Still not as bad when I fucked up a stealth mission in Shadowrun. So shadowrun is like dnd but in a futuristic dystopian setting where corporations run everything without any rules or regulations holding them back. Anyway I was supposed to break three party members out of prison. First I need to tell you how they got captured. They came across a trap and instead of running or trying to disarm the thing they kept poking at it to see what it did. Anyway my characters boss wants him to break them out of the prison that he designed without anyone noticing. So me and another party member agreed on knocking out the security tower. We didn't know it would open every cell door in the prison and instead of one area it controlled all the security in the entire prison. So moments later the prisons on fire there are riots and it is on the news all while my character is getting an angry phone call from his boss. I only got off the hook because when the warden tried to arrest me he got blamed for everything because he was in charge of the prison.
@@girlbuu9403 Hiding from? You mean killing them so there's no witnesses. That's how my group plays DnD, even though we have 3 players who have their stealth on 20
@@goreobsessed2308 Also true. If you have a party decked out in full plate you might need to have a contingency plan, or make those stealth rolls real easy to pass, otherwise you are just being an asshole. This is also why the DM telling the players what kind of game they want to run is important, so they can make characters that better fit the playstyle and themes.
I just love that innocent, naive talking book character that thinks it's full of good ideas and optimistically thinks the players are going to go along with it's ideas. I know that character. I have read it many times.
I almost had my first TPK last time because of an "easy" waterdeep encounter. Wont say what happens there to avoid spoilers I'll just say that it involves kenku
Dungeon was adapted to the player level if you where going in the right direction. Ofc myself and others bashed trough the baricaded door, beacuse it was there and whent trough it. To our disgust there where lines and lines of enemies that where beyon our powerlvl. The dm was baffled only to find out that the players where never intended to bash the barricaded door. The DC on the barricaed door was a 19 strenght check that our 1st lvl fighter with high strenght easly overpowered with a nat 20 roll, and we where being punished for that.... Sometimes creator logic is not on spot.
10 years later the level 1 wizlord PC is asked. “So, how did you get started in dnd?” Her eyes just glaze over with PTSD. “Sit down, I’ll tell you a story.”
So, there was this temple fortress of snakemen that took human slaves. The module said it's a stealth and sneak affair, but the DM was having none of that. He had brought his own set of a hundred polished dice. 15 grey ones for zombies and paralysis checks. 19 blue ones for humans, air elementals, spells and the head priest. 30 green ones for snake beasts and poison checks. 35 green grey marbled ones for snakemen, yuanti and other snake humanoids. and 1 blazing red die for Ras Nsi and his flaming sword. We bribed our way in, and witnessed a monstrous commotion of slavery and sacrifice in the temple. Our cover got blown and we alerted the entire temple within minutes, and we had to flee after a few PCs fell. After patching us up for a bit, we discovered teleporters and in a wild goose chase we teleported all over the temple we split up the enemy forces and bit by bit battered them down. I was with the party rogue up on a balcony, facing a courtyard full of undead that were climbing up to us. We were shooting down at first, but then had to take most of our turns to throw them back down, until they overwhelmed us and we had to climb even higher and had to fight while clinging to the wall. Meanwhile in the throne room, our fighter challenged the leader and killed the snake king with his own sword. That day, was when I truly became a wizlord.
@@aracaniusinfinius2880 imagine what he could do if he MASTERED being a GM, he could mortally fuck up a session but still find a way to make it epic as hell.
As frustrating as that all sounds, I have no doubt that once the final enemy was defeated, they all felt extremely accomplished. (Especially if/when they found out that that wasn’t even supposed to be possible)
It's like Cidhna Mine. You end up in there and have to do a convoluted plan to escape. I just blew everyone up with magic, and the rest of Mararth was ravaged after that. I turned a lot of people into sweetrolls. And ate their hearts as i was a Werewolf.
Chadwick . Just Chadwick. I am still new to dnd, but why won’t we do the classic MAA strategy? M stands for murder, A stands for all and A stands for around. I’ve never seen that tactic fail. Because I never had the chance to play this game before.
@@frankwest5388 fighting is kinda like a Pokemon battle everyone gets a turn to attack ,level basically determines power and somethings will either be super effective or do absolutely nothing. You can take a chance to heal but you have a limited number of spells based on your level. Now everything is based on the role of a die or a combo of dice which means MAA is a risky tactic especially because you keep the damage you had in the last battle and have to do a long rest to get back most spells which can really suck after fighting waves of enemies.
@@frankwest5388 ''Just Chadwick. I am still new to dnd, but why won’t we do the classic MAA strategy?'' Because in D&D superior numbers are more dangerous than what you may think. Your warrior may be level 10, but enough level 2-5 can overwhelm him and kill him easily.
@@cruzwindu777deffsff4 That depends on which D&D we are talking about, my 3.5 team never had any problem dealing with almost infinite numbers of lower leveled enemies. They were simply too good at finding op setups in even weaker classes. I had a transmuter sorcerer that was pretty much invulnerable to anything below 10, hell I could tank berserkers and kill them with melee attacks(as long as they didn't get anything above 18 in their dice rolls.). In the new 5.0 however, yeah numbers are op.
i just picture that level one, new player sitting in a dark corner of a tavern, scowling into their glass, and occasionally some little newb comes along and asks if it's all true.
game: "This is a stealth mission. Here's an invisibility potion." me: *[incoherent screaming as I enrage and maul my way through hordes of elite guards]*
Every time I ran a module it always would get so detailed and side walked I end up just making stuff up on the fly to try to get them back on track lol
Thank you moose~! It is a friend of mines character drawn as a chibi~ Ive been thinking of switching to a non chibi version of one of her characters though. And I did not expect this many thumbs up! Ive never gotten this many ever before O_O And for the convo at hand.... ive never run a published adventure myself actually, I feel like I got a limited budget as is as I dont have a stable source of income and dont really wanna spend it on something that doesnt offer anything new mechanics terms as I feel like a module would mostly be fun to use once and then lose its value kinda.... I do like reading about old modules to get story ideas though, planning to run basicly the apocalypse stone in 5e sometime.
Honestly, what you ran was probably 10X more fun than what the module wanted you to. Much more epic, and im sure those players loved it. It was one of those where they werent supposed to make it out, but they did.
I would have tripled the xp gain and added a ton of loot for pulling something like this off. Seriously, accomplishing what was supposed to be the least likely outcome is a critical success.
With our group we came across a yuan-ti patrol who we fought, and charmed into helping us. Because they actually hated Rassnasi, and wanted him dead. We only disguised ourselves as slaves, and met the high priestess , who wanted Rasnassi dead. She kept our fighter Olin in the room with the weapons, and when the sacrifice occurred we snuck into Rassansi’s room as slaves,ambushed him, nearly died; but with cleaver thinking, and a heat metal spell from my Bard, and Rassnasi, and his guards were no more. We were on good terms with the high priestess, and the other conspirators.
Keep in mind that Tomb of Annihilation is a full campaign adaptation/remake of Tomb of Horrors, which was specifically created to be a player killer unless you carefully planned your actions. Also, the book has a "captured" scenario, so you can railroad your party into it.
@@Nemo12417 The "captured" scenario occurs if the PCs lose a fight to the Yuan-Ti in Chapter 3, or botch an assault or infiltration on the temple. The Yuan-Ti want slaves and sacrificial victims rather than corpses and fight to capture not kill. How is that a "railroad"?
So basically, this story/session is like (In quotes)... *"...Stealth is OPTIONAL for this mission."* *"...Nobody will notice if there's nobody to notice."* *"...It still counts as stealth if no one lives to tell about it."*
Reminds me of a secondhand story I heard about this one character someone created. They were a lizardman barbarian. Ended up with great strength and intimidation but next to no intelligence. Guy decided his character really wanted to be a rogue but could just never do it. So the character would run up screaming into encounters with low numbers of enemies, bash their heads in with his club, and then whisper to the corpses "You no see me." and walk away.
"Oh sweet jesus the campaign's become derailed in a massively stealth-focused campaign, what do we do?!" "We put the train into ***MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE***"
They never mention any deaths so I imagine that if your first D&D game is a GLORIOUS MEAT GRINDER OF DESTRUCTION without dying you had some goddamn fun
The whole plan in that module just sounds too specific for a player to come up with, and even if one of them suggested a plan like that, they'd probably say something like "Na, sounds too risky."
@@arandomuserwashere8895 Yeah, that's more like a console RPG narrative choice than a TTRPG way of handling that. Railroad-or-die as a start to a module, if the players are intended to have control over their characters at that point... which, maybe they aren't? That's the only way I can see that making sense, and of course that's not exactly a comfortable start to a module. It's a very Luke-Skywalker-gets-Princess-Leia-captured sort of plan. ...Plus, that just seems like a terrible plan, as Puffin Forest points out. How many volunteers are these yuan-ti getting? Is "slave for an insane cult" *really* that much of a dream career choice around those parts that they're used to people asking to be interns? How foolish are these yuan-ti that they'd go "Sweet, these very believable volunteer slaves bring us to quota for today's enslavements! Looks like we can punch out early today"? ...Just what the hell?
He's fudging a lot of details. You can, and that's fully expected by the module btw, also enter the temple by diguising yourselves as pure blooded yuan ti. The slave thing is for non human character for which such a disguise wouldn't work, (And also since the module is part of a campaign, there's a good chance than more than a few Pcs have already been captured and enslaved at this point int he module so already inside the temple.)
The players' way in sounds more creative and believable than the 'official' way into the place. Though I would have liked to see the head GM's reaction to seeing the aftermath of that and learning how derailed things had gotten xD
If it was me I would be like Me: So let me get this straight you want to continue ripping and tearing through this area Players: Yep Me: Okay let me just grab something to eat and drink because I want to enjoy this!
He cuts out a lot of stuff here, there’s more than one way to play it. In my party we snuck in disguised as snakes and planned to assassinate Ras with the help of the “friendly” snake lady. Unfortunately one of our NPCs was a double agent and Ras found us out. We could’ve killed him there in the blood pool room but instead we restrained our paladin and submitted. The slave part is actually really well done and it ended in a slave uprising and an awesome boss fight against a powered up blood ritual Ras. My lawful good human cleric got turned into a neutral/chaotic good yuan-it cleric and the whole thing was some of the most fun I’ve had in a D&D session.
@@powerist209 Sure. But the point is not s much thow he DMed his game here (he did the best of a very hurried situation), it's more how he presents the module in his video, making it look like it's ridiculous and badly written when ut's actually a much better module than he gives it credit for.
Custom campaigns are far better (Assuming you have a DM that can properly run one), because it gives the DM far more flex room. In one of ours, we were fighting against a group of Dryads who were dangerously and explosively expanding the forest, looking to wipe out entire cities in this wave of green. We were supposed to defeat each of the Dryad leaders one by one before making our way to the Dryad Queen to defeat her. However, in our first encounter against the first Dryad leader, one of our characters decided to try the diplomacy route and got a ridiculously good result, and we eventually ended up turning that Dryad to our side. So we eventually ended up defeating the queen and replacing her with the Dryad Leader we had turned and creating a strong bond between the Dryads and the other races. In a later campaign (set like 200 years in the future), I ended up playing a descendant of my original character (who ended up hooking up with and eventually marrying one of the Dryads), and I got to use some cool bloodline feats to give her some Dryad powers. And a lot of the story was radically changed by our decision to do that. Our DM flat out told us that he expected us to just steamroll all of the Dryads, but goddammit, we found a better way and positively influenced the story.
I've run both custom and pre written quite a bit and honestly I don't think it's that one is necessarily better than the other. Some pre written adventures definitely suffer from being too much on a railroad, but that can happen with custom too. With a pre written the important thing is to learn the adventure inside out so you're comfortable with it and know what stuff is important and what isn't, and then to remember that it's a guideline and if you need to go off script, you can. Think of it as directing a script you didn't write: it's there as a guide and to give you a story but you decide how to make that story work, and you're the final editor of what will work for your players.
Prefab adventures in general aren't bad, but then you get the ones that are written like a novel and everything goes to hell, because they're usually stupid.
As someone who's a DM, that's a terrible design - most of the groups I've run (though admittedly I have a sample size of two) would probably not jump at the opportunity of being slaves, and would likely try some other strategy. There is no other strategy, you say? They'll find one. They always do. Their plans haunt my dreams...
Just DM in adventurers league, then when a player comes up with a creative plan you can just say "the book doesn't list that as one of the options, so you can't do that".
Conor O'Neill Actually, this story, and all the comments saying the intended route was terrible, makes me really love how players can screw with the narrative. This and another route taken by a different commenter show how these deviations can ultimately lead to a more fun and exciting adventure. Kinda reminds me of Mann vs Machine in TF2. There’s a pretty solid meta to that game mode, but it’s always fun when someone on the team decides to screw that meta and do something stupid. Especially since most of the time that something stupid ends up working.
@@raspberrypie1706 *"the book doesn't list that as one of the options, so you can't do that"* Why not? Seriously, people keep _claiming_ that AL restricts play in this manner, but I've never been shown a rule that says this. If an adventure doesn't provide an actual reason why the PCs can't try something, they can try it. It might not _work,_ but they can try.
I always feel those books expect the players to have read it first. I doubt many groups would even consider giving up all their gear and equipment, let alone actually go through with it.
Five different fights, with all the heroes inches away from death, ending with the temple floors awash with the blood of the cultists. Now THAT is an adventure!
