I had a similar experience when someone in my party cast fog. She was so excited. "Now they can't see us!." to which the Gm replied "You hear someone shout in Orcish "Yes, now they can't see us! and run around you."
Who'd they do it on? I have a storm cleric cast sleet storm on incoming white dragons, which have no problem with ice or cold weather,completely immune to the spell, the party wasn't.
This kind of remind me that good old crawling through recently emptied oil pipe. Due to visibility problems one player had bright idea to try and light torch so we could move faster. GM took his idea into consideration and replied that such move would improve our speed by around +150km/h and asked once more for confirmation if he really wants to light that torch. Even with that our poor torchlighter did not get a clue and rest of party had tio physicaly subdue him before he shot us out of that pipe.
I used to do that as a monk, the DM ruled a rock counted as a simple weapon so i would just pick up rocked and chuck them using my proficiency and massive dex bonus. The rock did 1 damage or so, but my dex made it 4 or 5 damage.
It's the same in my campaign but npcs with bricks. Four natural 20's in a row for one hobo with a brick helping the party. Open rolls from me the GM, and no crits until next session.
In the first game I played with my current group one of our players kept missing attacks and hitting the walls near his enemies instead. This, combined with the facts that his character was this hoity-toity paladin, and the player tried so hard to make him a super badass who was completely flawless and wanted the rest of us to take the character seriously, led to the rest of us dubbing his character the Wallbeater, since that was the only thing he consistently managed to hit with his attacks. He probably wanted the guy to be nicknamed the Great, or the Pure, or the Perfect, or something like that, but to his aggravation his character got stuck with the nickname the Wallbeater. It also wasn't helped by the fact that the guy played his character like an idiot. He honestly should probably have played a fighter because the paladin class was way too advanced for him to wrap his head around. He has this heroic idea of what a paladin is, so he always wants to play as one, but his idea doesn't line up with how it is in the game. He played his paladin like a fighter: meaning that he always forgot to use his abilities. He always forgot that he was also the group healer. The rest of us had to keep reminding him to use his divine powers. So his character was, for a long time, a total fuck up as a paladin, and yet the player insisted that he was flawless. He thought he was playing Uther the Lightbringer, when in reality he was playing Mr. Bean in armour.
I know, but this tank/healer combination still has a healer side to it, which he didn't fulfill. And he never used his other paladin abilities on his own either.
dude if I had a nickname like wallbeater id ham it up and wait for that perfect moment when I could make it a viable name by breaking my way through a wall like the cool-aid man
One of our running jokes is to check the Dirts quality, as someone in the first dungeon wanted to check the quality of the dirts composition (long story) and I told them "roll knowledge nature". They rolled a crit, and I ended up saying it was pretty much God-Tier Dirt, the party broke out in laughter for a solid 2-3 minutes, someone made a joke about becoming dirt farmers with said patch of dirt, which extended the laughing by another minute, and someone actually took a bottle of that dirt. To this day, my parties sorcerer and cavalier still make references to checking the dirt.
One of our running jokes is that ghouls are freaking terrifying. There was one session of ours where we killed all the bosses fairly easy. Then we came to a small group of ghouls whom legitimately beat our asses. One of them picked up a rock and started bashing us to death with it basically. In the end we managed to steal their rock (we were convinced it was amazing and magically lucky at this point), but we never managed to kill them all.
The spells do just what they sound like, one makes the target larger and the other make the target smaller. The use cases tend to be that larger melee characters hit harder and have longer reach, smaller ranged/casting/support characters are more dexterous, harder to hit, and better at sneaking. There's also the situational uses like having narrow hallways that Enlarged characters wouldn't fit in, or small holes that Reduced characters would.
Dennis Rigdon We had a fight with a Green Dragon (don't know the age). One part of our plan was that the Barbarian jumps into its mouth followed by the Wizard casting Enlarge on them, blocking it's mouth and therefore taking away it's breath weapon and part of it's multiattack.
That mahogany joke is similair to one that we do in our pathfinder campaign which we are in the middle of. The whole mahogany thing revolves around our cavalier multiclassing as a paladin winning in a bar fight against the owner of said bar. He wins by the bar owner picking up a mahogany table and dropping it on their head, rendering them unconscious. Later the person who sends us on this campaign explains to us that the tables are made of mahogany which in this specific city was very rare, the DM later states that he just wanted to say mahogany in a stupid italianish accent he made up. Since then whenever we got into a combat encounter we asked if there is any mahogany tables around for the enemy to knock themselves out with.
When surveying your surroundings, always look for: places for the rogue to sneak; an escape route if shit goes sideways; opportunistic weapons designed to do extra damage to a boss; mahogany for your opponent to knock themselves out with.
I remember one game where we had a new player that started for the very first time join us that was pretty memorable. We were fighting this water weird (water snake thing that hides in water) that had dragged in one of the other players since he underestimated its reach. The new player, who rolled a wizard tried to make the water weird slip using grease, which failed and only turned the water weird a slightly brownish grease color and caused the player trapped inside it slipping from the grease and making escape more difficult. The wizard player on their next turn decided it was a good time to use cloud of daggers on the water weird, which resulted in the player and water weird taking 4d4 slashing damage (this was at lvl 3 so only so much hp to work with). So basically the player was trapped inside the water weird drowning, slipping constantly from the grease, and getting slashed up by floating daggers. One of us jokingly put up a video of a blender blending a piece of meat since that's pretty much what happened to that trapped character. He managed to survive, but nearly died in the process from friendly fire, though since the new player was his friend irl he forgave him and warned him to look at the spells before casting.
Guaranteed ONLY if they can SEE the target Dewani90, as the wording of the spell specifically says in the book. If the caster can't see the target, no magic missile.
Whenever I heard "darkness" mentioned, I was playing Final Fantasy, and I thought, "Oh, hey! That'll actually come in handy! Every attack the dragon attempts aside from magic spells will miss!" If only that were the case with Dungeons & Dragons, I'd add that spell to my character in seconds!
I am sure that is somethign that he conscioulsy sees as homebrew.....jesus fuck dude get over it. I made a comment that I find it weird how he prnounces it...no insult no sign of felt superiority except for what YOU interpreted into it. Stop to get your fucking nillys in a twist.
One of my favorite d&d inside jokes is from a campaign I played last year, where one of the players was a cat (the familiar of an old character) with a headband of intellect and high charisma. During one of our sessions, we had infiltrated an orc stronghold to plant explosives and destroy the place. The cat was just walking casually down a corridor and came across an orc, who looked down and asked in common, "Why is cat?" The cat then looked up at him and replied, "Why is not cat?" and gave the orc an existential crisis. Funny enough, in that same session we had another inside joke as well. The halfling monk and the scarecrow rogue in the party were carrying barrels of explosives when two orcs turned down the corridor. The scarecrow simply stopped moving so it looked like a normal scarecrow, and the monk cast minor illusion to make a barrel appear in his space. The orcs were confused about why there were three barrels and a scarecrow randomly in the hallway and went to pick up the illusory barrel. Before they could act, the scarecrow made quick work of one orc and the monk made quick work of the other, landing a devastating flurry of blows. The DM began to describe the orc being punched in the face, until someone pointed out, "He's a halfling - there's a height difference." The DM then changed his description accordingly, describing it as the monk punching the orc so hard in the balls that he coughed them up and died. Afterward, the monk cut off the orc's now-empty scrotum and forever ruined the word "coin purse."
Johnathan Era why would a creature choose to live in the dark if they can't see in the dark? Caves are dark, dragons live in caves, ergo dragons can see in darkness.
I play a tiefling and in a game where we were going to save a king from some demons, we get in the throne room and we see 2 wraith like demons hovering over the king pulling some sort of energy out of him so i run over and get between the wraiths and the king telling the cleric to heal the king but she decides to try and fight the demons and everyone else just ignores me after a few rounds of this i get fed up and drop darkness blinding all of my party and the demons. Then i pick the king up walk him out of the room and do a medicine check to stabilize him. Everyone got pissed and said that i was stupid that we should have beat the demons first and then taken care of the king, well after we were done with the encounter our dm told us that if i had waited 1 more turn the king would have died and he couldn't rally his army to fight the demon invasion
The Cleric tried to fight instead of heal? The only explaination I can think of is she was a Death Domain Cleric and was trying to stay in-character, but I'm confident that wasn't the case
Duuuude, you cant get mad at someone for playing their character how they wanna play them. If their characters wants to ignore yours then they gotta deal with the consequence that your character will take shit into his own hands. Thats not something that they should out of character get mad about. In character, sure. Out of character, no. You do what you think is right for your character.
Angelica McRussian This. Maybe they are a bloodthirsty healer. Maybe they see it as their god's will to destroy all demons. Etc. You can't assume a personality from someone's stats.
And thats fine to me. The rogue shouldnt be mad about that either. You choose your own characters actions. Right there the healer might not have thought the situation was that serious. The rogue did though, for whatever reason. In character the people can argue about that as much as they want, just dont take it serious enough to argue about it out of character. Its a game, and everyone has the right to choose their own actions :P
New D&D player here. This reminds me of the time I cast Faerie Fire during my first encounter playing as a bard and completely failed to consider that, by lighting our enemies up like Christmas trees and making them vulnerable to attack, I’d ended up sabotaging our paladin as well, who had found himself comfortably in the middle of the twenty-foot cube with most of our enemies in it due to him being, y’know, a paladin. He took a mighty biff to the mush next turn despite his high AC, and our party almost completely forfeited any advantage my Faerie Fire had conferred just trying to keep the pally alive. Needless to say I learned this lesson fast and printed out a few quick reference sheets of bard spell cards for the next session.
Everyone's complaining about the blindsense bit, but you're all overlooking the disadvantage the darkness gave to the ENTIRE PARTY. Giving disadvantage to one enemy is not worth hindering your entire party as well as any assistance you have as well. Maybe they learned about the blindsense after the fact when the dragon was ripping the fighter to shreads because it had it and he remembers this part strongly because it's what fucks his fighter over. The focus of this was that the party did not have the excess supplies to go missing shots and wasting spells, not that the dragon could still attack them. Besides, everyone's calling this bullying without actually knowing how you and your D&D buddies play. With my group we're pretty loose and get into trouble a lot. We do silly things and make mistakes and we just laugh at it, learn, and move on. We constantly pick on each other's mistakes, not with the intention of bullying, but because we know we're only joking around and don't do it with the intention to hurt the other player. We tear each other down and pick each other back up. Seriously, have none of you never tease'd another player for an action they did that didn't go as they had anticipated? That grand leap of faith that ended with a mouth full of dirt. That brilliant plan that goes to shit the moment it's executed. Touching an evil artifact to store it safely and instead being cursed and posses by its will.
I find it more strange that Ben didn't remove himself out of the sphere of darkness into safety, and drawing the dragon out of the range of the darkness spell (it doesn't anchor onto an object, but a grid space), unless he just died in the single round.
Oh so the player and character knew that dragons have blindsense?? Honestly if one DIDN'T know that, they may think casting darkness could help to temporarily disorient an enemy...
Well, the archers should still be able to fire blindly into the darkness, and he could dispell it next round. They could have used the round to "prepare".
"Oh shit, this sphere of darkness appears on the deck of a ship in the middle of the day! There's nothing we can do!" So... nobody thought to shoot into the darkness? Nobody casted magic into the darkness? Yeah you couldn't TARGET the dragon but that darkness isn't some kind of forcefield that deflects attacks. Oh no, you have disadvantage! There's a 25% chance you don't hit the giant monster inside the black bubble! You might hit the guy inside!
