Context: Our party was told to help clear out the dungeon of Duergar, simple right. What the we didn’t know was that they had a basilisk and for some strange reason my friend immediately wanted as a pet. Some how he convince all of the party members to not kill it. We take care of the Duergar, blind the the now pissed basilisk and it all comes down to my turn.
Me: So I want to tame the basilisk how do I do that? (Looks sheepishly over to the DM)
DM: (Evil smile) Do you have animal handling?
Me: (Checks character sheet) YES! I have an 8 in animal handling!!!
DM: Ok roll well…(She is not going to make tha-)
Rolls a nat 20
DM: Um … so you pull out some food for the basilisk and it immediately likes you because the Duergar have been starving this poor creature.
Friend: I want to befriend the basilisk!!
Also rolls a 20
DM: It sees you two as its owners now. (Can’t believe that just happened.)
He is our team mascot that now petrify‘s people on command by saying “kiss kiss”.
P.s we cured his blindness after we made sure to do a few more animal handling checks.”
When done right, critical fails should be almost as much fun as critical successes. They give your game more opportunities for drama, humor and teamwork heroics. Plus we wouldn’t be able to appreciate the 20s as much without the occasional 1.
help i accidentally created a cleric with a -1 to religion checks how the fuck did i even do that
“hey i just realized, we’ve been on this trip for weeks and i’ve never really seen you praying”
“eh, yeah, i mostly only do that sort of stuff at greengrass and midsummer”
“…. sharindlar literally gives you magical powers. you have a magical tattoo.”
“yeah she’s cool, she knows i’m busy”
religion checks are more about knowledge regarding deities than devotion
“don’t worry, guys, sharindlar will smite the shit outta anyone we need smote, that’s what she’s all about!”
“… isn’t she an avatar of mercy and life?”
“she’s an avatar of shut the hell up”
Character with skill sets that don’t match their class are my favorite thing
When I first started playing Pathfinder I thought “craft” meant like “watercraft” and I gave a ton of it to my Barbarian so I wouldn’t be useless running with the two pirates in our group.
Mid game my DM was like “No… Like… Arts and crafts.”
And I was like “Fuck it he knits, is there any yarn on the ship?”
DM: *Rolls dice* … *Looks up* This shipment is nothing but yarn.
Me: I’m going to knit a sweater.
DM: What’s your craft score again? *Looks at page*………………. Don’t even roll…
DM: So you all pull into port wearing sweaters beautifully knitted by our goddamned Barbarian.
Ragtag group of scoundrels & assassins: Yay!
i generally don’t reblog this post much because if i did that for every example someone reblogged this with i’d spam everyone’s feed, but i love this
This sounds like a fun idea but just make sure your players are having a good time with it. A lot of people don’t like having their characters actions taken from them but this could also be a good opportunity for some genius role play!
Just whipped up this random prophecy/vision generator. There’s about a million things you can change/add to this list (like substitute “birds” for “hags”) or change “wolf” to “winter wolf” or even “worg” but really it’s just meant to inspire you. Maybe your next character can show up to the party with terrible visions of the dragon who devoured its young from the altar!
i dont think you guys appreciate how rad this site is
because first of all you got your basic fantasy and game race names for like
everything
BUT AS IF THAT ISN’T ENOUGH
REAL NAMES WHICH ARE GOOD FOR BOOKS
AND THIS THERE’S MORE????
BAM, PLACE NAMES
AND STILL MORE
SO YOU SEE THESE LITTLE OPTIONS HERE
PLEASE, PLEASE
GO AND TRY TO HELP A GOOD PERSON OUT
This is my go to site for naming literally anything.
this site also has generators for flags, languages, maps and other cool stuff, seriously it’s awesome, go check it all out and help the site if you can.
YES!! FANTASYNAMESGENERATOR HAS BEEN MY FAVORITE WRITING WEBSITE FOR YEARS
it’s worth it. for both you and your players, but especially for new players who can see the game in different ways than you
examples I’ve written that you should feel free to use:
-orcs: rather than give in to the weird “tribal savages who fight all the time,” consider connecting orcs and their inate strength/constitution to the earth. in my most recent campaign setting, orcs are descended from a human champion who bested an earth primordial; the primordial, impressed with their strength, blessed them and their descendents with powerful tusks and a greater constitution.
-drow: instead of the entire drow narrative being “they’re dark skinned and bad because they betrayed the fair skinned elves and their gods,” consider playing up their connection to spiders. perhaps they worshiped a spider God who gave them the ability to blend into their darkened surroundings. if you’re married to their current aesthetic appearance, take care to present multiple drow societies that have different outlooks; not a homogenous race of black skinned slavers. consider pigmentless drow, who’ve lost all skin color because they never see the light of day. drow who use echolocation? distancing your drow from the bad connotations carried by the current zeitgeist is a useful endeavor
-include. colored. elves. in. your. game
-drop the ‘tribal’ aesthetic and the connotations that goblins and other monstrous races have. it’s lazy
-focus less on race and more on societies; a society can be evil or good, but a race cannot
-consider that fantasy races have no reason to conform to any gendered structures (especially our current human binary). dwarvish societies who express their varied and fluid genders through beard braiding. elvish societies who reproduce asexually. don’t limit yourself to what you can relate to from a 21st century human perspective
it takes a bit of elbow grease to decolonize your d&d, and the process is never done, but in my own experience, it’s only ever lead to more innovative and engaging experiences!
Verliese Und Drachen 