Hello! I am creating a few new hag types but I am not particularly experienced yet at balancing creatures correctly. I would like to present the Harpy Hag:

This creature is a harpy that was either born in or strayed into the feywild and became imbued with innate fey magic. It then commands its own congregation of harpies as it lures travelers to their doom.

https://preview.redd.it/9q1egp2wbdqb1.png?width=809&format=png&auto=webp&s=b075a7e1b51d7ce9bb80ead7222aa74668cb6932

I have no idea if this is correctly balanced as a CR5 creature and I would very much appreciate some opinions and critique. Also feel free to use it in your encounters. Thank you in advance!

So I am building a character for the new kingmaker story. A mastermind rogue with investigator free archetype. Now mechanically in happy with the character. Just flavour and backstory wise not yet.

I tend to make "perfect characters" which often results in not very interesting role play. But I find it difficult to assign a flaw to my character or an interesting twist. So I was hoping someone could help me come up with a fun twist to make the RP of my character better!

He has the barrister background (legal apprentice or something) and is fresh out of legal college. The character is a elf with tiefling ancestry.

I appreciate all feedback!

In a couple weeks I’ll be playing a level 20 one shot with about 5 combats and no long rest. We were told to make a level 20 character and pick 3 magic items. It’s in the Shadowfell.

I want to play a Way of Shadow Monk, but have no idea how to minmax it, whether I should multi class or not. Since we are allowed to short rest and not long rest a monk seemed like it would be good.

Just to give y'all some context, two party members were busy IRL and cannot make it to the sessions. Their characters are off doing something else. We have two NPC traveling companions with us.
So here's the scenario: We encountered a strange, naked man NPC (plant person) in the mountains who is freezing to death. We healed him and our sorcerer used detect thoughts and found the NPC's entire life revolved around a strange resort where he accidentally wandered off and out of. We're already on guard, but we thought to trust the DM and see where he wants to bring us. We followed the NPC to an open field where the naked man started begging to be let back into the resort. So we did as he did and called out as well, when suddenly, we were transported there. We were met with a 'hostess' who was demonstrating strange abilities, including clipping through the ground at will and making the strange naked man disappear. We were then led to our rooms where we had room service. Afterwards, we chose to explore and investigate the resort, when I had the idea to look for the naked man's family. After some light interrogation, his wife and daughter seemingly have no memory of him and so we became even more suspicious, staying on guard.

Our party was then invited to a dinner hosted in an arena, with plant people spectators in the bleachers. The hostess had her staff bring out covered trays of 'food' and upon seeing what's inside, we were shocked at the sight of our companions heads.

Next Session: Our companions sprung to life and explode out of the table. Apparently, the hostess arranged for a "fighting pit" where we fight our companions, against our will. One of our companions felt like they were compelled to fight while the other one is thoroughly enjoying it (For context, this is the same companion that we lost to before in a previous tavern brawl). We defeated our companion, but also targeted the hostess when she stepped forward to charm everyone briefly. We realized her immense power through her charm effects because of her insanely high DCs, but she didn't physically retaliate. After the battle, the hostess revealed it was the companion's idea for the fighting pits, not hers. I was fed up with the situation and demanded to leave, but she didn't allow for it. The DM wanted to railroad us into talking to her, but she is so blatantly evil that no one in the party wanted to. So I did the only choice the DM left me with, I had my character attempt suicide in order to leave. The powerful creature wasn't fazed at the threat and allowed me to continue with the suicide, but eventually gave in to my demands and allowed me to leave the arena. The party followed suit and ignored the hostess' antics (she was trying to show them a weird art piece), which made her incredibly frustrated, so she ported all of us out of the resort and that was the end to that event.

Now, I will admit, character-suicide is a gross overreaction to the situation, and I apologized to the DM for it. But none of this would've happened if the DM didn't railroad. We gave her a chance, she seemed evil, and so we wanted to leave, but she didn't allow us to which forced my hand. This led to an argument over the core issue here so I'm curious what the communities thoughts are on this?

That's obviously a loaded question, but hear me out. I'm a newer DM, and I'm starting to wonder if combat is worth it.

I try to use interesting monsters and narrate what's happening in an engaging way, but it seems like combat is always this big slog that grinds everything down.

A part of the problem is that some of my players are new and don't know how the game or their characters work. But even with that, it feels like most combats just bog down the game.

So what I'm wondering is if it might be worth it to scrap combat as it is (protracted war gaming with tons of things to track). I'm wondering if it could be made more free flow, or narrative, or even if an auto resolve system is possible. I'm not saying, no rolls, just decide you win, but a way to not make trivial combats bog things down. Something almost more like a skill challenge, where they make a few choices with rolls and those determine the outcome.

