What do you think is mechanically the weakest race and how would you make it "shine" within the existing rules (pre2024 update but with Tasha's)?

So our first session of the campaign, I specifically didnt ask my players to tell me what they decided to play so imagine my suprise when they all four decided to play Human clerics who are all like super buff. Its is so weird and fun, they really lean into the roleplay, and i even allowed them for their spellcasting focus to be one specific muscle, different ones to each player of course.

But this is so much fun already I love my players

For the next arc in a campaign I'm running I reckon will be called "Just Business", the players who are evil aligned will be working in/for the Nine Hells. What are achievements or acts they could do that would warrant promotion to the next rank (Disregarding the whole species change that rank brings) . Could they buy it? Just kill their boss? Detailed answers please :)

As a person who loves theory crafting, I always though Dimension Door was basically a "must pick", for how versatile moving yourself and a willing partymember 500 ft can be. However, as I'm in a campaign right now with an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer who has had Dimension Door for the entirety of lvl7, which lasted seven sessions, I'm getting rid of it, as I have not cast it once.

Here are what I consider uses of Dimension Door and why they haven't come up:

1. Kitting/catching up in very-long range battles
   1. The DM doesn't run long-range battles, as neither party members, nor monsters can really attack from very long range. The battle map is rarely above 120x120. Ranged enemies are also in general extremely rare (post-apocalyptic wilderness, mostly beasts).
2. Rescuing a downed person
   1. Three players have Healing Word. If someone gets downed, they spring back up almost instantly. Players also rarely get downed because we have Polymorph, Aura of Life, Death Ward, and potions. Combat also rarely lasts longer than 3 rounds, so even if someone isn't spring back up immediately, we can just heal them post-combat.
3. Running away from a lost encounter
   1. The party has a mentality of "we live or die together", so the idea of 2 out of the 5 members just ditching the rest is... not within roleplay reasons. If it's a party escape, then Twin Polymorph Giant Eagle does the job better as it covers the full party.
4. Escaping a prison (or similar) structure
   1. Most of the campaign is wilderness. Even when someone got stuck, they could always either Misty Step out or someone used Stone Shape to get them out.
5. Getting over a chasm/getting up to an unreachable place
   1. Twin Polymorph Giant Eagle allows us to fly for up to 3 hours.
6. Getting out of being Swallowed
   1. This happened once (giant mimic), but the DM ruled that dealing enough damage from inside was enough for it to vomit us out

So, probably very campaign and party specific, but I somehow ended up in a situation, where I'm getting rid of Dimension Door, as I haven't cast it for 7 sessions, and there are other spells I definitely would have.

First off, I admit I’m a little nervous asking this as I don’t want to seem ungrateful or any other negative word I can’t think of right now. I played DND for the first time ever the other day, it was a one shot and it was ran by my friend. I didn’t know any of the other players prior. It was fun, but I also thought I would be a lot happier about playing. I want to start by saying I’m an insanely huge fan of critical role, and they’re the main reason I wanted to play in the first place. I also just always loved RPGS and making my own characters and trying to immerse myself in worlds. I’m thinking I went in expecting it to be more like Critical Role? I love how they bounce off each other and have so much fun and have a great balance of role play and checks and combat. However, this game (while fun!) lacked some for me. We had some combat that was good enough I think, but the role play was an eh for me and the game went on for SIX HOURS. I was extremely burnt out by hour 4. I really want to get into being able to do campaigns, but I just didn’t feel connected like it seems all my favorite campaigns seem. Is this normal? None of my close friends want to play. Will I ever be able to feel as excited about playing myself than watching others play? Please help :(

A 15ft Cone that takes up ~six squares.

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So, my dm and I are going to talk about upcasting find familiar (I’m a pact of the chain warlock). Any ideas?

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1783-the-10-species-in-the-2024-players-handbook

Hello everyone i recently been talking to my Dm and we've been looking into several source and adventures books in the recent editions, looking to find where dragon eggs appears and what tipes they are.

 these are the one we could find out in official sources.

Three black dragon eggs - hoard of the dragon Queen end of chapter 3

Red dragon egg out of the abyss chapter / MAd mage

three white dragon eggs The White Dragons Hunt

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden 1 silver Dragon egg

do any of you know if more dragon eggs appears and where?

Newbie joined the table and asked to help create the first character.

I thought about using a fighter but I thought that with the spells along with the blade sing the character could fend for himself so the group wouldn't have to take care of him so much.

Is it difficult to keep the wizard alive at the beginning? I know that the wizard is more difficult to use all the potential but it shouldn't be easy to avoid ruining everything with so much variation in resources.

