Good Dagi! (Or, 'How the Party Was Saved by a Tiger') DnD

Long weekend for me. Played in a long session Friday, ran one Saturday, and then went out for drinks with a couple friends. One of them plays in my campaign, the other has never played. After a couple beers they decide they want a one-off campaign and - tired as I was - I couldn't pass that up.

I decide immediately this is going to be randomly rolled / defined by whatever piques the players' interest. One rolls an Aarakocra Ranger + the other a Half Dark Elf Sorcerer. Sounds fun. I like Rangers, so I decide early on we're going for a Witcher 3 vibe.

They walk up to a job board in town, and I use this random encounter generator to populate it with random requests from townspeoples. Of all the ones I read off to them, they found "Oi thar's a giant snake eatn' meh sheep!" the most interesting. Who wouldn't?

They meet up, negotiate a price for the head of this snake, and set out to collect evidence. They end up at a suburb/farming community on the outskirts of town, and sure enough after talking to some locals they find evidence that a snake had been around. Animals were disappearing in the middle of the night, yet no blood was seen. They conclude it's probably eating them whole - as a DM I'm internally saying, Good idea! I'll make it a giant constrictor snake.

They follow the trail, and conclude it's been living in and climbing around in giant trees in the nearby forest. The playeres ask if it will be voiced by Scarlett Johansson. I'm a 6'2" man with a deep voice; Sadly I was not able to pull that off.

I describe the tracks of this thing as being as big around as a refrigerator. They (smartly) decide they want to go get a mercenary. Again, I randomly roll some NPCs that can serve as mercs. After talking to all of them (and after I'd done unique voices for all of them - helps that I was buzzed) they select a Monk named Caelian. I look back at his character description and noticed I'd missed something - so on their way out of the Bagger's Sack Pub, he whistles for his animal companion (my players' eyes light up) and a fucking Tiger trots out. "His name is Dagi," says Caelian. My players are delighted.

"So we call him Doggy, right?" they ask. OBVIOUSLY we call him Doggy.

They head out to the Forest - on their way, they rent a goat named Shirley as bait. Jurassic Park references went on for about five minutes.

They find a clearing in the dense forest (convenient) and tie the goat up in the middle of it, letting it bleat its heart out.

I let one hour of game time pass. I want them to be impatient. They are hiding behind a large tree, waiting for something to happen. I'm ominously rolling die while they wait. The Aarakocra Ranger decides to fly above and get a better look - bad choice. The Giant Constrictor Snake (hiding above them in the large tree) tries to snatch him out of mid-air, and gets a surprise round on the group. "Roll Initiative."

First round, the Ranger makes a successful opposing strength check to escape the grapple they were in. They head to the clearing, and are pursued by the snake. It's a Huge Class creature, and I represent it using d6's in a line, slithering along.

One by one, it starts taking out the party. First the Monk is constricted and takes 2d8+4 bludgeoning every turn. Nasty. The Monk Caelian dies, and Dagi the Tiger roar/howls in anguish.

The Ranger mixes it up in melee combat, and gets constricted again. The Ranger goes down. I let him control the actions of Dagi at this point.

The sorcerer is pursued through the trees, and is grappled as well. The tiger is flanking + bite/slashing. Sorcerer goes down to a nasty bite after valiantly firebolting for a few rounds.

Now it's Doggy vs a Giant Snake.

At this point, grapple contest checks are being made every round. The tiger fails multiple times, but is doing solid damage to this snake. Dagi is also taking 2d8+4 bludgeoning damage each round from constriction.

Last Round. One last strength contest - Dagi rolls a 16. The Snake rolls a 15. Dagi the Tiger escapes with 1 HP left, and makes a last ditch effort to murder this snake with the corpse of its former master nearby, and our player characters helplessly crumpled in a heap.

Dagi rolls a 14 vs AC - Snake has 12. 8 damage - more than enough to finish this thing off. It sags and drops its head to the ground in a large thud.

Dagi the Tiger channels its inner Lassie, and sprints to the village to get help - he brings back the woman who sold them Shirley the Goat. The party is saved, the snake is dead. The group gets a long rest, retrieves the head of the snake, and they receive their reward.

EPILOGUE

The Ranger sits down in front of Dagi, and says "Dagi. I swear it on my life, come with me and we will honor your fallen master - I will protect you and care for you if you do the same for me." I was like, fuck. That's good RP. Roll animal handling w/ advantage. 19.

