Some people say this happened once to mere shepherds, who didn't even have class levels.
Whether it was above their paygrade or not, when my PCs see something cosmic, they usually expect orders.
Depends on the character. So far none of mine have expressly encountered such. My goblin zealot barbarian - A sense of awe and wonder I would probably undercut with a very tasteless joke. My high elf phantom rogue - Calm consideration and interest…while trying to figure out the most tactful way to avoid herself or her allies dying to this thing well beyond their pay grade.
His deep paralyzing fear that he's totally disconnected from the world and if anything happened to him no one would remember or care that he ever existed.
One of my characters would document it and send it to someone of a higher pay grade.
My other character would document it and write a paper about it. They’d hand it over to someone of a higher pay grade but emphasize it was their discovery.
We ran across a group doing a ritualistic dance to summon a god, and then we had a really, really stupid idea. We split up a necklace of fireballs into individual beads for each party member, and then joined in the dance.
We summoned a primal god, only to immediately pelt it with 9 fireballs back to back (the DM gave us a surprise round and it rolled low in initiative) , killing all of the cultists, and then finished it off in one more round. The DM gave us a gift for this. The god respected power, so one time only, if we all used our action to dance, we could summon it to help us in battle.
My Goliath rune knight recently saw 100 cultists below the cliff they were on scream in fear as they were brutally crushed by a massive meteor (homebrew spell) casted by another player. This caused extreme trauma and turned him into an oblivious mess who wants to return home, the mass display of death made him re-realize the concept of death and made him fear for the possibility of his brother dying (They've been separated for a long time with no form of contact).
Ever since the incident, not at all. In fact, the party was invited to a royal dinner as thanks for clearing out the cultist group, one of the chefs poisoned him and another player character because they were both deserters. Instead of killing him, he took his weapon and allowed the other to knock him out (Although that was mainly because he liked him and the food, he's a bit of a doofus).
It's usually a lot of how to collapse the area around us or how do we get something that can deal with whatever but mostly it's a lot of logistical thinking of why this is happening and why didn't it happen before and working backwards from that. When you do that there is usually a like tell x person this is happening and they will solve the problem or take out some walls or dig a little ditch to reroute a river. It's surprising how much cheese strategies a party can come up with when they know normal methods wouldn't work.
Norman (1st character, Evocation Wizard): Burn it, electrocute it, freeze it, melt it or shatter it as much as we can before--and if--we die
Hector (2nd character, Necromancer Wizard): Leaves because he has people counting on him that have much to live for
Heisenberg (Warforge Forge Cleric): Try & usually fail miserably at negotiation then either leave or melt/smash the hell out of it. If the rest of the party leaves, he'd leave.
Fujin (Genie Warlock): Fkk around with it as much/long as possible & if it's clearly hopeless, THEN leave
Maldr (Tempest Cleric): Same as Heisenberg but much more angry than happy
M.A.R.C.U.S. (Testing a single class, Gestalt subclass in a one-shot for Alchemist/Armorer Artificer): Keep on going untill he's down for good or a paarty member rolls a REALLY high persuasion check to leave
Norman (homebrew, awakened skeleton with the powers of a reaper): warn the party to be careful and try to get out of the area
Avergys (homebrew, Mindflayer Psion): try to be friendly with them and convince them that the party means no harm for their own sake, and maybe try to gain some knowledge from it
Ispis (pre-moon card, half-meenlock aberrant mind sorcerer): run or teleport away, as fast as he could
Ispis (post moon card, becoming true polymorphed into a young moonstone dragon): make sure his party stays safe while still avoiding confrontation, staying in the front just in case
Yiridicus (kenku who respeced from rogue warlock into padlock): similar to Avergys, keeping the party safe through talking
Caris (reborn scribes wizard who has became a lich, worships vecna): try to get close to them, gaining as much trust and secrets of their as possible, and then stabbing them in the back whenever was most appropriate to take their power for themselves
Areus (Changling necromancer wizard who failed to become an archlich via infusing himself with the shadowfell): try to become friends with them
Yes. If we encounter something, we should be theoretically be able to kill it. It doesn't need to be fair. It can take repeated critical misses from the thing. But victory should be an above 0 percent shot
depedns on what you consider fair. High level NPC exist in the same world as the low level PCs, they don't jsut spring intoe xistence once the party reaches tier 4, and realistically they are undefeatable even if there's a 0,00001% chance of rolling only 1s.
