 Dungeons and Dragons is all about imagination and improvisation. But sometimes, we can get caught up in the grind and the game loses its magic. Bring your game group together for a no pressure day or night of fun with a figurine Painting Party!
1) Make it a Party Organizing a "painting party" with your DnD campaign group can bring you together in a fun and relaxing way. The campaign party is more than just a group of people playing a game, you’re, presumably, friends. And a great way to bond as a group is to kick back with some paints and some snacks, and have a blast talking about your favorite adventure or even what’s going on IRL (in real life). Painting the figurines together also gives the opportunity for input from your party. You might need a tie-breaker for what color your armor should be, or you might receive the best suggestion on what color will best show off your special weapon. 2) Bring the Game to Life The adventure of Dungeons and Dragons relies on a lot of imagination, and sometimes having tangible representations can make the magic of the game even more real. Utilizing figurines on the board, rather than just tokens or markers, makes you feel more connected to the action. But taking it a step further and painting your figurines gives another layer of “reality” to the campaign while making the game feel more unique to the party. Of course, there is the option of buying figurines already painted, or commissioning an artist to paint them for you, but you lose that personalized quality that comes with painting them yourself. Painting figurines by yourself can sometimes seem like a lonely chore. Making the activity into a party with your group makes the work go by faster and makes it a lot more fun. 3) Conquer as a Team Painting your character figurines, and even helping the Dungeon Master (or Game Master) to paint some of the monsters you'll face, can bring out even more ideas about your character and how you'll interact together as a team. It could be a fun surprise for the DM to reveal that you’ll be painting a Lich that the party will be fighting at some point down the road, without revealing when that fight will be. It makes the game board more engaging to customize the monsters and NPCS (non-player characters) you face to give them added personality. What if your skeleton army suddenly had runes painted on their bones? A whole new story could be unfolding in the DM’s mind because of some creative painting choices the group made just for the fun of it. 4) Take a Break from the Grind Hosting a painting party can also be a great break to take in between long campaigns to refresh your imaginations and get back to the roots of why you love playing the game and with whom you love playing it. Painting isn’t about rules or the luck of the dice, it’s all about letting your imagination take over. Sometimes the game can get too serious and tempers can flare. Getting back to basics and spending time with your group in a no pressure setting is the perfect way to bring back the fun of the story and the rewarding challenge of working together. 5) Discovering a New Hobby An afternoon painting figurines with your friends might be the opportunity that reveals your love for painting. Whether it be painting figurines for other groups on commission, or even doing canvas paintings, all it takes is that first joy of selecting colors and seeing your creation come to life. DnD is a great platform to discover and grow other creative pursuits, such as drawing and writing stories. Exploring color and form through painting is just another way you can tap into your imagination and experience the magic of the DnD world. It's important to remember that a Painting Party is meant to be fun, so painting skills are not required. Have a laugh or two, swap stories of your favorite battles, and get back to the magic that turns game night into an epic quest! Alice Liddell is an author, artist, and performer who loves bringing magic and fantasy to all aspects of her working and personal life. Whether it’s DnD with friends, or a round of Fable solo, Alice has always loved gaming of all kinds. You can find her work on her social media handles Facebook, or under littlalice06 on IG and Twitter. Picture Reference: https://all-free-download.com/free-photos/art-painting-kids.html  Barak thumbed the edge of his axe as he listened to his companion drone on about the intrigues of court. Prince Kheldar was a master of political schemes, but Barak would have none of it. Give him a good honest fight any day. “Get to the point!” he snarled. “Did you talk to your aunt about the Bear Cult?” Kheldar nodded. “You aren’t going to like it.” “She won’t help?!” Barak was incredulous. “Oh no, she’s fine with it. We can get the information we need...if we all come to dinner tonight.” One of the ancestors of the D&D game is the writings of H. Rider Haggard, whose barbarian protagonists solved problems in Gordian fashion. There can be a refreshing clarity to quick violence, but domains like Richemulot, Borca, and Dementlieu are expected to have courtly intrigues, and Nova Vaasa and Darkon are no strangers to social schemes. If you’re looking for a challenge that doesn’t look like a battlefield, consider a formal social event. Whether a private dinner party or a public auction, a social event can have all the thrill of slaying a dragon, if you focus on these seven major challenges. For the first six, it’s easy enough to assign points for varying degrees of success and total them up at the end. The seventh requires a little more scorekeeping, but it’s all worth it to hear a player yell that their insult landed a critical hit. 1) Pleased To Meet You It’s normal for adventurers to brag about their exploits, but few cultures view brave deeds as the first thing they want to know about you, and many consider it gauche for you to tell the tales yourself. You’ll need to know if formal introductions are based on noble titles, academic degrees, lineage, birth sign, or something else. If you rank below your peers on this yardstick, it’s usually best to admit so up front with a little modesty and wait for an opportunity to speak about your deeds. A good host may give you an opportunity to do so immediately, or a respected member of the group might step in when you are forced to be modest. 2) A Token Of Esteem Depending upon the occasion, formal gift giving may be expected. If not, it pays to know how a small unexpected token would be received. Whether you’re giving, receiving, or exchanging, gifts represent status, and the subtext underneath a particular choice may have many layers. In the real world, a single birthday gift of Cuban cigars, for example, might snub other gift-givers by the price tag, beard the authorities by being contraband, and bear a secret reminder of a lost weekend in Cuba. On other occasions, gifts can scream rather than whisper. A powerful figure who knows her rival intends to publicly shame her with a priceless gift at their next meeting may hire outsiders to steal it, or to find something worthy of exchange. 3) Clothes Make The Man In all but the most barbaric of societies, social gatherings call for clean clothes, but that’s just the beginning. Clothes indicate status as much as gifts, and following the latest trends in fashion--or deliberately setting your own--involves a significant amount of time and attention. Even the smallest accessories can speak volumes, and usually do: social movements often identify themselves by a pin, badge, or ribbon showing you support the cause. Even without such explicit accessories, adept socialites can convey subtle messages in the choice of a hat or lapel pin. Reading the messages in a person’s clothing may grant a bonus towards influencing them, or at least eliminate the faux pas of asking where someone stands on a matter when they are literally wearing their sympathies on their sleeve. 4) Soup Or Salad? You can generally judge how challenging a dinner party is going to be by the number of courses. Each course has a specific set of expected behaviors: utensils to use, bites to take, how to speak, etc. To know how to behave, a PC can either rely on their knowledge of nobility, or just watch other people carefully and do what they do. Prepping ahead of time can grant a bonus to either of these rolls. Failure, however, means an error that the character must mitigate diplomatically to avoid diminishing their status in the eyes of those present. 5) Small Talk: The Smaller The Better Career adventurers will get the reputation of being crass and insensitive unless they learn to avoid “shop talk” around people who don’t engage in regular mortal combat. The weather may be a boring topic, but it’s a safe one: it’s slightly different every day and no one can be blamed for it. Topics with equally high variety and low sensitivity might include crop expectations, the latest opera or public games, and how fast children grow. Middling territory for small talk would be things like popular books and what people do for a living. If someone at the table brings up politics or religion, that doesn’t make it open season. You’ll usually score more points by steering the conversation back into safe waters than you will by joining in on boorish behavior. 6) Double Your Speak, Double Your Fun It’s rude to have prolonged side conversations at the table, so folks who want to go beyond small talk had better get good at hidden meanings. Know your default values to exchange innuendo, and consider establishing code words and phrases ahead of time to grant a bonus to these checks. The Message spell is also useful for unobtrusive speech, but the whispers it employs can be overheard. Try covering your mouth with a napkin, or whisper while pretending to take a sip of wine. Once away from the dinner table you may be able to talk more freely with your target, but only if you have an excuse to meet together. Even the most casual meetings can become fodder for gossip, especially across political lines or between sexes, especially in societies that have strict gender roles. 7) Casual Debate Small talk is intended to avoid arguments, but some settings actually call for something more spirited. To engage in a casual debate is perhaps the closest thing to social combat, and I highly recommend the use of some kind of reputation point system so players can actually feel the progress of the fight. For example, you can extrapolate the “hit points” and AC of each person’s argument from their related skills and abilities, and let people take aim at an argument using various social skills in place of an attack roll. Everyone should have a role to play, but those roles are often reversed from traditional combat: if a previous support character like a bard is suddenly the front-line fighter, allow the mighty thewed barbarian with minimal social graces to support the bard by laughing at jokes and glaring at the opponent to throw him off. Done properly, a good social event can feel like the party went through a minefield blindfolded, followed by a pitched battle. The fact that reputations were the only casualties only complicates the matter, because losers may have long memories and yearn to settle the score. Of course, this is an adventure game, but you should have enough here to keep it from being boring even before things take a turn for the deadly. If your players enjoy it, you can discuss whether they want just the occasional change of pace or a longer detour. Who knows? Your next campaign might be set in a more socially dangerous setting. With scheming courtiers hiding behind pleasant faces, there’s hardly a need for monsters at all. Leyshon Campbell has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, from the Kargatane's Book of S series, playtesting D&D 3E in a Ravenloft campaign, to the ill-fated Masque of the Jade Horror. He married his wife on Friday the 13th after proposing to her on Halloween. By tradition, the first story read at birth to each of their three children was The Barker’s Tour, from Ravenloft’s “Carnival” supplement. He is currently running the “Queen of Orphans” Ravenloft campaign. Picture Reference: https://www.etsy.com/listing/688840794/monte-cristo-invitation-regency-wedding  I was fascinated to read Paul Bimler's article on Solo D&D. I also enjoy solo gaming. As people say, there are as many ways to play D&D as there are DMs. With solo play there are as many ways to solo play as there are players. My style of solo roleplay is somewhat different to Paul's. There are two significant differences. The first is Paul's flipmat and markers. I am much more in the ‘Theatre of the Mind’ school and do not use any physical play aids, but more about that later. The other big difference is the rule system. I prefer to utilise a much lighter rule system for my solo play. The primary reason is all about continuity. Once you start a solo adventure, if you find yourself breaking off from your narratives to check rules, roll dice and check tables, I find it makes it harder keep the story flowing. Rules light games often have just one or two mechanics that are employed in every situation. Alongside simple mechanics you often get extremely simple characters. This means that you could in theory keep your character on a Post-it note and run your game from memory. If you strip out the flipmat, miniatures, or tokens that leaves only the solo rules and the journal. Paul has his The Solo Adventurer’s Toolbox. The Toolbox is one example of a “Solo Engine”. All the tables that make up the decision making rules in solo play are generally referred to as a Solo Engine, GM Emulator, or a GME as they drive your stories. When you would normally ask a question of your GM you instead ask the Solo Engine and roll for an answer. Once you have an answer you have to apply gut instinct, common sense and imagination to make that answer fit the game you are playing, the situation your character is in and the sort of adventure you want to have. I have here five combinations of solo engines and games give you an alternative to Mythic GME and D&D. 1) Solo Engine for 7th Sea Role Playing Game These rules were made specifically for the 7th Sea game. Where D&D can turn into a battle of hit point attrition, 7th Sea is a much more narrative style of game. You don't have to beat your way through hordes of kobolds rolling ‘to hit’ and the dealing damage to each one. 7th Sea deals with whole groups of these ‘minions’ as single entities which reduces your record keeping and speeds up play. The solo rules have a more sophisticated set of question tools that go beyond the no, maybe, and yes that Paul talked about in his article. The basic principle is the same but you lose the maybe answer and in its place you get and… and but… modifiers. The and… modifier means that your answer was what you expected and even more. To take Paul's example of ‘can you find an inn’, a Yes and… would be the first thing that you think of that would be even better than just finding an inn. My first reaction was ‘Yes you find an inn and the landlord is a retired adventurer friend of yours.’ The but… modifier adds a complicating factor or makes things not as good, yes but…, or as bad, no but…, to the standard answer. ‘Do you find an inn?’ Yes but… there is a mob gathering outside complete with torches pitchforks. With the and, but, yes, and no there are six possible answers from the same simple ‘roll for an answer’ mechanic. In addition to the yes/no roll, these rules give you a complex question tool. If you are watching a villain across a tavern and you try to overhear their conversion a yes/no answer is not going to help you. The complex question tool gives you a two word pairing that is to be used as the distilled essence of the conversation, in this case. The complex question tool is used for conversations, the subjects of books, or anything that conveys meaning. Finally, these rules use dice to prompt NPC reactions and, should a fight start, their tactics. That sounds a lot of work but the whole thing is about ten pages with full examples. 7th Sea is one of the most popular narrative games of recent years and you can run an entire campaign with this simple booklet and some note paper for your journal. 2) 3Deep Episodic Role Playing This game uses a simple 2d6 mechanic for just about everything from stats to skills to driving cars and flying X-wing fighters. It was also written with a solo engine built into the game from the start. 3Deep's solo engine uses something called story arcs. You start with at least one story arc or thread that is part of your character’s background. As you ask questions the answers can make achieving your goals harder or easier and manipulate NPCs. 3Deep has a more structured journal and asks you to keep track of scenes, NPCs and unfinished plotlines as these often reappear in your character’s adventures making everything interconnected. The game is genre neutral, and therefore equally at home with swashbuckling, special forces or stormtroopers. 3) Devil's Staircase Wild West Roleplaying This game is so new it is not even released yet. You can download the playtest documents, a quickstart PDF, and a set of solo rules all for free from DriveThruRPG. Devil's Staircase is the underlying game system and is driven by a poker style playing card mechanic rather than dice. The accompanying solo engine has the yes/no/and/but and complex question tools as well as NPC reactions but this time they are driven by dealing cards rather than rolling d100s, d20s or d6s. Of all the games here this is about the lightest in terms of rules and you really can have a character on a sticky note with space to spare. Although the Wild West is not everyone's favourite genre, it is easily accessible for solo play as it doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to picture the setting and NPCs. There are other Devil games in the pipeline. By solo playing this game you can help with its play testing and help bring the game to market. 4) Grim & Perilous Solo Rules These rules share a lot of their DNA with the 7th Sea rules above. They were derived from a set of rules called the One Page Solo Engine by Karl Hendricks. This version has been written to work seamlessly with Zweihänder. You would not normally think of Zweihänder as rules light but there is an eight page rules summary to use as a reference in place of the main book if you are familiar with your character and setting. The game also uses a common mechanic for all skill tests and challenges so running the game without the book in front of you is relatively easy. The Grim & Perilous Solo Rules are a stripped down version in comparison to the 7th Sea rules as the NPCs reactions have been cut back. Zweihänder has detailed rules for social interaction so the solo rules do not really need a ‘roll d100’ to see how the NPC reacts. What you do get on the other hand is an actual play written up where you can see how a complex plot evolves from just a few interactions with the solo rules. 5) Demonic Solo Rules Shadow of the Demon Lord is not really a rules light game but the actual play is really easy to grasp. I have included it in this round up because it is, I believe, one of the only solo engines where the state of the character is taken into account by the oracle. Most oracles or solo engines remain unchanged by the status of the character. They change the distribution of results based upon the probability of the question being true or false, yes or no. This solo engine interacts with the character in a subtly different way. The core method is the same but Shadow of the Demon Lord has a mechanic called Fortune that can modify all the rolls made by a character until it is ‘spent’. In this solo engine when a character has Fortune it is used to nudge the result in the characters favour. It is a subtle difference but over the duration of a campaign a 5% difference in your favour has real consequences. The big gain when using a solo engine that is build specifically to work with the game you are playing is that you don’t have to learn a new game mechanic. The solo rules should sit naturally alongside the existing game rules. On the other hand, the big gain in using a rule light game is that you don’t have to interrupt your game to check the rules or consult endless tables. Rules light games often put more on the GM to interpret but where you are both GM and player and the entire world is being created by you on demand GM interpretation is intrinsic to solo play. All of the games here are available as PDFs. Light rules, digital rulebooks and simple solo rules mean you can solo play anytime and anywhere from your commute to work to while waiting for a plane. The most expensive of the solo rules featured here is $7.99, the rest are one or two dollars, and Devil’s Staircase is completely free. If you have not tried solo play it is not a big investment to give it a go. If you have bought one of these games but not been able to play it then I would say give it a go and get those unplayed games off the shelf and give them a go. Peter Rudin-Burgess is a gamer, game designer, and blogger. When not writing his own games he creates supplements for other peoples to sell on DriveThruRPG. His current obsessions are Shadow of the Demon Lord, 7th Sea 2nd Edition, and Zweihander. Header image is in the public domain  While scanning your monster manual for fresh nasties to batter and maim your closest friends, you may be tempted to flip past the Stirge. As a tiny beast with four measly hitpoints you might fail to see its value as an adversary to even the lowest level adventurers. Stop. I’m about to teach you five steps to turn a buzzing gnat into pure terror and all-out panic.