@@Leivve I have to agree - I have a DM that is running a homebrew and he was caught off guard when the party got outflanked and opted NOT to surrender and be taken prisoner. Fortunately for us, our spellcaster wasn't fully out of good spells yet, the rogue was already invisible, and our crit-build bolt ace was rolling like the D20 gods were smiling upon him. The DM had planned for us to be captured and to have our next session being our one absent player showing up with NPCs (played by us) to rescue the party - he had thrown a CR 17 fight a THREE level 10 characters and we had managed to escape it and even cut down a few of the enemies on our way out. NEVER assume players will willingly submit to being prisoners or slaves, that's DMing 101.
Module: "Your charactors will all submit themselves as slaves and be fine with that" me: My players would not sit still for that for one single minute. They would abandon the table before they did that. The new mission for the module would become "free the slaves at all costs".
Well, it works a bit different in a bottled module. Eventually the DM will let you know it's the only path in the module you can take, and because of that you know there's a realistic way to do it. Basically, if the module doesn't give you a enough options, metagaming is the only path.
@@DutchBlackMantha I understand that. What I am saying that for the people I am playing with, the answer to "The module only lets you submit to slavery" is "Then get a different module". And if I were to double down on stubborn it would become "D&D isn't fun any more, let's do something else"
@@DutchBlackMantha Not really. The job of the DM is to accommodate results for the players' choices and actions. Just because you're running a module doesn't "erase" the existence of the civilization needed to support a supply of human slaves. Players are free to choose to go to a nearby city, to find hirelings, or an alchemist, or get flammable materials or harvest plants with toxic smoke. The entire point of RPGs is that there is ALWAYS the freedom to think outside the box, and find another way in. A scroll case packed full of sulfur, powdered charcoal, and saltpeter for example can make a fantastic lockpicking tool.
Yeah, the module is poorly written. It should have read "If the players are defeated in combat, they are enslaved rather than killed and blah blah blah." Players have a way of breaking the story. Similarly in Pathfinder, there was an encounter at a port where there were some corrupt dock inspectors. As a Paladin(Old-school Paladin), and wanting to avoid a major incident soon before a long journey into the jungle river, I insisted that our party submit to their inspections and they basically ransacked our ship. Granted, all they made off with was basic travel rubbish, and I did wind up ponying up the cash for what was lost(Which I did gladly. Remember: Paladin). After we left the dock, the DM was like "Yeah, you were supposed to fight them." That was another poorly designed encounter, if you ask me.
That's actually in the book. The patrols are supposed to attack while the adventures sleep and the DM is supposed to go for the TPK. Then they wake up as slaves.
@htomerif DM is trademarked by D&D, GM is what every other RPG tabletop uses to call their "Dungeon Masters". GM, Game Master- is a generic term for someone who is running the game.
@@carljohnson3434 huh. But this video is specifically about D&D. This is all weird. You know, its been a while, but all this "I'm the DM but my hands are tied" stuff seems oxymoronic... emphasis on the last part. Do people really just all use pre-fab adventure stories now? Don't we already have that? Isn't it just called "books"?
When I played this module the GM suggested we submit ourselves as slaves. I said that was the worst idea anyone could have. GM: "What do you mean?" ME: "Your suggesting we submit ourselves as slaves to a race that has been keeping slaves for centuries at least, our only hope would be if someone inside of the temple actually wants to help us for their own gain." GM: "well their most likely would be someone who could gain from you guys taking out the head honcho" ME: "of course there would be, but we would be little more than pawns to be disposed of afterword's. And we would likely be weakened from the fight so we would be easy pickings" GM: *sweats feverously* "well than what do you intended to do" We than with my Half elf ranger and the Dwarf Fighter planed out how we were going to fight a war aginst them. we would attack slave caravans and recruit the slaves to our cause equipping them with our enemies gear the best we could. my character developed anti toxin for our small army and we began our attack. the bulk of our forces would attack the main gates with Bows and arrows and other ranged weapons as well as eventally getting into melee. while the party and the rest of our forces took down the two walls we had tunneled to inside the fortress we than killed the remaining guards equipped whatever slaves were inside attacked the Yu-tie army from behind while they were fighting our much better trained (compared to the ones we just freed) army of freed slaves and crushed the bulk of the Yu-tie forces we than went in and room by room cleared the entire fortress the final battle with Nasee ended a bit unceremoniously as the rogue stole his weapon and the wizard couter spelled Nasee's magic while myself and my *Newly deputized rangers* filled him full of arrows. by the end of it the GM didn't even know what to say with just a little bit of planning and forethought we had trivialized a module that was considered hard. In the end though he agreed the whole group had fun and it was a good session. Than me and the Dwarf recruited the slaves as our personal army... The GM said he was going to need a week to plan out our next session. :)
Iron Templar Your version of events sounds equally as awesome as what Puffin dealt with. We can all agree, though, that the intended route is terrible. Considering the specific kind of rouge I want to be, I wonder if a stealth option was ever possible. Slave option doesn’t count, I’m thinking more Metal Gear.
If I were DMing I'd have hosed you on the tunnels. Yuan-ti are partly snakes, so it makes sense that the more mutated of them would have the senses of snakes. That means poor/non-existent hearing but an intense sensitivity to ground vibrations. They'd have rumbled onto the presence of the tunnels and been prepared for that part of the plan. It would also have been fitting for the Yuan-ti, again playing up to their serpentine natures, to have hypontized their slaves at least to the point where they would be unable to fight their masters - albeit I doubt they'd invest that much effort until after it was clear you were freeing and re-arming slaves to fight against them. You also would have the issue of time. This is a big investment of time to free, arm, and train all of these slaves. What are the cultists doing in all that time? Just twiddling their fangs? Or do they get help of their own? Player ingenuity shouldn't ever be punished, but neither should it be allowed to completely run roughshod over the narrative and turn something into a cakewalk.
I think it's an Adventurer's League thing. Your character isn't tied to a campaign, but can be dropped in at any game. The catch is that they gain experience and level up normally, they don't level up or down to fit the module.
Thus you now see why i dislike AL. That and the 'PHB +1' rule. Means i can't be a scourge aasimar with the storm herald barbarian path, or any other quirky build I've always wanted to try.
brute force is the best force if tou have enough of this force you can topple any force making it a force to be wrecked in with making it the best force
You'll be okay so long as Abserd uses his magic on the big bad avoiding a TPK. Abserd is a 1st level everything. Even necromancer and classes that went away 2 decades ago. He is a lvl 37 spellcaster though.
I dunno, battling it out against guards you're not suposed to be able to win against head on and comming out on top of an epic melee sounds like more fun than the other guys probably had. Certainly makes for a better story.
@@KalibreSteelblast sometimes it just works that way you got a bunch of full tables who dont want new players and head gm just needs to take over the riff raff ben really should have declined because the head gm did ask if he had experience with this.
So D & D module says get the players to accept a stupid plan or not do it at all. That's why I never used any modules. It' way more fun to outline the situation and let the players decide how to do it. And if they decide to hit the problem with a hammer, and it won't work, let them. It might lead to them doing a side adventure to find a lost, ancient, magical, superhumonganoid "HAMMER OF THE GODS" to come back and hit the problem with that.
@@catherinestickels2591 And that's the fun part. To see just how far the players are willing to go to accomplish something in a totally stupid way. I was in one of my first adventures with a party of all new player and DM. We spent days (actual days) trying to get across a large missing area of the floor in a hall way to a door on the other side of the hole only to finally get about 4 of us over there and open the door, to find it was a false door opening to a solid wall.
This isn't a module, this is part of a hardcover, and the players go in through the back entrance if they actually paid attention. You can actually ambush most of the enemies in the temple.
"Y'know, often times if you bash your head against a brick wall enough times, eventually it will come tumbling down." So... you've played Dark Souls too.
To be fair, I know that my character would have a problem with the premise of that adventure. Willingly be captured and have all my hard-earned loot taken away? Yeah, that ain't happening.
That's the 'if they were captured' bit, not the adventure forcing it. I don't know why he says that's what it demands. I guess trying to talk himself up after screwing up. Though looking through the adventure and listening back to the video, I'm guessing it is all made up.
@@WeAreTheBentusi well that's cause you'se a monk see. what you need is rogueish guile and charm, use some ropes or have a magician magic up some trick, pretend to be slave trader with slaves. show interest in their cult and future business oppertunities. then start throwing daggers at everything. but before that last part release party members.
Yeah; I remember reading in the module that the recommended approach is not infiltration, ut rather diplomacy. You still end up meeting the potential ally and have to do the spy game within the dungeon, but at less risk. Or depending on what information you have amassed beforehand you can skip her and try to meet the big boss directly and get what you need from him diplomatically, as it is in fact to his own interest that you do do. And IIRC all the details on the slave infiltration given in the book are not just for submitting willingly - they are for when you attempt to fight and fail horribly, getting captured.
I'm sure this is all answered to some extent in the module, but why are the players somehow expected to submit themselves as slaves, giving up all their stuff, to enter the temple? Shouldn't the module START with them already having been captured, maybe reclaiming their stuff, then fighting in the temple? Again, I don't know the module, and my DM experience is pretty light, but I can't imagine a group saying "Good idea! We should get captured on purpose!"
Basically, IF the module is the one I think (and I think so, too many details like the bed guy and the pool of blood coincide), this module is part of a greatr campaign. To be exact the module is "fane of the nigh Sperpent" from Tomb of Anihilation. 1) Why is this pertinent ? Because at this point it's very possibe and even likely that the players already had some encounters with the Yuan Tis and where capture then, meanong they'd already *start*the module as slaves. 2) Even if no Pc isn't inside, the mosule expect and think that some of the players (aka those for which it's beleivable and have a decent charisma) will disguisethemselves as Pure Blooded Yuan Ti and the other who can't disguise will give THEM their items and PRETEND to be THEIR slaves. 3) The main bad guy, Ra's is actually fairly easy to convince to let you go and even support if you can proove or at least make him think he's being played for a stooge by the bigger bad guy of the campaign (which he is.) and in fact it is in his interest to let you vainquish them. 4)The second in command can be convinced to help you set an assassination of the leader and she will free you if you help her (and surprinsgly she will). There's also a doplleganger double agent in the temple for anothr faction of you work with them. and you can alway cause a slave revolt. There's also some secret passages to infiltrate the compound and so on, thereare a few options, the disguise yourself as yuan ti pure blood/slave is onely what the module consider the most likely and less dnagerous option. Should be noted this is meant to be a pretty tough module (and campaign) where characters can die a lot anyway. It's not called tomb of anihilation as in 'spiritual sequel to tomb of horrors' for nothing.
While commenting on some of your previous vids, I have been critical of your playstyle or DM style. This time, I have to give you props. You were tossed into a tough spot, rose to the occasion, and it sounds like the players all had fun. It sounds like the adventure was way too railroad-y but that's not your fault. You had no time to prepare...also not your fault. You rolled with what you had and the show went on. Well played.
I've seen this vid several times and I'm left thinking the party really managed to push the boundaries and wiped out the temple despite not being supposed to. It definitely sounds like it turned out to be a great session for "the battle" and I hope the new player stuck around. It does make me wonder though how possible it would be for Puffin Forest to break other written campaigns like that.
That's actually really cool imo. You're telling me everyone else that ran this campaign snuck through this keep except for ours which killed every last one of them? Guess who's table has the most xp now!
For AL, is it ok for different tiered players to play on the same campaign? It seems more on the coordinator's fault for pushing the player in a deadly challenge, and presuming a person would know a campaign straight out. Partly on Puffin's part as well, but I digress. Second, I do not blame Puffin for the mishap. First time GM and a missing a section, due to time constraints, would throw off many newcomers in GMing. I praise that, through sheer luck and improv, the player had a wonderful time. I hope to see more stories such as these, where mistakes are just Happy Little Accidents. Good job Puffin, you a get like for this video.
red1995j The level 1 should not have been put in a T2 game, and a DM’s first AL game should not be a T2 either. The other players should have created new 1st level characters and guided the new player while the DM ran a straightforward T1 module.
It's the one strange bit in this otherwise great story. The presence of the level 1 was made really explicit at the start, but doesn't appear to matter at all to the rest of the story?
Chekov's level 1 player didn't get killed. What a shame. Why even include her in the story when she doesn't get mentioned anymore? And how the hell did the wizard get out of that whole paralyze chest stabby situation?
full-party stealth never works in dnd without using pre-created characters for the PCs to select from. does the fighter in fullplate just stay back 2 rooms? If they can't hear his clanking, he won't hear his team's screams. edit: well I guess it depends on the fighter's listen check but considering it's not a class skill... (least not in 3.5e)
I honestly would have preferred the way you ran it haha. Much more excitement for sure and much more thinking for the players to do which is one of my favorite parts of tabletop RPG's. I think you did just fine.
