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Getting Started: Settings

The Setting

Few things can be as fun, or as agonizing, as forming the setting for a new campaign.  If you’re the creative type, you’re probably very excited for this step.  If you’re not, you probably nodded along very enthusiastically when I described it as potentially agonizing.  Regardless of whichever you are, I’m here to give you a quick (relatively...) rundown on how to ‘frame’ the world your players’ epic campaign will be taking place in.

Before going further, I want to be clear on one thing: this is D&D, and you are the Dungeon Master.  Everything is negotiable, and can be changed to create the world you’re looking to offer.

Step 1: Take a deep breath.

There’s a lot of text below this point, and it might make you feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.  Here’s a helpful tip to make this all more palatable: You don’t have to do it all at once.

If you want to get into D&D right away, read through the article, get a map set up, and follow the steps to flesh out a single kingdom or area of the world.  You and your players can get up to all sorts of trouble with that alone, and some campaigns can run their full course in such a “small” area no problem if need be.

Step 2: A map.  

You might have expected to start with choosing a name for your world, but honestly, that step isn’t very important.  What is important, however, is having an image to look at and imagine the world upon.

The more creative-minded will break out the art supplies here do it from scratch, and for that, I salute you.  The rest of us need some help, and there are plenty of resources out there to help you “generate” a map from scratch.  Personally, I prefer the fantasy world generator at D20srd (Link here).  It’s a fine enough tool, although it may take several tries before you land on an outcome you’d like.  The settings the map tool defaults at create a world that feels a little land-heavy in my opinion, so I recommend turning the %Water setting up to 65 or 70 if you want larger, proper oceans in your setting.

Step 3: The Inhabitants.

Humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, dragonborn, even tieflings!  That’s a lot of peoples that need a home, and I’ve only touched on what the 5e Player’s Handbook offers as default player races.  What about orcs and goblins?  Giants, dragons, and the like?  It’s a lot to take in, but it’s important we get them settled first, with one exception...

Gods.  Unless you’re the very small percentage of DMs looking to run a game without any deities, it’s time to start thinking on them and what you’d like.  If you have any aspirations of creating gods of your own, *now* is the time to do it.  Look at the map you’ve created, imagine the worshippers of the god you’ve got in mind, and then pick the place they exist.  That much is easy, and some of you might feel I told you something you already knew, so here’s something a bit more to think about: how powerful is this god?  How many followers do they have, and are they terrestrial (that is to say, are they present in the world?).  

Most importantly, once you have your gods selected, how do they interact with one another?  If you’ve taken peoples with contradictory gods and made them neighbors, how do they view one another?  As a nuisance, or is war on the verge of breaking out at any moment?  

With peoples settled, gods imagined, and their followers labeled, it’s time to take a step back and look at how to make it all distinct.  Who was left out, and if no one was, should they be?  Not everyone needs a homeland.  Some races, like tieflings, lend themselves to being scattered about the world due to their chaotic nature, and are oftentimes mistrusted in many areas for their appearance or less-lawful leanings.  

With these considerations made, look at the locales you’ve created and ask yourself: what ails these people?  What monsters lurk in the hillside and are common to their region?  Perhaps the dwarves in your mountains are in a constant battle with orcs.  Maybe the pious humans of one of your more lawfully imagined kingdoms find themselves beset by an unusual amount of undead.  Threats can be less visible too, ranging from expansive and unseen criminal undergrounds, to an ancient aboleth working to enslave a kingdom with a plan that spans thousands of years.

Finally, look at your kingdoms, your countries, and your smaller, backwater locales of intrigue, and imagine an alignment that best describes the region.  In a typical fantasy world, “Good”, “Lawful”, and “Neutral” alignments should be most dominant, as they’re easier to imagine as more stable.  You should still strive to have places, maybe not even particularly large ones (a chain of islands home to pirates, for example), that don’t quite fit the ‘good’ mold.  These can be as large as an entire kingdom in and of itself, or you can add them in later as small, seedy towns lurking in the shadow of a ‘good’ empire for its criminal underbelly to use as a headquarters.

Step 4: Beyond The Material Plane

Dungeons and Dragons wouldn’t be D&D without more than just the obvious world in your setting, unless of course you’re designing it that way.  Most of us, though, will want a variety of external planes to have players fight foes from and, potentially, even go to.

The default planes, I feel, do this incredibly well.  Roll20 has an article that explains them fairly well (found here).  At some level, you should be using what is already offered in the D&D mythos.  I recommend keeping the concepts of he Transitive Planes (Ethereal and Astral), and the Elemental Planes (Air, Fire, Water, and Earth) most of all.  The Ethereal Plane isn’t really a plane the way the others are, and some spells rely on it, so if you want something unique there, I suggest you just edit The Ethereal Plane to suit your needs.  

Let’s get to the meat of the issue - Outer Planes.  Again, I’m a big believer in the established mythos, but how much of it you use is up to you.  In addition to this, you can edit them in any way you please!  That new god you made, be it or good or evil, will have very little difficulty finding a proper plane among the established to call home.  Good old wikipedia (Link Here) has a very useful chart that explains the various upper, lower, and neutral outer planes.  Which of these you use is entirely up to you, and the framework offered lets you remove some entirely and supplement your own if you’re dead set on it.

In Conclusion...

Give it a name.  Any name.  At this point, you probably realize that the substance of the world you made is so much more important than the name.  The best part of all of this is, you made it, and until the players see it, none of it is set in stone.  You may hear ideas your players have for their characters and want to shape some of the world around it, to create a place where that character of theirs really belongs.  You may want to change enemies to fit their backstory vendettas as well, and that likewise can help make the world feel more varied and alive.

More than anything, I hope everyone who’s made a setting here hasn’t forgotten they’re here to have fun, or that nothing should ever come before that.

Continuation of the Getting Started series:

Getting Started: Combat

Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 1

Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 2

[dndplus]

Adoption Part 2: Orcs

Ever wanted to make a Monstrous Adventurer?  A kobold? A goblin?  A bugbear?  A Yuan-Ti?

It looks interesting, right?  It’s an exotic creature, one you probably only know as an enemy or a quirky weirdo.  They’re strange, but carry an untamed aesthetic, like a wild animal someone foolishly tries to keep as a pet.  But… they’re restrictive.

Part 2: Orcs

Orcs are tough, vicious fighters.  They raid, they plunder, they pillage, and they’re pretty damn good at bein’ scary.  They also have the most diverse warmongering hordes in all of D&D, accepting Ogres, Trolls, and Half-Orcs into their ranks without a second thought, and having no qualms working with other creatures like Giants if it helps them accomplish their goals.  It is divine command that drives the orc lifestyle, so what then would an orc look like if it were raised away from it?

>>>Link Here<<<

With this variant origin homebrew, you’ll be able to start a lore-friendly version of an orc of almost any flavor!

Next part hopefully out before May.

As always, I’m always looking to help answer questions people new to DMing might have.  Feel free to message me directly.

[dndplus]

Announcing Adoption - A Variant Monstrous Origin!

Ever wanted to make a Monstrous Adventurer?  A kobold? A goblin?  A bugbear?  A Yuan-Ti?

It looks interesting, right?  It’s an exotic creature, one you probably only know as an enemy or a quirky weirdo.  They’re strange, but carry an untamed aesthetic, like a wild animal someone foolishly tries to keep as a pet.  But... they’re restrictive.

Part 1: Kobolds

There’s no way about it: a kobold grovels, cowers, and begs.  It knows pack tactics from growing up with other kobolds.  But... what if you don’t want to be that kobold?  That outcast in exile?  That sole survivor of a massacred clan?  

How about a way to be your own kobold?

>>>Link Here<<<

With this variant origin homebrew, you’ll be able to start a lore-friendly version of a kobold of almost any flavor!  

More parts to come at some point in the future (but probably not for a little while, as Grinding Gear Games owns my soul starting Friday...)

As always, I’m always looking to help answer questions people new to DMing might have.  Feel free to message me directly.

[dndplus]

Lack of Updates Part 2, and Even More Homebrew Content

Haven’t posted in a while, still check though in case anyone has questions about a post/needs DM-ing advice.  If you’re wondering why, it’s because it’s difficult to come up with ideas for a good, substantial post.  So much of running a game happens in the moment, and there’s nothing I can do to write about that, and I’ve already dropped long guides on how to get started with the creation of settings and adventures.

As an added note, I’ve updated the Zealot document in my older post.  I’ll repost it here for anyone interested (and yes, I know there’s a Barbarian sub-class called Zealot.  They’re different enough where one shouldn’t ever be mistaken for the other though, and there really isn’t another word suited to it).

Introducing: The Zealot - A 5e class for the holy, monster hunting, vigilante, gun-toting lunatic in all of us!

>>>Link Here<<<

That said...  I have new homebrew content as well!

Unearthed Arcanas, and Why I Did It Anyway

ARTIFICER!  Yes, yes, Wizards has a brilliant class guide for Artificers already, but that’s a class tailored to the Eberron setting.  It’s also quite boring by my tastes, following a “1/2 caster” archetype that already exists in both the Ranger and Paladin classes.  It gets the job done well enough, but an Artificer isn’t just someone who makes magical equipment and is somewhat technologically inclined (unless you’re in Eberron, in which case it is what it is).

The actual definition of Artificer is “A Skilled Craftsman or Inventor”.  Yes, if you didn’t know, Artificers were something people at one point in our own mundane world were called.  I took that to heart with the development of a completely different Artificer.

As a warning, I’ll say now that this Class is probably not a good one for beginner players.  It’s complex, and offers a degree of freedom not seen anywhere else.  It also operates under its own rule-set, and has a flavor all its own, which is WHY I felt inspired to see it made.

Without further ado...

Introducing: The Artificer - A 5e class for the tinkering, steampunk, technomancer in all of us!

>>>Link Here<<<

This is version 1.0 of the class.  There are a lot of risks taken with its creation, as the rules it follows and the things it’s capable of don’t fit the mold of any other class in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.  It comes with three full archetypes:

 The Thaumaturge: A Spellcasting-focused Artificer who pushes the class’s bizarre spellcasting methods to the limits, and succeeds in unexpected feats of magic no other class is capable of.

The Power Jockey: Power Armor.  Enough said.

The Gadgeteer: Do you like inventions?  Of course you do, you’re looking at an Artificer.  Oh, sorry, you really like inventions?  You like Death Rays?  And Gravity Discombobulators?  You like fancy weapons of your own design, and having a trump card in your back pocket at all times?  Well then, my friend, you’ve come to the right place.

[dndplus]

In-Depth: Alignment

Introduction: The Why

Titling this as “In-Depth” feels a little disingenuous, as I don’t think it’ll be particularly long, but it’s as in-depth as I plan to go on the topic.

Making a post about alignment was an idea I had after having a conversation with someone on another site about how alignment in question can be used.  Everything aside, the fact of the matter that 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons (which this blog is primarily about) doesn’t really go into detail on how or what alignment really ‘does’.

Sure, a chaotic evil character is going to act differently from a chaotic good one, a lawful good character can find themselves both at odds with, and in agreement with, chaotic good and lawful evil characters for plenty of reasons.

But... what about a player’s alignment?  What is it, what does it do, and why does it matter?  5th Edition doesn’t say much on the matter, which means it’s up to the Dungeon Master to interpret its meaning and how it’s used.

After talking about it, and thinking about it myself, I figured there were two ways really do alignment: Strict and Fluid.

Part 1: Talk To Your Players

This bit is important.  Really, really important.  Some groups are of the mindset that alignment is a hard restriction, one that has to be minded carefully and can punish players who act in opposition to it.  Others feel that alignment is an indication, rather than a restriction.  This is the difference between Strict and Fluid Alignment Systems at their most basic, ideological core.

Part 2: Strict

So why is it important that you talk to your players first?  Well, if you run a game with a Strict Alignment System, your players may feel they’re being railroaded for making decisions.  The Strict Alignment System enforces punishments for going against a declared alignment, and can call for a player to publicly declare a change in their alignment.  This may come with additional limitations, like not allowing a player to switch their alignment too often, whether that be through DM discretion or a hard “X amount of time in game needs to have passed” thing agreed upon by the table.  It’s a system that keeps players honest to the character they created and emphasizes roleplaying to that character specifically.  Failure to do so can result in sudden penalties, like a good character rendered stunned for a round as memories of the innocent they murdered flood through them.  It’s powerful and direct and easily opens up avenues for redemption arcs (or the opposite), but if the players aren’t aware you’re using it, it can seem like you’re twisting their actions by putting words in their character’s mouth.  A player should never feel they can’t play their character the way they want to, it goes against everything D&D is about, so make sure you’ve discussed how this alignment system works with your players before putting it into action.

Part 3: Fluid

On the other side of the coin, we have the Fluid Alignment System.  I’m biased here, as this is the one I prefer to use.  A Fluid Alignment System does nothing to force a character to do anything they didn’t sign up for.  Really, it works opposite the Strict Alignment System.  

In the Strict Alignment System, emphasis is put into how you react to the world.  You’re pushed to act the way your character was at creation, or make a hard decision about changing after feeling that your character has moved away from that.  

In the Fluid Alignment System, the world reacts to you.  A player is never told to act a certain way, rather, they’re informed of how the way they’re acting changes how they’re perceived.  You’re not punished for acting in opposition to your alignment, but if you continue act opposed to it, you might be informed your alignment has changed.  It just happens, but you’re still you and free to act as you please.

So what’s the point?  Well, the world reacts to you.  A Lawful Good character naturally gets along with the guard and other forces of law, and gets along double well with something paragon-esque, like a paladin.  Difficult Checks for interacting with these characters might be more lax, while interacting with something blatantly opposite, like a pirate, can become difficult because the pirate is innately distrusting of someone who gives off the ‘lawful good’ aura.

The Fluid Alignment System is an alignment system that maintains the weight of having an alignment at all, without actively restricting the players from acting how they choose.

Part 4: Pros and Cons

So, why one over the other?  Which system is right for you and your group?  

Well, the Strict Alignment System gives a DM more control, and can help with groups that want their roleplay to be more structured and reliable.  It can make alignment changes seem more meaningful, and the change is advertised in a severe and sudden way that gives the other players a chance to think about how they might react to it.  It’s good for the narrative and theatrics in that way, and adds another dimension for you and your players to make use of.  It is a system that emphasizes management of how the players react to the world around them.

The Fluid Alignment System frees the players to act as they please, how they please.  There are still consequences for their actions, but only ever externally.  It allows the players to dictate the mood of the campaign, and makes the changes their characters go through gradual.  The effects of a player’s given alignment are subtle, with a player feeling kinship with the like-minded, and finding those unlike themselves more difficult to come to an agreement with.  It is a system that emphasizes the world reacting to the players choices and actions.

In the end, you’ll have to pick whichever one you prefer.  I honestly cannot declare one better than the other, as they both have their advantages and disadvantages.  Hopefully, though, this post is enough to help reveal which one is more appealing to you.

[dndplus]

In-Depth: Villains, Part 2

Again, if you’re hear to learn about making a villain for your adventure/campaign and you’re a newer, less experienced DM, I highly recommend you look at my posts titled ‘Getting Started’ first, specifically the ones about making an adventure.

They can be found here:

Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part 1 Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part 2

If you’re here and have not looked into Part 1 of my In-Depth on Villains, it can be found here:

In-Depth: Villains, Part 1

Hello again!

We’re picking up right where we left off with the steps I laid out in Part 1.  They are:

Motive, Station, Mentality, Ability (Essentially, all of Part 1)

Introducing the Villain to Your Party (We’ll start here)

The Villain’s Lackeys

Evolution

The Hill They Die On

Most of the actual “Creating” happened in part 1 with identifying a villain’s MSMA.  This is only a small part of a villain, though.  Having a good one made does little if they way they’re presented and used isn’t also done appropriately.  For some, simply being a menacing figure is at the end of your dungeon is enough.  That said, you can’t simply having one basic, menacing figure after the next over a twenty level campaign, can you?

