I do not recognize the town names or mountain range. What setting is this staged in? If it is homebrew, are the Mountains the home of any barbarian tribes?
It's homebrew meant to plop down wherever, and I chose to plop it down in forgotten realms. Don't worry about those details to much, I made them only to have more context then "this road on some mountains, next to some town".
Barbarians and other woodland people would exist here, but not in great quantities. Small tribes along these mountains only.
Very good - this fits well into the history I have already written, Anders will have arrived in Kimble's Rest looking for work after his tribe was slaughtered in the nearby hills. He seized upon the opportunity to join the summons and take the ride to Wyatt's Peak.
I've been thinking about character relationships and the methods my group has used in the past. If anyone wants to join in, we can develop our backgrounds further.
Two prominent methods I've used have been Pathfinder's Character Background Generator. Part of it is how two PCs may have known each other in the past. The appropriate table is found at the bottom of the page, second to last table.
The other option is a homebrewed one we found on the net. It can be a fun exercise for defining how characters have known each other.
If anyone is interested in using any of these, I'd be game, too.
That works for those who actually know each other. But here, my character certainly would have had no knowledge of any of you until we met in Kimble's Rest. Howevet, there is no harm in us getting to know each other by RP in game. We are, after all, only 1st Level. Plus, our Cleric, Varus, has yet to weigh in on how he found out about the letter.
So Anders pretty much grabbed the same coach as we did headed in to Wyatt's Peak. Completely random that we met each other.
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I thought I kind of alluded to m reasoning being "'cause I was told to." It's a trope that all adventurers step out their door because they were 'called' or are following some kind of personally-originated drive. But then it dawned on me that sometimes great things happen because you were volunteered by someone else to go somewhere. =) I plan on a character arc where he is then personally drawn into the struggle, and I've already started to allude to that.
Suffice to say, the letter seems ambiguous anyway, so to say that Vaurs was ordered here to "help" by his superiors doesn't really but him on lower footing than anyone else. =)
Hence, I think his personal connections can be done the same way, in that they can start off blank, and are then shaped by reactions and events.
[Mind you, while this might be fine while we have the rich tapestry of the story intro to work with, for our -following- characters, I think it will be VERY useful to refer to the resources you've thrown up, since some of our character will have to be all "I heard you were here! And look that other guy died! It's a good think I know you from long ago so I can jump into this combat right now!" Or somesuch. =)]
I concur with Varus, not random, in that we were all brought to this location, Kimble's Rest, by the very same piece of correspondence. I would like to think we met over the few or couple of days before securing the coach at the likely only inn in the small town of Kimble's Rest. Maybe something along the lines of overhearing that we needed a ride up to Wyatt's Peak while having dinner, and then this leads to, "Hey, I received the same letter as you", sort of thing.
I have updated my background history to reflect what happened to Anders perevious to his staying in Kimble's Rest. Please feel free to read it in my profile. I would have shared this info with any who asked after we met.
I concur with Varus, not random, in that we were all brought to this location, Kimble's Rest, by the very same piece of correspondence. I would like to think we met over the few or couple of days before securing the coach at the likely only inn in the small town of Kimble's Rest. Maybe something along the lines of overhearing that we needed a ride up to Wyatt's Peak while having dinner, and then this leads to, "Hey, I received the same letter as you", sort of thing.
I like that.
Seems good.
That all sounds fine to me.
So this is the first character I've made and played for 5e. My other experience as a player was with premades for a quick jaunt to the Tomb of Horrors. Other than that, I've been the GM.
I'm starting to notice that one downside with choosing background personalities from the list is that they don't always mesh up with how the character turns out in game play. Does anyone else have that thought?
This may be why our dear GM said to forgo character backgrounds, perchance?
Interesting perspective. I think that I try to play my characters somewhat consistent with the very broad and general background personalities. For instance, just because you have a flaw does not mean that it always shows forth. You can play up or play down the characteristics as you see fit. I take them as guidelines, but I have seen them played to the letter too. For someone who does not enjoy role playing and character development, playing it to the letter may work.
In my home game, I've been encouraging my players to reexamine their background personality, trait, etc every few sessions or at least once a level to see if it still fits. If it doesn't, I have them update it. I suspect this is a decent representation of character growth throughout a campaign. Some people change a little bit, others grow deeper into their own convictions.
That makes sense.
In game note:
I feel that Sharla would contribute to Galenus and say that it should be something flashy and showy - something obvious for all to see.