So now the Aarakocra Ranger has a Tiger companion lovingly named Doggy, and the Half Dark Elf Sorcerer player immediately asks when we're playing next.

Submitted July 24, 2017 at 10:33PM by chucktowski http://ift.tt/2uRlshI DnD

The worst demise of a D&D group in the history of ever— Part 2. DnD

On the 18th of February, this happened. (tl;dr: Player B cheated on Player A with Player C of our 6+DM group.)

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Several people wanted to be updated about what happened next, so I'll be tagging those people in the comments below.

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Player B did end up riding home with Player A since they live together.

First thing on Monday, which was 10 a.m., I was the first non-employee through the door at the game store, to see if my 4 dice were still there somewhere. I searched the entire game room and I only found one green/black d12 that was behind a box in the corner— almost invisible on the store's carpet —and a translucent red tiddly wink/bingo chip/marker of some sort. I looked through the store's dice chest, too, and didn't see my dice in there either. I told the lady running the store about their significance (and about the broken miniature) and she was apologetic and said I could "take" a set of dice they had "for sale". I couldn't tell if she was offering me a freebie or suggesting I buy some new dice, so I told her it wasn't the store's fault and I wouldn't feel right about the store giving me some dice for something someone else did. Then she said she meant I could buy some new dice from them, stuck out her tongue at me— I don't know why, but everyone at that store does that —and I felt infinitely stupid, so I courtesy laughed and left soon after.

I texted back and forth with Player A a lot on the 21st. He said he was "probably" not going back to the game, and I could hear it in his voice that he definitely wasn't. He told me he disconnected Player B's phone, which he was paying for, and that Player B was living with her mother by Sunday afternoon. He asked me if I would come over by noon on the 23rd to act as witness when Player B comes back to get the rest of her stuff. I told him of course I would and he texted me his address. (Once an Army brother, always an Army brother.) I asked him if he wanted to go "Eat shit, talk shit, and shoot some shit" (lunch, hang out, go shooting) and he said it sounded like a good idea, so we now have plans to make plans to get together someday and go shooting. I plan on broaching the topic of him playing D&D again in the future while we're out blowing shit up.

Player A also told me that Player B slept on the couch Saturday night (the day of the incident) and wasn't "kicked out" of Player A's apartment per se. I told him I would have had her "shit" on the curb even before I got home, I would be that livid. He just laughed. Since then, and as far as I know, Player A is not talking to Player B. (I can't blame him. I wouldn't talk to her either if she cheated on me— especially with another player in our D&D group. That still blows my mind, especially after how long the two of them were together.)

Player B showed up at Player A's apartment a little after noon on the 23rd with her mom and 2 cops. The cops and Player B's mom did virtually all of the talking. Player A and Player B didn't say a single word to each other. The cops asked who I was and Player A told them I was there for his protection. At that comment, the cops asked if Player B was violent before and Player A and Player B both said stuff to the effect of neither one of them ever physically fighting. Player B didn't say anything to me; she just looked embarrassed and ashamed. (Good!) Player B's mom gave me dirty looks the whole time she was in Player A's apartment, and I'm pretty sure she knew I wasn't her daughter's now-ex-boyfriend since the two of them had been together for years. Over the course of about an hour, Player B mostly took clothes, bathroom stuff, books, papers, and mail while her mom seemed to be attempting to instigate some bad behavior by constantly asking "Is this yours?" about damn near everything that was in Player A's apartment. When Player B was done, she left with her mom and the cops took off in their cruiser.

As expected, the DM showed up on the 25th because he gets paid to be there. (He gets a "very nice discount" on store purchases.)

Players D, E, and F (myself) showed up on the 25th to see if the D&D game was over. Player D gave me one of my missing dice, a pink/white d10. (Small victory! Yay!) Player A didn't show up for the game, and we all expected that. (I didn't tell anyone I knew he wouldn't be there.) Player B didn't show up for the game, and we were all thankful for that. The DM told us he didn't expect anyone to show up to play, so he hadn't planned on anything for that week. He told us he had the content we didn't cover the previous week, if we three wanted to continue the campaign. I brought up the point of the group not being "Monty's Midgets" anymore. I asked if we could play the same campaign, but with different characters (because I know how much it sucks to make a campaign and then not get to run it to completion) and from a different angle or something. Players D and E said that would be awesome and the DM said I get Inspiration for the entire first session for that idea. As we were making characters, Player C showed up...

