The product placement "half the price of other brands" is a misleading, lol My bluetooth Headphones share a lot of similarities to what raycon advertises and i just paid 9,99€ for them.😂
I love when people go on Reddit for validation but forget to leave out the parts of the story where they are red flags and then get clowned for it lmao
Just as funny is the inverse too. “I have literally never done anything wrong ever and our DM is Hitler, should I just quit this campaign???”. Embellishment is fine but sometimes Reddit do be getting a little too much theatre kid writing in their stories.
I do this with actual books and films as well. If the ending is just actually a crime, I will just headcannon it so I can at least enjoy the parts that were good without thinking about the end
For context for Jacob and those who're also unfamiliar, in VtM vampires get paralyzed by getting staked through the heart, so the reveal of a PC getting stabbed through the chest and it just doing nothing is a really big deal.
I didn't think that context was needed, but still interesting. Because normally you'd expect the stab through the heart to just KILL someone so the displaced heart is a big deal either way as you wouldn't expect them to be able to move either way :'D
@@ardynizunia9709 When stabbing someone in the chest you are pretty likely to hit a lung, which are important for breathing and should not be filled with blood, so even if the heart is not pierced, staying alive after taking a stab to the chest is pretty difficult.
Yeah Its essentially (in a meta sense) revealing this guys got quite a high level of power (Think moving the heart around the body or even just out of the body entirely is like one of the top level disciplines (powers) one can have, so revealing it's something far less worrying is kind of a kick in the teeth.
@@jansteinhaus5821 I mean, I agree yeah. But either way it results in players EXPECTING someone to be incapacitated, but then if the DM says it hit the heart(which isn't there) and missed the lungs, then them not being incapacitaed would be a big surprise moment. Soooo, it works either way I think.
I've only ever seen two DMs work well once, and that was because they were a married couple who communicated well, put a lot of effort into it, and separated duties during game - one of them focuses on plot, storytelling, and role-play, while the other handled running combat/skill checks, mechanical decisions, and maintained notes and records. Essentially, with one running The Story and the other in charge of keeping the game flowing mechanically, it led to a smooth game with a good pace.
I've seen it a few times and had mixed results. Usually worked best where one was a primary dm and the other would take over for a week or two to give them a break... but that may not count as 2 dms.
Not DnD, so this may affect it, but I'm currently running a campaign with another GM and it's going great. There are hiccups here and there, but we communicate pretty regularly, and intentionally leave each other strings to pickup if we like. The trick has been that we don't touch each other's specific stories, and only elude to each others work to tie it all together for everyone else. We also communicate with our players. "Hey, that item that he gave you during his last run doesn't vibe with this run. Can we shelve it for now?" It's more like both of us putting in 60-65% of the effort (totaling over 100%), but we don't have to do everything and also get to be players, which we didn't get to do in other groups Edit: I forgot I didn't clarify that we've been doing this for going on two years now. So it's not a "it will fail eventually" thing, we just both respect each other and communicate
2 DM's is not that much weird, just rare. And yes, it usually shall be separated duties. Example => pf2 playtest of Commander and Guard in RullesLayer channel. It's a collaboration with another youtuber, both are DM'ING but with different spheres. For example the second one was the one who had prepared maps, yet they decided on the foes together. In this example it was done for absolute sure the playtest is incredibly unbiased and diverse for the report after the result. Usually Co-dm is not equal to the first one!
My DnD group actually has three DMs, though one of them is normally busier than the other two, and it seems to work pretty well. Addionally, because our sessions last about an hour, due to club restrictions, our DMs for our second session out of two, split us into two groups. This was to help us get through our first combat session. That combat session was also just us escaping a castle and running from guards, so splitting them splitting the players up had us have a pretty fun time working within our groups. Of course the three DMs are all friends and generally good people, so the game has run pretty smoothly. I am very glad I joined the club too, as for my first time playing DnD, it's been awesome.
"Ahh, but what he doesn't know is that I know that he knows that I've been expecting him to betray me, and so he's prepared for me to be prepared for him to betray me, but he doesn't know that I'm prepared for him to be prepared for me to be prepared for him to betray me!"
@@kasane1337 5 Dots in Fortitude + Feral Claws = If your betrayal plan doesn't include me being at ground zero of a nuclear detonation then don't even bother.
for the unfamiliar: interparty conflict is very very common and outright encouraged in many VtM games. You are vampires fighting your inner beast which is your overwhelming drive to conquer and kill and feast. losing your humanity and succumbing to your beast is a core struggle every player has to deal with every night as a vampire. betrayal and ambition and selfish behavior is part of the game generally
as someone who's most expeeirences with dnd were videos, videogames and 1-on-1s, the blac and white dychotomy of seeing vtm players stab each other in the back like it's just monday and even moreso the attitude of your average dnd player and dm going like "WTF?! WHYT WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" is appalling, is it possible that both type of players just like the synapses to connect that depending on context one can do either in either game if things happen that lead to them...?
@@iota-09 Eh, it's half setting expectations and half mechanics. Though I haven't played VtM, I have played TTRPGs that encourage PvP, and they have built in systems to balance these exchanges. Also, there's an expectation for these things to happen: of course my partner would think to betray me, this is Blades in the Dark, everyone is a rat bastard. In D&D however, not only is there an expectation of unflinching cooperation, of not separating the party, of playing in a functional group where everyone has a tactical role they must fulfill; the mechanics don't really support PvP. It *could* exist, in the sense that you could theoretically declare that you attack your friend, but it's not balanced around that situation and people would rightfully think that it's a breach of the social contract.
@@15PaperSpearsProtectTheWise what social contract? and why "rightful"? i must have not seen this contract cause i don't remember signing anything? and i know this sounds like a joke but i'm perefectly serious, like,r oleplay exists it's not like, i dunno, in cod an ally forcing you to die for no reason other than to have a laugh at you dying, if there's a roleplaay reason why would someone take it badly in that case? as in, think that the person i rl had something against you. i get that some people... far far more than i thought, can't distinguish reality and game, but surely not those can too right?
@@iota-09 when designing a tabletop game, you make the rules and mechanics and systems with the idea to produce specific gameplay outcomes. I think it's really neat that there's a game out there for every kind of itch a table could have! it's also super valid tho if you love one system and adapt it to the story you want to tell. as long as you keep the focus on fun and communicate what story you're trying to tell with each other, then it's all good :)
The VTM mechanic is called Staking: a stake to the heart paralyzes the vampire. The displaced heart allows you to pretend to be paralyzed to sneak attack your attacker or escape when someone assumes you're paralyzed.
I never thought of Displaced Heart as a great perk tbh. I seem to recall the rules make it super hard to stake any vampire in melee to begin with. It should be easy for any vampire who gets punctured in the chest but not through the heart to fall down and pretend it worked when it actually didn't, then attack/escape at the opportune moment.
@@Maladjester Its not the best use of the points i agree, however consider; if someone is trying to stake you, they want you alive (well... vampire... undead i guess) which means, without the merit or similiar power, you are at their mercy if they succeed, with it, you can either keep fighting, or pretend it worked and then flee when given an opportune time
I had a character who was a sorcerer who wanted to keep it a secret. I front lined with a short sword all level one. When I got meta magic I used subtle spell for touch spells etc. But litterally the first time the DM addressed my character he was like " you there! In the sorcerer robes." Lol
In a 3.5 DnD campaign I had a warmage character once, with a chain shirt, a shield, and spear. I was targeted immediately at the start of multiple combats as "the obvious biggest threat" as a spellcaster. I kept having to call out that I'd look more like a ranger or fighter, not a spellcaster before I cast any spells.
There's no need for anti-magic in prison. Restrain the mage, put a gag in the mouth, confiscate all belongings. No components - no spells. Maybe add to it some restricted anti-magic: teleportation ward and advantage on wisdom saves against spells for guards. This way, it can potentially be played around, which is fun.
I could see it working as a sort of puzzle element to an encounter. Anti Magic’s in play and debilitates your casters, but the effect is being generated by a physical object on the play field that someone needs to go and shut off. Kinda like that one FFX boss, only instead of the antimagic generator being just a side target to kill, you have a whole grid map where you have to figure out where it is and strategize who splits off to deal with it.
@@isenokami7810 you know the players will do their best to steal that object or attempt to buy/create another one, and use it to trivialize the fight against the evil lich. If a human town can use an anti-magic field for their prison, then it must be a common thing in the setting, and surely 30 sessions later your high level characters will be able to get their hands on one. And it wouldn't be fair if it disabled players' spellcasting, but not the lich's. And that's all fine, you just have to understand the implications and be prepared in some manner.
@@bogdanleviit depends on the edition, spell, and meta magic feats involved. If the players know and plan for going into a prison with those kind of precautions for mage prisoners, they can plan around them (which may be fully fine for a planned adventure type thing), but the DM may want to avoid. However, a general anti magic field prevents all that, more useful for a party that's going to be sent to prison they're not meant to escape (without outside help at least). It can make sense to use an anti magic field, but it depends massively on the party and campaign.
8:00 Normally when I run a game and we are about to hit a point where the players will be unable to do anything else other than the story I will give them a “You have a bad feeling you won’t be able to go back once you continue…” like some games do before you start the final mission.
Perception check succession: "Something goes off in your heads, an ominous feeling creeps up your spines as you realize moving forwards may mean never coming back." Perception check failure: "I think there's free candy down there guys."
About giving this games alerts. I tried an open-world style game, and the players rushed to the main objective. They were almost finishing it and hadn't explored the other things I had planned. At one point, I said, "Proceeding this way will have a significant impact on the scenario; other areas may become inaccessible." They immediately started going to other places.
I did a game with 2 DMs and 2 players once. It was years ago and didnt have a system really. The players made a detective duo in the 1940s with a world similar to real life but with demon summoning as the only form of magic. My friend was the "plot" DM and I was the "combat" DM. At one point the detectives split up, one to chase a gorilla demon who kidnapped their client and the other stayed behind to interrogate the summoners. I DM'd the chase scene on the other side of the room and after both scenes were over we met back up in the middle and exchanged what happened. It was honestly pretty fun.
@purpleblah2 Nah. That games gameplay is really not liked at all among most of my friends. Also you can cast spells other than demon summoning in that game.
I had a fairly similar situation happen to me, as the VTM thing. We were playing DND, and I had come up with a character design that was pretty out there, which I did clear with the DM first. In a very short version, my character's design was that he was cursed with immortality (and I mean cursed, in the fact that he was constantly watching everyone he cared about die, and wanted nothing more than to be reunited with them in death.), but not in the traditional sense of just not dying. He could, and did die, but every time he died, his soul was forcibly transferred into the body of the next thing that died (what ever it was that killed the person would be immediately healed, so that my character wouldn't immediately die again.). Again, I cleared it with the DM, and the thought process was that we would have fun with the DM choosing the body that I would inhabit after each death (maybe I would end up in a strapping young soldier, who was killed in combat, or maybe I would end up as the 90 year old grandma who died of old age.), and if they felt like my character should have a more "true" death, then he could just say that I came back on the other side of the world or something, effectively writing the character out of the story (which I was ok with, because I know this is a very out there concept.). It was also supposed to be a fun later game reveal to the other party members, showing that the bunch of random oddballs that they had been coming across throughout the campaign, were all actually the same person. The problem then came in, when myself the DM and one of the other players (there were 5 of us all together, 4 players and the DM) got together in voice chat before the first session just to clear up a couple of things. The other player left to go do something, and while they were gone I wanted to get some last minute clarification on my character, which required talking about my character's concept. What we didn't know, is that the other player ended up returning very quickly after he left, didn't make any mention that they came back, or any sound, until after I finished my inquiry (at which point they pretended like they had just gotten back.). Now, this wouldn't be a big deal, even though I would have liked to have the reveal later, but its not a huge thing. Just because the player knew my character's concept doesn't mean the character does. The real problem happened when, session 1, within the first 20 minutes of the session, I make one allusion to being older than I seem, and that player proceeds to "figure out" my character's concept, and straight up spells it out for all the other players. Like, we were literally in the starting tavern. The extent of the interactions that my character had, were waking up in his room, making his way to the tavern, and having a quick interaction with the bar keeper, which is where he hinted that he is older than he seems, and that player apparently figured out that my character was an ancient immortal, who's soul inhabits the recently deceased every time his body dies.
So you just took it standing? How did your character react? Did he just say "yeah lol"? You could have gotten out of that one, assuming the player didn't spell it out OOC.
@@PapaRoboto Well, I attempted to play it off as someone in a universe would. Its a ridiculous concept, even in a Dnd setting. So I played it off as such. Its just a ridiculous story. However, since he knew out of character, his in character knew that it wasn't just a ridiculous story. Realistically, based on the back story I created, and the fact that they barely knew each other, the most accurate event would have been that he would have killed that character to protect his secret (he was tortured for over a decade when someone he thought he could trust sold him out to a noble who was desperate to find a means of immortality for himself.). However, I didn't want to be "that guy" to the DM, and throw his entire campaign for a loop because "its what my character would do." That said, I should have just asked the DM if I could make a new character then and there. But Hindsight and all that. He essentially did spell it out. He was "in character" but he legitimately spelled out the exact details of my character's concept. No one could have been at that table, and thought for even a second, that what he said was just a theory that he came up with.
I added a HR to my table where, if you play a wizard, each time you gain a level in Wizard, in addition to adding the 2 free spells per level, you also add 1 spell whose school of magic matches your arcane tradition (only applies for the 8 core subclasses). That spell is auto-prepared and does not count against your preparation limit.
Misplaced Heart for a Vampire is important, cause a stake in the heart is not QUITE technically lethal. It just paralyzes you until the stake is removed. And PvP isn't uncommon, especially since there's a mechanic that makes you "lose control" and just attack stuff.
@@crazagres1839 it's just kind of a shit flaw, tbh. Your character wouldn't have any way to know they have that flaw until they get staked so either it never comes up or it kills your character.
@@Neutral_Tired Yeah it's not like you yourself know without trial and error, and trial and error for this Includes dying. Hell, it's perfectly in line to stake someone for most vampires to disable them for a moment as the need arises. You'd die the Moment it happened. I never had anyone run it in my games and I'd legit ask them to reconsider if they did lmao. I'd prop house rule it to just do x agg damage or something because losing a pc for this is beyond what I'm cool with.
@@1down4upworkshop61 Torpor was different, that's what happened if you got beaten to "death" without any supernatural or fire damage. It was basically "You aren't dead, but you're out for a LONG time" like potentially years, depending on how old you were. The stake paralysis lasted only as long as the stake was in you. Of course, getting a stake rammed through your heart could do enough damage to torpor you as well.
I had a secret vampire in my party for 15 sessions of Curse of Strahd. Me and his player (who is my best friend, was my roommate at the time, and shares many storytelling sensibilities and philosophies with me) spent SO MUCH time trying to work out codes, stealthily texting to make sure the character was getting blood in game, etc. We even went so far as to have a designated set of dice she’d roll if she ever did a “persuasion check” that was actually a stealth use of charm (it only ever happened once and she rolled a nat 20 so it was all good). I even came up with a plan for what I’d do if he went down in a fight and failed his death saves. It helped that one other player (who was also our roommate at the time) knew, so she helped cover for some things with the other two players and knew not to accidentally say anything if she got suspicious (because she knows us and kinda knew this character already). It ended up that he got revealed in Argynvostholt, and it turned out really cool and good and the party loved it. But I could easily see it going the “secret assassin” route if we hadn’t planned stuff out so much.
The lesson from the assassin story is that such secrets require a lot of planning. You thought it through in advance and it turned out great. Good job, that's amazing!
@@sabatorgaming8354 I was ridiculously lucky no one else picked paladin, especially given that you basically have to have cleric and/or paladin in the party for Curse of Strahd. The other party members are a nature cleric, a draconic sorcerer, and an eloquence bard. There was one incident where the Turn Undead feature was used on some vampire spawn and the vampire PC failed the secret Wisdom save, so he had to stealthily move away from the cleric lol. I’m also really lucky his player is a person I trust implicitly not to cheat at DnD and also someone who knows the rules well enough to know when and what saves to make. TL;DR we got so lucky all around.
