Nimble game has Good Tactics and Monster options

 See his detaisl on the kobold minions and such

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gQNrg1Q0dl8&t=321s

Sly Flourish and Dragonbane - and my Mage underpowered combat worry

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=te__Wy4E-ZE&t=755s

He does same temple we just did.

I wanna ask… is dragonbane good for aoe blaster mages? Or is it just super fun for GMs and martials?

Sidenote, from here: 

Neomaxim said:

Do you think it would utterly destabilize the game to let players have either the Fleet Footed, or Parry-equivalent Heroic Traits [Heroic action names are called Defensive for shield blocks taking no action costs WP, similar to Fast Footwork which gives Dodge an attack without using Action, WP cost 3] for free?

Not at all.

It actually works better for the game if you do as in the end just speed up the inevitable. Most players will take one of them anyway as soon as the get their first Heroic Ability granted from the GM for a heroic deed (aka milestone advancement...) as they stand heads and should above the rest.

The adventure booklet in the basic box hands out 1-2 if I remember correctly. And Path of Glory assumes that the player start with three of them.

Also you just could play with the Alternative Ability optional rule from the rule book that allows a player to swap out their starting Heroic Ability.

You can compare the basic action economy of the game to low level D&D. A quirk that won't last long and you will spend the majority of your campaign with everybody having them.

A quick high damage Melee build:

• Thief Style
• Heroic Actions taken should be:
• Assassin - WP cost 3 - sneak att does extra d8. (Sneak Attack is automatic if another party member is also fighting them). 
• Backstabbing WP cost 3 - cannot be dodged or parried, get a boon to the roll, number of dice rolled for dmg is incr by one (i.e. 2d8 instead of d8). Must use a Subtle weapon (pg. 74). 
• So, Dagger is subtle, D8. If you have high STR or DEX you get extra d4 dmg I think. So you could do this:
• 3d8+1d4 DEX MOD for every maxed out sneak attack with both heroic actions available. 6WP cost. 
• Fighter Style (note 2 hand means you can't Block, but can still Evade/Dodge right?)
• Weapon
• 1 Hand weapon like Battleaxe or Longsword: 2d8
• Most 2 Hand weapons do: 2d10 
• Heroic Actions
• Dual Wield - WP 3 : 1hand weapon ea. hand, extra attack at a Bane (Disadvantage in 5e terminology)
• Double Slash - WP cost 3-  hit 2 enemies nearby.  Can combine with Dual Wield. 
• So using both you get:
• 2d8 + 2d8 +1d4 for STR Mod on two targets. 6 WP cost. 
• Ranged Style 
• Longbow
• Heroic Actions
• Twin Shot - 3 WP - Roll once to hit with a Bane (disadv). Dmg rolled separately. Arrows can be same target or different. 
• You can use sneak attack if you get surprise to do extra dmg or something with ranged or melee.

Welp, that is 99% of your combat builds right there. Pretty simple system in that sense. 

The only "complexity" I can see is 

• if you lay out terrain to be used effectively, same as any TTRPG with a map, which I do like. 
• swapping inits
• deciding when to block/evade or not (commentors say: monsters have actions as same # as Party members minus 1, so someone can always "do something" other than block-parry/evade.)
• ? Is that it? I think that's almost it. I mean then you decide when to spend WP to do extra damage... but when they Parry/Evade your stuff, that sure sucks. And those fire spells pretty much say you can shield-block-parry/evade whatever except for AOE stuff I think. 

Starting to think people that love Dragonbane love it for a few simple reasons:

• it feels fresh to them b/c they've been playing D&D style for 40 years, and this has the funky "roll low is good" skill system, which takes like 10 seconds to learn, but feels funky. 
• fast moving rounds b/c stuff is simple, less dice to count, less stuff to do (frankly). And normally characters just have one single thing to do, not even 2 attacks until you are maxed out super duper late game stuff that probably never happens
• same reason ppl like shadowdark
• same reason ppl like B/X
• fast rounds means players get their turn sooner
• it's just less combat tactically interesting. I think this is "less crunchy" using the internet term.  :(
• I think you play like d20Roll folks, put all the calculations on a 1 click macro on a computer, and it calculates all the 6 or 8 or more dice all at once super insta style. 
• I LIKE THAT. Sure it's not as fun as rolling dice and watchign them fall... you can still do that for small dice rolls or whatnot. But often the SPEED of it is just better,  you can do lots and still have tactics. 
• it has the DCC/ Shadowdark thing of rolling to cast... and crit failure on spells suck a lot, but those GMs seem to like the chaos of that
• the skills matter much more outside of combat
• swapping inits and that whole minigame is new a different, yeah it is
• they like duck-people... i guess
• oh yeah, the "pushing" to reroll and the "taking a condition" are well done, I will give them that. It seems pretty fun, can be roleplayed, and isn't a forever you are screwed option I don't think. 
• and of course these are folks that enjoy death being super common, for whatever reason.
• and and and... a lot are DMs, who probably like having cooler monsters, less homework on leveling up stuff... and a really cool looking graphical / art system like Dragonbane. 
• I might be being harsh, I mean I did like the game. I'm just biased b/c I like more complexity, and that comes with
• custom char builds
• custom monster builds
• lots and lots and lots of monster variety

