Latest / Sessions Canceled / Villainous Traits: Ep. 41

Transcript

Villainous Traits: Ep. 41 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:11
  The Bard turned into a giant ape and got eaten by the crazy
• 0:14
  hellbeast. So sessions canceled, it's just
• 0:17
  me and Matt here today. Actually, everybody has
• 0:19
  abandoned us. Yeah, calm.
• 0:21
  Cool. Collected, chaos crew, whatever
• 0:23
  I named us the last time. So Matt my original topic for
• 0:30
  today, I feel like I would have preferred if the group is here,
• 0:35
  right? If we've also if the four boys
• 0:36
  could unite at the end of the year and talk about Something
• 0:41
  interesting. But worry not.
• 0:43
  I have a backup topic and it's one that you and I have spoken
• 0:46
  about a few times and I'm curious to get like your
• 0:50
  in-depth takes on it. That's obvious villains.
• 0:52
  Yeah, I guess one is for the so long.
• 0:57
  Yes, the bad guys, the villains, the big bosses Now I mean I feel
• 1:04
  like I have a few questions here that we can sort of go through
• 1:07
  and the big. I'm going to put the big first
• 1:10
  question and big fucking quotations is what makes a good
• 1:13
  villain and I we're not going to answer that.
• 1:16
  Now we're going to pretend I got a few more questions were going
• 1:18
  to run through those and see if we can sort of come up with
• 1:20
  something at the end. Yeah definitely.
• 1:23
  Yeah. Now I think the one that we've
• 1:26
  spoken about before that I wanted to ask you is do you
• 1:31
  prefer to run more like straight Eight up, like, I'm evil
• 1:35
  villains or do you want like, more nuan's sort of complex
• 1:40
  villains running them specifically, that's weird from
• 1:44
  like, you know, you know, Storyteller from someone who
• 1:47
  likes the like, watch movies and shows and everything most people
• 1:51
  really, you know, they cling to the more complex, nuanced
• 1:54
  character, you know, there's more depth to them.
• 1:57
  However, when it comes to like tabletop games, Dean D
• 2:00
  specifically, Players tend to kalach onto the more like, you
• 2:08
  know, the strip Necromancer evil guy.
• 2:10
  The the terror, the one pterodactyl from Spider-Man who
• 2:13
  can cure cancer? But just wants to make
• 2:15
  dinosaurs. It's just as a DM, and as
• 2:19
  players, like I've seen this time and time again, they like
• 2:21
  them, just straight up. I'm just bad.
• 2:24
  And I'm doing bad things and there's nothing you can stop me.
• 2:27
  You do to stop me. Like people latch onto those
• 2:29
  more in tabletop games. I'm not sure.
• 2:32
  It's just because it's It's made you know, it's fun for the
• 2:35
  players to like, you know, talk shit to that person and then
• 2:38
  fight them and there were win or lose.
• 2:40
  It's more fun, just the role play and pretend you're just
• 2:43
  you're on your own evil and alter ask with the lich's brain
• 2:46
  put into it. And now you're just like I'm
• 2:48
  going to wreck so much Havoc. You have no idea.
• 2:51
  Yeah. I think it's a healthy bit of
• 2:53
  both. Right.
• 2:53
  I think a part of it is I wish to?
• 2:57
  Yeah. I think it's just I crave
• 2:59
  violence. I don't want to have to feel
• 3:00
  bet. It's the opposite of the
• 3:01
  Dinosaurs. The dinosaurs.
• 3:03
  And I don't want to feel bad for the villain.
• 3:05
  I just want to beat him to death.
• 3:08
  Yeah, exactly yeah, yeah. And like the Nuance villains,
• 3:11
  you can do but like, where's don't latch onto them that much,
• 3:16
  unless you, unless you constantly have that person in
• 3:19
  their face, like somehow or the players are constantly hearing
• 3:23
  about the villain, and like learning about them and shed.
• 3:26
  Like, I know if you want pull some Elden ring nonsense in
• 3:30
  like, but some like little tidbits of lore and see how that
• 3:33
  That nuanced characters affecting the world.
• 3:35
  Like if you want to have like a mole, a Nia like oh this fucking
• 3:39
  crazy, rat lady. Just blew up this whole part of
• 3:41
  the country. We gotta go stop her.
• 3:43
  Yeah. You can't do something like that
• 3:46
  but nine times out of ten they just a straight up, you know,
• 3:48
  baddies is more fun to play as a DM and more fun for the players
• 3:53
  and just beat the shit out of. So I don't disagree with you
• 3:58
  because I actually, I do agree. I like the more Skeletor like
• 4:02
  Dylan's myself. I think they're just more fun to
• 4:05
  run because you don't have to think about like oh well is this
• 4:08
  conflict with their tragic backstory?
• 4:10
  Do you do you want to show restraint here or do you know
• 4:14
  Vie for like players some sympathy fuck if it's easier
• 4:20
  just to be like yeah, they're just fucking evil.
• 4:22
  It's you know, it's the Lex Luthor, aren't you going to wash
• 4:24
  your hands? No, because I'm evil.
• 4:26
  You're like, what are you talking about?
• 4:31
  Yeah. That being said.
• 4:33
  Said I do actually have an interesting little like an
• 4:40
  interesting story that sort of conflicts with that about like
• 4:42
  players not latching on to. So like the more complex
• 4:45
  villains and I know this is like this is the exception rule
• 4:48
  right? Like the rules have an exception
• 4:49
  for a reason but actually this is interesting.
• 4:51
  It's interesting and worth sharing.
• 4:52
  I think this was like probably the end of the first year the
• 4:57
  game and I wanted to incorporate a little bit of stuff from From
• 5:04
  Paladin's background because his whole thing was he's like, oh,
• 5:07
  I'm like an alcoholic Land. Pirate.
• 5:10
  Also known as a bandit but, you know, to him, he's a land
• 5:12
  pirate. Yeah.
• 5:13
  And he's like, oh, when I paid my giant War rig vehicle, I
• 5:17
  busted into some like old science building from back in
• 5:21
  the day. And I stole this engine, it's
• 5:22
  like crazy. Like super prototype engine.
• 5:26
  That makes my car better than the other cars.
• 5:28
  And a lot of people would be like, you know, that's a little
• 5:32
  crazy for your level 1. Character.
• 5:33
  But I was like, this sounds fucking amazing.
• 5:35
  I love this. You don't know.
• 5:36
  I'm like, you don't know this fucking engine Mark by his way.
• 5:37
  He's like, no, no, I can, I rip can only fix the engine when
• 5:41
  he's blackout drunk and he'll never remember how and I was
• 5:43
  like, yep, okay, I'm down with this.
• 5:45
  This is great, I love it. Yeah, well I got drunk.
• 5:48
  I'm a level 20, artificer, normal person, level one
• 5:52
  fighter. Let's go.
• 5:53
  Yeah, exactly. So, basically, what, what, what
• 5:56
  I had done was there, there was like this the this sort of Well
• 6:03
  it's not the the like subtext of the big arkwright of like the
• 6:08
  Bandit where Arc it was it was pretty much in the players face,
• 6:11
  you know like oh these Bandits keep popping up, they keep
• 6:13
  killing shit. You know this this massive
• 6:16
  vehicle City got sacked and it's these crazy Bandits, flying a
• 6:19
  new banner and the players like oh shit, that's crazy.
• 6:23
  Anyway, we're gonna go do this thing, you know.
• 6:25
  So when it eventually bit them in the ass and all this shit
• 6:28
  went down there to get medicine, they one of the players, And she
• 6:33
  destroyed a lot of the medicine by breaking into the medical
• 6:35
  facilities and contaminated at all.
• 6:38
  Hey, so they had to go fraud to, like, one of the, they're like a
• 6:42
  bit. They're basically like a mob
• 6:43
  boss for one of the big cities, the cities, run by like for mob
• 6:47
  bosses, that control industry, but they all hate each other.
• 6:50
  They're trying to kill each other in the shit.
• 6:52
  And therefore, yeah, yeah. So they were like, okay, they
• 6:57
  this one guy who is, who was the villain of the Ark?
• 6:59
  Just like the crazy alligator. Dude, that I told you about.
• 7:02
  Oh yeah. Okay, I actually run the in the
• 7:06
  industry for medicine in this city and I can give you the
• 7:09
  medicine you're missing, but you got to do me a job first.
• 7:12
  And when they had before they had met this guy, I'm flooding
• 7:15
  with context. I'm sorry.
• 7:17
  Before they met him, you know, the Guild Master guy was like,
• 7:20
  hey, Don't fucking trust this guy.
• 7:23
  This guy's a fucking snake. Do not trust a single word.
• 7:26
  He tells you, it was the Odin. If he tells you snow is white,
• 7:30
  he's lying situation. Yeah, to the players already
• 7:32
  knew he discovers bad news, and I was like, perfect, they're
• 7:34
  gonna go in with mistrust. They know that he's gonna try to
• 7:38
  stab them in the back and any given time, but they can't kill
• 7:41
  him because they need him. And I'm going to talk about this
• 7:43
  later because this important. But, yeah, so they, they had
• 7:46
  sent them to a factory and in the factory, there was a
• 7:49
  scientist, dude, the scientist working on a thing.
• 7:51
  Like he was doing here humor experiments.
• 7:52
  He was evil as shit players went through thing.
• 7:55
  They killed the boss, they were looking for that guy and they
• 7:57
  found him at the like science facility where they got the
• 8:02
  engine from. So obvious immediately rips
• 8:03
  adjourn our Loop that his name Paladin's bleep, that up
• 8:07
  Paladin's character was like, oh shit, I've been here before and
• 8:13
  they tried breaking it in, they flubbed it, I think I talked
• 8:15
  about this in an earlier episode and the guy who they were like
• 8:18
  this guy's definitely a villain. He's going to try to fight us.
• 8:21
  He's got crazy mutant Powers. They tried breaking in and they
• 8:25
  failed. They got caught.
• 8:27
  So I was like, okay, we're at a Crossroads now we can I can
• 8:29
  either like force this crazy boss fight and you know, the
• 8:35
  players ought to fight him. He's got crazy telekinesis.
• 8:37
  He's got, he's got like a banshee style instead down with
• 8:39
  like, like stopping your heart, but the players were like, hey
• 8:44
  man, let's talk like, we know we tried breaking in, but let's,
• 8:46
  let's, let's just delicious talk.
• 8:48
  Let's just talk to somebody which my player.
• 8:51
  We're up to this point for about a year.
• 8:53
  Have been the most murder happy. Fuck shit, brakes, tough
• 8:59
  characters. I've met some of them.
• 9:00
  Not all of them, but sorry, but just like fuck shit Break Stuff
• 9:03
  and you're like, I love. This is chaos is great, but they
• 9:05
  were like, no, no, let's talk about this out, man.
• 9:07
  Like, you seem like a reasonable guy.
• 9:10
  I don't know why you're working with gharial, but you probably
• 9:13
  have reason, and I was so confused.
• 9:16
  So here. Okay.
• 9:16
  Like and he couldn't, he did have a tragic backstory of like,
• 9:18
  his husband was locked in cryo, Oh, stasis.
• 9:21
  And he couldn't get him that without killing him.
• 9:23
  And the my idea, right. My initial conceit was that
• 9:27
  they're going to fight this guy, no matter what like they're
• 9:29
  gonna fight him and they can choose to spare him and do this
• 9:33
  extra side quest stuff that will earn them some like favors and
• 9:36
  some like physical rewards but they just skip the boss fight
• 9:39
  because they were like, oh dude, you're fucking depressing as
• 9:42
  shit. Let's let's help you out, man.
• 9:43
  Like, and they still, they asked him to move in with them.
• 9:48
  I they moved him to their fucking there there. all guilds
• 9:51
  and he lives there with his husband and like all the
• 9:53
  scientists that they also saved from cryo and they're like, hey
• 9:58
  hey Moreau can you help us out and every time they talk to him
• 10:01
  in my head it's like This was a Villain at one point.
• 10:05
  This guy was supposed to like potentially kill one of these
• 10:07
  players and they were like, no, no you are our friend.
• 10:09
  Now, this is not an option. Your consent is unnecessary.
• 10:14
  So yeah, I just thought that was an interesting little like,
• 10:16
  tangent to be like, usually I agree with you 100%.
• 10:20
  There's no the tragic villains, they don't work very well
• 10:22
  players, kill them. But for some reason, my players
• 10:24
  were like we're adopting him DM. This is not.
• 10:27
  They said they said to me, your consent is unnecessary and I
• 10:29
  went, yeah, I see. Another that's a thing of
• 10:34
  players do like we have. Yeah, I mean they did with the
• 10:37
  no guy they adopted an old dude. Oh yeah.
• 10:41
  You know, worker. Yeah, the the hyena guy.
• 10:42
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 10:43
  That was funny too because he wasn't even a villain.
• 10:45
  He was literally a nameless goon is unnatural and they put gun to
• 10:50
  head in there. Like we're adopting his son and
• 10:52
  he went Yeah player, I don't know why.
• 10:56
  Clearly I'd tried doing it in. We're doing magic you know goon
• 11:01
  Academia when we were in that one Cobalt like fire dungeon.
• 11:05
  Oh yeah, I was trying so hard Kilted.
• 11:09
  I found like because it was like a low like dungeon built into
• 11:13
  the like I don't know like red rocks and shit A bunch of cobalt
• 11:16
  and like one of they called Fire Salamanders, I think Yes, the
• 11:22
  salamanders. Yeah, and out of the pie of
• 11:24
  there was just like, random, like, red Drake's, and now me
• 11:29
  being like mad. And I love dragons and I have a
• 11:32
  thing for Drake's in general because of the three-year game.
• 11:36
  I was in my character. Me was like trying so
• 11:40
  desperately to just kidnap one of the drinks and just be like,
• 11:43
  this is my baby and I love him and he's going to be my new pet
• 11:46
  and Sam was just not having no. No.
• 11:51
  I love him. I had just been a human like I
• 12:02
  love pets and it's like magic pet.
• 12:04
  Yes, please give me. Even if it's a bandit I don't
• 12:08
  know that gonna be true. I definitely feel that myself
• 12:12
  right where you see like the tiny helpless that like shit.
• 12:14
  We did it in Joshua's game with the fucking gazer.
• 12:16
  We're like me, take him, we're gonna take them and then fuck.
• 12:21
  Sam did it with the nameless Goodwin's, the fucking the to
• 12:24
  Jackal errors in the lizard. Yeah.
• 12:26
  Where is it? Our fucking piece of ring.
• 12:29
  I love how much. I just annoys Josh, we just like
• 12:33
  I'm trying to run this, very serious greek-style like
• 12:36
  pharaohs each kind of game and then they open a fucking pizza
• 12:39
  shop. And I'm just like, yeah, it's my
• 12:43
  defense. I was not, I was not down for
• 12:46
  the pizza shop, but it's really. I'm like, this is dumb as shit.
• 12:50
  Why are we doing? I'm this and you guys are at
• 12:52
  least made like Gyros or something.
• 12:54
  We could have left. I didn't want to do this.
• 12:57
  It was Sam who is like I want to open to eat Surya as ackley's.
• 13:00
  Don't fucking call it. A neat Surya and fury.