Vampire The Masquerade is... Let's say "pvp friendly". Depending on the group and the DM (mostly, the DM) players could have varying and conflicting objectives. So it's not "common" but if the premise of the game is "light pvp and opposing objectives" it's perfectly normal. And seing the rest of the story, it was exactly this kind of game. And the heart thing, being stabbed in the heart puts the vampire in some sort of shock. So the heart thing is a "nice" move, an ace up your sleeve. Expecting betrayal, when you're betrayed, you're not vulnerable. She would have been acting, and maybe starting a fight or something. A nice ace up her sleeve that the DM just screwed her over for no reason.
@@scrapbotcommander That, and imagine the wizard being secretly a lich. And the DM : "Oh, btw, she's a lich, and her phylactery is in the second drawer in her desk in a secret compartment."
@@MultiKbarry Also conflict in Vtm is also very often Social conflict. It's not DND where at the end of the day you Will have to kill or at least beat the BBEG or x of his minions to progress. Betrayal and scheming are much more the "strength"' and "preference" of vamps than swinging their fists.(Though they can and do that as well.)
I was involved in a campaign once with 2 gm's that was actually really good. One was a very analytical minded, numbers guy. He could put together a fight and hit all the rules like nobody's business. The other was a super creative artist. He handled the narrative. It legitimately went really well. It helped that neither of them were big ego guys so they had no problem sharing the game.
Playing vampire the masquerade with people you don’t know that well can go very weird because the way the game is written allows for many… questionable courses of action that may not be even considered in other games.
@@bogdanlevi Kinda. You play vampires, almost universally evil. At best usually self centered and caring more for personal survival than group empathy. Its not as bad as Shadowrun where betrayal is expected and encouraged, but its common... Like a mafia kinda deal. Sometimes you come out on top, other times you end up staked through the heart and left on a roof for sunrise.
@@greatclubsandwich5612 yeah, this sounds a bit difficult to pull off successfully. Mafia's good because it has clearly defined rules, but with TTRPG rules I think most people will end up whining and getting offended.
Jacob, did you forget the whole staking a vampire in the heart? Having your heart in an unknown location is actually a pretty big deal when one of the only ways to kill you is stabbing you blindly like a pincushion. Or as the player was going to do, play dead and make the rest of the party think they were dead. Only to slink away due to their only weak spot safely unknown
I mean, the alternative is to stab in every single other part of the body and randomly hope you can actually affect the other player. That sounds like a really abusable trait, regardless of whatever flaw they had to take to get it. You essentially become immune to paralysis in a setting where guaranteed paralysis is expected. That just doesn't sound fun to deal with as a player, maybe I'm weird but idk. Hypovolemic shock should still be setting in if you get staked to the heart, unless vampires in VtM just don't follow human physiology but at that point why is a stake to the heart going to do anything anyway.
@@SupaFly-gx1zono Vampires do not follow that at all. You could shoot a vampire in the chest and they would treat it as a scrape in the knee. The only way to kill a vampire is to make their heart stop beating. My sabbat brujah fought a i think they're called tziminche they can move their heart around. So instead of ripping the heart out of his chest to kill him (because it wasnt there) He tore his head off which instantly killed him. My hunter character met another vampire who had like a high fortitude ability and dodged bullets. So he essentially out a Molotov down his throat and burned him from the inside. There's tons of ways to kill a vampire in vtm. But moving the heart is not a big deal. If you want it alive alot of dynamite does the trick. Well... He may die by yknow.
When I was first playing D&D, I had a DM that would constantly have stuff happen in the game specifically to ruin my character concept. JUST me, not anyone else in the group. It's hard to list examples since it was so long ago, but the one that really stands out in my head was when I made a character who had inherited a demon-slaying weapon and decided to follow in their ancestor's footsteps as a demon hunter (I took a massive deficit in my starting gear just so that I could start with this weapon and backstory). First session, a random NPC disarmed me, causing the weapon to fall into a basically bottomless pit and be lost, and since we were in the middle of retreating through a portal to a different plane, it was impossible to go back and find it. This was done on purpose; he flat out told me that this was to teach me a lesson about building my whole character concept around a single item. If it was that big of a problem, why not just veto it from the start? I'd have been willing to make something different. I'm not exaggerating when I say he did this kind of stuff to me all the time.
Feels like a missed opportunity from the DM, tbh. Having a character who's whole thing is their weapon is very She-Ra/He-Man coded and very fun for storytelling. It's an item that can be taken away from you (with a heads up and confirmation you're cool with it) to push your character to learn to do other things than rely on a big sword all the time, ultimately giving you a fun challenge, the group needs to strategize a bit better, and makes your character more well-rounded The "hero is disarmed and has to fight without their gimmick" episode is a common trope for a reason, after all
That's infuriatingly patronizing on his part. Adults playing play-pretend with actual rules to make it fun should be able to talk things out at character creation - if he had a problem with your character concept, he shoulda brought it up. And even so, I get a DM having an issue with specifics of a character if it doesn't fit the setting, if it's too minmaxed, but then just- communicate. If a DM has an issue with a character CONCEPT it's just saying 'hey i don't like your WHOLE character, on principle'. Which, could be okay, if there are actual reasons for it and it be discussed - and even if it's just a quirk or personal taste, there are ways to compromise and make it okay for both parties. And if he did that all the time to you, my guess is he never had any actual problem with your characters. He had a problem with YOU and he felt entitled to teach you lessons like some sort of manipulative narcissist patronizing asshat.
One of the major themes of VtM is that vampires are morons and cannot cooperate with each other. Infighting amongst party members isn't encouraged but it's not as taboo as in games like d&d
Ive done anti-magic twice in 3 years. Once was a temple where a ranger needed to prove his toughness and ability to be worthy of the legendary bow at the end of it, and the other time was an anti-magic boat that they needed in order to pass through a magic barrier in the ocean that surrounded the continent they were on.
My favorite anti-magic flavor was in the game Wizardry 8 where there's a library room in the first dungeon with a ghostly chorus of monks that aggressively shushes you if you try to cast a spell.
I’ve always really liked Van Richten’s Tower in Curse Of Strahd. It’s just the area of tower with the anti magic effect and it can cause some very interesting rule interactions.
I've only ever used anti-magic runes to stop players from flying over puzzles. They tend to glow and be very obvious so they know what they are there for.
I had one campaign where there was a Pub run by a retired hero that was a uber-powerful Wizard that hated violence, so he casted a powerful barrier that prevented the guests from fighting. This made the Pub a Neutral Ground for alot of NPC’s that would normally be enemies. I remember the look on one of the players when he tried to cast an illusion spell to steal a quest item only for the spell to fizzle out and the Bartender turned to face him, citing “This is Neutral Ground, Crime is prohibited here.”
I usually do the opposite where areas are filled with Wild Magic so everyone's spells have a small chance to surge. Also, I can see anti-magic being fun as an arena hazard. Like maybe there's a circle that can be turned on and off and you can get the enemy into the circle and turn off their magic as well.
@@Axetwin I just think it's funny that the poster described his character as Tywin Lannister then went on to describe how it was lame that he died anticlimactically.
Usually I hate dnd horror stories, because the channel reading them takes it at face value or just reads it all the way through & doesn’t really add anything. But I really like how you do it. It feels more personal & real
Which, I think, is very inspired by how Smosh does Reddit stories, so since he mentioned our boy Shayne as his usual source for Reddit content... it figures. But it genuinely is great, more Reddit story shows should go about it like that tbh
Worse yet, they started with AI voices and just read them out loud, letting you actually read the story (listen to it) WITHOUT their stupid comments. But then YT hammered down on AI voice overs and they had to read it themselves, but have nothing to add of value so they're stopping the reading every paragraph and saying utterly pointless things, only disrupting the flow of the story. Jacob at least adds his own personal experience, saying "this happened to me one time" or "this player also sounds like a problem, here's why" but those channels like CritCrab literally do none of that. All they do is stop video every 30 seconds to say equivalent of "Damn man, that sucks, I'd run away from the table" over and over again. Zero analysis, zero context, zero personal experience, literally just honing in so they can call it a video and post it, then repeat that EVERY DAY. I genuinely liked AI era of reddit stories, because at least who ever I was watching was making money off it and I got highly curated content by human, not an algorithm, without having to actually go onto the cesspit of what we call Reddit. The moment they started adding their worthless opinions I tuned out, then later learned it was because YT forced them.
This reason alone is why I like Crispy's Tavern and Den on the Drake the most. Because they actually add onto the posts with added humor and commentary into their videos for them.
@@MrMrtvozornik I'm really confused. Your comment seems to be simultaneously saying you want the readers to give their opinions and then also saying you don't?
@@SomeoneOnlyWeKnow. No, my argument is "I don't want readers to give too much of their opinion and instead be filter which picks best stories so I don't have to go to cesspits like Reddit. However, if they want to add commentary that's not an issue if they are insightful, useful, interesting opinions, and not obvious NPC comments I know they are making because of YT guidelines.". END OF TL;DR Reason why Jacob's commentary is interesting is because these types of videos are less than 10% of content he makes, and you can see his skits, reviews, DMing or even just regular DM advice. However, most of these channels like CritCrab started with this, and this is 100% of their content. They have to quip in every minute or so and they're printing these types of videos on daily basis for profit and nothing else, with result being their commentary being absolutely meaningless and uninteresting. By all means, go watch like 10 CritCrabs (or his clones) videos in a row, solid 100-110 minutes, and take a shot every time he says an NPC comment akin to "damn man, that sucks, maybe you should look for another group". You'd be deceased by the end of this challenge run. And no cheating, just because he swapped 40% of words in the sentence, if the gist of the sentence is akin to it, it counts. But reason why Jacob doesn't give out NPC comments is because he's not an NPC, because he didn't start and made whole "career" reading out other people's stories. This is verifiable by going to his channel and watching his varied videos. He's a creative guy, DM, skit maker etc. He's not making daily, bland, same old same old videos like those who only do these readings, so when he speaks he's not speaking for speaking sake, he actually has opinion. CritCrab doesn't. It insults my intelligence to hear guy quip in every minute just to give an NPC take cause he needs to speak. It's akin to listening to an interesting story from one person and then having another person next to you keep on repeating "I had a similar situation like that, it sucks" NO MATTER WHAT THE STORY IS. It's annoying and attention seeking, but then if you find out that 2nd person is paid and has some rule that requires them to speak up every minute or so, and it becomes disgusting.
As a frequent redditor, I find that's a misconception people have about reddit based on certain subs. Like, reddit has tons of shitty communities, and the larger the sub the more likely it is to be bad. But there are so many well curated and great subs for niche hobbies and other interests that generalizing reddit like that just seems dumb to me. If you curate your experience reddit can be a great place. Certainly no worse than Twitter or Tiktok or whatever.
@@fomme397 That's a very low bar, though, being better than Twitter or Tiktok, like, the only things worse than them are like... sites for russian grandmas like OK or VK.
I was just thinking at that moment "Jacob has had such an idyllic ttrpg experience. You can tell because he is shocked by this. This is Bad DM 101 level stuff. He is such a summer child."
The playing an assassin secretly reminded me of one of my favourite characters. I was a changeling warlock pretending to be a dwarf. My character played off self changing stuff as Invocations, and had the devil sight invocation so I still had dark vision. The players were all friends and they knew what was going on a couple sessions in because they are experienced players, but they knew their characters wouldn’t know so nothing came of it other than OoC jokes.
If your magic system is so pigeonholed that you literally can't cast spells from a rival school, even through effort, your world needs to accomodate for everyone being an evocation mage.
20:40 god sometimes this kinda thing isn't even malicious, but the DM will just casually reveal a major character twist or backstory bit that you had been saving for a big reveal. This one just has the extra sting of *actually* being malicious / retributive.
Limiting wizards to their school is a cool idea in principle (obviously only with player buy-in) but the problem is that the spell lists aren't remotely balanced for that. Like, there are 18 divination spells total on the wizard list. Abjuration only has 1 2nd level spell, Arcane Lock. They're my top 2 favorite wizard subclasses but that has everything to do with their class features and very little to do with their spells.
I really feel like you are missing the most powerful thing a level one-5 has its called a barbarian to murder other wizards for you mine is named ARRRRRRRRAHAHAHAHAHG. and that all he says. He has an intelligence of 18. I think he just likes yelling.
I had an idea for an all Wizard campign that's basically the opposite. Basically everyone would have a preferred school of magic where they would get bonuses to that school, and then one school they can't use because their character just sucks ass at it.
That was exactly my first thought. My 8-lvl wizard can have 17 spells prepared at the moment, and her max. spell slot available is 4. So I checked the number of spells available for 1-4 slots and here are the numbers. There are: - 16 necromancy spells - 20 abjuration spells - 38 conjuration spells - 13 divination spells - 19 enchantment spells - 36 evocation spells - 21 illusion spells - 34 transmutation spells So screw necromancy and divination magic I guess. Dumb rule
@@myh-devils_advocateit would be a great rule that actually outs limits.on wizards so they don't get to do everything, but the spell lists need to be built around it, also, allow a few off-school spells
It's much better in a system where this is a part of it to begin with, like pathfinder1e, but even in pf1e, you're getting a benefit to one school, while 2 of them, you're greatly diminished in your ability to use, but not completely unable to, unless you pick the archetype that does that
As a Masquarade GM, This is wild to me. revealing a secret always sucks but in Masq? Secrets are kind of the whole damn point. Imagine going to your whole caracter creation taking big flaws to get this one little thing that could maybe not even come up at all just cuz it's fun and could lead to an amazing moment. Not only of gameplay but of suprise and just all out chaos at the table when you reaveal your master move. I would love if one of my players had the guts and the brains to make a move like that work and making sure to help them get that moment of BIG Brained Gamer Time would me so exiting and really up there in my priorities for that campain. Getting robbed of that moment when that was one of your goals the whole time is cruel and would turn me off the game so bad for a while. My condolescences... That's fucking rough. (sry for bad spelling I'm quebecois)
Relationships in DnD are dangerous. I ended up getting together with a girl that the DM had a crush on, and in the next game my character was turned into a pig, told I could only speak using the word, "oink" and then slaughtered by the DM's self-insert NPC while in pig form near the end of the session.
Love the videos! I wanna say as an anecdote, I've DMd 3 different campaigns where I was part of a 2-DM team. All three of those campaigns went really well but I can easily see the problems that can arise from something like that. But what's important is having a shared vision and debriefing after every session. One huge benefit is having one person DJ and run numbers and stuff during combat while the other person narrates the fight.
Not only that, but he KNEW it would be the last session of a campaign that, apparently, he had lost interest in anyway. So instead of just going with the flow, he dragged his feet on principle, refused to engage with any fun presented, got overly precious about the safety of a character he was NEVER GOING TO PLAY AGAIN, and ensured his last session was miserable...which is probably what he wanted.
Also when the fighter said they were told last minute, makes me think they were trying to end the game to get ride of the fighter, probably for the same behavior being shown at the end.
@@ozatu13 A pretty common way to get rid of trash players is to pull a "rocks fall everyone dies", then when the player in question storms out in huff, retcon the falling rocks and continue the game with everyone else except the problem player. This is handy for dealing with people who other players have to have contact with outside of the game, because they might cause problems for the other player IRL if you just straight up kick them out.
@@McCheese-xc9ig I mean, you're only fucking over the entire party and not solving the problem(they'll literally just be shitty next game again, but now also have legitimate reasons to complain about your dming because you are actually a shit dm. They are correct.) but sure, that's very smart. Do not - I repeat do not - actually open your mouth and talk to them - like two adults would and Resolve the situation. Try to Ruin Everyone's time in an attempt to ruin his. That is definitely the right way to handle that situation.
For context, Vampire the masquerade kinda has "Damn your inevitable betrayal!" vibe to it. party members aren't necessarily friends, and the game doesn't exactly discourage backstabbing. Also the game was one of the most popular Table top games when "Interview With A Vampire" came out, so.. the associated pride rush got caught up by White Wolf Publishing and they ran with it pretty well. It was sort of the game that catered to that sort of thing before table top games catered to that sort of thing.