My comment on Mage on SlyFlourish's yt:

Dragonbane comment 2 of 2: So I would like to say, as a player and a GM, I tend to really like your take on things. When we are the GM, we want our friends and family to succeed and beat the monsters. We want everybody to have a good challenge, each of the party to have a solid role in combat, and also for everyone to have a lot of fun (including the GM). So coming from that angle, I would appreciate your take on one aspect of Dragonbane that I have reservations on. 

Speaking purely combat-wise, I suspect the Mage class is a little underpowered... but I haven't played enough to have a good feel. What I understand is that in Dragonbane you never truly level up, so you almost never increase hitpoints on your PC. So enemies don't have crazy high hitpoints... ever. Goblins and orcs have 7 HP to 10 HP. Bigger monsters have around 25-45 HP it would seem. Spellcasting costs WP, has a chance to miss, a chance to be parried/evaded, and a chance for a critical mishap. I believe the highest level single damage (or even AOE) spell is 2d6 , same as most attacks, unless you use WP to increase it to 4d6 (you can't do that all that often in a game day). [edit: 2d10 if you get the rank3 Firebird actually. And a correction, a Heroic Ability similar to D&D feats, you can eventually after many upgrades/adventures cast 2 spells in one round (still costs extra WP), but that seems similar to other class Heroic Abilities where they can attack twice, etc.]. 

The Mage is also very squishy, with armor being more important in Dragonbane in many ways than other RPGs I've played. Our very excellent GM who has played exclusively Dragonbane for a year even stated he barely sees anyone play a Mage. It seems like all the other characters are just way more consistent in combat. So... what am I missing or is the Mage just supposed to be 80% utility even if you try to build one out to be a battle mage? 

Maybe there are some blogs out there explaining this, I just haven't found them yet. I will be rewatching a youtuber going by "Cthonic Musings" who loves Dragonbane and seems to have a solid 40 years of experience in TTRPGs, so I hope he sheds light on this specific worry. Example: www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=jIfSJDs_ojQ [[edit2: I'm starting to think at the very end game scenario, if you are maxed out in magic abilities, have all the Heroic Actions, save all of your WP points for the boss, happen to have rank 3 firebird for 2d10, upcast it spending more WP points to do 4d10... use more WP to cast a 2nd different spell for 4d8 upcasted... yeah you can do a ton of damage in one fight, if those spells aren't parried/evaded and if all 4+ rolls go your way... seems like a lot of ifs! Maybe you can go last in a round to make sure they aren't parried/evaded.... Honestly though, I just wanted something like a D&D fireball so that sometimes you can do a lot of damage with AOE... guess this game just plays differently!]]

Conclusion:

Well, it seems like the Mage is not going to be doing a D&D style fireball very much. And you might get lucky on a big damage double spell against a boss monster... IF you are like super maxed out character-wise with every spell, etc. and you save all your WP for the boss, and wait for a round he can't parry. I think. I wonder if with heroic actions the martials get to do sort of similar damage in a round or two. Hmm. 

Red Hand of Doom = Good. Tomb of Annihilation 5e - issues

Tomb of Annihilation, 5e

•  https://www.enworld.org/threads/tomb-of-annihilation-likes-and-dislikes.714741/page-3
• They say there is a TRex with feathers. Nope, no thank you, not correct and not cool. 
• Sounds like there are a bunch of NPCs I wouldn't need or care about. These newer modules go so overboard with the NPCs. 
• So I better avoid it on StartPlaying I guess. A shame. Maybe I could DM it for the kid and retool everything to be less annoying. Or just find more old ones. 

Some questionable party portraits. And never liked the bugbear design in 3.x either. 

