I had an interesting sort of meta idea of giving a warlock a free level. The pact giving them power beyond normal means. It really would make the enticement of making a pact for power be real.
With diseases, I think the best way to handle them, without making curative magic toothless, is to exploit the fact that illness rarely hits a person instantly and obviously. If you contract a disease, it usually takes time between infection and the manifestation of symptoms. So the game ought to reflect that. Instead of telling the player, "You wade through the waist high sewer water, you now have Black Fever", just silently make rolls behind the DM screen while the players are wading in through said sewer water. If they contract Black Fever, make a note of it, but don't inform the players. Let them go on with their adventure. Then, slowly, start seeding into descriptions bits and pieces of the PC's deteriorating physical state. They get a coughing fit, or feel some rash developing. They wake up and get told to mark down that they have a point of Exhaustion, and maybe tell the character to reroll Hit Dice when they take rests, and make them take the lower of the two. Have them just experience a fainting spell after a fight...or in the middle of one. Just ramp up to worse and worse symptoms, until it becomes obvious to the characters/players that the PC is actually, legitimately ill. If you've been choosing the times when symptoms manifest, you could potentially trick players into thinking the symptoms are actually something else, like the fainting spell being chalked up to an actual Sleep Spell, by some unknown enemy. Or the result of a curse or poisoning. Or that coughing fit happened in some musty catacombs, so it seems like the character is just suffering from dust inhalation. Make the players as unsure of what's going on as the characters would be in-universe. Moreover, if the game goes on a while before the players catch on, their character might have passed the infection along to others. Other party members, or random NPCs. Many diseases - like Spanish Flu - had a period between infection and when symptoms manifest, where the inflicted person is contagious and passes it along to other people. That disease was so deadly because folks were passing it along before they even knew they were infected. So the PC - the "Patient Zero" - might have been interacting with other PCs or NPCs, silently passing on their ailment. Even if the character gets the party Cleric or Paladin to cure his disease, they may come back to a town they stayed at to find the whole place in the grips of epidemic. Made worse by the fact that the disease might have been contracted from some isolated location that no one has been to in centuries, meaning the populace has no immunity to it.
Ah, lycantropy curse, classic! I was a bit bored during one of my sessions, so when the party completed a dungeon - they got their obvious treasure room. Paladin, of course, instantly went for the chest in the middle of the room. And I asked for a dex roll. Party: - Oh fck, it's trapped! (I don't do a LOT of traps, only if we have a dedicated rogue for that, so he can have his moments of Indiana Jonesing some fucked up shit). Paladin: - *fails the throw* great, how much damage do I get? (party of veteran players, so traps are kinda the damage thing) I didn't really like that I was being called out on "trapping" the loot, so... Me: - You didn't react in time and the chest bit you. The mimic's fangs went deep into your exposed hands and recieved *some damage, nothing too much*. So the party - killed the mimic, and nobody cared for the bite. And what I do in my campaigns - IF players don't cure a condition with normal means during the next 24 hours - IT becomes a curse and can be cured only by doing some sort of side quest (homebrew rule, but sometimes - it's actually fun to see, that cleric goes "OH FCK ME!" after 24 hours and when I say, that some effect became permanent on a party member, because he didn't pay attention). What was the mimic curse? Well, after about 2 weeks - "you see dreams of gold, lots and lots of gold all around you, you can hear the sound of it and the unstoppable will to horde it. You wake up, naked in some village, covered in blood and surrounded by loot. You have a gold coin stuck between your teeth. Basicly, he became a weremimic, and the condition for transformation was - talking an hour or less prior to going to sleep about gold and loot. That was the trigger and they didn't talk about it much until a campfire next to a dungeon they were planning to raid for nearby town. On the awesome side tho, eventually he WAS able to cure the condition, but he was devoted. He was a paladin of Bahamut, I believe, and during their travels - he actually went to a temple to ask for advice from clerics. They provided the chance for "brief talk through high priest" and the Bahamut... well, he found it fair, that paladins greed led him to his current curse. And, for a favor, Bahamut will not remove it, but make it a LOT more bareble to live with. The catch? He stayed a weremimic and he could do a transformation to a furniture he encountered in his travel once per long rest (got a second transformation on level... 12 or something, since it's became kind of a running joke at that point and I really wanted to reward him for finding use for that). And yes, paladin the infiltrator - was one of the best things I've seen in that fun game. Basically, he could be SOLD to any merchant and then run away for instance (that's how they actually managed to infiltrate some corrupt merchant, by selling paladin in form of a table, so that he could know where the storehouse and base of the merchant is; yes, those clever ideas ARE one of the reasons why he got a second transformation) or just hide in shape of a box in plain site with critical success guaranteed on that roll, if enemy has 12 or less INT. Basically, he became a Solid Snake.
The orphaned hero probably has more to do with classic hero tropes as opposed to being D&D connected. Look at superheroes, almost all of the major superheroes lost their parents at a young age. Even mythology and ancient legends often involved the abandoned child, the orphan, the neglected child, or the demi-god whose divine parent was obviously not there to raise them. It just gives greater independence and freedom to the character - that and it's harder to justify why a normal, well adjusted person would be going off gallivanting and fighting dragons as opposed to someone with nothing to go back home to.
thehulkster94 this is exactly right. I mean, I've played characters with 2 living parents and everything, but there's much more freedom for motivations to take up an insanely dangerous lifestyle without such connections.
Here's an idea for curing lycanthropy: Removing the curse draws out the lycan spirit from the afflicted that you have to destroy before it inhabits another person.
Nicolas Diaz Oooooo, I like. Having to fight a representation of the curse so it doesn't find a new host once it leaves the afflicted is a great idea. Gives a basis for how the curse works.
That's pretty rad. A spirit of lycanthropy... it wouldn't just be a feral wolf. It'd have some fey or ghost-like tendencies, and it may borrow some of your own skills having been intertwined with you. It couldn't exist as just a feral wolf - it has to have some otherworldlyness. Nice concept.
Jim Davis, I wish my DM was you really bad. Every episode you just bring up this level of detail that I wish my group could reach, not blaming them that’s just how our group is.
The darkest I’ve ever gone is a I had a psionic try to prove herself to a mind flayer by beating them in a psychic battle. She rolled a natural 1 soI made her a vegetable. Rest of the campaign the party had to travel to the underdark to retrieve the fragments of her mind. After they were all retrieved she had to go through rehab to be able to function again, but nonetheless she was never the same again.
Ryan F i gave everyone a consent form before hand on how far they were willing to allow me to go with their characters. My personal rule is “epic actions have epic consequences” .
I think you did great with this because the player didn't lose their character forever and because she failed they had an entire campaign out of it so I think you handled it very cleverly
One of my favorite curses to place on my players was to have them lose memories, but make it so they don't know what they've lost, but they know they've lost it. They took a very extended journey to discover these memories, which tied into another quest or story they had no idea was missing - basically allowing me to poke a quest in out of nowhere.
I love lasting consequences in general, but I HATE consequences that are permanent. Especially level loss in older editions... sure, you can earn them back, but by the time you do the rest of the party will be further ahead of you. One bad encounter and you'll be sub-par to the party for the rest of your character's life.
"that's not what god wanted" is a great way to explain why the medical sciences aren't so developed: Clerics don't want Wizards to study diseases & to heal w/o Devine Magic.
JG R except the Theurgy school exists, which is the wizard cleric. The Celestial pact for the Warlock exists, again, not a cleric. Divine soul sorcerer is, literally, part god. Can cast any cleric spell they could ever want. But still not a cleric.
Theurgy is UA, therefore non-canon as of the time of writing. Celestial Pact is made with a Divine creature, therefore Divine Magic. Divine Soul Sorcerer is indeed literally part Divine. Therefore the Clerical spell they cast are -still- Divine Magic.
I meant it more in a political sense of the world within the game. I guess Clerics wouldn't be that fond of Celestial Warlocks, but they'd see Devine Sorcerers as Prophets or such
Actually, the existing clergy might despise a Divine Soul for being part divine like that. Especially those higher up in the hierarchy. Ironically enough, the Celestial Warlocks are probably less of a problem to most clergy than Divine Souls.
-yeah, I thought about that just after sending the comment, organized religion doesn't tend to look @ prophets under a very good light, they can be seen as a threat for being the very descendant of the gods, of which they should be the only representative. the Bible, e.g., is full of stories of prophets & how they were killed by the organized religion. -Celestial Pact might be seen as underlings or just heretics who worship Celestial beings instead of worshiping the gods -Theurgists! what are Theurgists? would they be secular, laical, theologians or studious monks? that will define a lot in your campaign, you could even have a heretic bunch based on the Reformation, in which the clergy is formed by Theurgists (studious theologians) instead of Clerics
Because how extremely important levels are, and because DND has such a huge power curve, I find it extremely difficult to use Level drain whilst still maintaining the fun. It is somewhat doable if ALL of the party are level-drained to a similar level, but if just one or two people get severely drained, it can hard to make the game fun for them as they will spend many sessions being little more than some dead weight that the other characters need to constantly look after, and the players themselves really don't enjoy barely being able to contribute to the party. I know a few people who would be ok to roleplay a character significantly weaker than the rest of the party due to an accident, but those are the masochists/geniuses that could find a way to RP even if their character was just a rock! The vast amount of players will be either very unhappy, or try to immediately get their character killed so they can reroll and play as something useful to the party.
