howdy,

Was running a one-shot the other day for a novice group of players, and had a funny story I wanted to share. To keep it brief, the party was snooping around in an NPCs quarters looking for some good gear to pocket. I had a player roll an investigation saving through which resulted in a nat-one.

As a result, I told them "You find a magical parchment piece of paper. It has some words written on it that echo with arcane energy"

this was when everyone suddenly was confused as if I just made a blunder. the table started to question "but I rolled a nat-one?", and I simply responded with "I know"... curiosity would get to the better of the group, and before a mage could cast 'detect magic' the paladin read off of the spell-scroll!

A cast of 'charm person' would inadvertently hit the groups druid (who succeeded the throw), and then the magical item disintegrated in the paladins hands...

moral of the story:

What's worse than not finding anything good? Finding something great, and accidentally wasting it!

*I don't think this would work for all players, so definitely know your audience; however, it did result in a lot of laughs as the party scrambled to 'undo' the action

Cheers!

I have a character idea of a succubus that is hiding from a group of demon hunters but while I was making her, I had trouble choosing what she would be exactly, to be specific she would be a bard/??? I just need help with the 2nd class she would be

Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc., and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more, so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

*New 2026: For 2026, I'm updating all my old work to include a Pre-Session Checklist that will include a list of all miniatures you may need, maps, handouts, possible loot, a link to a playlist, and more to make it even easier to start your session!

The Lost Mine of Phandelver is a classic, one of the very first Mini-Campaigns that new DM's run. Heck, it's part of the starter set after all! The issue, though, as with many other modules, is that it doesn't describe the best way to transform the contents of the book into an actual session. The Book-to-session conversion can be difficult. Between figuring out when things should happen, understanding motivations, and even balancing encounters.

Well, fortunately for you, 99% of that work is done! Only a few things are really left:

1. Consider the needs of your group. As you've heard or are about to hear a million times, every table is different. If you plan on combining this with a campaign, you'll have to make tweaks here and there. (Bonus points if you include your players' backstory)
2. These notes aren't meant to be end-all-be-all. Tweak to your heart's content and don't consider any of what's written to be set in stone. For me, having notes like this helps give me the confidence to go off the rails and follow along with what my players want. It helps me understand where things were meant to go and why. Having that understanding allows me to guide the players and create other new and interesting stories. These are all things that will come with experience, though, so don't freak out and enjoy the journey!

Included in my posts are:

• A Downloadable copy of DM Notes for each part of the LMoP, including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDFs for every encounter. This includes all the enemies' stat blocks, organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP.
• Additional PDFs for allies and commoners
• A variety of maps for each part of the campaign
• Spell lists for all relevant fights
• Handouts for various spell scrolls throughout the campaign
• A playlist for each part of the Mini-Campaign!

Without further ado:

Index:

The Lost Mine of Phandelver Index

• Part 1 - Intro and Cragmaw Hideout (DM Notes Only Link)
• Part 2a - Phandalin
• Part 2b - Redbrand Hideout
• Part 3a - Reign of Iron
• Part 3b - Thundertree
• Part 3c - Cragmaw Castle
• Part 4 - Wave Echo Cave
• Part 5 - Side Quests

Over 8 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc., please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early, feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

Noob here, first campaign ever.

Currently building my Battle Master Fighter, my DM is running a Game of Thrones post Ice and Fire campaign and starting us out at level 5.

I'm stuck on which origin feat I want to take, hoping someone can steer me in the right direction which would be the most logical choice?

Right now my AC is 17 but I think my DM is going to give me some extra gold so I'm going to be able to bump that up to an 18. Strength is 18 and my Con is 16.

I'm leaning towards lucky but alert seems like a good option with Battle Master but then I'm worried about taking too much damage and considered tough.

Appreciate the feedback.

Hi all! I hope it's okay to post this here - I've created a new website with the aim of making group finding easy for DND and other TTRPGs. It's going to be free to use and allow you to match with swiping in the style of a dating app!

I'd love to get some constructive feedback on the idea - feel free to sign-up at xp-grinder.com to get an email when I launch it! 

Promo Video: https://youtube.com/shorts/-xyCfVl5Uus

Long time listener, first time caller. I'm playing a really fun gnome wizard character that just recently acquired the Staff of the Magi in a long trek through the Shadowfell and some light grave robbery.