Introducing the Villain to Your Party

This is important, make no mistake.  When the party first meets the villain is just as important as when they kill it (assuming the villain doesn’t win, of course).

There are several things to consider when you introduce the villain, but the MSMA of that villain go a long way in helping you determine the details.  Here’s a few basic introductions to start:

1. The Guy At the End

This is the most basic of all introductions.  Essentially, an NPC in need of help will describe the villain to the players, and the players will run into them at the end of their dungeon and fight to the death.  Believe it or not, as basic as this is, it can be compelling even for a campaign’s BBEG.  

I recall a specific example here of an Aboleth who worked so secretly that discovering his name was an event of enormous importance in the campaign.  He was never seen (or interacted with) until the very final confrontation.  Rather, the players dealt with a legion of spies (in the form of Deep Scions) that acted as the main source of their player-to-villain interaction.

For simpler villains, you really can just stick them at the end of the dungeon and call it a day.  The scale may go up as your players increase in level, such as in who gives them the task, and what they’re there to accomplish, but at the end of the day there’s always room for a simple “they’re the guy at the end” situation.

2. The Power That Be

A powerful politician.  A corrupt member of the military or guard.  The ruler of an evil kingdom.  This villain is best introduced to the players through their importance to the region, without any mention to the fact that they’re to be an enemy in the future.  This builds precedence, and creates drama when their involvement becomes that revelation to really kick things off down the line.  It fits will with the noble-as-a-thief trope I went into detail on in Part 1.

In some cases, this villain meets with the players directly before the two groups turn adversarial.  They could be someone the players report their heroic deeds to, and are thus congratulated and even rewarded.  They could be a person of importance they bump elbows with while at a gathering for the rich and powerful, whether it be for something completely unrelated or not.  Regardless of what you do, when this chance meeting happens, I advise finding a way to show the villain isn’t entirely genuine.  This could be as blunt as them being mean to a servant, or dismissive of plights of people they think of as ‘beneath them’, but it can also be more subtle than them.  The villain could be trying too hard to appear kind to the players, such as by offering favors and help should the players ever need this.  This approach is particularly devious, as your players will never turn down a favor from someone who seems powerful (especially if it seems like going to them is what you intend for them to do in teh future).  In this way, you create a situation where the players learn of a plot by the villain without knowing who it is yet, and thus delivering their involvement directly to the villain themselves.

3. The Old Evil

Some villains have a history of being a villain.  They enact schemes meant to disrupt life for good folk and cause disorder wherever they go.  They may also be a great, roaming beast that’s awoken from a thousand year slumber that the players will need to assemble help against.  Regardless of your particular brand of ‘ancient, terrible evil’, you can be certain to evoke an entirely different atmosphere when you introduce this villain through a story reminiscent of the Boogey Man.

Of course, how you reach the ‘ghost story introduction’ of your villain is important as well.  Show the players the effects of the villain first, such as a village in ruins at the hands of their methods, or if the villain isn’t meant to pay off until much later, put the players IN the event that terrorizes a village/city/kingdom.

In Conclusion...

Regardless of how you choose to introduce the villain, and there are obviously more than the three I gave you to get started with, remember that your villain is unique.  Two different villains with the same introduction should play out differently, sometimes even drastically so.  A cocky, arrogant noble is going to be blithely charismatic, whereas a cold, uncaring sociopath who cares nothing for his people will likewise be a stalwart and serious individual.

The Villain’s Lackeys

This applies to every villain, even ones without ‘actual’ lackeys.  I know that may seem strange, but we’ll get that particular type of villain in a moment...

For starters, consult your villain’s MSMA.  Their station as a crime lord is going to put the criminal element front and center as far as lackeys is concerned.  In contrast, a warlock may have deep sea monstrosities, wicked fae, or terrible fiends at their disposal.  A crime lord who’s also a warlock might have both.  

How do you handle that situation, though?  Typically, the beings of a patron’s background (in the case of a warlock) are of a higher power level than commonplace thugs.  In this scenario, your crime boss might employ a wide variety of thugs, bandits, and the like, and have a single, somewhat powerful fiend/fey/eldritch horror as a sort of ‘mid-boss’ to the adventure.

Some villains don’t really have minions, but may live in places that are simply fraught with danger.  A Behir lives in a secluded cave, one that’s particularly hard to reach, and could have any arrangement mountain monsters between the players and itself.  This could be a contingent of trolls, or a group of stone giants.  It’s important to understand these aren’t true lackeys, of course.  In the instance of a villain like this, the players will be able to sneak by whatever stands between them and their intended target, which can drastically alter the course and pacing of an adventure.

More significant villains are going to employ a greater variety of minions, including other villains!  Keep this in mind when you have two greater villains operating in a similar realm, as a ‘mid-boss’ type, lesser villain can be the thread that ties the two together.

Other villains have far less complicated lackey situations, but ones that should still be heavily considered.  Liches and necromancers, for instance, will employ the undead.  It’s important to know a lot about undead minions when you select what they command, though.  Some liches may have apprentices who weren’t quite up to the task of achieving lichdom themselves, which would create a Boneclaw.  Other liches might have a Cadaver Collector employed, which suggests that they are mechanically inclined, a fact that can be reflected in their lair and the traps they employ later.  Finally, a particularly sadistic and wicked lich may be host to a Devourer, suggesting a connection to the Demon Lord of Undeath Orcus himself!  

A villain’s lackeys tell a story about the villain themselves, as well as what they do and what they might become.  In that vein, we move on to...

Evolution

This section will be short, but it’s important.  It does not apply to minor villains, as they are meant to come and go in a short period of time.  Moderate and major villains, however, can be the focus of multiple adventures.  Their schemes, as well as their defeats, can shape how they present in the later segments of an adventure.

A villain who succeeds in stealing a powerful object may acquire new abilities, or perhaps that same villain kidnaps a renowned tinker and adds mechanical wonders to its list of lackeys.  

On the contrary, a villain who is defeated may set itself up to better counter the players’ own abilities, or retreat to a place where it is more powerful.

This can happen in reverse, as well.  Players may simply find a villain becomes more nuanced and dangerous as they grow closer.  The tactics used to achieve victory may prove less effective as time goes on, or they could reach a point where they need to evolve by finding outside help.

Whatever the case, always be mindful of how the successes and failures of your villain are going to shape their actions.  It keeps things from becoming stale, and empowers the notion that the players are fighting a specific character, and not just ‘whatever the DM throws at them that session’.

The Hill They Die On

Another short section, and the one we’ll conclude on.  There are scenarios where your players will kill a villain before you planned to have them die, and that’s fine.  

Applaud your players for pulling something like that off, whether it be because they were exceptionally clever, or your own inexperience made it possible.  It’s at this moment I’ll say something I may not have said yet: always be ready for the next adventure.  If your players pull off a surprise victory ahead of schedule, knowing what their next adventure is to be and letting them find their way to it will allow you time to finish the session without canceling too early.  This will then give you time to prepare assets and properly build the entirety of that next adventure.

Unexpected scenarios aside, your villain has a limit.  There is both a point in time when the villain must truly ‘lose’, and when your players will yearn for something new.  There are a few ways to do this, but what’s most important is to understand their motives.

A necromancer looking to learn about the undead will die on the hill of ‘backed into a corner with nowhere to go’.  It’s not significant, but a necromancer of that sort is not a significant villain.  A necromancer working tirelessly, maybe even selflessly, to use profane magics to resurrect a loved one will sooner die before let the players foil their plot, and that is the hill they die on.

Some villains will still try to escape after their plot is foiled, only to find they have nothing once truly beaten.  This villain may fade into obscurity, beaten but not dead, or that villain may develop a personal vendetta against the players.  That adventure finds the players as targets, with the villain pushed to their absolute limit as they attempt to assassinate the players in a murderous rage with no regard for their own well being.

Villains have an expiration date; a period of time where their involvement as the players’ main antagonist is interesting.  You can save them if you want, keep them alive to be used as a lackey to a greater villain, perhaps purely to strike at the players out of spite, but they are still no longer the main antagonist in that scenario.  

I end this post here, on this somewhat dour note, because you may feel particularly proud of a villain.  That’s great, be proud, and even keep that villain for later.  A villain in one campaign can come back in another as an undead, or a devil, or after some other grisly transformation, and when they do they’ll be interesting again.  What’s most important for now is that you say goodbye and congratulate your players when they triumph, and then get excited as you start the MSMA for the next villain they’ll love to hate.

[dndplus]

In-Depth: Villains, Part 1

I go over Villains somewhat in my Getting Started series of posts, specifically in the ‘Making an Adventure’ segment.  It’s enough to get a Dungeon Master started with a simple villain, but I didn’t go into much detail on how even the examples were made or why those options in particular were brought up.

If you’re interested in something simple, or simply don’t know much about making an adventure in general, you can find those posts here:

     Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part I

     Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part II

For everyone looking to do a little more with their villains, the sections below will detail several methods I employ, as well as how and why I go about using them.  These can especially helpful if you have trouble keeping your players engaged and focused on your villain.

To do this, and to better explain it to others, I’ve broken my method down into several parts that will not only help you organically create a villain, but also tie that creation into their introduction to the party and act as inspiration for the adventures you create going forward.

The steps in question:

Motive, Station, Mentality, and Ability (Part 1 ends after this...)

Introducing the Villain to Your Party

The Villain’s Lackeys

Evolution

The Hill They Die On

Some of these steps are going to take less time than others, and some you might choose not to do, but all of these choices are equally important to the process of creating villains that will be unique and varied across a campaign.

Motive, Station, Mentality, and Ability

Why they do it, the means they have, what type of person they are, and what they’re capable of really sums up the framework of a villain in every way imaginable.  This arrangement, their “MSMA”, can be used for every character, but it’s especially important for a villain, even if it’s only a minor one.

     Motive

The motive precedes everything else.  Regardless of who a villain is, they have something they want to do, or, more important, you as as the DM have a story you want to tell.  The scope of the motive is very important here, and should be enlarged to match the importance of the villain.

A minor villain should have a very basic motive...  

A necromancer abusing a town’s graveyard to create undead (whether it be for a purpose or just to expand their knowledge and experiment) is a very good basic motive.  You know this is a bad guy breaking the law, as they care only to further themselves and do it at the expense of others.  Their work is dangerous, illegal, and was probably discovered because some poor soul was eaten by one of their zombies.

A moderate villain should have a quirk to their basic motive, making it more elaborate and take longer to accomplish...

That same necromancer becomes an entirely more dangerous foe with a deeper purpose to their motive.  They could be relatively kind, believing in the long run that their ‘work’ will benefit the world more than it harms it.  In this way, the players’ journey for justice becomes less obvious than black and white, as the necromancer might make a good argument for their actions and drag an adventure out by taking time to reveal whether or not they’re at all to be trusted.

A major villain should have a motive that would inspire incredible effort on their part, as well as instill in the players that they fight someone who may be more determined to succeed than they are to stop them...

A necromancer, like many dangerous wizards, becomes their most terrifying when they are pursuing a singular, seemingly out of reach goal.  Having a truly sympathetic reason to enhance this can help, a common one being that a necromancer seeks to use necromancy to restore a loved one whose death has left them beyond saving by ordinary magical means.  Some players may even be sympathetic to the cause, and think helping the villain and keeping them out of trouble would be a wiser course of action, but then discover the ancient ritual they’ve discovered (or the new one they’ve invented) requires the sacrifice of hundreds, possibly even an entire town or city.  The scope is massive, one that befits a major villain, and offers opportunities for their plot to unfold over time instead of all at once.

Understand also that simpler motives can be used for major villains as well, especially if the villain themselves (like a dragon) has the means and power to threaten it on a massive scale.  For instance, a bandit might seek to take over a town, while an elder dragon could scheme to seize an entire kingdom!

These are just examples, the text in bold is what you’ll want to focus on.  Giving you more than the frame and some examples is somewhat impossible here, as the villain’s motive is essentially the foundation of your adventure/campaign.

     Station

A character’s station in society sets the stage for your adventure/campaign.  That station can also demand you explain how a character gained certain abilities, such as why a noble might be a master thief, or why a street urchin has grown into a crime lord with powerful magical abilities.  

In this way, a criminal mastermind is revealed to have risen to power through their own natural and incredible sorcerous powers, or perhaps because a powerful patron turned them into a warlock when they formerly had nothing, and made them fiercely loyal because of it.

All of this is a tool to combine locales and form a unique backdrop.  It can insert fiends into a narrative, or fey, or other bizarre creatures.  It can give a character seemingly acting alone interesting contacts from their past, or can act as a major revelation that spells doom for the villain (finding out a master thief is actually a noble can be shocking, as well as give the players a more powerful way to go after such an evasive opponent).

How you use a character’s station to advance and enrich a story is entirely up to you, and you may not even use it at all.  It’s simply another tool to improve your adventures and storytelling ability.

A character’s station can be incredibly exotic, though.  If your great villain is a dragon, their ‘station’ in life is now something entirely different.  Luckily, the Monster Manual will tell you about these creatures in their entries, and you can then extrapolate a result based on it.  In this way, a dragon becomes an overlord with its own army, or a solitary creature with an elaborate and dangerous lair.  

Likewise, an Aboleth might live off in some secluded place with a small population of creatures worshipping it as a god, or it could be hidden beneath a kingdom, and in the process of enacting a scheme to take control from the shadows that’s been thousands of years in the making.  In the first example, an Aboleth is a potential moderate villain, whereas in the second, it’s a major one whose identity as an Aboleth may not be discovered till very late in the campaign.

     Mentality

I’ve touched on this a bit already, back in Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part II.  A villain’s mentality is not something you should skip, as it influences much of how they scheme, and also how they fight.  We spend our entire lives interacting with others, so imagining a way for a person to act isn’t all that difficult.  That said, let’s talk about why you might choose a specific way for someone to act based on the situation...

In the example of a noble who is secretly a master thief, a change in mentality can create a completely different series of adventures and confrontations indeed.  

For instance, you might make them arrogant and haughty.  They’re not so much cruel in their thievery as they are oblivious to how it harms others, and as a result find the sport of the whole thing its attraction.  This character is unlikely to do much killing, and may serve as a prime candidate for the players to try and capture alive (as they don’t necessarily deserve death).

On the other hand, that same noble might becomes a menacing, dangerous, and possibly even horrifying opponent when you attach the moniker of sociopath to how they act.  They might take things simply because they want them, or to prove their superiority and stave off the boredom of a boring noble lifestyle.  This same master thief might start as someone who finds the players chasing him as an amusement until they discover his identity, at which point he become something closer to a manipulative politician or assassin.  The players could find the noble working to pin his own crimes on them, or simply using their own stealthy abilities and ability to plan shrewd and cunning heists as a way to exterminate the players before they can prove they’re the thief.  Unlike the arrogant sportsman, this thief is now a murderous threat who doggedly looks to undermine, imprison, and even kill the players to save themselves.

When deciding on a mentality, understand that a character who is innately insane in some significant way will be much quicker to attempt to kill the players.  In this way, you get a villain who will try to fight the players immediately.  The less insane a character gets, or rather, the more stable they are, the more time you’ll have to build towards a confrontation (a big deal, especially if you plan to have many and the character in question is a major villain).

You can also have a kind character as your villain, such as in the example of a necromancer trying to bring back a loved one.  This villain is nice as you can have them ‘win’, but decide not to kill the players because they’re trying minimize casualties in their scheme.  This sort of villain might have their mental state degrade over time, or all at once when the players finally get the upper hand and ruin their plan.

