Ok, here's our dilema here (sorry spelling?) . Ok, we've begun a new chapter in our campaign. Here's the situation in a short description. The time Angel has left us as the "time War" has branched to other places. The time council recalled her and she left today. (Not the player, just her character). Now during her time with us, the Empire has moved to a "Elven Empire". Every known Kingdom has at least one Elven resident in it. These elves act as I guess you could call them Ambassadors for the Kingdoms. Some of the Kingdoms are actually ruled by a High Elf, in fact, our Svereign Queen (She rules the Empire itself) is a High Elf. Now, that's things in a nutshell, or as simple as I can make them. Anyway, me and the DM are kind of stuck on something, We all know the Elves have a connection with Nature and even the weather in some instances. Elves are very emotional. So, when Keira (The Angel) left today, the entire elven community all over the Empire was greatly saddened. This Angel had been part of our lives for many years even before we were sent to this "Realm" by an evil force. We all came to love her very much. It is the beginning of Winter now, and the Dm wants to use house rules to reflect the sadness of the Elves by having their connection with nature cause a temporary "Snow Storm" over the whole Empire. This storm would only last a day or maybe two max. Now, neither me or the DM has ever done anything like this before mainly because elves were never part of the "Main Story" as they are now. Me and her want to know the best way to go about setting this "storm" in motion. The mechanics of it are a bit confusing. We are in the beginning of a war between the Fairies and the Drow who want total control over the land. Would this "Storm" caused by the sadness of the Elves cause any henderance (sp?) to the Fairies or the Drow if they decided that now would be a great time for an attack? Like I said, the storm will only last for 1 to 2 days. Our story is now centering around the Elves. Eventually we will be jumping ahead about 10 years after the Angel left us, but right now we have to finish up the last ending of the last chapter before moving on because it sets up events for the new chapter. Me and the DM will be running the game, she will do the mechanic work (dice rolling,character handling..etc....) I will be handling the NPCs under her instructions of course. But neither of us has ever run a campaign with complicated house rules like this. This is a high level campaign, no players are below level 7 now. We know about as much as we can learn about elves and are aware of the different 'lores' associated with them. It's this one thing that eludes us, not too much help on Google about how elves can control weather events due to emotional status. Our elves cannot intentionaly control the weather, but their emotions can inadvertantly cause weather phenomenon to occur. Right now they are extremely saddened at the departure of Keira (The Angel) and we want that sadness to be reflected by a snow storm over the Empire. So what would be the mechanics of something like that using house rules in a Homebrew campaign such as this. We both want everyone to 'run with it" and have some fun with the situation. Oh and BTW, not everyone in the land is an elf, The elves only help run and guide the Empire. In our world or "realm" everyone loves the elves and trust them fully. As do the Elves trust and love everyone. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated, we don't officialy start the new campaign for about a week from now, to give me and the DM time to sort things out such as this.

Not too mention I'm having camera issues and had to order a new one. Also had some internet issues causing lag in the video stream. 

Have you considered running a campaign that isn't full of overly complex house rules? Only you've now posted several of these threads asking for advice on stuff that ultimately is the DM's decision. If they want a snow storm they can just say "and it starts snowing heavily" and call it a day, without worrying what a bunch of random people on the internet think. It sounds like your DM keeps trying to rule things on the fly but is out of their depth so a simpler campaign might be better. From this and other threads it also sounds like you've very much created a campaign in which The Time Angel is the main character, they've got very complex homebrew abilities that broke an entire encounter and now the entire world is changing because everyone is so sad they've left. That's fine if you're all ok with it but most people don't want to sit through someone else's story with them just as support characters.

Also you say "This is a high level campaign, no players are below level 7 now" which isn't particularly high level for a 5e D&D campaign but also does this imply that you're not all leveling up at the same rate? Because again you're adding a whole level of complexity in that isn't in the rules and encouraging a main character situation where one person is a higher level than the others

First things first, you really should use paragraphs separated by line breaks more when writing your posts.  This is a common curtesy to break up walls of text and make your writing more clear.  You seem to know how to do this, since you did so with the last paragraph in your post - but the first paragraph is a bit on the run-on side.  Separate paragraphs might also help you better organize your thoughts, which can sometimes bounce around from place to place in your posts in a way that makes them feel a tad on the rambling side.  

I mention this not to be rude, but because on past threads multiple users have responded to posts in ways that made sense based on the post - and you then clarified that you meant something different.  Slightly more organized posting can help reduce ambiguity by more clearly conveying your thoughts, resulting in better feedback.