Player C showed up about 2 hours after our original game would have started. The only one of us to actually see or talk to him was the DM. Apparently Player C called the store to see if we were playing and then stood outside, waving at us, inside, for "30 minutes" before the lady running the store saw him and went out to talk to him. She was how we found out Player C was even out there, and that he wanted to talk to our DM. Our DM went out to talk to him and came back in about 15 minutes later carrying two pizza boxes and a case of Mountain Dew. (None of us ate the pizza, but some guys playing Battletech or something at the other side of the game room did; we gave the case of Mountain Dew to the store to put in the refrigerator to sell "to make up for the broken chair".) Player C was allegedly not trying to rejoin the group; our DM said he was just there to apologize. ("Fuck that guy." was the general attitude Player D, Player E, and myself had; our DM didn't really say where he stood, but we noticed he didn't eat the pizza or drink the Dew either...)

Our DM decided that the premise of the new campaign would be that all of our previous characters had gone missing without a word, and our party of 3 was assigned the task of scouting their last known whereabouts for information. Thinking about last week's Reddit thread and how I named us Players D, E, and F, I joked with Players D and E that we should call the new adventurers the "Deaf Squad" (DEF Squad) and fake being hard of hearing whenever we don't like someone or something they have to say. (And our little scam has already gotten one of us— OK! OK! It was my character. —out of jail because of a "misunderstanding".)

And, finally, about an hour or so before we quit, we picked up a completely-new-to-5E player— an older guy who hasn't played since 1E.

Submitted February 27, 2017 at 10:45PM by Stormbow http://ift.tt/2mmytfJ DnD

Female Dragonborn physiology? (5e) DnD

(Before I start I promise this isn't about eggs or boobs)

The PHB doesn't seem to be particularly helpful in explaining this. Is there any kind of sexual dimorphism between males and females, or are females giant refrigerator lizards just like the males?

I'm trying to design my character (Life Cleric of Kelemvor) and in my head she's not super huge or anything and is kind of quiet, she likes to spend time looking out for the sick and making sure they can comfortably pass on (provided it's their time), etc.

I know the PHB has general guidelines for height/weight, but those seem a bit large for my tastes. I suppose if it's not in the PHB it's up to my DM's discretion?

Submitted January 20, 2017 at 11:18AM by ohdeargodhelpme http://ift.tt/2iQMtrW DnD

[5E] When in a temple dedicated to an Old God, don't answer questions willy nilly DnD

This is a story of Ash, the 22 year old Monk who left his master to find his own way.

TL;DR Answered a question from a pool, which turned out to be a deal, and magically aged 20 years. He's kind of okay with the outcome.

Okay, now to the story. The group at the time was 5 people, tasked with working alongside a government to cleanse a temple full of old god shit. We walk in at first and deal with some monsters in the courtyard that had like 3-4 mouths each. Charming. We power through them surprisingly fast. The main chamber had some creatures called "Unspeakables" which were hard hitting melee monsters, and there was like 6 of them. Our Barbarian face tanks them and we clean up. In true roguish monk fashion, I kill steal the prone enemy at the end with a flying elbow. My party loves me.

We were told that there was a spawning room to the right, and a burial chamber to the left. Burial room was hinted to contain loot that was our pay; so we leave that for last. We power through the spawning room, and then head back to get the loot before going through the final chamber.

We find some weird talking creatures that weren't openly hostile, and just wanted to munch on dead bodies. The party is mostly neutral with a lone good and evil. The neutrals convince the rest that they aren't hurting anyone, and made off with the loot (Got an Amulet of Truesight myself).

Now we get to the final room. There is, of course, a bigger than normal baddie. Well, we have a vengance paladin who loves to kill things, so that thing survives two rounds before Ms. Refrigerator smites it into next year.

Then we encounter the pool. Madame walking toaster investigates it first, and the DM tells the player that a disembodied voice asks it "What would you give, to learn that which you must know?". Our ice queen washing machine never actually answers the question, and asks questions to it instead. All mentally. Our characters don't know whats going on.

