Troll Thread Edition

And sometimes elves

Behold, a Wild Magic table with nothing utterly fucktarded like farting bubbles or permanently turning into an oompa-loompa.

Just chaotic, magical effects that can help, or hinder the party. The worst possible result is cast timestop on yourself, at the end of its effect, cast finger of death on yourself. Which if it does kill you, leaves a zombie in your place.

What do you think about the compass/clock I made for my players? It's gonna be placed in the campaign's homescreen on roll20.

I rather like it, user. It's very powerful, makes the sorc seem like it's busting magic out the ass.

Item is not what it seems.

A GM of ours ran a one-shot where some Dwarves paid the party to escort a valuable prototype steam engine from one dwarven city to another. A few hours into the campaign after a couple encounters with bandits, insane cultists and a territorial dragon, the party tinker-gnome wizard wants to take a peek under the hood to see what is so special.

Inside the main boiler, instead of machinery or pipework, is a silently thrashing demonic man bound in admantine chains with the inside scrawled with protective runes and parchment. The man matching the exact description of one of the players other characters, a Psyker who was sucked into the warp in the Dark Heresy campaign.

Then it was an added twist on was the man powering the engine? Was the engine just a ruse to transport this bound demon? What did the Dwarves want with this creature and how should they proceed? Should they trust the Dwarves? Should they trust the Cultists? What is their next step?

When using kobold fight club to make encounters, should I reward the party with adjusted XP or base? Why for either of them?

I'm looking forward to using it myself, I absolutely love the balance with effects like "Cast magic missile at 2d4th level." and the effects that are "Cast Flamebolt at yourself, and up to two others.".

Nothing is too overpowered, nothing is too risky or dangerous. And most importantly no effects that are "Hah, your face polymorph into the pepe-frog guy from the may may XD!"

Just started yawning portal from level one as a grave domain cleric, what did I sign up for?

It uses the calculations out if the DMG. So read the book.

Should use Chaos Bolt instead of Firebolt.

That's pretty neat, user.

Very nice

Depends on the DM but probably a fun ride into hell if all goes well.

Not that dude, but do you even know what adjusted XP is user?

Could you upload that somewhere, so I could add it to the homepage I have pictured here?

Not him but the book answers you question, which is why he said to read it.

>This adjusted value is not what the monsters are worth in terms of XP; the adjusted value's only purpose is to help you accurately assess the encounter's difficulty.
Pg. 82 of the DMG

Adjusted Experience is just a baseline to gauge encounter difficulty by the chart on the same page. Personally, I use milestones rather than encounter experience, either way.

I said I wasn't the dude asking the questions, I know what adjusted XP is, hence why you shouldn't use KFC for this kinda calculation, as it doesn't take it into account. Not that it's a perfect system even with adjusted XP, of course.

Stat me Veeky Forums.

KFC lists both adjusted and encounter XP though.

I'd post the owlbear meme but I can't be bothered to find the folder so have a (you) and fuck off.

>Have 5 players
>3 singles and a couple
>The couple invites another couple I've never met without telling me
>New couple rocks up with partially filled sheets
>Tell the group I'm not running for 7 players
>They should at least have given me a heads up
>Don't even have enough chairs for them to all sit on
>Start getting chewed out by all the players
>"It's just 2 more players, it's no big deal"
>"We're all friends here, you'll like the new guys"
>Say no and that we should call it an early night
>It's awkward as fuck

Session didn't run, people only stuck around for about half an hour before leaving.
I know I was being rude, but I don't like unannounced visitors in my place (with few exceptions).

>Just invite random people to someone else's home
>Get upset when that person is understandable annoyed
What the fuck is wrong with people? Do they not understand basic etiquette?

Nah, you're in the right. If it's your game and your house then they should have said something first. I don't understand this whole, just show up, mentality that some people have. Maybe it's because I'm a social retard, but I always ask to come over even if it's a weekly thing we always do.

What do I do with a player who wants to play as an undead character? I mean, it's not unusual in my setting for undead to exist, but they're usually the minions of something more powerful. I'm leaning towards letting him, but I'm not sure if he should keep his initial races statistics or if we should come up with different ones. Have any of you ever had this come up?

UA Revenant isn't that bad.

Yeah, I mistyped and meant to say "the question"

Anyone? Soldier stories or fun campfire stories an infantry soldier could tell?

I'm thinking Kobold Vietnam with a sudden sorcerous outbreak as we had to retreat?

Thanks, I'll take a look.

Use one of the vampire species from the Plane Shift Articles?

And weep for the lack of Plane Shift: Theros to allow you to play one of the Noston.

>"It's just 2 more players, it's no big deal"

I never understand why people say this. How new do you have to be to the hobby to not understand that now EVERYTHING has to be readjusted to the fact that the party size just increased by 40%.

And that's assuming the new players were invited, which in this case they weren't.