• 13:04
  Eights me and he was like good that I'm going to keep calling
• 13:05
  it The III. Unlike I swear.
• 13:07
  You fucked up. I hate you so much I'll funny.
• 13:14
  Yeah it was it was so funny. Yeah, it's just a thing.
• 13:21
  It happens every game and I fucking my trick saving game at
• 13:25
  half my players adopted to was it they adopted a baby mimic
• 13:30
  that it was originally in the shape of a book and now one of
• 13:33
  the players is trying to train to like make it a companion.
• 13:38
  The entire group of dotted a pair of twin fairy dragons that
• 13:43
  I think they're like, they're like 45 years old.
• 13:46
  So they have kids and now Just found which would you think like
• 13:52
  Matt why are you putting all these things out there for your
• 13:54
  players to you know, just adopt and take and it's like I just I
• 13:58
  just use random tables or what the adventures tell me to do.
• 14:01
  This is my fucking idea. I'm the guy who literally is,
• 14:04
  like, I hate Summoners because they fucking some 132 snakes and
• 14:07
  ruin my Encounters. This isn't on me.
• 14:12
  And now last game, they found a topaz dragon egg.
• 14:19
  And now, the they're like, can we keep it and maybe had a like
• 14:23
  sure, what's the worst that can happen?
• 14:27
  Now, the knowledge, they have to fairy dragons, a pet mimic and
• 14:31
  now they're going to have a pet dragon.
• 14:34
  You've done this to yourself. Yeah, I know I've done this
• 14:36
  myself but I gave the players that I gave him, the talk like
• 14:39
  in the podcast for, I'm like, all right.
• 14:41
  Listen like if you guys use these in combat.
• 14:44
  They're fair game. We all agree.
• 14:47
  And so now they specifically like they don't want the fairy
• 14:49
  dragons involved in combat. They don't want probably there
• 14:53
  that I'm assuming they're not going to want the baby dragon
• 14:55
  involved in combat until a little bigger.
• 14:58
  Hmm do you know what? It's not really on topic but
• 15:01
  here's a good question. What is your general rule on
• 15:06
  saving throws for friendly? NPCs are first sorry for death
• 15:09
  saves them from the NPC's. I don't know because I went back
• 15:13
  and forth on like is like normally the room.
• 15:16
  You know the the rules are like NBC's are the same as monsters
• 15:21
  so they don't get death saving throws.
• 15:25
  I think start important ones for like you know like let's say
• 15:28
  there's like oh there's a character that wanted that's,
• 15:32
  you know, romantically involved with another character.
• 15:35
  Maybe I'll give that out, you know that NPC up, you know,
• 15:38
  death saves, I don't know, it's a bit.
• 15:43
  I guess it chant my mind changes constantly with it because if
• 15:47
  they're doing like a you know like an escort Quest where they
• 15:50
  have to bring an important BC over, that's kind of an
• 15:54
  important thing of like Like hey, if this character, you
• 15:57
  know, dies, you know, Mission failed, we'll get em next time.
• 16:00
  So it's like, do I give them the chance of saving them do?
• 16:03
  I give them the death saves? I don't know.
• 16:05
  Like, I never, I'm never 100% on if it's a good idea or bad idea.
• 16:11
  Yeah, I was. So I'm in the same boat.
• 16:12
  I basically, what would happen with me, was I let One and PC
• 16:16
  have death saves right? And then the that, BC went down,
• 16:20
  I was like, he's gonna get death safe, and then I was like,
• 16:22
  probably shouldn't have done that.
• 16:25
  And and another another NPC that was friendly went down and then
• 16:28
  my players were like, oh don't worry, the NPC's have death
• 16:30
  saved sometimes like All right. Well it would be a dick move.
• 16:33
  If I was like magic said well actually yeah I was I was like a
• 16:38
  dick move to do but I are fine. Fuck it in this game it for the
• 16:43
  as long as this games going on. I guess the NPC's of death
• 16:45
  saves. And I basically just stuck with
• 16:46
  that the whole time. Yeah.
• 16:48
  Okay. That's good.
• 16:52
  Yeah, I don't know. Well yeah, let me know if it's a
• 16:54
  good thing because I'm I'm I'm not 100% on in either Camp as it
• 17:00
  can be useful, but it's also like, certain missions and Wes
• 17:04
  you don't want to like ovaries did because that it's like the,
• 17:07
  the, you know, the fear of death isn't real for the players where
• 17:10
  it's like, all right? Come little two-year-old that we
• 17:12
  have to fucking, like, you know, I'm going to bring with you on
• 17:15
  every Adventure. It's okay.
• 17:16
  You have death saves. I'll bring you back up.
• 17:19
  I've spared the die. Yeah, right.
• 17:21
  That that It is for the right. That is something I had to like,
• 17:24
  record with literally, like two weeks ago because they fought
• 17:28
  the big bought like the big boss of the arc, like, the crazy.
• 17:31
  I think I told you it was a, it was the stat block for the king
• 17:35
  of feathers, but I really need to shit and back and like me,
• 17:38
  that, that super-high cr1. And I just use the both of them
• 17:40
  together, nice. And like, more than half of the,
• 17:46
  of the players and NPCs, like Omaha.
• 17:48
  Everybody went down. Oh Shane.
• 17:50
  I don't know what the fuck happened and I Sure.
• 17:52
  So my players think that I was just being nice, let me know, I
• 17:56
  wasn't being fucking nice. All of the NPC's world above a
• 18:00
  15-4, all of their death saves. No one failed.
• 18:04
  A single fucking death save that wasn't player character.
• 18:08
  And because people are like, yeah, it's like, aren't you
• 18:12
  happy that like the, you know, like your players are doing
• 18:16
  after work? Mikey look, I don't want to kill
• 18:18
  my players, that's never been my intent, but I want to give them
• 18:22
  something incredibly challenging and if they die, they die.
• 18:25
  You know what I mean? Like, I'm not gonna be happy
• 18:27
  with it. Especially about the throw a
• 18:28
  bunch of the story that I've written for that character out.
• 18:30
  But if it happens, it happens, and it'll be interesting for
• 18:33
  character reasons, but those NPCs, just fucking refused to
• 18:36
  die. That's literally all of them
• 18:39
  were like, I hear? No Bell.
• 18:41
  Yeah, well, me in coach and it's like, you just took a hundred
• 18:44
  points of fucking damage lie. About like it just got me so mad
• 18:49
  and I'm like, now, the players are getting, I'm going easy on
• 18:51
  them. Like, no, no, I was not going
• 18:53
  easy on you. You're not getting some extra
• 18:57
  cannon fodder that fight. Yeah, your friends should have
• 19:00
  died. Yeah, it has fucked me at least
• 19:07
  once. Now, as I read, it doesn't fuck
• 19:11
  me, it's not like I'm mad about it, but it would have been
• 19:13
  interesting to see, like, one of the characters, like, you know,
• 19:16
  one of my players are the characters are her three
• 19:19
  siblings and then for Paladin, it's like his first mate on his
• 19:23
  pirate ship. It's also his like giant, he's
• 19:27
  like a bird. I think I talked about before
• 19:29
  his name is visits the crazy. Oh yeah, the lizard.
• 19:33
  That's the size of the eagle. Yeah, that thing got downed.
• 19:37
  And then, one of my other players stiffy, her fucking, she
• 19:42
  has the, it's a six-legged horse with claws fangs, right?
• 19:46
  No lips. All right, down to unlike
• 19:51
  Paladin Paladin, literally has a rule where it's like, if his pet
• 19:53
  dies, another pet will show up within a week and you don't have
• 19:57
  that so of her fucking, if her not a horse dies, it's fucked.
• 20:01
  It's fine. Yeah.
• 20:02
  But nope, it it fucking nailed all of its death saves.
• 20:06
  And I just sat there, like, are you fucking me now?
• 20:09
  Do you roll the death sazed? You have the player who's
• 20:11
  controlling it, I run the players even controlling, I'm, I
• 20:15
  don't know. So the the players Paladin
• 20:19
  controls Vis for the most part. I like it's sort of it goes back
• 20:25
  and forth because sometimes I'll roll for Vis, sometimes he'll go
• 20:27
  for Biz, I'll move him. He'll move me just sort of
• 20:30
  depends on. Like, do I have His character
• 20:33
  sheet open at the time. If if I do, then I'll do it.
• 20:35
  If not, he'll do it. Yeah, it just it they wrote they
• 20:40
  will really well and it just it fucking.
• 20:43
  I just I sat there, I was really happy but I was maulding at the
• 20:47
  same time just so they're salty as fuck but really happy at the
• 20:52
  same time. I'm glad kissed.
• 20:55
  The king of feathers is a cool mod for people who don't know if
• 20:57
  she just type in you know, Google Images, D and E, king of
• 21:01
  feathers. It's basically A big T-Rex with
• 21:03
  feathers fucking massive. I don't know if it has a horn.
• 21:08
  Yeah, right? Yeah, it looks like if anyone
• 21:10
  who plays my monster under it looks like a voided up Anja Nath
• 21:14
  with more. Like, it's just more colorful
• 21:16
  the engine has like a brown pink, the King of Fans, just
• 21:20
  he's just a rainbow of fuck you. Mmm.
• 21:25
  I love it. It's so great I've ever since I
• 21:27
  found out about it like roughly where I think it's from Yeah,
• 21:35
  yeah. Okay.
• 21:36
  Ever since I found out about us, like I want to use this Someday.
• 21:38
  I'm gonna fucking same. I wanted to use it.
• 21:41
  So many different cages on my players.
• 21:43
  I never got the chance. It's so good.
• 21:44
  It did the first time it teleported my players
• 21:48
  themselves. That's the I've watched a, let's
• 21:52
  play of people doing it, and then the ends like, yeah.
• 21:55
  And then the T-Rex the dinosaur teleports and just like, wait
• 21:59
  dinosaur what it's like, yeah. How far 30 feet.
• 22:03
  VI. He's right behind you and it
• 22:04
  doesn't hold up. You just said the dinosaur
• 22:06
  teleported. And he's like, yeah.
• 22:08
  And that's a crit. Oh, wow.
• 22:11
  How much help do you know you're dead?
• 22:13
  This is like, no, no go but I don't care that my characters.
• 22:15
  They don't back to the fucking dinosaur.
• 22:18
  Yeah, it's the little. Okay, We're Not Gonna Move by
• 22:20
  like you didn't just say what you just said you know.
• 22:22
  Like that's what I'm at ever me where I was like, yeah.
• 22:25
  So it moves over here and they're like oh we're gonna talk
• 22:28
  about opportunity I'm like you would if it didn't teleport and
• 22:32
  they went. Yeah.
• 22:33
  It what? And I was like, oh yeah and now
• 22:37
  it has multi attack to and they went But I love the was it's the
• 22:43
  it has the breath weapon, that's just B's B's.
• 22:46
  Yeah. He's like just T-Rex full of
• 22:51
  bees. Should I literally?
• 22:54
  I so I kept that ability. The only thing that I changed
• 22:58
  was that rather other? It doesn't, it doesn't spit them
• 23:00
  out. It calls them because it's you
• 23:03
  know, it's think it I basically made it like a Quetzalcoatl
• 23:06
  analog. I called it shuko bottle, and it
• 23:09
  was like a It wasn't like a DD but it was like a powerful
• 23:13
  entity that the the shark people know about, it's like the
• 23:18
  guardian of their underworld. I took a lot of it from Mayan
• 23:21
  mythology and I break you know I threw some names around.
• 23:24
  Yeah. So it called it's rather than
• 23:28
  swarm of bees it comes the swarm of poisonous snakes, that's why
• 23:32
  it fly around the players and just rip them to shreds.
• 23:38
  Oh my God. It was great.
• 23:41
  It didn't end up doing that much, unfortunately.
• 23:44
  But every time the snakes come out to players like are you Have
• 23:53
  I went talk about it. Yeah, I would talk about Chicago
• 23:55
  but unfortunately, it's a giant, angry T-Rex.
• 23:58
  Not really a villain as much as this fucking problem.
• 24:05
  Yeah. Evil, alligator, mob boss, man
• 24:08
  is a problem and the village. No, king of feathers is just
• 24:11
  something you now have operable for CA.
• 24:15
  It's, it's the, it's the bag of dog shit that gets dropped at
• 24:18
  your front door. You're like, why, what is
• 24:20
  happening? And please, God, someone help
• 24:22
  me. I'd really don't want to do this
• 24:23
  right now. Yeah, it was very good.
• 24:30
  What was your short? Oh yeah.
• 24:32
  There is no question was complex or simple villains.
• 24:35
  It's I think we both had basically said simple villains
• 24:37
  are just the better of yeah yeah see is there like a is there a
• 24:48
  villain that you particularly enjoyed running?
• 24:51
  Like one that really had you like yes this is.
• 24:53
  This is the guy. Yeah.
• 24:56
  It's weird because this one's. This is kind of a long story and
• 24:59
  I kind of mentioned this character a while ago.
• 25:01
  I don't actually remember if we met, if I mentioned him during
• 25:05
  our Monster episode or my briefly kind of mention over
• 25:09
  him. But when my players they're
• 25:13
  like, this is like literally like the first few months of the
• 25:17
  three-year game. And I did the Matt Koval thing
• 25:20
  where I'm like, okay of zaccheus, let me look out that
• 25:22
  adventure and I threw that. My players went into the Into
• 25:26
  the caves they were looking for the the special MacGuffin and it
• 25:31
  led to them a bunch of different Dungeons.
• 25:33
  And one of the areas they try, they kind of like pass through
• 25:36
  was this kind of Fortress built into the side of a cave and it
• 25:41
  ends up being a drought post and that Outpost led into the bigger
• 25:46
  city. If anyone knows actual like,
• 25:48
  Dean delord history, I had that connect to menzo Branson which
• 25:53
  is the big important, route City and that g.
• 25:56
  If you play out of the Abyss, you can go there.
• 25:59
  And so I didn't have all that content prepped or anything
• 26:03
  because I was like I they're not going to go there but I just
• 26:05
  want to like hint dad like maybe later on and when they're higher
• 26:07
  level they go there and so they end up talking to the drought
• 26:13
  and being like, Hey listen we're lost we're trying to figure out
• 26:16
  where to go the drought cow Point them to like you know get
• 26:18
  the fuck off our property. But what ends up doing was
• 26:22
  having a drow sneak and follow them.
• 26:26
  As the players are continuing down is under dark tunnel on
• 26:31
  their Adventure. Trying to find where the nail
• 26:33
  the, the magic item is well, one of my players, this is Chris.
• 26:38
  The shadow monk guy is characters or or him?
• 26:42
  I'm not really sure. It's super paranoid.
• 26:45
  So he just looks just like a little bit.
• 26:53
  He's kind of all these characters.
• 26:55
  Kind of have this little bit of a trait and so he's like, mad.
• 26:58
  I want to make sure nothing's following us.
• 27:00
  I want to like, roll, roll perception, or anything, see and
• 27:04
  so, I guess your, and he rolled fucking dumb.
• 27:06
  Hi. I don't, I don't remember him as
• 27:07
  a 20, but he, I was like, yeah. You see.
• 27:11
  There's two, there's two drow. One of them in particular.