Finally, she says "This pool is talking to me, lets get out of here and let the army finish their job".

Ash however, responds by saying "Talking pool of water? Bullshit". He walks up to the water and looks in it. Same question.

He thinks about it for a bit. He comes up with the answer of "Time". He'd give time to learn that which he must know. Please note that he was thinking of this as a question of how he would accomplish things. He is a monk, and would happily spend time to learn what he wants.

Then he magically ages 20 years. The voice says "What is it you wish to know"

In character, everyone sees Ash age 20 years. Questions come in from the party members asking WTF just happened. We come to the conclusion that the Old God this temple is dedicated to must have interpreted my answer as consent to a deal.

Our Mitsubishi Paladin then tries to tell Ash that we could use this opportunity to figure our where the McGuffin is, and gets a resounding "HELL NO I'M NOT SPENDING 20 YEARS OF MY LIFE FOR THAT SHIT". We also decided to take this time to figure out what exactly the magical aging did. We decided that it was treated as if I aged 20 years according to my current level of physical activity. I train and meditate daily. I had a strong body for a 42 year old man. I didn't know my parents long enough to know if I was going to still have hair at that age, so I rolled for it. 1d9 for Hair; 1-2 was majorly receeding, 3-7 was minorly receeding, 8-9 was full head of hair. I rolled a 9, so we said that I now had a full head of salt and pepper hair.

So I ask the DM for some time. He RP's with the others for a bit, and I actually sit down and think about what on earth Ash would spend 20 years of his life for. What would be worth 20 years to him.

I look back to what drives Ash. Why is he here? What is meaningful to him? His order doesn't place value in a God, his order emphasizes personal strength and will. He approached his Master with nothing but the desire to become stronger, so that he would never be a tool of someone else, and he tempered his body and mind like so.

He trained with his master for 8 years. After all of that time, he still felt like he didn't understand his Masters Wisdom. He felt like he was lacking the personal growth to appreciate it, and that was a large part of wanting to set off on his own, with his Masters blessing.

Thus, he told the voice that he wanted to know his Masters Wisdom.

My DM, being the god that he is, told me to wait for a bit. He then pulled out this quote and whispered it to me (We're on Roll20).

"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow."

My character was thankful for this, and felt like he truly had begun to understand the order he had joined, and why his Master has molded him as such. He would have gladly spent more than 20 years coming to the revelation.

After making it back to camp, we learn that the Army had done their job and purified the temple, and learned that it was not uncommon for this God to deceive people into deals like this. However, we also learn from others that the deal was the deal, no strings attached. No corruption from the God itself.

After meditating on what I had learned that night, and that morning; My DM told me to add +2 Wisdom to my character sheet.

Ash is kind of okay with how things went down.

For those curious, the passage is from Herman Hesse; a German-Swiss poet from the 1900's.

Submitted December 22, 2016 at 07:24AM by RepliesWithAnimeGIF http://ift.tt/2ihiZnc DnD

I became a bad player, and I'm not sure what happened (minor content warning) DnD

(Stop reading if the name Helm Greycastle means anything to you)

I'm crazy about this game. I absolutely cherish all things role-playing, acting, improvising, losing oneself in the fantasy of it all. I DM two campaigns and play in a third. I just had a "bad player" moment in the one I'm a player in, and I'm not quite sure how to feel about it.

I had joined this campaign about 9 months in, so the DM threw a bunch of stuff into my character's backstory to fit him into his setting, and that included an unrequited love for an elven bard who tragically would die 4-5 sessions in. I wasn't wild about the Woman in Refrigerator trope, but I did my best to play along. I'm a soldier, after all. We deal with loss and move on.

A couple of months later, our party all ended up in individual dream scenarios, where we each tasted our own ideal futures -- for a turn -- before they were ruined. Mine, of course, was to be happily married to the elf, with a little kid playing in the yard, when suddenly a bunch of elf-hating humans break down the door, grab me, and threaten to rape the elf. We could wisdom save out of them, but as we struggled in the dreams, so our characters swung wildly in their real world.

Aaaaand that's where I became a bad player. I said "so be it, I submit to this fate." I think the whole scene just really grossed me out, and I basically decided to call the DM's bluff on the whole rape threat. The love interest was his idea that I went along with, I endured the Refrigerator stuff and was pretty glad that it was over, but bringing her back as a potential rape victim just kind of killed it all for me.

