I think you are thinking about the world "parlay" too literally. It's not necessarily going up to an owlbear and being like "hello mr owlbear, what do you want in exchange for my life", but rather like the scene in a movie where they hold out a piece of meat to a wild animal and get it to eat the meat instead of them and it leaves them alond
In this case parlay with the monster could be used as distracting the monster. Maybe you could use the meat to distract it from killing you. It may or may not work but is an option.
I think that's the same with oozes. They should have said it in there probably since its different from the other creature types in there but it could probably make sense to throw a vial of something the ooze likes down a hallway and when the ooze goes that way the characters could sneak past.
What I honestly quite like about these rules is that they're a great "oh shit" button for a DM, like myself, who may have planned a monster to be a standard combat encounter and wouldn't have expected characters to parley. I ran PotA a while back when I first started DM'ing and a bunch of specters are written to attack the party at one point in an average combat encounter, but the party outright refused to attack them and instead wanted to put these dark spirits to rest, a tactic on which the book had no details. I managed to fumble my way through it, but having rules like this would've made that a lot easier.
I understand what you mean. I was looking at the Death House section in Curse of Strahd the other day, and I came to the part about the Ghost Servant, and I'm like "What if the Cleric, or Paladin, or someone with a priestly background, or anyone else with a decent modifier for Religion, decided to try to put her to rest, or pacify her, by prayer or something?"
Hey, the ooze does actually have a use since oblex's are a thing from mordenkainen's tome of foes, the small one's have a intelligence of 14 while the elders boast a 22(and can cast spells),
@@general.catallion_8054 Thanks, after he questioned communicating with oozes I was like it would be good for oblexs and the psychic grey ooze variant but after that I found so many more in 5e content.
Happy new year! And yeah, it's nice to have this codified as a method for players. It makes it less 'foreign' for DMs. Plus with some of them are neat roleplay setups.
Ranger in my game parley with a dire bear by feeding it stew from the cookpot that was cooked the day before. The dire bear had snuck into the camp while the party was sleeping and after several successful skill checks she got it as a companion.
I was hoping for a bit more, but this is nice. Having a section talking about which rolls to use to learn about a creature is actually pretty helpful though.
I have a homebrew to encourage putting proficiency into knowledge skills. It goes like this. ... Before doing a skill check, a PC can analyze the situation with an appropriate knowledge skill with proficiency. It has to have proficiency. The PC rolls a d20 for Knowledge. If the roll is a 1 or 2, the skill check must be done at DC+5. If the knowledge roll is 3 or above, the PC can do the skill check at DC minus 3. It may sound crazy to give such a low DC for the knowledge check, but the odds give between a bonus of +1 to a +3 as the DCs scale up from 10 to 30. There is more room for failing with two checks. This homebrew is working very well in my games and causes the proficiencies to be more spread out. Just one more thing, these knowledge proficiencies cannot be used on attacks.
I read the chapter yesterday. I was a bit surprised about the content. I agree with you on all the points. I'll use some of the d4 option as quest or methods to distract the enemy.
Exactly. Or they should have just added a few more pages for specific monsters as opposed to just lumping everything into categories like they did. You could fit a TON of individual monsters into a page or two using charts! Tasha kinda blew the opportunity to make this chapter exceptional.
I personally love the parlaying with monsters. "Spoilers C.O.S" Once Upon a Time my players parlayed with a blue dragon they also happened to be carrying some Dream pastrys. The dragon demanded all the food and treasure the party was carrying proceeded to gobble down the food and passed out. Later the party find this wagon sitting off to the side the bard decide pull out a set a thieves tools and tried to pick the lock on the wagon an explosion is then set off knocking out two of the party members waking up the Dragon! That was an awesome fight! Luckily no players actually died.
