Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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OOC: So it looks like my options are A.) Take that 6th bard level to give me extra attack from the college, counter charm, and increase my spell capacity or B.) Take the Rogue 4's ASI and either b1. Ninja out Tommary with a 20 DEX or b2. modest improvement of his spell casting stats by boosting CHR +1 (oh, and give him one more inspiration), and make his sort of breezy bardiness and knower of weird shit more credible by boosting his INT+1 to help with some of his skillmonkeying. I'm thinking A.) gives the greatest volume of options; but I don't want to discount what a +1 to an ability score's base mod does to the characters overall utility math either so surveying this select team of theorycrafters. Except Illy, she evidently doesn't want Tommary anywhere near his fly by the seat of his pants when his pants are bunched around his knees school of spellcasting.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Ilyara looked up at the rapidly disappearing Saint of the North, a wide, warm smile on her face. Her attention followed the fluttering snowflakes down, spotting the larger, firmer ones with names etched into them, and went to retrieve her own. It tingled in her hand, magic thick and powerful upon it...but what truly mattered just then was that they'd done it. Saved Christmas, thwarted the grinch-hearted rat bastard in charge of this mountain, made Layla's whole heckin' year while they were at it, and found another of the Cliffside government's wandering trinkets. This had been a good day's work.
Now to sleep. After convincing Toots to wash Santa Claus' blood off her hands, because holy shit that was not okay...
* * *
OOC: Congratulations on saving Christmas in the Saint Nick of time, everybody!
Eh?
...Eh?
Heh, but yis. Merry Christmas to all and thanks for the game so far. Here's to another year of getting ****ed over by this overgrown rock heap.
I'd go bard 6, Midnight. Gets you your second attack which is a big deal, and it puts you in position to get bard 7 and fourth-level spells next level-up. We're getting to a point where we're gonna need them shits. There's definitely an argument to be made for buffing scores, but getting a second swipe on a two-swipe build like Swords bard is a bigger deal than near anything else.
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OOC: Well Midnight, that’s a good question. I tell ya what, I’ll rattle it around a bit and let ya know what I come up with if you do the same for me. Fair? (First blush, if you wanna lean into the “G” in RPG, Yurei’s pro’ly right about mechanical advantage. If you wanna lean into the “RP” part, then I have a question for you: is Tommary a bardic Rogue, or a rakish Bard?)
If this wasn’t a non-feat table I woulda grabbed Metamagic Adept and had a good excuse to take another level of Sorcerer next time we leveled-up… but it’s not, so I didn’t, so I won’t. 😉 it’s nothin’ but Bard from here on out for this chica chiquita, and Toots has just maxed out her SAB (🤘😜) and can pick up a new Bard spell. I’m pretty sure she’s got the highest level spell access in the party, so I wanna make it count, but I’m not sure what the party needs most. Here’s my available options:
What (if anything) does anyone think?
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It's very difficult for me to recommend anything but Dimension Door, especially since of the current part, only Tommary is too big for Toots to be able to teleport with. Being able to simply N.O.P.E. the hell out of a terrible situation, or being able to bypass five hundred find of Hell Naw , is incredible.Control of movement and positioning can be key. Plus, imagine how much more straightforward the Slippy Room of Slipping woulda been?
Sending is always good to have, though Ilyara can prepare it if we need it, and in all these cramped environments down here Stinking Cloud is a mother****er...but I'd go with Dimension Door. Freedom of Movement and Greater Invis are solid picks too, but Toots isn't as suited to Greater Invis tomfoolery and Freedom of Movement just isn't as versatile as Dimension Door. The rest of Bardic fourth-level is very situational. heh, whwnever I theorycraft a bard my fourth-level picks are almost invariably Polymorph and Door.
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Really?!? confusion didn’t even get an honorable mention?
Unless she could’ve cast DDoor 6 times and hauled “a creature no more than 1 size larger,” that room spawned from one of Jigsaw’s wet dreams would’a still been what it was. 🤷♂️
To be honest, I feel pretty “meh” about most 4th-level spells. That’s why I have no qualms about a 2 deep dip into Wiz on an Arcane Trickster, they only loose out on Greater Invis.
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OOC: I'll look over spell lists for Toots and make input if she's not built up yet later. Same with my decision on Tommary. My bordering on pathological tendency to always "do Christmas" at the last minute led to me only getting 4 hours and 5 minutes sleep last night, so I ought to get more rest before making any game affecting decisions or recommendations ... I mean for "this" game. I'll likely still be all over the forums doing me, I just realized last night/early morning I explained how to get the FBI involved against EBay vendors engaged in bait with "1st Edition AD&D" and switch "DMsGuild reprint". When I saw that this morning I did a little Keanu/Tommary "Whoa."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Moar spell chatter:
I have an extremely low opinion of recurring-save 'disable' spells. If the spell can't do its job in one single round, or doesn't affect a huge number of creatures all out of proportion to its spell level, I consider it a waste of time. It WILL let you down, and swiftly. Critters are almost guaranteed to break such a spell in three rounds or less, no matter how garbage their saving throws are. Given that Toots already has Hypnotic Pattern, a vastly more potent and wider-area control spell at a lower slot level, Confusion seemed wastefully redundant. Heh, especially since Stinking Cloud can similarly rob the enemy of turns, but also does damage and doesn't disappear after the enemy makes one of the seven billion saves they're allowed against it. Just about the only recurring-save spells I tend to acknowledge are things like Hideous Laughter that you can cast with a 'throwaway' first-level spell slot and still get some use out of even in high levels, or the Hold Person/ Monster spells that inflict the absolutely devastating Paralysis condition. Evben one round of Paralyzed can absolutely wreck a critter, so they get a sorta pass.