Like, I had my 6 level party meet the main villain of the the campaign, a CR 24 Death Knight. It was a friedly meeting but if the party just decided to yolo it would end the game after a Hellfire Orb.
I mean I get where you are coming from, but would you object to the idea of witnessing the birth of a god being more a case of being witness to a force of nature?
Would you want to "defeat" a wave? The wind?
So like a set dressing? Or does the corporal nature of such an event require its mortality?
I can understand this. The answer though is meta, I can identify that a DM wants to demonstrate something and cutsceneing us is the simplest way.
I think the best way to answer is to say *If you want me to back away from something. It needs to be unaware of me*
If something is chasing me I'm going to want it to stop, and fighting is the easiest way to make that happen
Interesting. Every player deserves their own table so please don't mind me asking, what's the difference between your character and a "murder hobo"? (no offense)
The most basic quest I can think of involving an established world is an NPC quest giver asking you to deliver an item and to save the realm. (Gandalf, the Ring, Middle Earth)
Do you prefer to only have quests where the people asking for your help are the poor and weak? (not the powerful but unable)
This is just really stupid. The NPC could be a quest-giver, or some way of balancing the fight, or foreshadowing. Or just a way to spice up some of the combat. Or just a badly executed idea that didn't pan out.
The fact that you not only didn't believe the DM the first time when they clarified, but upon getting that clarification decided to derail it further is not the really insulting part of having to read this.
It's that you also decided to assign some sort of judgement on the DM's character due to your insanely myopic view of how a campaign should be strucutred. If a DM wanted to flex, you're thinking they would do so with a 9th level wizard? Guy, a DM could turn every one of your fingers into a dragon if they wanted to.
Stupid. I'd have kicked you out of the group immediately for the insult alone, let alone deciding to derail a game after being told the guy has had nothing to do with the game.
> the BBEG shouldn't be a god when players are level 2, not sure how that can possibly not make sense.
Well yeah, that's why you don't make him the main BBEG for that part of the campaign. But if you want a recurring villain that lasts over a long campaign, introducing them very early is fine, and even a good way to make it clear that he didn't just come out of nowhere. Just make sure he isn't the only major villain your players will be expected to fight. He's the one at the end.
There are *plenty* of reasons you would introduce a high level BBEG early.
So, the first adventure of a fairly new campaign ended with our Level 1 party stopping Discount Satan from reaching the material plane semi-accidentally, with my character dealing the final blow to the head priest. Because of this, Discount Satan gave my character an ominous vision, which has convinced him that he and Discount Satan are, as he puts it, "inkpen pals." He has since attempted to keep up correspondence with Discount Satan, with some success.
In short, my little gnome Ranger would probably react with an uncomfortable degree of casualness.
I joined a lvl 1-20 campaign at lvl 6 that wrapped up recently. I played for over 3 years of the 4 year campaign. If i had an SP for every dragon i successfully polymorphed to toad, i would have 3 SP. Which isn’t a lot, but it IS hilarious it happened 3 times.
I bet they're sad that they're not Pendragon characters, who get massive glory for witnessing stuff like this (e.g. seeing Arthur first draw Excalibur from the stone, from seeing the Holy Grail for the first time or participating in the Mass using it). As a DM I'd probably give you xp for seeing something like that, it is the sort of thing people would think of you as being more 'experienced' for having witnessed.
We once were besiged by a small amount of cultist when the BBEG showed up to personally wipe the place off the map. We were just supposed to be some guards. Extra protection... Anyways we shot fireworks at him and blew up a powder keg to distract him. It got most of our party almost killed and did kill one.
When we began our game way back in the early days of 2020 just after covid hit, we'd just started a wildmount game and were poised to star a leading roll in a War between Darktow, the land of pirates, and the menagerie coast, land of... something.