For the uninitiated, the Stirge is a horrid flying thing that looks like a mixup between a bat and a mosquito. Its wingspan is roughly two feet across, and a six-inch long proboscis hangs limp from its face. To feed, the creature flexes powerful jowl muscles, transforming its sagging sucker into a ridged spike that it plunges deep into the flesh of its prey, drawing great volumes of blood as sustenance. They’re weak, they’re crunchy, they’re barely a snack, but when run right the stirge is absolute nightmare fuel. 1) Scourges Of Stirges A stirge is like a locust or a rat. A pest by itself, but like all pests, you’ll almost never find it by itself. Stirges travel in scourges. No seriously, that’s the collective noun for a group of the horrid things. If you encounter one or two of these bloodsuckers a good crack with the business end of a heavy stick will probably do the job, but a scourge of stirges is something very different. This is where you abandon the standard course for encounter design. Most encounters are fought to the bitter end. Not this one. Stirges travel in swarms so big that no adventuring party could exhaust their numbers. Maybe no army. Like locusts they descend on entire towns, leaving utter devastation in their wake. Where locusts obliterate crop fields, stirges suck the literal life out of every warm-blooded creature they can get their creepy pincers on; livestock and people alike. Step one is to think of stirges as an event rather than an encounter. It’s not something you come across, it’s something horrifying that happens to you, to the town you’re in, to the community of people you’ve sworn to protect. A stirge encounter should be run like a hurricane. 2) Foreshadow The Event To Build Suspense In The Birds, Hitchcock didn’t drop flocks of feral seagulls out of the sky without warning. He lets the tension build throughout the film by gathering more and more of them on wires and jungle gyms. Set up the encounter long in advance by making your players think about the stirges before they’re a threat. Have a few perched on fence posts or circling above like vultures, then have their numbers gradually grow. Have townspeople who have experienced scourges of stirges in the past start becoming unnerved and then unglued as more of the little beasties arrive, as sheep and cattle start turning up dead with big hideous sucker holes in their sides. Give some of those people big old scars from proboscis wounds in their own necks and chests. Make this place well aware of what’s coming. Watch the drive-in scene from the movie Twister. These people live where tornadoes are a persistent threat. Most days are normal days, but the threat of an unstoppable cataclysmic force dropping out of the sky is always looming. When the winds pick up, it takes about a minute for absolute panic to set in. That’s the way to run a stirge event. The people of this community know the danger they’re in better than the party does, but they’re about to learn. 3) A Scourge Is Not A Stirge A stirge will grab onto you, plunge its proboscis deep into your flesh and suck the blood out of your body. That’s the threat. Absolutely horrifying obviously, but I want to impress upon you that the threat of a scourge of stirges is much more than just a lot of that. Don’t get me wrong, it is going to be a lot of that. One after another of these repulsive bloodsuckers are going to latch on and pierce you with their fleshy spike-ended mouth-straws, and if you rip one off, two more are going to take its place. I just don’t want you to think that that’s the extent of your problems. What happens when a few hundred of them land on the roof of the rickety old barn you’re hiding in? It collapses on your head. If you’ve never been smashed in your face place by a big swinging joist take my word for it, you’re going to lose half a skull and a good bit of brain. With that many wild things thrashing around, mounted torches and candle sticks are going to get jostled. Things are going to catch on fire. People are going to go crazy. Your party will be dealing with absolute pandemonium, and anything you can dream up that goes along with that. 4) Keep Them Outside, Keep Them Moving, Make Shelter Scarce If you’ve ever had to deal with a hornets nest you know that the terror mostly disappears when you scamper flailing back into your house and the door clacks shut behind. Don’t give your party that. Give them reasons to go outside. Give them long distances to run with only a few sparse overhangs, tree branches, or wood-sheds to crowd into for moments of respite before they’re overcome again. If they find a really good shelter give them a moment to build up that false sense of security before burning it to the ground. Give them children and infirm elders to protect in wide open spaces. Watch The Birds, The Mist, Twister, The Swarm, or any other movie where people are trying to survive a catastrophic event by hiding in doors. You’ll find that there’s always a reason to go outside. 5) Lay Waste And Move On I think this final point is the one that really matters for inspiring a feeling of earnest dread. When the event is finally over, it’s not because the party saved the day. It’s not because of some daring do or some heroic sacrifice. It ends the way most catastrophic events end: without rhyme or reason. The sky clears, the daylight returns, the scourge moves on. It leaves of its own volition and you realize that you’re powerless against it. Then you’re left with the aftermath. A town has been raised, people have died, the communities entire store of livestock has been decimated, and now they must recover. A stirge event reminds us that while our characters may be heroes of great power, the world they inhabit contains dangers well beyond even them. With these five steps you can turn a 4hp ⅛ CR monster into an event that your players are sure to never forget. From that moment on, anytime a stirge turns up or flies by you’ll send waves of terror rippling across the table, and they’ll never look at a mosquito the same. Good luck! Ryan Cartner and Dustin Hoogsteen are indie tabletop game designers at epiclutesolo.com. They are creating one game every month in 2019. You can download the first of these twelve planned releases for free at www.epiclutesolo.com/blog/games Picture Reference: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/432204895463483101/  While some campaigns and one-shots may start out at high levels, it seems most start between levels 1-3. If you’ve played Dungeons and Dragons long enough, you’re probably sick of fighting the same overused creatures at low levels. Goblins, kobolds, undead, and bandits are among some of the most common (and hence boring) adversaries for low level players. Other creatures like lycanthropes, fey, beasts, and myconids are less common, but still border on repetitive.
With just a little bit of creativity, and your trusty Monster Manual, you can feature these low-level, frequently forgotten creatures into your next one-shot or low level campaign. While they are 5e specific, similar creatures can be found or created for other TTRPGs. 1) Animated Objects Think of an item. It could be something mundane and unassuming, or something rare, horrifying, or even rusty or rotting. Now imagine that item trying to kill you. Animated objects are usually used briefly in low level campaigns, but imagine building a whole module or one-shot out of them. Libraries full of flying books, armories full of weapons, and kitchens full of plates and utensils all animated to make your characters distrust every single item they see. There’s technically only three animated objects in the Monster Manual, but with generous sprinkling of the animate object spell, just about anything can be turned into a deady item. 2) Bullywug Do you remember what a Bullywug is off the top of your head? I completely forgot about them until I paged through my Monster Manual again. They’re little frog people that love to terrorize those who trespass through their swamp. Sneaky, territorial, and willing to take captives, it’s a wonder I have never heard of them being used in low level play. While there is only one instance of them in the Monster Manual, give them some class levels in rogue, fighter, or wizard and not only will they make for a formidable story thread , but you can even scale them into higher levels of play. The swamp-based opportunities are abundant. 3) Dinosaurs Who doesn’t find Jurassic Park both slightly terrifying and creatively immersive? It’s the perfect inspiration for a low level D&D campaign. Dinosaurs do it all: flying, swimming, running at high speeds with giant snapping maws. What’s not to love about a dinosaur campaign? With a total of six in the Monster Manual, they won’t require the creative effort of the bullywug, unless you want to scale them past CR 8. Finally, you can set them in almost any environment. 4) Lizardfolk If we’re being honest, we’d have to admit that Lizardfolk are basically goblins that can hold their breath and ambush you from underwater. There’s less options for them in the Monster Manual (three stat blocks), and they are not as environmentally flexible as goblins are. I assume these are the reasons they’re not as popular as goblins or kobolds. However, their lore presents some great opportunities for a rich low level campaign. They craft great jewelry and tools, and have an awe of magic that could give a unique roleplaying opportunity to any magic users in your group. They love feasts and sacrifices, which can make for a great story elements. Finally, they worship dragons, and are often exploited by them. A low level Lizardfolk campaign could easily transition into a high stakes dragon plotline. 5) Modrons These little guys are so cute and have a lot of potential. But if you’re not running your sessions in Mechanus, there’s little plausible reason your players would encounter them. These little creatures are fun to run and to play against though, so pull up your creative britches and figure out a reason to run a few sessions with these guys. Maybe they’ve gone rogue, or maybe it’s time for the “Great Modron March.” No matter what you figure out, with at least five canonical options, you’re sure to have a great time playing with modrons. Whether you’re able to make a short campaign out of these, or just stick to a one-shot, they’re sure to provide a type of fun that’s different than goblins, kobolds, and zombies (oh my!). There’s a lot of other low level creatures that we didn’t cover, but could still use some love. Check out the Monster Manual and Volo’s Guide to Monsters for even more ideas. Ryan Langr is a DM, player, and content creator of Dungeons & Dragons 5e. His passions include epic plot twists, creating exceptionally scary creatures, and finding ways to bring his player’s characters to the brink of death. He also plays Pathfinder/3.5. In his real life, he is a stay at home dad, husband, and blogger of many other interests. Photo credit: Goblin art by Armandeo64 (armandeo64.deviantart.com) CC BY-SA 4.0  The most important element in roleplaying is communication. Sometimes players will assume that their DM has understood what they are attempting, only to find out a scene later that their idea went completely over the DM’s head. The following listicle will help your DM understand you better and reduce any problems that originate from a lack of proper communication.
1) Goal This sounds trivial but most players will almost always assume the goal and not mention it. “I want to climb the wall” sounds like a goal but it isn't, because it doesn't let the DM know why you are trying to climb the wall. “I want to get to the top of the wall so I have a better position from which to shoot my bow” says clearly what your intention is. Without a clear goal, the DM may misunderstand and end up narrating a result that you didn't expect. Sometimes this issue can be solved immediately, but in other cases this won't become apparent until after the encounter. At which point arguments ensue: “During the fight I climbed the trees, but it never gave me any protective cover!” “Well, you just said that you wanted to climb the trees. You never told me why.” 2) Means How you are going to do what you are attempting. This is the big one because here you can be creative and ingenious. Your DM might even reward you with some in-game bonus depending on how you do it. Climbing a wall barehanded isn’t the same as using a grappling hook. A single goal usually has many ways of achieving it, so don’t always go for the trivial option. Imagine the surrounding environment, what things are around that can be used. The DM will usually not be exhaustive in his description which leaves room for imagination. This is also a good time to look through your inventory. DMs will usually pick the most obvious means, if one is not specified, and assume you are using no equipment. This can result in losing potential positive modifiers to your skill test or, even worse, getting negative modifiers! 3) Skill Do not leave the skill test choice to your DM. Some games have an exhaustive list of skills and your DM won’t have all your skills memorized. He does not know what you are good at and what you are terrible at. If you want to use your “Lie” skill but the DM asks you to do a “Charm” test, go ahead and tell your DM: “I would like to use my Lie skill.” Some DMs might not like this style so be sure to talk it over with them. Try to be reasonable and not ask for a skill check with an unrelated skill, like using your strength skill to sing. Though sometimes using a completely ridiculous skill can have hilarious results. Your DM may and should encourage you to explain how your skill is being used. 4) Assistance Unless your character suffers from delusions of heroism, you might want to ask other characters for help. NPCs are not just side quest givers, some have skills that can and should be used to your benefit. Most DMs will fill the world with helpful NPCs just waiting to be used. Town guards can help you fight off those outlaws mugging your party in the alley. Some recurring NPCs, such as a previous quest giver, can become allies. They can provide information or resources for your current adventure. Even your enemies can be of aid if you understand their objectives and motivations. After all, if the dragon attacking your town is after gold why not lead him to your rival’s larger and richer city. 5) Personality Skill tests are the best moment to show how your character behaves. A barbarian and a duelist might both fight with swords but how they fight differs completely. Think about how this skill test relates to your character. A fear of heights might make a wall climb more interesting, or perhaps an old grudge fills you with fury as you strike your enemy. Personality can also be used to show intent. A scholar holding his book to his chest with sweat falling down his brow while hiding behind a shelf is cleverly not going to try to ambush the beholder. Don't forget that you are playing to have fun and “I jump backwards as I flail my sword around while yelling ‘I hate skeletons!’’ is always more entertaining for everyone at the table than: “I attack with my sword.” With all this in mind, we can change: “I wanna climb the castle wall” to: “I want to get to the top of the castle wall so I can sneak in. I’m going to look for the best catapult expert in our unit and I want to convince him to launch me. I want to use my Charm skill and with a wink and a convincing smile I say: ‘If you get me on top of that wall, I will end the war and you can be on your way home before dawn.’” Rodrigo Peralta is a roleplayer and a DM that likes to playtest many different rpgs. He enjoys both highly detailed complex systems and barebone casual games. He participates in local roleplaying events as both DM and player. Picture provided by author.  The following is an excerpt found in the journal of the former Count Moneybags Von Moretax. It was found in the Corporate Dungeon ruins behind the headquarters and was restored by the High Level Games historians. These are believed to be his final words.
