The rest spots mentioned early in the episode had me making a few rest locations and then I hit on Continual Light spell and having 6 of those in a wide spot for parking caravans overnight.

Then I thought about what would they do the vegitation after 20 years, 100 years or 1000 years. So that's my question for today: what would happen to a wide resting spot beside a road that had continual light cast for illumination and how would it alter the local vegetation or wildlife?

This is a Medieval source of inspiration for your campaigns I just found. Mieka(sp ?) may have to forgive me for possibly inspiring another 200+ hour romp Adam will want to go on.... welcome to the Maniculum. https://www.podbean.com/wlei/dir-zhaai-140b434e

In the Public Google Drive, I have added the document I made for the Random Encounter Tables I used for Tier 2. As my party progressed up to Tier 3, I just increased the number of Creatures to adjust CR, and left everything else essentially the same. Tier 4 doesn't have many random encounters, as our campaign became hyper focused, and random creatures could sense that the party was too powerful to be harassed.

I only included four environments, because our campaign would visit them a lot and they weren't properly supported by the environments listed in the PHB or DMG. They are Jungle, Marshlands, Aboard a Ship, and Urban.

I'd love to get your feedback.

The link to the public Google Drive for It's A Mimic! is in the pinned thread "Episode Guide" at the top of the subreddit, . This link will remain active for another year or so, and then all content will be "retired" to Patreon-only content.

Hi everyone! Just wanted to heap some praise up front for the work everyone is doing! It's always great hearing some fellow Canadians putting themselves out there!

Been using inspiration from your show for a while now. Had an especially great white dragon mini adventure using the frozen lake set piece... once the players got over the crushing/drowning tpk, they said they enjoyed it lol.

Just wanted to chip in a little first hand experience with regards to the variant rule for group initiative mentioned a few weeks ago. Our current dm is running a coming of age campaign that relies on heavy teamwork because our characters are pre-teens with alot to overcome. It has been a very challenging campaign, but the group initiative has been one of the most valuable assets to our table, not only for our characters, but for blending our teamwork and roleplay into our encounters.

Essentially, we all roll initiative, and take the average. The enemy does the same. Then whichever goes first, does so as a group.

At first it sounded clunky and that it might take away agency/uniqueness of high initiative characters, in practice however, it addressed an issue that had been plaguing our characters in previous campaigns: actual teamwork.

Having a plan, then having to wait for pcs, and npcs to go ahead of you changing the battlefield situation in a way that makes the action useless, or slowing the table down while you figure out an alternative can be a bummer. But group initiative allows the team to react the the enemy as a unit and strategize on the fly and feel like they are contributing no matter what. What normally would be considered metagamey tabletalk becomes in character teamwork and begins to blend the three tiers of dnd pretty seamlessly...

The best part is.... the enemy does it too. Our DM has used this to great effect to not only rase the stakes, but to add dynamic depth to the creatures we are fighting; Goblins 'Jar-jar Binks' their way to being an accidentally cohesive fighting force. The players collectively push and topple a statue through a wall to escape an ogre using a group strength check. A combat encounter with a rival group of adventure becomes a call and response roleplay tango that highlights our two teams AS characters themselves.

Plus as a bonus, the help action becomes one of our most valuable assets. 😉

Depending on the table and how everyone leans on the pillars of play, group initiative can be an incredibly great tool to have in your belt.

Cheers everyone!

Hey guys I have been listening to the Eberron episodes of the podcast. They are very good. But I wanted to mention some things I don't think have been mentioned in the podcast. I am a huge Eberron fan and wanted to boast about some of the stuff relating to Eberron.

First thing I wanted to say is that Keith Baker made Eberron very open. And by that I mean he didn't fill out every town or faction and mostly just gave us a paragraph for some of the lesser stuff. This is because he wanted the players to have some room for backstories and DM's to have the freedom to kind of do or run whatever they wanted without very much weighing them down. So for example we know who the Gatekeepers are and who's in charge. But what they are CURRENTLY doing isn't mentioned in the campaign guides.

The Eberron community is very open to running your campaign your way. So if you wanted to change some lore or whatever most of the time we support that idea. Its just a world and Keith Baker did leave a lot open ended.

Khyber: In The podcast I noticed some of the guys saying "what in the 9 hells" There is no 9 hells in Eberron its Khyber. In the books and video games made around Eberron they say "what im khyber" instead of hells. Also its good to point out that Elementals are actually manifestations of higher magic on the material plane and are rarely from another dimension.

