I’m trying to make a fun encounter for a king who’s not physically strong but very smart. One of the PCs fathers, he always thought the PC lacked the skills for leadership. He and the PC will test their leadership skills.

I’m thinking about having an actual chessboard behind a small screen only the one player and I can see that’ll correspond to a checkerboard pattern on the battlemap. Wherever the baddie moves a piece, a rune will explode, dealing massive damage. The player will need to communicate with the party to warn them.

Has anyone run something like this? Like a hidden movement game? Thanks for the help.

I have a question about an entry on the wild magic surge table (2024 PHB). Row 29-32 reads:

“The next time you cast a spell that deals damage within the next minute, don’t roll the spell’s damage dice for the damage. Instead use the highest number possible for each damage die.”

How would this interact with maintained spells or those that don’t immediately do damage, e.g., wall of fire, delayed blast fireball? The wording begins “When you cast a spell…” but also refers to damage during the next minute. Would the surge simply affect the first damage roll during this time frame, or would it extend to all rolls during the period? Why? The wording is confusing since it doesn’t refer to “the next roll”.

I have a variety of cities in my setting which are rather dense. My setting is sort of a fantasy-meets-industrial hybrid, and some of the larger cities are akin to smaller modern cities with population counts of several hundred thousand citizens.

I've seen a lot of the typical "city builder" mapmaking options, but I've never seen any tools or methods (or really even examples) that demonstrate cities of this scale. These cities would have thousands of buildings, and placing them by hand one at a time over some watabou overlay isn't going to capture that scale. I'd like to find some solution to create elegant and interesting-looking city maps that just have clusters of city blocks that I can place down to visually communicate 'dozens or hundreds of buildings packed here" to the players.

Anyone know of any mapmaking tools that offer this?

I'm about to start a new campaign with two friends. I already have world created because we played a really short campaign that we didn't finished because two of my players have a beef now. Should I just forget these heroes? Should I have them as cameo as if they already finished they're stories?

IMO as player I'd probably like to se that character that I wasn't able to play or finish his story lives a good healthy live 😅

What do you guys think?

One of my players recently acquired the Griffon's Saddlebag, which is a sentient Bag of Holding that allows access to a raft of spells, and has a job to do. Basically, the holder of the bag can receive courier requests for magic items with payment proffered. If the holder of the bag accepts the request, the item appears in the bag for delivery.

The party is headed to Barovia, where for a bit of a giggle, I'd like to add the first request letter, conveniently en route to their destination, or possibly at their destination (Death House). The client turns out to be a mimic - I'll fudge the rules and either let it speak aloud or make it capable of more sophisticated telepathic communication - but what would a mimic order from Fantasy Amazon?

Blackguard, get outta here! Just looking for some advice!

So my party of high level adventurers have found themselves at the final day of battle for a war. And one party member is considering using Planar Ally to summon a high level celestial to fight with them. I’m trying to consider what the ally would ask for in exchange for such a favor. Ideas?

So in my world the gods arrived a very long time ago. They arrived and brought life to a plane full of elemental and primordial chaos and with it brought order. Newer texts and teachings say that they came here of their own accord, but my idea was that the older the texts you find you start to learn the truth. The further you go back into ancient relics and texts will seem to imply that they fled here to escape some other unknown threat. So my question would be what kinds of entities could exist that would make powerful gods flee their former domains?

One idea I had was another pantheon of powerful gods usurped them from their former thrones but I’m looking for other suggestions.

So for context, i'm running a homebrew villain campaign where my party sides with the BBEG. He has been banished to a separate realm with his 2 adopted daughters. All three of them are night hags. All my players know rn tho is that they're fey and they're fighting his sister (the good guy) to free him.

last session, one of the daughters (half jokingly half flirty) offered some of her clothes as a gift to a PC (druid/barbarian elf) and she agreed after the hint of a "proposal". So she WILLINGLY agreed to the marriage, no trickery involved.

I kinda get the gist of what a fey marriage entails but i'm kinda lost on what would happen in a marriage with a night hag? especially bc i had these keep all the fey traits and customs...

if anyone has any suggestions on hag marriage laws or knows fey marriage laws well, i'd be so thankful for a response!

