Princes of the Apocalypse a D&D 5e Adventure - Full Party

[brassherald]

Good day to you. I am in need for four or five brave adventurers to go out and answer the call to slay elemental evils. Would you like to go on this quest?

In other words, I have this module for D&D 5e, its called Princes of the Apocalypse. 4 or 5 players is probably the best party size (The book does not say, but my friends and I who regularly punch above our level ended up having a few issues with 3 players).

If you are interested, just post here. There is a mini adventure first which gets new characters up to level 3 where the full adventure starts, we could also skip this and just start at level 3 if you all want. No need to make your character immediately, by the way, we can get our group together then people can decide what class and whatnot that they want to play.

In the event that you are interested but do not have any of the source books for 5e, PM me and I will help you get them.

Set sights on adventure!

PLAYERS

Irrelephant11 playing Ellywick Nackle the Bard
Haschel Cedricson playing Harald Tornsvala the Cleric
skitter30 playing Aderyn Lackwater the Druid
Panzerjager playing Plume of Smoke, the Rogue
Xalxe playing Joell Wilder the Fighter

Replacements should one of our adventurers vanish:
xReckonerx
McMenno

[brassherald]

I was thinking PbP.

[brassherald]

I'm interested but have no idea how to play D&D.

Oh, forgot to say. I am not requiring any experience and I will always be willing to help anyone that needs it.

To give you an idea of my experience, my normal group met weekly for about 2 years while D&D 5e was still new, I also for some time played 3.5e, but 3.5 was confusing, 5e is pretty simple and if you want, this can be a learning experience.

[brassherald]

It's pretty casual, so, like a post each week?

I'm fine with it moving slowly.

[brassherald]

I'm in. Allowed splatbooks?

Anything published by WotC in its most recent form. (So, like if divine soul was different in the UA's from Xanthar's Guide to Everything, use Xanthar's)

I'll consider anything outside of Wizards of the Coast official stuff, but I'm going to need to look and make sure its not ridiculous to the point that party members will feel useless next to you.

/interested but my experience with dnd is basically non-existant

That's fine, we are all new at some point.

If this is a full in, we have 3 definite ins and 2 which I'm not sure about I'll add the list to the OP.

[brassherald]

I feel like 5 is the right number. Also, for those looking to start working up characters, going to do this differently from my main group, which cannot get away from the 4d6 method, and say that stats are going to be point buy.

Also, here are some character sheets if you like, with some pregenerated characters which may help and here is an improvement upon the character sheets.

This is the app I use for character sheets. (Here for apple users).

Here is a spellbook app to make life easier for casters. I cannot find one on Apple. I also have not played a caster in a while so this may not be the best app anymore, but it has good reviews.

This is my super secret "I've bought all the books, but just want to bring my phone and dice" link. Don't tell anyone. For new players, best place to start is the PHB. Please do not read this adventure, though I guess if you have done it before, there's not much harm.

Let me know if you need anything more to start setting up the party.

[brassherald]

Review of reddit tells me that this is the best app for D&D on apple.

I have an android and have not owned an apple product in years, so cannot say with any personal knowledge that this is good.

[brassherald]

In my experience, the published adventures do not need to be min/maxed.

And irrelephant, you are crazy not liking big meat shields. My favorite 5e character so far is still my dragonborn paladin.

[brassherald]

If y'all end up needing a replacement let me know; never done PBP before though.

You can join, if you want, still have one more slot open.

[brassherald]

I also feel like with people having never played D&D 5e, we should do the mini adventure from level 1. I personally almost always start at 3, but level 1 is alot easier to get into because each character has more limited options. Level 3 is just where all the characters get more customized since they all choose their subclass by then.

[brassherald]

Way of the Four Elements is not well considered, and is one of those subclasses you would have to kind of min/max to make it on par with most of the other classes. It is your call, of course, but if you want a monk, the general consensus is that Open Hand is a little boring but good and Way of the Drunken Fist and Way of the Long Death are generally considered decent options.

In some circles, monks are less than well received.

I've run games with monks in the past, though, and, in fact, in my rotating DM group one of our DMs plays a monk. My Rogue steps in for him pretty well.

[brassherald]

For ranger, by the way here is the ranger revised, which is far superior to the one in the PHB

[brassherald]

I am of the thought that Moon druids are also vastly overrated.

[brassherald]

For druid, you would probably prefer a race that gives you wisdom, but, realistically, any race can excel at any class in the game.

My group has had a half-orc warlock, a elf barbarian, and I believe one of my friends is now playing a dwarf wizard. So, you can do whatever.

[brassherald]

ABSOLUTELY!

[brassherald]

If y'all end up needing a replacement let me know; never done PBP before though.

Hi this is a real /in now because why not. I'm thinking something punchy (fighter/barbarian) cause I don't do that much.

Cool, I'll add you to the beginning, and with a full group. Let me know when you all are ready for the adventure!

[brassherald]

Oh, just send me your character sheets at some point for approval, I'm not going to be super intense about it, but I want to be sure things are done right, especially for newer players that may forget to add a save or something like that.

Additionally, if you decide to roll for money and not take the preset equipment (I suggest against this) I'm not going to be super concerned about making you guys eat and drink all the time. Hunger and thirst are boring.

[brassherald]

After some thought, I definitely want to focus a little more on magic than the ranger allows, and I'm not actually all that in love with having an animal friend.