Ah the noble’s life. Sipping expensive mead atop your throne made of ivory crafted by a peasant is truly the only way to live once you’ve done it for twenty minutes. But alas. Here I am. Imprisoned for claiming that the king’s head was too round when all that expensive mead finally got to me. So here, in the dungeon I will recount some of the ways my other nobles have fallen from grace. Believe me, some of them are rather quaint. 1) Framed Yes, the most time honoured tradition of the nobility. Perhaps because it kills two birds with one stone, in that it removes another noble from power and if you’re clever enough and it hides some atrocity you’ve recently committed. There are of course many hurdles to consider: noble seals from other houses, daggers owned by other people, paying off servants and then promptly killing them as well, and a plethora of other minor issues to consider. Perhaps you have a right hand man you place too much trust in, and some plucky adventuring group could weasel information out of him. You may want to kill him. Not to mention such things may leave a paper trail. Perhaps a private investigator gets ahold of your bookkeeper? Hm? Said bookkeeper, not knowing the situation, shows her your costs and paychecks and sees thousands of gold being sent to shut people up. Can’t have that. Guess you should burn down the accountant’s house. I would tell you more, but I can’t tell you everyone's secrets, now can I? Not that I would ever partake in something so low. But you know who would? That Duke Silverbrand. I’ll bet if the royal guard searched his bedroom after eight tonight, they would find some damning evidence proving that he framed a certain Prince for a murder he committed. 2) Trash Talk Yes, this is the reason my execution is scheduled tomorrow. If there’s one thing you should know about those of noble blood, it’s that their egos are as fragile as a two hundred year old man's bones. This is particularly true of royals. Your kings and queens, princes and princesses… they just can’t take a joke. Another simple fact is, many nobles can’t stand their king. So it really is just a matter of tricking them into saying what they want to in front of the right crowd. Instead of telling you how to do this (it’s quite simple really, liquor and a group of people is really all you need). I will now quote some things that got people executed and/or banished. “King Richard? You mean that man with the exceptionally pointy head?” - Viscount Talksmacker of Trashington. “I’m telling you, the King put some sort of curse on the Queen. No way a man with such a small number of brain cells gets a woman with such - agh! My arm!” - Baron Badguy of Vill-any, spoken in front of the king, who had just come back from a sparring match with live steel. “Prince Keith is the human equivalent of a book with no pages.” - A man whose name was stricken from the records. “Is the King around? No? So we’re talking smack then lads?” - Duchess Exe of Cution. “King Richard is so round and discoloured I wouldn’t blame you for mistaking him for a boar testicle.” - Count Moneybags Von Moretax In short, it doesn’t take a lot to get a man killed in most noble courts. 3) Sleep With Someone's Spouse Now this may not get your nobility revoked officially (unless it’s with the queen) but there’s a very good chance you will be the laughingstock of the public and the newest target for some noble who knows where to find a hitman. In other news, water is wet. The typical noble won’t just have you killed for this, but most likely tortured or mutilated in some uncomfortable way. However the fact that a certain noble will forever be known to time as “The Cuckold” is sometimes worth the pain. This is typically not something that ends up as public knowledge, however you can guarantee that your reputation is ruined in court. P.S. Seeing as I'm about to die tomorrow... sorry Martin. 4) Don’t Tow The Line This is by far the least fun way to die. In every noble court, there are unspoken rules. Don’t get caught committing your crimes, and if you do, make sure your back is nice and ready, because it’s about to get stabbed multiple times. Don’t insult people in any blunt way, or you’ll become a pariah. Most importantly, don’t break the norm. Norms change from court to court. But I promise you, if you’re treating the public with respect (not lying to them, lowering taxes, trying to give them anything for free or god forbid actually listening to them when it comes to government policies), you’ll be in a grave faster than you can count to two. I remember one poor man. Oh the poor soul! He said in public court that he thought we should get rid of the toll to cross the bridge into the city. Not only was the movement shot down unanimously, within the week, but the man's home was burnt down, his farms were salted and his body was found in the sewers with twenty six stab wounds. In short, it’s very easy to be removed from a court in a number of increasingly uncomfortable ways. Don’t do bad things. Don’t do good things. I highly suggest that if you don’t want to be disgraced, you just enjoy the money and agree with the local consensus. I imagine that these are my final thoughts. As such, I would like the last thing I ever write to be to my family. Tell my wife I loved her, but not as much as my tax money. Tell my son he can do anything he wants, but not as much as my tax money, and lastly, tell my daughter to marry up. This was the last thing found ever written by Count Moneybags Von Moretax. Our scholars are finding more of his older works, however, and day by day, the man who was Count Moneybags Von Moretax is painted further as a kind, loving and just ruler, who was put to death by unjust laws. Jarod Lalonde is a young roleplayer and writer whose passion for both lead him here. He’s often sarcastic and has a +5 to insult. Dungeons and Dragons is his favorite platform. Although he’s not quite sure if it’s Cthulhu whispering to him in the small hours of the night, or just persistent flashbacks to the Far Realm. Picture Reference: https://www.pinterest.com/tah223/nobles-highborn-and-officials/  This is a slightly updated version of the article that appears in my Nuggets #1 zine. I've been creating a new world seven hexagonal spaces at a time. Here is the beginning of that; an area for your player character to explore around a small village. It is written system agnostic and is easily adapted to any edition of old school role playing games. The village, Victoria's Tower, was built around and is named after a the wizard's tower at its center. There was an accident and the sun is frozen at dusk for 20 more days (totalling a month). The village and its surrounding hexes are stuck out of time. Anyone can travel back and forth, but no time passes naturally until the end of the month. Spells and other magical effects work normally. 1) Plains And Village A mage, Victoria, lives in a tower and a village has evolved up around it. Victoria built here because of the magic contained in the burial mounds from a long dead civilization. The village provides reagents from the sea in exchange for protection from the wizard. Victoria has frozen herself and cannot fix this. Her tower is protected with glyphs of warding and arcane locks. There are about 20 small crates filled with enchanted fish (see 12) here waiting for Victoria to open her door. 2) Plains And Farms Mostly farms and the location of the ancient burial mounds, these plains feed the village. There is an underground tunnel connecting the mounds to Victoria’s tower. If the twelve mounds are explored, four are connected to the tower and found emptied, four more are silent, and the last four are haunted by undead. One contains a flail, Beast Render, that smells of patchouli and deals +2 damage to beasts. 3) Plains And Lakeshore A body of water where fishermen catch gillies and stuff them into enchanted scarecrows on the shore. After four days the fish are removed and delivered to the wizard. There is also an island where reagents and medicinal herbs are grown. Barren mothers (unknowingly cause by Victoria’s experimentation with ancient magics) come here with their husbands to tend the area while the men fish. 4) South Tower Hills A well traveled road has signs of a fight and two dead worgs killed by a piercing weapon. There is a woman nursing her wounds under a small rocky overhang away from the road. Lune, an elven warrior, is armed with 2 short swords. She stands her ground if threatened, but seeks to be left alone. She is bringing the remains of two humans to add to the scarecrows in area 3. Once a month the scarecrows need to be refilled with fresh kills. Only Lune and Victoria know of this dark deed. Lune will not let players know about this unless her life depends on it. She will say that the remains she carries are from her family and she is making a pilgrimage to the lake to bury them at sea. 5) Moonlit Hills These tree barren hills hide a duchess, Lady Em Winter-Borough, waiting under the moonlight for a clandestine meeting with one of the clerics, she is dying and has a book of secrets to trade for a cure. The players will not recognize Lady Em, as she is from a kingdom far away. She claims to be Dass Whitehall, a noble from a nearby kingdom and is waiting for her slower coach, with her luggage, to catch up. Her coach is hidden here and can be found if players search the hex. If the players search within the coach they can find a diary and a contract that reveals Lady Em’s true identity and the fact that she is dying. Her family made a pact with a devil that has cursed her with disease. She is looking to find a cure or a loophole in the contract. 6) Ogre Hills An ogre, Rockgrinder, make his home here in an out of the way cave that players can find if they search this hex well. He hides if seen and has promised a raven (actually Victoria) to keep the town safe. Rockgrinder has a ring that lets him talk to animals and uses them for information. In addition to hunting predators, the raven leads him to food, but has been absent for over a week. 7) Plains Of Dissonance The wizard’s apprentice stays with a group of traveling men. These are clerics of an uncaring god and they seek to destroy the wizard because she is tampering with ancient magics. The clerics have no names. The apprentice can locate all the wards in the wizard’s tower and is being charmed by the clerics to give them the information. The apprentice has not entered the tower in eleven days for fear of accidentally setting the wards off.  Richard Fraser has been roleplaying since the early days of Dungeons and Dragons and started with the red box in the eighties. He currently prefers to DM fifth edition D&D, though reads a lot of OSR and PbtA. He currently has podcast, Cockatrice Nuggets and maintains a blog, both of which can be found at www.slackernerds.com.
Picture Reference: Provided by the author  As I’ve discussed before in my halloween special and fantastical micro-setting posts, I believe that what sets tabletop RPGs apart from other mediums is the absolute freedom to create. Some find this a burden and choose to stick by the book or by well established cliches, and others even look down upon those who would deign to use their imagination. Admittedly nobody likes the “snowflake / edgelord” half-angel / half-demon prince whose very existence places them at the center of the world. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater! There are plenty of ways to take the cliches and give them a twist, or take the “chosen one” character concepts and turn them on their head. Here are five ways to make interesting characters.
1) Add One Unique Feature Everyone has one idea in them! So, you’re an elf wizard, but you have a distinctive nervous habit; you tap your fingertips to your nose like the performer Sting or Dr. Cox from Scrubs. You’re the tough half-orc fighter but in your free time you develop con-langs. You’re the halfling bard who ends every verse with “can you dig it!?”. Nervous habits, catch phrases, hobbies, predilections, family heirlooms, or odd trinkets worth little in gold but containing sentimental value are all little things you can do to bring some depth to your character. Just one unique feature can lead to an explosion of character developments! 2) Play Against Type People think they know what a fighter, wizard, paladin, etc., are supposed to be, but what if they were different? In fact, what if they were opposite? Why can’t a fighter be intelligent and introspective? In many games, this is discouraged, because a fighter would need to put points into their “dump stat,” typically intelligence, in order to perform well on skills which benefit from the intelligence attribute. However, even in such a system, there are outside-the-box ways to make an intelligent fighter that isn’t poorly optimized. This intelligent fighter comes from a small, under-educated village, but his mom was once a scholar in a major kingdom. Although the rest of his village discouraged his learning and even bullied and taunted him, he is nonetheless well-read, introspective, and eloquent. However, he has anxiety and general emotional issues around his education, and when taken to task, his anxiety often gets the better of him (see tip 4). In this way, while on his character sheet he has low intelligence and this will still affect his rolls, in terms of his character, he can be roleplayed as an intelligent and introspective person. Going back to our Sting-like elf wizard, as opposed to the bookish dork, this wizard is a charming magician / rock-star, although he’s also callous and tends to turn people off who get to know him (justifying his low charisma). And what about the lawful stupid paladin? How about our paladin sees the corruption in his church. He believes in the general morals but not the exact letter and idiosyncrasies of the law. He’s the rogue cop of paladins. 3) Play Against Genre Conventions (the exception that proves the rule) So this one is a bit trickier, and may require that the GM and the rest of the party approve of it in order for it to work. In a typical fantasy setting, often times people resort to the “fellowship” story: A group of strangers or loosely associated individuals with varying backgrounds who come together to go on some quest. Whether this is your campaign or not, there are ways to inject different kinds of genre archetypes into the fold. Perhaps your character wears a masked costume and fashions themselves as a vigilante or superhero, as much Batman or Zorro as Robin Hood. Or maybe your character is an agent of the kingdom, a pulp superspy, or instead is a gritty hardboiled noir detective wrapped up in a plot beyond their imagining. Maybe your eldritch knight gets their strength and magical powers from an alien or extraplanar symbiote, fantasy Venom-style. Again, it’s important to make sure that this concept will work within the world and story that the GM is trying to tell, but this can be a fun way to utilize pre-existing archetypes while also seeming fresh and unique, and can potentially spice up the whole setting. 4) Give yourself a Hindrance (and be true to it) So I want to be very careful with this one. Hindrances should not be treated as an oddity, or a joke, or used flippantly. Do a little research, learn the logistics of the hindrance, and think about how it can add to the character without being the character. Especially if portraying mental illness, which is often stigmatized, please be respectful. This can be a fighter with a missing hand, a wizard with dyslexia, a bard with performance anxiety, etc. Unlike systems where disadvantages can be gamed to get more abilities and then ignored, in this case, the point is that the hindrance does affect the character and must be addressed. That’s not to say it needs to affect their character sheet. Perhaps the one-handed fighter has trained his whole life this way and is as capable as anyone else, but there is a story around how he lost the hand, or it’s a sensitive topic that enemies or other NPCs can use to provoke him. 5) Turn an unpopular concept on its head I know I railed on the half-angel / half-demon “edgelord / snowflake” character above, but actually I’m as much railing against the people whose only concept of a unique character is something like this, than the concept itself. I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with this half-breed, but let’s make it actually interesting! Maybe the end result of our half-angel / half-demon is something in the middle, something purely mundane. Everyone is out there looking for some exotic messianic figure, when in fact she’s really more of a Joan Smith the human-iest human. Maybe, rather than being some beautiful angel/succubus-like creature, she’s actually an awkward, twisted, Lovecraftian creature, like a cross between the Chaos God Nurgle of Warhammer 40K and the chimeric cherubs from Kabbalah or the Book of Ezekiel. Perhaps you’re chaotic evil in a party of good, but rather than being a third-tier Joker, you have some incentive to work with the party, and maybe their goodness rubs off on you after a while. Rather than being the petty, rogue rogue (pun intended) who pickpockets the party and stabs everyone, you mastermind heists, leveraging the abilities of the full party like Ocean’s 11 or Leverage (see tip 3). Whether you stick closely to the traditional fantasy archetypes, or want to play the “exotic” half-angel / half-demon, there are all sorts of ways to put a little spice or twist into it, to make the character, the world, or the campaign more interesting. Regardless of what system you’re playing or what’s on the character sheet, there is usually wiggle room, little nooks and crannies where you can get creative. Even just one unique feature can breathe life into a character. Good luck with your new character concepts, I look forward to hearing your stories! Max Cantor is a graduate student and data analyst, whose love of all things science fiction, fantasy, and weird has inspired him to build worlds. He writes a blog called Weird & Wonderful Worlds and hopes people will use or be inspired by his ideas! Picture Reference: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/10/19/19/08/medieval-1753740_960_720.jpg  Wizards of the Coast recently released Waterdeep: Dragon Heist into the wild and it is a unique take on their usual two hundred fifty plus hardback adventures. Instead of starting at level five and going to fifteen or past, this adventure is purely tier one, levels one to four (five by the end). Wizards had Kobold Press do something similar in the beginning of fifth edition with Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat, but this is the first hardback that focuses on the lowest levels and newer dungeon masters. Wizards has a habit of writing adventures for people who have played Dungeons and Dragons before, leaving a lot of advice, technique and common issues left out. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist does a good job of putting options and comments in the text that encourage good gaming habits. 1) Useable Maps Although a printed Mike Schley map looks great on the table, a drawn map is a more common occurrence at the tables I’ve played at. Instead of the usual (albeit beautiful) Schley painted maps we have more generic Dyson Logos maps. Dyson has a simplistic, gameable style that translates well to the battle maps that most of us use for our games. Also, these maps are smaller and lend themselves to be used over and over; in fact the book leads the new dungeon master to this conclusion. 2) Replayability There are often things written in adventures directed to entertain the dungeon master while reading that the players will never see. This book takes that a step further and gives you four ten step paths reusing the same ten maps as different locations each time. Again, this promotes good dungeon master habits (reuse, repurpose, and steal) in new dungeon masters and keeps the dungeon master entertained on subsequent playthroughs of the hardback. Getting your fifty dollars out of a product has never been this fun. A dungeon master can run this for the same group and only the first two chapter are the same, and even those will likely play out different as the second is very free form and weather effects will wreak havoc on the players’ plans. 3) Leads Dungeon Masters In the Right Direction When Things Go Wrong It’s said that no plan survives contact with the enemy, this is true in Dungeons and Dragons as well. When four minds go up against one, those four players will always think of things the dungeon master has forgotten. For example, when a non player character is mentioned they let the dungeon master know that if that NPC is dead or otherwise removed from play they can just be substituted with a generic version of them. There are also many ideas of how to handle the situation when those players go sideways or get stuck in the story. 4) Sandbox Done Right Starting at around level two, the players are given the option to do what they want. New and even seasoned players can get analyzation paralyzation when faced with more than three choices. When the dungeon master looks at you and asks, “What do you want to do?” a player will likely freeze up. In the sandbox chapter of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, they don’t just dump you into a list of locations hundreds of miles apart (looking at you Storm King’s Thunder), but instead give you ideas of what the players can do and of things that can happen during this time. 5) Using Non Standard Rules Waterdeep: Dragon Heist could have stuck to the core rules and not made any changes to them, but instead Wizards again chooses to lead a new dungeon master into a good routine by suggesting that some things may not work the normal way. Using variant rules like “Skills with Different Abilities,” taking disadvantage to give another player advantage, or the addition of constant weather effects during each season, Wizards encourages a new dungeon master to look beyond the rules for options as they come up. 6) Obvious Money Sinks In each Dungeons & Dragons hardback adventure there is always an incredible influx of gold that the characters receive. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist expands upon some of the rules in the Dungeon Masters Guide for spending gold. Running a business is covered in the Dungeon Masters Guide, but setting one up isn’t. