I'm very new to D&D (just over 3 months) and nobody in our group had a PHB and I couldn't just drop and get one so I thought, "Shoot! I bet the library system has a copy" (They have 4!) So I just checked it out and renewed it until I could afford one and held onto the library copy until my check-out time was over and we had 2 copies for quite a few weeks for our group. Libraries are all about resources from more than just their collection. Most libraries have agreements with others to borrow resources so talk to your librarian. I still use it for all sorts of things (the DMG, Volo's Guide, Sword Coast Guide, etc.). Also, thanks Web DM! Your videos have been incredible helpful to me!
dandwiki is primarily for homebrew content. The only official material on the site is OGL. The big problem is that a lot of newbies see the name, assume everything there is official, and then bring that to the table.
And that's the second problem. When you have 100 temporary contributors, 5 regular editors, and 2 admin, you have massive piles of unregulated, unread, broken, incomplete material.
I found in the LMoP that players are wickedly powerful too. I sent a group of eight goblins at them while they were level 2. Only goblin blood was shed that day. Then again, goblins probably weren't enough. They'll probably never be enough.
Scared of being OP? Well...it takes some skill as a DM...BUT Im going to say, you can throw quite a bit of things into the mix, edit the enemies, give them some more skills, let the monsters have some player style abilities, minions, traps, other encounters. It can very much be a blast watching the players teeter on the edge of control.
The Tabletop RPG One Shot Group on Facebook is probably the best place to find games quickly. There are multiple games a day being played through that group. Over 3,000 members.
Regarding the Slow game, I've noticed that games I've played in that seem to move slowly are when the GM hasn't prepped and keeps struggling to make up what happens next. Can confirm from a running the game standpoint, if I haven't prepped, there are a lot more long pauses
The term overpowered is so relative it's ridiculous. I've had so many games where one player is playing something that's supposed to be broken and is being overshadowed by a more clever player. For example in 3.5, a minotaur with full psychic warrior class levels in the shadows of a half-elf bard, the DM screaming "Bards are so OP!". The best thing you can do to make a party balanced is to turn the spotlight where it needs to go as a DM. Have a clever fighter named Dave with a bag of tricks that seems to solve all the problems? Does he have a dominating personality? Well, Minerva the ranger just discovered a problem. Give her the puzzle and say "While Minerva considers her predicament..." and turn to another player to give her needed time to come up with a solution. If Dave is with her and pipes up, tell him that she has encountered the puzzle first and will have first action. Issues arise when players' characters are allowed to be omnipresent and are allowed to tackle all problems the party encounters. There shouldn't be one or two people solving all the problems unless the other characters are intentionally, whether roleplayed as such or due to their personality, happy to stay aside (which I've seen). This style has the added benefit of not caring HOW the problem is solved. Magic or mundane, a problem never tackled by Steve is never solved by Steve, so Frank gets a turn.
I wish WotC would just release all their books as PDFs. I would gladly pay full price for them, but instead I just end up stealing them. I generally play online anyway, and I've got no use for a bunch of giant hardback books.
"Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free! You are a pirate!" Honestly though, PDFs are a godsend for spellcasters. WotC haven't released a full spellbook categorized by class (then level) which would be a huge seller if it was just a small, dedicated, paperback book that's only use is to streamline swapping spells as well as quickly getting the properties. If they have released an official spell book then sign me up because I' buy a copy of it for a reasonable price, maybe around the $15-20 range. Market it as a supplement to the PHB and have it be the ultimate quick reference, surely people will pay for it since there is a demographic that loves the homebrew/3rd party caster card decks.
I see that Black Box in the background there. That was my first 'edition' of Dungeons & Dragons! Opening it was a magical experience, changed my damn life forever.
really enjoy your videos. not sure how to put this thought into words.. you are total nerds, but funny not annoying. I wish I could find a group of "you people" to roll with. keep up the good work.
One thing you could have mentioned when talking about players getting bored at a table is the DM's role in making sure that no player is out of the conversation for too long when doing things out of combat. It's really easy to reengage a player just by asking them, "Hey, what's your character doing right now?"
