Sans Undertale Is an INCREDIBLE D&D Encounter
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- Опубліковано 12 гру 2024
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Go full meta and just challenge the actual player in armed combat.
Roll to not die IRL
@@itsvioneko what's my bonus
@@Recardoisntaken sprint literally as fast as you can until you slow significantly, time it, divide by 6, equals roughly your con score. Find your bonus as normal. Good luck.
It's the only way
@@demonzabrak how do we determine dex?
This is the perfect boss for all those murder hobos
They're gonna have a bad time
"On days like this party's like you.. should be burning in hell."
@@PlayYourRole LOL
That's what he's for
Totally dude it's a perfect boss for them murder hobos
The value in having a character who can see all their past sins and punish them for it - even sins they tried to not do, or were under the influence when doing - is insanely drama filled. Especially because Sans so rarely hates them, but is cheerful and resigned that he has take this “evil” entity out of the world.
…did I mention I’ve used him as a boss in my world-hoppers campaign already? XD
AGH I love it!
Did you have a Psycho player, that got his ass whooped hard?
@@burningsamrai3681 Oh yeah, I had an unremorseful murderer and Sans almost put him in the ground. The only reason the player didn't die was he could leave the world and Sans couldn't
@@sentinelstorm487 Quite effective lol.
Maybe give them a Ghost rider like penance stare attack or whatever it’s called
I remember reading Reddit stories of a Bone Dragon. It’s made from the corpses of Murderhobo activities, and grows in power and vengeance with each new body part.
Now I’m imagining this being was Sans. He learns from each death how you fight, and gains resistances or even immunities to your skills. Each hit can cause Fear by making you relive an NPC’s life before you killed them.
If you sincerely apologize, he’ll revivify you and warn you he may not be so forgiving next time.
Taking notes rn
God that’s actually gold. Another thing I was thinking of is a growing dark presence, unknown to the players, with each kill they make, kind of like your bone dragon. It basically would be an upgraded Shadow, but also able to enter and haunt the dreams of people that kill because «That’s what my character would do», acting as a jury, but also as a vigilante when facing it as a mini-boss, targeting only those that it deems unredeemable, but not killing them. Instead, each of its attack would make resurface the bad memories and feelings about each of these kills, and let them experience mentally the pain they inflicted. They wouldn’t be able to die, as this «mini-boss» can’t deal much damage. The whole thing about it is that he wants to teach them that the world is not all about violence.
As for the reason why it’s a shadow, the original character, a paladin, got ambushed and killed by shadows while he was going on a dark path, but was able to regain his consciousness post mortem. Hence why he has these moral virtues.
God DAMN I really like this idea!
got a link to that story?
@@PlayYourRole If I were to make this Sans, ignoring offensive scaling like damage and DCs…
The Wis Save for the Fear effect is a Legendary Action that occurs after a player hits him, you take half damage if you save and you are still aware of who you are as you relive the last day in that NPC’s life (instead of forgetting who you are).
He has a low base AC. However, he has a table of different ACs. Each way you Murderhobo increases the individual AC against that method. So if a Fighter always uses his Greataxe, the AC for that would be high and Sans might eventually resist or immune that weapon; but if the Dagger is never used, it has the better hit chance and full damage.
Let the players know how this works by having him say “I saw that coming. Unlike [NPC],” then activate the above Wis Save to show that same move killing an NPC. They should catch on that their normal methods don’t work.
Sans, when he kills players, turns them into loyal Undead who retain remaining skills and spells.
Once the party is down, he will take the apologetic to safety, revivify, and warn them against testing his mercy a second time.
My take on how to make the NPC more meta is to use your natural voice for them and have them refer to the PCs by their players' names
Ohhh thats such a fun idea!
brilliant idea
No have them use the character names but every once in a while hint that they know the players name. Don't make it too obvious at first
that would also let players have some existential drama or fear in there characters.
as the characters wouldnt know what this NPC was talking about and if said NPC tells them "yeah your not in controll of anything you never have been".
it would allow intresting scenarios where roleplayers could have arguments with there own characters kind of like the player in undertale does with "player 2" chara etc etc.
I once ran a oneshot themed after a fairytale, and I DMed in a sorta silly storyteller voice. At the very end, when the PC’s encountered the malicious force that had possessed the kingdom’s prince and had been causing so many problems in the kingdom, I switched to first person and revealed that the narrator I’d been playing the whole time was actually an in-universe character.
As they fought the Narrator, he couldn’t cheat, but he lied to them up and down, lying about his damage resistances and vulnerabilities, his AC, how hurt he was, what other NPCs were doing at the time, and so on.
It was a lot of fun.
Technically, Sans doesn’t “see” into the different timelines, he’s just really intuitive and uses the MCs reaction to things to figure out what they’ve done
In D&D terms, he has a passive insight and perception of like 50
This is a very important thing to point out, since I’ve seen comments talk about how to make this character fit a more meta role, despite how Sans himself doesn’t have these meta abilities people think he does. Like you said, he’s just very perceptive with pretty much every "meta" comment just being based on player expression.
Like in his fight, he only comments on the number of times you’ve died/killed him, or if he successfully "spared" you. Hell, even when he finds out you’re a time traveler in the other routes, it starts because you look bored! He’s definitely more about insight and perception than people realise.
If anyone wants to lean towards that for their own version of this character, I imagine it’d work great with sudden dice roll buffs (like the use of Inspiration or Lucky, or maybe an ability that adds a die roll to a failed check) as the PC shifts to handle the task better, something that’s usually unseen.
Or perhaps an out of character argument that some players settled with, but didn’t like the outcome the party had selected, where you could comment on how that character looks like they wish something else would’ve happened.
These are just examples and I encourage people to think of their own, but this is more in line with how Sans would be. Not "Oh, I know I’m in a game." like Deadpool.
@@eddiemate he also realises that you can control the timeline during the scene in the hotel restaurant if you have died so far on that playthrough. He makes a comment about the promise he made to toriel to protect you, and says “looks like I’ve done a good job, you haven’t died.” He then follows this up by commenting on how frisk has an annoyed look on their face, as they have indeed died.
I would say insight & perception of like, 100 or something.
Because Sans explicitly uses your *_facial expressions ALONE_* to guess everything with a near 100% accuracy.
Sans after cheap shotting you: Wow, you look pretty pissed about something. Heh... *Guess I'm pretty good at my job.*
Everytime you fight Sans is actually the first time. However, Sans is _aware_ of DETERMINATION & timeline alterations occurring due to DETERMINATION interferences. With only that knowledge, & the fact that he IS going to fight you, he knows that you WILL die fighting him. So, seeing someone otherwise so disturbingly neutral or outright _joyful_ about what they're doing, suddenly so utterly *_livid_* could only tell him ONE thing: I _AM_ pretty good at my job.
