5e Game - Part 20... er, Lessons Learned, Part 20

These session recaps have stopped being about individual sessions and more about lessons I'm learning running the game, so I changed the title to match. Enjoy.

Cursed items are so much fun, and even more so if the players rely on the Identify spell, which will tell you a lot about the loot you just earned, but does not reveal any curses (check the DMG, pgs 138-139, doesn't work on cursed items). The players get complacent, they forget to follow any sort of safety procedure when it comes to cool magic stuff, and then the DM gets to have their fun. My party's paladin thought he found just the coolest sword, and of course it was cursed. Not every magic item should be cursed, but you need to throw it in there every once in a while just to keep your players on their toes.  This cool sword was the best use of a cursed weapon, and it only lasted for about one session before the rest of the party got wise and confronted the paladin about the issue, head on. That was fun, letting the players wail on each other as the paladin failed his save vs the curse, and while the rest of the party was trying not to hurt him too much, the paladin was going for blood. Some DMs avoid PvP in their games, and while I definitely do not condone it, I am also not actively avoiding it. In this case, the players knew what was going on and had fun playing to that story and afterwards there were no hurt feelings.

Which brings us to talk about magic items in 5e - I am down with the current system, but whether you want to make it very light magic items like you see in 5e, or make it very heavy like 3e was, why the designers of 5e didn't make it a more generic, plug and play, build your own magic items selection. For instance, instead of having a specific item, say a Flame Tongue, that is "any sword" on fire and deals an extra 2d6 fire damage plus sheds light in a 40 foot radius, or Frost Brand, again "any sword" that deals an extra 1d6 cold damage, gives you resistance to fire while you hold the sword, sheds light, and so on. Instead of all that, why did they not just do it based on a table, you want an, say, Uncommon weapon, you get to pick one thing from the table, or two if you take a lesser damage bonus. Rare gets two, Very Rare gets three... I'm not firm on those yet, but it is the direction I want to go, so I can make up magic items as I need them. Oh, the iconic stuff - Apparatus of Kwalish, Deck of Many Things, Sphere of Annihilation - those will stay the same and not get any changes, but your run of the mill stuff, those I want more leeway with. And not have to do it on the fly like I have been doing. One of the things I want to add in is a Curse column, so I can choose from a variety of curses and apply them or not. 

The party had driven back the invading army and had to charge off to find the big bad's lair and stop them from completing their ritual to summon the much bigger nasty into this plane of existence. Teleportation spells, especially provided Deus ex machina style, work very well for skipping over a lot of boring "the party has been here before" travelling that didn't move the plot forward beyond the party needs to be in a different place.

D&D 5e still does not handle languages and learning new ones well. It is probably in downtime activities, but I like a previous edition's (I think it was 3rd, but I could be wrong) use of the INT score modifier to determine how many languages a PC could learn or knew. And yes, the races and classes have a lot options for PCs to acquire new languages as they level, but I want something more than those two options. The trap in the adventure that was the genesis of the above rant is the most railroad-y bit of this whole adventure - there is literally no other way into the last dungeon, which I find hard to believe logically, and there is exactly one and only one way to get past the trap. I realized this early and made sure to give the party enough clues and let the smarter characters/players help each other get past it. Lessons to be learned - there always needs to be more than one way into any dungeon, because if nothing else, the bad guys want more than one way out; and every trap has to have multiple ways to detect it, disarm it, or even just bypass it, never make it one and only one way to get past it. Or if that is your only option, make it do very little damage or be annoying in some other way.

Failure is almost as fun as success, as long as it's failure on a small scale and not a full on TPK/party wipe. Though I haven't seen one of those lately, and have heard from other sources those can be fun, too. Speaking of, best D&D joke I have heard recently:

PLAYER: I rush at the orc, sword raised high!

DM: interesting choice. The orc swings at you and... Oh, that's not good. Okay, roll 3d6 please.

PLAYER (confused): 12?

DM: good, and another 3d6.

PLAYER: um, 16?

DM: nice. Another 3d6, please.

PLAYER: 8... Hey! Am I rolling up a new character?!

DM: yes, yes you are.

Sorry, made me laugh, had to share.

