#dnd rant

[ultimatedreamer-official]

For those of you who don’t know, there is a new DND campaign that dropped the first episode today, it’s called MinMaxed and it includes a couple of popular YouTube artists. Honestly, I am running on fumes so I’m not gonna tell you all of them, go find it yourself and watch the first episode if you’ve got a spare two hours, I just finished watching it and then re-watching it, and I want to share all my notes that I have so far of things that I noticed in the campaign that I think have a secret/hidden meaning or something that will come up later:

1. The town‘s name is Sellshire, which made me think of the name of one of the one of the groups who are participating in this campaign,: ‘sell sword arts’. Sellshire seems to be a small land without a ruling monarchy, there is farmland nearby with sprawling planes and small huts, although there doesn’t seem to be in a rulers nearby, it definitely seems to have some classes or a similar type of situation going on with different parts of town being nicer and different people obviously being more well often than others.

2. This town isn’t too big and population is 3 to 5000 people but goes up to over 9000 people for the Earth mothers festival which celebrates bountiful harvest, the campaign apparently takes place the first day of the Earth mothers festival. So there aren’t too many people around yet.

3. With the previously mentioned class system that isn’t talk too much about in the campaign so far they’re obviously people who are more well often than others which brings us to our first NPC introduction: Nestor Albbrine, who is apparently a very well off man who is a noble who owns quite a few of the farms that surround the small city/town. Now, despite the earth, mothers festival coming up, which signifies bountiful harvest, many of the people in the city have been going hungry, which leads to rumors around the town of Nestor possibly hoarding food.

3. The rumors of Nestor hoarding food, and keeping it away from the towns people is apparently what spurs Bloominic to investigate which leads to chaos and eventually the party meeting up.

4. So we get an introduction of luminous character who is super cool and he gets into the building all fine and a moment later we get an introduction of the cell sword arts team, who is apparently an adventuring team in the DND world too, and they are looking for a “cool“ sword that a guy apparently told Clark about, further squabbling and conversation between Clark, David and Megan indicates that Clark does not know much about the sword the house, the layout or exactly what makes the sword cool. David doesn’t even seem to know who this man is an even straight up ask Clark who the man is. So far we don’t have any lead into that, but I suspect that this might be someone who tried to send them into the house for a reason reasons that are yet to be seen in the campaign.

5. Next we get an introduction to Jacque yep that’s right Jacque the whipper, so apparently Nestor has a daughter whose name is Cilren it’s definitely an interesting name, apparently her and Jacque were ‘hanging out’

6. When instructor Bensei is introduced, he knocks on the front door of Nestor’s home, which is then answered by Megan who first looks through the keyhole and Tater the DM says that he has decided to make all key holes in this campaign see-through. It seems to be an inside joke and I’m just curious exactly what led to this and curious how it will play into the campaign later on.

7. So they run into two shadowy figures in the kitchen, they get in a sign language battle until one of the thieves ask ‘are you with Calavera?’ and then a moment later after David says that they’re not, but they’re cool, the thief informed the other thief of this only to be replied with ‘I don’t care we’re not supposed to leave witnesses’ so obviously Calavera is someone in power possibly the next boss level, it’s gonna be super interesting to see who Calavera is.

8. Now Tater made off hand comment about how no one else would be coming into a room because at the moment the whole party was there, but then for maybe about a minute or so everybody in very joking tones was saying ‘of course no one else will come. no one else will show up’ so it makes me wonder if they’re going to have guest stars, which obviously is something that they’ve talked about having in the future seasons of MinnMaxed, but it makes me curious if there will be any surprise guest this season 

9. Now they’re in the kitchen and they start having a fight and one of these thieves finally gets killed, but instead of falling to the ground, the thief just fades off ‘like a force ghost.’ this is later further address and I will talk more about it in point #11, #13 & #14

10. This isn’t so much about the campaign, but I believe it was Clark who rolled a six and a seven and everybody was complaining about it and was telling tater to not do the hand motion that they did not notice that Jacques was not only doing the hand motion, but then flipped the camera off with both of his hands 🙌

11. While fighting the thieves, another one disappeared, and after being asked, tater explained that not only was their whole body and all their clothing gone, but there wasn’t even blood on the ground. It all disappeared when the person phased out of existence or to wherever they phased to.

12. At one point during the fight, tater then reveals that the thieves are not thieves. They are actually assassins, he tries to back up and fix his mistake, but everybody caught him and eventually he just gives up and starts calling them assassins. This will come in to play at point #15

13. When another thief died, and there were more questions asked tater than said that they were still in the “mortal realm“ which makes me wonder if there is another realm where they go to when they disappear.