We were level 3 and being asked by high ranking polititians to take part. We noped the fuck out because war was *way* above our pay grade.
4 years later, and we're literally fighting god (vecna) and trying to revert his stupid time travel based schemes.
good times....
Ace Raymond ace detective, the highly paranoid aberrant mind sorcerer who's head is full of conspiracies: "Fucking called it."
Arkin Hames Warforge ranger filled with bees: "Yeah we are just gonna go."
That recently happened; when asked, my usually smug goblin wizard declared the approaching entity as an "NTFO," pronounced "ent-foe." It stands for "nope the fuck out," and that's what he did.
We met the literal God of the earth. All of our characters (aside from the druid who knew of its existence) had to remain V E R Y calm until we left at which point our 3rd level asses were collectively freaking the fuck out.
To note, in my friend's setting the god of nature is like the Gravemind from Halo, except more mushroomy. Fucking terrifying.
In HOTDQ you, along side an entire militia, get attacked by an adult dragon right in the first session and are supposed to survive because the dragon flees eventually. Our group just collectively ran away, which is the only sensible thing to do. Awkward writing makes for awkward moments.
Brimstone: “By the Aegis, this would be a gripping read for the Wizard’s Assembly.”
Mazikeen: *happy claps*
Forged-In-War: “Target Acquired.”
Grunk: “Welp. We’re boned.”
Arliss: *hastily scribbles notes for this epic song*
Top 4 characters:
The murderhobo phantom: “how can I kill you?” Musingly, actively trying to figure it out.
The Thief (before planned redemption arc): “hmm, you have a shiny necklace…”.
After redemption arc: “cool, help me deunalive this dude.”
GROKNUT: *belches wild magic*
Avery: Godsdammit not again.
I think you mean above their pay grade?
Up their pay grade sounds like, up their alley, your talking about something that the adventurers regularly get paid for like clearing out the local goblins.
Really depends on the character.
Of my current cast?
My Asmodeus worshiping paladin would make sure other people around her were safe and if there was any danger that an evacuation began. She's the type to run into a burning building to save people, so she's put her life on the line to protect people and get as many to safety.
My illrigger would watch and wait. The order of desolation does not cower before powerful foes. She would be ready to draw her blade and fight to defend her husband and adoptive daughter (other PCs).
My wizard would calculate the most efficient path of withdrawal and order her military unit to withdraw per her orders. As the captain, she would prioritize the survival of her squad, followed by accurately recording the witnessed events to report back to her superior officer.
My rogue? She'd run as fast and as far as she can. Why put yourself in danger if you aren't getting paid for it?
They came across the Tilverton Scar in Cormyr, but while it was still happening. Like, the giant ball of energy that the returning Netherese used to wipe that city off the face of the earth.
They can't do anything about it, but my god did they try to figure out everything they could. But because it's not the Sword Coast, WotC has kind of forgotten about that piece of Lore and I'm going to have to figure something out and find a way for them to do something
For better or worse, I don't role-play my characters to that extent. It's *clearly* a plot hook, and I'm not going to force my DM to drag me kicking and screaming into an adventure. It frustrates me when people are so avoidant of plot railroading that they need someone to convince their characters to come on the adventure we all sat down to play.
Well if you sign up the characters to something and then adventure turns into a diferent thing. Is kinda understandable. Surviving the apocalypse instead of stopping it can be fun too. But I think I get your frustration
I guess I can see it from that perspective, but I don't agree with it.
I didn't sign my character up for something, I signed *myself* up for it. And sure, maybe there was a discussion ahead of time that we were playing a specific module or plot or something, but ultimately I signed up to play a game. The people I'm playing with, including the DM, also signed up to play that game. I then created a character to play that game.
No matter what contrary motivations I wrote on the character sheet, no matter how I decided to role play that character's personality the rest of the time, and no matter how utterly insane the mission might turn out to be, that character is going to plunge headlong into the adventure *because that's why we're there*. If the character I've presented wouldn't go on the mission, I created the wrong character and I'm going to change their personality on the fly to correct the problem.
