D&D Story: The Obelisk Encounter 

This is what I thought was going to happen, too.

the bad guy was traveling the multiverse, and the different tables are essentially alternate universe versions of each other. So it would have made sense lore wise, for a events in one universe causing a ripple effect across the multiverse, resulting not only in a TPK of that party, but also the death of all alternate universe versions of that party.

Ditto. Followed by the GMs blaming you for the Obelisk Apocalypse

@@CentralNexusPrime i find it interesting that he was specifically told to kill them if they fucked with the obelisk and then he just didn't

@@thunderborn3231 It sounded like he tried, but the setup of the fight and the parties defensive abilities made it very hard to kill the party in the time limit.

It would retroactively spawn the idiots who will press the button.

I mean who wouldn't?

Wise words my doode Wise words

That book was brilliant

GNU Terry Pratchett

The main gm said publicly that traps can insta kill PC's. So, it should have been a hint

Sigh…. Planned a nice city to explore during Halloween with all sort of food and stalls with a rich history based off revolution and genocide for non humans fighting for their rights… Dwarf with int score of the number after 2 …dropped trout…and crapped in the fountain… I’m front of the whole festival…

@@southanime it could have had better warning. "You sense an overwhelming sense of powerful evil. You are an ant, it is a mountain."

@@wormwoodbecomedelphinus4131 Uhh... it explains it much less good Im sure there sort of enough enemies in D&D who are much bigger than players but still killable

@@wormwoodbecomedelphinus4131 welcome to tomb of ahnihilation. Literally the single worst designed piece of garbage ever to be printed. Gary Gygax made this just so he could have fun murdering his players because he was one of “those” DMs who think the game is Player Vs DM in a battle to the death

Very insightful

I'm stealing that

I feel no shame in saying I'm going to steal that.

Ah, a yugioh falsebound kingdom fan. Excellent

Going to use that for a campaign when the players ask that 👌

@Johnny W everyone just gets a temporary +1 wisdom and learns not to destroy random ominous magical artifacts

i know simply amazing

Is this 5th edition, cus if it is, that's probably why it ended this way (if not the rest of my comments might not apply). Monsters have tons of health and do tiny amounts of damage relative to PCs in 5th. Thus there is a low chance of killing the PCs. Ever. Then you where forced to add timer to the match. In this situation it makes sense that the monster can never do enough damage to kill anyone in time and the PCs can't inflict enough damage to kill the creature either. I know there are exceptions to this, but it seems to be in the design philosophy of 5th. If you fallow the rules as written its pretty hard to kill PCs unless they really do something stupid or you single someone out in a heavy handed way. I feel that a lot of this is done in the design to create an illusion of danger for th PCs (but not actual danger) and also to prevent a new DM (not implying Puffin) from accidentally killing PCs. Addressing the disappointed out there concerning the anticlimax. I honestly think this is a good story even if we don't get what we probably all wanted to see happen. He is just telling it like it happened. It may not be as exciting as TPK, but it shows the nature of the system, it helps us see how to design a better encounter. Honestly he was sorta forced to run this it wasn't his design, so its not his fault the PCs didn't all get slaughtered like they where supposed too. Obviously the designer of the encounter didn't do the math ahead of time. I personally would make sure to make a really over powered monster if I really wanted to have all the PCs die if they made said mistake. Or just remove this object entirely. Unless you like the stalemate thing. Thats the great thing about D&D, you can tweak it to be what your group is looking for, you imagination is the only limit. From my almost 20 years of playing through many other systems and from 2nd edition until the present, I feel that 5th is a more "player friendly" ,as some might say, and that can be good or bad depending on your play group. I for one increased damage across the board in my game( Damage of PCs and Monsters) with player consent ( by about 60%) so PCs feel more danger (usually increasing excitement) but at the same time can get awesome sudden victories with a lucky crit. It also makes combat quicker, which is good for my group, but would not work for everyone. People criticizing this need to remember that G.M.ing is hard, and the P.C. are not always gonna do what you want, and thats okay. We get to make these stories together, and have these weird unexpected things happen, sometimes it makes things really annoying but a lot of the time a whole new story gets made that I never imagined that is way better than I could have thought off. And that is what I love the most. I like to have things unfold organically and usually use my notes and encounter plans as guidelines rather than rail roads, so I could probably never be able to run some other persons prescripted event like you did and I give you credit for dealing with it. Thanks for your time, your effort, and your insightful video.

@@EricTalwin Thaco... Having established with that single word I how far back I can claim to go... Having a a "party wipe" encounter.. bad GM.. that fails to kill anybody.. still bad GM... that does nothing but sidetrack the group from the adventure with pointless combat.. Contemporary GM... A good GM knows how to progress the story not waste everybodys time with a few rounds of ultimately meaningless "you dumb, roll for initiative bitches" bullshit combat

I recently came to the realization that I have to up the difficultly of combat encounters becausemy players always insist on circumventing things like rolling stats at session zero and building only optimal characters (who are sometimes hyper focused on just one approach to combat or style), right now I started a new campaign using the variant rule of a short rest is equal to a night of sleep, and a long rest is equal to taking a week off of adventuring. I do use the CR system, but usually rate most fights in the harder range. Also combat that isn't in confined spaces can span entire towns or swaths of land so range is actually a factor as opposed to all enemies constantly being close enough for 1 fireball to get them all.