The best example of derailing a story has to be the most memorable game I've been in, purely because of how stupidly powerful I got for just... following the plot like a reasonable person. My party were all serpent people in a conan universe. We consisted of serpents in human disguise, serpents that were scaly humans, and me, the giant, 12 foot long snake with arms who might as well have been a rope with a blender stuck to him. Claws, muscle, I realized halfway through the story that I could just abandon his sword to me more effective. Now, the party was effectively lost in the start, so we needed to find someone to ally with until we could find our king... so our party leader, a burly male warrior named princess (Named not for ironic reasons, but because the player was "haha, girls") wound up getting us allied with a lich.... but then we didn't stop, and got allied with a geomancer THE INSTANT WE ENCOUNTERED RESISTANCE. Now my character, at the time at least, was a rather irritable creature. He was by the books, temperamental, and overall was only with the party because Princess was literally the serpent prince. He was in it out of respect only. It was only recently that I looked back on it and realized I hadn't made the angry character I wanted, I'd made a character reacting in a perfectly natural way to the nonsense going on around him. Escape prison and get tranqed like 6 times, only to get imprisoned again while your party fucks around for 30 turns? Go into a cold rage and start shredding and devouring the guard kobalds, freeing everyone yourself! Stuff like that. The party was a nuisance to my character. Almost every enemy we met was greeted with the same thing. princess would lay down his weapons and declare "We're on your side!" and succeed his damn rolls. By the time we actually met up with our king, we'd dropped more storylines that I could count, and had basically every major baddy wanting us dead. For awhile onward we seemed to be on track, doing missions for the king, helping bring the serpent people closer to summoning Set to the mortal realm. throughout the campaign I'd been apprehensive to all the side switching, but this was the only side that mattered! My character wound up so devoted that he was made Set's champion. And then we reached the final chapter... What we were supposed to do was conquer the last kingdom that was putting up resistance to the summoning. It was like our final boss. Seige the castle and bring it down. Princess instead suggested we infiltrate it stealthily and take it down from within... which is what we did, minus the taking it down part. We walked right up to the people in charge, while I remained hidden, cursing so many serpentine swears under my breath that I'd probably make Set himself blush, watching as my party defected to join the resistance. What did I do? Did I betray my race, my god, my king, purely out of respect for my friends? No, my character thought they were idiots and traitors, and never built up any kind of respect outside of a basic sense of alliance with the same rulers and god. Now that that was gone, my character booked it back to the king to inform him of his son's treason, and I wound up being blessed by Set as the king succumbed to rage and grief. To punish the traitors, my beefy snake dude was turned into a minor god. The party attacked with a small party of the rebel kingdom's elite solders, tried to befriend me, and got slaughtered. Set was eventually summoned, and we consumed the world together. The ultimate champion. But seriously, there were so many interesting plotlines killed because of the constant ally shifting.
@@stormcrowlegendary3512 Yeah, I probably have told it before, it's my favorite, so i kinda tell it a lot I suppose. And yeah, he could spit acid, and I made him a brawler, while everyone else just... did really bad diplomacy. I'm not paraphrasing either, they'd go up to an enemy and say, "I'm on your side" and boom, diplomat. I did it once, picked up a target our king had sent us to kill, said, "Don't worry, I'm on your side, there's nothing to fear" then dropped him out a window. Everyone complained about me lying after that... I loved the campaign, but dear god my party was awful..
@@crazybunnyproductions7287 haha oh God I think I would have loved your character. Esp with that last scene of turning the party's stupidity around on them both with the diplomatic bs and the killing them for being idiots that can't just pick a side. He sounded very reasonable instead of angry and that party sounds terrible.
@@Kris-wo4pj Thanks. He was a very fun character to use, and being the final boss of a campaign was an interesting first for me. I originally thought not using conventional weapons would have been bothersome, but the DM was very reasonable with the claws, acid spit and poison sprays. I hope to bring him back in a future campaign perhaps.
Here's how I'd probably handle the "new player interaction" Coordinator: "Here is a new player with a level 1 character." Me: "Okay, got it!" Coordinator: "You know the character is level 1." Me: "Yeup, got it!" Coordinator: "I just want to make sure you understand she's a new character." Me: "No problem, give her advantage on her rolls. Got it." Coordinator: "Seriously, new character." Me: "Okay, so you want me to TPK the entire party in the first five minutes. Can do!"
@@kingfail3819 Sadly, this is D&D AL, where, you're not supposed to do things like that. Then again, in D&D AL, You're not supposed to put level 1 characters at a level 5-8 table. Even with that said, fudging it won't be possible, since everything is entered into the DDAL system by whomever is running the event, and I don't think the end point allows for that kind of fudging... That being said, Puffin could have just said "You know, guys, I'm not really prepared for this module this week. Since we have a new player, can I whip out a module appropriate for 1-4 level characters and you guys whip up some 1-4 level characters? I promise next week I'll have the other module prepped and ready to go."
Me: Oh, I have an idea! *Gets a bottle of colored paste and goes to cult leader* hey I have the cure to your ailment! Cult Leader: what? Me: trust me, I'm a con-woman!
My favorite part of this story is for Puffin it was a chaotic fun time, but for those players was probably one of their top epic D&D experiences....ESPECIALLY that first timer who stepped into this bloodbath.
To be honest, with that level disparity and the way the adventurers league kinda fucked both Ben and that player I think the plot armor solution was literally the ONLY option and infinitely forgivable in this one instance.
I love how they don’t just let her be a level appropriate for the campaign and throw her into a much higher-level campaign (I’m not too sure about Adventure’s League rules but nonetheless)
I know this is from 1 year ago but Adventure League is intended for you to make your character at home and then bring them to table. You start at level 1 and only level up through official module play. They couldn't scale her character up to the quest but honestly shouldn't have even allowed her to join that group. Probably had no alternate tables and didn't want to turn her away or something.
tfw you are cliche bbeg and spend tens of thousands of gold pieces on your op weapon but and don't curse it to paralyze anyone other than yourself who wields it. tsk tsk tsk yare yare daze
Honestly, their approach sounds way better. Ridiculous to make the players become slaves like that. If the story wants your players to be slaves, then much better for your players to go on suicide mission than to follow that plot. Even if they don't win, that just sounds more fun. And lucky for you they did win this time. But what happened to the lvl 1 Wizlord? The people need to know.
@@TKDragon75 What, really? Are you sure they didn't hand this off to the interns? I can't think of a time where a party's default approach is "Murder Hoboism"
Stupidly designed adventure, by how it sounds. Players are supposed to submit themselves as slaves and give up all of their items!? Might as well say they lose all their levels at that.
@@youtubeuniversity3638 have you played/ran the module? If not then you are only being given 5% of the circumstances and drawing an opinion on it. There are defintely other options. There are NPCs that can help, spells that can help, roleplay that can work, etc. Also funnily enough that someone else said this was the most railroaded adventure considering just how much content in the module is completely missable/skippable and how many options it gives you to complete the task. ToA is a hexcrawling exploration module with probably the least amount of railroad tracks out of any module released for 5e.
TH-cam University ehh it’s not quite like that as others have said. It’s more that there’s an encounter where they’ll likely be captured and have to use clever tactics to escape, more so than that they should usually actually submit themselves intentionally. I still think this part of the book assumes a lot about the kinds of things a group might be capable of, but I don’t think it’s quite as bad as he makes it sound.
me and my friends are playing through this campaign now and we ran into the exact same issue at this part. We essentially bashed our heads against the problem until we won, i think we had like 3 tactical retreats by the time we finally beat the rawnase.
I don't understand. Do the characters just have to figure out that they have to be slaves, or do they just get told to do this and remove all player agency? Every time I hear about adventurers league it just feels like a huge railroad sesh with no room for creativity.
Rowdy Boy Right? Trying to indirectly coerce or suggest to players that they need to become slaves would be a monumental task - they signed up to be adventurers; you can't adventure in chains (and what if they kill you instead, not like the players know it is "safe"). It's as unnatural as assuming the party will immediately set up shop when they get into town (they could become shop keepers but how likely is it really). Can't speak to Adventure League, but can discuss campaign books. The ones I've read tell the GM a series of strung-together situations that players activate but that will largely rely on the GM to set up/connect together/create player interest. It's a tough gig to just jump into willy nilly. In this case the book likely assumed the GM would see it had created a situation that benefited from a ruse/surrender and left it to the GM to make it happen in whatever way was reasonable to the GM. It's a lot of text and information for you to interpret (as opposed to being a step-by-step play-along guide) which is why Puffin initially skipped ahead to 'the start' of the adventure. Most of what a GM does is explain what is happening so that players can make decisions. They also have a special moment at the start of a session to set the scene, "Your group has been walking through such-and-such forest for the better part of a week, the landmarks on your map are inconsistent, the lost temple remains lost, you haven't seen any animals in three days, and you are running low on food..." "We finished last session with you lot getting victory drunk at ye old bar, this morning you wake up in a gutter, you aren't wearing shoes, your socks are seeping wet in a gooping yellowish liquid, and your companions are sporting rune-like face tattoos (you expect you have one as well)." At the start of a campaign you can explain why the group is there and what is luring them towards danger, let them know they've already been dragged into the dungeon as captives, ask them who messed up and how, or who had the brilliant idea to "get captured" and what items they attempted to stow on their person. Not sure about Adventure League, or this book in particular, but the campaign books I've read barfs the initial setup at the DM to figure out. Adventure League probably requires consistency, then again no one instructed Puffin on the 'proper way' to start the campaign. Mad props to Puffin, takes guts.
Rowdy Boy I would guess that the GM is actually supposed to introduce the players to this idea. As far as I understood, this is actually a part of a module that was converted for adventure league. The original module consisted of way more approaches and would involve way longer preparation abilities for the players. But they did cut it down for adventure league, so I guess in the name of efficiency the GM probably was considered to either outright railroad the players into slavery or simply tell them. But yeah, the slavery thing is usually a total fail in this type of game.
In the module there are couple ways it can go down. The slave way is supposed to happen if a yuan ti patrol finds them while they sleep and TPKs them. Then they wake up as slaves on the inside. It's not supposed to be the players idea lol.
Aaron Dacon That is actually soooooo old school. Life has not really changed that much and no player that spend any amount of time to create his perfect murder hobo will ever willingly become a slave.
Or they could just charm their way into becoming paid assassins for the Yuan Ti (Like my group did). Or go through the secret entrance, and fight a Hydra.
@@youtubeuniversity3638 It's part of Tomb of annihilation, which I'm currently running. Tomb of annihilation is great, but this part in particular is exactly written like in puffin describes in the video. This isn't even a little railroady, it's straight up "ok now TPK and they are slaves of the yuan ti, there". Otherwise the fortress is an absolute nightmare to attack. There's another entrance which makes the thing more manageable but it's totally hidden and players don't have any particular reason to look for it. Fane of the night serpent is a really really poorly written dungeon. And it came out in september 2017 IIRC.
the first time i repaired the DC plug on a laptop via soldering sorta went like this "Hey, can you repair my broken laptop plug, " "uhhh... sureee.., why not." I managed to do it thou
Currently running the fane of the night serpent. My players did the slave thing but it still turned into a bloody mess. Granted they released all the slaves and redirected half the dungeon to them but it's still pretty bloody.
@@arandomcheese Gotta admit I'm jealous lol. The few people I game with in this tiny GA town apparently have no interest in a tough campaign. Tried talking them into it yesterday, and nope.
Lol, you become paid Assassins for the high priestess, and mearly disguise yourselves as slaves, then when the sacrifices occur you ambush Rassnasi, and get into an epic boss fight. Or you could take the secret entrance, and fight a Hydra.
@@samaustin339 That sounds so... restricted... I think I will stick to my own custom made worlds and let my players enjoy good stories and expansive settings. : P
@@Elmithian Sam Austin was merely pointing out an alternative to the "surrender and become slaves" option. How is it "restrictive" to present an adventure in the form of a detailed setting populated by NPCs with individual motivations, that has multiple different ways to complete?
@@nickwilliams8302 Because in comparison to every GM I have been under, giving them handful of options only is *very* restrictive. And honestly makes me feel like it is more a video game than a tabletop game where imagination of the players can open up incredible new methods to achieve their goals and missions. And yes. He was pointing out alternatives that *I* took as being alternatives offered in the *book* for this particular short campaign. Not from their own head. I apologise if it was his suggestions to expand the setting that was already quite restrictive. I was only criticising the material of the book/quest that was being used in the story. And I have seen more "fleshed" out characters written on the back of a cereal packages than the fleshed out world this represents (over-exaggeration I know. My point is, this isn't fleshed out at all in comparison to most good campaigns I have seen and seen others run)
@@Elmithian "I was only criticising the material of the book/quest that was being used in the story." Except step one of that activity is to _read_ the book. And if you want to claim that you have, please give me a page number where the PCs actions are restricted.
