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[bardicknowledgeblogger]

The wild thing about being obsessed with your own DnD campaign is that there's absolutely NO fandom content for it except the stuff that you make

Like, what do you mean only six other people in the entire world have heard of Dave the Ice Elemental whose job is Freezer at the Fantasy Starbucks?

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

I am so entertained...

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

I think the responses of doing Speed vs Power/Damage is pretty solid. Basically make it where you can get more shots off or get a shot off before the target reacts, but the counter is that you might only hit an extraneous body part or clip armor or something. Where as taking time for one good shot is more likely to hit a vital point, but they might do something before you can or limit how many shots you make.

If you don't like that though, you could do Movement vs Attack. Ranged weapon characters tend to really struggle with people getting too close, or with people getting into cover and blocking line of sight. They tend to benefit a lot from being able to quickly move about the field. So you could make it that the more damage you do, the less repositioning you can manage in the round. You have to choose to commit to the attack you're doing and where you're doing it from, or 'phone in' the attack a bit so you can try and get set up for a better one.

I'm currently working on an RPG system and the way combat works is that you roll dice each round and then you split that number between two opposing values. For melee attacks it's attack and defend, so the more likely you are to hit someone the more likely you are to be hit. For spells it's successful casting and empowering the spell, so the more powerful the spell you cast is the less likely it is to succedd.

I am currently struggling to come up with what two values to split between for ranged weapon attacks. I feel like there's basically just your aim, and if you're better at hitting you're also better at dealing more damage.

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

This starts out as a nice gesture, then quickly becomes absolutely ridiculous.

1,024 dice. Man.

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

Hi, hello, writers? This is how you do a cyberpunk game.

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

💎 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺! Starlight’s Reach
Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement) ___

These long, silken gloves are dotted with silver stars. While wearing them, you can always see the stars in the sky, even in the daytime, and you can’t become lost by nonmagical means as long as you can see them.

While wearing the gloves, you can use a bonus action to summon a javelin of starlight. The javelin appears in your space and moves with you, floating alongside you. It sheds bright light in a 10-foot radius and dim light for an additional 10 feet. When you summon the javelin, and again as a bonus action on each of your subsequent turns, you can make a ranged spell attack with the weapon, with a spell attack bonus of +8. The javelin has a range of 30 feet, but it can be used to attack a target up to 120 feet away: doing so causes you to make the attack with disadvantage.

If the javelin hits a target, it deals 1d6 + 4 radiant damage, and a shimmering star appears fixed in space at the point of impact. The star sheds bright and dim light like the javelin, and it remains there for up to 1 minute. Hit or miss, the javelin then winks out and reappears next to you in your space.

You can use a bonus action to dismiss the javelin. When you do, the shimmering stars created by the javelin each flare with a celestial light, creating 1-inch-diameter beams of energy between them. A star can have up to two beams of energy connected to it, and each beam must connect to a different star no more than 60 feet away from it (you choose which stars). A creature caught in one or more of the beams must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw or take 4d6 radiant damage. The stars then vanish.

After the javelin attacks for the fifth time, it disappears, and any stars created by it wink out without creating any beams. ___

✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon’s Saddlebag on Patreon for less than $10 a month!

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

*comes out of three hour drawing haze covered in blood*

T O O T H 🦷

Item no. 49 from @basalt-dnd list of Another 100 Magic Items (which I FINALLY found the original post after saving the images ages ago, but not the author 😅). I changed the item description ever so slightly to fit what I had in mind

(Also lmk if I need to add more cw/tw tags!!)

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

One thing I think tabletop RPGs could stand to learn from video games is to be more prepared to fuck around with diegesis in the name of interesting gameplay. Tabletop RPGs are often stuck in this headspace where having a rules toy with anything less than direct, 1:1 correspondence to some notional action being performed by a character in the fiction is treated as something controversial, while video games are out there like "the outcome of this cooking competition shall be decided by giving the dishes you prepare stat blocks and having them fight your opponent's dishes in grid-based tactical combat", and it's understood that this is just a game-mechanical metaphor. You don't need several thousand words of ponderous exposition about the political history of the Food Wars Dimension to explain it – it's allowed to be a conceit of the medium.

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

Inspired by recent discussions of an Actual Play.

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

idk what dm needs to hear this but you arent getting that done in a single session

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

I don’t think I have the chops for D&D or other tabletop RPGs but I could make a good DM’s assistant. I don’t play the game but I sit and listen and then after the session the DM can ask me for ideas.

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

by Kyoung Hwan Kim

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

It's very funny to me that the stereotypical gelatinous cube is bright fucking green when the monster itself is almost perfectly transparent. Like its gimmick is that it's a monster that imitates an empty 10x10 hallway. How many people have fallen victim to gelatinous cubes because they "know" that the ooze is bright green and so don't bother to check the suspiciously clean corridor in front of them.

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

Warlocks after a short rest

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

have you done a d10 list of weird boats/ships before?

There are rings for oars, you think, but no oars aboard. There is a mast for sails, you think, but no sails to be seen. Still, the ship seems to be propelled forward, guided by unseen force despite its bare decks, devoid of crew and cargo alike.

The spiderwebbed rigging is the product of the arachnid that sits where you imagined the crow's nest should be. "It's her ship," the crew whispers, "we go where she bids. Her brood is in the hold."

The whole thing is made of glass, from bow to stern. You can see straight through down to the water beneath the hull. It's unsettling; moreso when you spot the shark-like creatures keeping pace with the vessel.

It's carved of teak, of all things. The shipwright was a demigod, they say, from a time when trees grew large enough for a ship to be carved whole from a branch - not even a trunk, a branch! No telling how long she's been asea, but she never wants for crew. Many a sailor would give up their greatest treasures to sail on her decks.

The flag it flies is known to no man. If you look away too long, its colors have changed again. It otherwise appears ordinary. But time goes a bit wobbly when that flag changes, the crew claims.

The churning turbines on its underside were torn from conquered mills. They kick up the silty riverbottom and leave whirlpools in the ship's wake. Its masts were the grists, the poles that did the turning, and its sails are flour sacks sewn together. What cause does a miller have to take to the water?

You'd never met a ship with a mindwright before, but that's what they seem to call the man in the brig. He could be sleeping, you think, but it is his will and his will alone tethering this ship to reality. By all rights it shouldn't exist: a hulk of bone and rot from a creature long-dead. The brig is to keep things out, not to keep him in, for if he is disturbed, the whole vessel will go to the drown.

Ebbs and flows, waves and still waters: the ship contains them all. You're unsure of the magic animating it, but you can walk on the deck and pull a line and turn the wheel just as you would on a mundane boat, albeit with wet hands and feet. The dampness chills your very bones.

Chains writhe around the hull with a horrible grinding cacophony. They crawl up the masts like ivy and weave in and out of portholes. That much weight might sink a ship, except the chain leviathan lurking beneath the waves holds it aloft. Those who set foot on its decks never see shore again.

You watch, incredulous, as the paper unfolds, and again, and again and again and again, into a four-masted vessel with trimmed sails and an origami figurehead.

all d10 lists

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

Space Shroom for getting so high, you’d be out of the exosphere ⭐🌟✨