I completely disagree with their stance on level drains. It's so incredibly unfun to play against. I can understand where they are coming from, but it's such a crap shoot to deal with as a player. I hate the concept and am glad that they got rid of it in 5E. As siner said, if it's just 1 person of the party that got affected, he's suddenly useless because he's now dead weight. My suggestion is to have RP consequences, not mechanical.
I usually institute experience drain, so rather than actually lose levels the player just has to make back lost exp. I also warned them ahead of time that ghosts did this, and every time they've encountered ghosts they are super cautious and usually diplomance their way out rather than fight.
I never liked level drains. How can a vampire hitting you make you forget hard learned lessons. Now I do like things like characteristics damage, I think they make far more sense.
6:35 My DM did just that with a curse at one point. He made the Remove Curse for that specific curse require a rare flower, found only in the Abyss. (What a flower is doing in the Abyss, I don't know). But it made for a much more interesting adventure to go and get this ingredient instead of just 'boom you're cured'.
First of all, you guys are amazing. I have consumed at least a little of probably just about every D&D channel on UA-cam and no one else I have found provides the depth of analysis that I find here other than Matt Colville. Between his channel and yours, I think any aspiring DM can find what they need to run a successful game. You have certainly inspired me, and now I run three games that shamelessly steal ideas from your show. Seriously guys, you are doing God's work with this channel and I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to make it. On the specific topic, I really hate the way restoration magic trivializes some of the tricks in my bag. I know it was an intentional design decision by WotC, but I disagree with it. Instead, I will either have remove curse/disease be a caster check like you suggested in your video, with the DC determined by the spell slot used to cast the curse, or I will just allow the target to make a new saving throw against the curse/disease. I only allow one attempt per curse/disease per day, and I also usually have it so that a curse/disease, once it has taken effect, takes a day to fade after being dispelled. Even just informing my players of that rule has been enough to make them wary and behave more cautiously, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
Ok but now you have me thinking of a town where everyone DOES have a limb missing, and why. maybe a powerful creature that will happily protect the town from invasion, drive off any chimera and such...for a price. it wants a limb from every child born into the villiage. maybe it's a hag who needs them for a ritual, or a necromancer who likes making hand swarms, , or it lost an arm and now demands the same from its wards. nobody knows why, but the creature just wants everyone's non-dominant arm and they're willing to give it to them in return for the protection. that'd make for a fucked up town, especially if a character has an incentive to kill one of those creatures...
I could even see a 'sunk cost fallacy' thing coming up in this plot. Like, with a creature protecting the town in exchange for limbs, the town villagers would probably hate to have some plucky heros come in and kill the defender they literally paid an arm and a leg for.
This reminds me of gimpy's tavern in Pavis, where the owners are retired adventurers who all lost part of a limb, I believe that it was a leg. This is in Runequest 2 of course.
Thing is, if you've got a cleric in the group then that space in your party is taken by a character whose purpose is to deal with damage, death, disease and curses. If that space was taken by a champion fighter with elven accuracy and GWM then the lasting consequences of battles such as death would be staved off in other ways such as killing the enemy before they can kill the party. So considering the party brings a cleric along and takes that hit on potential overall damage in favour of the utility of a cleric I don't see an issue with allowing the cleric to do cleric things. That said, it behooves the DM to place those kinds of challenges in the parties path, draining their spell slots and the space in the clerics prepared spell list by throwing curses, disease and the like at them and letting the cleric do their thing. Otherwise the cleric is just a worse fighter. And though they might be removed easily, perhaps they can remove the first curse but that uses a spell slot they can no longer use to heal the party, revivify an ally or remove a disease later on.
I love sprinkling my curses with some upsides as well. I once had a Wizard become possessed by a demon of secrets. The wizard gained a sizable boost to their intelligence and spellcasting ability, but the demon would be slowly siphoning their vitality and life energy; withering their body and slowly killing them. The wizard was actually quite happy with it in the beginning... although that did not necessarily last :D
One of my favorite characters was from second edition. Dwarven cleric. Ended up retiring him at 17th level. He'd been 14th level twice...and had a wooden leg. Permanent things happen...but you ROLE play them!
lh0000 we were playing Curse of Strahd and I had a wild magic surge. After that I rolled really high on any charisma checks til we switched to a homebrew setting.
Hey guys I just wanted to say I absolutely love your channel! Thank you for all the great work you guys are doing and for the awesome videos! Looking forward to many more Wednesdays with WebDM
I just want to give you some praise, I find your videos very re watchable, it's so easy to have them on again, you and Matt Colville are the only ones I've really found this with even when I enjoy other UA-camrs.
My opinion on monsters that reduce some statistic about the players is this: Losing Strength, Intelligence, etc. Feels like damage Losing Levels/XP feels like pointless regression
Oooo, another thing that could be cool, casting resurrection magic could have detrimental affects on the caster, similar-ish to the wish spell. The sort of exhausted theme it has.
The Arcane Trickster Rogue Archetype gets an ability at 17th level called "Spell Thief" that was the first thing that came to my mind when I read this comment. Perhaps it can be used as an inspiration for the mechanics of such a monster?
The Tome of beasts with out by kobold press, has a spider that does that it uses the bodies of Mages like batteries and is often found with one in his mouth
Hands down the greatest channel about D&D...hands down! For 100k subs can you guys do a video on how creative control works, who is in charge of the format and final cut, what influence fans now have on the direction you guys go in (if they even have any influence at all), how you guys schedule bringing Jim in now that he lives away, etc, etc. Essentially I’m asking for maybe a mini documentary about “WebBM” and a bit more insight into the people who are “Jim”, “Jon”, and “the Camera crew”. I know you have done a video like this in the past where you talked about the set up of the show and some of what goes into it, some of Jim and Jon’s past works in production / theatre, but perhaps another is in order, based on how far you guys have come. The fans have said it many times before, people toon in just as much for the material as they do for the hosts (some people even more so for the hosts! 😊). Just a thought. Also I really want to know what happens next in Razzel Sinn...🤓
I've been watching the channel for a while, you guys are the best. I dont play 5th edition but the way you guys talk about dnd really helped my dnd group enriching our experience.
I’m running Curse of Strahd now, and I’m all about the party having to make difficult moral decisions. I really like the idea a curse or negative effect that can only be removed by transferring it to someone else. Especially with Lycanthropy and Vampirism.
Only recently found this channel, and I've been binging tons of videos. As someone who's just started running a 5e campaign (which has...a lot of homebrew) these videos have been a great resource for learning more about how to make a game interesting. This video (and the earlier lycanthropy one) was especially useful...since the entire premise for the campaign I'm running is based on a "werewolf plague" wiping out or converting a considerable swathe of the population, while the party is questing to find a cure. This video really helped me figure out ways to explain why that plague couldn't be just whisked away with a dispel curse and such, which is great. It'd be kinda lame if the central conceit for the campaign was solved quickly with a third-level cleric going around and casting "dispel curse", after all. Keep up the great work guys.
Lots of comments so sorry if this has been said. A good way to use lasting consequences is tie them to a certain location or dungeon. Imagine a dungeon where to unlock doors or solve puzzles you need to interact with a certain kind of crystal to proceed. Interacting with those crystals makes a player take a certain type of curse that lasts as long as the party as in the dungeon. That way the players know they need to deal with these consequences for the duration of the dungeon but arent worried about having that consequence for the whole campaign.
Disappointed you guys didn't touch on the lingering injuries at all in the DMG or suggestions on what to do with a player who has suffered a dead character that the party is trying to resurrect
One big proponent for handwashing (and also the first surgeon to perform a C-Section where both the child and mother survived) was actually a transman named Dr. James Barry! Another big figure in the sanitisation movement, Florence Nightingale knew him but they /Hated/ each other because they had such different temperaments. But yeah, those were the big "wash your hands" figures that pushed us towards more sanitary practices #TheMoreYouKnow
Having specialized rituals and materials and places of power and people of knowledge is a fantastic solution for handling magic as a quickfix. The injuries table and madness tables are great resources. You got crit above 1/2 hp or knocked below 1/2 hp, that's a minor superficial injury roll. Crit below 1/2 hp or dropped to 0; lasting minor injury that may alter skill or attack rolls slightly, or roll for long-term madness. Died or crit to 0 hp; marring injury roll and or permanent madness. The most important thing is to encourage and reward players for embracing the difficulties so they feel rewarded for their role-play, instead of punished for trying to play.
