Shadowdark Shadowdark General Thread [+]

[Scribe]

So, if anyone is interested I have a useful and balanced base for SD multiclassing. I think, anyway. If there's interest I'll lay out the specifics.

I'm pretty anti multiclass in general, but always interested to see how people approach things.

That said, I'm realizing I'm a bit hypocritical because I have some caster/psionic features in my current project that are able to be picked up by anyone... /shrug

 

[Fenris-77]

Ooh, yes. A perennial topic of discussion. I'd love to see what you've come up with.

So it's actually maybe closer to old dual class rules than the recent D&D multiclass where a MC character would usually be one level lower in each class than a single class character in the same party (so 9/9 to 10).

Each basic class breaks down into two tiers for puposes opf this little thought experiment. You get one tier with the armour/weapon/language and minor abilites and a second tier with the core class ability (weapon master, spellcasting, backstab). At char gen still have to pick a single class and you get the full package. (you do get the class HP for both tiers

After first at any level you can take the next level in you first class, or a tier in another class. This means is takes two levels of advancement to get a single first level in a second class (at which point the character would be 1/1). After that you can level one or the other class every level (so the cap would be 5/4 or 6/3 or whatever).

You must still abide by a given classes restrictions in to use its abilities (so no backstab in plate etc). And only levels in that class count for abilities that add half level to X or to determine spells and slots.

I was pretty determined to not make this not quite as good as single classing. It was as much to dig around under the hood a little with the classes.

 

[Scribe]

Been a bit of a day, I am pretty sure my stress level is directly related to the number of times I look for KS updates.

 

[Scribe]

So, unless we see some wild progress, there is about 0 chance I will be at my current location when the Western Reaches ships...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So, unless we see some wild progress, there is about 0 chance I will be at my current location when the Western Reaches ships...

I do think we're in the home stretch. I expect the next time we hear from Kelsey, it'll be that the Players Guide is available in digital form and she'll have an update on the GMs Guide.

 

[Scribe]

I do think we're in the home stretch. I expect the next time we hear from Kelsey, it'll be that the Players Guide is available in digital form and she'll have an update on the GMs Guide.

Yeah feels like that should be happening pretty quick, its why I'm refreshing constantly. I just really dont want to be moving when it wraps up!

 

[Scribe]

Email update, on track for a summer release it seems, Players book soon.

 

[zottel]

Email update, on track for a summer release it seems, Players book soon.

I feel like a kid again, waiting for summer break.

 

[Mannahnin]

(accidentally posted in Warpiglet's thread at first, mistaking it for this one, somehow)

Thursday night I ran my third session of OSE's Curse of the Maggot God for four 3rd level Shadowdark PCs. They had kicked a lot of butt and gotten lucky on basically all their Con saves against Trog stench in session 2, but had lost their Cure Wounds and Bless spells at the end of the session, so were not quite as powerful anymore. I'll ahead and spoiler tag chunks of this in case other people don't want details from the module.

Session 3 saw them get overconfident, get ambushed in a difficult spot and fail those saves, and barely survive & win a big fight against the Trog chief, a couple of Trogs, and the priest of the Maggot God, the last of whom broke morale and fled down a tunnel while 2/4 PCs were unconscious. Rather than consolidating their win/playing conservatively the goblin fighter chased the priest while the elf wizard stabilized the PC priest and thief. The fighter found the evil priest and his enormous Maggot God in a further chamber and elected to move to melee after a bit of posturing and threatening with the priest, which meant when the elf wizard showed up it was just in time to see the fighter strike down the evil priest but be swallowed whole by the Maggot God. The wizard wisely retreated and guarded the priest and thief until they awoke (I am currently house ruling that to take 1-6 non-combat rounds instead of 8 full hours), but then the party foolishly decided to press the fight with the 60' long Maggot God, to their sorrow. Both the thief and priest wound up down again and devoured, and only the wizard escaped to see the light of day again.

Tonight we'll do some fresh character gen. As this is a more newb party and most of them are coming from 5E I let them start at 3rd level, and I'm debating whether to let them start at 3rd again or have them make the new characters 2nd to feel the loss a little more.

I have The Seer's Sanctum, a puzzle dungeon by DirectSun, on deck/prepped on Roll20 already, which would be less fighting. I might also upload Through Ulthan's Door as another option, which I've been itching to run for quite a while. That one is also intended for 1st levelers, so I could still bump up the antagonists slightly if I do have the new PCs be 2nd.