I’m pretty sure we already have the Morkoth, Su-monster, and titanothere.

And I loved the moose bear. I think I might be using that in my future games.

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

I’m pretty sure we already have the Morkoth, Su-monster, and titanothere.

And I loved the moose bear. I think I might be using that in my future games.

 
IIRC, in the Avatar animated series, all the regular animals were gestalts of IRL animals.

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

I’m pretty sure we already have the Morkoth, Su-monster, and titanothere.

And I loved the moose bear. I think I might be using that in my future games.

 
IIRC, in the Avatar animated series, all the regular animals were gestalts of IRL animals.

 They were. I remember the rulers of the earth part of the world had a plain bear and it was funny because it was considered an anomaly 

Queen: "and here is my bear"

Tourist: "youre bear-mole?"

Queen: "no..."

Tourist: "your bear-dog?"

Queen: "no."

Tourist: "you're goat-bear"

Queen: "NO! It's just a bear"

Tourist: "oh! Where did you get such an exotic pet?"

Of course, that isn't a direct quote from the show, but it emphasizes the point.

Quote from Raccoon_Master >>

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

I’m pretty sure we already have the Morkoth, Su-monster, and titanothere.

And I loved the moose bear. I think I might be using that in my future games.

 
IIRC, in the Avatar animated series, all the regular animals were gestalts of IRL animals.

 They were. I remember the rulers of the earth part of the world had a plain bear and it was funny because it was considered an anomaly 

Queen: "and here is my bear"

Tourist: "youre bear-mole?"

Queen: "no..."

Tourist: "your bear-dog?"

Queen: "no."

Tourist: "you're goat-bear"

Queen: "NO! It's just a bear"

Tourist: "oh! Where did you get such an exotic pet?"

Of course, that isn't a direct quote from the show, but it emphasizes the point.

 
Lol I remembered that scene but I couldn't conjure up a direct quote either. Hilarious and self-aware.

*whistles, strolling by*

*stops. Looks around. pulls a crate out of a bag of holding*

*sets the crate down, and climbs on top of it*

Good evening, or afternoon, or morning, my fellows. As some of you know, the council of our great Reclaimed City has employed a brave group of heroes to save us form eternal doom! The best of the best. The creme da le creme if you will. Word has reached our ears that one of those heroes has perished, and the Council seeks another hero to go and assist in the saving of all of civilization! if you wish to apply, do so at the: Council Headquarters (AKA, the recruitment thread)

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from Raccoon_Master >>

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

I’m pretty sure we already have the Morkoth, Su-monster, and titanothere.

And I loved the moose bear. I think I might be using that in my future games.

 
IIRC, in the Avatar animated series, all the regular animals were gestalts of IRL animals.

 They were. I remember the rulers of the earth part of the world had a plain bear and it was funny because it was considered an anomaly 

Queen: "and here is my bear"

Tourist: "youre bear-mole?"

Queen: "no..."

Tourist: "your bear-dog?"

Queen: "no."

Tourist: "you're goat-bear"

Queen: "NO! It's just a bear"

Tourist: "oh! Where did you get such an exotic pet?"

Of course, that isn't a direct quote from the show, but it emphasizes the point.

 
Lol I remembered that scene but I couldn't conjure up a direct quote either. Hilarious and self-aware.

 That was one of my favorite parts of the series. AtLA had such great world building.

Just spitballing on my sentient sound idea. It'd be incorporeal and invisible, and can travel through objects that conduct sound. Have an aura that makes it difficult to concentrate. The area of a silence spell causes it to become incapacitated. It can garble spells that require vocals. When it dies, it can infect a creature with an intrusive tune that acts like a disease, and ultimately causes them to sing a new sentient sound into existence.

What else could I add?

I'm also working on a new version of the 3e zeitgeist for the brewing competition. It's a fey entity that emerges from urban areas.

Immunity go Thunder damage, maybe being healed by it? Attacks that deal thunder damage and deafen with tinnitus.