@@eddiemate p
Honestly, I don't think that's completely it. He'd not have the past timeline experience to gauge each facial expression on - He could have a ball park, but he's _too_ precise. That said, his guesses break down after a bit. I think he has _partial_ timeline seeing abilities, since gravity magic and time magic often go hand in hand. But it's less, "Oh yes I have seen every single thing you did in every timeline" and more, "I'm getting a feeling that this is your... 5th try? Yes, 5th"
So not pure insight and perception, not pure timeline chicanery, but more like a supernaturally boosted perception and insight
Sans shouldn’t be a meme honestly. He’s a fantastic character. Some people just love to go a bit too far
Sans is only a meme because megalovania is a meme
I agree, undertale has some fantastic writing
@@אורוידןפלד-י3ק megalovania is a banger
@@Klausbro never said it wasn't, a song can be both a banger and a meme
@@אורוידןפלד-י3ק It's neither at this point. It's an Honest to god genre.
“All that advantage and inspiration and you still couldn’t hit me. Maybe luck just isn’t on your side or your puppet strings are to tight”
The strings comment would fit Spamton better, even though it's still good for sans.
@@Ilias2 you're sorta just saying that cause of the phrase puppet strings, the actual phrasing and intent behind the general point isn't very Spamton, he's always quite encouraging and trying to make a sales pitch for things he thinks will help both you and him
And then in Snowgrave he's wayyyy too angry to speak that calmly
the fun thing about sans is that his fight mechanics don't have to translate 1:1 to some other medium like DND. the point isn't that he's powerful because of some specific mechanism or special lore power, it's that he's cheating and turning the game's mechanics against you. so if you have to design a sans fight in something other than undertale, you don't try to "recreate" his powers exactly, you just find clever ways to break the place he's inhabiting.
it's something that's often missed but can have great payoff. sans in a comic? bro can dodge by just walking outside of the panel into the empty space. in a video? he'll "pause" the video to rearrange everything, then play it again. in a dnd campaign? "huh? you're rolling? who does that? i can just hit you, pal."
the fun comes from the shock of suddenly seeing rules you've accepted and use to their full extent suddenly broken and bent. him dodging attacks in undertale isn't cool because he's secretly athletic, it's because he's the only character in the game that actually just ignores the RPG attack rule. him having 1 ATK and 1 DEF but having that 1 damage be dealt per frame is super cheeky and it could easily be translated into DND stats and rolls to catch people off guard, i think.
that "a character that can hear the players talk" idea is brilliant, and illustrates what i mean by all this :)
at the end of the day, overusing this kind of character trope can turn a story or campaign into something a little too meta, or define the entire thing. keeping it secret and only revealing it for a climactic moment that makes players suddenly look back on small hints and things they thought were just funny bits or something is definitely the way to go. you don't want to spend an entire session dealing with immersion breaking moments, but one moment/encounter that breaks the wall for full effect can make for an incredibly memorable experience.
yooo that's actually a good way to interpret sans
and the way you beat him is just like you interpret it, breaking the original rules by moving the box and attacking a second time in the same turn
@@dualitygrief576 agreed!
i actually have a more extreme opinion in that it would help the game to have the way of beating sans be harder than having the game do it for you. the idea that you had to break the game and its rules to beat him doesn't translate well, and it's often illustrated or seen as him just being caught off guard or something.
i think it'd be better to have him be genuinely impossible to beat, and the requirement for a win condition would be /actually/ cheating and modifying game values or "deleting" some fake game file (think of Oneshot or DDLC as examples of mechanics like these) to do so. this way, the idea that you have to cheat back is more efficiently communicated by the game, and the idea of "Determination" as a concept translates as well. you're so determined you'll do ANYTHING to get past an obstacle that is supposed to be impossible.
it also ties back into the narrative consequences... at the end of the genocide run, the game breaks completely. it'd be almost ironic how, in order to reach the end, you have to break the game. and now that you've broken it, there's no going back...
My headcanon about Sans's powers is that he can warp spacetime. We know he can just casually teleport, so why not? He ignores immunity frames by speeding up time during his turn, and is able to dodge where no other monster can because he slows down time during your turn.
@@plasmakitten4261 Or.. hear me out, he just twists the game's logic to do all of what you say, for the reason of "just because", which is the entire crux to his powers to begin with.
He dodges your attacks because, why would he just stand there and take it if the option of just moving to the side is right there? 1 damage and 1 defense? No problem, just deal 1 damage per frame and have the weight of your sins weigh you down more. This especially comes in when you consider other pieces of media like what the OP says; moving to a different comic panel if he's in a comic to save himself from getting attacked, or pausing a video and switching some stuff up to save himself there.
He's *aware* of the multiple timelines but he can't straight up see into them, he can only judge based off of how your face looks what happened. Yes, he can teleport, but Teleportation and warping Space and Time are *not* inherently 1:1, and if he did have the power to warp space and time then how come he still relies on your facial expressions to determine what happened in other timelines? Because I'd presume that's sort of an important qualifier for being able to manipulate everything to your will. Why doesn't he just shift you over to a separate timeline when you do the Pacifist ending to just avoid the fight entirely?
As someone on Jigglemeister's video had said (Which, I presume is the video you watched considering the parallel between "space and time" and his usage of "quantum physics" and how the points are pretty much the exact same), it doesn't take quantum physics to move 3 steps to the left, he's just cheating as a last stand for you to reflect on what you've done and *maybe* go back to a Pacifism ending.
You're free to believe that's his power and I can't really do anything about it, but from an objective standpoint it sort of doesn't hold up when you consider other stuff, and, at least to me, walking a few steps out of the way and breaking the rules of established RPG game elements of being forced to take a hit makes more sense than him manipulating reality to his will just to do the same thing.
I do want to make it clear this is not in malice or hatred or anything, as like I said you're free to believe what you want, and if I came off as belittling or insulting then I'm sorry, it wasn't my intent. But it was something I felt that begged the light of scrutiny as I saw a lot of people believe this when I saw that video and it had me question "Why is it quantum physics? Is it that complicated to just dodge an attack when you don't want to get hit?"
@@WizardCraft-ox4pe i agree with most of this, but i'll add on by saying that you're going too far in the other direction with this:
"he can only judge based off of how your face looks what happened."
while PlasmaKitten's headcanon is adding onto the text of the game, your interpretation is too literal with the text as well.
consider this: sans is an intentionally obtuse character who messes with you while playing dumb ('i am the legendary fartmaster,' 'huh? are you following me,?') to /hint/ at his powers while simultaneously giving a completely mundane, stupid explanation for what he's done. believing him when he says that, for example, him knowing how many times you've died before is due to him just reading your expression is akin to believing him when he says that the way he got you to grillby's from waterfall (or into the MTT restaurant through a closed off alleyway) is literally just a shortcut.
the extent of how much sans remembers through timelines is deliberately kept vague and without an answer. there's enough room in the mystery to theorize that he's got some way of remembering more than the deja vu others feel. a piece of evidence i personally like is the picture he keeps of everyone post-pacifist ending in his workshop, even past a true reset.
