I can see it now, thank you. Also, just for clarification, with Reclaim Potential, when your echo gets destroyed and you have 1 temp HP, you're out of luck, right? the 2D6+CON won't overwrite this (so you get those instead), right?
More clarification about echo knight
First off, you have an amazing community here, congratulations. It really touches me to see lemmy getting big enough to be of actual help, rendering that other platform unnecessary. Thanks for your input recently.
I was hoping you could help me clarify some other questions about the echo knight so I don't need to create an account on the Dnd Forums.
- The echo can use the first part of the sentinel feat (says the FAQ on the forums) with it's reaction (reduce enemy movement to 0 with an attack of opportunity) - can it also benefit from the Shield Master (receive no damage on an successful dex-save)
- can the echo be used for the protection-fighting style (use reaction to impose disadvantage on an attack directed at someone next to you)?
- Can the ability to see through your echo avatar be used to create an echo at a spot your echo can see (that is still less than 1000' away from the knight)?
I hope that's all of them... Thank you so much in advance & keep on making social media social again :)
Thanks both of you (I hope @[email protected] sees this answer directed at him, too) . You do seem to have a lot of fun with Prestidigitation^^ We have a kender bard and a highelf mage in the party, both very attuned to mockery, so I believe my GMs sanity might be endangered if the Fighter starts something like that as well^^
I do have an Intelligence of 14 mind you, I'm not dumb, just ugly (CHA 9)^^ I can use the echo as cover, but more cover is always better, right? even more so as it's my duty to protect my spellcasting brother. He's rather feeble but very smart - he can see through the cover that the goblins think is solid.
Something to think about.
These are great & specific suggestion, you're awesome. Really like the battlefield map or message option which I would never have thought of. Superb fit for a military background.
Mind Sliver
sounds cool! My GM also gave me your consideration - I don't profit from more attacks, which is true, but! I'm only using a longsword and shield, so I do D8s of damage, which is also how Booming Blade scales, so I'm "only" missing out on the +4 Strength Bonus (currently). Plus I intent to regularly make use of the extra damage Booming Blade gives by disengaging via echo. At least in my mind.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be smarter than what you suggest (I can't - I'm a noob), I just use the opportunity to check wether my plan would work in the first place.
I totally forgot to think about utilities, thanks. also the site is awesome, thanks for that as well. We have a kender bard and a highelf mage in the mix already, so I think they'll be much better at creative magic use and I don't want to "overdo" it (I heard magic in Dragonlance is rather rare). My Inteligence is 14 though, mind you.^^ It's that dangerous middleground where you feel smarter than many (and like to show it), but aren't anywhere near the really smart people. Roleplay potential yay!
I did not think of that, thanks. Prestidigitation sound really fun, but since we have a kender Bard and a Highelf mage in the party already, I believe there will be a great lot of magic shennanigans going on without me chipping in.
I'm a total noob without any knowledge other than the computer games mentioned. I also used some kind of character builder, not sure if from R20 or D&D beyond - which also had a limited list. I chose shield, which isn't a good choice if you want your Bonus action for other stuff like being someplace else^^
noobs help for fighter cantrip
I’ve recently jumped into a game of Dragonlance despite the fact that all I know of D&D stems from Solasta & the old Neverwinter Nights games. I came to play an Elf Fighter that I want to subclass to Echo Knight. The GM was so friendly to let me rethink my choice of cantrip, which I humbly seek to be advised on. My current favourite is Booming Blade, which I find mixes well with the ability to move out of the current melee by switching with the echo. It also scales in damage the same way I’d receive extra attacks, so I won’t be missing out on much damage in my view. What would you choose, and why?
I played lots of forbidden lands and quite some dragonbane. Undoubtedly dragonbane is much more heroic with the aforementioned death saves, hitpoints and conditions. Bear im mind that damage taken while down (from an aoe-monster attack or a stray fireball) is an automatically failed safe. In my experience you can absolutely play it gritty, dark & challenging, just by giving less opportunity to rest & be on friendly grounds. You could even homebrew-temper with the death saves, die after 2fails but recuperate with 5successes, or leave them out entirely. But gain a bit of experience with playing as intended. Characters do die, by no means less often than in fbl.
I found it very useful to not think about percentages of given price, but the actual situation the hagglers are in. Once a peddler-pc wanted to buy some iron and rent a smithy to craft something and wanted to pay with a gold piece (I placed some that were minted in Glethra - as a plot hook). Unfortunately, there wasn't much the smith could do with a gold coin, so It took our peddler a successful manipulation roll to get the equivalent of 7 silver in rent and iron. Dalb, fully aware that the PCs had no torches and inside weatherstone was dark, asked double the price, if not more.
Remember there is no economy in the Forbidden Lands (yet?), so favours and goods in demand will be common. Also let them know that there is a point where coins become heavy ;)
You'll get all the support possible here. Start your own post, tell us all about your gang and fire your questions.