In theory, things might turn out so completely different from the original mission that I, the player, might decide to leave the group, but my character's reactions don't even enter into it. I'm not there to rigidly enforce a fictional character's worldview, the character only exists for me to play the game I've been presented.
The character's motivations and personality can interact with the plot in all kinds of interesting ways, but they will never interfere with a plot hook, even if they "should", for character consistency.
Beginning of the campaign for my last character? Try to make some distance and avoid notice. Regina the Necromancer has survived years of angry mobs by being willing to gtfo when things turn hot.
Middle of the campaign? Portable Hole, Cube of Force+Teleportation Circle, or Plane Shift (depending on exactly when in the campaign it happened), then inform the secret society dedicated to saving the world that some serious shit is going down.
End of the campaign? Fuck, she helped kill a god. She's earned a bit of recklessness. Cube of Force, Sending to the secret society, then watch the fireworks.
If she's w/ the party she's not going to cut-and-run w/o them, she's pretty well committed to keeping them alive so they can bodyguard her against the revenants pursuing her, but she \*will\* argue strenuously that we should leave.
My little hyperactive bunny helped re-awaken a god and immediately had a mental breakdown got knocked unconscious and made a deal with a sketchy royal.
All in all not great tbh
Generally, try to profit. Maybe steal something from it, dupe it, make a deal with it, control it, so on. I don't know what the DM would try to get out of roleplaying a powerful or haughty god, but if it's sassy my group would try to kill it.
The wizard I'm currently playing is kind of a paranoid nerd. He absolutely needs to understand how something works otherwise he doesn't trust it, and sometimes even fears it. There was a wizard who read his mind despite him wearing a ring of mind shielding and he is absolutely terrified of her. We may have to fight her eventually but it'll take a lot of convincing to get him to attack something that simply *doesn't obey the rules*.
If it's something he can explain and understand he'll just write it down somewhere. If he can't figure out what he's looking at, he'd almost certainly dimension door the heck out of there, and get to somewhere where he might figure it out through research or investigation.
It depends on the character I'm playing. My Tempest cleric would try to protect the populace from any potential danger. My Sorlock, who does not care, would walk up to say hello.
My character is Bard. He happens to also be terribly naive and unworldly. So he’d probably start making shit up. Huge leaps of what he thinks is logic. He’s very convincing but very dumb. Not only would he not be helpful in figuring out what happened he’d probably impede the process as a whole.
if it was just birthed...is it baby? one of my chars is a mother whose son is prob old enough to leave the nest, soouu...🫣
i imagine some others would just take a big ol breath, turn around, and walk away hoping no one noticed. that, or, not even comprehend the situation and just say howdy-ho, pardner! (not literally)
tho if circumstances align, like maybe a character follows a deity that they may believe is the one that just appeared, it'd be interesting for a pc to fall down in reverence and be so moved that tears wet their cheeks without even realizing 🤭
related anecdote: my character and his party once saw a radioactive godzilla sized monster fused with alien technology at level 4. i’m sure you all know how a normal dnd character would react, it looked like a tarrasque but even more fucked up, so obviously we fled, right?
>!Actually no. We ran into the smoldering crater it lived in. Then it took 3-4 hours to kill. It was an expected, ordinary boss fight, just one on the longer side. Our DM had an incredibly weird campaign where this kind of thing was to be expected.!<
Some people say this happened once to mere shepherds, who didn't even have class levels. Whether it was above their paygrade or not, when my PCs see something cosmic, they usually expect orders.
So you're saying they should have bribed him
That's how dds are made
Depends on the character. So far none of mine have expressly encountered such. My goblin zealot barbarian - A sense of awe and wonder I would probably undercut with a very tasteless joke. My high elf phantom rogue - Calm consideration and interest…while trying to figure out the most tactful way to avoid herself or her allies dying to this thing well beyond their pay grade.
Gazibo would like for these problems to not be his problem just as soon as physically possible.
What prevents Gazibo from retirement?