———

Moving on to the substance of your thread, I warned something like this might happen on a prior thread of yours.  A key element of roleplaying games is escalation.  The player gets more powerful as time progresses, and as they gain power, their influence in the roleplay side of the game also increases. When you start breaking the game early with overpowered characters - both in terms of their mechanical power and their roleplay sphere of influence - you have to keep breaking it to ensure there is escalation.

Because of this problem, I agree with and want to build upon what CunningSmile wrote - your campaign has foundational issues and your best course of action is likely to take a mulligan, end this campaign, and start afresh.  Frankly, I think you need to stick with official mechanics and probably would benefit from running a premade campaign, rather than a campaign you are writing your own.

For the first, sticking with official mechanics, the reasons for that should be clear - you all do not have a good grasp of game balance yet, as evidenced by giving a low-level player abilities that surpass spells you unlock af level 17.  A lot of your mechanical issues will solve themselves if you use official character options only, venturing into homebrew once you have a lot more experience under your belt.

For the second, your campaign seems messy.  For example, you have low level players that are reshaping the world (at level 7, players typically are working at a small regional level; global level is for much higher levels) and are trying to build around that in a manner that already is spiraling out of control.

Above the table, you also said you had two DMs - one doing the mechanics and you doing the NPCs. That kind of situation leads to too many cooks in the kitchen.  Here is where a premade campaign will really help you - it has already done a lot of the legwork and design, allowing a single DM to refine the concepts and modify content to better balance against the players.  Essentially the book is your second DM, but one that is static and not going to add additional chaos to the game.

This is not advice I give lightly - I exclusively DM for my own worlds and never use premade campaigns.  But the problems you all are showing would be best fixed by using a premade campaign, and developing more experience that way before you try writing a campaign yourselves.

———

While the above advice is what you really need to hear, I will also answer your question, though it is not a satisfying answer: How you handle this is entirely up to you.

That said, if I were handling it, here is what I would likely think about:

Historically, storms do hinder the movement of armies.  Faeries are typically summer creatures, and Drow live underground, so would have little experience with snow.  However, because having both enemy factions be hindered would be boring, I would likely come up with some way for one faction to be hindered while the other is not.  For example, maybe the faeries are using portals from the Feywild to travel (this would depend on the cosmology of your world), so logistics and difficult movement are not factors in their invasion.

If you are going to keep moving forward, the way to handle this is to think about your world, the requirements of it, and what would create the best story.  Only you can really answer that, as we random folks on the internet will never have enough information to make an informed decision for your game.

Ok, not sure any of this would work for your table, but you asked for suggestions and i will give some.

1: How do elves effect the weather? You don't know and neither do the elves. They just know they do. (Because in standard D&D lore they don't effect the weather)
Unless you are in the Feywild, emotions don't effect the world. There has to be magic as an intermediary. A budding sorcerer might set fire to their curtains when they are angry because they got angry and are untrained. But that is their innate magic misfiring. (Unless you want to rule that all elves have low level innate magic that can collectively build up to an effect. )

2: Would this storm effect the attacking forces? If they weren't prepared for it, it would. If they sensed it coming Cause Drow are elves too, they might not have been as hindered. Depending on where Drow live, they might think they were prepared, and they really weren't. They might think their "war spiders" or whatever could stand the tempetures but the wind chill was too much etc.

3A: The things you may not have thought of. Depending on when in the season this happened, a freak snow storm even for one or two days can destroy entire food crops yields. People could have starved or frozen to death during this, and if it was well known that Elven moods effect the weather, then there might be resentment toward them. " You bad mood literally froze my daddy to death while he tried to save the harvest. The starvation took my mother and brother. Get out of our lands you murders!"  And/ Or, Elves might have seen the harm they did and became less emotional and stoic.
Another option is Druids are suddenly more revered, because they came along and fed people with Goodberries, regrew the crops with plantgrowth, or did control weather to mitigate the snow storm.
If it was after the Harvest then that wouldn't be an issue, but then again it might. If the Elves are very emotional than they would have seen their mood cause hardships for their non-elven friends, and loving them, would take steps to countermand their impact, or use it for the benefit. New Practices 10 years later of elves throwing parties of having meditations on happiness to improve the weather etc. They might not fully control the weather, but if they know they can effect it so drastically they might try and have SOME control.

3B:  Since they might know they can effect the weather in large numbers, the elves mad sure that weatherproofing steps were put in place and there was no nedgative impact on the surrounding kingdoms. and people would be like "Good thing we were warned about this." Elves still might be perturbed about their manipulation of the weather and take up study on the phenomea to understand it. Could even be a questline. Figure out why their moods do things to weather.