Dungeons, adventure sites, campaigns, zines, you name it. I've grown to love procedurally generating some of the world as we go and mess it all up, and I don't want to fall into the familiar 5e trappings of a more linear story (though I have enjoyed those), so I suppose an alternate style of this question is "What are some good tools for your 5e sandbox?"

I'm relatively agnostic on theme, would just like to hear what people have used and recommend.

My players will all be partaking in a special graduation ceremony that involves them facing challenges, tests, trials, and tournaments to display their skill and how far they’ve progressed since they first enrolled in the academy.

The school is meant to cater to almost every class so that my players don’t feel like they have to be a wizard or play an intelligence focused build, and one of them chose a bloodhunter.

What I’m trying to go for with most of the specialized class tests is that there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s merely a reflection on how they view life, their powers, studies, etc. And so that outsiders who’ve come to observe can decide if the player is the right one they want to take under their wing. Though obviously there will be situations where there’s a present fail/succeed, win/lose

I'm getting ready to run Shadow of the Dragon Queen, but I'm really bad at most things, including drawing maps even if I have them in the book.

So basically, I'm wondering if anybody knows where I might be able to source PC maps from the campaign?

I've only found VTT and I'm way to broke for VTT.

Any help is much appreciated and will be rewarded with my thanks.

Thank you lovely people.

I'm the DM for a homebrew campaign I made for three brand new players. We just wrapped up our second session and everyone is having a great time.

This group is very combat-focused, so I've thrown in a bunch of fights, including one major boss battle they just completed.

My concern is that the players are going to level up very fast. They hit level 2 at the end of session 1, and if I add up all the XP they just earned they'll probably be at level 3. I want them to get the basics of the game down before they start adding more stuff to track, and I don't want to spend half an hour each session helping them update their characters.

Is it reasonable for me to delay them from gaining a new level until, say, they make it back to town and have a chance to relax? Or can I add some episodic leveling, where we don't really use XP at all?

Hi all! So, I've been loving reading through The Monsters Know What They're Doing and trying to incorporate some of those tactics. However, so far I've found that the concept of enemies scattering/fleeing/running away from combat is mechanically weird and just uninteresting. Specifically, the mechanically weird part is the idea that: once they're off the battle mat, when are they "gone from combat"? That transition point is a little awkward for me, and I feel like it's a bit situational. I have, however, enjoyed the storytelling aspect around them going to get support or warning the next room. So, some wins and some loses around this new model (as opposed to "every monster fights to the death, final fantasy style").

I'm curious if other DMs have found ways to make the idea that "almost all creatures want to survive, and so will flee when wounded/outnumbered/etc" fun and interesting? I'd love to hear how it works at your tables!

I'm about to run the Age of Worms AP from 3.5e for 5e VTT. Quite a bit of the maps have been remade for VTT but some them haven't. And I feel that as I get further in the campaign the number of good maps are going to be harder to find. Do y'all know of any good map creators, that are cheap or free, that can be used to recreate some of the modules maps? It doesn't have to be fancy as long as I can mostly recreate what was there in the 3.5e versions.

So I have a party of 3 that I DM for. I am planning on having them go through a series of trials that test various things like teamwork.

I want a puzzle that has the 3 of them work together in some way but I'm having a really difficult time coming up with any.

My one idea is having a Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes type puzzle where 2 of them get some sort of mismatched instruction and they need to direct the third. However. I am not clever enough to come up with this on my own.

If anyone has any suggestions, resources, or could dm me and help that would be super awesome. Thanks y'all!

Hello! I'd need some help for running a os feauturing a 3 lvl character (sorcerer) using this segment of the campaign ''Descent into avernus'', which i thought was cool and wanted to connect with the fact that in the adventure Duke Stelmane is under the influence of a mindflayer. I'm figuring out how the mindflayer can control mother Aramina at distance and a way to make the pc escape the Church. I don't want her to fight the mindflayer yet, I'd need some technical advices for it to have sense and being cohesive. Thanks!

