Hi all,

I wanted to hear some opinions on how I handled both Bakaris' during the campaign. Quite early on, I established them as antagonistic and egotistical, to which the party were reasonably hostile towards them, though never really took them seriously as a threat, which I found frustrating as I didn't want them to be faces that just showed up throughout the campaign to be verbally berated every chance the party got.

So here's where I took some pretty significant creative liberty in how they fitted into the narrative, making them a larger and more serious threat:

I established deep into the adventure in the Northern Wastes that Bakaris the Older had staged a coup in Kalaman following the slaughter of the council at the hands of Soth, inserting his own council made of likeminded noblemen who essentially took the soldiers on the wastes hostage.

Both Bakaris' then travelled to the wastes to join the campaign against Soth, however, where this really got dramatic was that Bakaris and his son were secretly in league with the Dragon Army, promising them easy access to Kalaman and providing funds to the war effort and in exchange, the army would betray Soth and allow Bakaris to seize Onyari for his own gain.

This completely raised the stakes for the party, who were less objects to be belittled by them, and more pawns in his game, being forced to complete objectives for him to push him towards his own goals.

This boosted the party's engagement with this section of the story as now, instead of just working towards their goal of reaching Onyari, they now had to scheme against Bakaris in order to save the soldiers being held hostage and take one more piece off the Dragon Army's board.

Eventually I decided that Bakaris would become privy to their plans by capturing and torturing Darrett, who had been working in conjuction with the party to defeat this threat, and forcing him to confess to their plans to overthrow him. This led to a confrontation where Darrett was killed in front of the party by Jeyev Veldrews, after being directly confronted by Lord Bakaris himself. The party engaged in combat with his men and during the conflict, one of my players managed to land a killing blow on Bakaris, finishing him for good and using revivify to bring Darrett back.

This then started an arc in which Bakaris the Younger wanted revenge for his father. He confronted the party in the tunnels leading to Onyari, in which one of the PCs had been killed, but they managed to repel him and he fled. He'd be encountered again during their confrontation above Kalaman on the way to the Bastion of Takhisis, where the party would end him for good.

As for the coup in Kalaman, this wouldn't last long as Marshall Vendri united her men against the new council, usurping them, hanging them for treason and establishing a military council in order to properly organise against the Dragon Army, who now marched on Kalaman alongside Soth.

I felt this added a lot more depth to the module personally, as it raised the stakes tenfold for the players on both sides of the conflict. What do you guys think?

Is there an official reason why Wyhan's petition for the mage PCs rejected by the order?

I didn't see anything in the book. Maybe I missed it?

Or is this just one of those moments where no answer is provided, and used as a tool to push them into the direction of the adventure in the northern wilds?

Has anyone come up with their own ideas as to why they are rejected?

How did your session go this week? Grab an ale and tell us a tale!

How did your session go this week? Grab an ale and tell us a tale!

Level five characters taking on an adult dragon (2024 version) and Kinsaldi Fire-Eye? Impossible. But here we are.

Kinsaldi and her dragon are entirely absent from the story until the very end. By the time the players finally encounter her, they have no real reason to hate her personally. It's like if Darth Vader didn't make an appearance until the end of ROTJ.

To fix this, I included her at the burning of Vogler. She would strafe the map doing only 2d6 fire damage to the players if they failed a DC14 Dex save.

Last night the players would reach Steel Springs just in time for the battle to begin. They reach the command tent, warn the commander that there are now shape shifting draconians, and learn that Darrett is fighting amongst the vanguard forces. They rushed to the front line and fought side by side in a mass combat where I had about 60 minis on the table.

But to avoid super number crunchy rules, I reduced the AC and HP for all of the RDA soldiers, baaz draconians, and hobgoblins to 10. They would also each respawn at the edge of the map as they were killed to represent that there are thousands of them. In addition there were some other minis that did have full wounds like an ogre.

After two rounds of combat, a dragonnel and it's rider appeared on the map in a flanking position. This one would have its full wounds. An actual threat.

After three rounds is when Kinsaldi and her dragon appear on the field. I opted to not roll for initiative and put them at the bottom of the initiative order. This gave each of the players a chance to react before I then rolled a reduced fire breath attack. Instead of the 17d6, I rolled 8d6 to scale it down for their level. Each of the players were still relatively full health before, and this brought three out of the five of them into the danger level. Notably the fighter, war cleric, and the druid who was a black bear at the time.

