What are /r/DnDBehindTheScreen's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Here's 1100+ of them (unorganized)

EDIT: This is built into my app RPG Companion under the NPC generator section, although there is only a chance that an NPC will get a title.

Let's look at the spells a Transmuter would have.

Alter self: this one is pretty easy. If you can turn into a fish, what better way to keep other people out of your house than having the opposite of an airlock, inside of which only fish can survive? It also makes water-based traps trivial to overcome. Heck, if you want a good boss battle, have him laugh maniacally, flood the room, and turn into a shark. Underwater combat sucks, especially if the water goes all the way to the ceiling...

You should have small things which have been enlarged, and large things which have been shrunken. Put stuff in bottles! Let them realize that it wasn't painstakingly assembled in there, but done with magic. Holy crap, why is there a copper piece the size of a horse?

Feather fall! This is their bread and butter. You want a memorable last encounter? The wizard's shtick is now pushing people out of windows and gently floating down after them, probably shooting magic missiles all the while.

I would consider having nontraditional methods of moving between floors. The wizard uses rope trick, and spider climb, or levitate. Let the party figure out how to get around that.

Their jam is controlling the battlefield. Shape Earth! Control Water! Slow! Stone Shape! By the time the party gets to them...well, for one, he'll probably know that they're there, so there's lots of time to prepare. For another, high-level wizards have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves. He's not going to stand in a room and let them beat him to shit. I don't even really understand why he'd stand his ground once he was low on health, to say nothing of polymorphing and giving up the biggest advantage that they have (which is spellcasting). Make the PCs work to keep their foe in place.

i am going to save this for later thanks!

i currently do it in such a way expecting a character to die. I have all rolls visible in roll20.net so i can't fudge numbers at all. if a player dies it dies with the normal 5e rules. I tell the players before the game starts they can have up to 3 characters made that level up with the milestones the same time the player does.

i tell the players i just need to know how they know each other, family, friends went to bard college together....so if a player dies and can bring in a new character easy. because main party knows each other so well having a dead fighters sister wizard come in to help out is fairly believable.

your way seems to be a lot less work on the players end. I may change things up next time

If you don't want to be locked in to the Microsoft system and would rather self-host and own your own data, trilium is a powerful note-taking application with plenty of features. It does require some technical expertise to self-host applications but you can also run it on the desktop via downloading an executable (so it's just like a regular program).

Ditch Microsoft and check out Obsidian. It's a powerful, yet simple, way to create a knowledgebase. It's free, and it's file system based. That means you can use google/dropbox/one drive, etc to sync your notes. You can also pay for Obsidian's syncing service if you don't like those other services.

It is a desktop app, but they've just released their mobile app. I even use it as a player to make a wiki for my fellow players based on what we know.

There's a ton of user mods, but for D&D, the vanilla feature set works perfectly out the gate.

> What's the key to effectively scheduling with a group of more than 4 players?

Others have covered the "find interested players, run an interesting game" aspect.

I'll add that an easy scheduling tool has proven very helpful. I've used free Doodle surveys (https://doodle.com/free-online-survey) a bunch. That way the DM can say "I'm available on these ten days next month, from X to Y time" and each player can just jump in and quickly click which dates they can attend. When the DM sees a critical mass the DM emails/texts/etc the group and locks in the next game date(s).

An alternative method that has worked in my groups is finished each session by trying to schedule the next session. Phones out, calendar apps open, sort it out in a few minutes and commit to it.

Lastly, a great system I've used as a player and DM is to make it very clear that "if the majority can make it, we're playing." If 3 players from a 5-6 player group can make it, game on. Trying to find a date where every player can attend is too much work. Majority rules.

Yes, I can copy it and set the copied version to public. Here ya go.

Thanks! It's really, really handy.

EDIT - I should note that this board incorporates a couple homebrew rules, such as "passive arcana" and some bits about magic items to reflect how I handle them in my games.

Thanks for sharing.

Michael Ghelfi is awesome. He just recently allowed me to integrate his ambient music into my Android App DnDify. It already has 50+ background music themes, but was lacking ambient noise.

His music will be added with the next update.

As an aside, I can't recommend Overleaf enough. It's a great cloud based LaTeX environment. If you like the idea of LaTeX but feel a bit overwhelmed by the idea of getting it going, Overleaf is for you!

https://www.overleaf.com/

I started to compile my own MTG Monster Manual but I stopped abruptly here it is if it gives you any inspiration. My favourite setting is Innistrad fits with the meta that I'm currently enjoying Dark Souls, Curse of Strahd and the new Shadows over Innistrad reinforces this.

It's just a way for me to share free stuff without worrying about someone taking it and then publishing it for profit.

They provide a lot of different licenses for sharing free work. The one I'm using basically says:

• You can use this content for free in your games.
• If you republish it somewhere for free, you have to credit me.
• You can't use it for a commercial purpose, i.e. for profit.
• If you make something based off of it and publish it, you have to let other people use it under these same conditions.

If you aren't familiar with Creative Commons you can check out their site at https://creativecommons.org.

The detailed version of the mentioned license is here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Or you might take a nap

Who knows how many all-day marathon-style D&D games would go well with a nice half hour downtime break?