See now, that is all I wanted was some insight on the consequences of doing this. We haven't started things off yet because we are making sure of things like this. That is the only reason I ASKED for some help. 

One thing, neither me or the DM are "expert" level DMs, and yes, we thought of using a premade campaign, but, and here's why we didn't.....We had our own story in mind and none of the premades came even close enough to our world. So we decided to just use a "Homebrew" campaign, what's wrong with that, after all, isn't that what 5e was designed for? To give the game more leway for DMs to created their own "WORLD" for more complexity.  If we wanted to just use "someone elses" idea, then it wouldn't be "our world" would it?

As far as stating it as "high level" I only meant that our campaign runs starting at a higher level than most campaigns I've seen, (usually atarting around 2 or 3). We started out in chapter 1 of the game at level 4, so yes, we do advance, every chapter we advance 1 level. My last posts were at level 6, we're now at level 7. 

As far as having a "main character" ,no..we do not have a "main character" so to speak. We only use main characters for the varying situations, once the situation has been resolved, the main character shifts, just like it would in any story. I watch a lot of fantasy and sci-fi and a story isn't any good without some main character, the story has to revolve around something or someone, in this case the story is revolving around the situation of someone who is loved very much leaves and everyone is saddened by it. 

The storm isn't really meant to cause any serious harm, it's not a all out blizzard, it's only a small localized snow storm. A small bit of snow falling wouldn't cause serious harm to crops, it's winter for god sakes, all farmers would be prepared for such things and took appropriate measures for it. I don't think it would be "logical" for all the elves to announce "Listen up people, our friend is leaving us, it's going to make us sad so there will be a freak snow storm that is going to kill your crops and cause starvation." come on, would that happen in real-life? Of course not. The situation is only meant as a ,I guess you could call it, a small detereant while things get ready for the next campaign to really start up.

All I have been doing is "asking" for some insight, I'm not expecting any "random" person to tell us, "Do it this way because the rules say so" kind of answer here. I don't understand why it is, that when I post a legitimate question to just get some insight to help guide us "non expert" DMs who are just trying to "learn as we go" , that the responses become more like everyone is "tearing" down our idea saying "well that's not how I would do it because it don't follow standard rules, so you need to abandon your game and start over". It's a Homebrew game people, we did it homebrew so we could do some of the things we wanted to do in the story without running into problems with breaking standard rules. 

The only thing I was asking, is simple...If the sadness of the elves ,and yes, we are aware that elves can affect changes in weather, but if following standard elven rules, only within a 300 foot radius of any one elf. Our elves are more unique, and yes, we are very familiar with elven lore and stuff like that, but we wanted to make our elves a bit more unique without making them 'too powerful' so we had to balance things out thus creating our own version of elves, anything wrong with that? It is Homebrew after all. All we wanted to know is, if the snow storm did happen, haven't really decided yet, then using proper mechanics of 5e, how could we make it happen and what effects would a "small localized" snow storm have? We could just 'wing-it' but we wanted to work out the mechanics of it properly. 

We know enough about D&D to run a smooth game, we have in the past played in several games and have run a couple that were premade. We just wanted to write our own story and put it into a D&D setting, and with 5e we saw the opportunity to do that, so we did. Yeah, it may seem a little "haphazard" right now, but isn't that what a "message board" is for, to get insight and help when we need it? 

Yes, every decission is ultimately up to the DM, but even an expert DM needs a little 'push' in the right direction every now and again. That's all we're asking for, a little 'push'. Our players are all friends, we knew that the DM was not an expert and that things could get a little 'messy', but we overlook that, because we are not 'experts'. If the internet isn't for getting a little help without getting ridiculed , then what is it for? Just to log on ,look around, and etc...? If that's the case, then why the heck have it so people could post in the first place. 

Ok, and yes, I'm sorry for the way my posts were formatted, I was in a hurry and just wanted to post my question before the next day (game night tonight) . So yeah, my post was not formatted correctly. Sorry. I don't post that much anymore on any site, I only post when I feel the need. I am not an 'expert' poster like some people. I am a novice. I get this same thing on another site (not D&D related) asking for help with a software program, again I get ridiculed about how I post things, and they expect that I am supposed to "know it all", hell..if I "knew it all" I wouldn't need to post and get advice now would I?

I think I'll just inform the DM that we should just go with our gut. I'll explain to her that none of the "experts" want to fool with novices and that asking for any advice or help online is out of the question. I most likely won't be posting anymore. This kind of bummed me out the way I am being treated because I am not an 'expert' like everyone else is. Sorry for wasting your time. Bye..Bye.