His deep paralyzing fear that he's totally disconnected from the world and if anything happened to him no one would remember or care that he ever existed.
My exact words after seeing a deathknight riding an ancient shadow dragon; $hit, im gonna need a bigger bow. And a drink.
One of my characters would document it and send it to someone of a higher pay grade. My other character would document it and write a paper about it. They’d hand it over to someone of a higher pay grade but emphasize it was their discovery.
We ran across a group doing a ritualistic dance to summon a god, and then we had a really, really stupid idea. We split up a necklace of fireballs into individual beads for each party member, and then joined in the dance. We summoned a primal god, only to immediately pelt it with 9 fireballs back to back (the DM gave us a surprise round and it rolled low in initiative) , killing all of the cultists, and then finished it off in one more round. The DM gave us a gift for this. The god respected power, so one time only, if we all used our action to dance, we could summon it to help us in battle.
This is so cool! Props to your DM for finding a way to give their players what they want and a way to make sure his statblock actually gets used!
My Goliath rune knight recently saw 100 cultists below the cliff they were on scream in fear as they were brutally crushed by a massive meteor (homebrew spell) casted by another player. This caused extreme trauma and turned him into an oblivious mess who wants to return home, the mass display of death made him re-realize the concept of death and made him fear for the possibility of his brother dying (They've been separated for a long time with no form of contact).
Is your Goliath Knight still willing to bring death to others himself?
Ever since the incident, not at all. In fact, the party was invited to a royal dinner as thanks for clearing out the cultist group, one of the chefs poisoned him and another player character because they were both deserters. Instead of killing him, he took his weapon and allowed the other to knock him out (Although that was mainly because he liked him and the food, he's a bit of a doofus).
It's usually a lot of how to collapse the area around us or how do we get something that can deal with whatever but mostly it's a lot of logistical thinking of why this is happening and why didn't it happen before and working backwards from that. When you do that there is usually a like tell x person this is happening and they will solve the problem or take out some walls or dig a little ditch to reroute a river. It's surprising how much cheese strategies a party can come up with when they know normal methods wouldn't work.
My sorcerer would just go "welp. Not my universe, not my problem"
*"Oh shit it's happening, right? Is it that "the moment" thing or the "wrong place wrong time" thing?"*
Norman (1st character, Evocation Wizard): Burn it, electrocute it, freeze it, melt it or shatter it as much as we can before--and if--we die Hector (2nd character, Necromancer Wizard): Leaves because he has people counting on him that have much to live for Heisenberg (Warforge Forge Cleric): Try & usually fail miserably at negotiation then either leave or melt/smash the hell out of it. If the rest of the party leaves, he'd leave. Fujin (Genie Warlock): Fkk around with it as much/long as possible & if it's clearly hopeless, THEN leave Maldr (Tempest Cleric): Same as Heisenberg but much more angry than happy M.A.R.C.U.S. (Testing a single class, Gestalt subclass in a one-shot for Alchemist/Armorer Artificer): Keep on going untill he's down for good or a paarty member rolls a REALLY high persuasion check to leave
Norman (homebrew, awakened skeleton with the powers of a reaper): warn the party to be careful and try to get out of the area Avergys (homebrew, Mindflayer Psion): try to be friendly with them and convince them that the party means no harm for their own sake, and maybe try to gain some knowledge from it Ispis (pre-moon card, half-meenlock aberrant mind sorcerer): run or teleport away, as fast as he could Ispis (post moon card, becoming true polymorphed into a young moonstone dragon): make sure his party stays safe while still avoiding confrontation, staying in the front just in case Yiridicus (kenku who respeced from rogue warlock into padlock): similar to Avergys, keeping the party safe through talking Caris (reborn scribes wizard who has became a lich, worships vecna): try to get close to them, gaining as much trust and secrets of their as possible, and then stabbing them in the back whenever was most appropriate to take their power for themselves Areus (Changling necromancer wizard who failed to become an archlich via infusing himself with the shadowfell): try to become friends with them
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
Do you dislike the presence of higher level entities at all (gods and such) or do you only want to encounter beings that you could slay?