If motive is the frame for your adventure, a villain’s mentality is the style it’s built in.  A devil can be menacing, or silly, or both.  A necromancer can be brooding, or misunderstood, or wicked.  A thief can be a smiling, sporting fellow who really doesn’t mean anyone harm, or a cold, egotistical maniac who’ll kill you to keep things quiet.

     Ability

And here we are!  If your villain is a dragon, or an aboleth, or a beholder, or a devil, or a hag, you know their abilities.  You might choose to add some, as their station and mentality might push them to have unique quirks in that way, but their abilities are pretty static.

For humanoid figures, a character’s abilities are split into two major categories: player abilities, and non-player abilities.  One of these is obvious, and makes for a relatively easy to construct character - You make them like a player, and maybe splice in something extra from their unique background or through a magical item they wield.  The other, being of the non-player sort, can be more complicated.  If you’re well into a campaign, creating a character who will act as a worthwhile opponent to your players shouldn’t be too hard.  Otherwise, you can look for something at the Challenge Rating you’re shooting for and rig up abilities with similar number values. This can work from CR 1/4, all the way up to CR 26 (it gets a little more complicated after that).  

These abilities, no matter what they are or how you got them, should match the character in question.  A bandit chief, lord, or king, depending the scope, will have mundane powers and incredible natural combat ability.  An archmage, on the other hand, will deal exclusively in magic, while a warlock, or the priest to an evil god, might have a mixture of the two.  

The abilities of a villain also give us clues to the minions they might keep.  While a noble’s station can give them an army or order of knights to command, their dark dealings with a great old one of some sort (as a warlock, in this example) could add powerful, otherworldly beings to their arsenal.  

A character’s ability also denotes how a final confrontation might be structured.  A dragon lends itself to being a single, big foe if that’s what you’re after, whereas a humanoid foe will carry with them tricks or allies to shore themselves up.  The necromancer, obviously, will enter into battle with undead at their side, but the master thief might create a playground of deadly traps and abuse their evasive nature to lure players into them, before finishing them off after the trap has done its work.

The nice thing about deciding a villain’s abilities is that, after the first three steps of MSMA, it’s probably something you’ve already got lots of ideas for.  They’re a bi-product of the first three steps, and help to enrich the overall story instead of just being a creature’s vague capabilities.  By having all of it work together, you have the foundation for a compelling core to your adventures and campaigns, one that will likely prove more engaging to your players.

This will end Part 1 of the post.  I knew the MSMA section would be longest, so I included that here.  It’s also a lot of substance, and good enough to help a lot of players building NPC characters in general without the other half of the post.

Expect Part 2 sometime soon (within the next week).

[dndplus]

Lack of Updates, and a Homebrew for you.

I haven’t posted anything new on the blog here in a little while.  I want to post information on details people, you people, need.  In that vein, I’m making the start of this post an open invitation for any and all people with Dungeon Mastering woes to DM me with questions and concerns.  I’ll answer back as best I can, and if it’s a really good question with an especially complex answer, I might do a full blog post on the issue.

For everyone else just looking for some D&D content to peruse while they enjoy their morning/afternoon/evening on Tumblr, I’ve got a homebrew here I was working on a little while back as a means of apology for not posting anything recently.

Introducing: The Zealot - A 5e class for the holy, monster hunting, vigilante, gun-toting lunatic in all of us!

>>>Link Here<<< 

This thing spans 10 pages in openoffice, so I’m just gonna link it.  If you’re using it, bookmark this page and check back every once in a while in case my play testing forces me to make changes.  

As any DM would, I’d love to hear about any experiences/problems anyone who makes use of this homebrew has while playing it themselves.  Happy Hunting!

[dndplus]

In-Depth: Splitting The Party

There is a special place in the most sadistic part of a DM’s heart for the prospect of splitting the party.  It fills expert players with terror, as they know just how much weaker a group can become with the loss of even a single member, and newer players make hard-earned blunders via their overconfidence.

Yes, splitting the party is an excellent tool for adding challenge and creating tension, but it comes with some hurdles for the DM.  How do you set it up?  How do you keep things fair?  What goals do you create for the party, and how?  We’ll talk about all this and more below...

As a word of warning, if you don’t know the more basic aspects of DMing and building an adventure I suggest you read the posts linked below first, as I don’t go terribly in depth on how to make an adventure in general, only the details of how to split a party and make use of it:

Making an Adventure, Part 1

Making an Adventure, Part 2

Getting Started: Combat

In-Depth: Altering Combat

Splitting The Party

This can be the most difficult part.  You don’t want to railroad your party whenever possible, doing so removes the beautiful reality of D&D, the one that tells players they can do anything they want (within reason, hopefully...).

So, how do we split the party?  The first thing you need to remember is patience.  A convincing split doesn’t happen because you want it to, it happens because the party makes a mistake.  Here’s a list of simpler ideas that might help you spot when the opportunity is upon you:

A simple task, done alone.  The party has killed a vampire, and they know where its coffin is.  The location is undefended, the session is almost over, and most of the party is too taxed to pay close attention.  Your intrepid paladin sees an opportunity to be noble and go stake the vampire, while the warlock and cleric are too concerned with getting a rest, the ranger is busy chatting it up with the local priest you just saved, and the barbarian noble is looking to set up lodgings for the night.  If this sounds too specific, it’s because it actually happened in one of my campaigns, and the paladin never came home.  A great, great way to set up any number of adventures in which the party is down a member!

The double gate.  Your party enters a dungeon.  It beings with a fork in the road, and a gate on either side.  There is a lever by each gate, but when you pull the lever, the gate on the other side goes up, and a new one comes down blocking the way (with a 5-10-15 foot gap between them).  The only way through is for the party to split up and pull both levers at the same time.  This method is simple, effective, and easy, but probably requires you specify that the levers wont react to things like mage hands or unseen servants.  Perhaps the levers do nothing at all, and then dungeon’s evil architect is watching from the shadows?  The excuse is yours, just make sure it’s there if your party is particularly clever.

Timing.  A carefully planned ploy by a friendly NPC requiring two things to happen simultaneously is another really simple way to encourage a split, but it’s not guaranteed.  Veteran players will look for any reason to avoid a split, and will show a knack for problem solving you probably didn’t know they had.  This one simply might not work, but that’s really the case for most any ploy of your own that requires the players to act a certain way.

Collapse.  This one is great.  Nothing is quite so exciting and jarring as having a cave collapse and drive a literal wedge between the party, except maybe having the floor collapse instead, resulting in the party falling into two separate chambers.  This is quick, dirty, and nearly unavoidable if you don’t give the party enough time to stoneshape their way out of the mess they find themselves.  Just be mindful of teleportation spells!

Keeping Things Fair

So, we’ve split the party.  Now what?  Now, we keep things fair.  If you split one character off alone, this is pretty easy.  You can even throw typical encounters at the party if you wish, just understand that they’re going to be much more difficult and costly to the party with their action economy so heavily depleted.

What does this do, though?  Well, it shows the value of a single party member, or if you split the party down the middle, it can remove that ‘well rounded’ feeling a complete party gives.  It’s important to budget your encounters out around the new party numbers though, and on that note, we need to talk about what happens when the party is split unevenly.

More specifically, we’re going to talk about what to do when a party member is singled out and alone.  It’s a situation that calls for some tact on your part, as not every class in Dungeons and Dragons is well suited towards life on their own.  Rather, each class has weaknesses that, when exploited, can render them very weak.  Keep this in mind when you craft an encounter for that solo player.

In addition, if the party is friendly with any NPCs applicable to the situation, you could also have them show up (or be found) in whatever section the poor solo player has ended up.  As an added bonus, this can go a long, long way towards making an NPC the party is familiar with seem either more trus

What’s the Goal, and Why?

You’ve split the party, and you’ve reminded yourself not to go too overboard with the encounters while the party is in their weakened state.

Now for the important part: the why.

This is an adventure, after all.  What does the party hope to accomplish?  Regardless of what the greater task is, you should understand that first and foremost the party wants to reunite.  That is the big event that marks the adventure’s end (or is the penultimate event before a final showdown, if you’re after that sort of thing).

With all of that in mind, let’s look at some of the more interesting thing we can do with a narrative that splits the party.  There’s a lot, so I’m going to break it up into different sections, each propping up a different attribute of the adventure you might choose to incorporate for story reasons...

The first attribute we’re going to talk about is: NPCs.  When you split one or a small fraction of the party away from the greater whole and stick them with a friendly NPC, you’re in a great position to tell your story.  Here’s a few reasons why:

Not-so-friendly NPC - This is a personal favorite of mine.  Not every enemy is going to be an eternal foe.  Sometimes, that ‘random’ enemy that got away runs into a greater villain themselves and develops their own unexpectedly righteous quest for vengeance.  It’s an opportunity for your players to define themselves as petty, wherein they go for the kill anyway to get revenge for an old grudge, or the right proper ‘good guys’ who see an opportunity to gain an ally and turn the wicked to a more righteous path.  

Lost NPC - Sometimes your lone player character drops down into a small office and has a quick, relatively easy fight with a guard, only to find a key on their corpse.  Surprise surprise, that thought-dead NPC from before is chilling out in a jail cell, and your lone player character now not only has a friend, but feels like they were responsible for it.  It’s a nice little way to add some excitement and let the players know a certain character is still kickin’.

Betrayer - Just as a bad NPC can turn out to be kind of good, a good NPC can turn out to be a real butthead.  They need the player in this situation, it’s the reason they keep the PC alive, whether it be because the challenges ahead are too dangerous, or because they actually need that PC in particular.  In some scenarios, the Betrayer NPC could even be the cause of the party’s split in the first place, and be the mastermind behind a greater, more dramatic plot.

Obviously there are other examples, but if I resigned myself to putting up an example that would fit every reader’s campaign, I’d be here forever.

Instead, we’re going to move on to the next major attribute to keep in mind when designing a party split scenario: Time.  Here’s my two favorite ways  time can affect the progression of an adventure...

Endless Enemies - This one is absolutely fantastic, and if someone is just looking to do a ‘party split’ for the sake of fun, this is probably the most fun you can have with it.  Whether it be a few or just one player separated, having them trapped somewhere (that the rest of the party knows about) and fighting a constant stream of lesser foes can really put the rest of the party in a difficult situation.  This is actually one of the few situations where metagaming improves your game experience.  At a tabletop, it’s difficult to have all of this happen separately and secret, and that’s to its benefit.  You want the other players to know their friend is in trouble, to create tension and show the situation is time sensitive.  If you’re on Roll20 or something like that, go through the trouble of making it so the players can see what’s going on with each group to heighten that tension and make things more memorable.

Time-ing - Yeah, sometimes you gotta do something at the right moment.  Group 1 has to blow up a bridge before group 2 can open a gate.  In a dangerous situation, you set this up so group 2 has an easier time getting into position, and then possibly combine it with Endless Enemies to have them constantly fighting while Group 1 struggles to get into position.  Again, this creates tension, and pushes the players to use resources to go fast.

I have no doubt there are more creative DMs out there who can come up with their own potentially more incredible use of ‘time’ to make an adventure more exciting, but I find the two examples above are great for a first time.  Any process that involves endless enemies lets you dynamically adjust what the party is facing, since the enemies trickle in slowly, and thereby keep it from becoming too difficult if you’re unsure.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can save a much larger, more dangerous enemy to throw at the players waiting for rescue when the rest of the party draws close.  Typically, I would create an excuse for the player in the danger to be able to escape without actually fighting, as both the main party and the splintered part will be very weak by this point.

By this point, you probably have everything you need to create your own ‘split the party’ scenario.  I wish I could do more, but one thing I intentionally avoid in these posts is getting too specific.  I don’t want to tell someone not to do anything when there are legitimately situations in which you might want to do that, I merely want to give you enough to try something on your own, as you’ll no doubt have a deluge of new ideas of your own on how else you might do it after you’ve run through it with your players.

[dndplus]

In-Depth: Altering Combat

This is post is titled “In-Depth”, and it is done so because it talks about the aspects of combat and building encounters in D&D that are beyond your basic ‘understanding locales’ and KFC nonsense.

If you want the beginner’s post on Combat, go here:

    Getting Started: Combat

That said, in my Getting Started post, I didn’t go into detail on certain aspects of running an encounter.  This was intentional, as someone who’s just started should’t be concerning themselves with quite so much.  But what about the rest of us?  The people building encounters for players at level 3, or 5, or 9, or 14, or... you get the picture.

As per usual, I’m going to break this post down into certain key segments:

Experience, and Why You Shouldn’t Always Listen to the CR

Special Enemy Abilities

Moving The Goalposts: How to Make Parties of Particularly Deadly Player Characters Feel Their Weaknesses

One Big Foe

Depending on your level of experience, one (or all) of these bullets will jump out to you as things that have needed adjustment on your end.  Here’s some tips and insight on how to manage all of these factors, starting with some advice to keep experience values from affecting how you structure encounters...

Experience, and Why You Shouldn’t Always Listen to the CR

I’m going to go ahead and start this post by saying that, in my opinion, no custom campaign should ever really bother with experience.  This is a guideline (admittedly a useful one), but it can grossly limit a DM’s creativity and flexibility when building an encounter.

So, you can either assign experience values yourself based on the difficulty (because, yes, an encounter can be worth MORE experience than the CR suggests as well), or you can simply inform your players of when they’ve earned a level-up as your campaign’s story dictates.  I’ll give some advice on this, but first, let’s talk about the why.

A vampire has a challenge rating of 13, and awards 10,000xp (split evenly among the group).  It’s a difficult foe, with regenerative capabilities, Legendary Actions and Resistance, the added complication of Misty Escape, incredible story-centric skills (shapechange, charm, etc), and even the ability to summon minions.

It also only has 144 hit points (on average).  In a straight up, no non-sense fight, you’d be downright shocked to see how low a level some parties of 4 can be when challenging a “dreaded” vampire and coming out on top.

So, what gives?  Why 10,000xp for something that has such a strong chance of being outright blown up?  Well first of all, a vampire has legendary resistance and legendary actions baked in because it’s meant to fight with others.  The chaos of a packed battlefield is what makes a vampire the CR 13 menace it claims to be.

But that’s my point: A vampire is not a CR 13 creature when alone, not the way many dragons fit their CR when they are.  For instance, an Adult White Dragon (also CR 13) has the same Legendary Resistance, Legendary Actions, much more HP, a higher Armor Class, a deadly breath weapon (12D8, save DC 19, YIKES!), and a far more powerful array of standard attacks.  What’s more, dragons of this size have Frightful Presence, which severely ups the creature’s action economy (more about action economy in One Big Enemy later...)

At this point, the Adult White Dragon already seems stronger than a Vampire, but it pulls way, wayyyy ahead when you factor in its nightmarish 80ft Flying Speed.  If this isn’t proof that you can’t always trust the CR rating of a creature, I don’t know what is.

So, how do we go about assigning level-ups in a way that keep us from worrying about the sudden deluge of experience an overrated monster offers?  Simple!  You forgo experience altogether!  Some players like the illusion of experience, though.  To accommodate this, plan out all of the adventures you wish to have spanning a “level” and then split up the experience rewards based on the difficulty of individual missions.

If your players understand and trust you enough to handle the level-ups without the bells and whistles, it’s up to you to plan their distribution.  The best way to do this is to look at the greater adventure at play in your campaign and take stock of your villain.  Your players should be strong enough to handle them when the times comes, but not so strong that they walk right over the poor sod.  Use those benchmarks to create the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ points of the level ups you need your players to get.

