thoughtsofagm

[thoughtsofagm]

A player wants to play a character with no arms (Help me)

I need help with this.

A few things to know:-

They don’t want any prosthetics magical or otherwise. 

They still want to be able to use their weapons or cast spells and move without any disadvantages.

They don’t want their character treated any different that others. (That’s the easy part)

How the heck do I make this all work? My autistic brain wants to make this balanced but also just wants to say yes and get it over with.

Two of my players are against this, one who is missing their legs (they use a wheel chair and so does their character [huzzah for combat wheelchair!])

Do I just tell them no? Do I work on trying to make this work anymore?

[thoughtsofagm]

Warlocks

I got told I'm a bad DM for not allowing a player to play a homebrew warlock which the only change was they had Wizard spell slots. Before I get into this, I run almost purely in a version of Adventure league, a public D&D event that means at level 5 players get +1 weapons, casting foci and shields (If I’m remembering right). Meaning when I complain about warlocks its usually down to them having a High spell DC due to having rod of the pact keeper +1 to +3.

Now I’m in the middle with Warlocks, I think the evocations they get are a blast and you can do some fun stuff with them. Either in Roleplay or combat, but some of their spells just frustrate me as a Gm. I know warlocks aren’t the only class that get Synaptic static or Hypnotic pattern.

When you have a party of 3 warlocks, spamming repelling blast, Hypnotic pattern and synaptic static, it gets a bit dull and boring. We can’t change the adventure to fight against it.

Off topic but the last thing I want as a GM is giving a warlock more spell slots. not to mention it would mess with their abilities since they don’t get a lot of spells. So it would end up being a rinse and repeat.

[thoughtsofagm]

Non D&D content but something I’d love to do in Dragon age. Make Anders a Tranquil. That is all

[thoughtsofagm]

My interaction with a Racist PC

I had to have a conversation with my DM about a rasict PC that set me off during a session yesterday. I told them that after the session and mentioning my dislike for that play style and those types of characters. The whole night I couldn't sleep, the anxiety of the reactions I got from the DM who didn't see it as much of a problem at the time.

I was shaking during the whole conversation, unable to calm down and on the break of tears. I always much such a negative reaction to those types of PCs, especially when their hatred is pointed at Drow, Orc, goblins, etc.

The Dm thanked me for bringing it up, better to know now then later down the line. He apologized for dismissing my opinion when I first brought it up.

The player in question sent me a essay on how sorry they were, the friend who brought them in told me they’re not like that and them drinking probably made them go over to top with it.

Usually I just sit there and let it slide but I couldn’t. Not again.

[thoughtsofagm]

i love being dm. it means i can ask the most innocuous questions totally unprompted to my players like “hey what’s your bard’s swimming speed?” and get this reaction every time

[thoughtsofagm]

Okay... Hot take but I feel like its important and should be said.

So, In the age and resurgence of the popularity of D&D and other TTRPGs, I think a little conversations should be had.

Especially towards the Podcasts like Critical role that I’ve seen grow massively in popularity over the years.  A lot of talk has been had over how DMs/GMs should not compare themselves to people like Matt Mercer and how players should not expect that. 

BUT what I don’t see a lot of people talking about is players comparing themselves to the players on these professionally-ran podcasts. I think that it is so important, with all of these new people coming into the hobby to not feel obligated to try and push themselves to the standards of people on these shows. 

It can make people feel like they are not good at these games when in reality, they may play different, or they are learning the ropes. Not every backstory is gonna hit as hard as the next, sometimes you mess something up and that’s is okay.  That could turn people off of the hobby all together which is really sad. What I find most interesting about it is that…. most of the time, at least from what I’ve seen is that the judgement is coming from ourselves.  I have been there and done that. There is such a pressure nowadays, I feel. That revolves around the idea that we as players must be as good at the professionals but somehow be strikingly different and not have a single thing in common with the podcast players. 

