5th Edition D&D

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So I’m designing a new campaign, warring factions. One faction is notably the destination of most paladins as they play the “goodie two shoes” part of the world building. The other two factions are more balanced somewhat in terms of class.

Without factoring the PCs into the formula, how would you envision a war/battle/skirmish go, when one side can field 10x the paladins than the other side, when the other side can only field a few paladins and other regular soldier/classes? How can I balance the battle so it favours neither side?

I play a light domain cleric and since my damaging spells are mostly radiant or fire would it be worth it for me to take it?

So I know a dragon's hoard can look like anything. Knowledge, cheese whatever they really fancy. But traditionally its gold and treasure.

How did dragons properly gather gold for their hoard? Did they just rob and conquer kingdoms or steal from merchant guilds, or perhaps they were given tribute to be persuaded not to destroy the local kingdoms. I don't really see how dragons could gather gold any other way than acquiring it from civilisations. Which feels strange because loads of them are fiercely intelligent and it feels like killing and pillaging people for wealth would be beneath them.

My group is moving through the northern part of the continent, on a ship bound for the pole. They’ve made an enemy of a young white dragon, who I plan to have attack them as they travel.

I plan to run the dragon as dangerously as possible. Breath weapons, swooping attacks…

But in the end, whenever a dragon is chasing/battling a ship and its crew, why not just have the dragon destroy the ship, and assume the people aboard will drown?

Hey, so, I’ve seen a couple of people saying that “running a dragon realistically” means they would never land and kite the party from a distance.

But I’ve always imagined that flying is quite demanding, especially for such large creatures, and the dragon need to land every now and then to regain power. Sure, a dragon would not be on the ground for the whole fight, that is stupid.

And if the dragons could fly “forever”, how would you make this encouter fun for a close range Barbarian?

Thanks to everyone who answers!

So, yeah, what the title says.

I've been playing for close to a year now. Only one long-term character (There was my very first, but campaign got dropped after a couple of sessions).

I've been playing an Arcane Trickster Rogue and I've loved it. Rogues are my thing. Always have been in video games and whatnot. So naturally, I love it. Although I'm still learning to role-play "properly".

But now I need to build a new character for a new campaign and IDK how to strike a balance between [Something I'll enjoy playing] and [Something new to try].

I don't want to put myself in a box of "Only Rogues". That'd be boring, to say the least.

That said, I know that, in general, I'm not interested in Paladins and Clerics, for example.

That still leaves a myriad of options and I just don't know where to go.

The second character being harder to build than the first one is quite a shocking surprise.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Stats: STR:13 CON:13 DEX:19 INT:10 WIS:14 CHA:6

Class: Rogue(Thief) 3

any fun ideas?

If I'm wildshaped into a giant lizard and something triggers my lycanthropy, do I become a hybrid of the 2 animals or do I just become one or the other? I've seen this question pop up before but I've never seen a clear answer.

I've been thinking about Plane Shift: Innistrad and how it's a setting that limits players to humans only while still having variation amongst them based on their origin. While having only four options--Gavony (+1 to all ability scores), Kessig (+1 DEX and WIS, the Survival skill, and the Mobile feat), Nephalia (+1 INT and CHA, one skill, and the Skilled feat), or Stensia (+1 STR and CON, the Intimidate skill, and the Tough feat)--is pretty limiting, I really like the overall vibes they all have. With some reflavoring, they even work outside of the Innistrad setting.

I'm curious to see what kind of builds or changes to popular ones that limitation encourages or necessitates, on an individual and party level. Which origin would be best for each class? Would Gavony get any use at all? Am I overthinking this completely? How will this affect the weretrout population? All good questions, and I look forward to the discussion.

For consistency, any builds posted should use the following parameters:

• Innistrad humans only.

• 27 point-buy.

• Take average for HP.

• Mobile, Skilled, and Tough feats disallowed.

I recently created a LARP like experience for my players as their character went to an Escape Room in-game. Any one else did something similar? if yes add your ideas and suggestions so future DMs will be able to do it better.

https://craftedcrossroads.com/how-to-turn-your-home-into-an-escape-room-for-a-ttrpg-session/

Way of the Kensei (revised)

Slightly inspired by u/agenderarcee's kensei revision.