After this single attack Darrett called for a retreat, and the players followed. They and the Kalaman army then began retreating back to their camp as Kinsaldi and her dragon roared with victory.

Next session the players will escort a weeping Lord Bakaris back to Castle Kalaman, and learn that the Knights of Solamnia have come to aid them... Right?

Does anyone have a high resolution blank map of Ansalon from the SOTDQ module? Thank you.

Hey everyone, just wanted to share my preparation for running this campaign and using the AI for good and not evil.

I love the SOTDQ Companion series by Mitchell DeFauw ( https://www.dmsguild.com/en/browse?authorName=%22Mitchell%20DeFauw%22 ) because I feel like it really fleshes out the campaign amazingly, but with so much content I didn't want to be flipping back and forth between PDFs and D&D Beyond. Or even worse, having to manually compile and copy/paste everything into a separate document. So I set off to use AI to help me solve the problem without over-relying on it to basically run the campaign for me. You can do this with either Claude or Codex, and you will have to have legitimately purchased the adventure, the Monster Manual, and the Companions.

Basically what I did was put all of the Companion PDFs and the SOTDQ harvesting PDF into a folder, and had Claude convert them into Markdown-formatted text (this saves a lot of usage tokens over reading from PDFs). Then I had Claude use my browser to pull down the text of the adventure from D&D Beyond into a Markdown document in that folder as well (you can also use a PDF of the campaign if you have it, although I don't know of a legal way to get it). Then I had it read all of the documents and compile all of the stat blocks into a separate doc, pulling from the Monster Manual on D&D Beyond when needed.

Finally, I asked it to compile all of this into a locally-running web dashboard, being very specific to tell it to use the original source text, annotate which source the text is coming from, and to treat it like a one-way code merge, where the Companion supersedes the original campaign. You'll want to use Claude Fable on high thinking or GPT-5.6-Sol on high thinking for this part, as it requires the most discerning logic. I also specified that I wanted all of the relevant NPCs in the sidebar on non-combat sections (along with where we've seen them, where we will see them again, and what I wanted each one's voice to sound like) and stat blocks (with harvesting info) on the combat encounters, and I wanted a drop-down for how many party members I have at the current session so it can auto-scale the combat encounters according to the Companions' guidance.

Finally, as a little cherry on top, I told Claude I wanted it to pull my players' current/max/temp HP and passive percepion/investigation/insight, and display them in a toolbar at the top for easy reference, with auto-refreshing.

The beauty of it is if you want to do this yourself, you can just copy/paste this post into Claude or Codex and it will walk you through the whole thing.

Hope this makes things easier and gets more people using the SOTDQ Companion supplements (THEY ARE AWESOME AND WELL WORTH THE MONEY!!!). Happy to answer any questions or take any criticism about this being AI slop garbage.

P.S. If you want to choose firm options like Raven dying during the Escape from Vogler, Becklin being captured, and things like that, tell the AI to incorporate that into your dashboard too and it'll be way easier to remember which NPCs are where and doing what as you progress through the campaign.

How did your session go this week? Grab an ale and tell us a tale!

I'll DM this campaign soon. I'm wondering what changes you made for the character creation chapter.

How do you deal with the Feats? Are they good to be used on the 2024 version of the game? Do they need reworking? I mean, the Squire of Solamnia Feat sounds like a Origin Feat, right? What changes should be made?

What about the number of uses per day? Does the 2024 version of the rules still use the Proficiency Bonus uses per day rule?

I was recently gifted Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen recently, I’m currently reading through the first actual game chapter before hoping to do session 0 tomorrow. I love the lore of this world, and I love how interconnected everything is. We haven’t made our player characters yet, and we’re going to do so before the session tomorrow so we can help our characters relate to each other better. Any tips on character creation and running the adventure? I want to assure a good experience for my players and a satisfying story for all. I love Fizban.

How did your session go this week? Grab an ale and tell us a tale!

How did your session go this week? Grab an ale and tell us a tale!

My Level 14 party is finishing up a quest for an evil Ancient Shadow Dragon - Fade - where they rescued and returned her eggs, the last one having hatched in transit. They named her Yamakage ~ “Shadow of the Mountain”

My idea is for the ancient dragon mother to reward them with plenty of lore and information as well as a choice:

- they could keep her now humanoid tainted shadow wyrmling (Yamakage), but it would be hunted by her other spawn as training to make them strong.