Oh, I'm also thinking up a new hostile astral entity. I don't have any details really yet, but I envision it as a disembodied force that latches onto an astral traveler's silver cord and follows them back to their origin. Maybe they possess the body of the traveler, leaving their projection trapped in the astral plane, or maybe they do something gruesome like explode out of their material body. Haven't decided yet.

Quote from The_Leviathan_of_Levistus >>

Immunity go Thunder damage, maybe being healed by it? Attacks that deal thunder damage and deafen with tinnitus.

 
Good ideas. I imagine it attacks by filling the mind of the enemy with the dial-up internet noise. I also like the idea that they're not necessarily hostile, and can be charmed by singing or otherwise making delightful sounds with an instrument or whatever.

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Oh, I'm also thinking up a new hostile astral entity. I don't have any details really yet, but I envision it as a disembodied force that latches onto an astral traveler's silver cord and follows them back to their origin. Maybe they possess the body of the traveler, leaving their projection trapped in the astral plane, or maybe they do something gruesome like explode out of their material body. Haven't decided yet.

Quote from The_Leviathan_of_Levistus >>

Immunity go Thunder damage, maybe being healed by it? Attacks that deal thunder damage and deafen with tinnitus.

 
Good ideas. I imagine it attacks by filling the mind of the enemy with the dial-up internet noise. I also like the idea that they're not necessarily hostile, and can be charmed by singing or otherwise making delightful sounds with an instrument or whatever.

 This is unrelated to the Astral Monster, but for some reason it reminds me of a monster I made: essentialy, people live on the positive energy plane/sun (don't ask how) in my world, and so, travelers will often get filled with positive energy to the point that their mortal form disintegrates and they become a light ghost essentialy.

Maybe their leader is called Fluffy the Sleepy? And the music makes him drowsy.

So, some of you may recall that earlier this year I was working on figuring out the Biomass productivity of different Biomes for my world.

Now, some may wonder why it is that I would do such a thing, lol.

First and foremost, it has to do with Random Encounters, Random Weather, and Random Events.

Desolate areas with little life will have very low Biomass Productivity, and so will have not only fewer living things, but also have lower chances of random encounters with living things. So the random encounter lists for such a place will have fewer items on it, and they are less likely to happen.

Sand Deserts generally have a biomass productivity of around 4, for example (as expressed in gC/m/yr, or grams of carbon per square meter per year), is going to have far fewer encounters than a tropical rainforest (Jungle) that has a Biomass of 2500.

Biomass is the total mass of all the carbon based life (plants, animals, bugs, etc) in a square meter (or roughly 9 square feet for my purposes) in a given year (the previous 'dragons eating everything stuff' has an effect here). So in a square meter of desert, there are going to be only about 4 grams of carbon per square meter per year. Barely enough to maybe provide for a single tuft of grass. A single human has a biomass of around 60 so a single human sized living thing is going to be the only living thing in 15 square meters. A plant is much lighter, so a lot more plants, for example.

Indeed, plants make up about 80% of the total biomass for any given area. So that 4 in a desert means that 3 grams per square meter are given over to plants. Plants generally don't make great random encounters. But that also means that in a square mile, we have a biomass of 20 to look at and use for random encounters. roughly 1 person sized thing per 3 square miles. Divide that person up (small rodents might be a 1, a swarm of insects might be a 1, a hunting cat might be a 3 or 4) and suddenly you can see more possible stuff to put in there -- and you have a limitation on what is possible.

For random encounters, I generally use a time and distance measure of 4 hours and 6 miles. There is a chance in each of those periods for a random encounter.  The encounter, however, only draws from the square mile around. But it means i can use a Biomass of 60 ( 50 for plants, 10 for living things) each roll -- and add up the mass for failed rolls.

It gives that verisimilitude that folks are "always looking for" -- but more importantly, it allows me to craft encounter tables that are reflective of the world as  whole.