This combined chapel and asylum in the Twin Songs neighborhood has long offered sanctuary for the depressed and mentally ill. The few attendants ascribe to the faith of no particular god, but extol the virtues of meditation and whatever calm faiths visitors might bring with them.Few seek the church's services on their own. Rather, most who come to dwell at the church either have a room rented for them by concerned family or receive a somewhat mysterious—and usually unexpected—invitation from the institute's superintendent, Mother Aramina, a lawful good female human priest. Aramina is a former Candlekeep scholar who's moved her lifelong study of psychology from the academic to the clinical. How Mother Aramina learns of individuals' distress and under what circumstances she offers free room and board in her facility is something of a mystery, but as of yet, none have discovered any sinister angle to her work. In fact, Mother Aramina has been known to hire empathic intermediaries to help extricate the needful from destructive conditions. Despite its charity, though, the Church of Last Hope is not universally loved. The Faithless, the Guild-associated gang in Twin Songs, see a trove of wealthy city-dwellers and wishy-washy non-priests in their midst, ripe targets for protection schemes, kidnappings, and all manner of other plots. Currently none of the Church's patients have been endangered, but Mother Aramina is cautiously looking for more permanent security solutions.

So here is a random thought.

What if I swapped the costs in the handbook from GP silver. (25gp now equals 25sp) but leave the copper prices and life style prices the same.

That would make stuff seem more accessible to commoners without compleatly wrecking the game right?

Anyone think of an item thag would make this broken? (Obviously would adjust the amount player get paid from GP to SP)

Reasoning for me if to make gold seem/feel way more valuable and platinum feel just insanely valuable. While at the same time making the squalid and poor life styles feel way more expensive.

My players have reached a point in my campaign where they will come face to face with the BBEG for the first time. They have no idea who he is just that there's a bounty on him that one character has a contract for and another player has been hired to kill him. They have slowly been learning there's more to the guy than meets the eye and something far more nefarious.

So the bbeg is essentially stealing an item and escaping with it when the players find him. He casts a portal to escape. In the encounter the players have the ability to close the portal if they can break his concentration or destroy the portal. There's also a possibility they lower his HP enough he triggers his second form (I know I hate doing it but my players said they like it) if that happens he can no longer hold the item he's stealing, loses concentration on the portal and just makes his escape, while very likely severely maiming a player on exit, but essentially the players win the battle.

I was doing final prep last night and thought, what shit!? What if bbeg reaches the portal and my players just decide to follow him through!

I want to treat that as a failure, so my thought was to have them teleported to his location but the bbeg is there waiting and casts another portal for them to fall into as a trap. Players get teleported far away from their current location and fail to retrieve the item the bbeg was after. Setting up some bad consequences for faerun and now having to find a way back to where they came from.

Question is it weird to have the bbeg win the first battle? Even if they trigger his second form there is zero chance they can kill him. He will always make his escape, just varies in how that happens.

I think it sets up a rivalry and incentive for the players to try and kill this guy in the future.

Anyone else do something like this?

This is something that I do that I have never thought about before as a potential problem. But now I'm wondering if it's a good idea.

So say a player wants to know to if a certain spell will get their desired result. If I feel as though that's not the intended use of the spell, I will probably allow it if I think it's a creative solution with a rational explanation. But I don't SAY it's allowed. Instead I make them roll Arcana (or whatever is relevant) to know if their character thinks it should work.

E.g. (Note: Not the best example)
Player: "Can I use minor illusion here to fool the guards?"
DM: "Make an arcana check"
If pass - DM: "You feel as though that should work"
If fail - DM: "You aren't sure. Could be a risk"

At first I thought that it was good for the immersion. Now I'm thinking it might be a bit much. Maybe it takes away the players ability to make decisions? Not sure. What do you think?

A werewolf stalks the night in the remote island village of Kennel Cove… Can your party stop the beast before it’s too late?

Find out in the first adventure on my new D&D YouTube show, One Shot Wonderland!

This is a ready-to-play one-shot! Perfect if you need a last-minute session. Just watch the video, grab the fully illustrated PDF, and you’re set to play tonight!

🔗 Watch the show & download the PDF here:
https://youtu.be/BZAuA8Q035U?si=L1sDu1ARtvaQ2e45

This channel is my first independent project after years in the German games media (GameStar, M! Games). I'd love to hear your thoughts on the first episode! Let me know what you think, and if you enjoy it, a sub would mean the world to me. 😊 Also share your experience with me if you end up playing this adventure!

The illustrations are by the wonderful u/cuveika. You might wanna check out her art too!