A group I GM recently had one of.. these moments, rather a collection of moments in rapid succession. The campaign is set in my webcomics world of the Elemental Planes, and the group had been tasked by the Elemental Lord of Fire to retrieve a few books for them. Two of which, were located in the Elemental Plane of Water. The group went to a contact of theirs, and found out that the items they needed were held up in the Water Lord's treasury, so, they snuck in through an underground entrance. The group is only about level 2 at this time, so they're pretty weak and this task was rather simple and straight forward. Everything was going fine, but as they continued in, they noticed these puddles on the ground. Pay in mind, this place has water everywhere, a floor made of ice, it's common to see water pooling. Now what I hadn't told them is that those were inanimate water-golems, which were the Treasury's security. What they were supposed to do is sneak up on them, cast an identify spell and realize 'Hey! This is a dormant golem. We should avoid these!' But, one of the players, a Barbarian named Zisa, sees one of said puddles and decides to charge at it and activating their barbarian rage while doing so. For no other reason than they said it looked 'menacing'. I did your usual 'Are you sure about that.' DM shpeal, and of course, they keep on with it. So I said that they charged over the puddle, and had to make a reflex save to avoid falling flat on their ass as they tripped over it. Even asking if they 'Damaged it'... They succeeded the save, only for the Water Golem to become active, as with every, other water golem in the dungeon and promptly deck the Barbarian down to 1 HP. It was then that the group realized that I had meant for them to sneak around these things, as the puzzle later on in the dungeon, was no longer powered because the magical power in the dungeon was being rerouted to keep the Golems active. Golems they now had to kill. Level 5 golems with high AC, couldn't be crit as they were made of water, high as hell melee power and immunity most of their magic, while they were level 2. Well, the Barbarian, not wanting to solve the puzzle in the first place, decided to brute force it. Now, the puzzle was given by a massive, stationary dragon skull with a hinged mouth. The group could see the path forward and had to solve it's riddle with a simple matching lights puzzle. The Barbarian, attempted to force the head open to get to the path, and awakened a super boss that I had hidden, which was the Skull.. This is a level 20 boss that is meant to guard the treasury in the Water Lord's absence. If they had done the dungeon as it was meant to have been done, they would have walked through, snuck around the dormant golems, solved the puzzle and continued onto the next floor. Instead the barbarian set off the security system, awakened the dungeons guardian, and then promptly got killed by a colossal dragon skull for their stupidity, while the rest of the group got captured by the Water Lord and their goons, and almost killed via firing squad for trespassing.. Now when ever a player decides to do something obviously idiotic, or might potentially cause a TPK, the group calls it 'Pulling a Zisa'.
One inside joke of the campaign I am currently participating in is that I always ask if there is old crusty food anywhere. It started when we entered an abandoned bakery and our GM told us there were bits of crusty food on the shelves, and I asked if I could eat them. The GM gave me a puzzled look and everyone busted out laughing, including me. To this day, when I enter a room, I ask if there is a shelf with crusty food on it for no reason at all.
Right on! (Though, in the tiefling's defense, did the character know that dragons have blindsight?) What I run into a lot is players misunderstanding how a spell works. So they say they cast it, I read it over a bit and explain how it works, and then the players proclaims, "Oh, if THAT'S how it works, then I'm not casting it." This is the cousin of not reading the spell. What I also find is that players have an amazing knack for interpreting spells in the best possible light for themselves, and when the DM -- me -- reads the spells, we see that they don't work exactly the way the players thought they did. This is why I ALWAYS read a spell for myself when a player casts a spell I'm unfamiliar with.
Speaking of not reading spells... it's a concentration spell. You can drop concentration on a spell at any time, even if it's not your turn. I'll grant that the warlock didn't know that the dragon wasn't affected but it'd be super apparent after the first unobstructed hit against the fighter. Also, dragons are huge. Just cast darkness 30 ft into the air. The dragon would still be in darkness but everyone else would've been fine.
Free actions don't exist in 5e (though there are like flourishes and things like that you can do on your turn), if we're talking about another ed such as Pathfinder or 3.5, free actions can only be taken on your turn. He'd have to at least wait an entire round before being able to drop concentration. Granted, the other player's could have attacked him to make him lose concentration on their turn. This most likely all happened in a single round before the player's next turn could show up. Finally, the mocked player may have chosen to deliberately kept the spell up to spite the rest of the group.
@Kuuryo For 5e yes, I'm not sure what PF is playing here though, as this an older story possibly from before he switched to 5e. That said, look at: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/139537/when-exactly-can-a-caster-stop-concentrating-on-a-spell for all the potential mess that can happen by allowing someone to end concentration at any time (that said, its still RAW legal). DM mileage may vary.
Since the tiefling’s turn ended it would make more sense to shoot it in the back with an arrow (gives you the “surprise” advantage to hit), because taking damage requires that you make a constitution check to hold concentration.
A running gag for me in a group I was in was that I was called the Arsonist because a fair amount of my strategies early on in my D&D playing involved something being set on fire. It worked a fair amount of the time, and even when I made characters who didn't use fire-based spells, I had players get confused when I opted not to set anything on fire.
Assuming the player didn't know that dragons can see in darkness, their move makes decent sense. I think you guys were a little harsh on mc pointy horns there. Plus you could all have attacked the dragon at disadvantage, so it really isn't too big of a deal
I think the dm and the other players didn't really deal with that one well... Why would the dm volunteer technical stats? Why wouldn't the ranger and crew shoot at the dragon's last position (it's a dragon, it's big. Take the 20% miss!)? Why didn't the warrior back up?
Blind firing had a chance to hit the warrior so they likely held back. The warrior didn't back up because the dragon was first on initiative and with advantage flatted the warrior in one turn.
Don't forget that the teifling can instantly do the dismiss the spell as it is a free action to do so after the dm gave all all the meta information they shouldn't have
Crim Crysari Or the Warrior was unlucky and the dragon Novad him by getting 3 crits and 2 regular hits from its multi attack and legendary actions despite the fact they your fighter wasn’t the only one in range... I am totally not speaking from experience what are you talking about
an attack roll with Disadvantage (or circumstance penalties...depending on edition) is *still* an attack roll! why did you all just *not* try? not being able to see the creature just simply means it is *harder* to hit...not *impossible* . i mean a dragon is like the size of a barn! even if it were encompassed in a globe of tenebrous energy you could feasibly still hit it just by shooting in the general area! i'm no Robin Hood but i am a decent shot with a longbow. i can hit a 10in pie pan at 25 yards no real problem. i'd say i count as "Proficient" with Longbows. i think if i stood in front of a barn sized thing with my bow and then closed my eyes i could still put the arrow *somewhere* in the barn sized target.
are...are you...are you suggesting said fighter was...? providing it *cover* ??!!! BAHAHAHAHAHA!!! sorry..hehe..no. because if it was Medium (the only way the fighter could conceivably provide it "cover") then it was young. VERY young. like wyrmling fresh outta the shell young. in which case its Blindsight had a very limited range. in fact limited to 10'. the Darkness spell has a 15' radius. which means in any given direction the dragon faced it was 5' further out than the dragon could sense with Blindsight. so...the dragon would be blind too. in which case their DM screwed them just to be a dick DM and screw his players. my point still stands either way. Disadvantage or circumstance penalties (depending on edition) don't make attack impossible...only harder. so, *make* *the* *friggin* *rolls* . an attempt is better than nothing.
DwarfBeard TheDungeonMaster Maybe in the REAL world where your aim doesn't rely on a dice roll. But when you're rolling disadvantage with your ally right in front of the enemy, you're more likely than not to hit your teammate in the back of the fucking head or something. I have seen plenty of instances where that sort of thing happened. So, with that many people, if they got enough bad rolls, they could have killed their teammate before the dragon ever did.
Had a similar situation where someone cast fog on an enemy...when they were already in fog that they’d JUST used magic to lighten, thereby completely undoing the entire point. I’d like to add that they were fighting an ASSASSIN, you know, someone who likes to stealth.
Umm... this isn't a story about not knowing what the spell does-- it is a story about not having read the monster manual and knowing what the MONSTERS can do. Which... the PCs aren't supposed to know anyway. The Tiefling didn't actually make any mistake, had the dragon not had blindsight (which he wasn't supposed to know it had anyway) then putting a big blinding globe around a dragon isn't such a bad idea.... And the fact that you can't fire arrows into a globe to hit a target nearly the size of the globe itself is a failure of the rules to match the reality of the situation. In a realistic scenario, you could probably just fire arrows blindly into that globe and have a decent chance of hitting whatever was within it.
TheHobgoblyn character would have knowledge about the world, basic knowledge like a beast being able to attack smell would be apparent to any PC with an INT higher than 3.
Last I checked, human beings and similar humanoids can also smell things. Something likely you didn't realize because your INT is no higher than 3. But being surrounded in inky darkness would be nonetheless disorienting and befuddling to any animal. Dogs have great senses of smell, but if you threw a bag over the head of a dog in the middle of it playing, it wouldn't go on behaving as it previously would without interruption. Again, something you would probably realize if you weren't so proud of your INT of 3 and thus seeing no reason to try to achieve anything higher. Moreover, if something the size of an automobile was obscured by a globe of darkness no larger than itself, I am quite certain I could take a shot at the automobile sized target and hit it. Of course, the issue is that like you the other PCs clearly only had an Intelligence of around "3" and thus you and them are as lost, bewildered and confused thinking it must have vanished entirely, the same mentality as a baby when someone covers their face during "peek-a-boo".
TheHobgoblyn why on earth would any sort of adventurer not know about the abilities most creatures have? Tell me that. Not to mention a dog with a bag on its head is muffling almost all their senses. You've covered the nose, eyes, and ears. That's disorienting. Knowing that dragons tend to live in caves with their hordes of treasure in most mythos they would obviously not live in an area they couldn't see things in. There is common sense in d&d most GMs won't let your character have a complete lack of it without a low INT. No my character is not proud of having low INT but even a barbarian with an INT of 6 understands that dragons are apex predators that can see in the dark. If you would take the time to think you might realise that in order to actually role play well you would have knowledge of the world you fucking live in.
Encounters with dragons are meant to be considerably rare, there isn't a whole lot of room for individual experimentation with what they are and are not capable of. Hell, bears are a real life animal and when the question of "what should you do if you encounter a bear in the woods?" people will give myriad answers from "play dead" to "become aggressive and try to look big and make lots of noise" to "move away quickly and hope it doesn't follow" and each of them will claim if you follow the other advice then you are certain to end up dead. This is a REAL LIFE animal we are talking about here, one that humans have encountered frequently and even owned and trained for hundreds of years yet there is no consensus on what to do. If you don't like the bag example, then we can simply point to the fact that there are dogs and cats who are blind despite having great senses of smell and hearing. According to you, being blind is absolutely no hindrance to these animals and if they were to suddenly become blind in the middle of the day, they would just carry on with their lives without even the slightest sign of being hampered. I trust that if you do not have any personal experience, you can probably find information online fairly easily and note that-- yes, being blind would be a significant hindrance to a dog or a cat despite having sharp hearing and sense of smell. They are simply unable to get around without those senses. And this is despite the fact that they are both at least semi-nocturnal animals. They can "see in the dark", but if their sense of sight is lost-- they cannot just simply ignore that and get on with their other senses as though sight was never something they used in the first place. Dragons having blindsight is functionally stupid and illogical because no matter what parallel you draw with any similar real life animal, if they have eyes then they do in fact use their eyes and being denied their eyes is not something they could instantly adapt to instantly. Even if an animal could learn to eventually adapt to this condition or can maneuver around dark areas if prepared, suddenly being denied its sight during a period it is relying on it would be severely disorienting. In the very best case scenario, if a Dragon uses echolocation like a bat or dolphin (it clearly does not, for if it did so it would need to be emitting a constant sound and most definitely could not be utilizing its breath as a weapon as a result), if it was out in broad daylight using its eyes to maneuver around and was then suddenly struck blind, it would take a moment to adapt to this new situation.
