#d&d 3.5e

[tabletopresources]

Image credit "Fishing" By yonaz

So in last night's 3.5 edition D&D game, my players had a chance to do some ice fishing and one player called out for one of my ad hoc mini-games (I do this a lot haha). I wanted something simple, a combo of character skill and some luck, and so in short order ended up with this very quick mini-game you can easily employ.

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Quick Disclaimer: These fishing mini-game mechanics may not be entirely original and could resemble systems from other games I just can't recall. For my part, I'm posting this FOR sharing. Feel free to use, adapt, or modify them in your own games as you see fit. No ownership or exclusivity is claimed over this idea—enjoy and share as you wish!

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Fishing Mini-Game (D&D 3.5 Edition)

Step 1: Build the Fishing Pool

The player rolls a number of d6 equal to their relevant skill modifier (Survival or Profession (Fisher)).

Example: A character with a +10 in Survival rolls 10d6 and sets these dice aside as their "Fishing Pool".

Fishing Pool Example Roll: 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6.

Step 2: Perform the Fishing Check

The player then rolls 5d6 as their "Fishing Check" for one hour of fishing.

Example Roll: 1, 2, 4, 4, 6.

Step 3: Match for Combos

The player now attempts to match the dice results from their Fishing Pool with their Fishing Check results to form combos. The number of dice used in the combo determines the size of the fish:

Small Fish: Match 2 dice from the Fishing Pool with the Fishing Check.

Medium Fish: Match 3 dice from the Fishing Pool with the Fishing Check.

Large Fish: Match 5 dice from the Fishing Pool with the Fishing Check.

Example Combo:

If the player's Fishing Pool has dice showing 1, 2, 4, 4, and 6, they could match all 5 dice with their Fishing Check, catching a Large Fish.

Step 4: Fish Weight and Rations

Once the fish is caught, the total weight of the edible parts of the fish is determined by summing the values of the dice used in the combo.

Example: For a Large Fish (1, 2, 4, 4, 6), the total weight is 1+2+4+4+6 = 17 kg.

To calculate the number of rations provided by the fish:

1 kg = 2,000 calories (or half a ration).

Rations Formula: Divide the total weight of the fish by 2.

Example: 17 kg / 2 = 8.5 kg or 8 rations (we round down).

Step 5: Continue or Stop

After catching a fish, remove the dice used from the Fishing Pool.

If the player still has at least 2 dice left in their Fishing Pool, they can attempt to catch another fish using the same Fishing Check results. Otherwise, they are done for that hour.

That's all that we did and they loved it!

But since then we've considered how future games or others might expand on it with special roll combos, items, locations, setting conditions, Aid Other, etc. So here are some...

Optional Add-Ons and Considerations

Multiple Attempts Per Hour:

If the player rolls exceptionally well on their Fishing Pool, they may be able to attempt fishing multiple times in an hour. To keep this simple, I'd say if they are able to clear the first Pool entirely, they get a brand new roll, a whole new Pool as if starting fishing over, but they keep their previous catches.

Modifiers and Conditions:

You could introduce conditions that affect the Fishing Pool or Fishing Check rolls:

Good Fishing Spot: +1d6 to the Fishing Pool.

Bad Weather/Overfished Area: -1d6 (or more) to the Fishing Pool or disadvantage (see 5e, we use this idea quite a bit even in our 3.5e games) on Fishing Check rolls.

Magic/Luck Items: Grant rerolls or bonus dice to the Fishing Pool or allow rerolls of the Fishing Check.

Special Fish Combos:

Occasionally, you could allow rare or magical fish (or larger species) that provide bonuses or other effects; perhaps these are possible if the combos use specific die results:

Giant Fish: Requires a match of dice with identical values, but double the weight result (ex: a medium fish that used 5,5,5 would be a Giant of its type, and grant 15x2 or 30 kg of edible parts!).

Magical Fish: Grants temporary bonuses, like extra HP or special buffs, when consumed. (ex. A combo of sequential rising values, like 1,2,3,4,5, would grant a Magical Large fish)

Fishing Tools and Bait:

Fishing equipment or bait could modify the rolls:

Better Rods/Lines: Allow rerolls or add extra dice to the Fishing Pool.

Special Bait/Lures: Increases chances of catching better or more fish (ex. set any one die result to 6; or allow player to select the value of any one die, etc.).

Aid Other

Another player can choose to assist Player A if they are proficient in the same associated skill (Survival or Profession (Fisher), etc based on your setting):

Player B (helper) rolls for the associated skill.

If the result of their skill check (rolled like any other skill check) is 10-19, Player A gains 1 extra die in their fishing Pool.