I know I have had quite a bit of anxiety centered around this. I have a character by the name of Maeve Cyndriel, she is a half elf bard/wizard and I gave her a sort of eastern European accent. I made her years before I even started Critical Role and let alone season 2 started. But now I feel nervous to play her because of the accent as she might be compared to Jester. Another character I have, Blythe Adalarius wears circle glasses and when I finished her design, my mind went “Hey! that kind of looks like Percy” I felt bad about it, even with the glasses not being the same. She wears the glasses [which are more like dark sunglasses] because her eyes are blank white because she was an artist who made a deal with a demon to get her sight back after going blind. They are not the same and yet the pressure still remains I just think that it is so important to be kinder to ourselves as DMs/GMs and as players. We are not gonna be show stoppers all the time. We might not all have fancy minis or do fun voices, but that doesn’t matter. We are all here to have fun, not try to impress people not even there. In the end the game is for fun and to spend time with friends and build a story together. Like in anything else, comparing yourself to others is never beneficial, it will only hinder you and stop you from growing.  Just remember to have fun and make memories, never let pressure make you feel like less of a good player Sorry about this lil post, Just wanted to shoot this idea out there because we are all different and play different and should not feel obligated to play like anyone else. Ideas and characters are built from pieces and parts that do not wholly belong to the podcast DMs/GMs and Players. It all just here to be a fun hobby, as long as you are all having fun as a party and a group then you can’t go wrong. 

[thoughtsofagm]

My villain strapped the PC who has been in a relationship with for half the game, into their death machine.

Pc: W-Why are you doing this? I thought you loved me!

Villain: I do love you, our love is so strong, I’m going to use it to power my machine, and end the world so you can never be hurt again.

*Cue to painful screams of the PC*

Me: I guess you could say

Pc: don’t say it!

Me:...Love hurts!

[thoughtsofagm]

Animate Dead - Raise Dead

In a game, I played for 2 years, I was playing a kobold ranger/ Monster hunter. Trisk. 

We were in a boss battle, against a giant sorcerer who had eaten my character clan, to gain “Draconic blood”. All of us were low on spells, ammo, and hp. he critted me, killing me in one blow. Knocking Trisk’s lifeless body into a wall, where it fell onto the group and stopped moving.

I dunno where I was going with this, more under the cut

The table went silent. Everyone paused and looked at me, I didn’t want to say anything, “I’m good guys, carry on”. They did, the players next to me could tell I was not doing well with this, I wasn’t mad just sad and tired.

Then our Nercomancer, Anel, asked the GM a question, “Can i use animate dead on Trisk friend to bring them back as undead?”.

A little backstory, Anel and Trisk had been friends since the beginning of the campaign, they became friend over the love of cheese and magic. both of them believed that the people’s lives don’t have to end at death. While not wanting to stop the cycle of life, they wanted to have a city where those who chose could be brought back to help.

Gm: As a skeleton or corpse?

Anel: As themselves but undead. I have more spells to use but I think that would work better, Up to you. The gm thought about it, he took me aside and asked me how I felt about it. I said I didn’t care. We returned to the table, the Gm allowed it and trisk was brought back to unlife as a skeleton. I had my mental stats reduced, I could still do my actions, but my line of thought was limited.

We killed the giant. Trisk now as undead, stood there, doing nothing.

She was carried to a wizard, Anel’s teacher. They talked, about how to restore my intelligence, to keep me going when Anel is out of spells. I left the table for a good while after that. Trisk’s death hit my hard, everyone understood and were sad too.

I came back as Trisk mental faculties were restored. I wanted to make them laugh, “I guess you could say, I don’t need to lose weight anymore huh?”

[thoughtsofagm]

I don’t like Elves

I don’t like Elves. I don’t like Tolkien Elves. I hate the “better than everyone” Elves. I hate the “We live a lot longer than you so know better” Elves.

