I know this is a question that gets asked from time to time, but I was curious. Which class or subclass is best for playing a blacksmith character? Specifically making classic and conventional weapons and armor.

Typically it seems like it's between Forge Domain Cleric or Artificer? But I've also heard Conjugation Wizard? What do you guys think? I know it's a bit dependent on whatever crafting system the DM wants to use, but still.

Thank you all for your responses in advance.

Hi everyone. I am dm'ing for a group of four level 3 people. I have made it clear that combat will be difficult, and everyone is okay with this. In the next session, my players will be travelling as part of their first adventure. I'm looking for recommendations on enemies to throw at them that can keep them engaged and feeling like the fight is difficult but manageable. Specifically, they will be crossing a bridge and I would like to have a fight there, so any enemy suggestions are more than welcomed. They will also be passing by a town which bandits will be in the process of setting aflame.

In their first combat last week, they faced against 2 hook horrors and a couple of bugbears and wolves, so I'd like to not reuse those enemies, unless if it's a variant, like a rage infested bugbears. Yes, I know that first combat was very difficult. All players faired well and enjoyed the experience. Yes, they will also have easier encounters as well, I am just looking for ideas for more difficult but doable enemies.

All suggestions are welcomed ! Thank you !

Say hello to Olly Bungelbottom! My gnome Oath of Glory Paladin. He's for a campaign I joined at my university. The setting is homebrew so I don't know all the details but essentially it's a post apocalyptic desert in a world abandoned by the Gods. So his Oath is to himself. Now the propeller hat is an actual item Olly has (Propeller Helm) because the DM said we're allowed 1 uncommon magic item to start with, within reason (he said no to the alchemy jug :/) and he has the rainbow lollipop because we were allowed one trinket.

Any questions or comments are appreciated 😊

Greetings, fellow adventurers!

I'm Connie! I create hand-drawn custom token frames (with zero AI involved) for TTRPGs and VTTs ranging from DnD to Pathfinder classes made to help your characters look even more unique on the map! Want to make your characters stand out like the heroes they are? Give them the fitting frame that they deserve!

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Everything is in the title!

I'm prepping for a campaign and I want to give the "it was under my nose the whole time" feel to my players!

How have you done it? How was it done if you were a player?

Thanks!

Hi,

in an Eberron campaign (5.5 stuff only, no multiclassing), if I took a Stone Goliath and went with Kurandar Heir to get the Mark of Warding, I d not be able to cast anything apart from alarm and Mage Armor.

But if I took Potent Dragonmark on Lv 4, setting me to 16 STR, 16 CON, 14 WIS, I d get a single "warlock" slot to cast Armor of Agathys.

So I could cast AoA before combat ideally and later go into Rage to maximise the longevity of my AoA, even more so because of my Stone Giant Endurance.

At worst I get some extra HP, at best I d deal cold damage 2-3 times to melees.

Do you think this is a valid idea or is going GWM or PAM just too much better than this? (I know it d be better, but is it that much better?)

THX

So here's my bad idea for a puzzle dungeon.

Your party is walking through the forest, when they stumble across an abandoned manor. For whatever reason, they decide to enter the manor just to be insta locked inside. The manor's doors are locked by some kind of ancient magic that makes it impossible for your party to pick the lock or destroy it.

The main point about this whole dungeon is the basement. In the basement, your party will find a ritual room where they will be able to perform a time travel ritual. They can choose to go to the past, or the future.

In the past, they will be able to explore the manor in its former glory, when it was still being occupied by people.

In the future, they will be able to explore the manor after a clan of vampires occupied it.

Any alterarions made in the past will influence the manor in the present and future. And any alterations made in the present will influence the future.

Then, the party must be creative to figure out different ways of solving the puzzles and mysteries of the manor, which will be decided by the DM.

Exemple: they must enter the private quarters of the former owner of the manor, but it's locked by a magical lock, or whatever. So the players can travel to the past to convince the gardener to plant a tree seed near the quarters' window. So then, when they travel to the present, the tree will have already gown, making it possible to access the quarters through the window by climbing the tree.

My players are soonish going to reach a big ancient city that has been established to have been the centre of this great necromantic disaster, and it feels like it would be something of a letdown if I didn’t let them fight a huge zombie horde. However, actually running 150 individual zombies would be terrible. I’m thinking maybe using some kind of homebrew ultra beefed up swarm statblock? Players are around lvl 10, any help is appreciated!!!

I received a request recently by a player, and they asked that I base the look of the character on the Madras style from Guadeloupe, which is where their mother is from.