Whether you know if the beast can or cannot see you is irrelevant, the Darkness spell was still a dumb move, because even IF the beast could not see the party, NO ONE could see the beast either, making attacks against it very difficult. Plus, even if you do not know everything about Dragons, you would still at least know about it having a Breath Weapon that covers an area and needs no aiming, thus no sight, in order to blast the group...
Step-by-step everything YOU LOT did wrong, which you cannot blame on the Tiefling. 1) The GM should not tell the Tiefling that they had made a mistake. The Tiefling did not know the dragon had Blindsight, and should not be informed out-of-game by an angry GM. And the GM shouldn't act like a jerk because a player didn't read the Monster Manual 2) The Ranger did not try to shoot the dragon, even though it's a large target, and he has a good idea of where it is (since it has not moved anywhere). The Ranger wastes a turn by being petty. 3) The GM has the crew do nothing instead of shooting the dragon, even though it's a large target, and they all have a good idea of where it is (since it has not moved anywhere). The GM wastes a turn by being petty. 4) The rest of the group does nothing instead of shooting the dragon, even though it's a large target, and they all have a good idea of where it is (since it has not moved anywhere). The rest of the group wastes a turn by being petty. 5) The DM suggests that the dragon is at an advantage, even though it is not. The dragon can SENSE the presence of everyone around it, but it cannot SEE them. There's no special smell or sound to firing a bow or casting a spell, so the dragon has no means of reacting upon them. 6) You try to fight the dragon in complete darkness instead of, say, disengage and retreat to safety. Which you have a pretty good idea of where it is (since it's right behind you). And considering you ran straight up to fight the dragon yourself, you may have been mauled to death by it anyway. The Darkness had no effect on your chances of survival in this case. 7) Your group let one of their people fall to the dragon with no attempts at all to save them, just because they were all too petty and to fire into the darkness. They'd rather one of their people die, that fire at the dragon, which they all had a good idea of where it was. I could go on with the smaller details. But put short: you are faced with hitting the broad side of a barn at night, whilst knowing where the barn is, and only standing a few yards away from it. And there's about a dozen of you firing at it at the same time. And instead of taking the shot, you sit down a sulk because the sun isn't up yet. The Tiefling didn't do anything wrong, they acted based on the knowledge they had and considering they were faced with a dragon, an act of panic is to be expected. Your group could not hold this against the Tiefling, IN-CHARACTER, in good conscience. The Tiefling did not cause one of the players to almost die, the rest of the group and the GM did, because they were the ones who started waving the white flag the moment a mild inconvenience hit them.
The worse thing is the tiefling didn't even misread the spell. He just reasonably assumed (quite reasonably) the dragon would only have darkvision which the darkness spell specifically says it can't see through.
Actually no darkvision sees right thru darkness , its deeper darkness that makes darkvision pointless unless it has improved darkvision then it will give no shit also d%roll to see if hits or misses 50% miss chance, not including they could shoot the fighter if they all don't have precise shot
Tiefling got off easy, when I used Hunger of Hadar on a dragon (I had devil's sight invocation) and then went to work hitting it once every round. Well while the rest of the party was dealing with the second dragon I was just hitting the green dragon and Hunger of Hadar was damaging it. So when the other dragon dies and the party is ready to go after the one inside the Hunger of Hadar it's the paladins turn. So what would you do if your warlock was concentrating on a spell to hold a dragon at bay but you need to get in there? You'd shout to the warlock "Hey drop the spell we're ready to go!" To which the warlock would do just that. But no...our paladin sprinted to me and attempted to force me to drop concentration by hitting my character in the face with non-lethal damage 3 times (I have warcaster as a feat guess who didn't drop concentration) guess what happened to the dragon at the start of its next turn.
TheSqoad Or, you know, throwing a fucking _dragon_ at a party who hadn't even memorized their powers yet and apparently had nothing better to do than fire arrows at it.
In one campaign I played a Drow Swashbuckler, part of his fighting strategy was casting Darkness upon himself and dashing around the battlefield slashing and impaling enemies upon his blades. To anyone gazing upon this they would see a dome of darkness moving around the area leaving behind a trail of bodies. It was really fun! If he needed any help fighting targets in the darkness he'd cast Faerie Fire so that others can see them as well. Before anyone says anything my GM said that as a Drow I could see in my own magical Darkness spell area and a home rule.
I killed myself by accident last time I played by casting grease on one side of an arena I was supposed to fight on, and was subsequently caught and put on the side with the grease (I was a wizard at 1st Lvl and damaged, so 5/7 HP), the gnome I was fighting with hit me once which left me on a single hit point, and i shot him with some magic missles, after which I promptly failed a dexterity check and fell over in the grease, giving him an advantage which knocked me unconscious, I rolled a 1 for my first saving throw, and for my second/final one i was given advantage because the gnome was trying to help me, I rolled a 2 and a 5, the dm decided to let me roll one last time because it was my first playthrough after all, and I rolled a 3. All because of a grease spell.
Unless the tiefling character already knew that dragons had blindsight, I think casting darkness on it is reasonable.NOT casting darkness because of game knowledge would be meta-gaming. I'd prefer players that make mistakes like this, because it can help with the immersion.
I probably would have had him make an intelligence check / nature check first to see if the character would be aware of the in universe generic knowledge about dragons (that the player didn't know).
Thats not really fair, how the fuck was he supposed to know that dragons have the fucking hearing skills of godamm daredevil,thats dm information, and if he was anew player than their is no way he coulda known
the problem wasn't that he didn't know that the dragon could still see them, it was that he made it so everyone else couldn't see the dragon. Even without the dragon having the ability to see them through the darkness it still has a potent breath attack it could just fire off blindly across the deck of the ship.
I played in a campaign that had something similar happen. Darkness was more of a detriment to our party than it was to the enemies we were fighting. However, in our case, the player knew exactly how the Darkness spell works.
I think the Warlock should know what his spell does, but the DM and everyone else was still terrible. The dragon is a large target, and it is not impossible to hit when shrouded in darkness, you're just at a disadvantage. No one did anything because they were all petty, and the fighter, instead of retreating when he can't see shit and his sword FUCKING BOUNCED OFF THE DRAGON, decides to fight it head on
Viewtiful Z the warlock knew what his spell did, if it had been anything without blindsight it would've worked out. What the warlock can't be expected to know is that dragons have blindsight.
The DM shouldn't have to explain the spell. If you are playing a spellcaster, then it is your responsibility to know your spells. The DM was not metagaming; he was following the rules and stating the effect of the spell. It wasn't the DM's decision to cast the spell.
No, BillyJoe, the warlock did not know what the spell did. It doesn't matter that the dragon had blindsight. Did the fact that the dragon have blindsight cause the PCs to not be able to see the dragon? No, the Darkness spell caused the PCs to not be able to see the dragon. If the warlock knew what Darkness did, then he would know that he was about to make fighting the dragon more difficult.
mdiem Except the DM was metagaming. He was witchhunting the player for not reading the Monster Manual and knowing that Dragons have Blindsight, which led to the other players witchhunting him
Something similar happened to me on an online D&D. At the time, I had forgotten what Druidcraft made so my character created a small rainbow in the middle of a fierce battle.
I'm not one to be winy about these kind of things, except the pronunciation of tiefling. You're doing it wrong. But I love your videos! Keep up the good work! I'm a recent subscriber and am currently binge watching your videos
The darkness thing is more of not knowing what dragons are capable of and not so much not knowing what the spell did. It did exactly what he thought and wanted it to do. He just didn't know what DRAGONS did. Not a very good example. So basically you hazed a probably new player for no reason and possibly turned them off from D&D. Good job.
I make sheets describing my spells. Then I try to review them before the session so I can ask my DM questions. Sometimes my DM even uses the sheet to check on the spells.
Debatable, as DM I would argue, yeah totally possible. Rules as stated in the rulebook, is a bit of grey area since you can't take actions (including dropping a concentration spell) on other player's turns, that said, if you're attacked (not on your turn) you can lose concentration. So I suppose the player's are dumb for not attacking the spellcaster to force him to lose concentration? Still an entire round of wasted turns though assuming it takes more than a few hits to succeed in breaking his concentration. Maybe he was maintaining the spell just to spite them all for poking fun at him?
I had a similar experience, but instead of darkness, my “bright” idea was to cast the light cantrip on our warrior so they could see,... on them, not a weapon or object. Ended up blinding them for a good amount of time, almost killing most of our group
The whole point of the fact that spell casters must meditate/pray/prepare spells in advance, or have a really short list of spells is so that they know their damn spells! If they don't know how their spells work, they shouldn't be able to cast!
The spell darkness creates a globe of darkness outside of which a creature cannot see. The Tiefling DID know his spell-- he just cast it on one of the few targets it wouldn't have had much effect on. And the character of the Tiefling shouldn't really have known that the dragon didn't need to see anyway... and everyone else not shooting was just being stupid.
TheHobgoblyn I mean, SOME of them might not have shot on the grounds of "We might hit our comrade!", but I guarantee you any true neutrals (AKA most of the crew present) would have fired without a second thought because "DRAGON, OH GOD I'M GOING TO DIE"
The Darkness spell creates a globe of darkness that cannot be seen *into* either. If the Tifling knew the spell, then he deliberately sabotaged his party and should be strung up as a traitor.
The crew wouldn't of fired arrows after seeing the big ole sword bounce off the even bigger dragon. They probably would have abandoned ship or if they had gunpowder blew it up with cannons. Unless there was some sorta fear aura too from this great mythical beast that made everyone but the heroes useless.
Can't blame the player for not knowing the dragon had blindsight. Or did you guys learn that characteristic about dragons earlier on in game? If not then he would have been meta gaming imo.
Malachai I disagree, he said it was a habit of his not to read the spell all the way through or not have a complete grasp on what the spell can or cannot do. I’ve played with a lot of people like this, and I can tell you, from experience, nothing is more frustrating than playing with a person who clearly did not care enough to put the time into creating a proper spell list.
I enjoy having large dangerous flying creatures pass by that is far above the level of the player. They get terrified they're about to fight this epic beast and it completely ignores their existence. And then eventually they get curious and they attempt to track it down and that's when things just get really really bad
The mahogany thing just reminds me of an in joke that came from my poor description. A dwarf asked what the walls of an underground area was made out of, so I gave the answer granite, but he wanted more, so I kept giving joke answers and now granite is a massive meme in our group, along with Hydras
To be fair, that's not a problem with reading his spell, he knew what the spell did, and people could still attack the dragon's square, albeit with a 50/50 miss chance. Not knowing that the dragon had blindsight had nothing to do with not reading the spell.