Oh a VtM post! I am a DM for a few VtM games and love the system so much! Ok so as others have pointed out, staking a vampire in the heart causes paralysis in the victim so revealing they have a displaced heart instead of letting the players have the moment of "huh, they didn't get stopped by a stake" is criminal! Its up there with unbondable for amazing traits and lets you get crazy with the drama. As for the betrayal in game, thats actually the least shocking thing in the whole video. Vampires (they call themselves kindred btw) are power hungry, loners, and overall asshats to most people who aren't stronger than them in some way. They are untrustworthy on a good day so yeah. VtM is usually about the stuggle of kindred finding their place in the night life and is full of dramatic crap (the kindred literally cry blood if they get emotional and start crying) so games usually focus entirely on the groups strifes of trying not to lose themselves in the blood and hunger of their undead lives.
tbf VTM is the kind of game where i'd expect players to be mature enough to be able to do the thing their character would do even if they know it isn't actually a good idea, at least for big stuff like this.
I could see spellcasting granting opportunity attacks in specific scenarios. Something like "if you cast a spell with a target other than self and a range other than touch/line/cone, any enemy within 5 feet can use their reaction to attack you". That way spell casters can still use something like thunderwave on melee threats, or escape with misty step, but they can't just ignore them and cast fireball at the opposing back line units. It would need to be carefully balanced, but it would put more emphasis on protecting your back line units and preventing enemies from getting close to them.
My version of the rule after discussing it with PF2 players here in the comments: 1. Casting a spell with somatic or material components triggers an opportunity attack. This attack is made at disadvantage. 2. The mage slayer feat makes any spell trigger your opportunity attack and removes disadvantage. If this attack hits, the caster makes a concentration check. On a fail, the spell is countered. 3. The war caster feat makes it so that your spells don't trigger attacks of opportunity. 4. If a mage slayer attacks a war caster, they counter each other, and the opportunity attack is resolved using rule 1.
nope, all opportunity attacks on magic casting is a good rule, paired with the partner rule that you can make defensive casting rolls to avoid the aoo of course. basically everything from pathfinder 1e is how a game like that (as in, dnd style fantasy games) should be run tbh.
@@bogdanlevi 1. Why would that attack have disadvantage? You're literally gesticulating and chanting incantations like an idiot while an enemy with a sword is standing right beside you. That makes zero sense. The attack should be made normally (still expending their reaction to do it, of course) 2. Mage slayer feat getting aoo out of *any* spell and prompting a concentration check every time on a hit is perfectly enough of a boost to that feat. 3. Sure, let's make war caster even more ridiculously good, why not? That feat is already more than good enough. The only spells that should not trigger aoo are spells with a range of self or touch, and spells with casting time of "reaction". Every other should by simple logic, trigger one.
@@SchrollShepard i put disadvantage and a buff on war caster so that melee half-casters don't get punished too hard by getting all these opportunity attacks. As a paladin, you call upon the gods for aid, thus provoking furious blows from surrounding enemies and tanking most of them with your trusted shield. That's pretty cool. Taking a lot of extra damage just for playing your class as intended would be dumb. I think reaction, self and touch spells are fine to trigger aoo, as long as they have somatic/material components. But, if you put in the exception for reaction, self and touch, then the melee half-casters will be doing fine, and the disadvantage can be removed from aoo. That's a valid version as well.
The "Casting provokes attacks of opportunity" is an old rule that encourages tactical combat over spell spamming. Considering that magic was formerly much more powerful and limited, and that taking damage usually causes you to automatically lose your spell, if one wanted to apply that rule to 5e, one would have to modify the magic system considerably. It is not a bad rule per se, just a bad rule if you use it to punish your players.
You are right, that rule is an oldie but goodie. If you are a DM running a 5E game needs to bring up this house rule at session zero. It really doesn’t punish players too much, because the players I played with use this rule to great effect against enemies. Also the rule is very realistic. A raging barbarian is right in front of you in melee range and when your turn comes up you reach into your components pouch and wave your hands around for 6 seconds, seems like a lifetime supply of bad ideas.
I mean, in 3.5/pathfinder you could at least make a concentration check to not provoke in melee. And if you failed the check your spell doesn't go off. It's still better to stay away from melee while casting, but you could risk it in a pinch. Making it so you always provoke seems overly punishing. Especially for gish builds.
Just a thumbs up and a corroboration on this for Jacob to see; in Pathfinder 1st Edition and D&D 3.5 casting within melee would provoke; because you had to make gestures and spent however long not focusing on the combat. Firing a bow within melee range of someone else ALSO provoked attacks of opportunity; this meant that the front line had more incentive to keep melee from the ranged members of the party. I don't know about 4th, but to my understanding 5e is meant to be less crunchy and grid tactics, so a DM bringing in those old rules is a little shaky; a good DM of course would inform players of rules they wished to alter prior to a game of course.
As someone who played Pathfinder 1E for a long time it definitely makes you think more critically about your spell casting and positioning. Honestly DND5e is sometimes too kind with it’s mechanics, but I like playing both games. DND5e is better suited for more casual play, I know it can even get a bit tedious when you need a spreadsheet for attack modifiers and damage like my lv15 brawler/bloodrager/paladin did. But boy does it give you such variety.
You really wouldn't have to modify it at all. Prior editions had you make a concentration check to have the spell go off when you get hit. That's fine. Give Eldritch Knight and similar (sub)classes immunity to this and problem solved. Spellcasters literally have everything already, they can have one thing to deal with.
I haven't played a _proper_ V:tM campaign either, but from what I've heard (I have a close friend who played it a ton and relayed a lot of stories about it) backstabbing is more common in those circles than D&D. It's very themey for the vampires in that setting.
I was part of a gaming club in college and someone ran a VtM campaign. I couldn't participate due to class loads, but did sit in on the last session. One guy messed up, things snowballed, and they almost broke the masquarade. It devolved into everyone trying to screw each other over to save their own skins lol.
There's also a mechanic in the game called "frenzying" where the vampire loses control and goes into a berserker rage. This can be caused by something as simple as someone lighting a safe fire in the same room as the vampire, so pvp doesn't even have to be intended.
@@Some_Average_Joe that happened in my last session! our lasombra (evil shadow vampires that everyone hates) went into a frenzy and absolutely broke the masquerade, we had to kill every bystander we could find, check for cameras, and beat him until he went into torpor (not-quite-death, but he will be unconscious for a literal decade). two of us ran into the sewers, our professional killer took the lasombra's body home, and i am hiding in an alleyway with a bunch of dead humans to stop them from being found. we have no idea how the next few sessions are going to go now.
Made me happy when you mentioned the accesibility of online sheets. It really makes a difference for me and my enjoyment of the game to use such sheets.
I feel like spells provoking AoO came straight from 3.5 - there it is a PHB rule Our group is going to take a short adventure in 3.5e, and my mind is blowing off in a mix of rage and wow, coz in that edition they take things we're used to in 5e, but well, provide something satisfying in return Tho I consider 3.5e overcomplicated and definitely more deadly for characters than 5e, it's gonna be an interesting experience
I once had a campaign where I relied heavily on anti-magic force fields... It was an entire barbaric demonic race that was weak against magic so they created huge mobile tanks with anti magic fields. It was A LOT of fun for the mage and the group, they pretty much fought to bring the tank down, the mage being a coordinator / support until the tank went down and after that there was this HUGE fireball that blew pretty much the entire opposition to smithereens. I made it this way because the group would rest at every corner so that they could cast Fireball at the beginning of each combat, the mage was a huge rulebook nerd and made an OP sheet that removed all the fun in combat for the group. So now you have to rely on the group until you can cast, but when you can the group will cheer at the mighty wizard they have available!
I really like solutions like that to this sort of problem! Doesn't take the shine of the OP character, keeps everybody else engaged and relevant, 10/10
5:50 Now that is what we do with our group... 4 oneshots and 1 campaign going out with a ... BIG BOOM! From blowing up (ourselves included) a tank to a space station of the enemy. Last week we just blew up a nuclear silo's control room as we were surrounded and failed to cast the teleport scroll 3x, so we were like: Guess we unalive! XD
Like any game developer for video games you as a DM create a game where the players wins and you loose without the players realizing you planed to loose form the start.
ive been dming for only a few years, but in my first years I read/watched a lot of DM horror stories, and its a blessing and a curse because i am now hyper self-conscious about avoiding this type of behavior
I love these videos because you are like, forcefully a normal functional person. It really puts in perspective just how reddit reddit is, as well as how goofy some of these stories are.
I just wanna say, I never really got into DnD youtubers until recently. I had been a forever DM until recently. It was impossible for anyone to get me to run a game due to hardcore burnout, ADHD complications, etc. So my BIL stepped up to run a game with almost zero TTRPG experience. He performed admirably despite no working knowledge on the mechanics. So, I told him he could pause his game, and I would run a game in order to teach him and the other new players the core game mechanics. So, to wrap this up before it gets too long, through mostly your content, I have been able to enjoy being a DM again. Which translates to the players' enjoyment directly. Your videos literally make shitty days better. Your attitude is infectious. Your ideas are mostly fresh, informative, and interesting. I play 3.5 exclusively, but it is easily translatable. Thank you, Jacob.
The worst part is when you spitball and answer, and then everyone just fucking runs wild with it. NEVER say it's Evocation unless you know for sure it is becuase your players WILL think it's gonna explode.
"Abjuration" is a decent enough fallback answer because that can mean anything from magically reinforced wood to make it harder to break down to preservation magic to prevent the lock from rusting to an honest to goodness barrier preventing folks from making physical contact with the door. And yes, don't say "evocation" unless you want your players to immediately assume the door will explode.
@@darienb1127 Oh if you have a specific spell in mind for the door then by all means ignore my post. This is more of a "Oh shoot I made this door magical but I didn't think far enough ahead to make this door enchanted with any specific spell, I just wanted to say the place is magical! How do I respond to this in the next 10 seconds!?!" Just say Abjuration and nobody will question it.
The ending of that first one seems like a “rocks fall, everyone dies” moment. As though the poster conveniently left out the many moments where they refused to cooperate throughout the session/campaign, and this (likely just as bad) DM got fed up and gave them a lazy bad ending that wasn’t even planned. You can see plenty of hints that the DM had unrealistic expectations, but mostly this player is just INCREDIBLY immature.
20:00 Cus they're vampires and probably not in the same clan. Depending if they're using old or new rules, Old rules where really draconic about clans and their interactions. This actually wouldn't be too uncommon. In the new set of rules you're not so bound by clans so it makes more sense for different clans of vampires to actually work together instead of being so tribal about it. Edit: Yeah "20 years later." They where playing the old system. Kill vampires that aren't in your clan is half the game. Even killing vampires in your own clan is sometimes part of the game depending on the clan.
With the way the system works, plus all the stories I've heard about both larp and regular table play, I sometimes wonder how this game made as far as it did
@@hugofontes5708 its actually a very interesting setting that caters to people who enjoy urban fantasy and brooding dark "woe is me" characters and vibes (its me, im people) but its themes of personal conflict and drama + politicking can just go awfully wrong in groups that arent on the same page or know each other very well. Its also a game about terrible people who do terrible things, and sometimes players take that too far. But its honestly a great rpg, its just not as accessible as DnD
@@hyche_-6790 I am aware, I read the book of some version a bit a while back. The question is more how the game survived both itself and its environment enough to get as far as it did
@@hugofontes5708 honestly? I think it came out at the right time lol, that must be a big part of it imo. It starting to be popilar in the early-mid 90s where a lot of gen x was clammoring for darker art and stories, I suppose, which can be seen reflected in a lot of the music at the time that was popular with grunge and hardcore bands. Just spitballing really though lol! I'm pretty sure they made a documentary about white wolf that goes further into detail about it :3
@@hyche_-6790 I completely agree with this. I would be fine with being stabbed in the back by another player if it meant their character got closer to their in-game goals; it's a great storytelling moment and I'd happily roll with it. But another guy in my group wouldn't be able to handle it at all without getting IRL-mad at everyone. He's a great guy, but the power fantasy he plays D&D to live out is one where he's a badass paragon-of-goodness who is entirely in control of his fate. An unexpected, DM-supported PC betrayal would break his brain.
15:00 I think that setting up a prison to have anti-magic properties makes sense. many of the criminals there could be casters and you wouldn't want a jail-break. Kinda like if an inmate is considered dangerous enough they will be completely chained up any time that they are outside of a cell. Magic is even more destructive, so that caution could be dialed up to 11. That being said in a world with mass amounts of magic it does not make sense for a city infrastructure not to include it. So having large parts of cities covered in anti-magic doesn't make sense without some narrative reason.
When I was in high school, I brought my girlfriend to my D&D 3.5e game so she could try out the hobby, and my DM at the time immediately killed her character via orc sniper. She was his ex. She also never touched TTRPGs ever again, and I am still angry that he robbed her of the hobby like that.
@@clothar23 I mean tbf it was only stupid if Blinky_Dorf didn't explicitly go to the DM and warn them ahead of time, asking if it was chill. If the DM heard that and went "oh, it's chill" and plotted revenge, then I'm glad she's his ex cause that's a motherfucker who can't accept any losses
Had a DM that was a creep and a power gamer. - Once stated in the middle of a game out of nowhere that he and our druid player had slept together. In which she clarified that they had fallen asleep late one night but didn't do anything. - Also, he played a goblin that had become a part of our party. He was clearly fudging the dice rolls on the goblin's character abilities. The goblin was stronger than the paladin & the fighter, wiser than the druid, and more charismatic than the bard (basically only rolling 17s and 18s). Feats include the goblin persuading a merchant to sell him a halfling full plate armor set for one gold piece and the goblin casually killing all the bandits in our encounters before we had a chance to do anything. - Also, he never planned/wrote things out ahead of time so things were always improvised and lacking on top of being a creepy power gamer.
"YAAAYYY, I AM THE MOST POWERFUL!" "Karl, you make the rules..." Like how you gon' be the a power gamer AND the DM?? 😂 half the fun of real, non-asshole power gamers is that the DM can set them challenges they'll need the party's help to overcome. Can't do that if you're the mofo behind the DM screen.
this video was actually VERY helpful! in one of the next sessions they were going to go into a ice dragons lair, and UNTIL you said something they've always pretty much had the option to run disengauge from combat. one thing I've mentioned is that such things can have consequences, and they've kept that in mind pretty well. but i was going to trap them in with said dragon and now i need to let them know ahead of time, or at least before the fight itself, the point of no return. SO THANK YOU SO MUCH!
9:23 i'm currently in a game with 2 gms and its not bad. we have an online campaign that is very roleplay heavy. i feel like its more like one GM plus another actor (and he also makes the battlemaps cause he's really good at it). it is nice to have an npc talking to another npc and not just have one gm talking to themselves.
1:19 I loved the reference to Smosh's (Shayne's Reddit stories). I'm a huge fan and the wider it's spread, the happier I am. I literally came to this video from their Who Memed it in Smosh Pit. Your videos are great too though and I'm always pleased when I see you upload ❤️
Great video, as usual😊 My take on the issues discussed: I think many DMs’ frustration could be avoided just by referring to another TTRPG manual. They get stuck on D&D or other medium-high complexity systems just because they’re the most famous; however, they push for bizarre scenarios, requiring a certain amount of knowledge to be solved while remaining engaging.
We don't allow dnd beyond at my table because it would always take too long and nobody understood the UI, plus it was really annoying to look at our tiny screens and we don't like being on our phones any more than necessary at the table. I'd be totally cool with an I Pad with a virtual version of a paper sheet tho and I provided all the paper sheets (and colour coded them as I got nice decorative ones)
one fishy thing about the first story is that we get no information about the other players in this group. Dm = bad OP = only smart one everyone else = don't worry about them, im the important one here. Was the campaign being railroaded? according the the angelic op with a character that can be summed up with the "it's goofy time! NO DAD, NO!" meme it was. Was there proper communication? maybe, maybe not. for all we know, OP just didn't want to bother listening. Was the DM doing this so they could have a new story sometime down the road that starts with the players escaping from the slavers, like a vermintide thing? beats me; all we know is that the dm is a railroading poopyhead.
