My new YouTube video: A DM’s Guide to Ranged Combat is now live! Please go give it a watch!
If you’re a DM looking for a way to challenge your overspecced crossbow player, or just generally make mixed-range combat more interesting and enjoyable, it’s full of helpful tips and visualisations. Plus, supporting these long videos really helps keep my channel alive and funds more future content!
Hey btw, if you're doing worldbuilding on something, and you're scared of writing ~unrealistic~ things into it out of fear that it'll sound lazy and ripped-out-of-your-ass, but you also don't want to do all the back-breaking research on coming up with depressingly boring, but practical and ~realistic~ solutions, have a rule:
Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:
Plot hole 1: If the vampires can't stand daylight, why couldn't they just move around underground?
Solution 1: They can't go underground, the sewer system of the city is full of giant alligators who would eat them.
Well, that's a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.
Plot hole 2: How and why the fuck are there alligators in the sewers? How do they survive, what do they eat down there when there's no vampires?
Solution 2: The nuns of the Underground Monastery feed and take care of them as a part of their sacred duties.
It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it's just turtles all the way down. And if you're lucky, you might even find that the second question's answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:
Plot hole 3: Who the fuck are the sewer nuns and what's their point and purpose?
Solution 3: The sewer nuns live underground in order to feed the alligators, in order to make sure that the vampires don't try to move around via the sewer system.
When you're just making things up, you don't need to have an answer for everything - just two layers is enough to create the illusion of infinite depth. Answer the question that looms behind the answer of the first question, and a normal reader won't bother to dig around for a 3rd question.
✨New item!✨
Ebonclaw
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement by a monk)
These black iron gauntlets menace with spikes along the knuckles. While you are wearing these gauntlets, your unarmed strikes deal an extra 1d6 piercing damage.
If you kill a hostile creature of CR 1 or higher with an unarmed strike while wearing these gauntlets, you draw some of the creature’s life energy into yourself and regain 1 ki point.
Curse. Each time you regain ki using these gauntlets, a darkness begins to take hold of you. When you do so for the 7th time, your spirit becomes addicted to the life force of others. You can no longer regain ki points when you take a short or long rest, but the ki points you siphon from each creature you slay is now equal to one roll of your martial arts die. Additionally, your maximum number of ki points is doubled. When you finish a long rest you lose all remaining ki points if you haven’t regained ki points using these gauntlets since your last long rest.
When this curse takes hold, the gauntlets undergo a transformation, revealing their truly sinister nature. They now deal extra necrotic damage equal to one roll of your martial arts die on a hit instead of the extra piercing damage.
Ebonclaw, forged of infernal soul-stealing iron, shackles the wearer to the pain they can inflict with their clenched fists.
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📜 Credit. Art and design by us: the Dungeon Strugglers. Please credit us if you repost elsewhere.