Hey, we had a good squad session last week! Now that the party is all back together, I’ll start writing a bit about each session in a campaign-diary type series. So, here’s the first one!
Category: SBotLL Campaign (Page 8 of 8)
These posts pertain to the campaign I play in as the elven bard Finnith. There are two parties, one good and one evil, who started in different parts of the world.
This year, SBotLL is taking a break in December! After the November 30th session (good squad getting back together!), we won’t be having regular sessions until the new year. This will give our DM a break from weekly campaign prep, and players won’t have to worry about squeezing D&D into their holiday schedules.
We love D&D because it can throw scenarios at us that we can’t predict. The combination of you, your fellow players, your DM, and the roll of the dice can come together in unexpected ways. Sometimes, this is a delightful surprise for everyone (“somehow, we have an owlbear now” type stuff).
But sometimes, these odd situations can stump you. You find yourself in a sticky situation. You have no idea how your character is going to get out of this.
And as you’re sitting there trying to kick your brain into action, your DM asks you, “what do you do?”
So, what do you do?
The rules of D&D are meant to function for many different groups and individuals. They give a Dungeon Master guidance in adjudicating questions in case of unexpected circumstances. But sometimes, what’s written doesn’t quite work the way it should, or the way we feel like it should.
Of course, DMs have the freedom to alter the rules of the game as it suits their table. The Dungeon Master’s Guide has a whole chapter dedicated to optional rules variants and creating your own items/spells/monsters. So, if something’s not working, you can feel free to tinker with it until it does.
For example, let’s look at the Lucky feat.
In July 2017, WotC posted an Unearthed Arcana article called “Greyhawk Initiative.” Greyhawk Initiative takes cues from previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons to rework 5e’s initiative system.
Don’t split the party: an oft-repeated maxim in D&D groups. Whether as a guideline or hard rule, the sentence gets thrown around frequently when it comes to tabletop advice! And not without good reason, I think. There are a lot of perfectly good reasons to keep the party together, either as a DM or as a player.
When the party is split, depending on your situation, the individual members can find themselves at a disadvantage.
In combat, front-line fighters need the support of back-line combatants, and vice-versa. Challenge Ratings (CR) of monsters assumes a party of around four PCs, and fewer characters means fewer hits. Your support characters can’t heal or buff other characters when those characters are missing, and there’s more pressure to deal damage when you’re one of two instead of one of five.
This extends outside combat, as well. Dungeons & Dragons assumes that you’re working with a group of diverse individuals, each possessing certain abilities and filling a certain “niche,” so to speak. And I’m not just talking about parties that have a traditional composition, either! Each player character has their own backstory that gives them a unique connection to the campaign world.
Even broader than that, each class and subclass give a character abilities unlike any other character in the party. The pact of the fiend warlock interacts with the world differently from the evocation wizard or the battlemaster fighter. They have different tools in their toolboxes– spells, proficiencies, equipment, even.
I prefer keeping the party together. But, sometimes stuff happens, and it makes more sense in-fiction for the party to split off from each other for a while.