is you do. SotDL is lethal enough without you telling everyone what your skill set is

It should be SOTDL.

Yeah that. Sorry for the typo. Although it is correct in the whole link, I just got it wrong there

Now it works, ty, but it was pretty slow, maybe I have connection problems.

bump for interest

What are you interested in? I am always willing to talk about SotDL

I'm a bit confused in the char gen. As a human you get an extra language or a profession, but then later it says everyone gets 2 professions. Does that mean that a human could start with 3 Professions if they wanted to or am i misreading it?

You are correct, you can start with 3

Ok, i just thought first reading through chargen that profession were sortof unique, but turns out everyone has them, thanks for clarifying.

The best way to think of Professions is like Skills and background rolled into one. It's character's past as well as what sort of things they are good at, and therefor get bonuses towards.

Do any of the other book supplements have information on the Cog God and his cult?

Assuming you're talking about some sort of God of Clockworks I can't say I've ever heard of anything like that, and I like to think I know the books pretty well. If you can tell me where you saw mention of it in the first place I might be able to dig some more up for you though

He gets one line in the "Artificer story development" section in the core rulebook.

>You joined a heretical cult devoted to the Cog God, a mechanical deity sometimes worshiped by
clockworks.

I want to know if he gets mentioned anywhere else.

Ah, that. As far as I am aware there isn't another mention of it, and there is certainly no mention of it in the two places where I looked first. That being Ghosts in Machines, which the Victims of the Demon Lord on Clockworks, and Uncertain Faith, the supplement for Priests and religions.

The story development things are more just ideas rather than fleshed out concepts and in cases like that they are the sort of thing players and DMs are supposed to work together on.

System seems simple, yet flexible without feeling too bland. Looking to run it for the first time for some old DnD vets as well as some new players. Any advice for a new SotDL GM? I'm well versed in other systems I guess I'm asking if there is player options (good and bad) that I should be aware of when I'm helping people roll characters, etc.

I'll probably be running survival of the fittest as an intro if that helps.

First off you should expect your players to end up with dead characters. Starting at level 0 basically means your are in no way special, make sure your players understand that so it's not too much of a shock if they die in the first few Adventures. Make sure you are able to get them back into the game quickly if they die off early too.

On of the best pieces of advice is to read through the DM section of the core book, it is incredibly useful and will give you guidance on how to use all the major systems of the game.

Assuming you are going to be using the PDFs posted here I suggest you let your players use anything they want from the core book, Demon Lord's Companion and Uncertain Faith and the Adept Novice Path from Forbidden Rules. Those are the books I view as essential. You could get away with just the core book but the Demon Lord's Companion is very much core book part 2 and Uncertain Faith fleshes out the religions of the game and introduces variants of the Priest Novice Path for each god which I think adds a whole lot in terms of flavour and variety. The rest of Forbidden Rules I suggest you ignore other than the Adept and the new Actions. Feel free to use it when you have a better grasp on the game.

Something almost as equally as essential is the Victims of the Demon Lord series, they flesh out the races more and include more options for chargen and alternate talents for level 4. It's not too much more complexity and it can be fun to see the sorts of results you get with them. They also include race specific profession tables all of which grant some gear which can make the start a little less stressful.

You might want to play a few premade adventures first so you can get an idea for the level of difficulty, these are pretty open so you have a lot of room to do your own thing. They give you the general plot and characters, and some maps with the important stuff labeled but there are gaps for your own stuff

I should have mentioned, the Victims of the Demon Lord supplements only include races from the core book and the Demon Lord's Companion as of now.

After you have played a couple of adventures you might want to look into the Poisoned Pages content, these are things like expanded rules for disease, injury, insanity as well as some new gear to buy and new races. Insupposable Instruments adds an awful lot of new equipment and is always a good addition to any game IMO and Dark Passages is great for filling your world with ancient tomes and scrolls.

When you start making your own adventures and after you've gone through a fair amount of the other books bestiaries you'll want to look into the Monstrous Pages. These add all sorts of new creatures and some have rules for making your own they are a great source of inspiration for making adventures whether that's a mansion where the furniture itself is out to kill you or the lair of a Gaping Gourger it's always easy to find something to feature in an adventure.