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist not only lets the dungeon master know how much gold is needed to repair and run the business, but also who players will need to talk to and what happens if players eschew the guilds. There are prices for some scrolls as well if the players wish to purchase them, I don’t remember seeing these anywhere else and will use them as a base when pricing scrolls in the future. In most Dungeons and Dragons official material there is a lack of advice for someone just starting to run games. As far as direct advice, there still is, but if you take a look at the habits Wizards is trying to develop in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist there is some great insights. While I’d rather see a section of advice, this is heading in a good direction. In fact, I think Wizards of the Coast finally out did the Starter Set adventure (Lost Mine of Phandelver) in ease of entry for a new gaming group. This would be my new recommendation for a dungeon master just starting if the price of the required books and dice wasn't so high. Richard Fraser has been roleplaying since the early days of Dungeons and Dragons and started with the red box in the eighties. He currently prefers to DM fifth edition D&D, though reads a lot of OSR and PbtA. He currently has podcast, Cockatrice Nuggets and maintains a blog, both of which can be found at www.slackernerds.com. Image source: 2018 Wizards of the Coast   Between RPG products, novels, comic books, TV and movies, random blogs, and so on, there are already so many amazing worlds out there. Many of these worlds are tried and true and have decades of lore and refinement. But, for as amazing as some of these worlds and tropes may be, they aren’t novel, and they aren’t yours. Those worlds have already been explored and those stories have already been told. There’s nothing wrong with tried and true, with staying within the lines of a setting or a genre, with telling a story that has already more or less been told, but what I love about tabletop is that it allows for something more. With no artistic talent, programming experience, or a crew of performers and a special effects team, you can build a novel world. Your players can experience genuine wonder in the exploration and discovery of things truly never seen before. There is nothing wrong with orcs and elves and dragons, but at some point, they became mundane. You know what an orc is, and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy and nostalgic, and as the worldbuilder I’m just leveraging your knowledge and nostalgia. That’s simple and sensible enough, but where’s the fantasy in that?! If you want to build worlds that make you feel the way you did when you first read Lord of the Rings, let’s try something new! Here are 5 tips to bring fantasy back to the fantasy genre. 1) Understand The Tropes This first tip isn’t about building a unique world per se, but it’s an important first step. Why do we love orcs and elves and dragons? As I discussed above, part of why we still use these creatures is because they’re known quantities, and they’ve worked in the past. But more than that, they hold some symbolic value. Elves can represent a people in tune with nature, or the end of an old age, or (if you’re going for more of a fey interpretation) whimsy and wonder. You need to understand what the tropes are and why they exist in order to change them. 2) Subvert The Tropes Now that you’ve thought about what the tropes mean, subvert them! Maybe in your setting, the elves are undergoing a magi-industrial revolution, using new magics to twist the forest into woody machines. Maybe the elves are a new race, and this is a world in which the age of humanity is coming to an end, rather than the reverse. I was a preteen when I first played the video game Warcraft 3, but the idea that the orcs were once a noble, shamanic people prior to the events of the first game blew my mind. By that point, between Warcraft and Lord of the Rings, I thought I already knew what an orc was supposed to be. By subverting my expectations, Warcraft left a lifelong impression on me of what the genre of fantasy can be. 3) One Unique Thing I’m borrowing this term from the tabletop RPG 13th Age, but I think it can just as easily apply to worldbuilding as to character creation. This is in-line with the above, a single subversion can entirely change the nature or tone of a world. However, other additions or changes can also make a world unique, without totally subverting it. In this world, maybe halflings have elongated faces and big eyes, as if they evolved from a lemur. Maybe that inspires you to place the halflings on an isolated, Madagascar-esque island, rather than The Shire, deep in a Euro-inspired forest. Maybe elves have bluish skin and white hair, making them just a little more alien. Maybe they actually are the descendants of ancient alien refugees, and there are subtle hints throughout the world that their magics are in fact advanced technologies. 4) Borrow Generously Maybe you don’t just want one change, but a world entirely different from traditional fantasy. It can be daunting to build a whole world, or even to decide where to begin. In such a case, take from what’s already out there! So you have a fantasy setting, but instead of orcs and elves, you have daleks and twi’leks, and instead of paladins and wizards you have jedi and onmyoji. You can change the names, shuffle around details, adapt them to whatever technology level or setting aesthetic, it’s just about giving you a place to start. At this stage it might seem a bit slapdash, like a child smashing their toys together. That can be fun, but let’s take it one step further: how do these disparate elements come together? In the process of answering that question, I think you’ll find that the world starts to build itself. Even though these are known quantities, by arranging them in a unique way, they can become something novel and greater than the sum of their parts. 5) More Is More (But Also Less Is More) If you’re like me, and the problem is that you have too many ideas, rather than too few, don’t be afraid to go all out! Throw every idea you can possibly think of up on the board and see how it shakes out. The reality is that many of your most unassuming ideas will end up being your best, and many of your personal favorites aren’t going to work the way you expected. Plop it down like a big brick of marble and chip away at it. Share your work on r/worldbuilding or elsewhere on reddit, start a blog, or seek advice in some other way. At the end of the day it’s your world, but consider what other people have to say, and if they tell you something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to chip it off. So here’s the world I came up with, just in the process of writing this article: A peaceful tropical island, inhabited by a small, lemur-like people known as halflings, is invaded by the powerful, arcane lich army known as the daleks. A few unassuming halflings are rescued by a great onmyoji, a tall woman with light blue skin and white hair, wielding a glowing blue saber of light. She takes the halflings to the continent, where they learn about a war gone awry between an old race known as humans, and the blue-skinned elves who have begun to succeed them. Out of desperation, a sect of humans placed their souls inside arcane boxes, giving up their own humanity to bring human civilization back to its former glory, as they perceive it. Amidst a world in such turmoil, what place is there for the halflings? Max Cantor is a graduate student and data analyst, whose love of all things science fiction, fantasy, and weird has inspired him to build worlds. He writes a blog called Weird & Wonderful Worlds and hopes people will use or be inspired by his ideas! Picture Reference: https://wallpaperstock.net/best-friends-fantasy-world-wallpapers_w50899.html   The dungeon master has the power to make or break a game. Good dungeon masters can transport you to a land of fantasy, and make even the clunkiest of game mechanics fun and engaging. Bad dungeon masters, on the other hand, can take what looks like a great game on paper and make it into the kind of experience that will drive you to drink. If you have yet to be visited by any of the dungeon masters on this list, then beware! For in your future you may yet have to contend with… 1) The Naked Emperor Every dungeon master was once new. There was a time when you didn’t know where the monster stats were, when you bungled a plot twist, or when you messed up rules calls more often than you got them right. But most dungeon masters learn from these mistakes, re-read the text, and eventually find their groove. Not the Naked Emperor. No, for you see, the Emperor has no need of such plebeian things like books or lore with which to make their decisions. Clothed in the invisible garments of their own brilliance, it’s uncommon for the Emperor to even know the mechanics of the game they’re running beyond the very basics. Convinced that the stories they have to tell transcend such things, questions about damage, resistances, or even class features are met with a dismissive wave of the hand. In short, the Naked Emperor is the know-nothing DM who has no interest in getting into the mechanics of how the game runs, because that isn’t their concern. They rarely keep players for long, and when those players find other groups it can take some time to forget the behavior they learned in the Emperor’s Court. 2) The Author In an ideal game setting, the dungeon master runs the non-player characters, the plot, and the world physics. The players are in control of their characters, and the actions those characters take. The dungeon master sets up the situation, the players react to it, and collaboratively they tell a story. Not at the Author’s table. The Author sees themselves more as a director of all the action taking place at the table. While the players might be the ones behind the characters, they’re treated more like actors on a set. They can improvise, and put their own spin on things, but the Author insists on certain paths being taken, and certain actions not being taken. Their games are characterized by problems with one-and-only-one solution, by constant interruptions explaining to players why their current actions will not work, and at times literal divine intervention pointing an arrow down a specific path. No matter how beautiful the setting, how flowery the words, or how attentive to mechanical detail an author is, their games tend to feel more like a police state where you are attempting to guess the dungeon master’s desires rather than playing. Because without freedom, you’re not playing a game… you’re just part of a play where only one of you has the script, and he won’t share it with everyone else. 3) The Schoolmaster A good gaming group has its share of messing around, in-jokes, and silliness. After all, you’re getting together around a table with your friends pretending to be elves, dwarves, wizards, and assassins… it’s kind of a silly thing to be doing, and taking yourself too seriously can backfire. No one seems to have told the Schoolmaster this, though. The Schoolmaster has underlying rules to how a game table should be managed. Players should be attentive, listening to all of the information they relate before taking the baton back so they can begin roleplaying again. The Schoolmaster expects you to listen when they talk, and to follow their lead. In short, they treat their players more like children who need to be corralled, and less like adults who are here to have fun together. When the dungeon master tries to get everyone’s attention, it’s a good idea to listen. But when they start threatening to give players detention, and lecturing instead of being part of the game, it’s time to move on to a table run by someone who isn’t possessed by the spirit of Ichabod Crane. 4) The Adversary RPGs are full of uphill battles, ambushes, tense negotiations, and hard-fought skirmishes. These are the challenges the characters have to overcome in order to reach their goal, and to bring the story to its completion. And while no dungeon master wants to make it easy on the players, most of them don’t want to kill the party. The Adversary does. For the Adversary, the story is a secondary concern. The game has a binary outcome, and for them to win, the party has to die. Adversaries tend to have enemies that are noticeably outside the party’s weight class, but they are also the first to cry foul if a tactic or power proves particularly successful against their villains. They will out-and-out strip abilities from player characters, stating that they no longer work, or switch tactics entirely to ensure that strategy is nullified completely. Worst of all, though, Adversaries have no empathy for the players’ goals. They may pay lip service to the idea that you’re all here to tell a story, but the Adversary won’t consider the game a victory if they haven’t made the players bleed for every inch of ground they cover. Adversaries breed mistrust, but even worse, they can lead to players grabbing every advantage they can possibly find. This often leads to dungeon masters who aren’t adversarial thinking these players are just power-gaming munchkins, more concerned with bonuses than with the story. Adversaries leave scars and habits that can be hard to unlearn. 5) The Punisher A good dungeon master lets the laws of cause and effect play out in the world. They arbitrate things neutrally, and allow complications and solutions to arise naturally from the actions of the player characters. In short, their actions have consequences, but those consequences fall into the “what comes up must come down” school of mechanics. This is not the case for the Punisher. For the Punisher, any act that fails is an excuse to inflict upon that character an Old Testament level of pain or humiliation. A Punisher’s critical fumble deck is well-thumbed and dog-eared from use, and they’ve never once asked players if they even wanted to use that optional mechanic. They simply take it as a given. The Punisher takes glee in natural 1’s, and may even attach consequences to regular failed rolls, as well. Broken weapons, injuring yourself, feedback from spells that failed to penetrate an enemy’s defenses, and even slipping on random banana peels and falling prone in the middle of a fight are all commonplace for the Punisher’s games. Some Punishers play it straight, giving the same drawbacks to the monsters, but they fail to see that a monster breaking its weapon has a much smaller impact overall than a PC who has lost their primary weapon in the middle of a dungeon. Punishers tend to suck the fun out of a game, particularly if the table is on a good run of bad luck. Adding insult to injury may be done in the name of “realism,” but the result is more often a game that feels like it actively wants you to stop playing. There are certain challenges we all have to face in life as gamers. Remember that if you’re ever faced with one of these dread DMs, remember that if you survive you get XP… and you’ll learn to recognize the signs the next time you see one of these game masters across a table. For more from Neal Litherland, check out his Gamers archive along with his blog Improved Initiative! Picture Reference: https://dungeondutchess.com/tag/gm/   “Any axe is a good axe.” Ah, Dwarves. Every races has a certain stigma behind them in small human towns. For the most part, adventurers seem to be the exception to this. Although not every Elf is for equal rights, and not every Halfling is brooding and in (really adorable) plate armor. Of course it's worth exploring these wonderful little worlds of stereotypes because often they're based on a shred of truth. Or in other cases, a rather large pile of truth. 1) Elves A personal favorite of mine, Elves are the pointy eared, bow-shooting, magic-casting tree folk with an unnatural beauty and a thoughtful nature. Beware, because behind that calm and collected nature sits a xenophobe true and true. Who hasn’t wanted to spew racial slurs at everything under the sun every now and then? Humans? Inferior. Dwarves? Idiots. Halflings? Won’t amount to anything. Elves are the gods’ masterpiece and no one can take that away from them. When you start peppering everyone on the field in a volley of well aimed arrows, the party may reconsider using you as gnoll bait. 2) Dwarves Drunken brawling is a fun hobby, and the only hobby that Dwarves probably made into an art. If you can’t drink yourself under the table as a Dwarf, you just aren’t living to their full potential. Not to mention your average Dwarf almost likes their liquor as much as they like their friends, with their Lawful Good tendencies and all. You’ll be the envy of the party, as being proficient in smith's tools lets you maintain and create armour and weapons for the party. But don’t let those pesky Elves get word of your craftsmanship, otherwise they’ll be begging for some of your work. 3) Gnomes Wisecracking and friendly sometimes Gnomes are a little underrated, but when you mix magic and tinkering the results are usually rather splendid. Albeit being so small may have its disadvantages, it usually means you’re just that much harder to hit with a battleaxe. When the going gets tough, Gnomes have a tendency to make the going softer, between a loveable nature and invaluable skills Gnomes are quite the asset to any adventuring group, mostly due to their friendly natures and the neat little gadgets and do dads. Just don’t let them hear you demean their work, or it may spark quite the little fury. 4) Half-Orcs Fury. Gods. Good and evil. These are all the truths that a Half-orc faces in their lives. They all feel the pull of the god that calls to their very blood. All know the anger that makes their heart beat and their blood boil. The very fact that they are seen as being born of evil causes many to end up there. Their tenacity, both of body and mind are what marks Half-orcs. They aren’t made of stone. They’re made of bone, and when they pull yours from your body, you’ll know what it means to be a Half-orc. Bunch of badasses. Of course, real world stereotypes aren’t fun, but games are games, right? Jarod Lalonde is a young roleplayer and writer whose passion for both lead him here. He’s often sarcastic and has a +5 to insult. Dungeons and Dragons is his favorite platform. Although he’s not quite sure if it’s Cthulhu whispering to him in the small hours of the night, or just persistent flashbacks to the Far Realm. Picture Reference: https://www.pinterest.ie/pin/299207968980723733/   Since their introduction in the Van Richten's Guide, Ravenloft has gone to great lengths to make fiends diabolical again. There are no legions of hellspawn, no hells or heavens to travel to, no blood war cutting down thousands of faceless fiends an hour, cannon fodder for a multiversal conflict. Fiends in Ravenloft are rare, each a unique individual character, usually surrounded by a web of intrigue best suited for a high level party.
However, this is still a fantasy setting, and making fiends rare and unique has made them less accessible for situations when the plot calls for it. Friendly contact with an evil outsider is a requirement to get into the Blackguard prestige class, and Pathfinder gave us many more classes and archetypes that assume these monsters are everywhere. If your plot calls for a pact with darkness but fiends are scarce, here are some creative ways to get the job done. 1) The Ebonbane Despite being trapped with in a magical crystal coffin in a very remote location, the Ebonbane's legend has spread among those seeking shortcuts to power. Those who come to bargain with him are frequently lulled by his imprisonment, thinking themselves in control as they slice their palms and place a bloody handprint on enchanted crystal. The truth is, they will never leave Shadowborn Manor unless he owns them, body and soul. What he offers: Black Blade magus archetype, enchanted magic swords. What he asks: the Ebonbane compels his agents to work against the Knights of the Shadows. They find themselves hating anyone wearing the insignia or cloak of the Circle. Over time, this hatred grows to overshadow any prior ambition that caused them to strike their original bargain. 2) Baltoi The Bound Slumber spell cast on Baltoi doesn't prevent her from dreaming. She has one of the few perpetual dream spheres in the Nightmare Lands, and while the Nightmare Court has tried to corral her influence by sequestering that sphere in a Mist Oubliette, she has corrupted some of their ennui. Born of nightmares and tainted with demonic essence, these vile creatures bring her dreamers to tempt and corrupt. What she asks: Baltoi demands that each of these diabolists perform a rite that grants her domain powers, or weakens the spells that bind her. She doesn't care what they do after that. What she offers: Many don't survive performing the rites she demands. Those that do gain access to the full spectrum of summoning from the lower planes and undergo two stages of transposition with a fiend of the appropriate alignment. 3) Tsvtieyft Schattendertodd Bearing a name that means roughly “Second Shadow of Death,” this tenebris elevates the depraved and disturbed into legendary serial killers, its “Lustmorde.” The legends of its proteges always mention the city of Morfenzi, so those who would seek it out know to look for it there. If your campaign calls for a Jack the Ripper or Sweeney Todd, it's easy enough to say they traveled through Morfenzi at one point, and followed the call of darkness underground before journeying on. What it offers: The Lustmorde are not usually spellcasters, so the gifts of the Second Shadow are those befitting a cinematic serial killer: mild damage resistance or natural armor, even bonus feats that like Diehard are perfect for a killer who just keeps coming. What it asks: The master of the Lustmorde demands not just a body count, but murder as art. It drives its proteges to take risks for more kills even as it protects them. Of course, all three of these fiends are powerful enough that they might grant any boon the plot calls for, and ambitious or desperate enough to assist anyone for any reason. While you can always have your would-be diabolist stumble across The Black Duke or Elsepeth, it's nice to know some fiends that are exactly as far reaching as you need them to be. Leyshon Campbell has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, from the Kargatane's Book of S series, playtesting D&D 3E in a Ravenloft campaign, to the ill-fated Masque of the Jade Horror. He married his wife on Friday the 13th after proposing to her on Halloween. By tradition, the first story read at birth to each of their three children was The Barker’s Tour, from Ravenloft’s “Carnival” supplement. He is currently running the “Queen of Orphans” Ravenloft campaign. Picture Reference: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17529/Van-Richtens-Guide-to-Fiends-2e?it=1  If you are familiar with my show, The Dragon’s Horde, then you will also be familiar with the concept of “the sleepy dragon list.” For those of you not in The Horde, the sleepy dragon list is a bit of an albatross hanging from my dungeon mastering neck. In brief, it is a shorthand list of ideas that I have for items, adventures, NPCs, and such. Items on the list include things like “He thinks he is a werewolf. He is not” or “weird (sexy?) key.” Then there is the infamous “sleepy dragon.” It has dwelt within the list for nigh 4 years now, and I have yet to remember what the heck I wanted to do concerning a sleepy dragon. Despite this, I have continued to expand my sleepy dragon list with tons of narrative seeds to get a story on track. One of the most frequent questions we get on the show is from new DMs asking how to get things started. To this I say, ask no more, friends; Pendragon has 7 adventure introductions to get the creative juices flowing!