That doesn’t stop me from making my lovely Elven Son who’s married multiple different “short lived races” in his time. His current partner is a human warlock in her 90s, he just can’t help falling for dumb magic wielders who make terrible choices.

[thoughtsofagm]

Getting yelled at for Lizard titties

That’s it, I got yelled at for describling my lizardfolk (reskinned to be a Envie by Chris Zito) but with tits.

Gm: so Ryan describe.. “Bartholomew“

Me: He’s a fat crocodile man with big old man titties-

Table: Beings to laugh at my new character

Gm: How dare you disrupt my table! I’ll getting you moved *then proceeds to yell at me as he contacted to organizer to join our discord chat.

----

The best thing that came out of that was all of the players defending my choice of words, defending my big lovable Bartholomew.

[thoughtsofagm]

Supporting BLM

Hey want to support Black Lives Matter and get stuff from what apart from knowing you’ve done the right thing

DmsGuild is doing a charity sale of homebrew and AL d&d 5e stuff! Link

Each supporting a different charity/Good Cause:

-Black Lives Matter

-NAACP Legal Defence Fund

-National Police Accountability Fund

[thoughtsofagm]

18+ only Adventure League

I run adventure league in England and there are rules in place to protect those who are under 18.

Meaning without spending a good £250+ for each GM, More money on safe guarding, etc JUST FOR THAT LOCATION, meaning if at any point the place moved to a new address, we’d have to pay that all over again. This information I got from a fellow GM who has run at a school before.

We can’t run games fort under 18s, and it fucking sucks.

I would love to have more people playing D&D, having young GMs and players. 

The place I run is barely staying a float, they just can’t afford it. In our group of GMs, we have about 4 that run weekly, 3 that run twice a month. All that could have under 18s in it. so that would be.... £1750 just to get them checked.

Not to mention we have some really good people who play but who also have criminal records meaning they can’t interact with kids at social events. I don’t go into it, for all of them their records come from over 20 years ago and has stuck. We would have to tell them they can’t attend on days with have Under 18s.

I have been in talks with my old college of running a D&D group, explaining that they would have to get all of the GMs checked, but if there was interest we could run 4-5 hours game sessions for people.

[thoughtsofagm]

I’ve had a problem with my own writing in a game, Its in Dungeon and Dragons 5th edition. A few of my players have been triggered by:

1, Use of Slavery (By yugoloths)

2, One by the use of capitalism, A baron is being a asshole, using his money to control everything including all business.

3, War, Giants have come together to “take back” their land (In my worlds Giants were the first race to walk the realm)

4, The way I described a foreign leader (with a Culture loosely based around the amazons, which one player is basically wonder woman, minus to god powers or at least thats what she thinks hohohoho)

Now I want to make it so they’re not triggered, so they can enjoy the game. I just need some help.

I need story ideas, concepts I can use to make the game nicer for them, but I want risk. They all seem to love the stopping monsters, either making friends with them or killing them It’s usually the latter, those poor poor Goblins and Kobolds, they just wanted to be friends with the PCs

[thoughtsofagm]

I was going to say, grab a level of fighter at 1st level, then a human variant for war caster. Staff in one hand and shield in the other, then take the either the dueling fighting style. If anyone gets close, you can whack them with the staff.

If you really wanted too, you could bypass the mage armour for just heavy armour  (Or even just a breastplate if you don’t want the Stealth penalty),then you don’t have to worry about dex and want to focus on Int and Charisma. Although it might be going a tad nuts Stares at my Fighter 1, Abjuration Wizard 8, Chain-lock 3 that I play in Adventure League

Hey because I made a post about abjuration wizards a while ago, I feel somewhat obligated to let the internet know about an incredibly devious setup you can do with abjuration magic in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition to turn your squishy wizard into a walking fortress of magical death using only your knowledge of the arcane and a blood pact with some dark entity.

