Vmail from Eric Frankhouse

Matt V. comments on ep 300 Relying on NPC’s

I want to do a big write in soon, off some previous episodes, but it may be a few weeks still and wanted to get something in! Lots of GREAT episodes lately gentlemen.

So, two weeks is the final session of my Mutant Year Zero game. Right now the PCs and about 16 NPC’s are all travelling to the last area. They can use these NPC’s as characters, as its a tough dungeon.

To create pressure, early on they will run into a trap that will likely trap at least 5-8 of the PC’s & NPC’s in a prison on a lower floor. They have pretty close bonds with all these characters at this point.

Most every thing takes 4 hours in MYZ. If they decide to rest or build something I’m going to very animatedly and blatantly remove one captured character randomly from the pile! Or if they just take too long dicking around. I’m even debating on just ripping them up, as long as its not a PC….

I think that should work! I feel your recent episodes inspired me to come up with the idea. Hopefully it works.

Somethings get better with age…not saying you guys and the show are one of those things, just pointing it out 😉

Here’s to another 100 at least!

Matt emails us about multiple ability checks in 5e

Hey guys, love the podcast.

I was just reading through the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide, refreshing myself on some things and picking up some of the great inspiration to be found in there when I came to the section on Ability Checks. Under the section on Multiple Ability Checks is the following advice: 

“Sometimes a character fails an ability check and wants to try again. In some cases, a character is free to do so; the only real cost is the time it takes. With enough attempts and enough time, a character should eventually succeed at the task. To speed things up, assume that a character spending ten times the normal amount of time needed to complete a task automatically succeeds at that task. However, no amount of repeating the check allows a character to turn an impossible task into a successful one.”

Now, as 5e has been my entry game into the hobby I don’t have the burden of confusing different editions that some of you elder statesman might suffer from. But, if you were worried about having players Take 10 or Take 20 and then realizing it wasn’t part of 5e, well it seems like it maybe kind of is. 

Anyway, I just wanted to point this section out to you guys and anyone else who like myself doesn’t want the characters to miss the secret door they know is there or watch the fighter with 20 strength fail to open the sarcophagus that shouldn’t be an issue just because of a bad roll, or worse yet sit through roll after roll until the PCs finally do the thing we all knew they should have been able to do anyway. 

Thanks guys, here’s to 300 more!

Matt