1) The Herd In the city of Sherrack there is a small village nestled within a grassy basin. Here, traders and farm hands amble about their day selling, harvesting, and discussing the recent goings-on over at Gumby’s farm. As of late, the resident octogenarian and shepherd has had quite the ordeal keeping his flock alive. Every day or two several of his flock go mysteriously missing; stranger yet, more sheep emerge from the woods to to fill their place the following day. Little do Gumby’s neighbors know, that he had recently developed an acute fear of his impending mortality and has turned experimenting on his flock to find the secrets of immortality. And little does Gumby know that the Divine have their eye on him and have sent a couple watchdogs his way in the form of sheep whose wool cannot be sheared. 2) Maiden Voyage The Briny Steed had seen much better days on the sea. Now it rests patiently in harbor, waiting for its next (and probably final) voyage. Through bribery, philandering, and “oh, come on’s” the wannabe captain, Earl Stoutheart has managed to convince the party to commandeer the vessel and sail it across the Scattered Sea. The gang lies in the belly of the ship, waiting for nightfall, but when the time arrives, they emerge to a sight most strange. The ship has already departed on its own accord and seems to be in command of its own heading. It is a ship’s turn to do some commandeering for a change, and the party is along for the ride of a now sentient maritime vessel. 3) Alcohol Poisoning You haven’t heard of the Drinking Hat?! Why, it’s the finest saloon for miles around. Well, it used to be anyway. Built in the husk of an abandoned grain silo, the proprietors of the bar have converted it into a massive, multi tiered drinking house. Tubes snake their way from the mountain of barrels above down to the respective patron, but I wouldn’t go there if I were you. Recently, a group of thieves guilders met an unfortunate end after having their drinks. They could have chosen any number of barrels to sip from, but the poor sods must have gotten one that had been tampered with. Some say it was just bad luck, but I say differently. I say they were assassinated. On my honor as guild master Roan, those responsible for the death of my men will pay with more than just coins. 4) Showstopper The bardic hall in Brint is known nationwide for being the home to more than its fair share of celebrities. The flying Charnelli twins. Finnigan the wondrous. Heck, even Mertick and his performing bear Bathsalts have stopped by on occasion. No one expected a show stopper from Cleopatra though, but a show stopper it was. Everyone assumed she would live and die as a modest tailor until she took the stage to sing. The issue is, no one will ever know how the show actually went, because no one ever left. The morning after her performance, the the owner of the hall found the entire crowd dead in their seats! She has since been arrested for murder, but she says she is innocent and they simply dropped dead in the middle of her act. Cleopatra’s head is on the chopping block, and your party may be the only ones who can prove her innocence. 5) Repo Let it never be said of Matilda that she was anything but a saint. Known for her meek generosity, Matilda enlists the help of the party to help her with a job a little outside the capabilities of a sweet aged woman. The thing is, locals are tired of the stagnant water of the swamp nearby, and they plan on draining it completely. This is all fine and good for most people, but not ‘ol Matilda. She informs the party that she left a large cache of treasure in a lockbox somewhere within the belly of the marsh. Should they find it, she would be more than happy to give them a cut of the booty. The party drudges around in the murky waters, following Matildas instructions closely, but when they arrive, not only do they find treasure but also a corpse clutching the lockbox. Upon further investigation, it appears that the body is wearing a locket with a picture of Matilda inside. Upon further further investigation, the party hears a group of locals approaching. Upon further further further investigation, the party is discovered by the locals (Matilda included) ripping the lockbox from the arms of a dead man. “That’s Harold!” Matilda shrieks, “And that is my lockbox!” Turns out Harold had mysteriously disappeared a year ago, taking both his and his wife’s savings with him. Matilda weeps in the arms of the closest friendly local, but what’s that? Did she just glance over and smirk? 6) The Call Of Pazuzu (I incorporate something similar to the following in each of my campaigns. This cult is kind of like my signature; I would love to know if this inspired an adventure of your own). Your party is headed off for a new adventure in unfamiliar territory. About a day from their destination, a group of naked elves and humans approaches with open arms. They inform the party that they are thrilled to see new faces and are about to, in short, start a celebration. Whether they join the naked folk or not, the party has to pass by the strangers’ camp which has a massive, half finished totem looming overhead. The nudists are busily gathering scrap wood to finish the totem, and they gleefully sing, dance, and try to rope the group into helping. Despite their cordial, unsuspecting nature, these individuals have been waiting a year for that particular night to summon their favorite pestilence demi-god, Pazuzu! An otherwise silver moon slowly begins to shift to a blood red crimson; then, with the totem complete, Pazuzu in all of her pestilent glory animates the statue and chooses it as her personal avatar. Whoops. 7) The Bane Of My Existence “Sleepy Dragon” The role of an effective storyteller can be a daunting task, especially since most of the work of a Dungeon Master happens in real time, but having good narrative seeds chock full of possible hooks and intrigue can make the job that much easier. Nothing feels worse than getting to the table and not feeling like you have enough content to work with; veteran and beginner DMs alike know this. Hopefully you can find ways to plant these seeds if you find yourself in a pinch, and maybe you can start crafting a Sleepy Dragon list of your own! A brief aside, if you come up with a cool answer to the Sleepy Dragon conundrum, feel free to tell me about it at [email protected] so we can feature it on the podcast! Andrew Pendragon is a veteran role player, Dungeon Master, and story teller. His work can be seen featured on outlets like the Chilling Tales for Dark Nights podcast and Youtube channel BlackEyedBlonde, but he takes the most pride in his High Level Games affiliate podcast The Dragon’s Horde where he, alongside his co host, answers listener submitted roleplay questions and weaves them into a false-actual-play adventure! Picture Reference: https://www.deviantart.com/legend13/art/Sleepy-Dragon-s-Teddy-275967993  When I started gaming, I loved to read the early Dragon anthologies for their insight into the early game. One of my favorite anecdotes was about a Lake Geneva player who took “wall" as a language, and proceeded to interrogate dungeon walls as to what was behind them. His creativity was only matched by the DM, who had all the walls reply in drunken slurs that they had no idea because they were all “plastered.” Apart from comic relief, this scenario raises the question of the role languages might play in various games. The Ravenloft setting dispensed with the simplicity of a “Common" tongue found in other settings because it clashed with the insular, xenophobic nature of the setting. This has forced players to strongly consider their choices for what many other settings consider an afterthought. To make sure you are covering all you bases, consider the 4 S’s. 1) Secret Societies Like Druidic in previous editions, knowledge of a particular language is extremely useful for identifying who is part of your secret club. Hidden messages become much more secure, as the eccentricities of a language are far more confusing than any code. Even when translated by magic, cryptic jargon or slang still remains, such as with Navajo code talking. This also adds to the flavor of the secret society, as the language in question is tied to pragmatic or philosophical roots of the group. Vampyrs of Falkovnia might use Wardin (the language of their leader’s lost world) as a way to express their ambitions, and a prospective Knight of the Shadows might be expected to learn Nidalan before the annual trip to the The Shadowlands. 2) Status It was suggested in the Ravenloft Dungeon Master’s Guide that Draconic--the language of arcane spellcasting--was one possible bridge between the diverse patchwork of peoples scattered throughout the Mists. An example of this was given in Van Richten's Arsenal, when Celebrant Agatha Clairmont and Gennifer Weathermay-Foxgrove found it the only common language they could write letters in. In academic circles, knowledge of Draconic or other dead languages might be a significant status symbol. After all, Mordentish may be the language of scholars across the Core, but in Mordent it’s the language of everyone, from the dean to the drunkards. Dead languages are a much better reference than living ones when you are trying to sort out the ones who had quality schooling. 3) Summoning Summoning spells get short shrift in Ravenloft due to the restrictions on summoning extraplanar creatures, but there are ways around these restrictions. The simplest is the Entities from the Id feat from the RLDMG, which allows the full summoning list to anyone who has failed a Madness check. This has been expanded on for Pathfinder to allow for the Summoner core class using madness in a character backstory. However you choose to specialize in summoning, many summoned creatures need direction in their own language to do anything other than attack, so language slots add a lot to their versatility. 4) Sundries Sometimes the language slot is the best place for a language-like skill that doesn't fit elsewhere. Vistani ‘tralaks’ or trail signs don't have a ‘spoken’ form, but this is a language available to PC’s, unlike Paaterna. Like gnomes speaking to burrowing mammals, there might be a character with a supernatural ability to understand the speech of the undead, the shared chorus of elementals, or some ancient language from a past life. I thought about that guy who talked to walls when a player unfamiliar with Ravenloft put drow sign language in their list of languages. Drow are barely even legends in Ravenloft, so this was perhaps the least useful language choice possible. However, it inspired me to think about the role of sign language in the Land of Mists, and I created an esoteric sign language for this character, one used by La Serrure et Cle due to problems speaking while masked (and to further hide deformities that affected speech). Years later, “Surreran Sign" continues to be an interesting feature of my games. Consider this challenge next time a player proposes a rare or unorthodox language. There could be a great story there, and at the end of the day, great stories are what roleplaying games are all about. Leyshon Campbell has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, from the Kargatane's Book of S series, playtesting D&D 3E in a Ravenloft campaign, to the ill-fated Masque of the Jade Horror. He married his wife on Friday the 13th after proposing to her on Halloween. By tradition, the first story read at birth to each of their three children was The Barker’s Tour, from Ravenloft’s “Carnival” supplement. He is currently running the “Queen of Orphans” Ravenloft campaign on Discord. Picture Reference: http://termcoord.eu/2016/04/j-r-r-tolkiens-guide-to-inventing-a-fantasy-language/   On the surface, pretending to be someone else for four hours a week may not seem like an activity that you could participate in that would help you connect with yourself better. However, the similarities and differences between character and player can help you define yourself. I have had a lot of issues over the years with finding myself. With finding a way to state who I am clearly. D&D provided a way for me to explore who I am. I started playing D&D when I was six years old. My father (a grognard) introduced me to the game with second edition intermingled with AD&D. At that age, it was really just closer to make believe. Just pretend. It also means that I’m probably the only modern D&D player I know who knows what the hell a THAC0 is. I played with my dad for another two or three years before things started to get hard in my family. The oil crisis hit, and my dad was working up north at the time. He got laid off. My family used to sit pretty comfortably, but before long, we had to sell the house and move into a trailer, where we still live. My dad ended up depressed and he put on more weight. An issue he had been struggling with for a long time at this point. I’m talking since he was ten. I remembered at this point how happy my dad was when we were playing that game, and I brought it up again, about two years after we had moved. We went to the warehouse within the week and rounded up the old books. At this point, the game represented a world where I had power. Where I had control over something; felt like I was progressing in some way. It was around this time in my life where I was really starting to struggle academically. I had to retake my fifth grade math course right before we moved simply because I didn’t do any of the work. I wasn’t very social either. My sixth grade year was when I started to show promise with something - writing. I had such a flare for making up worlds and scenarios. Looking back, I know the reason was my experience with the fantastical worlds of D&D. However at the time it was chalked up to an active imagination and the fact that I read a lot, and quickly. This, quite obviously, is still a hobby of mine to this day. Another thing that sparked around the time of this reintroduction of the game into my life was my newfound love for medieval history and historical martial arts. The year afterward, I started to play with people other than just my father. His depression was starting to get a little bit better because it had been diagnosed and he was on medication for it. He was still working minor jobs while my mother continued working two jobs. I was playing with two close friends of mine in particular, who I’ll call E and A. E was a little bit of a pain in the ass and can be a rules lawyer sometimes, but his unique characters usually means he’s got something to add to the group. A was twice as shy as I was, but he was incredibly creative. His characters were killer. My father usually DM’d for us when he had the time. Academically I started to flourish. I saw my work as a way to increase my stats and gain new proficiencies. My life was pretty much defined by games and pretend. I was still writing and rocking a 90% or more in my english classes. However something wasn’t quite right during all this time. It all felt off. I felt these characters I was playing were more fleshed out than I was. More real than me. I had made them, yet they had a hundred things more going for them than me. As absurd as it sounds, I got jealous of my characters and for awhile I didn’t want to touch the game. This marks a bit of a dry spell when it comes to gaming in my life and bit of a very unique time developmentally for me. I started looking around myself and seeing adventure in a different light. Adventure wasn’t just something that could happen for and shape my characters, it could happen for me and change me. I became outgoing. I wanted to do and try as much as I could, and I still do to this day. I like to refer to this point in my life as “The Great Exploration” and I feel that it is an integral part of every person development. It took awhile of me messing around but I started to settle again close to the begining of highschool. Not that I wasn’t still ready to have fun, but I looked at myself and knew that I was in fact a character, and I had to develop my skills. It was at the beginning of this year where I started to fall in love with D&D all over again, and I created a character I still play to this day with my dad - Aramil “Lupus” Lupintine. Lupus was just supposed to be a kinda strong one shot character. He started at level 5 with a little bit of backstory and a few magic items. But above all he had personality in spades. He was charming, dashing, and clever and he knew it. This man exuded confidence and made sure everyone was aware of this. As I played Lupus, I noticed that I felt more at home pretending to be him than actually being myself. Instead of scaring me off, I took this into consideration and started to try and act more like him. (At least his better qualities, I didn’t want to become a douchebag and a show off.) It’s crucial to note that this was a character only I and my dad played. It was a one on one campaign. My father told me he was seeing Lupus in me more and more and that it’s not really a bad thing. It’s also worth noting that this was around the time I started writing for this site. My passion for the game at this point was unparalleled. I can still find exact pages in the 5e books without even having to check because of how much time I spent pouring over those books for me and my friends. I’m a completely different person now in my life. I’ve seen a lot of change in a very short period of time, some good, some bad. But a lot of the better stuff was thanks to D&D and it allowing me to explore myself in a unique, safe way. To this day, every now and then, when things get tough I look myself in the mirror and ask, what would Lupus do? The answer is more often than not, “insult someone in a position of power, walk away scott free and take a piss in the shrubbery on the way out.” However when that isn’t an option, the answer is “just keep fighting.” Which is what I think we should all take out of our D&D characters. When faced with insurmountable odds, our adventurers don’t sit back and say “Well… shit.” They spit in the face of adversity, stomp on its foot and then beat the crap out of it while it’s still reeling. Sometimes you need to push through in the way best for you. That’s why there’s different classes, because we all have different plans for how to win. That’s the story of every D&D character, and that’s the story of everyone who is trying to make a place for themselves in this world. Jarod Lalonde is a young roleplayer and writer whose passion for both lead him here. He’s often sarcastic and has a +5 to insult. Dungeons and Dragons is his favorite platform. Although he’s not quite sure if it’s Cthulhu whispering to him in the small hours of the night, or just persistent flashbacks to the Far Realm. Picture Reference: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/303993043583155351/   Hey, Jim here! Before Frankie gets started, I wanted to remind you that High Level Games is bringing you game content and commentary absolutely free, as well as providing a home and launching point for a slew of great creators! If you want to support our endeavors, we'd love it if you stopped by our Patreon to show your support. Of course, if you'd like a little something for your hard earned money, you could always pick up one of our fine game products as well. Greetings, traveler! It’s no secret that adventurers stick out like a sore thumb in the Core. Heavy armor and ostentatious magic draw all manner of unwanted attention, and the wisest heroes learn quickly to travel incognito if they want to avoid overt hostility from the worst of the abominations that stalk the realms of men. Early in our correspondence, I gave you some advice on how a spellcaster might ply their trade without arousing too much suspicion. I thought we might revisit a similar topic and discuss those of a more surreptitious bent. Rogues (better known by their more honest sobriquet: thieves) are a staple of the adventuring party. Mundane skills of legerdemain, acrobatics, and ambush attacks make them indispensable to the travelling hero, but this sort of champion has a tendency to run afoul of the law, and with the exception of the ever-rare paladin, they top the Darklords Most Wanted lists in most domains. Fortunately, there are a number of guises the enterprising footpad can operate under if they want to avoid the watchful eye of the Core’s dark masters. Or just the local constabulary. 