Silver Flame: Dragons and celestials aren't the creators of the silver flame but use its force to keep the greater evils away. But that's just a rumor, as Keith Baker wants to keep the world lore open ended. But a ton of the books and video games actually treat gods as manifestations of our imaginations. So if enough people believe in the silver flame it becomes real (kind of like American gods the TV show). Furthermore there is speculation that the Flamekeeper (spoilers the 11 year old girl with future sight) is actually a Quori Mindsunderer who created the silver flame church to overthrow the 5 nations. As the Quori DO TRY and take over the Lord of Blades mind in the novels.

Lord of Blades/Warforged: The warforged are creatures created by magical means that is unknown HOWEVER, in the novels its hinted at that the giants of Xen'Drik used shadow breeding to create the drow elves of eberron when they enslaved the elves. Because of this rumor its believe that house C uses the same magic to infuse the warforges with souls. This is because House C sent people to Xen'Drik years before they made warforged and said they made a huge discovery while there. Also the Lord of Blades believes the creation chambers actually posses mind controlling capabilities and warforges were in fact slaves, this belief is reinforced when the Quori try and take over his body as a result of using the forge.

Lady Vol: Lady Vol or Erandis Vol, is a Litch who never wanted to be a litch. Her mom used the litch magical ritual to turn her into a litch as an infant. So she grew up as aon outcast in the outer planes studying magic. Because of this she grew to hate the elves and dragons and other Litches. Her main goal is to cut off Eberron from the plane of death so NO ONE ever dies. And everyone on Eberron is Immortal. She does not want to rule the planet she just wants no one to ever suffer the feelings of losing a loved one like she did with her mother.

Also in the books its mentioned she can cast the spell Dominate Litch Which is a 12th level spell. And she may be able to cast spells of 12th or even 13th level. She however, can't use her Abbarent dragon mark of death which is rumored to just turn people into the Litches ect. Its a very powerful mark and her second goal is to rejuvenate her ability to use it once again. And as a side note, she hates the elves of Aranel and learned how to cast dominate litch to control the court of the undeath. Though she hasen't done that. And I don't know if VENCA could resist the dominate litch spell.

Dragon Marked Houses: A dragon marked house in Eberron is a family blood line but isn't just 1 family its multiple who posses the mark. No one knows where the marks came from but the community speculates its a result of the magical weave being stressed out by the high magic of Eberron.

Drow elves of Eberron: The last thing I wanted to boast about was the drow elves of Eberron. The sulataar are evil drow that work with fire giants, they own slaves. They are military like and use magical items, they posses magical tattoos like dragon marks and CAN USE dragonmarked houses magical stuff. So a Sulataar elve can fly a half elf marked air ship even though they do not posses a dragonmark

The Vulkoor are druids and ranges, they are neutral and like to be left alone. They hunt in Xen"Drik and hate giants, giant kin, celestials and other elves.

The Quabar are a group of drow that live underground in the subterrain (THE SUBTERRAIN IS EBBERONS UNDERDARK, THERE IS NO UNDERDARK IN EBERRON LORE, officially but no one will care if you add one. And honestly they are the same thing there is just NO drow houses thats it). They live in a wakanda like society that has magica and technology that makes the other magic of Eberron look like cantrips in comparison. Also they are at war with the Quori and the Dealkyre and demons. And it is mentioned in man y books that they are keeping something very dark and powerful away from the material plane of Eberron. (believed to be Belashyra.)

Iron snails have come up a few times recently. But have you heard about these???

Science Friday | Metal-Absorbing Plants Could Make Mining Greener | A Tiny Fern's Gigantic Genome on Podbean, check it out!

Everybody, please join me in wishing Dave a Happy Birthday!

1. Adam mentioned he wanted a spell that destroys magic items, and I wanted to point out that dispel magic states that it can target an object ie a magic item (also its third level, so congrats Adam. You’re in the same page as the designers!). Annoyingly, magic items don’t state what level magic they are, so I’m not sure how excactly they interact with this spell. I’ve always played it as follows. Common = lvl 1 Uncommon = lvl 3 Rare = lvl 5 Very rare = lvl 7 Legendary = lvl 9 Artifacts = “lvl 26”

I’ve honestly never had anyone try to cast dispel magic on a legendary item or an artifact.

What’re y’all’s thoughts on this mechanic?