""If you've done everything right, you have to face him"
Um... technically speaking its the opposite my guy. You have to intentionally and persistantly do what the game keeps telling you NOT to do before he faces you.
Okay TECHNICALLY this is correct but I meant if you've followed the correct actions that leads to this fight lmaoooo
@@PlayYourRole There's a better example of a dramatic situation - in Undertale, no less - where a person who wants to be a friend is forced to battle you in a fight that has no real winner as both of them lost the moment they started. Asgore at the end of the regular playthrough is a very humble and soft person who wants to be everyone's friend, but he has committed to needing to kill humans to free his people, already having distanced himself from his family due to his hesitance to actually save the monsters. His children are dead, his wife left him, he already is responsible for six deaths for that plan, so he has nowhere to go but to finish the job.
The thing that makes Sans battling so interesting is twofold - first of all, it's the surprise of a silly and innocious character being a major threat and his fighting style is basically munchkinning. He bends the rules on how he can attack and set himself up to render all your stat power completely meaningless. It's only by getting to do a cheaty thing yourself that you get to get the better of him.
If you do all the right things you should be fine
note: Sans only fights you after you have killed everyone else, if you miss, or spare 1 monster, he does not fight, he still sees good in you until the very last bit
i like to interpret this as him still trusting in papyrus's judgement of you and that he only steps in when he realizes that the amount of "Determination" you'll have after Asgore could very well destroy the timeline.
i feel like it's more likely because of his promise, and because he just... doesn't see a reason to care. he knows you're a shitty person but if you're not on genocide then you're not about to destroy the world, instead resetting it to before anything happened. difference in genocide is that well, like he says: "seeing what comes next, I can't afford not to care anymore"; he seems _very_ aware of the fact that finishing genocide means destroying the entire world instead of another reset.
That's pretty much it. To understand the reason why Sans chooses whether or not to fight you is made clear if you understand your character's driving factor: Determination.
After all, what is determination, really? It's the desire to see things through to the end. To finish what you started. To push yourself in order to overcome any obstacle you encounter.
And depending on whatever it is you're determined to do, this affects Sans' decision on whether or not to step in; like the quote you referenced, he "can't afford not to care anymore".
As well as what he says a bit further on:
_"you're, uh, very determined, aren't you?_
_you'll never give up, even if there's, uh... absolutely NO benefit to persevering whatsoever._
_if i can make that clear. no matter what, you'll just keep going._
_not out of any desire for good or evil... but just because you think you can._
_and because you "can"... ... you "have to."_
Exactly how or why Sans is able to know the things he does is never explained in detail, only through implication and interpretation of certain things he says. But somehow, whether it's due to some sort of perception he has, or because he's "seen it happen before", he knows that if you, the player, are not determined enough to systematically slay each and every monster you've come across so far, then Sans might not have a great opinion of you, but you're not enough of a threat to the world for him to risk his own life, either. He knows that the ("neutral") path you're on will not lead the world to complete extinction (because of how the game works?), and that the player will inevitably reset the game and start over, for better or worse.
Minor correction: Sans does not have Determination (or at least, he's not confirmed to). Every time he acknowledges a reload, even when he's literally counting how many times you've died in the genocide route, he has an excuse for it, like he's just "reading your expression". He definitely knows that the player CAN reload, but seemingly that's all he knows. He's just paying attention to minor details in how the player acts with the knowledge that they may have reloaded. It's not that far-fetched, especially since even characters with zero meta-knowledge like Toriel or Papyrus can comment on reloads by having deja vu.
This^
Honestly, I’ve always thought about having a enemy who works mechanically similar to Sans or better yet like Fuher Kind Bradley from FMAB. A character that is just extremely tough to hit, nearly impossible, but once you do it feels rewarding and may make him easier to hit as it slows them down.
It's REAL hard because of how AC works in dnd but I imagine it's not impossible
@@PlayYourRole Honestly the hardest part would be making it fun. If players are just constantly missing for hours I could easily see that being unfun. Maybe adding a endurance factor might make it better just like how Sans eventually becomes exhausted after fighting for so long.
sans job of judging your sins with Fuhrer King Bradley’s everything else would be sick
@@PlayYourRole could makes it so that it starts extremely high, but every turn or two it goes down one until it stops at 16-20
This is definitely interesting.
As a fan of both Undertale and Deltarune, I think there are definitely some character concepts that could potentially work well in DND:
Spamton G Spamton: On the surface a greedy merchant who’s down on his luck and has more than a few screws loose trying to hassle them for their money with scams. But can become an encounter if the party makes a special deal with him, this also turns out to be a scam that only benefits him, only this time it becomes a boss fight, eventually it could become clear that he was and puppeteered by the BBEG and was desperate for a way out. In other words could be a cool opportunity to show the characters and players some of the terrible things your BBEG can do and has done.
Papyrus: An adventuring rival that the party may face multiple times who really is only in it for the popularity and to make friends, eventually sees the party’s potential and will root for their success and encourage their growth and development to become the best they can be.
Flowey: Secret Chaotic Evil BG or BBEG hiding in plain sight. Weak but grows stronger with the party until they ascend to godhood.
Gaster: NPCs that talk about and worship a wizard that does not exist, but is always listening, and always watching. Perhaps remnants of this wizard and his research can be found throughout the world if the party investigates hard enough.
Grillby: Ever wanted a fire genasi bartender in your tavern? Would you like to?
Undyne: Serves a King in your world, fights to uphold justice with a fiery passion, will fight the party if they go against their faction, recklessly break the law, or for the common good. Now just to find a way to make them stronger when they “die”.
There are also some pretty cool PC ideas as well, both seen above and a few others.
Noelle: Ice wizard / healer who’s looking for their lost sibling and perhaps for some sort of ailment that her Father has that can’t be cured with simple healing spells.
Ralsei: Cleric with flavoured fire healing magic? Pacifist who isn’t afraid to fight and supports the rest of the party and their decisions. Their god of choice has tasked them with an important mission and they require some assistance.
It would be interesting to see someone play a Barbarian as Susie but also that could be frustrating for everyone else at the table to deal with someone who won’t easily cooperate. Probably would require some experience and maturity to play that kind of character.
Ralsei def a wildfire druid
@@Saltine. I’ve also seen Ralsei as a light domain cleric so either or
I mean, Undyne the undying is essentially a paladin who turns Death Knight when the party kills them and cuts them short from their oath. Meta story beats have always been very iffy when I run them in DnD. I think a much smoother translation is a paladin who starts as the drinking buddy but ends up in a fight to the death, with oaths and friendships at stake.
Murderhobos would be hit much harder by their favorite adopted goblin gaining a second health bar, than a meta joke which might break the immersion.
I’m not sure where I mentioned meta jokes but you definitely have a good idea for an Undyne to DND translation
@@matttale7918no, they are gunsliger
I could see Sans as a beatable version of an Inevitable, since he's more of a laid back and relaxed being that rather hope they could/would follow the "good" path. Then, when they have to fight, it shows how much focusing on that "good" path + lowering this highly powerful being to the affairs of mortals, because they wanted mortals existence to turn out okay rather than ensure order and contracts are upheld.
