Dungeons and Dragons

Is there an abridged version (1-2 pages) of main game math mechanics for v3.5 or v5?

cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/7586224

Some excerpts:

About Record of Lodoss War's origins:

Record of Lodoss War originally started as a TTRPG Replay, a written transcript of a tabletop RPG (TTRPG), with the first Lodoss War stories being a Replay for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Reading the original Replays is oddly endearing. I expected the chit-chat, playful snipes at the DM, or even the reading of dice rolls to be cut out in order to make the players’ adventure read like an actual narrative and not a transcription. All of that stays in the Lodoss Replays, however. Everything from excitedly reading out dice results to the players’ reactions to twists in the narrative, to character creation itself, is kept in the text.

About its influence on Japanese TTRPGs:

Besides the good that Record of Lodoss War did for Group SNE as a company and the aesthetics of anime itself, it was also good for fostering a small but dedicated community of TTRPG aficionados in Japan. TTRPG Replays are still very much alive and well, although many of them are being replaced by Twitch VODs and YouTube videos.

Tabletop RPGs are still enjoyed as a pastime in Japan. Since Sword World [game created by Lodoss War author] dropped, Japanese game designers have produced a plethora of TTRPGs, including fantasy games like Alshard and Arianhrod, which both use their own versions of 2d6 dice systems, similar to Sword World. Both games are distinct from SW, with Alshard taking its imagery from Norse mythology and Arianhrod feeling more like Ragnarok Online than D&D, but they are still high fantasy games at their core.

About its influence on fantasy anime:

In much the same way that Fist of the North Star or Saint Seiya changed the shonen battle subgenre, or how Rose of Versailles changed romance manga, Record of Lodoss War brought a lot of key narrative and design elements to the foreground. The Lodoss aesthetic of flowing capes, long hair whipping around in the wind, and chitinous armour has been recreated and lampooned over the years.

I am running a modified version of Tegel Manor, with the town transplanted from a coastal city to a mountain valley township on a lake. I decided I was tired of making up adhoc descriptions of where everything was, and hated the included region map in the adventure, so I threw this together in dungeon draft.

I had previously converted the entire megadungeon to a FoundryVTT compatible map (200+ rooms, took forever to draw every wall/door/window/etc for maximum interactiveness), so now they can track their findings in the country side as well.

Kind of a shower thought, and maybe it's just how I run campaigns, but it feels like there's a lot of parallels between DMing and that guy who has a great idea for a book/movie but will never write a single page.

The DM comes up with "So what if there's this guy with this magic power, and the only way to beat him is through a very specific process." And then all the Players decide: who are the characters? What do they do? What do they say? How's it all work out?

Playing the haunted house in Curse of Strahd, and our party was tracking down "baby Walter" in the sub-basement.

We made it to a sacrificial alter, when a bunch of ghostly cultists appeared and demanded "One must die. One must die."

We have a magic using zombie in the party, which was hanging back in the hallway. The cast disguise self to look like a living person, got on the altar for one of the other party members to run them through with a sword. We figured the zombie could be the most convincingly dead, and even if the sword did damage it wouldn't for real kill them. For the deception check the DM had the zombie player roll, they got a nat 20, so the ruse worked and the zombie didn't take any damage at all. The table went wild at this.

The specters disappeared, and Walter appeared from the murky water.

As a human fighter, I jumped on his back, hanging on by digging one hand axe in, and stabbing at the tendrils holding the baby in place with the other.

The rest of the party tried o damage Walter. The zombie player tried to run past but got absorbed into Walter.

Everyone kept hacking at the Walter monster until finally our large half Storm giant monk, who had dropped his weapon, was able to reach in with his bare hands and rip baby Walter out of the core of the monster, causing the creature to collapse into gore and Walter to turn into dust.

This Kickstarter is for odd-numbered dice: D9. D11, D13, D15, D17 and D19. Available in Black, Red, Yellow, Green, Indigo and Purple. $12 plus shipping for the set of six.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impactminiatures/cursed-dice

I’ve backed Impact! Miniatures before and it’s always been great.

I really like that odd-numbered dice even exist. It sounds like a what-if that was taken too far. And it turned out great.

What about a unique way to show curses and disadvantages to your players. Impact!'s cursed dice allow you to give your players a unique die to use for the session to show the effect of their misguided actions. A D19 to show a curse that prevents criticals and natural 20s. Along with several other different dice to disadvantage rolls in many creative ways.