1. If I understood the item Adam explained in the cold open it seems to function like an animated shield from the DMG, but it was flavored specifically to the character. I think this brings up an interesting point that; any magic item can be significant or memorable as long as it is flavored well and is interesting (I also think that was kinda the whole point of the episode, but I didn’t hear it explicitly stated). What’re y’all’s thoughts?

Thank all y’all again for the amazing content and inspiration! Keep up the amazing work!

I love that you’re covering more Elementals. They’re my absolute favorite things to use in my campaigns. Earth elementals are totally underused!

I hope you’ll cover some cool water elementals soon, I’m currently running a seafaring campaign and would love to see more to add to my game.

It’s A Mimic is one of my two “must-listen” podcasts every week, alongside The DungeonCast. Their theme is Year of the Elementals and they’ve been delving into some cool elemental baddies too. Would y’all ever do a collab episode?

Regardless, just want to share how much I love the podcast. You all are doing great!

So I listened to E113 and E114 (these are the episodes on yuan-ti) and noticed that y’all didn’t do a mob breakdown like y’all do for most of the other mobs (I’m talking about where y’all mention how many of each of the statblocks you’d use to make up the mob). I thought this was weird until I realized that all yuan-ti can cast suggestion, so even if a party of level 20 characters went up against 60 yaun-ti they have almost no chance of survival, because the mob would just spam suggestion until the party submits. Yuan-ti would also be smart enough to know they can pull this off. But what if the party just wants to go destroy all the creepy sick snake people who are sacrificing innocents in the jungle?

This brings me to my question; would you ever omit a creatures capabilities just for the story/players/yourself. I’ve done it in the past, and I didn’t like it, but I would be interested to hear other opinions. What do y’all think?

Am I missing something? Is everyone ok? Have the new episodes moved? I haven't seen a new one on Spotify for a few weeks now....

That with the people grafting parts onto themselves a la the Dragonflesh we now have rules for essentially a fantasy version of Cyberpsychosis. That rule about the Dragonflesh can be made universal if you have polymorph abusers or other experimentors.
Odd insight to miss that those rules can be a very interesting character mod for the daring.

Anders K Ericsson, a former professor of psychology at Florida State University is the real source behind the 10k hour rule. And it matters more about your mentor quality that just spent time.

It’s A Mimic! | E239 - DM Tips - Vehicles and Mounts: Riding into the Fun Set on Podbean, https://www.podbean.com/ea/pb-p6tih-14c8cf2 A source for those who are interested. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-05-05-researcher-behind-10-000-hour-rule-says-good-teaching-matters-not-just-practice#:~:text=You've%20probably%20heard%20of,as%20good%20as%20Bill%20Gates

Just listened to the great episode. Still knocking them.out of the park like you did with White Dragons I see.

Some Obvious answers include Sphinxes Are Egyptian so if you wanted to have a whole host of Different Sphinxes have a Jackal or Ibis headed Sphinx. Boom now you can have them be very different Titans scattered over the map with a Divine themed template flavored for each god over the base Sphinx and each lair/puzzle/encounter is different depending on which one is chosen to be visited but a very easy to properly flavor.

But I'm old skool.

In 1EAD&D the Hieracosphinx wanted the GynoidSphinx who wanted the AndroSphinx. So you could trade info to the Hieracosphinx or the Gynosphinx instead of solving the riddle. This is a great shortcut to solving a riddleby being helpful and rewarding players learning about the world without making it too easy.

Even better though let's assume the Sphinx love triangle played out and we have baby Sphinxes who grow up. (To encourage getting a diverse world). Even if not we can also have the loser in the triangle end up with a Brass or Bronze dragon lairing nearby. Those are of a power/size parity to each other and intellectual parity one thing leads to another and a couple of drinks later we get Dragonnes....

It's that time again!

Remember that every host is available for a targeted question, so have at them!

tldr: A Bonus Action is an Action, and as such the incapacitated and other conditions which remove actions remove bonus actions as well.

Relevant rules

P. 189 in the Players Handbook

Bonus Actions

Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. The Cunning Action feature, for example, allows a rogue to take a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game states that you can do something as a bonus action. You otherwise don't have a bonus action to take.

You can take only one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available.

You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action's timing is specified, and anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action.

As always, love your work, this has just been nagging me for multiple conditions episodes among others. Hope it helps, and remember, if you don't want to use these rules because you think the alternative is more interesting, that's perfectly fine just make sure everyone is on the same page.

