Short Rest: Eldermourne - Ep. 1: The Reaping Season

The most Emily sentence ever "Did I ever tell you that I happened upon a snail race?"

The most average man. Brad Pitt in fight club.

I love this podcast but go birds 🦅

nothing on earth that jake can say can stop me from visualizing henry as moe from the simpsons

Again, Go Bills.

Go birds

Anyone else unable to find the actual first episode on their feed? Found it else where & am loving this ach so far but figured it was worth mentioning

ok but Resident Evil mixed bag when? Love that you draw inspo from that series sometimes, Murph.

Please come to Buffalo and celebrate NADDPOD and the Bills. We would love a live show <3

Me and several of my coworkers listen to your show, we do roof and gutter cleaning. When Caldwell referenced the halbert being like a gutter pole I instantly felt like a badass, as I was using one at that moment up on a roof

I'm stealing 'memory vault', I need it. If I can remember it...

What were the statblocks for Syb and Fergus? As a dm, I’m really into the big slow heavy hitter and small fast light hitter thing and may want to use the stats in future games.

I subscribed about two weeks ago and now I'm almost caught up! The Rube Goldberg bit had me literally crying, that was so unexpectedly funny

In my head I always kinda saw henry similar to Tom Cruise from the movie Far and Away but just a little bit older

Make Henry hotter.

Oh Henry totally looks like a grungy Colin Farrell in my head. Like pre glow up

I cannot accurately describe the look of sheer discomfort on my coworkers’ faces when they asked me why I was laughing so hard and I had to answer them, through tears of laughter, “A man on my podcast is screaming a detailed description of a Rube Goldberg machine.”

It’s cool to hear that using bells to control the undead exists in a range of media! The necromancers in the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix have a bandolier of bells, with each bell having a different affect (which is what came to mind for me listening to the episode). I’m totally loving Eldermourne- a giant bouquet of roses to all four of y’all!

Let Jake take the Unarmed Fighting style UA! Do it Murph!

I'm calling it, Henry is going to get a homebrew harpoon weapon at some point. 1d6+strength check to pull a harpooned enemy towards him, maybe? That, or a trident.

I very much want the horseman’s bell to be a cowbell and when the gang finally faces him he goes into a rendition of Don’t fear the reaper.

A 'bill' or bill-hook is also a type of polearm like a halberd

Tavern brawler gives you proficiency with improvised weapons. I used this feat with a character, and it was a lot of fun. The improvised weapons proficiency came in handy and it was such a fun scene.

Sorry jake but go eagles!! Fly eagles fly

If you see this Jake instead of tavern brawler which can be a bit underwhelming, I’d recommend taking the pole arm master feat. It allows you to take an extra attack as a bonus action for 1d4 plus your strength modifier which you can flavor as a punch. You can also take an opportunity attack when someone enters your space!

So I have a few fresh water exospheres, and one of them is mostly just snails (and a dragonfly nymph). They can actually get pretty fast, but I've definitely seen them race before and I strongly suggest making snail races a thing.

Emily, don't feel bad about the cat food. I was feeding my cats one morning, and I made my coffee at the same time. I mashed up their food with some warm water (because that's where my life is now), and I had two bowls to carry. In a tired reflex, I confused my brain and rather than set down the spoon for the cat food, I put that sucker directly into my mouth. And deposited the coffee spoon in the sink. 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️ Spoiler alert, it tastes exactly as bad as you think it does. Anyway, love the new campaign!! Kinda wanna watch football with Henry, smoke my first cigar with Fia and fail a science experiment with Zirk. Keep being amazing!!

this was great!

Henry can root for the Bills, a sport fishing team he used to work for fending off monsters as the fishermen fish for billfish (like a blue marlin) Did that make any sense? But of course they only catch bullywugs

Omg!! The Geeky Blinders!! This campaign just fully realized itself in my mind! Love Peakey Blinders, Jake is Arthur, Emily is Polly, and Caldwell is Michael. And the Coup de Gras - Tom Hardy is in Peakey Blinders!!!! Worlds colliding! Worlds colliding! Love you!

Heeey there' is a unarmed fighting style in a UA is amazing for a boxer fighter ..1d6+str for damage or 1d8 if you are not using anything in both hands. I have some characters that are boxers because I love de concept XD

Not sure why I didn't think of this on first listen but for Henry's extendable halberd it reminds me of the hunters axe from bloodborne. So from now on whenever it sets pulled out I'm going to imgine the hunters axe being extended to a 2 hand weapon.

If you’re looking for a way to incorporate the Bills into the world, Marlins, Swordfish, and Sailfish are collectively called Billfish, which works well for a port town’s sports team.

