Peak Konsi content, this might not normally be my style of character but I LOVE it when she gets to nonchalantly and completely accidentally upend people’s understanding of reality

WotC and failing to understand their own game, name a more iconic duo

Megalovania

I’ve had some issues with Invidious being unable to play specific videos once or twice, but the issues tend to go away after a couple of days.

I mean, we know Google and Youtube are both multi-billion-dollar corporations that are absolutely enraged by the idea that there could be any possible way for a commoner pleb like you to NOT have your online experience absolutely crammed with as many privacy violations and hyper-targeted ads as possible. Invidious having to constantly stay ahead of such powerful entities’ attempts to block them out means that some errors and periods of downtime are perfectly excusable- what’s important is continuing to support them in their fight.

“Roll a death save.”

“No.”

“…No? You can’t just not do that?”

“I don’t care.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Too bad.” Gets back up with 50% HP

Now that’s really interesting! I wonder where I can go to see this stuff…

This may sound strange, but honestly once you understand the game it’s really the other way around!

The official 5e devs do NOT have any clue what they’re doing in terms of encounter balance and design; almost everything gets crapped on by a good spellcaster or Ranger, and they play it pretty safe and corporate with stories too. Half of 5e adventures are copies of old adventures and it really shows because all the copies of old classics are actually way more respected and generally liked (Curse of Strahd, Sunless Citadel, White Plume Mountain) than 5e originals (Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen). Notable exception being Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. Despite being the smallest original adventure in 5e it’s honestly good.

Still, I really appreciate the meme for our community! You’re the backbone of lemmy with all your posts my guy

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK BOYS

Isn’t this the plot of Fire Emblem Three Houses

Babe wake up, new forbidden snack just dropped

Walking Wake

Young Black Dragon called Gendridd, wasn’t meant to be a major obstacle, his personally is that he’s evil mostly just because he’s having a fantastic time being an asshole and constantly taunting people (to the extent that the first and so far only lair effect he’s got is the ability to heckle people at any location in the lair). Anyways he was fully aware that he’d get one-rounded trying to fight a party of four level 7 PCs, so instead of fighting them stole the party’s unattended bags and sat in a tree to taunt them about it before flying off (he did not consider this might lead to fighting them anyway).

The party’s plan was to ambush him in his own territory, so their plan was to cut through some of the most overgrown parts of the swamp to get behind his lair and set up an ambush, instead of confronting any of his minions. However, between several spellcaster party members who had both completely dumped their strength/dexterity and couldn’t cast spells while drowning, party members wearing full heavy armour that weighed them down significantly, and bad rolls, then two of them fell into a bog, and in trying to rescue them the others also fell in and they all drowned, resulting in the first TPK.

Obviously that wasn’t a super satisfying ending, so for closure I offered to run a oneshot with a level 5 party in Gendridd’s lair, sent to avenge the original party, on condition that I wouldn’t hold back with enemy strategy and tactics (no bullshit with magic, just good enemy postioning, balanced teams that had lots of options in fights, and had actual battle plans). They made it through most of the dungeon pretty well, while constantly trading off verbal barbs with Gendridd who basically ran a snarky sports commentary the entire way through, letting them know how eager he was to crush them when they made it to HIS big boss chamber. Anyways they reached the outside of the chamber and they were just preparing to fight the skeletons who were guarding his door when he jumped out of an acid river behind them and got a Surprise Round, hitting two of them with a breath weapon and then rolling good enough initiative to knock out their fragile backline casters.

After that then he’s become popular/respected enough to get Promoted To NPC.

TLDR: First wipe due to RNGiamat cursing the d20 and a party badly suited to dealing with falling in a bog. Second wipe because Gendridd employed the secret chromatic dragon art of ‘lying to people’.

Can confirm, I run a LOT of dragons and the interesting dragon villains are generally about finding unique takes on their common traits or villains because of their response to their circumstances rather than pure random villainy. We’ve got the red dragon who self-perpetuates her own cycle of violence, we’ve got the black dragon who’s mentally broken because their worldview of being entitled to everything due to their strength collapsed after they lost a territorial struggle, we’ve got the emerald dragon who’s desire not to be bothered by their humanoid allies led them to neglect their promises, we’ve got the silver dragon who loved her friends so much she was willing to fall into necromancy to try and undo their deaths.

Also we have That Bastard With Eight Player Kills.

That said, always remember: To become cliche, something needs to work super well first- so well that everyone does it. It only crosses from great into cliche if everyone does it and forgets why and how it worked in the first place.

Fully intended! Vex helping both explain stuff for new players and make funny jokes about content is straight up aspirational

Thank you <3

She’s a character with the Unholy Ravager class, I use her to spice up my Forgotten Realms games (White Dragoness in a non-snowy area jumpscare)

On the contrary, puzzles can be half the fun, especially if your players are idiots

There is a Young Black Dragon in my world who was literally never meant to be a major issue for any players but currently has EIGHT player character deaths attributed to him, because the first (level 8) party TPKd when they tried to move deeper into his territory to ambush him after he stole one of their bags, and they all drowned in a bog (trying to help each other and the ones who went to help also getting into trouble). Then there was a oneshot where a second (level 5) party went to his lair to avenge the first one and they also TPK’d because he got a surprise round against them.

Thank fuck for that. With any luck the better conditions will even give them the power to push back on management if management demands something stupid be added to a game.

In an industry as notoriously dreadful as game development, every bit of quality of life counts.

They do have their place- just that place isn’t “something you can just drink every day without thinking about”