Also, railroading isn't that big a deal. Not all Dms have the improv skills and game knowledge required to allow their players a free style of play, and there are moments that play out better in a "cutscene" format. The slavery ending definitely sucks, though.
@@PapaRoboto Once again - as long as it's communicated well, it's not a problem. If you're expecting a sandbox-type of RPG or something along the lines of "Choose your adventure", a railroaded campaign or even a single session might be really off-putting.
I know there are a lot of people that do these responding to horror stories videos. But what makes it really good with you doing it, we see how you are as a DM, and can see you putting into practice what you might talk about in these kinds of videos. Other response video people don't show themselves as a DM doing the hard thing and talking to players during the game. I like your insight here, please do more.
if I had a quarter for every time Jacob brought up that story about the DnD 3.5 game with the assassin player, I'd have 75 cents. Which isn't a lot, but it's funny that it's happened three times.
I really enjoy this format for your videos! I avoid subreddits like this like the plague, but I also really enjoy seeing people roast stories from them and you're someone who has a lot of good insight into what it means to be both a DM and a player. It feels like having an outsider voice from my own (very well meshed, lovely to play with) group's occasional exploration into the wild horror stories out there on the internet within the tabletop sphere. It also seems like it's a fairly quick and easy type of video for you to film and put out in between your larger projects and scripted videos (sort of like your try not to laugh videos are) so if it's something you have further interest in doing, I would gladly watch you do many of these. I always have a lot of fun with them! All three of us in my party watch your videos fairly often and we really enjoy the silly casual ones just as much as the insightful and/or scripted sketch ones!
ok to clarify your confusion with vampire the masquerade. basically you play as a vampire, some vamp rules dropped, others amped up, some exclusive to certain vampire clans. basically the displaced heart trait was probably an advantage because only vampire hunters, vampire servants or "Ghouls", and vampires themselves will know if you get hit in the heart, you are immobilized and can have your head cut off safely. The displaced heart is an advantage because the stab in the chest they take, which is basically instakill, renders it irrelevant till they luck out with a good stab somewhere else.
"...man, I don't know, *door magic*." is so relateable 🤣 reminds me of the dimension 20 moment from the vulture dimension that's on the official youtube shorts channel as "Brennan fully breaks Zac" and is gold 😃
mhm I was kinda appalled by how the comments he read all went "he didn't even allow you to run?" and "he forced you to play?" like, bish, with an attitude like that for what you know will be the final session, they're lucky they GOT to play would've been entirely understandable if the DM just paused and went "do you wanna play this game or not? cause if you don't want to play, I'm not gonna keep you here. But if you are, this is what's happening, and I get you're tryna play up to your character, but can you show at least a little cooperation? Name_1 and Name_2 are leaving our group today, let them have some spotlight here! instead of wrapping it all up in this brooding darkness you're bringing, man"
@@sourwitch2340 They'd have been luckier not to play lmao. The DM was very much the issue. The twist in the story was that This player was ALSO the issue. The DM isn't magically good now that one of his players sucked, he was still the worst person in that group.(Which - as we found out - is a major achievement frankly.)
The first one, that comment is absolutely on point. You could roleplay that. Have the next campaign start with the escape. Perhaps even have a whole campaign about the escape. Or have the character remark in the next campaign how they escaped the slave mines without further elaborating. It's a thing that happened, they don't want to talk about it. The second one breaks the important social rule of "everyone is playing together" You don't just change rules, you don't just make up houserules at your whim, you don't decide what the other people do.
Spoony/TheSpoonyOne talked about Vampire a few times back when he was active, and this sounds on par for Vampire 20 years ago. Lots of infighting due to not being the right clan or whatever. One of Spoony's stories ended with him, in larp, leveling the clans headquarters after he was beaten into submission by them the previous week. I haven't watched the video in 5 years or so so idk if the language used in it is pc for todays internet, but it's titled "Counter Monkey - Vampire: Spoony's Jyhad" if anyone is interested.
That's uh, weird to say the least, might as well say that all that gold and time spent copying the spell to your book was for nothing. The whole point of that process is the wizard translates the spell from whatever other wizard wrote it down to their own personal format/formula so they fully understand it. It's like translating someone else's programming code from a different language to one you are familiar with.
Huh, that's weird but not terrible. Your wizard can still cast at normal speed the spells he learned at creation and the two he picks up on level up. So it sort of creates specialization.
@@Jermbot15 We're assuming there wasn't a house rule that you didn't automatically learn new spells on leveling up, but had to either pay someone to copy from their spellbook, or use off-board time to go to study.
We have opertunity attacks on apellcaating in pf2e as well, but most monsters dont have one anyways, so it's usually just players hitting evil wizards. The martial characters also have actions that cause opportunity attacks too, and there are ways to avoid inciting the oppertunity attacks so it balances well.
It's a super normal mechanic tbh It gives a way to actually shut down/inhibit casters, without needing to be able to one shot them, ect. Especially with some feats or so on, reach, step up, ect. I'm confused why it would be considered a shock point that they exist, I was more shocked they didn't in 5e at baseline.
@@Cthululululu to be perfectly honest; 5e players aren't really the best. many seem to think TTRPGs are about having a perfect power fantasy, which would make good mechanics like AOOs seem like a shock.
Stories like this remind me why I am blessed to have the groups I do. Back when I DM'd a Great Retcon campaign (basically shuffling DnD settings so I could constantly wing my campaign and write down the choices made) my players not only rolled with it but did shenanigans to make it better. We have a homebrew recovering God of Ganja and their holy city has a portal to the Taco Bell realm. A main antagonist is The Director: a movie director that morphs his surroundings into a movie set. The crazed Wood Elf of the party stole the key grip's camera.
14:40 - "spells in melee range proc opportunity attacks." In 3rd edition this was actually how it worked. And if you got hit by the attack the spellcaster would have to make a concentration skill check in order to finish casting the spell - otherwise the spell would be lost. There were workarounds for this such as taking a 5-foot step to get out of melee range, casting it as a quickened spell, or casting the spell defensively (which also required a successful concentration check to successfully cast the spell, but it avoided the attack of opportunity).
Yeah man, it is not a big deal if you want to use that rule in other editions or other settings. As long as it is explained in session 0 and is applied to both sides is fair.
I know I'm late to the party, but: I very much like it that way. It both empowers martials to potentionally hamstring casters by just by threatening AoO, but it's also easily preventable by either casting defensively (more or less any purpose-build caster with a high primary stat has to roll very unluckily on the concentration check to not make the DC, extra so if they chose the Combat Casting feat, really the only thing you stand a good chance at failing are high level spells, but low and mid level spells you can easily gamble on casting defensively) or ... and hear me out on that one ... MOVE out of the threatened area by either 5ft step or just eating the AoO whilst stepping away and then casting a higher level spell without needing to cast defensively. It also incentivizes spellcasters to learn and prepare crowd control or terrain/area denial spells (good ole Grease and Wall spells) aswell as mobility spells that let you move great distances to that when someone tries to barge into your comfort zone, you can put a lot of space between them and you.
@@Aotearas Yup, spells provoking AoO means tactical gameplay is incentivized and rewarded on both sides of the confrontation. Sometimes rushing the caster with a double move and having the step-up ability in your pocket is more ideal than moving and attacking some other opponent and letting the caster cast uncontested. Meanwhile casters are incentivized to not only use damage spells and think about their positioning to keep them out of movement range. Spells provoking sounds punishing at first but as long as the tools to work around it are also included (defensive cast and 5ft step) it actually enhances the caster experience and makes them better players.
For the first one, the player admits to not participating in the combat at all? And is then upset when this has a negative outcome for the party??? I'm 100% convinced that the DM wanted this to end differently, but has been told off for "railroading" in the past so didn't want to just hand them the ending without any participation in the FINAL BOSS FIGHT from one of the players. DM probably hit the "fuck it and fuck you, then" stage and just let them lose, given that's WHAT THIS PLAYER WAS TRYING TO DO!? Also the title of the post mentions characters dying but they're not mentioned in the end, only that the party was enslaved; makes me think that some characters died in the boss fight while Tywin Lannister just stood by some nearby door. Guaranteed that the two players leaving did not play with this player again lmao
I just don’t understand why they’re upset. Sure, they were told it’d be their last session last minute, but what does it really matter how it ended? They already said that they didn’t really like playing with the DM in the first place since they were kinda railroady and it was going to be the last session. Who cares if you get railroaded into a bad boss fight and then get enslaved if you’re never going to be playing this campaign again? They definitely seem like the kind of person who just doesn’t want to go along with whatever someone else wants them to do, so they “don’t trust anyone or anything” so they can always have a reason to say no to whatever’s going on. And whenever it doesn’t go their way, they cry about how they’re being railroaded into things. That’s why I don’t fully buy their story. They were “kinda forced to enter this building” suggests that they weren’t really railroaded into it, but the OP is just trying their best to make it sound like it.
Once I had my character not participate in a fight. So. The entire party were wanted "criminals" and we were newcomers in a big city, doing shady stuff. Now, my character is characterized as "respecting authority" and being a coward. As we're moving through alleyways, we get detected by a squad of patrolling city guards. While my generally murderhobo party members just get to fighting, my character decides to sneak/flee up a fire escape. (weird setting, don't ask) Anyway, it turned out the guards were vampire thralls, and their unfortunate passing didn't really amount to anything. But that incident definitely became a point of contention for my fellow party members, and they kept bringing it up for a few sessions after.
Yeah, the guy there was being a dick because he thinks friend zone is an actual thing, and that she did it to a guy she just didn't want to be involved with. Basically a "fuck you, you don't get to choose". Crazy indeed
@@PapaRoboto No, what I'm describing is friendship. The "friend zone" is a construct made up by "nice guys" who think a girl/woman is obligated to show sexual gratification for them acting like a friend to her. I have several female friends. Am I in the friend zone with all my female friends just because I only have sex with my wife?
Spells in melee provoking attacks of opportunity used to be a thing in older editions, but even then they can be avoided by making a concentration check.
communication is absolutely key between players and their dm. Even as a newer dm i make sure to meet with each player one on one to talk about goals and expectations (as well as character stuff ofc) which is super important and really helpful to the me as the dm too, especially in a homebrew setting. I remember how awful my first few dnd games were as a player, when the DMs didnt communicate etc and i vowed to never be that kind of dm. I had a dm who insisted on as much detail as possible in our backstories, but then a few months into the game when i asked to roll perception or investigation to look for something extremely integral to my character's backstory, the dm had no clue what i was even talking about. Highly disappointing. Managing and balancing player AND dm expectations through clear communication is the #1 thing to do before starting a game.
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Your link tree discord invite is presently invalid. Love the video though n_n
The product placement "half the price of other brands" is a misleading, lol
My bluetooth Headphones share a lot of similarities to what raycon advertises and i just paid 9,99€ for them.😂
Did you finish the 44 rules yet?
Vampire the masquerade is all about secrets. Backstabbing other players and not getting caught is the game.
Is there a reason there's a cryptobot as verification? I'm not even remotely comfortable with that.
I love when people go on Reddit for validation but forget to leave out the parts of the story where they are red flags and then get clowned for it lmao
Love to see a problem player get called out for being the problem
"Hey reddit. So I (does clearly asshole thing)
AITA?"
Just as funny is the inverse too. “I have literally never done anything wrong ever and our DM is Hitler, should I just quit this campaign???”. Embellishment is fine but sometimes Reddit do be getting a little too much theatre kid writing in their stories.
Happens all the time on Reddit, the site is just full of toxic ppl like that lmao 😂
@@irontarkus190luckily we're here on youtube, which is a bastion of civility and reason!
If you ever don't like a campaign ending you can just headcannon a Monty Python epilogue where a bunch of modern cops show up to arrest everyone.
I do this with actual books and films as well. If the ending is just actually a crime, I will just headcannon it so I can at least enjoy the parts that were good without thinking about the end
@@glenndiddythis is what fanfic is for
@@anandbleep2337 lol true
That's such a copout tho
@@MrProthallhaha cop out
For context for Jacob and those who're also unfamiliar, in VtM vampires get paralyzed by getting staked through the heart, so the reveal of a PC getting stabbed through the chest and it just doing nothing is a really big deal.
I didn't think that context was needed, but still interesting. Because normally you'd expect the stab through the heart to just KILL someone so the displaced heart is a big deal either way as you wouldn't expect them to be able to move either way :'D
@@ardynizunia9709 When stabbing someone in the chest you are pretty likely to hit a lung, which are important for breathing and should not be filled with blood, so even if the heart is not pierced, staying alive after taking a stab to the chest is pretty difficult.
@@jansteinhaus5821 theyre vampires
Yeah Its essentially (in a meta sense) revealing this guys got quite a high level of power (Think moving the heart around the body or even just out of the body entirely is like one of the top level disciplines (powers) one can have, so revealing it's something far less worrying is kind of a kick in the teeth.
@@jansteinhaus5821
I mean, I agree yeah. But either way it results in players EXPECTING someone to be incapacitated, but then if the DM says it hit the heart(which isn't there) and missed the lungs, then them not being incapacitaed would be a big surprise moment.
Soooo, it works either way I think.
I've only ever seen two DMs work well once, and that was because they were a married couple who communicated well, put a lot of effort into it, and separated duties during game - one of them focuses on plot, storytelling, and role-play, while the other handled running combat/skill checks, mechanical decisions, and maintained notes and records.
Essentially, with one running The Story and the other in charge of keeping the game flowing mechanically, it led to a smooth game with a good pace.
I've seen it a few times and had mixed results. Usually worked best where one was a primary dm and the other would take over for a week or two to give them a break... but that may not count as 2 dms.
Not DnD, so this may affect it, but I'm currently running a campaign with another GM and it's going great. There are hiccups here and there, but we communicate pretty regularly, and intentionally leave each other strings to pickup if we like. The trick has been that we don't touch each other's specific stories, and only elude to each others work to tie it all together for everyone else. We also communicate with our players. "Hey, that item that he gave you during his last run doesn't vibe with this run. Can we shelve it for now?" It's more like both of us putting in 60-65% of the effort (totaling over 100%), but we don't have to do everything and also get to be players, which we didn't get to do in other groups
Edit: I forgot I didn't clarify that we've been doing this for going on two years now. So it's not a "it will fail eventually" thing, we just both respect each other and communicate
2 DM's is not that much weird, just rare.
And yes, it usually shall be separated duties.
Example => pf2 playtest of Commander and Guard in RullesLayer channel. It's a collaboration with another youtuber, both are DM'ING but with different spheres.
For example the second one was the one who had prepared maps, yet they decided on the foes together.
In this example it was done for absolute sure the playtest is incredibly unbiased and diverse for the report after the result.
Usually Co-dm is not equal to the first one!
My second game is actually handled by 2 DM, and i think they are fiance? But yeah it works super well with basically this formula.
My DnD group actually has three DMs, though one of them is normally busier than the other two, and it seems to work pretty well. Addionally, because our sessions last about an hour, due to club restrictions, our DMs for our second session out of two, split us into two groups. This was to help us get through our first combat session. That combat session was also just us escaping a castle and running from guards, so splitting them splitting the players up had us have a pretty fun time working within our groups.
Of course the three DMs are all friends and generally good people, so the game has run pretty smoothly. I am very glad I joined the club too, as for my first time playing DnD, it's been awesome.
"another party member betrayed me" "the moment I was waiting for" yup, sounds legit for a VtM game
"Ahh, but what he doesn't know is that I know that he knows that I've been expecting him to betray me, and so he's prepared for me to be prepared for him to betray me, but he doesn't know that I'm prepared for him to be prepared for me to be prepared for him to betray me!"
@@Geothesponge111 That's why I play Brujah half the time ngl, the rest can scheme lmao.
@@crazagres1839 Gangrel be like "Anyway, so I started biting"
@@kasane1337 5 Dots in Fortitude + Feral Claws = If your betrayal plan doesn't include me being at ground zero of a nuclear detonation then don't even bother.
@@kasane1337 *Malkavian sits quietly in the corner gently petting the radiator.*
I'm getting surgery tomorrow. That being said, I promise not to enslave someone's D&D party while I'm there.
tell me if you enslaved them anyways.