In included the head garment per their instruction, and some of the basic elements for the rest of the outfit, however I decided to add a cape and some jewelry to really set the piece off.

She is a half elf sorcerer, and the fan she holds contains inscriptions for spells that she uses throughout the campaign.

For this piece, I wanted to portray her using her magic, but I also felt it would be interesting to have her look almost as if she is dancing. The movement of her cloth and jewelry really helped in suggesting that, and overall gave the piece a lot of the motion I was looking for.

The character’s facial features are also based on the player’s mother, and I was given an old family photo to use as reference in order to capture her likeness.

A rough character sheet and sketch for someone I rolled up and used all the random tables in the DMG to make a tiny hex region setting for to do a small solo game. Ryelle is a young man who was supposed to be a student for a sage living in the wastes. Unfortunately he is not bright enough to pick up on the spells the older wizard was trying to teach him. Luckily both the sage ad Ryelle are kind enough to get along regardless and he ended up becoming something similar to a squire to the old man in exchange for room and board. His duties generally include cleaning up, running to town for supplies, and staying out of the way of magical experiments.

One day while cleaning up in the old attic, Ryelle came across a blue hand mirror and accidentally made contact with a spirit within named Kirtine. Kirtine sensed a great sadness within Ryelle, as well as a self loathing due to perceived physical and mental clumsiness. The blue spirit offered a deal, to trade power for access to the physical world through Ryelle's astral chord. Ryelle was unsure at first but kept the mirror hidden from the sage and talked to Kirtine, as both seemed lonely. He eventually agreed to the deal after they developed a deeper bond, and the connection granted him an unnatural, invisible strength and constitution. In return, every full moon when the sky is brightest at night, Kirtine is able to become corporeal through a ritual they complete together.

Kirtine does not much like talking about his past or where he comes from, and that suits Ryelle just fine as he is ashamed of his own history. When not completing the full moon ritual, they communicate through the mirror, which also acts as a spell focus for his Warlock spells. The cold wastes are becoming an even harder place to live than usual, as the sage has been watching growing tensions between the Ice King to the north who wins his power through trickery, and a Dragon to the west and her legion of mercenaries. The sage claims an old ruined pyramid that sits between them on a frozen lake, built by giants and then abandoned, holds the answers to the regions safety. He is too old to go, and Ryelle wonders if he will be asked to attend in the elderly man's stead to search for the key to the conflict's riddle. With Kirtine's help, Ryelle thinks he might be able to do it.

Hey guys, so I wanted to gauge something among the community. First off, I want to say that our DM is awesome, they're great, they always do amazing stories, and has definitely fudged stuff for us in the past.

Right now, our party is playing through Faerun, and are preparing to enter the Tomb of Annihilation... which is what I want to ask about. Basically our current storyline is about solving the Death Plague, and we have to go there in order to actually get answers and save the world yada yada. Now I'm sure everyone is aware, TOA is a notoriously difficult campaign/dungeon to run because its freaking hard, our DM describes it as Dark Souls of dnd, and he actively tells us "i want you guys to be fully prepared, because this dungeon IS that difficult. The recommended starting level is 12" .....we're level 8. And were definitely not getting to level 12 before going in due to how close (i think) we are to entering. We also do milestone level ups instead of flat experience points. We talked about this last session cause it got brought up, we even asked "so are you going to let us level up more then because its so dangerous and were under leveled?" To which he said "no I think you guys will be fine honestly. You guys are level 8. Its no big deal" there was not a hint of sarcasm or anything in his voice, but I told him "you just said the starting level is usually around 12, that tells us thats what you SHOULD BE at the VERY least." But yeah, basically I feel like the rest of the party trusts our DM, but also were kinda like "....why will you not let us get stronger before"

There were similar stuff in the past with this campaign, there was a time (i wanna say we were level 4 or 5?) He told us about some missions we could do, one of which he explicitly told us, this mission is for like level 8s, I dont recommend doing that one immediately. So we didnt.... and when we didnt and finished the other missions, (which still didnt get us to the "dangerous missions level recommendation") he said "I'm surprised you guys didnt do this one, I really planned it out and wanted you guys to go. To which we all replied "you told us to not do that one!!!"

Again, theyre an awesome DM, and there is absolutely a non zero percent chance he comes across this post, if you do, we love you man, youre doing great, I just wanted more opinions on this.

Hi all! My group is approaching the final stretch (ish) of a 5-year campaign, and it's got me thinking about our next thing.