Red Hand of Doom 

• 3.5e  
• I think I wanna try one day
• Lizardmen
• Dragons
• Although the weird half-dragon everything sounds super duper weird
• half dragon cows that shoot lightning bolts? That sounds goofy as hell.
• maybe if it is a curse, I'd have to reskin all that goofy stuff
• I think a massive orc army incoming to destroy a city or something
• Some epic thing where your party is the assassination team or something to take out the "head" of the bad guys
• Many ppl like it, quote it as 
• being super good layout. 
• I think it has a ton of "this group of lizardmen do xyz when this happens"
• Apparently VERY hard if just played as is. The 3.5e guy in a comment (yt comment below) said they TPK three separate times during the 3.5e era, and they all were pretty serious players. 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AV0jii5JuU&t=1290s
• Comments from ppl (SPOILERS)
• 5e converted: I ran a 5e conversion of this and my party had an absolute blast. The fight to destroy the bridge near the beginning and the final 5 part siege were real standouts! The whole module made my players have to think a little more tactically, especially after the monk jumped into a bunch of undead at the Ghostlord's tower, failed all her saves against their attacks, and ended the fight with 2 max HP because of all of their necrotic max hp drain.
• The triple TPK guy, parabostonian2267: 

So you guys asked how people experienced it? It's kind of become a meme for my friends and I, because it started when my friend (who usually played rather than DM'd - I was the usual DM) ran a campaign where he told us (veteran 3.x players) "please don't make super-powerful characters for this campaign." (Living Greyhawk had kind of taught us that the weak perish to looking around the corner and seeing 4 bodaks and the strong pick good prestige classes, lol.) 

• So we made mediocre characters that were fun. He ran a couple modules for us prior to RHOD so we could get to level 5ish before we came into the adventure, and then RHOD kicked our asses, lol. After the first TPK (minus the 6th dude that didn't show up the week of the TPK, of course), we brought in 5 new PCs. I died again at some point in a silly way (combat with 3 dragon-cow things, all breathed lightning at my wizard taking partial cover behind stuff, and he died instantly) and we TPK'd again later IIRC, though the 2nd one I can't recall. It seemed very much in my memory like the kind of adventure that punishes you for not having multiclassed or prestige classed into something with evasion, lol. So for us, it became a meme of "when a DM asks people not to optimize, ask them if that's because they want multiple TPKs."
• 
  
• SERIOUS SPOILERS SECTION
• 
  
• Seriously though, as a player I remember the first TPK being REALLY rough on us as a group though. It was early on in the adventure, there was a place on the water that was kind of like a lizard man village or something shaped like a circle, with a tower in the center with a bell at the top. The big problem that we immediately saw(besides being on the water, which was a huge problem for a group that had a paladin and a cleric both fond of heavy armor that could easily make them sink and drown) was the huge # of lizard men who were natural swimmers and could, capsize boats and drown us or whatever. So we decided as the group to hang back, come back with the waterbreathing spell on the group the next day, and sneak into the tower to disable the bell so we can pick off lizard men and not have to train the whole zone or whatnot. Of course, this was catastrophically bad, because once we sneak into the tower we basically stumble over a dragon. On one side: we were level 5ish and much preferred fighting the dragon inside where it couldnt fly and kite us, but on the other side, we did manage to kill it but lost 3 PCs in the process. 1 other PC along with mine tried to sneak out after, only to find the lizardmen had heard the fight, and jumped us underwater. Lo, for the legend of my halfling wannabe-arcane-trickster making attacks of opportunity on lizard men trying to grab him under water, stopping maybe a half dozen attempts "like a cat in a corner" only to eventually be disarmed and put in a bag. And then later, tortured to the point of madness and maybe getting eaten by lizard men. =( 
• 
  
• Its funny though how the first TPK is so vivid in my memory, and the death by the weird dragon-cow things, but I don't remember what the TPK was for the far more successful group 2 was. I would love to read it at this point to get more a sense of how to deal with the black dragon / lizardman village area, because it was one of those TPKs where the group felt like it was very unclear what we should have done differently. (Other than maybe to just see the village was bad and just leave? IDK.)
• 
  