So, I think this is dumb. disadvantage on the shots because they can't see it but the dragon is fucking huge. Also you can break a concentration at any time in 5e, I understand if there's some homeruling going on but I feel like it could've been dealt with better than witch hunting the warlock. And if the warlock was that ignorant and harmful to the party talk to him about it before it escalated. Puffin, I love your videos but this one triggered me.
Stitchthealchemist I'd Still allow for the npcs to shoot into the darkness at a 10 foot angle. -4 in 3.5, disadvantage in 5e, heavy cover in Pathfinder who Cares xD
there is no way the guy could know the dragon had blindsight unless they fought another dragon that had it. seriously its called knoeledge people... your character who has never met a dragonn before may not know that info. but just for record... concentration can be broken as a free action. nobody was forced to ose their turn.
So just to be clear you berated a player for not knowing that a dragon has blindsight and can see through darkness, and for you all acting like there was nothing you could do despite fully being able to target the dragon since you're still able to attack it, just at a 50% chance to miss from total concealment, and that assuming the dragon isn't large enough to actually take up the whole sphere in which case a large portion of it is still fully visible and able to be hit...for the lols?
Okay, so, hey, I have an idea for an..."interesting" rp: So, it focuses on this one item, "The Oculus mortem" or something like that. Quick back story of the thing: _it is literally the eye of some long-dead eldritch abomination from beyond the universe, and as such, a piece of their corpse has certain...abilities._ So, how it works is as follows: the eye is a random chance item, so the player who has it must roll the dice between 1-100, and depending on the number, the severity, magnitude and effect of the outcome is changed. So, going from my personal preference (which you can change) of even=good, odd=bad, 1-100 severity, 1 would be pretty mundane, not really good, but not really bad, just kinda "eh", so their weapons would degrade a bit, or a food item would vanish, 2 being the opposite of their weapons getting back some durability, etc. Where it _really_ gets interesting is the higher numbers, like: 50 is good, but not amazing, so your health goes up, your attack is better, something like that, 51 is bad, but not crippling, so your health is down, you miss more often, you find less valuable loot, etc (note, the eye can be used any time of day, and before any action, the same rules apply for magnitude, effect, etc but the more combat-oriented stuff is definitely more for boss fights and stuff, so just imagine that 70 would be like, a fountain of gold in the chest, where 71 takes everything but the coppers, or something along those lines) but where you start messing with stuff like an engineer on coke is at about the 70 and higher mark, _oh boy,_ so, 70 is like, " everything is better now, so have some help." And the enemy you're fighting/dungeon you're raiding/market you're at just...is better, so, the lich king's minion's just keel over or something, the vendors suddenly have way better prices, the dungeon traps malfunction, it's basically like you ingested a 7 four-leaf-clover milkshake, wore horseshoes as jewelry and the higher beings just breathed in your direction. 71 though, oh boy, you'll need a priest, a mortician, an exorcist and a hitting' bible for this one, because the universe just took a crowbar to your legs: Chests just up and dissapear, if not, the loot does, every enemy within 50 metres suddenly hits like a runaway truck on the freeway, shopkeeps and salesmen will take every gold piece from your pockets, come with all the problems that may bring, every brick, shingle and stone in a place is now trapped to all hell, and the deepest dwellers of the pits are laughing their asses off, but don't worry, because we still have: *99 & 100* To sum up, 99=may god have mercy on your soul, for this has none. 100=the holy eye of the great being deigns that today, you shall go to heaven, because why not. 99: so, you know how I said the item was from the corpse of an eldritch, space bending lovecraftian abomination? _turns out, not all of them are dead._ so, manage to get one of these, the universe lags for a minute, pauses, tears itself open, and sics one of the unknowable horrors on the world for seven minutes, then yanks back on the choke-chain. But, although the thing's gone, what it did...isn't, and what happens, well, that's up to you. The sky can turn red/green/purple, the sun can change colour, one of your party members can just up and cease to exist, all your gold/items/food/armour is just _gone, now,_ and have I forgotten to say that that crawling, formless horror can just _remove_ cities? Like, major trade capitals, entire areas, or even _planets_ can just *not be there anymore.* 100: ....sooo, if 99 is the ultimate _bad_ result, this is the ultimate _good_ result. Wars can stop, money beyond your wildest dreams can appear to you, the boss can just _vanish,_ party members can come back from the dead, cities and towns can double, triple, *quadruple* in size and power, and, my favourite, *a member of the party can literally attain near-godhood for a period of in-game time.* *------* So, yeah, do with this idea what you will, oh, and, _you can't tell the players how the item works, only how to use it._ (Note, after reading the deck of many things description, I now realise that they sound very similar, I would like to make addendum that the GM can alter the outcomes almost in their entirety except for the basics, "best result" and "worst result". Addendum 2: the oculus mortem cannot alter itself with it's effects, as that would cause a paradox, however, if you would like to incorporate said paradox, feel free to.)
One day there will be an attack your not supposed to look at and the tiefling will be like this is my moment and cast darkness and roll a critical fail
couldn't they just fire their arrows into the darkness at the place where they "think" the dragon is? like, just let them make the attack with a -4 to hit or something? and no, i'm not making the joke about "I cast a magic missile"
4 роки тому
because they might hit the player who charged the dragon.
I had a player cast fog cloud once and he was all like “The kobolds can’t see us now!”. Everyone gave him the look while I told him that THEY couldn’t see the kobolds either.
I was playing a home brewed undead race that was essentially a shade, which was a type of ghost that was corporeal, and I made my way up this large wooden surveillance that was about six stories high, and down below was a guard on watch. Slipping my dagger out I made a leap of faith down to silently land behind him to slit his throat. Only to fall through several floors with all the guards crashing down with me, taking down the entire tower and everyone in it.
Been running Curse of Strahd for a few months now. One of my PCs died and was now a bard. Anyhow the group had just gotten into Castle Ravenloft and was tricked into a gargoyle ambush by a vistani named Boris. Boris tries to escape and runs down a spiral staircase. The bard tries to cut him off by using dimension door, also taking a plot essential NPC with him. I say however, you haven't explored that part of the castle and can't properly visualize the area at the bottom of the staircase. You can however use direction and distance to try teleporting there. So, he says he teleport 50 ft straight down. He and this npc do so, and land on this table in a room full of bones, which just so happened to be the room they were guaranteed to find Strahd. So Yea, the bard landed on this table and found himself Surrounded by Strahd and a few minions. Fun times
I had a similar experience when someone in my party cast fog. She was so excited. "Now they can't see us!." to which the Gm replied "You hear someone shout in Orcish "Yes, now they can't see us! and run around you."
Who'd they do it on?
I have a storm cleric cast sleet storm on incoming white dragons, which have no problem with ice or cold weather,completely immune to the spell, the party wasn't.
we had the same thing, but the dude cast it on a rogue. a level 20 rogue.
that we were chasing.
@@vixievulpixie Might as well give a smoke-bomb to Batman.
I mean, i cast fog on someone to hide them while they were performing a ritual. They couldn't do anything anyway, and the enemy never attacked them
This kind of remind me that good old crawling through recently emptied oil pipe. Due to visibility problems one player had bright idea to try and light torch so we could move faster. GM took his idea into consideration and replied that such move would improve our speed by around +150km/h and asked once more for confirmation if he really wants to light that torch.
Even with that our poor torchlighter did not get a clue and rest of party had tio physicaly subdue him before he shot us out of that pipe.
In my game we had a similar in-joke, it was " throw a rock at it", it was from when I had two crits when I threw to rocks at a bone demon.
Dude, rocks are overpowered.
Yeah, they are
There's an SAO Abridged reference to be made here.
I used to do that as a monk, the DM ruled a rock counted as a simple weapon so i would just pick up rocked and chuck them using my proficiency and massive dex bonus. The rock did 1 damage or so, but my dex made it 4 or 5 damage.
It's the same in my campaign but npcs with bricks. Four natural 20's in a row for one hobo with a brick helping the party. Open rolls from me the GM, and no crits until next session.
“Ben’s busy today, he’s got the darkness.”
In the first game I played with my current group one of our players kept missing attacks and hitting the walls near his enemies instead. This, combined with the facts that his character was this hoity-toity paladin, and the player tried so hard to make him a super badass who was completely flawless and wanted the rest of us to take the character seriously, led to the rest of us dubbing his character the Wallbeater, since that was the only thing he consistently managed to hit with his attacks. He probably wanted the guy to be nicknamed the Great, or the Pure, or the Perfect, or something like that, but to his aggravation his character got stuck with the nickname the Wallbeater.
It also wasn't helped by the fact that the guy played his character like an idiot. He honestly should probably have played a fighter because the paladin class was way too advanced for him to wrap his head around. He has this heroic idea of what a paladin is, so he always wants to play as one, but his idea doesn't line up with how it is in the game. He played his paladin like a fighter: meaning that he always forgot to use his abilities. He always forgot that he was also the group healer. The rest of us had to keep reminding him to use his divine powers.
So his character was, for a long time, a total fuck up as a paladin, and yet the player insisted that he was flawless. He thought he was playing Uther the Lightbringer, when in reality he was playing Mr. Bean in armour.
I don't see a paladin as a group healer. Paladins are more tanks with healing abilities rather than pure healer.
I know, but this tank/healer combination still has a healer side to it, which he didn't fulfill. And he never used his other paladin abilities on his own either.
when you only have a paladin for healing spells, he kinda is the group healer
1987MartinT û
dude if I had a nickname like wallbeater id ham it up and wait for that perfect moment when I could make it a viable name by breaking my way through a wall like the cool-aid man
One of our running jokes is to check the Dirts quality, as someone in the first dungeon wanted to check the quality of the dirts composition (long story) and I told them "roll knowledge nature". They rolled a crit, and I ended up saying it was pretty much God-Tier Dirt, the party broke out in laughter for a solid 2-3 minutes, someone made a joke about becoming dirt farmers with said patch of dirt, which extended the laughing by another minute, and someone actually took a bottle of that dirt. To this day, my parties sorcerer and cavalier still make references to checking the dirt.
Nat55atata
We always use "invincible scrub" because of a pile of sticks that refused to die.
One of our running jokes is that ghouls are freaking terrifying. There was one session of ours where we killed all the bosses fairly easy. Then we came to a small group of ghouls whom legitimately beat our asses. One of them picked up a rock and started bashing us to death with it basically. In the end we managed to steal their rock (we were convinced it was amazing and magically lucky at this point), but we never managed to kill them all.
dirt farmers" reminds me of a similar gag in the online comic "order of the stick" where the heroes rescued a Dirt Farmer...
This channel is super charming, keep it up man!
Well welcome to the future
@@mr.potato2223 you too
Charm person
Cute, haha. I had a player that would do this with "Enlarge Person" and "Reduce Person" in the most random of times. XD
let's enlarge this giant so he can't get through the hole!
I did that as a hill dwarf wizard, it was always fun. To shrink a hill giant
First time D&D player here, what do those two spells do?
The spells do just what they sound like, one makes the target larger and the other make the target smaller. The use cases tend to be that larger melee characters hit harder and have longer reach, smaller ranged/casting/support characters are more dexterous, harder to hit, and better at sneaking. There's also the situational uses like having narrow hallways that Enlarged characters wouldn't fit in, or small holes that Reduced characters would.
