>>97813902
>TQ
The most important question to ask is, "Why is your character adventuring now?" Once that's answered you can probably figure out the rest.
I would also suggest asking how did the character learn their skills or about who raised them. That way you can get some history about the character too.

I wish my players gave a shit about their backstories. My one player is involved as hell and crafted a reason she's adventuring as well as a backstory rife with possible hooks (bastard child of high ranking nobility, dumped off in a remote city as much for her own protection as to save face), but the other players are a former pirate (still hasn't told me why she's "former"), a carpenter who came to town to find work in his trade but ended up getting involved in adventuring instead, and another guy who I'm still unsure of why is there other than he's an adventurer.

Needless to say I'm going to come up with hooks for the first player and maybe one or two for the second, but I don't know if I need to prod the third and fourth players more or if I just let them stay along for the ride.

>>97813902
>Why are you here
>Who do you know
>What are you afraid of
You can do pretty well with those three, I've found. Bare minimum, you get at least a paragraph that you or other players can springboard off of.

>>97813936
These are good ones. Another good one can be 'who else in the party has your character met?', since having linked backstories can really smooth things out.

>>97813955
i dont let players in before we worked a good reason for adventuring and distinctive trait for their characters
i refuse to have a party of Johnny Metagaming PCs who are draw to adventure "to become more powerful"

>>97814011
Okay, but what about getting richer?

>>97814011
It's definitely on me. I didn't push them because the characters were originally rolled up for a one shot to gauge interest in playing that I then let them keep for an actual campaign, and beyond a few questions about their goals and secrets I didn't really prompt them to develop the characters beyond how they're playing them.

>>97813955
I wish my DM would address the hooks in my backstory, but to be fair, he did mention that it'll be a while before we got there.
I find not making a backstory or simply phoning it in is a disservice to oneself as a player. It's the most creative freedom you get as a player and having it come up is always rewarding.

>>97814035
>Okay, but what about getting richer?
yes, but no. You can get rich through normal means like becoming a merchant etc

adventuring should never be the get rich easy option, it should be a last resort of the desperate and those who cant do anything else, it should be what you are forced to do out of a lifechanging event, it's what happens when a normal life gets flipped upside down
"my character wants to become a more powerful wizard" ok, go to the academy, dont become an adventurer

>>97814075
>creative
>player
kek thanks I had a good laugh

>>97813902
>TQ
No sane person becomes an adventurer. What damaged you enough to choose this path?

It's funny - in Warhammer Fantasy RP, every character is supposed to have a reason related to their background for becoming an adventurer. Unless your background is "Mousillonian Peasant", in which case, escaping Mousillon is considered justification enough.

>>97813902
TQ: >why are you here amd why do you adventure?

Thats it. I dont care about anything else until it comes up

>>97814140
>it should be a last resort of the desperate and those who cant do anything else
Agreed. That was literally the reason. Same reason you cant pay basic labourer wages to accompany you in the dungeon. Who would risk their life for some copper?

Maybe if people could risk their life again, they would understand that

https://youtu.be/o-w3bky1c8Y

Damn, Mearls did not age well.

thread is dead share what you're working on

me: next session they're in elysium after going through a bunch of horrible places, I like going from extreme to another. I think it's very fun to try to make a perfect place interesting without actual danger, so the encounters im thinking of

- obviously fighting the urge to just stay here forever, their npc friend will definitely fail his wisdom saves
- a village in the distance that never gets closer, until they do good acts: healing injured animal, not stealing from abandoned cart, having patience with some old tortle granpda walking slowly and wanting company (that last one im still workshopping)
- an orchard of primal fruit, if they steal em animated trees and a guardinal get angry, but will just knock them out and quickly forgive
- bee-women who share their honey (the guardinal wants in exchange for the fruit, or as payment) if one of the party accepts to be their mate (twist: it's for life)

>>97814907
Right now I'm procrastinating on the Amber Temple rework, and on my biological "inside the belly of the kraken" dungeon. Neither should be too difficult, but I'd rather do nothing than work on the maps.
Come to think about it, I'm procrastinating on the worldbuilding for my viking campaign too

>>97814936
>"inside the belly of the kraken" dungeon
funny that was my last session

>>97813902
>What has your character been doing the past few years before this campaign?