• So in short, my recollection of the adventure was that it was incredibly brutal, if well thought out. I also remember being very frustrated with the other "goodish" people as feeling mostly useless, but like you guys said it was setting up the heroes to be the necessary heroes to make the difference. Its hard to separate what negative bits I remember as being part of the system (3.5 had good and bad parts definitely, like you guys said ESPECIALLY about buffs, but also stuff like relative benefits of multi/pr-classing for saving throws and stuff that made a huge difference in character power), what was the DM not signaling stuff to us, what was us not picking up or maybe playing poorly in ways we didn't recognize, what was us being "non optimized characters" in the first wave at least, what was the DM just being really brutal, and so on. But the adventure definitely knew what it was about, definitely handled stuff like information control thoughtfully, definitely thought out tactics for bad guys, and so on. Clearly the writers had put a lot of thought into it. But again, I just played and died a bunch, I never read it. Anyways despite some amount of mixed feelings from TPKs, we still had a good time, and certain bits are still very memorable decades later.
• 
  
• Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed the stories of our failures. People always love to hear TPK stories, especially about adventures that they conquered, lol. =p

Words: Lightning Bug

Lightning bug or Firefly?  

Lightning Bug: I've heard some other folks use that word... for a while I thought it was just my Dad. 

Firefly: seems to be more common in the general US pop culture (TV, movies), but if you want to be technical, it is less correct since they are beetles and not flies. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter -- it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

From National Geographic. 

Spinosaur with a unicorn horn

 New species! Spinosaurus mirabilis

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_HlsB3dn7sk&t=527s

8 Fantasy Subgemres by Bob Worldbuilder

 Interesting take, the Low Fantasy is particularly interesting… I probably agree with a lot of it but….

• And now I know what Cozy fantasy is. OK. 
• Time 15:08 summary. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LNauaDxuPgA

Commenter says:

Sword and Sorcery is “low fantasy high adventure. The actual setting is one where most people never encounter the supernatural elements. … examples Conan, dnd adventures like Against the Cult of the Reptile God, The Lost City, etc. 

My thoughts:

Older (and a ton of current) D&D campaigns at level 1 characters started off as Sword & Sorcery/ Pulp then evolved into High Fantasy pretty quickly.  Then if you got into higher levels, maybe that’s the newly defined “superhero fantasy” … kind of. 

Those three are all parts of the same thing to me. And the current internet ppl obsession with separating them is maybe too much. But I understand why they do it.

Now as far as the genres/ games that pull in modern (anything after the year 1500) technology or science fixtion… I definitely like to keep that very very separate.  

DRAGONBANE Description by a DM:

his is an introductory adventure for those wanting to try a new system, but still in keeping with high fantasy. Dragonbane trades the superpowers of heroic fantasy for more grounded stats and the freedom to develop your character as you want. Combat usually only lasts 3-4 turns, and monsters are particularly deadly and unpredictable.

My initiative preference so far

 Having played OSE and B/X style initiatives ONLINE with new ppl, I can't say I like it. It is too uncoordinated, and my turn has been skipped before. It's just not clear the way some DMs are doing it. 

1. Draw your movement.
2. Declare if spellsEtc. Sometimes they never ask (because low levels get so few spells). 
3.  Ranged. 

And then the old school guy who does make you declare spells, it still gets messed up (well partly b/c he started doing semi random initiative mixed in with B/X rules so it is super unclear what is right in his game). 

So my preference is good old 3rd edition or 5th edition cut and dry, everybody rolls, then you get your order. 

NOTE: Shadowdark Init is weird. The highest init roll goes first, THEN everybody goes clockwise. Can't say I prefer that. And how the heck do you do that online. And does that mean monsters always go last... except monsters do roll init. Now I'm confused. 

Popcorn Initiative in D&D

Sounds iffy to me, but someone on startplaying with 30 yrs experience is using it. Guy's name is Northern Dungeons on startplaying. 

https://theangrygm.com/popcorn-initiative-a-great-way-to-adjust-dd-and-pathfinder-initiative-with-a-stupid-name/

Well he uses it for "I like to use Popcorn initiative for exploration and skill challenges when there is an urgency or danger that opens up space for cinematic descriptions and allows equal opportunities for the spotlight."

Wild Kingdom, the cougar vs porcupine

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=51dVcIaWrSA&t=388s&pp=2AGEA5ACAQ%3D%3D

This is the one I remember… pretty sure. Early on the young one attacks the porcupine and gets quills in a paw. Indicated with my red marker. 

Ow. At least the cat can get the quills out pretty quickly, although it showed one of the quills getting stuck in his lip for a minute as he pulled them out. But yeah, that sucked. 

Worse though was when the cat got into the river, white water, boulders and super strong current, then a waterfall. Luckily didn't crack his skull or break his legs. 