After that, use important encounters to space those level ups out.  Here’s a few examples of events that are well suited to triggering a level up:

Defeating one of the villains most powerful minions.  This one is obvious, and a classic.  As an added bonus, it cements the feeling in your players that they’re getting closer to final confrontation.

The conclusion of an important meeting, or the coming of a particularly plot-important revelation.  This one is a bit more complicated, but again fits well with the feeling of progression.  Typically, this is best used when your players have gone through a lot of combat since their last level, but are lacking in some plot-significant baddie to mark the occasion.

Difficult Side Quests.  Yeah, sometimes the players get dragged into something completely unrelated, but it’s nice for these to have weight and not feel like a waste of time.  If you’re worried about your players going off and doing other stuff to the point that they’ll become too powerful, remember that you can fill the final boss encounter with additional minions to bring the difficulty up to par.  Alternatively, you can use the story you’ve created to put a sense of urgency into the players, and also create consequences for their wandering.  A necromancer threatening to ascend into a lich is a terribly frightening prospect, and makes the players feel like they’ve lost ground for running off to level up more before the final confrontation.

That’s really all there is to say about experience.  It’s not a terribly detailed subject, but it’s one I want Game Masters to understand.  CR, like everything else, is just a tool.  Treating it as gospel will make balancing encounters that much more difficulty in the long run.

Special Enemy Abilities

I sincerely hope that this is a short subject, because it’s not a particularly complicated one.  What’s it really about, though?

Well, sometimes that Specter enemy you’re throwing at your players was created as a result of something unique.  The Monster Manual already gives us a ‘special’ version of the Specter in the Poltergeist, but that doesn’t always fit the flavor of your specter’s circumstances.

Let’s start with a few examples of why a creature might have special abilities:

A pact, blessing, or curse from some greater being.

The unique way in which it came to be.

Life in a locale not typical to its species.

Some detail specific to your setting.

There’s a lot more, but these should give you an idea of when to get creative.

In the instance of the specter, we’re going to combine 1 + 2, in which someone died at the hands of a particularly horrid and dark god.  At this point, you have to ask yourself: how much stronger, or weaker (because yes, they can be weaker), is my ‘special’ creature?

So, our ultra horrible nightmarish entity has doomed a few pour souls to a particularly vile magically induced death.  What comes of it?  If the entity is supposed to be particularly powerful, then make the specters more powerful too.

We’ll start by upping the HD from a flat 5D8 to 5D8 + 20, which is a significant increase for any party that has trouble dealing with a Specter’s natural resistances.

It can’t just be more powerful though, can it?  No, the rule of cool is important, and we want this new version to do something cool that will tip your players off to how unique it is, as well as match the dark entity that created them.

In this example, I’m using an evil god of my own design known as Goddenfeir.  Without going into too much detail and boring you all to death, Goddenfeir is a god obsessed with the concept of complete nonexistence, and finds it unattainable.  Wraiths, specters, and the like created by Goddenfeir carry this sense of oblivion deep within their being, and manifest abilities to go along with it.  Here’s what I gave the specter:

Breath of Oblivion - Recharge 5-6, 15ft Cone.  Targets caught in the breath must make a DC 12 Dexterity Saving Throw, suffering 5D6 Cold Damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one.

This is a frightening ability, especially when the prospect of multiple specters comes into play.  In my own campaign, this was done to pump up Goddenfeir himself in a simple event that wasn’t meant to threaten the players that much, merely show them that he’s there, and that even something as harmless as a Specter (CR 1 normally) can potentially become very dangerous with his dark influence.

Moving The Goalposts: How to Make Parties of Particularly Deadly Player Characters Feel Their Weaknesses

Adding this category was very much so an afterthought, but it’s an important one: some player parties are just too damn good at killing things.

So how does a Dungeon Master kill-, er... challenge such a party?  Simple: you move the goalposts.  Not every encounter needs to come down to ‘killing the other guy’.  Not every encounter needs to be combat, either.  You could throw a puzzle at your players, or a particularly deadly trap (or a combination of the two!).

When you are looking for a way to give your oh-so-powerful band of murder-hobos a fight that will leave them quaking, you want to change the goal of the overall fight.  Here’s some basic examples of how to do that, for you to use straight up or to inspire you to create one of your own:

Evacuation!  A town is under attack, and its enemies are legion.  Have your players brave the town and help the people trapped within escape, fighting through the endless hordes all the while.  This can be easily done by enticing them with a great deal of gold for every person they save (and then making them increasingly difficult to get to, of course).

Trapped!  Sometimes, the only play is to run away.  Again, we have an endless horde situation, but this time your players are working against the clock (and their own limited resources) to secure a means of escape.  Speaking of clocks...

Stall/Rush!  Some parties are strong because they blow enemies up super fast.  Some parties are strong because they’re just so damned resilient.  Whichever the variety plaguing you, making a fast party take their time (such as with an enemy who’s invulnerable for a series of turns at the start of a fight) can be devastating.  Likewise, forcing a slow party to get the job done fast (say, defeating a powered up Ogre Champion with the key to the lift of the collapsing mine they’re in).  

This is a pretty bare-bones set of examples, but I think they demonstrate pretty well that a lot of parties are only really strong when the game is being played how they expect.  Dungeons and Dragons isn’t just about killing the bad guy, though.  Sometimes the evil player campaign requires taking someone alive, or the good player campaign needs the players to make an ally of an enemy.  Whatever the demand, there’s always a way to move the goalposts and show your players they’re not as unstoppable as they think.

One Big Foe

I saved this for last specifically because it’s what reminded me to return to an combat in an In-Depth post.  In the Getting Started: Combat post, I talked about KFC and how it shows us that quantity > quality when it comes to making an encounter more difficult.

But what about when when you want to hit your players with a proper, ginormous monster?  Some monsters are already built for this, like Dragons and Beholders, as shown by the presence of Legendary Resistance and Legendary Actions.  Legendary Actions, in particular, are there to help even out the action economy difference.

Action Economy

You have 5 players.  They are each level 3, and you’ve called in a Hill Giant (CR 5) to pick a fight with them.  With the ability to deal 36 damage in a couple of attacks, it’s pretty clear that a Hill Giant is a deadly foe.  Surely it will-, wait, no, the players killed it in 2 rounds.

How?  Your 5 players only had to average 10 damage each to deal 100 damage in two rounds, and the Hill Giant has a low Armor Class and an average HP of 105.  The Hill Giant, if lucky, did 72 damage total.  In all reality, it did much less, with several points of damage going over as a player fell unconscious, or 18 points vanishing into the abyss as your giant rolled a natural one or just outright missed.  What’s more, no one in the party probably even bothered using a potion or other consumable, and next to no healing spells (if any) were used either.

This is where we even things out...

Legendary Actions

Hill Giants do not have legendary actions, and shouldn’t, but when one big enemy is alone, giving them legendary actions can help improve the threat they pose to the party without diluting the experience and adding more small enemies to back it up.

For a Hill Giant, we give it a pool of 2 Legendary Actions, which it takes at the end of a player’s turn, and is refreshed every time the Hill Giant’s turn ends.  It’s Legendary Actions would then look something like this:

Move, 1 Action - The Hill Giant moves up to half it speed.

Club, 1 Actions - The Hill Giant swings its greatclub at a target..

Hurl, 2 Actions - The Hill Giant scoops up a rock from its pouch and hurls it at a distant target.

At this point, the Hill Giant is suddenly terrifying.  2-3 turns feels like an eternity when it gets two attacks on its turn, and up to 2 additional attacks through the use of Legendary Actions.  We made it more mobile as well, a fact that will truly terrify the squishier members of the group who rely on keeping their distance.

In the end, though, a Hill Giant still only has so many hit points.  The fight would have to go terribly, TERRIBLY wrong for 5 player characters to all die to this one Hill Giant.

It’s important to think about what you want your legendary actions to accomplish for a creature.  I set the boundary of two attacks, an attack and half of its movement, or a single ranged attack, and then made the total legendary action uses match the pool of actions themselves.

Hopefully, this will improve your encounters when you try to throw a single, menacing beast up against your players, instead of it just turning into an ego boost for your players!

[dndplus]

Happy Thursday!

This post is for that handful of people who followed me.

First of all, thank you very, very much.  Writing this out was a lot of fun and really helped me order my own thoughts on things, and to find it has helped others has turned it into an extremely rewarding and gratifying endeavor.

The Important Bit:

What do you want to know more about DMing, or D&D in general?  

I usually play on Sunday’s and get my ideas from playing with my group, but last Sunday was a by for us, so an idea hasn’t ‘come to me’ like it usually does.  So, I’m looking for ideas.  You know, something to type out while I’m watching CR later tonight...

[dndplus]

In Depth - Character Creation

This post is still for Dungeon Masters, but I imagine players can glean a thing or two about this on how to make a character.

Now I know what a lot of people are thinking: this is too basic.  The Player’s Handbook does an excellent job explaining this, and-

I’m going to stop you right there, because this isn’t just about the basics.  Yes, I’m going to go over the actual steps of creating a character, but I’m also going to add insights on how a DM can help walk a new player through the character creation process, as well as how a DM themselves can get the most out of a character creation process themselves.  It’s also a look at why DMs and Players should make their characters together.

Here’s the bullets on what we’ll be covering:

Rolling stats, and why we do it first.

Getting to know your player, and understanding what they want.

Picking a background before a class.

Choosing a class.

Incorporating the character into the setting.

Rolling Stats, and Why We Do It First

This is a big one.  I can go on and on about the virtues of this step, but the reason we insist on doing it first is to talk about something that comes even before this step right away: how stats are handled.

There are many ways to handle stats, and it’s up to the DM to discuss with the players what they’re looking for.  Here’s a few ways it’s typically handled:

A point-buy system, where all players are on even footing and can tweak their character’s stats to their liking.

Absolute chaos, the other side of the spectrum.  You roll 4 D6s, add up the best 3, and pray you get a couple decent rolls to make something at least usable, and accept that the struggle is part of the fun.

A hybrid approach, whereby a player rolls 4 D6s and adds up the best three, and has the ability to turn one roll into a 16 (so long as they didn’t already get two 16+ rolls to begin with).  This system basically removes the ability for a character’s stat-line to be completely screwed, while preserving the randomness that some characters will naturally be more gifted than others.  Some players like the chance to be extra strong, and also like a challenge, but hate the possibility of being useless, so this can be a popular option..

My personal favorite, the ‘reroll’ approach.  This one is hard to explain, but the results have always been much to my liking and never left a player in a bad spot.  You roll 4 D6s like normal, add up the best 3, and keep going until you have all 6 rolls.  At this point, whether or not the player rerolls is based on a few simple guidelines.  Here are the rules I use:  Did the player get at least 2 rolls of 16+?  Keep.  Did the player get at least 1 14+, 1 16+, and have no rolls below 10?  Keep.  If neither of these happened, the player is offered a chance to reroll.  I’m a fan of this system because it allows for the possibility of character weighted heavily in one direction, giving them great strengths, but also great weaknesses.  Likewise, the other option is a character that’s still pretty good, at what they do, but with no grave weaknesses.  Finally, you can still end up with an incredible character, but I’ve yet to see anything obscene.

Regardless of whatever method you use, make sure you’re there for the rolling of the stats if the method requires it.  Do not, under any circumstances, allow a player to roll their stats without your supervision.  This is a mistake, one that can give rise to a player who fudges their rolls.  A DM must always be vigilant for this kind of behavior, as once someone starts cheating, it can be very, very difficult to get them to stop, and even harder to get other players to ever trust them again once they’re caught.

Getting to Know Your Player, and Understanding What They Want

Now, while rolling/picking stats, it’s time for you to discuss with your player what they’re after.  Not everyone plays D&D for the same reasons, after all.  Some people are looking for a way to hang out with or make new friends, some want to escape reality into a place where they can be a great hero or villain of their own making, and yet more want a sprawling, somewhat theatrical experience for them to lose themselves in.

The biggest lie a person can tell you at this point is that getting this information out of your player will be easy.  It’s not.  It’s Hell.  Expect that this is a process of you whittling them down, and start with a basic list of questions to find the angle that will get some answers you can work with:

What do you want to play?  This is an underestimated question, but some players really are that easy.  The ones who want to be powerful wizards or sorcerers (but don’t actually know the difference) should be introduced to the concepts of wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks.  People looking to brawl should be shown Barbarians, Fighters, Paladins, Monks, and maybe Rangers.  Players that want to be able to do a wide range of things should be shown Druids, Clerics, Paladins, and Bards.  Players that want to play ambushing assassins should be shown Rogues, Rangers, and Monks.  Giving them details of what each class brings to the table after narrowing things down usually results in a confident choice.

What do you want to get out of Dungeons and Dragons?  This is a tough question with a low success rate.  It usually hits well with players who are just there to have fun, though.  When that happens, and you can’t find something the player wants to play, suggest suspending the character creation until the others have gone.  Then, you can recommend a class that will be unique and useful in the group.  This usually satisfies the player in this category.  If it doesn’t, you’ll just have to keep working at it.

What do you want to be?  This is an important question, and one that sets up the real next step of character creation.  On occasion, you’ll have a player who can imagine the story of their character.  They’ll see a soldier, or an acolyte to some god, or a pirate, or a thief, or an entertainer or... whatever it is they fancy.  Not every thief has to be a rogue, and not every acolyte has to be a cleric, paladin, or monk.  Some players are convinced what they want to do won’t work, and in those situations you need to remind them that what they want absolutely can and will work.  

What’s your favorite fantasy genre?  This one is a little simple, yeah, but sometimes it gets the ball rolling.  Finding out that someone loves Lord of the Rings, and asking them who their favorite character can easily result in a recommendation that gets the player’s gears turning.  Likewise, a big fan of kung fu, karate, or MMA might not realize that monks are martial arts masters, and not just sagely individuals who make wine in a monastery on some remote countryside.  

Explain EVERYTHING.  This isn’t a question, this is what you do when nothing else works.  These supremely difficult players are typically joining the game for dubious reasons, mostly because they’re guarding themselves than for anything nefarious in nature.  D&D, while being a game that’s classically attributed to shut-in nerds, requires a person to be surprisingly outgoing to get the most out of it.  Guarded players are going to take extra time and attention, and might do odd things like wait till you’ve explained everything before making a choice, because for one reason or another they feel less embarrassed about looking excited about what’s looked down on in some circles as ‘just a board game’.

Whew that was a lot, but character creation can be incredibly taxing when dealing with newer players.  The good news is that that step is now done with, and you have a much better idea of what the player might be after (unless they’re the guarded sort, in which case may the Upper Planes have mercy on your soul).

Picking a Background BEFORE a Class

It’s amazing how much you can do before actually choosing a class.  Many of your players by this step will already have something concrete in mind, and that’s fine, but it’s still best to figure out a character’s background first.  

The Player’s Handbook offers several of these in detail (Pg. 125/141):

Acolyte

Charlatan

Criminal/Spy

Entertainer/Gladiator

Folk Hero

Guild Artisan/Guild Merchant

Hermit

Noble/Knight

Outlander

Sage

Sailor/Pirate

Soldier

Urchin

It’s a big, BIG list, and yet somehow there’s yet more to it than just picking one and being happy about it.  The biggest mistake a DM might make is seeing these and not realize that, from the very get-go, they’re just the framework of something you offer to a player.  They can be mixed, matched, and tweaked in any way that fits a specific player’s backstory.  Here’s a few examples to take note of:

Mercenary - All the flavor of a soldier, right down to the same possible skill proficiencies and tool proficiencies.  A mercenary, however, may have slightly more or less gold (depending on the success of their group), lack an insignia, and have a completely different kind of Feature.  Mercenaries who worked on the sea might have proficiency in sea vehicles instead of land ones, and share the Ship’s Passage feature with Sailor/Pirate.  They could also be tough and wise to the road, giving them the Wanderer feature from Outlander, or be well known and respected, garnering them the Rustic Hospitality feature from Folk Hero.  These are all ways to flavor a basic background and turn it into something that fits a player more appropriately.