1) The Butler Great warriors often travel with a retinue. Fortunately, when faced with a wrathful cavalier, very few intelligent monsters will turn their back on the most visible threat to attack the help. Wealthy merchants, priests, diplomats: really, anyone with money can have a valet with them without arousing suspicion. In matters of espionage, the butler can often go places, especially in more medieval settings, where a notable hero might be noticed. Pulling off the role of the butler requires a bit of skill as a valet. Knowledge of how to prepare a meal, how to ready a horse or suit of armor, and how to craft or repair articles of clothing go a long way to selling the ruse, in addition to ingratiating you with your group, since these amenities can be welcoming comforts on the road. The best valets also double as barbers, of course, keeping their lords’ hair and faces immaculately trimmed and shaved. This provides a useful excuse for carrying a straight razor. Letter openers and small tack hammers can also be included without disrupting the image. 2) The Fur Trapper The quests of adventurers can sometimes take them far into the wilderness, and many groups take to hiring guides familiar with the lands they’re traversing. If your group isn’t fortunate enough to have such a guide, you might make your own fortune by disguising yourself as one. Providing you speak the local language, you may find rugged ‘working poor’ types more amenable to discussing current events with a fellow peasant. Knowledge in how to make, set, and disarm traps is one of the most quintessential thief skills, so it’s something you probably won’t have to go out of your way to learn. The profession gives you a reasonable excuse to carry a small selection of snares, wires, and jaw traps wherever you go as well as tools with which to work on them, and despite the name a skinning knife is still perfectly capable of slitting a throat when required. Of course, the large, shaggy furs that are common with these frontiersfolk are wonderfully useful for hiding any tools or items you wouldn’t want local law enforcement to find. 3) The Clown What better way to justify your acrobatics than by being an actual acrobat? The Skurra have long been aware that performers of all types are often allowed to get much closer to targets than a wandering sell-sword might be, and given more leeway in breaking social mores. While denizens of the more buttoned-up domains like Lamordia or Mordent may give such a performer the cold shoulder, many places see a street performer as a welcome break from their daily monotony, and may be more forthcoming with information (or just easy access to their coinpurses). Skill at performance is a must for this role, requiring the thief not only be a skilled gymnast, but that she have the ability to captivate an audience as well. Mimes, jugglers, or prestidigitators can help distract guards or crowds while their parties engage in clandestine activities, and the trappings of the clown can include a number of items that can be turned to lethal purpose, including juggling pins or knives, as well as potions or smokepowders for more dramatic effects. Oversized ruffs, shoes, and prosthetics can offer an easy place to hide smuggled goods, or as a decoy to keep eagle-eyed guards from noticing more cleverly concealed items. 4) The Bureaucrat Kingdoms aren’t built on swords and soldiers. Real kingdoms are built on paperwork. A thief who understands the machinations of seal and signet can be a much more dangerous threat than one who works with daggers and lockpicks. Diplomats, tax collectors, and lawyers can gain access to storerooms, prisons, and state halls with ease, and a balding, ink-stained clerical worker is rarely considered a threat by the fiends adventurers make a business of confronting. Pulling off this role requires either a wealth of knowledge in the field being infiltrated, or a phenomenal ability to bluff. Knowledge of local and international laws helps, as does being a dab hand at forgery. While the accoutrements of this disguise aren’t as useful for concealing deadly implements, wealthy or important bureaucrats can easily justify hiring professional muscle (read: the rest of the party) to keep them safe, cloaking the entire heroic venture in a veneer of legitimacy. 5) Doctor Every domain is accepting of at least some form of medical professional, with the more developed nations boasting a wide variety of physicians, alienists, and naturalists. The biggest benefit of adventuring as such an intellectual is the status it affords: the wealthy and the educated are often more open with someone they view as a social peer. The curiosity of these professions serves as a plausible excuse for the nosiness of the typical adventurer, and many people who balk at the idea of turning to barbarians with swords to address their needs are more willing to talk to someone they see as being able to solve their problems with reason and science. Investigative adventurers may love this role: it encourages them to carry a number of inspector's tools, such as magnifying lenses, sample vials, and chemistry kits. The surgical tools that many medical professionals keep on their person make efficient (and at times extremely gruesome) weapons, but also provide a lucrative, if visceral, source of income, since many monster body parts can fetch a high value from the arcane crowd. At the end of the day Any thief is better than no thief at all. Although they don't have the martial prowess of the fighter or the eldritch knowledge of the mage, their utilitarian skillset is too valuable for any party to be without. Still, whether you're looking to duck the wrath of Azalin Rex or just Constable Bob, a little subtlety never hurts. Good luck, and happy hunting. Frankie Drakeson, Lord Mayor of Carinford-Halldon Frankie Drakeson is a retired rifleman and the current mayor of Carinford-Halldon in Mordent. He is married to Gwendolyn Drakeson, the granddaughter of Nathan Timothy. Jim Stearns is a deranged hermit from the swamps of Southern Illinois. In addition to writing for the Black Library, he puts pen to paper for High Level Games and Quoth the Raven. His mad scribblings can frequently be found in anthologies like Fitting In or Selfies from the End of the World, by Mad Scientist Journal. Follow him on Twitter @jcstearnswriter, or listen to Don, Jon, & Dragons, his podcast. Picture Reference: https://www.deviantart.com/gandolf67/art/Rogues-Den-375845519   There has been something of a surge in tabletop RPGs over the past few years, and while a lot of systems have grown their player base, no one has gotten as big as DND 5th Edition. Driven by the popularity of shows like Critical Role, it isn't much of an exaggeration to say that this edition of DND has finally clawed the Wizards of The Coast property back onto the lofty perch it was knocked off of when they released the previous edition. Since I like to check out popular games, I've played my share of DND 5E. I've also created content for it, which has necessitated going more than wrist-deep into the mechanics that make it work. As a gaming system, 5E is perfectly functional. It's fast-paced, easy to learn, and you can tinker with it relatively easily. With that said, though, there are certain aspects of it that I (as a player, an occasional DM, and a designer) absolutely hate. And, as always, one player's flaw is another player's feature. So keep that in mind as you go through my list. 1) The Narrowing of Class Features When I sit down with an RPG, one of the things that I enjoy is outright ignoring the stereotypes of a given class, and how they use their powers. Unfortunately, though, 5E has narrowed the functionality of class features to the point that character concepts which were simple to create in previous editions are outright impossible to make now. I’ll give you an example. A barbarian's Rage now has the caveat that you have to either attack a foe or take damage pretty much every round in order to keep your Rage going. This reduces Rage to nothing but a combat-focused ability, taking away any other potential uses for the power. You can't use your enhanced strength to pick up fallen comrades as you flee from battle, for example, and you can't use it to give you an extra boost while climbing a mountain side. You can't use it to outrun people chasing you across the rooftops, and unless you're actively being hurt you couldn't even use it for something like rescuing NPCs from a burning building. Even winning an arm wrestling contest is out, by the rules as they're written. This single-purpose mentality extends to a lot of classes, and it restricts play style unnecessarily. Rogues can only sneak attack with finesse weapons? Paladins can only use their smite on melee attacks? Was a paladin with a longbow whose hand is guided by the divine too game breaking? And so on, and so forth. The desire to be less flexible in terms of how abilities work, and thus to restrict character concepts, is one thing that turns me off hard about this edition. 2) Alignment Is More Pointless Than Ever Before Nothing starts arguments faster than talking about alignment in tabletop RPGs, but at least back in the 3.0 and 3.5 edition of the game alignment had some kind of purpose. Certain spells might affect you differently based on your alignment, you had to be of a certain alignment to be part of certain classes, and there were weapons that wouldn't work for you if your alignment didn't match theirs. It wasn't the most important feature of your character most of the time, but it would have mechanical repercussions in the game. I've played through a dozen levels in various 5E games so far, and alignment has never once come up. I haven't seen it mentioned in any spells I've looked at, nor in the descriptions of any magic items. There are suggestions in the class descriptions, but nothing happens to you if your paladin, monk, or cleric's alignment shifts away from what it was at the start. It doesn't restrict which classes you can mash up, either. Which begs the question; why the hell is it even here? While I'm sure there are a lot of folks who are extremely glad that alignment no longer impacts their in-game choices, if it doesn't actually do anything, then why was it included at all? Why not replace the pages talking about alignment with a deeper, more in-depth discussion of character beliefs and morality, since that's all been reduced to pure roleplay (as far as I can tell)? 3) An Overabundance Of DM Discretion The Dungeon Master is one of the most important positions at the table; without them, there's no game. However, 5E is a lot more like the second edition of the game, in that it expects the DM to not just rule on what's happening (like a judge or a referee), but to actively use their discretion as part of the core rules. I'll give you an example so you can see what I'm talking about. The wild magic sorcerer's description says that the DM may choose to make them roll a d20 any time they cast a spell of 1st-level or higher. If that roll is a 1, then they roll on the wild magic surge chart. A core feature of a class is entirely dependent on the DM's discretion. If you have a DM who doesn't know, or doesn't care, then the sorcerer will never actually roll on that table, which means a big part of that class will never function. Why put that decision on the DM, instead of just writing a rule that made the sorcerer roll that d20 every time they cast a spell, thus making it both truly random and feel like a game of Russian roulette? Or why not instead offer expanded language that states that when the sorcerer is in a stressful situation, or is suffering from any conditions, they must roll the d20 then? It's both one more thing for a DM to keep track of and it's asking them to put their nose directly into a player's core class feature. This isn't the only instance of this thinking showing through in the rules, either. If you look at skill checks, there's no longer a chart showing the appropriate difficulty check for certain tasks. Not so long ago, if you wanted to make an appropriate knowledge roll to know what monster you were facing, there would be a formula for determining that DC (typically something like monster CR + 10), and you would be able to ask questions about it based on how high above the DC you rolled. There were similar formulas for determining the DC for making a certain jump, for successfully persuading or intimidating a target, etc. Now there's a footnote in the Dungeon Master's Guide regarding average DC level based on how difficult a task might be, but there are no specific tables for particular tasks and challenges, or for modifiers to them. If you have a good DM, this isn't a big deal. If you have one who isn't mechanically savvy, or who decides to arbitrarily punish the group by setting nigh-impossible difficulty checks, then there's nothing in the rules you could raise as a point in your defense. 4) Big Gaps In The Rules It's impossible to make a rules system that covers everything. Even attempting such an impossible task is to court madness. But with the exception of when I joined a second edition campaign, I have never seen a game where there were fewer answers in the official rules about things that will actually come up with a fair bit of regularity. For example, we have some inkling of when certain races get older... but where are the age penalties/benefits (and if they don't exist, then what difference does it make how old you are)? We have rules for breaking objects, but no specific rules about trying to sunder the weapon, armor, or shield being wielded by an opponent. We have no set DC levels for given skills, as mentioned above, and there are no real rules for how you learn new languages. As a sample of the things that, while I was trying to build characters and figure out twists for an intro adventure, left me sighing and muttering, “Goddammit, 5E...” Sure, these aren't insurmountable problems. But if someone tries to sell you a car, and that car has parts missing, you'd be understandably irritated as you find ways to fill in those gaps. Especially if you were in the middle of a long campaign when you realized a piece you figured would be there just isn't. 5) Archetypes When I first came across the concept of archetypes back in 3.5, and then later on in Pathfinder, I thought they were a phenomenal idea. You took a base class like the fighter or the rogue (which already had a general, level 1-20 progression), and you swapped out certain abilities to make a more custom package of abilities. Maybe your fighter gave up heavy armor proficiency in exchange for additional damage with light weapons, making them into a duelist, or your ranger gave up spells in exchange for the ability to create traps. Archetypes were taking an already solid foundation, and providing you additional options you could use to better realize certain concepts. The keyword there is option. Archetypes were not a required part of the game. Much like prestige classes, you could use them if they suited your concept, or ignore them if they didn't. One of the most irritating aspects of 5E for me is that it kept what I can only think of as a holdover from 4E, in that classes much choose a particular archetype which more specifically defines their powers. Rogues have to make the choice between arcane trickster, shadow dancer, and assassin, for example. Barbarians can elect to go berserker, or totem worshiper. And so on, and so forth. Yes there are more options than that now, but these are the choices you're faced with in the base book. The problem is that there is no longer a foundation class; every class has branching paths. And the specificity of those branching paths often eliminates certain character concepts (perhaps just as much as the narrowing of class features I mentioned in the beginning). I don't mind their existence, as several of these archetypes are fun to play with; I object to them being mandatory. Because if they are optional, they give you additional tools to use for making your best game. If they aren't, then you're just being forced to cram your concept into one of these more narrowly defined paths which feels more like something out of an MMORPG like Diablo or World of Warcraft than the free-form universe of options and customization that tabletop RPGs have the ability to offer. While you can make the argument that the DM can just change the rules at their own table, these criticisms apply to the rules as they're written, not how someone may modify them in their personal games. For more of Neal Litherland's work, check out his gaming blog Improved Initiative, or take a look at his archive over at Gamers! Picture Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDJzEagqE0   Before you begin reading this guide, I would like to formally make note of my identity. I am Balamast, Master Thief of the local thieves guild; some of you may know me as Fox Fingers and if you don’t, I am terribly disappointed. I have spent the last 20 years perfecting my craft and now I will give you the five most useful tips I can share to improve your skills. If you are not of the charismatic or dexterous among us, please stop reading and go learn how to be like the rest of the barbarians. Well, shall we begin?