Got to make your son promise too though otherwise he might kill tywin Lannister while you're getting surgery
I will scoff! And stay near an exit!
thanks bro
Good luck... on both counts!
for the unfamiliar: interparty conflict is very very common and outright encouraged in many VtM games. You are vampires fighting your inner beast which is your overwhelming drive to conquer and kill and feast. losing your humanity and succumbing to your beast is a core struggle every player has to deal with every night as a vampire. betrayal and ambition and selfish behavior is part of the game generally
as someone who's most expeeirences with dnd were videos, videogames and 1-on-1s, the blac and white dychotomy of seeing vtm players stab each other in the back like it's just monday and even moreso the attitude of your average dnd player and dm going like "WTF?! WHYT WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" is appalling, is it possible that both type of players just like the synapses to connect that depending on context one can do either in either game if things happen that lead to them...?
@@iota-09 Eh, it's half setting expectations and half mechanics. Though I haven't played VtM, I have played TTRPGs that encourage PvP, and they have built in systems to balance these exchanges. Also, there's an expectation for these things to happen: of course my partner would think to betray me, this is Blades in the Dark, everyone is a rat bastard.
In D&D however, not only is there an expectation of unflinching cooperation, of not separating the party, of playing in a functional group where everyone has a tactical role they must fulfill; the mechanics don't really support PvP. It *could* exist, in the sense that you could theoretically declare that you attack your friend, but it's not balanced around that situation and people would rightfully think that it's a breach of the social contract.
@@15PaperSpearsProtectTheWise what social contract? and why "rightful"? i must have not seen this contract cause i don't remember signing anything?
and i know this sounds like a joke but i'm perefectly serious, like,r oleplay exists it's not like, i dunno, in cod an ally forcing you to die for no reason other than to have a laugh at you dying, if there's a roleplaay reason why would someone take it badly in that case? as in, think that the person i rl had something against you.
i get that some people... far far more than i thought, can't distinguish reality and game, but surely not those can too right?
@@iota-09 when designing a tabletop game, you make the rules and mechanics and systems with the idea to produce specific gameplay outcomes. I think it's really neat that there's a game out there for every kind of itch a table could have! it's also super valid tho if you love one system and adapt it to the story you want to tell. as long as you keep the focus on fun and communicate what story you're trying to tell with each other, then it's all good :)
wait, did my comment asking "what social contract? what's that?" get deleted? i didn't think it had anything wrong in it...
The VTM mechanic is called Staking: a stake to the heart paralyzes the vampire. The displaced heart allows you to pretend to be paralyzed to sneak attack your attacker or escape when someone assumes you're paralyzed.
Reminds me of those people who have their organs mirrored horizontally
@@migueeeelet Or maybe verticaly you meant? how the fuck a MaN can function if he has ass instead of heart. LULE
@@migueeeelet Situs inversus!
I never thought of Displaced Heart as a great perk tbh. I seem to recall the rules make it super hard to stake any vampire in melee to begin with. It should be easy for any vampire who gets punctured in the chest but not through the heart to fall down and pretend it worked when it actually didn't, then attack/escape at the opportune moment.
@@Maladjester Its not the best use of the points i agree, however consider; if someone is trying to stake you, they want you alive (well... vampire... undead i guess) which means, without the merit or similiar power, you are at their mercy if they succeed, with it, you can either keep fighting, or pretend it worked and then flee when given an opportune time
I had a character who was a sorcerer who wanted to keep it a secret. I front lined with a short sword all level one. When I got meta magic I used subtle spell for touch spells etc. But litterally the first time the DM addressed my character he was like " you there! In the sorcerer robes." Lol
Well, if you were wearing robes, that's kind of funny, Noone noticed you were wearing robes instead of armor.
In a 3.5 DnD campaign I had a warmage character once, with a chain shirt, a shield, and spear. I was targeted immediately at the start of multiple combats as "the obvious biggest threat" as a spellcaster. I kept having to call out that I'd look more like a ranger or fighter, not a spellcaster before I cast any spells.
@@Jordan-kq3qw I was wearing just common clothes.
I had my cleric dress as a stereotypical wizard, but weave the armor into and under his clothes.
The guy in robes was either a sorcerer.
Or he killed one and took the robes.
Anti magic works well in one major type location: prisons.
There's no need for anti-magic in prison. Restrain the mage, put a gag in the mouth, confiscate all belongings. No components - no spells.
Maybe add to it some restricted anti-magic: teleportation ward and advantage on wisdom saves against spells for guards.
This way, it can potentially be played around, which is fun.
I could see it working as a sort of puzzle element to an encounter. Anti Magic’s in play and debilitates your casters, but the effect is being generated by a physical object on the play field that someone needs to go and shut off. Kinda like that one FFX boss, only instead of the antimagic generator being just a side target to kill, you have a whole grid map where you have to figure out where it is and strategize who splits off to deal with it.
@@isenokami7810 you know the players will do their best to steal that object or attempt to buy/create another one, and use it to trivialize the fight against the evil lich.
If a human town can use an anti-magic field for their prison, then it must be a common thing in the setting, and surely 30 sessions later your high level characters will be able to get their hands on one.
And it wouldn't be fair if it disabled players' spellcasting, but not the lich's.
And that's all fine, you just have to understand the implications and be prepared in some manner.
Also puzzle rooms. To avoid players getting too creative with blowing shit up or wizarding out everything.
@@bogdanleviit depends on the edition, spell, and meta magic feats involved. If the players know and plan for going into a prison with those kind of precautions for mage prisoners, they can plan around them (which may be fully fine for a planned adventure type thing), but the DM may want to avoid. However, a general anti magic field prevents all that, more useful for a party that's going to be sent to prison they're not meant to escape (without outside help at least).
It can make sense to use an anti magic field, but it depends massively on the party and campaign.
8:00 Normally when I run a game and we are about to hit a point where the players will be unable to do anything else other than the story I will give them a “You have a bad feeling you won’t be able to go back once you continue…” like some games do before you start the final mission.
"Several cutscenes will now play in sequence"
Perception check succession: "Something goes off in your heads, an ominous feeling creeps up your spines as you realize moving forwards may mean never coming back."
Perception check failure: "I think there's free candy down there guys."
Lol @@Theepieguy
About giving this games alerts. I tried an open-world style game, and the players rushed to the main objective. They were almost finishing it and hadn't explored the other things I had planned. At one point, I said, "Proceeding this way will have a significant impact on the scenario; other areas may become inaccessible." They immediately started going to other places.
When I'm running a game and there is an unskippable situation that is going occur I tell them "once a decision has been made there is no going back"
I did a game with 2 DMs and 2 players once. It was years ago and didnt have a system really.
The players made a detective duo in the 1940s with a world similar to real life but with demon summoning as the only form of magic. My friend was the "plot" DM and I was the "combat" DM. At one point the detectives split up, one to chase a gorilla demon who kidnapped their client and the other stayed behind to interrogate the summoners. I DM'd the chase scene on the other side of the room and after both scenes were over we met back up in the middle and exchanged what happened. It was honestly pretty fun.
That sounds awesome!
i'm sorry, you mean a shin megami tensei ttrpg? that's actually awesome
@smolmoon9254 It was inspired by Raidous games yeah. It was super fun even though we made our own rules
Call of Cthulhu?
@purpleblah2 Nah. That games gameplay is really not liked at all among most of my friends. Also you can cast spells other than demon summoning in that game.
You know, sometimes I forget bro has a whole Kid
My man have undergone mitosis
Mans got lucky. I was a 3/4ths kid
It would be worrying if it was only half of one.
Goku
Bro out here straight duplicatin
I had a fairly similar situation happen to me, as the VTM thing. We were playing DND, and I had come up with a character design that was pretty out there, which I did clear with the DM first. In a very short version, my character's design was that he was cursed with immortality (and I mean cursed, in the fact that he was constantly watching everyone he cared about die, and wanted nothing more than to be reunited with them in death.), but not in the traditional sense of just not dying. He could, and did die, but every time he died, his soul was forcibly transferred into the body of the next thing that died (what ever it was that killed the person would be immediately healed, so that my character wouldn't immediately die again.). Again, I cleared it with the DM, and the thought process was that we would have fun with the DM choosing the body that I would inhabit after each death (maybe I would end up in a strapping young soldier, who was killed in combat, or maybe I would end up as the 90 year old grandma who died of old age.), and if they felt like my character should have a more "true" death, then he could just say that I came back on the other side of the world or something, effectively writing the character out of the story (which I was ok with, because I know this is a very out there concept.). It was also supposed to be a fun later game reveal to the other party members, showing that the bunch of random oddballs that they had been coming across throughout the campaign, were all actually the same person.
The problem then came in, when myself the DM and one of the other players (there were 5 of us all together, 4 players and the DM) got together in voice chat before the first session just to clear up a couple of things. The other player left to go do something, and while they were gone I wanted to get some last minute clarification on my character, which required talking about my character's concept. What we didn't know, is that the other player ended up returning very quickly after he left, didn't make any mention that they came back, or any sound, until after I finished my inquiry (at which point they pretended like they had just gotten back.). Now, this wouldn't be a big deal, even though I would have liked to have the reveal later, but its not a huge thing. Just because the player knew my character's concept doesn't mean the character does. The real problem happened when, session 1, within the first 20 minutes of the session, I make one allusion to being older than I seem, and that player proceeds to "figure out" my character's concept, and straight up spells it out for all the other players. Like, we were literally in the starting tavern. The extent of the interactions that my character had, were waking up in his room, making his way to the tavern, and having a quick interaction with the bar keeper, which is where he hinted that he is older than he seems, and that player apparently figured out that my character was an ancient immortal, who's soul inhabits the recently deceased every time his body dies.
So you just took it standing?
How did your character react? Did he just say "yeah lol"?
You could have gotten out of that one, assuming the player didn't spell it out OOC.
@@PapaRoboto Well, I attempted to play it off as someone in a universe would. Its a ridiculous concept, even in a Dnd setting. So I played it off as such. Its just a ridiculous story. However, since he knew out of character, his in character knew that it wasn't just a ridiculous story. Realistically, based on the back story I created, and the fact that they barely knew each other, the most accurate event would have been that he would have killed that character to protect his secret (he was tortured for over a decade when someone he thought he could trust sold him out to a noble who was desperate to find a means of immortality for himself.). However, I didn't want to be "that guy" to the DM, and throw his entire campaign for a loop because "its what my character would do." That said, I should have just asked the DM if I could make a new character then and there. But Hindsight and all that.
He essentially did spell it out. He was "in character" but he legitimately spelled out the exact details of my character's concept. No one could have been at that table, and thought for even a second, that what he said was just a theory that he came up with.
@@ikeillue8385 Sounds like an asshole ngl
Body-hopping, resurrecting immortal. You meet them every month where I come from.
@@andruloni "wait, doesn't everyone do that?"
I added a HR to my table where, if you play a wizard, each time you gain a level in Wizard, in addition to adding the 2 free spells per level, you also add 1 spell whose school of magic matches your arcane tradition (only applies for the 8 core subclasses). That spell is auto-prepared and does not count against your preparation limit.
Idk man that sounds kinda based.
Why buff one of the most powerful and versatile classes by making it more versatile? It's not like Wizard is a weak class option.
@@Taenarius I haven't played much DnD, do archers have elemental arrows?
@@kaiseremotion854 Not by default, although you can pick up special arrows that do elemental damage, or special bows that do it
@@Taenarius hmm, I think they could definitely open up other classes having alot of variety.
Misplaced Heart for a Vampire is important, cause a stake in the heart is not QUITE technically lethal.
It just paralyzes you until the stake is removed. And PvP isn't uncommon, especially since there's a mechanic that makes you "lose control" and just attack stuff.
Can be lethal with stake bait lmao.(Though like nobody picks that for obvious reasons.)
@@crazagres1839 it's just kind of a shit flaw, tbh. Your character wouldn't have any way to know they have that flaw until they get staked so either it never comes up or it kills your character.
@@Neutral_Tired Yeah it's not like you yourself know without trial and error, and trial and error for this Includes dying.
Hell, it's perfectly in line to stake someone for most vampires to disable them for a moment as the need arises. You'd die the Moment it happened.
I never had anyone run it in my games and I'd legit ask them to reconsider if they did lmao.
I'd prop house rule it to just do x agg damage or something because losing a pc for this is beyond what I'm cool with.
If I remember, getting staked left you in, what the game referred to as a state of torpor ...
@@1down4upworkshop61 Torpor was different, that's what happened if you got beaten to "death" without any supernatural or fire damage. It was basically "You aren't dead, but you're out for a LONG time" like potentially years, depending on how old you were. The stake paralysis lasted only as long as the stake was in you. Of course, getting a stake rammed through your heart could do enough damage to torpor you as well.
I had a secret vampire in my party for 15 sessions of Curse of Strahd. Me and his player (who is my best friend, was my roommate at the time, and shares many storytelling sensibilities and philosophies with me) spent SO MUCH time trying to work out codes, stealthily texting to make sure the character was getting blood in game, etc. We even went so far as to have a designated set of dice she’d roll if she ever did a “persuasion check” that was actually a stealth use of charm (it only ever happened once and she rolled a nat 20 so it was all good). I even came up with a plan for what I’d do if he went down in a fight and failed his death saves. It helped that one other player (who was also our roommate at the time) knew, so she helped cover for some things with the other two players and knew not to accidentally say anything if she got suspicious (because she knows us and kinda knew this character already).
It ended up that he got revealed in Argynvostholt, and it turned out really cool and good and the party loved it. But I could easily see it going the “secret assassin” route if we hadn’t planned stuff out so much.
The lesson from the assassin story is that such secrets require a lot of planning. You thought it through in advance and it turned out great. Good job, that's amazing!
Imagine doing this only for another party member to be a paladin and use Divine Sense
@@sabatorgaming8354 I was ridiculously lucky no one else picked paladin, especially given that you basically have to have cleric and/or paladin in the party for Curse of Strahd. The other party members are a nature cleric, a draconic sorcerer, and an eloquence bard. There was one incident where the Turn Undead feature was used on some vampire spawn and the vampire PC failed the secret Wisdom save, so he had to stealthily move away from the cleric lol. I’m also really lucky his player is a person I trust implicitly not to cheat at DnD and also someone who knows the rules well enough to know when and what saves to make. TL;DR we got so lucky all around.
@@kamilee4123 was the vampire playing paladin?
@@sabatorgaming8354 Vampire is a battle master fighter. Sorry, phrasing was a bit weird lol.
Vampire The Masquerade is... Let's say "pvp friendly". Depending on the group and the DM (mostly, the DM) players could have varying and conflicting objectives. So it's not "common" but if the premise of the game is "light pvp and opposing objectives" it's perfectly normal. And seing the rest of the story, it was exactly this kind of game.
And the heart thing, being stabbed in the heart puts the vampire in some sort of shock. So the heart thing is a "nice" move, an ace up your sleeve. Expecting betrayal, when you're betrayed, you're not vulnerable. She would have been acting, and maybe starting a fight or something.
A nice ace up her sleeve that the DM just screwed her over for no reason.
Would it be the D&D equivalent of a DM just revealing the full spell list of a wizard because he used magic in the middle of a PvP duel?
@@scrapbotcommander yeah lol
It’s only PvP friendly if you play the Camirilla. Other Sects generally look down upon fighting within a pack or gang.
@@scrapbotcommander That, and imagine the wizard being secretly a lich.
And the DM : "Oh, btw, she's a lich, and her phylactery is in the second drawer in her desk in a secret compartment."
@@MultiKbarry Also conflict in Vtm is also very often Social conflict. It's not DND where at the end of the day you Will have to kill or at least beat the BBEG or x of his minions to progress. Betrayal and scheming are much more the "strength"' and "preference" of vamps than swinging their fists.(Though they can and do that as well.)
"This happened to me when I was dming"
Jacob about to explain the time he asked out a vampire whose gallbladder was in their butt.