Milla Saunders That's what I was expecting too.

Yeah, that was my expectation as well. I was thinking at that point, "Oh boy, this is going to be a Multi-TPK!"

Same actually. Thought the same.

and in the end, no one died ...

I was 100% sure that was what he was leading up to.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

Cough area 51 raid cough

Well, as Albert Einstein used to say : There are only two things which are infinite. The universe, and human stupidity, but I'm not sure about the universe.

@@AsaelTheBeast You are truly right

@@joshlexcelius2573 tho irrelevant but correct

That sounds fun imma do that

Clickity clackity your about to get attackety -jocat

@@n80_ Stop signing your comments. We can see your account name.

@@AppleOfThineEye I was just crediting him

@@n80_ Okay. I misunderstood.

Hugh Taylor Not immune totally. You need magical weapons (or equivalent) to really damage it physically, and it reflects spell attack rolls (flamebolt, eldritch blast, scorching ray) so you need spells that don't require rolls to attack (Magic Missile, Fireball, Disintergrate).

In truth, that demon isn't really immune to damage. It have resistance to most damage type (damage is halved), 18 AC (hard to hit), the Magic resistance ability (double his chance to avoid spells effects), and about 180 hit point. It's "merely" very hard to kill.

Or bullied him relentlessly online for some good old psychological damage..

Yeah, Puffin really DM’d this wrong. Yes, the creature has Resistance to non-magical weapons. And it is resistant to fire and cold. And it has Magic Resistance, but all Magic Resistance does is give the creature Advantage on Saves from spells. So if the party attacked with, say, a chromatic orb that did Lightning damage, it would hurt it just fine (an AC of 18 for a party high enough level to be in the Tomb isn’t impossible to hit). Also, how does no one have magic weapons by this point? They are way past the level where they should have some options to shut this down easily.

Its the Death House Shambling Mound problem all over again,

JAY EM Demon: I've got a t-time with a Teifling Bard and Dwarf Cleric in 20 minutes, so bye

I think there's so much bad DMing going on in this story, right from the start. ToH has always been badly designed, but you could have fun with it. This handling is even worse. "If this unheard-of thing happens, then.... you can TPK freely! - Ok, scrape some spells and potions, moving on."

To be fair, if the place is deadly, they did just wait spells and supplies on a fight that they couldnt even win.

As a dm I’d say, roll a survival check. If they roll high enough they can grab shards of the stone that was holding him. Make a weapon that negates demonic resistance. So that they have something the other players don’t even if it’s for a highly situational encounter.

He scared em shitless. That's what.

At least until they beat the dungeon have low hp, and no spells left then zulken comes back for them with friends. Congrats you won!

So nothing of value?

Never expect a plan to survive contact with the rank-and-file.

Never expect a plan to survive contact with the PCs

@@rbck8826 Including, of course, ones hatched by the PCs.

Enemy? After my two years in the army, I could say that plan will be ruined way before enemy. The second it is passed down chain of command it just dead :3

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong Murphy's Law

Robert K low roll smh

And 10300 exp

B' D Nah they didn’t beat it, them getting to keep their characters for a while longer is the only reward

@@someanimelover8602 But see, that's just bad DMing. I'm not going to argue about this. It's just bad DMing. That is all.

@@someanimelover8602 They did. Solving an encounter through any mean is getting the exp.

No kidding. The one thing you can consistently expect from players as a DM is that they will *never* do exactly what you expect.

Or he was *specifically* tempting fate in hopes to jinx it

yeah I had someone random I met choose to piss on my charecter when I encountered a magic rug that wrapped around me. people do the most random shit man

Lil Eggplant Was your character named “The Dude” or some variant of that?

@@Abdega I don't remember, it was middle school

Me walking into a room like

Inb4 calamity ganon

technoblade has joined the server

Is that a snot joke

Citizens of L’Manburg :

Nothing of any kind survives first contact with the PCs. It's like the story of King Midas, only not.

Sad but true.

Thexsoar the Bearded I don't know about that, Team Four Star seem to do fine. You just need to make the story elastic to a certain degree and have multiple routes.

True. Wasn't a good plot line or encounter this time, though. Just a bad adventure designer's brainfart.

Somedude Watchintv Very True, though they are the rare good Kind of Players and not the average, i mean they live with the dice rolls and don't complain, turn bad rolls into funny Antics, don't try to Powergame and share the Spotlight evenly with each other. they even give away Magic artifacts without a second thought if it is convinient to the plot...These Kind of Players are really hard to find nowadays.

Not to mention that knowing a demos name can give you power over it

And bullshit and on your side* is much better than bullshit and out to getcha.

Nice, I am totally using that one in my own game. Thanks for the tip!

He should've said, "Just call me Tazerface."

In other systems, if you as DM accidentally named the demon and told it the players, they would have advantage on fighting him for knowing his name.

