Author: Paul G.

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Addendum 2025-04-29

WOTC released a new Sage Advice document that clarifies a few things about the rules. Some early takeaways:

Magical Darkness: they clarify that magical darkness by itself is not impenetrable by Darkvision. if a spell or magical effect specifies that it blocks Darkvision (as is the case with the spell Darkness); then it does, otherwise it does not.

Multiple Dash actions: I don’t think we’ve been confused about this, but they make it clear that if a character gets, for example, the ability to Dash as a bonus action such as Lucretia’s Cunning Action or Kog’s Adrenaline Rush, you can still use your Action to Dash as well; meaning that a character could Move (up to their Speed), Dash as an Action and Dash as a Bonus action to yield Speed X3 in distance covered. Again, I think we’ve always played this way.

Opportunity attacks with reach weapons; if you are holding a weapon with reach (e.g. glaive or halberd) and a foe attempts to move out of your reach, you can use your reaction to attack; note that if you are using a reach weapon this only triggers if they try to move beyond your reach; a 5 foot move would not trigger your OA (though it would trigger any others adjacent not using reach weapons); good news, bad news. There used to be (in the 4e days, maybe even 3e?) an ability/feat called Threatening Reach that allowed you to make OA with reach; now anyone gets it.

Opportunity attacks and grapple, shove: yes, you can use grapple or shove as your OA rather than make a standard attack

Weapon Masteries
You probably noticed that I gave W.M. to the bad guys in our last fight. As I’ve mentioned, I want to stick to monsters from the 2024 Monster Manual for this campaign rather than tweaking them/making my own.

However I am interested in the W.M. effects. I think they are a pretty cool addition. When it comes to NPCs, especially “named” NPCs, I’ve been using DNDBeyond to create a character sheet (for instance, for Vindurain, the sorceress/warlock/witch). I am actually using an existing Monster Manual entry for The Gauntlet, because it’s good enough, but I gave him W.M. for his two weapons (longsword and javelin).

I guess that’s where I’m at right now; NPCs (versus “monsters”) may get the full character creation treatment; and thus have a full set of abilities, or they may be “monster” entries plus weapon masteries.
I may still explore the possibility of introducing some “monsters,” especially recurring ones, who might get a single W.M. with their “standard” weapon from the Monster Manual.

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Addendum to session 14

We discussed Luck Points. Specifically, transferring them from one player to another. We agreed to try out a method for this as follows:

  • The PC must exhaust their current total of any Luck Points on the roll in question. They may then be supplemented by gifts from other players.
  • PCs may gift their own Luck Points to other players using their Reaction. Obviously, a PC who has already used their reaction this round may not thus gift.
  • The use of Luck Points,  including all gifts as well as those from the PC whose roll is pending, may not exceed 5 points.

We’ll try that out and see how it goes.

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Session 7 Addendum

Just a couple things from last session:

Anker’s body should be returned to Aldmaar; Juttah has already indicated that he doesn’t plan to return at this time

Milestones for advancement to next level:

  1. Develop a facility associated with one of the factions
  2. Recover an artifact of the old realm (a Wolf-emblazoned item with magic still intact)
  3. Narrative milestone (to be uncovered)

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Session 5 Addendum

We discussed several rules emphases:

  1. Spell components; we’ll want to track whether spells have verbal (not possible in magical silence or when gagged, e.g), somatic (requires a free hand to cast), and/or material components. I’ve started a spreadsheet with spells from PC character sheets tracking which have which type of components, and for material components, which can be replaced by using a spell focus, which will wear out over time, and which (none so far) are consumed in the casting.
  2. Ammunition: please track arrows (bolts, bullets, etc). Alden proposed a system for determining if fired arrows could be recovered — roll 1d6; 1-2, none recovered, 3-4, half of spent arrows recovered, 5-6 all spent arrows recovered.
  3. Dying: once a PC goes to zero hit points, once they’ve been restored to 1+hp, they incur one point of exhaustion. For each point of exhaustion, a character incurs a penalty on all D20 checks (attacks, saving throws, ability checks including initiative) equal to 2X exhaustion. For example, a character has two points of exhaustion; all D20 checks until exhaustion is reduced are at -4. A long rest restores 1 point of exhaustion.
  4. Encumbrance: we discussed that, while we will not be formally tracking encumbrance, I’d like to know where “party” items are — e.g. who is carrying them, and would like us to be reasonable about what/how much each person is carrying.

 

There were a number of sidebar conversations PCs held with members of their factions. Buck won’t be commenting on these discussions in the narrative post — he wasn’t there and I assume your characters wouldn’t have told him about them.

The nobles — seemed not pleased at his message in general

The Guilds — seemed indifferent or uncertain

Anthracite — seemed interested but skeptical

Aldmaar — seemed excited about the references to addressing the King’s plundering of the wood; less so about sharing the game bounty

The peoples of the South seemed generally excited about the whole speech, though maybe not so excited about mining

San Nicholas — seemed wary of the whole speech until Arthur addressed his commitment to the Church of San Nicholas and its prominence within his family, at which point most were beaming.