Ok, first off, you seem a little mad at my suggestions when I was only giving them off information specified in the first post. The storm being localized to a 300 foot radius was not mentioned, nor was the time of year. You did say "their connection with nature cause a temporary "Snow Storm" over the whole Empire." so I went off that. Unless the whole empire fits within a 300 foot Radius, i am being given contradictory information on scope. 

I did what was requested, and you seem upset with me as well even though I made no comments on your formatting or told you to just figure it out on your own and that I didn't know information I was not given. Hells i even gave more things to think about that could either be inspiration or discarded as not useful. 

You seem rather heated unlike your other thread, is everything alright?

Quote from Princexylan478 >>

 

I think I'll just inform the DM that we should just go with our gut. I'll explain to her that none of the "experts" want to fool with novices and that asking for any advice or help online is out of the question. I most likely won't be posting anymore. This kind of bummed me out the way I am being treated because I am not an 'expert' like everyone else is. Sorry for wasting your time. Bye..Bye.

 I highly encourage you to go back and read people's posts.  Not one of the posts is designed to attack you - everyone here acknowledges you are a novice and is trying to give you the feedback they have learned from their own experiences playing the game.  Moreover, everyone is doing so in a way that is clearly designed to be friendly and helpful. CunningSmile posed their suggestion as a question, indicating it was not a command, but rather trying to get you to consider an alternate path might benefit you.  I used language such as "I mention this not to be rude", that your best course of action is "likely" to change course, and included advice on how to continue, since I acknowledge you are not required to change to a different direction.  GnollitAll provided helpful feedback on things you should consider if you were going to move forward.

It is troubling to see you say "none of the "experts" want to fool with novices" when you just received 694 words of feedback directly related to your question, and another 662 words of feedback aimed at some of the campaign problems that have expressed themselves across several of your threads.  Everyone here did want, to use your words, "fool with" a novice and help them - and you categorically are being dismissive of that help.

Now, speaking for myself, it does not bother me that you were kind of rude to me - I do not get offended on my own behalf over the interwebs.  But I rather thought both CunningSmile's and GnollitAll's posts were pretty good pieces of advice, and I feel rather bad on their behalf that you are calling them unhelpful, when there entire reason for posting on this thread was to do nothing but try and help.

You are the one who asked for feedback; it is not fair to those who tried to help you that you are now getting upset over that feedback. 

I truly hope that you can learn from this experience and maybe realize that folks on D&D Beyond are genuinely trying to help you, even if it is not the help you want to hear.  There is a mostly pretty good community here of experienced players who love to pass forward their knowledge, and you would be doing yourself a disservice to disavow yourself of the community over what appears to be entirely your own misreading of folks' intentions. 

I wasn't directing towards you, I even accepted your ideas about the question at hand. I was directing the message above to all the others who wanted to just sit there and ridicule us about how our game was being run. We are aware that I couldn't give specifics without actually posting the entire game. I would have to start from the beginning and more or less post a 'book'. 

I was asking for just the thing you responded with and I thank you for that. No my problem is with all those "experts" that decided that my question wasn't worth their input because it wasn't like how "they" would run a game. So be it. Everyone runs these games the way they see fit, just because a DM don't run "your type" of game, don't give you cause to ridicule them for doing so. Our game runs smoothly without costly problems, as I said, we just need a little 'push' from time to time and I "thought' this would be the right place to get some advice and insight, guess I was wrong on that point. All I got was ridiculed about how we ran things because it didn't "fit-in" with "their way".  To tell you the truth, I wouldn't even want to play in a game that the DM thinks they are some kind of "GOD" and that you do it their way or no way. 

I like a game where you are comfortable and with friends who aren't going to "beat-you-down" because you want to do something a little different than the standard. Aren't these games supposed to be "fun" and 'exciting" ? Not dictated and frustrating because you have to follow rules to the letter. That would just be plain out boring to me, because you would spend more time concentrating on the rules than actually playing the game. 

We've had fun with our game and it's not all "haphazard" as everyone else here seems to think it is. We are organized and we do try to play with the correct 5e rules, but it's homebrew, and I know a lot of DMs out there just 'hate' homebrew because it don't follow standard rules. They feel that homebrew is more or less like 'cheating'. It isn't if you keep things organized and follow the 'basic' rules. Homebrew can be just as fun as premade games, if they are done right and not allowed to go 'haywire' and become a 'free-for-all'. At that point it is best to just abandon things. I've tried to run a couple of Homebrew games myself and things got out of hand and I had to dismantle the game completely. I was just starting out as a DM back then, but now, I know more about the mechanics of D&D and am able to keep things organized. 