I wonder why the asterisks didn’t make it bold...

@@Chuusuisetsujojutsu Abserd was in charge of the code that day.

@@BSE1320 Ha!

@@Chuusuisetsujojutsu The last asterisk is before the exclamation mark

I mean, ToA is meant to be a meat grinder, its not supposed to be _fair_

The fight might have been anticlimactic, but the buildup was still excellent. Besides, there’s a sort of taboo charm to when any game, be it video or tabletop, has these “you’re asking to die if you mess with it” encounters. If someone made a video game off this module, I guarantee players would actively try to take it down. Not just survive, actually kill the demon.

You botch the ritual and summon a Halfling who is an Obelisk Tormenter.

I would have taken one look at this "unwinnable" monster stat block and done exactly that :D Homebrew Obelisk and One Punch Man the whole damn party

TOOOOOOOOOORMEEEEEEEEEENT

AH! Obelisk! It is not possible. No one has been able to summon him!

I PUSH OVER THE OBLELISK THE TORMENTOR WITH MY ENTIRE PARTY!

hear*

hello fellow man of culture

Barbarian like

TBH sounds like a metagame. No way on earth you turn back to do that.

... I mean... you don't have to imagine. Puffin told you.

LOL - And also on the animation, it said 10,500xp for the obelisk encounter.

@@darklightstudio In DND you usually get XP for KILLING an encounter, this one just signed off after a while. The only way to actually KILL this thing would be by using attacks/spells/invocations that straight up IGNORE his resistance to, basically, everything. And the only character class that can do that, at least the only i can think of, would be a hellfire Warlock using the Hellfire blast(Ignores Resistance to fire and forces anything which is immune to take HALF the damage from fire), which would be a VEEEERY high risk for him as well(with that being said i only know the 3.5 rulebook and that might've been changed). So there would be A THEORETICAL approach to kill that Demon though for the Warlock it's a high chance of getting himself KILLED.

@@timbo3286 no, you get XP for *overcoming* the encounter, which they did.

@@silentdrew7636 SURVIVING BECAUSE THE ENEMY FUCKED OFF IS NOT "OVERCOMING"

@@paulman34340 It is if that is the only possible positive outcome.

Definitely. I was so let down by Tomb of Annihilation. Our group played it for what seemed like forever without ever getting to the tomb. It was so boring and tedious that it literally killed the campaign and we just stopped playing.

@GeoffreyToday Sounds like your DM wasn’t too good at their job.

@@tsifirakiehl4250 actually, he's probably the single best DM I've ever played with, and judging from the number of upvotes on the original comment of this thread, it looks to me like this is not a particularly uncommon assessment of ToA.

Bryce Mckenzie you are speaking logic by the story one can guess that's not exactly their forte.

I kept asking my players, "How high are you flying above the water?" The one who never got the hint was the one who was rolling up a new character by the end of the night.

How is this surprising? There are some players whose goal is "leave no stone unturned." Even if the big red button says that anyone who pushes it will die, someone will want to push it just to see what happens.

My paladin would have charged the thing straight up to destroy it. Just saying that’s his lawful good side.

In one game I played in, we got a book that literally said "Do Not Read, You Will Die." Two of my party members actually fought over which one would get to read it. The.. the winner died, obviously.

same but with a fucking universal deith who had been asleep and did not like waking up and this same deity shows up continously through our campaigns hes like a half dragon i guess you could say woth the ability to change some.parts of his body at will, thankfully for the party they had a dragonborn pc who was quite diplomatic and maged to calm the deity down, i told them they had accidentally triggered a optional.super boss and a slight plot before the deity flew away into the mountains to continue his rest

I'm new into the D&D world, care to explain please? :)

@@IlVostroNarratore, there are certain subclasses of arcane spellcasters in errata books that use True Names as a means of control, attack, and disruption. GM's with that errata would have the knowledge on how to use the rules to make the PCs jumpy.

@@IlVostroNarratore in most intepretation in fantasy and DND knowing the true name of a Demon gives you control over it / allows you to banish it.

Teixas so it runs on Ancient Egyptian magic then?

@@Frostyman452 It takes from all forms of mythologies and such, and invents its own. That's one of the cool things about the game. Loads of people run games with characters or countries based on real-world events

Chaotic Pure

My players skipped rescuing the SCREAMING CAPTIVE in order to loot the treasure chests.

@@abrahamalfaro7908 obviously. priorities my friend. shiny first, screamy later.

ultra ranger GDM= Greatest Dungeon Master?

The real legend 87 grand dungeon master, the head dude/dudette of his D&D league branch

Listening to the fight sounds like the demon was under used. A being of that power wouldn't just sit around waiting at the barbarian or Cleric. It's first actions would be to remove weaker foes and destroy them. Not just inocking them down, but continuing to hit them until they die. Reduce the numbers on itself before crushing what remains. On top of also summoning a second demon to join in.

Under used, or was the GM being nice on them?