Anyone else interested in being a healer?

If someone else wants to be healer, I'll be bard/sorcerer. If not, I'll be a healing bard/cleric, or maybe skitter and I can be dual semi-healing bards

Sorcerer also does have a healing sorcerous origin with divine soul, if you so choose to use that.

[brassherald]

I'll start marking off in the OP when I have seen character sheets. I don't think I've ever seen a game where it was against the rules to show the other players your character sheets, so feel free to share them with everyone.

[brassherald]

Are we using encumberance? XP or Milestone?

The module uses XP to my knowledge.

I won't be a stickler for encumbrance, but don't abuse this.

[brassherald]

Still need to do spells and personality stuff but here's what I have so far.

Looks good, could you just put variant human in your race for convenience's sake?

I am not banning Variant Human because I feel that every race lowkey gets a feat. For example, hill dwarf gets +2Con and +1HP per level, which is, in fact, the toughness feat.

[brassherald]

Added to the list.

I don't know when to set kind of a deadline for all characters to be created. I'm by no means going to delay this due to the personal issues you may have heard about on the rest of the site, by the time this is ready to go, I'll definitely be functional enough to do this.

[brassherald]

Looks good to me.

[brassherald]

Today's my day off, I'll put "pen to paper" today after I sort my car out. I have a couple ideas bouncing around.

Good to hear, I also took the day off, and of course, was given work to do from home.

[brassherald]

I can't do two groups right now, so, if someone else wants to DM, I won't be upset or anything

For the info from the app, I guess screenshots sent to me is best.

[brassherald]

Do you think there's enough interest for a second group? (and is there another willing DM if brass doesn't want to manage 2 groups?)

I'm going to reiterate I just do not have it in me to DM another game, but I would join as a player if there were a second group.

[brassherald]

For my game, by the way, I came across a cool house rule on reddit that I'm going to steal for each level of HP.

When you level up, you roll for HP and take the higher of the roll and the average HP offered in the PHB/other source. So, if you have d8 hp per level, if you roll a 3, you take the 5 average.

[brassherald]

Got my spells ready to go

Cantrips: Minor illusion/Mending/Vicious Mockery
Level 1: Heroism/Cure Wounds/Bane/Dissonant Whispers

Also is there any way for me to get one more point in Charisma without changing my race? Point buy maxes out at 15 but 16 (+3) would be so useful for some spells

That DnDBeyond website doesn't allow for Forest Gnomes so I'm keeping things on my pdf, but if anyone ever needs/wants to see images lmk

Let's just remove those limitations, I forgot they were there anyway.

No stats higher than 20, still.

[brassherald]

3.

[brassherald]

brassheraldsa@gmail.com

[brassherald]

shared the file with you

Received I will take a look when I take a coffee break in like an hour.

[brassherald]

That does, however, bring up that I have all character sheets. I'm kind of entrusting you guys at this point to keep your own records, I don't want to be too involved in your record keeping.

Just to get a full class composition here, we have:
Irrelephant11 the Forest Gnome Bard
Haschel Cedricson the Variant Human Cleric
skitter30 the Wood Elf Druid
Panzerjager the tabaxi Rogue
Xalxe the Human Fighter
(I am aware that I have not used your character names, I will write them down somewhere in my home computer because I am never going to remember them, I use notoriously easy names to remember because I am terrible with them)

Also, I lied, just closed my door and looked over the character sheet, you're good. If everyone is ready, tonight I can start your adventure.

[brassherald]

Hooray! I'll message you my updated character sheet before then just to make sure I didn't break it when I change the background/stats

Sounds good.

[brassherald]

FYI, probably going to just use Frogstar World to make each chapter of the adventure. It'll just be easier to sort information.

[brassherald]

lolllllll I thought HC was a wizard not a cleric brb changing my spells again

So did I until I literally just checked.

[brassherald]

So, a bit on formatting for the fact that you guys have newer players in here, and I don't feel like writing another motion right now.

1. When we begin the game and I don't have the module with me, so I don't know how quickly this will happen, eventually there will be mechanical things like dice rolls to do, the first time one comes up, I will put an explanation in a spoiler.
2. I'm going to put in some maps for combat where we'll just assign grid numbers to keep track of where everyone is, so movement will be somewhat easy to track, I believe. It's not as important in 5e as others (4th Edition was impossible without a map)
3. Each time we are in combat, I'm going to ask that everyone gives me the relevant information at the beginning of the combat in their first post, I'll make it more clear there.
4. I think the best way to handle the threads is that this will also be your OOC thread, where you can discuss tactics or just ask about any issues. Feel free to use this to your heart's content, the thread itself I'd like to keep relatively cleanly on game moving posts.
5. I'm going to go with the combat rounds resolve in order, but you do not have to post in combat order. So, basically, even if you are going last in combat, feel free to post your actions, and if I see an issue while resolving, I'll just ask you what you want to do with it, like if someone kills your target before your turn.

[brassherald]

Just a bit of a note for the discussion, generally in the D&D community, it is accepted that it is better to proactively prevent damage than to heal it in terms of efficiency.

[brassherald]

You're a Rogue, I recently built a rogue with the main goal of constantly dealing sneak attack damage.

[brassherald]

Thread time

[brassherald]

I can and will do that now, I would prefer we use the discord, if we want to use any voice chat/messaging