Tag: dungeons & dragons

Player Quotes

Candle of Invocation

DM:  Does anyone have Arcana?

Hector rolls successfully

DM: You get an idea about it.  You believe the power comes when it’s lit…

Hector:  I say “this is just a normal candle, I don’t know what you’re excited about.”

Quotes from Series 2, Episode 3: Leave No Mage Behind

DM Note #6

Story Paths

This refers to Series 2, Episode 1 of Agora Core: Gifts of Pelor.

After the party was formed, their initial actions caused the original side-stories to be cut because they were never going to be able to walk around the town of Mid-Nis as free men.

And so the possible stories and adventures had to start anew.  I really like the moment in the episode when the well does seem to have run dry.  They are sitting in a tavern having a quiet drink and wondering where to go from here.

From here, their world is both limitless and directionless.  They have no burdens apart from staying clear of Mid-Nis.
Storylines were in place but needed them to make the first move.  It was interesting to see what happened next.  Orix even mentioned becoming pirates!

By talking to Dais in the tavern they heard the local gossip that they could profit from; a new ‘grave’ site discovered in the desert landscape known as the Da and the Mid-Nis mines requiring a Kobold elimination squad.

Their visionary dreams, brought about by the mysterious ‘Summit’, gave the players personal missions.  The visions also gave them insight into other sordid activities going on.

They decided to pursue the treasures in the desert, but they may yet return to the other options.  The Kobolds may yet grow stronger and Orix showed an interest in looking in on his friend Vian who left home to go to the mysterious Mara Society.  But first, let’s see what the Da has in store…

DM Note #5

Rules for Horse Riding

This refers to Episode 5 Agora Core: Escape.

The conclusion of the episode involves the party trying to escape on horseback.  Pevel’s attempt has to be a series highlight.

This leads me onto today’s topic.  How do you decide how capable a Player Character (PC) is at riding a particular creature?

In version 3.5 on Dungeons & Dragons, there was a Ride skill, and so the simple way to determine if you could successfully ride a creature was for the player to roll a d20 and add their Ride skill number to the total.  If this was equal or higher than the Difficulty Class (DC) total that the Dungeon Master (DM) decided on, then the player would have succeeded.  If not, the player failed to complete the task, in this case, ride a horse.

In the 5th edition (5e) of Dungeons & Dragons there is no such thing as a Ride skill and no set way of determining
the skill according to the Player’s Handbook. Instead there are a series of ability-based skills that PCs can be proficient in – proficiency is a bonus number added to particular skills.  Here is how I applied the ability-based
skills to this task.

As the horses were no familiar with the players, they had to see compatible they were, in other words, how comfortable the horses were being handled by a PC.  I used the skill Animal Handling (a Wisdom-based skill) for this.  However, even if a horse is comfortable around a PC, that doesn’t make the character agile enough to be a rider.  So the second roll I believe the players should do is an Athletics check (a Dexterity-based skill) to see if they could
successfully get onto the horse and balance whilst the horse moves.   Both these challenges can be done against a Difficulty Class determined by the DM.   If the PC and creature have a history together I wouldn’t ask for a check to be made as the rider and horse already have this level of understanding and ability.

This was my solution to this challenge.  In the finale (episode 5) to Series 1, I just got the players to roll animal handling as we were running short of time.  To further save time, there were two levels of Difficulty to the rolI – 15 or above to start riding in 1 round (6 seconds) and 10 or above to start riding in 2 rounds (12 seconds).  In the case of Pevel his desperate second attempt was more desperate and needed a swift move, so I got him to make an additional Athletics Check as well to pull it off.

So how do other DMs and groups work out their riding skill?  Let me know.

This is the end of the DM Notes for Series 1.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the content and found some of them useful.  Stay tuned for Series 2 later in the summer.