Lilitha11 Puffin rarely seems the nice type in his stories. I suspect it is more likely the topic isn't well covered for the encounter. Even reading baseline data shared on a monster stats page will hardly give you all the knowledge. It gives a good baseline but usually only tells creature specifics rather than racial history, preference, or actions. That is DM interpretation and translation of further research and reading not just running the encounter night of with no pre-planning.

Azure Balmung remover he’s playing adventure leagues he has to follow the module and the module won’t let him do that

Why can’t he just bend the rules he’s the DM?

@@todddempsey1277 Adventurer's League

@@Zonic3451 but the players ARENT supposed to play that encounter!

@@todddempsey1277 because in adventurer's league all tables must abide the the setting the module gives you, otherwise tables will diverge in progression and you cna no longer have people switch tables.

God damnit i remember when i accidentally found sephiroth in kh2 and was like oh cool ok lets see *dead*

Dude that only works if the player character is smart enough to rollplay their halfling bard as intelligent or wise or just average.

@@flamingrubys11 me with the dark inferno in KH3

@@andrewaftontheandroidhedge2780 *has Mysterious Figure PTSD flashbacks*

The more appropriate literary rule to invoke here is Chekov's Gun. You shouldn't add details to a story that *don't matter to the story.* Otherwise it's just boring and unrewarding; or confusing.

Not as often as a dwarf.

On Krynn it would undoubtedly be the kender's fault.

Phyrior with my last group it was always this lute playing orc names jessica. He was murdered by a member of the group eventually

I've always found that it's the Rogue that starts stuff like this.

OMFG YOU'RE RIGHT. I had a friend who role-played a sociopathic, chaotic neutral aligned, half-ling that got into SO MUCH trouble... We could've did a clean jail breakout of our informant, but he went gung-ho, got us knee deep in trouble with the jail guards, and my sister's character also having many loose screws didn't help either. Needless to say, we left a bloody jail with 5 dead guards and potentially torn families... Not that he chose a half-ling, it's just that he coincidentally got it from our other friend who hosted the game and created some character classes. Although, he did make the personality for shits and giggles though so it was an insane coincidence. Trolls, the both of them, Jordan and Kim... XD

Imperial Fists, my habit has always been triggered by a "Don't do it." And I'll stand there looking at the thing occasionally a party member will mutter a "you're not gonna do it" and then, well really what other choice do I have but to do it?

I'd cast sleep on you & everyone in the group every turn until success if you went through the steps.

Its like a big red button IT HAS TO BE DONE

I designed an entire puzzle around the concept of "don't do it!" I made a huge tree in the middle of the room and described the relative position of the sun. The players felt very clever when they chopped down the massive tree and shot the (illusory) sun out of the sky without me giving any indication that they should. Little did they know that it was actually they way to solve the puzzle. I that my players are going to take the "why would you do that?" option.

At high levels, it's unlikely that you'd be able to make more than one person sleep, if even. Sleep is super useful at low levels, and that's it.

Ive seen the stat sheet for that thing. Its actually pretty takeable.

In D&D, "resistance" doesn't mean immunity. It means half damage. Their GM is a moron.

Iain Hansen hey that merchant called me dumb so I destroyed his whole village and kidnapped his daughter

In my defense, I didn't know the cave system had a magical element that became explosive when reacting to fire. I also didn't know there was an entire trade village and thriving town in and above the mountain to be destroyed. I just said, "oh hey, cool cave" walked in, saw one kobold, did an instinctive firebolt, rolled really badly, and hit the wall. Not my fault, it's the dice that murdered all those people and damaged the economy. I'm being hung either way, but still. Actual story from a homebrew campaign. Sorry Jon.

XD

DarthR0xas its alright at least your not the guy that plays a blood hunter that accidentally killed himself in battle

The former has a way of leading into the latter to be fair.

this isn't Minecraft

@@GarrettStelly and the prize for most pointless comment of the year goes to......

I had a campaign I was in a couple of weeks ago that started by being revived by a Necromancer. Said Necromancer was reviving people to make a makeshift army to take down a king that had killed his family. This was a sequel campaign to a campaign that ended with me accidentally blowing up a city on a mission for the king I mentioned earlier. I, for some reason, decide to tell the Necromancer this. We managed to win the encounter, but I am now the biggest idiot in the party.

Lmao that's great!

OOF!

XD

... all the yes

I just apply instant psychic damage to shouted puns

EvilNinjaDuckie Yes, my DM threatens permanent damage to health when my group metagames

. . . god dammit treebeard

jeez, that's just insane. did they have to sign a waiver, like, 'we're not responsible if you unleash an ancient evil upon the multiverses as we know it and doom all life to oblivion or enslavement, or any combination of such events.'? or was it more along the lines of if little timmy want's to play with the phylactery, then, by golly he can.

Lol, those players were like "play D&D? Get on our level noob! We're gonna play Museum Tycoon!"