I definitely think this section is necessary to go along with the whole "We're putting this in the book so you know it's ok" thing they have going on with Tasha's. Some new DMs could not know what to do in a situation where the party wants to parlay and not fight. There might also be some groups who think the game is just slaying monsters and getting treasure. You said that it never crossed your mind to parlay with oozes and monstrosities. It might not have crossed some people's mind to parlay with anything they consider a monster. Also, parlaying with monsters doesn't necessarily mean talking to them. You can communicate with a lot of different things without words. Parlaying is just establishing a situation of non-violence between 2 or more parties. For example, with oozes (though there are intelligent oozes in Mordenkainen's) it could be just putting that offering that they like in their path and going around it while it feeds on the offering. It could be the same thing for owlbears, even though I don't agree with you saying they are mindless creatures. All in all, this is a good section to have in the book and I'm glad that it's there.
Any party with a Druid & Eloquence Bard above 6th level would crush this tasking. Personal game: Create food and water cast at higher levels several times a week does a-lot for taming small groups of wild griffin’s while your animal speaker does their magic when your a15th lvl party that wants sweet ass rides available to teleport outside of places and ride the wild griffins in for the entrance effect. We also repopulated struggling old griffin populations.
Mere hours after watching this I ran a session for my group and the first thing the players did was parlay with a group of kuo-toa. My combat encounter became another entry on the future allies list!
I think a 3rd party publisher could crank out more specialized tables within each category, such as a book of tables for the very many aberrations, beasts etc.
11:09 "Who's conversing with oozes?" Oozes are instinct based creatures, so the encounter may be attempting to appease them long enough to escape. Also, I made an entire Ooze-based subclass, so...*they* are talking to oozes.
I like making Owlbears a more natural beast. Like the original Owlbears were created by this mad wizard, but as they have lived in the wild and generations have passed since they were created, they'd have settled into a more simple life in nature.
I make a total of 12 knowledge skills in my game. Arcana, Dreams, History, Linguistics, Medicine, Monsters, Nature, Navigation, Religion, Trade, Traditions and Traps. Those cover all areas of knowledge useful in DnD. Other areas like construction and engineering depend on proficiency with tools. Let's say that I wanted to do an Animal Handling check with an Owlbear. I would first use Monsters with proficiency to get advantage on the Animal Handling check.
They forgot one VERY IMPORTANT thing for Fay. 5. Candy or sweet baked goods. Those are better than gold when trading with fay that aren't Hags. In addition, giving these things should instead just give a straight +5 or something instead of advantage.
I figure "parleying" with an ooze--or animal-intelligence monsters of any type--would probably be less "Please take these offerings and consider not killing us," and more kind of distract them with food or shiny stuff while the players sneak past...
4th edition also had Dungeoneering and Streetwise which i think should have stayed tbh, currently there isnt really a "Skill" for trying to ask about knowledge of PEOPLE that are still alive and have done recent things. Streetwise kinda fit that.
I think these random dm tools are just exposure therapy for people afraid to DM. You just slip in little tables and hints into sections that sound like they could be interesting to players. Then one day they will have read enough to feel confident enough to give it a go.
I mean, the Awaken spell is a thing, and just because it's relatively "mindless" it doesn't mean a creature can't understand the concept of "don't hurt me, and you get this thing" or "I'm not a threat, please let me pass". At the very least it could distract a creature long enough for you to get around it, which is part of the point. And most anything else can be handled with a relevant check, like say, Animal Handling for behaving in the correct submissive manner to show you're not a threat. So you can, in a sense "communicate" to some extent even with a very obvious language barrier, this just makes it a little easier to convince it about what you're trying to do. So yeah, could it have been more in-depth? Yes, but I think what we got is pretty okay, at least as a starting point, with nothing too complicated and stuff that's easy to adapt to more complex situations. Plus, like you said, some of those could work as great quest hooks. Happy new year, Ted. May you and yours be blessed with good health and good fortune in the coming year. Stay safe!
Technically the last section is the puzzles section and it's almost 20 pages (18, I believe). You should probably do a video on them, for completionist's sake at the very least.
I would say consider granting advantage because you can also consider just playing along after they’ve given a gift and just give them what they’re asking? Idk, maybe.