I am sorry for making it sound as if I were directing my anger at you, no it was more to those 'know it alls' before you that wanted to just ridicule me for the type of game we were running because it didn't fit in with their style. I was only asking for just what you gave me, advice and insight. Thank you for giving me what I asked for. 

As for the storm, I understand about the crops issue and things, but it's not that kind of storm. It's more or less just a 'freak' storm caused by the elves because they were saddened at the loss of a dear friend. That's all it was, just to show that because the Elves in our world are very loving (except for the Drow who are nothing short of pure evil), caused an event that showed their feelings. And yes, in Elven lore, at least one of them, Elves have a connection with nature, weather is a part of nature, and some elves (depending on the story and the lore used) can affect weather in a 300 foot radius. That is the maximum, however, since elves are also mentally conected as well, and we have elves all over the empire, all the elves felt the same sadness and thus affected the weather accordingly in their area, sort of like a domino effect. So the storm occured over 'most' of the empire. 

Bassicaly what happened is, when the sadness hit, and it took a few hours, the first thing to happen was a sudden drop in overall temperature, then dark clouds formed over the land, then rain began, just as it would with a naturaly occuring snow storm,as the temperature fell, the rain turned to snow, and though there was som accumulation on the ground, and since it is winter season, most farmers had already prepared for winter weather, so they would already have precausitons in place for the season, so although some crops may be affected, it wouldn't cause a serious 'famine' because all crops would not have died out. The storm only lasts for 2 days, anyway, and it's not a all out blizzard, so not much damage would be done. But as you pointed out, some people 'may' have some resentment towards the elves for not having 'control' of their power. Not everyone has full control over magic, and I forgot to mention that we are not native to this realm we are in, we were brought here against our will by an evil force, we had to make the best of things because not even the Time Angel could return us to our own realm. In this Realm we are stuck in, magic works a bit haphazardly for some people ,especially those connected with nature like the elves and the fairies. It don't always work the way they want it too. It has something to do with the land itself, which is something we never figured out. 

So you see, we are not in a pre-determined land. things don't always work the way you expect them too here. Plus, we are all Medieval people living in a advanced technological world, we don't understand a lot of things that happen, we just make do with it and live on. Think of our story much like that of the TV series "Once Upon A Time". Except we aren't dealing with a curse, we were just sent here for an unknown purpose, no curse was envolved. The evil force simply created a one way portal and sent everyone here with the exception of men. For some unknown reason only the women were sent here, all men in our land came from other places which I won't get into. All women are sterile as well, so we have to 'lure' others from other lands (with help of some friendly female pirates). Our male population is growing, but slowly. 

So there is a little information on our story. It's not all "messed up" as some have said. It has everything a story needs, a plot, drama,suspense,action, all of the elements of a story. Our job as DMs is to put that story in game play format, and sometimes we just need a little help with that as we are not 'experts'. 

I just don't like ridicule because I am different from everyone else. It's like getting bullied for being different. Just because I and the DM don't run the same type of game others may run, don't make us so different than them. We are simply trying to enjoy a game that was designed for fun. Isn't that what a game is supposed to be fore,fun? You gave me your insight and advice, great, thank you and me and the DM will move on at game play tonight. I have enough information now to pass on to her to help us decide what to do. I think we will have the 'storm' occur, but not so severe that it causes any serious problems for anyone. And yes, since our enemies (the fairies and the Drow) are not familiar with most of the magic in this realm, we will make it more difficult for them to launch any attack during this time.  That's easy enough to do using standard mechanic rules. But it shouldn't damage any crops severely enough to cause any real problems, sure, a few crops may die, especially for any farmers who didn't prepare properly, which is their fault not that of the elves. All we can do when things return to normal is have the Elves ,who are very loving people, give aid to those who may be hit hard because of the storm. That's what loving people do,they help others in time of need. Our elves are not melevelant or mischievious , they don't harm people on purpose, they are very loving and kind to everyone and will help where help is needed. 

Also just FYI, we don't have large armies, most fighting has been minimal, but with magic and brains. However, the DROW are amassing an army by kidnapping the few men that are being brought in by the pirates, and brainwashing those men to follow them, so it will eventually come down to all out war I'm sure. Men are still being brought in but getting such volunteers (we never force them to join us), is hard work. We only only have one group of pirates and it's a small group with only one ship, and sea travel takes time.