In the "Tomb of Horrors", there wasn't any ancient evil to be unleashed (unless you counted the Demi-litch, which in itself was pretty much a trap, and my players never even WENT into that room. They blocked off the section of the tomb containing it.). The whole tomb was just traps. Many of which were insta-kills. But my players having been burned by so many dungeons before were paranoid by the point they got to this one and handled this one like bosses. Most players would just wander around, touch everything, and just stumble into every trap and instantly die. My players wouldn't even MOVE or set foot into hallways or room, often for days at a time, using all kinds of elaborate equipment that they brought with them or would McGuyver themselves to investigate whether they could even enter or even step one foot ahead. The exploration was painstaking, but their reward, as I said was great. They made a LOT of money off of this place. My players were just... that way. "We're going to handle this SMART and we're going to exploit this for as much money as we possibly can." Every dungeon crawl resulted in them slowly and deliberately testing EVERYTHING. Every brick in the wall. Every floor brick. Every cieling brick... Roping things off...All while keeping things safe for themselves... etc.. "Tomb of Horrors" isn't the only dungeon that they turned into a tourist "trap" either (See what I did there?).

Yep. My players were kind of smart. They knew that money was the way to get that sweet castle they wanted, and those servants they wanted, and those magic items they wanted. I can't tell you how many times as a DM I facepalmed because I would sent them to some city for some adventure to happen only for them to begin some elaborate money making scam that would just side-track the whole thing, forcing me to jump through hoops to ram them back into the plot. They looked at every single thing as a money making possibility. EVERY...SINGLE...THING.

To be honest, that's in itself a pretty cool way to play, if a little slow and such their goal is slightly different from the regular parties goal. Now, I do not know that much about DMing but isn't there a small amount of freeform/extra a DM can add on their own (I am used to Pen and Paper so I do not know if the same amount of flexibility applies in DnD)? What if you add an encounter that is literally a representation of greed to fit somewhere in a campaign?

sllike the omega weapon from ff7?

Our DM had us up against an adult white dragon and his wyrmlings at level 3. Thank the gods for nat 20s.

When I put my players up against an adult red dragon at level 3 the point was that fighting it was a _bad_ idea. Didn't stop one guy from hitting him with the Wand of Wonders anyway. It was the first time I'd seen insta-death in 5e.

You tip the obolisc party instantly gets 3 round death curse.

@@barrybend7189 Easy there, Satan

agreed. Was really disappointing when after all that leadup it comes down to "It's a tank but only shoots water balloons. And it has a limited lifespan so you will just waste time and some potions/spells running around. No one dies, nothing really happens". The head GM made it sound like a vicious beast, so the result was weak :(

@@SurgStriker I would make it a glasscannon with something like high invulnerable save roll. If it rolls good, it will tank all their damage, if not it will have like one or two rounds to kill all of them

@@SurgStriker - When pitting a party against certain death I try to add another factor. Like, they creature that put him in there would also be summoned just a few rounds later. That way he can "save the day" even though mortal concerns are so beneath him.

wow ._.

sounds RAW to me

5e Nalfeshneee sucks ass

Yeah, I was here expecting something incredibly powerful... Bit underwhelming to find out it was "only" a Nalfeshnee. It's a powerful demon at CR 13, sure, but with 7 PCs it won't TPK any party above 4th level.

I mean, not for lack of trying. The party had to go through a bunch of healing spells and potions to survive.

I would have just increased the damage and made it stay longer

@@jared5803 I would've made it a Marilith instead, depending on the level of the party. But it's Adventurer's league, DMs can't change the modules.

I don't think the Nalfeshnee gave his true name there, Ben was like, "Uhhh what name sounds like a demon name*goes through a bunch of names before picking one*oh wait, this sounds like a demon's name right? Lets go with that!" So I'm pretty sure if it ever comes up the demon would be like "Oh you thought that was my actual name? You mortals are dumber than you look!" So yeah, I think our evil pig friend will be fine. :)

Quentin Hendricks He was given pretty express permission to fuck their shit up, however. Using a reasonably well-known rule variant that's in reference to an ability demons and devils have had since AD&D seems pretty fair when a DM's only goal is "show no mercy."

The issue is it's organised play, where GMs are *required* to play exactly to the book in order to create a fair play experience.

The demon was severily downplayed, it has teleport, he could easily be teleporting, making the characters follow him around the battlefield wasting their actions to Dash to him and get a free Multiattack taking a good chunk of the PC's HP (if all 3 attacks hit that would be an average of 62 damage plus the fact that the characters are quite weakened by the death curse). And that could be done following the book (and the demon has 19 INT, so it is plausible for him to be a pain in the ....).

Regarding the true name thing, I just told myself the demon struggling to make up a name happened in universe

It's called being railroaded, and it's not fun for anyone.

To be fair, it also sounds like you were trying to drag the party off in multiple directions which no one else wanted to go to. The DM was probably right to block some of your requests, no one wants to play with the person who's only interest is doing whatever they want.

Sarena Romriell But he only wanted to go to a blacksmith? Why stop them?

@@joshwist556if everyone else wants to leave and only he wants to stay the DM has to choose between splitting the party or telling him no. Telling him no a little unfair, but I can see why he did it. He also said that many times throughout the session he tried to go "off the beaten path." I wasn't there so obviously I don't know everything, but I would probably make the same choice as a dm. It sounds like op wasn't a good fit for that group and leaving was the best option. The DM was probably trying to make sure the people who actually showed up for an adventurers league game got what they came for. DMing is about making the game fun for the whole group, not just your most creative player.

