dykes-n-dragons - Tumblr blog

[dykes-n-dragons]

and when I say “pick two” I mean that your brain and/or body picks two for you at random at the start of each day

[dykes-n-dragons]

glad to see those spreading the truth

[dykes-n-dragons]

An rpg that starts off in new game+ but the party has no memories of their original adventure but everyone else does.

[dykes-n-dragons]

House Hunters: D&D Edition. 

Alright, on a more serious note, I was inspired by a recent ask to redo my original building generator that I made a while back (and add a lot more tables and detail to it). It’s by no means an end-all-be-all set of rolling tables, just an outline to get things started and developed. Have fun looking for a home base for your adventurers!

The artwork used is stock by Fumar-Porros. They create all of it using SketchUp and Photoshop. It’s really impressive!

Buy Me a Coffee?

[dykes-n-dragons]

Y’ALL 

HeroForge has added Wheelchairs for your Characters!! 

While Strata Miniatures did it first… (and if you check their post on Painting Polygons they have links to find 5e compatible Combat Wheelchair rules), HeroForge offers customizable options and thats fuckin’ awesome

[dykes-n-dragons]

⚔️ 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺! Steam Harpoon Weapon (spear), rare ___

A curious mesh of magic and steam-powered mechanism, this spear’s barbed head can be launched from its shaft and quickly retrieved using the attached chain. You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. Once on each of your turns when you attack with the spear, you can choose to make a special ranged attack with it, firing the spear head toward a target within 20 feet of you. This ranged attack uses your Dexterity modifier for its attack and damage rolls. On a hit, the target must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be pulled up to 15 feet toward you. A Huge or larger target automatically succeeds on the saving throw. Hit or miss, the spear’s head then reels back and reattaches to the top of the weapon immediately after the attack. ___

✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon’s Saddlebag on Patreon for only $1 to $7 a month!

[dykes-n-dragons]

Hello! I have an interesting villain idea, but I'm struggling with how to integrate them as a recurring character. They are a Changeling Swarmkeeper who made a deal with a devil in their youth, and have regretted it ever since. They now carry out their patron's will with ruthless, but dispassionate efficiency - even seeming reluctant at times. The players can attempt to kill this slippery foe who so easily vanishes in a crowd, but they could also try to help find a way to break their contract...

Villain: Yves the Envenomed, Assassin of the Zicivaic Swarm

“Grisly deaths are to be expected when mages are involved, but all the same I can’t help but pity the old geezer. All the power of the cosmos at his hands, names of gods upon his lips: and some freak decides the best way to off him would be “Eaten from the Inside out” “

-Darvu Karn, lead investigator for the magocratic tribunal, persuing the death of Igirius the imaginator, a murdered archmage. 

Adventure Hooks

A serial killer is on the loose, one who favors flesh eating insects as a murder weapon and always seems to target powerful scholars or arcanists. Years will pass between the killings, but invariably a body or three will be found devoured by innumerable tiny mouths, the premises stripped clean of evidence as well as any scrap of paper.  After one of her colleagues is found in such a state, the party is hired by archmage Orisa hearthweaver to find the assailant and ensure she’s not the next one to feed the swarm. 

Whether recovering antiques from a dungeon or heisting them from the manor houses of the well to do, the party comes across an ornate lockbox sealed with arcane means that seems almost unnaturally enticing. The box contains no treasure, merely a desiccated hand, crudely severed, home to a number of small unidentifiable insects. If any magic is used near the open box ( including in the opening of it) the beetlelike things begin to multiply at an alarming rate, seeking to devour the caster in question. The only other thing contained by this deadly trap is a symbol: a diamond like shape composed of crude, inward spiraling scratch marks, seemingly etched into the interior box by the hand itself. 

A friend of the party’s caster and former fellow apprentice writes to them with some concerns: after acquiring an innocuous book they seem to be followed everywhere by a hooded figure that seems nothing to do but stare, twitch, and scratch. Driven by anxiety, they’ve decided to flee their home and attempt to evade this stalker, and hopes the hero may be able to lend any sort of aid they can.  When the party finally catches up to them, the friend is on the verge of being attacked by a figure who’s wounds drip black ichor and skin crawls with innumerable vermin. The assailant flees, but will most assuredly will be back unless the party does something. 

Setup:  Less an actual assassin than the implement of a sinister, alien intelligence, the man who sometimes knows himself as Yves is perhaps one of the most dangerous and selective killers at large today.  Working his day to day life as a simple criminal and hired blade, Yves is every so often overwhelmed by a sickness he calls “The Itch”, a demonic compulsion that turns his blood into viscous poison and grants him supernatural insights and abilities that make him into a perfect living weapon for the killing of mages. 