14. One of the assassins gets very wounded and tater says that she just phases it away as though “they could do it at will the whole time” which begs the question of if those people died or if they were just wounded enough that they retreated.

15. The party then goes to Nestor‘s room where they find him face down, dead, stabbed twice in the back. His injuries seem to be oozing a orange icon that’s vibrant- vibrant enough to look not natural and when checks are run on it, it may be poison, which is then checked by Jaques and confirmed by tater that it is indeed poison, then tater includes that it may be arcane in someway. I’m definitely interested to see what this orange stuff turns out to be especially after we find out something that happens in point #17

16. While the rest of the party does this David steals Nestor’s journal which is just sitting on his desk even though his whole bedroom is ransacked… Nothing suspicious about that at all.

17. They turn Nestor’s body over and find another stab wound near his neck so he was stabbed three times. Overall, this is when tater gives us some insight on the orange stuff and says that it probably was on the blade or stabbing tool. this is when we find out that Megan has the orange stuff oozing out out of where she was also stabbed and tater says that “the stuff is suboptimal”

18. Also, Jacque gets a pair of fuzzy pink and leopard print handcuffs. 

[masterhallmark]

SUNE ISN'T THE SEX GODDESS

SHARESS IS THE SEX GODDESS

Stop mixing them up

Edit: I should probably clarify with more details.

Sune

Sune is a goddess of love, which can include sex. The issue is people are mistakenly thinking she focuses on the sex side of love, when typically she focuses on the emotional side more. She even has some doctrine relating to platonic love, in addition to romantic love. Sunite clerics are supposed to make FRIENDS with the lonely as part of their quest to spread love

Her dogma is as follows

Beauty is more than skin deep. It issues from the core of one’s being and reveals one’s true face to the world, fair or foul. Believe in romance, as true love will win over all. Follow your heart to your true destination. Love none more than yourself except Sune, and lose yourself in love of the Lady Firehair. Perform a loving act each day, and seek to awaken love in others. Respond to love at least once a day. Encourage beauty wherever you find it. Acquire beautiful items of all sorts, and encourage, sponsor, and protect those who create them. Keep your own body as comely as possible and as attractively displayed as situations warrant. Let hairstyle and clothing best suit your personal appearance, striving to stir and delight others who look upon you. Moreover, hide not away, but always seek to present yourself to those around you in a pleasing variety of garbs and activities so as to move them with love and desire. Love those who respond to your appearance, and let warm friendship and admiration flower where love cannot or dares not.

Her doctrine is mostly about following your heart. If your heart says have a sex with some people you love, THEN you go for it. If not, then you don't go for it.

Sharess

SHARESS is the one who focuses on all manner of pleasure, particularly (but not exclusively) sexual pleasure. Her doctrine is as follows

Life is to be lived to its fullest, in decadent sensual fulfillment of yourselves and others. That which is good is pleasurable and that which is pleasurable is good. Pleasure is to be sought out at every opportunity and life is to be lived as one endless revel. Spread the bounty of Sharess so that all may join in the endless revel of life and bring joy to all those in pain. Infinite experiences await those who would explore, so try the new as well as savoring the old.

Sharess is more focused on the "pleasure" side of things than Sune. Followers of Sharess focus on spreading pleasures of the senses to ease suffering in the world, but focus much less on the emotional side than Sune. Also, she's a cat lady. As in in addition to her having cats, she also is sometimes Bast from the Egyptian Pantheon.

[thehomelybrewster]

Natural 1s & When to Call For An Ability Check

Inspired by recent discussions about the "ethics" of save scumming in Baldur's Gate 3 and that game's decision to treat 1s as automatic failures and 20s as automatic successes both for saving throws and ability checks, I wanted to give my two cents.

This generally applies to all systems that use a DnD-style for these sorts of mechanics, where you roll a single die by default and add a relevant modifier to it, but I'll use DnD-centric language because of obvious reasons.

Now naturally in 5e that rule which is applied in BG3 does not exist. It was proposed as a rules change for the 2024 revision before being scrapped, yet I also know that plenty of tables run with this house rule and several DnD-inspired games have it baked in as a regular rule.

I generally don't like it, especially the automatic failure by rolling a Natural 1 part. Of course success and failure are relative. The typical example for this is the royal audience scenario, where a player character makes an outragous demand of the monarch, rolls Persuasion, and rolls a Natural 20 and expects that request to be granted, even if it's something ludicrous such as being made the official heir to the throne.

If I was playing a game that used this type of rule or had to DM for a table that expected it, I'd treat Natural 20s for impossible ability checks as an avoidance of negative consequences rather than as an opportunity for a reward. In the aforementioned scenario, the monarch wouldn't immediately try to arrest the daring adventurer for treason, for example.