If the result of their skill check is 20 or higher, Player A gains 2 extra dice in their fishing Pool.

Player A can then use these extra dice to help form better combos when matching against their Fishing Check.

Let me know if you use this mini-game in your D&D sessions, or revamp it for the tabletop rpg/edition you play!

I'd love to hear your stories of the biggest catch, or lamenting that one LEGENDARY CATCH that got away!

And check out Tabletop Gaming Resources for more art, tips, and tools for your game!

[seventyeight-moose]

'Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords' summarised:

[nostalgiachan]

Wasn't sure what sort of trappings to give ol' Sydan here, so I thought a 3.5e sheet might be cute. Present it more like I'd colored it directly in my sketchbook.

[nixii-sabre]

Kidd on his way to be funniest fucker in the torture chamber:

WRONG. Harper was the funniest fucker, she waved at him while chained.

[troacctid]

Warmage feats, visualized.

[troacctid]

Can't believe D&D Tumblr left OP hanging for four years without anyone in the notes posting this picture of the Equinal, a type of Elysian celestial guardinal from Book of Exalted Deeds (page 173).

It's technically a legal player race, but it has a +7 level adjustment and 6 racial hit dice, so it counts as a 13th level character before you even take any class levels. You can imagine how that might be impractical. However, it does come with some pretty kickass abilities, including 13 different spells that you can use at will.

So someone mentioned to me that in 3rd edition d&d there's a humanoid horse race they couldn't remember what it was called so I tried to look it up but I made a typo and

[oddthesungod]

Dam…….. its crit role’s 9th anniversary!! Still remember sitting down to watch the first campaign 2 episode one day to see what the fuss was all about after seeing a couple cool artists I followed on twitter post about it, I think they were at episode 5 when I started watching? So I pretty much followed along campaign 2 from the start!

Wild how fast time passes!

Anyway happy 9th to CR and thank you for being the push to get me back into ttrpgs!!! 💖💖💖

[slayerdurge]

A Deal with God (Post-Ending Durgetash Fanfic)

CHAPTER TWO - THE REUNION

Enver re-entered his body screaming.

As The Dark Urge listened in transfixed stillness, his screams gradually changed into a strange and discordant mixture of laughter and sobs, and all she could think was that she’d heard that sound before.

But she couldn’t place it until a series of sensuous fragmented memories crashed into her mind—the damp stone walls of an underground dungeon, the thrust of steel as it penetrated flesh, the tantalizing ferrous scent of fresh blood, an influx of saliva pooling in the bottom of her mouth, and the howling keen emanating from the pile of meat in front of her. Then came the feeling of satisfaction. The knife clattered to the floor, and as she wiped her mouth, she heard the sound change.

It was the sound of a torture victim who’d been offered a moment of reprieve, and the only coherent thought she could form in the mangled, macerated caverns of her brain was that that sound should not be coming out of him.

She couldn’t say exactly how long the sound continued, but eventually she became aware that it had stopped, and that his eyes, which had been alternately twitching and rolling backwards into his head, had refocused. He was looking at her.

She became aware of what she must look like, standing stock-still and staring at him in paralyzed silence, but she could rouse herself to neither speech nor movement. 

Slowly, he sat up, supporting his unsteady balance by spreading his hands flat on the rock’s surface. He looked around, taking in the sizeless expanse of the Astral Prism. His gaze seemed to sharpen. “How long?” he asked.

“How long…” She didn’t immediately understand the question. 

“How long was I dead?” he repeated, over-enunciating each word impatiently. 

The twinge of annoyance that caused within her brought her fully back to herself. “Less than a day,” she said. “Maybe slightly more. I lost track of time during the battle.” She glared at him pointedly. “You’re welcome, by the way. For your life.”

He stood, wobbling slightly but catching himself and righting his posture quickly. He walked towards her, stopping when there was only a few feet of distance between them, and met her gaze evenly. “Thank you,” he said, without a trace of sarcasm. “For my life.”

The Dark Urge found it suddenly difficult to maintain eye contact. 

[read more on ao3]

[honourablejester]

D&D Deity Spotlight: Thautam

Thautam’s clerics believe that the spark of magic lies within all things, and they work tirelessly to draw forth the magic in everything from the walls of a dwarven citadel to the axes wielded by its guards. The dwarves dedicate many magic weapons and armour to Thautam. In dwarven folklore, Thautam acts as a kindly uncle to Moradin, content to putter away in his workshop and mutter advice to the Soul Forger. Artistic renderings of Thautam show him as an elderly dwarf with rheumy, blind eyes. […]

Thautam is obsessed with recovering as many artifacts as possible from long-lost dwarf civilisations. He also has a special interest in protecting the dwarves’ adamantine and mithral mines.