My group had a hard time in the fane, but it was also kind of wonderful. We took it in three separate assaults. *GIANT SPOILERS* The first assault was when we were level 5, and had come upon the fane by chance. We walked in the front door, and the guards saw us. Before anyone said anything, the druid summoned 8 wolves and negotiations were off the table. The pureblood/malison fled through the door while the guards were torn up. Unable to open the door, we decide to break it down. Our druid upcast “Heat Metal” by one level and my cleric had 10 attempts to beat a dc 25 strength. With both guidance and bless active, I succeeded on 3 attempts, and my warhammer tore a person sized hole through FOUR INCHES of solid bronze (also rupturing many enemy eardrums from the terrible noise) Unfortunately, there were archers and basilisks behind the door, as well as a snake pit, so we had to retreat after an arrow went through my ear. Our second attempt came at level 7 when the last of the Wizards of Thay cast invisibility on us to aid us in her revenge, as Ras Nsi had slaughtered their company. We went in a secret underground entrance that my cleric had left when he had escaped slavery. Then we discovered a very interesting facet of our druid’s wild shape. Wild shape is neither a spell nor an attack, so using it didn’t break invisibility. He transformed into a giant crocodile and ferried us across a guarded river, invisibly. We didn’t fail a stealth check until we got to the blood pools, so we wiped put everyone in that room, before checking out the sauna. Inside is a malison who we bargain for information from in exchange for granting him a merciful death. My cleric performs a ritual killing via “Inflict Wounds” to the spine while standing in the blood pool, and then performs a quick blessing to send the guy’s soul to Dendar (although an hour afterwards, I realized that the Soulmonger made that rite worthless). We sneak around as slaves for a bit before fighting some more, with our rogue dying in one of the fights. Then we find the storeroom, which besides holding enough stuff to make some packs with, has blocks upon blocks of special incense that the Yuan Ti use to pacify their slaves. My cleric ends up on a really bad trip from getting a lungful of the stuff. After taking a rest in the armory, some guards “invite” us to the high priestess’s room, where we get info about Ras Nsi’s secret chambers. Before we head there, we check out the altar and the divination pool. Our barbarian (the rogue player’s new pc) decides to leap into the pool, getting terrible visions and a madness as a result. By what seemed to be a stroke of fortune, the madness was only alcoholism. Unfortunately, the player then decides without prompting from the DM, that the blood from the altar looks like wine to her maddened barbarian. One drink later, she suffers a horrific transformation into a Yuan-Ti pureblood, which leaves her with 4 levels of exhaustion, leaving her useful for only one thing, sounding the alarm to scare Ras Nsi to his secret quarters. After the alarm is sounded, the warlock that I am playing in addition to my cleric (we often have to double up because of a chronic shortness of players) makes us all invisible, and we sneak into Ras Nsi’s quarters. One surprise round later, we quickly find out that Ras Nsi is an 11th level wizard, and he kicks ours asses. We barely escape the fane alive, running through the bronze door, which had only been covered by cheap cardboard. Our third attempt occurs the next session, but with an important change. Our 1st druid (we had two that were alternating on missing sessions, but both showed up this time) forgot his sheet, and thus used a wizard I had designed specifically to fight Ras Nsi when the DM asked us to make extra characters per the book’s advice. We sneak in invisibly once again, but this time we have a plan. Our second druid summons some snakes, and we tie blocks of nightmare incense to them. The snakes sound the alarm by ramming the gong, and soon nearly the entire population of the fane is in the main chamber. We light the incense with magic, and the entire population slaughters each other while gripped in the LSD fueled nightmares. Only the champion and two guards survive, as well as the priests, who were mysteriously missing. The champion flees to the harem with the guards, and we repeated the trick by tossing another block of incense in (which one of the guards tried to bat back to us with his sword while screaming “Nooooooooo” but he failed). The champion made his save again, and teleported away with the concubine he was having a secret affair with. We go invisible again, and the casters use the teleporters to warp into the throne room while the non magicals walk. In the throne room, we find the champion having slain many of the traitorous priests, but about to be finished off by the head priestess. We surprise attack her, and she is flung right into the champion’s path, and he uses the opportunity to cut her in two mid flight. Since the champion’s concubine is nearby, we take her hostage in an attempt to make him fight for us, but we only end up extracting a promise to flee the temple immediately. We take what we can get, and the couple departs to an unknown fate. Finally, we confront Ras Nsi a second time, opening by telling him that his master had played him for a fool, and that the tomb he is guarding is the source of his disease. After bemoaning the loss of his people and slaves, Ras Nsi attacks us as his last hurrah. With a wizard bearing counterspell on our side, he doesn’t do a whole lot until the last round. Unfortunately we rolled a bit low on damage, so once we ran out of counterspells, Ras Nsi called out a final curse upon the world, and committed suicide via SIXTH LEVEL SPELL SLOT FIREBALL. Miraculously, we all survive, and jump to level 9 from the ridiculous xp we got. After a rest, we get a small encore by demolishing the temple’s last survivor, Ras Nsi’s hydra, with the contagion spell. We leave the temple through the ruined door, hauling fat stacks of loot.
Levels were given out by triumph over great threats or by heavy training. Death wasn't punishment, it was a release and the entire campaign was just them forging their through hellish encounters together with nothing but blood, guts and determination
I tend to favour more flavorful characters then the standard cookie cutter builds you get sick of seeing all the time from CharOp guides. NonStandards make a much better and more memorable story. Im thinking of making a Goblin Ancient Paladin for my next game.
"If you bash your head against a brick wall enough times it will eventually come tumbling down" 10:43 Yea, but chances are you'll be the one tumbling down first
You have to admit... brute-forcing your way through a stealth-designed campaign, and winning... that's ballsy.
As a smart man once said nobody can notice if there is nobody to notice
@@games-rc9td The alternate approach to stealth games! xD
@@Nyerguds thats how i play stealth mision because that is both funny and challanging
Still not as bad when I fucked up a stealth mission in Shadowrun. So shadowrun is like dnd but in a futuristic dystopian setting where corporations run everything without any rules or regulations holding them back. Anyway I was supposed to break three party members out of prison. First I need to tell you how they got captured. They came across a trap and instead of running or trying to disarm the thing they kept poking at it to see what it did. Anyway my characters boss wants him to break them out of the prison that he designed without anyone noticing. So me and another party member agreed on knocking out the security tower. We didn't know it would open every cell door in the prison and instead of one area it controlled all the security in the entire prison. So moments later the prisons on fire there are riots and it is on the news all while my character is getting an angry phone call from his boss. I only got off the hook because when the warden tried to arrest me he got blamed for everything because he was in charge of the prison.
That's pretty much Warframe in a nutshell xD
I can picture the table screaming and rolling dice desperately. And then the coordinator looks and says: "oh, the new guy is good".
Luciano Alencar lol yeah little did they know...
Luciano Alencar Little did they know that the initial plan was skipped right into the ‘kill everything’ route.
Always the most fun route 😂
lets be honest the kill everything route is the only route worth taking
@@michaelm8852 you mean, the fun route
Every stealth mission:
No one will notice, if there is no one to notice
That is why you give them a reason to be stealthy. Like they are level 3ish and they are hiding from frost giants.
@@girlbuu9403
Hiding from? You mean killing them so there's no witnesses.
That's how my group plays DnD, even though we have 3 players who have their stealth on 20
@@IndigoTail >Level 3 PCs
>Frost Giants
>Killing them
You or whoever is DMing your campaign is being WAY too forgiving and budging WAY too many rolls.
Expecting every group to be able to do a stealth mission is silly.
@@goreobsessed2308 Also true. If you have a party decked out in full plate you might need to have a contingency plan, or make those stealth rolls real easy to pass, otherwise you are just being an asshole. This is also why the DM telling the players what kind of game they want to run is important, so they can make characters that better fit the playstyle and themes.
“hey can I try DMing?”
“yeah sure heres 7 people and im sure you’ve got a campaign planned”
And here's another, level 1, player. Please proceed to balance her out with the others, who are all far higher lvl.
If the new player who is woefully underlevelled for this quest happens to perish, it is your fault, and may Tiamat have mercy on you
That's AL for ya!
to be fair, ben DID say he had the campaign ready.
329link
To be fair, they expected him to have prepared a specific module before he even asked them.
Wizzards of the Coast:
This is a stealth mission!
Puffin Forest:
*Stealth is optional for this mission!*
Technically they used the, "No one can hear you if they are all dead", method of stealth.
Technically speaking, it's still considered as stealth if none lives to tell.
Marauder Snitches end up in ditches
Wizlords of the coast*
@@danielhughes6556 They took lessons from the Stiner Scout Squad.
I just love that innocent, naive talking book character that thinks it's full of good ideas and optimistically thinks the players are going to go along with it's ideas. I know that character. I have read it many times.
I almost had my first TPK last time because of an "easy" waterdeep encounter. Wont say what happens there to avoid spoilers I'll just say that it involves kenku
those are terrible ideas though. xD
Dungeon was adapted to the player level if you where going in the right direction. Ofc myself and others bashed trough the baricaded door, beacuse it was there and whent trough it. To our disgust there where lines and lines of enemies that where beyon our powerlvl. The dm was baffled only to find out that the players where never intended to bash the barricaded door. The DC on the barricaed door was a 19 strenght check that our 1st lvl fighter with high strenght easly overpowered with a nat 20 roll, and we where being punished for that.... Sometimes creator logic is not on spot.
@@krzyrzak456 My group just met them and it almost ended very badly for us also.
You must be madly thinking about all-possible scenarios right now.
10 years later the level 1 wizlord PC is asked. “So, how did you get started in dnd?”
Her eyes just glaze over with PTSD. “Sit down, I’ll tell you a story.”
So, there was this temple fortress of snakemen that took human slaves. The module said it's a stealth and sneak affair, but the DM was having none of that. He had brought his own set of a hundred polished dice. 15 grey ones for zombies and paralysis checks. 19 blue ones for humans, air elementals, spells and the head priest. 30 green ones for snake beasts and poison checks. 35 green grey marbled ones for snakemen, yuanti and other snake humanoids. and 1 blazing red die for Ras Nsi and his flaming sword.
We bribed our way in, and witnessed a monstrous commotion of slavery and sacrifice in the temple. Our cover got blown and we alerted the entire temple within minutes, and we had to flee after a few PCs fell. After patching us up for a bit, we discovered teleporters and in a wild goose chase we teleported all over the temple we split up the enemy forces and bit by bit battered them down. I was with the party rogue up on a balcony, facing a courtyard full of undead that were climbing up to us. We were shooting down at first, but then had to take most of our turns to throw them back down, until they overwhelmed us and we had to climb even higher and had to fight while clinging to the wall. Meanwhile in the throne room, our fighter challenged the leader and killed the snake king with his own sword.
That day, was when I truly became a wizlord.
@@jacksonbarrett5561 I read it
Whats a wizlord? Its a wizard and warlock multi-class?
@@elmeromogollon She is lv1 so future wizlord.
@@elmeromogollon just a weird way that said person said wizard I think.
Respect for Ben for absolutely derailing the campaign and managing to recover it anyways, that's some real DM work right there
Apparently his first too lol
@@aracaniusinfinius2880 imagine what he could do if he MASTERED being a GM, he could mortally fuck up a session but still find a way to make it epic as hell.
@@cooldog8580 Such is life.
Good on the players for somehow surviving
@@cooldog8580 isn't that what he does?
As frustrating as that all sounds, I have no doubt that once the final enemy was defeated, they all felt extremely accomplished.
(Especially if/when they found out that that wasn’t even supposed to be possible)
Those are the best runs though
Who said they ever found out? XD
I bet the GM had to be fudging some rolls in their favor at that point.
@@Jebu911 to be fair, he kinda screwed them over accidentally, so it’s not unwarranted that the dice get a helpful nudge every now and then.
Frick impossible we got cheese and nat 20s
It’s interesting getting a notification that says “Whoops, Everyone has to die”
My phone notification goes
"A body has been discovered"
SOOO that makes it funnier
Breaking news everyone is dead
I say it’s T H R A N O S fault everyone died
Probably Skynet trying to tell you it's timem
Whoops that wasn't the right email
That sounds like much more fun than the original plan.
Yeah, actually? Yeah.
Lots more fun.
And leagues less uncomfortable.
It also sounds like it would be a slog if everyone wasn't on Death's doorstep every single second past the bribing.
@@kento369 Mhm. speaks to how shit the original plan is, doesn't it?
DnD in a nutshell
It definitely soundslike a nightmare for dm though
This was supposed to be Skyrim and you turned it into Dark Souls!
Pretty much
Nope, that was supposed to be Dishonored but turned into Doom 2016.
It's like Cidhna Mine. You end up in there and have to do a convoluted plan to escape. I just blew everyone up with magic, and the rest of Mararth was ravaged after that. I turned a lot of people into sweetrolls. And ate their hearts as i was a Werewolf.
Nah, if it was Dark Souls his entire party would have been dead after the first encounter.
It was supposed to be Splinter Cell but he turned it into Dynasty Warriors.
The original plan, literally:
Step 1 - give all gear to enemies
Step 2 - profess servitude to enemies
Step 3 - come up with a plan
Chadwick . Just Chadwick. I am still new to dnd, but why won’t we do the classic MAA strategy?
M stands for murder, A stands for all and A stands for around.
I’ve never seen that tactic fail.
Because I never had the chance to play this game before.
@Chadwick . Just Chadwick.
This "plan" appears literally nowhere in the written adventure.
@@frankwest5388 fighting is kinda like a Pokemon battle everyone gets a turn to attack ,level basically determines power and somethings will either be super effective or do absolutely nothing. You can take a chance to heal but you have a limited number of spells based on your level. Now everything is based on the role of a die or a combo of dice which means MAA is a risky tactic especially because you keep the damage you had in the last battle and have to do a long rest to get back most spells which can really suck after fighting waves of enemies.
@@frankwest5388 ''Just Chadwick. I am still new to dnd, but why won’t we do the classic MAA strategy?''
Because in D&D superior numbers are more dangerous than what you may think. Your warrior may be level 10, but enough level 2-5 can overwhelm him and kill him easily.
@@cruzwindu777deffsff4 That depends on which D&D we are talking about, my 3.5 team never had any problem dealing with almost infinite numbers of lower leveled enemies. They were simply too good at finding op setups in even weaker classes. I had a transmuter sorcerer that was pretty much invulnerable to anything below 10, hell I could tank berserkers and kill them with melee attacks(as long as they didn't get anything above 18 in their dice rolls.).
In the new 5.0 however, yeah numbers are op.
Through this entire video I’m wondering what happened to that poor level one wizard during that fight
i bet that plot armor happened xd
She probably stopped being level 1 somewhere during that fight.
I think they died he said 2 players died then they took off
You weren't the only one. I was expecting him to mention her towards the end.
Same. I’m also left wondering 😂
i just picture that level one, new player sitting in a dark corner of a tavern, scowling into their glass, and occasionally some little newb comes along and asks if it's all true.
My only disappointment with the video is that it doesn't follow up on that poor, level 1 character and how they managed to survive this.
“Ras Nsi? Haven’t heard that name around here in years...”
By the end of that session I’m pretty sure the level one is level fifteen
"It's true...the yuan-ti...the pool of insanity...Raz nsi...all of it."
"I'm not in the room, right?"
"What room?"
"The room he's casting all those spells in!"
game: "This is a stealth mission. Here's an invisibility potion."
me: *[incoherent screaming as I enrage and maul my way through hordes of elite guards]*
Didn't even need the potion.
@@Kindrick barbarian?
@@Bruh-lq7ev bard would have done something else.
