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Any D&D/D20

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[scriver]

F in rip, kagus

[Frumple]

Next session one of you can play the scars. Magic dragon scars! They gained sentience and now they fight for booze and gigolos.

It's a colony being, so one person gets to be the scars on both the survivors.

[Horizon]

I can't help but think of the scenario where every member of that party thinks that

My good stranger, mi amigo the party consists of a CE Bugbear Barbarian, a CN Goblin Wizard  who thinks he's a Gnome, an actual Gnome Artificer who can't trust anyone for  R E A S O N S. Oh and the High Elf Rogue at least she is NG, and then me the Half-elf Bard who do the sword shit.

Oh almost forgot the Mechanus Sorcerer who solves L A W  with E Q U A T I O N S.

[Grim Portent]

I can't help but think of the scenario where every member of that party thinks that

I generally play evil characters, often inspired by historical figures like say Alexander the Great. So not good people at all, warlords, zealots, assassins, cannibals (usually animal people of some kind.) But ironically when I do make a Good character they're generally the most moral character in the group. Sparing lives (everybody gets at least one chance at redemption,) donating money, trying to talk people down, resolve people's interpersonal conflicts, admonishing speciests rather than just making fun of them behind their back, facing any peril to try and save others. The kind of guy who'd duel a Balor to save the life of a murderer because no one deserves that kind of fate.

Not necessarily the only Good guy granted, but my group has a tendency to pass up the chance to do the most morally correct* option in favour of things like revenge. Revenge against bad people certainly, but often disproportionate compared to what they've done unless they were also funny. Like, 'this racist asshole is a monster and we'll go out of our way to spite him and investigate him because he must be up to something, but that racist old lady had funny improvised banter with a PC so she's fine, horrible but fine.'


*Morality obviously being subjective, though D&Ds internal morality is basically an illogical version of Kantian morality, but generally speaking some of the broad strokes can be consistently agreed on.

[Iduno]

*Morality obviously being subjective, though D&Ds internal morality is basically an illogical version of Kantian morality, but generally speaking some of the broad strokes can be consistently agreed on.

By sane people perhaps, but not usually by the devs. Last I checked, the only things that the devs have as consistently evil are having dark skin and/or having a matriarchal society. At least 5th, despite its issues, is taking the first steps to removing alignment by making it less important.

[Rolan7]

Dang, that's direct but largely true.  Though spellcasters do have spells with "good" and "evil" qualifiers to contend with.  I think 3's Book of Vile Darkness (and the Book of Exalted Deeds) tried to add more mechanics for morality, but did an atrocious job.  I mean, BoED has a prestige class AND a feat based around being a virgin.  And unless I'm grossly misremembering, having that virginity... removed without consent... requires an Atonement spell like a fallen paladin.  yeah, not great.

5E is a lot better about morality in general, I agree.  4E was probably the worst, trying to consolidate alignments to remove nuance.  But 4E was an interesting experiment in a lot of ways.

[Egan_BW]

My approach has been that alignment reflects cosmic alignment with divine or otherwise forces, not everybody has it, it is not an element of personality or a roleplaying prompt, and good-evil are not options on it.

Speaking of, finished GMing my first session today. Went well. The rogue rolled two critfails trying to hack at the ratswarm covering the bard, the bard rolled one critfail targeting same swarm (this resulted in the bard going down), the second ratswarm rolled one critfail trying to nip at the cleric and wound up fighting amongst themselves, taking casualties to their own Giant Cave Spider venom covered teeth.

[Rolan7]

Congrats on your first session!  Nice DF reference with the venom
Crits and critfails are always fun opportunities for creativity!

[Egan_BW]

(It only occurred to me to call it a GCS when I went to post about it here, in game I called it what the monster manual calls it: a Giant Spider. But dnd Giant Spiders do seem to live primarily in caves so it's pretty much the same.)

There was actually a spider, which was probably more than the party could have taken on safely. So it was a good thing that it was just passively hanging out on the ceiling of a room without any exits large enough for it to use. Since it couldn't really hunt effectively, the local rats were feeding it in exchange for use of its silk and venom. Valuable boons in the rat world!

The idea came when flipping through the end of the monster manual thinking about things for a low level party to fight. Rats, giant rats, swarms of rats, swarms of spiders, giant spider... hmm. If they get a task to kill some rats, and run into swarms of them, they'll expect the boss to be a big rat. But what if I mix and match? After all, rats are social creatures, and so are dnd's conception of giant spiders, sometimes. They could find a symbiosis, and I get to pull a spooky twist when they find the creepy crawly in question.