Acolyte to a Dead God - Sometimes, bad things happens in a setting.  A campaign can start shortly after the fall of a god, with one of your players being the stalwart champion who refuses to give up their late deity’s sacred charge.  In this scenario, you often end up with an Acolyte devoid of the Shelter of the Faithful feature.  Life may have been hard since the death of their god, causing them to become proficient Wanderers, or maybe beneath their first identity of Acolyte they are also a noble.  My personal favorite is to mix Acolyte with Hermit, permitting the player to know a grand secret that may have a connection to their god.  This can be some truth their god entrusted them with that has great implication going forward, or even an artifact of uncertain power with the potential to resuscitate their patron from death!  Such an secret can be massive enough to create an underlying long-term goal for the campaign, and pit the forces that saw the god’s death against the players from square one.  It might sound like a lot of responsibility to plant on a player, but for some, the idea of such a massive task to undertake is what they’ll enjoy most.

Disgraced Noble - Blood carries power, enough to bend the ear of local lords and the like.  But what if that’s all a character has?  A prideful urchin, refusing to stoop to nefarious acts, may be lacking in street smarts, but by virtue of their birth still has the power to invoke their bloodline to others in power.  This character starts with little, possibly because what they had was taken or squandered by immediate family, but is rife with the flavors of determination and a sincere desire to return to their station.  This character is well educated, and remains skilled in History and additional language, but lacks in the means to persuade as efficiently as their non-disgraced counterparts, and starts with less coin and crummy clothes.  Their ability to be persuasive and throw their bloodline’s weight around may have been replaced with the skills needed to survive on the streets, like Survival itself, or perhaps with another language found where they live, or Athletics, or Religion from their need to visit local churches and pray for the strength struggle on through the shame of their fall from grace.

What I hope is understood most by these examples is that a player should be pushed to go into detail, not just so they themselves get more engrossed and invested in the events of the game, but so that the DM has more to use to that end.

Choosing a Class.

With a background selected, picking a class can now have more weight behind it.  It’s the culmination of a character, not the start of it, and that too attaches yet more weight to the decision.

The flavor of a chosen class becomes more apparent now that we have a background chosen.  Let’s look at how the decisions made in one of the backstories from before can affect the class outcome.

For this, we’ll use Disgraced Noble:

Barbarian - A Disgraced Noble forced to survive on the streets (Survival variant) can quickly become stripped of their more refined attributes.  Their life is difficult, and it seems often like their anger alone is what gives them the strength to go on.  In this way, a Disgraced Noble makes an excellent barbarian, combining the duality of their need to be proper and respectful with the ability to fly off the handle and wreak absolute havoc when pushed too far or disrespected too severely.

Fighter - A Disgraced Noble that’s especially devoted to the task of not succumbing to life on the streets acts the part of the knight even if they lack the resources to really be one.  It’s a bullheaded strategy in life, one that’s forced them to toughen up (Athletics variant).  Contrary to what would happen with most nobles, this seems to have emboldened the Disgraced Noble, and made him a paragon of discipline and strength that a locale can come to rally behind.  In many ways, this Disgraced Noble can be more Noble than any other.  They can also be cruel though, and don the mantle of a warlord looking to reclaim their birthright by force.  Whatever the choice, the player and DM have a lot to work with.

Paladin - Faith can lead to salvation, something the Disgraced Noble who turns to the local church might quickly learn.  The assumption by nobles that they are born to lead meshes well with the Paladin class, as they themselves are also natural leaders.  This Disgraced Noble refuses to let what happened to them shape their life, and forges on for whatever cause they adopt as if becoming Disgraced never happened.  Unlike the Fighter or Barbarian, this Disgraced Noble’s goals may not have to do with reclaiming their birthright, reacquiring it anyway will probably be in their future if they’re successful anyway.

In the instance of a player already knowing what class they want, you help them mold the background onto that choice in reverse.  In some cases, you can have their choice of class come from a relatively recent event, such as a thief signing a pact with some patron who suckered them into a bad deal with a heavy, ironic personal cost.  

Whatever the outcome, understand that your creative license (and the player’s) is endless!  This is Dungeons and Dragons!  You can play a Paladin Kobold Noble adopted by a well-off dwarven family who worships Moradin and supplements their paladin levels with sorcerer levels from their kobold heritage to create a spell-slot packed, divine smiting machine!

Incorporating the Character Into the Setting

Here we are, the part where it all comes full circle and you do your DM you to make a player’s character feel like a part of the world and not just tacked on.

For some characters, this is very easy.  The Disgraced Noble, or the Acolyte to a Dead God carries heavy integration right into their backstory.  You need only add the places and people in the world to highlight these things, and you’re all set.

For other characters, this can be more difficult.  Consider pairing characters with compatible backstories to give their existence more weight and to speed up the formation of the party when you finally play.  For instance, the Mercenary might remain friends with the Disgraced Noble after they can no longer be paid, and a Criminal and Pirate might bond after being forced to share a jail cell for a while.  Likewise; clerics, paladins, and monks might all recognize one another of worshippers to a similar diety, or a gladiator fighter may have heard of an acolyte monk whose temple encourages dueling as a means to perfect their martial arts.

Not all character backstories are going to have grand outcomes.  When you see one like this, ask the player if their character should have any special motivation behind them.  What do they desire, or what grudges do they hold?  What event pushes them out from their comfortable life?  Did a family member die, and leave them seeking revenge?  Is there something they find themselves needing to do, possibly because a dying, elder loved one wished it?

Whatever the case, look for a way to create a motivation in your player’s backstory.  Why?  Because some of your players absolutely will not go for this.  Having content that the players feel invested in completing does a lot for their engagement in the game, and one player being energized about something is usually enough to set fire to the whole group.

With all of that said, this brings me to my last point of this post.  Some players just don’t give a shit.  Don’t feel bad, it’s the way of the world.  They want to hang out, kill some enemies, get some cool loot, and then do it all again next week.  They feed off the energy of other players, relying on them to give the campaign substance, and will oftentimes make you feel like everything you’ve done went unappreciated.

When you encounter this player, understand something very important and beneficial about them: they’re there to have fun.  They keep things light, and do things unexpectedly in character as a gag that cracks the whole table up and makes the hours of play fly by.  This player is a headache and a half, but every group would benefit from having one, so tolerate their nonsense when you have to.

[dndplus]

In Depth - Treasure

I’ve touched on this a tiny bit in my getting started series, but I felt really talking about the loot you choose to live your players would be an excellent resource for many aspiring Dungeon Masters out there.  Mostly, I want to talk about a few things in particular:

How to avoid giving players ‘too much’.

Gold, and maintaining its value.

Magic items, both minor and major.

Altering existing magical items and creating your own.

Odds are, if you’re a DM, one of these topics is something you wish you knew more about, and for good reason!  Poorly handling treasure can be somewhat catastrophic, and there is no ‘safe side’ to err on.  

Typically, though, you don’t need to get ‘all’ of treasure management right to keep your game engaging.  In addition, there are a few band-aid solutions that can come at certain progression points to help patch up issues.  I’m going to mention these first before moving on.

    Help!  I gave my players too much gold!

This is a rough one.  The coins your players acquire are an excellent tool for attaching weight to something.  It’s important to understand that having too much money is something the party is allowed to do if they’ve just legitimately been saving it.  If your party ends up with too much money because you made a mistake, however, there are a few things you can do help manage the situation...

Steal it.  This is mean, but playing your players’ wealth off as a device to set up another adventure can work, assuming your players don’t lose their minds and hiss and scream and cry about it.  In this scenario, I would typically steal all of it, and then have them come to find that much of it is gone when they finally track down the culprit.  Making an adventure with a net loss is dangerous though, as it discourages players, which is why I’d only suggest doing this if their problem of too much money is relatively small.

Reimagine price tiers.  Yes, your players have lots of money now.  Those items on Magic Item Table A, B, and F that you sneak into shops from time to time only cost 1, 2, or 5 thousand gold coins (or less, if it’s consumable), and now your players have 10,000 gold a piece!  Magic Items are rare though, and how much more expensive they get as they become rarer is at your discretion!  You can also keep certain less-rare items more expensive purely because of how useful they are (I’m looking at you, Pearl of Power, Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, and Headband of Intellect!)  Consider making these more useful items and rarer items progressively more expensive, and simply work in the wealth you’ve bestowed upon your players into that equation.  You may also want to adjust the cost of land, buildings, and vehicles accordingly.

Gold sinks.  Like stealing, this is kind of mean, but slapping an impassable barrier in the form of a crucial NPC needing a lot of money is good way to lighten the load of a player’s wallet.  The only issue with this is that it’s D&D, and if your players are dead set on not lightening their wallet, they’re going to tear down the world you’ve built to make it happen.

At the end of the day, when you make a mistake, sometimes the best thing you can do is tell your players and explain that a change needs to be made.  And yeah, you’re going to get players who tell you “No” when you say this, who say they earned it, and demand they be allowed to keep their mountain of money no matter how much it inconveniences you.

Unruly players are part and parcel of being a DM.  Players who go out of their way to trip you up and gain an unfair advantage are fine, even good fun, but when one of their ploys works too well, you need to put your foot down.  It’s important to understand in these situations that you’re doing the bulk of the work to keep the game running, and that your fun needs to be assured just as much as the players.  Events like these can kill a campaign, but at the end of the day, you did the work and that one unruly player is throwing a tantrum over something game breaking.  Call their bluff, and accept they might storm off, because that player who’s causing you a problem is cause you a problem again if they think they can get away with it.

    Help!  I gave my players too many magical items!

This one is actually really easy to solve: tell your players you’ve been too generous, and scale the loot back.  Unless you’ve given them a ton of incredible gear, this is an issue that’s solved with time.  Consider making future rewards less impactful ones, like Bags of Beans, Alchemy Jugs, and other lesser items that can make for good fun.

If you gave your players something far too powerful for their level, attach a cost to it.  That incredible weapon?  It was stolen, and the proper owner wants it back!  Or maybe its ancient, worn by time, and at risk of breaking.  Having your players roll a D4/6/8 and having the item crumble on a natural 1 is a good way to give them that taste of power without any permanence, and any lack of rolls made prior can be chalked up to you explaining they’ve used the item beyond what it was intended for.

Some players will get upset at this, but it’s not something you should ever fold on.  Compromise can come in the form of them getting something in return for giving an extremely powerful item up, but never in the form of them being allowed to keep the item.  Your level 4 Adventuring Party shouldn’t have a Sphere of Annihilation.  Stealing the Daern’s Instant Fortress some NPC used to shield them in a moment of panic is cute, but the players using it as a 10D10 damage bomb that early in the campaign is far too destructive and inhibiting to your ability to design encounters and situations.

How to Avoid Giving Players ‘Too Much’

It’s important to understand when you start a campaign that how much magical loot your players get is entirely up to you.  This can be a lot, which works well in high fantasy settings where magic is abundant and the history is vast, or very little, which works better for more quaint settings or settings where magic has come to be frowned upon and treated with distrust.

Regardless of however much loot you decide to give your players, please understand that the important detail is your consistency.  If ‘feeling’ it out hasn’t gone well, or you want to be certain of your consistency, you’ll want to start classifying the adventures you offer by length, difficulty, and experience earned.  Here’s a basic list to help you see the differences I’m talking about:

The easiest of the easy.  Short length, easy to find, low risk, and relatively easy enemies.  No significant items should be awarded here, even in High Fantasy.  If the adventure comes without a gold reward, a consumable can be used in its place (a useful potion, perhaps).

A mid length adventure, something that takes a whole session (3-4 hours worth of play) and typically requires a player to make use of a short rest or two so they can conserve their resources.  In this scenario, offer only a little bit more gold than what the easiest jobs offer, but add an item of worth as well.  This can either be in the possession of an enemy, or in a chest somewhere.

A long adventure, sprawling multiple sessions and having multiple parts.  Players should find this somewhat difficult, and if all goes well, they may even have been forced to use some of their precious consumable items.  This adventure, as stated, is long and has multiple parts.  Awarding 2-3 items is fine, whether they be spread out or as part of some great stockpile found at the end, at least for high fantasy.  In lower fantasy, 1 item overall will be enough to earn the excitement of your players, and in the starkest of settings, having a magical item only be found half the time on such a long adventure can even be appropriate.  Just remember that, in the case of especially low magic fantasy settings, these limited magical items should be memorable ones!  Don’t be afraid to give the players real power, even at a lower level, as there is no plans for things to get more abundant down the road.

A finale.  Regions in settings have major problems, or ancient threats that tend to resurface.  When the players stumble upon an ancient evil working in the shadows, watch as it succeeds in committing regicide (King/Queen assassination), track it to its evil lair, recruit the locals to help assault said evil lair, and finally bring the monster to justice, they deserve a substantial reward.  Not a lot of these are going to happen, maybe as few as 3/4/5 before the story your players’ current characters are on concludes, so don’t be afraid to cut loose.  In High Fantasy, this can be as much as an item a piece for the players, as well as a large sum of gold.  In lower fantasy, 1 or 2 items is fine, maybe filling out the rest of the player slots with consumables to accompany.  In the starkest of campaigns, these should still guarantee at least a single magical item.  If your campaign includes items of great power, like artifacts, mythical items with story-related attributes, or items that grow and become more powerful under certain conditions (or all 3!), this is a good time to hand one of them out.

With those 4 bullets, you create guidelines for yourself.  You may find that even this system is too much for your tastes, but take heart, you can always dial back what the players fine.  Not every adventure can or should be a big loot winner, lest your players stop being excited when finding interesting or powerful items.

Gold, and Maintaining Its Value

Gold is tough to deal with.  The expenses of daily life are pitifully cheap, and even things like horses, carts, and carriages don’t demand a particularly steep price.

So, how much gold should your players earn?  Well, the first thing to consider is the party size.  200 gold at level 1 is a lot, but 50 gold for each player for something dangerous (or found as the collective hoard of a group of bandits) is a little more manageable.  Charging 50-100 gold for a basic healing potion makes that not very much, especially if you’re demanding your players either pay a small amount each day to cover their daily living expenses, or if you’re having them go about their day naturally and are keeping track of how good a job they’re keeping themselves fed and healthy.

As things progress, making hundreds of gold per adventure isn’t odd, and the treasure horde of a finale can quickly have each of your players coming into thousands a time.  And this is okay!  Sailing Ships cost 10,000gp!  Magical Items cost huge sums of money as well, with items (not consumables) from Magical Item Tables A and B (Dungeon Master’s Guide, pg. 144) costing up a thousand gold each (Bag of Holding is a good example of this).

It’s okay for players to acquire these large sums of gold, and even stockpile it, so long as you haven’t flooded their wallets with the stuff.  Try to remember that magical items are not common, even in High Fantasy settings.  That’s why, with the exception of basic healing potions, everything basically starts with a description of ‘uncommon’ rarity.  As far as Magical Item value goes, I use a scale something like this in my own campaign for magical items the players purchase (when they can find them):

Consumables A-B | 50 - 1000gp - There’s a lot of variance here, because lesser spell scrolls are very cheap, but Elemental Gems are quite powerful.  Conjure Elemental, after all, is a 5th level spell, but Elemental Gems can be used by anyone, and require to concentration to maintain, making it a VERY powerful consumable indeed.  Try to remember that when you price items, the odds of them being found and their value in a shop need not correlate.  Value is based on usefulness, for just like in real life, having something rare does not necessarily make it valuable.