@@CappyEmo You're not a bard until you seduce your way through at least one major encounter that was supposed to end with combat
@@Bruh-lq7ev Bard would have sex with Rassnasi. And a bunch of STD's. Rash-nassi.
Honestly due to being derailed this seemed to become a MUCH better and more memorable dungeon IMO
I like your picture.
Every time I ran a module it always would get so detailed and side walked I end up just making stuff up on the fly to try to get them back on track lol
true, it helped that they won
Thank you moose~! It is a friend of mines character drawn as a chibi~
Ive been thinking of switching to a non chibi version of one of her characters though.
And I did not expect this many thumbs up! Ive never gotten this many ever before O_O
And for the convo at hand.... ive never run a published adventure myself actually, I feel like I got a limited budget as is as I dont have a stable source of income and dont really wanna spend it on something that doesnt offer anything new mechanics terms as I feel like a module would mostly be fun to use once and then lose its value kinda....
I do like reading about old modules to get story ideas though, planning to run basicly the apocalypse stone in 5e sometime.
Honestly, what you ran was probably 10X more fun than what the module wanted you to. Much more epic, and im sure those players loved it. It was one of those where they werent supposed to make it out, but they did.
Yeah, having to spend a whole DnD session kissing snake ass doesn't sound like my idea of fun in all honesty.
I would have tripled the xp gain and added a ton of loot for pulling something like this off. Seriously, accomplishing what was supposed to be the least likely outcome is a critical success.
I wouldn't be surprised if they have gain epic boons from that whole ordeal
@@Raptorman0205 You can access the temple in more than one way though...
@@TheBayzent but you can't reach the throne room more than one way with any decent chance of success right?
So the module assumes the players will be okay being captured and turned into slaves? Did the creator of the adventure meet D&D players?
With our group we came across a yuan-ti patrol who we fought, and charmed into helping us. Because they actually hated Rassnasi, and wanted him dead. We only disguised ourselves as slaves, and met the high priestess , who wanted Rasnassi dead. She kept our fighter Olin in the room with the weapons, and when the sacrifice occurred we snuck into Rassansi’s room as slaves,ambushed him, nearly died; but with cleaver thinking, and a heat metal spell from my Bard, and Rassnasi, and his guards were no more. We were on good terms with the high priestess, and the other conspirators.
Keep in mind that Tomb of Annihilation is a full campaign adaptation/remake of Tomb of Horrors, which was specifically created to be a player killer unless you carefully planned your actions. Also, the book has a "captured" scenario, so you can railroad your party into it.
@@Nemo12417
The "captured" scenario occurs if the PCs lose a fight to the Yuan-Ti in Chapter 3, or botch an assault or infiltration on the temple. The Yuan-Ti want slaves and sacrificial victims rather than corpses and fight to capture not kill.
How is that a "railroad"?
@Gambent
The module assumes no such thing.
@@samaustin339 Ah, good old 'cleaver tihnking' ... thats where you all kill everything right? with cleavers?
Y'know, when a GM says everybody has to die, they're usually talking about the players, not... well.. the entire flippin' dungeon!
Rocks Fall; The BBEG was spelunking on the wrong fucking day.
_Peace was never an option_
I also interpreted it that way! ...Yeah. That went better than expected!
Please don't kill your players! That is called "murder" and is generally frowned upon in modern society! The PCs are fair game though...
So basically, this story/session is like (In quotes)...
*"...Stealth is OPTIONAL for this mission."*
*"...Nobody will notice if there's nobody to notice."*
*"...It still counts as stealth if no one lives to tell about it."*
Too true... to true
Ghetto Stealth, nobody will see anything ever again...
Reminds me of a secondhand story I heard about this one character someone created. They were a lizardman barbarian. Ended up with great strength and intimidation but next to no intelligence. Guy decided his character really wanted to be a rogue but could just never do it. So the character would run up screaming into encounters with low numbers of enemies, bash their heads in with his club, and then whisper to the corpses "You no see me." and walk away.
@@gregoryalbert3461 I fucking love that concept, i want to try that now lmao
Thats how I ran my ninja in pathfinder
"Oh sweet jesus the campaign's become derailed in a massively stealth-focused campaign, what do we do?!"
"We put the train into ***MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE***"
Too bad they didn't get the turbo
"We can't brake, we cannot slow down"
"Slow down? This is when we go EVEN FASTER."
@@lagg1e If you go fast enough maybe you can get up to a sufficient velocity to complete an orbit and just get back to the start.
Just gotta get enough speed to start generating lift obviously
Wait a minute. What happened to the Level 1 First-Timer? Did she survive the bloobath or was she baptised in D&D serpent blood?
She was the last one alive lol
I cant believe he survived the bloobath
Rachit Modi yeah I thought the person in the throne room would be the first timer but no.
"I'm playing a wizlord!"
Most likely died in the first fight
I honestly just wanna know if the new player had fun
Until she got slaughtered, sure!
They never mention any deaths so I imagine that if your first D&D game is a GLORIOUS MEAT GRINDER OF DESTRUCTION without dying you had some goddamn fun
@@TomasPabon They didn't? What about the spear through the chest.
@@ZphyraRyuu The wizard managed to survive. Somehow.
Spear through heart dosen't matter
“Is there a plan B?”
“Yes. They die.”
Like honestly same
The book was right. It just didn't realize the temple was going to die, not the players.
I love seeing you slowly improve your art style, I especially noticed the texture in the hair and different eyes
I know he's really getting good with his art
I don’t know how you can make something look simultaneously shit and really good at the same time but damn Puffin manages it.
His animations are a bit more animated this vid, too.
Lol it's not like his animations were a very high bar to begin with. Though i do enjoy his stories
I liked the talking book. The art has improved greatly.
The whole plan in that module just sounds too specific for a player to come up with, and even if one of them suggested a plan like that, they'd probably say something like "Na, sounds too risky."
Yep, it seems kinda dumb that that's the only way the campaign expected you to beat the dungeon.
@@arandomuserwashere8895 Yeah, that's more like a console RPG narrative choice than a TTRPG way of handling that. Railroad-or-die as a start to a module, if the players are intended to have control over their characters at that point... which, maybe they aren't? That's the only way I can see that making sense, and of course that's not exactly a comfortable start to a module. It's a very Luke-Skywalker-gets-Princess-Leia-captured sort of plan.
...Plus, that just seems like a terrible plan, as Puffin Forest points out. How many volunteers are these yuan-ti getting? Is "slave for an insane cult" *really* that much of a dream career choice around those parts that they're used to people asking to be interns? How foolish are these yuan-ti that they'd go "Sweet, these very believable volunteer slaves bring us to quota for today's enslavements! Looks like we can punch out early today"? ...Just what the hell?
He's fudging a lot of details.
You can, and that's fully expected by the module btw, also enter the temple by diguising yourselves as pure blooded yuan ti.
The slave thing is for non human character for which such a disguise wouldn't work,
(And also since the module is part of a campaign, there's a good chance than more than a few Pcs have already been captured and enslaved at this point int he module so already inside the temple.)
@@s.m.2523 Well,still,stealth plan sounds too forced anyway
The players' way in sounds more creative and believable than the 'official' way into the place.
Though I would have liked to see the head GM's reaction to seeing the aftermath of that and learning how derailed things had gotten xD
If it was me I would be like
Me: So let me get this straight you want to continue ripping and tearing through this area
Players: Yep
Me: Okay let me just grab something to eat and drink because I want to enjoy this!
He cuts out a lot of stuff here, there’s more than one way to play it. In my party we snuck in disguised as snakes and planned to assassinate Ras with the help of the “friendly” snake lady. Unfortunately one of our NPCs was a double agent and Ras found us out. We could’ve killed him there in the blood pool room but instead we restrained our paladin and submitted. The slave part is actually really well done and it ended in a slave uprising and an awesome boss fight against a powered up blood ritual Ras. My lawful good human cleric got turned into a neutral/chaotic good yuan-it cleric and the whole thing was some of the most fun I’ve had in a D&D session.
Well, he did say that he had to prepare 5 MINUTES.
@@powerist209 Sure. But the point is not s much thow he DMed his game here (he did the best of a very hurried situation), it's more how he presents the module in his video, making it look like it's ridiculous and badly written when ut's actually a much better module than he gives it credit for.
Custom campaigns are far better (Assuming you have a DM that can properly run one), because it gives the DM far more flex room.
In one of ours, we were fighting against a group of Dryads who were dangerously and explosively expanding the forest, looking to wipe out entire cities in this wave of green. We were supposed to defeat each of the Dryad leaders one by one before making our way to the Dryad Queen to defeat her. However, in our first encounter against the first Dryad leader, one of our characters decided to try the diplomacy route and got a ridiculously good result, and we eventually ended up turning that Dryad to our side. So we eventually ended up defeating the queen and replacing her with the Dryad Leader we had turned and creating a strong bond between the Dryads and the other races. In a later campaign (set like 200 years in the future), I ended up playing a descendant of my original character (who ended up hooking up with and eventually marrying one of the Dryads), and I got to use some cool bloodline feats to give her some Dryad powers. And a lot of the story was radically changed by our decision to do that.
Our DM flat out told us that he expected us to just steamroll all of the Dryads, but goddammit, we found a better way and positively influenced the story.
That is an amazing ending of a campaign and start of a character
I've run both custom and pre written quite a bit and honestly I don't think it's that one is necessarily better than the other. Some pre written adventures definitely suffer from being too much on a railroad, but that can happen with custom too.
With a pre written the important thing is to learn the adventure inside out so you're comfortable with it and know what stuff is important and what isn't, and then to remember that it's a guideline and if you need to go off script, you can.
Think of it as directing a script you didn't write: it's there as a guide and to give you a story but you decide how to make that story work, and you're the final editor of what will work for your players.
Prefab adventures in general aren't bad, but then you get the ones that are written like a novel and everything goes to hell, because they're usually stupid.
so your D&D campaign became shadows of war?
"... and he single handedly improved race relations with anyone and anything that could handle the girth of his member."
Neutral Evil: “Whoops! Guess everyone has to die now”
Even the hat clerk?!?
especially the Hat clerk!
@@luketfer Especially the WIZARD!!!
*"You never split The party"*
As someone who's a DM, that's a terrible design - most of the groups I've run (though admittedly I have a sample size of two) would probably not jump at the opportunity of being slaves, and would likely try some other strategy. There is no other strategy, you say?
They'll find one. They always do. Their plans haunt my dreams...
Just DM in adventurers league, then when a player comes up with a creative plan you can just say "the book doesn't list that as one of the options, so you can't do that".
Raspberry Pie I'll take "reasons why AL is stupid" for 500 alex!
Conor O'Neill Actually, this story, and all the comments saying the intended route was terrible, makes me really love how players can screw with the narrative. This and another route taken by a different commenter show how these deviations can ultimately lead to a more fun and exciting adventure.
Kinda reminds me of Mann vs Machine in TF2. There’s a pretty solid meta to that game mode, but it’s always fun when someone on the team decides to screw that meta and do something stupid. Especially since most of the time that something stupid ends up working.
@@raspberrypie1706
*"the book doesn't list that as one of the options, so you can't do that"*
Why not?
Seriously, people keep _claiming_ that AL restricts play in this manner, but I've never been shown a rule that says this.
If an adventure doesn't provide an actual reason why the PCs can't try something, they can try it. It might not _work,_ but they can try.
@@raspberrypie1706 If a DM utters that sentence to me, it is the last time he does that for me. I'm leaving.
*YELLING IN ABSERD VOICE* "WE MUST PROCEED QUIETLY, THERE IS GREAT DANGERRRRRRR!"
I didnt even read the Abserd voice part of that comment and still read speech in Abserd's voice. I think i watch too much Puffin.
reminds me of a gag in the online comic "order of the stick":
"everyone roll a stealth check."
"I GOT A FOUR!"
“I waaaaarnnnned yoooouuuu.”
@@ericb3157 "NO WAIT, IT WAS A NINE! THE BOOTS ADDED FIVE!"
I bet they preferred what you did over what the original story, cause screw becoming slaves, I'd prefer almost dying, way more fun.
Hell yeah. That fight sounded awesome and chaotic as hell. Screw willingly being slaves.
I always feel those books expect the players to have read it first. I doubt many groups would even consider giving up all their gear and equipment, let alone actually go through with it.
Five different fights, with all the heroes inches away from death, ending with the temple floors awash with the blood of the cultists. Now THAT is an adventure!
@@Leivve I have to agree - I have a DM that is running a homebrew and he was caught off guard when the party got outflanked and opted NOT to surrender and be taken prisoner. Fortunately for us, our spellcaster wasn't fully out of good spells yet, the rogue was already invisible, and our crit-build bolt ace was rolling like the D20 gods were smiling upon him. The DM had planned for us to be captured and to have our next session being our one absent player showing up with NPCs (played by us) to rescue the party - he had thrown a CR 17 fight a THREE level 10 characters and we had managed to escape it and even cut down a few of the enemies on our way out.
NEVER assume players will willingly submit to being prisoners or slaves, that's DMing 101.
if a module EVER. EVER only works with just one way through?
The players WILL take another way.
Module: "Your charactors will all submit themselves as slaves and be fine with that"
me: My players would not sit still for that for one single minute. They would abandon the table before they did that. The new mission for the module would become "free the slaves at all costs".
Good too know I'm not the only one thinking that. 😅
Well, it works a bit different in a bottled module. Eventually the DM will let you know it's the only path in the module you can take, and because of that you know there's a realistic way to do it. Basically, if the module doesn't give you a enough options, metagaming is the only path.