Well, I would argue that killing a demon of regret doesn't eliminate regret itself from the world; you killed an embodiment of the concept, not the Platonic Form/concept itself. But what you have done is destroy an agent which actively spread regret and made the world a worse place because of it.

I would personally use these as ways to make the plot-significant demons far more interesting than "yet another Babau/Balor/Pitfiend/etc." Veteran players who fight a cult trying to summon something into the world normally don't hear whatever description the DM offers; they hear "Let's break out the silver/cold iron weapons again and get swinging." Adding the sort of description proposed above breaks that normalcy and makes the scenario interesting again.

Honestly, this is almost like an adaptation of the 16 HP Dragon. By making the fiction exciting, important, and interesting, the demon gains a sense of scale and awe-fulness that no mechanic will ever give. Cause let's be real, which is scarier: a balor, or Mallus, the Inevitable End (who happens to use an awfully familiar stat block, with maybe a couple of tweaks)? Which would you rather fight as a player? Whose evil plan seems more important to thwart?

That's my 2 cents, anyway.

Pacing is definitely top for engagement. Recently I had a discussion about engagement in another Reddit board. Some players also want to point out that we don't all need to be fully engaged 100% of the time. It's okay to slip a little.

I develop an app on Android for music, loops, and sound effects to set ambiance. It helps with engagement too, I find. Players feel the mood more and are excited by the sound effects when something interesting is happening. It's free, so check it out: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.highfantasysoundboard

Just letting you know /u/bezoing , your link is leading to a dropbox folder with logo (leading the way, 30 years anniversary). I think you wanted to paste something like portify (https://github.com/rckclmbr/pyportify) or stamp (https://freeyourmusic.com/move-from-spotify-to-google-play-music.html) ?

I wasn't filling in context for him, and it's not intellectually bankrupt. It's a common narrative concept (at least in writing) I was explaining, as you seemed to have misinterpreted what it meant. And it's generally thought to be good advice. Wikipedia research says Hemingway and Palanuik were proponents of it, and I believe Stephen King talked about it in On Writing. As to your comment about a 1000 years of experience, professional whatevers have to remind themselves of basic concepts all the time. Back to On Writing, Stephen King discusses at length how adverbs should be avoided. In a different section he writes a first draft of something and shows the editorial process. He has to cut out adverbs that he absent-mindedly put in. It is a concept which certainly applies to Dnd, and can relate to OP'S question, in a peripheral way. By saying 'show, don't tell' he meant that OP should be showing evidence of the villians history, rather than giving the players a 5 page exposition dump. An accent from a particular reigon, rather than just saying hes from there. It's fair advice to give. It doesn't answer OP'S question, because his was about giving the player more info than the character, but it far from an intellectually bankrupt fortune cookie platitude.

Unless things are really weird, I highly doubt the city guard would hit a downed opponent with intent to kill (well, maybe some corrupt ones would). I have had them manacle downed party members before, so even if they revived, they couldn't just grab a weapon and start swinging or just start slinging spells.

In extremely wealthy cities, or maybe as a special task force, going equipped with Iron Bands of Binding makes sense as well to subdue, but not kill, lawbreakers.

As far as communication, I've equipped cities with something similar to the flare system in Attack on Titan. A couple members of each squad are equipped with a wand that can fire out different colored flares, with each flare representing different colors. Like Red means Emergency, All Guard get here! Blue meant medical emergency. Yellow meant a mild emergency. Orange meant gather here for further instructions. That kind of thing.

I don't know if you don't speak French and are just repeating what high school told you or do and giving the colloquial meaning. However, ménage means household. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ménage

https://repl.it/@esherwood/Tomb-of-Annihilation-Weather

Here's one I whipped up from /u/xor 's.

I made it a tiny bit more gritty in that I made: 1) a 5% of going full-blown tropical storm straight from light rain and 2) a 10% chance that a storm stays a storm. That could easily be changed to follow RAW.

I've run it several times and I'm getting averages of around:

• 4% sun
• 6% clouds (no rain)
• 56% light rain
• 22% heavy rain
• 12% tropical storm

Using Craft for campaign prep and notetaking. Easily interlink things with @, and a TONNE of keyboard shortcuts (optional) that can speed up workflow (especially helpful while note-taking).

I used to use OneNote and switched over. Also tried Notion but couldn't get the hang of it, but will say it is superior to OneNote.

There is though! Don't lose hope!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spellsdd5&hl=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dd%26d+spellbook+app&pcampaignid=APPU_1_j82aVbnmFpbmoASMrqT4Dg

There's a contentious use for this and other summoning spells that's worth mentioning. Planar Binding takes one hour to cast and requires no concentration.

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Planar%20Binding#content

SGD lasts for one hour and allows you to summon the demon inside of a blood circle (magic circle is a suitable alternative, but blood really isn't hard to come by for adventurers) thereby preventing it from leaving or harming anyone. Some people argue that the summoned demon would disappear one turn before Planar Binding's casting was completed, but Jeremy Crawford says he'd allow it and that's good enough for me.

https://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/10/14/does-planar-binding-work-with-conjure-elemental/

Having the demon break free of your control isn't a problem here. SGD's text states uncontrolled demons stay around for 1d6 rounds if you stop concentrating, meaning you can keep concentrating and the demon will remain in the circle.

If you're a divination wizard, it gets better: You can force the demon to fail the save against Planar Binding with one of your portent rolls.