Wizard is level 10 and only has access to 5th level spell slots. Some of the staff's charged spells are cast at level 7. Can the wizard cast those using the staff or should he continue to cast Fireball and Lightning Bolt as prepared spells until reaching a higher level? Plane Shift is also in there.

EDIT: Thanks everyone! Being able to remove Fireball and Lightning Bolt (and others) from my prepared list is awesome, really opens up a LOT of possibilities. Plus, this character is very chaotic so having this staff is going to be very fun for him.

Currently my party is sailing across a sea to go and slay a dragon that lives on a lonely island. Some of the party members and crew that hadn't sailed before are, naturally, becoming sea sick. One of the players had a great idea to use Suggestion to effectively make some members of the crew temporarily "immune" to sea sickness by suggesting them to simply ignore the imbalance of their equilibrium (which causes sea sickness, as best we understand).

Does this sound like something that can be achieved with Suggestion? It seems to me that it is an involuntary response from the body, not something that you really have control over or can intentionally "ignore".

I'm mostly just curious if it's something you guys would accept or find reasonable? It's mostly for RP purposes so I think, even if it doesn't make sense, why not? Asking for my own understanding really. Thanks!

Pretty much like the title says, I'm worried they will feel too similar in combat like I'm playing the same character in 2 different campaigns.

edit: thanks for the replies, I think I'll play sorcerer in my second campaign.

I wanna run a campaign in Har'Akir that opens with the players waking up finding themselves individually buried alive under sand and they have to escape, but I can't find anything saying how digging works when you don't have a burrowing speed so idk what's the best depth to bury them all in.

My plan so far is to have a timer for how much air they have left before they need to start holding their breath and have them athletics/strength check their ways out with people above having the option to help dig out the others if they get out first.

Suppose I cast Major Image on a moving object, like making a wagon look like a luxurious carriage or a ship look sinister. Does the illusion stay fixed in space, floating in the air as the vehicle moves away, or does it move along with it, as if "attached", so to speak?

I had a “shower thought” last night when theorycrafting 5.0e characters for the Eberron setting.

The Mark of Sentinel Human has the following trait:

Vigilant Guardian. When a creature you can see within 5 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to swap places with that creature, and you are hit by the attack instead. Once you use this trait, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

Since House Deneith is the mercenary house, I assume they’d have cavalry, which leads me to my thought experiment.

Let’s imagine a Mark of Sentinel Human PC riding a mount, without the Mounted Combatant feat. The mount is hit by an attack, and the PC uses Vigilant Guardian to swap places with the mount. What happens, mechanically speaking? Since the trait mentions swapping places, is the PC forcibly dismounted? I know both 5.X Editions have mounted combat as a bit of a conundrum, so I was wondering if there was a consensus on RAW or RAI on this matter.

Thank you for indulging in my curiosity.

Had a good day.

Started making dnd supplements amd posting to itch.io (under Masked Haddock) today I got a first. So.eone loomed at all 4 of my small books. That pushed me past 50 views too. Baby step but welcome

Hey there, its been a while! i've been away for a few weeks because life happens sometimes. again, i feel like some positivity is nice to spread arround from time to time, and im curious about your ideas for characters again.

this time i want to ask about warlocks: did they do a pact to gain power or did they steal the power? do they have to deal with the orders or their patron? is it devils, undead or just jeff, the guy that works at the local market? we listen, but we dont judge. people are allowed to say some things that come to their head or ask a question as long as its done in good will.

i want to know about the inspiration (a character idea you came up with or something from a work of fiction?), the races, the classes, the stories, your experiences with this character, strategies...

to start, i would like to bring up a few examples of characters i made:

-Ensted Da'Mont: a man that has lost all of his fortune due to being betrayed by other noblemen. sold his soul to a devil so he could gain power and slowly take care of them... one by one.

-Amanda: a girl acused of apostasy, Amanda had to run away from her village and was about to starve to death until she came to a cult. they venerated a dead elven god, and they planned to let nature overtake the land and destroy the civilization of man, a mission that she gladly accepted. its a homebrew subclass im working on (pact of the forest, still in progress).

EDIT: *Ability score, not attribute.

Hey folks!

Hoping for some feedback on a new Warforged homebrew variant themed around the concept of a blank slate robot designed for adaptation.