One major resource for android phones for spellcasters (from what I hear I don't think it's in the iphone store, at least not yet) is the spellbook app. Lists all the 5e srd + ee player's companion spells, lets you filter them by class, college, etc, organize by name or level, create individual character spell lists, keep track of spells prepared per day if applicable, and even add spells (like the new cantrips from SCAG, the stuff from UA, etc). It even lists the phb page number within each entry and lets you enter the page numbers for the new spells you enter from scratch! I can't remember if the ee spells list the PotA book page or the ee pdf page but yeah they're listed too. Some slight imperfections include: 1, it doesn't have filters for spells specific to domains, warlock patrons, paladin oath, druid circles, or racial magic (or at least the support for this is incomplete; it seems a few such items are listed but nowhere near all); 2, when creating a character list it wants you to enter character info but doesn't have proper support for multiclassing - that is, it asks for proficiency and level separately but only has a single field each for ability score and class; 3, there is no support at all for homebrew or as yet unreleased classes that might eventually exist; 4, while it lets you add new spells, it doesn't really have proper support for entering custom book names, so if you get something 3rd party or something that isn't released yet becomes available, you can't name a new book. I use this thing all the time while playing; such a convenient resource...
Regarding overpowered players against a single target, I'll spend some time really thinking about how that creature's abilities work with one another because I've found most of them, as is, will have some interesting tactics that can overwhelm PCs even if only for a couple rounds. Also, you guys are awesome. I can't get enough of these videos.
did the guy give them magic items? if so, that's likely where his problem comes from. everything is balanced for a completely generic pc of the appropriate level to be a challenge. the more magic they have, the more out of balance they are. thats like, 80% of most problems like this. The other 20% is usually smart players. If they really set things up to work the field of battle to their advantage, then they're actually playing the game right - means they're invested in success, which means they WANT to win the fights, and carry on playing the game. Thats great, you've got a great group of players! Just need to make it harder to set up those winning fields... Not quite as easy, sadly, as the DM. You're stuck being one guy running the bad guys, vs the other 5 guys around the table (or 4, or 6, or god forbid 9). Just make sure they're having fun and you're doing your job :)
One trick players can do to keep "diplomacy" focused goals interesting is to kind of hitch their wagon to another player's character. Establish an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" kind of setup at the bare minimum. If something comes up and the "non-talky" PC is really not okay with the way things are headed, maybe it's time to cash in on a favor or ask their friend to try to "skew" the task or whatever in a certain direction. Having that sort of dynamic can help keep people engaged, even if they're not the one's doing the speaking or planning. However, it does require forethought and setup.
Our DM took us aside to say "no more hard liquor" he said we become so intoxed we tend to go on tangents and don't allow him to complete a session. Ale only at ye table.
I would love to play a Spelljammer game. So much fun. Also for having something to always jot notes in I use Evernote. The phone app is pretty great and you can update your notes and track them so much easier.
Overpowered PCs? Huh. We had a player who somehow got away with playing as a basilisk, and killed whatever he looked at. The DM tried blinding him do many times, but he somehow was still OP. In fact, everyone hated him so much, that they teamkilled him.
I teamkilled my party once... my first D&D character ever in fact. we were levels 13-14s, Evil party. I was a sorcerer who favored evocation/abjuration for some melee fun as well as spell slingin. And I had a nice flaming vampiric longsword, I went into the room first, and a rust monster got the surprise on me, eating my sword :\ I was the first sorcerer to go into a barbarian's rage (in RL) >:3 and AoE killed us all. Yeah... I wasn't allowed in that group again lol
I never understood people who get mad because some other persons pc is more powerful than theirs. you should just be happy you have that power helping you survive in the game world.
One thing I tend to notice is that I wind up being the only guy at the table with a paper character sheet, I just like clearing the atmosphere of the table from stuff like phones, laptops, that kind of thing. Also, it seems to me that running monsters at people bare is super boring, because they will just gang up on big guys and thwomp them quite easily. What really gets players into trouble is environmental effects like weather, pitfalls, falling rubble, and difficult terrain. If you can incorporate any of that into the encounter, chances are it will be more interesting, because players need to deal with two problems and are put in a pickle. A general rule is to try to say "this was happening *and then* something else happened," or "it was going to plan *but then* something else happened."
Hey Web DMs, i search a lot for good D&D information on RU-vid and you are realy the best there is. Whit this Video i have see all your stuff and i am loving it. Looking forward to see more. Greatings from Germany, your new Fanboy
I'd say keep a laptop or iPad nearby in regards to the book one they can download PDFs of the PHB and there are spell indexes online that will allow you to look through spells by level class and school.