Once completed, you'll have a demon under your complete control with no opportunities to make saves to regain control. The spell lasts from 24 hours up to an entire year and a day with a 9th level slot, and it only costs one 1000g gem.

Players should talk to their DMs about using these spells together in this way, but DMs should abuse the hdll out of it.

If you want to give them that poor, weak & under-heel feeling... please give them lots of care packages in terms of hope & small victories. Here are suggestions:

• They cannot even afford swords (!!!). But they find a retired blacksmith and cobble an abandoned smithy out of town in an abandoned farm. Now the heroes have not only provided themselves with arms an armour, the right & honourable rebels are gearing up as well!

• The Player Characters discover much of the impoverished conditions are caused by the poor hurting the poor. Players get advice from a Sprite with Heart Sight. Your players have a means to find the genuinely kind thieves and root out the corrupt lawmen. They become a sort of medieval batman.

• The druid discovers that one Goodberry a day in 5e rules can feed ANY CREATURE for a day. That feeds ten people a day... per spell! Wow! At first they manage to save the lives of some children. Then they feed some bandits and thugs that just wanted to feed their families - and win them over. They talk about how their homes were ruined by a hungry giant nearby. The players then feed this hungry Hill giant and win their trust. Secretly, they build a town with the help of this giant and refugee families and cobble together the workings of a great Army of Justice!

• The paladin of any level gains the ability to cure disease, making a huge difference in the little thorp that was soon to die out completely. Does the demon spreading this disease take notice? Oh yes. Oh yes, for sure they do.

I found most DM's would make my character poor and then make me suffer. This was fun for them (???) but boring, predictable and annoying for any player. You have to give them that success of the underdog feeling really fast before their morale kills the game entirely.

I would take a look at the level from Titanfall 2 called "Effects and Cause". It pulls off something similar to what you're thinking of. The player gets a device that they can use to switch between two different time periods, the present and past, and you use this to your advantage to circle around enemies and solve puzzles. I would recommend reading this article about it, I think you will be able to use a couple of these concepts.

FoundryVTT is a standalone program with a lot of flexibility. There are many simple web-app style VTTs too, these are usually free and easy to work with - I can’t recall any right now but some Googling will get you what you need

Dudes with tags! They be your brood! Here, let me see if i can fetch a dinosaur here:

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/brood

That said, i didn't mean they were your 'offspring' so much. Nor your litter. That would be odd.

This is great! I'm sure the folks on /r/webdev love to see your project too, if you feel like posting it there.

> There is no server side language being used. There is no database.

So the content is static, with all code running client-side? You could probably manage/host the website using the free https://pages.github.com service

If you wanted to create an in depth custom mountain range there is some good free GIS software here http://grass.osgeo.org/ but if you don't want to download anything or have to navigate a damn near impossible interface You can use the topographical selection in Google maps over a chunk of the Appalachian mountains or over the Caucasians to get a lord of the rings-esque mountain range map.

No Grimrock?! You play nao! http://www.grimrock.net/

>The only thing that might cause any difficulty is the lack of towns in dungeons.

Vending machines...some powered by INSERT COIN, ounces of blood, XP Drain, lives of the innocent. hehe

>...then they find themselves in an even older mine system that doesn't look dwarven...

Sounds like /r/pixeldungeon

If you want to set up some visuals to go along with the voice chat, like maps/tokens, consider using https://roll20.net/ . If you start getting really interested, you can also roll dice online, set up character sheets there for PCs and monsters, etc.

I use Clip Studio pretty exclusively. It's a great intuitive program with a ton of great features. Buy it once and you own it forever, and it looks like the basic version is on sale for $25 for the next 11 hours. (Basic version is the one I use)

I have a self hosted dokuwiki instance, the formatting is easy to learn (especially if you make some vim macros to replace reddit markdown with dokuwiki syntax) and it's lightweight, fast, and looks pretty good. Currently I have ~190 pages with a total of 2.9M characters, 500k words, or 25k lines. I used to use OneNote and it's awesome, but I'm moving away from external, proprietary resources, so I can control my own data and make sure it's available when I need it. It does mean I have to be home to access it, but given the past couple of years, that hasn't been a problem!

If you want to go full homebrew, but don't have much time to build from scratch, you could explore random generation. It has its limits, of course, but I found that generating many things for a task and curating the best results can yield very nice outcomes.

For instance, take a look at Asgaar's Fantasy Map Generator. You have countries, cultures, religions, rives, routes, etc, most of what you need to build kingdom's politics. Play with the parameters, generate load of maps, and save the best. You can end up with a pretty solide base.

My favorite Mind-mapping app has a great series of screencasts that go into topics like 'Why Should You Mind Map', 'Brainstorming', and other topics. Even if you don't use the software, the concepts apply to paper mind mapping equally well. Check it out.

I love the idea about birthdays, I'm definitely gonna steal that.

I've always had a similar thought about made-up calendars. They are often complicated with a bunch of names and dates that need to be remembered. For my current campaign, I decided to literally just use a real-life calendar. I bought a cheap mini-calendar from amazon and have been marking off the days as they pass in-game. This way I can also tell the players "It's February 23rd" and they know exactly what kind of weather to expect, how much time has passed since January 2nd, stuff like that.