I love Murph so much omg 🖤😂

At some point in the campaign they are definitely going to have to go to cor-con (easier to say and sounds better to me than coroner con). Great start so far :)

Look I'm not saying I'll cancel my sub if you call yourselves anything other than the Geeky Blinders...

As someone who both plays a familiar using wizard and is a DM for a warlock with a familiar, don’t put arbitrary limits on a familiar. The familiar having to get into a dangerous position to take a help action is penalty enough; most familiar critters will go down in one hit, and it takes time and resources to cast FF, so being reckless with your familiar can put you in a really rough spot.

Being from Buffalo and hearing y’all mention the Bills had me

SPOILER ALERT FOR CRANK.... Jason Stathem dies at the end of the movie while falling from an airplane (?) to his explosive death.

Also to weigh in on the tavern brawler feat for Henry, maybe Polearm Master for a little one-two action by hitting folks with the retractable handle, (also the change to opportunity attacks also seems apt for someone who was previously employed fending off river beasts) https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/polearm-master

Dear Jake, the Kensei Monk is really fun, and you can still rock swords.

My first short rest ! And what a way to start things of ! Love the pure chaotic energy that's always present in the group. For Jake, I'm not sure if homebrewing is a thing he'd be even interested in but there is a class called the Pugilist by Benjamin Huffman. It might be worth checking out. I've been dying to play it for some time now. Thank you very much for the great quality entertainment you've given me the past few months, I needed it !

Such a great short rest!! It’s so awesome hearing how excited y’all are because I am the same amount of excited. Also the pebblepot / cup of sprite connections killed me

I've always ruled with help action that you have to be able to reasonably explain HOW the creature is providing the help. A book couldn't necessarily give you advantage on a ranged bow attack because... well... how could it? Unless it was in melee with the target, then I would say it's not a valid help action. However it could certainly help you with arcana checks if its your spellbook. Similarly, a pet snake couldn't help someone with a history check because that just doesn't make sense unless the snake is a historian. So it just has to make sense. Otherwise it gets pretty ridiculous.

So the house rule for Help actions, is my familiars can only use a Help action for a few things Attacks, and things they are proficient in. So if Bookvar is like a reskinned raven he only has proficiency in Perception, meaning he can only grant help on Perception, and Attacking. Otherwise he is still useful for scouting, casting touch based spells through (like cure wounds!), and things like rogue sneak attacks. Given that he's a Spellbook and doesn't have eyes, I could see swapping in Arcana for Perception, but I really try to avoid making them permanent advantage machines in my games.

For boxer Henry there's a UA fighting style from earlier this year that is way better than Tavern Brawler. Jake could switch his fighting style over to Unarmed Fighter for 1d8 damage and some damage when he grapples! I think that would be perfect for Henry.

You guys might hit on this in your monk discussion but the crunch nerd in me is too excited- the Class Features that are almost certainly going to be in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything next month has an option where you can make a martial weapon a monk weapon! It enhances Martial Arts, aka those dinky strikes you think Jake might not be big on. 2 Levels of Fighter & then going into monk would give you ki shit + second wind, fighting style, & action surge- I can see it being very cool

It was so funny how y'all described Henry as like an old timey boxer with a gut, but when he takes his shirt off the biceps are still there. Cause thats about how I would describe myself. Lmao. I was pretty fit back in the high-school days, but now I'm a 5'9" dad with biceps still. Anyway. Love the show, and I can't wait for the next sode

on Em's query about not overloading the advantages of Bookvar as a familiar I'm always a fan of very characterful familiars with a vibe being limited to the stats they can help with. So in Bookvars case Int and Wis based rolls seems apt for a living book in a way that I don't think they bring much to the party for a strength check.

A dead rose for Coroner Con. It was so funny to see them treat it like an exclusive venue, I would LOVE to see more.

Great first ep guys!!!!!!

Hmm, I thought the bell was a Garth Nix reference!

I handle in-combat familiars just like I do summoned animals. They roll their own initiative and on their turn they can take the help action, but doing so puts them in danger of being easily one shotted by the enemy

A new record, went off the rails before Brian could even introduce himself, bravo 👏

I love the thought of Henry literally shadow boxing with his Echo. Can't wait to see how things play out.