In general, though, your PCs would have observed that Arthur’s speech was received by the factions in the following ways:

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Session 4 Addendum

Rules notes: we discussed “weapon juggling” and how the rules explicitly support stowing and drawing a weapon as part of the Attack action, plus stowing a weapon as a Free Action, meaning that a PC with 2 weapons drawn could stow both weapons and still draw another as long as they are taking the Attack action.

We also discussed that administering a potion, to oneself or another, is a bonus action.
To discuss: using DNDBeyond for initiative and HP tracking

Each week I’ll provide a “Session Notes” post from Buck Headstrong that will be a narrative recounting of what happened, and a separate “Addendum” such as this one with mechanical/meta-game stuff.

Loot: there is some loot to be gathered after the fight, no big surprise. This won’t come up often, but Arthur is going to take a significant “share” of the take, which leaves the following for the party:

  • 1 heavy ring similar to that taken previously from the catacombs; a Ring of Elemental Evil
  • Among the weapons salvaged and otherwise to be found:
  • 1 masterwork wolf shield ( a Royal Shield)
  • 2 masterwork pikes (Royal Pikes)
  • no money or other items of interest other than what Arthur has claimed

To discuss: Level Objectives

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Dundracon 2023 — Lessons Learned

Joe and I attended DunDraCon in Santa Clara in February. DunDraCon was the first ever gaming convention I attended, way back in …1990? I lost track of it, but attended again in 2017, where I ran my Fate “Kung Fu Wombat” game (though I called it something else back then).
As I’m interested in attending more gaming cons in retirement, I booked us a room and secured tickets to this year’s event.
I didn’t submit to run a game, mostly because I was too late to submit one. More on that later.
DunDraCon has a — being charitable — idiosyncratic system for registering for games. They break down the event into a handful of time windows, such that you will only get assigned one (or zero) sessions during each window. One chooses their top 3 choices for events they’d like to attend per each window. The drawing that determines which, if any, of your choices you can attend, only happens eight hours or so before the window opens1. So, even in the week leading up to the con, even if you registered on the first day of availability, you still don’t know what sessions you will be in.

And, spoiler, you will almost certainly have windows where, you did not get into any session. For the entirety of Saturday, the first full day of the con, I got into only one session. Joe got into zero. An entire day of the conference with no events.

To be fair, not understanding how this was likely to play out, I made two choices that contributed to this problem. First of all, I didn’t register to run any games. Had, I that would have guaranteed that I could have played, and you can be damned certain I would have made sure Joe had a seat at the table. Additionally, GMs get a “priority” registration that increases the chance that you will get into an event when you register with the priority. The dude who ran the game we got into on Friday night said he has never failed to get into a session when he used priority.

The second screw-up was I didn’t book us for events in every window. Many of the scheduled sessions are intended to run 6-8 hours, but the session windows tend to be more like fours long. I didn’t book any sessions for windows where, if we had got into our choices in the previous window, we would still be playing and therefore unable to attend whatever we chose in the previous window. They would have overlapped. Little did I know that there was no chance I would end up in overlapping sessions because we would have been lucky to get into any session at all. For the whole day.

We played eight hours of D&D Friday night, which was fine. The scenario “Bad Water” was one where all PCs were dwarves and gnomes living in the Underdark who had never seen the light of day. We were required to investigate a problem with the local water supply, an underground stream that served the community in which we all lived. It was a bit of a meandering affair that probably could have been a punchy four hour adventure, but it took us all of eight hours. It was fine.

The venue, the aging Santa Clara Marriott is a decent site, and an upgrade from the hotel that hosted the event last time I attended, in San Ramon.

Here are the key takeaways for me, for next year:

  1. Sign up to GM a game, to ensure that we get to play and to get a priority registration.
  2. Book events for every session.
  3. Maybe think about spending part of Saturday at Great America? It is literally just across the parking lot from the hotel.

Joe and I played some D&D and DDC in our hotel room. We made the best of it.

Next year will be better.

Footnotes

I could confirm some of this if DunDraCon’s site

  • 1) hadn’t already archived their event list for this year, so you can’t see how things were scheduled and

2) wasn’t having such performance issues right now that it’s essentially unusable.

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Default macros in my macro bar

… when I’m running a game.

Name:GroupInit

Script:

!group-init

Comments: Just a dumb shortcut for running the standard GroupInit API Script. I don’t have to remember the syntax (which couldn’t be simpler). Allows me to select a group of bad guys click on macro, it launches Turn Tracker, rolls their initiative and the bad guys initiative gets added.