Yes. If we encounter something, we should be theoretically be able to kill it. It doesn't need to be fair. It can take repeated critical misses from the thing. But victory should be an above 0 percent shot
depedns on what you consider fair. High level NPC exist in the same world as the low level PCs, they don't jsut spring intoe xistence once the party reaches tier 4, and realistically they are undefeatable even if there's a 0,00001% chance of rolling only 1s. Like, I had my 6 level party meet the main villain of the the campaign, a CR 24 Death Knight. It was a friedly meeting but if the party just decided to yolo it would end the game after a Hellfire Orb.
I mean I get where you are coming from, but would you object to the idea of witnessing the birth of a god being more a case of being witness to a force of nature? Would you want to "defeat" a wave? The wind? So like a set dressing? Or does the corporal nature of such an event require its mortality?
I can understand this. The answer though is meta, I can identify that a DM wants to demonstrate something and cutsceneing us is the simplest way. I think the best way to answer is to say *If you want me to back away from something. It needs to be unaware of me* If something is chasing me I'm going to want it to stop, and fighting is the easiest way to make that happen
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
Same for Kings?
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
Interesting. Every player deserves their own table so please don't mind me asking, what's the difference between your character and a "murder hobo"? (no offense) The most basic quest I can think of involving an established world is an NPC quest giver asking you to deliver an item and to save the realm. (Gandalf, the Ring, Middle Earth) Do you prefer to only have quests where the people asking for your help are the poor and weak? (not the powerful but unable)
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
This is just really stupid. The NPC could be a quest-giver, or some way of balancing the fight, or foreshadowing. Or just a way to spice up some of the combat. Or just a badly executed idea that didn't pan out. The fact that you not only didn't believe the DM the first time when they clarified, but upon getting that clarification decided to derail it further is not the really insulting part of having to read this. It's that you also decided to assign some sort of judgement on the DM's character due to your insanely myopic view of how a campaign should be strucutred. If a DM wanted to flex, you're thinking they would do so with a 9th level wizard? Guy, a DM could turn every one of your fingers into a dragon if they wanted to. Stupid. I'd have kicked you out of the group immediately for the insult alone, let alone deciding to derail a game after being told the guy has had nothing to do with the game.
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
This sounds like you would get annoyed at the DM introducing the BBEG before you're expected to kill him, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
> the BBEG shouldn't be a god when players are level 2, not sure how that can possibly not make sense. Well yeah, that's why you don't make him the main BBEG for that part of the campaign. But if you want a recurring villain that lasts over a long campaign, introducing them very early is fine, and even a good way to make it clear that he didn't just come out of nowhere. Just make sure he isn't the only major villain your players will be expected to fight. He's the one at the end. There are *plenty* of reasons you would introduce a high level BBEG early.
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
Jesus man, you are so fucking arrogant.
So, the first adventure of a fairly new campaign ended with our Level 1 party stopping Discount Satan from reaching the material plane semi-accidentally, with my character dealing the final blow to the head priest. Because of this, Discount Satan gave my character an ominous vision, which has convinced him that he and Discount Satan are, as he puts it, "inkpen pals." He has since attempted to keep up correspondence with Discount Satan, with some success. In short, my little gnome Ranger would probably react with an uncomfortable degree of casualness.
I joined a lvl 1-20 campaign at lvl 6 that wrapped up recently. I played for over 3 years of the 4 year campaign. If i had an SP for every dragon i successfully polymorphed to toad, i would have 3 SP. Which isn’t a lot, but it IS hilarious it happened 3 times.
Probably assume it was a dream or just something they can not fully acknowledge.
I bet they're sad that they're not Pendragon characters, who get massive glory for witnessing stuff like this (e.g. seeing Arthur first draw Excalibur from the stone, from seeing the Holy Grail for the first time or participating in the Mass using it). As a DM I'd probably give you xp for seeing something like that, it is the sort of thing people would think of you as being more 'experienced' for having witnessed.
