Dragonbornknight - D&D Stuff

Kulgam,Jammu and Kashmir,India [OC][1080 x 1350] - Author: viperftw on reddit

Want to play some cool underwater adventures in D&D? Check out Beneath the Waves on DMs Guild!

This book I've been working on with a bunch of amazing creators has a load of rules, player options, and new monsters plus a level 1-5 mini campaign!

It's beautiful (look at these pieces by Angela O'Hara and Kendal Gates!) AND it's currently 1/3rd off!

Cemetipede – Tiny undead, unaligned

This peculiar creature is a rare but notorious critter. Once the darkness it stems from is stripped of all its flesh, it emerges and intrudes into to the world of the living – crawling through the smallest cracks of doomed tombs and cursed caskets. The cemetipede is driven by an insatiable hunger and nests close to places where food is plenty. It infests the pits of overcrowded graveyards, snatches rotting remains from shunned battlefields or creeps through the soggy sewers beneath the local butcher’s shop. Reeking of undeath, the cemetipede quickly turns from a pest into a menacing threat for any settlement close by, especially when gathering in decently-sized groups and food supply is running low…

🔮 If you like my work, kindly consider to support me on Patreon to gain access to monster pages, tokens & artwork of 200+ of quirky creatures, items and potions.

it’s easy to forget, so I’ll remind y’all: you can make fantasy versions of anything. yes even things you might not think about. like soil types. I am thinking of fantasy soil types right now

Our group was riding through a pretty heavy storm.

My Sorcerer: I guess it could be worse.

In exactly this moment he got struck by lightning. The chances were so low, but it was meant to be it seems.

Business and Crime revisited (d&d 5e)

I recently posted a set of guidelines for using 5e running a business mechanics as a means of bootstrapping player owned criminal enterprises.

My players requested a campaign with gameplay and adventures centered around owning businesses, building a home, and running a criminal enterprise. So, I started looking into the RAW mechanics and found it kind of lacking. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to expand business ownership mechanics to better suit being the main focus of their downtime gameplay, as well as tying in mechanics for criminal enterprises.

These mechanics include:

Buying businesses from previous owners.

Running businesses in cycles of 30 days, with 6 intervals of 5 days.

Using businesses as fronts for criminal enterprises.

Running multiple businesses as a conglomerate.

Side quest plot hook table (complications)

It’s 2 am. Ideas that might make your combat encounters spicier.

1. Damage control. Force your players between choosing to fighting and keeping their environment intact. Make them fight in a crowded area and make them chose between putting out fires, rescuing people, or keeping peace versus attacking or following enemies.

2. Shooting the messenger. Make your initiative a chase scene. Have one or a few enemies high-tail it for backup, and if the messengers succeed, the tables turn hard against the players. Make them race through crowds, through difficult terrain, across rooftops, through other enemy forces, to get to the messenger.

3. Silence. Put both the enemy force and the players into a spot where they have to stay quiet or they both get hurt. Ex, sleeping monster nearby, avalanche, alerting guards, ect. bonus points if you enforce no talking even OOC.

4. Hide and Seek. Make the players hide from or fight a creature, monster, or enemy that relies on hearing alone. Bonus points if it’s incredibly dark or the player’s perception senses are also significantly hindered in some way. EXTRA bonus points if they’re already weakened or injured so they can’t fight directly or through brute force.

5. Creative workaround. Take away usual player resources (spells, weapons, usual playstyle, ect) and put them somewhere they have to try something new. Ex, melee fighters without their weapons at a fancy gathering. Casters in an anti-magic zone or magic immune / magic eating enemies. players who like to use movement in tight quarters. the min-max player gets outnumbered. the shy player gets the focus. ect.

6. Enemies to friends. Have the enemy force and the player party work together so they don’t all perish- but for how long? ex. sinking ship, burning or collapsing building, common enemy, ect.

7. Air combat. If you don’t already have griffins, birds, Pegasuses, dragons, airships or other sky mounts / vehicles in you game, wtf are you doing?? Take the fight to the sky.

8. Delivery. Similar to shooting the messenger, but the player party has to reach their destination before they get caught or downed. Useful if they’re escaping with valuable information, person / hostage, item, ect.

9. Switcharoo. Body-swap your players and have them switch their sheets, or polymorph them into other creatures. Preferably impose a time-constraint so that they’re pressured to move faster rather than read and entirely understand new sheets. Maximum chaos.

Scrimshawed Sawfish sword with Sailor’s Rights and a whale, America, 19th century

Dungeon Masters, don’t be afraid to challenge your players!

Sometimes you need to really throw something threatening the party’s way, something out of their league. Not in a DM v Players situation, in a genuine reaffirmment that stakes are real and character death is possible. The goal is never to kill players, but a truly terrifying and epic fight is sure to leave the players feeling awesome for defeating such a powerful enemy.

Challenge Rating is not an accurate measurement of a creature’s strength, a single CR9 could be easily beaten by a band of level 4s. I won’t go into action economy because that’s not what this post is about.

So how do we throw a deadly encounter at our players to make them feel cool?

Well first, pick or redesign a monster to play to the party’s strengths in subtle ways.

Have an archer PC? Give the monster a vulnerable point that’s hard to hit. For example in my most recent game a low level party fought a large clockwork dragon, illusionist and a swarm of cultists, the dragon had 3 weaknesses 1. A maintainance hatch that if hit could deal critical damage, perfect for a rangers well placed and timed arrow to hit. 2. A combustion engine that could be extinguished briefly using our sorcerers water or ice spells. 3. Legs that were vulnerable to attack from the barbarian causing it to lose movement. These weak points were hard to hit and required tactical thinking to approach and exploit adding complexity to the combat. This could be achieved in many ways, perhaps the basalisk has a soft underside that would leave it vulnerable if they could get close enough to strike it, or the armour of a battle ogre has a cannon shot hole in it perfect for a well placed arrow. Make these weak points easy to spot, and hard to act on without forethought.

Second, tailor the environment to the encounter

If your monster is too powerful, give the players pillars and tables to duck for cover behind. Hanging chandeliers or breakable platforms are great assets to an offensive and battlefield changing encounter. But these features aren’t exclusively helpful, powder kegs and coal heaps are great for both players to utilise in strategic attack but also pose a constant threat to anyone close enough that a well placed scorching ray may leave them unconscious. Chances are your players will take on the information and strategise, luring a creature to a dangerous place or having to choose between facing the beast head on or risking a trip over the rickety bridge. My last campaign ended with the PCs ultimately tricking a demon lord to the edge of a cliff before banding together to trip them over. A good set piece may be the foundation to a satisfying fight! (This applies to all encounters not just boss monsters)

Finally, Don’t pull punches!

The players will be way more proud and excited about their victory if it’s earned. Yes, there is a time and a place for fudging rolls or having a monster not attack the lowest health character for a while. But don’t rig the combat, to challenge your players and give stakes to your game the reality that PCs can die is important. So yes, don’t go all out on the players with a monster well out of their league, but definitely don’t turn the frightful beholder into a plush toy who’s eye beams keep narrowly missing while it sits and soaks up damage. There’s a very fine balance you have to find between keeping the fight even and keeping the fight threatening. But in my experience if one or two PCs are downed and the healer is scrambling to save them both, as the fight comes to a close and everyone barely scrapes through alive are usually the ones that get the best reactions. Again the goal is NOT to try and kill PCs, the goal is to push your players to strategise and earn their victories and feel AMAZING going it!

If anyone has any further advice or just stories of a perilous battle feel free to share them, and remember the number one rule of D&D is that everyone should be having fun!