I'm so glad Emily brought up the question about the familiar help action. I love Dimension 20, but the way familiars are used in that series to basically always give the character advantage is distracting and doesn't make sense most of the time. We recently had a conversation within my D&D group about help actions in general, and I think we settled on the concept that you can only give a help action if you have proficiency in that skill, or have something in your backstory that would explain your knowledge or experience to assist with the check for that specific instance. Like, your character might not be proficient in history, but if another character is trying to recall something about an area where your character used to live, you could assist them because ostensibly you would have some historical knowledge specific to that area. It prevents help action "spam" while recognizing class or background specific proficiencies and provides some neat opportunities for creativity and RP.

Smoking is disgusting and Fig always made me nervous about it but Fia seems fine and it doesn't make me feel good or bad about it lol

Toy Story is the new Frozen 2

I love Murph's elaborate explanation of a Rube Goldberg, it reminded me of the pantomime that Mac, Son of Mumford would do

I watched crank while I was getting a tattoo and he doesn’t sleep he just fights

Im sure people have said it, but there the UA fighting style that allows unarmed do 1d8

SHORT REST FACT CHECK: the “resonant bell” item in bloodborne does NOT “make monsters go crazy”. its sole purpose in the game is to summon friendly cooperators from different worlds (aka other real people playing the game). the item our beloved direct messenger was probably thinking of was “Gascoigne’s Music Box” which when used DOES make a certain monster (minor spoilers for bloodborne: specifically Gascoigne) go nuts

I got myself a familiar to help me aim and fire a small cannon. Story was, I had the attuned weapon feature. So I snuck onto a pirate ship and attuned their smallest cannon, and then I just summoned it whenever I needed a big blast to start the battle. My DM nerfed it in action economy, so it took an action to load, an action to aim, and an action to fire it. So I preloaded it, and had my familiar (a small celestial octopus) use it's action to aim the cannon, so I could run over and fire it when needed in a big fight. And that's all I used my familiar for.

it was called thin ice and it was one of my favorites even though I was never allowed to get it out by myself even though I WASN'T EVEN GOING TO MAKE A MESS, MOM,

For familiars - my pirate wizard has a bird familiar that is designed to be another pair of eyes (she’s a navigator for her ship) so i almost exclusively use her for advantage on perception checks. I’m with emily, anything else starts to feel excessive (and insane. how is a bird meant to help me with arcana??). We’re also an even party so my dm will use her to break group stealth check ties but not for much more than that

I could see henry in one of those irish fisher sweaters

Hey there guys, first, awesome episode! Second as someone who was a diehard Jason Statham aficionado during peak Statham years, Transporter was the one where he's basically a getaway driver/illegal goods courier. The one where he has to stay awake is Crank, and it's done by him doing adrenaline inducing acts as well as mainlining crank, aka meth, because it somehow keeps him from falling asleep and dying after being poisoned. So yeah, Chev Chelios (either the best or worst character name ever?) gets into some meth-fueled antics. The More You Know (cue shooting star graphic).

Just want to post that in the movie Crank Jason Statham is injected with a poison that if he falls asleep he dies, and he's trying to fight his way to the antidote

Even when he was first brought up, I imagined Henry looking kind of like Joe Dempsie in game of thrones season eight but a bit plumper and with his beard a bit more grown out.

Bring it on, come on!!!

Lol they are wild in this one

I don't have feedback re: find familiar, but I did find Phillip too mean and I'm hoping he can be obstinate and fight with Fia and undermine her without being explicitly verbally abusive (a bit too real!) Really looking forward to this campaign though 👏 👏👏

You guys made me choke on my coffee with Geaky blinders!

Hey Em! About the Find Familiar question, I have a toad familiar on my warlock! The main way I use him is by handing him off to my front-line allies before fights, so that I’ll have a Spare the Dying/Cure Wounds ready if they go down. If you don’t want to use help action abuse, loaning Bukvar to Henry is a good combat alternative!

Hey, Jake! There's an Unearthed Arcana fighting style called Unarmed Fighting that gives you 1d6 per fist, or 1d8 if you attack with both hands. It'll probably become an official option with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

This is for tomorrow while I’m at work so I have to wait to listen thank you gods and goddess for this blessing😂

In Crank, Jason Statham's character is injected with a Chinese poison and has to generate adrenaline any way he possibly can to stay alive, and yes, that includes copulation.

Yes!!! I’m SO excited to draw Jake’s character

So excited to be on a new journey

Why does it make so so happy to hear you dorks shoot shit for an hour 🤣

Yes we like before listening. We are that happy it's out. Can't wait to see what is going on in this ep Edit:cum jokes. Thats what we can expect at the top. 100% worth the prelike

❤️ very excited to listen! All of you are so funny and unique and deserve twice as many nice comments as any hate u might get. Hope I didn’t jinx u

Just got broken up with, I needed this right now ❤️

Woohoo!

Hello. First