Because Thautam is a blind deity, prayers to him use unusually descriptive language. ‘Bless this sword, with its ruby pommel and silver-sharp edge …’ begins one well-known prayer.

Thautam’s temples are small –for his clergy isn’t as numerous as Moradin’s or Mya’s— but they always show an obviously magical hand in their creation. Some float in the centre of a cavern, while others feature spires and buttresses more fanciful and gravity-defying than those favoured by dwarf stonemasons.

--- Races of Stone (D&D 3.5e, 2004) (link!)

Continuing with ‘dwarven deities I love and that D&D 5e has done wrong’, we have Thautam, the blind dwarven god of artificers. Because, hey. Did you want a god specifically for your artificer? Might I present. I am going to politely ignore that 5e gives him the Knowledge and Trickery domains (well, no, he can definitely keep those, especially for his ‘retrieve artifacts of lost ancient dwarven civilisations’ hobby), when clearly he also needs the Arcana and Forge domains. Because, again, he’s an artificer. As direct of a god of artificers as you could ask for.

(I know, those domains came in later books, it’s mostly just that no-one went back to the neglected one-line-total deities of the PHB to update their domains, but still).

I initially was interested in him because of 5e’s one-line description of him as a god of ‘mysteries, darkness and lost treasures’, because, hey, those are all things I’m interested in. But it’s curious to me how they seem to be almost exclusively referencing that obsession with lost treasures for this, plus the blindless, and leaving out everything else?

I really love his temples, for example. He’s a dwarf wizard, a dwarf artificer, and his temples are therefore just extra. Throw some magical frills on there just because. Make your stone building hover! Throw some extra towers and fancy bits on there, just for fun. How about some orbiting platforms? Glowy crystals! Make it magic. Loving as I do the more wonderous and visibly magical end of fantasy, a god of magic and craftsmanship who just has fun jazzing up his architecture just because he can is fantastic to me. Especially since he’s a dwarf god, and is very specifically not being as stereotypically pragmatic as he could be in favour of having fun and overtly showing off the magic that can be imbued into all things in the process.

(Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore dwarf pragmatism, but it’s fun every so often to throw in a bit of contrast for fun).

Thautam is also just … a fantastic picture of a deity. He’s Moradin’s kooky old uncle, rheumy-eyed and dispensing muttered wisdom, puttering around and throwing magical buildings together for fun. That is the head of the dwarven pantheon he’s muttering at. I’m not sure if they’re sharing a workshop or if Moradin just buggers off every so often to take a breather and visit his uncle in his. Either way, it’s kind of enchanting. Having Thautam as your deity would so be like having your absent-minded kooky old handyman uncle around, who’s lost his eyesight and needs some concessions for that, but is happy to listen to you describing your work. The more fanciful the better!

If you’re an artificer, or a wizard, or an archaeologist. If you like making things for the pleasure of making things. If you believe that magic is there not just for utilitarian purposes, but to be big and bold and enjoyed. If you want a god to mutter at in your workshop, rubber duck programming, engineer’s prayers of ‘ow, fuck, what’s up with this thing?’. If you want a god to go seeking the lost magical technology of the ancients for. If you want a god of making things who lost his sight and kept on trucking, kept on making, kept on building. If you want a god who has a little fun with his creations, who doesn’t mind being a little bit extra just to show off what he can do.

Do consider Thautam. Even if you’re not a dwarf. He’s fantastic.

(Random sidenote, but Thautam reminded me of thoughts I’d had regarding one of the 5e trinkets in the PHB: ’37. A small, weightless stone block’. I’ve had thoughts before about a dwarven architect or artificer who’s on a quest to discover the origin of said trinket because a weightless stone could allow you to build anywhere. Including possibly the sky. Thautam would be a great god for a dwarf on such a question, since it dovetails so neatly not just with his ‘make your buildings magical and floaty’ aesthetic but also his obsession with the lost treasures of ancient dwarven civilisations. Want to throw a lost ancient dwarven flying city into your lore? One that predated the Netherese empire, and may have influenced it? Because if so, have I got a god for you …)

[thejaymo]

"When one of the players is drawing a map as the characters explore a new place, give her a break. Describe the layout of the place in as much detail as she wants, including dimensions of rooms"

"Of course, when the PCs [player characters] are lost in a dungeon or walking through fog, the whole point of the situation is that they don’t know where they are (or where they’re going). In cases such as these, don’t take pains to help the mapper."

I love this detail in D&D 3.5 ed. rulebook.