Name: GroupCheck

Script:

!group-check

Comments: like GroupInit, just a simple call to the standard GroupCheck API Script. Select bad guy tokens and click macro button. It produces an inline menu in Chat window, where I select the type of check, including saving throws and skill checks, and rolls for each token selected.

Name: SaveApply

Script:

!group-check {{
–?{Save|Dexterity|Constitution|Wisdom} Save
–process
–subheader vs DC ?{DC}
–button ApplyDamage !apply-damage
~dmg [[?{Damage}]]
~type ?{Damage on Save|Half,half|None,none}
~DC ?{DC}
~saves RESULTS(,)
~ids IDS(,)
}}

Comments: Nice script I found that uses GroupCheck. For selected tokens, it rolls a Saving Throw, asks what the damage to apply is, whether one takes half or no damage if save is successful, asks the Difficulty, and then applies the results to the tokens after all that. Awesome for area damage spells such as Fireball.

Name: Dead

Script:

!token-mod –set statusmarkers|=dead bar1_value|0

Comments: Dead-simple script leveraging TokenMod. Bad guys get the big red X of death and hit points reduced to zero.

Name: TokenSetup

Script:

!token-mod {{
–set bar1_link|hp
–set bar2_link|ac
–set bar3_link|speed
–set name|@{selected|character_name}
–on showplayers_bar1
–off showplayers_bar2
–off showplayers_aura1
–off showplayers_aura2
–on token_vision
}}

Comments: Using TokenMod, sets up token for PCs with just the basics. I have a very similar one for NPCs.

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Welcome to SkyCity!

The citizens of BezosCorp’s unique crystal toroid located at the L5 Lagrangian point in the Earth-Moon system welcome you to live the life others can only dream of!

Grown from crystals harvested from asteroids and even Comet Halley, SkyCity is a gleaming gem suspended in a perfectly safe and stable orbit.

Come ride your bicycle amongst the green trees and pure air that only your grandparents can remember from their youth on Earth!

Feast on the finest gourmet foods! Real beef imported from Lunar Colony Heinlein! The finest wine and beer from crops grown right here at SkyCity! The universe’s finest chefs all work for BezosCorp!

Swim in the perfectly clear water of Lake Amazonia!

Like to hike? Rock Climb? Run? Ever try it in 1/3 gee? You’ll never want to go back to the oppressive gravity of Earth!

The streets are spotless. Crime is unknown. And those views! The moon is always full! From L5 we see half of the moon that’s visible from earth and half from the back-side! You’ll never grow tired of seeing Earth …..

;jafjqwfd…. … .

Transmission interrupted.

Welcome corporate criminals! You’ve destroyed the earth and now you’re seeking your last refuge where you think the people that you’ve left behind, poisoned and bereft can’t reach you.

Let this be your notice. There is no escape from your crimes. We are the Fist of Destiny. You will answer for what you have done. Our reach is infinite and we have the support of the 20 billion lives you have fled from. There is no nuclear engine powerful enough to escape Earth, to escape us, to escape your fate!

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Mission Report #133

Krisskross has joined a group of adventurers into the Undermountain.

This soldier accompanies a unit composed of a goliath, a human story-teller, a dark elf sorceress, and some odd halfling-dwarf hybrid.

Upon arriving in Undermountain, we were confronted by a ludicrous band of humans playing as vampires. They were pathetic and easily bested.

We managed to make our way through a magical portal which seemed to grant random enchantments, as likely to be fell as boon.

We fought a group of manticores, fed ritually by a troll, all of which we eventually bested.

We have continued to explore. My compatriots are typical gold-grubbing adventurers with no higher purpose than to fill their coffers until such time as their drinking and carousing forces them into poverty and they must sally forth again to complete the cycle.

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Bloodbath at Gralhund!

They carted the bodies out, one after another…

Last night, this terrible Season of Blood stormed over a new location: Lord and Lady Gralhund’s villa. Neighbors reported hearing what they initially thought was another of the Gralhund’s famous parties being conducted at the lovely compound in the North Ward. However, the evening turned out to be anything but festive. Nearly a dozen armed men, clad in black leather armor (sound familiar, Dear Reader?) met their demise inside the walled villa, alongside an equal number of Gralhund’s own guards and employees.

Lady Yalah Gralhund herself was cruelly put to the sword by these assassins. Lord Orond sustained only minor wounds while trying heroically to defend his dear wife.

The City Watch, in an all-too-frequent refrain, report that they have no leads on the purpose of this murderous assault or on those who may have coordinated it. Citizens reported variously that an evil-appearing human male, tall, broad and clad in — guess what? — black leather armor, was seen fleeing the villa during or immediately after the vicious melee. Other reports suggest that, rather than a man, a mechanical creature departed the villa at that time, springing dozens of feet into the air. Or perhaps both?

It’s clear that the City Watch is unable to guarantee our security, in our City of Splendors during this dangerous time. Lock your doors, citizens. And beware the Black Clad!