[Horizon]

I remember playing an Undead Sorcerer in Pathfinder who Crit confirmed a Chill Hands spell on a big bad; a demon of sorts and rolling those 20's had the table amazed at how a dinky weak Sorcerer just rekt a demon with a lvl one spell.

[Hanslanda]

I made a morally ambiguous LG Paladin for Curse of Strahd. It worked because he was stupid as hell but very wise. Wise enough to realize trusting his OBVIOUSLY evil teammates was better than making well intentioned but ultimately destructive choices on his own.

"I am Ilmater's judgement, here to punish the bringers of suffering. I know not why you have been chosen, but it is your turn to suffer for the good of all *SETS HIMSELF ON HOLY FIRE, DRAWS SUNBLADE, AND DROPS A LEVEL 4 SPELL SLOT SMITE*"

[Iduno]

As long as we're talking about stupid paladin ideas:
https://twitter.com/Talen_Lee/status/1481111561762930688

Context with additional great/terrible stories:
https://andrewducker.tumblr.com/post/656396056453595136/what-is-the-child-annihilating-zipline

[Egan_BW]

"A lot of construction experience, but no engineering experience."

[Kagus]

With the last session's TPK, the DM has decided that the two characters to make their death saves are to be momentarily retired from active play as they probably need a while to think about things (I happen to strongly agree). So we're all rolling up new characters at level 5, to basically pick up at investigating the site on the mountain where everyone else died.

I asked the DM if there were any hooks or things he wanted to have in a character, and he mentioned that it would be nice if someone had a kind of cursed relic that followed them around. Some kind of token that resists normal curse-breaking magics and that always returns to the bearer after being thrown away/burned/etc., reappearing in their pocket to haunt them. This was to have a way of leading folks back to the "forge of unmaking" that the original party was going to be venturing towards, as the bearer had heard legends of such a place that could dismantle cursed and magical items at their very core.


I cooked up a concept that I thought would be kinda fun; a dwarven merchant, from a family of merchants, whose clan prided themselves on the honesty of their deals. However, a deal can only be honest if neither side is cheated, and that includes the merchant. So to uphold their status and reputation, they place great effort and investment in not getting scammed. Their very name relies on it.

Somewhere along the line, this character got gipped. He was given a fake gold coin in a deal. Insignificant in the greater scheme of the trade, but it was a slur on his honor and the honor of his entire family. And furthermore, it could not be removed and would remain as a permanent mark of shame against his name, despite all previous attempts to banish it. A deviously powerful curse, and one seemingly custom-tailored to target his clan. So he ventured out in a kind of self-imposed exile, until such a time as he could defeat the magic and start on the path of restoring his family's honor.

Mechanically, I was thinking a Devotion paladin. Lots of shiny golden glory to go along with the esteemed mercantile theme, while also allowing for high CHA to facilitate being a trader. Was considering picking up Skill Expert to both round out one of my stats (could have 16 in both STR and CHA if taking mountain dwarf) and give me expertise in Insight to help beef up my bullshit detection, as is my family's claim to fame. Curiously, Devotion's tenets can be worked to make a fair amount of sense with a trader type character of that sort. If they honestly believe that providing investment and employment are greater goods to society than simple charity, then you can find logic in there to facilitate garnering more wealth, since they'd be able to make more investments and provide more employment as such and thereby spread goodness. An ethical capitalist, if you will

Fighting ability would be a little bit on the "eh" side with only 16 STR, but in a way that kinda makes sense if he's first and foremost a merchant, and Devotion's channel divinity ability helps leverage the high CHA into more hitting as well (while additionally being all shiny and golden, which seemed thematically appropriate). And while we're not level 6 yet, the previous session did make it rather clear that we could probably do with some enhanced saving throws


...buuuut then I checked the roster, and it looks like someone else is playing a paladin. And I don't really wanna step on any toes.

Guess it's ranged bullshit battle master time!

[Horizon]

Low-key: Arcane Archer (3) multiclass Hexblade Warlock (3) is actually hella broken. Be the Human (Variant) to choose the Sharpshooter feat at lvl 1. Go for the Improved Pact Weapon (Invocation) for instant Strongbow as I like to call it. Literally you can just fuck shit up because the -5 is practically null if your Dex is high. Imagine a Bursting Arrow then with +10 Damage to the main target the +2d6 Force on top of the base weapon roll if it hits and the saves fail.

And besides that the Hexblades curse will increase Crit range, and bonus damage! Cha mod ftw!

THEN DESTROY FROM RANGE!

(Don't believe me? Check the math, I tested the math and cannot believe people haven't noticed the hidden OPness of both classes!)