Awesome video! I'm about to DM a game tomorrow (My first time as DM, actually!) which prominently features an epidemic of a curse similar to werewolf lycanthropy, but I wanted it to be much harder to cure in PCs than *poof* Remove Curse when they hit 5th level and even harder for NPCs so that they feel some repercussions if they leave someone behind (especially someone important) during an attack by these creatures and he/she gets infected, that might come back to bite them! Pun not intended, haha! The last few videos you've done, as well as your lycanthropy video have been really helpful for thinking up some ideas for my own game!
My favorite character I have ever played lost his right arm from the shoulder down (he was right handed). It is to this day still have greatest top 3 greatest effects on any character I've played.
Totally on point! I'm with you guys all the way here. This is my main gripe with 5th Edition, it is actually difficult to provide any semblance of real danger without tweaking the rules or up scaling your encounter difficulty a great deal, and if you've got more than 4 players you're really working to make it challenging and impacting.
my DM was making things easy so we asked him to make it harder and he did now, we're all 20 but he somehow makes quests harder and has buffed up the monster himself (home-brew...kinda but it's really just numbers) and it's awesome
In 5e I think that players create more negative consequences between themselves than the DM does and that's a good thing. Nasty status ailments is one thing but broken trust between characters or hard lessons learned is another thing altogether. In one game the player was the head of an adventurers guild, a war started and weighing his efficacy as a leader a lot of members up and left out of a sense of national pride as well as better pay. Most of them died though. Another player who had set him up to be a guild leader was railing on him for being inconsiderate and brings up how he wasn't even there to lead his men as guild leader on the battle field. Basically ended the conversation and made a point most people at the table probably never considered themselves.
I was running out of the Abyss, there is a point where Zugtomny, the demon queen of fungus can infect PCs with her spores, which are counted as a disease. This is a DEMON LORD. The level 3 paladin goes 'well, I'm immune to disease.' This is a HUGE disconnect between story and mechanics, so I said 'you are immune to common diseases, this is a demon lord, you are not immune.' the PC wasn't happy but he accepted it and we moved on, because it made sense from the story.
Not sure if you've already covered it, but I'd love to see a video on running/playing in low level, first tier games - DMs I've played with have often looked to skip them as they think low level play is too boring
Another video directly correlated to my old school, realistic consequences, 5th ed game. Thanks again for the well discussed underlinings of our beloved game.
For me, as both a player and a GM, I have always disliked things like level drain. Anything that happens in the game should be a going forward. Losing a level as a temporary effect is dramatic but as a permanent or long term effect it just takes away their character's abilities and powers that they've worked for. I have always enjoyed permanent effects that add to the game though. Losing an eye so they take a penalty on ranged attacks and maybe suffer from headaches or something. Adding a curse and requiring some interesting quest to remove it. Unfortunately I tend to see the opposite when there's a long term effect
my favorite lasting consequence is having a child. if your bard or other pc decides to seduce someone and get a room, have them roll a d20 (rolling against a pretty low number, so it’s uncommon, or whatever you decide) to accidentally get themselves or the other one pregnant. it’s especially fun if you bring it up a bit later (because you never know, right) and they have to provide for the kid
Ghost . . . This happened to my character once. It was a LONG campaign (in-game time) and I eventually raised my daughter to be a cleric. After my character died, I took over my kid. The party knew her well, and had no problem welcoming her (she was 22 at the time).
I did this, kinda.... I made one of my PC's severed ear grow little arms and legs. It acts like a grumpy old dwarf that likes to build/repair things. It can hear the pulse of gems underground sometimes, so he runs off to mine them, other times things are just too loud for it to bear. Timothy Eary is loved by the party. Not sure when it'll backfire, maybe it wont but only time will tell.
I've introduced a magic bracelet that on command word deals 1d10 to the wearer and severs their hand. The hand becomes a crawling claw that the player can control, until returned to place where is heals back onto their arm.
How about, to make remove curse more risky, having a chance that the curse would instead infect the person that tries to remove the curse, like having a low risk of a trade off instead of an outright removal of the curse. Maybe also have it be that if you use a higher level spell slot that the risk is lowered or just vanishes depending on the curses level.
I think y'all should do a video on transportation. Ask questions like "how big is the world the players are in?" and "what types of transportation are readily available?" You could talk about the exotic modes of transportation and the more common ones, and how they can be used by the dm.
One thing I've found helps get players on board with lasting negative effects is to also seed your game with ways to gain lasting positive effects that lie outside of loot and class levels (boons, extra feats, etc). Telling your players "adventuring can change your character for the worse, but it could also change them for the better" is a much easier sell. These lasting positive effects also give your players more goals to shoot for. If they don't want to risk lasting consequences, then they'll decide not to seek out these lasting benefits. It makes the choice theirs and rewards them for accepting putting these lasting consequences in the game.
Every party I've played in was a glass cannon party with zero Clerics, and going to a town doesn't. DM "Oh you look for a cleric in in this town? Yea.... Nooo you don't find one; look's like you're stuck without an arm." Inner Me "WHY!!!!!" Outer Me "Alright".
Love your video's, My life cleric recently was turned into an uber werewolf(kept rolling 1's on tests and it was a full moon) My character savagely killed and ate about 14 families and a bunch of passers by. Some powerful casters and everyone that we had met so far tried to cure it to no effect and we read books in game about to no avail. I also nearly TPK'ed the party(I kept rolling 20's to break out of restraints and hit). I had my cleric have a breakdown and decided to take his own life before he could next turn and hurt one innocent life. I didn't want it to seem like a cop out but I think it was how it was received, I had not thought it would but I felt that my character would do. Had it be any other character other than this one I would not have done this but the cleric was absolutely disgusted at the thought of taking a life unless absolutely necessary.
I feel like the reason that things like negative levels were unpopular because they lacked a meaningful way to avoid the threat. A player builds a level over many encounters and actions, so having undead that, at times, just kind of become a threat from left field, be able to undo that so easily is, well, kinda bullshit. I think a broader issues is that so many of those negative aspects lacked a concrete way to over come that. A permanent stat debuff is problematic when the rulebook lacks a clear path to reversal. And it doesn't have to be n easy path, but a clear one. Because it's too easy (especially considering the dearth of DMs, and the fact that many people don't live in areas that can support massive game communities) for a DM to permanently cripple a character relative to the events surrounding them without providing a path to remedy. I feel like "Reincarnation" is a good example, where you might end up with a character fundamentally changed, and they're stuck with their old build. A lot of DMs will say "you've made your bed, deal with it." when a character suddenly changes their balance. A fighter that looses their Half-Orc endurance, their +2 to strength, and their +1 con but now has a Tabaxi's +2 dexterity might want to move away from their great weapon style because they've just lost HP, durability, and raw hitting power, and focus on archery or two weapon fighting. But the DMG and PHB provide no recourse to say, rules as written, that serious consideration has to be given to how the players recover or adapt to significant changes or negative effects. (There's also other questions with that spell, such as whether wisdom and intelligence should change, given that the character remembers their life experiences, and wis and int kinda represent learned experience.)
I had a DM who had a tinker gnome cleric NPC who used restoration on a rogue who was petrified and chipped his ear off. We asked him to "fix him" so he gave him an ear that would make an alarm sound if he crit failed lol
I kind of did that but for a character I'm playing in a supers game but only because there backstory involves time travel and playing out the scenario essentially precluded not messing with that timeline, therefore to keep it from getting to messy I made a nice discreet time loop where the person who gives them access to their technical facilities is actually there future boss they hate before a name change. The Dm can expand this plotline however they want... you know how comics love to mess around with that, however it in no way needs to affect the plot. My Dm's not only a hundred percent on board but actually quite excited!
I had a Satyr character hit with Grim Revenge (3.5e). He ended up defeating his own hand in combat. He then went on a quest to find tinker gnomes to craft him a hand. It had claws he couldn't use for offhand attacks. Super fun, but would go limp in anti magic fields.
A cool idea I thought of was altering a curse by making the Caster some sort of spell tinker and the component you've used to remove the curse has made it stronger. Now you have to go on a quest to find a specific flower in a specific swamp or something. Or maybe a character gets killed by a special spell that requires an ancient diamond in a lost dungeon that's been enchanted in a specific way. You carry your teammates body to the temple, and there it is. But the doors seal behind you and now everyone must escape.
I thought about something similiar. When someone has a disease or curse or whatever I assign a Spell Level to that. Everytime something like remove curse or cure disease is cast I remove that Spells level from the Disease/Curse level. When it reaches zero, it is cured. So as an example, a disease with level 6 needs maybe 2 Level 3 Cure diseases. Additionally, a disease "regrows" 1 level at sunset.
In the game I ran the other night I had the goblin nursery you guys have mentioned a few times to get the players to think. I expected an argument at most and to my delight it actually came to blows within the party. The bard was going to slaughter the goblins and the paladin attacked him to stop him he crits him and dropped the bard in one hit and he had 2 failed death saves before the paladin agreed to loh him. And I laughed and laughed
In NWN, yeah the NWN from BioWare, if you leveled your character up while under the influence of a curse, it became permanent. This wasn't mentioned in the manual, so it was a fairly cool event to experience when it happened to me the first time.
