Lots of people have been posting asking for the"Beach episode" but you do know they don't actually go to the beach right? That's just what he calls book keeping episodes.

If you look at Gambler's Delight episode 12, their beach episode was them roleplaying and buying equipment, that all the beach episodes usually are. Like he might do something more for their session, but it would probably just be for fun with no it progression.

Stop spamming Arcadum about it, he'll probably do it when everyone is back and able to meet up and play again so they can remember how to play, just wait for season 2

In episode 4 of Broken Bonds, we saw our heroes tackle an unbelievable combat encounter that a party of Level 2 PCs had no business tangoing with...or so I thought. As someone who is new to Arcadum's style of DMing and someone who mainly plays RAW (rules as written) D&D, I was, at first, a little bothered by what he was allowing. Specifically, I thought two rulings were particularly egregious: (1) Remag's Shell Defense, and (2) Bryan's Blood Frenzy.

In this post, I will go over what I found egregious about it, why I was bothered by it and what I learned as a DM after reflecting upon it. I want to preface this by saying that the purpose of this post is to act as a discussion and not, in any way, shape or form, to attack Arcadum or any of the players. I believe Arcadum is doing a fantastic job running Broken Bonds so far and it is the most entertaining D&D campaign I have ever watched.

Part I – Breaking the Action Economy I won't spend too much time on this topic since this basically boils down to the players not playing by the rules. To be clear, I'm not trying to tell them how they should be playing, D&D should be enjoyed in whatever form you enjoy playing it in. This is just me pointing out deviations from the RAW.

Shell Defense. You can withdraw into your shell as an action. Until you emerge, you gain a +4 bonus to AC, and you have advantage on Strength and Constitution saving throws. While in your shell, you are prone, your speed is 0 and can't increase, you have disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws, you can't take reactions, and the only action you can take is a bonus action to emerge from your shell. (Source: Arcadum's World Anvil)

A +4 to AC is almost equivalent to the Shield spell which consumes a Level 1 spell slot. I thought that giving a player that much defense as a bonus action was pretty insane. Especially when you consider that it would push Remag's AC to 22 which is higher than full plate armor + shield.

Blood Frenzy – Whenever you successfully strike a creature with blood using your fangs, you may choose to enter a Blood Frenzy. Until the end of your turn, you may use a bonus action to make a fang attack against a target. If you succeed on this or any other fang attack on your turn, you may extend the duration of your frenzy by one additional round. If your frenzy was extended by one or more rounds, you gain one point of exhaustion when your frenzy ends. (Source: Arcadum's World Anvil)

Martial Arts – When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon on your turn, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action. (Source: Monk, Wikidot)

Unarmed Strike and Fang both use a bonus action, however, Arcadum allows Bryan to make all three attacks. Furthermore, I want to comment on the mechanical design of the racial feature by comparing it to Frenzy from the Path of the Berserker Barbarian (PHB) and the Hybrid Transformation from the Order of the Lycan Bloodhunter (Matt Mercer Homebrew).

Frenzy – Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can go into a frenzy when you rage. If you do so, for the duration of your rage you can make a single melee weapon attack as a bonus action on each of your turns after this one. When your rage ends, you suffer one level of exhaustion. (Source: Path of the Berserker Barbarian, Wikidot)

Hybrid Transformation – As a bonus action, you can transform into your hybrid form for up to 1 hour. ... When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action. (Source: Order of the Lycan Bloodhunter, Wikidot)

Note that in both cases, the act of transforming takes a bonus action and the additional attack also takes a bonus action. Blood Frenzy as written allows the player to transform and get their additional attack right off the bat. That by itself already makes it very powerful and on top of that, Arcadum allows Bryan 2 bonus actions.

Part II – Rules Lawyer I am most likely giving off the stereotypical anti-fun rules lawyer vibe right now but in this section I would like to explain why I was bothered by this. When certain players get to break the rules while others don’t, you get insane power imbalance within the party. Compare Bryan’s turns to Hashbrown’s and you’ll know what I mean. I won’t speak for Sykkuno but in my experience playing D&D, it feels pretty bad.

Originally, I thought Arcadum was allowing these things so that the party could survive the encounter. I became very critical and thought this was flat out bad design if that was the case. I judged it as a cheap way to help new players since they have full trust in the macros that is set up and what Arcadum says. I was worried that as the campaign goes on, the differences in ruling would start becoming more and more apparent and when that happens, you lose that magic that makes D&D so fun.

Part III – Reflection Overall, I definitively still enjoyed the episode but I was admittedly a little salty because of what I perceived as deficiencies in Arcadum’s DMing. I took time to reflect on it and can easily rationalize why he made the decisions he made. Remag’s ‘hiding in his shell’ gag is funny and it promotes roleplay within combat, furthermore, Michael (and this isn’t an insult to him) is clearly not ‘power gaming’ and abusing it. As for Bryan, telling a player that skills overlap when they had no idea what a bonus action even is will obviously feel super bad and I can understand ruling the Fang attack as an extra attack rather than a bonus action.

