D&D Question

[Tank_Guy#3]

Rather than create a new thread for questions, I figured I'd practice my skills in thread necromancy.

1st Question: St. Cuthbert is the God of Retribution. That said, does he actively seek retribution by, say, hiring assassins to kill the wrong-doers or perhaps having his monks/followers track and kill them?

Or is it that he simply waits for something unfortunate to happen to the wrong-doer and then say "There! St. Cuthberts will is done!"

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2nd Question: I recently created a new character, so to get rid of my old character I had him join the militia of a town we stopped in. Our party's bard sent his slave/apprentice to follow him. Our bard secretly tasked his apprentice to kill my former character (which he did).

Now, our bard confessed his evil crime to our party's paladin of Heironeous. Our paladin went through the motions and prayed, then decided NOT to smite the bard, even though he committed a very evil act.

My question is is that correct? I mean, wouldn't he be required (being that he is a lawful good paladin) to take action against the bard (i.e. smite/kill him)?

 

[Rub'Rum]

Tank_Guy: For me, the D&D rules do not provide answers to these questions, and that is a good thing. There are no set rules on how people or gods should behave and what is acceptable. It's part of the beauty of the game. It depends more on the dungeon master and the other players, and the way they want to craft the story.

It reminds me of when we started our group and I said I was gonna play a minotaur character, and old-school player was hard to convince because he said "aren't minotaurs supposed to be evil chaotic flesh eaters or something? I don't want to be eaten!". Well yeah, they could be, but... They don't have to be.

 

[Tarkhan]

I've found that sometimes as a DM you just have to make stuff up. Typically, it works out.

Don't hold yourself to written lore, if a few slight changes will help your players have more fun with it.

Though we all play pretty socially in my group, and its as much an excuse to get together and have some beers as it is to play the game

 

[Abaddon]

Would it really make any sense to kill off members of your own party like that?

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

Would it really make any sense to kill off members of your own party like that?

In this case yes, as he's already got another character created to replace him.

 

[PeteAtoms]

D&D isn't considered D20 anymore is it?
D20 = DnD3.5? = Pathfinder?

 

[Rub'Rum]

D&D isn't considered D20 anymore is it?
D20 = DnD3.5? = Pathfinder?

Yeah pretty much. D&D 4e sort of gave up on the open D20 system for some reason. 4e still a good game, and D20 is still there for all the other developers, so it's not all in vain.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Here's a question, or more an attempt at discussion, for Dungeon Masters, about the risk of preparing stuff that doesn't get used.

For instance, how do you cope with preparing for failure in a skill challenge in D&D? A failure in a skill challenge should usually result in the party still achieving the goal, but in a more roundabout and difficult way.

For instance, I might want to prepare a skill challenge where the party is trying to convince a duke to do something. A success would mean that they would get his help. A failure could mean that he's going to give them his help only if they do a certain quest for him, like retrieve an object from some dungeon.

So, as a Dungeon Master, I find myself in a situation where I feel like I have to prepare that dungeon which may very well NOT get used at all if the PCs succeed at convincing the duke to help them in the first place.

This is just an example. But yeah, a general rule is that failure of anything (not just skill challenge) must not block the adventure, just make it progress in a more complicated way, but it also means that you, as a DM, have to prepare for failure, and that actually can demand a lot of work, 75% of which is at risk of not being used.

Am I doing it wrong? ... I dunno...

 

[Tarkhan]

It depends. The quest they have to do in the case of failure, you could re-use in a later adventure, with a little shuffling of the enemies inside to fit your current adventure and player levels.

Its not "wasted" if they don't use it, as you just hold onto it until eventually they do fail a skill check. If the side-dungeon is like a cave or ancient ruins or something, these sorts of places are common to many D&D campaign settings.

Once every month, we actually run a more laid back night with randomly created dungeons and enemies, and someone else DMs it. For one, its a break for whoever is DMing the current campaign, and for two, if a couple of players want to learn how to DM, so they get some experience with the mechanics of DMing during combat.

We also switch DMs for each adventure, because as stated - there can be a lot of extra work involved.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Yeah that's sort of how I think to deal with it... "Well I'll use this somewhere else", but often, these dungeons or locales have enough flavour to make it hard for me to just plock them anywhere without an hour or two of work. Oh well, I'll just have to figure it out.

Besides, if it takes me 2 hours to prepare a dungeon that will only get used 6 months from now, ehhh... I could probably have used this two hours to make *this week's* adventure more detailed.