[catgirl-rose]

Do any experienced Pathfinder players know of some critters that have bonus effects to deal with good-aligned creatures? I'm looking for something to beat the ass of an ultra paladin. Content made for D&D 3.5e will also work as long as you can link me to the SRD page for it.

[acealistair]

Nimue | Half-Elf | Thief Rogue | Urchin | trying her best

[pigeonliker420]

whenever i go looking into help or random talk about bg3 i keep seeing people like comparing it to dragon age either in expectations or selling points and bro. ghirl. its not dragon age. its baldurs gate

[troacctid]

Memes I've shared with my D&D group, part 1

[anohrak]

He Wasn't Built For This

He remembered the sight of wind in the ship’s sails. He remembered the sun setting over the horizon, its reflection on the water stretched into a massive, glowing ribbon on the sea. He remembered the thrill that stirred in the crew when uncharted land appeared on the horizon, cheerfully asking for his assistance in drawing up a new map as they landed. He remembered the captain wrapping his arm around him, the two of them looking across an unknown horizon, and a whisper; “This is what it's all about, Navi.”

Foreign lands. Uncharted territory. New paradises, forgotten dangers, and a bright future full of Mystery; an apt name for a ship meant to touch every edge of the world.

He is ripped away from this memory by hands on his shoulders, shaking him violently.

“SURGEON! Follow me. We need a saw.”

He slumped down for a moment as the memory faded. Only for a moment - his left arm flips behind him, another arm with a long hacksaw at the end unfolding from over his shoulder.

He had been called “The Navigator” by the crew that had built him. Over time, the captain and eventually the entire crew would call him Navi. He was equipped with a great deal of nautical and cartographical equipment - an internal compass, a sextant, fins that could detect the direction of the wind… there was never a time that he didn’t know where he was, or how to find out. The time he spent aboard the Mystery were the most fulfilling years of his existence. He hadn't lived long enough to truly appreciate the life he had been given, or the crew who had required his areas of expertise.

Many of his navigational instruments had fallen out of repair. His arms, once adorned with finely tuned mapmaking equipment, were now host to changeable scalpels, saws, clamps, and needles. The wounded dragonborn on the cot before him snarls in pain, as doctors rush for medicinal herbs and bandages. Navi examines the dragonborn’s leg - a festering rot had surfaced, oozing with old blood and infectious pus. It is spreading quickly; but it can be stopped.

Navi motioned towards the camp’s alchemist. He points at a large chest sitting behind him. The alchemist places a hand on top of the chest, looking back at Navi with a bitter grin.

“No potions tonight, surgeon. That leg is gonna have to come off.”

The aperture of Navi’s spyglass eye narrows, an accusatory stare at the alchemist.

“Do your job, surgeon,” the alchemist sneered, crossing his arms.

The dragonborn looked up at Navi, an almost pleading expression in their eyes before they faded out of consciousness.

Navi had performed this procedure before. He applies clamps and rope to the lizard’s upper thigh, and begins to saw with great precision about a hands-length away from the binding.

He remembered rolling out a large sheet of parchment, attaching the corners to the table to prevent it from rolling up again.

He was quick, but by no means did he lack patience. Scaled flesh. Ribbons of blood vessels, an artery… the femur gives him some trouble, but it is nothing a hammer can't assist with.

He remembered every detail of the expedition; with great ease he drew mountains, rivers, and roads. Pre-existing structures gave him some trouble, but it was nothing a compass couldn't assist with.

There were cries of pain as he tightened the bind and applied more clamps to stop the bleeding, but he knew the dragonborn would be okay. He picks up the leg for disposal, and is about to walk away when he is stopped by the Alchemist.

“Hey!” Navi turns his head, optic directly facing the Alchemist.

“You ever side-eye me again, I'll melt you down for scrap myself,” the Alchemist says through gritted teeth. He opens the chest and pulls out a healing potion, stuffing it underneath his robe.

Navi walks away, still holding the leg in both hands. Another memory flows through him. He remembered walking away from the Mystery’s map room, a rolled up map on his arms.

“Hey,” the captain called to him. He stopped in the doorway as the captain came to meet him. “I hope ya know… we couldn't be doing any of this without ye.” The captain patted him on the shoulder, then walked onto deck. He looked down at the map cradled on his arms…

He looks down at the leg held in his arms. Arms that had been retrofitted for so many surgeries he can't remember what the original set looked like. He stands there for a long time, noticing the blood dripping off of his arm, the lump of poisoned flesh in his arms, being treated with some kind of apathetic respect.