There was a thing with anikins metal hand were a magnet meant to get rid of the clones weapons when they were atacking a citadel, and he got stuck to the ceiling through the fight.
This reminds me of an old character of mine from Old World of Darkness. My werewolf got so beat up he kept getting permanent injuries. He lost an eye to some banes, has his ribs permanently cracked and one lung collapsed, but the little guy kept going.
A player of mine picked up a cursed dagger magical +1 with curse of missle attraction on him. He didnt Id it before using and they had no curse removal spells on casters that worked as the item was strongly enchatned and protected. He didnt want to destroy the dagger so he lived with it until they seeked out and met a powerfull cleric how removed the curse. Was great fun side plot.
I am posting this without finishing the video but I don’t want to forget: what o do for curses to remove a curse with “ Remove Curse “ you have to cast it at a equal or higher level then the curse was cast and if it is equal you have to then roll and beat the DC of the curse. ( it makes sense to me and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how curses work normally but if u want to use it you are free too )
I'm running my own "razel sinn" campaign, so I deal with a lot of curses and so forth as a DM. And I did it just like you all suggested a level 7 curse needs to be restored by level 7 or higher magic. It's worked so far and the team quested to find a cleric able to restore them, with no questions or complaining about the rules, they just went with it.
My favorite was Crit Hit tables that had lasting wounds. I DMed a campaign where a character played a one armed samurai cause of one of these tables and a Nat 20 rolled by me during a climactic boss fight.
Kevin Hoffmann they just started streaming a lot of different games on Twitch that have a Starbound game which is spell Jammer. & Jim's Homebrew set in a post-apocalyptic kind of world
I've always loved the idea of double-sided curses, where the curse can have beneficial elements. For example, a curse that gives someone light blindness but they gain darkvision or see in darkness.
what about having a PC who's a goblin suffer Nilbogism after, say, a space-time rift occurs that drops an aberration/dimensional enemy on the party and afterward they end up slowly being effected by this disease? (just learned about the Nilbog today) Could they be 'cured'?
Mine to help with my campaigns is I don’t have my worlds have health potions, I also have it where it requires 1d6+1 days to restore full health. For the magic health section it’s more like the caster is willingly giving their health to others for a short amount of time. It makes them think of alternatives that can surprise anyone.
I like to make up a different type of disease or poison that conventional magic doesn't work against. This type of Magical disease makes the party need to seek out an especially powerful magic to combat the magical illness. Maybe it's a great druid or the fey wild or a magical flower that grows in the underdark.
Daniel Palmer I have something similar in one of my campaigns, it's a plauge that is propagated through magic, if someone who is infected casts a spell or had a spell cast on them the other person has a chance to be infected. Made some of my PCs a little scared of slinging spells all around the village.
I do something similar, although I prefer to also do something in the middle of the road. I.E. there is a disease, it can be cursed by a Cure Disease spell, but it may require the Cure Disease spell to be cast at a higher level, or for the caster to succeed on a difficult spell check, due to the complexity/resilience of the disease. But due to the often powerful magic associated with curses, the anti curse-removal tricks you can do with them are far more fun :D
A lot of players have a very reckless attitude that absolutely hate that they had some sort of permanent effect afflict them. "I can't believe I got turned to stone, all I did was go into the Medusa's lair!!"
Jared Prymont I mean, there's no such thing as a permanent effect. As a DM you should be mindful that a player is playing a character because they want to play them. The game normally has rules in place to reverse things like petrification and even death. As a DM you should give players the opportunity to bring their friends back. No one says it has to be easy, but if one character gets hit with the petrification the rest of them are still able bodied. Maybe you need the blood of a naga and a holy ritual of the snake god, Serpentor to undo it. Now the party gets to go on an adventure to save their friend, as parties are oft to do. Sounds to me like a character got petrified and asked you "is there anyway we can get rid of this" and you just smugly said "Nope! Shouldn't have fought a MEDUSA if you didn't wanna get turned to stone forever, that'll show you for playing a game to have fun." and were surprised when your players demanded a way out.
There’s the other side of this argument here to consider- what happens when your players are viewed as the only people who CAN cure those diseases and curses? What if the players are dishonoured publically because they want to save their spell slots or go to the next town or progress with the plot to wipe out the source of the disease? Could that end up on them becoming public enemies?
Im in a campaign with a Tortle barbarian named Yog, and he died in our second session. We wanted to keep him, and we decided to have him come back as a ghost. So now when he touches anything he has to make a constitution roll, and if its below an 11, he fases through the object, and has all the weaknesses/resistances of an undead
You guys would really love Shadow of the Demon Lord. The author was one of the 5e developers, and back in the day he wrote for Warhammer Fantasy RPG. The tone of the setting is frequently compared to Warhammer, but I think it's a bit more twisted. And the mechanics are incredibly well designed. If you consider 5e a few steps above 3.5 in game design, SotDL takes it a few steps farther.
If you nerf the healing classes, are they going to get something back in return? If not you are going to have the problem of no one wanting to play the gimped healer class. You'll end up playing Inn Stay 5E.
tbh now i kinda want a campaign where half of the story is shown through random encounters in inns. Like you HAVE to stay in the inn because travel is crazy hard; but in every one something goes down 'monster of the week' tv show style and through that you start seeing a thread linking it all, leading you to the big bad
How I dealt with curses or crippling effects, I took the level of the caster level and complement stat to curse an item. To detect the curse depending at what level it was cast, all depends on what level the pc, detection complement stat and roll. As an example, if an item was enchanted with a curse, npc level 10, with complement stat at say 16, and a pc level at 5, with complement stat of 14, it would be difficult for the pc to detect the curse. That applies with detect magic, higher enchanted with cures harder to detect, meaning harder to tell what type of magic it is. With that, to dispel said curse the pc would have to find an other pc or npc on the same level (if the curse was cast at a high level). On top of that, for any reason the party cannot find such person to decurse, they would have to find a temple of some sort, that has ample pool of holy water, a purified flame and party members have to leave an ample donation to have the effect removed. Most of the time they keep the effect as a badge of honor, in remembrance of difficult times, depending what the curse effect is.
I've only been playing d&d for about a year, hearing these old rules... I don't think I would have enjoyed some of the older versions. Permanent punishments seems a bit harsh, I'd rather just roll a non fucked over character tbh
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I had an interesting sort of meta idea of giving a warlock a free level.
The pact giving them power beyond normal means. It really would make the enticement of making a pact for power be real.
"I'm altering the way Restoration magic works, Pray I don't alter it further! " - Jim Davis
❤
With diseases, I think the best way to handle them, without making curative magic toothless, is to exploit the fact that illness rarely hits a person instantly and obviously. If you contract a disease, it usually takes time between infection and the manifestation of symptoms. So the game ought to reflect that.
Instead of telling the player, "You wade through the waist high sewer water, you now have Black Fever", just silently make rolls behind the DM screen while the players are wading in through said sewer water. If they contract Black Fever, make a note of it, but don't inform the players. Let them go on with their adventure.
Then, slowly, start seeding into descriptions bits and pieces of the PC's deteriorating physical state. They get a coughing fit, or feel some rash developing. They wake up and get told to mark down that they have a point of Exhaustion, and maybe tell the character to reroll Hit Dice when they take rests, and make them take the lower of the two. Have them just experience a fainting spell after a fight...or in the middle of one. Just ramp up to worse and worse symptoms, until it becomes obvious to the characters/players that the PC is actually, legitimately ill. If you've been choosing the times when symptoms manifest, you could potentially trick players into thinking the symptoms are actually something else, like the fainting spell being chalked up to an actual Sleep Spell, by some unknown enemy. Or the result of a curse or poisoning. Or that coughing fit happened in some musty catacombs, so it seems like the character is just suffering from dust inhalation. Make the players as unsure of what's going on as the characters would be in-universe.
Moreover, if the game goes on a while before the players catch on, their character might have passed the infection along to others. Other party members, or random NPCs. Many diseases - like Spanish Flu - had a period between infection and when symptoms manifest, where the inflicted person is contagious and passes it along to other people. That disease was so deadly because folks were passing it along before they even knew they were infected. So the PC - the "Patient Zero" - might have been interacting with other PCs or NPCs, silently passing on their ailment. Even if the character gets the party Cleric or Paladin to cure his disease, they may come back to a town they stayed at to find the whole place in the grips of epidemic. Made worse by the fact that the disease might have been contracted from some isolated location that no one has been to in centuries, meaning the populace has no immunity to it.
I come from the future, and this comment hits hard.
You magnificent bastard.
This aged like cheese.
After the first time you do this, pc's will just starting casting lesser restoration on a regular basis.
@@aethon0563 Good. Let them burn their resources. It's their spell slots.
Ah, lycantropy curse, classic!
I was a bit bored during one of my sessions, so when the party completed a dungeon - they got their obvious treasure room. Paladin, of course, instantly went for the chest in the middle of the room. And I asked for a dex roll.