• 27:15
  This is actually right around the time.
• 27:18
  That Morton kanan's Tome of foes.
• 27:20
  Out. And that book came has a lot of
• 27:24
  cool. New drowse one of those
• 27:26
  specifically is called a shadow drought shadowblade.
• 27:31
  It's basically this like drow assassin, that summons Shadow
• 27:37
  Blade and like, you know, kills people in the dark and it's
• 27:39
  summons. 5-foot, cubes of darkness and basically what
• 27:44
  you're supposed to do is you you you stab someone with the, with
• 27:46
  the shadow sword, someone's a five foot Cube that basically
• 27:49
  just blinds are I get now, they have no idea what's going on and
• 27:53
  they can turn off the darkness, do whatever they want and do
• 27:56
  more damage to the the player wasn't.
• 28:01
  This wasn't this. The thing that Matthew Mercer
• 28:06
  based that crazy red-haired Rao assassin lady in campaign soon
• 28:10
  after I don't know, I don't know because she has her own stat
• 28:14
  Block. In the new territory reborn oh
• 28:17
  she does g. Yeah, she's fucking decked out a
• 28:19
  tie. I'm, I've 100 cents for the for
• 28:22
  my players. I'm using that step back.
• 28:26
  I'm using this tab. Lock It Up Guys.
• 28:27
  Using its talking. It's so cool.
• 28:31
  Yeah, no shit. I don't know if maybe she's,
• 28:33
  that was a that black originally and then he built off of that.
• 28:37
  But that's what I use for this 141 drought.
• 28:40
  And then the second round was just like you know, I think it
• 28:42
  was like a the week just lowered route.
• 28:45
  You can you can imagine like whatever the them in the one the
• 28:48
  monster manual. Just because I'm like I want to
• 28:50
  Super A powerful person and then there s the dress, the commoner?
• 28:54
  Yeah. No, not a commoner.
• 28:55
  The, the warrior or something, real Bandit, CR 18, something.
• 29:01
  Yeah, I don't remember. So, he sees these two drought
• 29:05
  and he's like, this is when they're like level 6 or 7 to.
• 29:09
  So he's just like, oh these fucking drow here.
• 29:12
  This is a, this is also the player who specifically after
• 29:15
  this moment hates all drown. Was like I'm gonna go to the
• 29:18
  city and I want to I don't want to kill all Drow.
• 29:21
  And that's what started that whole shenanigans.
• 29:25
  And so, he's like, all right. He's like I'm going to Shadow
• 29:29
  step behind the motherfucker. And I'm just, I'm just going to
• 29:31
  go to town. I'm just gonna murder them.
• 29:35
  The drought Shadow Blade is CR 11.
• 29:38
  It's it's high. It's pretty.
• 29:40
  Yeah, it'll fuck you if you're not careful.
• 29:42
  So and the only thing I found I will try and find you the image.
• 29:46
  I use I because I randomly found one from Google basically it,
• 29:52
  what it, what if the shredder was, was a A very
• 29:55
  lighter-skinned route. Basically that's the image.
• 29:57
  You can imagine for the Shadow Blade for the Shadow Blade.
• 30:00
  That's the image I found because I was like the first image I
• 30:02
  like Google. Then I was like, oh, this looks
• 30:04
  sick. See and so, I hope layer
• 30:07
  teleports hell yeah. A real pal?
• 30:10
  Yeah, which is, which is funny because afterwards he became
• 30:14
  known as the pale drow for my players not like I've got the
• 30:17
  fucking paled Rio and that's what started becoming dislike
• 30:21
  villain for them and specifically for the shadow
• 30:24
  monkey. Oh, like, you know, that reminds
• 30:26
  me of a turtle. Why if you seen Inglourious
• 30:28
  Basterds? Oh yeah.
• 30:30
  It's been a while. Yeah, the the was the jubair, he
• 30:33
  had the better. You do the better, you
• 30:47
  know, guy and base. He's like, all right, I'm gonna
• 30:49
  need you to stop doing whatever you're doing to, which the
• 30:53
  payload router, you know, took exception to that.
• 30:55
  At and one shot him. Oh, oh no.
• 31:00
  Which Chris are you get? He had no.
• 31:01
  Like I he was like, what the fuck?
• 31:03
  Just happened. And so the rest of the party are
• 31:06
  freaking out trying to figure out like, oh my God, what's
• 31:09
  going on? Because it's, you know, it's
• 31:10
  dark and there in the cave and only half of them have dark
• 31:13
  vision and they're like, oh no, our new, our new dog.
• 31:17
  Oh, friend, just teleported away from us.
• 31:20
  And now I hear combat in the distance.
• 31:23
  But basically they ended up killing the, the weaker drought
• 31:29
  and the Shadow Blade just because actually the Shadow
• 31:31
  Blade also has a was, it shadowstep feature.
• 31:38
  So I'm just like yeah he just you know he teleports out and so
• 31:41
  they're like fuck all right whatever if we ever see that
• 31:43
  guy. Yeah we're gonna fucking weird
• 31:44
  kick his ass. And when they got to the end of
• 31:49
  the underdark adventure was they fight a Beholder, they kill the
• 31:52
  beholder and they base. He teleport back to the surface.
• 31:56
  It was as their teleporting out the pale drought and a bunch of
• 32:01
  other drought Warriors. Just so you know, they kick in
• 32:02
  the door and they're like pointing to like you.
• 32:05
  Where are you going? And so Chris was so upset
• 32:08
  because he's like no fuck. Why are we teleporting out now?
• 32:12
  Give me five minutes I want to fuck this guy up and so They
• 32:16
  teleport out. And so for the longest time in
• 32:19
  the campaign, they're always like our I'm at.
• 32:21
  We want to go to the underdark. Want to kill this guy, he's
• 32:23
  being a dick. You want to fucking fight them,
• 32:26
  and there was one time that when the players were off on an
• 32:30
  adventure him and a bunch of other drought actually snuck
• 32:33
  into their stronghold. Because I was using the Matt
• 32:36
  Koval stronghold and follow her book.
• 32:38
  Actually tried a satellite, killing a bunch of their and PCs
• 32:41
  and they ended up stealing something from them from the
• 32:43
  players. Wait, wait, wait, wait,
• 32:47
  straight. You got you had the guy like
• 32:50
  killed their friends? No, he didn't kill their
• 32:52
  friends. He basically wall him and he had
• 32:55
  a him and a small like Squad of drowned.
• 32:58
  Spiders basically direct attack and Destroy wrong hold.
• 33:02
  And while the other drought minions were basically attacking
• 33:06
  the stronghold in fighting the players, basically hirelings,
• 33:10
  they had a bunch of NPC hirelings that they got, he
• 33:14
  stole Something from their, from their home base.
• 33:16
  I don't know. It's been a long time.
• 33:18
  I don't remember exactly what he stole.
• 33:21
  I was one of the I also again, I still a lot of shit from people.
• 33:27
  One of the things that part of my campaign was, I actually took
• 33:30
  the teeth of the Dragon, the idea, the Matt Koval got from
• 33:34
  his friend, but I made them into, you know, five different
• 33:37
  magic items. Each one based on the chromatic
• 33:39
  dragons colors. It was a green one, a blue, one
• 33:42
  yellow, white black red. And so, I think he stole one
• 33:46
  from them, and then just went back to the other dark, which my
• 33:49
  players were like, what the fuck?
• 33:51
  And so when they finally getting, I think they ended up
• 33:56
  doing a bunch of other stuff and then got to level 6 16 when
• 34:01
  they're like, all right, Matt, we need to go to menzo Brands
• 34:03
  and we need to kill the drow. We need, which they ended up
• 34:07
  instead of calling it men's of Brands and they're like, we're
• 34:09
  going to go to web town, you know to patented trademark web
• 34:13
  down. When you go down there going to
• 34:14
  fight the pale, drow kick his ass or take our stuff back.
• 34:18
  We're gonna put an end to this nonsense.
• 34:21
  And it was one of those things where like they only really met
• 34:26
  this. NPC.
• 34:27
  This you know, Monster twice or once basically her.
• 34:32
  Yeah, that they encountered him, once they met him twice but then
• 34:36
  he became this prevalent figure and then they end up getting
• 34:40
  like some hirelings to rachie go into the underdark and get
• 34:43
  information. And apparently, what ended up
• 34:47
  happening with him was he became a very important member The
• 34:51
  Dragon Cult that I end up dragging, the dragon called was
• 34:55
  a big part of my home game and I found.
• 35:01
  So in Forgotten Realms Allure and this is a, there's a lot of,
• 35:05
  there's a lot info-dump, I'm sorry, but there's nothing like
• 35:07
  that. I actually do know a bit about
• 35:09
  this, because I was going to run for the dragon Queen.
• 35:13
  Oh, nice nice. Well eat.
• 35:15
  So, in Forgotten Realms, lore and they don't really mention
• 35:17
  this a lot in 5V, they did mention it in Indy, next airing
• 35:22
  will invite the Vault of the Dragon adventure and in the big
• 35:26
  like I have the for E mezzo Brands and book which is fucking
• 35:28
  awesome. As you like love drought.
• 35:31
  There is a sect of drow called. I'm going to butcher named de
• 35:36
  Res charlson. And they are.
• 35:38
  So they, yeah, they are a subset of drow who are half dragon drow
• 35:47
  but they're half shadow dragon. Oh, Yeah.
• 35:52
  So and they're all like assassins and because they have
• 35:55
  dragon blood in there all Sorcerers but because their
• 35:58
  Shadow Dragons, It's all necrotic shit.
• 36:01
  It's like these guys are fucked and basically the players
• 36:06
  because the main antagonist throughout my campaign were
• 36:08
  dragging cultists and Dragon Cult.
• 36:11
  This is sky, this is shadow assassin.
• 36:15
  After me dealing with the players.
• 36:17
  Basically decided to go and work after stealing this important.
• 36:21
  item was basically told to keep it from the, you know, keep it
• 36:24
  from the players and give him a bunch of like power from the
• 36:26
  dragon called and then made his own sub-sect with these half
• 36:31
  shadow dragon, drow, assassins or source And basically that was
• 36:36
  like one of the big things that the players were fighting and
• 36:38
  dealing with were these fucking half dragons constantly and then
• 36:41
  going around having men's of rennes and Adventures, dealing
• 36:44
  with drowse, going to bazaars seeing all sorts of weird,
• 36:48
  fucking aberrant shit, and the other dark, and eventually they
• 36:54
  can, you know, they they finally got the big big boss fight with
• 36:57
  him which was after going through a big dungeon, getting
• 37:02
  to him at the end. Getting teleported into the
• 37:04
  shadow fell. To fight him.
• 37:07
  And then basically it was him to shadow, dragon, blue, shadow
• 37:13
  dragons, and a bunch of those half-dragon.
• 37:17
  Shadow dragon, drow assassins, and was a big fucking fight and
• 37:24
  he is the one. Like I don't, I normally don't
• 37:27
  really like to build monsters from scratch.
• 37:30
  He's the only thing I've ever built from scratch on the ground
• 37:34
  up. After taking the shadowed Rouse
• 37:37
  a block and then rather than reworking it, I was like, I'm
• 37:40
  just gonna I'm just gonna, you know, make a new thing entirely
• 37:44
  afterwards. I am bunch of shadow dragon
• 37:46
  Powers, gave him the bunch of dragon shit, give him spells and
• 37:52
  legendary I think he ended up being like a suit CR 16 creature
• 37:56
  by the time I was done. Yeah.
• 37:59
  I think I can after about three and a half years.
• 38:04
  I think I can name on one. I can count on one hand, how
• 38:07
  many times I made a step lock from straight up scratch.
• 38:09
  So fucking Kudos because I Sam does that shit to I'm like
• 38:13
  that's just sounds awful. I don't want to fucking through.
• 38:15
  I never, yeah, I never liked doing it because, hey, like, I
• 38:19
  don't like to be like the, you know, there's there's a
• 38:21
  difference between a lazy dungeon master and then the lazy
• 38:24
  dungeon master, the lazy dungeon Master's the guy who goes out
• 38:28
  and just like, listen, why am I gonna build a monster when
• 38:31
  there's so much fucking resources out there.
• 38:33
  I could just take Something. And then warp it into my own
• 38:36
  thing and fit into my campaign. Why do I have to go?
• 38:38
  And it's not like, oh, you're taking something somebody else
• 38:42
  made and it's like, yeah. But they're posting on the
• 38:44
  internet for anybody to use. I'm not selling it.
• 38:49
  I'm not I'm not critical role, I'm not live.
• 38:52
  Like recording myself and my friends playing this game.
• 38:55
  I'm using it for a home. Great game.
• 38:57
  It's fair game. Yeah.
• 38:59
  So building likes likes at blocks.
• 39:01
  I most of the time like 90 Nine point nine percent of time I'm
• 39:05
  like no there's there's no reason for me to do it.
• 39:08
  That took no I don't think I will.
• 39:10
  Yeah. Basically but he was the only
• 39:13
  one because of how much like the characters loads this guy and
• 39:17
  wanted to just they wanted to punch him in the face and kill
• 39:22
  him. And then anything all day they
• 39:24
  eventually. Did they got the super MacGuffin
• 39:26
  item? And yeah it was it was very cool
• 39:31
  to build like this weird. Shadow dragon half-dragon
• 39:36
  sorcerer assassin guy, shadowblade.
• 39:40
  It was, it was, it was very fun, he was very cool.
• 39:44
  Villain basically just played up the fact like, yeah, one of the
• 39:47
  things would Rouse like everyone jokes or like, oh, elves are all
• 39:51
  perfect being than they hate everybody.
• 39:52
  It's like no, no, they don't hate elves in like fantasy, you
• 39:57
  know, they don't hate other races.
• 39:59
  Yeah, there's a little bit the ego but it's not like they're
• 40:01
  like I'm better than you and, you know, it It's just like we
• 40:04
  came here first. We were here first, I probably
• 40:07
  did all these things. I'm just, you know, I'm good at
• 40:10
  everything and you'll eventually get their drower like, not
• 40:14
  other, things are terrible. Where the more, where the
• 40:18
  cooler, the more sexier, the more powerful or, like, my
• 40:24
  droughts, droughts specifically, the like now, we're the best.
• 40:26
  Fuck you guys. Ding dong, your opinion is
• 40:29
  wrong. Where Dracula, if you like
• 40:31
  old-fashioned, just straight up evil drought.
• 40:35
  I would recommend looking into the Dark Eldar from 40K because
• 40:38
  it gets they pull some shit where you're like.
• 40:44
  Wow, the the, the drow in the Indie just seemed like fucking
• 40:49
  Saints and they're not that bad shit.
• 40:52
  That's real bad. That the Dark Eldar.
• 40:55
  They do a lot of bad things to people for the lulz but also for
• 40:59
  survival, which is part of the lulz.
• 41:02
  Yeah. Long story short, the Dark Eldar
• 41:06
  in 40K are constantly having their souls destroyed?
• 41:09
  Like it like drained away. So by causing suffering, they
• 41:14
  can substitute that for the like suffering.
• 41:18
  They're going through by having their souls destroyed.
• 41:20
  So it rejuvenates them and it's got to a point where like they
• 41:23
  don't even need to eat, I need to eat or sleep or drink.