The session kind of came to a halt there -- the DM wasn't willing to accept my reaction, and the rest of the players were having fun with the dream flailing = real swinging mechanic, so I became the stick in the mud who didn't want to play along. Eventually a non-tranced party member started grappling my character, which led to a bunch of strength contests that kept us in a holding pattern until my character snapped out of it.

The DM was bluffing about the rape threat, obviously. And I made some dumb excuse about being upset about the high Wisdom DC (my character's +0) because I didn't want a very open discussion on how rapey a campaign should get.

My character still keeps a lock of Fridge lady's hair. Next session I fully plan on burning the lock to bury her forever. Hell -- that even works in RP -- a soldier as elite as I cannot let himself be so easily broken by the shadows of the past.

I know these posts usually are met with a bunch of "talk to your DMs," but I'm content to have my character burn the lock and move on. Just wanted to get it off of my chest, organize my thoughts, and maybe start a discussion on these sorts of delicate conflicts.

TL;DR: DM pushed a Fridge Woman NPC on my character, keeps parading her corpse around for awkward feels, latest one got rapey, I really didn't want to play along but feel kind of bad about it.

Submitted September 28, 2016 at 11:28PM by PM_ME_GHOST_PROOF http://ift.tt/2cLseMw DnD

The refrigerator monster popped in my facebook feed today DnD

http://ift.tt/2clnPQ9

Submitted September 17, 2016 at 08:38PM by yotama9 http://ift.tt/2cHEWJj DnD

Concept: The Jellatinous Cylinder One Shot DnD

Thought up a concept for a brief combat One-Shot this morning, and since it won't fly with my own group because of reasons, I thought I'd share it.

Your party is tasked with clearing out an abandoned factory that has been overrun by a plague of mysterious Gelatinous... cylinders. As your players set up their minis, you go to get your minis, where you left them - the refrigerator. The Gelatinous Cylinder minis are, in fact, Jell-o shots. You kill one? You may dispose of the mini, as you see fit.

Submitted April 15, 2016 at 12:00AM by GalileosBalls http://ift.tt/1VZRrT0 DnD

[5th] Inspiration for LARPing an action. DnD

I must preface this with a brief introduction of my father. My father has always been a no nonsense down-to-earth kind of person. Work hard because you have to, have fun when you can kind of guy. He's very outdoorsy and loves hunting and nature and waking up at the asscrack of dawn. So when I managed to talk him into playing D&D with my uncle, cousin, family-friend, and myself I was more than surprised. He played a druid fittingly enough.

Anyway, he had been injured in a fight with the three bugbears in the Redbrand Hideout and didn't want to use one of his spell slots just yet so he decided to use one of the few health potions they had found. Before my cousin could give it to him he said "Wait a second," and walked over to the refrigerator. He came back to the table and simoultaniously threw his 2d4s and drank his "healing potion."

Submitted April 22, 2015 at 06:09PM by drewboy111 http://ift.tt/1Jbeu8s DnD

[3.5e] Dealing with Greater Stone Shape at Paragon Levels DnD

Hello fellow players and DM's. I'm running a 3.5e homebrew and looking for some advice regarding the greater stone shape spell from the Spell Compendium.

I've got your classic OP'd Druid in the party. The player is incredibly creative and always thinking outside the box (which is fine and something I try to reward as much as possible). The issue I'm running into is in regards to encounter design. He's currently at 10th level so that means he can shape up to 110 cubic feet of stone (10 cu feet + 10 cu feet/level). That's about five and a half french-door refrigerators worth of rock as a point of reference. For anyone familiar with the show Avatar, it basically makes him an earthbender.

My issue is mitigating that with encounter design. Lots of structures are made of rock; particularly standard dungeons, keeps, castles, etc. I don't want to stifle creativity but that's a lot of rock to move in any given instance, essentially making stone walls and floors always-passable.

Anyone else come up against this issue? Outside of outlawing its use and making everything made of metal, any suggestions on balancing it out? It's one of those fine lines where you don't want to nerf the spell altogether while not allowing it to degrade every encounter/eliminate all challenge that involves stone structures.

Thanks for your feedback and ideas!

Submitted January 09, 2015 at 06:10AM by WittyScreenNameHere http://ift.tt/1xKI7qL DnD