Party: - Oh fck, it's trapped! (I don't do a LOT of traps, only if we have a dedicated rogue for that, so he can have his moments of Indiana Jonesing some fucked up shit).
Paladin: - *fails the throw* great, how much damage do I get? (party of veteran players, so traps are kinda the damage thing)
I didn't really like that I was being called out on "trapping" the loot, so...
Me: - You didn't react in time and the chest bit you. The mimic's fangs went deep into your exposed hands and recieved *some damage, nothing too much*.
So the party - killed the mimic, and nobody cared for the bite. And what I do in my campaigns - IF players don't cure a condition with normal means during the next 24 hours - IT becomes a curse and can be cured only by doing some sort of side quest (homebrew rule, but sometimes - it's actually fun to see, that cleric goes "OH FCK ME!" after 24 hours and when I say, that some effect became permanent on a party member, because he didn't pay attention).
What was the mimic curse?
Well, after about 2 weeks - "you see dreams of gold, lots and lots of gold all around you, you can hear the sound of it and the unstoppable will to horde it. You wake up, naked in some village, covered in blood and surrounded by loot. You have a gold coin stuck between your teeth.
Basicly, he became a weremimic, and the condition for transformation was - talking an hour or less prior to going to sleep about gold and loot. That was the trigger and they didn't talk about it much until a campfire next to a dungeon they were planning to raid for nearby town.
On the awesome side tho, eventually he WAS able to cure the condition, but he was devoted. He was a paladin of Bahamut, I believe, and during their travels - he actually went to a temple to ask for advice from clerics. They provided the chance for "brief talk through high priest" and the Bahamut... well, he found it fair, that paladins greed led him to his current curse. And, for a favor, Bahamut will not remove it, but make it a LOT more bareble to live with.
The catch? He stayed a weremimic and he could do a transformation to a furniture he encountered in his travel once per long rest (got a second transformation on level... 12 or something, since it's became kind of a running joke at that point and I really wanted to reward him for finding use for that).
And yes, paladin the infiltrator - was one of the best things I've seen in that fun game. Basically, he could be SOLD to any merchant and then run away for instance (that's how they actually managed to infiltrate some corrupt merchant, by selling paladin in form of a table, so that he could know where the storehouse and base of the merchant is; yes, those clever ideas ARE one of the reasons why he got a second transformation) or just hide in shape of a box in plain site with critical success guaranteed on that roll, if enemy has 12 or less INT.
Basically, he became a Solid Snake.
The orphaned hero probably has more to do with classic hero tropes as opposed to being D&D connected. Look at superheroes, almost all of the major superheroes lost their parents at a young age. Even mythology and ancient legends often involved the abandoned child, the orphan, the neglected child, or the demi-god whose divine parent was obviously not there to raise them. It just gives greater independence and freedom to the character - that and it's harder to justify why a normal, well adjusted person would be going off gallivanting and fighting dragons as opposed to someone with nothing to go back home to.
thehulkster94 this is exactly right. I mean, I've played characters with 2 living parents and everything, but there's much more freedom for motivations to take up an insanely dangerous lifestyle without such connections.
Here's an idea for curing lycanthropy: Removing the curse draws out the lycan spirit from the afflicted that you have to destroy before it inhabits another person.
Nicolas Diaz Oooooo, I like. Having to fight a representation of the curse so it doesn't find a new host once it leaves the afflicted is a great idea. Gives a basis for how the curse works.
Look up the ending of the Companions' questline in Skyrim for an example of this done pretty well.
That's pretty rad.
A spirit of lycanthropy... it wouldn't just be a feral wolf. It'd have some fey or ghost-like tendencies, and it may borrow some of your own skills having been intertwined with you. It couldn't exist as just a feral wolf - it has to have some otherworldlyness.
Nice concept.
so I wasn’t the only one who thought about that Skyrim companion quest
Good Idea
Jim Davis, I wish my DM was you really bad. Every episode you just bring up this level of detail that I wish my group could reach, not blaming them that’s just how our group is.
Joshua Tungate You don't need Jim Davis. You are the DM your group needs. Welcome to the club.
Cheapshot 28 it sounds like they’re a player tho
A dwarf in our group took an axe from a large loot pile that was a tithe to Umberlee. Needless to say he is now cursed and won't go near water.
T20s Grunt The Bitch Queen is not to be trifled with.
The darkest I’ve ever gone is a I had a psionic try to prove herself to a mind flayer by beating them in a psychic battle. She rolled a natural 1 soI made her a vegetable. Rest of the campaign the party had to travel to the underdark to retrieve the fragments of her mind. After they were all retrieved she had to go through rehab to be able to function again, but nonetheless she was never the same again.
Icarus Deoliviera seems harsh but I bet the players will never forget that campaign!
Ryan F i gave everyone a consent form before hand on how far they were willing to allow me to go with their characters. My personal rule is “epic actions have epic consequences” .
As a DM and I player I think that's an amazing way to go with that.
I think you did great with this because the player didn't lose their character forever and because she failed they had an entire campaign out of it so I think you handled it very cleverly
JohnnyBoy thank you ! I’m fairly new to DMing but I really like to build a believable setting with believable consequences.
One of my favorite curses to place on my players was to have them lose memories, but make it so they don't know what they've lost, but they know they've lost it.
They took a very extended journey to discover these memories, which tied into another quest or story they had no idea was missing - basically allowing me to poke a quest in out of nowhere.
15:43 is where they discuss lycantrophy.
I love lasting consequences in general, but I HATE consequences that are permanent. Especially level loss in older editions... sure, you can earn them back, but by the time you do the rest of the party will be further ahead of you. One bad encounter and you'll be sub-par to the party for the rest of your character's life.
LOL the family of Pruitt's on the thumbnail haha.
"that's not what god wanted" is a great way to explain why the medical sciences aren't so developed: Clerics don't want Wizards to study diseases & to heal w/o Devine Magic.
JG R
except the Theurgy school exists, which is the wizard cleric.
The Celestial pact for the Warlock exists, again, not a cleric.
Divine soul sorcerer is, literally, part god. Can cast any cleric spell they could ever want. But still not a cleric.
Theurgy is UA, therefore non-canon as of the time of writing.
Celestial Pact is made with a Divine creature, therefore Divine Magic.
Divine Soul Sorcerer is indeed literally part Divine. Therefore the Clerical spell they cast are -still- Divine Magic.
I meant it more in a political sense of the world within the game. I guess Clerics wouldn't be that fond of Celestial Warlocks, but they'd see Devine Sorcerers as Prophets or such
Actually, the existing clergy might despise a Divine Soul for being part divine like that.
Especially those higher up in the hierarchy.
Ironically enough, the Celestial Warlocks are probably less of a problem to most clergy than Divine Souls.
-yeah, I thought about that just after sending the comment, organized religion doesn't tend to look @ prophets under a very good light, they can be seen as a threat for being the very descendant of the gods, of which they should be the only representative. the Bible, e.g., is full of stories of prophets & how they were killed by the organized religion.
-Celestial Pact might be seen as underlings or just heretics who worship Celestial beings instead of worshiping the gods
-Theurgists! what are Theurgists? would they be secular, laical, theologians or studious monks? that will define a lot in your campaign, you could even have a heretic bunch based on the Reformation, in which the clergy is formed by Theurgists (studious theologians) instead of Clerics
That's the most disturbing cover picture to date. Bravo Pruitt. Bravo.
Give me back my face
Diditallforthexp IT'S YOU. YOU KILLED MY FATHER.
I didn't even realise until you pointed it out
Adam Osborne i really want to use a curse like that in a game. A town with a cursed well that makes everyone look like the same dude.
Level drain is the coolest thing ever to DM me, and it's abhorrently overpowered to player me...
Because how extremely important levels are, and because DND has such a huge power curve, I find it extremely difficult to use Level drain whilst still maintaining the fun.
It is somewhat doable if ALL of the party are level-drained to a similar level, but if just one or two people get severely drained, it can hard to make the game fun for them as they will spend many sessions being little more than some dead weight that the other characters need to constantly look after, and the players themselves really don't enjoy barely being able to contribute to the party.
I know a few people who would be ok to roleplay a character significantly weaker than the rest of the party due to an accident, but those are the masochists/geniuses that could find a way to RP even if their character was just a rock!
The vast amount of players will be either very unhappy, or try to immediately get their character killed so they can reroll and play as something useful to the party.
I completely disagree with their stance on level drains. It's so incredibly unfun to play against. I can understand where they are coming from, but it's such a crap shoot to deal with as a player. I hate the concept and am glad that they got rid of it in 5E.
As siner said, if it's just 1 person of the party that got affected, he's suddenly useless because he's now dead weight.
My suggestion is to have RP consequences, not mechanical.
I usually institute experience drain, so rather than actually lose levels the player just has to make back lost exp. I also warned them ahead of time that ghosts did this, and every time they've encountered ghosts they are super cautious and usually diplomance their way out rather than fight.
I never liked level drains. How can a vampire hitting you make you forget hard learned lessons. Now I do like things like characteristics damage, I think they make far more sense.
