Eberron is definitely the coolest 5e setting sourcebook that I know of
When is 5e Spelljammer??
Eberron is basically 1920s pulp adventure in dnd clothes
Its great
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Being in my D&D party is like being in a motorcycle gang. It doesn’t matter why the fight starts, if one of the party is fighting someone, you all stomp that person (and usually all of their friends) until they stop moving.
Unfortunately, stomping people is not a good approach to take with a module like Caverns of Thracia.
I remain the dedicated non-fighter in both my D&D games and it gets really exhausting trying to talk people out of murder constantly. And by people, I mean the other players, not NPCs.
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Yeah, it’s not so bad if they are monstrous things trying to kill you, but i get really fed up with encountering some sentient creatures and the first thing someone does is attack them.
Especially when the module is kicking our arses and the DM is rolling a d6 for wandering monsters every hour.
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My one and only character I’ve ever lost, Harriet the librarian frog, ate it in an Eberron campaign due to the same thing - she was incredibly ill-suited for battle, relying on her winning personality to talk her way out of problems.
Then another player with an aarakocra rock star Jojo bard/warlock multiclass literally swooped through the door and did thunder wave on the entire room, downing himself and aggroing everyone in the room.
I am getting really good at the “I’m totally not with those guys” line of argument in fights. Part of it is that I am trying to roleplay a decent enough person, but the other part is that I just find fighting tedious.
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It’s a tough one. Game-wise, I don’t want to not be involved in a battle if the group decides to get into it. No in-game reason, just, I don’t want to be sitting there for the entire duration of a long, long-ass D&D battle doing nothing, or worse, making people feel bad for wanting to do a part of the game they like.
I generally do all I can to avoid battle, but if it starts, I’m in it with the group. Sometimes I get the opportunity to show mercy or take a hostage.
I think the full pacifist run is only possible with the buy-in of the whole group, where it’s clear that this isn’t how this group wants to approach their problems.
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Yeah, if a fight is going, I have to jump in and help, but it is amazing how so few people fail to consider not murdering everything as an option.
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One of the big problems with D&D is that when all the mechanical buttons to press are combat related, that’s what you’re gonna press because it’s the most engaging part of the system.
It’s a big reason why games having more solid non combat rules is a good thing, IMO.
Like take a look at Burning Wheel’s variable levels of detail for combat and social interactions. You can resolve almost everything combat or social on a sliding scale of complexity, from a single roll to an elaborate mechanical system depending on the circumstances.
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Oh yeah, exactly. Like I have even told the people I play with that I get it, because like 60%+ of the book is all just combat stuff, so people think that is the way to go, and just…nah.
Definitely. Having some kind of game-like mechanic to persuade or deploy argument tactics or something would be great. Essentially a game in itself, with “combat strategies” and a payoff of XP, or maybe some kind of unique stat that helps you level up your diplomacy.
Take a look at Burning Wheel, or it’s less intimidating siblings Mouseguard and Torchbearer, all of which have advancement mechanics built around getting better at the stuff you actually do, and have detailed mechanics for debate an negotiation.
There’s also games like apocalypse world that have simple but impactful mechanics for a lot of things. It technically has more detailed combat rules than social, but they’re also the sort of thing that when they hit the table, bad shit is almost certainly going to happen to you. And 90% of what is on a character sheet is non combat stuff. Plus, Apocalypse World just rules in general.
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Really old-school D&D is an interesting aspect of that problem because the books are basically only combat rules…and if you play by the book, the characters are almost certainly going to get wiped out in a single adventure session, just because the system is incredibly deadly to new characters.
So there’s two ways to go from there, you either fudge/inflate numbers so that the game becomes a little more survivable (which is how you get systems like 5e where even mid-level encounters become HP sponges exchanging broadsides) or you concentrate on the GM winging/the group collaboratively coming up with how to run the stuff that isn’t covered in the rules.
Unfortunately the old-school scene has been associated with bad actors/truly awful people, so there’s definitely a stink associated with it at this point (although there are a number of really interesting creators working in that context, Scrap Princess and Cavegirl being two of them).
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One possible solution is to increase player HP but not increase enemy HP. Sure, this is going to make players a bit more aggressive but if resting is kind of difficult, it just means the players have more chances to run, and a bit of a cushion for things to go south.
While sort of against most ‘old school’ principles I’ve Seen , you could also have death be a condition with consequences, like losing treasure and/or some kind of permanent injury or other permanent status change.
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One thing that I’ve seen done is that nobody’s HP ever goes up and everything is based on CON – so even ancient dragons have like 21 HP. Everything could potentially die in one hit! I’ve never played with it myself, it is intriguing though (and I have played more Cortex-y systems where it’s very very difficult to increase your health pool).
It’s interesting that you bring up Death Conditions because that’s actually something I do when playing a B/X-style system, I’ve taken the old hit location and critical tables from Warhammer Fantasy 1e and made a “Death or Dismemberment” system where if you drop to 0 on a hit, we see where you were hit and what happens – there’s a good chance that a character could just have a crippling injury instead of outright dying, which to me is a large flavor win as well as meaning that dropping to 0 isn’t as punitive.
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Someone was running a 5e module recently where there was some awful situation where everyone had to make three out of five successful skill checks in anything arguably tangentially relevant to a time sensitive crisis in order to prevent a catastrophe. I just wanted to cast a damn spell instead.
It was really wack and felt so cheesy.
3rd edition fucked over the whole system by making everything so skill check centric.
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The problem there is that every roll needs to have weight. If a roll happens, something needs to be different at the end of it.
The ‘Lotta skill’ rolls idea doesn’t work that well because if you fail the game just…stops and doesn’t move forward.
Every time the dice get picked up in a game I try to think, and ideally even say out loud, as a GM: if the roll goes good this will happen, if it goes bad this other thing will happen.
3e’s mistake wasn’t having codified skills, it was having a lot of rules saying ‘yes, just sit there and keep rolling even though nothing is happening’.
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Yeah, comparing 3 to 5. I did prefer 3’s approach of having a shit ton of specific skills, to 5’s broadly defined few. Having a character who’s really good at rope use is more interesting than everyone just dropping ranks in the generic survival skill.
My biggest pet peeve is going from doing cool shit in dungeon rooms to rolling a perception check and calling it a day.
hard disagree there. Rope use is the kind of skill that is impossible to gage the Usefulness of in D&D as a player before the game starts, but takes a hug chunk of resources to get.
In a game where you have a billion skill points and can drops a handful on it’s one thing, but there’s only a few classes that have a billion points in 3e.
It also creates a situation where players get less creative with their actions because nobody thought they would need a rope. Or wanted something cooler than being able to use a rope.
(Ropes are also a great example of why skill checks are weird in 3e. A rope should probably just be something the players use without a roll, and maybe make an athletics check sometimes in case like, the rope is being shaken right now).
So having the big tent skills means you can define your character in broad chunks of handy abilities, instead of getting nit picky with skill points.
Also the alternative to making perception checks quickly becomes players just taking a stick and poking every floor tile which is equally as boring, IMO.
That’s why I generally just tell players shit unless something is specifically hidden and the consequences of not realizing it’s there are immediate and interesting. Like a goblin waiting in ambush, or the ominous sound of a Bullette moving towards the players right this second.
Floor traps sound cool but are super boring most of the time, IMO.
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