So about starting experience modifiers. I have the city building mostly worked out in that regards, how spending money and treasure in town increases the experience of any new adventurer that comes into the campaign will have (assuming anyone dies), and I was considering another, per-player bonus as well.
My idea was that of trophies. An In-character possession that you could earn that then grants an ooc-effect, something like "Goblin Boss's shield. Provides +50 starting exp to this player's future characters".
There are some issues with working out how to give out these trophies, which I would want to do as fairly as possible so no class-type suffers, but is this even something you guys would want to have implemented at all?
Since some characters may die where others survive, this gives the chance that people will be a different exp-totals. Personal trophies could make that difference larger, potentially. Thoughts?
What if it was more about doing important things? So say with the goblin boss idea, if one of us killed him, that person would gain 50 xp. for their later characters. If all of us worked together, we would get 12.5 each for later characters.
Alternatively, you could adapt the RP xp. idea. A lot of DMs award xp. for good roleplaying or being in character, when it would be beneficial not to. What if instead of giving us xp., you gave our later characters xp.?
You could also do a hybrid of several of them.
I was leaning on that during a really critical fight, The PLAYERS would decide who gets the trophy. Reasons could vary.
-Varus pulled off a really critical heal and kept the entire party from wiping
-Galenus managed to stop the magical effect that was about to kill Sharla
-Anders tanked and killed the boss while the party was distracted with the small-fry
Everyone could discuss, and then pick your MVP in that fight (not yourself). In the case of a tie, I would decide between them. The IC, that character would get the trophy and get the future-experience effect.
Also, I'm pretty sure I'm going to cap all starting experience to the highest level of EXP earned. So if someone had 400 exp, and then another player died, no matter the investments/trophies, you can't go above 400. Basically, you can never die and come back with a character with MORE experience than what the party had already achieved.
What about if you are voted as the person to get the future xp., you get the same amount that you got in the fight?
As an example, we fight an Imp (200 xp total), and Anders gets a crit, killing it it one strike. Everyone votes he gets the future xp. Everyone would get 50 xp. (for killing the imp), and he would get 50 future xp.
But if Varus prevented a TPK next fight, against a trio of black bears (100 xp each), everyone would get 75 xp, but Varus would get 75 future xp.
I agree that everyone should vote on who gets the xp. Seems fair.
Why do we not just divide up the XP equally, and the DM can add extra, if he sees fit, to any one or two players?
To clarify a bit, so we are all on the same page:
All experience will be divided equally between the adventuring party while adventuring. However, something that appeals to me in crawls (especially in 5e, it's much easier to do this not unfairly) are characters being on slightly different levels of power. Maybe someone keeps rolling low for HP, maybe someone went to roll for stats and got a lot of high ones, maybe your character died and came back with just enough experience that they aren't the same level as the rest of the party. 5e's bounded accuracy makes these differences much more manageable than previous systems, and it's something I wish to explore in this campaign.
I doubt it will ever mean that any two characters are more than one level apart from each other.
So, to answer you Anders, that IS what I'm doing generally speaking, but I would like to explore having another system in place to give extra experience to people (maybe in the moment for great roleplay/amazing idea), or posthumously to the future characters.
Since the "Next characters starting exp" system is already something in place I would like to take further advantage of it with this trophy system.
Sharla: I'll have to look at how manageable that specific formula of exp-granting works out, but maybe? It would certainly scale with the party, but I don't want the personal exp bonus to unbalance the starting exp for the rest of the group.
In my home games, my players have been getting variable XP because some people can't make game (one game is ok, by several games in a row leads to disparity in earned XP). They haven't complained and they haven't experienced any noticeable power differences.
I figured that Sharla's plan was to have the performance after we takes to Springhand - later tonight. The idea is to bring back festivities to an area of despair. It helps ease the mind, if not cure the haunting.
No worries! I figure that was the case. :)
So for the investment in the town...
Does it work like this?
I spend 10 GP on a new weapon, Sharla spends 15 GP on some armor, Varus spends another 20 GP as a donation to the church, and Anders spends 5 GP on information. We've now spent 50 GP in the town. We can use that 50 GP to invest in a single location. So we kind of get a two for one deal when we spend money - not only do we get whatever we purchase, we also get investment into the town. Right?