• 41:25
  They just kind of torture the shit I people and they'll live
• 41:27
  forever. Jesus fuck because we beheld,
• 41:30
  that are delicious thought. Yeah, yeah.
• 41:32
  They they turn people into furniture and shit and they're
• 41:34
  like, there's still a lot. I still turn you into a couch,
• 41:37
  you and that's it on you. And yeah, yeah.
• 41:39
  Don't they were like, literally reorganize your DNA in bone
• 41:42
  structure, to turn you into a fucking couch, and then you'll
• 41:44
  just be alive for 20 years or until the board of the Academy
• 41:48
  quote. The Dethklok thing is like that
• 41:49
  you most metal thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
• 41:53
  So fucking sick. Yeah, that will while now he's
• 41:57
  funny. So you brought it at drow who,
• 41:59
  you know, this is something I was kind of curious about, you
• 42:03
  know, someone who's run as long as you have.
• 42:07
  How do you keep recurring villains, interesting?
• 42:10
  And not something that the players get really fucking
• 42:12
  annoyed with. So, yeah, it's that's a tough
• 42:16
  one because I always have the mindset of like if you're going
• 42:21
  to put the bad guy in front of the player and unless they have
• 42:24
  some sort of like teleport, and I don't mean like Misti
• 42:27
  stamping. Or I turn invisible and run out
• 42:30
  the door. No, no.
• 42:31
  I mean like if they don't have the seventh level spell teleport
• 42:35
  if they're in front of the player just expect them to die
• 42:40
  unless it's like you know a level 20.
• 42:42
  Like that all the bartender's level 20 fighter.
• 42:45
  Yeah II. Never put a bad guy out in front
• 42:48
  of the players unless like they're meant to fight the bad
• 42:52
  guy and you know win or lose and as a DM I'm never trying.
• 42:58
  Me I'm never trying to win the bad guys.
• 43:00
  The bad guys want to win so going to play them up the best I
• 43:03
  can but me as like I don't want to win, you know?
• 43:06
  It's that's not fun. I agree.
• 43:08
  I agree. Ya know so but reoccurring
• 43:12
  villains, it's hard. It's really hard to do the best
• 43:16
  way. It's like you have them show up.
• 43:18
  You have them show up or you have like people talk about them
• 43:22
  or you can you can kind of do the Handsome Jack thing.
• 43:25
  I like have the bad guy be in constant communication, with the
• 43:28
  Players. And it's against the players
• 43:30
  have no control over it. The bad guy will just shoot a
• 43:33
  message into their brain. Being like, Oh man, these
• 43:35
  pretzels suck. I bought this but stallion for.
• 43:37
  Like you should do that if you want or you can just have like
• 43:41
  the you know the bad guy is constantly doing things or
• 43:44
  having minions around doing things around the player.
• 43:47
  So he's they're constantly like they're constantly being talked
• 43:52
  about, they're constantly involved in the player's life
• 43:55
  but if you're Like actually the ever on rising from the last war
• 44:01
  book as a small section? How you can actually do this.
• 44:04
  Because recurring villains is a very big important thing with
• 44:08
  eberron is, you know, with pulp adventures.
• 44:11
  And some of the ways they say, it's like, oh, it wasn't you
• 44:13
  didn't act, you know? And some of them are like kind
• 44:15
  of, you know, cliche, but they work very well for D&D game.
• 44:19
  Or any tabletop game is 9 times out of 10.
• 44:22
  You know, it's hard to have a recurring villain.
• 44:26
  That's not like either the level 20, you like bad guy, you know,
• 44:32
  he's not your players aren't supposed to fight yet and you
• 44:34
  don't want to keep UK them. I think like one of them they
• 44:37
  even mentioned the like what if the bad guy like.you know with
• 44:40
  the players kill him? But they you know an explosion
• 44:43
  goes off and they can't find the body and then that NPC just
• 44:45
  shows up or you didn't actually kill the NPC you kill the bad
• 44:50
  guy? You kill the simulacrum or a
• 44:51
  clone of them or something? Y'all.
• 44:54
  It's like kind of like the We'll be like, I fucking damn it.
• 44:58
  But if you know you'll keep the reoccurring villain, it's kind
• 45:02
  of annoying. It is kind of annoying thing in
• 45:05
  tabletop games to do, 100% agree.
• 45:08
  I had a, we had it was in this one game.
• 45:11
  I think I talked to us before, with the, with, with Samir, the,
• 45:15
  my, like, Middle Eastern character with the blade whip.
• 45:18
  You have like the gambling addiction.
• 45:19
  Yeah. So, halfway through this
• 45:24
  campaign we were like made aware of this crazy death knight,
• 45:28
  dude. You know what he did?
• 45:30
  I to this day. I still don't even know what
• 45:31
  this guys fucking deal. Was.
• 45:32
  I just don't know. But there's like eyes a death
• 45:37
  knight. That's probably that's probably
• 45:39
  a problem for someone else not for me.
• 45:41
  Yeah, I do not even know he was a fucking death knight.
• 45:43
  Like I do we know so little about the sky he rocked up
• 45:46
  during a crazy Rescue Mission and and what happened was, is
• 45:53
  that we were trying to like We were trying to like save the
• 45:59
  like the the King's son who got like kidnapped in the middle of
• 46:02
  the night. It was a whole thing.
• 46:04
  We got to the capital city, we're friends with the King, we
• 46:08
  go to bed at the barracks. We wake up.
• 46:10
  The kidnapping has already happened and the Zeppelin's and
• 46:14
  straight of the Zeppelin. Exactly.
• 46:16
  Yes, yes, yes, fucking Zeppelin's are flying away and
• 46:22
  we're like, What do we got here? This.
• 46:26
  How do we apply? Glitters like judge.
• 46:27
  We don't hear anything in the gyms like, no, you don't hear
• 46:29
  anything and I was, I was miffed.
• 46:31
  I was miffed to say the least. But I was like, alright, fine.
• 46:35
  Fuck it. You know, maybe these guys have
• 46:37
  some crazy magic Autumn who knows?
• 46:38
  You're just because I don't know silent on the Zeppelin.
• 46:43
  It's dumb, but I guess it could be a thing, right?
• 46:46
  Anyway, so we go to rescue. The King's son as relieving this
• 46:51
  death knight, dude, just fucking is, literally, Superman flying
• 46:55
  after us. What the fuck?
• 46:57
  Is this guy? Whatever.
• 46:59
  Fuck up. So we like knock him out of the
• 47:01
  sky. We get away, whatever he shows
• 47:05
  up, like, eight sessions later with the soul of a blue dragon,
• 47:08
  Who had who he had met in. Like, they're sort of a friended
• 47:11
  because in that game, like your beat metallic or chromatic
• 47:14
  didn't matter it Dragon was a dragon.
• 47:16
  That's all you were, you know. Yeah.
• 47:17
  They're good ones or bad ones and he like you'd killed him in
• 47:19
  like taken up his soul and like stuck it in his armor and were
• 47:23
  like, oh great, all fucking guy. So, we kicked his ass again.
• 47:27
  It was a pretty hard fight. We kicked his ass, we were going
• 47:29
  to kill him and then he teleported out here like, oh my
• 47:31
  God. Okay, here we go.
• 47:36
  And then we fought him again a few sessions later.
• 47:39
  And then he teleported out again and were like, oh my God, just
• 47:43
  stop. Yeah, II personally, I don't
• 47:46
  know you. I I would prefer if you just let
• 47:51
  us kill the boss and he gets Delilah Briarwood it, right?
• 47:54
  He gets brought back to life again and again.
• 47:57
  Well, that's probably what the DM.
• 47:59
  What the only thing I can think of is that the DNA was during
• 48:03
  the fight. You guys either got him like,
• 48:05
  really low on health, or you, you basically Actually you you
• 48:09
  got it. You know the boss fight, you got
• 48:12
  his health bar down and so he did the like cutscene, like
• 48:15
  guess we'll fight another day and then just, you know,
• 48:17
  teleported out. So I'm assuming happened.
• 48:20
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:21
  That's what. Yeah, that's almost definitely.
• 48:22
  What his, what his thought process was but like I, yeah, I
• 48:27
  agree with you. The, the ninja vanish after 100
• 48:29
  hit points is like, can you can we not do this right, it?
• 48:33
  Well, it was the fact that it happened like twice.
• 48:36
  Yeah, if it did, if he did it, once you guys, Like that and
• 48:39
  it's like oh shit. He can teleport.
• 48:41
  We have to make sure next time to like hunkering down or
• 48:44
  something like, did that happen like more than that?
• 48:48
  Like afterward the third time or second time Well, so
• 48:53
  unfortunately, the campaign ended, fuck turbulently to say
• 48:59
  the least, after that, there's a lot of things but like, yeah, it
• 49:03
  just, it was. So I thought I was so fucking
• 49:06
  annoying. I just yeah, yeah.
• 49:10
  But that is to say I really hate the doombot method.
• 49:15
  Mmm. You know, the Doctor Doom.
• 49:17
  It was a doombot the air. Yeah, I hate that shit.
• 49:20
  That's part of why I hate dr. Doom Yeah, I mean the only issue
• 49:24
  it works though, that's why it's like it's again, it's super hard
• 49:28
  to keep recurring villains, Indian D.
• 49:31
  Like the doombot oh, is a Roboto, is a clone.
• 49:35
  Oh the the building you guys are fighting exploded and the body
• 49:39
  is miraculously gone. Like, you know, it's tough, It's
• 49:43
  a tough thing. It is.
• 49:45
  Yeah, I'm not even gonna pretend that it's not.
• 49:47
  It just I think what it is is that if you employ the same, Did
• 49:52
  it over and over again? Yeah.
• 49:54
  Like if he teleports away the first time, you're like, oh
• 49:56
  fuck! He got away.
• 49:57
  And then you kill him the second time and then he comes back to
• 50:00
  the third time, but he's like half of his face is like
• 50:03
  skeletal or zombified and he's like, clearly a little corrupted
• 50:07
  looking, you're like, oh shit, someone just won't let this
• 50:10
  fucking guy dot. You know, it's the variety that
• 50:13
  makes it annoying or that makes it not annoying because like, I,
• 50:18
  you could have the most charismatic villain ever, but I
• 50:21
  think the players are Like I just don't want to fight you
• 50:24
  again especially if they have like an annoying stat block, you
• 50:26
  know, right? It just not having sex in a
• 50:31
  whole thing. The way the way that I got
• 50:33
  around it specifically was I just didn't let them fight him
• 50:39
  that dude gharial because like you know I set them out from the
• 50:42
  onset to be a villain. Someone who's gonna keep being a
• 50:45
  thorn in their side, constantly threaten them make their lives
• 50:48
  of living fucking help. Yeah.
• 50:51
  But I'd stayed at very early on, right?
• 50:52
  Like, you can kill Bandits carte blanche, right?
• 50:56
  Because they're Bandits and more often than not.
• 50:57
  They're firing at you. They're Bandits.
• 51:00
  But if there's an if it's another member of it's a member
• 51:03
  of another guild, you can't attack them unless you get fired
• 51:06
  on first. If you do it's sort of the
• 51:10
  mutually assured destruction, right?
• 51:11
  Let me like anybody can just like you are home.
• 51:14
  Guild can get wiped off the map for something.
• 51:16
  You fucked up on it. My players did actually kill a
• 51:19
  bunch of people out of sequence, right?
• 51:20
  They were they just killed them and they were like what do we do
• 51:23
  and the The Guild a called The Guild Master music other I'm not
• 51:27
  telling you to do anything. What did?
• 51:29
  Anyone see you? And they're like, no, we killed
• 51:32
  everyone. I was, he was like, okay good,
• 51:35
  get rid of them. Yeah, so yeah, the whole time
• 51:41
  they were talking to Carol. They're like we want to kill him
• 51:43
  so bad but like we can't you can't do anything unless he
• 51:46
  makes a move because we're going to be breaking Guild policy and
• 51:49
  then we're fucked. Like we've killed all of our
• 51:51
  friends and obviously I wasn't gonna make my brother's life
• 51:55
  players, stick with that forever.
• 51:56
  So this whole thing was he was planning a coup.
• 51:59
  In the like manufacturing City. That's like I said, they're all
• 52:03
  trying to get each other jobs and he was trying to like
• 52:04
  muscleman and take everyone's property.
• 52:08
  So they made a deal with another mob boss to be like, look, I
• 52:13
  will hire you guys as my Strike Team for when he pulls this coup
• 52:18
  and because you're working for me and I'm telling you to do it
• 52:22
  and he's already tried killing us, you can kill him, carte
• 52:26
  blanche and I can take his shit. Right.
• 52:29
  I will be, I will be fair and big quotations about how I divvy
• 52:33
  things up and sell it from now on because now I own the
• 52:35
  majority and they die think. I think they ate it up.
• 52:40
  Because every time they saw him there, like, we, you just once
• 52:43
  you make your fucking move, buddy, it is go time and I'm
• 52:47
  going to. It is go.
• 52:48
  It is on like fucking Donkey Kong my man, when they
• 52:53
  eventually did get to fight him and they killed him.
• 52:55
  I like it was a huge weight off my shoulders because eventually
• 52:58
  like the guys, he's Finally he's done.
• 53:00
  They were like yes he's fucking dead and then I went so he's not
• 53:05
  really the main villain. He's more of like the
• 53:07
  deuteragonist, you know. I mean he's the bee's he is a
• 53:11
  main villain but he's not the main villain.
• 53:13
  You gotta kill someone else who's stronger and I went fuck,
• 53:16
  yeah, no no. And I was like, yeah, don't
• 53:19
  worry though because this guy's actually made the loan they were
• 53:21
  like but most of us almost just died.
• 53:25
  I was like yeah. You got 24 hours to fight this
• 53:28
  guy. It's locked and they want.
• 53:32
  What, what do you mean? Oh no, sorry around.
• 53:35
  They killed the other guy. And then they had to go fight
• 53:37
  him 24-hour like within 24 hours or he's gonna take over the
• 53:39
  city. So, you know, one character
• 53:42
  literally died and had his max HP reduced to 1.
• 53:47
  Yeah, it was great. It was so funny.
• 53:50
  He's like I literally if something touch, if I, if I take
• 53:52
  more than three points of damage, I die out.
• 53:57
  Don't let me get hurt and he really shit.
• 54:00
  Dude, it was, they basically cheated by just writing him up
• 54:03
  with temp HP? Yeah.
• 54:05
  And he was like, okay, I have 17 HP now like he's like, no, I'm
• 54:14
  not sure resting because my show rest.
• 54:16
  I lose my temper HP. My god.
• 54:20
  Oh, so good. But yeah, I just, they just
• 54:22
  keeping him around as like this. Just literally, Lie like this.
• 54:27
  Antagonist. This guy who's just constantly
• 54:29
  giving them shit and to their face and they just can't do
• 54:33
  anything about it and it just it like I can tell you just you
• 54:36
  know, it boils their fucking piss and their mother.
• 54:38
  They do get to do it. It's so good.
• 54:42
  Yeah. Now the day they get to they're
• 54:44
  going to kill like I was going to be fucking awesome and they
• 54:49
  fucking they got him they they if I remember correctly, turned
• 54:54
  his head into pate and then Paladin it skinned him and
• 54:58
  turned him into boots. It was a Gator Man.