>>97813902
>TQ
I don't ask them questions beyond "Why is your character engaging with the premise of the campaign?". I write a primer with a TLDR of "here's the hook for the game, here's the setting info, bug me if you need more for your character, I have final say on if your character fits or not and if they don't we'll sort it out".

I try to present my players with as much information as I can about the game's setting so they can think about their backstories and character's involvement in the game on their own terms. They're adults, and my friends, and I trust they're capable of crafting a backstory that works.

>>97814907
>bee-women
Do they like jazz?
>who share their honey ... if one of the party accepts to be their mate (twist: it's for life)
I would fall hook, line and stinger for this.

>>97814907
I've got a game I'm in come April, I'm basically already sorted for it. GM is using a shitload of my homebrew (Full class overhauls + Rules adjustments) and most of my work is when he bitches about something or finds an error or vestigial features from my previous reworks for 5.5.

I'm playing a Silver Dragonborn Redemption Paladin of Bahamut by the way, a character I've had kicking around for a while. The best way I can describe him is very similar to the character Silverbolt from Beast Wars Transformers. A good-natured idiot who prefers to solve his problems with words rather than violence, but is more than capable of fighting should the need arise. From what I gather the rest of the party is (I think):
>Bugbear Armorer Artificer
>Human Moon Druid
>Cthonic Tiefling Shadow Sorcerer

We've been summoned by a Duke out near Thay (not in it, in a nearby territory) about some tower popping up near a city full of Dragonborn that is cause for concern. Game's set to start in April I think.

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GMing my first game with my first session in a weeks' time. It's over Foundry.

How do I start learning how to make Foundry battle maps?

All of the tutorials are enormously unhelpful and vague and written by people who haven't been new players in 15 years so they leave something to be desired.

>>97815111
>first time gm
>foundry
are you insane?

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Has anyone run a villain like The Dearth from Leven Thumps and Foo series? I loved the idea of a soil spirit but I don't really know how you could defeat him in a way that the players would think of.

>>97815111
Keep it simple. Learn what walls and lights and the vision settings in scenes do. Don't worry about getting teleport and multiple floors and automations and devil's sight figured out until you know the basics.
I don't make maps personally: I either get them pre-configured from whatever source, or I get map images and wall and light them myself in Foundry, or I use the drawing tools to scribble something like I would on my dry-erase foldout map IRL.
I recommend you log in as one of your players and move their character around, make sure they can see and do what you expect. You want to have an idea of how stuff works so you're not figuring it out for the first time when something goes wrong during a game or a player asks something about Foundry you don't know.

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>be me, 1999, Arizona
>want to play some DnD
>here about RPGA
>go to Convention, make badass specialty priest of Selune cleric, ready to dominate
>DM some guy with long brown hair
>goes okay
>DM says, the party is suddenly attacked by leaping wizards!
>whole table laughs
>rofl.jpg gonna kick these nerds asses
>first wizard puts most of the party to sleep
>Second wizard charms the thief
>Third wizard cast ray of enfeeblement on fighter
>Shit hit fan.jpg
>2 wizards battle the fighter, other wizard starts attacking us while we're asleep
>Kills our wizard moves on to me
>Wizard keeps hitting until my head is mashed potatoes
>DM cackles, "Take that shit heads!"
>Furious.exe
>Go to Regional coordinator tell him my character died
>Regional coordinator tells me my anger is justified and that DM will never host a game ever again.
Have fun never playing DnD you smug asshole

>>97815428
Sir this general thread is for Dungeons and Dragon 5th Edition 2014 version and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition 2024 version. You were not playing either of those game in your story as 1999 came before 2024 and 2014, or so I am told. And no, I am not the DM from your story.

