Tomb of Annihilation - A Race Against Death! Death count: 1

Creating your character

This will be done session zero. We will decide to use either 2014 rules (and the races/subclasses designed for those rules) or 2024 rules (and the subclasses and playable races released with those rules). There will be some character restrictions (ex. no one is teaching strixhaven spells in the jungle, races from other planes of existance, etc.) so as to keep with the theme of the campaign. Certain spells and backgrounds (goodberry/Wanderer/etc) will have modifications to not totally negate the survival aspect of the adventure. Expect a difficult survival focused game for the first half of the campaign before it transitions into a puzzle & trap filled dungeon crawl in the 2nd half.

Preparing for the session

Working mic is needed, Webcam a plus. Dndbeyond, Discord, and Roll20 account, the free ones are all you need.

What Belle brings to the table

Lots of theater of the mind discriptions as well as interesting battle maps. Music to set the vibe. Terrible NPC voices that will make you laugh. Tissues for when a dinosaur eats your halfling. You are probably going to die, so bring your back-up characters. They will probably die too. Tomb of Annihilation is a throwback to old school hex crawls and insanely deadly dungeons, with a ton of silliness thrown into the mix. I will be running this game as it was intended; Difficult as hell. To do any less would be a disservice to you and the story. Plus then you’ll have bragging rights when you complete it (especially if you somehow didn’t lose a character)

Homebrew rules

Potions - if you use an action to drink a potion, you get the maximum healing. Initiative - If you get a nat 20 when rolling initiative, you can choose where in the turn order you go. Ex. You want to be after the cleric so they can buff you first? No problem. Spell scrolls - Can be used by anyone as a one time use spell. Wizards can also learn spells from them, but this consumes the scroll. Dropping to 0 Hit Points - To avoid metagaming, death saving throws are rolled secretly to the DM. This will make the other players feel pressure when deciding their next actions. Do they go for the killing blow, or heal the wizard? While in death saves, the player can describe important moments from your character's life flashing before your eyes. Do you even know who I am? -When a roll happens that is going to lead to the immediate death of a character (failing a spell save, failing a final death roll, etc.), they can do an hero style flashback to a moment that demonstrates what motivates them. Like the inciting incident of their backstory, a memory of their lover, etc. After they describe this to the group, they can force a single reroll. This can only happen once per character. Help - A character can only provide help if it has proficiency in the skill or tool related to the task at hand, or a relevant ability score equal or higher than the character doing the task. If you say “I’ll help” during charisma based checks I WILL ask you how you help. Example: a bard with Arcana proficiency can help a wizard decipher magic runes (advantage on the Intelligence (Arcana) check), but a rogue with a Strength score of 8 cannot help a barbarian with a Strength score of 18 force open a door. Hero Coins - these act similar to inspiration as they are rewarded for things like journal entries, giving a recap at the beginning of the session, or awesome rp moments. These are stackable and can be used to increase a d20 dice roll by 1 for each coin used (you can have a maximum of 5 at any time, so use them!) This is not limited to your own rolls. If a friend fails a save, everyone can toss hero coins onto their roll to turn that into a success. This is to foster cooperation and encourage rp.

How Belle creates a safe table

Lines & Veils to be filled out before session zero. We will have a 5 minute break at the half way point!