I was also very happy with the calendar that I found because the title of it is "Unlikely Friendships", which could pretty much be the name of every campaign I've ever played in.

If you wanted to do the android tablet route, you could use RPGsound and pair your device to a bluetooth speaker. They just added the ability to add your own sounds, so that's nice.

If you wanted to go the Windows laptop route, I'm going to shamelessly plug BananaSplit (which I created). The program would run on your Windows laptop and the sounds can be triggered using a wireless keyboard that you carry around. May not be ideal for what you want to do, but it's an option.

TL;DR: 'Problem' Plot/Story hooks are a symptom of a DM lacking experience in adventure design. They have their purpose but belong on DMAcadamy, not BTS.

I think disallowing Plot/Story posts is a good decision. They fit much better under the umbrella of /r/DMAcademy. I view BTS as analogous to 'The Chicago Manual of Style,' a comprehensive source for DMs who show a high level of mastery. DMAcadamy, by contrast, is 'The Elements of Style.' A good resource, but for moving from beginner to intermediate skill level.

The 29 of 30 Plot/Story posts that are a problem fail because the DM lacks experience with story structures. Once a DM builds their adventure design chops, they stop needing input. It is easy for them to come up with something that is good enough. Improving upon 'good enough' becomes an exercise in creativity, not an application of form. These later posts will become the 1 in 30.

This isn't the posters fault. Story structure is a well-studied subject, but there is a lot to learn. And it is a disservice to them if we dismiss it out of hand. Everyone began somewhere, and senior DMs should serve as patient shepherds of the hobby. I remember my professor for the physics(E&M) lab module at university. We would come to him with a problem, and he would walk over to our lab station without answering immediately. He'd quickly check over all the settings and connections for the sensor and often found the problem. The entire sequence only took him 30s. Then he would explain why it messed up the reading. We needed him to trouble shoot less and less over the course of the semester.

You gotta use the terrain to your advantage. Have some ranged guys create a fire trap by lighting some oil in front of them and then have them fire over it at the squishies in the back of the player formation. The melee guys probably never bothered to grab a crossbow or something so they'll be useless or they'll run into the fire and get burned.

Read Tzu's "The Art of War" and then apply the thinking to your battle initiatives. Sometimes it's about throwing interesting curve balls to mix things up.

I quite like DM Minion and 3D Virtual Tabletop

Mott seems pretty close to a CR 5 Gladiator except that the AC+HP makes me think CR 6-7 is maybe more appropriate. Though one good spell could flip an encounter with him. Lowering his normal AC and giving him Parry (reflavored as the Barn Door providing a cover bonus too, instead of using the weapon) might be worth considering. Though the mental stats for saves might vary well be enough.

I would consider giving Mott the Protection Fighting Style where he can protect someone else with his Barn Door. If you want to give him some extra combat options.

I think one single attack is simpler for managing an NPC in-combat.

A character who is unconscious is automatically criticalled if the attack is within 5 feet. i was using the word "melee" here as shorthand for "within 5 feet" even if that's not 100% precise.

I'm the developer of the FoundryVTT implementation which works great. There's still some features which I need to iron out, but it has decent functionality. I even recently added "Action Locking" which is what I call the feature which prevents you from doing actions in the wrong phases (e.g. Attacking during the Movement phase). The advantage of using it on a VTT is that my UI is easier to use than a paper indicator for which phase it is.

Check it out and let me know what you think! https://foundryvtt.com/packages/scs

Up until 5th edition the <em>Polymorph</em> worked in turning anyone into a humanoid. Now this spell only works for a 'beast'. Also, the Polymorph Self spell is GONE (yet mostly that was a good thing).

You can physically alter yourself with <em>Alter Self</em> so long as you keep the same size and number of limbs. Hence, an ancient dragon would be a man or woman that would be colossal... and have wings.

Disguise self is just an illusion and only modifies your height by 1'.

Don't get me wrong: many other creatures can change shape. The entire 'lycanthrope' line (were bear, were cat, were wolf and were rat) all have the same size human regardless of the size of their animal form. Such common magic! It is even a bit of a curse!

Yup, you are right: this needs a house rule. I would suggest that it be only for the most ancient and powerful of the colours. Many Red dragons may not even see the value of being a humanoid and may see the proposition as a bit of an insult. Green dragons, on the other hand, love deception and trickery - they would be sad they can't change form from wyrmling on up!

I use a locally hosted DokuWiki instance for all my dnd work. I used to use OneNote but found it too buggy to rely on, despite the fact that when it did work, it worked great. Plus I hate relying on the cloud connection, I'd rather own all my data.

This might be a bit controversial, and is obviously not the solution for everyone, but a virtual tabletop works great for this kind of thing and can be used for F2F games, especially if you have a projector. A couple weeks ago in my online game I recreated the final scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron with a massive number of zombies coming out of the woods (around 60 I think) using D20Pro. The zombies stayed hidden and all acted on a single init until they got moderately close, then I revealed them and gave them their own initiative. It worked moderately well (most of the drawbacks were my fault, I believe) but would have been completely infeasible without the software.

>I'd certainly welcome any input on how to get the values closer to accurate, but for now my goal was just believability.

I was creating the table for a nautical adventure, so I used this weather data for Nassau. Like I said, it's great if you want to completely ignore markov chains and just have a policy of "given the current date, here are the odds of the weather."