I was involved in a campaign once with 2 gm's that was actually really good. One was a very analytical minded, numbers guy. He could put together a fight and hit all the rules like nobody's business. The other was a super creative artist. He handled the narrative. It legitimately went really well. It helped that neither of them were big ego guys so they had no problem sharing the game.
Playing vampire the masquerade with people you don’t know that well can go very weird because the way the game is written allows for many… questionable courses of action that may not be even considered in other games.
It's uhh, very teen melodrama in many ways, for lack of a better way to put it.
So it's a PvP kind of game where betrayal is normal?
@@bogdanlevi Kinda. You play vampires, almost universally evil. At best usually self centered and caring more for personal survival than group empathy. Its not as bad as Shadowrun where betrayal is expected and encouraged, but its common... Like a mafia kinda deal. Sometimes you come out on top, other times you end up staked through the heart and left on a roof for sunrise.
Like what?
@@greatclubsandwich5612 yeah, this sounds a bit difficult to pull off successfully. Mafia's good because it has clearly defined rules, but with TTRPG rules I think most people will end up whining and getting offended.
Jacob, did you forget the whole staking a vampire in the heart? Having your heart in an unknown location is actually a pretty big deal when one of the only ways to kill you is stabbing you blindly like a pincushion. Or as the player was going to do, play dead and make the rest of the party think they were dead. Only to slink away due to their only weak spot safely unknown
VtM doesn't work that way. Stabbing a Vampire only paralyzes them, doesn't exactly kill them.
@@Volvary Still. It's a massive weakness that the player planned around.
I mean, the alternative is to stab in every single other part of the body and randomly hope you can actually affect the other player. That sounds like a really abusable trait, regardless of whatever flaw they had to take to get it. You essentially become immune to paralysis in a setting where guaranteed paralysis is expected.
That just doesn't sound fun to deal with as a player, maybe I'm weird but idk. Hypovolemic shock should still be setting in if you get staked to the heart, unless vampires in VtM just don't follow human physiology but at that point why is a stake to the heart going to do anything anyway.
@@Volvarydepends on the vampire actually!
Some will just out right die.
@@SupaFly-gx1zono Vampires do not follow that at all. You could shoot a vampire in the chest and they would treat it as a scrape in the knee.
The only way to kill a vampire is to make their heart stop beating.
My sabbat brujah fought a i think they're called tziminche they can move their heart around. So instead of ripping the heart out of his chest to kill him (because it wasnt there)
He tore his head off which instantly killed him.
My hunter character met another vampire who had like a high fortitude ability and dodged bullets. So he essentially out a Molotov down his throat and burned him from the inside.
There's tons of ways to kill a vampire in vtm. But moving the heart is not a big deal. If you want it alive alot of dynamite does the trick. Well... He may die by yknow.
When I was first playing D&D, I had a DM that would constantly have stuff happen in the game specifically to ruin my character concept. JUST me, not anyone else in the group. It's hard to list examples since it was so long ago, but the one that really stands out in my head was when I made a character who had inherited a demon-slaying weapon and decided to follow in their ancestor's footsteps as a demon hunter (I took a massive deficit in my starting gear just so that I could start with this weapon and backstory). First session, a random NPC disarmed me, causing the weapon to fall into a basically bottomless pit and be lost, and since we were in the middle of retreating through a portal to a different plane, it was impossible to go back and find it. This was done on purpose; he flat out told me that this was to teach me a lesson about building my whole character concept around a single item. If it was that big of a problem, why not just veto it from the start? I'd have been willing to make something different. I'm not exaggerating when I say he did this kind of stuff to me all the time.
Feels like a missed opportunity from the DM, tbh. Having a character who's whole thing is their weapon is very She-Ra/He-Man coded and very fun for storytelling. It's an item that can be taken away from you (with a heads up and confirmation you're cool with it) to push your character to learn to do other things than rely on a big sword all the time, ultimately giving you a fun challenge, the group needs to strategize a bit better, and makes your character more well-rounded
The "hero is disarmed and has to fight without their gimmick" episode is a common trope for a reason, after all
@@Eagledude131yeah, but they should get it back. Which you likely already know.
Wow, that DM deserves a medal for being so freaking terrible, wtf
That's infuriatingly patronizing on his part. Adults playing play-pretend with actual rules to make it fun should be able to talk things out at character creation - if he had a problem with your character concept, he shoulda brought it up. And even so, I get a DM having an issue with specifics of a character if it doesn't fit the setting, if it's too minmaxed, but then just- communicate. If a DM has an issue with a character CONCEPT it's just saying 'hey i don't like your WHOLE character, on principle'. Which, could be okay, if there are actual reasons for it and it be discussed - and even if it's just a quirk or personal taste, there are ways to compromise and make it okay for both parties.
And if he did that all the time to you, my guess is he never had any actual problem with your characters. He had a problem with YOU and he felt entitled to teach you lessons like some sort of manipulative narcissist patronizing asshat.
That's funny as hell except the part where your entire game is ruined.
I just gave Karlach the Sussur flowers and sent her full throttle at any caster enemies. Worked like a violent, ragey, firey charm!
One of the major themes of VtM is that vampires are morons and cannot cooperate with each other. Infighting amongst party members isn't encouraged but it's not as taboo as in games like d&d
ohmygod is marcie walking already?? time really flies woah
Any day now he'll be helping her roll up her first Fighter.
She's talking too! I need to go lie down, because damn, I'm old.
I read walking as working and thought I entered a time warp
@@desert0fox Fighter ftw
Ive done anti-magic twice in 3 years. Once was a temple where a ranger needed to prove his toughness and ability to be worthy of the legendary bow at the end of it, and the other time was an anti-magic boat that they needed in order to pass through a magic barrier in the ocean that surrounded the continent they were on.
My favorite anti-magic flavor was in the game Wizardry 8 where there's a library room in the first dungeon with a ghostly chorus of monks that aggressively shushes you if you try to cast a spell.
I’ve always really liked Van Richten’s Tower in Curse Of Strahd. It’s just the area of tower with the anti magic effect and it can cause some very interesting rule interactions.
I've only ever used anti-magic runes to stop players from flying over puzzles. They tend to glow and be very obvious so they know what they are there for.
I had one campaign where there was a Pub run by a retired hero that was a uber-powerful Wizard that hated violence, so he casted a powerful barrier that prevented the guests from fighting. This made the Pub a Neutral Ground for alot of NPC’s that would normally be enemies. I remember the look on one of the players when he tried to cast an illusion spell to steal a quest item only for the spell to fizzle out and the Bartender turned to face him, citing “This is Neutral Ground, Crime is prohibited here.”
I usually do the opposite where areas are filled with Wild Magic so everyone's spells have a small chance to surge. Also, I can see anti-magic being fun as an arena hazard. Like maybe there's a circle that can be turned on and off and you can get the enemy into the circle and turn off their magic as well.
Ah yes Tywin Lannister, very well known for not dying anticlimactically.
Villains dying anticlimactically is the overall theme for A Game of Thrones.
@@Axetwin I just think it's funny that the poster described his character as Tywin Lannister then went on to describe how it was lame that he died anticlimactically.
@@Axetwin nah, the overall theme is "everyone and everything sucks, also nobody loves you. With incest."
I thought his death was very climactic. That whole night was probably the biggest turning point for Tyrion.
@@CrizzyEyes Yeah, that's fair.
"Man, I dunno! DOOR MAGIC." XD That got me lol
that one was so real
Jacob: "Anti magic in BG3 SUCKS"
Me, in a party with only fighters: *Agressively stuffing Sussur flowers in inventory*
Usually I hate dnd horror stories, because the channel reading them takes it at face value or just reads it all the way through & doesn’t really add anything.
But I really like how you do it. It feels more personal & real
Which, I think, is very inspired by how Smosh does Reddit stories, so since he mentioned our boy Shayne as his usual source for Reddit content... it figures.
But it genuinely is great, more Reddit story shows should go about it like that tbh
Worse yet, they started with AI voices and just read them out loud, letting you actually read the story (listen to it) WITHOUT their stupid comments. But then YT hammered down on AI voice overs and they had to read it themselves, but have nothing to add of value so they're stopping the reading every paragraph and saying utterly pointless things, only disrupting the flow of the story.
Jacob at least adds his own personal experience, saying "this happened to me one time" or "this player also sounds like a problem, here's why" but those channels like CritCrab literally do none of that. All they do is stop video every 30 seconds to say equivalent of "Damn man, that sucks, I'd run away from the table" over and over again. Zero analysis, zero context, zero personal experience, literally just honing in so they can call it a video and post it, then repeat that EVERY DAY.
I genuinely liked AI era of reddit stories, because at least who ever I was watching was making money off it and I got highly curated content by human, not an algorithm, without having to actually go onto the cesspit of what we call Reddit. The moment they started adding their worthless opinions I tuned out, then later learned it was because YT forced them.
This reason alone is why I like Crispy's Tavern and Den on the Drake the most. Because they actually add onto the posts with added humor and commentary into their videos for them.
@@MrMrtvozornik I'm really confused. Your comment seems to be simultaneously saying you want the readers to give their opinions and then also saying you don't?
@@SomeoneOnlyWeKnow. No, my argument is "I don't want readers to give too much of their opinion and instead be filter which picks best stories so I don't have to go to cesspits like Reddit. However, if they want to add commentary that's not an issue if they are insightful, useful, interesting opinions, and not obvious NPC comments I know they are making because of YT guidelines.".
END OF TL;DR
Reason why Jacob's commentary is interesting is because these types of videos are less than 10% of content he makes, and you can see his skits, reviews, DMing or even just regular DM advice.
However, most of these channels like CritCrab started with this, and this is 100% of their content. They have to quip in every minute or so and they're printing these types of videos on daily basis for profit and nothing else, with result being their commentary being absolutely meaningless and uninteresting.
By all means, go watch like 10 CritCrabs (or his clones) videos in a row, solid 100-110 minutes, and take a shot every time he says an NPC comment akin to "damn man, that sucks, maybe you should look for another group". You'd be deceased by the end of this challenge run. And no cheating, just because he swapped 40% of words in the sentence, if the gist of the sentence is akin to it, it counts.
But reason why Jacob doesn't give out NPC comments is because he's not an NPC, because he didn't start and made whole "career" reading out other people's stories. This is verifiable by going to his channel and watching his varied videos. He's a creative guy, DM, skit maker etc. He's not making daily, bland, same old same old videos like those who only do these readings, so when he speaks he's not speaking for speaking sake, he actually has opinion. CritCrab doesn't. It insults my intelligence to hear guy quip in every minute just to give an NPC take cause he needs to speak. It's akin to listening to an interesting story from one person and then having another person next to you keep on repeating "I had a similar situation like that, it sucks" NO MATTER WHAT THE STORY IS. It's annoying and attention seeking, but then if you find out that 2nd person is paid and has some rule that requires them to speak up every minute or so, and it becomes disgusting.
As a frequent redditor, your one consistent trait being that you know reddit sucks is so relatable
As a frequent redditor, I find that's a misconception people have about reddit based on certain subs. Like, reddit has tons of shitty communities, and the larger the sub the more likely it is to be bad. But there are so many well curated and great subs for niche hobbies and other interests that generalizing reddit like that just seems dumb to me. If you curate your experience reddit can be a great place. Certainly no worse than Twitter or Tiktok or whatever.
@@fomme397bro can't take a joke
@@fomme397 That's a very low bar, though, being better than Twitter or Tiktok, like, the only things worse than them are like... sites for russian grandmas like OK or VK.
Jacob unironically having his "Nononono, Wait wait Wait WAIT!!" Moment and I'm sitting here having the exact same moment cause oh no.
I was just thinking at that moment
"Jacob has had such an idyllic ttrpg experience. You can tell because he is shocked by this. This is Bad DM 101 level stuff. He is such a summer child."
The playing an assassin secretly reminded me of one of my favourite characters. I was a changeling warlock pretending to be a dwarf. My character played off self changing stuff as Invocations, and had the devil sight invocation so I still had dark vision. The players were all friends and they knew what was going on a couple sessions in because they are experienced players, but they knew their characters wouldn’t know so nothing came of it other than OoC jokes.
If your magic system is so pigeonholed that you literally can't cast spells from a rival school, even through effort, your world needs to accomodate for everyone being an evocation mage.
Literally the plot of the owl house
20:40 god
sometimes this kinda thing isn't even malicious, but the DM will just casually reveal a major character twist or backstory bit that you had been saving for a big reveal. This one just has the extra sting of *actually* being malicious / retributive.
Ah my drug dealer at the grocery store situation.
@@happypunky4129 ya'll are way too mystified by people who draw adult art
@@Zedrinbot Fair
I dont get it @@happypunky4129
I mean... suspected. The assumption was that it was retribution but that was the player's assumption. Might have just been a crap DM
Limiting wizards to their school is a cool idea in principle (obviously only with player buy-in) but the problem is that the spell lists aren't remotely balanced for that. Like, there are 18 divination spells total on the wizard list. Abjuration only has 1 2nd level spell, Arcane Lock. They're my top 2 favorite wizard subclasses but that has everything to do with their class features and very little to do with their spells.
I really feel like you are missing the most powerful thing a level one-5 has its called a barbarian to murder other wizards for you mine is named ARRRRRRRRAHAHAHAHAHG. and that all he says. He has an intelligence of 18. I think he just likes yelling.
I had an idea for an all Wizard campign that's basically the opposite. Basically everyone would have a preferred school of magic where they would get bonuses to that school, and then one school they can't use because their character just sucks ass at it.
That was exactly my first thought. My 8-lvl wizard can have 17 spells prepared at the moment, and her max. spell slot available is 4. So I checked the number of spells available for 1-4 slots and here are the numbers. There are:
- 16 necromancy spells
- 20 abjuration spells
- 38 conjuration spells
- 13 divination spells
- 19 enchantment spells
- 36 evocation spells
- 21 illusion spells
- 34 transmutation spells
So screw necromancy and divination magic I guess. Dumb rule
@@myh-devils_advocateit would be a great rule that actually outs limits.on wizards so they don't get to do everything, but the spell lists need to be built around it, also, allow a few off-school spells
It's much better in a system where this is a part of it to begin with, like pathfinder1e, but even in pf1e, you're getting a benefit to one school, while 2 of them, you're greatly diminished in your ability to use, but not completely unable to, unless you pick the archetype that does that
As a Masquarade GM, This is wild to me. revealing a secret always sucks but in Masq? Secrets are kind of the whole damn point. Imagine going to your whole caracter creation taking big flaws to get this one little thing that could maybe not even come up at all just cuz it's fun and could lead to an amazing moment. Not only of gameplay but of suprise and just all out chaos at the table when you reaveal your master move. I would love if one of my players had the guts and the brains to make a move like that work and making sure to help them get that moment of BIG Brained Gamer Time would me so exiting and really up there in my priorities for that campain. Getting robbed of that moment when that was one of your goals the whole time is cruel and would turn me off the game so bad for a while. My condolescences... That's fucking rough. (sry for bad spelling I'm quebecois)
Relationships in DnD are dangerous.
I ended up getting together with a girl that the DM had a crush on, and in the next game my character was turned into a pig, told I could only speak using the word, "oink" and then slaughtered by the DM's self-insert NPC while in pig form near the end of the session.
Love the videos!
I wanna say as an anecdote, I've DMd 3 different campaigns where I was part of a 2-DM team. All three of those campaigns went really well but I can easily see the problems that can arise from something like that.
But what's important is having a shared vision and debriefing after every session.
One huge benefit is having one person DJ and run numbers and stuff during combat while the other person narrates the fight.
With the first story, it sounded kinda like the fighter was dragging out the setup and then the session ended
Not only that, but he KNEW it would be the last session of a campaign that, apparently, he had lost interest in anyway. So instead of just going with the flow, he dragged his feet on principle, refused to engage with any fun presented, got overly precious about the safety of a character he was NEVER GOING TO PLAY AGAIN, and ensured his last session was miserable...which is probably what he wanted.
Also when the fighter said they were told last minute, makes me think they were trying to end the game to get ride of the fighter, probably for the same behavior being shown at the end.