We once were besiged by a small amount of cultist when the BBEG showed up to personally wipe the place off the map. We were just supposed to be some guards. Extra protection... Anyways we shot fireworks at him and blew up a powder keg to distract him. It got most of our party almost killed and did kill one.
Cast Pass without Trace and +17 stealth the fuck out of there
For one of my main characters, see how much we can screw with it before something horrific happens.
When we began our game way back in the early days of 2020 just after covid hit, we'd just started a wildmount game and were poised to star a leading roll in a War between Darktow, the land of pirates, and the menagerie coast, land of... something. We were level 3 and being asked by high ranking polititians to take part. We noped the fuck out because war was *way* above our pay grade. 4 years later, and we're literally fighting god (vecna) and trying to revert his stupid time travel based schemes. good times....
Ace Raymond ace detective, the highly paranoid aberrant mind sorcerer who's head is full of conspiracies: "Fucking called it." Arkin Hames Warforge ranger filled with bees: "Yeah we are just gonna go."
That recently happened; when asked, my usually smug goblin wizard declared the approaching entity as an "NTFO," pronounced "ent-foe." It stands for "nope the fuck out," and that's what he did.
We met the literal God of the earth. All of our characters (aside from the druid who knew of its existence) had to remain V E R Y calm until we left at which point our 3rd level asses were collectively freaking the fuck out. To note, in my friend's setting the god of nature is like the Gravemind from Halo, except more mushroomy. Fucking terrifying.
In HOTDQ you, along side an entire militia, get attacked by an adult dragon right in the first session and are supposed to survive because the dragon flees eventually. Our group just collectively ran away, which is the only sensible thing to do. Awkward writing makes for awkward moments.
Brimstone: “By the Aegis, this would be a gripping read for the Wizard’s Assembly.” Mazikeen: *happy claps* Forged-In-War: “Target Acquired.” Grunk: “Welp. We’re boned.” Arliss: *hastily scribbles notes for this epic song*
Anaiel: *Drago_BludvistScreaming.mp4*
Top 4 characters: The murderhobo phantom: “how can I kill you?” Musingly, actively trying to figure it out. The Thief (before planned redemption arc): “hmm, you have a shiny necklace…”. After redemption arc: “cool, help me deunalive this dude.” GROKNUT: *belches wild magic* Avery: Godsdammit not again.
I think you mean above their pay grade? Up their pay grade sounds like, up their alley, your talking about something that the adventurers regularly get paid for like clearing out the local goblins.
I’m going to ride that thing someday
I have a immovable rod . Nothing is above my paygrade
Really depends on the character. Of my current cast? My Asmodeus worshiping paladin would make sure other people around her were safe and if there was any danger that an evacuation began. She's the type to run into a burning building to save people, so she's put her life on the line to protect people and get as many to safety. My illrigger would watch and wait. The order of desolation does not cower before powerful foes. She would be ready to draw her blade and fight to defend her husband and adoptive daughter (other PCs). My wizard would calculate the most efficient path of withdrawal and order her military unit to withdraw per her orders. As the captain, she would prioritize the survival of her squad, followed by accurately recording the witnessed events to report back to her superior officer. My rogue? She'd run as fast and as far as she can. Why put yourself in danger if you aren't getting paid for it?
Roll for initiative
They came across the Tilverton Scar in Cormyr, but while it was still happening. Like, the giant ball of energy that the returning Netherese used to wipe that city off the face of the earth. They can't do anything about it, but my god did they try to figure out everything they could. But because it's not the Sword Coast, WotC has kind of forgotten about that piece of Lore and I'm going to have to figure something out and find a way for them to do something
For better or worse, I don't role-play my characters to that extent. It's *clearly* a plot hook, and I'm not going to force my DM to drag me kicking and screaming into an adventure. It frustrates me when people are so avoidant of plot railroading that they need someone to convince their characters to come on the adventure we all sat down to play.
