Topic: The Dungeon and Dragons Thread

@Darknyht That’s understandable about using twitter and what not. It’s gotten odd to be on twitter or X or whatever it’s called.

You sold me on the book, and the sidekick element is something I am interested in. And all the other stuff with fighting styles, maneuvers, and things like that sound really cool. Thanks for letting me know what’s in the book.

What are some of your favorite 5e books?

@Themagusx1 Here is my best answer

Official Sourcebooks - Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, Xanathar's Guide of Everything are invaluable to me.
Official Adventures - Dragon's of Icespire Peak (Essentials Kit), Tales of the Yawning Portal (has my favorite 3rd Edition Adventures in it, but it is just a collection of adventures), A lot of the Adventurer's Guild stuff published for organized play can be interesting.
Unofficial DM Sources I have - The Monsters Know What They Are Doing, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master.
Unofficial DM Sources I want - Kobold Press' Kobold Guide to Game Design, 2nd Edition; Tome of Beasts; Strongholds and Followers.

I tend to be on the DM side more than the player side usually. As for free, I loved the idea behind the Plane Shift PDFs Wizards produced as springboards for campaigns. The world building fascinated me even if MtG is not my thing.

@Darknyht That’s pretty cool collection. Nice on the second edition books. I still have mine but they are buried some where in storage. I am also more of a dm than a player myself.

Anyhoo you have me intrigued with the plane shift pdfs. Are those free, and I take it you get those off DND beyond?

They are buried on the wizards site as PDFs. Here is a link to one of them. https://media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/magic/Plane-Shift_Ka...

@Darknyht Thanks again. I will check them out.

@Themagusx1 Yeah, we're mostly just doing reconnaissance work. Though I nearly pushed us into a wyvern encounter the session before. My Ranger is an animal lover and wanted to feed them in their stable area. XD And the dragon this time was a close shave. Thankfully we looted some gems and a very valuable statue from the swamp castle when we went through Reznir's room. We're doing reconnaissance so we can figure out the best way to make her look bad to her Cult of the Dragon superiors. We are indeed on the floating castle, though the actual cult thankfully doesn't know we're here yet, just the neutral storm giant, his dead wife helming the ship, and his ogre lackeys. Some Kobolds too. I go into detail in previous posts in here, though you might have a fun time tracking them down since it's been awhile lol.

@Darknyht I can confirm Favored Foe is useful. My Ranger can dual wield swords if necessary, but I typically use a longbow and my drake for attacking.

@Tyranexx I think that’s pretty cool. I will look at your previous posts on here and see how everything led to where it is. It still sounds awesome.
So favored foe is pretty useful, and you can duel wield. What other abilities does your Ranger have?

@Tyranexx Yeah, Favorite Enemy was just did too little for the cost in Class advancement it took. Deft Explorer also seemed to fix Natural Explorer to make it useful, did you use that optional change also?

@Themagusx1 It's been a pretty awesome ride overall. If you could filter the thread just for my posts, that would be easier. Not sure if NL allows that functionality. The thread moves a bit on occasion, and it's been awhile since I last posted an update. Due to my vacation and life in general.

@Darknyht, @Themagusx1 Per my character sheet, the abilities and feats I have (some from my Folk Hero background) are:

• Sharpshooter
• Favored Foe
• Dual Wielder
• Extra Attack - I can attack twice, three times when dual wielding; one attack applies to my drake companion however
• Lucky (this has come in handy)
• Land's Stride (Situational, but this has helped)
• Hide in Plain Sight (Haven't used yet; also situational)
• Nature's Vigil
• Deft Explorer
• Primal Awareness (Grants some nice, albeit situational spells that I can use once per long rest for free; so far as a Lv. 11 character, I've had some use out of both Speak With Animals and Beast Sense)
• Drake's Breath (amazing Drakewarden ability; one use per long rest, after that I need to blow a Lv. 3 spell slot)

The character was drawn up for me, but I've added onto her and made her my own as our campaign has progressed. Within the rules and what our DM allows.