@@vaderwalks I mean, nothing stopping him from playing the character again anyway
@@ozatu13 A pretty common way to get rid of trash players is to pull a "rocks fall everyone dies", then when the player in question storms out in huff, retcon the falling rocks and continue the game with everyone else except the problem player. This is handy for dealing with people who other players have to have contact with outside of the game, because they might cause problems for the other player IRL if you just straight up kick them out.
@@McCheese-xc9ig I mean, you're only fucking over the entire party and not solving the problem(they'll literally just be shitty next game again, but now also have legitimate reasons to complain about your dming because you are actually a shit dm. They are correct.) but sure, that's very smart. Do not - I repeat do not - actually open your mouth and talk to them - like two adults would and Resolve the situation. Try to Ruin Everyone's time in an attempt to ruin his. That is definitely the right way to handle that situation.
For context, Vampire the masquerade kinda has "Damn your inevitable betrayal!" vibe to it. party members aren't necessarily friends, and the game doesn't exactly discourage backstabbing.
Also the game was one of the most popular Table top games when "Interview With A Vampire" came out, so.. the associated pride rush got caught up by White Wolf Publishing and they ran with it pretty well. It was sort of the game that catered to that sort of thing before table top games catered to that sort of thing.
Oh a VtM post! I am a DM for a few VtM games and love the system so much! Ok so as others have pointed out, staking a vampire in the heart causes paralysis in the victim so revealing they have a displaced heart instead of letting the players have the moment of "huh, they didn't get stopped by a stake" is criminal! Its up there with unbondable for amazing traits and lets you get crazy with the drama. As for the betrayal in game, thats actually the least shocking thing in the whole video. Vampires (they call themselves kindred btw) are power hungry, loners, and overall asshats to most people who aren't stronger than them in some way. They are untrustworthy on a good day so yeah. VtM is usually about the stuggle of kindred finding their place in the night life and is full of dramatic crap (the kindred literally cry blood if they get emotional and start crying) so games usually focus entirely on the groups strifes of trying not to lose themselves in the blood and hunger of their undead lives.
tbf VTM is the kind of game where i'd expect players to be mature enough to be able to do the thing their character would do even if they know it isn't actually a good idea, at least for big stuff like this.
Well said. I love VTM
I could see spellcasting granting opportunity attacks in specific scenarios. Something like "if you cast a spell with a target other than self and a range other than touch/line/cone, any enemy within 5 feet can use their reaction to attack you". That way spell casters can still use something like thunderwave on melee threats, or escape with misty step, but they can't just ignore them and cast fireball at the opposing back line units. It would need to be carefully balanced, but it would put more emphasis on protecting your back line units and preventing enemies from getting close to them.
My version of the rule after discussing it with PF2 players here in the comments:
1. Casting a spell with somatic or material components triggers an opportunity attack. This attack is made at disadvantage.
2. The mage slayer feat makes any spell trigger your opportunity attack and removes disadvantage. If this attack hits, the caster makes a concentration check. On a fail, the spell is countered.
3. The war caster feat makes it so that your spells don't trigger attacks of opportunity.
4. If a mage slayer attacks a war caster, they counter each other, and the opportunity attack is resolved using rule 1.
nope, all opportunity attacks on magic casting is a good rule, paired with the partner rule that you can make defensive casting rolls to avoid the aoo of course. basically everything from pathfinder 1e is how a game like that (as in, dnd style fantasy games) should be run tbh.
@@bogdanlevi 1. Why would that attack have disadvantage? You're literally gesticulating and chanting incantations like an idiot while an enemy with a sword is standing right beside you. That makes zero sense. The attack should be made normally (still expending their reaction to do it, of course)
2. Mage slayer feat getting aoo out of *any* spell and prompting a concentration check every time on a hit is perfectly enough of a boost to that feat.
3. Sure, let's make war caster even more ridiculously good, why not? That feat is already more than good enough.
The only spells that should not trigger aoo are spells with a range of self or touch, and spells with casting time of "reaction". Every other should by simple logic, trigger one.
@@SchrollShepard i put disadvantage and a buff on war caster so that melee half-casters don't get punished too hard by getting all these opportunity attacks.
As a paladin, you call upon the gods for aid, thus provoking furious blows from surrounding enemies and tanking most of them with your trusted shield. That's pretty cool. Taking a lot of extra damage just for playing your class as intended would be dumb.
I think reaction, self and touch spells are fine to trigger aoo, as long as they have somatic/material components. But, if you put in the exception for reaction, self and touch, then the melee half-casters will be doing fine, and the disadvantage can be removed from aoo. That's a valid version as well.
14:28 "wizards can only pick spells from their school" how in the world does a bladesinger or order of scribes work then
The "Casting provokes attacks of opportunity" is an old rule that encourages tactical combat over spell spamming. Considering that magic was formerly much more powerful and limited, and that taking damage usually causes you to automatically lose your spell, if one wanted to apply that rule to 5e, one would have to modify the magic system considerably. It is not a bad rule per se, just a bad rule if you use it to punish your players.
You are right, that rule is an oldie but goodie. If you are a DM running a 5E game needs to bring up this house rule at session zero. It really doesn’t punish players too much, because the players I played with use this rule to great effect against enemies. Also the rule is very realistic. A raging barbarian is right in front of you in melee range and when your turn comes up you reach into your components pouch and wave your hands around for 6 seconds, seems like a lifetime supply of bad ideas.
I mean, in 3.5/pathfinder you could at least make a concentration check to not provoke in melee. And if you failed the check your spell doesn't go off. It's still better to stay away from melee while casting, but you could risk it in a pinch. Making it so you always provoke seems overly punishing. Especially for gish builds.
Just a thumbs up and a corroboration on this for Jacob to see; in Pathfinder 1st Edition and D&D 3.5 casting within melee would provoke; because you had to make gestures and spent however long not focusing on the combat.
Firing a bow within melee range of someone else ALSO provoked attacks of opportunity; this meant that the front line had more incentive to keep melee from the ranged members of the party.
I don't know about 4th, but to my understanding 5e is meant to be less crunchy and grid tactics, so a DM bringing in those old rules is a little shaky; a good DM of course would inform players of rules they wished to alter prior to a game of course.
As someone who played Pathfinder 1E for a long time it definitely makes you think more critically about your spell casting and positioning. Honestly DND5e is sometimes too kind with it’s mechanics, but I like playing both games. DND5e is better suited for more casual play, I know it can even get a bit tedious when you need a spreadsheet for attack modifiers and damage like my lv15 brawler/bloodrager/paladin did. But boy does it give you such variety.
You really wouldn't have to modify it at all.
Prior editions had you make a concentration check to have the spell go off when you get hit. That's fine.
Give Eldritch Knight and similar (sub)classes immunity to this and problem solved. Spellcasters literally have everything already, they can have one thing to deal with.
I haven't played a _proper_ V:tM campaign either, but from what I've heard (I have a close friend who played it a ton and relayed a lot of stories about it) backstabbing is more common in those circles than D&D. It's very themey for the vampires in that setting.
I was part of a gaming club in college and someone ran a VtM campaign. I couldn't participate due to class loads, but did sit in on the last session. One guy messed up, things snowballed, and they almost broke the masquarade. It devolved into everyone trying to screw each other over to save their own skins lol.
There's also a mechanic in the game called "frenzying" where the vampire loses control and goes into a berserker rage. This can be caused by something as simple as someone lighting a safe fire in the same room as the vampire, so pvp doesn't even have to be intended.
@@Some_Average_Joe that happened in my last session! our lasombra (evil shadow vampires that everyone hates) went into a frenzy and absolutely broke the masquerade, we had to kill every bystander we could find, check for cameras, and beat him until he went into torpor (not-quite-death, but he will be unconscious for a literal decade). two of us ran into the sewers, our professional killer took the lasombra's body home, and i am hiding in an alleyway with a bunch of dead humans to stop them from being found. we have no idea how the next few sessions are going to go now.
"Yeah, I've heard of Raycon. Raycon these leaves outta my yard."
We GAMIN'
You will never be loved.
@@choboibigly6565 The reason why I put quotes is because it is a quote, I didn't come up with that myself. I was simply making the niche reference
@@SillySyrup Neither you nor the original speaker of the quote will ever be loved.
@@choboibigly6565 Fair enough
Made me happy when you mentioned the accesibility of online sheets. It really makes a difference for me and my enjoyment of the game to use such sheets.
I feel like spells provoking AoO came straight from 3.5 - there it is a PHB rule
Our group is going to take a short adventure in 3.5e, and my mind is blowing off in a mix of rage and wow, coz in that edition they take things we're used to in 5e, but well, provide something satisfying in return
Tho I consider 3.5e overcomplicated and definitely more deadly for characters than 5e, it's gonna be an interesting experience
I once had a campaign where I relied heavily on anti-magic force fields... It was an entire barbaric demonic race that was weak against magic so they created huge mobile tanks with anti magic fields. It was A LOT of fun for the mage and the group, they pretty much fought to bring the tank down, the mage being a coordinator / support until the tank went down and after that there was this HUGE fireball that blew pretty much the entire opposition to smithereens.
I made it this way because the group would rest at every corner so that they could cast Fireball at the beginning of each combat, the mage was a huge rulebook nerd and made an OP sheet that removed all the fun in combat for the group. So now you have to rely on the group until you can cast, but when you can the group will cheer at the mighty wizard they have available!
I really like solutions like that to this sort of problem! Doesn't take the shine of the OP character, keeps everybody else engaged and relevant, 10/10
in a nutshell, anti-*Bomb* un-*Planted*
@@owerio Absolutely no fire in the hole until that tank is down!
Was not expecting the Smosh Pit shoutout 😂 Love Shayne. Super happy for him and Courtney 🥰
Y'all don't know a bad dm till they've tried to make you drink piss. Don't even ask.
I'm asking???????
So, uhh, what *did* happen?
🚬😎
RP goes hard I guess? O.o
@@felixamari157 what
Bro, you can't just say something like that and not elaborate, just what layer of hell have you been to?
14:35--So the DM basically gave all enemies the Mage Slayer feat for free.
5:50 Now that is what we do with our group... 4 oneshots and 1 campaign going out with a ... BIG BOOM! From blowing up (ourselves included) a tank to a space station of the enemy. Last week we just blew up a nuclear silo's control room as we were surrounded and failed to cast the teleport scroll 3x, so we were like: Guess we unalive! XD
Like any game developer for video games you as a DM create a game where the players wins and you loose without the players realizing you planed to loose form the start.
ive been dming for only a few years, but in my first years I read/watched a lot of DM horror stories, and its a blessing and a curse because i am now hyper self-conscious about avoiding this type of behavior
I love these videos because you are like, forcefully a normal functional person. It really puts in perspective just how reddit reddit is, as well as how goofy some of these stories are.
I just wanna say, I never really got into DnD youtubers until recently.
I had been a forever DM until recently. It was impossible for anyone to get me to run a game due to hardcore burnout, ADHD complications, etc.
So my BIL stepped up to run a game with almost zero TTRPG experience. He performed admirably despite no working knowledge on the mechanics. So, I told him he could pause his game, and I would run a game in order to teach him and the other new players the core game mechanics.
So, to wrap this up before it gets too long, through mostly your content, I have been able to enjoy being a DM again. Which translates to the players' enjoyment directly.
Your videos literally make shitty days better. Your attitude is infectious. Your ideas are mostly fresh, informative, and interesting.
I play 3.5 exclusively, but it is easily translatable.
Thank you, Jacob.
1:27 XP WATCHES SMOSH MY LIFE IS COMPLETE AHHHHHH
"Man, I don't know! Door magic!"
Very relatable.
The worst part is when you spitball and answer, and then everyone just fucking runs wild with it. NEVER say it's Evocation unless you know for sure it is becuase your players WILL think it's gonna explode.
This! Came here to find this comment!
"Abjuration" is a decent enough fallback answer because that can mean anything from magically reinforced wood to make it harder to break down to preservation magic to prevent the lock from rusting to an honest to goodness barrier preventing folks from making physical contact with the door.
And yes, don't say "evocation" unless you want your players to immediately assume the door will explode.
@@webbowser8834 Although, you can say something like divination and really confuse your players.
@@darienb1127 Oh if you have a specific spell in mind for the door then by all means ignore my post. This is more of a "Oh shoot I made this door magical but I didn't think far enough ahead to make this door enchanted with any specific spell, I just wanted to say the place is magical! How do I respond to this in the next 10 seconds!?!"
Just say Abjuration and nobody will question it.
The ending of that first one seems like a “rocks fall, everyone dies” moment.
As though the poster conveniently left out the many moments where they refused to cooperate throughout the session/campaign, and this (likely just as bad) DM got fed up and gave them a lazy bad ending that wasn’t even planned. You can see plenty of hints that the DM had unrealistic expectations, but mostly this player is just INCREDIBLY immature.
20:00 Cus they're vampires and probably not in the same clan. Depending if they're using old or new rules, Old rules where really draconic about clans and their interactions. This actually wouldn't be too uncommon. In the new set of rules you're not so bound by clans so it makes more sense for different clans of vampires to actually work together instead of being so tribal about it.
Edit: Yeah "20 years later." They where playing the old system. Kill vampires that aren't in your clan is half the game. Even killing vampires in your own clan is sometimes part of the game depending on the clan.
With the way the system works, plus all the stories I've heard about both larp and regular table play, I sometimes wonder how this game made as far as it did
@@hugofontes5708 its actually a very interesting setting that caters to people who enjoy urban fantasy and brooding dark "woe is me" characters and vibes (its me, im people) but its themes of personal conflict and drama + politicking can just go awfully wrong in groups that arent on the same page or know each other very well. Its also a game about terrible people who do terrible things, and sometimes players take that too far. But its honestly a great rpg, its just not as accessible as DnD
@@hyche_-6790 I am aware, I read the book of some version a bit a while back. The question is more how the game survived both itself and its environment enough to get as far as it did
@@hugofontes5708 honestly? I think it came out at the right time lol, that must be a big part of it imo. It starting to be popilar in the early-mid 90s where a lot of gen x was clammoring for darker art and stories, I suppose, which can be seen reflected in a lot of the music at the time that was popular with grunge and hardcore bands. Just spitballing really though lol! I'm pretty sure they made a documentary about white wolf that goes further into detail about it :3
@@hyche_-6790 I completely agree with this. I would be fine with being stabbed in the back by another player if it meant their character got closer to their in-game goals; it's a great storytelling moment and I'd happily roll with it. But another guy in my group wouldn't be able to handle it at all without getting IRL-mad at everyone. He's a great guy, but the power fantasy he plays D&D to live out is one where he's a badass paragon-of-goodness who is entirely in control of his fate. An unexpected, DM-supported PC betrayal would break his brain.
15:00 I think that setting up a prison to have anti-magic properties makes sense. many of the criminals there could be casters and you wouldn't want a jail-break. Kinda like if an inmate is considered dangerous enough they will be completely chained up any time that they are outside of a cell. Magic is even more destructive, so that caution could be dialed up to 11. That being said in a world with mass amounts of magic it does not make sense for a city infrastructure not to include it. So having large parts of cities covered in anti-magic doesn't make sense without some narrative reason.
Really sad for the last person, I’m sorry. And thanks for sharing
When I was in high school, I brought my girlfriend to my D&D 3.5e game so she could try out the hobby, and my DM at the time immediately killed her character via orc sniper. She was his ex. She also never touched TTRPGs ever again, and I am still angry that he robbed her of the hobby like that.
Did you know He was her ex ? If so that was pretty stupid on your part.
Petty men are the worst.
@@clothar23 I mean tbf it was only stupid if Blinky_Dorf didn't explicitly go to the DM and warn them ahead of time, asking if it was chill. If the DM heard that and went "oh, it's chill" and plotted revenge, then I'm glad she's his ex cause that's a motherfucker who can't accept any losses
Lol. That one is on you.
Bros probably angry that you brought his ex that you are now dating to his dnd game.
On the first one, maybe the dm wanted them to win, but someone just stood in a corner, not helping.
That one was def an "everyone's an issue here" kinda story.
Had a DM that was a creep and a power gamer.
- Once stated in the middle of a game out of nowhere that he and our druid player had slept together. In which she clarified that they had fallen asleep late one night but didn't do anything.
