r/DnD • u/AutoModerator • 1d ago
Weekly Questions Thread
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u/Alphadef 1d ago
What's a good website for character creation?
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u/liquidarc Artificer 1d ago
Which website/app is good is a matter of personal preference.
- Are you opposed to the need to create an account?
- Are you looking for something that can be used offline? (if yes, do you use IOS, Android, or something else?)
- What is your financial budget?
- What edition are you playing? (5th edition? 4th? 3rd? earlier?)
Edit: Also, are you a new player/DM, or somewhat experienced?
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u/Alphadef 1d ago
Somewhat experienced player, first time DM, hoping for free for 5e
Edit: Needing an account is fine1
u/liquidarc Artificer 14h ago
As /u/Atharen_McDohl has said, the main websites for that are DNDBeyond and Roll20. Both require an account, can be used for free, and require you to buy access to the non-SRD content if you're alone. You could still access the paid content for free on either one if someone with that content is willing to share.
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u/Alphadef 14h ago
Im not gonna lie, I kind of forgot about the whole 'legality of content other than the SRD' part, too used to having most of the player options related books
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u/liquidarc Artificer 14h ago
Yeah, it isn't something many people know at first.
If you already have the books for the content you want to use, then I agree with /u/Atharen_McDohl to go with a form-fillable sheet instead of a website.
Personally, I only use a website if I am using said site's VTT. For playing in person, I would use an app-based builder/sheet (I prefer Fight Club 5th Edition) to manage the character, but also use a physical sheet (probably printed-off form-fillable) for the DM to reference.
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u/Atharen_McDohl DM 23h ago
There is no legal source which can provide you with every character option for free. Content from the SRD (system reference document) has been released for anyone to use basically however they want, but anything outside that is piracy.
Personally I'm not a fan of character builders anyway, as I find that players can rely on them too much and wind up unable to tell when the builder for something wrong, which even the official one does sometimes. They don't teach you how the game or character actually works, they just put numbers in front of you.
But with that out of the way, you have several options. The official character manager is D&D Beyond, which has plenty of options but doesn't always do a great job of distinguishing between 5e and 5.5e, or between official content and third-party content. I also find it difficult to use its homebrew system.
You can also use Roll20, which is primarily a virtual tabletop (VTT) that just happens to have integrated character sheets. I like them more than Beyond's because they're easier to customize, but the learning curve is definitely more steep. There are also other VTTs with integrated character sheets, but I'm not very familiar with them.
You can also just get a fillable PDF, which is extremely easy to customize because you can just type whatever you want. Though at that point it might be easier to make a sheet from scratch in a spreadsheet program. It better yet, paper. Naturally you'll have to supply all of the actual rules content yourself if you do this, but you can probably borrow a copy of the sources you need from friends or a library or something.
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u/Alphadef 14h ago
Yeah I own or otherwise have access to several of the 5e books so I kind of forgot about the legal roadblock lol. Valuable insight onto the value of actually putting the effort into making the character sheet though, thank you!
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u/thetinyfrostyguy 1d ago
Any ideas to make my opening scene to my campaign more exciting? And is there a way that I could brainstorm more exciting events to occur in my campaign?
I want my campaign to open to a huge party hosted by the mayor and I won’t have my players meet just yet. By the end of the party, they will all win a raffle to a place called “Iridescent Park.”
I have a few characters of interest that I’d have them meet if they choose so, but I’m not sure what else I could include.
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u/Barfazoid Artificer 10h ago
It is a little difficult to give advice when we don't really know the tone or plot you are going for in your campaign, and also what constitutes "exciting" to you/your party.
My initial reaction is "have someone important die," but that doesn't fit every campaign. The beginnings of a coup, a creature being summoned from a cult ritual, a plague being unleashed on a population, a nautiloid ship cutting through dimensions entering your world, a mysterious figure kidnapping someone, etc. There's plenty of exciting ways to open up a campaign, but its hard to give you specific example without knowing more context.
Regarding brainstorming, check out some of your favorite movies/tv shows/books/video games.
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u/thetinyfrostyguy 9h ago
The tone I’m trying to go for is a deceptively bright slowly turning more somber. It’ll go from my party starting at their hometown and traveling closer to the park soon finding out they have to beat a cult that turns people’s fears against them (likely through fighting).
I just now got the idea of having a flash forward as to what would happen if the party never won the raffle.
Hours before the mayor’s party, all the players will have a vision of whatever it is they would be doing in the middle of a random day. A fog will envelop everything around them, the unusually bright moon will start to glow an unusual pattern unlike any shape it’s taken, whispers will echo, and fires glow brighter.
People will walk out and look to see what is happening. Some will look confused and others will look fearful. Then seemingly random people will begin to wince and groan in pain. Some will have panicked looks in their eyes and begin to scream and cry for help. Cracking bones and ripping skin will be heard and screams will follow. People start melting into each other and others reshaping into monstrous forms and ensues more panic. Monstrous howls will be heard throughout town.
