I've been reading about some great decisions and some downright terrible ones on here for a while but thought it was fun to share -
Good
Rule -I run a challenging campaign so I like to have my characters with plenty of hit points. In my game, when you're rolling for hp, you reroll any roll under half the die.
Decision - I foreshadow as much as I can and adapt the game to suit the group. One of the minor villains in the party motivated so much hatred that I decided to prolong his stay and make him a bigger player in the campaign. The group have been desperate to hunt him down ever since.
Bad
Rule - I once thought it would be a great idea to have the party use bonus spells with normal spells. As time went on the group exploited this until they were effectively having 3 or 4 actions a round.
Decision - I once gave a group each a special gem worth a small fortune and then had to find ways for them to spend it without overpowering the party.
Ugly
Rule - I had set up a heroic battle with my paladin as the focus. He had just taken 'Dragon Slayer' as a kit and I was keen to give him a epic challenge. The dragon took to the sky raining lightning down on the group but the paladin could not fly and therefore use his special attack on it. Instead, the wizard fly up and used polymorph to turn it into a cow. The cow/dragon plummeted to the ground and was splattered on the rocks. The character playing the paladin was horrified. I should have fudged the save and give the character the ability to fly. Bad ruling.
Decision - When I first started DMing I thought it would be a great idea to award the moderately powered party an Axe of the Dwarvish Lords with a special ability of casting 'Death Ray'. Lets just say, I completely derailed my campaign and then had to scramble to find a legitimate way to take the idea off the party. I had the items stolen and effectively pissed everyone off in the process. Bad decision left right and center.
Rule - I once thought it would be a great idea to have the party use bonus spells with normal spells. As time went on the group exploited this until they were effectively having 3 or 4 actions a round.
Decision - I once gave a group each a special gem worth a small fortune and then had to find ways for them to spend it without overpowering the party.
This sounds interesting to me as I just granted someone in my party the following deviation from the rules.
He's playing a gnome cleric very attuned to nature. He worships Eldath and before rolling the character thought it would be best shown when he could manipulate water. So he asked if he could combine his 'create water' spell with 'shape water' spell. The rules say it has a casting time of 1 action, so I said, per default you can not. However I like this players roleplaying so much, I also don't want to limit his possibilities. So I granted him the following homebrew rule for these spells (as they're not overpowering to my judgement): On your first turn you can hold your action to cast 'shape water' which is triggered in your second turn by casting 'create water'. You can then use it to shape the water, depending on the amount of interaction he takes with the water I will distract movement from his turn to compensate for the time spent on playing out 2 spells.
Do you think I shouldn't have done this? Have I overpowered him? Hmm you got me thinking :)
You do know that when a polymorphed creature dies, their form reverts and they retain their HP from before they were transformed, right? Also, fly and polymorph both being concentration spells, its more likely that your wizard would've been the one to fall to their death as soon as they broke concentration on fly to cast polymorph.
Decision - When I first started DMing I thought it would be a great idea to award the moderately powered party an Axe of the Dwarvish Lords with a special ability of casting 'Death Ray'. Lets just say, I completely derailed my campaign and then had to scramble to find a legitimate way to take the idea off the party. I had the items stolen and effectively pissed everyone off in the process. Bad decision left right and center.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with this part. I'm pretty generous when it comes to loot, because I feel like this is also what's going to make a character feel special and unique.
Everyone can build a ranger and play him up to lv10. But if your ranger had an oathbow he would use to rain fury on his sworn ennemy with his boots of flying, he's going to feel and play completely differently from the next ranger who has a bow he can shoot in close range for bonus damage, with an animated shield to protect him.
My point being that if you're going to play a character for a long time, having fun toys to break the mold of your class can be extremely fun, and you have a myriad of ways to do so. You can have a character have one extremely powerful item, while the others get several items that are individually less powerful, but more versatile.
I've been reading about some great decisions and some downright terrible ones on here for a while but thought it was fun to share -
Good
Rule -I run a challenging campaign so I like to have my characters with plenty of hit points. In my game, when you're rolling for hp, you reroll any roll under half the die.
Decision - I foreshadow as much as I can and adapt the game to suit the group. One of the minor villains in the party motivated so much hatred that I decided to prolong his stay and make him a bigger player in the campaign. The group have been desperate to hunt him down ever since.
Bad
Rule - I once thought it would be a great idea to have the party use bonus spells with normal spells. As time went on the group exploited this until they were effectively having 3 or 4 actions a round.
Decision - I once gave a group each a special gem worth a small fortune and then had to find ways for them to spend it without overpowering the party.
Ugly
Rule - I had set up a heroic battle with my paladin as the focus. He had just taken 'Dragon Slayer' as a kit and I was keen to give him a epic challenge. The dragon took to the sky raining lightning down on the group but the paladin could not fly and therefore use his special attack on it. Instead, the wizard fly up and used polymorph to turn it into a cow. The cow/dragon plummeted to the ground and was splattered on the rocks. The character playing the paladin was horrified. I should have fudged the save and give the character the ability to fly. Bad ruling.
Decision -
When I first started DMing I thought it would be a great idea to award the moderately powered party an Axe of the Dwarvish Lords with a special ability of casting 'Death Ray'. Lets just say, I completely derailed my campaign and then had to scramble to find a legitimate way to take the idea off the party. I had the items stolen and effectively pissed everyone off in the process. Bad decision left right and center.This sounds interesting to me as I just granted someone in my party the following deviation from the rules.
He's playing a gnome cleric very attuned to nature. He worships Eldath and before rolling the character thought it would be best shown when he could manipulate water. So he asked if he could combine his 'create water' spell with 'shape water' spell. The rules say it has a casting time of 1 action, so I said, per default you can not. However I like this players roleplaying so much, I also don't want to limit his possibilities. So I granted him the following homebrew rule for these spells (as they're not overpowering to my judgement): On your first turn you can hold your action to cast 'shape water' which is triggered in your second turn by casting 'create water'. You can then use it to shape the water, depending on the amount of interaction he takes with the water I will distract movement from his turn to compensate for the time spent on playing out 2 spells.
Do you think I shouldn't have done this? Have I overpowered him? Hmm you got me thinking :)
You do know that when a polymorphed creature dies, their form reverts and they retain their HP from before they were transformed, right? Also, fly and polymorph both being concentration spells, its more likely that your wizard would've been the one to fall to their death as soon as they broke concentration on fly to cast polymorph.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with this part. I'm pretty generous when it comes to loot, because I feel like this is also what's going to make a character feel special and unique.
Everyone can build a ranger and play him up to lv10. But if your ranger had an oathbow he would use to rain fury on his sworn ennemy with his boots of flying, he's going to feel and play completely differently from the next ranger who has a bow he can shoot in close range for bonus damage, with an animated shield to protect him.
My point being that if you're going to play a character for a long time, having fun toys to break the mold of your class can be extremely fun, and you have a myriad of ways to do so. You can have a character have one extremely powerful item, while the others get several items that are individually less powerful, but more versatile.
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