* * *
Ilyara sat down within the tent, looking sheepish. "Hey, uhh...Toots. I'm sorry I told ya off for tryin'a get that bug off'a Santa the hard way. I just...I guess I felt like there had'a be something we were missin', some clever solution I wasn't bright enough t' figure out. When the Traveler sent me that vision from my own youth, told me straight up to just get it done with, I was kinna both relieved and antsy. We hadn't missed anything...but we had'a hurt th' Saint real bad to help him. I guess...I didn't take that as well as I should. Sorry."
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Tommary is regarding his special snowflakes, and utters, "Whoa."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
OOC: Anybody ever consider using Sleep outside of beginner levels?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
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"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
OOC: Realizing that Elyona gets to swap spells out at a long rest, I'm open to suggestions for good standard options for her to have prepared. I'll have to drop one or more of her current prepared spells to pick up any 3rd level options beyond those that Oath of Ancients gets her. But She hasn't really used Cure wounds, so that's one candidate to drop. Revivify and Crusader's mantle caught my eye as 3rd level possibilities.
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OOC: Aura of Vitality is one of the strongest healing abilities in the game, and outside of its first turn it doesn't consume Elyona's action to do stuff with. And outside of combat it trades a third-level slot for 20d6 healing, which ain't no joke and puts Healing Spirit to shame. Very good "That went super poorly..." spell, and an equally good "I'm going to fake having healing Word for the next minute" option as well.
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OOC: Sure. People 💩💩 it and claim it doesn’t scale well… but I think either they just expect it to be something other than what it is, or their DM never (or infrequently) presents situations in which it can be what it is. If you want it to KO all the baddies so you can grant them easy “mercy,” you’re gonna be disappointed with your life choices.
However, if Toots had it, she might have tried that at 2nd-level instead of Hypnotic Pattern against the flying, fire-breathing serpetipede instead. After all, it’s a lower-level spell slot burned, and 7d8 would very likely have KOed it (considering how easily it went ), so would have had the exact same effect of dropping it 40 feet straight down on its head for Ely to chop up into pieces. That fracas with the Gobbo Gang woulda pro’ly gone more smoothly with a napnap spell too. Heck, those vampire guppies would have been “sleeping with the fishes” (😜), make Henry an easier fight. And, I mean, if even one of those scrotonians had put their head down on their desk that fight would have been a good deal easier too.
Think about it, name a single other 1st-level spell that can potentially drop a 5d8 Hit Die monster in a single turn, without needing to even consider either their AC or potential saving throws? Name any other spell of any level that can do that, and then look at the level….
But the situations in which it really shines are apparently not ones commonly encountered this edition. If the party needs to pull off a caper in populated, civilian areas, a non-lethal way to remove a number of potential witnesses from the equation long enough to get in, get done, and get out without being seen or identified is better than all the fireballs in the world. But people don’t seem to want to do funky, Ocean’s 11/Italian Job style heists and such. They apparently seem to want to climb aboard and ride those rails chasing DPR like junkies. 🤷♂️
It seems that, as each edition has whispered to the next down the lane, “overcome a variety of increasingly difficult challenges however you can, as long as you can” got garbled into “murderdeathkill a single storyline major BBE for 10-14 levels and then start over.” What was that adventure people found out was gonna be low-combat and they all 💩-talked it before it had even been published? In this meta, non-lethal are non-starters for most players.
Think about what we have encountered so far: some Gnolls, some undead, the stuff in the frostballs where we found Ily, Layla, 9, the Gobbos, the Scrotums, Henry, some ke Eric monsters, Santa Clause, and that serpentipede. The Gnolls had to go, and undead are undead. 🤷♂️ That Air Elemental was pro’ly jacked and trapped like Ily had been and might have also not required combat if we had been able to communicate with it like we could with Ily. 9 was cool, Layla was chill as shit, the Gobbos were so cool I kinda want to give them their stuff back and apologize for mugging them in their own crib. And they said Henry was cool too, so I kinda get the feeling we pro’ly would have discovered he had also been kidnapped and pressed into servitude like Layla, the Gobs, and Santa were. The lizard we just killed was a dick, the vampire fish sucked (hehe), I got no problems killing lobsters and eating them IRL, so whatever, and scorpions are arachnids and anything with more than 6 legs and isn’t seafood is wrong on so many levels. Down here, non-lethal solutions seem to be working for us in at least half of the encounters we’ve faced. I think we should probably not be killing anything down here that isn’t openly hostile to us first.