The flipside, of course, is that it is a hell of a lot of work -- more than is reasonable in a game, obviously. And also why i love spirits, lol. Spirits don't eat. The guardian of the Desert is a Spirit, a being made of magic and divinity and all that kind of stuff.

Back in the 80's, one of the things that made Greenwood's FR popular (long before TSR even thought of it as a "real world' ) was that he and a couple others started writing "ecology of" articles for Dragon magazine; they described how the monsters lived and the general ecology of a given monster. 

What I am doing is taking that idea as a whole and interfacing it with my science background and going in a very different direction, lol. Absolutely useless, but I am sure as hell having fun with it and something useful will come out of it in the end.

This has been a post that is essentially there to make you read something long, boring, and utterly hilarious.

Welcome to Cafe Lycoreco! I’m Chisa, and to my right is Takia, and we’re here to serve good food and offer help!

I am a bad girl, but the show is just too damned cute.

So I turned it into a shop in a town in Durango. 

Been adding to my prep time of late using the “ethical” tool that I have for a little while longer (it ends soon), and so creating some images of things that players see as they move through the world. This one won’t pop up for a bit, but couldn’t help it.

Today’s weird post is about getting the features of people right.

so, Wyrlde has a bunch of people’s. Elfs,  Dwarfs, Faery, Seraph, Cambion, halflings like Sprights, Gnomes, Fay, Ogres, etc.

”Races” or Species, they are only part of the whole. And the Species have a general look to them, of course. Getting decent images is hard. But I can use certain combinations to make people’s.

There is also Gender, which has an impact of images because of sumptuary rules.

Next you have Homelands. These can significantly impact the clothing that one wears in terms of style and form.

previously, I did a damn fool thing, lol, and placed physical appearance characteristics by homeland. Now I have to fix this.

I finally got it figured out, at least — and it only applies to my needing images for the assorted bits. Clothes for homeland, physical traits for appearance. 

Take a Peasant Elf from 3 countries: Akadia, Aztlan, and Dorado. All are Elfs, but they can often be figured out by the clothing they wear.

This helps one to understand the places they come from a tad bit better — though in Dorado they often wear bonnets (a nod to the Sibolan custom of headscarves).

these are, of course, the most flattering examples of the “Image” cantrip in use to capture them all.

Quote from Raccoon_Master >>

 This is unrelated to the Astral Monster, but for some reason it reminds me of a monster I made: essentialy, people live on the positive energy plane/sun (don't ask how) in my world, and so, travelers will often get filled with positive energy to the point that their mortal form disintegrates and they become a light ghost essentialy.

 
That's actually not too far from how the positive energy plane worked in 3e. If I recall, while the negative energy plane continually sucked away your life force, the positive energy plane continually heals you, even above your hit point maximum. However, if your hit points were to reach twice their maximum in this way, you'd explode and die. Unfortunately, this means that the most effective way to traverse the positive plane was to have your character self-harm, which I don't like one bit.

I think that if I were to convert that into 5e, I'd create an invigoration track that amounts to negative exhaustion levels. They'd provide bonuses until you reach the top at which point you'd explode. That way the character has no incentive to self harm, but they'd do things like skip rests and go on long forced marches.

Have you ever had a  first roll of a campaign be a nat 20?

I did, when I was trying to take a magic item I regretted giving my party in a earlier campaign, but they rolled stealth to keep it, and by some unknown force, nat 20.

Next time just take it or have it run out of charges or better yet, make recharging the item a quest in itself.

Question for DMs and/or Players...

Have, you as a DM, ever allowed/provided more information than a spell would actually provide?

Players, have your DM ever used lore during a spell casting, where the spell technically wouldn't work that way?

Was just going through my notes of one of my sessions - and the Paladin in the party cast Divine Sense while they were in the graveyard. 

