u/hotstickywaffle

I'm not quite close to the final battle, but I want to start preparing. My initial idea was to have a 2 phase battle where halfway through, the dragon flies away and phase 2 happens in Phandalin (I know how I'm going to get the players there).

My other idea was to instead just do a full siege of Phandalin (partially inspired by the new season of Dimension 20). But I've never done anything remotely like that. Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm a first time DM running for first time players. They're level 4, just finished Butterskull Ranch. I'm going to be sending them next to the Logger's Camp to bring resources, but with a request from Halia to first stop at the Mountain's Toe Gold Mine (I ended up having to make both some narrative changes, as well as powering up the enemies for my 5e 2024 party). We have a Trickster Rogue, Armorer Artificer, GOO Warlock, and Lands Druid. They'll actually go up to level 5 after their next quest, since I gave a level for the 3rd "starting quests".

Basically, I'm curious how you guy recommend I run the trip from the Mine to the Logging Camp. I handled their trip to Butterskull by making it basically a long skill challenge with a few other encounters mixed in to keep all the built in stuff there. But I think I want to do something different for this trip. I hear there's supposed to be 6-8 encounters in an "adventuring day", so should I use that to figure out how much stufd they run in to and have that prepped? Or should I just roll per hex on a table. But for these long trips I feel like it makes more sense to have things in mind, rather than have it be random. Any other thoughts?

I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak and I have an Armorer in my party, which means he can Enlarge himself. We started talking about other players having Enlarge, and yada yada yada I want to run a Kaiju fight, especially since his character is themed around the Power Rangers.

My thought was having his PC sort of 1v1 with a big monster while the other PCs have a more standard fight on the ground. But do you guys have any other suggestions? Has anyone successfully run something g like this?

I'm a pretty new subscriber, only a few months. I've watched lots of D20, a fair bit of GC and MSN, and bits of other shows here and there. What are the episodes that someone really needs to have seen and come up a lot? This might see towards older seasons of shows, but I'm open to any suggestions?

So I got the main ending with the >!flight!< and the credits. Since then I >!woke Hypnos!<, did some big relationship moments with a few characters including >!Hecate!<, >!Moros!<, >!Dora!<, and >!Eris!<, (can't seem to unlock >!Nem!<), and >!found the 3 Fates and heard their prophecy for a new age!<.

Beyond that and finalizing my relationship stuff is there another big ending, the way >!all the gods reunite!< in the first game? Or was that the thing with >!the Fates!<?

I haven't played the game in years, and I would mod it a lot on my PC. How does it play on the Switch 2, especially without the mod store available?

I'm going to have my level 4 party have a run in with the dragon. Basically they're going to run into some super easy goblins, after smacking them around for a bit, there's going to be a big stampede coming out of the forest, and then the dragon will follow. I figured I'd have him breath weapon the party, eat some goblins, and fly off, but I'm worried that's going to take everyone down. Do I maybe just fudge the roll and/or just make sure he doesn't hit the entire party. Any other advice on keeping it from going sideways?

I'm currently level 9. My stats are Str 3, Per 5, End 4, Cha 5, Int 5, Agi 4, Luck 3. The perks I've taken are Cao Collector, Armorer, Line Wanderer, Gun Nut, Sneak, Hacker, Locksmith, and Scrapper. I'm about 10 hours in and I've just been working my way Southeast towards Diamond City. I have a collection of guns I've slightly upgraded, and mostly just use whatever I have the most ammo for at the time.

Any tips on where to go from here? I've liked using VATS, but haven't really locked down a playstyle yet.

I'm only on episode 47, but I was wondering if there is any info for the homebrewed stats for Crick Elves? I'd love to check them out, especially since I have an idea for a mushroom based PC.

I'm getting the game for the Switch 2 today. I've never really played Fallout, but I have played and loved Skyrim and Starfield, and similar games like Cyberpunk, plus I really enjoyed the first season of the show.

You guys have any tips for a new player? Perhaps some things I should do or places I should go early that are easily missed?

I've really gotten into DnD lately, and luckily managed to get my wife into it, too! I've love DMing for her and my friends, and I want to get my daughter into it. She is into board games, albeit simple ones like Don't Wake Daddy, Pretty Prettt Princess, and Uno. She also has an amazing imagination, so I think she'd be into it.

I considered trying to figure out how to fudge DnD into something kid-friendly, but I figured it's probably easier to use something made for kids. Ideally something that won't take much prep for me, and some visuals would probably be helpful, at least printable stuff.

So I'm building a cult into the premade adventure I'm running. I'm building them off of some backstory details that my GOO Warlock (and some other PCs) gave me at character creation. All he really gave me was that his powers manifested during some incident with this cult, that resulted in some of them dead.

I'm flavoring it as they are trying to help their god pass his power and influence in to our realm, while his patron is all about maintaining the gates between dimensions. His Tome is his focus, and he already has it at the start of this, and I have him compelled to this town for reasons he's unsure of, but seems to come from the book. He will somehow end up where the cultist are doing their ritual, his powers manifest, and he kills them.

So I have a general idea for how I want it to go, but I also realize this is a game and feel like he should have some agency. How do you balance something like this? Do you try and give the illusion of some choices, do you simply narrate what you want to happen, or is this a bad idea and maybe some simpler exposition ("as you see the cultists, you remember the time when...") would be better? Is there a way to do this where the player does have some agency?

I'm DMing for a party that has an Armorer Artificer. We're flavoring it as he's basically a Kamen Rider, which is the Japanese show that Power Rangers is based on. If you're unfamiliar with Armorers, they have an ability that lets them turn themselves Large. He can also cast Enlarge, as can our Druid, so you can imagine they're excited about that.