An enemy who CAN beat you but only wants to stop you is honestly a really fun idea for a combat encounter
1:56 he doesn't have determination, nor does he remember save states or timelines.
He's done research and has knowledge of the timeline. He sees an anomaly and figures it's you.
The funny part is the anomaly that's recorded is actually Flowey.
"nor does he remember save states or timelines"
Except he does. Not only does he keep track of how many times you have to load to beat him, he also will notice if you repeatedly reload before he judges you on the neutral or pacifist route, and eventually gives you a password to use to confirm his suspicions. So he has to have at least some form of memory persistence over saves and loads. Also, during the genocide route fight, he mentions having gone to the surface before, and then just having it reset on him. Although what's interesting about that is that that line comes up even if you didn't do the true pacifist route before the genocide route, which means even your first playthrough might not even be the first timeline.
"The funny part is the anomaly that's recorded is actually Flowey."
Both Flowey and the player qualify as the anomaly, especially if the player starts resetting multiple times or has to reload frequently.
he doesn't remember tho, he figures everything out based on the human's facial expression
@@ThatGuyCalledMyth9001
That's an extreme stretch. It's would be one thing to just simply get that you've lost before based on your expression, but the exact number, correctly, and repeatedly over and over and over? That's statistically impossible enough to rule out coincidence. And you can't just be "extremely good at reading someone's expression", there's limits to how much that can convey. And he'd have to have previous experience _and_ a frame of reference to figure that out anyway. There's too many variables introduced if he doesn't have persistent memory across loads and resets, Occam's Razor has to apply at this point.
@@VestedUTuber oooh boy
It's a fictional world,buddy.
What's impossible here isn't impossible there. 'Sides,he states that himself.
For example:"this look on your face...that's the look of someone who died twice in a row. Suffice to say,you look really unsatisfied. Guess i'm really good at my job,huh?"
@@VestedUTuber 'sides,when we are talking about undertale's world,remembering things from previous timelines are a lot more impossible. For that,extreme amounts of determination would be needed,and well,not only sans doesn't sound like the guy that would have this power,his own body would be too fragile to hold it and he would just melt into a pile of goo.
Correction: Sans cannot look into other timelines, he just knows they exist, and can only make assumptions based on the Player's actions.
Other than that, good video.
It's implied that he at one point had seen into other timelines. He seems to be pretty certain that if you continue, the world will end. He seems aware of Flowey's past genocidal rampage, and it's implied he knows that you were his friend in another timeline. That being said, he doesn't have full control over his ability to see other timelines.
@@bennettdaniel7779 it’s not exactly that he’s seen them, but he has researched what he can find and made educated guesses on that
There was a machine behind their house that hinted at that
@@theguywhoasked925 he can probably see them because he counts how many times you die while fighting him
@@blendedmusic7190 he goes based off facial expressions. He's very observant and really good at reading expressions. That and like all characters in undertale, he gets deja-vu whenever encountering something that's the same as a previous reset. He just knows what that means, unlike the others, who just dismiss the feeling.
As you hear the guard near closer, their armor clanking with every rushed step, you hear a *psst* from your side. You look over and see a skeleton wearing a blue hoodie and pink slippers, a permanantly grinning white skull with the blue glow of magic almost seeming to act as eyes.
The skeleton whispers shouts "Over here, behind these conviently shaped statues"
You and your party look and, as said, there were statues of various poses, all of them a slightly larger version of their respective races. You don't have time to give it much question and hide behind your respective statue along with your colleages. Just moments later the guard makes the corner, The Skeleton speaking up to drawhis attention.
"Hey there Fran, you're looking a bit frazzled, what's up?"
"Oh, hey there *pant* Serif. What are you doing here?"
While the guard and Skeleton converse You take a moment to analazie things. It seems that that Skeleton is rather well know if they are friendly with the guard, though by how the guard is speaking this Serif is likely just an ordinary citizen.
"By the way, what are you doing with these statues? Are you trying out another business venture?"
"Yep, though nobody has bought them yet, can't imagine why"
"Yes," the guard replies dryly "I can't imagine why either."
"Well, you should probably get some rest buddy, you look _bone_ tired"
The guard gives an exasperated sigh, though visibly more relaxed than before, and shakes his head "Have a good evening Serif" before walking away.
*conversing a bit with Serif later. yes, i got lazy*
As you walk off you can't help the small shiver that goes down your back. You look the direction you had came, at Serif, but there is nothing amiss, so you brush it off for the time being as you prepare for the next fight to come. ~Blissfully unaware that you and yours have caught the attention of something you can't hope to beat, your judge and, if needed, executioner.~
good job making funny skeleton encounter into a thing you would see in a book
Good job on making their names fonts as well
Correction:Sans doesnt have blue eye 24/7
Pretty huge mistake if you actually undertale fan
@@skell6134 They did say eyeS, and Sans' eyes do glow a majority of the time. They're white rather than blue, but what's the harm in a lil extra flavor?
@@tatltails3923 Ehh... not much harm,but i just got confused for moment
I actually did a one-shot dungeon with a similar mechanic about 5 years ago, it was not dungeons and dragons.
Cave of orcs, most of which were not being treated well, the players could basically slaughter them OR show empathy and start an uprising. For every orc that was killed in the cave the final boss would get a point that it could use to strengthen its attacks and defense from its custom ability "orcish justice". I ran this one shot multiple times and they all went uprising and the final boss was still fightable because the first room was a mandatory fight with a small number of hostile orc guards and a general. Everything else that could have been fought were either breeding slaves, children or footsoldiers, and those deaths too would have helped strengthen the final boss.
The final boss was basically a very morbidly obese half orc half ogre that was eating alot of stolen farm animals and had to have an elevator installed directly to his throne room so he could eat cooked meat without trapping smoke in the caves, by having it all cooked in the entrance or outside.
There is an event where if a player died during an encounter and they started the uprising, they could then "build-an-orc" using mostly fully built character sheets with some rng to keep playing.
It was one of my favorite adventures to run as a dm because either I would kick the shit out of the players for genocide/racism or there would be alot of fun rp, all of which would be entirely decided by the players actions.
Now I wanna try to stealth this, and just, don't kill anyone, don't start an uprising, just _don't get caught._
Bad dnd idea: let one of your players to choose between 2 PCs than reuse the one he didn't choose as metanarrative npc villain whose motivation of going against the party is not being chosen at the start of the campaign by the player
Ironically despite this being a bad idea if you have a tight-knit group who's willing to put up with your bs, I could see this working.
It's simple, once the players adress themselves by real names, he asks: Who is Travis? Is that your other name? Oh, Mat, that's just a guy playing me, don't mind him.