One of the party members got attacked by a night hag when they tried to take a long rest, except this attack was not physical but came in their dreams. This gave that character a -5 to their max HP that is permanent until they can get some high level healing, and they didn't get any benefits from the long rest. No saves, no range restrictions, no contested rolls, I chose a party member at semi-random (I made sure it was one of the casters in the group that was counting on some form of rest to get spells back), and no one killed the hag while she was doing her thing, so the effects happened. Period. Even though this meant we wasted half a session while the party tried to solve the nigh-unsolveable (they will at least keep it from happening again if they kill the hag, and the stricken party member will get benefits from resting again at that point, but the max HP negative stays until some big healing is used), I really like seeing this unblockable kind of attack. I am definitely not saying "we need more attacks like this!" or any other such nonsense, as they would make it too unfun for the players if they encountered it all the time, but something like this every once in a while is a nice reminder to the party they aren't quite as invincible as they previously thought. Need to find more effects/abilities/specials like this and keep them ready to use.

Sometimes the players roll awesomely and do so much damage the bigger bads go down before they can act. Those are nice, from time to time, just because it makes the players feel like they are the ultimate badasses. If it happened every combat, it becomes boring - there is suddenly no threat to the party, no challenge worthy of their fear or trepidation. But a complete, one sided butt whooping every once in a while is simply cathartic, so let your players have it, especially when it seems like the critical hits just keep coming. Of course, the other side of that coin is where you, as the DM, can't stop rolling crits or they can't stop rolling fumbles, and your party will either weather the storm and survive, or they'll be rolling new characters. Either way, it's a learning experience and it heightens the tension rather nicely.

Speaking of critical and fumbles, I borrowed Seth Skorkowsky's critical/fumble tables, and for the most part I like them. Here they are, for the curious:

I do need to modify these. Okay, well, I don't NEED to modify them, I have been using them in my current game for the past 10 levels, but I would really like to adjust it just a bit to fit into 5e better. I am going to stop making excuses and start working on it right now, while I finish off this post. I will share what I come up with here, please stay tuned.

No, I personally do not care what sexuality the characters in the group are, or what gender they identify with and if that is the same as what gender they were born with, or even which pronouns they prefer. But I wish some of my players cared enough about their own characters to ask those questions, instead of just seeing their PCs as a collection of stats and skills, just to be used as a tool to solve a problem and then put back onto the shelf waiting for next week's adventure. In that vein, I do not inflict one of those multi-hundred questioned character questionnaires that have been on the internet since practically day one, as I myself can only go through so many of the questions before I get bored and quit and I try not to be hypocritical, but that kind of thing is great if you want to flesh out your character. If you have never tried it, you should at least once, just to see if you like it.

That is it for this session of Lessons Learned, hope to see everyone back next time when we talk about your players whining about not having anything but violence to solve their problems, and the murderhobos they actually act like.

5e Game - Part 19

I am very far behind these session reports and I think that from here on out, I am just going to share tidbits that are interesting from a gameplay perspective - what works, what is not working, and what is working but could be improved upon.

The party eventually got to the wastes and had some encounters. The ranger is still forgetting to use his Primeval Awareness skill, as it is not an always on skill, it is not passive perception. Unfortunately, that player built a very broken, overpowered ranger that is sheer death at range, but he has not realized that doesn't make the character invincible or the best at everything in all situations. He has not found that the characters' limits, discovering them and overcoming them or muddling through somehow is where the fun is in our little game. Oh well, it keeps him happy thinking he has found ways to thwart me.

The party was overly cautious entering the lich's lair, and just wouldn't go charging about after minion monsters like I hoped they would. Not a problem, just an observation, and maybe they're a bit more cautious than previously thought. At least, when they know a 20+ CR monster is somewhere close by and they're not even 10th level yet. They did almost die when I hit them with 6 Flameskulls at the same time while they were wandering about the lich's lair, those things need a boost to their CR. 

The party dealt very well with the lich, mostly by putting a muzzle on the 2 socially inept characters. Notice I said "characters", not "players", and I meant it. Not every character can be great in all situations, as I previously mentioned, and you have to acknowledge that, both as player and as DM. I did have them scared of the lich, though, it helps if you're not too fussy about reading vital stats direct from the Monster Manual to the party.