>>97815428
Spoony was right in that story. The prewritten AL encounter was stupid

>>97815428
5e?

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>It's a bag of holding
>Literally nobody has their bags of holding explode unless they want it to so it's just a fucking bag of holding that's actually worse
>But wait! You can sell magic items with it for half their base price
>Great, how much do the magic items cost?
>DUNNO LOL THAT'S UP TO THE DM HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Holy fuck, this is an official item. Half the shit from DM's Guild is better than this.

>>97815119
It's not so bad for the most part. It's just that you are basically given no guidance on how 2 battlemap

>>97816108
>Holy fuck, this is an official item.
No, it isn’t.

>>97816108
>this is an official item
are you retarded?
>dndbeyond user
ah that explains it, you are

>>97816108
>Great, how much do the magic items cost?
Common items are (1d6+1)*10 GP
Uncommon items are 1d6*100 GP
Rare items are 2d10*1000 GP
Very Rare items are (1d4+1) * 10000 GP
Legendary items are 2d6 *25000 GP

Consumable items such as potions or scrolls are half price, round down.

These are official rules from Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

>>97814907
My party is about to take on the Redbrands in LMoP. They found the secret entrance to Tresendar Manor but might go in the front door anyway, and either way seems like it'd be fun. The nothic is looking to backstab Glasstaff and take his staff (which is cursed), so they might get to bypass a lot of the dungeon depending on how they play it. My fighter is itching to bash some skulls after a RP heavy session last time and there'll be plenty of time for that if the party chooses, though they might also end up playing cee lo with the Redbrands too.

>>97817589
Worse yet there's exact numbers in 2024 dmg

>>97817987
I as using 5etools but you're right, a quick sift through that part of the site (it wasn't showing up in search for some reason?) confirms it.

>>97817987
Holy shit the verify captcha just asked me who the dog was from Cowboy Bebop.

Gotta say, probably a way better way to get rid of bots and even un-lurked newfags/plebbiters. Though it should probably be tailored per-board lore, it's originally an anime site but not everybody browses /a/.

>>97817992
It's because 5e24 is a reversion back to a lot of 4e philosophy and one of those is freely buyable and craftable magic items, they're an expected part of your "build". I'm honestly surprised they didn't reintroduce Residuum, I mean Mercer still has it in Exandria. Hell, he even uses the 4e pantheon.

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To repost from last thread...
>>97805726
>>97802916
>>97807836

I've been digging more though feats and well, found Crossbow Expert. the 2024 version kinda stinks (Instead of the BA attack, it's free TWF fighting style with Light crossbows) and the free hand crossbow shot is kinda seen as OP... so part of me is thinking why not give it the same treatment that Polemaster had, just make the damage dice a d4 but also allow any type of crossbow to use it. It is a extra shot, but it's low damage no matter the weapon used.

------
Crossbow Expert (Rewritten)

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Ignore Loading. You ignore the Loading property of all crossbow weapons. If you are holding one of them, you can load a piece of ammunition into it even if you lack a free hand.

Firing in Melee. Being within 5 feet of an enemy doesn't impose Disadvantage on your attack rolls with crossbows.

Quick Shot. When you take the Attack action and attack with a crossbow or two weapon fighting with one, you can use your Bonus Action to make one additional attack with a crossbow you are holding. This attack uses the weapon’s normal range and damage type, but its damage die is 1d4.

------
The other idea is actually an enhancement to 5.5e Duel Wielder, and instead of making it pretty much a scimitar and dagger only feat, screw it and open it up for every light weapon. "When you are dual wielding light weapons, you can replace one of your weapon’s weapon mastery with that of the Nick weapon Mastery."
Depending on how I write it, it might give hand crossbows the ability to fire an extra two times with TWF + DW, but ya know, I'm not 100% sure that's a bad thing. It would be cool and we could do Neo Matrix shenanigans, but I hesitate..