This is easily the best video thumbnail of your whole channel. That's really saying something, because every thumbnail you make is already solid gold.
6:35 My DM did just that with a curse at one point. He made the Remove Curse for that specific curse require a rare flower, found only in the Abyss. (What a flower is doing in the Abyss, I don't know). But it made for a much more interesting adventure to go and get this ingredient instead of just 'boom you're cured'.
First of all, you guys are amazing. I have consumed at least a little of probably just about every D&D channel on UA-cam and no one else I have found provides the depth of analysis that I find here other than Matt Colville. Between his channel and yours, I think any aspiring DM can find what they need to run a successful game. You have certainly inspired me, and now I run three games that shamelessly steal ideas from your show. Seriously guys, you are doing God's work with this channel and I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to make it.
On the specific topic, I really hate the way restoration magic trivializes some of the tricks in my bag. I know it was an intentional design decision by WotC, but I disagree with it. Instead, I will either have remove curse/disease be a caster check like you suggested in your video, with the DC determined by the spell slot used to cast the curse, or I will just allow the target to make a new saving throw against the curse/disease. I only allow one attempt per curse/disease per day, and I also usually have it so that a curse/disease, once it has taken effect, takes a day to fade after being dispelled. Even just informing my players of that rule has been enough to make them wary and behave more cautiously, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
Ok but now you have me thinking of a town where everyone DOES have a limb missing, and why. maybe a powerful creature that will happily protect the town from invasion, drive off any chimera and such...for a price. it wants a limb from every child born into the villiage. maybe it's a hag who needs them for a ritual, or a necromancer who likes making hand swarms, , or it lost an arm and now demands the same from its wards. nobody knows why, but the creature just wants everyone's non-dominant arm and they're willing to give it to them in return for the protection. that'd make for a fucked up town, especially if a character has an incentive to kill one of those creatures...
I could even see a 'sunk cost fallacy' thing coming up in this plot. Like, with a creature protecting the town in exchange for limbs, the town villagers would probably hate to have some plucky heros come in and kill the defender they literally paid an arm and a leg for.
Ooooo I like this? Mind if I use this idea for a campaign? :3
go right ahead! that's like half of GMing, taking other people's ideas for your own use XD
of course! grabbing ideas from people and things around you to steal and/or modify is half your duty as a GM!
This reminds me of gimpy's tavern in Pavis, where the owners are retired adventurers who all lost part of a limb, I believe that it was a leg. This is in Runequest 2 of course.
Thing is, if you've got a cleric in the group then that space in your party is taken by a character whose purpose is to deal with damage, death, disease and curses. If that space was taken by a champion fighter with elven accuracy and GWM then the lasting consequences of battles such as death would be staved off in other ways such as killing the enemy before they can kill the party.
So considering the party brings a cleric along and takes that hit on potential overall damage in favour of the utility of a cleric I don't see an issue with allowing the cleric to do cleric things. That said, it behooves the DM to place those kinds of challenges in the parties path, draining their spell slots and the space in the clerics prepared spell list by throwing curses, disease and the like at them and letting the cleric do their thing. Otherwise the cleric is just a worse fighter. And though they might be removed easily, perhaps they can remove the first curse but that uses a spell slot they can no longer use to heal the party, revivify an ally or remove a disease later on.
and then your DM who is easily bruised in their egos that theirs players win, will nerf the damage output until the party can't survive
I love sprinkling my curses with some upsides as well.
I once had a Wizard become possessed by a demon of secrets. The wizard gained a sizable boost to their intelligence and spellcasting ability, but the demon would be slowly siphoning their vitality and life energy; withering their body and slowly killing them.
The wizard was actually quite happy with it in the beginning... although that did not necessarily last :D
One of my favorite characters was from second edition. Dwarven cleric. Ended up retiring him at 17th level. He'd been 14th level twice...and had a wooden leg. Permanent things happen...but you ROLE play them!
I played a wild magic sorcerer that was aged back into 9 year old because of a wild magic surge and she was more effective afterwards.
Not gonna lie, that sounds like a freakin hilarious story... like I would genuinely like to hear the story behind that....... seriously.
lh0000 we were playing Curse of Strahd and I had a wild magic surge. After that I rolled really high on any charisma checks til we switched to a homebrew setting.
"There is a horrific plague that is ripping through the cities and villages of your world"
Hey guys I just wanted to say I absolutely love your channel! Thank you for all the great work you guys are doing and for the awesome videos! Looking forward to many more Wednesdays with WebDM
How about that unbeatable curse that lasts at least 18 years called 'an heir'?
also far too easily cured using in game mechanics
This is my favorite comment thread
Son bad
I just want to give you some praise, I find your videos very re watchable, it's so easy to have them on again, you and Matt Colville are the only ones I've really found this with even when I enjoy other UA-camrs.
My opinion on monsters that reduce some statistic about the players is this:
Losing Strength, Intelligence, etc. Feels like damage
Losing Levels/XP feels like pointless regression
You know what would be cool, a monster that sucks the spell slots out of you and empowers his attacks with it.
Oooo, another thing that could be cool, casting resurrection magic could have detrimental affects on the caster, similar-ish to the wish spell. The sort of exhausted theme it has.
The Arcane Trickster Rogue Archetype gets an ability at 17th level called "Spell Thief" that was the first thing that came to my mind when I read this comment. Perhaps it can be used as an inspiration for the mechanics of such a monster?
The Tome of beasts with out by kobold press, has a spider that does that it uses the bodies of Mages like batteries and is often found with one in his mouth
Hands down the greatest channel about D&D...hands down!
For 100k subs can you guys do a video on how creative control works, who is in charge of the format and final cut, what influence fans now have on the direction you guys go in (if they even have any influence at all), how you guys schedule bringing Jim in now that he lives away, etc, etc. Essentially I’m asking for maybe a mini documentary about “WebBM” and a bit more insight into the people who are “Jim”, “Jon”, and “the Camera crew”. I know you have done a video like this in the past where you talked about the set up of the show and some of what goes into it, some of Jim and Jon’s past works in production / theatre, but perhaps another is in order, based on how far you guys have come. The fans have said it many times before, people toon in just as much for the material as they do for the hosts (some people even more so for the hosts! 😊).
Just a thought.
Also I really want to know what happens next in Razzel Sinn...🤓
I loved his explanation about the mountain sage, brilliant.
I've been watching the channel for a while, you guys are the best. I dont play 5th edition but the way you guys talk about dnd really helped my dnd group enriching our experience.
I’m running Curse of Strahd now, and I’m all about the party having to make difficult moral decisions. I really like the idea a curse or negative effect that can only be removed by transferring it to someone else. Especially with Lycanthropy and Vampirism.
Only recently found this channel, and I've been binging tons of videos. As someone who's just started running a 5e campaign (which has...a lot of homebrew) these videos have been a great resource for learning more about how to make a game interesting. This video (and the earlier lycanthropy one) was especially useful...since the entire premise for the campaign I'm running is based on a "werewolf plague" wiping out or converting a considerable swathe of the population, while the party is questing to find a cure.
This video really helped me figure out ways to explain why that plague couldn't be just whisked away with a dispel curse and such, which is great. It'd be kinda lame if the central conceit for the campaign was solved quickly with a third-level cleric going around and casting "dispel curse", after all.
Keep up the great work guys.
Lots of comments so sorry if this has been said. A good way to use lasting consequences is tie them to a certain location or dungeon. Imagine a dungeon where to unlock doors or solve puzzles you need to interact with a certain kind of crystal to proceed. Interacting with those crystals makes a player take a certain type of curse that lasts as long as the party as in the dungeon. That way the players know they need to deal with these consequences for the duration of the dungeon but arent worried about having that consequence for the whole campaign.
Disappointed you guys didn't touch on the lingering injuries at all in the DMG or suggestions on what to do with a player who has suffered a dead character that the party is trying to resurrect
One big proponent for handwashing (and also the first surgeon to perform a C-Section where both the child and mother survived) was actually a transman named Dr. James Barry! Another big figure in the sanitisation movement, Florence Nightingale knew him but they /Hated/ each other because they had such different temperaments.
But yeah, those were the big "wash your hands" figures that pushed us towards more sanitary practices #TheMoreYouKnow
Love your videos guys!! I've watched them all and I don't even play D&D though i find it so interesting.
Awesome shoutout to Maze of the Blue Medusa! My campaign is just about to go through it and I can't wait!
Having specialized rituals and materials and places of power and people of knowledge is a fantastic solution for handling magic as a quickfix. The injuries table and madness tables are great resources. You got crit above 1/2 hp or knocked below 1/2 hp, that's a minor superficial injury roll. Crit below 1/2 hp or dropped to 0; lasting minor injury that may alter skill or attack rolls slightly, or roll for long-term madness. Died or crit to 0 hp; marring injury roll and or permanent madness.
The most important thing is to encourage and reward players for embracing the difficulties so they feel rewarded for their role-play, instead of punished for trying to play.