@@joshwist556 Depends. If he just want to buy some nails or backup dagger, then it is no problem and can be skipped altogether (ie.: Ok, you bought it, lets go). Issue is if one player instead of starting quest decides to stay in town and start roleplaying with NPCs. Like going to blacksmith, wanting to hear description of that smithy and its NPCs, asking how they look, starting conversation with them that goes beyond "I am looking for cheap dagger, here are 2 gold coins" etc. And this sounded more like the other case. He wanted to go to blacksmith and start conversation with that NPC if he has something that is better then what he already has. Right at the start of quest. That simply does not make sense and is kinda inapropriate

The dark secret of every DM is that they harbor a perverse desire to see the group fail.. but only if that group fails _spectacularly._

It's only testing your luck if you say, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Daniel Gehring got me there

Bartee Page Murphy was listing in that day, and Murphy wanted to play.

DM's make sure that the chance of you doing something is super low, that way you're more likely to keep going on the path. And that thing you have a low chance of pulling off...IS FOR A REASON. My current GM has an NPC following the group for that very reason.

not so fast kaiba boi, first I summon Slipher the Executive Producer, in all its executive glory.

@@CathrineMacNiel oh.....my.....money

@Abysse Splash don't you mean god?

@@CathrineMacNiel you worship your thing i'll worship mines

@@CathrineMacNiel I summon Super Ultra Mega Chicken!

Did you complete the dungeon normally and survive happily to the end and get a happily ever after?

Did a new adventure come out and you abandoned your previous one to never come back?

Did you break the obelisk?

You broke the obelisk didn't you?

If my DM pulls out a no win encounter I just say like "-Character Name- feels overcome with dread upon seeing these monsters which he has only read about, never imaging he would face them in battle. Knowing he cannot best them, he pulls out his -insert sharp weapon here- and elegantly glides it across his own throat, ending his life before these monsters have the chance. No point delaying it.

That’s actually the safer option, too. If you’re killed by a wight, your corpse can raise as one as well.

@@PumpkinCake not according to 5e you don't. They removed the ability to create spawn from all the undead except the vampire.

@@FriendlyArchpriest false. Creatures killed by a wight's Life Drain attack rise as zombies. Shadow's Strength Drain creates new shadows. Wraith can use Create Specter on a creature that died violently (say from that wraith's Life Drain attack?).

I had a dm that sent 5 level threes against a higher demon. Not fun

Unfortunately, this is Adventurer's League. Creativity is strictly disallowed.

@@daviddaugherty2816 but....why though? Ain't that the point of DND?

​@@bodkimalonebased on my understanding of Adventurer's League, the DMs have to follow a particular pre-written adventure, and aren't allowed to venture too far off from there. They're allowed some creativity to fill in the gaps, but overall they have to stick to the assigned story. It's mainly so all the tables/groups of players are on the same page with each other and the storyline. If one group derails the campaign, they're not in sync with the other groups anymore, so GMs have to be very careful about what the players can and can't do.

My thoughts exactly. Kind of akin to saying: "You see ahead of you an *inconspicuous* 33 foot long Dragon. It takes up most of your view of Mainstreet." "Wait...uh...could you... uh...could you repeat that?" Obelisks are monuments. Isn't the intent of a monument literally to be conspicuous?

Lord Ruxlin Hogie True, last one I ran into summoned an army of undead/alive skeletons that kept pouring into the playing field and killed the entire team except our cleric (me), and our rogue.

There are good obelisks, but obelisks are all color-coded, if it is black or red, it is evil. If it is gold or white, it is good. Blue can go either way, but you can usually tell by the accent colors and the shade of blue.

HMMMmmm! Eat you alive, I must. Come from the Abyss, I do.

Dont summon evil Yoda he will hop from table to table and slay everyone in the room including DM's

Holy shit it does 😂😂

@@mrmidnightturbo4245 nobody: Cringe 3 am videos:don't summon evil yoda pig demon at 3 am omg It was terrifying 🤯🤯🥵🥵😱😱🙀🙀🙀😱😱WARNING SCARY AHHH I ALMOST DIED!!!!! YEAH DON'T DO IT HOLY CRAP IT HAPPEND DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

To be fair, most of Puffin's characters sound like that.

That's why I hate Adventurer's League

Actually false, if you look into the history of the game. Tournaments and competition games are tradition

This is false, Gygax was the original killer DM

@Luc Angelo Finney Until the mid-2000s, they were small, uncommon, and specialized. The only way you knew about tournaments was if you subscribed to a magazine or TSR or SSI circular. I started playing in '78 and there were never more than one or two gatherings in my state each year for years, and even then those meets consisted of only a couple hundred people at most, many of which flew in from out of state. It wasn't an enormous movement like modern fandoms. Plenty of people were into it and there were tournaments, but it wasn't played anywhere near like it is today.