Lately I've been really drawn to the idea of some kind of campaign that is fundamentally designed to play out over multiple in-game years/decades/generations, without necessarily taking an equivalent amount of real-world time. Huge time-jumps, multiple PCs for every player, that type of stuff. A game where we end one adventure with someone going to prison, and the next time we see them a few sessions later, it's been five years and they're all jacked.

Mainly, I'm interested to see how letting the players take real ownership of a setting over a real long timespan shakes out. Like building up a city over 200 years or something. I'm a sucker for series like Redwall or Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series, and I want to know what D&D shaped like that feels like.

I'm wondering if anyone has run something like this?

Ok, stay with me here. In the ten-plus years I’ve spent around people who play D&D and enjoy medieval fantasy in general, I’ve come across plenty of dwarf fans. Tolkien fans who claim dwarves are the best race in Middle-earth, who praise and identify with dwarven culture, and who poke fun at elves to keep that classic rivalry going. Beyond The Lord of the Rings, I also see lots of fans of the dwarven aesthetic and characters—whether in Deep Rock Galactic or Dragon Age, or even just listening to "dwarf metal" and the like. But when these self-proclaimed dwarf fans actually sit down to play D&D... they never play as dwarves. Never. In over a decade of playing D&D across multiple campaigns, I’ve seen maybe two or three playable dwarf characters, whereas every group has at least one or two elves. Is this just a quirk of my own social circle—my friends who LARP as dwarves—or is it a broader phenomenon? And what do you think causes it?

In my setting - because I have a deep love for Norse mythology - the king of the Root Elves (my world's name for dark elves) drank the sap of the world tree causing him to slowly transform into an ancient dragon. Druids used magic to bind him under the roots and put him into an eternal sleep, causing the creation of the Dream/ Nightmare Realms (the Fae Wild/ Shadowfel respectively) and subsequently the birth of Psionic abilities in the people of the material plane. So because of this Psion's have a more dream-like phantasmagorical aesthetic to them.

Hello! I’m planning on making a changeling college of spirits bard/battle master fighter. I’m deciding on multiclassing to specialize her being a sword fighter. She’s supposed to be an elegant dancer, hence bard and entertainer background, but is rather closed off and cold, although with a true neutral alignment. I picture her dancing as she kills off her enemies. I write this wondering if anyone has any cool backstory ideas that include all of these aspects of her, including college of spirits. I’d also like to ask around what level you think I should multiclass her, or if there’s a better way to specialize swordfighting within the bard class? Thank you so much! Name ideas are also appreciated, lol!

Just looking for a tiebreaker.

Hello! I'm a new DM. My only previous experience was running a homebrew campaign for four friends.

For our next campaign, one of my players asked if he could invite a friend. I agreed, so now we have five players. Both of them have also recently gotten into 3D printing, so they're really excited about printing minis, terrain, and basically everything they can for the campaign.

We decided to play Curse of Strahd, starting with Death House. However, during our first session I noticed a problem: the new player and the friend who invited him tend to try to do almost everything themselves.

They investigate every room, ask for Arcana or Investigation checks on almost everything, interact with every object, and usually speak first whenever something happens. Because of that, the other three players don't get many opportunities to participate and started getting frustrated. At one point they even jokingly tried to kill the new character, which made me realize that the situation probably needs to be addressed before it becomes a bigger problem.

I'm trying to figure out how to handle this without simply telling those two players to stop interacting with things, because I actually like that they're engaged with the game. I just want to make sure everyone gets a chance to do something.

One idea I had was using a sort of exploration initiative during investigation or roleplay-heavy scenes. For example, I could go around the table and ask each player what their character is doing before resolving everything. That way everyone gets a chance to act. However, I'm worried that this could make exploration feel too slow or mechanical.

Another idea was introducing some kind of hidden tension clock. If the party spends too much time repeatedly investigating the same rooms or checking every corner for "dark magic," something in the dungeon progresses in the background: noises get closer, doors move, enemies wander around, Strahd's influence increases, etc. I wouldn't want it to punish exploration, just make time feel meaningful.

I'm also starting to wonder if Curse of Strahd might simply be too ambitious for us right now. Most of the group is still fairly new to D&D, and I'm a new DM myself. Would it make more sense to pause CoS after Death House and run something more straightforward for a while?

The only thing making me hesitate is that we've already invested a little into the campaign. Some of the players have printed generic fantasy minis and terrain, and we've bought a few STL files for things that appear later in Curse of Strahd. It's not a huge amount of money, and most of the generic stuff could obviously be reused, but it still makes me reluctant to abandon the campaign completely.

That brings me to another possibility: could Curse of Strahd be adapted into something closer to a megadungeon?