@Tyranexx It’s all good I will go back through the post as best as I can. A filter would be nice. Those are some nice abilities for your Drake Warden. What is lands stride? Not familiar with that ability.

@Themagusx1 They are pretty decent abilities overall. My stats aren't bad either, the worst is Strength at 11. Best is Dex at 17. Land's Stride is a neat situational ability (copied this from elsewhere):

"Starting at 8th level, moving through nonmagical difficult terrain costs you no extra movement. You can also pass through nonmagical plants without being slowed by them and without taking damage from them if they have thorns, spines, or a similar hazard.

In addition, you have advantage on saving throws against plants that are magically created or manipulated to impede movement, such those created by the entangle spell."

We managed to play for the first time in about a month last night. Between Foundry updates and us forgetting our character abilities/the story we managed get about 2 hours in. Despite my wanting to do otherwise, our Eldritch Knight has begun exploring Argynvostholt. Our misadventure brought us into a battle with three Reverants which took forever with us failing saves against their paralysis ability.

Other than that not much happened, although I finally was able to put Flash of Genus to use for the first time to help with some of the saves.

I don't know a lot about D&D, but I did see the movie (Honor Among Thieves) and I'm currently subscribed to the "Saturday Morning Adventures" comic series based on the cartoon series from...what, the '90s? '80s? And I got the "Endless Summer" issue (which can be put side-by-side alongside the other IDW "Endless Summer" issues, which are Sonic, TMNT and My Little Pony)

@Tyranexx Land stride is very useful. It sounds like some thing you could use in the mountains full of snow or a swamp. What’s been the most difficult terrain you have been in?

@Themagusx1 Definitely the swamp that we were in before. The rest of the party (who couldn't fly or float in some way) was impeded, whereas my ranger strolled through with a whistle. XD The floating castle we're currently in has some icy areas though, so it may have some use here too.

@Darknyht Enemies who cause paralysis so easily can be quite a pain in any setting. Glad your group finally moved through that encounter, but that must've taken a good while.

@Tyranexx That skill will be useful in the castle if there are icy areas there. Do your party members have work around for the rough terrain?

@Darknyht That sounds like a solid session. Is this the start of your campaign?

@Themagusx1 No, haven’t gotten that on a schedule due to life being so busy. That was our Curse of Strahd game that finally was able to be played. I was stuck in DC all week for a conference so we actually were able to play two nights.

One of our players is becoming fond of falling. First they fell into a well by not paying attention, and in our second session they fell through a weak floor for the same reason. Thankfully nothing other than pride was injured.

Our overeager Eldritch Knight, who has been nick named Scrappy, almost walked into a room full of giant spiders after opening another entrance that led to the area. So it was another entertaining session.

It’s difficult as I know what happens in our current location due to a podcast that used it, so I am playing very passive at the moment. I am mostly playing it that I want to move on to our true goal instead of wasting time exploring a haunted mansion.

@Tyranexx Not going to lie, the paralysis was annoying but the frightened effect was what made it punishing. Because they were in the room with us, we had to make the wisdom saves at disadvantage. Thankfully one of the Battle Smith's class spells is Heroism which grants the user 5 temp HP each round and immunity to being frightened.

Once that was done, it turned into a straight brawl. While we could deal significant damage, they had over 130 HP each. I think our biggest advantage was that the DM wasn't familiar with the monster and probably did not use them as effectively as he could have. That said, I would rather get the issue around there being Revenants in the place resolved before 24 hours game time passes and they decide to seek vengeance for our trespassing.

@Darknyht Nice, how long have you been playing this Curse of Strahd campaign?

@Themagusx1 Our sorceror has Boots of Spider Climbing, which allows them to scale vertical surfaces. No special effects on terrain though. I don't believe any other group members can compensate for walking situations besides.

@Darknyht Some of our party dealt with the frightened effect in our last session since we...erm...slid into the white dragon in the depths of the floating castle. Good thing your Battle Smith was able to pull through with Heroism. If the DM wasn't too familiar with that monster, I wonder what would've happened to the party if they knew the monsters like the back of their hand....Revenants are indeed no joke.