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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[scriver]

First when they enter the fire exit have them encounter a small maintenance room with a magical door switch labelled "open all" (or perhaps "release all" may be more appropriate English?). This opens the door to the next room, of course. But it also opens all the cages/exhibits. OSHA rules are very important!

[delphonso]

The zoo includes a section full of cubes, jellies, and rust monsters which are totally passive after years as petting zoo attractions.

[Loud Whispers]

How do you guys determine the personalities of your characters? I've been testing out a new method by liberally exploiting Dwarf Fortress's personality traits & comparing them to the background and skills of my character, and I'm liking the results so far

[Cthulhu]

I never write more than three sentences for my character's starting description, including backstory, and flesh it out based on how I end up playing him.

[Iduno]

is using one illusion spell to lure the enemy into a trap and killing him really worth his full XP?  Hmmm?  I dunno?  But in old school 90% of the XP comes from treasure recovered, so it perfectly supports and even encourages being unconventional.

Anyone know which edition(s) they removed that in? I know it was gone by AD&D 2nd edition, but there were 5 editions before that.

Treasure=xp is weird, but if you only get xp for killing, the game becomes exclusively about killing, even when there is no good reason to kill someone/something.

How do you guys determine the personalities of your characters?

I usually play Shadowrun, where there is a lot more choices/information involved with your characters. Asking "why" to even a few of those choices starts making it obvious who they are. How I play them and how they react in game informs it somewhat as well.

[Cthulhu]

I think it was at least present in all the editions predating that.  It's strange if you're used to other forms of XP but it suits the old school method.  We all know about chainmail, and the earliest forms of dungeon-crawling D&D were a process for building wealth and property and a nice context for the eventual wargames.  There was story of course and a lot of the famous names that fly around (robilar, tenser, bigby, mordenkainen, etc.) were originally PCs in those first games, but it was a game first and foremost and player skill was more important than IC knowledge.  In that context it makes more sense.  XP for gold lends itself to a more sword and sorcery mindset, the dungeon is dangerous and vanquishing all the enemies isn't guaranteed or even desirable.  Speed, cleverness, and fighting only as a last resort.

It's also fun watching your players turn into dungeon locusts.  Once they get into the mindset they'll strip the dungeon bare of anything shiny.  Rip doors off their hinges and drag them out of the dungeon if they've got interesting engravings, tear tapestries down, peel the goldleaf off the evil throne.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My party once tried to do that and accidentally on purpose burst the ceiling of the dungeon, above which was a mountain river.

We didn't get paid for that job.

[delphonso]

On character:
I think most of us actually learn a character by playing. In the time before the first session, I generally imagine how my PC would interact with the other PCs and get a good grasp from there about how I want to play.

[Jimmy]

I usually try to ask myself: Why is this character adventuring? Why are they risking life and limb against monsters and traps instead of settling down and opening a tavern?

Usually it's enough to flesh out an outline of a goal. One of my more memorable characters was adventuring because he planned to exploit his party members to protect himself against a summoning ritual he'd botched in the past, calling forth a demon hungering for his soul. Thus, his life was devoted to supporting and strengthening his team as much as possible so that, when the demon did track him down, he'd have several large meat-shields between it and himself, giving him enough time to run away if nothing else.

[Kagus]

Step 1: Develop gimmick

Step 2: Work backwards and try to find some sort of explanation for gimmick

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Profit!

[Loud Whispers]

Step 1: Develop gimmick

Step 2: Work backwards and try to find some sort of explanation for gimmick

Step 3:

Step 4: Profit!

I'm really tempted to make for my next DM's campaign an artificer that is secretly 5 fairies piloting an 8ft tall armour suit. Tell the other players that they're just a blessed Knight who's sworn an oath to never doff their armour. Currently I'm playing an Elf that's pretending to be a Dwarf who's become best friends with the party's only human - who has consistently *almost* seen through their really poor disguise

[Rolan7]

One of my favorite parts of my group's brief Shadowrun foray was the Elf Poser flaw.  I don't even remember if I took karma for it.  There were potential downsides in that our Decker was a true elf, but my Adept character specialized in disguises and the Decker was flighty and easily distracted (also a hilariously bad at computers, but it was our first foray).  They were *heavily* into body modding, too, which I think gave my character an extra tinge of jealousy/resentment without being able to call them on it.