MerricB, on AD&D and new D&D... he hasn't updated his site in a while

 MerricB, on AD&D and new D&D... he hasn't updated his site in a while, but lotsa good stuff as I recall. Totally agree with this one:

https://merricb.com/2025/04/24/i-want-magic-weapons-to-matter/?unapproved=41222&moderation-hash=3f148576cd007ea2439c57da4097c818#comment-41222

https://merricb.com/2014/10/22/add-review-c3-the-lost-island-of-castanamir/

Pathfinder 1e char builder online free

BTW, Sorc builds: https://rpgbot.net/pathfinder/characters/classes/sorcerer/#races

NOTES

• Staffs
• It’s difficult to recommend specific staffs without knowing your individual character, so instead I want to make a general endorsement of the concept of magic staffs in Pathfinder. If you are a 3.5 native, go read Pathfinder’s rules for staffs because they have improved dramatically.
• Staffs are a reliable, rechargeable source of extra spellcasting that can give spellcasters easy and reliable access to spells from their spell list which they might not want to learn, or which they might like to use so frequently that they can’t prepare the spell enough times in a given day. On days when you’re not adventuring (traveling, resting, etc.) you can easily recharge any staff even if you can only cast one of the spells which the staff contains.

 Super nice. Pathfinder 1e (super similar to 3.5e D&D) char builder:

https://www.trovetokens.com/anvil/

Only issue on my browser at least, is you gotta zoom out to see a long list of feats to hit OK at the bottom. But can easily copy paste text to read feat descriptions, so not bad. 

Feats to investigate:

Wings of Air

Eschew Materials (Sorc level 1)

Benthic Spell:

You can modify a spell that deals acid, cold, electricity, or fire damage to deal damage through high-pressure water instead. The spell gains the water descriptor, and you can either replace the spell's normal damage with bludgeoning damage or split the spell's damage so that half is bludgeoning and half is of its normal type. Creatures with damage reduction apply their damage reduction to bludgeoning damage from a benthic spell, but the spell counts as bludgeoning and magic for the purposes of bypassing damage reduction.<br />A benthic spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.

Tenkar’s visuals hexcrawl

This is one excellent video with great visuals and ideas: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvtpLCcN6FY&t=162s

• Forest: Lightning split oak w old nails hammered in it  
• Hills: a line of standing stones like broken teeth. 
• Swamp: a half sunken shrine w candles still burning somehow .
• Plains: an abandoned wagon circle, grass grown tall inside it. 
• Right  by mountains, a black seam in a rock that blows cold air. 

Mystara Newbie Summary. And OSE vs. Mystara

 The official fan website for Mystara, whatever that means. Ppl seem to like it though, and I like the "newbie" summary: https://pandius.com/guide/index.html

And I like what they say here: https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/i8xpnx/questions_regarding_mystara_and_ose/

• Second what’s been said already. The Newbie’s Guide to Mystara is a good place to start for an overview of all the countries. The GAZ series does have tons of detail relating to rules and mechanics OSE doesn’t use, such as skills, but you can ignore most of them if they don’t apply to your game. The Hollow World is not known to people on the surface, so you can basically ignore it if you like.
• 
  
• The default starting place Karameikos and it was the first gazetteer published, so you could pick up the PDF and see what you think.
• 
  
• Mystara has tons of detail, including extensive history and lore, and good maps. What’s good about it is that you can take or leave as much of it as you want. Or, if you prefer, just leave a lot of it vague as in the earliest days of the setting when it was just called the Known World.
• 
  
• The weirdest thing about Mystara, in my view, is the substitution of immortals for traditional gods. That be hacked, too, of course. You can just decide to make them regular gods or use different pantheons.

Their bit on Shadow Elves:

• It should be stressed that the shadow elves are not evil per se. True, they hate the surface elves, as well as dwarves and humanoids and almost any outsiders. They have traditions that may seem savage when viewed from the outside. Within their own society, however, the shadow elves are honourable and supportive of each other. Crime is practically unknown, and for one shadow elf to betray another would be a sin worthy of the worst surface dweller. 

I've heard of this, what is it again: https://lamentationsmystara.blogspot.com/

OSE (but Mystara related) stuff...

Not sure what this is yet: https://furtivegoblingaming.blogspot.com/2024/08/land-of-mist-is-what-mystaraint.html

• OK, it's a Mystara-light setting for OSE. 
• Well... other than calling them drow, the rest isn't too far from normal fantasy or normal D&D or Mystara I think. And since the drow didn't exist in Mystara, it was the ... what... shadow elves that weren't exactly always evil, even tho in the arcade game they were obviously evil:
• "There are aquatic elves, nonevil drow who venerate the moon while still remaining mostly subterranean"