Consumables C-D | 500 - 2500gp - These are the big kid items.  The one-use powerhouses that even higher level players consider valuable.  These items cost a lot, but can have a serious impact on a battle when used, and typically have a price tag to reflect that.

Magic Items A-B-C-F | 500 - 3000gp - This is a big category, and it covers a wide range.  Understand now, before I say anything else, that this is not meant to be a shopping list for your players.  Asking around town and finding a shop with any magical items at all should be something they work to do themselves.  Some of these items, like Alchemy Jugs, Caps of Water Breathing, and Driftglobes are very minor, hence the 500gp price tag.  More significant items though, like Gauntlets of Ogre Strength (~2000gp Value) and Winged Boots or a Broom of Flying (~3000gp Value) are worth much more.  +1 Weapons and Shields have a value that’s up to you, but understand that they bypass resistances of enemies who are resilient to non-magical equipment.  In a High Fantasy setting, anywhere from 500-1500gp is fair game, depending on how heavily you wish to gate that first magical item.  In lower fantasy settings, these should be difficult to come by, as they’re meaningful, and may cost upwards of 3000gp.

Magic Items G | 2000 - 10,000gp - This does not include Flame Tongue.  Flame Tongue grants an additional 2D6 damage on attack rolls.  For its power level, it deserves to be on Magic Item Table H.  Having a chance for it to appear at ‘G’ table level is fine, but price-wise, it doesn’t fit well with the rest of Table G.  The lower end of Table G typically consists of Ioun stones, as these, while powerful, can potentially be destroyed.  Any and all +2 equipment should be very expensive, as should weapons that counter certain enemies while being an excellent weapon to begin with (Dragon Slayer, Giant Slayer, etc).  I’d put all of these over 5,000gp in value, with Sun Blade being at the top for its proficiency rules and radiant damage typing.  In general, items in Magic Item Table G are extremely impactful, often giving players the ability to do things they otherwise couldn’t, and should be treated as such when considering their cost.  

Magic Items H | 10,000gp - 50,000+gp - Yeah, these items are EXPENSIVE.  Priceless, even.  Things like stat books should never be for sale, unless done in some black market scenario rife with danger.  Simple, but powerful items (like +1 top-tier armors, +3 Weapons, and +3 Shields) should cost tens of thousands of gold coins.  Items like a Manual of Golems, however, should command a truly incredible price, perhaps even at auction and pursued by powerful criminal forces or wealthy archmagisters.

Magic Items I | Don’t - I’m not kidding, don’t sell these.  These items are legendary, and the very event of one being sold would be something that would draw all eyes in the world.  I don’t even know how a group of players would acquire the money to afford something so sought after, but if your players do somehow find their way into unfathomable riches, you should expect these items to cost hundreds of thousands, or even millions of gold a piece.

Magic Items, both Major and minor

I’m almost a little regretful that this section is so late, but that’s just how it worked out this time.

Magical items are exciting.  This is an undisputed fact, even if their effects aren’t wholly useful in combat.  We already know what Major items are, they’re the items I’ve been talking about in the post thus far.  They’re magical weapons and armor, or powerful potions that can greatly improve a player’s ability to fight or manipulate the world around them.

And then there are minor items.  Minor items work differently in that their effects are, as the name suggests, extremely minor.  This can be armor that’s put on or taken off faster than normal, a wand that makes people smile (even if it doesn’t make them happy...), or an amulet that let’s a person forgo rolling for a natural 10 once per rest.  Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has more detailed descriptions on these items and more, and I highly suggest anyone without that book who already enjoys 5th edition to track a copy down for themselves.

What’s most important about minor items is that, while the players get a neat tangible effect, it doesn’t greatly upset the balance of the game.  Because of this, you can be a little more liberal with their distribution.  That said, settings with less magical elements or ‘lower fantasy’ settings should probably forgo them for the sake of the theme.  For everyone else, these items are fantastic to clutter the shelves of shops selling interesting odds and ends, and let even a low level adventure pay out in a smallish ‘hoard’ of goods.

In the event of a lower level adventure with a finale that calls for it, such as an adventure that ends in a younger dragon as the final encounter, you can create a fledgling hoard of goods that looks like the real deal.  Start with what you’ve decided the adventure’s proper loot should be, in this instance we’ll call it a ‘mid length’ adventure with room for one decent item and a small amount of gold.  

The first thing we do in this instance is accept that the players are going to find a slightly better reward for their efforts, and that’s fine.  You can do this every once in a while.  Do this by adding a large amount of copper and silver coins to the treasure pile, turning that small pile of gold into a mound big enough for the dragon to sleep upon.  Then, look at some minor items!  Adding two or three of these can boost the legitimacy of your mini-hoard without horribly upsetting the game’s balance.

Or, if you really want, you can manufacture some interesting new minor items.  To do this, we need to get into...

Altering Existing Magical Items and Creating Your Own

I have a feeling that most of the people who start reading this article want to see this.  From a more technical standpoint, the best part about 5th Edition is how easy it is to homebrew content, which is to say, to come up with things to use in the game yourself.

Creating Minor Items

Following up from the last segment, we need to come up with some new magical items for our mini-hoard.  Ironically, these ‘simplest’ of magical items are some of the most difficult to come up with.  An effect players will like, but has little effect on game balance, can be difficult to create.

Here’s an example item I’ve created in the past as a minor magical item:

Mirror Journals

(Uncommon)

This set of journals (1D4+1) are mirror copies of one another, and the contents of their pages magically stay that way at all times.  If anything is written in one of the journals, it appears in the others as well.  A message written in the journals vanishes if whomever holds the journal places their index and middle fingers together and brushes over the text.  This erasing can only happen if it's attempted in the journal in which it was original written, but causes the message to be erased in all of the journals at the same time.

This item offers not immediately obvious direct combat benefit, as drawing it and stowing it could eat a player’s action, and writing in it would take another.  It does, however, allow players to keep in contact with key NPCs, but with the drawback of potentially leaving important information out for other, less friendly NPCs to find.

At the end of the day, though, in a lot of ways this is just an ‘altered’ version of another magical item (even if I hadn’t intended it when I made it), that item being ‘Sending Stones’.  Sending Stones is arguably a more powerful item, due to the way its ‘restrictions’ protect the actions of the user, and the way that using them takes far less time.  Still, Sending Stones isn’t a ‘minor’ magical item either...

Altering Items

This is a good time to talk about altering items in general, specifically, tweaking items in minor ways to make them a little different (or, potentially more powerful).  

Let’s take the ‘Circlet of Blasting’ as an example of this.  Editing this item to become something a bit more unique (or flavored toward the environment it was found) can be done in one of two ways:

Having it cast a different, second level spell.

Having it cast a different version of Scorching Ray.

In the first instance, we have the option of using another spell.  This method is very straightforward and easy to manage, as most second level spells are comparable to one another.  The only thing to remember is that Scorching Ray is not a concentration based effect, so it should not be replaced with one.  A ‘Circlet of Combustion’ that lets you cast Flame Sphere would probably be a much better item, if only marginally so.

The second option is something I like to do all the time.  Anyone can learn to cast Scorching Ray (well, anyone of the right class), but something like ‘Acid Ray’ would be a bit more unique.  You can even make the item a bit better by tapping into an element that’s less universally resisted, such as thunder or psychic damage.  Either way, these little touches can be used to match an item to its location (such as a Circlet of Mind Flaying, which would cast a psychic version of Scorching Ray and be found in an Illithid Lair).

Creating Magic Items

I feel like this right here could have an entire post dedicated to it, and it probably will in the future.  For now, I’m just going to give a simple, slimmed-down explanation on what I do to create a magical item from scratch.

     Step 1 - Assess the power level.

This step is first, and for good reason.  A Circlet of Blasting, for instance, casts a second level spell once per dawn.  A Hat of Disguise allows you to cast Disguise Self, a first level spell, at will.  They’re both in the same tier of item, but their power levels match because Disguise Self is a lower-level, non-combat spell AND it requires attunement.  In general, if an item’s effect is both constant and very useful, it should require attunement.  Basic +1/2/3 Equipment is the exception to this, and likewise a Circlet of Blasting, being a one-off per day, is fine to be passed around.  An item can also not require attunement if having it be easily passed around is part of its strength, such as with a Cloak of the Manta Ray.

     Step 2 - Do something new.

Make sure your item has some level of originality to it.  After all, if you can alter an existing item to achieve your goal, doing so will probably reduce the odds you accidentally open Pandora’s Box and make your players hilariously powerful in ways they should’t be.  

Next, ask yourself ‘why doesn’t this item exist already?’.  This is probably the hardest step, and warrants the most explaining, but in this instance let’s look at items like Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and Headbands of Intellect.  These items set a stat to 19, which can potentially be very strong for lower level characters.  Why, then, is there no item for Dexterity, Charisma, or Wisdom as well?  The answer here is simpler than you might think - they’d be much, much stronger.  Not only would they potentially convey similar bonuses, but they’d shore up a character’s Dexterity or Wisdom Saving Throws, two of the most common in all of the game.  A Charisma item, likewise, would boost an entire subset of skills that is universally useful to any character, those being to persuade, deceive, or intimidate.  There are also far more spellcasting classes that use Charisma and Wisdom than intellect, and while many melee classes use Strength, it affects far, far few skills and saving throws than the others.

So, after doing all of this, take a moment to double check you’re not doing anything that’s a big no-no for balance reasons:

Giving a player at-will use of a non-cantrip spell that deals damage.

Creating an item that’s functionally similar to another that already exists.

Giving a player an effect that does more than you intend. (Ex. An item that might boost the DCs of a cleric is fine, but an item that boosts wisdom can convey too many benefits all at once).

Making sure your item fits the power level of your players.  (An item that sets Dexterity/Wisdom/Charisma to 19 could be fine, so long as you understand that these are actually very powerful items).

     Step 3 - Give it flavor.

One thing you can do that the loot offered in your DMG has more difficulty with is tailor your item to fit the setting.  After all, an Apparatus of Kwalish is cool, but it hardly makes sense in some places.

Flavor doesn’t have to fit the setting, though.  Flavor can also be used to make an item more appealing to certain members of the party, an important thing to do from time to time when someone greedy in the group is snapping up all the best gear and is a little too proficient (or belligerent...) in getting everyone else to back down in trying to claim it.

Most important of all, flavor makes an item cool and special.  This is why a jeweled scimitar described in great detail can become a party’s obsession despite it clearly being nonmagical, because the item intended to fetch a high price at a store was elevated by a touch of flavor.

As a final note, I’ll drop an item I mocked up real quick to give an example of an item both flavorful, useful, and maybe obviously better in the hands of certain players than others:

The Brute's Answer

(Very Rare, Requires Attunement)

This curious item is shaped like the lower half of a helmet, and when donned covers the jaw of its wearer with a crude, darkened, and jagged metal plate.  

While you wear this 'helmet', you may insult a creature as a reaction to them casting a spell, and that insult will carry with it the effects of a counterspell (3rd Level).  If your intelligence modifier is negative, and you are countering a spell of 4th level of higher, you may add your proficiency bonus to the DC for countering the spell.  

Once used, this property of the 'helmet' cannot be used again until the next dawn.

It’s a strong item, landing either as a lower to mid-range Table G item or a very, very good Table F item.  It’s better used by someone brutish, as the name implies, and creates a clear cut example of who might be best for wielding it, as well as fitting the flavor of the item.  Finally, it require attunement, because Counterspell is a very strong, iconic spell, and a player shouldn’t be able to pull this out of their bag and put it on whenever it pleases them.  Having to suffer through a fight with no spellcasters, effectively negating the item’s use, is part of balancing the opportunity cost of such a strong effect.

In Conclusion...

All in all, there’s a lot more I wanted to say on a range of topics here, but Treasure is difficult.  I think it succeeded in being an in-depth look at treasure overall, but treasure itself is such a broad topic with room for so much debate that I’d need to give much of what was talked about here its own post to really do it justice.  

Hopefully, for the newer DM who reads this, I’ve given you enough to refine your handling of gold, trinkets, and otherwise so that you’re more confident in passing them out, and less likely to get stuck having to deal with overly wealthy, too well equipped players.

[dndplus]

Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 2

*EDIT* - The link to Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 1 has been repaired.

We covered part 1 of Making an Adventure here --> (Link Here), and dealt with all the trappings of a single-stage adventure.  This post will cover the ins and outs of a multi-part adventure, and even a multi-part campaign.

As per usual, it’s intended that you’ve read the posts:

Getting Started: Settings

Getting Started: Combat

Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 1

This will ensure that nothing said herein goes over your head, and also that you have two very big pieces of making an adventure already figured out.  Those being where is the adventure happening, and what are you killing?

Part 2: Multi-Part Adventures

In Part 1, we learned about Flags and Characters, two of the greater cornerstones for any D&D (or other tabletop game, for that matter) adventure.  After all, pulling your players in, and giving them something to sympathize/empathize/hate is a large part of what elevates any tabletop game from just getting more experience and loot to something more.

For multi-part adventures, we return to an old topic and learn how to string everything together...

     Flags, Part 2

That’s right!  Those events that trigger the adventure’s start in the first place are making a comeback!  What you learned in part 1 was only the beginning.

You see, an adventure doesn’t really end when you get the last room and kill the bad guy.  It does sometimes, even most times, but sometimes the big bad evil guy in the last room is working for someone else.  Sometimes, that bandit taking prisoners is working for a far more nefarious slave trader, or that rogue necromancer is actually part of a cabal that seeks to destabilize a prosperous kingdom for their own nefarious means.  It’s usually nefarious.

So how do we get from ‘just a bandit taking prisoners’ to ‘bandits all over are taking prisoners to fuel an underground slaver’s trade’?  The answer, of course, is Flags.  Flags for this sort of thing need to be more nuanced, though.  They need to reach the players organically, and typically play off of the players’ own tendencies.  Here are a few examples that would propel such a scenario forward:

The Bandit Captain in charge had a note on his/her person which details where to meet when ready to sell their prisoners.

Another group of prisoners at the site overheard something important from one of the bandits before the players rescued them.

Upon reporting the incident the players escaped from to the authorities (the guard, or whoever happens to be in charge of keeping order where they’re at), the players hear word of several similar incidents happening all over the kingdom.

Each one of these flags can push a player to a new adventure on their own, but you don’t always want to do that.  Sometimes, flags connect to other flags, and keep players out of the action a little longer while they work to figure out where all the clues lead.

It’s very important when connecting flags to other flags, however, that you keep you party’s tendencies in mind.  You might enjoy a sprawling tale of intrigue filled with dialogue and sparingly used combat, but D&D is about fun for everyone on both sides of the DM Screen.  If you want lots of story to happen between encounters, look for ways to keep your more combat-oriented players happy by peppering in single encounters or even entire one-offs.

For instance, following the theme of the bandit slavers, let’s say we gave the players the third flag.  They’ve spoken to the guard, but the next clue hasn’t been as forthcoming as they’d hoped.  The guard informs your players that the bandits don’t stay in one place for very long, and that while they’d love to have the help, they just don’t know where to send them.  This results in another flag, one the players didn’t realize they triggered when entering the guard house, through which an associate of a separate criminal element informs them that their boss wishes to speak with them.

At this point, we segway into...

     Characters, Part 2

A criminal is not lawful.  A dedicated officer of the law is not chaotic.  This, however, does not restrict them from being good or evil.  A guardsman can be corrupt, or carrying out the laws of an evil master.  Likewise, a criminal can be Robin Hood-esque, with a heart of gold, and embarrassingly sticky fingers.