These dice were designed to be as fair as possible for an odd sided die. All the sides are equal sized and equal distant from the center mass. Each die was created by a specialist trained in working with geometeric design.

These odd dice are all new molds and modified designs by Impact! We've learned from our attempts to make odd sided dice in the past and these dice are brand new designs to make sure the dice stop faster by being larger and designed to have better defined stopping surfaces. The new designs are also easier to read with larger fonts and better extras to show you the top value being rolled.

Apparently there was barely any change from the playtest version.

Key points:

• Bastions are acquired at lv5.
• Each player has their own bastion. Bastions can be grouped together into one bastion, but they are still treated as different bastions for the purpose of mechanics, except that grouped bastions can defend each other from attacks.
• Bastions can be populated with "basic facilities" (whose only purpose is flavour, apparently) and "special facilities". The latter provide actual tangible benefits by issuing orders to them during the "bastion turn" (once every 7 days). Special facilities are acquired as the players level up: two at 5th and 9th level, and one more at 13th and 17th level.
• Both types of facilities come in three sizes: "cramped" (4 squares), "roomy" (16 squares) and "vast" (36 squares), and can be upgraded later on. Some special facilities may have a minimum size requirement.
• The article provides three examples of special facilities. I'm not going to copy-paste them (click the link, you cowards).
• Project Sigil (WotC's own Virtual Tabletop) ad. Multiple ads, actually. My God stop talking about Sigil pls.
• Attacks seem... Lackluster. "In the event of an attack on your Bastion, a number of d6s are rolled. For each die that rolls a 1, your Bastion loses that many Bastion Defenders. If you don’t have any Bastion Defenders or lose them all in an attack, a random special facility is shut down for your next Bastion turn." Bastions that are grouped together can sum up their defenders total.

From what I'm reading, there are very few changes from how it worked in the playtest. I guess they were either lazy, didn't have enough time to integrate feedback, or both. This thing only exists to sell Sigil.

I am looking for a stat stick build where I just hit stuff really hard and a lot. Which do you think is better in phb 2024?

DM: "You exit the warehouse and make your way across the crowded market square. What measures do you take to avoid the suspicion of the guards?"

Paladin: "We walk like people who aren't covered in blood."

What did your group get up to last night?

The new College of Dance Bard subclass looks like it will be really fun. Unarmed strikes whose damage scales with Bardic Inspiration dice and uses Dex. Unarmored Defense that adds Charisma. Bonus action unarmed strikes when you use Bardic Inspiration.

You get to be 3/4 of a Monk, but also be a Face, and also be a full caster, and also get half proficiency in everything. And then the level six stuff buffs your party’s initiative and movement to the point it’ll be very hard to get the drop on you.

A fantastic new subclass all around.

We take a look at a workflow you can use to make running a campaign with multiple factions more manageable. We implement the concept of user stories, story mapping, and backward planning to create an evolving and flexible campaign.

It's a long one so grab a snack and something to drink. Feel free to use it to help you fall asleep :)

Hey folks! What's better than having a party of optimized characters? Having a party of optimized characters that work well together! Let's look at the concept of T-shaped individuals and how they can help us create parties that are resilient, and can do anything.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, I've never posted anything before.

I randomly got reminded of a webcomic I read around a year ago about a goblin priest(?) and orc paladin for the same god. The last bit I remember was the orc buying a dress using an enrichment fund that had an acronym starting with the goblins initial (it may have been KEF).

I've tried looking on Google, Lemmy and Reddit but I'm pretty sure I saw it on here. I believe it on the artists website but if anyone has any idea what it was called I'd be super grateful

Players who only have access to the 2014 Player’s Handbook will maintain their character options, spells, and magical items in their character sheets. Players with access to the 2024 and 2014 digital Player’s Handbooks can select from both sources when creating new characters.

Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh

I will try and dm Ghosts of Saltmarsh in a some weeks. To ad a twist and some flavour, i thought bringing in a bbeg who controls all three of the factions. I just need some ideas to weave it together. Any tipps and ideas on how to do this?
@[email protected]

I made this a year ago for dragon friends, a wonderful D&D show with a bunch of Australian comedians bullying their poor dungeon master.

Highly recommend

Hey folks! Conflicts between player characters are very interesting when it comes to the narrative, but can be dangerous to the health of your gaming group. If you want PvP in your games, you best know how to do it safely. In this video we discuss some strategies to do just that. How do you navigate inter-party conflicts for drama that does not make your group implode?