@@DutchBlackMantha I understand that. What I am saying that for the people I am playing with, the answer to "The module only lets you submit to slavery" is "Then get a different module". And if I were to double down on stubborn it would become "D&D isn't fun any more, let's do something else"
@@DutchBlackMantha Not really. The job of the DM is to accommodate results for the players' choices and actions. Just because you're running a module doesn't "erase" the existence of the civilization needed to support a supply of human slaves. Players are free to choose to go to a nearby city, to find hirelings, or an alchemist, or get flammable materials or harvest plants with toxic smoke. The entire point of RPGs is that there is ALWAYS the freedom to think outside the box, and find another way in. A scroll case packed full of sulfur, powdered charcoal, and saltpeter for example can make a fantastic lockpicking tool.
Yeah, my escaped slave half-orc monk would not ne ok with tgat
Your version sounds way better than the version "as written". You def. Went above and beyond for those players!
The original gave no autonomy. I would love his version even if I died
Story:"Be sneaky or you lose."
The players:"WE GOING IN FULL POWER"
FULL THROTTLE
@@MetaGiga Charge with speed of 1000 ponies
Yeah, the module is poorly written. It should have read "If the players are defeated in combat, they are enslaved rather than killed and blah blah blah."
Players have a way of breaking the story. Similarly in Pathfinder, there was an encounter at a port where there were some corrupt dock inspectors. As a Paladin(Old-school Paladin), and wanting to avoid a major incident soon before a long journey into the jungle river, I insisted that our party submit to their inspections and they basically ransacked our ship. Granted, all they made off with was basic travel rubbish, and I did wind up ponying up the cash for what was lost(Which I did gladly. Remember: Paladin).
After we left the dock, the DM was like "Yeah, you were supposed to fight them." That was another poorly designed encounter, if you ask me.
that doesnt sound so bad.
That's actually in the book. The patrols are supposed to attack while the adventures sleep and the DM is supposed to go for the TPK. Then they wake up as slaves.
Oh thank god someone is still using "DM" What the hell is a "GM"?
@htomerif DM is trademarked by D&D, GM is what every other RPG tabletop uses to call their "Dungeon Masters". GM, Game Master- is a generic term for someone who is running the game.
@@carljohnson3434 huh. But this video is specifically about D&D. This is all weird. You know, its been a while, but all this "I'm the DM but my hands are tied" stuff seems oxymoronic... emphasis on the last part. Do people really just all use pre-fab adventure stories now? Don't we already have that? Isn't it just called "books"?
When I played this module the GM suggested we submit ourselves as slaves. I said that was the worst idea anyone could have.
GM: "What do you mean?"
ME: "Your suggesting we submit ourselves as slaves to a race that has been keeping slaves for centuries at least, our only hope would be if someone inside of the temple actually wants to help us for their own gain."
GM: "well their most likely would be someone who could gain from you guys taking out the head honcho"
ME: "of course there would be, but we would be little more than pawns to be disposed of afterword's. And we would likely be weakened from the fight so we would be easy pickings"
GM: *sweats feverously* "well than what do you intended to do"
We than with my Half elf ranger and the Dwarf Fighter planed out how we were going to fight a war aginst them. we would attack slave caravans and recruit the slaves to our cause equipping them with our enemies gear the best we could. my character developed anti toxin for our small army and we began our attack. the bulk of our forces would attack the main gates with Bows and arrows and other ranged weapons as well as eventally getting into melee. while the party and the rest of our forces took down the two walls we had tunneled to inside the fortress we than killed the remaining guards equipped whatever slaves were inside attacked the Yu-tie army from behind while they were fighting our much better trained (compared to the ones we just freed) army of freed slaves and crushed the bulk of the Yu-tie forces we than went in and room by room cleared the entire fortress the final battle with Nasee ended a bit unceremoniously as the rogue stole his weapon and the wizard couter spelled Nasee's magic while myself and my *Newly deputized rangers* filled him full of arrows. by the end of it the GM didn't even know what to say with just a little bit of planning and forethought we had trivialized a module that was considered hard. In the end though he agreed the whole group had fun and it was a good session.
Than me and the Dwarf recruited the slaves as our personal army...
The GM said he was going to need a week to plan out our next session. :)
what happend?
Honestly I would try to create a new empire and that would be the goal of later sessions, however later adventures would still be an option
Iron Templar Your version of events sounds equally as awesome as what Puffin dealt with. We can all agree, though, that the intended route is terrible.
Considering the specific kind of rouge I want to be, I wonder if a stealth option was ever possible. Slave option doesn’t count, I’m thinking more Metal Gear.
Having a personal army sounds awesome. It's a lot of responsibility, but awesome lol.
If I were DMing I'd have hosed you on the tunnels. Yuan-ti are partly snakes, so it makes sense that the more mutated of them would have the senses of snakes. That means poor/non-existent hearing but an intense sensitivity to ground vibrations. They'd have rumbled onto the presence of the tunnels and been prepared for that part of the plan.
It would also have been fitting for the Yuan-ti, again playing up to their serpentine natures, to have hypontized their slaves at least to the point where they would be unable to fight their masters - albeit I doubt they'd invest that much effort until after it was clear you were freeing and re-arming slaves to fight against them. You also would have the issue of time. This is a big investment of time to free, arm, and train all of these slaves. What are the cultists doing in all that time? Just twiddling their fangs? Or do they get help of their own?
Player ingenuity shouldn't ever be punished, but neither should it be allowed to completely run roughshod over the narrative and turn something into a cakewalk.
With so many enemies.... How many times did they level up? More specifically the level 1?
I'm also really interested to know how the bloody first time player lvl1 char managed past all that!
The level 1 I'd have to assume to at least level 3. But from 5 to 6 you need like 7,500xp.
She probably went straight to tier 2 after that
Surprise. It uses old school rules and the cult only uses barter. No gold pieces no experience. Better luck next time.
She leveled twice before hitting the ground...
Why on earth did she start out at level 1? If she's Joining a level 5 campaign, her character should start at level 5.
I was gonna say exactly this. Why are you purposely screwing someone who is brand new? All you're doing is setting up to ruin their fun.
I think it's an Adventurer's League thing. Your character isn't tied to a campaign, but can be dropped in at any game. The catch is that they gain experience and level up normally, they don't level up or down to fit the module.
Thus you now see why i dislike AL. That and the 'PHB +1' rule. Means i can't be a scourge aasimar with the storm herald barbarian path, or any other quirky build I've always wanted to try.
@@Reapor234
PHB?
@@IrvingIV player's hand book
Ah.... brute force.... an unstoppable force when you have enough force.
Sentence needs to make use of the word "force" more times. 7/10
People die when they are killed...
brute force is the best force if tou have enough of this force you can topple any force making it a force to be wrecked in with making it the best force
Gavin Smith is this enough force
7.8/10 Too much force.
All I heard from that passage reading was "Stealth is Optional"
"Stealth is optional for this mission."
Or, to give it it's proper PAYDAY 2 name:
"Unless you need exp, you can run in and blow up the place."
I'm pretty sure Puffin Forest GM game are destined to go wrong
You'll be okay so long as Abserd uses his magic on the big bad avoiding a TPK. Abserd is a 1st level everything. Even necromancer and classes that went away 2 decades ago. He is a lvl 37 spellcaster though.
Totally want to be in a game of his when it goes wrong. :D
I dunno, battling it out against guards you're not suposed to be able to win against head on and comming out on top of an epic melee sounds like more fun than the other guys probably had.
Certainly makes for a better story.
"Even though everyone's level five, she's level one!" ... Really? You're going to foist a new player with a low-level on a fresh volunteer? Genius...
@@lortep458 Not the point- they should have grouped her with a more experienced DM.
@@KalibreSteelblast sometimes it just works that way you got a bunch of full tables who dont want new players and head gm just needs to take over the riff raff ben really should have declined because the head gm did ask if he had experience with this.
If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough force
More dakka, if target is proving resistant, apply more dakka, if you apply enough dakka you will win
When in doubt, apply more greataxe. Also ale.
Unless the task is Brain surgery?
"ESPECIALLY if the task is brain surgery!" Said the Barbarian.
If that doesn't work, split the party!
If that doesn't work, keep throwing fireballs at the problem.
So D & D module says get the players to accept a stupid plan or not do it at all. That's why I never used any modules. It' way more fun to outline the situation and let the players decide how to do it. And if they decide to hit the problem with a hammer, and it won't work, let them. It might lead to them doing a side adventure to find a lost, ancient, magical, superhumonganoid "HAMMER OF THE GODS" to come back and hit the problem with that.
Always the best solution to "That won't work." is to say "...without X." where X is something you just made up.
Players will never look for the intended solution. They will always find a way to break their way through puzzles and puzzle their way through fights
@@catherinestickels2591 And that's the fun part. To see just how far the players are willing to go to accomplish something in a totally stupid way. I was in one of my first adventures with a party of all new player and DM. We spent days (actual days) trying to get across a large missing area of the floor in a hall way to a door on the other side of the hole only to finally get about 4 of us over there and open the door, to find it was a false door opening to a solid wall.
This isn't a module, this is part of a hardcover, and the players go in through the back entrance if they actually paid attention. You can actually ambush most of the enemies in the temple.
@joker81035 Tomb of Annihilation.
"Y'know, often times if you bash your head against a brick wall enough times, eventually it will come tumbling down." So... you've played Dark Souls too.
I still haven’t beaten dark souls 2.
How long’s it been?
Halo 2 on LASO mode. Its the same. I played both.
To be fair, I know that my character would have a problem with the premise of that adventure. Willingly be captured and have all my hard-earned loot taken away? Yeah, that ain't happening.
That's the 'if they were captured' bit, not the adventure forcing it. I don't know why he says that's what it demands. I guess trying to talk himself up after screwing up. Though looking through the adventure and listening back to the video, I'm guessing it is all made up.
Wait... did anyone else see Whimsy in the ocean at 2:00 >.> does that mean he escaped from his underground lake... to meet new fweinds!
I saw Whimsy!! I was so happy.
I saw it to whimsy is now out in the ocean causing players to roll and hope it is nice whimsy
I saw Whimsy! I hope the players who see him roll correctly...
Yea I saw it first time... Made me laugh definitely.
"Think all dose slaves will come be my fwends?"
Hopefully they don't meet "MURDER ABOLETH"
the way you ran it seems more fun than the way it was supposed to be run
.... having never ever done this module I heard slaves and thought : Infiltration oppertunity, and 6 minutes in... I was right.
If I'm rolling a Monk I might risk that...but infiltration via slavery is NOT my first choice.
@@WeAreTheBentusi well that's cause you'se a monk see. what you need is rogueish guile and charm, use some ropes or have a magician magic up some trick, pretend to be slave trader with slaves. show interest in their cult and future business oppertunities. then start throwing daggers at everything. but before that last part release party members.
Yeah; I remember reading in the module that the recommended approach is not infiltration, ut rather diplomacy. You still end up meeting the potential ally and have to do the spy game within the dungeon, but at less risk. Or depending on what information you have amassed beforehand you can skip her and try to meet the big boss directly and get what you need from him diplomatically, as it is in fact to his own interest that you do do.
And IIRC all the details on the slave infiltration given in the book are not just for submitting willingly - they are for when you attempt to fight and fail horribly, getting captured.
As a rogue, infiltration would definitely be my first choice, but certainly not by slavery. I’d rather try not to get spotted at all, thanks.
I feel like I would just bribe everyone, I don’t why I just would
I'm sure this is all answered to some extent in the module, but why are the players somehow expected to submit themselves as slaves, giving up all their stuff, to enter the temple? Shouldn't the module START with them already having been captured, maybe reclaiming their stuff, then fighting in the temple?
Again, I don't know the module, and my DM experience is pretty light, but I can't imagine a group saying "Good idea! We should get captured on purpose!"
Your proposed scenario makes perfect sense! Which is precisely why it would never be written that way.
This is not the start of the module. Is from chapter 4 of 5, for characters of level 6-9 (i dont know how lvl 5 characters could win the battle alone)
Basically, IF the module is the one I think (and I think so, too many details like the bed guy and the pool of blood coincide), this module is part of a greatr campaign. To be exact the module is "fane of the nigh Sperpent" from Tomb of Anihilation.
1) Why is this pertinent ? Because at this point it's very possibe and even likely that the players already had some encounters with the Yuan Tis and where capture then, meanong they'd already *start*the module as slaves.
2) Even if no Pc isn't inside, the mosule expect and think that some of the players (aka those for which it's beleivable and have a decent charisma) will disguisethemselves as Pure Blooded Yuan Ti and the other who can't disguise will give THEM their items and PRETEND to be THEIR slaves.
3) The main bad guy, Ra's is actually fairly easy to convince to let you go and even support if you can proove or at least make him think he's being played for a stooge by the bigger bad guy of the campaign (which he is.) and in fact it is in his interest to let you vainquish them.
4)The second in command can be convinced to help you set an assassination of the leader and she will free you if you help her (and surprinsgly she will). There's also a doplleganger double agent in the temple for anothr faction of you work with them. and you can alway cause a slave revolt.
There's also some secret passages to infiltrate the compound and so on, thereare a few options, the disguise yourself as yuan ti pure blood/slave is onely what the module consider the most likely and less dnagerous option. Should be noted this is meant to be a pretty tough module (and campaign) where characters can die a lot anyway. It's not called tomb of anihilation as in 'spiritual sequel to tomb of horrors' for nothing.
I can just imagine how pleased the dude must have been with himself when he wrote that shit campaign. "Do it my way or die."
While commenting on some of your previous vids, I have been critical of your playstyle or DM style. This time, I have to give you props. You were tossed into a tough spot, rose to the occasion, and it sounds like the players all had fun. It sounds like the adventure was way too railroad-y but that's not your fault. You had no time to prepare...also not your fault. You rolled with what you had and the show went on. Well played.