When players are pushed to make criminal contacts, it’s important to understand that not every criminal need be their enemy.  This holds especially true when there are bigger fish to fry, and the suave, charismatic fellow who makes a living running illegal gambling dens and peddling less destructive substances (petty drugs, bootleg liquor, etc) is likely to hate a cabal of slavers moving into his territory as much as the guard.

That’s not to say that someone who makes a living being dubious will be forthright about this, though.  We are, after all, looking to keep the players entertained as the story runs its course.  In this way, you as the dungeon master have a new option to keep things fresh and varied: having this seedy, criminal mastermind demand something of the players in exchange for what his own criminal network knows that the guards do not.

Possibilities for this include:

Clearing out a safe house in some out-of-the-way place that has been overrun by dangerous, native creatures (Hi, Critical Role!)

Dealing with yet another, far worse criminal that the players’ new contact would like gone (a murderous mugger, or someone peddling extremely destructive and dangerous drugs perhaps).

Going somewhere on the character’s behalf, such as to an auction they can’t afford to be seen at, and carrying out business in their place (a possible non-combat option, for the rare party that thrives on that sort of thing)

On the other hand, you can keep the party going by taking any one of these things and connecting it to the bandit slavers instead.  Perhaps the safe house is overrun by them, or one of the bandit slavers’ more notorious members is nearby and needs to be dealt with.

Whichever path you choose to take things, it’s important to remember the characters involved.  Our new party contact is still a criminal, and what they’re doing can be a complete flip on what the players perceive.  Who’s to say they’re not working with the bandit slavers from the start, and these jobs are intended to get the players killed?  In the event of this, plant an ambush in the job the players are sent on, one with a flag that fingers their new contact as the dubious mastermind stringing them along, and prepare an additional adventure in which the players get their revenge!

No matter how it happens, your players will return to this new contact.  Whether they find the next flag by rifling through their things after a hard won fight, or have it given to them after finding their new contact to have the heart-of-gold they hope, they’ll feel a sense of accomplishment over completing that leg of this multi-part adventure.

     Characters, Part 2a - Villains

At this point, assuming your multi-part adventure isn’t a campaign in and of itself, your players will probably have a name, and maybe even a face, to attach to their enemy.

It’s at this point you need to understand your own villain, and their motives, to keep the way they fight the players in line with their beliefs.  Here are a few examples of ‘general archetypes’ you can apply to the ultimate ‘Slave Lord’ your players will end up encountering:

A garden-variety sociopath, uncaring for the emotions and plights of others, and arrogant enough to believe no one is capable of stopping them.  This character is cruel, and oftentimes oblivious to it, and carries with them a colder, joyless demeanor that might unnerve others.  They’re also intelligent, but suffer for their overconfidence.  A character of this sort will attack other characters the player know, possibly even using them as hostages, but may be too confident to consider the failures of their plans and how they might trace back to them, or think to have a Plan B for their own safety.

A born and raised criminal, seeking great wealth to rise above their status as a powerful name in the underworld and potentially seize power in a far more meaningful way.  This character is smart, ambitious, and aware of their own faults.  Their lack of sadism and sense of purpose will have them shy away from the more brutal tactics of the sociopath, but will make them more difficult to track down or catch.

A literal demon.  Yes, that’s right, a demon.  Some crimes are worse than others, and fiends, such as demons or devils, enjoy the prospect of corrupting others.  How better to corrupt than to not just subjugate people, but to aid others in subjugation as well?  The fiend is not like the other options because it is not human, and while its lack of empathy might seem similar to the sociopath, a fiend can be far more theatrical in nature.  Where the sociopath if cold, a fiend can be downright jolly as they act out their sadistic desires.  A fiend might also command other fiends, and the appearance of any fiend itself can be a major flag to send the players scrambling for answers.

The corrupt noble.  Oh yes, nothing quite sums up a villain like someone already in power abusing their station as a means to gain even more wealth and power.  This character might seem cruel and uncaring, but their inner monster is typically more nuanced than that.  An instilled belief that the lower classes are not to be thought of as people, while horrible, typically means the corrupt noble thrives on a sense of superiority, and accepts other nobles as worthy of their time.  As an addition to the corrupt noble’s tendency to abuse power, it is very likely that they have corrupt guards working for them as well.  When using corrupt guards, remember that they can rope in legitimate guards as well, and try to remind your players that not everyone they kill might deserve it.

     Wrapping it up

Yes, yes, it’s time to end it.  Your players have followed the bread crumbs, met an interest cast of characters along the way, and finally cornered the mastermind of whatever evil scheme they worked to stop.

What now?  Well, you know your villain.  Make their last words quick, as any monologuing is almost guaranteed to be interrupted by a player looking to get a cheap shot in.  

You know the characters involved in your over-arching story of your multi-part adventure (or maybe even campaign, if it spanned enough time).  When the fighting is done, and assuming the villain hasn’t come out on top and ended your party’s adventuring for good, you’ll want to think about how these characters react, and how they might get in touch with the players to offer congratulations or thanks.

That aside, you know how to build a combat encounter, and at this point, you probably know the party’s capabilities well enough to make it just a little more difficult than the other tough ones they’ve had so far.  If the adventure they went on tied in to the greater theme of their setting, perhaps it can them an audience with someone important (a powerful lord, or even a king) as a result.  Whatever the reward you give them, recognize the time it took for them to achieve their hard-fought win, and make sure it’s at least a little better than the usual.  If you’re worried about giving them too much, something special, like a favor from someone powerful or a grant of land to do with as they please might also suffice.

And yes, when the ultimate villain of the adventure is dead, you can add yet another flag to an even greater threat.  I suggest taking the players to a new region if you do this, though, as a change of scenery (and local problems) goes a long way towards keeping things fresh.

     In Conclusion

This is it.  At this point, with a setting, an understanding of how to build combat encounters, and the know-how to make your own adventures, you have all the bare bones tools to run your own game of D&D.

You’re probably going to make mistakes, whether it be in your own performance or some of the decisions you make (the most common one probably being to give your players too much loot/gold).  That’s fine, so long as everyone is having fun.

That is, after all, all that really matters: having fun.  If you’re doing it, and your players are doing it, then you’re doing it right.  Realize this as you do things, and understand the players are driving the ship.  This will destroy your hard work on occasion, but that comes with the territory.  If your players are ever abusive or uncaring of the hard work you put into organizing the game, don’t be afraid to walk away!  You are not there for their enjoyment, and they are not their for your enjoyment.  You’re all there for each others enjoyment, to hang out and have a good time with a bit more theatrics and dice rolls than usual.  

Thank you for reading along here at D&D&EE, and stay tuned for additional posts on the finer points of things like Loot, Legendary Actions, and how to keep a sprawling campaign interesting.

[dndplus]

Getting Started: Making an Adventure

Oh yes, it’s time for the fun part!  Picking up a module and running an adventure from someone else’s notes can be great, but nothing epitomizes the work of a Dungeon Master like crafting your adventure.  It’s what makes having a great campaign possible, and allows you to take character attributes from  your players and integrate them into it all seamlessly.

Before going forward, though, it’s important you’ve finished studying the first two parts of the ‘Getting Started’ series:

Settings - Link Here

Combat - Link Here

With a setting for everything to take place in, and an understanding of combat and how to build encounters, you’ve got the ‘frame’ of your adventures already built.  

In Combat, we talked about locales, and how they influence the content of the encounters you create.  In Part 1 of Making an Adventure, we’re going to start examining that from the other side, which is to say, you’re going to create a locale that can offer the adventure you’re after.

Part 1: One-Offs

Not every adventure your players go on needs to be part of some sprawling conspiracy or greater plot line.  Sometimes, there’s just a young dragon in the nearby forest causing problems, but just having a ‘problem’ around isn’t always the most fun or interesting way to start an adventure.  This why we’re going to start with...

     Flags

What’s a flag?  A flag is an incident that thrusts your party into scenario that either offers a new adventure, or quite literally drops the new adventure on their heads.  Here are some examples to get you in the mindset of what can serve as a ‘flag’:

A noble bumps into a player, and drops a valuable antique, causing it to shatter!  The noble, being haughty and cruel, demands repayment for the outrageously expensive item (which may or may not actually be worth that much...).  The players, obviously unable to pay the fee, and facing the wrath of a politically powerful lord, are roped into completing a task for them instead...

While traversing the town at night, a player is inadvertently tackled to the ground when a man/woman dressed all in black leaps down from a rooftop and collides with them.  The figure gets up and immediately runs away, before the guard coming chasing soon after.  After giving directions (whether they be correct or incorrect), the player who was tackled finds a strange gem in their bag.  It must have belonged to the thief, they’ll think, leaving them with the question of what do with it...

Your players discover a local ‘fight club’ of sorts, little more than a dirt arena in the woods about twenty minutes walk from town.  They choose to fight in it, and end up besting the champion in a fight.  The players go about their business as usual, but when they return to the arena, they find it a scene of carnage!  The enraged former-champion has assaulted the arena while they and the formidable arena master were away.  Disgraced by the former champion’s lack of honor, the arena master turns to the players and offers them a job to bring the former champion to justice.

So that’s a few potential flags.  You’ll notice that as you read through them, the requirements for their happening become more and more specific.  This is to make a point, that the adventures your players find can be well hidden, or can have flags so vague that you can thrust them into it.  Just take care when ‘forcing’ your players into a situation, as using such a tactic too often can turn them intentionally unruly to your designs, or worse, make them lose interest in the game.  D&D is, after all, a game about player choice affecting the story.

Once you’ve got your ‘Flag’ decided on, whether it be the players asking for a job, or something more spontaneous like the scenarios described above, it’s time to think about the more minute details of your adventure.

     Characters

That’s right, your adventure has characters.  Haughty nobles, surly fighters, boisterous dwarves, and pompous elves are the backbone of your adventure.  Believing that haughty noble is as cruel as they look, or that the spiteful thief has a good reason for their acts can come down to your portrayal of the character.

In the end, there are two concrete ways to influence the players’ perception of the character:

How your character talks.

What your character does.

A thief is a thief, but a thief who draws a dagger when approached, and then puts it away when asked to just talk immediately creates the impression of being reasonable.  On the other hand, a braggart who talks a big game and then acts like a coward when push comes to shove is both dubious and a little funny.  

Let’s not forget that actions speak louder than words, either.  A character that speaks one way can act another, betraying the truth of their intentions.  In this way, a kind and caring priest becomes suspicious for who they choose to avoid being generous or kind with, and a cruel, haughty noble may be softened when sneaking a few spare coins to a beggar while they think no one is looking.  In this way, an unlikable character can become someone worth putting up with and not worthy of suspicion, and a likable character can be revealed to be manipulative and potentially very dangerous.

Always consider these five things when designing a character:

Who/What do they care about?

Who/What do they hate?

How do they prefer to be seen, and is it who they really are?

What does your adventure need them to be?  Friendly?  Combative?  Misunderstood?

How do they connect to the other characters in your setting?

     Difficulty

This is a tough one.  Not every encounter your players come across should be some epic showdown that threatens to knock them within an inch of their life.  What’s more, difficulty can be measured in more ways than one!

Take example 2 in the ‘flags’ described above.  Finding the thief and bringing them to justice is a simple and easy way to end things, and probably ends in a simple, maybe even underwhelming showdown.  That’s fine, though.

On the other hand, your players may try to find out what the thief was up to, and discover the noble they stole from had wronged them in a terrible and criminal way!  Sympathetic players might try to bring that noble to justice instead, creating a much more difficult adventure for them to go on.  If this is a possibility in your adventure, understand that your players might not go for it, and learn to be happy if they don’t.  

That noble who got away with their crime is still a corrupt noble, and using them later and incorporating the truth of the thief might just be the push you players need to take things personal and elevate the corrupt noble into a more compelling villain.

What I hope has been illustrated here are the many kinds of difficulty, in that harder combat isn’t the only way to achieve it.  Having the ‘truth’ be muddled and require extra effort gives the players a chance to ‘fail’ without realizing it till much later.

As an additional note, puzzles to proceed, or disarm complex traps, can be an excellent way to shake up combat as well.  Something as simple as “Flip all five levers up” becomes an ordeal when your players only have 1 minute to do it, and flipping one lever causes the adjacent levers to reverse position.  

Speaking of traps...

     Traps and Obstacles

Traps and obstacles, like combat, are a compelling way to deplete a party’s resources.  This can be as simple as needing some planks on the other side of the dungeon to patch a makeshift bridge resulting in more combat, or an arrow trap rigged to go off when a door is opened.  It can also be a room filling up with water, and a complex system of switches that need to be activated in sequence.

What’s most important to understand about traps, however, is that they shouldn’t threaten to kill your players unless they’re slow and give them plenty of time to figure things out.  This, of course, has the potential to make it extra tragic, but let’s face it, the game has no point if death isn’t a possibility.

The DMG (Dungeon Master’s Guide) has some excellent insights on trap damage and severity based on player level, as well as several examples of traps.  Head on over to page 121 in you DMG and use what you learned from Combat and KFC to incorporate these deadly machinations in your dungeons.

     Secret Rooms

Everyone loves secret rooms.  I know I do, at least.  All I can really say about this is, don’t be afraid to have them.  If they’re a little out of place, come up with a reason for their existence (a Cask of Amontillado style walling in of some poor soul, the secret stash of a kobold, an extra measure of protection for the owner of some crypt’s more precious trinkets).

The biggest thing I have to say on this is... don’t give them away.  If your players don’t find it, then they didn’t find it.  Just let it go.  Also, be careful with the rewards in these places.  If the players are supposed to have these rewards, put clues in the dungeon to the secret room’s existence.  Otherwise, put fun items or consumable items in them, like Alchemy Jugs, Bags of Beans, potions, and/or extra gold.

     Everything Else

This is more of a lightning round to help with the actual design of a dungeon.  Consider it a checklist of things to consider when building your actual dungeons:

Is the layout orderly, or organic? (Crypt vs Cave)

How well lit is the dungeon? (Not everyone has darkvision!)

Are there any choke points for the players to abuse that make encounters too easy?  Or, are there any choke points I can abuse to make encounters more difficult?

Am I giving my players the right amount of loot?  One solid magic item and a couple consumables (potions and the like) is generally sufficient.  Avoid giving out things like +1 weapons, shields, and armor en masse early on.  It’s okay for a player to be stuck without a magical weapon for quite a long time, just make sure they have something else to show for it.  Page 137+ in the DMG has “Treasure Horde” tables that give you an idea of how rare certain equipment should be.

Flame Tongue should not be on Magic Item Table G.  Do not consider this for an item to award your players if you’re looking for an item of that level.  Ever.

Is your villain capable of working with other evils?  What allies might they have?  Would the greater villain of the region for your setting potentially have minions there as well?  Your one-off can have subtle connections to a bigger plot, and can even be used to lead the players into it if you wish.

How much gold are you giving your players?  Not every adventure calls for ‘treasure horde’ amounts, nor should every reward amount to a king’s ransom.  When starting out, err on the side of caution and give your players very little.  When Gold is precious, the things chosen buy with it become decisions.  Just because there are healing potions stocked at a local store doesn’t mean your players should always be able to buy it, and by tending to the currency they acquire carefully, you can offer magical items at specialty shops as well.  Take it slow, and always give your players less if you’re deciding between less or more.  You can always give them more gold later, but it can be much harder to deplete some of it once they have it.

Part 2: Multi-Part Adventures

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Getting Started: Combat

Ah yes, combat, because what is a game about sword and sorcery without a reason to use the swords and sorcery?  For this post, we’re going to delve into the most basic details of designing an encounter that fits your campaign and power level.

For now, we’re going to start with those staple first encounters that seem to go well.  Now, some people will be wondering what to do if they’re starting things at a higher level (like at level 3, 5, or 7), and to this I have to say: this post isn’t for you.  If you are a new DM, ask your players to come down to level 1 with you.  Seeing your players grow through their levels will teach you so much about how to design encounters, and will also allow you to take things slow.

