Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

Man, just did my first encounter in my group's latest 5e campaign, let me tell you about a little story about how god hates us all.

First, a bit of setup : we were walking in gloomy woods towards the nearest village when we got interrupted by a wandering spirit. One of our PC, who is searching for his lost daughter, is convinced the ghost is his long lost wife. Shenangans ensues, the ghost then trolls us and says something like "it's just a prank, bro; but now y'all gonna die!" Then, we roll for initiative.

First round, our barbarian strikes the ghost, then gets suddenly possessed. My turns come, me being a bard, I wanted to shout Vicious Mockery at him to protect the rest of the team, but the group convinced me to shoot the weakest enemy instead, so I roll my shortbow attack... Nat 1. Roll on the fumble table... Nat 1. My only ranged weapon breaks... Fuck!
Spent the rest of encounter angrily shouting gamer words onto the remaining enemies.

TBH it was quite an underwelming encounter, but the session overall was fun! Next game we gonna hunt down a beef boi terrorizing a nearby village.[\SPOILER]
 
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Man, just did my first encounter in my group's latest 5e campaign, let me tell you about a little story about how god hates us all.

First, a bit of setup : we were walking in gloomy woods towards the nearest village when we got interrupted by a wandering spirit. One of our PC, who is searching for his lost daughter, is convinced the ghost is his long lost wife. Shenangans ensues, the ghost then trolls us and says something like "it's just a prank, bro; but now y'all gonna die!" Then, we roll for initiative.

First round, our barbarian strikes the ghost, then gets suddenly possessed. My turns come, me being a bard, I wanted to shout Vicious Mockery at him to protect the rest of the team, but the group convinced me to shoot the weakest enemy instead, so I roll my shortbow attack... Nat 1. Roll on the fumble table... Nat 1. My only ranged weapon breaks... Fuck!
Spent the rest of encounter angrily shouting gamer words onto the remaining enemies.

TBH it was quite an underwelming encounter, but the session overall was fun! Next game we gonna hunt down a beef boi terrorizing a nearby village.[\SPOILER]
Your DM is a shithead for using fumble tables for every 1/20 attacks.
 
It has become a bit of a running joke with D&D that everyone who plays as Tieflings always plays them as Chaotic Neutral Rouges or Warlocks who are the quirky anti-heroes who don't play by anyone's rules. It is so bad that it has become a trope. Tieflings have become the annoying Tumblr and Twitter users self-insert Mary Sue characters on how they feel that they are oppressed and misunderstood. Damn shame as I like Tieflings due to them having an interesting background.

It's the flave of the year much like Drow Rangers were in season, then emo Wizards with gold skin, and before that human barbarians with 2handed swords in loin cloths etc. etc. etc...
 
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I have no idea who this is referencing, mostly because the only gold wizard I can think of right now is about as non-emo as you can get. WELCOME TO ESTALIA, GENTLEMEN!
Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance series, who to my knowledge predates Balthasar Gelt by about 16 years or so.
As usual GW probably took a concept from somewhere else and dumbed it down while simultaneously making it more interesting and metal as fuck (get it?)
EDIT: Fuck I was too slow.
 
Raistlin Majere. War of the Lance. Brother to Caramon (which i always called Camaron).
Ah. Heard of the man and why he was so emo (saw everyone's ultimate fates, and considering 99.99% of that is dying...), but wasn't aware of his gold skin. Suspected it was him though.
 
Gross. Everyone knows Geralt wields longswords.
I have no idea since I never played the games (or read the books for that matter). I think they just saw "big sword used with two hands" and assumed it was a greatsword.
 
I have no idea since I never played the games (or read the books for that matter). I think they just saw "big sword used with two hands" and assumed it was a greatsword.
Hand-and-a-half swords are what witchers use. A greatsword is too off-balance to wield one-handed, and witchers have all sorts of bombs and other equipment they need a free hand to wield.
 