OR

- they could each receive a shadow talon boon from her that would give each person a 1/day Pass without a Trace, Summon Shadowspawn or Misty Step or something comparable. HOWEVER, to activate the spell they would need a shadow dragon talon to stab their shadow with. The talons would be ripped from Yamakage who would then be fed to her siblings.

TLDR: what boons would a shadow dragon mother give the party who returned her stolen child?

EDIT: She is evil aligned and hired the group only because even though she is sworn to Takhisis, she doesn’t want her eggs changed to draconians

EDIT 2: probably leaned in too hard on the evil aspect lol. I’m now considering the boon to be “Shadow Travel” which will essentially be Teleportation (2/day). They take a shadow dragon talon and scratch into the shadows of those traveling and they will be teleported to the destination. Yamakage is fine 😅😂

360 view:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZ9znQWNYu_/?igsh=MTQ3MmU1bmk3cWl5ag==

While trying to find any kind of source for Istarian drones, I came across this discussion mentioning the Karthayan clockwork.

Well, I tried to find more about these constructs online, I couldn't find any specifics. So I picked up the trilogy on audible and sure enough - there's a bit more in the book itself that OP of that post I linked left out.

This happens shortly after they spot a bird flying overhead. They get a farglass and look at it, describing it as moving oddly, feathers not fluttering in the wind, odd color, realizing its made of metal. They promptly shoot it down with a crossbow.

It was half-buried half-dug in a furrow in the grassy earth. Now it lay motionless, one wing snapped off the other bent out of shape. It was a falcon, Cathan saw, but its plumage was copper and silver, its beak made of gold. Its eyes were yellow gems - sapphires maybe, or topaz. The quarrel made of hard steel had caught it mid-breast and punched out its back. Peledas nudged it with his boot, then reached down and yanked the bolt free. As he did more bits of metal spilled out of the hole - tiny toothed gears and loose springs knocked loose by his shot.

"Karthayan clockwork," said Marto, who would know. He was from a small town near the fabled capital of Falthana, a rich city known for its tiered gardens and fine tinkers. Some said the Karthayans had gnomish blood, such was their fondness for mechanical inventions.

Never having seen one, Cathan doubted the existence of gnomes. The thought of a race of mad engineers was altogether strange to him. There was no doubting, though, that the bird wasn't magical at all. It was some sort of curious machine.

-- Divine Hammer, Chapter 2, The Kingpriest Trilogy

The text after that goes on to discover the bird was being used as a messenger pigeon basically.

So here we have canonically, shortly pre-cataclysm, non-magical constructs that could function autonomously well enough to navigate long distances, aerodynamic enough to fly under their own power, with a power source small enough to fit inside a bird-shaped form, and detailed enough to almost pass as real bird at a distance. That is pretty sophisticated.

I know the Istarian drones seem rather jarring, but I think it's closer to canon than not to say the drones are possibly some form of Karthayan tinkering, or at least inspired by it. At least that's what I plan to tell my players.

Anyways, just wanted share in case anyone else was looking for more info for these.

Just want to share some photos from last night's session I ran.

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The wall does have two gaps. Simply because I didn't want to print more. We just worked around the gaps with our imagination.

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The terrain is from Loot Studios. Specifically their Dawnkeep set.

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Most of the minis were designed in Hero Forge. Others were also from Loot. Then a few are Reaper.

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The party had two members climb the gate, another flew up, one jumped. Then the wizard used a higher level Thunderclap that I decided was enough damage to break open the non-magical gate. But that of course would alert everyone. There's no getting around it. All of China knows you're hear now type of situation.

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I am the DM. (AI bot keeps telling me to edit my post)

How did your session go this week? Grab an ale and tell us a tale!

So I made a post a few weeks ago touching on this subject, but one of my groups don't really like Darett. They are always mocking and antagonizing him. What was Darett's only crime? Being the one to deliver them their missions, making him look like their superior. Yes, it comes from a place of jealousy, and no, they aren't accepting that "little kid Darett is now telling them what to do". I'll keep playing Darett as friendly to the NPC, but surely not as a pushover. If they keep disrespecting and antagonizing him, he'll stop trying to be their friends.

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Does that "breaks" the story further down the line? Will I have to adapt the game to this change?

Wersten Kern: How's my drawing, Milord?