I've done that before, so fun to see reactions
I've a hobo mage npc in my campaign who basically gave up fighting the BBG (and doing magic in general for reasons) and I've been wondering what sort of personality to give him. Defeatist is certainly on my list, and he does known a lot of stuff he doesn't bother talking about because "it will change absolutely nothing even if people know", but it never occurred to me so far just HOW much his overall character arch matches Sans'. Welp, I decidedly know how to roleplay him now. The players just found him sleeping in an alley, like, actually stumbled upon him when trying to free from a manor through the backdoor. This should be fun. Thanks for the food for thought!
Sans is a pretty good judgement, jury, and executioner type character.
Shame he just gets boiled down to “super godly powerful funny skeleton man with an edgy and tragic backstory”
I always thought of sans as a dwarf skeleton. He's shorter, knows science. And unlike humans (who doesn't have as strong of magic other than reset) dwarfs could learn magic in certain forms of fantasy. Though papyrus would make sense as a human skeleton since he's tall, seems happier. And has weaker magic.
Edit: just a spell check and the fact that most dwarves are seen as engineers or fat/short fighters. I rest my case.
a dc 20 history check reveals that sans is secretly ness
Imagine your GM starts to describe the boss room and you realize more and more it's The Last Corridor, which means...
G/DM: “It looks like a church hallway, except golden as the sun pours through the windows on either side of you. Pillars line the walls, and the tiled floor leads up to another large doorway at the end of the hallway.”
G/DM: “Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, a familiar silhouette appears, it was short, had its hands in its pockets, and from what you could see of it, it’s facial expression seemed sad, disappointed in all of you.”
G/DM: “The skeleton speaks. ‘heya. you’ve all been quite busy, haven’t you?’”
*the party starts freaking out*
This is a really cool concept, and it's nice seeing my two interests collide like this! Just as a note though, Sans does not have determination, nor can he remember resets. He's just incredibly observant (every time he calls you out on a reset he points out how you act like "That's the face of someone who died X times" or "You turned around before I even told you to. It's like you knew what was going to happen" and since he knows resets exist, he puts two and two together)
But besides that I really do love this video! Keep up the good work
I have a meta NPC in my world in part inspired by Sans whom my players enjoy. He is aware of the presence of the players and worships them as 'small gods' that 'bless' the PCs with luck and good decision making c:
About meta NPCs, several of my highest level NPCs in my main setting are fully aware of the 4th wall and the things beyond it. Several of them are interested in harnessing the power beyond the Wall. These characters don’t show up in most campaigns, but extremely high level games in my main setting become pretty meta, and recently they encountered several of them. It’s very fun to see the widened eyes when the players hear an npc address them by name.
On a campaign that i am ran for my freinds, the first person that the party saved was a goblin named Happy, he was really small for his race, he was constantly bullied for his size and his personality, he was pretty optimistic and a bit dumb, he only saw the best in people, the party found hidden in a hole on the wall a bunch of fairy tales and stories about heroic knights, soon to find out that it was Happy’s, that said he wanted to be a mighty knight to fight for good!
Once the events of that arc was over and all the fighter in our group trained him for a short while, just before introducing him to where he learnt everything about fighting, Happy was thrilled, he saw the fighter and the rest of the party as a source of inspiration to be great heroes like them!
But after a long time now with the party at the 16 level, they were fooled by a evil wizard, saying that they could take out the evil in the world, but society needed to start over, which means, kill almost everyone in the world and just let some of the “good people” repopulate, they were achieving this, killing innocent people to get out of their ways because in the end, it wouldn’t matter, but for someone it mattered, Happy tracked them down, and with watery eyes and a shaky posture, he was fully armored and holding a sword pointing at them, it mattered for him because they were his heroes, and now he would try to save them and stop this absurd plan, but that wasn’t enough, he was easily killed, he could be a level 15 battlemaster fighter, but he was fighting alone against a group of 5 powerful people. After that the party was clearly affected by this event, they finally saw that they were fooled by this wizard, Happy had saved them, they would have had a far worse fate if the little goblin hero wasn’t there to put them in the right tracks
When everyone he loved and cared died he was there to try his hardest to avenge them, he's basically a Revenant with a goofy streak. But holy crap is he a powerful Revenant
I was kinda thinking about this the other day, Genocide is basically a murder hobo campaign, with the Sans fight and ending being the DM punishing you for it.
some notes:
-you can only fight sans in a genocide run, where you go out of your way to fight and kill every possible monster you encounter before facing him (the characters in undertale are just called monsters, they're mostly pretty cool)
-you can reload the entire run at pretty much any time. right before the ending,, after beating sans. you are reminded and given a chance to do so too
-i also feel like sans' karma mechanic (his attacks deal damage which scales on how bad you are, and on a geno run that damage is pretty high) is also an underlooked thing that might work on dnd
Another example (kinda) is Senator Armstrong. The only reason you're fighting him is because of differences in morality. In the end, Armstrong wins because you kill him, fulfilling his dream of having the strongest make the decisions.
Everywhere I go I see his face...
Saucy Jack
Well well well if it isn't Saucy Jack.
How the fuck can you tie up Armstrong to the theme of this video for fucks sake
senator armstrong was just some rich kid with fancy toys. for all his talk of brute strength and manifest destiny, he ultimately got cut down like a dog. to pretend he won is mindboggling, and i don't know how this interpretation of the game became so prevalent.
the point is that he was a fascist, and sometimes it's neccessary to kill fascists. you can't reason with them, they use a fundamentally different set of ethics.
@@zuresei he won because his theory that the stronger are the only ones who get the say in arguments and that the weaker are silenced in response, is ultimately right he is killed by Raiden and he was shut up because their opinions where different even if Jack *also* had the moral high ground he passed a "meme" onto Jack.
With clicking on this video, I am well aware of how meta sans is, but I really thought this would be more about his in game stats. A glass cannon that is incredibly hard to hit, that packs serious damage. Or hell, make every “hit” against him just exhaust him more and more until the final turn where he is too exhausted to move and the final blow can be dealt. Not that your idea was a bad idea, I was just brainstorming based on the title
I've been planning a super secret surprise boss at the end of my Curse of Strahd campaign with a certain one eyed god of secrets, I think these ideas will work really well for that
HELL yeah I love it!
There was once a goddess who happily ruled her universe with the help of her champion, until one day, for some reason, she was flung away from it into a whole other universe. She quickly grew weaker until she was forced to take the form of an average fairy, though she remained immoral & had all her might, she had no way of returning to her home, eventually the higher powers in this universe noticed her, she told her story & pleaded to be returned, but regardless of their answers, she knew deep down that wouldn't happen.
However, she found someone with a figure & soul nearly if not identical to her champion, so she decided to follow him on his quest for righteousness.
One night however, somehow, she heard a prayer, it was hard to make out but after a few nights it was clear, a prayer to look over a group of people on their journey together.
Actually.... there is no in-universe hint that Sans can see other timelines, that is just a fandom thing that stems from when Sans is judging you at the Judgment Hall.