What's the best race for a Wild Magic Sorcerer? With tiefling it's impossible to instant kill yourself with fireball from level 2 (1 with false life). Half Elf is better in every other way except they can die from 1-3 from a fireball.

Go gnome or go home.

Why tho?

Pretty much any story where his power spun out of control and landed him in hot water or made a situation funny, like turn some guys armor pink or some shit.

Not him but you're already picking a garbage archetype might as well grab a garbage race while you're at it.

clearly fun is not for you, perhaps you should leave

I'll admit I probably came across as more standoff-ish than I initially wrote.
I was flustered and didn't expect it. But good to know I didn't overreact.

But there's a time and place for unannounced extras. D&D is not that. A BBQ with friends, maybe.
Some people just don't have a feel for it.

>I never understand why people say this.
Easy, no big deal for the players. For them, the more the merrier.
Plus none of my players have ever DM'd.

Personally, this could just be my upbringing, you don't do that period. Any shit you get for doing that you deserve, you have a right to be stand offish in that situation. Although I do agree a different context would get a different response, personally so long as you weren't flipping tables, sperging out and threatening people you didn't over react.

>so long as you weren't flipping tables, sperging out and threatening people you didn't over react.

I wasn't sperging out quite to that degree (internally, probably).
Rather, I was cleaning up my D&D gear while people were still at the table and packing away drinks and snacks.
To which I was told that it was rude and confronting.

Hmmm okay, I could work with that. That story could be why I made an enemy of a Dragonborn Paladin at some point.

Basic training stories.
Also, rip stuff from movies like Full Metal Jacket and Stripes.

Were they literally shaking, user?

Well honestly it was rude to invite strangers to your house without your permission. You had a firm boundary that they ran face first into and you made that clear. Also them having not DMed does make sense why "just two more with no notice" isn't a big deal to them.

As a side note what were you supposed to do, just not address the situation at all? Anything you did that was making your annoyance clear would have been confronting. Would they have preferred you just be passive aggressive? Either way hopefully it all works out in the long run with you and your players talking it out. Good luck my man

Are there any arcane abilities that would do forensics bullshit? I'm making an investigator NPC and I'm not sure if I want to make the Finger Prince of Nigeria come to not only indict the party for touching a door knob of a crime scene, but also reveal by process of elimination who the real criminal might be.

You're the fucking DM dude, make an ability up. NPCs aren't meant to be built using PC classes.

>Having the deck of many things in the game at all
Just no.

>Reach old age
>Heart is failing, have arthritis, all sorts of problems
>But somehow still have 20 con

There is no reason besides minmaxing to do 4d6 and assign instead of 3d6 down the line or point buy.

I don't want them to exist, that's the thing. If I can make them up, that's fine because I'd make none, but if they already exist in core rulebooks, that's a problem because I have to write my mystery in such a way that, logically, no one in a city of massive magical circlejerkery could solve the puzzle with arcane investigation.

It's better to focus on spells that already exist.
Use spells like 'divination', 'speak with dead' and so forth.
Using such spells you can eventually take a number of suspects and find the proper suspect out of them. However, since the players don't sound like they're guilty of anything here, they'd probably just be let free.

Oh, I forgot the big one. Zone of truth.
'Hi did you commit crime'
'No I did not'
'Okay you may pass'

You could say that a local was zone of truth'd and they mentioned the party.

>Just no.

You do realize that was a person's idea for character backstory? The deck seems incidental.

The deck of many things is world-destroying considering that if the deck of many things has been around for any notable length of time and has actually been acquirable, the world would have already ended to some fucking idiot deciding to un-exist the universe.

It doesn't matter if the players have access to it or not.

>Zone of Truth
SHI-
>Saving throw
Oh good, that's much less gamebreaking than I imagined. Plus, even on a failed roll, I imagine pleading the fifth would be a very interesting turn of events

You don't have to tell the complete truth. You can stretch it or be evasive.

Depends in the area allows you by law to remain silent. Considering that what you say has to be true and that it's likely less civilized than today, it's unlikely they'd let you get away with it and they'd just keep interrogating you.
At the very least you should be able to say 'that's private information (can only be truth) can you ask a less personal question that would prove me innocent?'

It's possible the villain might put in 'decoys' who are paid to not say anything, I guess. You have to think around the D&D magic rather than use conventional crime logic.

And why the fuck would it have to be? Have some crearivity. I can think if half a dozen reasons why that wouldn't have to be the case off the top of my head.

If your games are something more light-hearted, you might try to run the game anyway, BUT it is obviously your god-given right to cancel the game.

I somewhat understand why it might came out un-fun or something, though. Normal, social people in normal hobbies probably don't have that much difficulty with adding people. (What do normal people do as hobbies anyway? Videogames? Sports? Binge-watching netflix?)

I would be bothered by unannounced visitors at our table even as player, though.

Inviting more people without consent of host is most rude, though.