Still, I'd normally treat this sort of attempt as an unprompted roll and a joke, ignoring it completely, because as a DM you have enough control over the table that you can determine that a roll shouldn't take place. After all, would you respect a player that attempts an unprompted melee attack roll when the next other creature is outside of that character's regular movement speed?

With failures coming from a Natural 1 however there are different ways you have to handle them. Personally, with ability checks in particular, I'd handle a table that requests or requires that rule the following way: if the player character attempts a check with a DC that's equal to or lower than their modifier for that ability check, no roll is required.

If the bard has a +11 to Acrobatics checks, they will always (!) dodge out of the way of a DC 10 trap. A rogue who has reached the point where they get access to Reliable Talent will always handle ability checks with skills they're proficient in perfectly if the DC is 10 or lower. No roll required. Failing those rolls goes against the choices the player made when building these characters over time.

Now with saving throws, I love this rule! Giving a barbarian with an Intelligence score of 10 that five percent chance to see through the DC 22 illusion feels good! Same with the rogue having that five percent chance to not fully evade the effects of that fireball spell a goblin is getting out of a stolen wand.

But with ability checks... Consider when to call for a roll, what a failure means, and what a success means before you implement this house rule.

[clarafyer]

I HATE MAKING NEW CHARACTER SHEETS BUT AT THE SAME TIME I LOVE IT BUT I MAINLY HATE IT

The campaign we're doing tomorrow (Hell Hath Fury) needs us to be level 20 so I have to write so much down right off the bat and I'm so mad about it

Also turns out our whole group was writing down hit points wrong because they were surprised with my wizard having 142 hp when I knew that sounded right for level 20

I don't think anyone was adding the con modifier multiple times-

Also Flora is now a dnd character she's the wizard :)

[salty-eggg]

I just. I just have to rant about my brilliant players for a bit. I'll prolly send this to them so hello my greatest friends, I love you and you all are so fun to play with.

[charonarp]

You know what I'm surprised about? (this is D&D related, so if not interested, you can ignore :p)

Also, like...I talk about functions in Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation, sooo....yeah. No want spoils? You no read.

I'm honestly surprised that, when a character dies, the players aren't offered a choice on if they want to switch or not. Like, if they die, it's always "oop, you died, oh well. Make a new character", or whatever.

Personally, I don't like that very much. My reason being is that...well, players tend to like their characters! You can add so much depth and plot to a character if they have to go through some strange experience before coming back from the dead.

Tomb of Annihilation, for instance. That game is centered AROUND death, and people avoid it because of how challenging it is and the fact that once you're dead, you're dead. No magic can bring you back. Well...that place has an actually curse that, if you died before, you begin to rot. That can introduce a REAL CHARACTER CHANGE, but people tend to take that one rule so literally, that it drives people away...

Honestly, Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation, in my honest opinion, are very good settings to take this custom function and twist it into something horrific. I may have only DM'd once or twice, but if a player loves their character, and their death makes them sad, at least give them the choice of either moving on with a new PC, or to continue their own. That way there's no waste on potential story lines and gives you the chance to make things more dire for your players.

In Curse of Strahd, it's easier to do this because souls can't leave that place. So, the party could do a whole side thing to try to get their companion back to life, or the player could go through some type of ordeal with the devil Strahd himself, or some other entity that lurks within the mist of Barovia.

Tomb of Annihilation is tricky, and I've personally never got to play it myself. I've been wanting to play this game for YEARS (I want that damn ring so badly), but everyone refuses to DM or play that game because it's "difficult", and "dungeon crawly". The thing is, because that game is complex, people tend to not think about taking things into their own hands and changing it to their liking.

I think the main reason it's so complicated is because players (normally) start at LEVEL ONE, which is a fucking death wish ngl, and the setting is very tough on its players (as far as I'm aware), and it's stated that you can't bring people back from the dead. Well...why not change that up a bit? Perhaps magic can't bring them back, but something else could? You make a deal, you find some other source to bring them back, something that could work should that player want to keep going. Being revived from the dead already has its consequences in that setting, so I personally don't see any harm in this alternative.

Again, I've never played the setting. The curse only really works if the character is dead-dead, not knocked down making death saving throws and brought back before some final failure.

These are my personal thoughts on the function of death in games, and it's not just limited to these two settings. I'm a newbie DM, and this is honestly how I'd like to work with my players should one die in some manner, especially at lower levels. Just because they died doesn't mean they can't contribute in some way. Maybe, while the party works to bring them back, that one player is able to find some things that were otherwise blind to mortal lives, or they're able to still be with the party, just unable to interact with the physical world.