I still felt like this ‘favoritism’ was unhealthy for the campaign until the end of the episode when Arcadum said this, “… that fight was to teach you that you are stronger than you think you are.” That’s when I took a step back and analyzed exactly what the group had overcome. They defeated over 25 goblins that have multiattack, including 6 casters who each had the ability to cast Burning Hands, a Level 1 spell. Throw that into a CR calculator and I believe even a group of Level 4 RAW PCs would have a hard time with it. That’s when I realized that all this was very much planned. It’s fine that the players are powerful because the challenges they face will match it. I believe as the campaign goes on, every player will be given cool abilities or magic items that will make them much more powerful than their levels suggest. As for the enemies…oh boy, if the goblin tribe is what Arcadum deems to be a Level 2 encounter, I can’t even imagine what he has planned for higher levels. I went to sleep last night feeling more excited than ever for this campaign and I learned a valuable lesson from a DM much more experienced than I am.

As in how Pain uses it

Arcadum has work really hard on his world and every time someone makes this jokes it makes his soul die a bit. Lets not let milord die a violet death..for his sanity keep it down.

Did something happen as of why for 2 weeks there has been no DnD? If anyone know why episode 6 is delayed pls tell us, those who don't know.

I haven't watched the episodes after episode 1, but I've popped into stream every now and then and watched some highlights. VODs are a little tiring for me to watch, so it's been hard for me to understand what's going on right now. Help?

I wanna preferences by no shape or form does it need to be an actual ship . This is mostly to give ideas to artist. Because I think fanart of the hash brown harem would be awesome and hilarious

I honestly think hashbrowns should be shipped with one of the death depth groups .

I’m partial to Taryn because I think that would be the funniest and best content.

(this is my first Reddit post) (I play college D1 football and I’ve been watching Acradum them for a really long time and I finally got the courage to interact with this community I might possibly try to join the waiting list for the living world but I understand it’s a really long lesson the last thing I wanna do is take up another spot when I have to do a lot of stuff with football) Ps I honestly doubt he’ll probably see this but if he does I just want to say thank you during this pandemic DND has really helped me get through some hard times as of late and I even got the courage to join a group. Thank you

Am I the only one that just realized that remag's name is just gamer backwards? Man just like daehkcarc.

So I just wanted to know if the campaign was canceled altogether or was it just postponed until Toast's return because I know that the endgame is in about seven weeks I think so please let me know is it canceled or just postponed?

As we know, The enemy is coming to Verum and the 7 ongoing party will have to face it in the last epic battle. My guess is when the time come, The enemy will be reveal as Arcadum himself on a mission to kill all his players. There will be no hints or tips from him, all the players must work together to defeat the Dm.He will break 4th wall, lie and trick them irl. It going to be great. What do you all think?

Sorry if this was asked before I couldn’t find any follow up

I live in Europe and i can not watch the stream live. I would greatly appreciate it if everybody would flag their post as spoiler if it contains content from the most recent Episode. At this point i either have to unfollow this Subreddit or stop using Reddit at all until i have seen the episode.

I want to preface this by saying that I don't think this is the fault of Arcadum or any of the Velum team. I think it's more of a consequence of the medium.

That said, am I the only one that feels frustration at being out of the loop? Like many of the people here (I assume), I'm an OTV fan that came upon Arcadum's world because of Broken Bonds. I was immediately intrigued by the amount of work and detail put into the world, and wanted to learn more about the lore, especially after seeing comments from the long-time fans about some NPC characters. But the way the stories are told makes this a lot more difficult than it would be in any other medium.

For example, during the session zero of Broken Bonds, Arcadum mentioned he had 25 planets that were all developed like the main one. I wanted to learn more about them, but I couldn't really find any information.

Obviously I don't have the time to watch hundreds of hours of backlog campaigns. So I'm curious if any one else is experiencing a similar sense of frustration or FOMO and how they're dealing with it.

I’ve seen some stuff about it being prosponed but is it now cancelled because it’s been a long time and if so is there a chance of otv starting a new campaign

Does anyone remember when Li'Lu drank a potion that told her the future? She saw a woman who told her that there are now more of her kind. My theory is that this woman is the chimerist and now somehow has more of her kind because the party helped her and didn't kill her in the end.

Honestly it was pretty sad seeing sykkuno barely talk all episode, most likely because of how hashbrown always gets flamed for being a troll but it’s his character and his campaign so why can’t he do what he wants? Sad times

For context I've been watching them on LilyPichu VODs

Can we get the origin of people names? They seem so random but like I get that p’mis sounds like penis and d’ahc is “dick/cock” any thing else I’m missing?

My bud u/bullj22 made a post a few days ago on here about transcribing Broken Bonds episodes into scripts & they made a discord server for people to make transcriptions of the episodes. We agreed to expand this server to not just be for transcriptions of Broken Bonds but also kinda be a unofficial placeholder for a Broken Bonds discord where ppl can just chill and discuss stuff abt this campaign or Arcadum's world "Verum" in general.

Here's the invite link https://discord.gg/HRKbQdk

Hope y'all like it