Oof, that part about diseases hits hard in 2021...
Awesome video! I'm about to DM a game tomorrow (My first time as DM, actually!) which prominently features an epidemic of a curse similar to werewolf lycanthropy, but I wanted it to be much harder to cure in PCs than *poof* Remove Curse when they hit 5th level and even harder for NPCs so that they feel some repercussions if they leave someone behind (especially someone important) during an attack by these creatures and he/she gets infected, that might come back to bite them! Pun not intended, haha! The last few videos you've done, as well as your lycanthropy video have been really helpful for thinking up some ideas for my own game!
My favorite character I have ever played lost his right arm from the shoulder down (he was right handed). It is to this day still have greatest top 3 greatest effects on any character I've played.
Pruitt was on point with those puns
I love it
So many webdm vids!
yeay!
Don't stop releasing them!
I'm going to be taking over as DM of my group in the near future, and these videos are super helpful, and watchable.
have you checked out matt mercer's dm tips?
Totally on point! I'm with you guys all the way here. This is my main gripe with 5th Edition, it is actually difficult to provide any semblance of real danger without tweaking the rules or up scaling your encounter difficulty a great deal, and if you've got more than 4 players you're really working to make it challenging and impacting.
Great video, as always, guys.
Seriously though, why would someone thumbs down any of these videos?
my DM was making things easy so we asked him to make it harder and he did
now, we're all 20 but he somehow makes quests harder and has buffed up the monster himself (home-brew...kinda but it's really just numbers) and it's awesome
Another good effect could be that the restoration/undoing of the consequence happening gradually
In 5e I think that players create more negative consequences between themselves than the DM does and that's a good thing.
Nasty status ailments is one thing but broken trust between characters or hard lessons learned is another thing altogether.
In one game the player was the head of an adventurers guild, a war started and weighing his efficacy as a leader a lot of members up and left out of a sense of national pride as well as better pay. Most of them died though. Another player who had set him up to be a guild leader was railing on him for being inconsiderate and brings up how he wasn't even there to lead his men as guild leader on the battle field.
Basically ended the conversation and made a point most people at the table probably never considered themselves.
I was running out of the Abyss, there is a point where Zugtomny, the demon queen of fungus can infect PCs with her spores, which are counted as a disease. This is a DEMON LORD. The level 3 paladin goes 'well, I'm immune to disease.' This is a HUGE disconnect between story and mechanics, so I said 'you are immune to common diseases, this is a demon lord, you are not immune.' the PC wasn't happy but he accepted it and we moved on, because it made sense from the story.
Not sure if you've already covered it, but I'd love to see a video on running/playing in low level, first tier games - DMs I've played with have often looked to skip them as they think low level play is too boring
Another video directly correlated to my old school, realistic consequences, 5th ed game. Thanks again for the well discussed underlinings of our beloved game.
For me, as both a player and a GM, I have always disliked things like level drain. Anything that happens in the game should be a going forward. Losing a level as a temporary effect is dramatic but as a permanent or long term effect it just takes away their character's abilities and powers that they've worked for. I have always enjoyed permanent effects that add to the game though. Losing an eye so they take a penalty on ranged attacks and maybe suffer from headaches or something. Adding a curse and requiring some interesting quest to remove it. Unfortunately I tend to see the opposite when there's a long term effect
my favorite lasting consequence is having a child. if your bard or other pc decides to seduce someone and get a room, have them roll a d20 (rolling against a pretty low number, so it’s uncommon, or whatever you decide) to accidentally get themselves or the other one pregnant. it’s especially fun if you bring it up a bit later (because you never know, right) and they have to provide for the kid
Ghost . . . This happened to my character once. It was a LONG campaign (in-game time) and I eventually raised my daughter to be a cleric. After my character died, I took over my kid. The party knew her well, and had no problem welcoming her (she was 22 at the time).
I have an elven PC that's flaw is that he has a huge sex drive. Three half elves in our games so far have been his illegitimate children
Yeah.... the bard in my party got a prominent noblewoman pregnant. It sort of curbed his "i sleep with every female npc" routine.
lose a hand. get a Familiar-like Crawling Claw! an evil mischievous cleptomaniac Crawling Claw who follows you as if you were their hen mom.
I did this, kinda....
I made one of my PC's severed ear grow little arms and legs. It acts like a grumpy old dwarf that likes to build/repair things. It can hear the pulse of gems underground sometimes, so he runs off to mine them, other times things are just too loud for it to bear.
Timothy Eary is loved by the party. Not sure when it'll backfire, maybe it wont but only time will tell.
Lose a hand? Keep Mage Hand constantly on and have it float right where the old hand used to be. Or maybe Chill Touch if you're an evil little shite
DracoFlyer highrollers did exactly what you said
Shadowgear Really? Which one? The Mage Hand thing?
I've introduced a magic bracelet that on command word deals 1d10 to the wearer and severs their hand. The hand becomes a crawling claw that the player can control, until returned to place where is heals back onto their arm.
How about, to make remove curse more risky, having a chance that the curse would instead infect the person that tries to remove the curse, like having a low risk of a trade off instead of an outright removal of the curse. Maybe also have it be that if you use a higher level spell slot that the risk is lowered or just vanishes depending on the curses level.
I think y'all should do a video on transportation. Ask questions like "how big is the world the players are in?" and "what types of transportation are readily available?" You could talk about the exotic modes of transportation and the more common ones, and how they can be used by the dm.
Can u guys do a show on how to build magic items.
yah same
One thing I've found helps get players on board with lasting negative effects is to also seed your game with ways to gain lasting positive effects that lie outside of loot and class levels (boons, extra feats, etc). Telling your players "adventuring can change your character for the worse, but it could also change them for the better" is a much easier sell. These lasting positive effects also give your players more goals to shoot for. If they don't want to risk lasting consequences, then they'll decide not to seek out these lasting benefits. It makes the choice theirs and rewards them for accepting putting these lasting consequences in the game.
No link to the raise dead episode? You mentioned it so many times.
Every party I've played in was a glass cannon party with zero Clerics, and going to a town doesn't. DM "Oh you look for a cleric in in this town? Yea.... Nooo you don't find one; look's like you're stuck without an arm." Inner Me "WHY!!!!!" Outer Me "Alright".
Was your dm going for TPK?
@@kykisaky7841 No, he was just old school and liked having me disarmed.
@@akiraterzi9180 that is basically what TPK means.
Love your video's, My life cleric recently was turned into an uber werewolf(kept rolling 1's on tests and it was a full moon) My character savagely killed and ate about 14 families and a bunch of passers by. Some powerful casters and everyone that we had met so far tried to cure it to no effect and we read books in game about to no avail. I also nearly TPK'ed the party(I kept rolling 20's to break out of restraints and hit). I had my cleric have a breakdown and decided to take his own life before he could next turn and hurt one innocent life. I didn't want it to seem like a cop out but I think it was how it was received, I had not thought it would but I felt that my character would do. Had it be any other character other than this one I would not have done this but the cleric was absolutely disgusted at the thought of taking a life unless absolutely necessary.
I feel like the reason that things like negative levels were unpopular because they lacked a meaningful way to avoid the threat. A player builds a level over many encounters and actions, so having undead that, at times, just kind of become a threat from left field, be able to undo that so easily is, well, kinda bullshit. I think a broader issues is that so many of those negative aspects lacked a concrete way to over come that. A permanent stat debuff is problematic when the rulebook lacks a clear path to reversal. And it doesn't have to be n easy path, but a clear one. Because it's too easy (especially considering the dearth of DMs, and the fact that many people don't live in areas that can support massive game communities) for a DM to permanently cripple a character relative to the events surrounding them without providing a path to remedy.
I feel like "Reincarnation" is a good example, where you might end up with a character fundamentally changed, and they're stuck with their old build. A lot of DMs will say "you've made your bed, deal with it." when a character suddenly changes their balance.
A fighter that looses their Half-Orc endurance, their +2 to strength, and their +1 con but now has a Tabaxi's +2 dexterity might want to move away from their great weapon style because they've just lost HP, durability, and raw hitting power, and focus on archery or two weapon fighting. But the DMG and PHB provide no recourse to say, rules as written, that serious consideration has to be given to how the players recover or adapt to significant changes or negative effects. (There's also other questions with that spell, such as whether wisdom and intelligence should change, given that the character remembers their life experiences, and wis and int kinda represent learned experience.)
I had a DM who had a tinker gnome cleric NPC who used restoration on a rogue who was petrified and chipped his ear off. We asked him to "fix him" so he gave him an ear that would make an alarm sound if he crit failed lol
Pretty sure it also played mission impossible music when he snuck around
I kind of did that but for a character I'm playing in a supers game but only because there backstory involves time travel and playing out the scenario essentially precluded not messing with that timeline, therefore to keep it from getting to messy I made a nice discreet time loop where the person who gives them access to their technical facilities is actually there future boss they hate before a name change. The Dm can expand this plotline however they want... you know how comics love to mess around with that, however it in no way needs to affect the plot. My Dm's not only a hundred percent on board but actually quite excited!