Mate you really need to work through some things on your own because you’re being incredibly defensive and putting words in the mouths of people who tried to help you across multiple threads. No one has called your games haphazard, none of us said you were wrong because you didn’t play the game the way we would, and none of us have said DMs are god. None of us have even said that homebrewing a world or a story is wrong, largely because we all do it. None of us even mentioned the size of the armies for you to put in a special FYI paragraph at the bottom. What we have suggested is that homebrewing rules when you are new isn’t the best idea because you don’t understand the balance, that’s not bad advice, I’ve been DMing for five years and I’m only just at the point I’d be confident creating a spell or a class feature that wouldn’t break the game. You need to know the rules so you know how to break them, that’s advice that’s been given so many times in a many fields it’s a trope in its own right.

Frankly I don’t care, like Caerwyn I don’t have enough of my life tied up in the internet for it to hurt my feelings, but I do think you need to apologise to at least Gnoll who gave you a full essay of very good input that you’re throwing back in their face 

I’ll be that guy then.   You need to factorio your world building. A simple through line as a guide wire to keep things on track to a goal; and divide up your world facts into consistent chunks that feed into bigger concepts.  

This way when something doesn’t make sense, you home in on what part you need ro tweak or adjust, or even bolt on to. copper becomes wire, mix with iron becomes green circuit, mix with plastic becomes red circuits, mix with acid to make computer chips. 

as you walk back through system, you find the snag and fix it, which should fix upstream problems. 

Unless the entire world operates on fully soft magic….  in which case, theres nothing to explain.  Magic does whatever the plot needs it to.  If you are trying to apply logic to an outcome with no underlying rules, then a hot mess is the only option.  

I only put in that last part to kind of give a little more info on the story. Some have implied that the story has no structure and should be abandoned. This campaign has been going since 2024 and abandoning it isn't an option. I was only trying to show that we do have structure. 

Some posts did attack our way of running things still sugesting thst we just abandon it and start over. Why do that when all we needed was some help with how to run with the storm idea. We were attacked on the front of how the game is run I quote "For the second, your campaign seems messy". Exact words. Implying that they know better than we do in running a game they aren't even involved in and don't know the whole story which would take me a lifetime to post. I gave specific information on the situation and only expected returns on advice for that particular situation without having to divolge the entire story. 

I do appologize to those who did give purtanent information, and I thank you for that. But those whose answers are to abandon things because they don't follow the way "they" would do things, isn't an answer to the question I posted. The original question was " If we allow the storm to take place because the elves are connected to nature and they are saddened at the departure of their friend, causing the minor storm (I guess I should have made the "minor" part more clear, )to occur, what ramofications would that impose if say (and I did say IF) the enemy decided to attack during this minor storm. Gnoll's implication about the storm causing some crop damage and possibly causing a famine was actually the sort of answer I was looking for, and we decided that yes it may cause some minor crop damage to those who weren't already prepared for the winter months. And I did mention in the original post it was WINTER. I am sorry for affending those who gave pertenant answers. 

As you recall however, information attacking my posting format was posted, which is not even an answer to the question ,and that attack is what really upset me. I'm a newB at posting on message boards, and just because I don't follow everyone else's format of posting didn't warrant an attack on that part. I'm glad that person did explain how they format their posts and I have taken steps to rectify that. But do people here always attack newB people who post the wrong way? If there is a "special" method 'required' for posting, then maybe the sysOp of this site should post that as a 'rule' for posting and punish those who break such a rule. 

I have run into this posting thing on another site that has to do with a specific software (FSX) in designing scenery, I was constantly attacked because I didn't use "their" method of posting such as using abreviations and paragraph format, and stuff that had nothing to do with the problem I was trying to get help with.  There are no "rules" of how you should post that I can find on that site. It's just "experts" trying to show they know more than a novice and they want to "rub-it-in". Needless to say, I don't post on that site anymore because the people there are just too "stuck-up" because they know more than someone who is just starting out in scenery design. It isn't fair to get attacked just because you know less than someone else. 

Since I was told "we don't have enough information" ,I just added some extra information, it was not an attempt to steer anyone away from the topic at hand which is the results of causing the storm. We're going to continue with the game as it is, and take the advice from Gnoll and the other guy (forgot the name) and adjust the outcome as needed. the information given was useful and was something we didn't originaly take into consideration. If the storm was some sort of all out blizzard that lasted for 2 days, I too think that would cause some serious problems for farmers and could cause a "food problem", heck you couldn't even send out hunters in conditions like that and yes some people could starve and the death toll could rise causing some dislike of the elves for not taking control of their own magic and allowed it to run wild like that. But being as it is just a small minor storm, none of that can happen. That is the change we made BECAUSE of the advice both of you gave me. It was very helpful, thank you. BTW, the DM told me that she did originally plan on it being a rather large storm because of the severety of the sadness the elves were feeling. After I read out the answer you gave me to the DM, she decided that you were right and we agreed to make it a minor storm.

