Topic: The Table Top Gaming thread

@Themagusx1 Our enemies generally roll all over the place, but they had good luck last time lol. Whereas most of the player rolls are average, though the player controlling the crocodile surprisingly has decent luck with his rolls. We didn't play this weekend, possibly this coming one if we stick with our every-other-week-schedule.

@Tyranexx That’s pretty much how I roll for monsters. It’s always all over the place, and some days good and some days bad. My group is now finding out the villain is going to use a dead god as a weapon and they need to stop him, so they are going to go to a ball where the villain will be as the villain has a good public face. How is the villain in your campaign, and you guys will be playing on the holiday weekend? My group will be playing the fourth since no one has any plans lol

@Themagusx1 At least we know DMs don't commonly use weighted dice lol. There are plenty of other ways they can troll players anyway. Interesting how your group's villain has a good public face. Kind of reminds me of Lex Luthor in the DC Animated Universe before he showed his true colors to the public.

We haven't officially met our villain yet, though we know of her. I don't recall her name, but she's a half dragon who's VERY full of herself. I've checked, and I don't think we're playing this weekend. Some of the group has family in town, and TBH my availability tomorrow (Saturday) is up in the air.

@Tyranexx Lol never used weighted dice. But yes there are ways to troll bad players, and I have a few. Oh yeah I am a huge DC comics fan, and Luthor was certainly an inspiration for him. As for your half dragon villainess, how have you guys heard of her? A good villain in dnd, is always awesome as that it keeps things interesting. So far in your game what is your favorite monster you fought?

@Themagusx1 I'm not sure how many of our encounters have ensued from outright DM trolling, but you're making me rethink some situations now lol. The only deliberate character death was due to how that situation was laid out in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign; I think he was genuinely sorry about it. We've heard of this half-dragon lady through both those affiliated with the Cult in some way (like the high elf mentioned before) and from those determined to bring down the organization. The gnome NPC with us right now is one of those people.

Favorite monster so far would be an encounter we had with two doppelgangers earlier in the campaign. Our group was part of a merchant caravan where we were hired on as bodyguards. A caravan wagon belonged to the Cult, so we were tailing them that way. The two doppelgangers were disguised as human women passing themselves off as identical twins. They tried kidnapping and nearly made off with our Tiefling rogue at the time.

@Tyranexx Yeah it could be trolling but ultimately dice can cause the trolling in the end lol. Dice are the real trolls, lol. I wonder what it will be like when you meet the Half Dragon cult leader. So is that the campaign you are playing, Tyranny of Dragons? That’s pretty cool. I don’t use premade modules when I dm though, I use my own writings and materials, that’s just my style. No wrong way to dm,unless you purposefully make it unfun for everyone. Like this one guy who was pitting level one characters against Beholders and other high level monsters,

Glad the rogue was. It abducted. Who knows what they would of done with them. What other dangerous situations have you guys made it out of?

@Themagusx1 Ah...Dice. so wonderful. So terrible. So fickle. XD Which is one of the reasons why I picked up Lucky for my character. Tyranny of Dragons is the campaign we're playing, yep. He may be newer to DMing; I'll try to remember to ask next time. One of the other players is quite used to it and uses some premade settings, but he's done the occasional homebrew setting too. That guy putting level 2 characters against tough monsters....Were his players masochistic by chance?

Lol Yep, we saved the rogue from abduction, but they were hoisted by their own petard (and that situation I mentioned) not long after. I was a bit salty about that, and it wasn't my character! XD Other tough situations in this campaign....My character was in a 1-on-1 duel with a higher ranked cultist at one point and nearly died; she went down on an account of me rolling badly and the opponent rolling VERY well. Thankfully I had better luck on death saves. Another was the cultist camp incident earlier in the campaign since we were outnumbered. The cave system they were using was quite harrowing to fight through, but we did get out of one encounter by feeding a monstrosity (don't recall what it was) some chocolate as a distraction. That escalade also led to the hilarious food poisoning incident....XD I think I've mentioned that before.

@Tyranexx lucky is such a good thing to have. I habe had players use it on my games and it has saved them on more than one occasion lol. That’s a good campaign I hear the tyranny of dragons, and glad you guys are enjoying it. Your dm does sound pretty good and fair though even if he is newer, sometimes experience can be a good thing and sometimes it won’t be, I have seen really good players who have done it for only a year and bad players who been playing for decades.