Criticism and balance suggestions are welcome.

A wizard created a psionic disease that he used as a weapon to wipe out illithids. He was mostly successful but the an Illithid got the tadpole in the Wizard’s head before his hirelings killed it. Used a periapt of health to hold off the parasite and sought help from adventurer’s guild.

This is where the PCs came in, and the wizard said he was captured while studying the mind flayer colony. They took him to strixhaven researching a cure. The now very lonely Elderbrain hired mercenaries to get the periapt. PCs failed to stop this and the in the end they psionic surgeon and an eloquence bard to convince the involved to trick the tadpole into getting stuck in the human brain while party wizard became the tadpole, killed the nascent illithid’s mind, and finished the transformation. PC in the tadpole body experienced the instinct of the mind flayer and some vestiges of racial memory as over the course of 4 days it transformed into an ulitharid. Then they switched minds with the wizard NPC.

The PCs need to leave the college and travel hundreds of by boat miles back to the Adventures guild. There is a kraken that is about to lay claim to the city, who will give the city 3 days to acknowledge it’s rule or be destroyed, so PCs will need to sneak out or stay and fight. The human/ulitharid thing will need to figure out what to do now. PC’s have three day before the Kraken attacks and the city lords will have to decide to fight or surrender. That said the city is a magocracy ruled by hereditary storm sorcerers. So, PC help might not be necessary.

I am trying to figure out what “Lovecraft Wizard” will do now that he is one of the things he was trying to make extinct. How much is the mind flayer’s up bringing in the hive minds and how much is programmed into them. What will an ulitharid with the memory, psychology, and soul of a genocidal anti-Illithid abjuration wizard do, when this kraken threatens the city.

Lost a wife to the Illithids. Dedicated his life to eradicating the species. He was convinced by the pc eloquence bard to take this path. While I believe it is possible I can’t figure out if he means to kill himself, study them for more weaknesses, or something else; what makes the best story? I also don’t know if he can control himself or if he will slowly become something else, the alien mindset slowly changing his personality. Does he just disappear? Should he be compelled to start a new colony in a manic or insidious manor? Should he be just a human and actually unchanged? Since this is all very lovecraftian I really doubt the last. Mind flayer lore splits on do they need to eat brains what do people prefer?

What was it like?

I like 5e, even after everything that has happened, but its not the main RPG me and my friends play nowadays (that would be Tormenta 20). This is mostly because it does 2 things that as looking for that D&D 5e doesn't do: an adventuring day based around 1-2 more impactful encounters + more varied player races (like Tiny and Large people, full Undeads and Constructs and more balanced flying races, although I miss flexible bonus attributes).

This got me curious on what exactly D&D 5e does better, like what is the thing that makes you choose it over similar games (like Pathfinder 2e)or games that has close to nothing similar to it (like Apocalypse World)

I’m doing a prison break opening for my dnd campaign starting this next week, and I developed a ball and chain that’s made of a metal, cold-iron, that is supposed to suppress magic and drain the energy from the wearer.

The purpose of the metal is for the ruling party to be able to technologically advance faster than magic users can, and cancel their abilities in the process. The cuffs are an “experiment” on prisoners before they begin using it on people.

If a magic user comes in contact with a cold-iron weapon during combat, they may not cast spells on their next turn, and they have disadvantage on concentration to hold spells. The use of this metal will not be very common in the world yet.

The effect of the cuffs is: If a player casts any spell, an ability that is assumedly magic, etc., then the “Vampiric Cold-Iron Chain” will prevent the casting/activation and immediately cast “Vampiric Touch”, activating for the full minute, 3d6 necrotic damage until the wearer is unconscious, but the cuffs will not kill them.

My question is for you lovely min-maxers and sweet little campaign breakers, how would you break these cuffs if you were a level 2 character? One of my players has already said “I have some ideas” and I want to get ahead of the curve.

TLDR: I made magic cuffs to cancel magic users, how would you break them mechanically in game? (Effect above)

My idea is that i want to make a "dungeon" (read 'haunted gothic manor + town combo') in a town with a secret Vampire family, but I don't want to reveal right away that there are Vampires there so I can surprise my friends.

