Godsgrave Session 10 Recap

The new gods set out to confront the god of death, who was on the edge of a small village in a mountain valley built around an ancient monastery where nobody would stay dead. The new gods teleported to the edge of the monastery and interviewed a death addict before meeting up with the village elder and discussing issues of the village and the god of death over wasabi tea.

The elder negotiated rescue for those who wished to leave, as the village was entirely surrounded by the mist. The gods began ferrying people through the faerie rings, back to Sorefoot Sanctuary.

In return she told them that the god of death had asked her to pass on that he wished to talk to the new gods.

They travelled to the rice paddies that the god of death was tending, and spoke with him. He confirmed their theories, explaining that the fog was created by the remnants of souls harvested by his new scythe. So much of the soul was taken and given to Orolt, the king of the gods, that all that was left was shreds of memories, accompanied by a strong desire to live, feel, or be whole again. Mortals in the fog died as tiny candles, snuffed by an ocean that desired to feel warmth. Gods survived, but as fractured, mad things.

The God of Death warned them that when he died, his scythe may turn on them, and quickly ceded his mantle to Esmerelda, dissolving into a star of Darkness. Esmerelda instantlty absorbed the star and became The Pyschopomp.

The scythe instantly cracked and fractured, leaving a whole in reality in the form of an enourmous cruel insect. Undead burst from the ground in droves, and the scythe would also reach into the fog, launched spears of the soulmist at the gods.

The gods prevailed, and returned home to plot their war with the king of the gods.

This Rule Sucks: Legendary Resistances

So my players fought The Tarrasque recently and I felt for my bard's player. He spent the first three quarters of the fight burning through the legendary resistances, then cast Otto's Irresistible Dance, which would have been an excellent strategy, if it didn't count as a charm effect, which the Tarrasque is immune to (I have an issue with immunities also, but we'll look into that later). His last few spells were resisted due to the Tarrasque's "advantage on all saves" effect.

My monk's player never landed a stunning strike, The Tarrasque never got stuck in the wizard's Mud to Rock spell, and so on and so forth.

Saving throws in general are just a reversed version of how attacks work in Dungeons and Dragons.
For regular attacks you have:

The attacker rolls a variable attack roll on d20 + modifiers =/> a static defense number (Armor Class)

For saving throws you have:

The defender rolls a variable saving throw on d20 + modifiers =/> a static attack number (Save DC)

Mathematics-wise, they are exactly the same thing. Some players seem to prefer attack rolls as they get to roll the shiny math rocks, and don't like saving throws as someone else is rolling the dice.

So saving throws are just attacks, expressed slightly differently. Now imagine you're attacking an orc and you roll a critical hit. You start to cheer, only to have the GM go: "Nuh-uh, he dodged".

When I was a kid and would play make believe, there was the one kid, you know the one. You shoot him with your laser, he has a laser proof shield. You shoot him with your machine gun, he has a bullet proof shield. You cast a spell on him, he has a magic proof shield. You hit him with a billion trillion infinity double gun, he has an everything proof shield.

That kid grew up to work at Wizards Of The Coast and he designed legendary resistances.

That's not really fair. Legendary resistances are an attempt to keep the big boss fights feeling interesting, if they didn't exist, players would spam their crowd control spells until something took hold, and then bypass the fight. But I always feel like the kid with the everything-proof shield when I use them, as i'm effectively just going "nuh-uh it doesn't work!" when the player has already succeeded.

The other thing i've always noticed with Legendary Resistances, whenever they're used at the table, the other players always console the player who's spell or ability got legendarily resisted.
"No that's good, he's only got two left now!"
"Good job, we've got to burn through these fast."
The very fact that players need consolation for burning through Legendary Resistances is proof to me that they are unsatisfying. Nobody ever needs to be consoled after rolling a critical hit.

So how do we make this more satisfying for players? Two options sort of stand out to me. One is from the truly excellent blog goblin punch which none of you should go look at because it's far too good and I don't need to be living up to those sorts of standards.

My first idea is to simply keep Legendary Resistances, but make them take a round to come into effect. You put the dragon to sleep. For 1 round. Then it wakes up. Simple, but I could see it completely invalidating Legendary Resistance as keeping a boss out of the fight for a whole round multiple times could make the Legendary Resistances effectively pointless.

The other solution is from goblin punch, and it's pretty simple and elegant. He calls them ablative saves, and it works like so: the boss fails a save, but chooses to resist. He then takes a flat 10 or 20 damage. Goblin Punch is an OSR blog, with much lower hit point totals than fifth edition, so I would simply tweak it to:

Legendary Resistance:
When the creature resists a spell effect, it takes damage equal to the spell's level times 10.

This means that you can still burn through with low level spells, but if a high level spell, gets resisted, it provides the consolation prize of a bit of damage.

Godsgrave Session 9 Recap

The new gods were preparing to hunt down and find Bellephon, the god of war, when they were approached by the people of Sorefoot Sanctuary, who were quickly running out of food due to the rapid increase in population from all of the places the new gods had evacuated.

Esmerelda had locked herself away to complete some mysterious arcane ritual and was unreachable by anyone. Leorah, Sol, Elda Gem, and Amun-Khara were all busy defending the well of souls from spiritual assault.

With the mortal population on the brink of starvation, Meena led a magical ritual and taught the smallfolk how to eat dirt and rocks to take some pressure off the food stores. Yugom taught the people to fill their bellies with work, but found that he was just delaying the problem.

Eventually the new gods decided to visit the king of the giants, and barter, trade, or steal milk from his magic cattle. Amun-Khara created an iron flask which could hold a vast amount of milk, and gifted it to the group.

On their way to the Giant King, they stoppped at Namjoon's hometown, as he was anxious to check on his family.

They found the city overrun with fog, and no sign of Namjoon's Kin. Esmerelda scried Namjoon's wife to discover she was leading an evacuation to Sorefoot Sanctuary. This relieved the new gods but also increased the urgent need for food.

Esmerelda appeared to the new gods as a great golden dragon, having completed her true polymorph spell, and flew them to the giant king's castle in the sky. There the new gods gambled with the king, winning an eating contest by eating a sword, losing a poetry contest, and winning a contest of strength through a mixture of strength and cunning by picking a lift were the king would have to bend over, a painful thing as he had swallowed a sword during the eating contest, and were granted access to the magic cows. They filled the iron flask with milk, creating the sacred artifact, The Milkstar.

Elda Gem used the Milkstar to create an enormous feast, and the food shortage crisis was solved, allowing the new gods to turn their focus to the god of war.

Ubitsya had tracked down the god of war, who had rode into the mist to defeat it and apparently vanished. Bellephon had a magic sword, of many wondrous properties, one of which being it could never be disarmed from the wielder. To take the sword, you had to kill the owner. Ubitsya discovered that Bellephon had hidden inside the sword, and given it to a little girl called Lucy.

The new gods tracked down Lucy in the centre of a village full of dead bodies. Lucy told them how her village had been attacked by raiders, and the magic sword had appeared beside her while she was hiding, and she took the sword and killed the raiders.

Lucy then fainted, and the sword unfolded and grew into a strange peacock with a scorpion tail, made entirely of blades.

The new gods fought long and hard, refusing to strike down Lucy, and the cowardly god of war used her as a human shield many times.

They destroyed the blade, killed Bellephon, and Namjoon took on the mantle of the god of war.