I am currently in two different games currently one DM is very pace oriented with quick action. The other DM is hyper focused and detail oriented that tends to slow things down. I tend to run very simple PC's in both campaigns for different reasons. The detail monster gets the the simple life cleric that has a set simple routine that rarely changes. The other is set in Eberron and my Warforged is simple in that they require very little in the way of prep and as they don't technically sleep so I tend to take half the night as guard and rest for a short time before being the party cook.
I like to use the environment to make fights more difficult for the players. Maybe the kobolds flip over tables so they have cover, make the terrain difficult terrain for the players but not the bad guys, put a high CR monster they can't actually defeat inside a room that the players can come and go from but the monster is trapped in, make the space the monster is in too small for the entire party to get to the monster. Recently I put all of the monsters under a large rotten platform the players had to cross. The players moving around on the platform allows the monsters to know where the players are, so the monsters can attack through it, but the players have to get under the platform somehow to attack the monsters. Long post. lol
there is a great 5E spell book app call 5th Edition Spellbook by m&m apps, its available on the google play store and i think they even have an ios version. it had all the same info as the official PHB and the 5TH edition spell cards
In regards to the online gaming; I've done it for 10 years now and I prefer it. FINDING players can be difficult but roll20 is good but if you can find players (google it, mythweavers, etc) then I highly suggest a discord server with Avrae dice roller. You can set up a lobby, an in character channel, ooc channel, a private channel between the GM and any player, or a group of players, etc. It's amazing and highly versatile. I use this in conjunction with excel and trello. Trello is a group management system based on lists and cards. I have one for my players, one for my GMing. You can move cards back and forth, archive, etc. You can put images into cards then link those images as if they were being web hosted. I use cards to create plots, to house character stuff, everything. Since I started doing this, I'll never look back. It only lacks a map and if you can convince your friends to get table top simulator, you can have the feel of an in person game while sitting in your favorite recliner, in your underwear.
as for OP monsters, I usually pick monsters that have abilities that either let them punch above their weight, or make the players make difficult choices. My best scenario was a 4-way intersection that had two players get yanked and swallowed whole by giant frogs and the frogs ran in opposite directions where the the path directly infront of them had a golem keep another players talled so the one free player had to decide who to save first and if they had enough time to help everyone, people died it was fun and stressful.
I definitely recommend roll20 as far as playing online goes. Completely eliminates the need for most physical materials aside from the books, has a virtual table top, you can just click on stuff in the character sheet to roll things or bring up spells, and it has its own SRD for many systems and you can drag stuff on it directly onto your character sheet. In the campaign I'm setting up now, I'm putting the main game there while having chat and resources and other stuff in a Discord server dedicated to the game. Heck, there's even a Discord bot (Avrae) that's an even better 5e SRD than the one roll20 has (has stuff from Sword Coast and Xanathar's for instance), and at least one SRD wiki online that is *not* Dndwiki. Still is no complete substitute to using a physical tabletop and having the players be right there with you though.
My DM for the pathfinder game I'm playing in doesn't care if we use online material from the pfsrd so long as it's from a book he owns. Having a printed codex of stuff specifically for my character feels so much more efficient than flipping through a book every time I need to check out something that he can do.
I'm looking at multiclass casters. Full. Says you can get still to 20th level caster. Look at Bard magical secrets. You're a 10 bard, but say also 10 sorcerer. You still get 9th level slots. Meaning magical secrets let's you pick ANY spells YOU CAN CAST.
oh my god im the only one in my group that has a book, and EVERYONE always wants to use it. when it comes time to level their characters we spend forever just looking at my book. it makes it even worse that they all treat it badly. its got to the point where i have to basically make everyones characters because im scared they are going to mess up my book. they all have money to get a phb but they just dont want to and keep asking to borrow mine its so god damn annoying.
I have that situation as well in my group. Luckily though our DM has his own book but none of the other players do. And its annoying because I like to book mark my pages with Magic cards just so I can quickly go through the book, and I swear everytime I hand them the book atleast 3 of my cards fall out, and I know they could get there own books as well but they just dont want to. (one has it on a pdf but chooses not to use his laptop a lot, and refuses to send it to them cuz he got his from his College's public file sharing and some student uploaded it. So he wants it to feel special.)