I am creating a changeling that was sold to and raised by a (infertile) noble elf family. When she shapechanges into the elf daughter they want her to be, she is supposed to be passed off as a wizard because of the noble family's tradition.

I originally was thinking either rogue, artificer, or warlock:

• Rogue, because that's innate to changelings and I really enjoy playing rogues. This might show a little bit of Nature vs. Nurture, too.
• Artificer, because it seems like it would be more relevant to her story (she has to make up for what they expect of her) and it would lend itself to showing how she has no connection to other changelings, as they are usually not artificers.
• Warlock, because she could make a deal to find freedom/a place to belong.

I have a few other thoughts on other classes, but those were my top. I'll list the thoughts below:

• Sorcerer: This would probably be the easiest, it just isn't my favorite.

• Cleric: I really like the idea of being a cleric. It could be a "this is the only good thing I got from my "adopted" family" deal or maybe a "this is how I escape them" deal.

• Ranger/Druid: She could maybe use talk to animals to have a sort of Snow White thing going on where they do the "magic" for her? Plus, they have some spells.

• Paladin: (1) Glory: she could be trying to prove herself to be more than her "adopted" family said she was, (2) Vengeance: she could be trying to destroy the people that kidnapped/sold her or her "adopted" family.

Answering common questions:

• The only people she'd be hiding her changeling/class nature from would be the people that are connected to her noble family. As in, she'd be herself with the party, but if she needed to interact with nobility then she'd change into her noble elf lady persona and have to pretend to be a wizard for the duration of that interaction.

• I am not hiding this from the party, this is just for fun.

Say that you have a magic weapon such as a +1 weapon that doesn't require attunement. Can a PC attack with that weapon and then the next PC use their object interaction to take that weapon (does it matter if it's from their hand or do they have to drop it?) and attack with it on their turn? If so, what prevents a party from all gaining the effects of a non-attunement magic weapon each round?

So Powerful Build says, “you count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.”

If someone with it was enlarged would that count for the next size up as well?

Hey everyone. I've been going through the Dragon Age series again & it's got me thinking of possible ideas for a dnd campaign. I was curious if anyone has ever done this & what advice they may have.

So DAO seems like it would be the easiest one to adapt as a campaign & do something similar with the way you go around recruiting people & enlisting each race to help fight the blight. The Darkspawn & Archdemon make for very easy huge all consuming threats. Plus it could allow for some good political intrigue etc.

I also think the Qunari are very interesting & using them & an character like the Arishok from DA2 could be a fun villain in the middle of the story who is a very powerful enemy or ally. Though I have no idea how to represent the Qunari (would they just be Orcs or Goliaths?).

Anyway I'm just ranting now, but was wondering if anyone had ever tried something like this & what they did.

Trying to be more methodical in planning out campaign with notes for me as a DM.
I wanted to know if its a cool idea creating a bookmark character (DMPC) for myself to loosely keep track of events or improve upon certain sections of modules.
For instance if I gather a pickup group and I'm like Short hand:
"You're a hero hired by another hero whose already kinda fucked up?" (But its actually a different party at some other point in the campaign) would that get annoying?
I don't see this DMPC being anything more than the guy threading all the actions between pickup games.
(Alternative to this is to just run a campaign but I'm not doing that atm)

Campaing probally wont go past lvl 11, i'll choose half-elf race and rolled 16,14,13,12,10,10.
Need a really OP build since the campaing will be deadly. Don't know if i should just dip 1 level in Hexblade, or multiclass into Hexadun, Sorcadinor Hexsorcadin. Help me plz

AURA OF HATE WON'T BUFF ENEMIES!!!!

Something I've noticed about online DnD discussion is while there's no shortage of DM best practices out there - guides to being a good game master, running the game tutorials - there isn't as much focus on player best practices. Besides show up on time, pay attention during combat, and don't hog the spotlight, there isn't much conventional wisdom. And even those are more general advice for being a good person in any group setting. So in an effort to partially change that, as a 10 year rpg veteran across 10+ systems, I'm writing up this reddit post about character backstories.

We've all played, and maybe GMed for, a character with a bad backstory. This usually isn't that big of a deal: your status as a bastard son of the Elven king isn't really affecting things here in the dungeon of the mad mage. You have to ignore it sometimes (why is my character still here?) but if you’re focused on the GMs adventure, it's easy to work around. That being said, it's possible for a good character backstory to make a game better for everyone, and is often easier to write than a bad backstory is. These 6 best practices are what I've used to good success, and would recommend trying.

If you disagree with any of this, that's fine! My main goal here is to get people to be thinking about why they're writing backstories in the first place. If you think I'm wrong, it means you think something else is right, which is what I'm going for. On to the list!