Comicsluvr good thing your opinion doesn’t matter.
@@Someguyonline7732 Wow...you try to actually pay someone a compliment...
@@Comicsluvr I think he's saying that because he's tired of people complaining about Ben sucking as a player or GM.
I don't think you need to be critical about how someone else plays the game... As long as everyone has fun, what's it matter?
@@mathunit1 Even so, a brief 10 seconds more of reading would reveal they were complimenting Ben.
"We want to be slaves..."
*DBZ Abridged*
Than the forgot the safe word.
To Be continued.... (music plays)
I need an adult.
Scruffi I am an adult.
@@stormcrowlegendary3512What's a safe word?
@@yamiryushi Let's just say it's a word you say to make a person stop whipping you in S&M. More or less.
I've seen this vid several times and I'm left thinking the party really managed to push the boundaries and wiped out the temple despite not being supposed to. It definitely sounds like it turned out to be a great session for "the battle" and I hope the new player stuck around. It does make me wonder though how possible it would be for Puffin Forest to break other written campaigns like that.
A DnD video on trending? I can die a happy man
I love your avatar
So they won a STEALTH MISSION
and one of them was one level
and they killed a key part of the mission thats badass
Every other campaign the level 1 does afterwards is going to be a cakewalk.
That's actually really cool imo. You're telling me everyone else that ran this campaign snuck through this keep except for ours which killed every last one of them? Guess who's table has the most xp now!
For AL, is it ok for different tiered players to play on the same campaign? It seems more on the coordinator's fault for pushing the player in a deadly challenge, and presuming a person would know a campaign straight out. Partly on Puffin's part as well, but I digress.
Second, I do not blame Puffin for the mishap. First time GM and a missing a section, due to time constraints, would throw off many newcomers in GMing. I praise that, through sheer luck and improv, the player had a wonderful time. I hope to see more stories such as these, where mistakes are just Happy Little Accidents. Good job Puffin, you a get like for this video.
red1995j
The level 1 should not have been put in a T2 game, and a DM’s first AL game should not be a T2 either.
The other players should have created new 1st level characters and guided the new player while the DM ran a straightforward T1 module.
i though AL had the first tier at levels 1-5, not 1-4. am i wrong?
@@zachspears5244 you are. 1-4
I think they changed the rules of AL in Season 8 so that you can have different tiered characters.
@@mianwei3442 no it is still lol 1-4 now in hardcovers you are allowed to have mixed tier
What happened to the level 1? Did they get murdered or actually survive. Thats my only question. But now im running this for my group.
It's the one strange bit in this otherwise great story. The presence of the level 1 was made really explicit at the start, but doesn't appear to matter at all to the rest of the story?
Chekov's level 1 player didn't get killed.
What a shame.
Why even include her in the story when she doesn't get mentioned anymore?
And how the hell did the wizard get out of that whole paralyze chest stabby situation?
"stealth is optional for this mission"
Grabs heavy machine gun
Isnt it always
full-party stealth never works in dnd without using pre-created characters for the PCs to select from.
does the fighter in fullplate just stay back 2 rooms? If they can't hear his clanking, he won't hear his team's screams.
edit: well I guess it depends on the fighter's listen check but considering it's not a class skill... (least not in 3.5e)
I honestly would have preferred the way you ran it haha. Much more excitement for sure and much more thinking for the players to do which is one of my favorite parts of tabletop RPG's. I think you did just fine.
The best example of derailing a story has to be the most memorable game I've been in, purely because of how stupidly powerful I got for just... following the plot like a reasonable person.
My party were all serpent people in a conan universe. We consisted of serpents in human disguise, serpents that were scaly humans, and me, the giant, 12 foot long snake with arms who might as well have been a rope with a blender stuck to him. Claws, muscle, I realized halfway through the story that I could just abandon his sword to me more effective.
Now, the party was effectively lost in the start, so we needed to find someone to ally with until we could find our king... so our party leader, a burly male warrior named princess (Named not for ironic reasons, but because the player was "haha, girls") wound up getting us allied with a lich.... but then we didn't stop, and got allied with a geomancer THE INSTANT WE ENCOUNTERED RESISTANCE.
Now my character, at the time at least, was a rather irritable creature. He was by the books, temperamental, and overall was only with the party because Princess was literally the serpent prince. He was in it out of respect only. It was only recently that I looked back on it and realized I hadn't made the angry character I wanted, I'd made a character reacting in a perfectly natural way to the nonsense going on around him. Escape prison and get tranqed like 6 times, only to get imprisoned again while your party fucks around for 30 turns? Go into a cold rage and start shredding and devouring the guard kobalds, freeing everyone yourself! Stuff like that.
The party was a nuisance to my character. Almost every enemy we met was greeted with the same thing. princess would lay down his weapons and declare "We're on your side!" and succeed his damn rolls. By the time we actually met up with our king, we'd dropped more storylines that I could count, and had basically every major baddy wanting us dead.
For awhile onward we seemed to be on track, doing missions for the king, helping bring the serpent people closer to summoning Set to the mortal realm. throughout the campaign I'd been apprehensive to all the side switching, but this was the only side that mattered! My character wound up so devoted that he was made Set's champion.
And then we reached the final chapter...
What we were supposed to do was conquer the last kingdom that was putting up resistance to the summoning. It was like our final boss. Seige the castle and bring it down. Princess instead suggested we infiltrate it stealthily and take it down from within... which is what we did, minus the taking it down part. We walked right up to the people in charge, while I remained hidden, cursing so many serpentine swears under my breath that I'd probably make Set himself blush, watching as my party defected to join the resistance.
What did I do? Did I betray my race, my god, my king, purely out of respect for my friends? No, my character thought they were idiots and traitors, and never built up any kind of respect outside of a basic sense of alliance with the same rulers and god. Now that that was gone, my character booked it back to the king to inform him of his son's treason, and I wound up being blessed by Set as the king succumbed to rage and grief.
To punish the traitors, my beefy snake dude was turned into a minor god. The party attacked with a small party of the rebel kingdom's elite solders, tried to befriend me, and got slaughtered. Set was eventually summoned, and we consumed the world together. The ultimate champion.
But seriously, there were so many interesting plotlines killed because of the constant ally shifting.
You play a character so properly that you became your own big bad. There is no better perfection.
I remember you telling this story in a different vid. Your character was the strongest and the only brave warrior. You also had acid spit if I recall.
@@stormcrowlegendary3512 Yeah, I probably have told it before, it's my favorite, so i kinda tell it a lot I suppose. And yeah, he could spit acid, and I made him a brawler, while everyone else just... did really bad diplomacy. I'm not paraphrasing either, they'd go up to an enemy and say, "I'm on your side" and boom, diplomat.
I did it once, picked up a target our king had sent us to kill, said, "Don't worry, I'm on your side, there's nothing to fear" then dropped him out a window. Everyone complained about me lying after that... I loved the campaign, but dear god my party was awful..
@@crazybunnyproductions7287 haha oh God I think I would have loved your character. Esp with that last scene of turning the party's stupidity around on them both with the diplomatic bs and the killing them for being idiots that can't just pick a side. He sounded very reasonable instead of angry and that party sounds terrible.
@@Kris-wo4pj Thanks. He was a very fun character to use, and being the final boss of a campaign was an interesting first for me. I originally thought not using conventional weapons would have been bothersome, but the DM was very reasonable with the claws, acid spit and poison sprays. I hope to bring him back in a future campaign perhaps.
Number 4 in trending
Well done Puffin :D
You are awesome!
We all know that.
Gilberth Jiménez I cant believe he did it I always watched his vids I think he will hit 1mil subs soon if he keeps up the good work
I just surprise something good is on trending for once.
I can't believe he's on trending, but its amazing either way. Congrats to Puffin Forest
Number 6 now
Here's how I'd probably handle the "new player interaction"
Coordinator: "Here is a new player with a level 1 character."
Me: "Okay, got it!"
Coordinator: "You know the character is level 1."
Me: "Yeup, got it!"
Coordinator: "I just want to make sure you understand she's a new character."
Me: "No problem, give her advantage on her rolls. Got it."
Coordinator: "Seriously, new character."
Me: "Okay, so you want me to TPK the entire party in the first five minutes. Can do!"
lol well that's one way to interpret it
Alternatively, make the level 1 character another level 5 character?
@@kingfail3819 Sadly, this is D&D AL, where, you're not supposed to do things like that. Then again, in D&D AL, You're not supposed to put level 1 characters at a level 5-8 table. Even with that said, fudging it won't be possible, since everything is entered into the DDAL system by whomever is running the event, and I don't think the end point allows for that kind of fudging...
That being said, Puffin could have just said "You know, guys, I'm not really prepared for this module this week. Since we have a new player, can I whip out a module appropriate for 1-4 level characters and you guys whip up some 1-4 level characters? I promise next week I'll have the other module prepped and ready to go."
@@jackielinde7568 Him. Being reasonable and admitting to ignorance? You must be new here...
Me: Oh, I have an idea! *Gets a bottle of colored paste and goes to cult leader* hey I have the cure to your ailment!
Cult Leader: what?
Me: trust me, I'm a con-woman!
But what happened to that new player? Did she make it?
That's what I want to know!
She was playing a Wizlord. Of course she survived. Those things are massively overpowered.
I'm afraid that in your clumsiness you killed her.
@@honorboundfate9521
*NOOOOOOOO*
@@joshuarichardson6529 can you just make your own class/race in dnd?
Dude I can see from this vid your art and animation is getting better.
GO BEYOND!
Claylex PLUS ULTRA!
PUFFINS DRILL WILL PIERCE THE FOREST!
wait... so what happened to the level 1 character?
* Cuts to a ketchup stain *
@Mr420Spy not for season 8
I was wondering that too and figure it would be the one to save every one in the end
@@likeorasgod looks like the fighter did instead
Pretty sure they were the one that died right away.
My favorite part of this story is for Puffin it was a chaotic fun time, but for those players was probably one of their top epic D&D experiences....ESPECIALLY that first timer who stepped into this bloodbath.
But what happened to the poor lv 1 child?
There's no way she survived that whole encounter
Three posibilities:
1. She died
2. RNGesus gave her his favor, and she survived through pure lucky rolls and inteligent decisions
3. Plot armor.
@@irpsicologiayeducaciongrup8251 I'm guessing 3
@@bastionunitb7388
Yeah, i see 3 as the most probable one.
@@irpsicologiayeducaciongrup8251 Ben Probably fudged some rolls to save her.
To be honest, with that level disparity and the way the adventurers league kinda fucked both Ben and that player I think the plot armor solution was literally the ONLY option and infinitely forgivable in this one instance.
Also whatever happened to that lvl 1 person?
Did they die?
From the art it appears that she dealt the final blow
“Players should take care not to mindlessly murder everything in the area.” Talk about setting a party up for failure lol
10:42
“If you bash your head against it will, eventually, come tumbling down.”
Puffin forest
I love how they don’t just let her be a level appropriate for the campaign and throw her into a much higher-level campaign (I’m not too sure about Adventure’s League rules but nonetheless)
I know this is from 1 year ago but Adventure League is intended for you to make your character at home and then bring them to table. You start at level 1 and only level up through official module play. They couldn't scale her character up to the quest but honestly shouldn't have even allowed her to join that group. Probably had no alternate tables and didn't want to turn her away or something.
Gm's: This is a stealthy mission with a thick plotline
Any PC ever: I'm about to ruin this mans whole career
10:09 It's the flaming raging poisoning sword of doom (TAZ)
that's pretty crazy how he stole his sword in the middle of battle
must've rolled a critical
that's one op blade
Clearly, Taako had soul bound to it and called it to him.
Abrica-stab-you!
David Hurt well it says the fighter cut off his enemy's hand and took it. Make more sense if it was soul bound to boss tho.
tfw you are cliche bbeg and spend tens of thousands of gold pieces on your op weapon but and don't curse it to paralyze anyone other than yourself who wields it. tsk tsk tsk yare yare daze
"I can be stealthy"
"You cast fireball at the guards"
"And they never noticed us"
Honestly, their approach sounds way better. Ridiculous to make the players become slaves like that. If the story wants your players to be slaves, then much better for your players to go on suicide mission than to follow that plot. Even if they don't win, that just sounds more fun. And lucky for you they did win this time.
But what happened to the lvl 1 Wizlord? The people need to know.
Wow it sounds like whoever designed that module had never actually experienced a single D&D game. Like. Ever.
It was made by Wizards of the Coast, the people who've been working on D&D for over 40 years.
@@TKDragon75 What, really? Are you sure they didn't hand this off to the interns?
I can't think of a time where a party's default approach is "Murder Hoboism"
@@KaiTenSatsuma The time you write a module expecting murder hobos is the time they will try subterfuge.
@@KaiTenSatsuma I had to respond to your post, and thank you for coming up with the term "Murder Hoboism". Just makes me chuckle.
The Real TK-Dragon! Actually, Wizards of the Coast got D&D around the late 1990’s. TSR has it through the 80’s and early to mid 90’s.
Stupidly designed adventure, by how it sounds. Players are supposed to submit themselves as slaves and give up all of their items!? Might as well say they lose all their levels at that.
Also having just ONE option and not even the start of a hint of a plan B. This might be the most railroaded module I've heard of.
TH-cam University it makes more sense in the hardcover book then it does here. He also hammed it up a bit for entertainment purposes
@@justafanofz Made perfect sense, it's just that a logical progression does not always equal a progression worth going through.
@@youtubeuniversity3638 have you played/ran the module? If not then you are only being given 5% of the circumstances and drawing an opinion on it. There are defintely other options. There are NPCs that can help, spells that can help, roleplay that can work, etc.