Happy adventuring! ⚔️🐺

In my D&D world, the city my players arrived in has a Colosseum where fighters can earn money by competing in brutal battles. However, entering a fight requires a fee, and the risks are high! On top of that, spectators can bet on the fights, using a dynamic system where odds shift based on the fighters’ records.

The Colosseum is also a great way for players to scratch their combat itch, giving them an opportunity to fight outside of main story battles while risking money instead of their lives!

Fighting in the Colosseum

The Colosseum has three ranks:

• ⁠1st Rank (Novice) • ⁠2nd Rank (Gladiator) • ⁠3rd Rank (Champion)

To advance to the next rank, a fighter must win 5 fights in a row within a week. If they lose one, their streak resets. Losing three fights in a row results in demotion to a lower rank.

Fights Are Non-Lethal

To ensure fighters can keep competing, the Colosseum hires healers to intervene the exact moment a fighter is reduced to 0 HP. The moment someone falls, they are stabilized and healed to prevent death. This allows the arena to host intense but non-lethal battles, keeping the crowd entertained while preserving the warriors for future fights.

Pre-Made NPC Fighters & Random Opponent Selection

For each rank, I have pre-made NPC fighter sheets covering a range of levels:

• ⁠1st Rank: Fighters are level 5 to level 7 • ⁠2nd Rank: Fighters are level 8 to level 10 • ⁠3rd Rank: Fighters are level 11 to level 13

Scaling Difficulty Over Time

As my players level up, the Colosseum will adjust the levels of NPC fighters to ensure battles stay engaging and challenging. This means that while early fights might be against level 5-7 opponents, as the party progresses, new fighters will be introduced at higher levels to maintain the tension and risk!

Randomized Opponent Selection

To randomly determine which NPC a player character fights, I use a randomized table for each rank. Each NPC has a corresponding number, and I roll a die to decide who the opponent is. This ensures fights are completely random, keeping things unpredictable!

Entry Fees & Rewards

Fighters must pay an entry fee to compete, but if they win, they earn significantly more:

• ⁠1st Rank: Pay 1 silver, win 5 silver • ⁠2nd Rank: Pay 3 silver, win 1 gold • ⁠3rd Rank: Pay 5 silver, win 2 gold

This creates a high-risk, high-reward scenario where players can test their combat skills and climb the ranks!

Betting System

Spectators can place bets on fighters, with payouts determined by odds based on their records.

Betting Mechanics

• ⁠A fee is deducted from winnings based on the rank of the fight: • ⁠1st Rank: 1 silver, 2nd Rank: 3 silver, 3rd Rank: 5 silver • ⁠Multipliers are used to determine winnings, depending on how likely a fighter is to win. The lowest multiplier (e.g., x1) applies to a fighter who is heavily favored to win. The highest multiplier (e.g., x15) is for betting on a massive underdog. • ⁠1st Rank: x1,5, x2, x3, x4, x5 2nd Rank: x1,5, x3, x5, x7, x10 3rd Rank: x2, x4, x6, x8, x15

Determining Odds

For NPC fighters, I roll a d100 to assign them a probability of winning. Their chances determine their betting multipliers:

• ⁠1-40% chance to win → x5 (underdog) • ⁠41-65% → x4 • ⁠66-85% → x3 • ⁠86-95% → x2 • ⁠96-99% → x1 (heavy favorite) • ⁠100% → Extreme underdog win (x15 multiplier for 3rd rank fights only!)

For player characters, I base their odds on how many fights they have won:

• ⁠0 wins → High multiplier (underdog) • ⁠1 win → Mid-range multiplier • ⁠2 wins → Mid-range multiplier • ⁠3 wins → Lower multiplier • ⁠4 wins → Lowest multiplier (favored to win)

This lets players prove their skill in fair fights while also allowing for underdog upsets that make betting exciting.

Managing Large Bets

To keep the Colosseum's economy balanced, I use a simple rule:

• ⁠If too many people bet on the same fighter, the winnings are split among all winners. • ⁠The Colosseum never loses more than a set amount on a single fight, so extreme payouts may be reduced if too many people bet on the underdog.

Managing Large Bets – How Many is "Too Many"?