The Paths of Shadows supplement buff or add some alternate flavour to some of the core Paths which were well needed IMO.

Make sure your players understand how Boons/Banes work in that they you only +/- the highest number not all of them, I had that issue in my group

Power is a very important stat to consider if you want to do any sort of Martial/Caster build. Power is used to determine how many casts of each spell you have, and the rank of the spells you can learn. You can end up as quite a weak caster if you pick a path with no Power at some point so be aware of that

Related to that, spell slots are per spell not per rank. So if you can cast Rank 1 spells once you can cast them all once, not just one of them.

Make sure you keep and eye on which creatures have terrifying/horrifying that's something that can get kinda forgotten about in combat.

If you have a Magician advise them that they can only really focus on three magic Traditions any more than that and you start to dilute your spell pool too much and will end up under powered early one. Adepts and Priests should focus on two Traditions. Rogue can also do two but they get less spells than the others. It's also worth noting if your player wants a Magic Rogue that you let them know Rogue's get Power later than the other Novice Paths so they will be learning lower Rank spells longer than the rest.

Make sure your players know when they discover a Tradition they gain a Rank 0 spell in that Tradition and can only learn spell in Traditions they have first discovered

You might want to hand out a cheat sheet with all the actions on it (There is one in the trove I linked in this thread) early on some of those actions are lifesavers, Distract is very useful even into the late game.

It is pretty hard to fuck a character up in this, other than with Power, so let your players go nuts with it if that is what they want to do.

There are probably other things but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Hope some of that helped anyway

I thought of one more, and this is something often overlooked that is Social Attacks. Social Attacks are, Befriend, Deceive, Intimidate, Persuade, and Taunt. These work like regular attack rolls, you roll your stat (Int, Will or Str depending on the attack) against the targets (Int or Will). All of them work more or less how you would think, Befriend is a little different though in that it makes the other 4 more likely to work. If you skipped over these, like a lot of people seem too, you end up using Challenge Rolls for these which makes things way too easy. Social Attacks are a great part of this system and you should get your players used to using them

's good. The progression of how powerful you are is good, the expert and master paths provide large amounts of variety and it's easy enough to learn without becoming overly simplified

Thank you kindly, user! Been looking for that.

see every image from it in this thread

This thread convinced me to run this. If TG can unanimously agree something is good, it has to be great

Holy hell user thank you for all the advice

>irovedout.com/

this one is pretty cool

Don't mention it. If it wasn't obvious I am a big fan of SotDL and it's one of those things I could talk about for hours, and if someone get's some use out of me rambling about it, well that's even better. I'd be happy to answer any questions about it too, if you have any.

Very little of the setting has been discussed in this thread so the images posted don't really have anything to do with it.

As for the tone I can understand not liking horror fantasy but the things that have been posted represent such an incredibly small portion of what the game is about. Forbidden Magic, for example, has 26 spells across all the published material that is >4% of the entire spell list and not all of them are grotesque. There is also a reason it's called FORBIDDEN because the horrible stuff it does to people is not a think that is accepted by the world as whole. I am not saying you are wrong for not liking it but using just what has been posted here to support your opinion is ridiculous because it's a tiny fraction of the game and it's not something you are ever forced to use.

And as for the people that might be the most ridiculous part of all of this. You can't really judge anybody based on creating horror it doesn't automatically make them messed up. And having spoken to Robert j. Schwalb on forums and such I can tell you he's a really nice guy who genuinely wants people just to enjoy his game.

I don't give a fuck if you don't like the game, it's obviously not for everyone, but it does sound an awful lot like you are just talking out of your ass here

Slow down there chief. Saying shit like that gets systems on the meme troll list. Just skimming through the core book:
I have issues with the weapon and armor system.
The boon and bane system seems sort of derpy. Your first boon or bane are significantly more important than your second for any roll. It also seems swingy because of how they are additive coupled with the aforementioned thresholding.
I would probably never make a clockwork character if I had to roll on the forms table. I would probably only play clockwork characters if I got to pick from the forms table.

Skimming indeed. Try reading it because you are talking mess.

>Pick off a table
Fucking disgusting.