• 55:02
  And the animal people in the party are like I'm not okay with
• 55:06
  this. This is fucked up and he was
• 55:08
  like yeah but he's a bad guy, though.
• 55:11
  They're Like we don't ya. Okay.
• 55:13
  Okay, that's a person. He's like, yeah, it's a gator
• 55:17
  person and they're like, yeah, but I'm a bird person.
• 55:20
  Are you going to turn me into a fucking hat?
• 55:21
  He's like, no, because I like you.
• 55:24
  It's like, oh, just don't cross me.
• 55:27
  Yeah, yeah, it's just don't talk shit.
• 55:29
  Don't get hit, it's fun. We're good.
• 55:31
  We go. Cheap was so good.
• 55:36
  Now, it's great. Right.
• 55:39
  We're doing tip of Tunis and sequence, its kind of Well I
• 55:43
  know I Josh had problems before and you're sort of saying,
• 55:46
  right? Like when you put the pieces on
• 55:48
  the board, it's time to fight. How do you deal with the elusive
• 55:55
  bad guys speech? Which is to say like, how do you
• 55:58
  stop the players from fishing for that fucking surprise round
• 56:01
  when it's time to go? So most of the most of what I
• 56:05
  know has actually just been. Like, if you say, if anybody
• 56:10
  does like YouTube deep dive of like, Dean D villain videos.
• 56:16
  Fuck is so many. So many people have done videos
• 56:18
  on this shit and each one of I think I've have Said something
• 56:22
  similar to this, where it's like, either do it before combat
• 56:27
  or right out like bullet point the villain speech and say it
• 56:30
  during combat. So like let's say the players
• 56:33
  are going like, you know, the fights going to be in the main
• 56:36
  like Ballroom of the castle. So as the players are entering
• 56:40
  the castle and going down the voice of the villain and he
• 56:43
  gives his speech echoing throughout the Halls, as you
• 56:46
  know, voices, or they're going into, you know, dungeon or cave
• 56:50
  or something have the Just telepathy in their mind, give
• 56:54
  their speech before they get to the boss room.
• 56:57
  Like that's probably the easiest method and or if you're you
• 57:01
  know, if you can do it as a DM, as probably more fun.
• 57:05
  If you wrap the speech and basically, as they're going in
• 57:08
  combat and fighting this guy, he just says, the little bits of
• 57:11
  it. Hmm.
• 57:13
  But ya never because, yeah, you're going to have the player,
• 57:16
  you know, it's like, oh, I'm going to give my grandiose
• 57:18
  speech before we fight and then he's like, all right?
• 57:21
  I'm gonna I'll use my bonus action to get to use the ready
• 57:24
  action and I'm going to sneak attack surprise him.
• 57:26
  I know I'm an assassin broke. So now it's a crate and then I
• 57:28
  fucking know. Now is it just it never it never
• 57:33
  works out unless you're like I don't even want to say a dick
• 57:37
  but like unless you like do the thing where you like, hey guys,
• 57:42
  this is a cutscene, you know what?
• 57:44
  Yeah. Hey, hey, hey.
• 57:46
  Okay. Can go over Sometimes in a game
• 57:50
  if you're like if you have players that are cool with it
• 57:52
  but like I don't think the big the big bad guy speech is a good
• 57:57
  thing to do. Right before like as they enter
• 58:01
  boss room fucking Dark Souls. They go through the you know the
• 58:04
  fog wall. It's like do it before fog wall
• 58:07
  or inside. Fog wall while fighting.
• 58:10
  Hmm. Yeah for I I've come up with
• 58:13
  with I think a pretty ingenious method for how to do pull it
• 58:16
  off. I call it the gun to your head.
• 58:19
  Oh, right, because when you have like, literally what it sounds
• 58:24
  like right? Yeah.
• 58:25
  The bad guys going to do is bad guys speech and the players, you
• 58:28
  know, they're not going to stop him because he's got a gun to
• 58:31
  one of their friends heads, you know.
• 58:33
  It's like the classes like hostage method.
• 58:36
  Okay, I've done it once. Hmm, I've done it once and
• 58:43
  stored not really twice because when they fought Cardell his
• 58:48
  Characters like Uncle, he was guessing for a little while it
• 58:51
  was, they finally uncle and they fought gharial right.
• 58:53
  Your thigh. Yeah, they basically were like,
• 58:56
  oh, we're going to kill him and then he literally held out his
• 58:59
  hand and was like stop. And that, you know, that those
• 59:03
  people off, you know, because of the bad guys like pause and he
• 59:07
  basically had like a little talk with with cartels character
• 59:10
  dirge and then the fight started.
• 59:14
  Yeah, the other one though, when they fought gharial, he
• 59:16
  literally, like, he had a character, he had a gun to a
• 59:19
  character's head. She was like in a Birdcage
• 59:21
  because she had the good crazy singing voice and song, bird
• 59:24
  whatever. Yeah.
• 59:25
  And he'd, look at he sat on a like, a, like an ammo crate,
• 59:29
  like a big crate with, just like a revolver to her head.
• 59:32
  And he's like, okay, So we know what's going to happen.
• 59:36
  If you try to pull that trigger, I'm not bulletproof but I'm
• 59:41
  pretty bullet-resistant, you know what I mean?
• 59:43
  Yeah. So you know they didn't really
• 59:45
  have a choice but to have that conversation and it wasn't like
• 59:48
  a, it wasn't like a monologue, and I think a slight, slight
• 59:52
  side side tangent. The best bad guy speeches are
• 59:56
  not actually a speech, you know? Now, yeah, that's, you know, as
• 1:00:01
  a player I as a player. Orenda GM.
• 1:00:04
  I respect the speech that you came up with that you thought
• 1:00:08
  was probably super fucking cool. And it to be honest if it if I
• 1:00:11
  wasn't a player I probably be like, oh, that's pretty fucking
• 1:00:14
  raw. That's awesome.
• 1:00:16
  But as a player I'm like I just want to kill him.
• 1:00:19
  I just want to Yap Clickety Clacks so often I don't really
• 1:00:23
  care if it's just a one-sided speech.
• 1:00:26
  If it's more of like a you know it's a lot of leading questions.
• 1:00:29
  Like what do you do? If x y z and the players answer
• 1:00:33
  anything wrong? No, it's a it's a it's a
• 1:00:36
  command. What's best in life, you know.
• 1:00:38
  Yeah. The crash, the enemies that.
• 1:00:41
  Yeah. I like those wear it.
• 1:00:43
  You know, the bad guy obviously is on a high horse.
• 1:00:45
  He's obviously got some preaching to do it.
• 1:00:48
  Like you can't preach without an audience, you need some, eat
• 1:00:51
  some feedback. Yeah.
• 1:00:52
  And and it gives the players like time to either, they can
• 1:00:56
  like smack talk. The bad guy, which, you know,
• 1:00:59
  that's something. They've been.
• 1:01:00
  They've been wanting to do to hit their face for a long time.
• 1:01:02
  So it's like, yeah, this is a good.
• 1:01:04
  Opportunity without the players being like so I'm going to call
• 1:01:06
  them a you know I'm going to call him a fucking clown and
• 1:01:09
  then I'm going to you know stab him.
• 1:01:12
  Oh I bro that shit. I understand the desire to like
• 1:01:18
  Yeah Joe can call the the fucking the the big bad like a
• 1:01:21
  poopyhead. You know what?
• 1:01:23
  I get so not annoyed. I just ate a feels like such a
• 1:01:29
  wet blanket for me when players. They just they like won't
• 1:01:33
  especially if the boss Does the whole like it's part of the
• 1:01:35
  conversation of like? Well you're stupid.
• 1:01:37
  It's like yeah. Well not by I'm going to steal
• 1:01:41
  this quote from Matt Koval. That's when you have the bill
• 1:01:44
  and just kind of like, hmm. I wonder if anyone's gonna
• 1:01:47
  remember your words. After you're burning pile of
• 1:01:49
  corpses, he's just like, oh oh, we're going there now, huh?
• 1:01:54
  Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, I'll do it.
• 1:01:58
  Yeah, yeah. I actually had that happen and
• 1:02:02
  like, I sort of subverted it, right?
• 1:02:04
  My player. The BBC was like, yeah, let me
• 1:02:07
  ask you a question. What do you actually get out of
• 1:02:10
  insulting my intelligence? What does that actually get you?
• 1:02:15
  Feel better opposite sides of the board.
• 1:02:18
  We're obviously enemies. But why are you doing this?
• 1:02:24
  Because obviously, I don't care. You can call me names all day,
• 1:02:27
  it doesn't change. I'm still going to kill at least
• 1:02:29
  one of you. So is this for your satisfaction
• 1:02:33
  and you know people are sick. It's like the Avatar.
• 1:02:38
  It's like you know there's a big prisoners like a man that hurt
• 1:02:41
  my feelings. Like, are you okay?
• 1:02:43
  Yeah. It's a 20-minute like it here.
• 1:02:46
  Don't you want to fight me as I go?
• 1:02:48
  Yeah, we'll get there but, you know, it.
• 1:02:49
  Why was it? What's up, man?
• 1:02:52
  I did at one point I played in a One-Shot and my character was
• 1:02:56
  edgy as shit. He had like a giant curved
• 1:02:59
  Greatsword and he had like this place was like a smell is like a
• 1:03:03
  special magic great sword. That was, it was like it was,
• 1:03:05
  this is it was the fucking Virgil judgment cut and level
• 1:03:08
  shit because I made it a home brew and I just wanted to try
• 1:03:11
  and I asked the GM and he was like, yeah, sure.
• 1:03:13
  Try your home. Broke my one shot.
• 1:03:15
  But personality-wise. He was just Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• 1:03:18
  Like it, to the point that I was like, hello there and show my
• 1:03:20
  God. And the fucking guy was giving
• 1:03:23
  his bad guys speech. These look, he's like,
• 1:03:25
  unfortunately Quite shet. This aren't you?
• 1:03:28
  Like you just don't like giving him shit and the bad guy was
• 1:03:32
  like, are you doing this? You're doing this right now and
• 1:03:35
  fundamentally middle my sweet. Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  In the middle of Miss Mary didn't sort of my salad.
• 1:03:39
  Yeah. And and you know in my in my
• 1:03:43
  defense, I did actually engage with him but it was just little
• 1:03:46
  Jabs. Yeah, because he was like, oh,
• 1:03:48
  I'm going to destroy the world. We gotta yada and my character
• 1:03:51
  was like, okay, but what are you getting out of that?
• 1:03:54
  Like you'd have to be really stupid, which you are It's not
• 1:03:57
  important about why you'd be doing it.
• 1:03:59
  It was just a little little fucking pokes at his ego
• 1:04:04
  throughout, the TalkBack is great.
• 1:04:11
  I am fucking, I'm sorry. I'm just laughing because I did
• 1:04:14
  that. And I, when I said hello there,
• 1:04:16
  it was to the final bus. Mastered literally, did the
• 1:04:20
  general, good knows the father players are like, please stop.
• 1:04:27
  Do not do this. Don't do this right now.
• 1:04:30
  We're not doing this whole fucking song and dance.
• 1:04:35
  Oh, so good. Oh my God.
• 1:04:39
  Right. So here's another another
• 1:04:43
  question for you. Now, we've done the bad guys
• 1:04:44
  speech. Hey, how do you construct?
• 1:04:47
  A good villain? Boss fight, right?
• 1:04:49
  Like the villain has had their bad guy speech.
• 1:04:51
  Chips are on the board. How do you make a good villain?
• 1:04:55
  Boss fight? Well, what definitely one thing
• 1:05:00
  is having him like having her him having the villain talk
• 1:05:03
  during combat. That's like the big thing.
• 1:05:05
  Having him G either like making fun of the players or jabbing at
• 1:05:10
  them or being like, Oh, you know, after I'm done with you,
• 1:05:12
  I'm going to go find your, you know, your your aunt, you know,
• 1:05:17
  Aunt May living out in Long Island.
• 1:05:18
  I'm going to burn down her house wherever the fuck like you have
• 1:05:21
  the villain trash talking, you know, against the players
• 1:05:26
  depending on how You know, the level of monster if you like
• 1:05:31
  this video, DND, terms make. But making sure I'm trying to be
• 1:05:35
  as you know, tabletop agnostic, as I can making sure the villain
• 1:05:40
  has enough actions and stuff that they can do that.
• 1:05:43
  They don't get dog piled on for their, you know, against the
• 1:05:47
  players because like it's like if you're doing one if you're
• 1:05:49
  doing a bad guy and maybe a bunch of minions against like
• 1:05:53
  four players, most of the time, the players are going to try to
• 1:05:56
  ignore the minions and go. Laughter go after the bad guy.
• 1:06:00
  So the bad guys should probably have a lot of mobility and or if
• 1:06:06
  you're fighting like a bit, like let's say it's like, you know, I
• 1:06:09
  don't know. A boulder with arms and legs,
• 1:06:12
  then give it a fuck ton of Health if you don't want to have
• 1:06:14
  Mobility. Cool.
• 1:06:18
  You know. Cool.
• 1:06:18
  Special Maneuvers. I know for D&D like a lot of
• 1:06:22
  people like the, the MC DM, the, the action-oriented monsters.
• 1:06:26
  I'm I'm kind of mixed on them, to be honest.
• 1:06:31
  I was like legendary actions are so good and one of the things
• 1:06:35
  they do is they give play the monster, the bad guy actions to
• 1:06:40
  do in between the players turns. The action-oriented monsters.
• 1:06:46
  They give one action a monster can do during one round of
• 1:06:51
  combat and granted. They're a little more powerful
• 1:06:55
  but each action, it's just one. So you're only giving the
• 1:06:58
  villain one extra thing to do each round and it's like do you
• 1:07:02
  want that villain to is that villain going to survive three
• 1:07:04
  rounds. Also, the time know like I mean
• 1:07:08
  also granted as a DM, do you want combat to last more than
• 1:07:12
  three? Rounds.
• 1:07:13
  Like just fucking, you don't want it to become a slog, even
• 1:07:17
  Applause fight, you don't want to boss fight to like, like,
• 1:07:20
  become a slog. Hmm.
• 1:07:24
  Yeah. I could probably high Mobility.
• 1:07:26
  You know, things they can do during the players turn.
• 1:07:29
  Maybe, you know, minions or a pet, like no spice things up.
• 1:07:36
  Yeah, those are all like, yeah, no, I agree with that.
• 1:07:39
  Those are all, definitely like things that I do like the
• 1:07:42
  talking during the fight. That's big.
• 1:07:44
  Is it just, you know, you if you especially want to boss me
• 1:07:47
  number or you just don't want people to remember them as a bag
• 1:07:49
  of hit points because that's always the fucking.
• 1:07:51
  Yeah, right. It makes it makes them real to.
• 1:07:54
  That's the other thing it makes it like, oh, this isn't our
• 1:07:57
  drought shadowblade. This is, you know, this is Oscar
• 1:08:00
  lantry. This is that dickhead?
• 1:08:02
  I fucking hate the payload route.
• 1:08:04
  I want to punch this nerd in the face.