(Also the Decker was literally a cybernetic porn star as a backstory.  I don't remember what gender they identified as, I'm *pretty sure* it fluctuated from scene to scene.  It's possible they weren't good at shadowrunning and it's so unfortunate that they got left behind as we fled the final scene.  (Not actually my character's fault - the Rigger was trying to leave *all* of us high and dry, but I managed to get into the van as he tried to get it past the response teams.  He wanted my share but also didn't want to replace his van, so we split the winnings.  (Also he was literally a housepet sneaking onto his owner's computer, miles from anything that happened))).

I did take a somewhat-inhibiting addiction to VR chips.  Body dysmorphia, huh.

My character:
I wish I could take credit for the image, but I am still proud of naming him L-rand.  Because forced references are the best jokes.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I always liked the lore detail about how Elf Posers are universally disdained unless they can actually succeed in hiding it, but that Ork Posers are accepted in rare instances.

[Kagus]

Right... I realize that replying to the actual thread will have no positive effect and will just be wasting mine and everyone else's time, but I feel a mighty need to rant about this nonsense so I'm bringing it to you.

I occasionally browse another forum, and one of the boards there is DnD-related. Some fellow just posted a thread in there and I am having a hard time wrapping my head around all the compound wrongness that exists within this microcosm of fuckery.

Let's start with the original post, shall we?

Spoiler: Gently tossed word salad (click to show/hide)

The Wheels started turning in my head earlier and the idea hit me, you guys probably know about my Mithril Moths and if not look them up on DND Beyond, the thing here is just how tough would a LARGE nest of these beasties be against a party of Lv20 players?
By a large nest I mean between 5 and 10 small nests leading to a Big one with each small nest having between 25 and 50 Workers, between 5 and 30 Soldiers and 1 to 5 Queens and the big one having between 50 to 100 workers, 25 to 40 Soldiers and 3 to 7 Queens.
As for the Lv20 Party it'd be a group of 6, but here's the question, even with 5 to 10 sessions ranging from 2 hours to 6 hours could they manage to wipe out the moths without needing fresh meat from time to time?
Also if they couldn't do it with just 6 which Raid Party type would be the more optimal option in a DND setting, Full Raid Party of 4 regular parties working in tandem or a Legion Raid of 10 or more parties working together to back up the Lv20's?
That's the question that's been in my head.

All the above said I recognise what I'm asking and I realise fully the DMing nightmare it'd be even with sub DM's working under the main DM to manage the smaller battles while the main DM runs things and covers the DMing of the fight for the Lv20's but the question still remains, could the moths prove to be such a menace that such a method of taking out a large nest would be needed?

What are everyone's thoughts?

Now, if you're one of those obviously vanishingly rare individuals who hasn't already heard of his fantastically awful homebrew creatures, here are the links. Yes, three links, because it's three different pages and just searching DnDBeyond for "Mithril Moth" gives you fuckall.


I just... I don't...

So, the critters are obviously completed fucked in and of themselves. They're nowhere near that CR, the Large and Huge types use the exact same reach and damage dice as the Medium ones, the "Swarm Brutality" ability makes no goddamn sense and is also a flat DC17 (for the monster) insta permakill, what the fuck is going on with the queen's summoning feedback loop ability, and what even is a "swarm of" workers/soldiers?!???!?

They're ludicrously beefy when taking their size and numbers into account, and the summoning loop can potentially just result in a world-ending dogpile.

...but they're also almost purely physical damage, have horrible mental stats, and no condition/damage immunities. And they're Beasts.  A level 20 character has lots of options for being able to survive something like that. Like, depending on how you choose to interpret that Brutality bullshit, a Zealot Barbarian would be flat out unkillable no matter how many of the moths there are.

As such, it's both way overpowered for anyone, and also underpowered for level 20.


I've been staring at this mess for entirely too long now in an attempt to even grasp the full wrongness of it all, and all I've done is make my head hurt. I've thus opted to inflict it on all of you instead.

Enjoy.


Side note: English is allegedly this genius's native tongue.

[IcyTea31]

I have a feeling the author doesn't know what a Legendary Action is. As written, a swarm of Soldiers could defeat even a 20th level party if they do well in initiative, simply because they can all pile in and attempt the instakill move as soon as one of them succeeds in a grapple. They likely have advantage in the grapple check (as long as they do it directly and not via the bite attack), too, since they can restrain the entire party as a reaction (which calls for checks and not saves so even a high-level character only has about even chances to dodge it).

Most summoning abilities specify that summoned creatures can't summon further, but that doesn't matter since it's a Legendary Action the non-summoned Queen can do several times per round.

A zealot barbarian would indeed be the answer, being completely unkillable until they've been whittled down to 0 HP and their rage ends (as the moths can't grapple a level 20 barbarian even with a nat 20).