Now Divine Sense, as written reads -

Divine Sense

The presence of strong evil registers on your senses like a noxious odor, and powerful good rings like heavenly music in your ears. As an action, you can open your awareness to detect such forces. Until the end of your next turn, you know the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet of you that is not behind total cover. You know the type (celestial, fiend, or undead) of any being whose presence you sense, but not its identity (the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich, for instance). Within the same radius, you also detect the presence of any place or object that has been consecrated or desecrated, as with the hallow spell.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier. When you finish a long rest, you regain all expended uses.

However, I decided to use it to elevate a story element - where I mentioned how the real world blurs away from her senses - and she is suddenly seeing a wispy image of a Paladin, speaking to a woman - who appears to be a Priestess - and how he is off to hunt down a Necromancer - the Priestess warns him that the Necromancer in question has aligned herself with orcs and to beware.

Then the world returns back to normal for the Paladin.

I did this, because this provided an opportune moment to set up another story I had further down the line. (The Paladin was indeed killed, and raised as a Wight, who regained control of himself, but is still undead and now seeking the original Necromancer he sought in life).

What, if any, are some things you have allowed (as a DM) or experienced as a player, where a spell was used differently than "as written" to enhance the story?

Quote from SirTawmis >>

 

What, if any, are some things you have allowed (as a DM) or experienced as a player, where a spell was used differently than "as written" to enhance the story?

 I'm DMing for a warlock with the Eldritch Sight invocation, and I've stretched Detect Magic in some circumstances. I've allowed it to detect the sort of "residue" of powerful spells, and allowed the player to learn generally how strong some magic is via Arcana checks.

Not a spell but my DM allowed me to use my Tempest Cleric's Channel Divinity to tame wild primal lightning energy as part of a ritual. It was a really cool moment and it felt good to have my creativity rewarded.

It is fairly common for me to give divination anything a boost and extra stuff…

… but also, it may not be useful in that moment, or even at all.

I use a lot of symbolism that reveals itself through repetition (crows appear before an ambush, the number 4 shows up over and over, the color pice is everywhere) and love my omens, portents, and signs as a whole thing for mood and atmosphere.

That feature, for example, would probably work for me even with total cover, and I would likely even give a bit of an idea of kind of devil or critter.

Quote from SirTawmis >>

Question for DMs and/or Players...

Have, you as a DM, ever allowed/provided more information than a spell would actually provide?

Players, have your DM ever used lore during a spell casting, where the spell technically wouldn't work that way?

Was just going through my notes of one of my sessions - and the Paladin in the party cast Divine Sense while they were in the graveyard. 

Now Divine Sense, as written reads -

Divine Sense

The presence of strong evil registers on your senses like a noxious odor, and powerful good rings like heavenly music in your ears. As an action, you can open your awareness to detect such forces. Until the end of your next turn, you know the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet of you that is not behind total cover. You know the type (celestial, fiend, or undead) of any being whose presence you sense, but not its identity (the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich, for instance). Within the same radius, you also detect the presence of any place or object that has been consecrated or desecrated, as with the hallow spell.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier. When you finish a long rest, you regain all expended uses.

However, I decided to use it to elevate a story element - where I mentioned how the real world blurs away from her senses - and she is suddenly seeing a wispy image of a Paladin, speaking to a woman - who appears to be a Priestess - and how he is off to hunt down a Necromancer - the Priestess warns him that the Necromancer in question has aligned herself with orcs and to beware.

Then the world returns back to normal for the Paladin.

I did this, because this provided an opportune moment to set up another story I had further down the line. (The Paladin was indeed killed, and raised as a Wight, who regained control of himself, but is still undead and now seeking the original Necromancer he sought in life).

What, if any, are some things you have allowed (as a DM) or experienced as a player, where a spell was used differently than "as written" to enhance the story?

 Yes. I’ve done that and I’ve been a player when our DM’s done it to us. In both cases the DM (me in one case) did it to give the party some information that would help them understand the story better.