The spell demiplane looks like what you want. The spell varies a good bit from edition to edition. Here is the 5e listing:

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Demiplane#content

The spell permanency isn't a thing in 5e but other similar effects become permanent if you cast them in the same spot every day for a year. Of course, you're the DM, so do whatever works for you. You could easily hide a demiplane gateway behind a wooden door, or you could have the wizard just cast it on the fly whenever needed.

If you wanted the room to look unassuming when you walked in you could have an illusion spell running or something like that. You could put wards up on the door if you wanted protection. As for scrying protection, I'm not sure you'd be able to scry on the room as it isn't actually on the plane.

Good catch. They take damage for being out of water per 5E rules when they fail a save on the tentacle's disease effect.

I extrapolated from there in my mind that willing slaves would adapt to underwater conditions from being around the Aboleth and become unable to live on the surface. Not part of the rules as strictly written, but I don't feel like it's a huge departure.

Check out episode 24 of the dungeon master's block podcast here, it has tons of great advice and inspiration from 3 veteran dm's in a system agnostic context.

Background depth: XGtE this is your life tables Settings: there are tons of settings out there. Search on this subreddit or on DMs guild and season to taste Themed music: https://tabletopaudio.com/ is awesome.

I wrote some code to simulate the exploding roll situation. I found that for average damage it does not matter what roll it explodes on. However!! The standard deviation and max damage are impacted significantly by what roll it explodes on. Check it out (feel free to modify the first 3 lines to play around)

Course not! I thought it was getting common enough to not explain, but Slack is a free team chat program, mostly designed for businesses but I've found it's great for campaign groups. I'm in three Slack groups for Dnd campaigns right now. For some of them it's mostly used to schedule the next session, share memes and jokes, ask rule questions etc, my group has been using it for intersession roleplaying like I was talking about above. It maybe wouldn't be for every group but you should check it out: Slack home page

I personaly use grim hollow for transformation stuff. basic idea is that every teir of gameplay they get to chose a feature but it comes with either a mecanical or roll play flaw. it comes with vampire, whear-creature ,fiend,aberation,Litch and celecital transformations.the vampire transformation starts on page 69.

Grim hallow

For tracking encounter information (initiative, non-player HP, conditions, etc.) I use notepad++ on my laptop. I played a few encounters in a one-shot thing with a DM who used this thing. Laptop seemed easier, to me. To organize campaign thoughts, I like Evernote, but I wouldn't recommend messing with that until you have a first session and you know whether or not you'll be continuing with it.

Aside from that... it depends on how complex things get, I guess. If you find yourself having trouble keeping up with something, find an app that'll help with it.

Hey man! I tried following your steps here, I followed the instructions, but when I hit the hotkey and the bar opened, nothing showed up in the search bar when I started typing :( Do you have a frequent issues page or anything?

I have a game with a mix of in-person and remote players, and the Jabra 510 has really helped communication for everyone. The mic picks up everyone at the in-person table really well, and the speaker is loud enough for us to hear the remote people. We use Zoom for audio so I can stream music and background FX to everyone, and Roll20 for map sharing and video.

One of the best uses of this was in the old Forgotten Realms books, especially those for 2nd-edition AD&D. They had a whole section in the FR hardcover book on alternate currencies and their effective values. It also had several pages of tables for coming up with gemstones, artistic objects, and non-gem stone as treasure.

(By 'non-gem stone' I mean things like marble. A half-ton block of marble might be incredibly unwieldy, but worth a nice chunk of coin to a sculptor.)

The coinage included cultural notes that gave some glimpses into various countries. Things like the 'bela', from when Sembia tried their hand at making paper currency. They printed too many and devalued it to the point where a 1-bela note is worth only 1 cp. Same goes for the steelpence, made as an alternative to gold but overproduced. It mentions the term "Buying steelpence with bela" meaning financial stupidity.

Waterdeep has an unusual-shaped coin made of electrum. It has very little value outside the city -- something like 2 sp -- but is worth something like 10 gp in the city. Cormyr's coins have notable kings stamped on them.

I think the book's worth using if you have a Realms game, regardless of edition. Here's the Amazon listing.

A classic teaching mechanic in video games is to railroad a mechanic on you, and then very shortly afterword offer a "freeplay" way to use this mechanic.

You could introduce a party NPC that has history as a tactician. Have him outline an ambush by the PC's that require interacting with the environment, such as pouring hot tar on some enemies, or toppling some pillars when he gives the signal. The trap is highly effective against the enemies.

Have the tactician separate from the party, and while they're making their way forward they come across several tar pots or pillars that are set up in some juicy spots. They should take the bait and use the environment again, and if they don't, have the tactician re-appear and question them why not.

If you feel the need to be heavy handed, have the tactician break into a long monologue discussing the tactical importance of using your environment (maybe quote "The Art of War"), how using your environment effectively can let you swing above your weight.

After that, you just need to continue stoking the flame, creating more and more nuanced environmental elements for them to interact with until they approach encounters more to your liking.

5th Edition Spellbook Cards:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spellsdd5

You can sort by class, spell level, and name. You can also save several spell lists for different characters.

I was going to try to do one of these for my players. Require a bit of thought from them to get to the other side.