I'm also wondering if high damage, low HP monsters might just help with things going faster. As well as increased player efficiency.

But, I know some people play combat-lite games. How do you pull that off?

(Also, please don't just tell me to not play 5e)

Creating a 15th Level Lich Sorceror with a +4 CHA, but I can't figure out the Save DC and Spell attack.

Would I use the same equation for a player's character (8+spellcasting ability modifier+proficiency) or another method?

So I started DM'ing for three guys who wanted to try out D&D, two of whom are coworkers. Of the three, there was one I felt was going to flake out quickly. He's kind of a fan of sports, dislikes RPG video games but plays a lot of online shooters and NBA 2k. He wasn't sure what class he wanted to play but he said he "really likes animals" so a built him a quick moon circle druid so he could be a wolf, which he kind of enjoyed. We played two sessions of that and he expressed concern that his character is kind of OP (which, I mean, it's moon circle druid at second level, so yea) and I offhandedly told him about the Beastheart class by MCDM. He sounded kind of interested so I hooked him up with the book and told him if he wants to change classes just let me know.

Fast forward to this last friday when I come in to replace this guy at work. Apparently he got no phone calls that day so he tells me he's been working on building this new Beastheart character all day. Ya'll... he literally spent eight hours thinking about how he would build this character, and how he would maximize its effectiveness, taking into account abilities he would get in the later levels. He also asked if he could adjust his character race to get better racial stat bonuses.

Me: "Damn, I had no idea you were a min-maxer."

Him: "What's a min-maxer?"

He said he still needed to look up the different companion animals he can get with the class. I told him there's a few extra in the MCDM Flee Mortals book. He said he wanted that one too.

We've been working opposite shifts this weekend and he has spent ALL WEEKEND picking out traits for this character and meticulously going over abilities and options.

Ladies and gentlemen I think I have him hooked.

Looking for call minis to get for the underdark and I know Warhammer has a wide range of monsters/ aliens.

So, i play a death domain cleric lv9. Im thinking about to cast hallow (with necrotic vulnerability as additional effect) on the deck of our ship.

What will happen, when i attack a creature - (who failed his CHA saving against the additional effect) in the hallow, with inflict wounds - who is immune to necrotic dmg.

1, It will it become "only" resistant to necrotic. If so, then my lv6 death domain class feat - ignore resistance to necrotic - will ignore this resistance and will do full dmg?

2, Hallow overwrites the immunity and become truly vulnerable to necrotic? if so then double dmg?

3, Nothing will happen, 0 dmg anyway

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I want to run a different one shot for my group based off a reel I saw recently( https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxJsQ1et-0v/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== ) in which my “PCs” would be in a sleepy forest town under attack by an undead horde. Each given a lvl 1 character and have to survive until dawn, if/when their player dies, they draw a new character card from a deck, pick up a randomised weapon and get back into the fray.

This could be a standard commoner, town priest “cleric”, lumberjack “barbarian” etc

The final wave would be a boss like finale, if they fail, the town will be destroyed, if they succeed the survivors will be immortalised- and added into our main campaign lore!

Hopefully something different and fun for the PCs. Have you guys ever ran or played something like this? what should I consider or add in for fun?

I was watching voice cast from BG3 playing DnD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeJKnofNBNs&ab_channel=HighRollersDnD

Cleric tried to use that spell to boost sneak for the group in the middle of the combat to flee from it. Immediately I thought DM will shut down the attempt as a useless one. But instead he tried to find a use for it, since enemies have a magic nature and spell protects from detecting by magic means. DM asked cleric to make an Arcana check to understand will it work against those enemies.

Then I got what kind of trick DM is using. Every time players suggest an unusual move at first DM is looking for a way for this to work, as he is playing on the players side. It sounds simple and stupid, but how empowering it feels for the players. It completely negates players against DM vibe.

Cleric failed her checks and attempt due to dice rolls, but I'm sure otherwise DM would have granted them a success on that unusual spell use.

A few years ago I played a little adventure with a party and we were all complete beginners.

So we played the adventure and we heard from the villagers that another resident had not appeared in the village for a long time. So we decided to go to the house and had to go through a small forest where we met a fox and a little later a dog. My character (cleric) and only my character managed to gain the trust of the animals and we took them with us. So about 200 feet away I tied the animals up so that they wouldn't run away or follow us and maybe put themselves in danger. In the house itself we met a few gnolls who had taken the resident hostage. We quickly put an end to the whole thing and had already looted the house quite a bit at that point because we assumed the gnolls had killed the resident.