Dennis Rigdon We had a fight with a Green Dragon (don't know the age). One part of our plan was that the Barbarian jumps into its mouth followed by the Wizard casting Enlarge on them, blocking it's mouth and therefore taking away it's breath weapon and part of it's multiattack.
That mahogany joke is similair to one that we do in our pathfinder campaign which we are in the middle of. The whole mahogany thing revolves around our cavalier multiclassing as a paladin winning in a bar fight against the owner of said bar. He wins by the bar owner picking up a mahogany table and dropping it on their head, rendering them unconscious. Later the person who sends us on this campaign explains to us that the tables are made of mahogany which in this specific city was very rare, the DM later states that he just wanted to say mahogany in a stupid italianish accent he made up. Since then whenever we got into a combat encounter we asked if there is any mahogany tables around for the enemy to knock themselves out with.
Nice!
i thought it was a hunger games joke
I assumed it was just a Dragon Ball Z Abridged joke.
DODGE!!!!
When surveying your surroundings, always look for: places for the rogue to sneak; an escape route if shit goes sideways; opportunistic weapons designed to do extra damage to a boss; mahogany for your opponent to knock themselves out with.
I remember one game where we had a new player that started for the very first time join us that was pretty memorable. We were fighting this water weird (water snake thing that hides in water) that had dragged in one of the other players since he underestimated its reach. The new player, who rolled a wizard tried to make the water weird slip using grease, which failed and only turned the water weird a slightly brownish grease color and caused the player trapped inside it slipping from the grease and making escape more difficult. The wizard player on their next turn decided it was a good time to use cloud of daggers on the water weird, which resulted in the player and water weird taking 4d4 slashing damage (this was at lvl 3 so only so much hp to work with). So basically the player was trapped inside the water weird drowning, slipping constantly from the grease, and getting slashed up by floating daggers. One of us jokingly put up a video of a blender blending a piece of meat since that's pretty much what happened to that trapped character. He managed to survive, but nearly died in the process from friendly fire, though since the new player was his friend irl he forgave him and warned him to look at the spells before casting.
"Is the table made out of... Mahogany"
Wait was that a DBZA King Yemma joke?
"It's Mahogany. Mahogany!"
Bertoxolous The Puzzled I think it was.
And not just any mahogany....
I think it might have been a hunger games reference
"That's mahogany!"
death singer
That’s what I thought
They couldn't attack the darkness?
Darksummerswind most likely would miss so they didn't want to waste arrows and stuff
I think he was referencing this video: ua-cam.com/video/-leYc4oC83E/v-deo.html
at 1:31. Unless I'm mistaken. . .
But you are correct!
Puffin Forrest nice to know. Also your videos are getting me interested in d&d and star wars and other tabletop rpgs. Your great dood.
Thanks! That's great to hear.
Puffin Forrest also I might make my own custom tabletop rpg about steven universe, but I doubt I'll get far lol.
Mostly because I'm a terrible artist.
"Do we hear beds?", "I fire my great sword from my bow"
I cast Magic Missile and attack the Darkness!
Hey, where's those Cheetos and Mountain Dew?
Dead Ale Wives!
:)
In the Fridge
I cast darkness at the magic missile!
Guaranteed ONLY if they can SEE the target Dewani90, as the wording of the spell specifically says in the book. If the caster can't see the target, no magic missile.
K, but you have to SEE the target in order to cast magic missile
Whenever I heard "darkness" mentioned, I was playing Final Fantasy, and I thought, "Oh, hey! That'll actually come in handy! Every attack the dragon attempts aside from magic spells will miss!"
If only that were the case with Dungeons & Dragons, I'd add that spell to my character in seconds!
If I was that guy that casted darkness. Every time they would say "why don't you cast darkness" I would just cast it just to troll them.
Alucard you are in a dark room,
I cast darkness.
you made the darkness, darker darkness, now there's a orb of darker darkness darker than the normal darkness
@@masonmccoppin7743 It's...ADVANCED DARKNESS.
@@Nyghtking ...no
@@masonmccoppin7743 yes
I can't get over the fact that you say "Taifling"
usernamedkjah wut m8 I'm pretty sure it's pronounced teef-ling pretty much everywhere.
UK here, it's definitely TEEfling.
usernamedkjah ok so in my home brew your name is pronounced Jill. It's not wrong it's just my homebrew
I am sure that is somethign that he conscioulsy sees as homebrew.....jesus fuck dude get over it. I made a comment that I find it weird how he prnounces it...no insult no sign of felt superiority except for what YOU interpreted into it. Stop to get your fucking nillys in a twist.
Is that the only response you can come up with? xD Well certainly fits the capabilities you have displayed so far...
One of my favorite d&d inside jokes is from a campaign I played last year, where one of the players was a cat (the familiar of an old character) with a headband of intellect and high charisma. During one of our sessions, we had infiltrated an orc stronghold to plant explosives and destroy the place. The cat was just walking casually down a corridor and came across an orc, who looked down and asked in common, "Why is cat?" The cat then looked up at him and replied, "Why is not cat?" and gave the orc an existential crisis.
Funny enough, in that same session we had another inside joke as well. The halfling monk and the scarecrow rogue in the party were carrying barrels of explosives when two orcs turned down the corridor. The scarecrow simply stopped moving so it looked like a normal scarecrow, and the monk cast minor illusion to make a barrel appear in his space. The orcs were confused about why there were three barrels and a scarecrow randomly in the hallway and went to pick up the illusory barrel. Before they could act, the scarecrow made quick work of one orc and the monk made quick work of the other, landing a devastating flurry of blows. The DM began to describe the orc being punched in the face, until someone pointed out, "He's a halfling - there's a height difference." The DM then changed his description accordingly, describing it as the monk punching the orc so hard in the balls that he coughed them up and died. Afterward, the monk cut off the orc's now-empty scrotum and forever ruined the word "coin purse."
To be fair, the dragon having blindsight wouldn’t be on the spell description.
Talon Greenlee but it would be common knowledge to the PCs especially if he rolled higher than a 3 on INT.
I've been playing D&D for about 7 years now and I didn't know dragons have blindsight...
Johnathan Era why would a creature choose to live in the dark if they can't see in the dark? Caves are dark, dragons live in caves, ergo dragons can see in darkness.
Gr3nadgr3gory darkvision would be sufficient for a dragon to see in darkness, no need for blindsense
PixelHunter and the spell is literally called "darkness"
I play a tiefling and in a game where we were going to save a king from some demons, we get in the throne room and we see 2 wraith like demons hovering over the king pulling some sort of energy out of him so i run over and get between the wraiths and the king telling the cleric to heal the king but she decides to try and fight the demons and everyone else just ignores me after a few rounds of this i get fed up and drop darkness blinding all of my party and the demons. Then i pick the king up walk him out of the room and do a medicine check to stabilize him. Everyone got pissed and said that i was stupid that we should have beat the demons first and then taken care of the king, well after we were done with the encounter our dm told us that if i had waited 1 more turn the king would have died and he couldn't rally his army to fight the demon invasion
The Cleric tried to fight instead of heal? The only explaination I can think of is she was a Death Domain Cleric and was trying to stay in-character, but I'm confident that wasn't the case
Viewtiful Z nope she was not she was a dedicated healer idk what she was doing
Duuuude, you cant get mad at someone for playing their character how they wanna play them. If their characters wants to ignore yours then they gotta deal with the consequence that your character will take shit into his own hands. Thats not something that they should out of character get mad about. In character, sure. Out of character, no. You do what you think is right for your character.
Angelica McRussian This.
Maybe they are a bloodthirsty healer. Maybe they see it as their god's will to destroy all demons. Etc.
You can't assume a personality from someone's stats.
And thats fine to me. The rogue shouldnt be mad about that either. You choose your own characters actions. Right there the healer might not have thought the situation was that serious. The rogue did though, for whatever reason. In character the people can argue about that as much as they want, just dont take it serious enough to argue about it out of character. Its a game, and everyone has the right to choose their own actions :P
New D&D player here. This reminds me of the time I cast Faerie Fire during my first encounter playing as a bard and completely failed to consider that, by lighting our enemies up like Christmas trees and making them vulnerable to attack, I’d ended up sabotaging our paladin as well, who had found himself comfortably in the middle of the twenty-foot cube with most of our enemies in it due to him being, y’know, a paladin. He took a mighty biff to the mush next turn despite his high AC, and our party almost completely forfeited any advantage my Faerie Fire had conferred just trying to keep the pally alive. Needless to say I learned this lesson fast and printed out a few quick reference sheets of bard spell cards for the next session.
When they mix up fire-bolt and fireball.
🔥🔥😱🔥🔥
cloudsRniceC0M3 IVE DONE THAT!
"Oh, the dragon still can see us, but we can't see it. Let's set the boat on fire. If everything is burning there is no way to miss!"
Not gonna lie, I would probably use darkness whenever someone mocked me, just to spite them into submission.
"Don't miiiinnnnd if DO!"
*rolls*
Everyone's complaining about the blindsense bit, but you're all overlooking the disadvantage the darkness gave to the ENTIRE PARTY. Giving disadvantage to one enemy is not worth hindering your entire party as well as any assistance you have as well. Maybe they learned about the blindsense after the fact when the dragon was ripping the fighter to shreads because it had it and he remembers this part strongly because it's what fucks his fighter over. The focus of this was that the party did not have the excess supplies to go missing shots and wasting spells, not that the dragon could still attack them.
Besides, everyone's calling this bullying without actually knowing how you and your D&D buddies play. With my group we're pretty loose and get into trouble a lot. We do silly things and make mistakes and we just laugh at it, learn, and move on. We constantly pick on each other's mistakes, not with the intention of bullying, but because we know we're only joking around and don't do it with the intention to hurt the other player. We tear each other down and pick each other back up. Seriously, have none of you never tease'd another player for an action they did that didn't go as they had anticipated? That grand leap of faith that ended with a mouth full of dirt. That brilliant plan that goes to shit the moment it's executed. Touching an evil artifact to store it safely and instead being cursed and posses by its will.
I find it more strange that Ben didn't remove himself out of the sphere of darkness into safety, and drawing the dragon out of the range of the darkness spell (it doesn't anchor onto an object, but a grid space), unless he just died in the single round.
Oh so the player and character knew that dragons have blindsense?? Honestly if one DIDN'T know that, they may think casting darkness could help to temporarily disorient an enemy...
BonadanAlloy This.
Basically what Drizzt, or any other Drow for that matter, would do.
This is basically a story about how a whole group bullied a player because they didn't metagame an encounter by reading the monster manual entry...
It's not a terrible idea, but the fact that it also prevented anyone else from doing anything meant it caused more trouble than it might have helped.
Well, the archers should still be able to fire blindly into the darkness, and he could dispell it next round. They could have used the round to "prepare".
2:57 "just kidding, I died horribly." Well at least no one saw.
"Oh shit, this sphere of darkness appears on the deck of a ship in the middle of the day! There's nothing we can do!"
So... nobody thought to shoot into the darkness? Nobody casted magic into the darkness? Yeah you couldn't TARGET the dragon but that darkness isn't some kind of forcefield that deflects attacks. Oh no, you have disadvantage! There's a 25% chance you don't hit the giant monster inside the black bubble! You might hit the guy inside!
Don't Tieflings have devilsight? Pretty sure he could still see inside the magical darkness
YorHaTomata usually the caster is able to see inside their own Darkness orb.
InsanoRider777 But, in 3.5E, you need a clear shot to cast Magic Missile.