And everything Sans says is based off of the (apparent) subtle non-verbal cues Frisk makes that allows Sans to figure out Sherlock Holmes style what is going on.
"Hmm, that expression... that's the look of someone that's died twice in a row."
This^
BTW, I love the Sherlock Holmes comparison. That's a really good way of explaining it.
@@--CHARLIE-- You can thank TVTropes for that... They have a whole page on that ability, calling it the "Sherlock Scan".
Another fine deep dive into a character's psyche that makes them an interesting idea for this game we all know and love. It does make me contemplate what a game with a Sans-like character and a Deapool-like character would be like. Probably fun. Definitely chaotic. Also the next time Sleepy Jay™️ imagines a fun topic to discuss for the channel, maybe write down some one worded bullet points along with the idea so Not So Sleepy Jay™️ can decipher the reasoning behind what the original idea was for. Keep up the fantastic work you do! I get excited every time a new video shows up in my notifications. Thanks for being a bright light in this not as bright world.
Sleepy jay is a chaotic entity who wants my life to be as hard as possible, he simply cannot be reasoned with
@@PlayYourRole now I need a stat block for Sleepy Jay
“How has my life come to making Sans edits?”
We all get there one day or another. *Eventually.*
To be honest I thought this was gonna be about his combat mechanics - which, while dodging everything might be a bit difficult to set up, "zippy" bosses do provided a different take on the pressure of a boss fight that is very compelling.
technically at a point in the game sans takes you to a restaurant and tells you about a friend behind a door. they tell you that they made a promise that if a human ever fell down he would protect them. he then says that if he hadn't made that promise. "you would be dead were you stand." this is not aimed in a mean way it just gives more information on sanses character.
One of my main deities in my world is the God of The Game and know the difference between a player character and a non-player character. Once I can run a campaign around his introduction to the world I'ma have some real fun with meta stuff.
Maybe have their introduction as some sort of "companion get!" Thing with their avatar.
Another idea would be having them as some sort of extra player kinda like a cpu player.
2 minutes in and this is a brilliant concept! you want to leave your players absolutely shaken to their core? Have them visit a seer or get some kind of reading done wear the person doing the reading starts alluding to things they have done in other campaigns. Especially if it was a particularly memorable moment or a morally questionable action that they will remember. Works especially well if all of your campaigns are in the same universe, They will be left terrified if the actions of their previous characters are brought up in-character.
I’m a simple guy. I follow dnd content and I enjoy sans undertale. I see both presented to me on a thumbnail and I watch. Love the way you explain things my guy you got another subscriber.
The karma system would be awesome to implement in dnd.
Maybe dndsans would have a poision or similar hp drain attacks that will increase by 10% for each human and 5% for monsters you killled. So if you killed like 10 people and 100 monsters, he would get a 600% boost to the life decaying effects.
You could call this effect karma too. So the players can feel every single soul the taken away.
Also since in undertale he dodges a lot, give him a different type of hp. That takes amounts of attacks instead of damage number, would mean we arent hitting him. But tiring him out
One of my players has an old character named boof, he was a barbarian who just cared about getting health care for people, in my current campaign same player plays as a pirate and boof is there to act as a friend and occasional moral guide line as he also searches for gold but only to build a hospital
Honestly the way you describe the crux of the emotional beat, of 2 entities clashing who don’t necessarily want to fight each other but have to as a result of conflicting morals, reminds me of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s final boss. That game has also been memed into oblivion, but it still has some great songs and moments, and “It Has To Be This Way” is an excellent song for this type of encounter. I don’t think the Armstrong encounter is a perfect comparison mostly bc the reason behind the fight is completely different, but the song at least captures a similar vibe of people who fundamentally contrast with each other having to come to blows because their views and goals clash so much.
I kinda has this "meta" conceptual being called the "Primus of Tales", which kinda works like the Monitor from the Marvel series. He does not interfere with the PC's actions, nor influence them. They just record and observe their deeds, but he has an uncanny, omega powerful ability, to speak to the Players themselves since he can communicate with their "Will", questioning their actions as players, than their characters. My players haven't realized yet, but they have been talking to the Primus of Tales multiple times without them knowing.
In my setting, "Will" represents player choices over character choices. Sadly, most of my players don't "roleplay" their characters that effectively, and I saw this as a solution to incorporate story into meta elements of the game. The BBEG I made "The Knight Of Lies" also has this ability to speak to the character's Wills and manipulate them, so the Primus of Tales needs to teach them the concept, but being careful not to reveal himself in the process as what he is doing is already "taboo".
This reminds me of how I do sphinxes in my games. (by the way as always if anybody wants to use these ideas by all means)
My friend was the one who actually explain to me this concept but basically a sphinx is supposed to be an embodiment of knowledge in our games that we run there in embodiment of some specific field of knowledge. Therefore it makes sense that they would know everything on the topic including information that the players themselves like no but the characters will not such as the ability to roll dice the ability to make character sheets and so forth.
Here are two examples so that you get it.
My friend was running a campaign for very new players that all happened to play a spellcasting class or sub class in one way or another. The campaign was placed in sort of a Hogwarts style magic school. No he wanted to explain to these very new players how to spell slots the season spell tax work but he wanted to explain it in character as much as possible so what he did was that he had one of the teachers in the school is things that is particularly specialized in arcane Studies. And this things directly walked both the players and the characters through how magic in DND fifth edition works.
The second example is one that I ran. At the end of this dungeon crawl in a forgotten city The players arrived at this sphinx is layer. Who particularly specializes in death. Now apart from the classic riddle challenges he also gave the players a few ominous warnings before they left about the specifics of certain events that might happen when a number of characters are going to die. When the first of these events happened in a major NPC ended up dead they realize that those were just ominous chanting‘s but prophecy which actually allowed me to ease them into the concept that they had to fight a large free-for-all but that’s a different story…
In both examples what happened was that the players ended up trusting those things is even more than they should because they displayed knowledge that no character would have but the players can prove it’s completely true no matter if they were their enemy they knew that this being as intelligent. Where is dungeon Masters of Mike sometimes till the players that they may know something about the characters would have no idea but in this concept kind of flips this statement on its head which ended up creating the situation with the characters believe this being is that intelligent.
The very concept of Karmic Retribution is fantastic. A poison that scales with how much wrong you’ve done. That’s my favourite thing with him, I think.
He does little damage as a baseline, but when he hits someone, like say, Megatron, he fucking tears straight through them. Karmic Retribution, by the very mechanics of Undertale, is a poison of the soul. It is practically impossible to handle if you’re not specifically prepared for it.
People seem to ignore how Undertale attacks are attacks not on the body, but on the soul. Sure, they can manifest their magic physically, but why do so when striking the soul directly is much more efficient.
This is why Sans can punch far above his own level. Because a single hit can devaste the ones he actually fights.
Sans is a storytelling masterpiece for certain games, but I think something we need to consider is the fight mechanics too. The idea that he's super weak stat wise but has mechanics that make him a beast is such a cool mechanic that could translate well to D&D.