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It’s a non-lethal spell that should really only need to work for about 3 rounds when used in the rights situations. I love Confusion, it can be an amazing choice when the right situations to use it are presented to players. Yes, you are absolutely, 100% correct in your tactical assessment of the spell. But I think the non-lethal nature is the exact reason to take confusion lots of times, much like sleep.
As she’s winding down her apology, she hears Toots snore rather loudly for a 65 lb, 70 year-old Hin woman. It seems she was quicker to slumber than Ily was to follow her this evening. Ily realizes thatToots is obviously not loosing any sleep over the matter.
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OOC: You know why I don’t personally choose Sleep more often? Because it’s usually the damage rolls I whiff on. I’m pro’ly the only person who would likely not even be able to KO two 4-HP commoners with a 2nd-level, 7d8 casting of Sleep. You’ve seen my damage rolls, you know it’s true.
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On Sleep
I've seen players get good use from it, but generally in unconventional situations. One player I know of famously used Sleep to (literally) derail a train robbery by putting the engineer to sleep, which was a big oopsie and also a pretty epic water cooler moment for that table. Heh...I remember one player at my table accidentally rolled exactly his own HP and put himself to Sleep tryin'a use the spell to calm a drunken dwarf, which was absolutely hysterical and just peak D&D. But yeah, it's a pretty niche spell overall. Good at what it does, but not many games really lean into what it does. I have no issue with it being in a Wizard's spellbook, but it's hard for me to justify it on sorcerer or bard lists where I get so few spells known.
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Your group is all bright eyes and bushy tails when the colored dome fades. What now?
OOC: Make whatever changes you need to your character sheet regarding new spells and abilities. I'll admit to being tempted to make random changes to Toots' spell list as Sposta says her patron is an a-hole. But that would break GM/player trust.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
OOC: LOL. Honestly, neither she nor I have any real idea which deity dropped a li’l sumptin sumptin into her gene pool, or when. (We don’t really know much about her forebears other than they weren’t around. Like, ever….) All we know about the source of her divine Bloodline is that it has an evil affinity, and that it scares her.
Divine Soul
Sometimes the spark of magic that fuels a sorcerer comes from a divine source that glimmers within the soul. Having such a blessed soul is a sign that your innate magic might come from a distant but powerful familial connection to a divine being. Perhaps your ancestor was an angel, transformed into a mortal and sent to fight in a god’s name. Or your birth might align with an ancient prophecy, marking you as a servant of the gods or a chosen vessel of divine magic.
[Sic]
Divine Magic
Your link to the divine allows you to learn spells from the cleric class. When your Spellcasting feature lets you learn or replace a sorcerer cantrip or a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher, you can choose the new spell from the cleric spell list or the sorcerer spell list. You must otherwise obey all the restrictions for selecting the spell, and it becomes a sorcerer spell for you.
In addition, choose an affinity for the source of your divine power: good, evil, law, chaos, or neutrality. You learn an additional spell based on that affinity, as shown below. It is a sorcerer spell for you, but it doesn’t count against your number of sorcerer spells known. If you later replace this spell, you must replace it with a spell from the cleric spell list.
Goodcure woundsLawblessChaosbaneNeutralityprotection from evil and goodFor all either of us know, they may be very polite and considerate. But so is the RL devil when it wants or needs to be. 🤷♂️
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OOC: Alrighty everyone,
‘Rei, Midnight, M’lady A’s Daughter, I think I’ve narrowed it down to my top three choices, here’s what I’m leaning towards:
Greater Invisibility
• It could definitely be useful cast on any one of the party under various circumstances.
• It would definitely be useful on Elyona or Tommary. Could youse all imagine Ely, full-on shinobi going crit-fishing for Divine Smites with that RoLM?!?
• I’m not tryin’a load Toots up with too many Concentration combat spells.
• At least Tommary will also be able to take it soon too if Midnight is considering it, and doubling up on spells is dumb, so….
Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum
• We’re already pretty darned sure that the ******canoe running this nightmare factory is using magic to watch us struggle like a peepin’ creeper, so bein’ able to shut that down could be a massive advantage. (And it’ll likely irritate the bejeepers outta ‘im too, so bonus.)
• It can do a hell of a lot more than just that.
• It’s ju—ust situational enough that it might not get used.
• It takes so—oo long to cast.
Raulothim's Psychic Lance
• That one round of Incapacitated could be a game changer.
• We know the BBE’s name.
• It’s a shiny new toy.
• It’s another Direct Damage spell with no other utility or nonlethal uses.
• The BBE is a Wiz who will be proficient at Int saves.
Please give me your options at your earliest convenience. Thank you.
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OOC:
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OOC: I'm gonna be weird and say Psychic Lance. Mostly because surprisingly, this team is actually kinda critically short on blasting spells, and being able to selectively cripple one target for a round can not only provide an offensive edge, but a defensive one as well. Greater Invis is awesome for attackers but outside Elyona we have no primo martials, Ilyara can fight with her blade and does better damage when she does, but opportunities to do so are...slim. And as neat as Private Sanctum is, I don't think it'll pan out in the long run.
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