Dungeons and Dragons

We used to have several more people. Right now it’s 3 players and a DM. The DM is my cousin, and our rule right now is if one person can’t make it, the whole thing is called off. They really don’t want to just have 2 players, which I can understand.

This has been the only group I’ve ever played DnD with, but I’m not enjoying it at all. Part of it is the DM’s style, and part of it is another player.

I feel like I can’t do anything as a paladin without being yanked away from it. My first few sessions literally any time I tried to cast something, this other player told me I really shouldn’t. They’re so terrified I’m going to run out of spell slots. I never have.

At a certain point I just started doing nothing but regular attacking. That’s it. Just sessions on end of attacking as a paladin and nothing else without any complaints. I’m bored out of my mind.

I’m still a new player and I’m just trying to enjoy the game. But Any time I try to cast something, I’m being told not to, or given like a 5 minute thesis on how ” actually Bless isn’t as useful as this other thing, but hey if you WANT to use bless I don’t GUESS it would hurt…”

Also the DMs themes just don’t relate to me at all. The best way I can describe the game is like some mix of analog horror, SCP, and the backrooms. We never ever just meet some bandit or goblin. It’s always some unexplainable entity that the DM must use esoteric language to describe. It’ll be some object or being that is cognitively distressing to witness yet impossible to comprehend. And I’m having to roleplay a reaction to it?

Not to mention the crunchiness of the campaign is just wearisome to me. Our last campaign we spent an hour and a half just going over inventory, crafting, quest progress, and stats. All above the table; never in character.

It’s just such a boring campaign to me with a player that’s about to make me rip my hair out. But it’s also my cousin’s game, and I’m fairly certain it will have to disband - at least for a long while - if I leave.

I'm asking because the question the other day about silliest characters had a lot of funny comments.

Personally, I like to play as characters who are perpetually on the brink of fucking things up. Other players adore this, their PCs don't.

As an example, a week ago, the party was being escorted by a noble to a fort, although the noble was lagging behind. My character (who was a kobold gremlin) announced her presence and demanded to be let in. The guard manning the gate asked how he could be sure that we hadn't killed or kidnapped the noble. My kobold said "Isn't the whole point of kidnapping to announce it and use it as leverage? Why would we be hiding it from you?" The party's 'dad' quickly interjected that we had not kidnapped the noble, and that they were just around the bend. My kobold insisted to be let in, arguing "Just let us in, and if you need to arrest us for killing the noble, you'll have us surrounded." The party dad stared daggers at my character, and asked if she was deliberately trying to fuck things up. (the answer was yes, she had been slighted by the dad who did not let her be a gremlin) The dad asked the games to ignore everything my character had said, and the DM asked us to both do persuasion rolls. The other player rolled a nat one, and I rolled a nat 20. We both said "fuck." At the same time, and he burst out laughing.

I will be heading off to fight the morally grey fight as an Oathbreaker paladin in the service of Kelemvor this afternoon. I believe that we are going to steal a boat, sink that boat, get mad about not having a boat, steal another boat, and then set out on our adventure.

What are you getting up to? (If you're here after Sunay, what did you get up to?)

Mine was a shark person male named Susan (he didn't understand the idea of gendered names but liked how human names sounded)

I used to use OneNote, which worked ok but it got really crazy organizing and reorganizing every time we started a new chapter of our years-long homebrew campaign. Frustrated, I started looking around at other tools.

For the past year my players and I were using World Anvil to create a sort of online wiki for my players to replace the journal from our VTT which is not always online. I wanted to give them resources where they could check back on things that happened during the sessions, people they met, etc. I stopped using World Anvil recently because they straight up lost a bunch of my nested articles. I had articles nested in articles - which was something that I learned to do by watching their own internal YouTube guide videos. I asked for help on the official Discord server and was told "don't use nested articles", which breaks my entire organization methods - the same problem I came into with OneNote. Losing data randomly though isn't ok with me. A lot of those articles were WIP and I had no backup...

I started using Kanka recently because it's a small team and it seems like it's going to work out, but before I get super invested, I wanted to hear from the rest of the community, so - do you all use any tools? How do you keep yourself organized, especially in a long homebrew campaign?

We're back! New Dalancia is live at 5pm Central over on Twitch!

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Like adventures that are just laid back traveling and doing easy quest for NPCs?

Come join us on our adventure!

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I finally ran my party through Tomb of Horrors. I’m going to give my overall thoughts first, then some room specific things. The main thing, setting expectations was critical for running this dungeon.

• I told them that it was a “puzzle” dungeon and that combat would be minimal, so they brought characters that were good at investigating.
• Telling the party that it was unfair and to expect to die, made it easy to keep the game moving and they had backups ready. I included a narrative hand wave to explain how new characters could catch up so fast.
• Putting the mcguffin in the final room absolutely worked to drive the party to reach the end.
• The time limit worked an absolute treat for preventing the party from long resting at all really.
• I used the 1e elf/thief ability to auto detect hidden doors, and altered it to use passive perception instead. It really worked great for keeping the party from getting stuck everywhere.

The monsters were absolutely no challenge for a party of level 12 characters. Even tuning them up to as deadly as their 1e versions didn’t take into account the power increase of the party. You should definitely wholesale replace them with much more challenging encounters.

I had said that they couldn’t use mage hand to open doors, but then let a PC later use a rope tied to a handle, which was effectively the same thing. You should pick one or the other. Standing in front of the door to open it is dangerous, so it’s just if you want to force that or not.

Poison didn’t really feel right. In my game if you were poisoned, you immediately fell to death saves. In every instance the party was able to quickly heal the downed PC. So they were as deadly in theory as the 1e traps, but also effectively not.