Probably add monsters that get released or tinker with the maze to mess with them...muahahaha

Edit: it's a sliding block puzzle to get to the other side

Try r/DMAcademy for stuff like this. :)

What immediately comes to mind is &quot;Stone Shape&quot; and &quot;Mold Earth&quot;.

Hey there. I unfortunately haven't written the follow-up posts on this series, but I have posted a write-up of a 'spirtual successor' to this article on my personal blog. If you're interested, here's the link: https://www.notion.so/ninito/Microsettings-be4eeda0cfe04791a1c16921b6068bc9

Color dot stickers on the bases. You can write on them, or you can just go by color, or both if you have more minis than colors then you have groups of colors numbered 1 thru whatever.

You could try to get some multicolored pebbles

I had sort of envisioned this as a very powerful mechanic. There's a reason it's endgame content - it's in the same vein as being able to rain meteors from the sky.

This is a good question:

Flavouring a berry still only gives you the illusion of eating one berry (a watermelon is still a tasty watermelon - not steak or veggies or whatever). Note how the flavouring food does not change texture, colour, size and so forth.

With illusions one can have any version of any number of meals / plates or styles complete with furniture, ceramic fittings, silverware, music and fireworks - the entire castle or any structure you like. Sure you would still starve to death - but it would be an amazing culinary experience. Bonus points for using Suggestion (or similar charms) to take this even a notch further.

Done! Thanks again (and here's a link if you want to see it in action: https://www.notion.so/D-D-Template-v-1-07-2dcdbff5858c4b6db915fb0feafc3b74)

Also, I think Cobolt should be Cobalt for the Cobalt Soul Monk

Hello, I'm a bot! The movie you linked is called Trolljegeren, here are some Trailers

This looks cool! Just a friendly note, your site doesn't use HTTPS so some browsers may block it. there's a great service called Let's Encrypt that can help you with that.

I'm DMing HotDQ as well. I've read all the articles about how crap the adventure is, and taken appropriate action. Reports of our sessions and many others are here on rpggeek:

https://boardgamegeek.com/forum/1544116/hoard-dragon-queen/sessions

Mine are the ones starting with "Cheese". The reason I recommend these to you is because it helps me to see how other DMs presented the episodes, and what they customised to make the adventure better. When I need an idea in a sudden during the game I can often throw in something I read during my preparation.

Hey Colonel!

A few things before I could approve this.

1. Because Illustrator is not free (even though I know it's ca-razy powerful), would you mind including a link to Inkscape as a free option for those that can't/don't want to shell out cash for Illustrator? You don't need to worry about linking to tutorials for how to use Inkscape (I assume that our users can manage do google how to do that and if we have issues with that being requested I'll add a sticky comment)

2. Could you clean up your links so they're embedded properly? If you're not familiar with Reddit Markdown formatting, the Inkscape link above was done by typing [Inkscape](https://inkscape.org/)

Also as a small thing, I might suggest that you just link once to the entire imgur album instead of several times to individual images in the album. We've got a pretty solid and smart userbase and your images are also pretty clearly labeled. I wont' quibble over it if you want to keep all the individual links, but I think you'll get a better response if there's fewer things to click through.

From your shell, you should be able to run it with python alch-ingr.py

If you have trouble, let me know what error you get and what OS you're using.

Or you can use this. Press the Run button to compile the code and get an ingredient. After that, you can main(10) in the right panel to get 10 ingredients.

Thank you! I used the Overleaf DnD Latex Template, which worked pretty well until I had to manage the pictures and the big table, so I might try Homebrewery for my next one since it seems more straight forward and has a better-looking user interface, I'm going to have to see how it feels.

By RAW, "An unconscious creature is incapacitated (see the condition), can’t move or speak, and is unaware of its surroundings" (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Conditions#toc_15)

But most people would probably give the ambusher a stealth roll with a DC of passive perception -5 (disadvantage).

If the ambushers decided to blitzkrieg the party would wake up but suffer a surprise round. TBH, even if the party woke up from a failed stealth check I'd say a surprise round is still appropriate --- 6 seconds isn't enough time to process that if you were actually dead asleep. Best case scenario is being cognizant enough to try and roll away from an attack or something (so no AC penalty beyond missing any armor while sleeping), but definitely no attacks.

That's why I shared it! I would love if you used it!

The program I used was this:

https://aggie.io/

In the top right corner theres a way to get a link to invite people. When they join, they will appear up in that corner with an icon. They can name themselves from there too.

Each person gets a "layer" assigned to them, this can be found on the right side.

It takes a bit of playing to get used to the UI for sure, but it is pretty straight forward for a paint type program.

You should credit the artist if you are going to make use of their work.

With that out of the way, the program you probably want is Gimp. It's an open source Photoshop analog.

If that won't work for you, I suggest you poke around OSalt and see what options you can turn up. Regardless, you are going to need to learn a good bit about whichever program you choose. That's a pretty layered image you have there, and if you just slap something on top it's not going to look good.

If you're willing to put in some work to understand metaphorical audio cabling, consider Voicemeeter and couple it with their virtual audio cable. One channel for mic, one for Skype (through a virtual cable), and the basic in for the music player. Just make sure not to route anything into a feedback loop.