However, that wasn't the case when we looked in the basement and found him beaten up. So we stood in the basement and were a bit conflicted because we wanted to keep the loot we found in the house but were sure to give it back when he noticed what we had taken (1x magic item). So we had a discussion until our fighter decided to put a quick end to the whole thing and beheaded the resident.

He said we could say it was the Gnolls and get away with it. However, my cleric (lawful good) found the actions wrong and decided to attack the fighter for his hideous deed. My character used a fire spell and accidentally set the basement on fire (I had forgotten that the spell sets everything flammable in the area on fire) in the hope of getting the fighter down.

We all made it out of the basement and out of the house without any problems because the fire took quite a long time to set the rest of the house on fire. Before the fight continued, our bard stopped us and we decided to leave with bad conscience. Only so that in the end I find out that the animals had ran away. So we decided to find the animals again but the tracks were nowhere.

Our Dm said that this was punishment for murdering someone innocent. However, I found it really unfair since I was the one who managed to tame the animals and couldn't do anything about the fighter's actions. So why were we punished as a “group” when the blame lay entirely with the fighter and in the end I was actually the one who lost the most. In the end there was no further punishment, the residents believed us about the story about the gnolls and I received the only punishment because I wasn't allowed to have a fox or a doggo.

But what is your opinion on whether our DM's punishment is justified or did we or the fighter get off too well?

Just a little background so that this makes sense. I’m currently in college. It’s also vaguely important to the narrative that this campaign has two DMs. But most importantly is that I’m trans. So I’m in a campaign with some of my friends from school. We had session today and we met two NPCs (DMs want them to be characters we run into throughout the campaign). Well one of these characters shares my dead name. It’s not spelled the same but it is pronounced the same. This is where me being in college comes into play. All of the friends that I’m playing with (except for one) currently go to school with me. But I only met them when I started to go to school (last fall), and as such they’ve only ever known me by my chose name, as I only started to really use it when I left for college, and I changed it as soon as I was legally able (which for me was 19). So my chose name has been my legal name for about 9 months now. My problem is that every time the character’s name is said my heart skips a beat in fear/dread. I don’t know that to do though. I don’t necessarily feel comfortable telling my DMs that that character shared my dead name as it will also tell them what my dead name is. I feel that this could be a good opportunity to distance myself from my dead name but I also don’t want to feel uncomfortable in session. Does anyone have any advice?

I have a character whose culture was heavily influenced by "the Black Plague on Steroids", for nearly two millennia a highly virulent plague swept through the Race, it could have been spread through every route of transmission. It was airborne, transmitted through direct contact, and could spread through fomites, the whole nine yards. However, for nearly 800 years, it has since been eradicated, barring rare accidental infections (low double digits).

What cultural things would be a holdover from the nearly two millennia of that?

I am playing with 3-4 players and I have decided, that within the cell block, my players will be in. They will share it with three different gangs, each gang will consist of 12 members.

Split into.

1 leader.

3 Right hands.

8 low-level thugs.

I need help with scaling how powerful they are, for example.

I want the leader to be so strong that it would take 3 of them at once to take him/her out.

And I would like the right hands to be so strong it would be a hard 1-1 or you need 2-1 to win.

My players are starting at level 5.

I havnt decided if I want to find a monster in the monster manual or if I should make them like I would make any character.

What monster level would you recommend for the different type of enemy or what level character and I will just adjust the hitpoints to make them monster like.

Any help would be amazing!!!

Feel free to ask questions if you need anything explained iked further.

In my campaign we've just had a massive fight at the apex of the adventure. Not quite the BBEG but close enough to warrant a 2 week break. During the break, we've been told that there will be a 20 year timeskip.

I play a Barbarian, half dwarf half orc, what can I add to my character (both lore-wise and gameplay-wise) to make it seem the 20 years have really passed, and so i'm not just playing the same character after 20 years?

I want to have two opposing sides for a campaign, one of which is extremely proficient with magic, the other one is more technology focused, they will be at war, my players will be for the side with magic against a nation of almost machines, basically. What I want to know is how to balance this, I think it’s a neat idea, but might get boring after a while. I was thinking of the enemy recruiting some lowly mercenaries to help defend or maybe even attack the players. Idk, what do you think?

Title basically says it all. A player of mine wants to play a Constantine-like character for an upcoming campaign. She likes the summoner type.

Thing is, she wants to be a devilish summoner, and if i'm not missing anything, you don't get to summon a devil until Lv9 (as Infernal calling is a Level 5 spell). However both "Summon Lesser Demons" and "Summon Greater Demon" summons demons at lower levels.