Yves has no control over when The Itch strikes, or who it targets, for those are chosen by his patron: the devil-swarm Zicivaic. This devil is at once a vast horde of bettlelike creatures sharing a vauge intelligence, the vast floating hive-islands they occupy in their particular hell dimension, and the mummified body of the original Zicivaic entombed at the center of the largest and oldest hive. 

The devil-swarm has only three wants: isolation, propagation, and knowledge. All of these are fed by targeting mages, whether they be ones who learn a means of contacting or summoning Zicivaic, or merely those who accumulate a sizeable enough library to make a meal for the lore-eating legion.   When such a target is found, Zicivaic sends Yves ( or another of those it has inflicted with its curse) to slay the mage and feed their arcane libraries to the swarm, the innumerable tomes pulped down to make more hive, the magic contained within spreading throughout the swarm. 

Background: Yves first came into contact with the devil-swarm when he was a boy, apprenticed to a two-bit sorcerer who’s only real talent was passing off the scraps and scribblings of more obscure mages as her own. One day his tutor bought a book of Arcanum from a group of traveling adventurers, who had liberated it from the lair of a nameless cult they’d recently slaughtered. The youth was inflicted by Zicivaic’s curse in a botched summoning ritual, one that saw his tutor devoured and Yves left a confused and traumatized wreck. 

Since then the envenomed assassin has made his way in the world, forced to adapt to his frequent “illnesses” that come over him like a debilitating fever and leave him with only hazy recollections of the time or deeds he performs while under its sway. 

Far away in some rank and buzzing hell, the original Zicivaic exists in a similar wretched state, body all but wasted away as it forms the core of an archipeligo of fear and disgust and hunger. Zicivaic was once a scholar among devil kind, one summoned by petitioners for polite discourses on the nature of philosophy and the arts. His pretentions and genteel nature angered a rival fiend, who conspired to slip a cursed tome into their possession, one that would burden the scholar with a literal hunger for knowledge. Compelled, Zicivaic ate the tome, then their apprentices, then their library, then sent shards of their being out to seek more. Reduced to little more than hunger and the need to know more, the newly formed devil-swarm now operates primarily on instinct, displaying flashes of infernal cunning as the ghost of the original Zicivaic’s original personality stirs from its devouring torpor. 

For the asker: Hey friend, sorry about the delay, the holidays have been wild and my inbox has suffered for it. 

One of my key pieces of advice when designing content is to make sure that you don’t mix too many different “influences” into a project, as keeping things trim will ensure you can fit a story element into different setups until you find something that really works. 

In this instance you’ve got: 

A Changeling: faceswapping doppleganger heritage, mistaken identities, identity crisis

Swarm Imagery: notes of pestilence or famine, mindless consumption, disgust, 

Bargins with devils: damnation, souls, elements of contracts and all that religiously fun stuff. 

I hope you don’t mind, but I decided to focus in on the devil-swarm aspects, as I think it makes for a unique antagonistic force compared to your usual, silvertongued, pitchfork and hellfire type devil. Likewise, I think Yves will be an interesting mystery to pick apart as his killings, as his motivations are more “occult” than “homicidal”, forcing a party to look further in their investigation than your usual conspiracies or crimes of passion. 

Art Source 1

Art Source 2

[dykes-n-dragons]

The top 5 is getting so much love. What's everyone's #6 song in their 2020 Spotify Wrapped? The song that almost made the cut...

[dykes-n-dragons]

Some (more or less) simple house rules of mine concerning falling to 0 Hit Points:

1. Secret Death Saves: If you play online, the players whisper them to you. If you play at the table, they hand you a note. Or you trust them enough to manage it by themselves. Keep also secret if the character made it or not. A successfull DC 10 Medicine Check reveals, if the character is still dying, stable or dead. This leads to RP and to intense fights.

2. Lethargy: Falling to 0 Hit Points gives one level of exhaustion. That prevents the feeling of being an indestructible machine that keeps fighting after being revived several times.

3. Broken armor: Falling to 0 Hit Points gives the characters armor class a permanent and stackable malus of -1. If your armor class falls to 10 because of that, it breaks apart entirely. To repair the armor, it costs 1/10 of the armors original price per point of AC that must be restored.

Feel free to use them in your game.

'cause f*ck 'em, that' why.