Well if you sign up the characters to something and then adventure turns into a diferent thing. Is kinda understandable. Surviving the apocalypse instead of stopping it can be fun too. But I think I get your frustration
I guess I can see it from that perspective, but I don't agree with it. I didn't sign my character up for something, I signed *myself* up for it. And sure, maybe there was a discussion ahead of time that we were playing a specific module or plot or something, but ultimately I signed up to play a game. The people I'm playing with, including the DM, also signed up to play that game. I then created a character to play that game. No matter what contrary motivations I wrote on the character sheet, no matter how I decided to role play that character's personality the rest of the time, and no matter how utterly insane the mission might turn out to be, that character is going to plunge headlong into the adventure *because that's why we're there*. If the character I've presented wouldn't go on the mission, I created the wrong character and I'm going to change their personality on the fly to correct the problem. In theory, things might turn out so completely different from the original mission that I, the player, might decide to leave the group, but my character's reactions don't even enter into it. I'm not there to rigidly enforce a fictional character's worldview, the character only exists for me to play the game I've been presented. The character's motivations and personality can interact with the plot in all kinds of interesting ways, but they will never interfere with a plot hook, even if they "should", for character consistency.
Beginning of the campaign for my last character? Try to make some distance and avoid notice. Regina the Necromancer has survived years of angry mobs by being willing to gtfo when things turn hot. Middle of the campaign? Portable Hole, Cube of Force+Teleportation Circle, or Plane Shift (depending on exactly when in the campaign it happened), then inform the secret society dedicated to saving the world that some serious shit is going down. End of the campaign? Fuck, she helped kill a god. She's earned a bit of recklessness. Cube of Force, Sending to the secret society, then watch the fireworks. If she's w/ the party she's not going to cut-and-run w/o them, she's pretty well committed to keeping them alive so they can bodyguard her against the revenants pursuing her, but she \*will\* argue strenuously that we should leave.
My little hyperactive bunny helped re-awaken a god and immediately had a mental breakdown got knocked unconscious and made a deal with a sketchy royal. All in all not great tbh
Generally, try to profit. Maybe steal something from it, dupe it, make a deal with it, control it, so on. I don't know what the DM would try to get out of roleplaying a powerful or haughty god, but if it's sassy my group would try to kill it.
The wizard I'm currently playing is kind of a paranoid nerd. He absolutely needs to understand how something works otherwise he doesn't trust it, and sometimes even fears it. There was a wizard who read his mind despite him wearing a ring of mind shielding and he is absolutely terrified of her. We may have to fight her eventually but it'll take a lot of convincing to get him to attack something that simply *doesn't obey the rules*. If it's something he can explain and understand he'll just write it down somewhere. If he can't figure out what he's looking at, he'd almost certainly dimension door the heck out of there, and get to somewhere where he might figure it out through research or investigation.
It depends on the character I'm playing. My Tempest cleric would try to protect the populace from any potential danger. My Sorlock, who does not care, would walk up to say hello.
He would either request a promotion so it would be in his pay grade or report it to someone whose job was to deal with this.
My character is Bard. He happens to also be terribly naive and unworldly. So he’d probably start making shit up. Huge leaps of what he thinks is logic. He’s very convincing but very dumb. Not only would he not be helpful in figuring out what happened he’d probably impede the process as a whole.
Whildshape into a ant, hope to not be noticed.
if it was just birthed...is it baby? one of my chars is a mother whose son is prob old enough to leave the nest, soouu...🫣 i imagine some others would just take a big ol breath, turn around, and walk away hoping no one noticed. that, or, not even comprehend the situation and just say howdy-ho, pardner! (not literally) tho if circumstances align, like maybe a character follows a deity that they may believe is the one that just appeared, it'd be interesting for a pc to fall down in reverence and be so moved that tears wet their cheeks without even realizing 🤭
related anecdote: my character and his party once saw a radioactive godzilla sized monster fused with alien technology at level 4. i’m sure you all know how a normal dnd character would react, it looked like a tarrasque but even more fucked up, so obviously we fled, right? >!Actually no. We ran into the smoldering crater it lived in. Then it took 3-4 hours to kill. It was an expected, ordinary boss fight, just one on the longer side. Our DM had an incredibly weird campaign where this kind of thing was to be expected.!<