If we wanted to, could we also just spend money straight into investment? Say I didn't want to purchase anything, but I wanted Kelly's Stables to advance. Can I spend a straight 50 GP on Kelly to improve the stables? If the above paragraph is two for one, then would straight investment have double value?
Galenus, that was a style I was considering doing it for a while, but in reverse. I originally planned it so the "two for one" style of buying and gaining investment only gave half your spent gold into investment, and then you could just "donate" gold for gain the full amount as advancement with no goods in return. I changed my mind from this way of doing things for balancing reasons.
Trying to balance out how much treasure should be earned for how much experience gained, to equal out to how much starting experience you'll get with your next character is kind of an awkward calculation, but I think the way I currently have it going should work out. Hopefully. Some random treasure rolls might really skew this as too much, or too little investment capital.
So, to try and keep this already-untested beast somewhat sane, I'm going to say no. I'm not going to allow straight up donations for double investment. I'm cool with giving money away for investment (donating to the poor, or helping out an NPC that you've grown fond of) but it'll be worth the same as it would if you were to be buying something with that money, investment wise.
If you've got a bunch of money to spend, but no one has anything worth buying, there are alternatives you could do if you want to actually get something for your gold (understandable), such as paying money to attract a new business (still working this out. I'm thinking 100gp to attract a place, but offers no investment exp-boosting. Once the new business is there though, it is improvable like the others). Depending on the business, your liquid gold very well might have further effects as well (Banker, maybe?).
That seems fair.
When I was first reading it, I was thinking that only a straight investment would be allowed, at 1:1. I was confused by the "total spent" value on my first reading.
5e, compared to previous editions, tends to leave players with more gold to spend - only because they're no longer spending in on required magic items. Investing in a town like this is a great way to spend gold. I'm stealing the idea for my next campaign. :)
If we can clean the place up, then Anders would considering settling down here because he is pretty much homeless, and he loves the mountains.
If we can clean the place up, then Anders would considering settling down here because he is pretty much homeless, and he loves the mountains.
Leaving it open for yourself to switch characters without dying eh?
No, just confident I will survive...lol...
So I totally thought my telepathy was one way only, but injury looked up the rules and it doesn't say that. I wonder where I got that idea.
I'm not actually sure if it can be used 2-way. If you have an actual reference to describe such, I'd love to see it.
As I see it, the warlock ability says "grants the ability to communicate", ambiguous. Communicate can mean one way, or two way. If it said converse, or send, or send and receive, it would be clear, but they chose an ambiguous word.
Later, it says that the target of the warlock's telepathy must have at least one language to 'UNDERSTAND' the message, and says nothing else about the other way around. This leans me toward thinking it is one way.
The telepathy spell clearly states that the receiver can send messages back. This is an example of how they would phrase it if they meant for the warlock telepathy to be two way. This makes me lean even further toward one-way communication.
If you find something that adds weight to the other side of this, for now I'm going to rule your telepathy is send only.
I think they clarified that it was only one way in a sage advice, or maybe someones twitter. The same place that they said you can let go of a two handed weapon to cast a spell. I forget where it was.
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I took the word "Communicate" to mean two-way. I thought if it would be one-way they would have used a simpler word like "send" or had simply been non-ambiguous there. i.e. "You may send, but not receive, messages," like they did with the spell "Message," whereas the inclusive word "Communicate" generally means two-way. From Dictionary.com: "interchange thoughts, feelings, information, or the like, by writing, speaking, etc."
That's fine if you want to say it's one-way, but then the usefulness becomes limited.
Let's have a GM call on it and we'll roll with that call the rest of the game. Edit: just saw the call has been made. One way it is. Thanks!
Also, are there any variant rules we're using in the game? I've been seriously considering variant rest rules for future campaigns in my home game. I want to use Gritty Realism (short rest is 8 hours and long rest is 1 week) for Princes of the Apocalypse, and then try the heroic realism (short rest is 5 minutes and long rest is one hour) for some quick modules. Just to see how it works out.
Anything like that here?
I like flanking, climbing onto bigger creatures, disarming, overrun, shoving aside, tumbling, and enemy morale.
The variant flanking rules are deceptively bad. They look good at first - you gain advantage! - but then you realize that every other ability that gives advantage is now obsolete because all you need to do is flank. It nerfs many different class abilities.
If flanking gave a simple bonus, it would be a decent variant rule, but as is I strongly recommend against it.
I am not for the complication of a streamlined rules system. That is why 3.5E went south, and it is why I enjoy 5E so much.