1. Consider whether you need a backstory, or just a personality

Starting from first principles, do you need a backstory in the first place? In a lot of campaigns, the answer is no! If you’re going through Barovia fighting Strahd, it doesn't really matter what you were up to before that, if it's outside. Just a couple details that were extrapolated from your race and class can be good enough. The rest can be discovered in play: What happens when the Monster Hunter Ranger finds a monster that shouldn’t be hunted? This was the baseline for DnD backstories historically, and is a lot of fun to play, it leverages the strengths of RPGs well. I would outright recommend this if you’re playing in one of the long, official d&d adventures, where adding home-brew is difficult and time consuming for the GM and shouldn't be expected. 

2. You're an Adventurer now, know how that happened

While you used to be a guildartisan, a sage or an outlander, your not anymore! This happened for a reason presumably, otherwise you would still be eking out a living hunter elk. Why exactly you transitioned from your previous life to a small adventuring party is your inciting indecent, and is a good thing to nail down. If your character was happy as a librarian, you're probably going to run into trouble justifying them hunting Gnolls in a swamp. Whether you just came of age and left the family farm, or you where killed and resurrected years later by a blood ritual, something happened. Figure out what.

3. Understand the power of proper nouns

One of the easiest ways to suggest depth is by giving things names. It's the Kessel Run principle, if you say your character did or is part of something with a cool name, it's evocative but doesn't need many details. It also gives your GM a great jumping off point. Saying your character fought in a war and was a member of the Gelugon Battalion, aka fantasy green berets, for example gives your GM something to work with. They can answer questions like “What are they up to now?” or  “Why did they disband?”. These are all easy things for GM to slot into a game, which both of you want: they get to expand their world, you get to have a foothold into it. The caveat is to remember the gm decides the state of the word, not you. Sometimes, something you think is cool clashes with the GMs world, or their tastes. Maybe The Mad Bug-Elf King Thyr’drak with a bastard son is a bridge too far for them. But, this is always true: Backstories are inherently collaborative, and need to fit the world the GM is running.

4. Remember who the main character is

Its not you! Its the party as a whole. There isn't really a hard line here, but avoid centralizing you're backstory to much with the main content of the game. If every npc and bad guy has a deep connection with your pc, it can make the other players feel left out. Instead of it being a story of a group of people doing heroic deeds, its your PC fulfilling their destiny while others just tag along. If you notice this happening in game, talk to your GM about it, there are plenty of levers they can pull to fix it. That being said, this can be pretty easily worked around in play by highlighting your fellow pcs, and making sure not to engage as an individual, but as a group instead.

5. Tropes can be your friend, and don't need to be avoided

Archetypal charterers get a bad rap sometimes in other media like books and TV, but they translate well to RPGs. While you may have watched a lone gunman struggle at first to feel comfortable in a new social setting, only to turn into the worlds biggest softie enough times to make you groan when you hear yet another older male character say "I usually work alone, but i guess i can make an exception", its different when you are the guy. Playing into tropes is a lot of fun, it feels different to be Clint then to watch him. It also gives a shared touchstone for your fellow players. If they know what your character is about inherently, they can play off of it better and more deliberately.

6. Write stage directions, not an novel

Writing long, David Attenborough/League of Legends wiki style backstories are time consuming to write and are hard to parse. More importantly, they misunderstand the relationship with the DM: they are your co author, not your audience. You should be giving them tools to implement into the game you’re about to play, not a short fiction to read. For example, instead of writing:

>”Born to Tiefling parents Tharvil and Anagad in the City of Brass, Clabby Dawnshank grew up fast in the tiefling ghettos. Though they had little money, they managed to get by under the fire of elemental thumbs. Clabby was a happy child, quick with jokes, not understanding… etc”

Instead, use bullet points. That 600 word slog i was about to write, that my gm was only going to skim, can be condensed down into:

• Clabby Dawnshank, Tiefling Eldritch Knight Fighter
• Personality: Grim, Sarcastic, Friendly 
• From City of Brass, poor
• Was a metalworking serf, hated it
• Conscripted at a teenager by a traveling Scholar-Knight who thought he was cool. Was his apprentice
• Learned magic and sword-craft, liked traveling
• Teacher was killed by a demon, the demon stole the teachers special sword
• On the material plane now, looking for the demon/sword

All the same information is conveyed, but easier to write, and much easier to read for your GM. I could fill in more proper nouns, like the name of the demon, or the organization the Scholar-Knight was is, but you get the picture. Even with those, its half a page of text, not 3. Optimizing for legibility and ease of implementation for the GM makes both your lives easier.