To keep the Colosseum's economy balanced, I use a simple rule:

• ⁠If more than 50% of total bets are placed on a single fighter, the winnings are split among all winners instead of being paid out at full odds. • ⁠If 70% or more of bets are on the same fighter, the multiplier is automatically reduced (e.g., from x5 to x3) to prevent massive payouts. • ⁠The Colosseum never loses more than a set amount on a single fight, so extreme payouts may be capped if too many people bet on the underdog.

This prevents the players from abusing the system by all betting on a sure winner and walking away with massive, unrealistic profits.

Automation & Excel Management

Since tracking bets manually can be a hassle, I created an Excel sheet where I can enter:

• ⁠How much each person bet • ⁠The number of bettors • ⁠The selected fighter • ⁠The odds multiplier

The sheet automatically calculates:

• ⁠Total prize pool • ⁠How much each winner gets • ⁠Conversions between silver and gold

So far, my players love the Colosseum. It adds tension, a way to earn (or lose) money, and roleplay opportunities—whether as fighters, gamblers, or even schemers trying to rig fights behind the scenes.

Most importantly, it gives players a way to fight just for fun, without the stakes of the main adventure! And since all fights are non-lethal, they don’t have to worry about permanent consequences—unless, of course, they gamble away all their money!

Would love to hear your thoughts! How would you handle gladiatorial combat and betting in your D&D games? Would you change something?

Edit:

My native language is not English, and I just realized that I used the word “fighter” many times, but I always meant it as a combatant, not as a class. This is to say that the Colosseum is also an arena for magical classes.

So the PCs have been taken captive (not through a railroad, but through wilful surrender in a sandbox-style campaign) and are imprisoned in the dungeons of the bad guys, in chains, without any equipment.

What are some good encounters (combat and otherwise), puzzles, terrain challenges, etc that might be good to throw against them as they try to make an escape?

System is 5E and the PCs are around level 7, but any ideas (system-specific or not) are welcome!

I have not looked incredibly deep into it, but generally I know that castle-building techniques evolved to suite the weaponry they were against. Namely, the development of stout, angular bastions, later becoming star fortresses, was caused by the need to defend against the new threat of canon fire.

In a world with magic, where you can assume there would be magic involved in warfare, is there any way that castles might have evolved in order to counter magical assailment?

Hey y'all this is my first ever reddit post so I'm sorry if I do something wrong (or choose the wrong sub? Sure hope I don't but there's so many different DnD(5e) subs that it's kinda hard to know if this is the right one for this question).
I've had this random idea of a kind of dice magician that uses dice to roll his attack and their effects that eventually turned into the Gamemaster. While I'm also new to the whole homebrew monster making I do generally get how to calculate monster CR in 5e but this monster got me stumped. It doesnt have any real offensive capabilities and trying to avg. the damage of the monsters it MAY summon combined with the different chances for each monster doesn't feel right. Same with the defensive CR. It should be around 2 if I'm not mistaken but I don't know how to account for the wacky, conditional immunities and hit limit on top of the rather small hp pool. I feel like if I just look at the stats the monster would be a CR 5 at most but with all the gimmicks I feel like it may end up as anything between 7 or 12.

In general I'm quite happy with the monster but it's hard to classify. I know that CR isn't the best way to judge a monster's power level, especially if it's this RNG heavy but regardless I'd be happy to hear if anyone got some suggestions regarding my problem or feedback to the monster in general!

Edit: Forgot to link the actual monster... whoops!
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/1cKSEHbVnPQ_

I'm a relatively new DM and will soon be running a campaign based on Runeterra. The campaign takes place in the pirate haven Bilgewater and the main quest will focus on the players building up a reputation between different factions in order to acquire a boat to find a "Special lost treasure" far out to sea.

I have a majority of the story within the Pirate Haven figured out but I'm wondering how to make the ending satisfying to the players, it doesn't seem right to have them just sail into the sunset and get the treasure with no questions asked. However it also doesn't seem right to introduce a BBEG at that late a stage in the game.

Any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated.

Hey all, newer DM. Game started IRL where I just had some good old graph paper that I covered up and made everyone explore to get around the map or dungeon.

That being said, now that I've moved to online I purchased things like Inkarnate and so on to build maps. That being said I've found I don't enjoy it as much? I make maps for a particular area let them explore there then move on to another map but it does cause some odd pacing issues where I'm not sure if they're done exploring and feels a bit more railroady as well? I note they explore way less with this method as its harder for them to backtrack and so on

I'm not sure if just running one massive map like before would be better. But if so making maps would be even more difficult no?