1) Make Sure You Have A Silver Tongue Not every problem can be solved with metal, sometimes you must use your charm to get away with things you otherwise wouldn't. You must obtain a silver tongue. To do this, practice speaking to all manners of people. Try convincing someone that you’re somebody you’re not. Start simple, pretend to be a merchant from a far away place seeking land to be purchased. The more you practice, the better you will get at speaking quickly; especially when you are caught off guard. This is by far your most valuable asset as it will save your life in a pinch. This skill allows you to learn information that will give you an edge in these situations. 2) Light On Your Feet I can boldly assume you understand that being light on your feet is an important mechanic to becoming a good thief, right? Well, when it comes to running away from a caravan of guards who just caught you stealing from the king's cache, you bet that your not fighting them. Do what we thieves do best, RUN! Running isn’t just about beating your feet and controlling your breathing, it’s about fluidity of movement. We need to teach you how to fall from great heights, jump over railings, using alleyway walls to climb up onto a roof, the like. What I am getting at is that you need to go practice. Find some buildings to play around with, practice running as fast as you can, stretch your muscles and let it become not thought, but instinct. Eventually everything will become muscle memory and will be easily applicable where ever you go. 3) Know What You Are Dealing With Every rookie thief has made this mistake in the past, going in blind. You must know at all times what you are dealing with and the repercussions of such. What I mean by this is that when you pick your target, who does it belong to, what kind of power do they hold, are you willing it take to risks if you get caught. There are lots of different people out in the world, you could be stealing from a powerful wizard and you just might end up becoming a toad for the rest of your measly existence. So do yourself a favor and study. Learn everything you can about what it is your after so you have the best chances of succeeding. I am friends with far too many toads now. 4) The Thieves Language So, once we have our shinies and bobbles, where the hell do we go to sell them? Well, we must look for the marks. Have you learned thieves cant? We use this to mark places of interest under the naked eye of the city. We use it to communicate guard patterns, places to sell your stolen goods, jobs or even some useful items for any traveling thief. Thieves cant can also be used to communicate directly to others with slight hand gestures, that's how group jobs are performed, we do it without saying a word. So keep an eye out for these markings throughout the cities, you will be surprised by what might turn up. 5) Last Resort I always put this as my last lesson when it comes to teaching thieves. I am not a believer in killing, nor do I condone what ever acts you take outside of these teachings. But, as a thief you must be able to play dirty, a good majority of us are not tough fighters. I would always say run first but at some point in your career your going to be surrounded. Step one is to take a good hard look at your surroundings, see what you can use to advantage. Whether it be sand to throw in their faces or a rock to hide behind. Find a way to get in between the armor. Exploit weaknesses when possible, i guarantee you will always be able to out fight a man in plate. Exhaust him by dodging his attacks and when an opportunity arises go for it. We thieves tend to excel at knowing the human body allowing us to perform what I like to call “Sneak Attacks”; I am clever. Basicly pointing your blade into a weak point of the body, this tends to be more difficult with bigger weapons so we tend to stick with the knife. Thank you for taking the time in reading this guide as I hope it helps you achieve your goals and dreams of obtaining whatever it is your after. Remember to speak well, be nimble as a fox, learn about your target, know our language and when you have nothing else know how to fight. I do not run an assassins guild so if you get in trouble for murder, understand that purchasing this document holds me under no legalities of your actions. Master Thief, Balamast Benjamin Witunsky, artist, writer and nerd savant. Cofounder of the NerdMantle Podcast available on Soundcloud, Itunes and Google Play Music. Picture provided by the author  Party balance. I kind of hate this term. Maybe not the term, so much as the idea it represents. Yes, having your balanced party of a healer, a damage dealer, a damage sponge, and the person who does out of combat stuff covers all your bases. But I find that configuration so incredibly boring!!
I get it, though. I really do. Having all your bases covered is the best way to ensure success. But sometimes, it’s more exciting to completely overwhelm a challenge with what you’re good at, and then wonder if you can just overcompensate for what you can’t do. With that in mind, I decided to look at some of the fun that can be had with parties that are all the same class. I find that restrictions like that really let my creativity shine. So for your reading pleasure, I’ve put together a list of some of my favorite ideas for same class parties in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, using only the Player’s Handbook. 1) All Fighter Party Fighter is often thought of as the beginner class, or worse, the boring class. However, if there’s one class that could handle any feasible situation as a same class party, it would be our humble fighting man. After all, they’re the one class that gains the single most ability score increases on the way to level 20. (All classes gain five increases, with the exception of rogue and fighter who gain six and seven, respectively.) Anywhere an ability score increase can be taken, a feat can be taken instead, allowing a fighter to either round out party weaknesses, or hone their strengths further. Even if the GM doesn’t allow taking feats in lieu of ability score increases, some of their class features make them very well suited to dealing with almost any sort of violent or dangerous theat. They have the second highest hit dice, as well as the Second Wind feature. These combined grant them considerable healing capacity for themselves, since a short rest would let them regain quite a bit of HP, and then they regain use of their second wind which gives them yet another burst of HP. Things get really crazy when you consider that they can get up to 4 attacks per round, and they also possess the Action Surge ability, which lets them act a second time immediately after their turn. If the all fighter party absolutely needs to finish off an enemy with a quickness, they can all use their Action Surges in one combat round to double the amount of attacks they can make. This means that a party of four level 20 fighters can belt out 32 attacks in one turn! For Added Fun: All variant humans. Because extra versatility from an extra proficiency and an extra feat is exactly what the most versatile combat class needs. 2) All Barbarian Party The all barbarian party is similar in many ways to the all fighter party. They’re all exceptional with weapons, have a great deal of HP and also possess some short term effects that allow them to really push forward when needed. Barbarians, however, will be relying a little more heavily on their special abilities than fighters would. Rage is what makes barbarians special, and it’s simultaneously what limits what they can do, since it improves strength based attacks. This means that to deal with far off enemies, they’ll need to either throw things, or just try to close ranks. (Luckily, they do gain some abilities to make them more mobile.) One of the other benefits of rage is that it’ll also make them even tougher to defeat, making them resistant to most normal damage. Coupled with an AC that’s improved by dexterity AND constitution, and you’ll have a maniacal horde with high HP that can rampage their way through any threat. For Added Fun: All dragonborn. Call them the BARFbarians, because they’ll be puking up fire, acid, lightning, and Pelor knows what else on their enemies in their fits of rage. 3) All Monk Party Monk, in a way, is a very selfish class. Much of their abilities only benefit them, usually by granting them all manner of resistances to different effects, or a greatly increased movement speed. An individual monk is only useful in terms of their ability to move quickly on the battlefield and to tell the GM “No, that monster’s ability actually does nothing to me. :^)” Though when we carry these abilities to the illogical conclusion of making the party nothing but Monks, it trivializes a lot of the more mundane, non-combat challenges a GM can throw at the players. Noxious gas in a disease ridden warren? Breathing it like fresh air. Charming them to cause them attack allies? One turn later, they have a clear head. This makes monk an odd class out that doesn’t really excel at removing problems, but instead causing most problems to not matter to them, which is a strikingly appropriate theme. An entire party of monks is thus free from worldly concerns, allowing them to focus on greater causes. For Added Fun: All elves. They’ll already be eschewing all sorts of things like eating, knowing the languages of people they talk to, and even obeying the laws of gravity; we may as well add sleeping and needing light to see to that list. 4) All Warlock Party Warlock is, hands down, one of the most bizarre classes in D&D 5e. I’d dare to say that they’re best described as how they contrast against fighters. While a fighter has all manner of flexibility in regards to combat abilities and numerous feats, the warlock has access to all sorts of loosely related magical abilities, many of which are not combative in nature. With that said, for both story and ability cohesion, the best way to make the strengths of the warlock apparent is for all of them to have the same patron. (Incidentally, patron choice also has the least impact on what abilities a warlock has!) Once this is done, however, the plot hooks write themselves, and their sinister nature shines in all it’s terrifying glory. For example, a party of all Great Old One patron warlocks could easily spy on and conspire against the inhabitants of a city using their Create Thrall ability, or a group of Fiend warlocks could demonstrate their might to a remote village with Hurl Through Hell. From there, the insidious conspiracies can only grow. For Added Fun: All tieflings. When polite society rejected them, they found solace in religion. Not Helm, nor Lathander. No no no. They started following Nyarlathotep, to return the favor of the world giving them nothing but suffering. 5) All Rogue Party Rogue is, without a doubt, my favorite class in D&D. In 5th edition, they’re capable of all kinds of shenanigans. This propensity for silliness only becomes more apparent when you have a party of nothing but rogues. For starters, a rogue gains 5 proficiencies from their class, along with an additional 4 from their background, and anywhere from 1-3 from their race. If one source grants a proficiency a character already has, the player may then pick any other proficiency instead. This gives rogues a tremendous amount of flexibility in picking skills. Which is to say nothing about how a level 6 rogue will have four skills with double their proficiency bonus. (Further meaning that a party of four rogues will have 16 such skills!) They’re nothing to sneeze at in combat, either. Assume a four rogue party is armed with both ranged and melee weapons. If they split up into groups of two, with proper positioning, all four rogues can have sneak attack against every target. (Proper positioning meaning one duo approaches a target, allowing the other duo to make ranged attacks against it with sneak attack.) Which is to say nothing of some of the other abilities rogues have, many of which either improve their action economy in combat, or further improve their skill rolls. This isn’t to say rogue is without drawbacks, though. They’re one of the more fragile classes, and once one of them is dispatched, the rest will likely fall just as quickly. For Added Fun: All Half-elves. Because two more skills they can freely place proficiency in is precisely what the most skilled class needs. There we have it: some of the bizarre outcomes of compounding the strengths of a particular class onto itself more times than might be necessary. While party balance is a nice, safe bet to take, I’d encourage you to play on the wild side from time to time by getting together with your other players and agreeing on a same class party. It’s one thing to read and imagine what such a party would be like, but it’s another thing entirely to see it in action. Just be sure to find some way to compensate for what your party will be missing if you do! Aaron der Schaedel is often more consumed with the idea of whether something could be done, than whether it should be done. This more often than not gets him into trouble, but he always has a hilarious story to tell afterwards. For example, he’s going to include an unrelated link here to meet his external link quota, and go completely meta in explaining his intentions. You can tell him if you thought this was a good idea or not on Twitter: @Zamubei Picture Reference: http://looneydm.blogspot.com/2012/06/all-wizard-party.html  The Vistani are one of the truly unique elements of Ravenloft, but the familiar tropes of their wagons, evil eye, and card reading can become stereotyped and stale, getting in the way of making an encounter with them a truly memorable and unique experience. To make matters worse, their association with the real-life Roma can lead to unfortunate stereotypes of a people that have suffered from cultural appropriation and marginalization. Below are some options for bands taken to the edge of what it means to be Vistani, stretching the limits to create truly unique encounters far from any real-life association.
1) The Caliglia (Kamii) Vistani normally travel in cyclical routes, but what happens when one of those routes refuses to stay still? In 590, one band had just caulked their wagons to ferry themselves across the Musarde when the Grand Conjunction hit, and they were all swept out to sea! Reading the cards for their fate, their Raunie declared that they must remain on the water until their former route returns to them. The Caliglia traded their wagons for sloops, with which they escort ships between the various seas of the Core and beyond. To avoid static burn, they refuse to set foot on land for longer than a few hours, and always return to the sea before the sun sets. As part of the Kamii tribe, they have turned their metalworking trade to maritime crafts: nails, braces and other ironworks that protect vessels, compasses that predict the weather, and magic cutlasses that draw power from the sea. 2) The Valstike (Corvara) The Valstike tribe roam the lands extolling the virtues of the asylum of Dominia, selling crafts created by inmates, and offering to relieve families and communities of the burden of caring for the feeble minded, insane, or incorrigible. They don’t openly offer outright kidnapping as a service, but some have read between the lines and struck a private deal. If an individual is violently mad--or inconveniently sane--the Valstike excel at live capture, even before resorting to their potent poisons or powerful magic. Their padded vardos have a mild pacifying aura, a variety of restraints, and coffin-sized hidden compartments if necessary. 3) The Biskrem (Vatraska) Only in the topsy-turvy chaos of Vechor could the land change so quickly that Vistani can fulfil their obligation to travel by staying still. The Biskrem run a popular rural inn called The Sundowner (good quality food and rooms, fair prices), that generates a shared unreality wrinkle* among guests that drink their unique brandy. The radius varies depending upon the number of guests, and causes the surrounding landscape to resemble guests’ homelands. The Vistani fix native dishes for the guests out of local flora and fauna that appear when the land changes, and frequently speak of having “traveled,” even though the “camp” is a stationary building. Such an island of sanity is even more popular among outlanders from beyond the Mists, who frequently have vivid dreams of visiting their homelands, and even learn about current events. 4) Lunadd (Canjar) Scholars have wondered, if Vistani are compelled to move in fixed cyclical routes, how do new domains get added to the routes? The answer is found in a rarely mentioned family of the Canjar, whose strange fate allows them to visit each new domain as it appears, BUT at the cost that they can never go back to a domain after leaving. They sell their information to other Vistani during Lunaset, brokering for the supernatural power to add the new domain to routes. Lunadd cannot navigate the Mists per se, being locked on a course to visit each new domain as it appears. To compensate for this loss, and to assist with their mission, they have the gift of speaking the language of anyone they touch. 5) Kruug (Equaar) Hinted at in Van Richten's Arsenal, this singular family of Vistani are tied to the lost royal family of Velkaarn, and seek to restore the Bloodknife to its reincarnated owner. Like other Equaar, they have no wagons, but also stand out for only training truly wild animals, such the wolves and raptors that accompany them. Kruug trained animals despise the undead, and never fall under the sway of an undead darklord even if their creature type would normally be subject to a lord’s control. It's said that once the vampire lord Velkaarn is no more, the Kruug will return from isolation in the Mists. If these legends are correct, the Kruug may be the first Vistani family to willingly undergo ritual static burn. 6) Golurn (Naiat) As the domains on their route became increasingly urbanized, one clan left their vardos behind as they prowl the streets of Paridon, Nosos, and other large cities. Upon arriving in a new city, the Golurn spread out fast, darting through alleys solo, or in groups no larger than four. They find good places to perform, or do small chores, using the subtle charm of their heritage to ingratiate themselves. Golurn children and elders are always accompanied by adults who look after them and involve them in the task at hand. Anyone who threatens one of them finds the others are never far away, but those who indulge their presence find their spirits lifted, their minds awakened; far more value than that of any coin they leave with. Perhaps one of the most important elements of any encounter with a people as mysterious and unique as the Vistani is that it should fulfil multiple roles in the story. Atmosphere is always one of those roles, but the above are also intended for situations where the heroes need a challenge, or refuge, or information, or encouragement, or tools. If the heroes really do just need their fortunes told, or passage from one domain to another, consider alternatives to the Vistani from time to time, to help avoid making these powerful and mysterious people into a backdrop for the scene change. * Unreality wrinkles are a feature of Vechor described in the Nocturnal Sea Gazeteer, a netbook hosted by the Fraternity of Shadows. Leyshon Campbell has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, from the Kargatane's Book of S series, playtesting D&D 3E in a Ravenloft campaign, to the ill-fated Masque of the Jade Horror. He married his wife on Friday the 13th after proposing to her on Halloween. By tradition, the first story read at birth to each of their three children was The Barker’s Tour, from Ravenloft’s “Carnival” supplement. He is currently running the “Queen of Orphans” Ravenloft campaign on Discord. Picture Reference: http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/2016/09/curse-of-strahd-running-final-battle.html  Editor’s note: High Level Games is much more than listicles with captivating headings designed to rope you in! We’re a group run by roleplaying enthusiasts, for roleplaying enthusiasts. Help us grow by supporting our patreon, and get access to cool stuff, such as one page adventures, and much more! Plus the more that we are supported, the more content we can churn out - it’s a win-win.