One PC had detect magic up near constantly, but it didn’t really adversely affect the adventure in any way. The one place I fudged it was the dungeon collapse illusion at the first false ending. I waited until the PC stopped running and said they stop to look at something before I revealed that they were seeing illusion magic.

Entrance to the Tomb of Horrors
One of the PCs was a divination wizard and used a high level spell to determine the exact location to the entrance. Not a thing in 1e, but I felt it was fair to trade a spell slot resource to skip the two false entrances.

The Face of the Great Green Devil
One of the PCs sent their familiar into the mouth of the devil while looking through their eyes. I had them make a Wisdom save or they would have taken psychic damage. They succeed, so instead I described an ineffable eldrich abyss.

Chapel of Evil
The chapel was the first place they got stuck, which is what I expected. One PC kept walking back and forth to the corner with the secret exit, but also kept failing the passive perception roll. After about an hour and at the end of the session, I allowed them to spend some resources to get a big hint where to look.

Magical Secret Door
They found the door and investigated it enough to know what needed to be done, but none of them had the right spell prepared to unlock it. We did a little horse trading and I let them use a different spell of the same level to open the door.

Adamantine Door
Another door the party didn’t have the right setup for; they didn’t have three swords between them. Unless explicitly stated, I assumed all traps and doors were mundane things. So after they investigated enough I hinted there were switches in the sword slots that needed to be pressed. They carved up a quarter staff to make it work.

Cursed Gem and Bronze Urn
These two played off each other very well. In my game, one PC scooped up the cursed gem on the way out of the pillared throne room. The party did not accost the bronze urn and opened it gently. All I had to do was wait for the cursed PC to suggest a Wish from the efreeti, and boom.

Statues
I was worried the party would get stuck here, but for whatever reason they took an affront to the statues and used their first wish to send them away. Lucky break on them.

The Crypt of Acererak the Demilich
This scene also didn’t play out like I expected. The party was so distracted by the ghost that one PC thought they were going to grab the skull and run out of the crypt. I had them roll initiative and they were still focused on the ghost until Acerera’s turn which caught them off guard. It was a fun fight but still not a challenge for them.

I hope some of this helps some future DM.

This has probably come up somewhere but I am keen to hear your guys creative or interesting items you gave your players. I think there is a lot you can do but sometimes I get stuck in my head when thinking of cool items that are not just overpowered.

I go first: a magic music sheet that when played has a certain effect (in my case a "sonata of the forgotten", effect is pretty campaign specific) unslippable shoes, glowing chalk you can use to mark smth for example in a labyrinth and a mirror that makes invisible things visible

I recently started posting all our stream highlights over on Loops and I'm super excited about migrating all our content over to the Fediverse! I hope these are a welcome addition!

During each stream, our viewers can spend points to ask our characters anything, and the players (or the DM) have to answer in-character. It's been a lot of fun and this was one of the first few AMAs we did.

Enjoy! :)

Gestern kam die neue Folge der Pen & Paper News Online!

► https://youtu.be/pFdcS81nBq4

Mit dabei unter anderem @kritischerfehlschlag.de bzw. das Werk von @Seba und viele andere spannende Themen von @dnd und @wizards_magic !

Donnerstag (morgen) kommt die nächste Folge, ab nächste Woche wenn ich es schaffe bis dahin eine fertig zu stellen, heißt die News auch etwas anders, wartet ab! <3

Liebe Grüße und Hugs für alle
euer Martin

#penandPaper #news

A saving throw—also called a save—represents an attempt to avoid or resist a threat. You normally make a saving throw only when a rule requires you to do so, but you can decide to fail the save without rolling. The result of a save is detailed in the effect that allowed it. If a target is forced to make a save and lacks the ability score used by it, the target automatically fails.

Page 373 of PHB 2024

Bolded section is what I am concerned with. Does this mean that if I am a Barbarian with Strength/Constitution saving throw proficiency, that I automatically fail when needing to perform a Dexterity saving throw (because I do not have the ability score used by it)? Example here would be the Fireball spell cast by an enemy.

The good ol' fashioned "You all meet in a tavern, answering a poster offering gold for help..."? The action-scene, "You're all engaged in mutual mundane task, when suddenly a band of thugs/goblins/whatever bust in looking for the plot coupon and chaos breaks out"? The "Elder Scrolls classic" - all being prisoners thrown in together? Tie it in to a character's backstory and let them lead the other party members in?

What have you found interesting or successful, and why?

My favorite quote

Finally, "The dark elves are English posh people what have taken drugs."

Hello

Wanted to share that I have made this website where you can print out your dnd e5 spell cards.

The colour of the spell cards can be customized and you can filter out the spells based on class, subclass, level or individual spells.

https://dnd.akvila.dev/

The cards are printed out on at A4, and are 2.5x3.5 inch which also fit in magic the gathering sleeves.

So im in a almost weekly dnd 5e group but i feel like i need something more to do in my personal time. Im considering trying solo but im used to being in a group and not by myself, and i feel like i cant get creative enough to play solo.

I recently found a book (as seen in image above) and im not sure if i should try it or if there are better solutions?

What would you advise?

Does anyone roll random treasure and/or magic items for their games? If so, what resources do you use for this? This was a regular thing in 1st edition that I loved.

I was making some unique loot for a low-level party I'm running a quest for this week, and my roller derby brain intruded upon my D&D brain.

Hello. I plan to run a campaign with three of my friends. I will be the DM. I have been the DM before and I have been a Player before (in DnD 5e and also other systems). For my three friends it will be the first time they play a tabletop RPG. So which of the offical campaign moduls do you think is best suited for my friends?

Basically the title. They sent me the photos, they found them when clearing out parents house. Said books are used but the game is unused