This is classic D&D shit right here.
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On the question of presenting horror in D&D -
The basic feeling of horror is a sense of powerlessness, which is hard to convey in the mechanisms of play without just completely overwhelming the players and killing them, thus sapping the fun of the whole game.
But I wonder if you can convey “fear” in the game better by presenting challenging obstacles that don’t simply punish the players with death. Instead, force them to suffer change in failure - not necessarily detrimental mechanical handicaps like losing an arm, but things that simply change how their characters work on some fundamental level to keep them both intrigued and concerned. Like a reversal of traditional secondary progression (loot and magic items) that close and open different doors of playstyle.
An example for their current circumstance: if a character “engages” with the mushroom god in any way, specifically with hostility, then that character may suffer some fungal curse that saps some of their max HP permanently, but gives them some weird ability (spore cloud stuff maybe). Basically Annepire. After all, the people of the ancient world take refuge in ignorance and fear the turbulent winds of change caused in the wake of restless gods and powers.
This is all very insightful! I’ll definitely keep that in mind…
@AdamKoebel you’ve mentioned before there are no unnamed magical items in court of swords, that they all have a name and backstory. Do you plan on adding the magic items these characters chose to the main arcs world? So instead of random loot tables the players could come across the “Bracer’s of Salix” at a specific location or wielded by a specific npc?
Does Yomm still get the Barbarian’s Unarmored Defense while shape shifting?
I don’t know if you already accounted for this when playing because I don’t know the stats of the things he changed into. Just saw the question in chat and thought I’d bring it up.
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This is from the official WotC Sages Advice compedium page 2 version 1.14
These methods—along with any others that give you a formula for calculating your AC—are mutually exclusive; you can benefit from only one at a time. If you have access to more than one, you pick which one to use. For example, if you’re a sorcerer/monk, you can use either Unarmored Defense or Draconic Resilience, not both. Similarly, a druid/barbarian who transforms into a beast form that has natural armor can use either the beast’s natural armor or Unarmored Defense (you aren’t considered to be wearing armor with natural armor).
Makes the already good combination even better. ^^b
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Just curious because I’ve seen it before with Berg, but does @AdamKoebel houserule throwing weapons?
"Thrown
If a weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon to make a ranged Attack. If the weapon is a melee weapon, you use the same ability modifier for that Attack roll and damage roll that you would use for a melee Attack with the weapon. For example, if you throw a Handaxe, you use your Strength, but if you throw a Dagger, you can use either your Strength or your Dexterity, since the Dagger has the finesse property."
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@itmeJP please make a Bard character with the Noble background, take three NPC servants and have them be your orchestra while you are the conductor. 
You could hear the delight in Adam’s voice when Erin solved the problem of the grabby mushroom child by giving it something unimportant to hold.
It is fun to see different solutions to problems from gamers with different background.
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Mhmm. Every magic item has a backstory. It’s up to the players to discover it. Also, bracers made my ancient forest spirits given to a demon girl? What a great story!
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I’m such an open book sometimes. /laugh
Yeah! I was so happy when she did that, because I was trying to be menacing and invoke nervous tension and she was just like “get out of here spore baby” and dealt with it in a really cool way.
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No, what I said in the episode was a mistake about hand axes!
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Your face when Max was about to jump in the sludge fountain was great as well.
We needed fireball this episode, grilled mushrooms are good. I hope JP takes Sorcerer for next episode.
Yea they needed some sort of AOE or area denial spells like flaming sphere or spike growth. It would have been an entirely different fight if a flaming sphere was there to burn the mushrooms if they wanted to keep salix in the corner and not move.
I like that Adam started playing a turned based tactics game with all the summons in this episode 
The screen looked like the banner saga for a sec. 
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This episode hung around in my brain and yesterday I suddenly made a song out of it, so thank you and cheers! Parody Tribute 1: Ekishnugal (Draft Horse)
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Damn… just finished watching on youtube. It’s another one of those episodes. It makes for a good character arc for Yomm though.
I have to agree though that shapeshifting and summons are really hard to manage in r20. Swapping out the sheet for the character is easy but the token replacement is a sort of a doozy.
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I’m curious how the mushroom was able to move into the square to the left of the boar here. Does not appear to be enough room for an enemy with the cave wall right there.