Going lemmy is the right thing, it's the better product without big-corp envolvement and brings social media back their owners. It has of course not the refinement of an app that runs for 12 years. But everyone can help improve it, since it's open source. But since reddit is open again I expect things to slow down here (until reddit goes full twitter again and the next wave of protesters arive. we'll see)
I used to run Forbidden Lands excessively for several years now. Kinda moved on to new games, but still play Bitter Reach and one campaignless hexcrawl.
UPDATE: the sheets are now printable if you right click and select "print". If you choose "Background graphics" the red dots to show attribute damage will be printed as well. So if that kept you from using the sheets - you can now bring them to the table.
Yeah, I get the comparison with disney movies, but that's not the case. It can get goofy at times, you need a gritty/dangerous game to counterbalance. I played Dragonbane recently, playing a mallard that gets enraged easily is fun - until you fight demonic corruption & deadly manticores. I played a game decades ago where little 15cm faeries where on the table as playable characters. sounds disney, too, but I asure you - eyeballs are no tiny target in this case. The setting was also rather dark, but I can't remember what it was called.
Bottom line - to each their own, I guess. You're not missing out if you remove the wolfkin as playable characters or sentient society as a whole. Would be a different story with goblins and halflings, they will become important in a later campaign.
Disclaimer: the world you paint for your players is yours. You must choose on which parts you adhere to the book and in which part you don’t. You can’t adhere to everything, it will lead to incongruencies. TL;DR: it’s your game and each version of th forbidden lands is different. All I can give you is my thought. Conflict only drives a story in an interesting manner when it is resolvable by various means. If the kin were indeed as hateful towards each other as depicted from time to time, we would just play Warhammer. I myself find groups more interesting that are mixed. In one I play an Orc (and quite enjoy speaking imfrofferly), but one that realised that infighting got the orcs nowhere - not only need they cooperate among themselves but also with the other kin. But I digress… Anyways, being able to talk to others is paramount for this endeavour.
I’m also very fond of atypical kin-choices, even if most FbL-Kin have a neat little twist. I kinda wish there were mallards in this game, too^^ The technical limitations for forming proper syllables are there, no doubt, but I personally are quite willing to handwave it in order to create a heterogenious (and hopefully interesting) group with their own set of tensions. There’s other things that I would disregard, or think about disregarding - slave trade, in my eyes, makes little sense in Ravenland, for example.
That Wolfkin and Mallards are able to communicate with humans - could be some kind of magic. Much like that wolfkin (and/or mallards) exist and that halfling babies…. do what they do.
So what is Forbidden Lands?
Maybe you're here because you're already a fan, maybe you are doing some research wether FbL is right for you. Below are my, totally biased impressions and summary of Key features and why you should play it. I may edit this initial post depending on the comments below in order to deliver a community-driven overview of this game.
- The rules. They are both easy to understand and apply ingame and flexible enough to allow for a fine granularity. In a group of GMs we discussed if there was a "best weapon". We could not agree because each has its usecases - not bad for a system with 2 weapon stats and some tags on them.
- The lore. It's a fantasy classic with a surpising twist to it here and there. Without spoilering too much, halflings are all jolly and merry and friendly but behind closed curtains they hate each other, are alcoholics and beat their children. As a GM, you receive a treasure trove of background, legends, events, but from the perspective of the uncertain narrator, so there's a wealth of room for your interpretation. Not two worlds will be the same and if you are playing on two different tables, you will most likely still be surprised quite often.
- The campaigns By the time of writing there are three official campaigns available. Broadly speaking, they take well established elements of the lore (the "Bloodmist" that isolated villages for 3 centuries) and lets the players discover their reasons. And of course, save the world and/or carve out a good piece of it for the players themselves)
- The flexibility & preparation required: Of course, if you're not so much interested in the campaigns, you can play Forbidden Lands as a pure hexcrawl / dungeoncrawl. With little preparation required by the GM. The mechanics for travelling and resource management are excellent, the random encounters and tables to generate adventure sites provide you with enough tools to keep you and your players entertained for month.
Combat is much quicker resolved (and, as stated above, much more streamlined and fluid than pathfinder or DnD). A character has at most 6 Hitpoints (his strength), and losing those points makes him weaker (because they use strength to do melee attacks as well). At the same time, becoming "broken" takes you out of the fight and you receive a critical injury, possibly, but not necessarly, death. Call it - more dangerous, but less deadly.
What do you think? Why do you love it? What's missing in your opinion?
Forbidden Sheets
So usually I would post this into the link collection, I just recently discovered more cool features that I like to share. If you are the author of this tool or know who it is: receive my gratitude and respect.