I have that situation as well in my group. Luckily though our DM has his own book but none of the other players do. And its annoying because I like to book mark my pages with Magic cards just so I can quickly go through the book, and I swear everytime I hand them the book atleast 3 of my cards fall out, and I know they could get there own books as well but they just dont want to. (one has it on a pdf but chooses not to use his laptop a lot, and refuses to send it to them cuz he got his from his College's public file sharing and some student uploaded it. So he wants it to feel special.)
Jeremy Phelps lol that sounds terrible. i mark my pages with small sized sticky notes so they cant fall out. but i feel like they make the book look ugly, and i barely end up going to those pages anyways because half the time im using my book its to find out everyone elses characters.
For my group, when they have OP PCs, I never have a single monster fighting them. I'll normally have a boss and a few minions. Or maybe a couple of monsters instead of just 1.
For Venomfang in my fight the party first tried to lure it out of it’s tower. He new they were coming and since he had second initiative he hit all but one with his breath as soon as they got to the top of the stairs.
The Pathfinder wiki is amazing. I've never found anything as good for D&D. If WotC ever came out with like, a 5E online resource in the same vein that makes information easy to access and added some kind of reasonable fee, I'd be into that. Like a subscription based service that gives you access to all of the info, maybe even a group fee.
I always by an additional PHB just as a loaner. I tend to try and bring new players or casual players. PCs I don't feel are overpowered, I did have to get use to dialing back the magic item.
I always go to a session with more enemies than I think the party can handle. It is pretty easy to micromanage the challenge during the encounter. The nature of most encounters, typically the players are the ones invading in someone else's territory, means that at any time reinforcements can arrive to bolster a flagging enemy or if the players are struggling, well no one needs to know that there was 6 more orcs and 2 trolls 'waiting quietly' in the wings for the call to arms. Do they hear it or not? Well that depends on my players and how well they do. It is easier than it sounds. I can't emphasize how trivial it is to observe the flow of battle and then make decisions on the fly whether the battle has alarmed nearby reinforcements or not and in the end it just makes you look like a competent dm who designed a well balanced encounter, as if you had planned it that way...
4:54 when I started playing I didn't have access to books, so I borrowed my friend's copy of the PHB and I photocopied it in black and white and spiral bound it in a Xerox place. Maybe that can help some of you low income guys :)
KiqueDragoon yeah I looked at just trying to print out a pdf copy of the phb in black and white and it would have cost 50% more than just buying the book outright.
People playing Pathfinder can actually use the online reference site with a simple googling. The site is by the company and it contains not contains the core rulebook, but also a majority of the extension books.
As for the people who need books the PDFs are like $10 (at least for Pathfinder). Also watch out for the Humble Bundle sales. I picked up about $200 in PDFs for $15 on Humble Bundle. I know not everybody has a smart phone, tablet or laptop, but most people do have the smart phone. I bought my $200 laptop specifically for D&D/PF PDFs. I was looking at 8" tablets but then thought how I hated going from my 27 monitors to my friends 8" tablet one time to I got a 15" crap laptop for PDFs and mobile movies every now and then.
2:21 My party wreaked Venomfang Not even a single turn of combat, they just blew him up from outside the tower with magic missiles and a fireball scroll (they could see him from an arrow slit)
Price is one thing that I can sympathize with, but I feel like DMs need to be very careful when their players start looking at online homebrew. The folks at D&D wiki simply do not care about balance or setting limits. It’s a good resource for custom enemies, maybe, but once one player picks the race that gives them,+4 stat bonuses, you have to work extra hard to make anyone who doesn’t make such a build feel included
For Pathfinder, just use the PRD, which Paizo openly allows. It includes many of the books. Instead of a notebook, I just always have GoogleDrive at my fingertips :P
I HATE it that they don't sell .pdf versions of the D&D ruleboks. Sure it's nice that for most games the digital versions are slightly cheaper, but the main thing they are good for is the fact you can click a bookmark and be on the page you want to be or run a search if you don't know what you're looking for. it's so much easier to find what you're looking for quickly, and it's trivial to have ALL the books you've bought with you as long as they are on a tablet you bring.
I have PC overpowered problem in World of Warcraft (D&D 3.5ish) even with only access to 4 or 5 the books I allow. At best can give boss monsters the Elite Template HP x4, Str/Dex +4, and all 3 +2 Save Feats to keep mobs from just being splatted. Sadly all this really does is make monster a damage sponge.... Last "boss" they fought had over 600 hp as a CR 12 gave them a really good challenge just took more then dozen rounds...