I had a Satyr character hit with Grim Revenge (3.5e). He ended up defeating his own hand in combat. He then went on a quest to find tinker gnomes to craft him a hand. It had claws he couldn't use for offhand attacks. Super fun, but would go limp in anti magic fields.
now I want to watch the Blue Medusa adventure :/
A cool idea I thought of was altering a curse by making the Caster some sort of spell tinker and the component you've used to remove the curse has made it stronger. Now you have to go on a quest to find a specific flower in a specific swamp or something.
Or maybe a character gets killed by a special spell that requires an ancient diamond in a lost dungeon that's been enchanted in a specific way. You carry your teammates body to the temple, and there it is. But the doors seal behind you and now everyone must escape.
I'm about to run the Curse of Strahd campaign. You can bet your d20's that I'll be using some of these ideas for lasting consequences
I thought about something similiar. When someone has a disease or curse or whatever I assign a Spell Level to that. Everytime something like remove curse or cure disease is cast I remove that Spells level from the Disease/Curse level. When it reaches zero, it is cured. So as an example, a disease with level 6 needs maybe 2 Level 3 Cure diseases. Additionally, a disease "regrows" 1 level at sunset.
In the game I ran the other night I had the goblin nursery you guys have mentioned a few times to get the players to think. I expected an argument at most and to my delight it actually came to blows within the party. The bard was going to slaughter the goblins and the paladin attacked him to stop him he crits him and dropped the bard in one hit and he had 2 failed death saves before the paladin agreed to loh him. And I laughed and laughed
I don't know how, but these thumbnails just keep getting better.
In NWN, yeah the NWN from BioWare, if you leveled your character up while under the influence of a curse, it became permanent. This wasn't mentioned in the manual, so it was a fairly cool event to experience when it happened to me the first time.
There was a thing with anikins metal hand were a magnet meant to get rid of the clones weapons when they were atacking a citadel, and he got stuck to the ceiling through the fight.
This reminds me of an old character of mine from Old World of Darkness. My werewolf got so beat up he kept getting permanent injuries. He lost an eye to some banes, has his ribs permanently cracked and one lung collapsed, but the little guy kept going.
A player of mine picked up a cursed dagger magical +1 with curse of missle attraction on him. He didnt Id it before using and they had no curse removal spells on casters that worked as the item was strongly enchatned and protected. He didnt want to destroy the dagger so he lived with it until they seeked out and met a powerfull cleric how removed the curse. Was great fun side plot.
Just cursed my players with lycanthropy. So ready to use this
A_Wannabe_Merlin My DM has a boner for vampirism. It is terrifying going through a town and knowing that there are vampires in this town.
A_Wannabe_Merlin I can't stop laughing at that Land Before Time profile pic.
I am posting this without finishing the video but I don’t want to forget: what o do for curses to remove a curse with “ Remove Curse “ you have to cast it at a equal or higher level then the curse was cast and if it is equal you have to then roll and beat the DC of the curse. ( it makes sense to me and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how curses work normally but if u want to use it you are free too )
Jim needs to play the RPG Torchbearer. It's soooo good and it's fun to watch your characters struggle with the conditions they become afflicted with.
I'm running my own "razel sinn" campaign, so I deal with a lot of curses and so forth as a DM. And I did it just like you all suggested a level 7 curse needs to be restored by level 7 or higher magic. It's worked so far and the team quested to find a cleric able to restore them, with no questions or complaining about the rules, they just went with it.
My favorite was Crit Hit tables that had lasting wounds. I DMed a campaign where a character played a one armed samurai cause of one of these tables and a Nat 20 rolled by me during a climactic boss fight.
Hey guys, really like your videos. I wish you could air some more sessions so we can see your tips and examples in play.
Kevin Hoffmann they just started streaming a lot of different games on Twitch that have a Starbound game which is spell Jammer. & Jim's Homebrew set in a post-apocalyptic kind of world
Imagine the curses you could put on people using the “Wish” spell
close that door in the background, it's spooking me
+waffielz yolo I like empty chairs and open doors
It always makes me happy when you upload a new video ❤️
I've always loved the idea of double-sided curses, where the curse can have beneficial elements. For example, a curse that gives someone light blindness but they gain darkvision or see in darkness.
what about having a PC who's a goblin suffer Nilbogism after, say, a space-time rift occurs that drops an aberration/dimensional enemy on the party and afterward they end up slowly being effected by this disease? (just learned about the Nilbog today) Could they be 'cured'?
Mine to help with my campaigns is I don’t have my worlds have health potions, I also have it where it requires 1d6+1 days to restore full health. For the magic health section it’s more like the caster is willingly giving their health to others for a short amount of time. It makes them think of alternatives that can surprise anyone.
I like to make up a different type of disease or poison that conventional magic doesn't work against. This type of Magical disease makes the party need to seek out an especially powerful magic to combat the magical illness. Maybe it's a great druid or the fey wild or a magical flower that grows in the underdark.
Daniel Palmer I have something similar in one of my campaigns, it's a plauge that is propagated through magic, if someone who is infected casts a spell or had a spell cast on them the other person has a chance to be infected. Made some of my PCs a little scared of slinging spells all around the village.
I do something similar, although I prefer to also do something in the middle of the road.
I.E. there is a disease, it can be cursed by a Cure Disease spell, but it may require the Cure Disease spell to be cast at a higher level, or for the caster to succeed on a difficult spell check, due to the complexity/resilience of the disease.
But due to the often powerful magic associated with curses, the anti curse-removal tricks you can do with them are far more fun :D
A lot of players have a very reckless attitude that absolutely hate that they had some sort of permanent effect afflict them. "I can't believe I got turned to stone, all I did was go into the Medusa's lair!!"
Jared Prymont
I mean, there's no such thing as a permanent effect. As a DM you should be mindful that a player is playing a character because they want to play them. The game normally has rules in place to reverse things like petrification and even death.
As a DM you should give players the opportunity to bring their friends back. No one says it has to be easy, but if one character gets hit with the petrification the rest of them are still able bodied. Maybe you need the blood of a naga and a holy ritual of the snake god, Serpentor to undo it. Now the party gets to go on an adventure to save their friend, as parties are oft to do.
Sounds to me like a character got petrified and asked you "is there anyway we can get rid of this" and you just smugly said "Nope! Shouldn't have fought a MEDUSA if you didn't wanna get turned to stone forever, that'll show you for playing a game to have fun." and were surprised when your players demanded a way out.
My games have consequence and enemies who want to win. I never said there weren't work arounds- but those have to be earned.
There’s the other side of this argument here to consider- what happens when your players are viewed as the only people who CAN cure those diseases and curses?
What if the players are dishonoured publically because they want to save their spell slots or go to the next town or progress with the plot to wipe out the source of the disease? Could that end up on them becoming public enemies?
love your videos - as a request could you do more on classes? there are alot of UA not covered ect
Im in a campaign with a Tortle barbarian named Yog, and he died in our second session. We wanted to keep him, and we decided to have him come back as a ghost. So now when he touches anything he has to make a constitution roll, and if its below an 11, he fases through the object, and has all the weaknesses/resistances of an undead
You guys would really love Shadow of the Demon Lord. The author was one of the 5e developers, and back in the day he wrote for Warhammer Fantasy RPG. The tone of the setting is frequently compared to Warhammer, but I think it's a bit more twisted. And the mechanics are incredibly well designed. If you consider 5e a few steps above 3.5 in game design, SotDL takes it a few steps farther.
If you nerf the healing classes, are they going to get something back in return?
If not you are going to have the problem of no one wanting to play the gimped healer class.
You'll end up playing Inn Stay 5E.
tbh now i kinda want a campaign where half of the story is shown through random encounters in inns. Like you HAVE to stay in the inn because travel is crazy hard; but in every one something goes down 'monster of the week' tv show style and through that you start seeing a thread linking it all, leading you to the big bad
It's not nerfing the healing classes. They existed in earlier editions and did just fine - if not better. Lol.
How I dealt with curses or crippling effects, I took the level of the caster level and complement stat to curse an item. To detect the curse depending at what level it was cast, all depends on what level the pc, detection complement stat and roll. As an example, if an item was enchanted with a curse, npc level 10, with complement stat at say 16, and a pc level at 5, with complement stat of 14, it would be difficult for the pc to detect the curse. That applies with detect magic, higher enchanted with cures harder to detect, meaning harder to tell what type of magic it is. With that, to dispel said curse the pc would have to find an other pc or npc on the same level (if the curse was cast at a high level). On top of that, for any reason the party cannot find such person to decurse, they would have to find a temple of some sort, that has ample pool of holy water, a purified flame and party members have to leave an ample donation to have the effect removed. Most of the time they keep the effect as a badge of honor, in remembrance of difficult times, depending what the curse effect is.
I've only been playing d&d for about a year, hearing these old rules... I don't think I would have enjoyed some of the older versions. Permanent punishments seems a bit harsh, I'd rather just roll a non fucked over character tbh