Hand-and-a-half swords are what witchers use. A greatsword is too off-balance to wield one-handed, and witchers have all sorts of bombs and other equipment they need a free hand to wield.
So you're telling me posers aping a visual style don't pay attention to the original context of whatever they're copying? I am astounded. Flabbergasted, even. Surely, no one would do such a thing.
 
There was a brief period around when Witcher 3 was released where all I saw were white-haired greatsword Eldritch Knights.
I have one of those in my table despite the fact Witcher 3 was released forever ago.

Dude's entire backstory and persona is 1-1 Geralt's, major difference being he's dumb as shit. His player is horrible at decision making and makes some terrible fucking calls, it works pretty well as a parody.
 
I meant to post this Sunday night but I forgot: I mentioned in mid-September that I was going to try running a few 5e one-shots to test out giving Martials followers as class features. Well, with some help from my GM I got a big 6-session dungeon crawl rolling. We're two sessions in and it's been promising so far.

We've got two martials in the group. A Rogue and a Paladin, with a Wizard, a Warlock and a Cleric for casters. The party is at level 7 (going to start next session at level 8 ), and the Paladin and the Rogue both have one level 4 follower each. Since I'm trying to keep the rules simple the followers work like Archetype-less Fighters or Rogues, built with the standard stat array and a race of the players' choosing, which act on the same initiative as the player characters they're following (the player picks which one acts first, their character or their follower). The Paladin has a Fighter follower (her page) and the Rogue went with a Rogue follower (an apprentice assigned to him by the guild). The players directly control the followers during their turns, but suicidal actions or actions that go against the followers' beliefs can be overruled by the GM. The followers can use any equipment their classes allow for but everything (gear, housing, travel expenses and wages) is paid for by the player characters.

I'm upping the player levels by one for each session so we can test the follower rules over a wider range of levels. So far the martials are loving it and even the casters are finding it interesting since the followers have been doing a good job guarding the flanks and harassing enemy casters. The Cleric has raised the issue of potentially running out of healing spells but it hasn't been an issue so far since the extra characters add more outgoing damage and crowd control to the party and so fights end a little faster.

I'll report back at the end of the crawl. The player characters will be at level 11 and the followers at level 8 by then.
 
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Ah. Heard of the man and why he was so emo (saw everyone's ultimate fates, and considering 99.99% of that is dying...), but wasn't aware of his gold skin. Suspected it was him though.
Wasn't so much he saw everyone's fates as he saw the effects time had on every living thing (this didn't extend to nonliving things; he could assess if a chair was stable, for example). So yeah, almost everyone he saw was perpetually withering away.

(Almost. Laurana, being a young elf, didn't show any of this decay, which actually confused and mesmerized Raistlin for a bit. When they first met he just stared at her like an idiot.)
 
Wasn't so much he saw everyone's fates as he saw the effects time had on every living thing (this didn't extend to nonliving things; he could assess if a chair was stable, for example). So yeah, almost everyone he saw was perpetually withering away.

(Almost. Laurana, being a young elf, didn't show any of this decay, which actually confused and mesmerized Raistlin for a bit. When they first met he just stared at her like an idiot.)
Dragonlance had a lot of moments where the supposed good characters were incredibly dumb and cruel.
"Wow, this young man sure has a lot of pent up anger, hatred, and envy. I think the best solution is to curse him so he sees everything in a constant state of rot and decay, that should mellow him out."
 
Dragonlance had a lot of moments where the supposed good characters were incredibly dumb and cruel.
"Wow, this young man sure has a lot of pent up anger, hatred, and envy. I think the best solution is to curse him so he sees everything in a constant state of rot and decay, that should mellow him out."
While I've joked that the in-game lore of Battletech is 'people making terrible decisions', Dragonlance's characters were no slouches at fucking up. Par-Salian (the head of the White Robes) was a fucking moron who clearly did not grasp how screwed up Raistlin was from the outset.