They're level 4 right now. I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak for them, but I'm adding an entire other enemy faction that I can easily have just throw a big monster at them (I don't want to use the dragon BBEG for this). I'd love some suggestions for not only cool, big monsters (I don't want to homebrew much, beyond reflavoring), but also some ideas for making work and be fun mechanically for the whole party. I was thinking it would be two separate things going on, the two big monsters squaring off, while the party has some other task. But I could be talked out of that, as the rest of the party climbing the monster (I think the rules cap around 50 feet, but I might flavor it bigger). Any suggestions are appreciated!

Edit: If it matters, I run the game on Roll20, but I actually have most of the enemy statblocks on an Obsidian note

So my party is about to get a message that the farm 2 days away has been attacked by Orcs, with 5 hostages taken, plus another hostage who is a story NPC (so they'll definitely be alive when the party gets there). Besides having the party roll CON saves for exhaustion, my plan was to give the party a series of 5 encounters. These encounters would include things like traversing a particularly challenging mountain pass, or crossing a wide ravine (I don't really have specifics chosen). It would also include at lease one combat interrupted by a dragon for story purposes.

I figured I could run them as a series of skill challenges, partially because I think they sound interesting and I want to try them. But I also think it would be good for my party of mostly new players to have an opportunity to get more involved in an RP sense and get to contribute to what's happening more, rather than simply reacting to what I give them.

The plan is for each challenge they pass, that will mean that they made it through a bit faster and have an extra hostage alive when they get there. Each failure will mean they struggled through and lost time, costing them a hostage. (side question: should I tell the players that explicitly?)

My big question is if I play it out as a series of challenges, where they have to get to 3 passes before 3 fails, or make it play out as 1 bigger challenge?

Also, in regards to the combat. The idea is a pretty simple, easy encounter that is suddenly interrupted by a stampede of forest animals before the appearance of an ice dragon. The dragon will fly away after it's hit once or twice, but my question is how do I determine success vs failure on this one? Or do I just not include that as one of the challenges to save the hostages?

I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak for my party, which is, if you're unfamiliar, light on story besides a Dragon coming to the region and the resulting chaos from disrupted monsters and factions.

So I decided to build a cult (who our GOO Warlock had a run-in with when his powers manifested) that ties in several character backstories. They're basically working with a noble (who the Rogue previously embarrassed) to aquire mining sites in the area through the Miner's Exchange. Then they're using people they've taken prisoner (such as pur Artificer) to mine special crystals. They put these into monsters and other creatures to mutate them, which is basically allowing the powers of their God's realm to enter our realm through the creatures (which is in opposition to the values of our Druid).

The problem is how I get that information to the party in an interesting way. They have fought a few monsters and found some crystals, and just finished fighting the cultist for the first time at the end of the last session (we're about 1/4 through the campaign, and I've been trying to find the main story along the way). I was going to have them find a note from the noble tying him to the Miner's Exchange, but I didn't know where to go from there or what to have happen at the Miner's Exchange.

I'm also just, in general, unsure what to do with this part of DMing. Laying out the clues in an interesting way, and also have them be clear without just telling them. Especially when improv probably has to be involved. So yeah, any advice on this would be great.

My party has a quest that will involve about 2 days of travel to a ranch that was taken over by Orcs. I'm going to use it to introduce the exhaustion mechanic, saying they have to skip their long rest in order to make it in time to save the farm hands that were captured.

I also want to have them run into things on the way there, or maybe roll for an encounter (this was originally a hex-based open-world adventure but I'm kind of cutting that because it isn't working for us). But I don't want to take the time to run full combats, just some opportunities to maybe RPing a bit and using some resources. How would you go about doing something like this?

My party is level 4, an AT Rogue, Armor Artificer, Lands Druid, and GOO Warlock. 2024 rules but a 2014 module, so every combat is being reworked for both balance and to fit the story I'm trying to build as I go. This one includes a fight in a farmhouse but I'm also trying to figure out how to make that more interesting as well.

So as it stands, it seems like entire encounter is getting to the farmhouse and killing some Orcs, and hopefully getting Big Al put alive. But I want to make it more interesting. For reference, the party is level 4 in 5E 2024 rules. The party is an Arcane Trickster Rogue, an Armorer Artificer, a Lands Druid, and a GOO Warlock.

One idea was to basically give the players an opportunity to get there faster, and thus save more people, at the risk of gaining a level of exhaustion. These are new players (and I'm a new DM), so I think it could be a fun opportunity to introduce that mechanic to them.

As for the ranch itself though, I'm not sure what to do. I probably want to add a stealth element for my Rogue to shine. But I'm not sure how exactly to execute that (we're playing on Roll20 and I bought the module so I have the battlemap). I thought I could maybe play out the stealth portion like a Skill Challenge, and depending on how well they do, that effects the number of Orcs at the end? I just want to give some non-combat skill and ability use.

Any other ideas are greatly welcome!

I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak, and since my party is 2024 characters, I've had to dramatically alter the combats to be more balanced. But I've also had to adjust things to add some story for my PCs.

If you're unfamiliar, the quest is about a dragon coming to the region and causing chaos by displacing Orc raiders and monsters. It doesn't give you much story-wise, so I'm taking a cult that seems to mostly be side content and making them a more main villain because a cult ties into 2 characters backstories and I have another way to tie in a 3rd.

With all that said, I have a quest coming up that's just some displaced Orcs taking over a farm. I'm wondering if I should just leave it as Orcs (I'll have to use a different statblock or something to balance it out), or replace them with cultists. It feels more realistic to have other problems going on, but I also worry about pulling focus in too many directions. I'm struggling a bit with the story telling element of DMing in general, so help is greatly appreciated.