You could look into Azgaar. The maps are beautiful and if you explore the interface there's History and Lore you can interpret from it as well. https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/?size=11&amp;seed=750569275&amp;coast=1&amp;port=1&amp;river=0&amp;from=MFCG

In the context of the blog, yes. Halforcs exist. In fact, the author of the text, Armin Hosh, is a halforc who was raised by a halforc school called the Hosh Tribe. More about this is covered in the Foreword

There are also halforcs within the tribe that Armin is studying, which he will write about soon.

I should borrow that and call it "Sword to the spleen"

Or borrow from Kingdom of Heaven and say "Arrow to the junk" http://whisper.sh/whisper/0536db351dfd77e4963c49011287eabd4e1732/I-once-fought-for-three-days-with-an-arrow-through-my-testicle

There's tools that allow for everyone to indicate availability so you can see which day or time works for everyone. This is one I've used for non dnd purposes https://doodle.com/create though I'm not sure if it needs an account now (the main page seemed to be a bit different). So you input all of the days and times that work for you, send it out, give them a couple days to respond, and once everyone does (or enough people do, if just one player never gets to it then they don't get a say) you pick a date and stick to it. Tell everyone to make sure that day is good and to plan around it. Tell them you can only do this so many times. If you go through this exercise three times and people keep cancelling last minute, it might be time to reevaluate whether it's worth playing with a group that doesn't care enough.

The link you provided for the alfred workflow was an old version, this link to your setup is more current: https://www.notion.so/Alfred-for-D-D-8ec85204e69649a1a487192500413ba1

I've been looking around for a DM bag, something that can contain books and notebooks along with the usual miscellany of minis, dice etc etc.

This was a bit of a random find, but has anyone used a sewing machine bag for this? It looks rather well suited, just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on pros, cons, or alternatives.

E.g. https://www.amazon.com.au/Machine-CAB55-Carrying-Removable-Accessories/dp/B0892JKTRK/

EXPENSIVE SOLUTION: Buy a 3D printer, best investment I have ever made as a DM. Save up 300 bucks for a resin printer and you will never buy a model again as long as you are willing to put in the work to clean them up. You don't even have to paint them, just grey primer works fine and the quality of models online easily rival store bought models.

Medium solution: Buy the DND Starter set or DND Essentials kit. Both are fantastic for starting the game, have all the basic rules you need and a small adventure to go on.

Cheap O' Solution: All you need to know is the rules and dice. Rules can be found online, dice you will need to buy or use virtual dice for on your phone on off the internet for free as well as a ton of statblock and adventure ideas you can find.

Bag of Starburst for bad guys. You beat ‘em, you eat ‘em. And they fit perfectly in 1” squares.

Generic board game pawns like these are good for PCs or enemies.

I made an initiative tracker by writing players’ names on wood clothespins and clipping them to my DM screen in order.

You don’t even need a map with a grid. You can pay pieces out on the table and use a ruler (or print a d&d ruler) to measure distances.

I used this wet-erase map. In my party, each PC provides their own mini. I've done dice as the baddies if you don't want to invest in minis. I don't find it to stop the flow when drawing. Usually, everybody is rolling initiative, combat planning, and getting a snack at that time.

With the one that I use, there is the possibility of using a pre-printed map since there is a separate plastic layer on top of the neoprene. You can always use post-its or scraps of paper to hide areas they don't have line of sight on.

If you are using your battle maps online, and you think you will do so regularly, I would invest in some software for making maps. I use Wonderdraft and it is everything I could ask for, there is a huge community/discord/reddit for it and people make new assets for it all the time.

I also have a soft spot for hand drawn maps, and do a lot of that as well. I usually draw on 11x17 grid paper with non-reproducing lines, and once I'm done with inking and coloring (if I get around to coloring :P) I scan it, upload it, and go from there. A lot of times I'll then take my hand-drawn maps and use them as an overlay in Wonderdraft so I can re-make them with digital assets, which is useful for making variants of the map (day vs. night vs. fog etc.)

Lastly if you still get the chance to meet IRL I highly recommend using vis-a-vis/dry erase and a battle mat, and just use descriptive language to give the room life. It's a storytelling game after all, and this is actually my favorite way to use battle maps.

This list is great! A good place to use these RP prompts is during long rests, since the characters are likely just eating/drinking at the inn or campsite anyways. If the players don’t use a prompt themselves, have an NPC tagalong ask them instead. >!Reya Mantlemourn!< in Descent into Avernus travels with the party for a while, and I plan on using her for a few prompts like these in the opening two acts.

For more good prompts, check out the Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide. As a DM I’ve used this a number of times, plus it’s great for running your own PCs too!

This forum is an archive of resources, not an advice forum.

In the future, try r/DMAcademy.

Also, I suggest the Pound O' Dice from Amazon.

You can also try emailing Chessex, or Crystal Caste or one of the other big dice companies and see if they have a bulk discount for teachers.

Edit- Another solution. Have your kids use a diceroll app on their phones.

So I bought a bunch of these packs of cards: Apostrophe Games Blank Playing Cards (Matte Finish & Poker Size) (180 Cards) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H4CZQ14/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_W3ydCbFRVTZBE

So I can make them on the fly with a sharpie. I would say make 10, I can't imagine you would need more then that.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.awedsoftware.dungeonsanddragonsrandomtables

This app (idk for IOS) has a lot of tables from r/BehindTheTables included the potion's table you used.