🤓

DumbAnimator Nah. Just call up your comrades. Tell them to bring a S-51 mobile artillery gun and blast that demon to hell and if that fails well then just pretty much just die I guess.

Dis guy gonna killed

Davenn yaaaas abserd is heeere

this was adventurers league, and abserd was a homebrew session

Exactly what I was thinking ;)

The Second they start talking about his name I was like "And now they are going to say his name backwards or something like that. And that way they defeat it" even tho, I know literally nothing about D&D monsters.

If you know the demon's TRUE name.

Very good points everyone, but keep in mind, he asked his name *after* the encounter was over, when it was like "im leaving, fricc yall, bai"

RU-vidrFan888 main well you're obviously not going to summon him if he's already there

Where did you learn about the obelisks?

Damn you've been having a heavy fight grouo

Now THAT'S a story worth telling.

That's a good reason to have familiars born on this plane.

What did I do again?

Jared Kolodziejski Are you a Pro? Because I meant the pro. You're cool too.

Bryce Mckenzie Me too

And both of them can only hope to be half as good as Matt Mercer from Critical Role

Good for you. Im Croatian. We speek a diffrent language. I cant even play with my frieds becouse they are a part of 5% who dont know english. AND I cant find translated books even though there is quite big Croatian D&D comunity.

Same.

i doubt very much if that's true

So your ass physically ripped off of your body and fell to the ground while you laughed... Yeah I doubt this as well

was just bout to type this very msg., was watchin a league champion spotlight and out of the corner of my eye....gold. will now bingwatch his entire playlist, thanks utube

@@joemama370 Neeko is good at roleplaying.

Yeah my big problem with 5th edition D&D, the monsters are way too weak. If it was 3rd edition they'd all be dead.

The monster wasn't weak. The DM just didn't want to kill the players. Instead of focus firing on one character at a time he split up the damage among them. And if you think the monsters are way too weak then you should be using higher level monsters against your party.

don't get it twisted, taragnor. 3rd edition has its fair share of encounters that are balanced awkwardly. "haha ecl 7 becuz of only 7hd ecksdee" but then it can cast banshies wail at dc 23 and you're like: WTF?!?. My whole party except the +16 will save monk/paladin(serenity cheeser) are all dead?!?! whattafuck. like, 3.5 doesn't always get the "offense potential versus defense potential" formula correct all the time. some monsters you just don't put in the game, even when they are 5 ecl under the players.

dddmemaybe: Well yeah, I mean that's largely true of almost every edition of D&D (except 4th really). Even 5E has a small handful of monsters that can cast plane shift, which is the biggest screw you spell in the game, given it basically removes you from the adventure entirely. In 5E, that's even more out of place, because everything else is fighting with kid gloves on. But yeah, overall 3.5's challenge was more all over the place. 5E is more or less consistently easy, save the one exception I just mentioned. 3E certainly had its share of flaws too though.

When someone calls my name like

Funny, I can't stand Adventurer's League lol Things like this are largely the reason

Depends on GM and player. Was playing in a session of Dragon of Icespire Peak, and we ran into the baby white dragon when we were trying to get a midwife out of her windmill. The thing does his breath weapon, and it does 44 damage into three of us, and two of us (including me) were around level 2. I was a Shepard Druid that had a Con Mod of +3 and had the 7 temp hp from the bear totem. Barely survived with 1 point above my death thresh hold. Woke up to see the party rogue frozen solid. The capper? The rogue was named YULETIDE.

I have 56 names on a skull which says different. And two TPKs.

Pathfinder Society is way different.

@@WaltRBuck tbh ive passed up most adventurers leagiue the reason being dnd iyself seems wayyy too math heavy i decided to start playing urealms on table top instead

Katrina Payne see I thought that the one player yelling would’ve caused a chain reaction where all the other tables were like “Wait, we can knock the obelisk over. That other group’s probably getting Phat Loot! Let’s do it!” Maybe the others just inspected it and made the much wiser decisions of leaving it the fuck alone.

Katrina Payne I'd like to think that the dms collective giggling their bad decision tipped them off.

that's all there is in my mind how puffing forest's table totally messed up a whole AL meeting not only their table but every other table and not just raw damage but actual TPKs yep, everyone running fresh characters after that

I honestly expected most of the groups to just walk up, see an obelisk and push it over.

As much as the fun of D&D involves doing really stupid things, most players are wise enough to learn from *other* people's mistakes.

Blandco Looking at the health he gave, they were likely between level 7and 9. Even still, a Nalfeshnee isn’t a terribly hard fight at all, especially when the DM doesn’t use its ‘Summon Demons’ ability. It’s resistant, but not immune, to damage, and it’s only got 180hp, which can be gone in about 2 rounds with a table of 7

I know I'm a month or two late but, to add onto that, he made a slightly bad call with the Nalfeshnee. I looked up the statblock for them and, really, they aren't *that* bad. AC 18 184 HP average Resistant to Cold, Fire, Lightning; Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing from nonmagical weapons Immune to Poison and the Poisoned condition. However... unless this was a special Nalfeshnee, or they were using a different edition than fifth, he was wrong in one regard. They aren't resistant to damage done by magic, they just have advantage on saving throws against magic and other magical effects. So... a little difficult to hit but not impossible, especially with a 5-6th level party of six or seven people. (Guessing that because on the little blackboard, each person had 50 HP.) If save spells don't work, an eighteen shouldn't be that hard to hit. You'd at least have a +3 from Proficiency, and anywhere from a +1 to a +5 from your primary ability score.