Okay, that's everything. there was originally a 7th thing in here about making your backstory dramatic, but i removed it after thinking more about it. Because, i don't think that's really the point of this post. None of this applies to the content of the backstory. What im trying to convey is more structural: Your designing the background for a game, run by one of your friends who probably isn't a professional writer, to be acted against your fellow PCs, who are probably not played by professional actors. Your backstory should serve to enhance that experience. The details beyond that are more art then science. Thanks for reading, and I hope this post was useful to at least some of you!

Hey y’all I’m currently trying to design a boss fight for my 3 level 4 pcs (grave domain cleric with 27 hp, college of lore bard 27 hp, and frenzy barbarian 45 hp?) The problem I’ve been experiencing is that I don’t know how to balance the enemies. I’m worried because the enemies are supposed to be an assassin, two robots(willing to drop these if needed), and an artificer. I’m not too worried on hit points for them because I’m planning to just call it when I feel like it’s been going for some time. I’m worried about how much damage the enemies will do and the hit modifiers?

I've heard that this sub class is pretty strong and wanted to experience it at least once, since I enjoy playing cleric so far. So I have a couple questions just to see what the optimal way of building one might be, as well as just seeing what other people like to do with it. As well as just other questions to know about the sub class.

• What requirements does a twilight cleric need to fly with heavy armor for example? And, would playing a dwarf be able tot reduce those requirements if any? Since dwarves don't lose movement speed from wearing heavy armor.
• What kind of feats are useful?
• How would you distribute your attributes?
• I've seen some guides encouraging multiclassing, what route would you take with multiclassing? Or would you go straight cleric until level 20?
• What race would you choose?

I do like the Dwarf race, it's usually my go to when I consider creating a new character. But I would love to hear what other races would be good as a twilight cleric. Appreciate any and all tips/suggestions, thanks!

Hi y'all, I was reading through Phandelver and Below and found the Ashenwights. On their attack it's stated that "If the target is a creature, it has disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the end of its next turn."

Do I get this right, that it doesn't need to hit the creature to make it have disadvantage? I'm usually sure on this type of phrasing as other directly refer to the hit or have the condition connected to the damage with "and". But for these I want to be extra sure.

Thanks in advance

A few friends and myself are thinking of playing D&D but we can't commit to a long campaign that spans across multiple play sessions. We plan to play like we are taking quests from the Adventure Guild, and return to the hand in our quests at the end of each session. No epic story, no grand adventures. Are there any books out there that can give us a bunch of quests like a job board?

For the past year, I've been working on a pretty large horror campaign starting with a lvl 1 group that's meant to last quite a long time. To get some inspiration, I'm curious if anyone else has done a horror-heavy campaign: whether it's through DMing or as a player, what are your experiences in this kind of setting? Do you have any fun stories of your own? And any tips that you might offer someone who wants to get some creepy vibes in their campaign?

Thanks for any inspiration you might offer! 💕

After going through the new cleric subclass and wizard subclass options I realized there's an implication to the worldbuilding aspect of the game introduced by the lack of domains and schools. Streamline and consolidation isnt a bad design philosophy but what happens now when a player wants to play a cleric for a god that does not fit 4 available domains? Consolidating the pantheon is an undisputed neccesity but this is too much in that direction. The same thing happens with only having 4 wizard subclasses but 9 schools of magic. I wish they took more of a utility route by using war mage and lore master like subclasses to determine how you used your preferred schools versus reducing your focus into which school you used.

So with wall of fire, the part that says "One side of the wall, selected by you when you cast this spell, deals 5d8 fire damage to each creature that ends its turn within 10 feet of that side or inside the wall. A creature takes the same damage when it enters the wall for the first time on a turn or ends its turn there. The other side of the wall deals no damage.", can you do that with the ringed wall? If so, if you do the inside of the ring, does that force creatures inside to take 5d8 damage? I don't see a save, and 10 feet from each side would cover the whole inside.

as a subclass spell at 9th level. i mean, i'm not complaining, it's a good spell, and artificer desperately needs more disabling capabilities

but in terms of flavor or lore... why? what's special about armor (a chunk of metal with magic) that allows you to hypnotize people?

Hi r/dndnext

We come from the writing caves bearing gifts. My editor finally managed to decrypted my mad scribbles and to bring forth our one shot for Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

I am happy to present it to you now! We felt like it took ages of our lifetime to create this. This is a one shot for new or first time players which will take them from level 1 to 3. They will travel through the "Schattenwald", a dark forest were they will fight dangerous foes and meet the friendly halflings Goto and Boto. After a feast and some rest in the cozy halfling inn, they hear the history of the Tower of the Blue Watch. A once mighty tower that is now haunted after its keepers vanished one night. What secrets lie within? Only only way to find out...

You can download it for free here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/dnd-one-shot-of-108439830