This will honestly be useful for the Ranger in the game I DM who will do whatever is possible to avoid harming wild animals(especially ones that can be deemed as 'cute' such as Owlbears and Wolves). This would also pair well with a Speak with Animals spell I'd think, which is a 1st level spell.
I don't think "parlay" strictly means "speak." It's more "I dangle a vial of putrid liquid in front of the gelatinous cube before tossing it across the room, sneaking past the cube as it goes to absorb the liquid."
Maybe with ozzes and othes low inteligence monsters is not actualy comunication, but an atempt to bend the creature foccus in other thing, or make it calm.
something that this aid is to define some lures for creatures the party want to hunt, use the knowledge gathered from research, get a piece of the monsters desires and they can orquestate the ambush for a dangerous monster out of its lair.
I might make a low level role play/exploration campaign where the party is trying to appease or befriend some crazy creature but to get what it wants the party has to go see another creature which wants something else which leads to another creature, so on so forth.
I think you are thinking about the world "parlay" too literally. It's not necessarily going up to an owlbear and being like "hello mr owlbear, what do you want in exchange for my life", but rather like the scene in a movie where they hold out a piece of meat to a wild animal and get it to eat the meat instead of them and it leaves them alond
In this case parlay with the monster could be used as distracting the monster. Maybe you could use the meat to distract it from killing you. It may or may not work but is an option.
I think that's the same with oozes. They should have said it in there probably since its different from the other creature types in there but it could probably make sense to throw a vial of something the ooze likes down a hallway and when the ooze goes that way the characters could sneak past.
What I honestly quite like about these rules is that they're a great "oh shit" button for a DM, like myself, who may have planned a monster to be a standard combat encounter and wouldn't have expected characters to parley. I ran PotA a while back when I first started DM'ing and a bunch of specters are written to attack the party at one point in an average combat encounter, but the party outright refused to attack them and instead wanted to put these dark spirits to rest, a tactic on which the book had no details. I managed to fumble my way through it, but having rules like this would've made that a lot easier.
I understand what you mean. I was looking at the Death House section in Curse of Strahd the other day, and I came to the part about the Ghost Servant, and I'm like "What if the Cleric, or Paladin, or someone with a priestly background, or anyone else with a decent modifier for Religion, decided to try to put her to rest, or pacify her, by prayer or something?"
Hey, the ooze does actually have a use since oblex's are a thing from mordenkainen's tome of foes, the small one's have a intelligence of 14 while the elders boast a 22(and can cast spells),
I was saying the same thing lol
Not only that but the psychic grey ooze and other variants like that exist in 5e.
@@lancey_1680 oh yeah, forgot about those, good job!
@@general.catallion_8054 Thanks, after he questioned communicating with oozes I was like it would be good for oblexs and the psychic grey ooze variant but after that I found so many more in 5e content.
The fact that you can research the monsters with this rule makes the Ranger's small violin louder.
I think with Ooze it would just see a preferred prey on the ground and ignore you just giving you time to escape
Reason to Parley with an ooze: To lure it back to your wizard tower to live at the bottom of you garbage/poop shoot.
The Flumff requires you wear it as a hat for a nice night out.
Honestly would look pretty dapper if it had its own matching top hat
Happy new year! And yeah, it's nice to have this codified as a method for players. It makes it less 'foreign' for DMs. Plus with some of them are neat roleplay setups.
Bandit: Blast whomever came up with the word "Parlay"!
Tiefling Rogue: That would be the High Elves.
Ranger in my game parley with a dire bear by feeding it stew from the cookpot that was cooked the day before. The dire bear had snuck into the camp while the party was sleeping and after several successful skill checks she got it as a companion.
I was hoping for a bit more, but this is nice. Having a section talking about which rolls to use to learn about a creature is actually pretty helpful though.