If you’re here, you’ve probably already put together a setting/setup for your campaign.  If you haven’t, go ahead and pop over to this post and come back when you’re ready.  (Hint: If you haven’t done that part yet, you’re not ready.  Step 1 will make this very clear).  Attached to this guide will be “quick start” notes that outline very simple ways to use the lessons you’ve learned along the way.

Step 1: Understand your locale.

So, you’ve got a setting, you’ve got interesting places to put your players, and you probably have an idea of where they’ll all be starting.  Odds are, this place isn’t going to be terribly dangerous, and if you’re new and wanted to go for dangerous, I’d suggest rethinking something so flashy.  You’re far beyond a “Getting Started” post if you’re really ready for that anyways.

The two best ways to start a campaign (in my opinion) are in a town, or in a prison.  A town works well enough, so long as you can orchestrate a way for all of your players come together.  A prison is much less complicated, as you typically give/discuss a reason for your players to be in that sort of setting.  A more detailed post on how to form adventures will come later, but for now, it’s more important you know how to challenge your players appropriately.

We’re going to use these possible starts as a way to analyze the way a locale affects things...

     Step 1a: Prison

Now, in the event of a “prison” start, you have guards to worry about.  These could be bandits they were captured by while walking the road, cultists of to some evil deity that wish not to be discovered, or if your campaign isn’t afraid to go full criminal, just plain guardsmen.  

The theme here is what’s important, and knowing bandits, cultists, or guards gives you more precise options down the line.  They’re all also perfectly viable, as bandits, cultists, and guards have the 1/8th challenge rating (Referred to as CR from here on out).  This makes them very easy to dispatch, but most importantly, they come with natural points of progression for harder enemies.  At level 1, a fantastic first encounter is matching a 1/8th CR enemy against your players 1-1, which is to say, if you have 4 players, you have them fight 4 bandits/cultists/guards.  

     Prison Quick Start, Part 1: 

The details of how you get to this point are up to you, at least until I get around to posting an adventure-building guide, but if you’re desperate and need a suggestion now, I recommend giving your players some time in their ‘cell’ to introduce themselves, before pointing out an obvious method of escape as whomever is watching them leaves the room to go to the bathroom.  

The room in question should contain their means of imprisonment, a place for the person watching them to sit, and for simplicity’s sake an obvious chest with their equipment.  Once the players have let themselves out and fetched their things, have the guard who stepped out earlier return, and then call for help.  Have however many bandits/cultists/guards you need storm the the chamber to create that 1-1 fight, and enjoy the show as your players test their abilities for the first time.

     Step 1b: Town

The ‘town’ start.  There is no simpler way to begin a campaign than this, as small towns tend to have no shortage of small problems.  The best part about the town start is, bar none, the variety of things you can throw at your players.  

Here’s a short list  of possible first jobs to get the brain going:  

Rat Infested Cellar (the ultimate classic)

Disturbance at the graveyard (skeletons + zombies are some of the absolute best early enemies)

Highwaymen terrorizing the roads (goblins, bandits, and whatever else makes sport of robbing poor townsfolk)

Something Unfriendly Taking up residence in a nearby cave (Giant Wolf Spiders!  Giant Beasts!  Madmen!  A fledgling necromancer!  Anything is fair game when a cave is involved!)

Aggressive Bullywugs in a Nearby Swamp (frog people, anyone?)

Less short would be a list of starts to some greater narratives to throw at a player.  This takes quite a bit more preparation, and understanding how to build encounters to match your players power level, which comes in Step 2.

    Town Quick Start, Part 1:

This couldn’t be simpler.  Have your players meet in the tavern, preferably one with a simple name and easily remembered name (The Full Flagon, The Drunken Fool, something maybe including the owner’s name, etc).  Let them introduce themselves to one another, and nudge them with the fact that fresh characters start with very little money if they don’t seem to know what to do.

The moment one of them brings up needing work, have the bartender tip them off to whatever job you’ve decided to throw their way.  Then, all you need is a person willing to pay to get it done (a guard captain who can’t spare any men, a group of local farmers living near the danger, the mayor, a local wizard who needs something procured; whatever works).  And then your players are on their way!  There’s not a lot you can safely ‘expect’ your players to do, but going to kill something they’ll get paid for is definitely one of them.

When your players get there, have them fight their first encounter.  Below is a simple list of how to keep it easy enough for a first fight based on Challenge Rating (referred to as CR from now on):

CR 1/8 - 1 for each player

CR 1/4 - 1 for each player, minus 1

CR 1/2 - This is trickier.  1 for 2 players.  1 + a CR 1/8 enemy for 3 players.  1 + a CR 1/4 for 4 players.  1 + 2 CR 1/8 enemies for 5 players, adding an additional CR 1/8 enemy for each player after that.

     Step 1 Conclusion:

At this point you’ve probably noticed that everything talked about here has something in common: it explains how a locale influences the foes your players will face.

What I haven’t talked about yet is how it all comes together - the influence of your setting.  Certain places are going to have different problems, problems you’ve probably already thought about when making your setting.  A kingdom at war with a necromancer is going to deal with more undead, a unsafe chain of islands is going to feature pirates, sahuagin, kuo-toa, and sea creatures more prominently, and a more pious kingdom might deal with demon-worshipping cultists carrying out the bidding of their dark masters.

This might not seem important, but I can assure you that it is.  Fitting enemies to their locale sets a mood; spiders live in caves, rats live in cellars, and goblins ambush traveling merchants outside of town.  If you have the spiders ambush people like highwaymen, you need to realize you’ve just created a very interest scenario that the players will demand an explanation for, and if you’ve got one, more power to you, but that’s really just another way the locale is important in how you set up your combat scenarios.

Step 2: Balance and Kobold Fight Club.

That’s right, i said Kobold Fight Club.  

http://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder

THAT kobold fight club, every 5e Dungeon Master’s best friend.  This extraordinarily useful tool helps you “budget” out encounters for your party.  There’s more to it than that, though, and it’s what Step 2 is all about.  Unfortunately for other editions, this is a 5e blog, and that’s what I’ll be focusing on.  I’d love to get into the nuances of what came before, but as this is a blog for beginners, and 5e is the most beginner-friendly edition to ever exist, I’m going to keep it 5e for now.

So, how does it work?  Simple - you input the number of players you have, and their levels, and you look at what the adventure (and its locale) calls for in terms of potential enemies.  As an example, we’re going to use 4 level 1 characters to explore possible encounters.

Now, one of the very first things I did was recommend certain encounters to you in Step 1.  Here’s how they ration out by KFC’s calculations (assuming 4 players).

4 CR 1/8 Enemies - Medium Difficulty (200xp)

3 CR 1/4 Enemies - Hard Difficulty (300xp)

1 CR 1/2 Enemy +1 CR 1/4 Enemy - Medium Difficulty (225xp)

As you can see, they’re all in the 200-300 xp range, and are between hard and medium difficulty.  Believe it or not, “hard” is not very hard in this situation, as your players will be at full HP and have all of their spells/abilities ready to go.

In fact, don’t think of Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly as difficulties at all!  What you should do is think of them ‘resource sinks’.  Combat takes a toll, and your players will have to use spells to either keep their hitpoints high, or knock their enemies down fast.  Regardless, 4 CR 1/8 Enemies become far, far more menacing.

Quick Note: DMs managing new players should mention “Short Rests” after their first combat.  These short rests take only an hour, and let them roll their Hit Die (HD) to regain HP naturally.  They have one of these HD for every level acquired, so level 1 characters can only do it once, and adventures should be built with that in mind.

Now, KFC also includes what’s known as a ‘daily budget’.  Daily budgets are great, but at level 1, it’s a little misleading.  Not every party can handle 1200xp worth of fighting in one day right off the bat, after all!  That’s why it’s important to take things slow, and throw them into combat with what they can handle.  

We’re gonna get back in the ‘Prison’ and ‘Town’ starts now, and use what know about KFC and building encounters to build a ‘Deadly’ final encounter for the players!

     Prison Quick Start, Part 2:

So, your players have met, introduced themselves, broken out, and now have a pile of corpses around them.  Great!  But why, if your players could do that, were they captured in the first place?  Well clearly, there must be more bandits/cultists/guards around, and possibly even a leader among them!

Using KFC, your Monster Manual, and perhaps (THIS) extremely useful link, find a suitable ‘boss’ for your bumbling prison guards.  If you went bandits/cultists/guards, here’s a suggestion to make it even easier:

Guards - Knight (CR 3!?)

Cultists - Cult Fanatic (CR 2)

Bandits - Bandit Captain (CR 2)

Wait a minute, one of these things isn’t like the other.  A Knight has a CR of 3, making it worth 700xp!  Clearly it needs to be toned down, so tone it down we will!  How does one ‘tone down’ a creature, though?  Simply put, we look at its competition.

Knight - 52 Average Hit Points, Armor Class 18, +5 to hit, x2 Attacks, 20 Total Average Damage, Leadership

Cult Fanatic - 33 Average Hit Points, Armor Class 13, +4 to hit, x2 Attacks, 8 Total Average Damage, !SPELLS!

Bandit Captain - 65 Average Hit Points, Armor Class 15, +5 to hit, x3 Attacks, 17 Total Average Damage, Parry

Hmm...  Well, the Cult Fanatic is a spellcaster, making it very difficult to compare to the knight.  It’s best if we disregard that.  Looking further, the Knight is significantly more difficult to kill with it’s whopping 18 Armor Class than the Bandit Captain’s much more manageable 15.  In addition to this, the Knight’s leadership ability makes everyone around him much more dangerous.

In this instance, I would rename the knight to ‘Guard Captain’, and cut the Leadership ability altogether.  Next, I’d downgrade the armor class to 16.  This makes him a higher damage, slightly less durable variant of the Bandit Captain.  In addition to this, you can also just use the Bandit Captain’s stat block for a Guard Captain altogether, as nothing about his toolkit is completely unbelievable for a guard.

Next, we have to put it altogether in a proper, final showdown.  With a CR 2 creature commanding a 450 xp bounty, we have to be mindful of how it’s already in the ‘Deadly’ category of encounters.  What’s important to understand, though, is that quantity often beats quality, and a single enemy worth 450xp is much easier to beat than several enemies totaling 450xp.  Also, this is the finale!  A fight is allowed to get a little dicey in these situations.

I recommend going one of two routes - Adding a single CR 1/8 minion to support the big bad boss, (Giving us an adjusted bounty of 712xp!  Yikes!), or having a couple CR 1/8 minions fight the players alone, and then have the boss ambush the players just after they’ve dispatched the first wave of weaker guards.  Doing these two fights one after another, but separately, gives a 100xp fight followed by a 450xp fight with no time to rest, for a total of 600xp and plenty of breathing room for the players.  Either way, there’s a decent possibility that one player is knocked unconscious by this combat, and that’s really all you want to threaten so early on in the campaign.

     Town Quick Start, Part 2

Alright, everyone knows each other, they’ve found their job, and they just dealt with a group of skeletons/highwaymen/rats/spiders.  Why were they there, though?  What force (factoring in the setting and locale) made all of this happen?  Here’s a few examples below, based on the first scenario:

The rats in the cellar were chased up from below.

The local priest has turned to a darker master, and now defiles the graveyard they’re meant to tend.

The highwaymen you fought have a camp nearby, as show by a map found on one of their corpses.

The cave you’re in goes much deeper, and you’ve not yet cleared it of all dangers...

The Bullywug’s camp can be seen just up ahead!  It looks like there’s more of them...

Yeah, some of those were a little too self-explanatory and merely lent to a ‘what’s next?’, but it’s not always so complicated.  Using KFC, the Monster Manual, and THIS extremely useful link, let’s find appropriate enemies for a finale!

An ankheg burrows through the ground beneath the town, and is responsible for the rats! (CR 2)

The local priest is evil, and lucky for you, a standard priest fits the bill (CR 2)

Bandit Captains are CR 2, Goblin Bosses are CR 1 (with stronger minions to compensate).  All good stuff.

Those Giant Wolf Spiders are shacking up with a proper Giant Spider (CR 1), or perhaps you found wolves, and a Dire Wolf (CR 1) leads the pack!

Oh dear... those Bullywugs have tamed a man-eating Giant Toad! (CR 1)

These can all be worked with, and for a big final showdown, we want an adjusted XP of 600-750.  That puts us well into Deadly territory, and lets us explore with just what ‘adjusted’ XP is.  Basically, many smaller enemies totaling 100xp are much more dangerous than one enemy worth 100xp, so when fighting a group, the xp is adjusted upwards to compensate.  KFC does this automatically, so let’s look at how adjusted XP rates influence the final round of combat:

An Ankheg is pretty nasty all on its own, but have a fifth Giant Rat emerge alongside it and things just might get crazy (Adjusted XP 712)

The priest was corrupted, and the cultist (CR 1/8) who brought the words of a new, dark master to him is present.  Together, they make for a much more daunting fight (Adjusted XP 712)

The Bandit Captain and one of his bandits are more than enough for 4 level 1 characters (Adjusted XP 712).  Goblins, however, can be much meaner.  2 Goblins and a boss give us an Adjusted XP of 600, and a 3rd goblin brings us to 700.  Let’s not forget how dicey things can get when you add more enemies though and keep it at 2 goblins and their boss until we know more about the party’s capabilities.

Giant Wolf Spiders and Giant Spiders match the Goblin and Goblin Boss dynamic.  2 Giant Wolf Spiders and 1 Giant Spider give us a 600 Adjusted XP, which just barely gets us to the mark.

Like the goblins and the spiders, Bullywugs and their Giant Toad follow the 1/4 and 1 CR statline.  2 Bullywugs, 1 Giant Toad, 600 Adjusted XP, and probably 1 player scarred for life after they’re swallowed whole by the toad.  Perfect.

     Step 2 Conclusion:

Now, at this point, you’ve got what you need to start a campaign, but what about going forward?  Well, it’s different for every party.  What’s important is that you know how to build fights and adjust the values to suit your party’s needs.  Here are some extra notes to think about before we finish up:

Are enemies I’m using especially good against the party?  Dragons are famous for flying up and out of reach, turning that DPS machine barbarian into a rage-less, terrible archer.  On the other end, that cleric with tons of Wisdom that LOVES Hold Person might be a little too good against certain humanoids...

What advantages do I or the players have?  A group of archers shooting at the players from a point they can’t reach makes the players fight back with their own ranged attacks, which they might be lacking.  Underbudget encounters like this until you understand more about how they drain the party’s resources.

Am I giving the party too much time to rest and prepare?  Any fight seems easy if the party has ample time to rest up, so make plans to take that away from them!  Ambushing the players while they’re resting can be a great way of reminding them that Short Rests aren’t always free, and can up the difficulty when you find the content too easy to be engaging.

One Big Enemy.  These can be fun, especially as a finale, but can come off as too easy if the players have a knack for killing things quick.  Consider giving a single, larger enemy ‘Legendary Actions’.  These can happen at the end of any players’ turn, and a creature usually has 2-3 of them.  The Big Enemy gets those 2-3 actions refreshed at the end of one of its turns, and can use 1 to make a single attack, move, or even use 2-3 at a time to activate a signature ability on the fly!  More about this in a later post...

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Welcome to D&D&EE!

Dungeons and Dragons and Everything Else!

A blog about D&D, and a resource for aspiring dungeons masters who wish to run a game of their own.  So grab a tea/beer/something carbonated, get comfortable, learn a thing or two, and if you ever find something unclear or need some help not talked about, don’t be afraid to send me a message directly.

DMing is hard, grueling work, but I’m here to help.