How to have online charactersheets & group overview:
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go to https://www.forbidden-sheets.com/?lang=en
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in the addressbar of your browser, notice the id=xxx... bit. This id leads to your unique character! anybody using this link will be able to see & edit your character; That's why you should:
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backup your character by "Export" - you'll receive an ".fsjson" file that you can "Import" should anything break with your character. I recommend saving regularly.
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go to https://groups.forbidden-sheets.com/ and enter a name for your crew. Choose wisely, as you won't be able to change it later. It does not have to be unique though.
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at the bottom, paste the url to your character and click "Attach". repeat until done
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Voila! you have an overview of your group and a shortcut to your characters. (mouseover a character card, "open full sheet")
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Add sebedius, a helpful bot to handle inititive & dicerolls, to your discord (https://github.com/Stefouch/sebedius-myz-discord-bot) and you're good to play online.
Collection of Actual Plays
Here's the place to upvote and discuss your favourite AP and find the next for your watchlist. I haven't watched all of them, so please comment & add what I left out.
Better weather
i made a weather macro for foundry that takes the tables from BR & BOB, unifies them and makes weather a bit more predictable and dependent on the region & season (and how much fuss you want to have with weather in general)
https://www.mediafire.com/file/wd2r21c41qwu3iz/forbidden-lands-myweather_v0.1.zip/file
Intro:
“MyWeather” is supposed to give you a simple mechanic to generate some reasonable weather to spice up your journeys without taking up too much game time and brainpower. It works for all climate zones and seasons, from the frozen peaks of bitter reach to the scorching deserts that are not even discovered yet.
Weather is structured into temperature, clouds and wind which are all tracked individually. Clouds and Wind range from calm to storm and clear to dark clouds in 4 steps, the temperature from biting cold to scorching hot in 7 steps. You decide, based on region, season and infinite knowledge only a GM can have, what weather you expect, a “clear sky with mild breeze” for minimal negative effects on adventuring, “freezing temperatures with dark clouds and storm” during the dramatic search for the mountain pass in bitter reach, you name it. A table with inspiration will be provided. Expectations may be between two steps, during spring the expected temperature may be between cold and mild etc.
Once the expectations are set, you may roll a d6 for each weather element to see if it deviates from the expectation. Usually you roll once per day, but if you find the weather should change more or less often, feel free to adapt. We suggest you use three differently colored dice for the three elements and roll them together, white for wind, black for clouds and red for temperature. If the die shows a 6, the weather moves one step away from the expected weather, clouds and wind towards “more”, temperature towards colder. On a 1 or 2, the element moves towards the expectation or not at all, when the actual weather is already at expectation. In case the expectation is set between steps, the actual weather element will flip to the other side. In the example above, the actual temperature will alternate between mild and cold.
A table for the actual mechanical effects a weather phenomenon has is also provided. You are now all set to present your players with the added challenges your weather brings to the table
Dark secrets rethought
Coming up with good dark secrets is hard sometimes. If that is the case for you, the following alternative might be interesting for you:
During character creation, you will be required to select a virtue and a vice. These should be single-word attributes (refer to the examples below), followed by a brief description of how these qualities are expressed in your character. If your virtue or vice becomes relevant in a scene and leads to detrimental consequences for you or other characters involved, you will be awarded one experience point at the end of the session.
Example Virtues: Honest, Conscientious, Pure, Modest, Serene, Patient, Industrious, Benevolent, Devoted, Compassionate, Optimistic.
Example Vices: Addictive, Arrogant, Greedy, Lustful, Wrathful, Hedonistic, Lazy, Envious, Jealous.
Free League summer sale
Time to stock up on those dice. Maybe we get a new print for Melified Mage? prettyplease? https://mailchi.mp/frialigan/free-league-summer-sale-2023-h26g10adoc
Useful links
Of course, there are some awesome tools out there to help you as a GM. This is an unordered collection, vote for your favourite ones in the replies below:
the infamous yxans klagan:
- https://yxans-klagan.vercel.app/
smoke raven has some really powerful tools collected, I'm especially amazed about this one:
- https://www.smokeraven.com/forbidden-lands-hex-traveller
For the ultimate number-nerds:
- https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/demographics/
other Random generators:
- http://wyrmtales.net/?
- https://perchance.org/fl-session-generator
Onepage dungeon generator:
- https://watabou.itch.io/one-page-dungeon
Official sites in Ravenland
"place them where you want", they said. But if you want a consistent world, not every placement will make equal sense. Find thoughts and inspiration on where (and why) to put the Raven's purge sites.
Beware:
Spoilers ahead
Although your GM might have an entirely different view on the world. You have been warned, though.
[Character Inspiration] What are you playing?
What is your current favourite player character? Tell us about their Kin/Profession, what makes them special? Bonus points for Prides/Dark Secrets. Your next character might be inspired from a post here.
Quick Questions, Quick Answers
post your questions concerning rules or lore here. If in doubt, use
Spoilertags
like this one