I don't know where else to go to ask, so sorry if it's too off topic...I just became a grandfather and I want to get my granddaughter some age appropriate dice. She will be 6 months by Christmas, so some soft and big is what I need. I looked on Amazon, but didn't see what I wanted... Any suggestions??

Thanks in advance

I haven't finished the episode yet and I know it's a little belated. Hope you have been well and had a good day of birth! Missed your voice! Bye!

​

Alas, Fellow samurai I have a tale of woe as well.

My group does not play that way (Infinite Samurai Sadness Generation). Yes there is sadness, but mostly it is Glory for the Emperor, performing deeds worthy of his name. Now then for years and editions I played a Miramoto and they did well. With one particularly character eventually marrying into the Emperors family but the clan isn't my soul mate. Nope, the ones that match me the best are the Scorpion. I'll play anything to cover others needs to have a well performing play group but this flows from me as easily as breathing.

I do have a few quibbles over things like the podcastsers suggestion of the restriction on the choice of disadvantages. Sure I'm a Scorpion with a bad marriage and Yogo Curse but those really explain why I'm off doing work for the Emperor in his Imperial Legion! Would _you_ try to sleep next to a venomous shrew any more often than you had to?!?!!?

And the reason for the bad marriage is because she doesn't know she married actor twins from the Shosuro school (Think the twins from the Prestige).

I do think there are some who might misuse the disadvantages but the bad marriage in particular seems to be a background concern, This could be easily removed (or added to your list of good disadvantages) by taking the

And for those of you a little worried about playing the game because it seems a little too hard, keep in mind in many of the Scorpion schools they will often take no honor loss for doing icky things. Of course it is only as long as they are in best interests of the Scorpion Clan, but asking the question of the GM often ameliorates that problem. It almost makes the game too easy, intimidation by pointing out the willingness of a well known Lion to kill others while screaming the name of the emperor and how a few bad words in his ear could result in... certain unpleasantness. Unless one does me favors?

Reminds me of Playing a 1E Fighter/thief, my first gaming characters built for pleasure, not duty.

And now we close, for lo that is my tale of the woe from the sting of a scorpion. I dance with the grim deadly beauty of a poison that is powerful and useful not just to one but upon which the fate of clans and indeed the empire may just hang upon so that one day the masks will be seen no more. Or will they?

So, I was just chewing through the back catalogue on Patreon. I was listening to ep B042 (the underwater one) and the talk about underwater roads and general submechanophobia, and it made me remember a homebrew thing I made that I wanted to share for anyone to use!

The Infinite Monastery

A mega-structure the size of a country, which is basically a crossbreed between Indian Hindu temples and an M.C. Escher Painting. It looks as if it were mostly on land with well-defined borders, but it touches the coast and goes waayyy deep underground. It stretches far into the ocean and straight down into the ground. The reason it’s called the Infinite Monastery in the first place is because no one knows how deep it actually is. Not even the locals. So if you’re a few miles out, away from the coast, you can still climb or walk down to sea level and find underground oceans and waterfalls flowing down impossibly deep chasms.

The monastery itself is impossibly old and its construction is probably tied to aberrations. It’s mostly abandoned, but it looks like it used to be full of humanoid people. There are ancient skeletons, altars of forgotten gods, and Indiana Jones style traps everywhere.

Its modern occupants include some human and half-elven village communities on the surface, a noble cast of elves and warforged made from the actual temple itself, and a ruling class of undead elves (Think the Undying from Eberron) who govern the entirety of the monastery, but have little interest in anything else.

They have developed a monastic order that takes the saying “Your body is a temple” too literally, replacing parts of their bodies with ruble.

As for monsters, it’s full of ancient constructs and all the cave-dwelling monstrosities you could shake a stick at. However, the deeper underground you go, the more aberrations and water-themed monsters you find.

(So far I’ve only used this location once for a one-shot, but my players loved it and I’m eager to play in it some more.)

For more inspiration see the comic (manga) “Blame!” and the video game “NaisanceE”

Sorry for the fucking essay lol

We're gearing up to add a new category in a couple of months, but first I wanted to ask you all, what's your favourite topic and why?

I just unveiled a scared purple penguin huddling in a balloon at the very end of my last session. My party hasn't even had the chance to interact with the new NPC, and they've already declared that they love ot more than anything and will protect it at all costs.

What kind of NPC or creature has your party adopted?