His dodge would be a fun one, if sans gets attacked he can make a 5ft step to just dodge, even normally surefire hits he can just step away from as a reaction. He can do this as many times as he wants, and it doesnt invoke an attack of opportunity, but any attack past the first he has to make a saving throw to avoid exhaustion. Exhaustion goes past a threshold, and he loses the ability to do it more than once.
His 1atk and kr frames could be done in terms of his attacks being more broken down. A turn is six seconds, so the attack simply always hits once per second. Instead of sans rolling to hit, the players roll to get out of the attack. Functionally the same roll, but players get to have a sense of control because its their modifiers (probably dex) instead of sans' modifier to hit. You could use a gradient, where the DC of the save is more of a midpoint with a gradient. Say it's DC-20, high level players can make it but its still a challenge. Rolling over a 24 completely evades, 23 does one damage, 22 does 2, 21 does 3, 20 does 4, 19 does 5, 18 or lower does the full 6.
KR as the health drain would be more convoluded to add because, unlike the 1atk or the dodge where you can play it as a saving throw, replicating it would require explaining the new mechanic to the players which could easily kill the pacing. Instead, I'd frame it as poison with a turn cap. Each hit (for balance, I'll call the hit if the player takes any damage in the turn and not every point of damage) adds 1d4-1 hits of KR-Poison. The DM could be the one to track this and mention to a player on their turn if they take KR damage. To replicate the mechanic of KR acting as decaying health, if a player takes damage that sets their health to 0 but their health plus their current KR count above 0, they live with 1hp and their KR is removed
thats just my rough concept, and I am bad at balance so it is probably bad lol
You sir are a genius!
I really love this idea and thinking of sans like this as a character archetype to apply to a story is a really fun idea.
I don't play D&D, but this being recommended to me was a blessing from UA-cam.
I love those kinds of gut wrenching encounters!
I have a dragon that serves the king of the kingdom my players are adventuring in, and the Players absolutely love him. The thing is that he is loyal to the king first, and the king is slowly going mad. Eventually, my players are going to have to end the kings reign once and for all, but this dragon is bound to follow the kings orders and will die protecting him.
It's gonna be an extremely gut wrenching and difficult encounter, but I love it.
When you brought up Sans being a meta character, I immediately imagined this.
Sans: "It doesn't matter. I'm being controlled by the DM anyway."
Player character: "What?"
Sans doesn't have Determination, and he can't see other timelines. He's just really, REALLY good at inferring things.
I was very much expecting something about "1 HP hit me if you can."
I'm running Curse of Strahd for my friends, and I'm having a 'secret route'. If the characters follow strahd's will one too many times, he'll ask them to banish Sergei. And if they get to that encounter, they(lvl ~7 at this point) are met with a CR 17 Death Knight Sergei who cannot allow them to continue in the footsteps of his brother. Even if they pacify Sergei, Strahd will cut him down while he's distracted. They walked one step too many down the highway to hell
Funnily enough, I was almost setting myself up to do this kind of thing in a campaign a few years back. I had an NPC who would accompany the party on a couple of their early quests who was young innocent and naïve. The players started behaving a little piratical (it was a sky pirate type setting), so I started writing a contingency plan if they started going too dark with it. A few of the NPCs were retired adventurers and if the players got too infamous, they would come out of retirement to try and put down the monsters they created, and their former friend would be there to pick a side.
Unfortunately, life kind of got in the way, so the campaign kind of petered out. So didn't get to explore that.
How I imagine this fight going down for each class:
Artificer (however you spell it): *misses his throw of the bomb then dodges into said bomb*
Barbarian: "AAAAAAAAAAA-" takes 1d10 karma damage + 2d12 bone damage
Bard: *Nat 1 on seducing Sans* *gets instantly killed by him*
Cleric: "I CAN'T KEEP UP WITH THE KARMA!" *everyone in the party dies*
Fighter: *actual Sans fight*
Rogue: *assassin's double sneak attack 30d12 stabbing damage with rapier ends the fight against sans super early*
Wizard: *takes 1 hit, rolls 1d4 karma damage, dies*
How would you have an NPC interact with players at times instead of the characters? I feel like this would be fascinating if done correctly, I just don’t know how I could pull it off.
Sans is the kind of dnd encounter that you throw at murderhobos
This explains a lot.
I cannot imagine what this would have explained
@@PlayYourRole Now we know
What late night Play Your Role looks like.
What hidden potential is behind you staying late nights.
Why you aren't a serious UA-camr up until this point.
This is the tip of the iceberg
hand sans lots of gravity spells, throw those murderhobos sideways
Thank you for making this video, I already have a game where I was strugglying to make pcs accountable because of the setting, and stuff like Sans would be perfect for it.
Technically, Sans hates the player, and potentially all humans with every fiber of his being, which becomes apparent when he outright tells you that his promise to Toriell is the only reason he hasn't killed you on the spot. He just has a welcoming personality that he puts on to hide that rage from the people around him that he actually cares about.
Dokitale exists
Given all he says in genocide (along with the little story from Sans that Toby posted on Tubblr right after the game about how it's foolish to take revenge but not everyone is as strong willed as Papyrus about it) I think the whole thing that's happening is just him wanting to kill so much the one able to reset.
And this despite saying he always thought the "anomaly" (Flowey then you, he can't make the difference of who has the save) will stop doing resets once happy, yet he tries to do that only because he made that promise otherwise he would have chosen revenge instead even if it's counterproductive 'cause leading to more resets.
@@para9938 i think this falls apart because Sans doesn’t inherently remember the resets, he gets Dejavu like every other character.
The only reason hes able to figure out that its a reset is because of his research into timelines in the past and his godly ability to read facial expressions and theorise based on that.
that and it could literally just be that his job as a sentry and being one soul away from being free could be enough of a motivator to go through with killing a human.
HOWEVER Flowey has mentioned sans being a run ender for him several times during his run of the timeline, although he has done everything at that point so it very well couldve been Flowey killing Papyrus when sans was a different person or just straight up genocide routes that caused them.
@@MahNamJeff How does this fall apart ? What part of what I said require remembering the timelines ?
Even without remembering anything he already gave up in life just by knowing resets are a thing, I don't think he needs more to want revenge ?
@@para9938 i was specifically thinking about sans’ hatred for the anomaly line in particular. how could a hatred for it fester if he doesn’t even remember how many times its happened?
I was planning on Sans being a post-campaign encounter for my players, but not because of the players. I wanted him to be angry about the DM twisting and contorting universe around the players without actually knowing about the DM. Like, combat can last hours at the table, but only last a few minutes in game, and vice versa for downtime. He feels those shifts in the timeline, and he sees the end of the campaign as the universe dying. A post-game synopsis, describing what the players do after the campaign, would make the universe's death a slow and painful one as everything slowly fades from existence around the players. He thinks that by killing the players, he's giving the universe a quick and merciful death, because the campaign would cut off right there.