Also funnily enough that someone else said this was the most railroaded adventure considering just how much content in the module is completely missable/skippable and how many options it gives you to complete the task. ToA is a hexcrawling exploration module with probably the least amount of railroad tracks out of any module released for 5e.
TH-cam University ehh it’s not quite like that as others have said. It’s more that there’s an encounter where they’ll likely be captured and have to use clever tactics to escape, more so than that they should usually actually submit themselves intentionally. I still think this part of the book assumes a lot about the kinds of things a group might be capable of, but I don’t think it’s quite as bad as he makes it sound.
me and my friends are playing through this campaign now and we ran into the exact same issue at this part. We essentially bashed our heads against the problem until we won, i think we had like 3 tactical retreats by the time we finally beat the rawnase.
I remember playing that section. It was a near TPK. Good job not killing everyone.
I don't understand. Do the characters just have to figure out that they have to be slaves, or do they just get told to do this and remove all player agency? Every time I hear about adventurers league it just feels like a huge railroad sesh with no room for creativity.
Rowdy Boy Right? Trying to indirectly coerce or suggest to players that they need to become slaves would be a monumental task - they signed up to be adventurers; you can't adventure in chains (and what if they kill you instead, not like the players know it is "safe"). It's as unnatural as assuming the party will immediately set up shop when they get into town (they could become shop keepers but how likely is it really).
Can't speak to Adventure League, but can discuss campaign books. The ones I've read tell the GM a series of strung-together situations that players activate but that will largely rely on the GM to set up/connect together/create player interest. It's a tough gig to just jump into willy nilly. In this case the book likely assumed the GM would see it had created a situation that benefited from a ruse/surrender and left it to the GM to make it happen in whatever way was reasonable to the GM. It's a lot of text and information for you to interpret (as opposed to being a step-by-step play-along guide) which is why Puffin initially skipped ahead to 'the start' of the adventure.
Most of what a GM does is explain what is happening so that players can make decisions. They also have a special moment at the start of a session to set the scene, "Your group has been walking through such-and-such forest for the better part of a week, the landmarks on your map are inconsistent, the lost temple remains lost, you haven't seen any animals in three days, and you are running low on food..." "We finished last session with you lot getting victory drunk at ye old bar, this morning you wake up in a gutter, you aren't wearing shoes, your socks are seeping wet in a gooping yellowish liquid, and your companions are sporting rune-like face tattoos (you expect you have one as well)." At the start of a campaign you can explain why the group is there and what is luring them towards danger, let them know they've already been dragged into the dungeon as captives, ask them who messed up and how, or who had the brilliant idea to "get captured" and what items they attempted to stow on their person. Not sure about Adventure League, or this book in particular, but the campaign books I've read barfs the initial setup at the DM to figure out. Adventure League probably requires consistency, then again no one instructed Puffin on the 'proper way' to start the campaign.
Mad props to Puffin, takes guts.
Rowdy Boy I would guess that the GM is actually supposed to introduce the players to this idea. As far as I understood, this is actually a part of a module that was converted for adventure league. The original module consisted of way more approaches and would involve way longer preparation abilities for the players. But they did cut it down for adventure league, so I guess in the name of efficiency the GM probably was considered to either outright railroad the players into slavery or simply tell them. But yeah, the slavery thing is usually a total fail in this type of game.
In the module there are couple ways it can go down. The slave way is supposed to happen if a yuan ti patrol finds them while they sleep and TPKs them. Then they wake up as slaves on the inside. It's not supposed to be the players idea lol.
Aaron Dacon That is actually soooooo old school. Life has not really changed that much and no player that spend any amount of time to create his perfect murder hobo will ever willingly become a slave.
Or they could just charm their way into becoming paid assassins for the Yuan Ti (Like my group did). Or go through the secret entrance, and fight a Hydra.
I see that the official module makers have yet to learn a flipping thing about not railroading players after 40+ years of RPGs.
Either that or this was just a really old module. Or maybe both.
@@youtubeuniversity3638 It's part of Tomb of annihilation, which I'm currently running. Tomb of annihilation is great, but this part in particular is exactly written like in puffin describes in the video. This isn't even a little railroady, it's straight up "ok now TPK and they are slaves of the yuan ti, there". Otherwise the fortress is an absolute nightmare to attack.
There's another entrance which makes the thing more manageable but it's totally hidden and players don't have any particular reason to look for it.
Fane of the night serpent is a really really poorly written dungeon. And it came out in september 2017 IIRC.
@@anca1234 So, adjusting for the possible age of the story told in the video, likely not an old module during the time.
Albert Norman yFrench yyyyy
@@anca1234 isnt it a rewrite of tomb of horrors back when hexcrawl was still a thing?
This actually sounded like it was the most fun party of the groups. Everything was chaos and they still brute forced there way through.
But what happened to the lvl 1 player!
She's now 1 exp away from hitting level 3.
the first time i repaired the DC plug on a laptop via soldering sorta went like this "Hey, can you repair my broken laptop plug, " "uhhh... sureee.., why not." I managed to do it thou
Literally me changing the inside of my toilet tank. Never again..
Honestly...... that sounds beyond epic. I'm totally running a hardcore campaign like that next.
Currently running the fane of the night serpent. My players did the slave thing but it still turned into a bloody mess. Granted they released all the slaves and redirected half the dungeon to them but it's still pretty bloody.
@@arandomcheese Gotta admit I'm jealous lol. The few people I game with in this tiny GA town apparently have no interest in a tough campaign. Tried talking them into it yesterday, and nope.
We play online with players over in Europe.
@@LetsbeFrank38 Do you use Roll20?
@@kysier6015 we do.
8:47 "AFTER HIM! BRING ME HIS SAND!"
I hate sand. It gets everywhere.
@@RpTheHotrod it's coarse and irritating. Not at all like your skin.
"i got a jar of sand! I got a jar of sand! And guess whats inside it!"
Ahmad Momenai is it dirt?
No dude it's after him bring me his head
Or in other words: how AL is poorly written and doesn't consider what its players are actually like
Lol, you become paid Assassins for the high priestess, and mearly disguise yourselves as slaves, then when the sacrifices occur you ambush Rassnasi, and get into an epic boss fight. Or you could take the secret entrance, and fight a Hydra.
@@samaustin339 That sounds so... restricted... I think I will stick to my own custom made worlds and let my players enjoy good stories and expansive settings. : P
@@Elmithian
Sam Austin was merely pointing out an alternative to the "surrender and become slaves" option.
How is it "restrictive" to present an adventure in the form of a detailed setting populated by NPCs with individual motivations, that has multiple different ways to complete?
@@nickwilliams8302 Because in comparison to every GM I have been under, giving them handful of options only is *very* restrictive.
And honestly makes me feel like it is more a video game than a tabletop game where imagination of the players can open up incredible new methods to achieve their goals and missions.
And yes. He was pointing out alternatives that *I* took as being alternatives offered in the *book* for this particular short campaign. Not from their own head. I apologise if it was his suggestions to expand the setting that was already quite restrictive.
I was only criticising the material of the book/quest that was being used in the story.
And I have seen more "fleshed" out characters written on the back of a cereal packages than the fleshed out world this represents (over-exaggeration I know. My point is, this isn't fleshed out at all in comparison to most good campaigns I have seen and seen others run)
@@Elmithian
"I was only criticising the material of the book/quest that was being used in the story."
Except step one of that activity is to _read_ the book. And if you want to claim that you have, please give me a page number where the PCs actions are restricted.
Campaign: *goes downhill*
Player: *dies*
Puffin: *insert Sweating meme here*
My group had a hard time in the fane, but it was also kind of wonderful. We took it in three separate assaults. *GIANT SPOILERS*
The first assault was when we were level 5, and had come upon the fane by chance. We walked in the front door, and the guards saw us. Before anyone said anything, the druid summoned 8 wolves and negotiations were off the table. The pureblood/malison fled through the door while the guards were torn up. Unable to open the door, we decide to break it down. Our druid upcast “Heat Metal” by one level and my cleric had 10 attempts to beat a dc 25 strength. With both guidance and bless active, I succeeded on 3 attempts, and my warhammer tore a person sized hole through FOUR INCHES of solid bronze (also rupturing many enemy eardrums from the terrible noise) Unfortunately, there were archers and basilisks behind the door, as well as a snake pit, so we had to retreat after an arrow went through my ear.
Our second attempt came at level 7 when the last of the Wizards of Thay cast invisibility on us to aid us in her revenge, as Ras Nsi had slaughtered their company. We went in a secret underground entrance that my cleric had left when he had escaped slavery. Then we discovered a very interesting facet of our druid’s wild shape. Wild shape is neither a spell nor an attack, so using it didn’t break invisibility. He transformed into a giant crocodile and ferried us across a guarded river, invisibly. We didn’t fail a stealth check until we got to the blood pools, so we wiped put everyone in that room, before checking out the sauna. Inside is a malison who we bargain for information from in exchange for granting him a merciful death. My cleric performs a ritual killing via “Inflict Wounds” to the spine while standing in the blood pool, and then performs a quick blessing to send the guy’s soul to Dendar (although an hour afterwards, I realized that the Soulmonger made that rite worthless). We sneak around as slaves for a bit before fighting some more, with our rogue dying in one of the fights.
Then we find the storeroom, which besides holding enough stuff to make some packs with, has blocks upon blocks of special incense that the Yuan Ti use to pacify their slaves. My cleric ends up on a really bad trip from getting a lungful of the stuff. After taking a rest in the armory, some guards “invite” us to the high priestess’s room, where we get info about Ras Nsi’s secret chambers. Before we head there, we check out the altar and the divination pool. Our barbarian (the rogue player’s new pc) decides to leap into the pool, getting terrible visions and a madness as a result. By what seemed to be a stroke of fortune, the madness was only alcoholism. Unfortunately, the player then decides without prompting from the DM, that the blood from the altar looks like wine to her maddened barbarian. One drink later, she suffers a horrific transformation into a Yuan-Ti pureblood, which leaves her with 4 levels of exhaustion, leaving her useful for only one thing, sounding the alarm to scare Ras Nsi to his secret quarters. After the alarm is sounded, the warlock that I am playing in addition to my cleric (we often have to double up because of a chronic shortness of players) makes us all invisible, and we sneak into Ras Nsi’s quarters. One surprise round later, we quickly find out that Ras Nsi is an 11th level wizard, and he kicks ours asses. We barely escape the fane alive, running through the bronze door, which had only been covered by cheap cardboard.
Our third attempt occurs the next session, but with an important change. Our 1st druid (we had two that were alternating on missing sessions, but both showed up this time) forgot his sheet, and thus used a wizard I had designed specifically to fight Ras Nsi when the DM asked us to make extra characters per the book’s advice. We sneak in invisibly once again, but this time we have a plan. Our second druid summons some snakes, and we tie blocks of nightmare incense to them. The snakes sound the alarm by ramming the gong, and soon nearly the entire population of the fane is in the main chamber. We light the incense with magic, and the entire population slaughters each other while gripped in the LSD fueled nightmares. Only the champion and two guards survive, as well as the priests, who were mysteriously missing. The champion flees to the harem with the guards, and we repeated the trick by tossing another block of incense in (which one of the guards tried to bat back to us with his sword while screaming “Nooooooooo” but he failed). The champion made his save again, and teleported away with the concubine he was having a secret affair with. We go invisible again, and the casters use the teleporters to warp into the throne room while the non magicals walk.
In the throne room, we find the champion having slain many of the traitorous priests, but about to be finished off by the head priestess. We surprise attack her, and she is flung right into the champion’s path, and he uses the opportunity to cut her in two mid flight. Since the champion’s concubine is nearby, we take her hostage in an attempt to make him fight for us, but we only end up extracting a promise to flee the temple immediately. We take what we can get, and the couple departs to an unknown fate. Finally, we confront Ras Nsi a second time, opening by telling him that his master had played him for a fool, and that the tomb he is guarding is the source of his disease. After bemoaning the loss of his people and slaves, Ras Nsi attacks us as his last hurrah. With a wizard bearing counterspell on our side, he doesn’t do a whole lot until the last round. Unfortunately we rolled a bit low on damage, so once we ran out of counterspells, Ras Nsi called out a final curse upon the world, and committed suicide via SIXTH LEVEL SPELL SLOT FIREBALL. Miraculously, we all survive, and jump to level 9 from the ridiculous xp we got. After a rest, we get a small encore by demolishing the temple’s last survivor, Ras Nsi’s hydra, with the contagion spell. We leave the temple through the ruined door, hauling fat stacks of loot.
cool.
*Fat stacks of loot* Best. Ending. Ever.
Players: *leaves corpses with a bloody mess everywhere*
Necromancers:oh yay new friends
This is actually from a module where the BBEG is a godly necromancer the module is called Tomb of Annihlation
What happened to the first level new player's character....?
...
...
...
BEN?!
yeah what happened to the lvl 1
One of the panels has a red puddle on one side...
I think you can guess the rest.
2:41 that sounded like "But the *occult bleeder* ..."
which was actually pretty amazing, given the description and images before
Almost all DnD groups I gm do this. Had one group who were basically hardcore characters and always pushed for weak characters vs. Stronger enemies.
Levels were given out by triumph over great threats or by heavy training. Death wasn't punishment, it was a release and the entire campaign was just them forging their through hellish encounters together with nothing but blood, guts and determination
I tend to favour more flavorful characters then the standard cookie cutter builds you get sick of seeing all the time from CharOp guides. NonStandards make a much better and more memorable story. Im thinking of making a Goblin Ancient Paladin for my next game.
"If you bash your head against a brick wall enough times it will eventually come tumbling down" 10:43
Yea, but chances are you'll be the one tumbling down first