Because of this, I want to use another thing to distract them so they don't suspect the Vampires are pulling the strings.

The premise of the quest is that the youngest daughter of a influencial family in a town has gone missing, with this family + the town's folk supecting that its realated to the other problems plaging the town. In the end it will be revealed that the family that contracted the party are Vampires and the reason of both the troubles in town and the missing child.

What could be an interesting trouble to throw at the players and misdirect them while still falling into the Gothic Horror aesthetic + being interesting to connect to a Vampire family?

So I'm in a campaign playing a sliver dragonborn fighter he's very brutal and harsh but honorable like he wouldn't declare victory over a fluke and won't fight a foe who cant defend themselves. But again he's very brutal abd gas bo problem beating you to a pulp(think dinobot from transformers beast wars). In this campaigns lore a great ice age had been gripping the land for 12 years abd in the early days and before him his brother were in an adventuring party buy things got tough and they ended up betraying him abd selling him to slavery since he was a ravenite dragonborn. He dkes wish to get vengeance on his brother if they ever cross paths. Now present day He was hired along with the other players for a job and he's getting psychic messages in his head from his brother warning him but there's evidence that he's captured. Would it be honorable to let him rot or just kill him outright?

Our 5-member lvl7 party (two Sorcerers, two Rangers, one Cleric) managed to beat an Adult Silver Dragon (CR16).

We just spammed CC spells and made saving throw rerolls with Silvery Barbs.

It used up all its Legendary Resistances on the first round, which allowed it to Breath Weapon and take down 2 members. But then it got CC-ed, during which the downed party members were healed so they could fight again. And after that, it just never got to take any actions again.

As long as 1 hard CC succeeds from the 3 full casters, which is extremely likely, especially with Silvery Barbs spam, the dragon can't do anything, and the rest of the party can DPS.

Not only we won, it was even a surprisingly anticlimactic fight. Action economy advantage + CC is just stupidly strong, since you can just allocate part of your action economy to completely disable the opponent.

EDIT: Since this keeps being asked: The main CC spells were Command, Psychic Lance and Entangle. Aberrant Mind Sorcerers can cast Psychic Lance a lot, thanks to Psionic Spells, Psionic Sorcery and Font of Magic features. Psychic Lance causes Incapacitated, which disables Legendary Actions.

Also, our DM did not expect us to fight the dragon, hence why it was by itself and we were fully rested. One of our members requested a sparring match, but the DM ruled, for fun, that even a breath weapon could do non-lethal damage, so both sides could go all-in as if it was a real fight. The dragon yielded when it was about to go down.

My character and another character recently became friends, this character is an elf valor bard that joined the campaign at level 3

RP wise a Tiefling hexlock with a the raven queen as her patron being a silly little assistant bard is very funny and versatile

On the other hand I really want more invocations

If you skinned a gloomstalker (the monster from Critical Role books, not a ranger) and had an Artificer in the party with leatherworking tools proficiency, what kind of potentially magical item would you create? Some boots, a cape, a saddle? Alternatively, if you DMed for such party and were inclined to let them craft a magic item out of it, what properties would it have?

Me n my friends are doing a one shot that may turn into a full campaign, I'm just blanking on a background. I'm doing a bard turned barbarian.

In the design explantion of Bounded accuracy, the lead designer said that he made Armor class not scale as you level up because it would be weird if you we're wearing chain armor and had 19ac while this NPC was wearing the same armor but had 16AC.

so that's why a fighter once he gets the best armor he can will never normally get any better at not getting hit while enemy attack keeps scaling, in a game we're magic items are meant to be optional stands one uncommon per player.

Like wouldn't have been better if each class had armor that scaled with PRF (or bonuses at PRF points to curb multiclassing) and we just limited armor bonuses from Magic items to +1 and +2 for legendary/artifacts while making more magic armors that have Unique properties.

So was it worth making AC kinda irrelvant at higher levels so that Npcs and Players wearing the same armor had the same AC?

Hello, Moderator of r/Dragonoficespirepeak and done a massive renovation and ease of use for New and old DMs. We also cover the follow up modules:

• Storm Lords Wrath
• Sleeping Dragons Wake
• Divine Contention