This next part is where The Red Hand of Doom (the campaign we are playing, if you had not figured it out yet) let me down - my players were far too efficient in their travelling hither and yon, and so their was a huge lull between this part (negotiate with scary lich) and the next part (survive the siege of the major city in the area). The timeline provided is overly generous towards weaker or less focused parties, but my players had almost 2 whole weeks of sitting around and waiting for the bad guy army to show up and do their thing. Also, if you have played the adventure you'll recognize this next bit, the "victory point" mechanic does neatly codify the contributions the party is making to the war without having them do something completely stupid like fight the army of hobgoblins all by themselves. However, most of the failure states in the adventure would require the big bads to be complete cowards and run at the very first sign of trouble, or the party suffers a TPK and fails entirely anyway. If your party is still alive and have won most of the fights they get into, they'll win the war (at least the ground combat portion). I am not sure what I would do differently, maybe trickle more rumors to the party and let them figure out where to go and what to do in what order, give them more smaller, special forces style missions to accomplish, like interrupting supply lines, and tracking the command elements of the army. Something. 

Having thought about it a bit more, I think with more prep time than I have it, many of the smaller vignettes provided by the original authors could have been offered up to the party. The spy could have been in the major town and the party could have spent a day or so just chasing her down, following clues, almost catching her before she slipped through their grasp, more clues, a lucky break, and a final showdown. The party getting captured, or at least part of the party getting captured, and their escape or jailbreak by the rest of the party would work well here as well. I want to do a very deep scrub of the whole adventure and really bring it into its own in the 5e ruleset.

The adventure has a bunch of hill Giants acting as living catapults, trying to open a breech in the city's defenses. I had to jigger it so they were throwing their rocks from behind an earthen wall. My ranger player has completely tweaked his character to be death at any range, including out to the 600 foot max range mark of the longbow. I wasn't letting him sit there and plink them to death, and wanted to get the rest of the party involved, otherwise they would have sat there safe while the ranger shot. Yes, the wall would have crumbled before the ranger slew the last hill giant, allowing a large chunk of the hobgoblin army into the city - which eventually happens anyway - but this was too early in the siege, and my players would have sat back and let it happen. Sometimes they just aren't reckless enough.

The adventure has a great scene where a ninja sniper almost kills the good lord of the city, with the party right there and they (the party) have to go fight him/her in a coffin maker's shop. There isn't a fantastic hobgoblin ninja in 5e, so I reskinned a summer eladrin. I have found that to be the easiest thing to do all this time translating 3e to 5e, find something in the CR range that is close to what I'm looking for, tweak a few things here and there, call it good. There is no need to rewrite everything, find something that is close and tweak it. Having just written up some zombie wyverns, I really wish that 5e had kept templates from 3e. What a fantastic system that was, it made the original 3e Monster Manual twice as long as its page count suggested, just by being able to apply so many supplied templates to so many monsters. And yes, there isn't much difference between a human skeleton, an orc skeleton, a dwarf skeleton, and so on, but a human skeleton is different from a hill giant skeleton is different from a dragon skeleton (not a dracolich, mind, but an actual dragon skeleton) is different from a bulette skeleton and so on and on. I smell a project for the future. Admittedly, the authors of 5e have not left us all completely in the dark, providing examples of these wildly various monsters (zombie beholders and half dragon veterans, to name a few), but full on templates would have been so much better. Or even better, release a book with all the variants possible. I'd pay for more monsters to throw at my players.

This edition, like almost all editions of D&D, has a real problem with mass combat. Yeah, yeah, I too backed Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers Kickstarter, and it has a very bare bones mass combat system. I want more detail, though, and may have to look into adopting a medieval fantasy tabletop wargame to do the job, give the players something to do when these things come up. The one I have played the most is Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but I have been tempted into taking a peek at their rivals, Mantic's Kings of War. WHFB is the longest running fantasy wargame out there, but KoW is generic enough that I feel I would do the least amount of tweaking to it. I could be wrong, who knows? May even try one of the historical wargames, and throw in spell casters just for fun. Something else to check into.

That is it for this post. I am almost caught up to where we are in game sessions, but it has been a busy couple of sessions with lots of lessons learned on both sides of the screen.