Wasted attacks all around
@@DJATOMICA95 no they don't
A group I GM recently had one of.. these moments, rather a collection of moments in rapid succession.
The campaign is set in my webcomics world of the Elemental Planes, and the group had been tasked by the Elemental Lord of Fire to retrieve a few books for them. Two of which, were located in the Elemental Plane of Water. The group went to a contact of theirs, and found out that the items they needed were held up in the Water Lord's treasury, so, they snuck in through an underground entrance. The group is only about level 2 at this time, so they're pretty weak and this task was rather simple and straight forward.
Everything was going fine, but as they continued in, they noticed these puddles on the ground. Pay in mind, this place has water everywhere, a floor made of ice, it's common to see water pooling. Now what I hadn't told them is that those were inanimate water-golems, which were the Treasury's security. What they were supposed to do is sneak up on them, cast an identify spell and realize 'Hey! This is a dormant golem. We should avoid these!'
But, one of the players, a Barbarian named Zisa, sees one of said puddles and decides to charge at it and activating their barbarian rage while doing so. For no other reason than they said it looked 'menacing'.
I did your usual 'Are you sure about that.' DM shpeal, and of course, they keep on with it. So I said that they charged over the puddle, and had to make a reflex save to avoid falling flat on their ass as they tripped over it. Even asking if they 'Damaged it'... They succeeded the save, only for the Water Golem to become active, as with every, other water golem in the dungeon and promptly deck the Barbarian down to 1 HP. It was then that the group realized that I had meant for them to sneak around these things, as the puzzle later on in the dungeon, was no longer powered because the magical power in the dungeon was being rerouted to keep the Golems active. Golems they now had to kill. Level 5 golems with high AC, couldn't be crit as they were made of water, high as hell melee power and immunity most of their magic, while they were level 2.
Well, the Barbarian, not wanting to solve the puzzle in the first place, decided to brute force it. Now, the puzzle was given by a massive, stationary dragon skull with a hinged mouth. The group could see the path forward and had to solve it's riddle with a simple matching lights puzzle. The Barbarian, attempted to force the head open to get to the path, and awakened a super boss that I had hidden, which was the Skull.. This is a level 20 boss that is meant to guard the treasury in the Water Lord's absence. If they had done the dungeon as it was meant to have been done, they would have walked through, snuck around the dormant golems, solved the puzzle and continued onto the next floor.
Instead the barbarian set off the security system, awakened the dungeons guardian, and then promptly got killed by a colossal dragon skull for their stupidity, while the rest of the group got captured by the Water Lord and their goons, and almost killed via firing squad for trespassing..
Now when ever a player decides to do something obviously idiotic, or might potentially cause a TPK, the group calls it 'Pulling a Zisa'.
One inside joke of the campaign I am currently participating in is that I always ask if there is old crusty food anywhere. It started when we entered an abandoned bakery and our GM told us there were bits of crusty food on the shelves, and I asked if I could eat them. The GM gave me a puzzled look and everyone busted out laughing, including me. To this day, when I enter a room, I ask if there is a shelf with crusty food on it for no reason at all.
As an added bonus, I am also a tiefling warlock (coincidence?)
Vincent Burton I'd eat it IRL, just to troll God.
Right on! (Though, in the tiefling's defense, did the character know that dragons have blindsight?) What I run into a lot is players misunderstanding how a spell works. So they say they cast it, I read it over a bit and explain how it works, and then the players proclaims, "Oh, if THAT'S how it works, then I'm not casting it." This is the cousin of not reading the spell. What I also find is that players have an amazing knack for interpreting spells in the best possible light for themselves, and when the DM -- me -- reads the spells, we see that they don't work exactly the way the players thought they did. This is why I ALWAYS read a spell for myself when a player casts a spell I'm unfamiliar with.
Speaking of not reading spells... it's a concentration spell. You can drop concentration on a spell at any time, even if it's not your turn. I'll grant that the warlock didn't know that the dragon wasn't affected but it'd be super apparent after the first unobstructed hit against the fighter. Also, dragons are huge. Just cast darkness 30 ft into the air. The dragon would still be in darkness but everyone else would've been fine.
honestly incredible how much your animation skill has improved over the last two years. So excited to see how good it gets in the coming years!
You know breaking concentration is a free action.
Free actions don't exist in 5e (though there are like flourishes and things like that you can do on your turn), if we're talking about another ed such as Pathfinder or 3.5, free actions can only be taken on your turn. He'd have to at least wait an entire round before being able to drop concentration. Granted, the other player's could have attacked him to make him lose concentration on their turn. This most likely all happened in a single round before the player's next turn could show up. Finally, the mocked player may have chosen to deliberately kept the spell up to spite the rest of the group.
@Kuuryo For 5e yes, I'm not sure what PF is playing here though, as this an older story possibly from before he switched to 5e. That said, look at: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/139537/when-exactly-can-a-caster-stop-concentrating-on-a-spell for all the potential mess that can happen by allowing someone to end concentration at any time (that said, its still RAW legal). DM mileage may vary.
Since the tiefling’s turn ended it would make more sense to shoot it in the back with an arrow (gives you the “surprise” advantage to hit), because taking damage requires that you make a constitution check to hold concentration.
A running gag for me in a group I was in was that I was called the Arsonist because a fair amount of my strategies early on in my D&D playing involved something being set on fire. It worked a fair amount of the time, and even when I made characters who didn't use fire-based spells, I had players get confused when I opted not to set anything on fire.
Why couldn't he just release concentration on the spell, though? Most tables I've played at allow that.
Who wants to bet that if they would’ve left the dragon alone the dragon ignored them?
Assuming the player didn't know that dragons can see in darkness, their move makes decent sense. I think you guys were a little harsh on mc pointy horns there. Plus you could all have attacked the dragon at disadvantage, so it really isn't too big of a deal
Kristian Welsh
If he's their friend then there's no such thing as too harsh.
A person, or Dragon, who are in the dark can see people in the light just fine.
Kristian Welsh why wouldn't a dragon be able to smell and hear. It's a dragon.
To be fair: I had a player who once didn't think a dragon could be intelligent.
Leon Mercury that's disappointing.
Whenever the DM stares at you and asks "Are you sure?" - this is an indication that you might want to go to Plan B.
My eye twitches everytime he says "TIE"Fling instead of teifling LOL
Potato potato
Let's call the whole thing off
And now I have the mental image of a demonic TIE fighter.
No Tea Fling? But I thought we had a thing going!! *sobs
Whats wrong with saying tiefightling?
I think hearing stories from past DND campaigns is so cool. And hearing people’s enthusiasm is really nice.
I think the dm and the other players didn't really deal with that one well...
Why would the dm volunteer technical stats? Why wouldn't the ranger and crew shoot at the dragon's last position (it's a dragon, it's big. Take the 20% miss!)? Why didn't the warrior back up?
Blind firing had a chance to hit the warrior so they likely held back.
The warrior didn't back up because the dragon was first on initiative and with advantage flatted the warrior in one turn.
Don't forget that the teifling can instantly do the dismiss the spell as it is a free action to do so after the dm gave all all the meta information they shouldn't have
If the Warrior would die in a single turn, he wasn't much of a Warrior and that Dragon would have killed everyone regardless.
Crim Crysari
Or the Warrior was unlucky and the dragon Novad him by getting 3 crits and 2 regular hits from its multi attack and legendary actions despite the fact they your fighter wasn’t the only one in range... I am totally not speaking from experience what are you talking about
To be fair, even if he read the spell he'd still be screwed. He'd need to know if the dragon had blindsight or not .
an attack roll with Disadvantage (or circumstance penalties...depending on edition) is *still* an attack roll! why did you all just *not* try? not being able to see the creature just simply means it is *harder* to hit...not *impossible* . i mean a dragon is like the size of a barn! even if it were encompassed in a globe of tenebrous energy you could feasibly still hit it just by shooting in the general area! i'm no Robin Hood but i am a decent shot with a longbow. i can hit a 10in pie pan at 25 yards no real problem. i'd say i count as "Proficient" with Longbows. i think if i stood in front of a barn sized thing with my bow and then closed my eyes i could still put the arrow *somewhere* in the barn sized target.
the fighter was in front of the dragon
are...are you...are you suggesting said fighter was...? providing it *cover* ??!!! BAHAHAHAHAHA!!! sorry..hehe..no. because if it was Medium (the only way the fighter could conceivably provide it "cover") then it was young. VERY young. like wyrmling fresh outta the shell young. in which case its Blindsight had a very limited range. in fact limited to 10'. the Darkness spell has a 15' radius. which means in any given direction the dragon faced it was 5' further out than the dragon could sense with Blindsight. so...the dragon would be blind too. in which case their DM screwed them just to be a dick DM and screw his players. my point still stands either way. Disadvantage or circumstance penalties (depending on edition) don't make attack impossible...only harder. so, *make* *the* *friggin* *rolls* . an attempt is better than nothing.
likely to hit the fighter as well if youre shooting blind
I would not want to play with you, my barbarians would likely get shot in the back.
DwarfBeard TheDungeonMaster Maybe in the REAL world where your aim doesn't rely on a dice roll. But when you're rolling disadvantage with your ally right in front of the enemy, you're more likely than not to hit your teammate in the back of the fucking head or something. I have seen plenty of instances where that sort of thing happened. So, with that many people, if they got enough bad rolls, they could have killed their teammate before the dragon ever did.
Had a similar situation where someone cast fog on an enemy...when they were already in fog that they’d JUST used magic to lighten, thereby completely undoing the entire point.
I’d like to add that they were fighting an ASSASSIN, you know, someone who likes to stealth.
Umm... this isn't a story about not knowing what the spell does-- it is a story about not having read the monster manual and knowing what the MONSTERS can do. Which... the PCs aren't supposed to know anyway. The Tiefling didn't actually make any mistake, had the dragon not had blindsight (which he wasn't supposed to know it had anyway) then putting a big blinding globe around a dragon isn't such a bad idea....
And the fact that you can't fire arrows into a globe to hit a target nearly the size of the globe itself is a failure of the rules to match the reality of the situation. In a realistic scenario, you could probably just fire arrows blindly into that globe and have a decent chance of hitting whatever was within it.
TheHobgoblyn character would have knowledge about the world, basic knowledge like a beast being able to attack smell would be apparent to any PC with an INT higher than 3.
Last I checked, human beings and similar humanoids can also smell things. Something likely you didn't realize because your INT is no higher than 3. But being surrounded in inky darkness would be nonetheless disorienting and befuddling to any animal. Dogs have great senses of smell, but if you threw a bag over the head of a dog in the middle of it playing, it wouldn't go on behaving as it previously would without interruption. Again, something you would probably realize if you weren't so proud of your INT of 3 and thus seeing no reason to try to achieve anything higher.
Moreover, if something the size of an automobile was obscured by a globe of darkness no larger than itself, I am quite certain I could take a shot at the automobile sized target and hit it. Of course, the issue is that like you the other PCs clearly only had an Intelligence of around "3" and thus you and them are as lost, bewildered and confused thinking it must have vanished entirely, the same mentality as a baby when someone covers their face during "peek-a-boo".
TheHobgoblyn why on earth would any sort of adventurer not know about the abilities most creatures have? Tell me that. Not to mention a dog with a bag on its head is muffling almost all their senses. You've covered the nose, eyes, and ears. That's disorienting. Knowing that dragons tend to live in caves with their hordes of treasure in most mythos they would obviously not live in an area they couldn't see things in. There is common sense in d&d most GMs won't let your character have a complete lack of it without a low INT.