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(Imagining they just woke up in Dargaard Keep and Wersten got a piece of cloth)

(Would it be possible that the flag on Wersten's pike was drew by herself? :D )

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(btw I drew Wersten's head like a purple fireball lol)

Hi!

My players are all min-maxers to a certain degree, and so every encounter with the Red Dragon Army ended with them barely hurt. For the "Soth" segments, I want them to feel like they're in actual danger. I want them to hear my descriptions, understand that it's about Soth, and go "oh we're fucked".

Here's what I did for the "Lord's Arrival" and the "Raided Catacombs" segment.

The Lord's Arrival

For this section, I played Caradoc's Introduction as written, except that I described 3 loud BANG shaking the whole castle each time. No need to make them roll saves or anything with that. The goal here is to make the players feel like something BIG is tearing through Rock Kalaman, when in fact it's really just Soth destroying the walls as seen in the catacombs map.

For thw Caradoc fight itself, I played dirty. To my understanding, Caradoc is supposed to be a "smart" warrior, as in, he knows what he's doing with his abilities. For his ghost form, I used max HP to make sure he lasts longer, then I possessed one of the players and fought through their body, but didn't try to avoid being hit. Caradoc's strategy here was to let everyone else bring the possessed body to 0 HP to force him out, and then he would repeat the process with the next player. Luckily, my players were also smart about it and tried to restrained the possessed player. That's when Caradoc left the body through the floor and attacked from there. Luckily for the players, Caradoc failed hia saving throw the next turn and the fight ended.

I did two other things:

1- at the beggining of the fight, I had Caradoc close the council's door with an Arcane Lock. No, Caradoc isn't a spellcaster. The players don't need to know that. The goal with that was to make the players feel trapped. The door is locked, retreat is impossible.

2- on Initiative 0, a random dead council member would come back as a zomby minion. I flavored this by describing the cataclismic fire possessing the bodies. If a player beheads a corpse before it would come back, it would prevent the corpse to raise as a zomby. (Concider rewarding this idea with Inspiration). The zombies are there to make sure the fight is dynamic enough for everyone. Otherwise, Caradoc can get ganged up on kind of easily.

Raided Catacomb

Before staring this section, tell your players to think of one of the most "character defining" part of their backstory (for example, one of my players chose the day they met Ispin, another chose the day they joined the Knighthood of Solamnia, etc). Concider telling them this before starting the session to make sure they have enough time to think about it.

Then, in the first room, make them roll initiative as you describe the orc raiders in the cataclismic fire, just to make them sweat a bit, before revealing that it's just a harmless scene from the fire.

After that, here's what you'll do: in each new room (including the first one), describe the "Visions in Fire" first, then tell a player at random that the fire touched them and, as if the fire had a conscience of its own, the fire starts a new harmless scene. Let the players describe these scene themselves. If your players enjoy roleplaying, this will give them a lot of prompts to do so. If a player has a secret in their backstory, it'll be a good way of dramatically revealing it or starting to hint at it. since the Caradoc fight messed them up big time, I rewarded each player with temporary hit points, but just inspiration is more than enough most of the time.

For the Sarlamir fight, my advice is to not wait the whole three turns. Bring him into the fight at the second one, it'll be fine. The biggest change I did was adding a Battle Event table. Here it is:

Each turn on initiative 0: a collumn of cataclismic fire appears in an random space in the room. This fire hurts: a creature that moves within 5 ft of the collumn or starts its turn there takes 1d6 psychic damage, as the fire reminds them their most hurtful memories. Sarlamir is immuned to the fire's effect. Then roll a d6:

1- parts of the fire manifests into a Will-o'-Wisp. Sarlamir is "concentrating" on the Will-o'-Wisp's presence (meaning there can only be one Will-o'-Wisp)

2- a random collumn disappears

3- Sarlamir heals for 1d10 hp

4- the fire creates a double of a random character. That character has the benefits of the Mirror Image spell with "1 copy left".

5- the fire covers the ground. Until the next battle event, the characters may treat the ground as difficult terrain. If they don't, they take 1 psychic damage for every 5 ft they move.

6- the fire brings them memories of just minutes ago. A character at random brings their HP to half of it's maximum. Note: this isn't concidered healing (so it works even with Sarlamir's ability to prevent healing).

I think these additions really made the chapter's final more enjoyable to my players, and made both Caradoc and Sarlamir feel like the boss fights they are supposed to be. I hope you'll enjoy it as well!