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.
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.
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.
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