I know it's not exactly lore or character accurate, but I thought it would be cool.
I love the meta concepts, especially for one-shots! In my current campaign, we regularly use telepathy to discuss things in-character but without the NPCs hearing. So the DM made a character who is cursed to hear telepathic conversations. The characters--and players--were genuinely shocked. He also had a one-off thing where for a brief period, the NPC showed up in the memes channel on Discord...None of it was canon but dang was that fun!
That would be an incredible boss if you've ever played DND games with your party in the past. Sans always directs his comments towards the player as opposed to the characters ingame, so bringing up actions or sins from past games could be something pretty interesting
If I had to make a character like this Id make it as some kind of oracle. This could be a good way to challenge characters with dubious motivations or backgrounds. Maybe they call out to the rogue for not realizing two notifications of stealing all the time, maybe they show the bar to that is promiscuous ways leave a week of shattered lies and bastard children, maybe they resent the warlock character for making a deal with a particularly bad Patreon. Possibilities are endless definitely sounds like something I might use.
I think the way Sans' omniscience is really cool, not too meta or really game breaking for a fantasy setting.
Reminds me of Vivec from the Elder Scrolls, although for sure distinct (ALMSIVI worship, Chim, Godheads and other esoterics) it definitely can fit the setting
I think it just depends HOW meta it goes. Does he reference events he shouldn't know about? Or does he address the characters by their player names? That kinda stuff
@@PlayYourRole The funny part is that Sans has no meta knowledge, he simply guesses based on your expression and his knowledge that timelines do in fact exist
@@PlayYourRole In actual undertale canon Sans actually lacks meta knowledge. He doesn't have determination or even the ability to remember resets any more than any other random character (they all get deja-vu from resets, but only Sans knows what that actually means). He just knows they exist, and has really high perception and insight, so he can tell how many times you've died from the look on your face, or tell that you've encountered him before because you turn around to shake his hand without him telling you to.
The brilliance of Undertale's meta aspects is that everything is a part of the setting.
A D&D equivalent where things like dice and character sheets are actual systems of the world could be fascinating. Imagine if a character sheet was a magical contract that gave a character their abilities, and it could be stolen or destroyed...
Karma Retribution : the worse your character acts, the harder he stomps you into the dirt, poison damage specially, when you take damage, it inflicts poison damage.
"Judging by the look in your eyes, I see that I can't afford not to care anymore."
Can you feel it that weight pushing down on you, that feeling your hands will never be clean, the feeling of your sins crawling on your back
I mean the only way you fight him is going full murder hobo
Sans aswell as playing through LC and LoR has given and incredible desire to make or fight against a boss with some kinda meta level or even completely system bending mechanic to it that you have to play around that wildly changes the way you approach the encounter
Not only a perfect boss for murderhobo, but One with amazing stats.
Incredibile AC, someting like 40
High damage with poison
Very low healt.
That's what i call balance
He has low damage though. Unless you mean the poison is very damaging. Because yeah it is. But his actual attack is 1. Sorry if you already know that. Some people don't. If you did, ignore this.
@@--CHARLIE-- yeah i get what you're saying (and I also knowed It) but he has a multiattack over the top
Ngl, a Sans-inspired NPC sounds like it would be hilarious if sent against a game-derailing power-tripping player.
I've used a homebrew battle for Sans before (just because I like undertale) and it was pretty insane for the players. Barely survived. (They were fairly high level.)
Cheshire Cat is another decent inspiration, and fey are solid creatures to be like Sans.
Takuto Maruki: Hold on my snacks
I love the idea of a DM throwing in a hooded character that over time is seen at the end of each fight or each major fight then before any of the players can get near him, the entity disappears, and later on, he’ll show up and finally reveal himself as Sans. Then depending on how murder hungry the players got, they will have to be thrown into a battle with Sans. Or if they had been a good party for most of the campaign, Sans can show up at after a difficult fight later on and reward the players with certain items of their choices obviously nothing broken but like items in a certain pool of choices for each character.
Sans is not able to see into other timelines, he's stated to know what you did by the expression on your face.
this video could not have been recommended to me at a better time
our dm recently gave us an encounter with a wizard. he was injured in the forest, so the group stopped to help him out. well turns out hes a nercomancer and a pawn for the big bad
man screams "welcome to the BONE ZONE" and the man starts playing megalovania
wildest event in the whole campaign
I was expecting the video to talk about what the battle would be like; I was curious about how the dodging would work (even requiring a natural 20 would be too easy for a Sans-like battle).
But I liked the story idea/character analysis. It sounds like a good way to design a recurring character that can potentially be the opponent in an emotional battle.
Imagine you staring over with a new DND game and Frickin’ Sans Undertale remembers your old game
Lawful good character is the best antagonist for the Chaotic evil party, not because he's evil, but because he's the opposing force of nature that has to protect the innocent from you. You know you have something morally wrong if you face a hero in combat.
I like how "Sans Undertale" has stopped being a joke and has just become his full name
It's kind of interesting that about the 6:30 to 6:45 mark you went from why Sans is a good DnD encounter, to why Asgore is a good DnD encounter. Asgore is often considered the boss Pacifists playing Undertale don't want to fight, but Must.
In general just having an NPC who develops a personal antagonistic relationship with the players because of something they chose to do but didn't have to is an incredible possibility. Just any old thing they thought was a normal optional quest, and then later having someone show up who's angry about it.
I'm actually debating with myself whether or not to make Madam Eva from CoS kind of like this. Like she knows things about the player characters that she shouldnt and if the characters even show a little bit of sympathy for Strahd and actually side with him in any way, she orders all the Vistani under her to capture the PCs and then boss shenanigans ensue as Madam Eva becomes a story arc's big bad
Maybe give them a Ghost rider like penance stare attack or whatever it’s called
A big part for a Sans like encounter is to make him seem like a commoner, maybe sometimes hint to him being able to do something, with his showing up in strange places, but unless he is forced into a fight he just seems weak and lazy. if your party is good, it can be him joining them in the final conflict such as shortcutting them into a lair or whatever they couldn't get into or providing support with these dragon skull constructs he summons, but keep the focus on the PCs so they get to feel cool. Or if they have to fight him due to conflicting morals and his whole saving the world thing let them be surprised when this Level 0 commoner turns out to have legendary actions.
I can TOTALLY see an Archaeon or other Celestial filling the role of Sans, & maybe a Lich or Demon in disguise being the Flowey tempting them into more Murder-Hobo ways.
sans can't see into different timelines. he just figured out that different timelines exist, and is very good at figuring out what you've done based on that. it's kind of a common misconception.
Imagine an oracle character, raving about how the gods (the players) have spoken. Either confused, or enraged, and at times even quoting players at a point after the conversation.
*the Judge stands at the edge of the world, back facing you as you feel the chill of the golden hallway, quiet, too quiet. Did you do your best? Or does he have to stop you in the dead of your tracks.*
How to traumatize your murder hobo party: a video guide