There are a lot of monsters in the 5th edition monster manual, but Wizards of the Coast have deliberately given us a larger array of monsters instead of lots of options for specific monsters. Gone are the 14 different goblinoid options that 4th edition had. However, with a few easy steps, you can provide a cool twist to the baseline stats to create some interesting opponents, whether they are lowly goblins or powerful devils! Check out the five templates I have provided below. Note: These suggestions are quick, simple, and brief, but as such cannot possibly be perfectly suitable for all combinations of enemies. Where required, feel free to tinker with these values as you see fit, like the fine Dungeon Masters you are. For example, the CR increase is on the basis of a creature of a CR of at least 1. If they have a CR of half, or less, add the other bonuses, and use the Dungeon Master’s Guide, or an online CR calculator, to work out a more appropriate rating. 1) Combat Champion In any good band of warriors, there is always the combat champion - unmatched and unrivalled in skill and prowess. CR Increase: +3 Hit Point increase: +45 Attack Bonus Increase: +2 Legendary Resistance Increase: +1 New Action: Multiattack. If the creature already had multiattack, they get one additional attack New Bonus Action: If the combat champion reduces an enemy to 0 hit points, or scores a critical hit in combat, they can use their bonus action to make one additional attack this turn. New Reaction: Add +3 to its armour class against one attack 2) Skirmisher It is much harder to slay your foe if you can never quite keep up with it. CR Increase: +2 Hit Point increase: +25 Attack Bonus Increase: +3 Movement Speed Increase: +10ft New Action: The creature makes a melee or thrown weapon attack, and can then move 10ft. New Bonus Action: Can Dash or Disengage as a bonus action New Reaction: When they are hit by an opportunity attack, can use their reaction for it to miss instead. 3) Sharpshooter The most dangerous attack is the one you don’t see coming. CR Increase: +2 Hit Point increase: +10 Attack Bonus Increase: +5 Attack Damage increase: +5 New Action: The creature can make a ranged attack, with a -5 penalty to the attack roll, but with a +10 bonus to damage New Bonus Action: Take Aim, attacks made this turn cannot be at disadvantage, and have a further +5 bonus to hit. New Reaction: Can use a reaction to fall prone. 4) Shaman Goblins who play with fire are infinitely more dangerous than those who stick to clubs. CR Increase: +2 Hit Point increase: +10 Attack Bonus Increase: +2 Spell Save DC: +2 higher, if it has one. Otherwise, give it a DC as per the challenge rating recommendations table in the DM’s toolbox page of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. NOTE: (Damage can be changed to Cold, Thunder, Lightning, etc, based on whatever thematic approach you want for the shaman. You could also swap the 15ft x 15ft blast spell with a 30ft cone if you prefer that.) New Action: Elemental Blast, Targets a point within 45ft of the shaman, all creatures in a 15ft x 15ft area must take a Dexterity saving throw. Affected creatures take xd8 fire damage on a failure, half on a success. X is equal to 1 + half of the creature’s challenge rating (rounded up). For example, a CR5 shaman would deal 4d8 fire damage on a failed save, half on a success. New Bonus Action: Elemental Bolt, Spell attack roll, range 60ft, on a hit, it deals xd6 fire damage. X is equal to 1 + half of the creature’s challenge rating (rounded up). For example, a CR9 creature’s elemental bolt would deal 6d6 fire damage. New Reaction: Can use a reaction to cast Absorb Elements, at will. 5) Bodyguard There’s always that one guy who gets in the way. CR Increase: +1 Hit Point increase: +25 Armour Class Increase: +1 New Action: The Bodyguard can use an action to attempt to break a grapple between an enemy and an ally who are within 5ft of him. The bodyguard has advantage on this roll. New Bonus Action: Defend - while the bodyguard is within 5ft of a target ally, attack rolls against the target have disadvantage until the start of the bodyguard’s next turn. New Reaction: When an enemy declares an attack roll against an ally who is within 5ft of the bodyguard, the bodyguard can use its reaction to instead force the attack to target it instead. What do you think of these templates? What templates would you want for your enemies? Let me know in the comments! Peter is an avid dungeon master, role-player, and story teller. When he's not running homebrew campaigns, he is creating new worlds, or he is reading and writing fantasy stories, forever immersing himself in the gaping black-hole known as the fantasy genre. Picture Reference: http://overlordmaruyama.wikia.com/wiki/Goblin_Troop 5 Reasons to Use This Badass WerePanther For Your Next D&D Game: Meet Baron Urik von Kharkov25/5/2018  Hey, Jim here. Before Frankie gets going: if you want to help High Level Games continue to produce great content and launch the careers of the next generation of creators, we'd love it if you stopped by our Patreon to show your support. Of course, if you'd like a little something for your hard earned money, you could always pick up one of our fine game products as well.
Greetings, traveler! Congratulations are in order to you. Uncovering a doppelganger is no mean feat. I'm sorry the fiend slipped your grasp, but heartened to hear you already have a lead. As to your query: if, as you say, the monster was seen heading for Castle Pantara, you may indeed need to treat with Baron Urik von Kharkov of those lands. Fortunately, he and I have interacted on occasion in the past, and I would be happy to provide you with a few words to the wise regarding him and his domain. Baron Urik von Kharkov is the Darklord of Valachan. A werepanther as well as a vampire, he rules his populace with the help of an army of werepanther secret police. Each year he selects a bride by lottery, but he is unable to control his compulsions to harm his brides. Within the year, each unfortunate victim is dead by his hands. 1) Demon Lover Baron Urik von Kharkov's defining trait is his tragic marital history. With each annual bridal lottery, his hopes climb higher with dreams of the future, and with each unfortunate illness or accident, his despair plunges deeper than ever before. You may find him most approachable immediately before or after this annual lottery. Baron Urik von Kharkov's story centers around an allegory for domestic violence and the behavioral cycles of an abuser. When first courting potential brides (and potential victims, including PCs), he is attentive, erudite, and elegant. Gradually his demeanor shifts, becoming more demanding and more wrathful. By the time he begins harming people, either his underlings or his wives, he will have given the victim ample reason to believe he's only reacting to their bad actions; maybe even acting for their own good! If his victims ever awake to the realization of how much of a monster he truly is, they will be bound to inextricably to him that escape will be impossible, only a choice of death at his hands or their own. This is a sensitive topic, and should be handled appropriately. While von Kharkov (like many abusers) may believe that his evil actions spring from something within him, a Beast that is beyond his control, this is merely self-delusion. Like all Darklords, von Kharkov has been damned not because of his inherent nature, but the evil choices he willingly made. 2) Of the People The people are Valachan are dark of skin and black of hair, and if you or your companions have a contrasting appearance, you may find that it generates a great deal of attention. The Valachani culture differs significantly from that of the western Core as well, and is often considered 'less civilized' by the less worldly minds of our home realms. For their differences, the Valachani are no less civilized than you or I, and thinking otherwise would be a grave mistake indeed. Baron von Kharkov cuts one of the most impressive figures out of all the Darklords of Ravenloft. It can be refreshing to see a character that not only provides representation for black characters, but is also a character who is educated, powerful, refined, in command and beloved by his people. He has elegance and poise, with an undercurrent of menace, like the mighty feline predators he is so heavily involved with thematically. Rick Worthy and Steven Williams have both given magnificent performances of this variety that you can reference if needed. As well, Valachan serves as a good example of a prosperous and functional black-predominant fantasy nation. There are a couple stumbling blocks to look out for here. The first is the notion of a black man as a domestic abuser. This is a tired trope in fiction, which often ends up played to racist hyperbole or comedic effect. You'll get a better result if you take care to make von Kharkov's actions and relationships nuanced and rounded. Depending on the party's makeup, there is also the risk of running 'white savior' stories, where a group of well-meaning white adventurers deign to travel to a backwards group of people of color to solve their problems. Keep in mind that the Valachani are an independent, capable people, and you should have no trouble giving your players the same impression. 3) Cycle of Pain Despite his lofty status now, Urik has suffered many abuses in the past. Wizards in particular may find little favor to be had in Castle Pantara, as practitioners of the arcane have been no friend to the Baron in earlier days. Like many good villains, Baron Urik von Kharkov has a backstory filled with personal heartache that informs his present motivations. Despite the fact that he's utterly evil, like Erik Killmonger or Hannibal Lecter, von Kharkov has a true horror in his past. He's been enslaved, tortured, experimented on, and cruelly manipulated into harming those he cared about. If he's persecuting those who enslaved him (or people of the same bent) like the Red Wizards or the Kargat, it's easy to muddy the waters and make the PCs really struggle to think about who the bad guy really is. It's important to remember though, that a tragic backstory doesn't excuse his actions. No matter what von Kharkov says, at the end of the day he's still the one responsible for his own actions, and he can't lay the blame for the blood he's shed at the feet of those who hurt him. Remember again, he wouldn't be a Darklord if he hadn't chosen his own path. 4) Thieves in the Night The Baron is a terrifying combatant, to be sure, but the force that truly keeps Valachan in line is the Black Leopards. Forming the backbone of the Baron's authority in Valachan, the Black Leopards act as secret police, ruthlessly enforcing the Baron's will and security through fear and brutal violence. The Black Leopards (many of whom are werepanthers) are Urik's main tool to keep Valachan under his thumb. Given their distinctive appearance and fascist behavior, they make marvelous underbosses. Their stark contrast to the respectable, empathetic populace of Valachan makes them great center-stage bad guys, and their potent supernatural abilities let them pose a threat to even veteran adventuring groups. With fascist groups like the Black Leopards, there can be a temptation to make them appear sympathetic, as though their terrorism and violence is required to keep their borders secure against dangerous outsiders. Although this is the excuse such villains always hide behind, it isn't true in the Black Leopards case. While it's true that the Mordentish look down their nose at the Valachani, the 'dangerous threats' that the Black Leopards' violent actions and interrogations are meant to quell are merely a product of von Kharkov's paranoia and his underlings' cruelty and greed. 5) King Among Monsters I have seen three heroes pursue Baron Urik von Kharkov to their own deaths. Each believed they had the truth of von Kharkov's nature. One believed him to be a tyrannical dictator, a military leader held in power by a team of elite monstrous soldiers. One believed von Kharkov to be a werepanther, using his curse to infect and control the most sadistic and predatory of his citizens to control the rest of the nation. The third believed Urik to be a nosferatu, who drained the life from his captive populace as surely as he stole the lives of his own brides. Each of these heroes perished because none had the full picture: all of them were correct, and it is a blindness to all the facets of the Baron's character that has proved the undoing of many a hero. For the crunch-favoring DMs out there, Baron von Kharkov is a dream come true. As both a werepanther and a vampire, he offers a whole palette of abilities to choose from. As an undead shapeshifter he can ignore a whole range of spells and magical abilities, he can hold his own in combat, and his stealth and intelligence gathering abilities are so extensive it's nearly impossible for a party to get the jump on him. He's even got the ability to suborn feline party members like mounts, animal companions, and familiars to his own service! Best yet, many of the standard weaknesses of his monster types do not apply to him. It's important not to give the party a fair fight, however. Urik von Kharkov was born as a panther, not a man, and understands the need for stealth, ambush, and waiting for the opportune moment to strike. His ability to drain blood (and erase memories), spread disease, and command a wide variety of mortal, monstrous, and bestial servants allows him to ensure that a party on his hit list never gets a moment's peace, much less a short rest. Farewell If you decide to pursue this villain to Castle Pantara, I sincerely hope you find that the Baron has dealt with him first, in a terminal manner. Otherwise I fear it may be you who finds yourself being...dealt with. If you should survive, my own men can meet you at the Mordentish border and ferry you to safety with all available haste. In the meantime, good luck and happy hunting, Frankie “Farshot” Drakeson, Lord Mayor of Carinford-Halldon Frankie Drakeson is a retired rifleman and the current mayor of Carinford-Halldon in Mordent. He is married to Gwendolyn Drakeson, making him Nathan Timothy’s grandson by marriage. Jim Stearns is a deranged hermit from the swamps of Southern Illinois. In addition to writing for the Black Library, he puts pen to paper for High Level Games and Quoth the Raven. His mad scribblings can frequently be found in anthologies like Fitting In or Selfies from the End of the World, by Mad Scientist Journal. Follow him on Twitter @jcstearnswriter, or listen to Don, Jon, & Dragons, his podcast. Picture Reference: https://guardians-of-the-mists.obsidianportal.com/characters/baron-urik-von-kharkov  Editor’s note: There are always wheels turning here at High Level Games. I have been involved in a small handful of the many little projects we are undertaking. I have been creating new player character races for 5th edition, and have also released a small document on Time Demons. There are also one page adventures, and much much more coming to high level games. Help us grow by supporting our patreon, and get access to cool stuff! It’s a win win.
Ahh, magic items. Where would we be without them? Many DM’s love handing them out, others make their players work for them, but I think everyone who plays Dungeons and Dragons from either side of the screen finds magic items exciting. Whether it be by discovering items amongst loot, being rewarded for a noble quest, or even by prying it from the cold, dead hands of that orc warchief, magic items can be extremely memorable in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. If you’re like me, you’ve probably read the Magic Item’s chapter in the Dungeon Master’s Guide back-to-front. Or perhaps you’ve just seen your fair share of magic items in your experienced days of campaigning. Well here are ten new magic items which I have created using some niche and fresh recharge mechanics. 1) Brighteyes Item: Torch Topaz Charge (1): The yellow gem in the head of the torch glows faintly when it has a charge. An item regains all expended Topaz charges after spending one uninterrupted hour in sunlight. You can use an action and expend a charge to activate Brighteyes for up to one hour. For the duration, the wand sheds bright light for 100ft, and dim light for a further 50ft. While wielding the wand, you can end the light early as a free action. 2) Volthar, The Dark Blade Item: Longsword +1 Onyx Charges (2): The two black gems in the hilt of this weapon glow faintly when they have a charge. Expended charges are restored when this item spends four uninterrupted hours in darkness. When you hit a creature with this weapon, you may use your bonus action and expend a charge to deal an extra 2d6 force damage to the target. Then, you and the target swap places, teleporting to where the other just stood. This swap does not provoke opportunity attacks. 3) Ring of the Arcane Seal Item: Ring Jade Charge (1): The green gem in this item glows faintly when it has a charge. A spellcaster can use an action to consume a level 3 or higher spell slot to restore one expended charge. When you cast a spell of level 3 or lower, you may expend a charge of this item instead of expending a spell slot. The spell is cast at level three. 4) Ichor Bracer Item: Bracer (Requires Attunement) Ruby Charge (1): The red gem in this item glow fiercely when it has a charge. An item regains all expended charges after spending four uninterrupted hours in lava. You can activate a charge from this item as a free action at any time. When you do, you take 20 damage, which cannot be reduced. Then, you gain 8 strength for the next minute. This bonus strength can take you over any maximum strength limits. 5) Amulet of Resurrection Item: Amulet (Neck Slot) If the amulet has a charge when the wearer dies, they must roll 1d4. After that many rounds, they are resurrected by the amulet, consuming its charge. The wearer regains hit points equal to their hit-die size plus their Constitution modifier. They then must spend ALL of their remaining hit dice, regaining that many hit points. Then the target regains consciousness. Astral Charge (1): The white gem in this item glows faintly when it has a charge. A spellcaster can use an action to consume a level 9 spell slot to restore one expended charge. 6) Shrunken Head Of Telmashan Item: Shrunken Head Druids, Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards can use this item as a focus. Amethyst Charges (2): The purple gems in the eyes of the head glow faintly when they have a charge. Expended charges are restored after spending two uninterrupted hours in either a poisonous cloud or a poisonous liquid. When you cast a spell using this as your focus, you can expend a charge to cast it without requiring verbal or somatic components. (You must still have this item in your hand though) 7) Staff Of Magic Missiles (Reworked) Item: Staff (Arcane Focus) Passive: If you are a wizard, you learn Magic Missile, and always have it prepared. Furthermore, whenever you cast Magic Missile, the damage dice are increased to d6s. Sapphire Charge (1): The blue gem in the middle of this staff glows faintly when it has a charge. Expended charges are restored when this item spends one uninterrupted hour in water. You may expend a charge as an action to cast Magic Missile without consuming a spell slot. 8) Faey’s Crystal Flute Item: Flute +1 (Bardic Focus, Spell Save DC and Spell Attack Bonus increased by +1) Moonstone Charge (1): The white gem in this item glows faintly when it has a charge. An item regains all expended charges after spending one uninterrupted hour in moonlight. When you cast a spell using this flute as a focus, you can expend a charge to make a performance check. Your spell save DC for that spell is either the usual DC, or the performance check result, whichever is higher. 9) Wand Of Fireballs (Reworked) Item: Wand (Arcane Focus) Passive: You learn the Fireball spell, and always have it prepared. Furthermore, whenever you cast Fireball, the damage dice are increased to d8s. Ruby Charge (1): The red gem in the handle of this wand glows fiercely when it has a charge. Expended charges are restored when this item spends four uninterrupted hours in lava. You may expend a charge as an action to cast Fireball without consuming a spell slot. 10) Dragonward Shield Item: Shield +1 This shield increases your armour class by a further +1. Dragonward: You have a +2 bonus on saving throws against Dragon Breath attacks. Amber Charge (1): The orange sigil in this item glows faintly when it has a charge. Expended charges are restored exactly 24 hours after the previously used charge was expended. You can use a bonus action to expend a charge, to spew flames in a 30ft cone. All affected targets must take a DC:13 Dex Save, taking 5d6 fire damage on a failure, and half on a success. What are some of the most unique or memorable homebrew magic items that you have encountered in a Role Playing Game? Comment below! Peter is an avid dungeon master, role-player, and story teller. When he's not running homebrew campaigns, he is creating new worlds, or he is reading and writing fantasy stories, forever immersing himself in the gaping black-hole known as the fantasy genre. Picture Reference: http://mauiastrologyreading.com/power-gems-and-healing-2/ |
All blog materials created and developed by the staff here at High Level Games 
Click here to support our community for as a little as $1.00 for exclusive content, free downloadable stuff, and even discounts on role-playing game items.
Archives
April 2023
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