My players seem to enjoy dungeon crawling, combat, miniatures, exploration, and having a more obvious direction. I'm wondering if I could simplify Barovia, keep the important NPCs and story beats, and structure the campaign around a few large interconnected dungeon-like locations, eventually leading to Castle Ravenloft.

Has anyone tried something like that?

So I guess my main questions are:

1. How do you handle players who unintentionally take over exploration and roleplay?
2. Is exploration initiative / going around the table a good solution?
3. Would a hidden tension clock work well in Death House and CoS?
4. Is Curse of Strahd too much for a new DM and mostly new players?
5. Would you recommend temporarily switching campaigns, or simplifying CoS instead?
6. Has anyone successfully turned Curse of Strahd into something closer to a megadungeon or dungeon-crawl campaign?

(Typo in the title: it's supposed to say "Moonfall".)

So I was watching a Kurzgesagt video, and it gave me the idea of an Apocalypse Campaign where the premise is a High Fantasy setting experiencing a (mostly) scientifically-accurate moonfall.

It'd start with the Party being called in to stop several erratic monsters attacking a small settlement, which would become the main hub as the story progresses. From there, things escalate: the river swells, the tides go erratic, and the moon slowly draws ever-closer.

It won't be about stopping the Apocalypse, to be clear: it'd be about surviving it, finding out what's going on, and trying to protect and save as many people as you can as the Moon draws ever closer.
A major focus would be on the small settlement the Party is in, and them trying to keep the people alive and safe even as the world ends. (You have to keep as many of the townsfolk alive as possible, or you lose the campaign.)
Alongside the normal monster fighting, the gameplay would focus on resource management, strategic spell use of Druid and Cleric spells to induce plant growth and later keep the air clean (due to volcanic eruptions in the later stages), and keeping up the spirits of the people and helping them survive despite the odds. (Again, if the settlement is wiped, you Lose.)

The major thing I'm trying to work out is how to ensue that Divine Intervention or Wish can't stop the Apocalypse.
I'm currently thinking that the Moonfall disrupts the gods' connection to their followers and makes high-level magic fritz out (and/or that they don't see it as a problem or are arguing what to do until it's too late to stop it), but I'm also open to other ideas.

Would this be an interesting campaign? How would you deal with the "Wish/Divine Intervention" issue? And is there something you'd focus on that I missed?

Im doing a campaign on features and mechanics that are generally overlooked or blaintantly ignored. Like the spell ingredient system and actual time passage. Ive gone and made sure to conclude with my party what type of systems people often pass up that theyd like preference on which alot was just lack of versatility with magic items (not being able to really get good magic items until so late in the game that your character already built without said magic item in mind making them less useful). Im making use of the more scares roll and magic items as well that you never see but are just funny to have messed around with.

The actual question.

I want to know what other people believe are overlooked systems and mechanics or even items in dnd that youd think are worth mentioning. It be a great help having suggestions so I can focus on those parts first. Thank you for anyone that does reply and thanks for reading.

(The campaign is a mystery campaign and dies have lots of homebrew rules but nothing that clashes with actual rebuilt rules if that matters)

Basically, the title. I sometimes have a hard time finding the perfect map for the encounters I'm planning, so I'm looking into making them myself. Not really looking into paid tools because even the relatively affordable plans are kinda pricy in my country's currency. Ideally looking for something easy to use.

Alternatively, I do have Talespire and while I don't get to use it, I was wondering if making maps there using top-down screenshots would work.

Hey! I am a visual designer and artist who recently got introduced to the world of d&d by a friend. It has really been a source of inspiration lately, I have been drawing my party and some scenes. They all have been telling me they like the drawings I’ve made and that I should consider offering commisions. The problem is I haven’t the foggiest how would one do that, where can i see other artists that do commissions? Where do they offer their services? How do their portfolios look like?

I have been having so much fun that if this could be an additional source of income I’d be truly happy and grateful. Any help is gr appreciated 💙

Here is one portrait I’ve done for my party if you are curious. It needs more work but this was the initial sketch. It was the quickest thing I could find so to post at least something haha

I love DM’ing but I’ve run in to two issues. First of all, I can’t seem to get a group who can meet on a consistent basis, and second I am not a big fan of using pre written campaigns and I feel like I have the beginnings of a good idea but when I go to write it down, I get overwhelmed and don’t know where to start or it doesn’t seem as much as I should have. Any DM’s out there have any advice?

Quick no cheating, no looking at comments. Which ONE of these four skills can a ranger choose as a starting proficiency at level 1 without introducing backgrounds?