• 1:08:06
  It makes them a real person. Yeah, no.
• 1:08:12
  I mean, no, no, I'm just laughing because I'm just
• 1:08:15
  thinking of the pale drown out. Like it's like as someone who
• 1:08:19
  wasn't part of that game. That just yeah, I don't know if
• 1:08:23
  I would find that infuriating or fucking hilarious after a while
• 1:08:28
  they made. They were, originally, they
• 1:08:29
  thought it was funny because they're like, haha, you're
• 1:08:32
  freaking, you're like an albino drow or some shit, and he's just
• 1:08:35
  like, actually I'm the most deadliest assassin and all of
• 1:08:38
  the underdark and the like, oh, Oh no, it's just like fuck.
• 1:08:47
  May have talked shook a little too soon.
• 1:08:49
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:08:51
  For me I think the thing that the that always makes me sell
• 1:08:55
  really good like villain boss fights is and this is the sound
• 1:08:59
  so simple, right? But like, Regional effects.
• 1:09:04
  That thing that just gets super fucking looked over all the
• 1:09:07
  time. It to me at least I feel like it
• 1:09:11
  makes the world of difference, you know, to have like a
• 1:09:14
  tangible thing that happens when the villains near like the one
• 1:09:21
  where I like the the giant bat monster and Luciano go.
• 1:09:23
  Like the fact that all lights just sort of died as they got
• 1:09:29
  closer to it, it immediately like it sets a scene, right?
• 1:09:33
  It gives them like a feeling of, like, oh, we're really stepping
• 1:09:38
  into the fucking line. Ins then it's not gonna be good.
• 1:09:41
  Yeah, definitely. Terrain the environment like
• 1:09:46
  have environment environmental effects to like maybe they'll
• 1:09:49
  the the area like the boss room, your has a lot of like traps or
• 1:09:54
  you know dangerous things coming at the Players while they're
• 1:09:58
  fighting the boss. You're like, oh no. yeah, it's
• 1:10:05
  Rain. I keep being like yeah.
• 1:10:07
  And then I keep losing my train of thought about what the fuck I
• 1:10:09
  know II. Know what I want to say.
• 1:10:11
  Just fucking say it please. Yeah.
• 1:10:14
  The environment is huge. Like we talked about this and I
• 1:10:19
  think I believe it was our first encounter building episode but
• 1:10:24
  you really you need something going on in the map like
• 1:10:29
  different terrain elevations but stage hazards like bottom.
• 1:10:34
  Pits or running water or Motes of lava fucking crumbling
• 1:10:40
  Bridge, doesn't matter what it is.
• 1:10:42
  Put something in there, that it might not act against the the
• 1:10:47
  enemy. But make it work, at least in
• 1:10:50
  tandem with it because, you know, the, the, the big
• 1:10:54
  Colosseum is fun. Don't get me wrong.
• 1:10:56
  I love big Coliseum, boss fights, but a veil after a
• 1:11:00
  while, you just sort of forget that it's there.
• 1:11:05
  And when you forget that it's there you're less likely to
• 1:11:07
  remember like what happened and when you forget little when you
• 1:11:10
  don't remember what happened then you don't remember the boss
• 1:11:12
  as well as you probably could and then that thing that you
• 1:11:15
  spent weeks building the character of and planning out
• 1:11:17
  his super crazy back story just goes out the fucking window,
• 1:11:21
  really right. Like Yeah, environmental
• 1:11:26
  environmental hazards, and Regional effects.
• 1:11:29
  Obviously, you know, the the for me when I do legendaries right
• 1:11:33
  eye because I agree with you, I like the action-oriented
• 1:11:37
  monsters, but I also really like legendary actions, and I don't
• 1:11:42
  not just simple mechanic, it's so good.
• 1:11:44
  It's I don't know if Matt Koval made any like monsters that have
• 1:11:49
  both, not that I've seen. So I so besides the kingdoms and
• 1:11:54
  Fair book that I got that he started implementing that in
• 1:11:58
  there. He's also I subscribe to the the
• 1:12:01
  kickstarter for the flea mortal and every so often I'll get a
• 1:12:05
  play test packet that comes out with hey weirdo, flee Mortals.
• 1:12:09
  It's a new monster manual type book but it's using the MC DM
• 1:12:12
  stuff. And so some of the monsters in
• 1:12:15
  there so far that and what originally action-oriented
• 1:12:19
  monsters were supposed to be for were like, you know, oh I A
• 1:12:24
  goblin boss for my players because their level 1 and I want
• 1:12:27
  him to have a cool epic boss fight.
• 1:12:29
  But I don't want to like, give the boss, fucking legendary
• 1:12:33
  actions. I don't want to give a goblin,
• 1:12:35
  legendary actions. Oh, this is an alternative but
• 1:12:38
  now they've been doing it. They've been giving like boss
• 1:12:42
  monsters. He's action-oriented abilities.
• 1:12:45
  And there's they're cool. And and like I said, sometimes
• 1:12:48
  they end up being way more powerful than regular legendary
• 1:12:52
  actions. But again, the problem is you
• 1:12:55
  can only use one around. No, I've kind of jump back and
• 1:13:00
  like the action Orion monster for like losey are creatures and
• 1:13:03
  like, you know, Lo see our 563, like anything below 10.
• 1:13:08
  I think it's super helpful, anything above that, like, you
• 1:13:12
  know, an end campaign boss. I'm kind of mixed feelings on
• 1:13:15
  it. You just came out with a new one
• 1:13:18
  for the playtest packet for I say he I should say the whole
• 1:13:21
  team and they basically have their version of strawed And
• 1:13:27
  he's like CR 15 or 16 or some shit and each of his
• 1:13:31
  action-oriented, abilities are fucking nuts.
• 1:13:35
  But again, it's still just one around.
• 1:13:37
  It's like, is this vampire going to survive more than three
• 1:13:41
  rounds of combat? Yeah, I just the other thing is
• 1:13:46
  too is like I as a DM, I get a little bored.
• 1:13:50
  If my boss can't do a lot of shit.
• 1:13:53
  Yeah, you know because like you're like you know if you have
• 1:13:55
  minions in the field that that sort of helps alleviate.
• 1:13:57
  The boredom because you do have to keep track of other things.
• 1:14:00
  Yeah. But especially if it's like if
• 1:14:02
  it is just the one enemy on the board like, okay, he's gonna do
• 1:14:06
  his thing. All right, cool turns over.
• 1:14:08
  Now, I have to spend the rest of the next hour asking you guys
• 1:14:11
  what you want to do, and then I just have to react to that wears
• 1:14:13
  like like, hey, when you have Legend action, you can literally
• 1:14:16
  go. Okay?
• 1:14:17
  Like you can sort of go Tit for Tat with the bullet, the
• 1:14:19
  players? Yeah, exactly.
• 1:14:20
  Yeah. There is something.
• 1:14:22
  I've been, I've been wanting to try this out somewhere.
• 1:14:25
  I'm not really sure where it's actually something that comes
• 1:14:29
  from dungeon world. I know.
• 1:14:30
  Josh is in here. Can't take a shot.
• 1:14:32
  Oh my God. We mentioned dungeon run.
• 1:14:33
  Josh isn't what I know. I know it's crazy but basically
• 1:14:41
  I think this isn't any power dive bombers game is when you're
• 1:14:44
  fighting an enemy, they don't have a turn, right?
• 1:14:49
  Yeah, he mentioned will always like whatever you do something.
• 1:14:53
  They will react to it. So they basically have as many
• 1:14:55
  turns as the players to Or act in their own way.
• 1:14:59
  Yeah, because they don't have like, there's no initiative
• 1:15:02
  really Empower and dungeon world.
• 1:15:04
  It's all right, guys. All right, you go first and the
• 1:15:07
  monster goes, then you go, then I go then, you know, back and
• 1:15:09
  forth like that. I don't think it's like
• 1:15:11
  initiative. I think it's just like, yeah,
• 1:15:13
  whoever's around the table, go clockwise or some shit.
• 1:15:17
  I believe you choose use. You sort of make it like a okay.
• 1:15:19
  I think I need to do a thing now and then you do a thing and then
• 1:15:22
  you do you think? Yeah I kind of want to try that.
• 1:15:26
  I did just to see if it works. It's and I had a thought of
• 1:15:30
  maybe that's what they were trying to do with with the new
• 1:15:32
  vecna character sheet. He's got three reactions, I
• 1:15:37
  think so. I think that the but then they
• 1:15:40
  oppose it, they gave the he doesn't have, is a legendary
• 1:15:43
  actions or is it? It's been so long since I
• 1:15:47
  actually looked at the vagueness that block.
• 1:15:49
  Yeah he's got no legendary actions bad heading three three
• 1:15:53
  or five reactions or something like that.
• 1:15:55
  I know in the adventure itself, he As layer actions.
• 1:16:01
  Like because the the with the little vecna sap, like they
• 1:16:03
  actually gave him like later actions in there because you
• 1:16:06
  were supposed to fight him. I'm still like not I'm still
• 1:16:09
  mixed on that. Like stop block and everything
• 1:16:13
  it's like there's some aspects that I like and then there are
• 1:16:16
  others that I'm like this doesn't just feels like a rogue
• 1:16:19
  like a really weird necro Rogue. I don't know if that's a thing.
• 1:16:25
  Yeah, I mean the the Phantom Rogue but yeah I agree it just
• 1:16:30
  It doesn't feel like crazy wizard.
• 1:16:32
  It just seems like bad time. Yeah.
• 1:16:36
  Because like fighting that vecna it's not going to be easy and it
• 1:16:40
  shouldn't be but it doesn't seem particularly fun.
• 1:16:42
  It just seems like okay cool. He's gonna stab me and regain
• 1:16:45
  all these hit points and then have all these like 3D.
• 1:16:48
  Like you just freebie spells that he can cast at will like I
• 1:16:53
  you know what it is? It what it feels like.
• 1:16:57
  Pardon this crazy shift in topic, but in the, in the Dark
• 1:17:02
  Souls games, right? Like the things that make a good
• 1:17:05
  Dark Souls boss fight is that they are quick, bloody and
• 1:17:08
  visceral, right? They like a good to me.
• 1:17:11
  A good boss fight in Dark Souls, shouldn't last more than five
• 1:17:14
  minutes if it lasts more than five minutes.
• 1:17:16
  No, it's taking so fucking long and it's not even like a, it's
• 1:17:20
  like, oh well it's six minutes like no no, it's been five
• 1:17:22
  minutes. What the fuck am I still doing
• 1:17:23
  here? Right?
• 1:17:24
  Yeah it's assumed that your leveled for the area and There's
• 1:17:27
  a boss at the end of Dark Souls 3.
• 1:17:29
  At the end of the DLC, the final DLC called nadir's is crazy.
• 1:17:31
  Giant black dragons, like a corrupted shadow dragon thing,
• 1:17:35
  okay? That boss takes like 15 minutes
• 1:17:39
  because it has such high defense so much health and it's so hard
• 1:17:43
  to like do meaningful damage to it because it can just one shot
• 1:17:48
  you and it's quick to. It's not a slow boss.
• 1:17:51
  So you're sitting there in your 15 minutes and you get like for
• 1:17:54
  me at least I just got fucking bored after a while.
• 1:17:57
  You know, I would just get bored and then when I get bored I get
• 1:17:59
  sloppy because I'm not really thinking anymore, I'm just sort
• 1:18:01
  of like autopilot e and then you do that for five hours, you
• 1:18:05
  know. It's just this sucks.
• 1:18:06
  This just isn't Fun, you know. It's kind of like that where
• 1:18:11
  it's like, you know, the fact that he's going to be a
• 1:18:15
  difficult as fuck. You can do a lot of damage.
• 1:18:17
  You can be almost in fucking possible to put down.
• 1:18:20
  He's gonna teleport everywhere and when he teleports he's gonna
• 1:18:22
  do damage to your fucking over the Marshal users.
• 1:18:25
  Yeah. It's your dad.
• 1:18:26
  Just like, dude, can we just after about two rounds?
• 1:18:30
  I feel like I should be, like, DM, can we not do this anymore?
• 1:18:32
  I just don't want it. I don't want to do this.
• 1:18:34
  It's tough because high level monsters like high level, boss
• 1:18:37
  monsters, legendary monsters like that.
• 1:18:39
  They all kind of have that like, when in the three-year game, I
• 1:18:43
  threw my players up against from its at from Tomah, foes to one
• 1:18:48
  of the old Arch Devils. Garyun, he's if you look up any
• 1:18:53
  art of this, dude, it's the guy who's like, human upper.
• 1:18:56
  Body with big red bat wings, lower bodies, a snake, and it
• 1:19:02
  has a scorpion tail at the end of it.
• 1:19:04
  And he carries out for this fucking goober.
• 1:19:06
  I'm yeah, yeah, this guy. He's awesome.
• 1:19:09
  He's been a villain since first audition.
• 1:19:11
  So this guy is like, you know, Legacy creature, this guy and I
• 1:19:16
  threw him at my level like I think there are 18 or 19 and he
• 1:19:22
  all, he fucked them up, pretty good.
• 1:19:24
  I it was just him and I and I think I did the in the dungeon
• 1:19:29
  Master's guide the actual minion rules are no large combat and I
• 1:19:33
  gave him like a fuck ton of minotaurs like I think he has
• 1:19:36
  like 20 something minotaurs against my players.
• 1:19:41
  Yeah, be his thing he kept, he had legendary actions to
• 1:19:45
  teleport and he would be and it was 60 fucking feet.
• 1:19:50
  So he can go across the map to like another player who said,
• 1:19:53
  you know, taking pot shots at them and leaving the Barbarian
• 1:19:56
  and the Paladin to, you know, fucking twiddle their thumbs
• 1:20:00
  being like, Oh no. Now I have to run to the
• 1:20:01
  opposite side of the map. Hmm and then he can fly.
• 1:20:05
  So he's just Mobility up the ass and then does so much damage up
• 1:20:09
  the ass. Yes.
• 1:20:11
  And that ends up being what a lot of these Neo high-level, see
• 1:20:14
  our monsters and then 5e, you know, tend to do they just they
• 1:20:19
  can fly. They have a full lot of
• 1:20:21
  teleportations so that way players can't, you know, pin
• 1:20:24
  them down and they do like one really big damage thing and then
• 1:20:31
  just rinse repeat. Yeah, I know sometimes that's
• 1:20:37
  sort of that sort. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:40
  You're not wrong and I think that's kind of what the pain in
• 1:20:43
  the dick is for me is that, that doesn't do a lot of it.
• 1:20:46
  It's a lot of like It's a lot of regenerating or that too.
• 1:20:52
  Yeah, just being like I could it's like it's like a lot of
• 1:20:57
  them is like I have the power to take you in a one-on-one fight
• 1:21:01
  but I'm not going to and I said in a previous episode I like
• 1:21:04
  forcing movement in fights. It makes it more interesting to
• 1:21:06
  me. Right?
• 1:21:07
  And I again I like it the more of like the Sauron hits you and
• 1:21:10
  knocks you back 15 feet, right? Because ultimately it look, it
• 1:21:14
  doesn't do anything other than potentially knocking the tanks.
• 1:21:18
  Away from the Squishies and then you can beat the Squishies.