So, to start, let’s use the template of a level 10 character with the following ability scores:

STR: 8 DEX: 16 CON: 10 INT: 18 WIS: 10 CHA: 13

Take note that I picked these ability scores to represent a typical wizard. Con is a flat 10 to keep the hitpoints about as Middle Road as possible. What’s important is the 18 INT, 16 DEX, and 13 CHA (as we’ll need that much charisma to multiclass into Warlock)

And for our first class: 9 levels of wizard! Abjuration tradition, to be specific! Which I know sounds wild, not a lot of people pay attention to that subclass, and I do not blame them for it. I will, however, tell you how much ass this subclass kicks. You see, the main feature you get from Abjuration is the ability to create an Arcane Ward, which is basically a shield that activates upon the use of an Abjuration spell. This shield has hitpoints equal to twice your wizard level + your intelligence modifier, at this level and with 18 intelligence, your arcane ward should have a max of 22 hitpoints. You also get a lot of spells at 9th level, but these are the most important:

Mage Armor (1st level Abjuration)

Shield (1st level Abjuration)

Fire Shield (4th level Evocation)

Stoneskin (4th level Abjuration, and the ONLY spell here that requires concentration)

And from our single level of Warlock:

Armor of Agathys (1st level Abjuration)

SO! Let’s go through the steps of this build, or: How To Ruin The Encounter.

Cast Mage Armor. With a +3 dex modifier, your AC immediately becomes 16, which is on par with basic fighter and paladin armor. Mage Armor is also Abjuration, so your Arcane Ward activates.

Cast Armor of Agathys, at 5TH LEVEL! Because of your multiclass into warlock, you can cast this spell using your wizard spell slots! The effects of this spell are as follows: “You gain 5 temporary hitpoints. If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you have these hitpoints, the creature takes 5 cold damage”

A higher casting of Armor of Agathys increases both the temporary hitpoints and the damage by 5. So casting at 5th level means you have 25 temp hitpoints and it deals 25 cold damage.

Temporary Hitpoints and Arcane Ward are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. And more importantly, Arcane Ward soaks up damage before you take any damage in your temporary hitpoints! But because of the effects of Armor of Agathys, you deal the 25 cold damage regardless of whether or not you lose any of your temporary hitpoints.

Cast Fire Shield, warm shield or chill shield doesn’t matter, though keep in mind that a warm shield gives you resistance to cold damage and deals 2d8 fire damage to a creature that hits you with a melee attack, and a chill shield gives resistance to fire and deals the same amount of cold damage. For the sake of this post, let’s say you use a chill shield to stick with the Cold theme!

Cast Stoneskin, you now have resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Resistance applies before you subtract any damage from yourself or your Arcane Ward.

Cast Shield, whenever you don’t feel like being hit by something. This grants a +5 to AC until your next turn, bringing your total AC to 21.

SO FINALLY!!! Accounting for all of these factors, and assuming you take the average hp increase for every level, you now have:

43 base hp + 25 temp hp + 22 Arcane Ward hp for a grand total of 90 HITPOINTS

16 base AC and 21 AC with the Shield spell

HALF DAMAGE FROM FIRE AND ALL NONMAGICAL WEAPONS

And every time a creature hits you with a melee attack (until you lose those 25 temp hp), they take 2d8 + 25 COLD DAMAGE

And every time you cast an abjuration spell, your Arcane Ward heals for twice the spell’s level.

You are now a walking statue, surrounded by a storm of ice, and protected by incredibly powerful wards. Just run at whatever you’re fighting, make them hit you, they’ll regret it. You’re welcome.

[thoughtsofagm]

Now this is good stuff right here! Mage Armor lasts 8 hours, you can cast that before a short rest and get the slot back. Leaving more spell slots!

Hey because I made a post about abjuration wizards a while ago, I feel somewhat obligated to let the internet know about an incredibly devious setup you can do with abjuration magic in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition to turn your squishy wizard into a walking fortress of magical death using only your knowledge of the arcane and a blood pact with some dark entity.