The Clone Spell and the Lich

Watching Zee Bashew's latest video (if you haven't seen it yet, here https://youtu.be/rmQRhO2BNFc) that got me thinking about my current campaign. I'm running The Red Hand of Doom from 3rd edition, which has been fun, but I really wish I could spend a solid year really massaging it from 3e to 5e. 5e is different enough from 3rd that my characters have far more gold and magic items than they would have at twice their current level if this was a pure 5e campaign.

Anyway, after watching Master Bashew's explanation of the 8th level necromancy spell, Clone, one part I would immediately add to the Red Hand of Doom would be a little denouement for the lich in the story. Oh, yeah, SPOILERS AHEAD, you have been warned, blah blah blah.

The lich in TRHoD, the Ghostlord, is forced into creating undead for the warlord of the Red Hand, Azarr Kul, due to the warlord holding the lich's phylactery hostage. As part of the adventure, your party - if they are good/smart enough - returns the phylactery to the lich and doesn't fight him, freeing him from his servitude. But who wouldn't ask said lich to prepare a clone of themselves as an insurance policy? You've got access to the necromancer of necromancers and their immense necromantic knowledge base... you can taste the temptation in the air, can't you?

Of course Azarr Kul could not resist it, and as part of their deal, the Ghostlord creates a clone of the warlord. The party kills Azarr Kul, and with his dying breath, cannot open the portal fully to allow in Tiamat, but does hold it open wide enough to let her aspect through. Tiamat, of course, is not happy with the failure of her disciple and would normally devour his soul, but the aspect is having fun and distracting her, so Azarr Kul is free to flee to his clone.

The Ghostlord, like all liches, is normally dismissive of the outside world, only focused on their own research and interests. But the recent interruptions, first from the Red Hand stealing his phylactery and second the party returning said phylactery (again, if they are smart and choose not to fight) has made him "wake up" and so, when the warlord's clone's container cracks open, the Ghostlord is waiting. He could feel the fight happening in the north, feel the death of the warlord and release of the aspect into the world, and he knew where the warlord would go next. Oh, the fun the Ghostlord would have, because he had time and power over the warlord. The fun they would have.

Clone is a fun spell, and more than just an insurance policy. This is an aspect that I want to add to all my high level BBEG necromancers now. Hell, it's cheaper than a True Resurrection, and more flexible, though more time consuming and you now have a physical object you have to protect as well, kind of like a weaker phylactery.

The Warlock Gets a Second Look

Maybe I was a bit hasty with my last post on the 5e warlock class, and recent comments from some folks have made me take a second look at the class. I do have to say this, though, anyone who utters or types the phrase "killing the players' fun" in response to any restrictions any DM has ever enacted in their game is probably not a DM themselves. Or not one who is brave enough to admit that the DM's fun is just as important as, if not more important than, the players' fun, and part of that is deciding, as DM, what makes you happy to see included or excluded in the fantasy world of your own creation. If the inclusion or exclusion of any part of the core rules, be it class, race, setting, feat, skill or rule is a deal breaker for a player, then that game or group is not the one they are looking for, and they will go their separate ways. If the same applies to a DM, then the game is not happening, and the group needs to find themselves a new DM, and the DM needs to find a new group, which is vastly more hassle than one player finding a new group and being replaced. Oh, the DM might fool themselves a few game sessions allowing one or more players getting their way, but it will eventually take the fun out of the game for that DM, and then it's no fun for anyone.

Having gotten that one out of the way, let us talk some more on the warlock. The mechanics of the class never bothered me, just the ingrained roleplaying aspects and story behind the class are what really gets to me. The whole "extraplanar benefactor" that drives the backstory of every warlock is what draws my ire. It does not help (though I too have been guilty of doing this in the past, though usually in games not D&D), I do not like backstories that are more interesting and involved than your first couple of levels of play. The classic example is the character with a backstory that "explains" how they are the "the best (WHATEVER) in the land", be it assassin, thief, warrior, or spellcaster, yet in the first couple of sessions that same player is hoping that lowly goblin misses their attack because they just don't have the HP to soak it. Not very impressive, and doesn't make the whole backstory terribly believable, either.