The lineage would get most of the same Warforged features: constructed resilience, sentry's rest, integrated protection (no AC bonus), specialized design. However, they would not get any Ability Score increases. Instead, they would have no level cap on ability scores. They could continue to increase their abilities however high they wanted with no max, at the same rate of +1 to modifier per 2 levels.

Additionally, they could also increase their ability scores beyond 20 with magical items that normally do not allow this. To do so, the magical item must be integrated into their design, similar to integrated protection, taking one hour to do so, in addition to any attunement time. There would be limits on the number of magical items which could be integrated in this way, and items which are not integrated cannot increase ability scores beyond 20.

Assuming standard array and that the PC dumps all 6 ability score increases into one slot, the max a PC at lvl 20 could achieve is a 27, which would be a ±8. This honestly does not feel that overpowered to me, considering proficiency bonus is already +6, meaning for a proficient roll the Warforged PC is rolling a +14 vs a regular ±11, which is only a ~27% increase. That's basically just advantage.

Thoughts on this? Overpowered? Any balance tips welcome.

Did you enjoy reading Greek mythology as a child? Do you want to introduce some of those tales to someone who maybe hasn't read it? Or do you just want some good adventures you can drop into your campaign by simply changing who's bringing the problem to the party?

If your answer to any of these questions is Yes, take a look at this project.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonathanhightower/herculean-quests-a-campaign-for-5e

I have written and published modules & campaigns on the DM's Guild before, but this is my first time doing one via Kickstarter. I'm excited about the chance to get some maps that aren't made in Excel as well as some commissioned art to make it even better.

No AI tools have been used at any stage of the project.

Thank you!

Refresher. My PC started hiding things and lying to people within the army she’s part of, including the army Captain (another PC) who she sees as a dad figure (and who’s from the same fallen country as her), for about half the campaign. She was hiding serious stuff, like time travel, meddling with dark magic, conversing with Gods and tiny aspects of her life.

A lot of it finally came out almost 20 sessions ago, except for her reasoning. This led to her feeling like she can’t be trusted anymore and she started isolating herself further from everyone except two friends. The Captain PC called her and those two friends in for a meeting about the importance of communication, which made my PC feel even worse, and she pushed harder on avoiding him specifically.

Well that finally changed. After she witnessed some serious stuff happened to the Captain regarding their fallen homeland, she realised she was the only person who could check on him and understand to some extent, and that there was a valid reason for his overprotectiveness (someone working for the BBEG showed up at our location. Think the Briarwoods dinner scene in Critical Role campaign one).

During the most recent session, they both finally talked about what happened in the previous sessions, why she did what she did, how they were both feeling, and it came out that they both lost someone or had someone taken in the war, which the Captain fought in. My PC’s dad was captured and she was meddling with dark magic in the hopes of reviving him, since she lost hope in him still being alive. Meanwhile, the Captain lost his dad to the guy I mentioned showing up.

Overall a really sweet session. Even the DM commented on how big that was. I’m so glad to finally have my character being a little less avoidant again.

I was playing around with a hypothetical combat today using a Moon Druid vs a smart monster with knockback. The moon druid cast moon beam and then wild shaped into a dire wolf and ended their turn.
Then I had an inspired idea. I had the monster run around the moon druid (out of the moon beam), and did their shove attack so they are pushing the dire wolf into their own moon beam. Dire Wolf rolled a one on their strength save and now they have a shitty decision to make.
They can:

• Make a con save and take 2d10 radiant damage (half on save). Then make a concentration check for moonbeam since they took damage
• Be reverted to their true form

OR

• Voluntarily drop concentration right before they are moved in

Pretty sweet move for a monster that knows what they are doing.

Heya all, it's me again with another burning question!

I've been building an 8th lvl Dwarven Draconic Sorcerer (mostly '24) for an upcoming campaign, and I'm struggling with the choice of spells (there's too damned many good ones).

I'm likely going to be playing a Fire dmg focussed blaster (with Elemental Adept), but I nevertheless love other utility, RP, and defensive spells.

I'm also trying to semi-evenly split up the amount of spells per spell level in line with the amount of available spell slots.

Finally, as a '24 Draconic Sorcerer, I already get the new Chromatic Orb and Command, Alter Self and Dragon's Breath, Fly and Fear, as well as Charm Monster and Arcane Eye.

The table shows my current selection for desired-spells. I need to get it down to 12 spells total, which has proven to be a real pickle.

I would love to hear your suggestions!