That’s good you saved the rogue, and that one on one duel sounds intense. And I know what incident you are talking about. Are you ready to see some high level monsters down the line?

@Themagusx1 Lucky has definitely saved me on a couple of rolls lol. I'll need to ask for sure how experienced our DM is. I know some of the group have been playing D&D on and off for years.

I'm prepared to deal with some high level monsters down the line if our group levels hold up lol. We dodged a couple of anathemas recently since Yuan-ti give our group a hard time since almost all of us are at least half casters.

@Tyranexx Lucky is always good, and I can believe it saved you several times. Yeah let me know how long I am curious,cause how long shows maybe what editions some one had played.

Yuan ti are mean. What kind of locale are you facing them at?

@Themagusx1 For most of the group, I'd guess 5e, maybe an older edition or two for a couple of others.

We've faced a Yuan-ti hunting party in the swamp we're in and did dodge a couple of other encounters on the way to the castle. We had a hard enough time with the smaller group....We didn't like our chances against the anathemas, and we needed a long rest when we came across the other group.

@Tyranexx would you ever be interested in the older editions of DnD? Just curious if it’s something you would dabble with

@Themagusx1 I'd be interested in learning how they differ from 5e at least. Then maybe working out from there if I'd dive into an actual game.

@Tyranexx it is prettt interesting how the different versions of the game differ. Especially with soemthing like 2e which had a system called THACO which means to hit armor class zero. I think you would find that very interesting and things like how csome races had level limitations and things like that. And then of course there is the infamous fourth edition which I don’t hate but it is odd. And third edition basically is a far more complicated version of 5e. A bit too complex for its own good…imo. What do you think?

@Themagusx1 I'm not sure how I'd feel about some races having level limitations. Were there lore reasons why? I've heard rumblings of 3rd edition and the 5e comparisons but never really had them explained. Why, pray tell, is 4e so infamous?

@Tyranexx 4e is infamous is because he game was designed like an mmo with mmo mechanics. You could not customize your character that much, spells were mostly battle only but those th@t were not were rituals, characters started with high hopes even wizards, (25 hp) you can heal super easily, etc. there is so much weird stuff in the game.

@Tyranexx It also didn't help that 4e was suppose to come out with a companion program for PC similar to D&D Beyond or other digital tool sets. Problem was it wasn't ready by launch time and it was needed for 4e however by the time it was ready WotC decided to move on due to the negative feedback of 4e.

4e isn't bad per say, it's just plays more like a tactical video game more then anything. Maybe if they called it Dungeon and Dragons Tactics or something like that it would have gone over better, but people were expecting D&D.

@Tasuki No as it’s not bad, it’s approach to dming was quite nice. But it was too tactical to be dnd as you said and lacked the customization of what made but the game was nice with its supplements. I found the supplements for 4e to be quite nice and tons of cool monsters introduced.

@Themagusx1 It's crazy how some people thought using MMO mechanics for a tabletop game would be a good idea, at least described that way. The irony is that I thought MMOs were all about character customization these days. Though I confess I haven't played one in several years since they're such timesinks. That whole "ritual spells only outside of combat" bit seems pretty weird too.

@Tasuki If the companion program wasn't ready, why not just delay the launch of 4e until the two could release in tandem? I suppose the answer would be the usual reasoning - capitalism - but am admittedly curious lol. It probably could have worked as a tactics game if it was billed as such, but I could see how that would confuse anyone used to previous D&D editions.

@Tyranexx YeH there are a lot of odd elements of 4e, but I will say that they did come out with some, good supplements. In fact I still utilize Dungeonmasters guide 2, cause it has some good advice that’s universal for not just dnd but any tabletop rpg. And some of the lore stuff they did was killer. But again mechanically 4e is strange. Imagine a mage starting with 20 hp, yep that’s 4e. It does have its good.

Are you interested in the history of the game? If so let me reccomend a book called Game Wizards, it’s about the very early history of dnd and follows the creation and strained relationship of its creators Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and up until when Gary Gygax was kicked out of TSR(if you did not know what that is that’s the company that published and created dnd material until wizards bought them I wanna say in 97). I don’t know if that’s something you are interested in but I think you would enjoy it, just a little warning the book is a little dry in its writing but it is Intersting none the less.

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Wizards-Dungeons-Dragons-Historie...