That is where I find myself with the warlock - it is a class that is overburdened with too much backstory. And that is what I tried to fix by making it a multiclass only instead of a pure, standalone class. But really, if you need to know that level of backstory on your warlock - and by that level, take a look at the last warlock post I did, and watch the video by Zee Bashew and his warlock backstory - you are also probably the same player who writes a novel about your wizard, Parry Hotter, and their time at the wizarding school, Wogharts, before joining their adventuring crew. Maybe it is not the warlock that needs a fix, but a decent set of rules for 5e concerning your character at level zero, actual training options to turn that backstory into something you play through. Enterprising DMs will turn it into an opportunity to get the party together before they really get their adventuring days going.

I am sure someone has not waited until this point to jump into the comments to tell me how much fun I am stealing from the players. Because I hate it, all that player fun, and want to see it perish (END SARCASM). I don't mind players writing a good backstory, it is always heartening to see any player taking an interest in knowing who their characters are and where they come from, but please, keep the backstory to yourself. With the warlock, you can't do that, because of the nature of that contract it is always in the party's way, in the story's way, out there for everyone to see and deal with. It is one thing if, during play, you get yourself wanted by the authorities, so that you and the rest of the party are hunted until you fix it or get caught. That happened at the table, the rest of the party let it happen by not stopping you or by not turning you in afterwards (and collecting your bounty, because, come on, why shouldn't they also get paid for it?), either way they got a say in it. Or the DM is framing you, or the party, to make it a part of the adventure, but if they are a good DM, they will give you a way to solve the problem. With a warlock though, you put this burden on the entire team because you liked the character concept, and they have to hear your backstory. And the party cannot solve the issue - you either follow your part of the bargain or you lose your powers, or the party finds and kills your benefactor, and you lose your powers.

Like I said a couple of paragraphs ago, the backstory, or overabundance thereof, is what bugs me about the warlock. That, and how much some DMs are willing to overlook the extraplanar benefactor aspect of the class. We are playing in fantasy worlds, and maybe not every NPC is as paranoid as I am about what that contract entails for innocent bystanders near the warlocks, but ignoring that it is there is just as bad as overreacting and asking the warlock for a grand betrayal every game session to appease their "sugar daddy/momma". I even had one commentor on the last warlock post tell me his warlock players make the contract and that is it, nothing further required from the benefactor, when the PHB clearly states there is more, always more, required of every warlock. No one gets all of the powers a warlock gets for free. Why even bother delineating who the benefactor is if the warlock owes nothing and does not have to work for it? And if more is owed, why wouldn't at least part of the population be leery of your character if what is owed could turn out to be a literal pound of flesh, their flesh?

The mechanics of the class are interesting, though. It is a bit of a light gish class, though with only simple weapons and light armor, they are more reliant on Dex builds or races that give them weapon and armor proficiencies to open up their options. I prefer a more tanky or physical damage focused gish, personally, but I could play a warlock after some further contemplation. Still can't bring myself to play a monk outside of an Oriental themed campaign, or a bard, minus one special case, but warlock would not be too bad. I would still make the DM run the contract negotiations as part of Session Zero, and expect to get a little more harassment from the NPCs when I reveal my warlock nature. Still not letting them into my current campaign, but my players are about a third of the way through where I am going to do a major restart, so this and a few other things will change. Or I could wipe the party next session and warlocks will show up a lot earlier, you never know.

Yes, yes, I have grown tired of PC backstories - as a fellow player, I want to know the basics and if your backstory becomes plot relevant ("my sister does happen to be the merchant we are rescuing from this band of orcs"), fine, let us hear that part; as a DM, I only want the juicy parts that I can use to push the story forward (and against you, duh). You call it "using that information against the PCs", I call it moving the plot along, hooking the players into the world and making the world more personal, and also my gawd given right as a DM to mess with any PC at my table. Otherwise, your backstory is interesting to you and you alone. Why do you think one of the most popular t-shirts ever sold at GenCon said "No, I don't want to hear about your character"?

I fully realize I am very down on backstories, I have been playing the game a mite too long to really care for any other PC's backstory. However, it may be that my players and those I have played with have not been doing backstories correctly. Some food for thought:

Enjoy!