If you've ever read the short story where they go into what happened in Raistlin's Test, it's like Par-Salian ate paint chips as a kid. Raistlin defeats a dark elf (or at least thinks he does -- there's questions about how 'real' the Test is) and is pretty well wrung out and tapped out. To his shock, Caramon finds him and starts to carry him off, only for the two's escape to be blocked by a wraith. Raistlin digs in, ready to throw whatever he's got left at it... and then watches, stunned, as Caramon casts a lightning bolt to fry the wraith.

Now, why is this so insane? Because while there's been minimal sibling rivalry between the two, it's because there's an understanding: Caramon handles physical threats, and Raistlin manages magical ones. Discovering that Caramon somehow has magic too causes Raistlin to go right off the deep end and kill Caramon.

Since this is an illusion, though, and not real, Raistlin's just incinerating a phantom. And so to teach him 'compassion', Par-Salian socks him with his decay-vision. Never mind the fact that Raistlin was at his ragged end, and that magic is really the only thing he has (being weak, sickly, and having a really crap personality). No, let's just bait him with the idea that the one thing he does, and does well, his brother can do better.
 
While I've joked that the in-game lore of Battletech is 'people making terrible decisions', Dragonlance's characters were no slouches at fucking up. Par-Salian (the head of the White Robes) was a fucking moron who clearly did not grasp how screwed up Raistlin was from the outset.

If you've ever read the short story where they go into what happened in Raistlin's Test, it's like Par-Salian ate paint chips as a kid. Raistlin defeats a dark elf (or at least thinks he does -- there's questions about how 'real' the Test is) and is pretty well wrung out and tapped out. To his shock, Caramon finds him and starts to carry him off, only for the two's escape to be blocked by a wraith. Raistlin digs in, ready to throw whatever he's got left at it... and then watches, stunned, as Caramon casts a lightning bolt to fry the wraith.

Now, why is this so insane? Because while there's been minimal sibling rivalry between the two, it's because there's an understanding: Caramon handles physical threats, and Raistlin manages magical ones. Discovering that Caramon somehow has magic too causes Raistlin to go right off the deep end and kill Caramon.

Since this is an illusion, though, and not real, Raistlin's just incinerating a phantom. And so to teach him 'compassion', Par-Salian socks him with his decay-vision. Never mind the fact that Raistlin was at his ragged end, and that magic is really the only thing he has (being weak, sickly, and having a really crap personality). No, let's just bait him with the idea that the one thing he does, and does well, his brother can do better.
Its a huge theme in Dragonlance, that the Good guys really do hottible when they are in charge of things. The gods actually threw meteor on the world because when the good guys reigned, they caused so much harm.
Big part of Raistlin popularity at the time is that he was actually right. And he showed more compassin to the weak and outcasts (liker Bupu) than the "good guys" which were too busy killing each other, being racists towards half elves, being really corrupt knights etc. Raist does not only achieve the geek power fantasy, he also has the least hypocritical world view while doing so.
 
I have one of those in my table despite the fact Witcher 3 was released forever ago.

Dude's entire backstory and persona is 1-1 Geralt's, major difference being he's dumb as shit. His player is horrible at decision making and makes some terrible fucking calls, it works pretty well as a parody.
To be fair, it isn't like Geralt himself is known for making smart calls.
Yennefer of Vengenberg said:
I repeat, Ciri is not in Nilfgaard. And what my witcher, as you call him, intends to do, I do not know. But he… Crach, it's no secret that he and I… that I am sympathetic to him. But I know he will not save Ciri. He will achieve nothing. I know him. He’ll get caught up, lost in his own philosophizing, and wallow in self pity. He’ll vent his anger and hack at anyone and anything he comes across. Then, in expiation, he’ll do some grand, but pointless deed. In the end, he’ll be slain, stupidly and needlessly, most likely by a stab in the back.
Sounds like your typical murderhobo adventurer to me.
 
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