I'm curious what kind of maps you guys do?

Do you do singular maps or large sprawling ones?

I'd love to hear how you run your games, and or how you make your maps? Pictures and explanations would be helpful as I am very much a visual learner.

I need some help coming up with magic items for our Domain of Knowledge Cleric. I’m specifically trying to find items that would fit his personality, he’s a smart and mysterious guy that doesn’t care much for combat but knows how to get his hands dirty when needed, right now he wears chain mail, a preacher hat, and uses dual wield sickles.

I’m mostly having trouble because the player basically refuses to do much combat and seems to not like/want any magic weapon, armor or item that’s main purpose is combat.

Not too long ago I made a post asking for high level combat. I know the basic drill about monster CR, and resource management etc. It is not being enough. One of the comments that stood out along a couple of others was Use the enviroment and give players objectives. Ive seen this a lot and I've tried to put it in practice but I just feel like I am not good at it! Do you wonderful DM's of Reddit have examples or ideas on how have you applied this effectively?

I am rather new to Dm-ing, having a lot of ideas but not knowing how to execute them. In my eagerness I made two completely different campaigns, a pirate DnD campaign and a desert cyberpunk campaign. However, now in my Cyberpunk campaign I am rather stumped on how to introduce two of the main villains who are both assassins, and I would love to hear other DMs ideas and suggestions on how I can introduce these two in a way that will be engaging for my players, but also in such a way that it's the biggest plot point of our next session. All help would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance

Hi there.

I come to you in my time of nee...nah. I just need some tips and maybe ideas how to conduct a specific "encounter", if you could call it one.

Let me give you some background. To escape from an army belonging to the BBEG my players ran into an underground river which brought them to an underground dwarven colony. Right now they need to get south to their home base city (did I mention them getting away with an artifact which the aforementioned army seeks? No? Well now I did).

The only way to get south in the "lands under" is by boat through the "starless sea" (basically an underground ocean). Here however they were met with a problem. This dwarven colony has just been reclaimed from the drow but the "corridors" (dwarven road system) have been cut of by the drow again in a matter of weeks.

Now this colony was seen as the breadbasket of the underground world (think a giant kilometers large cave with sprawling grasslands...but with glowing mushrooms instead) so no chance of starving down there but the dwarves (and a sect of Eilistraeean drow who helped them) aren't keen on staying isolated which is why they are preparing to storm the corridors in a pincer move with the dwarven kings army in the south. (this is an opening act of what I call the next "Corridor War")

In the middle of this mess my players decided to join the dwarven army in the push until the corridor leading to the dwarven port settlement. As such what I need to create is a two part encounter with:

- The first being a few days long slog through the corridors fighting the drow legions. So two armies pushing against each other, skirmishes and air raids (yes. the ceiling is high enough), lack of water, constant darkness with sporadic sparse torchlight and sporadic cannon flashes accompanying the ever present feeling of claustrophobic unease.

- Second part will take place once they arrive at the second smaller corridor. Now with the dwarves fortyfing this side corridor and pushing forward the players have to sneak through to reach the port settlement and take the boat or a ship south. This corridor has a large number of rooms and "ventilation" shafts which can be used to sneak through. And considering the dwarven push even if they fail at sneaking they won't alert all the camps but only singular points. This segment will take a few in-game hours of travel.

Once they get through they'll find the dwarven port under attack (or nearly destroyed/destroyed if they are slow enough) The last of the dwarves will leave with them on the way south.

To reiterate then. I'd love some advice, especially on how to run the first part of this encounter. What tests, rolls, "micro-events" would be cool. I want it to feel like a drab slog without becoming a slog gameplay wise.

I'm not playing it to be truly deadly for my players since they are high enough level to keep themselves alive but since they got to know those dwarves and they believe in their cause I want to make the failures painful on an atmospheric scale (lots of trench warfare vibes so a quip one moment, death to a random arrow the next).

I'm also still trying to find some better ways to reinforce the feeling of "darkness". The kind of wet, stale and warm stressful feeling with those small deathly cold breaths of wind in-between.

Now then, what could you more experienced DMs suggest to make those encounters more engaging?