So, to start, let’s use the template of a level 10 character with the following ability scores:

STR: 8 DEX: 16 CON: 10 INT: 18 WIS: 10 CHA: 13

Take note that I picked these ability scores to represent a typical wizard. Con is a flat 10 to keep the hitpoints about as Middle Road as possible. What’s important is the 18 INT, 16 DEX, and 13 CHA (as we’ll need that much charisma to multiclass into Warlock)

And for our first class: 9 levels of wizard! Abjuration tradition, to be specific! Which I know sounds wild, not a lot of people pay attention to that subclass, and I do not blame them for it. I will, however, tell you how much ass this subclass kicks. You see, the main feature you get from Abjuration is the ability to create an Arcane Ward, which is basically a shield that activates upon the use of an Abjuration spell. This shield has hitpoints equal to twice your wizard level + your intelligence modifier, at this level and with 18 intelligence, your arcane ward should have a max of 22 hitpoints. You also get a lot of spells at 9th level, but these are the most important:

Mage Armor (1st level Abjuration)

Shield (1st level Abjuration)

Fire Shield (4th level Evocation)

Stoneskin (4th level Abjuration, and the ONLY spell here that requires concentration)

And from our single level of Warlock:

Armor of Agathys (1st level Abjuration)

SO! Let’s go through the steps of this build, or: How To Ruin The Encounter.

Cast Mage Armor. With a +3 dex modifier, your AC immediately becomes 16, which is on par with basic fighter and paladin armor. Mage Armor is also Abjuration, so your Arcane Ward activates.

Cast Armor of Agathys, at 5TH LEVEL! Because of your multiclass into warlock, you can cast this spell using your wizard spell slots! The effects of this spell are as follows: “You gain 5 temporary hitpoints. If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you have these hitpoints, the creature takes 5 cold damage”

A higher casting of Armor of Agathys increases both the temporary hitpoints and the damage by 5. So casting at 5th level means you have 25 temp hitpoints and it deals 25 cold damage.

Temporary Hitpoints and Arcane Ward are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. And more importantly, Arcane Ward soaks up damage before you take any damage in your temporary hitpoints! But because of the effects of Armor of Agathys, you deal the 25 cold damage regardless of whether or not you lose any of your temporary hitpoints.

Cast Fire Shield, warm shield or chill shield doesn’t matter, though keep in mind that a warm shield gives you resistance to cold damage and deals 2d8 fire damage to a creature that hits you with a melee attack, and a chill shield gives resistance to fire and deals the same amount of cold damage. For the sake of this post, let’s say you use a chill shield to stick with the Cold theme!

Cast Stoneskin, you now have resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Resistance applies before you subtract any damage from yourself or your Arcane Ward.

Cast Shield, whenever you don’t feel like being hit by something. This grants a +5 to AC until your next turn, bringing your total AC to 21.

SO FINALLY!!! Accounting for all of these factors, and assuming you take the average hp increase for every level, you now have:

43 base hp + 25 temp hp + 22 Arcane Ward hp for a grand total of 90 HITPOINTS

16 base AC and 21 AC with the Shield spell

HALF DAMAGE FROM FIRE AND ALL NONMAGICAL WEAPONS

And every time a creature hits you with a melee attack (until you lose those 25 temp hp), they take 2d8 + 25 COLD DAMAGE

And every time you cast an abjuration spell, your Arcane Ward heals for twice the spell’s level.

You are now a walking statue, surrounded by a storm of ice, and protected by incredibly powerful wards. Just run at whatever you’re fighting, make them hit you, they’ll regret it. You’re welcome.

[thoughtsofagm]

My general rule

If the players can do it, so can the bad guys. I do my best to inform my players of that before we start.

[thoughtsofagm]

An NPC has joined the party, by telling them he is.

Now to see what they do with him.