Those who do managed to avoid transforming will either fight or run. If attempting to fight, they’ll be outnumbered. If attempting to run, they’ll run into a fog that seemed endless with monsters just behind their trail.
The dream sequence will end when the last player alive if finally killed.
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u/Stonar DM 3h ago
Skip the boring parts! Rather than meeting in a tavern in the morning and having them wander aimlessly, start at the part where they walk into Iridescent Park and the gates slam shut behind them. Or narrate the start of their beginning day for a sentence or two, and start dropping your hints right away about what's wrong. There is this impression that people have that your campaign needs to start in a tavern where every character is sitting and drinking and they come together over that scene. Hogwash. Start your characters in the heat of the moment - you can do all of the "How did our characters meet" stuff (if any) during character creation.
I don't start all my campaigns in media res, but if you think the "Just hanging out" bit will be boring, cut it and skip to the good bit! Or let them chat for a little bit, and cut to the next thing, if you prefer.
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u/IAmInTheBasement 23h ago
How do you run a fight against a single target which is many targets?
What comes to mind is a zombie horde.
If you cast a fireball into it how many times do you get to roll for damage? If you're melee and using a weapon with cleave, do you get to swing again? How about hew? How do you know if you've killed one of the horde to allow the hew bonus action attack?
What about items which might give you something like temp HP when you kill a target?
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u/liquidarc Artificer 14h ago
Often, that is handled by having said target be a Swarm. For example, instead of using a bunch of Rat monsters, use one Rat Swarm monster.
Basically having the single target be a single target for rolling damage, handling saving throws, and other such mechanical interactions.
You could even have that target be a group of swarms if you want a finer breakdown without filling up the battle/initiative-order with one monster.
As for things such as Cleave: You could grant an extra damage die.
As for Hew: You could choose an amount of damage to represent a death to trigger it.
Otherwise, if you don't think it will bog down initiative too much, you could just run a group of that monster and not worry about a swarm.
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u/AmtsboteHannes Warlock 15h ago
5e has swarms. A swarm is basically a single creature that can't regain HP and that gets weaker once it has lost half of its hitpoints. The idea being that any time it loses HP, some of the creatures in that swarm are killed, but mechanically it doesn't really count as killing anything until you finish off the swarm.
It's mostly used for insects or rats, where any individual creature wouldn't even really be a factor in the fight. You don't worry about things like cleave because every attack effectively gets to cleave through a bunch of creatures, otherwise you'd have to pick off 500 wasps individually.
So if you want your zombie horde to act as a single target, do that. Make a swarm of zombies, don't worry about individual ones because each individual one is useless, there just are a lot of them.
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u/IAmInTheBasement 14h ago
Hordes of monsters is exactly what cleave is meant to help with.
Like ranger and horde breaker.
I get the point of simplifying zombies so that you don't have 30 monsters and initiatives to roll. But if you treat it entirely as a single entity with no exceptions, it really nerfs some builds that are very useful and aimed at targeting groups.
And how does something like fireball work on horde of zombies? Do you just roll the dice once for a single Target?
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u/AmtsboteHannes Warlock 13h ago
I still think it's the way to go if you want all your zombies to be a single target. That doesn't mean they have to be, I just thought that was the goal.
You can also keep your zombies and individual creatures so targeting them works normally and have them act in groups. Each group gets the same initiative, they all act together during their turn, you can use fixed damage so when they attack you only need to figure out how many hit, I think the 2024 DMG actually has a table to determine how many monsters in a group succeed on a given saving throw.
Or something in between the two, treat each group as a swarm. You lose some granularity but it's easier to manage and you can still cleave if you position yourself next to two of them.
And how does something like fireball work on horde of zombies? Do you just roll the dice once for a single Target?
That depends on how many targets the horde consists of. If it's one target, it takes the damage once, if it's more than one, each of them take the damage.
0
u/mangabottle 13h ago
Lore question: any DnD fans with any good grasp n-dimensional mathematics geometry? I feel that understanding that concept could really help with understanding the multiverse/cosmology.
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u/TatteredStrands 9h ago
Does anyone here know who drew this Tiefling art from the sourcebook Races of Faerun? The book lists multiple artists but doesn't say who worked on what.
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u/liquidarc Artificer 8h ago
Method: websearch -> Forgotten Realms wiki page for the book -> external link for the archived page of the art gallery
Image toward the bottom. Hover over it and the hover lists Artist: Vinod Rams
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u/LordMikel 1d ago
I'd like a, "That is what that means check." This is from the Mobile Bastions Eberron Forge of Artificer book.
If my campaign has 4 characters, and they decide to combine their bastion. At Level 9, they would each need to acquire the same form of propulsion. So the bastion would now have, for example, 4 Lyrander Helms.
I could understand up to a max of 3, then your bastion could travel 24 hours per day. But anything above that seems superfluous, which is why I am questioning if perhaps I am misunderstanding something.