alas all good campaigns must come to an end and so as a birthday gift to one of my players I’ve compiled some of the best quotes of his Wizard and his Gunslinger into some wall art for him and I thought I’d share it here too
World of Warcraft: Molten Core Monsters. D&D 5e Monster Stats
As promised here are the new Warcraft monsters, and Warcraft page design. Built with inspiration from World of Warcraft’s art book and game UI. All of course based on the original, and one of my favorites, raid. Molten Core. ((Art was taken from the original World of Warcraft TCG, some of which was reused for Hearthstone))
Terrorize your creatures from the volcano’s depths! Inhabitants of the fire lands! Core Hounds, Molten Giants, and their master; Ragnaros the Firelord! Fill your volcanos, or your plane of fire, with these monsters. Or even get some salamanders, fire elementals, and earth elementals together and recreate the Molten Core for yourself!
Note: Fair warning… Ragnaros is the most powerful and most dangerous monster I have tried to create. Everything above challenge rating 20 gets rather risky. We’re talking a party of level 20 characters probably with some nice magic items. Ragnaros is untested! I did my best to compare him to the creature closest to his challenge rating (Ancient Red Dragons), but he might over or under perform. If you decide to throw caution to the wind and terrorize some high level players do let me know how it goes, as it’ll be a bit yet before I can get my group together to test him myself.
Feel free to use. Any of my posted creations are always open to any DM that wants to terrorize player characters with them.
Concept: a D&D campaign where every party member has been co-opted or replaced by some sort of hostile intelligence; e.g., the fighter has been possessed by a ghost, the wizard is being mind-controlled by her sapient magic ring, the rogue is actually a shapeshifting blob-monster who devoured the original and stole her form and memories, and so forth. Each of them is totally unaware of the others, and believes itself to be the only monster in a group of unwitting human adventurers.
The warlock has been infested by a demonic fungus; her ridiculous hat conceals the giant mushroom growing from the top of her head.
The barbarian is a lizardman who fell victim to a botched reincarnation spell and regenerated as a human.
The druid was actually killed weeks before the party met, and is being expertly impersonated by three dire raccoons in a trenchcoat.
No one knows that the bard’s deal is; she seems perfectly normal to every physical and supernatural test, but pings to detect aberration.
D&D players will always come up with the most bizarre, workable solutions to problems when you least expect it.
In one game I ran, the party needed to find a magical artifact and didn’t have any idea where it was at all. So they decided to use Commune to figure it out – but Commune as a spell only lets you ask yes or no questions, and get an answer out of it. So they took a map of the continent, drew a line down half of it, and asked “Is the artifact on this half of the map?”. They then continued, narrowing the artifact’s location down further and further, until they were able to pinpoint the exact building in question.
This reminds me of the last campaign I was in, when my husband played a Telepathic Psion. When we were coming up with our inventories at the beginning of the game, everyone else is putting down normal shit like horses, packs, travel provisions, money.
My husband asked for a bear trap.
The DM (who happened to be coolkidmitch) asked him what the hell he could possibly need a bear trap for, to which my husband only said, “You’ll see.” After about twenty minutes of figuring out what this bear trap would weigh, the skill my husband would have to roll in order to use it, and a bunch of other minutiae, my husband had a bear trap in his inventory.
Now, all of us kind of forgot about the bear trap while we were adventuring along on our escort quest (during which my husband’s Psion regularly tried to convince one of our employers that there was a golden acorn/tree of life/fountain of youth/whatever the fuck in the forest so she would wander off and get herself eaten by bears – she was really rude) until we run into a situation where we’ve been surprised by the locals and nobody can draw a weapon without causing a real problem.
My husband pulls the bear trap out of his saddlebag, holds it out to the nearest goon, and says the goon needs to roll a will check. When asked why the goon needs to roll a will check, my husband calmly replies, “He’s being offered the fanciest hat he’s ever seen in his life, and he really wants to put it on.”
Moment of silence around the gaming table as all of us realize that my husband is trying to end the encounter by convincing a goon to put a bear trap on his head like a hat.
The goon failed the will check.
I gotta share The Grand Show story now.
So my D&D campaign is comprised of four newbies, one guy with a lot of tabletop experience, and me, the newbie DM. The crew is trying to break into a walled manor, in part to find out if the Lord inside had anything to do with some culty plot shenanigans (P.S: he was dead the whole time, so no one would have detected them from inside the wall regardless).
I am very explicit to them about the fact that they are trying to break into the Lord’s manor, in the middle of the day, across from the main thoroughfare of the town, with no cover or disguise of any kind, and they are all level 2 – so no teleportation, invisibility, illusions – nothing. They do not heed my warnings, and our gnome paladin and halfling rogue toss a grappling hook over the wall and start to climb it. Meanwhile the other three in the party – a totally inconspicuous group consisting of a dragonborn with a cat, a tiefling in a chainmail bikini, a half-vampire warlock with a mask and a swordcane, and an NPC satyr who was along for the ride – are just hanging out below the wall watching.