[dykes-n-dragons]

so the new way of mercy monk class seems so fun like... imagine just playing a character who can literally punch people to hear them. imagine a child born into a family of clerics who can’t quite get the knack of it and somehow has healing??? punches??? imagine like. goliath or orcish or other societies who are generally more martial, and well meaning /condescending missionary types like “let us teach you of our gods and healing magic’s and the 8 foot tall orc being like oh yeah when we need healing we have Grag punch us, and the missionaries are like.......haha what “yeah look i’ll show you GREG C’MERE”

imagine after a battle your rogue is bleeding from a stab wound to a stomach and your monk goes over like hahaha lemme take care of it PUNCHES THE WOUND

just IMAGINE the dumbass energy this class can channel

[dykes-n-dragons]

Fantasy Guide to Noble Titles & What they Mean

So I get a lot of questions about what nobles actually do or how much they own or why a certain title is higher than another. Understanding the complexities of nobility and their hierarchy can be a bit of a head twister but hopefully this will help you out. Just for the moment we will be focusing on European Titles because I can't fit all the titles into one post. Forgive my shitty doodles. The diagrams mark out where the particular noble would rule.

Archduke/Archduchess

These titles have two meanings. In the latter half of the Austrian Empire, it was used to denote senior members of the Royal family such as children and siblings. It is also a non Royal title given to someone who rules an archduchy, a large portion of land with in the kingdom. They are in charge of the archduchy, ensuring it runs smoothly. They are referred to as Your Grace.

Grand Duke/Grand Duchess

The Grand Duke is probably the trickiest of all these titles as there is a dual meaning. A Grand Duke can rule a state as a sovereign like in Luxembourg or they can rule a Grand Duchy (a large portion of land within a kingdom) like the Grand Dukes of Russia. The Grand Duke was below the Archduke and their lands may be smaller. They are in charge of ruling their Grand Duchy, upholding the monarch's laws in their name. They are referred to as Your Grace.

Duke/Duchess

The Duke is the highest rank in most European nations. The Duke rules a large portion of the kingdom- called a Duchy- which you can think of as a county/state. The Duchies are often awarded by the monarch to their children who are not the heir. The Duke is charge with running that portion of land by order of the monarch, handling the over all business of that piece of the Kingdom. Dukes are referred to as Your Grace. There was only one Duke per Duchy.

Marquess/Marchioness

A Marquess is the next rung down from Dukes. The Marquess is in charge of a portion of land within a Duchy which is called a Marsh which lays near a border. The Marquess is solely responsible for the running of that portion of land. The Marquess is called The Most Honourable (Insert name), the Marquess of XYZ. There could be multiple marquesses in a Duchy if it was near a large border.

Earl/Count/Countess/Compte/Comptesse

An Earl/Count Rules over an Earldom, which is a section of a Duchy but it has less importance than a Marsh ruled by the Marquess. The Earl/Count is the third highest ranking within the Duchy. Often it was the subsidiary title of the heir of the Dukedom, so the eldest son/daughter of the Duke would be the Earl. The Earl/Count of X is addressed as Lord X for example, the Earl of Grantham, is called Lord Grantham. There could be multiple Earls/counts per Duchy.

Viscount/Viscountess/Viscompte/Viscomptess

Viscounts are the Earl/Count's second in command, ruling a portion of land with the Earldom. They handled the judiciary matters of their lands and their barons. Viscounts were addressed as the Right Honourable (insert name) Marquess of XY. Viscounts can also be used as a subsidiary title for the son of a Earl. When Thomas Boleyn was made Earl of Wiltshire, his son George was made Viscount Rochford. There might be multiple Viscounts in a Duchy.

Baron/Baroness

The Baron is the lowest of ranks in the nobility pyramid. Before the mid-medieval period, almost all nobles were labelled as Barons. They ruled over a portion of the land under the Duke, the Earl and Viscount. There were always a huge force of barons with in the Duchy. They handled the minor local disputes of their lands, collecting taxes and monies owed. If they faced a larger issue or crime, they would pass it up to the next ranking noble the Viscount and then it could travel all the way up to the Duke. The Baron of Townville were referred to as as Lord Townville.

[dykes-n-dragons]

Metagaming actually rules

[dykes-n-dragons]

centaur catalogue :)

[dykes-n-dragons]

“Oceanside Ruins” [30x38]! Can you feel the breeze on your face? The ideal map for a maritime adventure or the completion of a great epic mission near the sea. This map has 24 versions and 19 assets (ready to use on Roll20 or other Virtual Tabletop). Subscribe and get assets and variants here:

https://www.patreon.com/spellarena 

If you like the map and are interested in more, come by our Patreon! I make a new map every week and my Patrons get high resolution, gridded/gridless, outlines-only, and night versions of each map. On top of that, if you become a patron you get access to every available map at the level you choose, which I think is excellent value.

[dykes-n-dragons]

Art by wan bao

[dykes-n-dragons]

Mousefolk by skybug12

[dykes-n-dragons]

I’ve been slowly but surely working through the outfit requests I’ve gotten for Miss Sandra. I’m about half way there lmao!

Also I post them more frequently on my twitter, so if you want to stay updated, check that out!