No my character is not proud of having low INT but even a barbarian with an INT of 6 understands that dragons are apex predators that can see in the dark. If you would take the time to think you might realise that in order to actually role play well you would have knowledge of the world you fucking live in.
Encounters with dragons are meant to be considerably rare, there isn't a whole lot of room for individual experimentation with what they are and are not capable of. Hell, bears are a real life animal and when the question of "what should you do if you encounter a bear in the woods?" people will give myriad answers from "play dead" to "become aggressive and try to look big and make lots of noise" to "move away quickly and hope it doesn't follow" and each of them will claim if you follow the other advice then you are certain to end up dead. This is a REAL LIFE animal we are talking about here, one that humans have encountered frequently and even owned and trained for hundreds of years yet there is no consensus on what to do.
If you don't like the bag example, then we can simply point to the fact that there are dogs and cats who are blind despite having great senses of smell and hearing. According to you, being blind is absolutely no hindrance to these animals and if they were to suddenly become blind in the middle of the day, they would just carry on with their lives without even the slightest sign of being hampered.
I trust that if you do not have any personal experience, you can probably find information online fairly easily and note that-- yes, being blind would be a significant hindrance to a dog or a cat despite having sharp hearing and sense of smell. They are simply unable to get around without those senses. And this is despite the fact that they are both at least semi-nocturnal animals. They can "see in the dark", but if their sense of sight is lost-- they cannot just simply ignore that and get on with their other senses as though sight was never something they used in the first place.
Dragons having blindsight is functionally stupid and illogical because no matter what parallel you draw with any similar real life animal, if they have eyes then they do in fact use their eyes and being denied their eyes is not something they could instantly adapt to instantly. Even if an animal could learn to eventually adapt to this condition or can maneuver around dark areas if prepared, suddenly being denied its sight during a period it is relying on it would be severely disorienting.
In the very best case scenario, if a Dragon uses echolocation like a bat or dolphin (it clearly does not, for if it did so it would need to be emitting a constant sound and most definitely could not be utilizing its breath as a weapon as a result), if it was out in broad daylight using its eyes to maneuver around and was then suddenly struck blind, it would take a moment to adapt to this new situation.
Whether you know if the beast can or cannot see you is irrelevant, the Darkness spell was still a dumb move, because even IF the beast could not see the party, NO ONE could see the beast either, making attacks against it very difficult. Plus, even if you do not know everything about Dragons, you would still at least know about it having a Breath Weapon that covers an area and needs no aiming, thus no sight, in order to blast the group...
Well, your story seems less about him not reading what Darkness did and more that he didn't know that dragons have blind sense...
What about the mahogany thing?
Remember when puffin used to swear in videos
Step-by-step everything YOU LOT did wrong, which you cannot blame on the Tiefling.
1) The GM should not tell the Tiefling that they had made a mistake. The Tiefling did not know the dragon had Blindsight, and should not be informed out-of-game by an angry GM. And the GM shouldn't act like a jerk because a player didn't read the Monster Manual
2) The Ranger did not try to shoot the dragon, even though it's a large target, and he has a good idea of where it is (since it has not moved anywhere). The Ranger wastes a turn by being petty.
3) The GM has the crew do nothing instead of shooting the dragon, even though it's a large target, and they all have a good idea of where it is (since it has not moved anywhere). The GM wastes a turn by being petty.
4) The rest of the group does nothing instead of shooting the dragon, even though it's a large target, and they all have a good idea of where it is (since it has not moved anywhere). The rest of the group wastes a turn by being petty.
5) The DM suggests that the dragon is at an advantage, even though it is not. The dragon can SENSE the presence of everyone around it, but it cannot SEE them. There's no special smell or sound to firing a bow or casting a spell, so the dragon has no means of reacting upon them.
6) You try to fight the dragon in complete darkness instead of, say, disengage and retreat to safety. Which you have a pretty good idea of where it is (since it's right behind you). And considering you ran straight up to fight the dragon yourself, you may have been mauled to death by it anyway. The Darkness had no effect on your chances of survival in this case.
7) Your group let one of their people fall to the dragon with no attempts at all to save them, just because they were all too petty and to fire into the darkness. They'd rather one of their people die, that fire at the dragon, which they all had a good idea of where it was.
I could go on with the smaller details. But put short: you are faced with hitting the broad side of a barn at night, whilst knowing where the barn is, and only standing a few yards away from it. And there's about a dozen of you firing at it at the same time. And instead of taking the shot, you sit down a sulk because the sun isn't up yet.
The Tiefling didn't do anything wrong, they acted based on the knowledge they had and considering they were faced with a dragon, an act of panic is to be expected. Your group could not hold this against the Tiefling, IN-CHARACTER, in good conscience. The Tiefling did not cause one of the players to almost die, the rest of the group and the GM did, because they were the ones who started waving the white flag the moment a mild inconvenience hit them.
The worse thing is the tiefling didn't even misread the spell. He just reasonably assumed (quite reasonably) the dragon would only have darkvision which the darkness spell specifically says it can't see through.
Actually no darkvision sees right thru darkness , its deeper darkness that makes darkvision pointless unless it has improved darkvision then it will give no shit also d%roll to see if hits or misses 50% miss chance, not including they could shoot the fighter if they all don't have precise shot
Tiefling got off easy, when I used Hunger of Hadar on a dragon (I had devil's sight invocation) and then went to work hitting it once every round. Well while the rest of the party was dealing with the second dragon I was just hitting the green dragon and Hunger of Hadar was damaging it. So when the other dragon dies and the party is ready to go after the one inside the Hunger of Hadar it's the paladins turn. So what would you do if your warlock was concentrating on a spell to hold a dragon at bay but you need to get in there? You'd shout to the warlock "Hey drop the spell we're ready to go!" To which the warlock would do just that. But no...our paladin sprinted to me and attempted to force me to drop concentration by hitting my character in the face with non-lethal damage 3 times (I have warcaster as a feat guess who didn't drop concentration) guess what happened to the dragon at the start of its next turn.
TheSqoad
Or, you know, throwing a fucking _dragon_ at a party who hadn't even memorized their powers yet and apparently had nothing better to do than fire arrows at it.
xt01 the spell darkness is different from regular darkness. Darkvision can't see through it
In one campaign I played a Drow Swashbuckler, part of his fighting strategy was casting Darkness upon himself and dashing around the battlefield slashing and impaling enemies upon his blades. To anyone gazing upon this they would see a dome of darkness moving around the area leaving behind a trail of bodies. It was really fun! If he needed any help fighting targets in the darkness he'd cast Faerie Fire so that others can see them as well. Before anyone says anything my GM said that as a Drow I could see in my own magical Darkness spell area and a home rule.
So Drizzt minus the interesting part of the darkness gimmick?
LOL. Yeah, I've had players cast the worst spells. Great story as always. I like the animation too. Thanks for sharing this.
Thanks! You're welcome
I killed myself by accident last time I played by casting grease on one side of an arena I was supposed to fight on, and was subsequently caught and put on the side with the grease (I was a wizard at 1st Lvl and damaged, so 5/7 HP), the gnome I was fighting with hit me once which left me on a single hit point, and i shot him with some magic missles, after which I promptly failed a dexterity check and fell over in the grease, giving him an advantage which knocked me unconscious, I rolled a 1 for my first saving throw, and for my second/final one i was given advantage because the gnome was trying to help me, I rolled a 2 and a 5, the dm decided to let me roll one last time because it was my first playthrough after all, and I rolled a 3. All because of a grease spell.
This where a DM gently reminds the player what they're actually doing instead of saying "are you sure"
Unless the tiefling character already knew that dragons had blindsight, I think casting darkness on it is reasonable.NOT casting darkness because of game knowledge would be meta-gaming. I'd prefer players that make mistakes like this, because it can help with the immersion.
I probably would have had him make an intelligence check / nature check first to see if the character would be aware of the in universe generic knowledge about dragons (that the player didn't know).
Man the voices you make are simply the best.
Thats not really fair, how the fuck was he supposed to know that dragons have the fucking hearing skills of godamm daredevil,thats dm information, and if he was anew player than their is no way he coulda known
The tiefling wasn't the new player he was a dumbass who didn't read spells before casting.
the problem wasn't that he didn't know that the dragon could still see them, it was that he made it so everyone else couldn't see the dragon. Even without the dragon having the ability to see them through the darkness it still has a potent breath attack it could just fire off blindly across the deck of the ship.
"I cast darkness" sounds an awful lot like the, "I'm attacking the darkness" from Summoner Geeks which is so old most people have forgotten about.
If was there and suddenly a huge ass dragon got engulfed with darkness...id fire blindly, unless you are so poor you cant handle the cost of arrows.
I played in a campaign that had something similar happen. Darkness was more of a detriment to our party than it was to the enemies we were fighting. However, in our case, the player knew exactly how the Darkness spell works.
So the dm was meta gaming ( cause the players don't know about blind sense ) and then punishing the player instead of explaining the spell in advance.
I think the Warlock should know what his spell does, but the DM and everyone else was still terrible. The dragon is a large target, and it is not impossible to hit when shrouded in darkness, you're just at a disadvantage. No one did anything because they were all petty, and the fighter, instead of retreating when he can't see shit and his sword FUCKING BOUNCED OFF THE DRAGON, decides to fight it head on
Viewtiful Z the warlock knew what his spell did, if it had been anything without blindsight it would've worked out. What the warlock can't be expected to know is that dragons have blindsight.
The DM shouldn't have to explain the spell. If you are playing a spellcaster, then it is your responsibility to know your spells. The DM was not metagaming; he was following the rules and stating the effect of the spell. It wasn't the DM's decision to cast the spell.
No, BillyJoe, the warlock did not know what the spell did. It doesn't matter that the dragon had blindsight. Did the fact that the dragon have blindsight cause the PCs to not be able to see the dragon? No, the Darkness spell caused the PCs to not be able to see the dragon.
If the warlock knew what Darkness did, then he would know that he was about to make fighting the dragon more difficult.
mdiem Except the DM was metagaming. He was witchhunting the player for not reading the Monster Manual and knowing that Dragons have Blindsight, which led to the other players witchhunting him
Something similar happened to me on an online D&D. At the time, I had forgotten what Druidcraft made so my character created a small rainbow in the middle of a fierce battle.
I'm not one to be winy about these kind of things, except the pronunciation of tiefling. You're doing it wrong. But I love your videos! Keep up the good work! I'm a recent subscriber and am currently binge watching your videos
Whiny*
A tiefling sounds like a sentient tooth with a lisp.
0:51 (Skyrim theme starts playing)
You are all forgetting the biggest flaw in this story: Darkness has a range of touch.
Not in 5th Edition. In 5e, it has a range of 60 feet
Easy fix
Archers line up picket line style shoot into the darkness. Something is bound to hit the dragon.
The darkness thing is more of not knowing what dragons are capable of and not so much not knowing what the spell did. It did exactly what he thought and wanted it to do. He just didn't know what DRAGONS did. Not a very good example.
So basically you hazed a probably new player for no reason and possibly turned them off from D&D.
Good job.
Beal McGrewer well, it became a running joke to suggest the teifling cast darkness, which means he couldn’t have left after the experience...