@@Daz0n Im assuming it might be 3.5 as in that version it has a spell resistance of 22.

@@wildatheart499 That is certainly possible, haven't played 3.5 so I wouldn't know. Though isn't that the 5e ToA book that PF used in the picture?

@@Daz0n yeah there's no 3.5 version of Tomb of Annihilation, plus all the language for resistances was 5e specific not 3.5

Kinda curious how that went. As far as I can tell, it's damage output is pretty average for a high level monster, but the party-wide save or suck + gargantuan health pool + his laundry list of resistances means he REALLY isn't going down unless you have a fairly high level party and/or have some serious magic swag going on. Honestly reminds me of the "glass cannon party vs mighty glacier boss" trope that's in every old school RPG, except this one is even more miserable because the dice can just decide they hate the players and they never get a hit in.

My thoughts exactly. Regardless of whether this was 3.5 or 5e, I'm honestly surprised a medium-high level party had *any* trouble fighting this thing. Its stats are actually pretty shit for a CR 10+ monster. And what kind of party doesn't have even *one* enchanted weapon on hand?

@@zimnylech527 Adventure League, that one

@@justnoob8141 or the adventure its self. there are like two magic weapons at the best in the adventure if i remember correctly before the tomb. and i think one you have to kinda just happen upon it (in a grave of a dragon), and the other is with a red dragon. there is ras-nasse's sword, but getting it can be difficult. there may be more but that's all i remember from my party's romp through tomb.

@@qwell1170 Mmm. In ToA, the magic items aren't really floating around that much, particularly stuff suited to doing damage. Maybe +1 daggers, magic sling bullets from a dragon's hoard, a couple +1 weapons from side quests, and Ras Nsi's Flametongue. And the gear of a couple CR 7 neutral characters who the party is unlikely to have killed and stolen the belongings of. At the time they run into the obelisk, they're likely to be levels 5-9 depending on how generous the DM is and whether they beeline it there as soon as they reach the forbidden city. And this is of course assuming they aren't coming here after a tough fight, like facing off against the Yuan-Ti in the Fane of the Night Serpent or getting into a dust-up with the King of Feathers, a magical T-Rex with a lot of extra HP, the ability to summon wasp swarms, and unlimited use of Misty Step. That fight is probably more deadly, but also seems like something the players would try to avoid. Then again, who would tip over an obelisk? Probably the same dumb-dumbs who went more than two rounds before trying to run away against a creature which can teleport to your back row and devour them.

change the obelisk to have a kill curse on the one who knocks it down instead of this specific demon. or to a deadlier demon. or to nothing at all. make it have a rust monster and eat his best item. or have the obelisk contain a good item that's actually horrible. cursed items ftw

Yeah, like Qualquer said. You're not gonna be in the AL, so you can basically make it do whatever you want.

Haley Giunta nice

Ferretzim 86 there are games that are run online. Roll20.net and subreddit DND are always looking for new players. If you have the patients for it you can play on a post by post forum

Yea, what this guy said. There are other RPG groups there you can find, but DnD has a LOT of groups available, given its popularity.

Check r/lfg. There are lots of people looking for groups

Another place to try asking if you have one near you is a local gaming store, you know the places that sell miniatures and rulebooks etc for RPG games. Many of them host games themselves or if they don't they may well be aware of local GM's looking for players etc. Most are still pretty well connected to the community even if they are not pretty much the exclusive hubs of the community that they used to be back before the internet kind of took over the role of being the meeting place for pretty much any interest on the planet no matter how niche it might be.

Try comic book shops, places that sell card games or online.

Darkness does work on demons such as this one, but only if you're all (monster included) about twenty feet off the ground and everyone's covered in blood when it's cast.

blarg2429 It's a joke from an old video of Puffin Forest

which one is that again?

The one where the dragon attacks the ship. Along the lines of, always read your spell descriptions before casting.

I think the title was something like "read your abilities"

Leah Smith I highly recommend you check it out. It is a bit costly, but you will noy regret it. I have had so much fun with DnD.

Just buy dice. Everything else is either optional or obtainable for free

⦕ Skyjin ⦖ That is definitely true, thanks for the advice. It's a good thing that the game takes part in the imagination, isn't it lol

Andrew Lentner Thanks for the words, will definitely keep them in mind. Definitely looking forward to starting!

Leah Smith roll20, tabletopsimulator

*Natural 20* *critical hit on wall* *breaks fists* *wall crumbles* OOPS IT'S THE FINAL BOSS! *gets roasted by Lich*

You shouldve casted darkness on it

@@SetSeth-yl6ke And then attacked the darkness

@@JohnWilkinsonTesla with Magic Missile.

@@thegloriouswizard5270 are you a sorcerer of light ?