• 1:21:21
  Yeah, so that's fun, but just being like, I just teleport over
• 1:21:25
  the map or like I'm flying the whole time and he's like, oh
• 1:21:28
  well only only three people can fly and is a concentration
• 1:21:31
  spell. That's just not fun now.
• 1:21:34
  Yeah, so but it ya know, it is really fucking difficult to do
• 1:21:38
  it, right. I really hope that they
• 1:21:41
  implement this in, you know, one Deez Nuts, eventually, because
• 1:21:45
  I've been using them for certain monsters and I I mentioned this
• 1:21:48
  to on the show on DM's Guild, there's an author and I'll let
• 1:21:53
  me find her name or their name is the lady that does all the
• 1:21:56
  blood condition. Yeah, she did.
• 1:21:57
  Yeah, they do all the bloodied and Gregerson.
• 1:22:02
  Yeah, she does. Not only she does a bunch of
• 1:22:04
  monster to loot. So it's like really cool for
• 1:22:06
  like if you have players that want to like, you know, Salvage
• 1:22:09
  monster B, it's really good for that.
• 1:22:12
  But then she also started making these bloodied and bruised, PDFs
• 1:22:15
  for every fucking five ebook. And it gives them like back and
• 1:22:20
  fourth edition there. Every monster has a thing called
• 1:22:22
  bloodied when they became when they got to half their hit
• 1:22:26
  points they get a new cool maneuver or more powerful
• 1:22:30
  maneuver, whatever they can do now because they're like, oh my
• 1:22:33
  God, they're at their the half HP there at death's door.
• 1:22:36
  The second phase of the boss fight is going up and so I've
• 1:22:40
  only used it once against my players and I downed a player
• 1:22:44
  during the strict saving game, they were fighting They were
• 1:22:49
  fighting an old guy who worked for the the orc who are the, you
• 1:22:54
  know, do Li not Death Eaters and it wasn't, it was a Knoll that
• 1:22:59
  specialized in blood magic. And one of the things they do is
• 1:23:04
  basically, when they get to half HP, they can instantly move
• 1:23:08
  without like as soon as they had, they hit the trigger.
• 1:23:12
  They literally it's called a trigger ability which is fucking
• 1:23:15
  funny as shit. So when they get to when they
• 1:23:17
  first get the bloodied, they can move up to their speed at any
• 1:23:22
  creature and then make one attack with advantage.
• 1:23:26
  And he I think I ended up actually creating my buddy wolf.
• 1:23:31
  After day because he was, he like, I think he literally used
• 1:23:35
  his big. Like I'm gonna like I'm gonna
• 1:23:37
  use my ultimate Matt and I'm going to try and like one shot
• 1:23:39
  the guy and basically got him like so 25% Health with that one
• 1:23:44
  move and the bad guy retaliated by zooming, over to him and then
• 1:23:49
  just fucking one shotting I'm and he's like, damn it.
• 1:23:59
  Yeah. How do you tried and true thing?
• 1:24:02
  What are you doing that situation?
• 1:24:03
  Other than like as a player as a DM as a GM?
• 1:24:06
  Like do you do you just look at him to go banish?
• 1:24:10
  You know what if you don't you just make them perish, right?
• 1:24:14
  You just like whale on them. I got we're on the player, the
• 1:24:18
  bad guy, the player is it? Because you're right, like, if
• 1:24:22
  he, if he 3/4 or dudes held you got, you got to do something you
• 1:24:26
  got to teach him a lesson. You can't let him get away with
• 1:24:27
  that shit. Well, it's good because that
• 1:24:29
  was, you know, he's like Lily, he's like this is my like
• 1:24:32
  emergency button move. I only do when I'm like, oh
• 1:24:36
  shit, we're in a serious like threat.
• 1:24:38
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:24:38
  It's the bill, like punished is like, you know, want to punish
• 1:24:41
  the player for like doing that stuff.
• 1:24:43
  But it was also, if you didn't bring the bad, Guy to half his
• 1:24:48
  HP, the bad guy might have started switching, you know,
• 1:24:52
  told wolf to being the Target because he's like, all right,
• 1:24:55
  I'm dealing with this one player who's up in my face.
• 1:24:57
  However, this other guy is taking potshots at me and
• 1:25:00
  they're doing a fuck ton of damage.
• 1:25:02
  I'm gonna go deal with him real quick because he's probably
• 1:25:05
  squishy if he's that far from me so probably would have just been
• 1:25:09
  like, you know, a smart creature would probably have tried to,
• 1:25:12
  you know, you know actually like think about it and move and
• 1:25:15
  that's the other thing too like making creatures.
• 1:25:18
  Not stupid. Like if they're fighting like
• 1:25:20
  something like something. I would doesn't have a lot of
• 1:25:23
  intelligence like, like a construct or, you know, like a
• 1:25:28
  giant like a wild. Like I don't wolf or Badger or
• 1:25:31
  some shit like, you know, it's gonna you know, it's not going
• 1:25:34
  to be super smart. It's not going to be intelligent
• 1:25:36
  but is really fighting like bump.
• 1:25:37
  Even like bugbears like you know, gobbling noise like you
• 1:25:41
  know smart monsters like a Knoll like they'll think they'll
• 1:25:45
  actually beat a you Winning in combat and being like, yeah,
• 1:25:50
  yeah, you know what, it's like this.
• 1:25:51
  Put this guy in front of me is annoying, but the guy with the
• 1:25:54
  bow is even more annoying. If I take him out real quick, I
• 1:25:58
  can come back and deal with this other guy, hmm.
• 1:26:02
  Yeah, I asked, right? Because it did you say that?
• 1:26:04
  It reminded me because I did the same thing to LP timid.
• 1:26:07
  A oh no. Yeah, because when they were
• 1:26:10
  fighting the king of feathers, right?
• 1:26:11
  He they have like a brought this up before they have like the
• 1:26:14
  crazy. It's a collar that Enhanced his
• 1:26:17
  meat, like mutation abilities. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:21
  And I remember, he basically the, his character has, it's
• 1:26:25
  kind of like cancer, right? Like his mutations are running
• 1:26:28
  rampant in its degrading, his body.
• 1:26:31
  But it's making him stronger, the sicker he gets right because
• 1:26:34
  of mutations, just getting more powerful.
• 1:26:37
  So it's a really cool like double-edged sword of, we'll all
• 1:26:40
  your attacks to stupid damage now but every time you do them
• 1:26:43
  you like risk hurting yourself, mmm.
• 1:26:46
  And I don't mean like you lose hip joints mean like your
• 1:26:47
  lifespan gets a little shortened.
• 1:26:49
  So he put the collar on and he did this like crazy powerful
• 1:26:53
  blast attack that smashed the king of feathers.
• 1:26:57
  It did like 60 70 HP, and he only had like Like yeah, like
• 1:27:02
  they get 400 flat, so like that shit.
• 1:27:06
  That's a good chunk. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah.
• 1:27:08
  It's about a fourth of an increase those.
• 1:27:09
  I gotta do something like, he claps.
• 1:27:12
  He's got it. He's talked shit.
• 1:27:13
  He's gotta get his fucked right. He's gotta find out, right?
• 1:27:16
  And then, I forgot that because his con mod has been lowering
• 1:27:21
  every week because of his sickness at level 12.
• 1:27:25
  It's only got 30. Something?
• 1:27:26
  Okay. Oh my God.
• 1:27:33
  And now he's dying and it's like oh oh!
• 1:27:39
  This is so bad! What have I done?
• 1:27:41
  And I've dude I fucked up. I fucked up, real hard.
• 1:27:44
  That's why players is not a spoiler.
• 1:27:47
  So his sickness has advanced to the point where he only has to
• 1:27:53
  death saved, successes or failures.
• 1:27:55
  Oh my God. You can only see it fail twice.
• 1:28:00
  And he had failed twice while he was eating and I had forgotten
• 1:28:04
  about that rule until I because I have a, he's my players, I
• 1:28:08
  have little GM notes on their character sheets, okay?
• 1:28:11
  Like how your mind help remind me of stuff I hadn't, I realized
• 1:28:15
  after the fight, I hadn't opened his thing at all.
• 1:28:18
  So, I just sort of absent mindedly opened it.
• 1:28:20
  And it literally says, can only sit fail to death saves and I
• 1:28:22
  went He should be dead, right? But I'm not.
• 1:28:29
  Yeah, I know, just kill him. You know what I mean?
• 1:28:31
  Like, that would be so fun. Just you just say this, you
• 1:28:33
  know, you can always just like, have it be like oh maybe it was
• 1:28:37
  a you know, a moment of adrenaline in your body somehow
• 1:28:40
  is able to preserve you from from dying after that, massive
• 1:28:44
  hit. I do something like nonsense.
• 1:28:48
  Hmm. You don't want a Pion, you don't
• 1:28:51
  want to punish the player too much and spend.
• 1:28:54
  That's and that's also like a mistake on.
• 1:28:56
  Yeah. It's like a mistake on the GM.
• 1:28:58
  So it's like, all right. Well, you know, we'll just,
• 1:29:00
  we'll just say, well, ignore it this time because that was my
• 1:29:03
  bad. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:06
  Yeah. I you know I think about this
• 1:29:09
  and I don't know how else to say it II.
• 1:29:12
  Feel like I almost lost. I I may have lost something in,
• 1:29:17
  not letting and not having that character died.
• 1:29:21
  I feel like I, I cheated the narrative in some way.
• 1:29:28
  But then I have to think like well I'm not, I'm not doing this
• 1:29:31
  for the narrative, right? I'm doing it because I want my
• 1:29:33
  players have a good time. Yeah.
• 1:29:35
  So I have to like constantly like well, you know, I don't
• 1:29:40
  want to. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:29:41
  I don't want to think that way because that's that's dangerous
• 1:29:43
  because then it's the like yeah, cuz a g a player.
• 1:29:46
  Yeah, that was so worried. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:29:49
  And like at the end of the day you are all, we all are playing
• 1:29:52
  a game to have fun at the table. We are not playing.
• 1:29:54
  Your Novella we're not playing. We're not You know, George r.r.,
• 1:29:58
  Martin playing Game of Thrones in the GM's world, as I were
• 1:30:01
  playing a game. And at the end of day, if like,
• 1:30:04
  that's that would definitely be something that would probably
• 1:30:07
  ruin the players fun of the like, hey man.
• 1:30:09
  So I made a mistake and your character at you should be dead.
• 1:30:12
  So here's your new character sheet and it's like, wait wait.
• 1:30:15
  Hold up scramble bimbo the the fucking halfling Rogue?
• 1:30:21
  Yeah, Jeff Lemire. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:26
  Yeah, I think. About it to this day.
• 1:30:28
  I'm like, don't him. And then I'm like, nah, maybe
• 1:30:35
  not, but maybe, okay. All right.
• 1:30:42
  I got one more question for you, but, you know, I'm sure just the
• 1:30:45
  two of us were probably gonna cut out a little early today.
• 1:30:47
  I got one more question. What is your favorite villain
• 1:30:50
  that you've fought against as a player?
• 1:30:54
  Oh, probably. Okay, so this is I think we've
• 1:31:00
  had some, I think a couple of highlights are the, the 1 V1,
• 1:31:05
  Maryland fight from a varnish. That was pretty fun.
• 1:31:08
  Wasn't really a villain. I don't know if that really
• 1:31:10
  counts actually because actually the whole you know gu thing was
• 1:31:15
  It was unwinnable situation so it was more just for the memes.
• 1:31:18
  Yeah, but I think as a player in the spoilers for fucking
• 1:31:25
  gangster under the main bad guy of the adventure is amaranth,
• 1:31:31
  who is this ancient blue dragon wizard?
• 1:31:35
  And one of the things like she does, is she actually found and
• 1:31:40
  has studied a bunch of old magic from from the nether.
• 1:31:44
  He's Fire and nether. Another L is another, he's there
• 1:31:48
  like the ancient Mages of thousands upon thousands years
• 1:31:51
  ago, they had the floating cities and all that shit.
• 1:31:54
  And now people faerun their adventuring and all the ruins of
• 1:31:58
  the crash cities that are underneath the ground now.
• 1:32:02
  And she has like all these magic runes carved into her, the boss
• 1:32:07
  fight at the end of storm, Kings down there against, her is so
• 1:32:11
  epic, and so big because you have to go you Do you find her
• 1:32:16
  located where her her layer is in a desert?
• 1:32:19
  It's in this big Grand Coliseum and she has a bunch of she her
• 1:32:24
  things. She does a lot of gargoyle like
• 1:32:27
  magic. Like she creates a lot of stone
• 1:32:29
  constructs and gargoyles. And so you get to this Coliseum
• 1:32:33
  and there's just a bunch of these giant Trevor Shay's with a
• 1:32:36
  bunch of gargoyles that are shooting at you.
• 1:32:39
  She is flying around this fucking Coliseum.
• 1:32:41
  As you're fighting her and then when you get her, I guess I
• 1:32:45
  don't know if it's actually said in the adventure but basically
• 1:32:48
  Midway through the fight she goes and there's a giant
• 1:32:51
  sinkhole under the ground and she goes into it and that's her
• 1:32:55
  actual layer because dry blue dragons, they make their lairs
• 1:32:59
  in underground desert like tunnel systems and so we're like
• 1:33:04
  fuck, like we have to go. This is the, we're going into
• 1:33:06
  her territory. So the first fight, half of the
• 1:33:11
  fight was just big dragon in the air combat, we're all trying to.
• 1:33:15
  Vive going into underground trying to survive a bunch of
• 1:33:19
  traps making our way through the dark cave and then just her
• 1:33:24
  lightning blasting us and shooting magic off into the
• 1:33:27
  Shadows until we have to like take her down and we ended up.
• 1:33:32
  She one of the things that kept happening in the campaign is our
• 1:33:38
  cleric. You would always get knocked
• 1:33:40
  unconscious because the DM would throw like a major at us who
• 1:33:44
  would cast Magic? Chuck missile because it's just
• 1:33:46
  a good, you know, it's a good spell and he would always take
• 1:33:49
  down the player by accident being like, I'm just going to
• 1:33:51
  cast magic Missile because it's simple and so the Claire hates
• 1:33:55
  magic Missile because he's like, I always do.
• 1:33:57
  I always get knocked out to magic Missile.
• 1:33:59
  I almost died magic Missile. It's my least favorite spell in
• 1:34:01
  the game. I fucking hate it.
• 1:34:03
  Cameron with the big blue dragon lady.
• 1:34:05
  She is on her last leg. She is fucking really weak and
• 1:34:08
  down and she knows our party. She knows like what we're
• 1:34:12
  capable of. And so she's like, All right,
• 1:34:15
  well, if I get, if I get rid of their fucking healer, I'll have
• 1:34:19
  no more issues and she cast magic Missile out of high level
• 1:34:23
  and just murders. Him straight up, kills the
• 1:34:27
  player. Oh yeah.
• 1:34:30
  And so, we're all like, look, fuck.
• 1:34:33
  And it was the first character death in a long time.
• 1:34:36
  And so are there total Barbarian managed to get the final hit on
• 1:34:41
  her. Now, you know, this is, this is
• 1:34:44
  for the clerk like that moment. Striking her down, we killed of
• 1:34:48
  this ancient, legendary boss of faerun.
