So you’ve decided to take up the mantle of Game Master. This is a task not for the faint of heart. The road ahead is filled with peril and frustrations, but it is also filled with fun and joy. Becoming a GM means taking on a set of responsibilities. As a GM you’re expected to be a story teller, challenger, rules referee, and teacher all at the same time. Balancing all of this is daunting, but the rewards are well worth the trouble. [Read more…]
From the Beginning: Writing your Character’s Backstory
Every story has a beginning, and the character you play is essentially a living story that unfolds through role-playing. The beginning of your character’s story is called a backstory, and it is the cornerstone of your character. Let’s take a look at how to make your character’s backstory interesting and unique. [Read more…]
How to Stop a Murderhobo from Ruining Your Game
A good campaign leads to adventure. Adventure can lead to killing. But it doesn’t always have to. Some of your players may not realize this, which leads to them becoming a murderhobo. But what exactly is a murderhobo, and how do you keep them from derailing your game? [Read more…]
Running npcs in your party
Over the past games in my campaign I have learned a few things. One of those things is my players have a penchant for npcs. While I love their enthusiasm for the characters I’ve created, it does get tiresome running several characters alongside the actual story. So how do you handle running multiple npcs that your party has gathered? Well there are a few ways.
The first way is the simplest, and that is to make a character sheet or stat block for your npc and give it to your players for them to run in combat. You still roleplay the npc, but any combat maneuvering is taken off your hands. The caveat to this is that you have players who are experienced. If your players are still at that stage where they constantly check their character sheet to see what they have, then perhaps giving them another one to track isn’t the best of ideas. The idea is to make the game run more smoothly, not bog it down. This does also require some trust, but if you can trust your players to not throw your npc into the jaws of a dragon then this is the simplest answer.
Another method is one I call the spotlight technique. This means the spotlight is shown on the npcs as the story calls for it, and all other times they are just background noise. For combat they can do one or two cool things per fight, but aside from that they just add damage for your group (this can be evened out by giving the enemies more health or upping the CR). This makes it easy since you can pull out whichever npc is appropriate as they become relevant, and ignore them any other times. But beware, this method could have your party forgetting their existence if they stay in the shadows for too long.
The last method I want to talk about is rotating cast. As your adventuring party travels the world they’ll meet new people, and some of those people will end up joining the party. While this is good in a vacuum, it does create this snowball effect. One game you’ll have a party of five, then seven, then ten or more. That’s way too many to keep track of on top of everything else. Luckily your npcs are people with goals of their own, and these goals play into the rotating cast method. The idea is that at certain points npcs will bow out to pursue their quests, making room for new npcs to join. This keeps the party dynamic fresh and keeps the game simple to run for you. An added bonus is that you can bring back any favorites hat your party is particularly missing, almost like a cameo!
Npcs can be pretty tricky when they stick with the party. They’re something that you always have to take into account when building encounters and planning stories. They require a delicate balance. If they are focused on too much your players might start to feel overshadowed, and at that point you’re just playing with yourself. On the other hand, if you let them fall into obscurity and don’t use them enough then what’s the point of them being there? Hopefully you can find the balance. Npcs can be great fun when they are recurring; it almost feels like playing yourself. But no matter how you choose to run your npcs, be sure to keep hose dice rolling high!
Character Concept: the Tabaxi Speedy Sniper
You’ve made camp for the night, exhausted from a long day of adventuring. Your eyes just barely close for slumber when you hear a loud noise nearby, one that sounds like a bird and bear at the same time. Moments later an owlbear is rampaging towards you. Surely you’re doomed! Just when the beast makes its lunge towards you, you notice a pair of feline eyes glowing from amidst the trees. A second later, an arrow flies from the trees, finding its way to the owlbear’s back. Not more than 5 seconds later, another arrow whizzes past your head, finding purchase in the beast once again before it falls to the ground. From the trees emerges a humanoid cat holding a longbow, a tabaxi ranger.
In this character concept, I’m going to take the idea of a speedster and run with it, literally. This is a fun way to build a 5e tabaxi character. The main idea stems off of the tabaxi’s racial ability that doubles your speed for a turn and recharges after not moving for a turn. The build comes online at level 10; 6 levels in monk and 4 in ranger. There are plenty of ways to level from there for even more speed, but the build really starts being effective at level 10. The 6 levels in monk allow you 15 more feet per turn, bringing your movement up to 45 feet per turn. More importantly, it gives you step of the wind, allowing you to dash as a bonus action. The mobile feat brings you to 55 feet. The ranger levels get a bit more situational, but with more benefits.
Dread ambusher gives you 10 feet on your first turn of combat. The ranger spells that are important to this build are longstrider and zephyr strike. Longstrider gives you 10 additional feet per turn for an hour, bringing your average speed total to 65 feet. Zephyr strike gives you a whopping 30 feet, but only after attacking. That works perfectly with how this build plays out. Due to action economy you’ll have to cast these spells before the battle starts, but remember that the payoff is twofold.
So once you have your spells up and on the first turn of combat you make an attack. Once that happens all of these bonuses stack up twice due to your feline agility. So when the stars align, your tabaxi ranger will be clocking in at 420 feet in one turn. For reference, that’s 4/5 of a mile per minute, or 48 miles per hour! Granted that’s only when everything goes off, but on average you’re still moving at 130 feet every other turn. Even on the low end you’re moving 65 feet, unless you run out of longstrider. That’s still double the speed of any normal creature.
So what do we do with all this speed? Well luckily the rest of the build fits nicely into an archer shell. This means your game plan is to just fire arrows and never get caught. Fire off an arrow, move almost a mile, and attack from an entirely different angle and surprise your foe. If you find yourself playing this at higher levels you can build into more speed with monk levels, or more damage with the scout subclass of rogue (which also grants more speed!), or if you’re feeling fancy you can grab levels in warlock and sorcerer and hit enemies from even farther than your bow can reach.
So what do you think of this 5e tabaxi character build? Did I miss any speed bonuses? How much is too much? Are you interested in more fun and wacky character builds? Let me know! And as always, keep those dice rolling high!
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