>You were created by the deck of many things
>But the deck of many things never existed
I don't care if it even existed for a moment
It's a stupid fucking item and no backstory should crap on your DM's world lore that much.

What should my Sorcerer trace in the air when he Counterspells? I'm trying to fight against just making it an arcane middle finger.

Nah man you were totally in the right, inviting extras to your place without asking you first is disgusting in its own right but then getting pissy at you for rightfully pointing that out and going what the hell at them is even more so. Drop them like a bad habit. If you can't do that though for whatever reason, if they bring it up again point out that the group size going up from 5 to 7 on the spot completely invalidates like half the prep work for a DM, and the hardest part too at that, encounter planning is a goddam bitch to get right and just dumping that shit on you and expecting you to just roll with it on the spot is not ok.

Make a plucking motion, like you're plucking the spell from your opponent's mouth.

Why trace anything, subtle spell it so you can't be counterspelled back.

The item is alive and poses serious doubts as to the nature of the mission the hero's have been charged with.

I like this! I'll say I trace a circular sigil and pull at the center of it like I'm pulling the voice out of the target or the object out of their hands.

I'm not always going to be using that also flavor is cool. I feel like its better to explain how you are casting than just say "I cast counterspell".

My Divine Soul Sorcerer reached level 8 last session and I'm not sure what spell to pick. I got Polymorph for my first level 4 spell but the others all seem a bit sup-par. I considered getting Banishment but I somehow doubt it would work in Barovia. What would you guys take?

So I've heard a lot of talk here and word of mouth that there is something called a Coffeelock, and the basic jist from what I understand is that they don't sleep and become more powerful overtime?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Idea from how I've heard it described sounds extremely interesting and It gave me a few ideas on how to work in into a character, especially a warlock. (Like being kept awake constantly by the voices of the otherworldly patron)

The problem I've run into though is I cant find an actual build for it, does one exist in a written format?

I've been looking over the things I could find on it and I still haven't been able to fully piece together what I'm supposed to do to make such a build.

Any help would be appreciated.

Always remember your character's character comes from your character's backstory, not their class, subclass or stats.

I don't know the exact build but I relies on Sorcerer levels to convert Warlock spell slots into sorcery points and taking eight short rests every long rest. Consult with your DM before you try cheesy stuff like this.

Utility or damage?

>Come from different dimension
>Use deck of many things in that dimension to wish myself into your world

Job done. No deck in your world and character backstory preserved.

I hope you don't this aggro with your players.

>Aspect of the moon
This shit again
You can just sleep for 7 hours and interrupt your rest instead
The build comes online at level 4
And don't forget you can make level 5 spell slots at level 7 and obtian level 5 spells at level 8
Also level 4 spell slots at level 6

That's even fucking worse because not only is it bringing interdimensional shit into the game, it's implying that someone from another dimension could have fucked everything up with the deck of many things without even being in the same dimension.

>it's bringing interdimensional shit into the game

LITERALLY what are the planes?

Huh. Last timeI couldn't find it for the life of me. Maybe cause I was checking on the phone.

Tbh I'd just slap exhaustion on the PC for not taking long rests.

I assumed by 'dimension' you meant some place outside of where the players might go and outside of common interaction. Planes, however, are a common place for adventuring in D&D.

>Sleep for 7 hours
>Wake up
>Run around a bit
>Go back to sleep for another hour or two
>Get exhausted because you didn't take a long rest
?

Well, in that case I make those spell slots vanish, after all he did go to sleep.

Everyone knows it's 6 for a man, 7 for a woman, 8 for a fool.

Then you're houseruling over it rather than going off of RAW. Long rest =/= purely sleeping and you wouldn't get a long rest just from having enough sleep or, heck, technically you could rest properly but it still wouldn't qualify as a long reset specifically.
Though, I guess you were hosueruling in the first place because exhaustion is an additional rule added as an optional only recently in a non-core book and with mechanics just as shit as long rests where you can literally sleep for over 20 hours in a day and become exhausted from not resting enough.

What about 12+?

It's just that coffeelock reminds me of shit like PunPun, sure it's not that powerful, but its way too far into metagaming and fiddling around with shitty rules and definitions. I mean, 5e is not a video game.

imgur.com/a/ZoGeW

You're houseruling by allowing multiclassing, which is an optional rule.

>DM cannot force you to take a long rest
Yes I can, 8 short rests are compacted into 1 long rest.

Thanks, user.

Not if they spend an hour of doing other things inside of that.

In the end, it is a decision that belongs to the GM.

That wouldn't actually disturb the long rest, got to be more than an hour for that.

One hour and one second continuous, then.

I mean, ultimately, the DM can just say 'pun pun no pun puning' and shut you down but the question is if it works RAW and maybe RAI.

Speaking of RAI, it is RAI.
They've confirmed that you are allowed to stack extra spell slots up using sorcery points and they've confirmed you can turn warlock slots into sorcery points and all that.