I'm perfectly happy with that, too, Anders.
Ah! I found it in the erata.
Does the warlock’s Awakened Mind feature allow twoway telepathic communication? The feature is intended to provide one-way communication. The warlock can use the feature to speak telepathically to a creature, but the feature doesn’t give that creature the ability to telepathically reply. In contrast, the telepathy ability that some monsters have (MM, 9) does make two-way communication possible.
As for variants, I also would like to keep it simpler, espeially because I`m implementing these city-building mechanics. Ill go over these once I get the time, and see if any are simple/interesting enough to use, in which case we'll talk about them at a case-by-case, Fair?
Seems fair.
One-way was how I envisioned it anyways, so I'm perfectly happy with that ruling.
As for variants, I'm happy with discussing any now or when they come up. However, the only one of concern for me was the rest periods, because warlocks are dependent upon short rests (comparitively, all other casters are dependent on long rests).
I would rather not use variant long rests. I think things are fine the way they are. I don't like to be a ridiculous superhero that can go from the brink of death to perfect health in 2 hours, but I also don't want to spend two weeks getting back to full health. The way it is seems fine to me.
CLIMB ONTO A BIGGER CREATURE
If one creature wants to jump onto another creature, it
can do so by grappling. A Small or Medium creature has
little chance of making a successful grapple against a
Huge or Gargantuan creature, however, unless magic
has granted the grappler supernatural might.
As an alternative, a suitably large opponent can be
treated as terrain for the purpose of jumping onto its
back or clinging to a limb. After making any ability
checks necessary to get into position and onto the larger
creature, the sma ller creature uses its action to make
a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check
contested by the target's Dexterity (Acrobatics) check.
If it wins the contest, the smaller creature successfully
moves into the target creature's space and clings to its
body. While in the target's space, the smaller creature
moves with the target and has advantage on attack rolls
against it.
The smaller creature can move around within the
larger creature's space, treating the space as difficult
terrain. The larger creature's ability to attack the
smaller creature depends on the smaller creature's
location, and is left to your discretion. The larger
creature can dislodge the smaller creature as an
action- knocking it off, scraping it against a wall,
or grabbing and throwing it- by making a Strength
(Athletics) check contested by the smaller creature's
Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check.
The smaller creature chooses which ability to use.
If this comes up, it could be fair. In my in-person games, I always have characters who try to jump on big monsters. We'll have to see if it ever is appropriate, or even if a player to chooses to try it, but I think I'm open to it unless someone sees a reason why not.
DISARM
A creature can use a weapon attack to knock a weapon
or another item from a target's grasp. The attacker
makes an attack roll contested by the target's Strength
(Athletics) check or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If the
attacker wins the contest, the attack causes no damage
or other ill effect, but the defender drops the item.
The attacker has disadvantage on its attack roll if
the target is holding the item with two or more hands.
The target has advantage on its ability check if it is
larger than the attacking creature, or disadvantage if it
is smaller.
Might overly complicate the system, but again, I'm open to it.
SHOVE ASIDE
With this option, a creature uses the special shove
attack from the Player's Handbook to force a target
to the side, rather than away. The attacker has
disadvantage on its Strength (Athletics) check when it
does so. If that check is successful, the attacker moves
the target 5 feet to a different space within its reach.
This just augments the already existing shove rules. I'm fine with it, seems a simple change.
TUMBLE
A creature can try to tumble through a hostile creature's
space, ducking and weaving past the opponent. As an
action or a bonus action, the tumbler makes a Dexterity
(Acrobatics) check contested by the hostile creature's
Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If the tumbler wins the
contest, it can move through the hostile creature's space
once this turn.
This one seems to fill a hole that I've noticed in 5e, that being if an enemy is in a 5 foot wide hallway, you literally cannot move past them until they are defeated. I'm open to tumble.
Any ones we wish to play with, I'll add into a spoiler in the house rules for ease of referencing.
Hot damn GM, that was a good post in the gameplay thread.
I would rather not use variant long rests. I think things are fine the way they are. I don't like to be a ridiculous superhero that can go from the brink of death to perfect health in 2 hours, but I also don't want to spend two weeks getting back to full health. The way it is seems fine to me.
I think gritty realism would be too much for a PBP game, but also heroic rests wouldn't fit this campaign theme. The normal rests seems to fit the best for this campaign.
The story unfolds...I like it!