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Message: <blockquote data-quote="krupintupple" data-source="post: 5478974" data-attributes="member: 58300">although my style tends to lean more toward tactical hack and slash combat, i can surely appreciate well-placed thematics and story-telling. since your group is mostly new, you probably won't really need to be the most polished on all of your rules. thinking along these lines, sometimes the best thing to grab everyone's attention is to go well outside of the boundaries of the rules, in order to further the story.for example, when trekking to find a rare type of plant, flower or herb in the forest for some random quest they're doing - perhaps a friendly fae or druid could take them through a magic grove or something, and when they emerge from the tangle of trees, weeds and grasses, they're ironically in the farm fields 30 seconds outside of town. perhaps even a cow mooing at them comedically (however, not before they get nervous that this was a serious encounter). even though the friendly 4th level druid probably didn't have the power to teleport them all back to a safe location, you can hand-waive that and consider it something that will further the story, and add to the feeling and depth of the campaign. i typically would write a few of these little vignettes down, maybe 2 or 3 per session, but no more than like two sentences each, and every time the action or story began to go stale, i'd consider reaching for one, just to keep things fresh and interesting.also, if you absolutely cannot locate a rule or something, there's no harm in saying "Ok, so I can't actually find the rule to preform a ninja-style backflip over the Orc chieftan while throwing your dagger at the rope that your friend is being hung by without harming him and intimidating the Orc...but how about we roll on it?" and then break something normally really rules-heavy and intimidating in a series of singular checks.for example: leaping over the orc? let's say a jump DC of 17 or so, maybe 15 if the PC has a running start. tossing the knife exactly to sever the rope without hurting a friend? sounds pretty impossible, but then again, this is a game of magic and fantasy, so maybe it's AC18 if the person's less than 20 feet away. intimidating the orc? how about just making the PC roll against the "orc" (you) except they get a +4 for each previous successful stunt they just pulled - so a +8 if they did flip over the orc and they did cut their ally loose. again, even failure can be advantageous: maybe a failed jump check means they just plow midair into the Orc, but they're both so unaware so noone gets any attacks. now, with both crumpled on the ground, they have to roll initiatives to see who can get up first, or perhaps begin wrestling with the snarling beast!that was all done on the fly, didn't officially use any of the real rules, but probably would lead to a story that your friends would remember for quite some time, or at least until the next session.</blockquote>

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