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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Grim Portent]

Silly idea rattling around my brain, The Conspiracy. A group of druids and other shapeshifters who can turn into ravens or swarms of ravens and act as a spies guild/cult. Individuals refer to one another as The Conspiracy, refer to the themselves as The Conspiracy, and the organisation as The Conspiracy when dealing with outsiders. Few known the actual goals of The Conspiracy, having joined to promote personal goals but being given tasks that also further a purpose beyond themselves.

Something of a slightly goofy but also creepy depending on execution idea for a thieves guild type of organisation, which a PC could belong to.

[Loud Whispers]

They have an extremist splinter group who shapeshift into crows and are known as the Murder

[delphonso]

A wiser, governing body of owl shapeshifters named The Parliament

[Kagus]

So our campaign's DM is taking a break this Monday, and our normally scheduled programming is being replaced by a one-shot headed up by the "grandfather DM".

He plopped down a list of rules and regs for the one-shot (which will be a level 10 adventure in some old dwarven ruins underground) on Tuesday, which included a couple noteworthy points:
Know your character
I don't want people to spend time looking up what their class/race is or does during combat, as this wastes the time of the other players and mine as the DM. Prepare a defined list of things your character does during combat, preferably 2-3 items, and have it ready so you don't have to spend time thinking about what you're going to do on a given turn.

Dodge rule
If I feel that you're taking too long to decide on what to do, your character takes the Dodge action that turn. This is to keep combat moving at a reasonable pace.

Now, while generally reasonable requests, the wording and tone used was apparently enough to scare one of the players off the session, as they didn't feel like they'd be able to make/upgrade a new character in time for session while also being very familiar with their mechanics.

...so I decided to make a character who would be very sure of what they would be doing every round, and ended up with a gnome Zealot 5/Phantom 5. And he's... Very slightly ridiculous.

DM allowed us one rare and two uncommon items for our characters, with the caveat that only one ability score modifier (gauntlets of ogre strength, amulet of health etc.) would be allowed, as having too many of these on one person kinda breaks the game.

Okay. Fair. No worries.


...anyway, this character is a tiny tank with advantage on 5/6 saves (and +10 modifier to the 6th), with +9 to hit on two attacks with advantage, and first one to hit deals 1d4+3d6+7+(1d6+2 necrotic) damage. With an additional automatic 2d6 going to someone else within 30 feet.

Also 105 hitpoints, and if I get hit with a piercing/bludgeoning/slashing attack I can reduce it to 1/4 damage. If they can hit my 20 AC, that is. And catch me with my 35' movespeed and bonus action dash.


Sure, there's a lot of nutty bullshit happening at level 10, and this is by no means my most munchkinny/minmaxed build... But I still think it's kinda silly. We'll see if it gets cleared by the DM or if he vetoes it

[Kagus]

Update! I got up today to find a new message in the discord that the DM had apparently put out in the middle of the night. This message explained the basic concept of the one-shot, and informed us that we were all hired in via the Adventurer Guild to delve down into uncontrolled territory in order to recover treasure and bounties.

This would have been useful information to know before I made a character who's a heavily disturbed escaped slave with no motivation that would make sense in that scenario.

I tried airing a couple ideas of tie-ins that might work better for explaining why my character would be there, at which point I was informed that "Backstory doesn't matter this time, it's just a straight dungeon crawl with little room for RP".


...okay, that definitely would have been useful knowledge to have earlier than the day before the session, especially given that I've already made a damn character and everything leading up to this has been him talking about the importance of the story and how certain things will be done in order to keep the narrative and its flow going smoothly, giving me the (apparently false) impression that story and RP would have some amount of importance here.


Strongly considering swapping characters last minute to the incredibly stupid crit build I've been toying with. Which, given his other house rule of "The extra damage dice for a critical hit are not rolled, but simply give their max value" would easily be over 80+ damage on a crit. He'd need that plot armor he's told us he'll be using on certain "narrative-important nemeses".

[Egan_BW]

Hey, if it's just a dungeon crawl, may as well use some crazy build.

[Kagus]

"Know your character well", it was said.

"I don't want any long delays breaking up combat as you look stuff up", it was said.


The very first turn, and our loud player with the corrective memory ground everything to a standstill with his complete lack of understanding regarding his character, the houserules of the game, and basic addition. Surprising absolutely no one.