- Also, he played a goblin that had become a part of our party. He was clearly fudging the dice rolls on the goblin's character abilities. The goblin was stronger than the paladin & the fighter, wiser than the druid, and more charismatic than the bard (basically only rolling 17s and 18s). Feats include the goblin persuading a merchant to sell him a halfling full plate armor set for one gold piece and the goblin casually killing all the bandits in our encounters before we had a chance to do anything.
- Also, he never planned/wrote things out ahead of time so things were always improvised and lacking on top of being a creepy power gamer.
Major creep, should probably not be around women
"YAAAYYY, I AM THE MOST POWERFUL!"
"Karl, you make the rules..."
Like how you gon' be the a power gamer AND the DM?? 😂
half the fun of real, non-asshole power gamers is that the DM can set them challenges they'll need the party's help to overcome. Can't do that if you're the mofo behind the DM screen.
this video was actually VERY helpful! in one of the next sessions they were going to go into a ice dragons lair, and UNTIL you said something they've always pretty much had the option to run disengauge from combat. one thing I've mentioned is that such things can have consequences, and they've kept that in mind pretty well. but i was going to trap them in with said dragon and now i need to let them know ahead of time, or at least before the fight itself, the point of no return. SO THANK YOU SO MUCH!
9:23 i'm currently in a game with 2 gms and its not bad. we have an online campaign that is very roleplay heavy. i feel like its more like one GM plus another actor (and he also makes the battlemaps cause he's really good at it). it is nice to have an npc talking to another npc and not just have one gm talking to themselves.
1:19 I loved the reference to Smosh's (Shayne's Reddit stories). I'm a huge fan and the wider it's spread, the happier I am. I literally came to this video from their Who Memed it in Smosh Pit.
Your videos are great too though and I'm always pleased when I see you upload ❤️
I also watch a lot of CritCrab.
I was about to comment "dont throw shade at smosh pits' reading reddit stories - that shits fire" 😂😂😂
@@master_ace he wasn't throwing shade at Shayne or Smosh. If anything it was a statement on how good and accessible their Reddit stories are.
@@8Rincewind it would have been a humorous comment - hense teh laughing emojis
Mad respect on the Shayne Topp appreciation
Great video, as usual😊 My take on the issues discussed: I think many DMs’ frustration could be avoided just by referring to another TTRPG manual. They get stuck on D&D or other medium-high complexity systems just because they’re the most famous; however, they push for bizarre scenarios, requiring a certain amount of knowledge to be solved while remaining engaging.
We don't allow dnd beyond at my table because it would always take too long and nobody understood the UI, plus it was really annoying to look at our tiny screens and we don't like being on our phones any more than necessary at the table. I'd be totally cool with an I Pad with a virtual version of a paper sheet tho and I provided all the paper sheets (and colour coded them as I got nice decorative ones)
Take 3.5 shots whenever Jacob mentions the assassin story
one fishy thing about the first story is that we get no information about the other players in this group.
Dm = bad
OP = only smart one
everyone else = don't worry about them, im the important one here.
Was the campaign being railroaded? according the the angelic op with a character that can be summed up with the "it's goofy time! NO DAD, NO!" meme it was.
Was there proper communication? maybe, maybe not. for all we know, OP just didn't want to bother listening.
Was the DM doing this so they could have a new story sometime down the road that starts with the players escaping from the slavers, like a vermintide thing? beats me; all we know is that the dm is a railroading poopyhead.
Also, railroading isn't that big a deal. Not all Dms have the improv skills and game knowledge required to allow their players a free style of play, and there are moments that play out better in a "cutscene" format.
The slavery ending definitely sucks, though.
@@PapaRoboto Once again - as long as it's communicated well, it's not a problem. If you're expecting a sandbox-type of RPG or something along the lines of "Choose your adventure", a railroaded campaign or even a single session might be really off-putting.
This is the first comment, and these stories are googledebunkers
YES
THANK YOU
What is that?
@@thegreatandterrible4508 watch miniminuteman
Lol good reference!
I know there are a lot of people that do these responding to horror stories videos. But what makes it really good with you doing it, we see how you are as a DM, and can see you putting into practice what you might talk about in these kinds of videos. Other response video people don't show themselves as a DM doing the hard thing and talking to players during the game. I like your insight here, please do more.
16:38 In what world does that list _not_ demonstrate the DM being stubborn and controlling?!
if I had a quarter for every time Jacob brought up that story about the DnD 3.5 game with the assassin player, I'd have 75 cents.
Which isn't a lot, but it's funny that it's happened three times.
The cameo of your kiddo 🥺
- i sleep...
- no! die!
as a severely dyslexic, dyscalculate and dysgraphic person, not having an online character sheet would instantly kill me
I just learned that dysgraphia exists. Thanks.
Yeah it's often something you have alongside your "main" dys-trouble.
i love how you speak about similar experiences and tell your little stories in these :)
I really enjoy this format for your videos! I avoid subreddits like this like the plague, but I also really enjoy seeing people roast stories from them and you're someone who has a lot of good insight into what it means to be both a DM and a player. It feels like having an outsider voice from my own (very well meshed, lovely to play with) group's occasional exploration into the wild horror stories out there on the internet within the tabletop sphere. It also seems like it's a fairly quick and easy type of video for you to film and put out in between your larger projects and scripted videos (sort of like your try not to laugh videos are) so if it's something you have further interest in doing, I would gladly watch you do many of these. I always have a lot of fun with them! All three of us in my party watch your videos fairly often and we really enjoy the silly casual ones just as much as the insightful and/or scripted sketch ones!
ok to clarify your confusion with vampire the masquerade. basically you play as a vampire, some vamp rules dropped, others amped up, some exclusive to certain vampire clans. basically the displaced heart trait was probably an advantage because only vampire hunters, vampire servants or "Ghouls", and vampires themselves will know if you get hit in the heart, you are immobilized and can have your head cut off safely. The displaced heart is an advantage because the stab in the chest they take, which is basically instakill, renders it irrelevant till they luck out with a good stab somewhere else.
"...man, I don't know, *door magic*." is so relateable 🤣
reminds me of the dimension 20 moment from the vulture dimension that's on the official youtube shorts channel as "Brennan fully breaks Zac" and is gold 😃
"I dunno man" *Fucking Dies*
Based Jacob for realizing the player was the issue in the first story
mhm
I was kinda appalled by how the comments he read all went "he didn't even allow you to run?" and "he forced you to play?"
like, bish, with an attitude like that for what you know will be the final session, they're lucky they GOT to play
would've been entirely understandable if the DM just paused and went "do you wanna play this game or not? cause if you don't want to play, I'm not gonna keep you here. But if you are, this is what's happening, and I get you're tryna play up to your character, but can you show at least a little cooperation? Name_1 and Name_2 are leaving our group today, let them have some spotlight here! instead of wrapping it all up in this brooding darkness you're bringing, man"
@@sourwitch2340 They'd have been luckier not to play lmao. The DM was very much the issue. The twist in the story was that This player was ALSO the issue. The DM isn't magically good now that one of his players sucked, he was still the worst person in that group.(Which - as we found out - is a major achievement frankly.)
The first one, that comment is absolutely on point.
You could roleplay that. Have the next campaign start with the escape. Perhaps even have a whole campaign about the escape.
Or have the character remark in the next campaign how they escaped the slave mines without further elaborating. It's a thing that happened, they don't want to talk about it.
The second one breaks the important social rule of "everyone is playing together"
You don't just change rules, you don't just make up houserules at your whim, you don't decide what the other people do.
Spoony/TheSpoonyOne talked about Vampire a few times back when he was active, and this sounds on par for Vampire 20 years ago. Lots of infighting due to not being the right clan or whatever. One of Spoony's stories ended with him, in larp, leveling the clans headquarters after he was beaten into submission by them the previous week. I haven't watched the video in 5 years or so so idk if the language used in it is pc for todays internet, but it's titled "Counter Monkey - Vampire: Spoony's Jyhad" if anyone is interested.
Had a dm rule that scrolls take 2 turns to cast, and if a wizard learns a spell from a scroll it still takes 2 turns to cast
Casting resurrection in 2 turns sounds fun.
That's uh, weird to say the least, might as well say that all that gold and time spent copying the spell to your book was for nothing. The whole point of that process is the wizard translates the spell from whatever other wizard wrote it down to their own personal format/formula so they fully understand it. It's like translating someone else's programming code from a different language to one you are familiar with.
That's such an odd houserule. At that point, just bite the bullet and ban scrolls
Huh, that's weird but not terrible. Your wizard can still cast at normal speed the spells he learned at creation and the two he picks up on level up.
So it sort of creates specialization.
@@Jermbot15 We're assuming there wasn't a house rule that you didn't automatically learn new spells on leveling up, but had to either pay someone to copy from their spellbook, or use off-board time to go to study.
Opportunity attacks when casting is an old 3/3.5 rule, and I like it. Casters are overpowered and gives melee characters a counter vs them.
Concentration check 10 plus spell level plusnumber potential attackers to avoid
@@toddmoore9841 also add to concentration check damage taken in the round this far.
We have opertunity attacks on apellcaating in pf2e as well, but most monsters dont have one anyways, so it's usually just players hitting evil wizards. The martial characters also have actions that cause opportunity attacks too, and there are ways to avoid inciting the oppertunity attacks so it balances well.
It was also in 3rd, but all you had to do was take a 5-foot step back and cast anyway. It was only a problem if something was impeding your movement.
It's a super normal mechanic tbh
It gives a way to actually shut down/inhibit casters, without needing to be able to one shot them, ect. Especially with some feats or so on, reach, step up, ect.
I'm confused why it would be considered a shock point that they exist, I was more shocked they didn't in 5e at baseline.
@@CrizzyEyes and first, and second, don't know about forth, I'm actually shocked that 5th got rid of it
@@Cthululululu to be perfectly honest; 5e players aren't really the best. many seem to think TTRPGs are about having a perfect power fantasy, which would make good mechanics like AOOs seem like a shock.
Stories like this remind me why I am blessed to have the groups I do. Back when I DM'd a Great Retcon campaign (basically shuffling DnD settings so I could constantly wing my campaign and write down the choices made) my players not only rolled with it but did shenanigans to make it better. We have a homebrew recovering God of Ganja and their holy city has a portal to the Taco Bell realm. A main antagonist is The Director: a movie director that morphs his surroundings into a movie set. The crazed Wood Elf of the party stole the key grip's camera.
14:40 - "spells in melee range proc opportunity attacks." In 3rd edition this was actually how it worked. And if you got hit by the attack the spellcaster would have to make a concentration skill check in order to finish casting the spell - otherwise the spell would be lost. There were workarounds for this such as taking a 5-foot step to get out of melee range, casting it as a quickened spell, or casting the spell defensively (which also required a successful concentration check to successfully cast the spell, but it avoided the attack of opportunity).
> Spells cause opportunity attacks
// sweats in 3.5 and PF
Yeah man, it is not a big deal if you want to use that rule in other editions or other settings. As long as it is explained in session 0 and is applied to both sides is fair.
@@j.margenat And as long as you implement the ability for caster to, you know, cast defensively aka the reason it isn't a problem in 3.5e/pf1.
I know I'm late to the party, but: I very much like it that way. It both empowers martials to potentionally hamstring casters by just by threatening AoO, but it's also easily preventable by either casting defensively (more or less any purpose-build caster with a high primary stat has to roll very unluckily on the concentration check to not make the DC, extra so if they chose the Combat Casting feat, really the only thing you stand a good chance at failing are high level spells, but low and mid level spells you can easily gamble on casting defensively) or ... and hear me out on that one ... MOVE out of the threatened area by either 5ft step or just eating the AoO whilst stepping away and then casting a higher level spell without needing to cast defensively.
It also incentivizes spellcasters to learn and prepare crowd control or terrain/area denial spells (good ole Grease and Wall spells) aswell as mobility spells that let you move great distances to that when someone tries to barge into your comfort zone, you can put a lot of space between them and you.
@@Aotearas Yup, spells provoking AoO means tactical gameplay is incentivized and rewarded on both sides of the confrontation. Sometimes rushing the caster with a double move and having the step-up ability in your pocket is more ideal than moving and attacking some other opponent and letting the caster cast uncontested. Meanwhile casters are incentivized to not only use damage spells and think about their positioning to keep them out of movement range.
Spells provoking sounds punishing at first but as long as the tools to work around it are also included (defensive cast and 5ft step) it actually enhances the caster experience and makes them better players.
For the first one, the player admits to not participating in the combat at all? And is then upset when this has a negative outcome for the party??? I'm 100% convinced that the DM wanted this to end differently, but has been told off for "railroading" in the past so didn't want to just hand them the ending without any participation in the FINAL BOSS FIGHT from one of the players. DM probably hit the "fuck it and fuck you, then" stage and just let them lose, given that's WHAT THIS PLAYER WAS TRYING TO DO!?
Also the title of the post mentions characters dying but they're not mentioned in the end, only that the party was enslaved; makes me think that some characters died in the boss fight while Tywin Lannister just stood by some nearby door.
Guaranteed that the two players leaving did not play with this player again lmao
I just don’t understand why they’re upset. Sure, they were told it’d be their last session last minute, but what does it really matter how it ended? They already said that they didn’t really like playing with the DM in the first place since they were kinda railroady and it was going to be the last session. Who cares if you get railroaded into a bad boss fight and then get enslaved if you’re never going to be playing this campaign again?
They definitely seem like the kind of person who just doesn’t want to go along with whatever someone else wants them to do, so they “don’t trust anyone or anything” so they can always have a reason to say no to whatever’s going on. And whenever it doesn’t go their way, they cry about how they’re being railroaded into things. That’s why I don’t fully buy their story. They were “kinda forced to enter this building” suggests that they weren’t really railroaded into it, but the OP is just trying their best to make it sound like it.
@@xinf3ctdx they also were saying that they only ever played this one character and every single one of their campaigns. Thats not a good sign.
Once I had my character not participate in a fight.
So. The entire party were wanted "criminals" and we were newcomers in a big city, doing shady stuff.
Now, my character is characterized as "respecting authority" and being a coward.
As we're moving through alleyways, we get detected by a squad of patrolling city guards.
While my generally murderhobo party members just get to fighting, my character decides to sneak/flee up a fire escape. (weird setting, don't ask)
Anyway, it turned out the guards were vampire thralls, and their unfortunate passing didn't really amount to anything.
But that incident definitely became a point of contention for my fellow party members, and they kept bringing it up for a few sessions after.
"Welcome to the friend zone" was kinda crazy since she was the one that friend zoned the guy, not the other way around 😭
Yeah, the guy there was being a dick because he thinks friend zone is an actual thing, and that she did it to a guy she just didn't want to be involved with. Basically a "fuck you, you don't get to choose". Crazy indeed
She didn't "friend zone" him. There is no friend zone. People are allowed to not be attracted to you while still enjoying your company. Grow up.
Do I not know what people mean when they say friend zone? Cuz what I thought it was was exactly what you said. @@Finckelstein
@@Finckelsteinyou're literally describing the friendzone.
@@PapaRoboto No, what I'm describing is friendship. The "friend zone" is a construct made up by "nice guys" who think a girl/woman is obligated to show sexual gratification for them acting like a friend to her.
I have several female friends. Am I in the friend zone with all my female friends just because I only have sex with my wife?
Spells in melee provoking attacks of opportunity used to be a thing in older editions, but even then they can be avoided by making a concentration check.
communication is absolutely key between players and their dm. Even as a newer dm i make sure to meet with each player one on one to talk about goals and expectations (as well as character stuff ofc) which is super important and really helpful to the me as the dm too, especially in a homebrew setting. I remember how awful my first few dnd games were as a player, when the DMs didnt communicate etc and i vowed to never be that kind of dm. I had a dm who insisted on as much detail as possible in our backstories, but then a few months into the game when i asked to roll perception or investigation to look for something extremely integral to my character's backstory, the dm had no clue what i was even talking about. Highly disappointing. Managing and balancing player AND dm expectations through clear communication is the #1 thing to do before starting a game.