I find it very useful and I suggest it! Not to diminish your work, great job.

Gott mit uns - Sabaton: All divine spells and effects are treated as one level higher (this also affects Smite)

The Art of War - Sabaton: Everyone gains the "Pack Tactics" ability.

Bloodshed - Amon Amarth: Everyone enters a 3rd level Berserker Barbarians Rage.

The Chosen Ones - Dream Evil: Immunity to Fear, 5 temporary HP (non-stacking) at Initiative count 20

Also, I don't know if non-English ones are okay: Soeldnerschwein - Black Messiah: May expend a number of gold coins up to their level/CR as a bonus action. The one with the most gold coins expended may not be attacked.

Sonne - Rammstein: All melee weapon attacks deal an extra 1d6 fire damage. The terrain is considered to be in broad daylight for the duration of the song.

Thanks for responding in such detail! On a side not I love how much people will write for this sub. Dungeon Masters are insanely passionate.

Anyways, if your players pass every challenge this final encounter will be very easy. Like infallibly easy. 1-2 fails should be also pretty easy just due to action economy, relatively even forces but players get more actions, so players should win. Which is good, right? They earned it. However as you go down I have a sort of issue.

If they fail 3, they're entire army is cut in half power wise. I feel like if they fail 3 or more the final battle will quite literally be impossible. Again this makes sense, right? They didn't earn it. Well thats where we get to philosophy on being a DM and personally I'd have a lot of backups prepared/different opposing army stats prepared so I don't TPK because they crit failed their way through 5 events.

Also I'd likely put "the Chaos of Battle" at a d6 or maybe even a d4. At a d8 a 1 strength soldier could accidentally defeat 2 Elite Knights. Again, I like to avoid TPKs that occur due to bad luck.

I feel like the Dex challenge isn't that bad but that's also because I can't think of anything better. However, I feel like the last challenge isn't great either. 1v1 combat is boring. Really, it is. I recently actually read The Art of War and I can't remember if this was in the prelude/editor's note or if it was in the main text, but there was a significant emphasis on a General's ability to train their troops. All of the charisma and quick thinking in battle will do nothing if your troops don't follow your command to the letter. Humans are very fallible and training them over time lowers that fallibility immensely. That seems like a nice jumping off point for a good challenge.

Thanks for your write up, I love the idea as a whole and might steal some points in future campaigns.

I think this idea sounds brilliant and I'd love to be involved. I've been DMing for two years and gaming forever.

My skills are in world building, writing of all kinds and research. I have written several published historical novels: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Arts-The-Books-Pandemonium/dp/1849921326

I have also done lots of technical writing in the past. And I love making maps.

My longest running campaign was based off one part Naomi Novik's Temeraire series of books (optioned but not yet filmed) and one part How To Train Your Dragon.

Using a movie as inspiration is very different than using a movie as plot design. Movies are paced VERY differently than an RPG campaign, books are more similar in pacing, character development, and perspective.

But movies make excellent visual and stylistic references that you can likely expect your players to have already have seen, or even ask them to watch.

If I tell you as my players *"These wastelands are much like those of Tattooine in Star Wars A New Hope. You feel like you are being watched, but do not see nor hear anything. The blowing wind and sand in your clothes is exhausting." * then I've given you a clear image where I'm pretty certain you all share the same vision.

I do initiative where the number to beat is 10+monster's initiative. Anyone who gets above that goes before the monster, then monster, then whole party. Allows for zero initiative tracking and more "combos" between PCs.

So for my "DM screen" I would say have none. Keep the conditions list handy (maybe even laminate it if you have a laminator and go from there.

Thanks OP!

~~I have a request though. I am using a 1 inch punch tool (http://www.amazon.com/EK-Success-Shapers-Nesting-Package/dp/B00161O9QI) and when I printed out the sheet the problem I am having is the images are a bit too close so when I punch one, the next one has a little part cut out. Could you possibly make a sheet that has the images a bit bigger, like perhaps 1.1 inches or 1.15? that would be awesome. I tries to edit it but It told me I need Adobe Live Cycle Designer.~~

EDIT: I found my problem - if you print these make sure you select "Actual Size" and not "Shrink oversized pages"

Don't know what system you are using...but the Book of Erotic Fantasy has rules for PC pregnancy in D&D 3.5. It follows up the effect of crossbreeding as well.

Usually you can find it on the web in the usual places.

I got very lucky - a barns & nobles locally had several of the Dungeon Commands on clearance for around $15 apiece. They each contained roughly 12 pre-painted figures. Depending on the set, they tend to have various humanoid figures suitable for heroes or NPCs, plus several large sized creatures (Drow, dragon, etc).

If you keep your eye out or look online, you might get similarly lucky. Here's a link to a set on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dungeon-Command-Dungeons-Dragons-Expansion/dp/0786960175

It's not 5E, but the Pathfinder supplement Dungeons of Golarion gives several themes for mega-dungeons. In particular, the last one, the ruins of a mine overrun by undead, is my favorite description and setup of a mega dungeon that I have ever seen.

The book doesn't detail ready to run dungeons, but instead has a chapter on each dungeon, giving a history/backstory, level descriptions or overviews and some unique monsters or magic-items that can be found in the dungeon. It should be readily usable for 5E or 4E. If you can get a copy it might be a decent source of inspiration.