Cringed nerdy nit pick but: mordenkainens tome of foes has three highly intelligent oozes, so hahhahahahah.
regarding the Intelligenze of Oozes, Oblex are highly intelligent, the elder one has 22
I have a homebrew to encourage putting proficiency into knowledge skills. It goes like this. ... Before doing a skill check, a PC can analyze the situation with an appropriate knowledge skill with proficiency. It has to have proficiency. The PC rolls a d20 for Knowledge. If the roll is a 1 or 2, the skill check must be done at DC+5. If the knowledge roll is 3 or above, the PC can do the skill check at DC minus 3. It may sound crazy to give such a low DC for the knowledge check, but the odds give between a bonus of +1 to a +3 as the DCs scale up from 10 to 30. There is more room for failing with two checks. This homebrew is working very well in my games and causes the proficiencies to be more spread out. Just one more thing, these knowledge proficiencies cannot be used on attacks.
I read the chapter yesterday. I was a bit surprised about the content. I agree with you on all the points. I'll use some of the d4 option as quest or methods to distract the enemy.
The best place for this would be in the individual monster entries in the Monster Manual, Volo's, Mordenkainen's, etc..
Exactly. Or they should have just added a few more pages for specific monsters as opposed to just lumping everything into categories like they did. You could fit a TON of individual monsters into a page or two using charts! Tasha kinda blew the opportunity to make this chapter exceptional.
Hey Ted, Happy New Year. Thanks for all the great content this year!
I personally love the parlaying with monsters. "Spoilers C.O.S" Once Upon a Time my players parlayed with a blue dragon they also happened to be carrying some Dream pastrys. The dragon demanded all the food and treasure the party was carrying proceeded to gobble down the food and passed out. Later the party find this wagon sitting off to the side the bard decide pull out a set a thieves tools and tried to pick the lock on the wagon an explosion is then set off knocking out two of the party members waking up the Dragon! That was an awesome fight! Luckily no players actually died.
I definitely think this section is necessary to go along with the whole "We're putting this in the book so you know it's ok" thing they have going on with Tasha's. Some new DMs could not know what to do in a situation where the party wants to parlay and not fight. There might also be some groups who think the game is just slaying monsters and getting treasure. You said that it never crossed your mind to parlay with oozes and monstrosities. It might not have crossed some people's mind to parlay with anything they consider a monster.
Also, parlaying with monsters doesn't necessarily mean talking to them. You can communicate with a lot of different things without words. Parlaying is just establishing a situation of non-violence between 2 or more parties. For example, with oozes (though there are intelligent oozes in Mordenkainen's) it could be just putting that offering that they like in their path and going around it while it feeds on the offering. It could be the same thing for owlbears, even though I don't agree with you saying they are mindless creatures.
All in all, this is a good section to have in the book and I'm glad that it's there.
Any party with a Druid & Eloquence Bard above 6th level would crush this tasking.
Personal game: Create food and water cast at higher levels several times a week does a-lot for taming small groups of wild griffin’s while your animal speaker does their magic when your a15th lvl party that wants sweet ass rides available to teleport outside of places and ride the wild griffins in for the entrance effect. We also repopulated struggling old griffin populations.
Mere hours after watching this I ran a session for my group and the first thing the players did was parlay with a group of kuo-toa. My combat encounter became another entry on the future allies list!
I think a 3rd party publisher could crank out more specialized tables within each category, such as a book of tables for the very many aberrations, beasts etc.
11:09 "Who's conversing with oozes?"
Oozes are instinct based creatures, so the encounter may be attempting to appease them long enough to escape. Also, I made an entire Ooze-based subclass, so...*they* are talking to oozes.
I like making Owlbears a more natural beast. Like the original Owlbears were created by this mad wizard, but as they have lived in the wild and generations have passed since they were created, they'd have settled into a more simple life in nature.
My Party really really likes to do this, thank you
I homebrew a skill called "Monster" works like any other skill. It is mostly used for hunting the monster.
I make a total of 12 knowledge skills in my game. Arcana, Dreams, History, Linguistics, Medicine, Monsters, Nature, Navigation, Religion, Trade, Traditions and Traps. Those cover all areas of knowledge useful in DnD. Other areas like construction and engineering depend on proficiency with tools. Let's say that I wanted to do an Animal Handling check with an Owlbear. I would first use Monsters with proficiency to get advantage on the Animal Handling check.