I make sheets describing my spells. Then I try to review them before the session so I can ask my DM questions. Sometimes my DM even uses the sheet to check on the spells.
....?
But he can just lose concentration, right? It doesn't have to be your turn to do that...
Debatable, as DM I would argue, yeah totally possible. Rules as stated in the rulebook, is a bit of grey area since you can't take actions (including dropping a concentration spell) on other player's turns, that said, if you're attacked (not on your turn) you can lose concentration. So I suppose the player's are dumb for not attacking the spellcaster to force him to lose concentration? Still an entire round of wasted turns though assuming it takes more than a few hits to succeed in breaking his concentration. Maybe he was maintaining the spell just to spite them all for poking fun at him?
"...it was just me and the dragon in the sphere of darkness..." That is the most metal thing I've heard in weeks. Thank you.
..what about mahogany tho... i want that story aswell!
I guess they laughed because it was a reference to The Hunger Games
Or Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
I doubt I’ll ever play a game of D&D but this channel’s funny and makes the game look fun.
Argh. Tiefling. TEEF ling. From 'tief' or :deep: in German. Being from the deep.....
I had a similar experience, but instead of darkness, my “bright” idea was to cast the light cantrip on our warrior so they could see,... on them, not a weapon or object. Ended up blinding them for a good amount of time, almost killing most of our group
The whole point of the fact that spell casters must meditate/pray/prepare spells in advance, or have a really short list of spells is so that they know their damn spells! If they don't know how their spells work, they shouldn't be able to cast!
The spell darkness creates a globe of darkness outside of which a creature cannot see. The Tiefling DID know his spell-- he just cast it on one of the few targets it wouldn't have had much effect on. And the character of the Tiefling shouldn't really have known that the dragon didn't need to see anyway... and everyone else not shooting was just being stupid.
TheHobgoblyn I mean, SOME of them might not have shot on the grounds of "We might hit our comrade!", but I guarantee you any true neutrals (AKA most of the crew present) would have fired without a second thought because "DRAGON, OH GOD I'M GOING TO DIE"
The Darkness spell creates a globe of darkness that cannot be seen *into* either. If the Tifling knew the spell, then he deliberately sabotaged his party and should be strung up as a traitor.
that awkward moment when the player has less knowledge of the situation than the character he is playing.
The crew wouldn't of fired arrows after seeing the big ole sword bounce off the even bigger dragon. They probably would have abandoned ship or if they had gunpowder blew it up with cannons. Unless there was some sorta fear aura too from this great mythical beast that made everyone but the heroes useless.
100% of the time, when the DM asks "Are you sure?", you always reply with, "Nnnnnoooooooooo?".
Can't blame the player for not knowing the dragon had blindsight. Or did you guys learn that characteristic about dragons earlier on in game? If not then he would have been meta gaming imo.
🎼 Hello *darkness* my old friend... 🎶
By joke you seem to mean passive aggressive jab... I'm not sure I'd like any of the tables you describe
This guy did before say he should put his team before his enjoyment of the game. He is in a cult lol.
For our group it was Thunderwave cast on the first round of the fight while the caster was surrounded by allies who hadn't had a chance to act yet.
kinda mean to call him rudely out for a mistake.
Malachai I disagree, he said it was a habit of his not to read the spell all the way through or not have a complete grasp on what the spell can or cannot do. I’ve played with a lot of people like this, and I can tell you, from experience, nothing is more frustrating than playing with a person who clearly did not care enough to put the time into creating a proper spell list.
I enjoy having large dangerous flying creatures pass by that is far above the level of the player. They get terrified they're about to fight this epic beast and it completely ignores their existence. And then eventually they get curious and they attempt to track it down and that's when things just get really really bad
I consider myself lucky I'll never ever have to interact with your dnd group
Especially your GM
The mahogany thing just reminds me of an in joke that came from my poor description. A dwarf asked what the walls of an underground area was made out of, so I gave the answer granite, but he wanted more, so I kept giving joke answers and now granite is a massive meme in our group, along with Hydras
To be fair, that's not a problem with reading his spell, he knew what the spell did, and people could still attack the dragon's square, albeit with a 50/50 miss chance. Not knowing that the dragon had blindsight had nothing to do with not reading the spell.
"What's the resale value on that tapestry?" - our Rogue, who always tried to steal EVERYTHING we came across
It is pronounced TEE-FLING!!!
Actually, it's pronounced "teef-ling."
That mahogany in-joke was so spot on for one of my own DnD in-jokes that im like "do i know this guy?"
So, I think this is dumb. disadvantage on the shots because they can't see it but the dragon is fucking huge. Also you can break a concentration at any time in 5e, I understand if there's some homeruling going on but I feel like it could've been dealt with better than witch hunting the warlock. And if the warlock was that ignorant and harmful to the party talk to him about it before it escalated. Puffin, I love your videos but this one triggered me.
Vargen Dae I'm not sure this was 5E, but I could be wrong
Stitchthealchemist I'd Still allow for the npcs to shoot into the darkness at a 10 foot angle. -4 in 3.5, disadvantage in 5e, heavy cover in Pathfinder who Cares xD
in 3.5 to use archery you need to see a target before you are allow to shoot it.
Lord Pfeiffer and following RAW in the situation where the target is your whole field of vision is bad DMing No matter the system.
In this case, it was more of the guy not knowing the dragon had blindsight, and less of the guy not reading what the spell did.
there is no way the guy could know the dragon had blindsight unless they fought another dragon that had it. seriously its called knoeledge people... your character who has never met a dragonn before may not know that info. but just for record... concentration can be broken as a free action. nobody was forced to ose their turn.
This one seems more about the tiefling not having meta knowledge about blind sense than it is about reading the spell.
So just to be clear you berated a player for not knowing that a dragon has blindsight and can see through darkness, and for you all acting like there was nothing you could do despite fully being able to target the dragon since you're still able to attack it, just at a 50% chance to miss from total concealment, and that assuming the dragon isn't large enough to actually take up the whole sphere in which case a large portion of it is still fully visible and able to be hit...for the lols?
Okay, so, hey, I have an idea for an..."interesting" rp:
So, it focuses on this one item, "The Oculus mortem" or something like that.
Quick back story of the thing: _it is literally the eye of some long-dead eldritch abomination from beyond the universe, and as such, a piece of their corpse has certain...abilities._
So, how it works is as follows: the eye is a random chance item, so the player who has it must roll the dice between 1-100, and depending on the number, the severity, magnitude and effect of the outcome is changed.
So, going from my personal preference (which you can change) of even=good, odd=bad, 1-100 severity, 1 would be pretty mundane, not really good, but not really bad, just kinda "eh", so their weapons would degrade a bit, or a food item would vanish, 2 being the opposite of their weapons getting back some durability, etc.
Where it _really_ gets interesting is the higher numbers, like: 50 is good, but not amazing, so your health goes up, your attack is better, something like that, 51 is bad, but not crippling, so your health is down, you miss more often, you find less valuable loot, etc (note, the eye can be used any time of day, and before any action, the same rules apply for magnitude, effect, etc but the more combat-oriented stuff is definitely more for boss fights and stuff, so just imagine that 70 would be like, a fountain of gold in the chest, where 71 takes everything but the coppers, or something along those lines) but where you start messing with stuff like an engineer on coke is at about the 70 and higher mark, _oh boy,_ so, 70 is like, " everything is better now, so have some help." And the enemy you're fighting/dungeon you're raiding/market you're at just...is better, so, the lich king's minion's just keel over or something, the vendors suddenly have way better prices, the dungeon traps malfunction, it's basically like you ingested a 7 four-leaf-clover milkshake, wore horseshoes as jewelry and the higher beings just breathed in your direction. 71 though, oh boy, you'll need a priest, a mortician, an exorcist and a hitting' bible for this one, because the universe just took a crowbar to your legs:
Chests just up and dissapear, if not, the loot does, every enemy within 50 metres suddenly hits like a runaway truck on the freeway, shopkeeps and salesmen will take every gold piece from your pockets, come with all the problems that may bring, every brick, shingle and stone in a place is now trapped to all hell, and the deepest dwellers of the pits are laughing their asses off, but don't worry, because we still have:
*99 & 100*
To sum up, 99=may god have mercy on your soul, for this has none. 100=the holy eye of the great being deigns that today, you shall go to heaven, because why not.
99: so, you know how I said the item was from the corpse of an eldritch, space bending lovecraftian abomination? _turns out, not all of them are dead._ so, manage to get one of these, the universe lags for a minute, pauses, tears itself open, and sics one of the unknowable horrors on the world for seven minutes, then yanks back on the choke-chain. But, although the thing's gone, what it did...isn't, and what happens, well, that's up to you. The sky can turn red/green/purple, the sun can change colour, one of your party members can just up and cease to exist, all your gold/items/food/armour is just _gone, now,_ and have I forgotten to say that that crawling, formless horror can just _remove_ cities? Like, major trade capitals, entire areas, or even _planets_ can just *not be there anymore.*
100: ....sooo, if 99 is the ultimate _bad_ result, this is the ultimate _good_ result. Wars can stop, money beyond your wildest dreams can appear to you, the boss can just _vanish,_ party members can come back from the dead, cities and towns can double, triple, *quadruple* in size and power, and, my favourite, *a member of the party can literally attain near-godhood for a period of in-game time.*
*------*
So, yeah, do with this idea what you will, oh, and, _you can't tell the players how the item works, only how to use it._
(Note, after reading the deck of many things description, I now realise that they sound very similar, I would like to make addendum that the GM can alter the outcomes almost in their entirety except for the basics, "best result" and "worst result". Addendum 2: the oculus mortem cannot alter itself with it's effects, as that would cause a paradox, however, if you would like to incorporate said paradox, feel free to.)
its pronounced (Tee-Fling)
Teef-ling, actually.
One day there will be an attack your not supposed to look at and the tiefling will be like this is my moment and cast darkness and roll a critical fail
Sometimes i watch these videos just to cringe
couldn't they just fire their arrows into the darkness at the place where they "think" the dragon is? like, just let them make the attack with a -4 to hit or something?
and no, i'm not making the joke about "I cast a magic missile"
because they might hit the player who charged the dragon.
I had a player cast fog cloud once and he was all like “The kobolds can’t see us now!”. Everyone gave him the look while I told him that THEY couldn’t see the kobolds either.
I was playing a home brewed undead race that was essentially a shade, which was a type of ghost that was corporeal, and I made my way up this large wooden surveillance that was about six stories high, and down below was a guard on watch.
Slipping my dagger out I made a leap of faith down to silently land behind him to slit his throat.
Only to fall through several floors with all the guards crashing down with me, taking down the entire tower and everyone in it.
Dude, these stories are great, I just found your channel today and I'm hooked! You've got yourself a new sub!
Been running Curse of Strahd for a few months now. One of my PCs died and was now a bard. Anyhow the group had just gotten into Castle Ravenloft and was tricked into a gargoyle ambush by a vistani named Boris. Boris tries to escape and runs down a spiral staircase. The bard tries to cut him off by using dimension door, also taking a plot essential NPC with him. I say however, you haven't explored that part of the castle and can't properly visualize the area at the bottom of the staircase. You can however use direction and distance to try teleporting there. So, he says he teleport 50 ft straight down. He and this npc do so, and land on this table in a room full of bones, which just so happened to be the room they were guaranteed to find Strahd. So Yea, the bard landed on this table and found himself Surrounded by Strahd and a few minions. Fun times