I have been running a D&D campaign for two years through Fantasy Grounds. Works great. Have not used it but RollD20 has generally good reviews about it. (For question about running a campaign from the internet). The bonus side is I can do a face to face game (like at a con) with all my stuff in my laptop - rules included - easy to search for things I need and organized so I never lose the paper that has what info the goblin shaman know if captured (or whatever).
***SPOILERS (potentially...idk)*** I'm running LMoP right now, the party hasn't met Venomfang yet. I don't really like how that encounter is written in the book with them trying to drive him off from this potential lair in the middle of ruins. Ruins just don't seem like a place for a green dragon as opposed to a forest or a cave. Instead, I'm introducing a gold dragon that disguises itself as a human wizard. It seems a suitable disguise since some dragons have spellcasting capability. This gold dragon (who I named Alkor) uses magic to hide his horde in a secret dungeon under the watchtower. Alkor mentions that there's a bad dragon (Venomfang) causing trouble elsewhere, so the party still has a chance to fight him, just in a more suitable environment where he would actually defend his lair rather than just fly off. I wanted to introduce Alkor because I'm wanting to run SKT following LMoP. If the party discovers that he's a gold dragon, he could be used as an ally against the giants.
Zelda is probably the best themed game based on how jarring and broken the timeline is. Did the PCs not kill/defeat Ganon? Then the world is flooded an the next adventure is more akin to Wind Waker. Did they beat Ganon but still want to be the heros? Get the other manics of the universe (ex. the guy from Link to The Past). There's a lot of good source material no matter how the PCs play it out. Majora's Mask itself can be a prime candidate for a path as well if the party wants to have a non-consequence session because of XYZ reason (A theory is that Link hallucinates the events of Majora's Mask, or the events don't matter because of the time mechanic.) Great example of fantasy franchises that will go well with DnD's systems, it's great that you mentioned it.
have you guys ever thought about doing creation episodes? maybe made up archetypes or campaign stories? or made up monsters? I know u find them underwhelming too and I make up monsters and tweak them all the time
When you guys say "a Party," how many PCs is that? I am running my first Campaign and I have 3 Players. I am so worried about killing them. They are also very experienced D and D players. Should they be able to handle any single monster that has a CR of their level?
What if you modify the monster, retaining the same encounter but making it harder by giving monsters extra powers or making them harder to kill. Hell if players can make overpowered characters... then the dm can spice up the monsters to. Give them a reason that they have some kind of extra armor rating. Maybe tougher skin through magic. Give a monster a temporal ability, like the ability to work with poisons meaning that yes they are still relative weak but if they do get a good hit. Oh, yeah.. problems. A good disease that a players cleric cannot just remove [you have to homebrew a bit] can be scary. And a curse that endures until they defeat the lich. Oh, oh now you raised the stakes. And if you got allot of heavy hitters you can make the challenge harder for them by making the evil be less about killing someone and more about outsmarting it.
I use online wikis and stuff to grab flavour for my character's backstory and such. We're playing 5th ed. in Faerun, but we only loosely follow the lore. So grabbing pretty much anything that seems appropriate for the theme of the character I'm going for works. Wouldn't trust anything on there for the mechanics of the game, though. I ran LMoP recently, and when we got to Venomfang, I ran the encounter using this guy's instructions to roleplay it as a guide: www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/2e682e/what_makes_the_green_dragon_work_in_lost_mines_of/cjwhmus It worked really well. He got them all grouped up, and the encounter started with a breath attack on them all. One of the players would have instantly died (not been knocked unconscious, *perma-deathed*, damn squishy wizards) in that first shot, had it not been for the Lucky feat. As it was, two players were knocked unconscious right off the bat. They just barely managed to end up beating it, and only because I decided not to use the dragon's breath weapon again once it recharged.
+Jim Cullen (Zagorath) Dragon fights can be some of the trickiest encounters to run. It sounds like your players had a helluva fight on their hands with Venomfang!
I have had several games canceled, or I had to Quit. One cause has been that I've played Divination Wizards, and the DM couldn't handle me. On one instance he was going to charge me 1 minute of time for every foot in an enemy camp while i was invisible. that is not a typo. 1ft= 1min. He wouldn't explain the issue. I believe the issue was, he could figure any other way to stop me. Another DM made every named villian have legendary resistance.... even like 4th level rogues, when i was a 9th level wizard. WTF . can you shed light on this steaming pile of a problem?