Even after a long guided talk through his Paladin/Hexlock mechanics and how they work together, he still doesn't understand how half the character works and is therefore playing it at vastly reduced capacity (he thinks Eldritch Smite adds a single 1d8, regardless of slot level, and believes that he can't use Divine Smite anymore since he has "swapped it out for" Eldritch). At this point though, we've just kind of quietly agreed to go along with it in order to keep the game moving.

Also I have a better command of what his +tohit and save DCs are than he does. So there were multiple occasions where he was asked to provide one or the other, started scrolling through his character sheet, and I just answered.


It was still an interesting session, certainly! I put in the last hit on a stone golem by slapping it with a weapon that cannot damage it, an umber hulk landed a crit on me (remember the house rule about treating bonus crit dice as though they rolled max? Yeah) that ended up dealing a total of 3 damage, and said hulk ended up confusing me so I wound up taking a 31hp chunk out of Mr. Loudmouth who was rolling around on the floor being effective at the time.

Me: "I'm assuming a 27 hits?"

Him: "I'll use my reaction to cast Shield!"

Other player: "...you have 20 AC"

Him: "Yeah, and now I cast Shield!"

Other player: "Shield only gives 5 AC, that's 25 total. He still hits"

Him: "Whuh...uh?"

DM: "Well, now you've spent a slot on learning about how your spells work. Moving on"


The session wrapped up with me dangling over a precipice in the loving arms of a roper, the conga line of giant spiders coming into view, the drow party mostly vanished into the shadows (except the mage, who is currently snoozing on some minecart tracks), and what looked kinda like an ankheg coming out of the ceiling. Also the floor mimic woke up.

Now, RAW, I could actually just wriggle out from the roper and survive the plunge easily, because 5e. But the DM doesn't really like the idea of fall damage capping out at 20d6, and I'm inclined to agree

[Loud Whispers]

It tickles my funny bone when I think of the silly things you could pull off with RAW. Things like vertical distances not mattering; a roper that is 5ft away from you horizontally but 1,000,000,000,000 ft away from you vertically is perfectly fine in pulling you across the galaxy

[scriver]

, and believes that he can't use Divine Smite anymore since he has "swapped it out for" Eldritch).

...what?

[Persus13]

It tickles my funny bone when I think of the silly things you could pull off with RAW. Things like vertical distances not mattering; a roper that is 5ft away from you horizontally but 1,000,000,000,000 ft away from you vertically is perfectly fine in pulling you across the galaxy

Well that's not really RAW. Its just diagonals that don't matter RAW.

[Cthulhu]

I don't trust anybody who uses the term RAW, they're always gonna try to pull some goofy bullshit that doesn't even work by their own standards

[MrRoboto75]

I prefer my rules medium rare

[Kagus]

, and believes that he can't use Divine Smite anymore since he has "swapped it out for" Eldritch).

...what?

Yeah, it could be he's just making a conscious decision and is expressing it in a very odd way, but he keeps saying he's "Swapped out" his divine smite with eldritch smite. And certainly, he has yet to use a normal smite a single time, instead opting to spend a pact slot on adding +1d8 to his attack.

Frankly, it would not surprise me in the slightest if he thinks he has somehow upgraded/exchanged his paladin's smite with the warlock's invocation, he is very easily confused by... Most things.

Including the fact that he seems to think he rolls an extra +1d4 on damage rolls, because he's a Hexblade. He also hasn't used his Hexblade's curse yet, as I don't think it's really occurred to him yet that it isn't a passive effect (despite having been told this multiple times during the session).

I don't trust anybody who uses the term RAW, they're always gonna try to pull some goofy bullshit that doesn't even work by their own standards

Or we're trying to acknowledge that the rules as they are presented in the book are occasionally kind of stupid, and so try to work off of a more sensible interpretation of what the rule is supposed to do rather than how it's specifically written.

[Loud Whispers]

Yeah, it could be he's just making a conscious decision and is expressing it in a very odd way, but he keeps saying he's "Swapped out" his divine smite with eldritch smite. And certainly, he has yet to use a normal smite a single time, instead opting to spend a pact slot on adding +1d8 to his attack.

Frankly, it would not surprise me in the slightest if he thinks he has somehow upgraded/exchanged his paladin's smite with the warlock's invocation, he is very easily confused by... Most things.

While this sounds like he's just confused himself, I think you could steal this for another character who swaps out their patron for their pact master. Thematically betraying their deity

[Persus13]

A character idea I've thought about doing before is a Celestial Warlock with Eldritch Smite who wanted to be a paladin but was very confused about how to actually become one.