As for the remark about us using a DM to run the mechanics and me to run the NPCs, that actually works out very well, it takes some of the work off of the DM, and as long as me and the DM have constant contact with each other (she tells me which NPC we are going to use during a session and what she wants them to do), it isn't a problem. After all, how much effort is needed to run an NPC? They are not like PCs where you have a lot of stats and character information to consider, they have basic stats , so what, they get attacked, you roll for damage, if the NPC reaches 0 HP then they die, simple as that. All you really have to do is run the NPC to fit the story at the time, not much else. It only gets a little more involved when the NPC has to attack or something,but being simple characters, that's pretty much simple to do as well. So having two DMs one running the game itself while the other one just handles the NPCs, isn't all that hard and doesn't really affect game play. It's like flying a 747, would you want to do that ALONE? I doubt it, you'd want a Co-Pilot to handle other things that you can't while flying the darn plane. Same here, we have a complicated game, and with more complications, you need a little help, and having 2 DMs handling two different things, just makes it easier and not a problem. I know probably most of you don't run games that way, but there is always the exception.

As far as DMs not liking Homebrew, I was refering to posts I have read on other sites, and a lot of DMs feel that Homebrew is 'cheating" because it allows for you to 'bypass' rules and basically doing it 'your way' without any rules. Most long time veteran DMS do not like 5e because of the Homebrew thing. I see a lot of veteran DMs still using the 3.5 system simply because they hate the 5e homebrew system. That's all I was refering too. Most all newer DMs use homebrew because it does give more wiggle room for complex campaigns such as ours. And yes, you are right, we most likely should have started out with one of the premade games, but as I stated later, we did start with premade, but there was no way to incorporate our story into those games, so that is why we went with a homebrew game. We are novice DMs and are doing our best to run things smoothly, and our players knew that and were ok with it. 

What I want to ask now is, if we run into a brick wall, can I ask for help here without being bashed about how the game is run telling me that we should just "drop it" and start over? We have been running too long to just drop out, dissmantle the game and start a new one. That just isn't an option at this point, all I ask for is some legitimit and friendly help when we run into something we don't understand. That is why I posted some other information about the game's story ,that was to help others understand what is going on in our world, because, let's face it, our world is not anywhere close to any of the premade worlds. We created our own world because none of the premades would work. 

Now that is something I fully agree with. I did explain we are from a Medieval realm and were brought into this advanced realm by an evil force. We had to 'adapt' to the world, and we still are. There have been many of those 'snags' you mentioned, but we did fix them, not to say there won't be more. We thought that having the Time Angel in the mix could help to balance out some of those snags since she could only advise and not interfere. Of course that didn't happen as we planned, so she decided to pull the Angel out and she will be creating a new character to play. No more time travel for now, not until we get a little more experienced. 

Our world does have magic ,not sure what 'soft magic' refers too, but magic in our world is a bit chaotic. We always have to do a 'failure check' when anyone casts a spell, because more often than not, spells fail misserably sometimes with fatal outcomes. Magic just doesn't work right here. that is why we have adapted to use some of the modern tech of the world (no sophisticated things like cell phones,computers ,etc..) and combine it with our magic to help the magic work. Still have to do that failure check, but with some +modifications to the roll to accomodate the tech aspect. Still have a lot of failures, but not as bad as before. 

So far..So good, no BIG MESS! Just a few little 'bumps' such as the storm thingy which with help here, we were able to adjust and overcome. Everything is good now. We can continue with the game as it is and move on to the new chapter after the storm is done. We were just held up with the mechanics of doing the storm.

BTW: we have implemented this idea----"3B:  Since they might know they can effect the weather in large numbers, the elves mad sure that weatherproofing steps were put in place and there was no nedgative impact on the surrounding kingdoms. and people would be like "Good thing we were warned about this." Elves still might be perturbed about their manipulation of the weather and take up study on the phenomea to understand it. Could even be a questline. Figure out why their moods do things to weather."

We never thought of that. Normaly as you stated earlier, in D&D lore, elves don't control weather or have any effect on the world itself. But as we figured out before the Angel left us, that because of the affects that this world has on magic, it has become a "side effect" of Elven magic that we have yet to fix or find a way to fix. We have to deal with it unfortunately. Your idea above, very informative and has been implemented. the Elves are going to start trying to figure out why they affect the weather the way they do and take steps to remedy the problem. I forgot to mention that this problem exists mostly with the High Elves ,but also has some effect with the Avriel elves as well, It doesn't seem to be a problem with any of the other Elven races, weird....still trying to figure that one out. 