They forgot one VERY IMPORTANT thing for Fay.
5. Candy or sweet baked goods.
Those are better than gold when trading with fay that aren't Hags.
In addition, giving these things should instead just give a straight +5 or something instead of advantage.
Not gonna' lie, doing a pacifist run of D&D was some of the most fun my group and I have ever had!
Happy New Year
I figure "parleying" with an ooze--or animal-intelligence monsters of any type--would probably be less "Please take these offerings and consider not killing us," and more kind of distract them with food or shiny stuff while the players sneak past...
My thoughts: “you’re crazy!”
Haha
Already breaking each Parley into a CR range for cost and value.
4th edition also had Dungeoneering and Streetwise which i think should have stayed tbh, currently there isnt really a "Skill" for trying to ask about knowledge of PEOPLE that are still alive and have done recent things. Streetwise kinda fit that.
Happy new year
Owlbear might be an animal handling check.
Ahh the ranger section expanded
I think these random dm tools are just exposure therapy for people afraid to DM. You just slip in little tables and hints into sections that sound like they could be interesting to players. Then one day they will have read enough to feel confident enough to give it a go.
My players have been talking to most of my monsters with 8+ int since forever.
Edit: Also, tools fill in for old knowledge checks just fine.
😃 new years
Any advice on parleying with Mother in Laws? I'd rather bargain with a Froghemoth
Ah I'm the favorite son-in-law, so no issues on my end
@@NerdImmersion then you are most fortunate indeed! 😆
These rules must have been written by the French.
I imagine the "consider giving them advantage" thing is specifically to give you leeway for betrayal etc
Happy new year Ted!
Happy new years all!
I mean, the Awaken spell is a thing, and just because it's relatively "mindless" it doesn't mean a creature can't understand the concept of "don't hurt me, and you get this thing" or "I'm not a threat, please let me pass". At the very least it could distract a creature long enough for you to get around it, which is part of the point. And most anything else can be handled with a relevant check, like say, Animal Handling for behaving in the correct submissive manner to show you're not a threat. So you can, in a sense "communicate" to some extent even with a very obvious language barrier, this just makes it a little easier to convince it about what you're trying to do. So yeah, could it have been more in-depth? Yes, but I think what we got is pretty okay, at least as a starting point, with nothing too complicated and stuff that's easy to adapt to more complex situations. Plus, like you said, some of those could work as great quest hooks.
Happy new year, Ted. May you and yours be blessed with good health and good fortune in the coming year. Stay safe!
Happy new year!
Technically the last section is the puzzles section and it's almost 20 pages (18, I believe). You should probably do a video on them, for completionist's sake at the very least.
Really
When does this “research” happen within gameplay: once they’ve encountered the creature? I don’t quite understand… Help
I would say consider granting advantage because you can also consider just playing along after they’ve given a gift and just give them what they’re asking? Idk, maybe.
This will honestly be useful for the Ranger in the game I DM who will do whatever is possible to avoid harming wild animals(especially ones that can be deemed as 'cute' such as Owlbears and Wolves). This would also pair well with a Speak with Animals spell I'd think, which is a 1st level spell.
I don't think "parlay" strictly means "speak." It's more "I dangle a vial of putrid liquid in front of the gelatinous cube before tossing it across the room, sneaking past the cube as it goes to absorb the liquid."
Waste of space.! If you can't figure this much out yourself you should probably stick to checkers.
Maybe with ozzes and othes low inteligence monsters is not actualy comunication, but an atempt to bend the creature foccus in other thing, or make it calm.
something that this aid is to define some lures for creatures the party want to hunt, use the knowledge gathered from research, get a piece of the monsters desires and they can orquestate the ambush for a dangerous monster out of its lair.
I might make a low level role play/exploration campaign where the party is trying to appease or befriend some crazy creature but to get what it wants the party has to go see another creature which wants something else which leads to another creature, so on so forth.
The rule set here does give an easy to follow guideline for that type of story.
I was the 420th like... yay
happy new year!
Happy days