If a player loves their character, and wants to keep playing them, you shouldn't have to punish that player just because "it's part of the rules". DMs are storytellers, and you can make your own rules. It's stated in the playbook that rules are not absolute, but are guidelines, and I think that gets forgotten a lot by many DMs for various settings.

Sorry for the ramble, I just had a sudden longing to play ToA and got reminded as to why people I've asked to play it with have refused in the past. Honestly, it's the same reason people in the past have refused to DM CoS too! All because it's "too difficult".

Honestly, sounds like a personal issue to me, but I can understand if someone is intimidated by something that, by book, is complicated to mess with.

But hopefully...hopefully I'll get that beloved cursed ring...I love that thing so much-

[fallenoftheromaempire]

Some dnd pet pieve because i feel like a hater tonight so what about it?

Players Petpeeve:

People that make character that don't fit the world/vibe of the campaign as a joke ( the classic "I'm playing a goblin named fart ahah" and it's a gothic campaign.)

People that show up to the first session without even having finished their character sheet/backstory(ofc this doesn't apply on session 0)

People that are obsessed with mechanics and nothing else

People that build their character to be as op as possible (and sometimes don't even discuss it with the dm just using hombrew without permission)

People that constantly contest the dm, like shut the fuck up (I'm not a dm btw)

People that put 0 effort in their character back story/development and are barely present in rp and only come alive during combat. Like go play a videogame or something.

People that make everything sexual. Not like the bard that flirt with everyone, like they constantly make gross comments about other characters or npcs.

People that call off last second without warning. Like if ther is even the smallest chance that i won't make It I'm warning everyone days in advance. Be respectful of other's time. (unless is an emergency)

Players that use ai generated images for their characters fc. Fuck you.

People that make their character do fuck all or go out of their way to make the stupidest decisions possible making everything harder for everyone else. I hate you so much.

People that keep talking about their character and their back story (this simply because i want to learn about the character in game and properly react to it without having previous knowledge. I just think it makes things more engaging)

DMs Petpeeve:

Dms that like the sound of their voice a little too much and launch in these long ass monolohues or cut of players as they are speaking but get mad if they get cut off. I love a monolog but dude it's been 15 minutes wrap it up

Dms that cancel last second without warning

Dms that invite people to join without asking the rest of the party first. (especially if we are like deep in the campaign, like we don't need more players)

Dms that act like it's them a against you and just look forward to cause pain for your character (good for character development but like please slow down it's overwhelming)

Dms that keep around that one toxic player instead of kicking him out the table despite fighting with them all the time.

Dms that when they are the player, constantly protest "That's not how i do it" yeah well, this is not your campaign nor your table. Get used to it and adapt.

Dms that allow all the above players mentioned. Like i wish they told them no.

Dms that keep no safety measures or safewords and don't stop even when the players speak up about how they are uncomfortable

Dms that spend an entire hour talking about their business. And i don't mean having a conversation, like i mean they just talk about themselves without ever asking you how you are doing for a whole hour while you just want to play. Like man I'm happy to listen but at least choose a better moment. I'm not in the head space for this and clearly neither are you.

Dms that waste a lot of time looking for the perfect image to use for npc. Like just describe it.

On that note, dms that use ai images. Fuck you.

What are your pet pieve? Let me know in the tags or notes

[byyliss]

Currently am crying a lot bc og somthing thats happening in my dnd campaing.

So, I play a character named Gin, shes a goblin who due to her backstory, can be very naive and oblivious, which in turn makes her more childish. Shes very similar to me, i always have a hard time playing charcaters that are too different from myself, so they are usually more silly and innocent inconciously. Im also autistic, and many traits i have end up in Gin by accident, but i try to accomodate that to her backstory.

And since the begining, two of the party members have been very rude to my character (one more than the other), they are always insulting her, being rude, and recently just said that the enemy from my backstory wasnt as important as other ones (we found out the place Gin is from, which is a slave circus, is still active, and I wanted to focus on it more now since most of the missions have been focusing on evryone else's backstory). I know its a chacrater, and i know they are just roleplaying, but that shit hurts. A lot. Bc some of her decisions come from me as a player, bc we both think alike, so it hurts a lot and i feel insulted whenever they rltreat my character like shit.

Today the DM told me these two players dont like my character and are annoyed by her, and i need to change bc they get annoyed while playing. And while my charcater can be a bit annoying, jfc you dont see me shit talking their charcaters, even tho both of them persoanlly hurt me a lot.

Like, they are making the game unbearable for me, bc it feels like Gin cant express any opinions or do anything other that be useful on combat. They made a bunch of jokes as their charcaters that hurt, but then they want to act as if im the problem?

Im currently crying a lot and have a headache over this. Sorry for the rant, im just....idk, i just needed to vent