• 1:34:51
  And we just so happen to, I forgot the, the, the Warlock and
• 1:34:57
  the DM kind of, home-brewed of thing of like, being able to
• 1:35:01
  bring people back to life, but then something happens to them,
• 1:35:04
  like corrupting magic happens to them.
• 1:35:07
  Okay, the Warlock ended up bringing the cleric back but now
• 1:35:11
  the clerics kind of fucked because he's been corrupted by
• 1:35:15
  the warlocks Patron. And now he's like oh no.
• 1:35:18
  But that was probably like the best fight just because like
• 1:35:22
  dragons are probably some of the best monsters to fight in D&D
• 1:35:26
  just because of like they're not you know they're not just a big
• 1:35:30
  sack of hit points. They have a lot of cool lure to
• 1:35:33
  them. They hit hard to breath weapon.
• 1:35:37
  Ins are pretty fun to like use in-game as a DM and also as a
• 1:35:40
  player to like try and Dodge them avoid, they can they their
• 1:35:45
  ACS are pretty high very much so they are pretty tanky.
• 1:35:49
  It gives you that. Like I'm fighting smog feeling
• 1:35:52
  of like I have to find the weak spot and they, you know, the
• 1:35:57
  fucking Mobility. It's like they fly like a
• 1:35:59
  motherfuck. It's crazy.
• 1:36:02
  Doing with that and the multiple phases of like fighting amaranth
• 1:36:05
  in the air. And then on top of that, she had
• 1:36:08
  spells. And one of the things that
• 1:36:12
  Emerald specifically has, is that she has this instead of her
• 1:36:16
  normal, breath weapon. She has a magic draining breath.
• 1:36:20
  It does like a fuck ton of force damage and steals a spell slot
• 1:36:24
  from spellcasters and gives it to her.
• 1:36:27
  Do you? That's such a fucking roof.
• 1:36:30
  Yeah, and so I, if GM's out there want needle, like a big
• 1:36:33
  cool, Final Boss, like if you have some, you know, you can
• 1:36:36
  find some Kinks under, or you can probably go in g MD and
• 1:36:39
  Beyond by Emirates for like fucking three bucks, whatever
• 1:36:43
  fucking they do on DB on. Fucking 10/10 boss monster,
• 1:36:48
  super cool like it, I like it. Yeah.
• 1:36:54
  When what what are you what are you?
• 1:36:55
  What's your is I've only really played with you in like like two
• 1:37:00
  to three campaigns and we've only had a couple of boss fights
• 1:37:02
  between those crew, and I'm not sure if anything in that has has
• 1:37:08
  been like a super highlight for you.
• 1:37:11
  Or visit something from like your Summoner game you were in
• 1:37:15
  or the my God. Now I'm blanking on the
• 1:37:18
  Japanese. What's the the sword game?
• 1:37:22
  The one that Martha's in. Oh, fire little background on.
• 1:37:26
  Thank you. Holy shit, my brain farted on
• 1:37:29
  the word and I'm like, what are the game?
• 1:37:31
  It says, Martha shit. You know, it's funny, I ask this
• 1:37:35
  question, but I hadn't even given you a fucking thought.
• 1:37:38
  What's the first thing that comes to mind like, out of all?
• 1:37:40
  All the games like is the first boss fight that comes to mind
• 1:37:43
  when you like when I say like oh boss fight as a player.
• 1:37:47
  So it's probably. Okay, so for reference the
• 1:37:51
  problem game, it was literally like, you know, it was basically
• 1:37:57
  a weird, you know, the theogony is that thing when everyone
• 1:38:02
  tried to like people try to be like all the religions of the
• 1:38:04
  world are coexist and they wrote like they tried writing like a
• 1:38:07
  concert comprehensive book as to how that was possible, okay?
• 1:38:10
  That's kind of what the farm game was, it was all of the farm
• 1:38:13
  games are sort of mish-mashed in and characters than, you know,
• 1:38:18
  are either like related to different people or their there
• 1:38:21
  are sort of recontextualized quite a bit and the boss, it was
• 1:38:27
  pretty much like the the halfway boss of the game, okay?
• 1:38:30
  And what made that really cool was He was sort of like this
• 1:38:39
  seems that this diet giant demon named for mortise.
• 1:38:41
  He looks fucking sick. I have a picture of him send
• 1:38:44
  you, and he was like this 50-foot tall demon that we had
• 1:38:49
  to fight. And it was at this point, like
• 1:38:52
  we were, you know, we're happy to the game.
• 1:38:53
  We're level 10, I'm sorry, no, we finished a level 10.
• 1:38:57
  So I was little Six or seven at the time.
• 1:39:01
  And it just it was the first time where, you know, I'm still
• 1:39:06
  early in my D&D career as a player.
• 1:39:08
  So shit is still wowing me. I'm still like, I don't know.
• 1:39:11
  Enough to be like that doesn't make sense.
• 1:39:14
  Or I don't like that ruling. Everything is like, oh my god,
• 1:39:16
  what the fuck? This is crazy.
• 1:39:18
  Yeah, and he was just, it was so crazy like he would hit so hard
• 1:39:23
  and like our are NPC was a cleric.
• 1:39:26
  So she was doing everything she could to keep us up and snubby
• 1:39:29
  went to one of my players in my game.
• 1:39:31
  And when he plays the shark person is playing a Bard.
• 1:39:34
  So she was trying to heal and like me the Barbarian are.
• 1:39:40
  And what their that it was a, it was a Homebrew class, but it was
• 1:39:45
  a, it's basically like a magic night in Fire.
• 1:39:48
  Emblem. Can't reward exactly what the
• 1:39:49
  call, okay? And you have like a wyvern,
• 1:39:52
  you'd like ride on a wyvern at sick.
• 1:39:55
  We had two of those. It just, it literally felt like
• 1:40:00
  we were trying Take down a giant monster.
• 1:40:03
  And what I loved was, I had a cursed sword that could shoot
• 1:40:07
  beams out of it, like in shock wave attacks, but every time I
• 1:40:11
  would do it, it would drain my strength by one point until I
• 1:40:14
  kill something. Ouchie, it was, I would get all
• 1:40:17
  my strength back. Yeah, my character had 20
• 1:40:20
  strength at this point. So, it really was this like,
• 1:40:25
  well, I can't get up there because I'm on the floor level,
• 1:40:27
  but the my beam attack does a lot of damage and it was I just
• 1:40:31
  I loved I'm not describing this well at all, I'm kind of caught
• 1:40:34
  the Nostalgia I suppose but just every time I would launch a beam
• 1:40:38
  up at him and it hit him in the face and I was trying to get him
• 1:40:40
  down on one knee and then we did and he picked up our Archer.
• 1:40:45
  He was a he was a rogue and then he became a fighter, I believe.
• 1:40:51
  Okay. Yeah he got almost got spiked
• 1:40:55
  like a football from 50 feet up and and you know LP was like hey
• 1:40:58
  bro hey Brett. If you get hit by this.
• 1:41:01
  If you get spiked you're dead, you're 50 feet up, but he's
• 1:41:04
  gonna Spike you like a football and you're hitting the ground
• 1:41:07
  like a crashing meteor. You're fucked.
• 1:41:09
  Thankfully. All right, then Spike, that's
• 1:41:13
  good. So clock probably made rules for
• 1:41:16
  like shadow of the cloths. This style fights for d and e.
• 1:41:20
  Someone's got to have made it by now.
• 1:41:22
  Like, yeah. I'm sure because that's probably
• 1:41:24
  like, like even a during storm king started, that's something
• 1:41:26
  I've been like, yeah, I want to see that happen.
• 1:41:29
  Like if it's not in there. Here we go.
• 1:41:33
  Here he is giga. Chad from mortise.
• 1:41:39
  Oh shit. This is like what if Obelisk the
• 1:41:42
  Tormentor was like more evil. He's a big boy, he's a big boy.
• 1:41:52
  You know, it's funny. The NPC actually got the winning
• 1:41:55
  kill in that fight, but um, so in anything, right?
• 1:42:00
  Yeah, it was so cool because if there is so in Fire Emblem, The
• 1:42:05
  Fire. Emblem is a thing.
• 1:42:07
  It's literally like an item. I'm it it does.
• 1:42:10
  It's like the Elder Scroll, it does just whatever the plot
• 1:42:13
  really needs it to be okay. And our NPC had it, it was a
• 1:42:17
  medallion that her mom gave us spoilers her mom, was the evil
• 1:42:20
  God, the whole time, she was actually an awesome are, and
• 1:42:23
  she's never knew it, and we didn't know it either until the
• 1:42:26
  next Campaign, which was crazy. Yeah, it was that shit where
• 1:42:31
  we're like, oh my God, it makes sense.
• 1:42:33
  Now holy fuck. It was, it was great
• 1:42:37
  storytelling on its part straight up.
• 1:42:38
  It was Amazing. So she like channel the Fire
• 1:42:42
  Emblem to boost her magic. And she threw a fucking
• 1:42:45
  spiritual binge beheaded his ass and we were like, literally,
• 1:42:51
  I've never been so happy to be kill steeled, laughs, I was so
• 1:42:56
  happy and then he blew up nice. You did the thing.
• 1:43:00
  The thing every asshole GM does, which I did with the king of
• 1:43:03
  feathers, he just goes Thermo fucking nuclear on you.
• 1:43:07
  He blows the fuck up. Is a stupid amount of damage.
• 1:43:11
  But the cool thing that happened was my, in the first Arc, my
• 1:43:14
  characters dad was murdered by a black by like a death knight who
• 1:43:17
  was controlled by, not this guy but somebody working with this
• 1:43:21
  guy, right? And I got his sword, but the
• 1:43:25
  sword basically traps, the current owner inside of it to
• 1:43:30
  act as a mentor for the next owner of the sword.
• 1:43:34
  That's sort of like the symbol of the king of the country.
• 1:43:36
  My character is a prince, so his dad became his mentor as the
• 1:43:40
  sword spirit. And when I first got the sword,
• 1:43:43
  after his dad died, it was bound in, like, it almost looked like
• 1:43:47
  a wire, bandages, like it was sort of like, wrapped up.
• 1:43:51
  Yeah. And it's like wire and I
• 1:43:53
  couldn't use it as a sword, like, I literally couldn't even
• 1:43:55
  hold it. And then eventually I could use
• 1:43:58
  it as a weapon, but it counted as interesting, normal great.
• 1:44:01
  So I couldn't do anything on. There was an improvised weapon
• 1:44:03
  because Steven sharp, but it would literally like it.
• 1:44:07
  I virtually I had to like keep it wrapped up in bandages and
• 1:44:10
  just like fastened to my back with leather straps.
• 1:44:13
  So I couldn't talk like literally couldn't pick it up.
• 1:44:16
  I know I'm going into. This is, it's cool.
• 1:44:18
  Don't worry eventually, I became like worthy enough to wield it
• 1:44:23
  and I could use it as improvised weapon.
• 1:44:24
  I used it for a while even though it was just not ideal or
• 1:44:27
  optimal. Yeah, but when the character
• 1:44:29
  when from words, blew up the characters like father,
• 1:44:34
  manifested and like blocks the attack and like the weapon
• 1:44:37
  unlocked fully and that I had it for the final of the end, like,
• 1:44:40
  run of the dude. It was so cool.
• 1:44:42
  I don't know. That's just a English.
• 1:44:44
  It was the most like, Animate bullshit, and I'm not even gonna
• 1:44:47
  front you. It's such an amazing bullshit,
• 1:44:50
  but spoil. He's, I actually like the anime
• 1:44:53
  bullshit a lot. People are like, no, no, it's
• 1:44:55
  not D&D. I'm like, the okay.
• 1:44:56
  No, fuck you D & D, is Anime, is a from Bleach.
• 1:45:06
  Like, you are like, it is, you know, it's weird to like
• 1:45:12
  speaking of like the, you know, the monsters blowing up and
• 1:45:15
  shit. Lately was the coast they,
• 1:45:18
  they're making more lower level monsters.
• 1:45:21
  That just they blow up when they die.
• 1:45:23
  And I feel bad because like even running strict saving a lot of
• 1:45:27
  the monsters. They give me do that and I think
• 1:45:31
  as I got my players are getting annoyed of, like, every monster
• 1:45:34
  they fighter. Every other monster.
• 1:45:36
  They find it blows up when they die and it's like Loops but it's
• 1:45:41
  like explode into snakes. No, haven't done that yet.
• 1:45:46
  I haven't found a good good. Excuse to use you on TV yet,
• 1:45:50
  restrict saver or I haven't, I haven't found a good spot to
• 1:45:53
  throw them into strict saving but I'll figure out something
• 1:45:57
  because that would be funny. Yeah.
• 1:45:58
  You like it? I don't really funny.
• 1:46:00
  You make me beg. Sam.
• 1:46:01
  Real proud if you like that. And they exploded the snakes and
• 1:46:03
  your players go high. And then you put the snakes on
• 1:46:06
  the field. They go about the snakes token.
• 1:46:08
  Oh yeah. Just like wait.
• 1:46:11
  So fucking funny, dude. I to this day, we still make
• 1:46:14
  those jokes because it is, it is It's so good.
• 1:46:16
  One of the crowning achievements in deity is being like, yeah,
• 1:46:20
  that exploded the snakes. What the fuck is happening right
• 1:46:25
  now? I don't know.
• 1:46:32
  Now, it's just as fun game. Yeah, crazy.
• 1:46:35
  Very good. Okay we're almost an hour and 50
• 1:46:40
  minutes. We almost pulled the full
• 1:46:41
  episode you and me let's go us. Fuck.
• 1:46:43
  Yeah, episode because I definitely want to do whatever
• 1:46:50
  they want to do. Another one of these with the
• 1:46:51
  other to like hear their takes on bad guys and villains and it
• 1:46:56
  wasn't them. Yeah, I'm definitely not hosting
• 1:47:00
  the next one. Now that our well figured out
• 1:47:03
  perfect. All right, well, be in between
• 1:47:04
  the Smasher pass monster manual, or you got to do it, we're
• 1:47:09
  storing. Don't worry, still on the table.
• 1:47:11
  We're still doing it. Yeah, we got a boys and girls we
• 1:47:14
  got it. Oh yeah, yeah, that's been us.
• 1:47:18
  Follow us on the Tweet, ours or the do tubes or basically
• 1:47:22
  anywhere. Where podcasts are held, feel
• 1:47:25
  free to leave a rating. If you think we're do good,
• 1:47:28
  leave a comment like, subscribe, All That Jazz.
• 1:47:31
  That's been us. That's what that that's done.
• 1:47:33
  We're done. Happy New Year, everybody.
• 1:47:36
  Oh, yeah, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year and happy
• 1:47:38
  holidays. But of the fuck you celebrate or
• 1:47:40
  don't? I don't know.
• 1:47:41
  Don't get drunk. That's what I'm going to do.
• 1:47:42
  Already hard, Party hard. Yak actually days, it's been I
• 1:47:55
  knew your New Year's resolution. I'm going to get a healthy
• 1:47:58
  liver. Right next holiday.
• 1:48:03
  Oh, I see, I see. Okay.
• 1:48:04
  All right, that's it.