After a minute I say, “behind you, you notice that a crowd of about ten or twelve peasants have gathered and are whispering in worried voices. You notice two guards approaching from down the road.”
Halfling rogue – one of the more-or-less newbies of the crew – whips around and immediately shouts “WELCOME TO THE GRAND SHOW!”, and scores an excellent deception roll. Dragonborn starts making his cat do tricks and rolls a sick animal handling check. Tiefling cleric begins pole-dancing on her spear and also rolls high. The warlock starts doing special effects with Minor Illusion and rolls ok. They nudge the satyr into playing music for them, who crits his performance check and charms half the audience as a result. The paladin, from the top of the wall, starts juggling his hammers and midway through throws one at the window of the Lord’s manor, breaking it so they can get in.
I was already going to give them that, and then nearly every last fucking NPC rolled an insight check of less than 10. So the group also made 10 gold for their “busking” and got into the manor completely unhindered. o/ goddamnit.
Roleplaying in general = epic
@listener-blue all i can think of is the damn squid babies
Running a campaign making use of the Sandstorm book for 3.5. Which is a desert environment and monster supplement book. So, the campaign is going well for an evil game. All the players are doing their shenanigans.
Most of them are following the plot but a player who regretted their CE character was given an option to reroll a new one as a cleric of storms. I figure I’ll give him a leg up and allow it. This is how the story of “Money Rain” Began.
So, rolling random treasure as they’re all level 8 or so. You can get some really silly ass results on the random treasure table. One of the enemies they killed happened to have a collection of 100,000 gold… In copper coins. All of it in copper coins. 10 million fucking pennies. So, the players, utilizing several extradimensional storage spaces have this ocean of pennies on hand to try and later convert it into a sensible currency like adamantine ingots or something.
One of the things they’ve been doing is cooperating with this cult, not so much as members but as “consultants.” Well, they were asked to help pacify this town and make it ready for the cult… Problem is they’re a group of 6 ne’er do wells versus a town of 3,500 people… That’s when the storm cleric goes, “well, I can make and generate a hurricane.” And that’s when the psion of the asks, “Can that include tornados and high speed winds?” I made the mistake of saying, “Yes.”
They then go on a twenty minute explanation and spend most of that doing various physics calculations. What is their grand plan for utilizing a force 3 hurricane in the desert? MONEY. FUCKING. RAIN. They decide to dump all 10 million copper into a pile and have tornadoes suck it up. After some quick math on the square and cubic footage of the town… They can get something like 9 coins per cubic foot of space for something like 10 rounds. And so it hailed pennies. More, and more and more. People immediately sought shelter because these things were doing almost 1 lethal point of damage from flying around at above terminal velocity. Then the weight on houses started collapsing roofs…
All told they ended up killing around 25% of the city, critical injuring another 30%, and left every single family with at least one casualty.
god damn money rain.
This post gets better everytime it crosses my dash
So, I’m in a campaign where everyone starts as level 0 commoners and we all flail around trying not to die horribly for as long as possible. Somehow, amidst all this carnage, an unexpected hero joined us.
DM: you are ambushed by three angry Gnolls. What do you do?
Dwarf herder (me): *looks through inventory* wait…I have a sow?
DM: Yep. You’re a herder.
Herder: Imma try and get her to attack the Gnolls.
*rolls a d20 and gets an 18*
DM: ok, she attacks. Roll a d4 for damage.
Herder: *rolls 4*
DM:….your pig kills the Gnoll.
Herder: I’m naming this sow Suzan the Battle Pig. Good job, Suzan!
~~~~later~~~~
Herder: *dies by another angry Gnoll*
Me: wait, can Suzan still fight?
DM: roll persuasion to see if your other character can convince her to help.
Me: *rolls nat20*
DM: Suzan is filled with rage and discovers an insatiable hunger for Gnoll flesh. She now attacks with a d6.
Suzan: *kills the remaining Gnoll boss and Gnoll magician*
Me: Suzan is gonna eat the Gnolls
DM:…ok, she eats the big one and gains 5XP and one point of luck. She’s too full to eat the other one.
Me: Suzan carries the magic Gnoll with her.
~~~~one short rest later~~~~
Me: can Suzan eat her Gnoll now?
DM:….oh right, you did say you carried that. Sure.
As Suzan eats the magic Gnoll, she feels a rush of magical energy in her mind. Her brain is rebuilt by this magic so that she has….
*rolls d20 and gets a 15*
Oh, for fu–Suzan has 15 intelligence now and the ability to cast spells. Congratulations.