He drops the leg into the mud beneath him, and backs away in disgust. He looks around at the fraying ranks of bandits, soldiers, and scum that merely used him as a hacksaw. His memory, designed to recognize and discover the world around him, was now full of potions, medicines, crude healing, and blood. He looks down at his hands.

He wasn't built for this.

Before too much time can pass, he returns to his post in the Alchemist’s tent.

This is the backstory I wrote for one of my D&D characters, a sentient machine cleric called Navi.

[honourablejester]

My friends will absolutely know it's me because i yap about Savras a lot (awesome aesthetics, divination is cool, also the god's design in powers and pantheons is just very clever with his face being literally crystal clear and him choosing to look like the ugly truth) but I was equally as shocked as you when I learned priests now use a staff. I kinda like to imagine that since modern savrans and azuthians are arguing about whether Savras lost on purpose (could have been a feint to avoid a worse fate, especially with the Times of Trouble coming) or Azuth genuinely was stronger, then maybe savrans wield a staff as a symbol of their god's foresight and to double down on their stance he let himself be caught on purpose...

Oh, I could definitely see it as a show of strength, a defiant reclaiming of the symbol.

I also, admittedly possibly just because he’s one of my favourites, do genuinely believe that he might have foreseen something that convinced him of the necessity of his imprisonment. I hesitate to say he allowed it, because of the severe amount of damage it did to him, but he’s the god of divination. I do think it’s more than possible that he saw a worse end for himself if he won and Azuth didn’t.

Which. I’m actually wondering if what he foresaw wasn’t the Time of Troubles, but the Spellplague. Because the Sceptre of Savras, at that point containing a huge chunk of his power and divinity, vanished the second Azuth released him from it. So a huge chunk of his essence was in the wind when Cyric entered Dweomerheart, murdered Mystra, and blew up magic. A process which apparently wiped out the weakened Savras outright, but condemned the more powerful Azuth to a significantly worse fate.

I’m wondering if the Sceptre was basically him death-proofing himself against that explosion, leaving a piece of himself unscathed and safely stored where it could be used to revive himself later.

Meanwhile Azuth, mortally wounded, fell into the Hells. And was absorbed, not into a staff, but into an archdevil, and his divinity fed upon to springboard said archdevil’s ascension to godhood (hi, Asmodeus!). Which. When you look at it. Is that not the fate Azuth condemned Savras to, only worse? Imprisoned, fed upon, and used to fuel someone else’s ascension to divinity?

I do wonder if, during that battle with Azuth, he saw enough to realise … If this happens to me now, at your hands, then I can know for sure that what goes around comes around, and you will suffer the same but worse at the hands of someone else later. And if I accept what must happen to me in the interim first, it’s possible that I can use it to survive what must happen later.

In which case in priests carrying staffs now might be more than just reclaiming the symbol, but possibly even a vindictive gesture towards a now-weakened Azuth who has just survived his own ordeal. A reminder to the humbled god of wizards that … well, he did it first. Everything he’s just endured, he did to someone else first. That might depend on how vindictive you interpret Savras to be, but it’s possible.

Alternatively, it could be an olive branch. Now that they’ve both suffered the same fate, and had to sacrifice something to escape it. A shared symbol to show potential reconciliation.

I still don’t like it. On a personal level. I don’t like waving a symbol of his torture in my god’s face. And it isn’t his symbol, his own symbol, the one he chose for himself, so even if he has commanded the change as part of some gesture towards Azuth, I still don’t want it to overwrite his own symbol. I would prefer to bear an orb, myself.

And. All of that aside. The 5e write up sort … lacks all of that. If it is where the thing with the staffs comes from.

Such individuals can sometimes be identified by the elaborate staffs they carry in homage to Savras. According to legend, Savras was trapped in Azuth's staff for ages. Azuth eventually freed Savras so long as Savras swore fealty, and today the staff is a potent symbol for those who revere Savras. Devout worshipers take great pains to decorate and embellish their staffs, each hoping that Savras might find it a welcoming place to stop for a time.

--- Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015)

It doesn’t mention the staff as a potential show of strength for Azuth, or as anything more complicated than just followers holding a symbol of their god’s past up to him in ‘reverence’. Which sits kind of badly with me. The book is aimed at players/GMs, not characters in-universe. If there’s an undercurrent happening there, you can state that. But they didn’t, which sort of leaves us with just the face value of the statement, that his priests are for some reason just perfectly happy holding up a symbol of his torture at him in hopes it will (somehow) make him like them better.

Which, yeah. Doesn’t sit well with me. Heh.

Anyway. Forgive the ramble. You have excellent taste in fictional deities! Also, I may be biased. Just a little bit.