Also you mentioned that the Druids would help to feed people if something serious happened, that too is an option since our main source of food does come from one of the Druid Kingdoms of which we are allies with. So I don't think starvation will be a problem unless something drastic happens such as the Druid Kingdoms being taken over by Fairies or Drow, that would be BAD BAD BAD. 

I think me and the DM have now come to understand the dynamics and the mechanics of causing this storm. We're still going to do it, but with a bit of modification to keep any serious consequences from happening. We'll see what the dice have in store as far as any attack during the storm. 

All of this was simply a 'filler' story while me and the DM get things set up for the 10 year jump for the next chapter. Just wanted to see how other players react to something like that. They don't even know what is going to happen yet.  I don't think any of them are members here so I doubt there is any danger of them reading any of the posts here.

I’m a little new here, but I would consider what factions might gain power from this. Notably, since almost all casters have some ability to create food, any organized group of casters in the area with less-than-good morals may well decide to take advantage - casting such spells almost constantly, in exchange for payments that just barely undercut the almost unaffordable normally grown food stores. If they did it early enough, they might be able to muscle out anyone that would do it for free (i.e. good druids/clerics) and become a ruling power. So, just food for thought, this might result in an opportunistic wizard guild becoming a wild card faction.

As for the storm itself, I would just say that whichever side has more access to force/fire field kinds of magic - to keep off or melt the snow - would achieve superiority. If one could seize a major farming district before the blizzard hits, or very soon after, and magically protect it, that area would become an enormous advantage and an instant hotspot in the fighting. Focusing on that, and perhaps including an uptake in evocation (Fire-based) or abjuration (force field-based) magic items to protect an army on the march, would simplify things down to just a few areas of focus.

Quote from Princexylan478 >>

We never thought of that. Normaly as you stated earlier, in D&D lore, elves don't control weather or have any effect on the world itself. But as we figured out before the Angel left us, that because of the affects that this world has on magic, it has become a "side effect" of Elven magic that we have yet to fix or find a way to fix. We have to deal with it unfortunately. Your idea above, very informative and has been implemented. the Elves are going to start trying to figure out why they affect the weather the way they do and take steps to remedy the problem. I forgot to mention that this problem exists mostly with the High Elves ,but also has some effect with the Avriel elves as well, It doesn't seem to be a problem with any of the other Elven races, weird....still trying to figure that one out. 

 Just to spin out an idea. If I’m a high elf leader and I realize my people can control the weather with their mood, that’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity. Someone pisses you off, send some angry elves down that way and the offenders get a drought or a flood. Someone pays you tribute, some happy elves come by, and it’s sunny and temperate with just enough rain to water the crops. If I’m the elf king, I wouldn’t want to remedy it, I’d want to use it.

The flip side would be people kidnapping elves and trying to force them to make weather. And I doubt other races would distinguish much between different kinds of elf.

It could easily be a campaign all by itself. 

Wow! Good ideas there. Could be a way to 'run-with -it' and create a good starting scenario for the new chapter. We had actually toyed with the idea of having the Drow or the Fairies (the bad guys) kidnap some high elves and do just that, since the Drow have developed a method of turning good elves to 'bad' elves working for them. It has almost worked once before, but with the Time Angel helping us, we were able to rescue those elves before the 'brainwashing' could happen. Of course now we don't have the help of that Time Angel, so this could possibly happen again. After the first attempt at that failed, it was never tried again. BTW, we do have an actual PC playing as one of the Drow elves that commands the rest of them, and we have a PC for the Fairie Queen who commands the Fairies. Everything else is NPC except for the other two players who one is a Druid, and the other is a Cleric. That's it as far as PCs go besides me and the player that was the Angel, we don't know what she will decide to be when the new campaign starts. I myself play just an ordinary Human with no magic, just fighting skills and diplomatic skills ,I am the advisor to the sovereign Queen.  I donn't really have a big role, which is the way I wanted it. 

The other idea there is also a good one, of course that would imply that the elves have been decieving people from the start and want to use their uncontrollable magic to their advantage to maybe take full control over the empire, that would be a bad thing, but boy would it make the whole story interesting. I'm going to pass these two sugestions on to the DM. Now this is the kind of stuff I was wanting in the first place. Keep the ideas comming, this storm could actually change the course of the whole campaign, which could be a good thing. It could help to get things on the right course. After all, who wants an adventure where everything is hunky dory with no badness happening. That makes for a rather boring story. Add a little drama to things, that's the way to do it. Keep those sugestions comming, it really is giving us some great ideas for future scenarios. Like I said, I'm going to pass these along to the DM and see what she thinks of them.