I'm thinking about reflavoring those spells as "Summon Lesser Fiends" and "Summon Greater Fiend", and allow her to summon devil(s) with the same challenge rating. What would you think about this? Can it have any big complications for the game balance that i'm not seeing rn?

Honestly three players and a DM is more than enough for a great dynamic, maybe four, but larger than that the game becomes quite slow and you can often lose the thread.

Obviously the big exception is critical role (!), but generally smaller groups move the plot forward much quicker and it's a much easier dynamic to Dm.

IMO!

So I have a player that had been in several games online now. His perception of the game kinda irks me, but idk if it's just a me thing.

So in the first campaign he played a Bladesinger, and feels as if he is majorly overpowered, but blames me that he didn't get to play to his full "potential". He wanted to summon fiends and such to aid him in battle, and make it where he doesn't even need to fight himself. The problem is, he never used the spells to do so due to components. But apparently it's my fault because I didn't put enough if the components in the game for him to do it multiple times.

Now fast forward, he is now playing in two games of mine, but in both, he is basically playing joke characters that are just carefree and un bothered by any repercussions of their decisions. One is literally Finn from adventure time, a ranger that just wants to fight the biggest monsters their are, but treats all fights and death like a joke, as in he doesn't actually care.

The second character is a barbarian from the new giant book, and at first I enjoyed the character, but it's still a joke character.

He has a mentality that he makes these unstoppable builds, and that DMs should adhere to that to let him have fun. I try to remind him, that DMs should have fun too, but when you treat everything they create and plan as a joke, then why should they create anything at all really? I don't know, maybe it's the mentality that I can't kill him, when in reality I pull alot of punches and make monsters miss alot, for the sake of my players fun. But maybe it's time I stop that? What do you guys think? Am I over thinking this

Sorry, I had to go back and edit this, as autocorrect had other ideas.

Im currently playing in a session thats going off of the one piece 5e binder and im new to the campaign(started 2 months ago) and after awhile the DM started to to notice that the other 3 players in the session were very over geared and had a lot more buffs then they should have. I know it sounds like a mad cuz bad moment but after a month of playing exploring fighting and getting new items a armor i still am nowhere near the weakest player in the party the DM has tried to humble them in different ways but they always complain no matter what he does or tries to change he has talked about fully stripping everyone of thier items am keeping everyone at the same level as this is what he has done before when we switched binders but now they are all saying that it would ruin the campaign what should he do?

like, say i want to get a feel for my character or simply just want to fuck around with them when im not able to play DnD, would that be allowed?

(to clarify, by Rp i do not mean any r/creepyasterisks shit XD)

So i am dming a session where my party will fight an ethereal maurader. ( 3.5e - https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/etherealMarauder.htm )

Their main ability allows them to move between ethereal and material plane during their round.

Obviously the party will have to ready an attack in order to attack them. Obviously^2 the first time the marauder will appear and attack the party will be flat footed.

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What happens though on subsequent rounds? The marauder will attack them flattfooted ( round 1) and it will disappear. When it will materialize again..will they be flatfooted? THey should since they cant follow its movements. If they are flatfooted how can they ready an action.

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If the are not flatfooted, and another marauder appears ( of which they are not aware ) will they be able to attack it? If not, how can they discern between the two

I want to star on this world, but I'm not sure how. Am I need to buy a lot of things like books and figures to star playing with friends? Do we need to star with people who r currently playing the game? Because we don't know any :/ So if someone can explain me how start, maybe some personal experience to compare and inspire us. And if someone know where to find good basics videos, tutorials and streams of people playing recommendations 🙏

After ending a campaign around lvl16 my wizard became a nice bbeg for another party with the same dm , he told me to not hold back that it was a 7vs1

I had done quite a lot of stuff to buff the shit out of this character, here is a list of buff I earned :

-I can hold 2 concentrations spell ( I know it’s op , but it’s a dm buff and I wasn’t gonna say no to that)

-got my half divinity shard thingy boosting me

-got all my items

So it went real fast I casted a sickening radiance as a bonus action (meta magic feat) and followed up with a wall of force from a spell ring , and it was pretty much over ,…

I do feel slightly guilty, but they tried to attack me during the monologue so I sent them straight to hell

So now my ex character is now a god , once a year for 24h the sky is absolute darkness and nothing can see (no blindsight no true sight)

What would you have done ? They dared to interrupt the monologue ! So no remorse for me

I would like to run a game during the club fair at my school, as there is a deal of interest in the club, and do not quite know what an attention grabbing thing would be. The current plan is to have the more seasoned members of the club do dnd things, but I don't quite know what they would be doing. Thanks in advance

I recently joined a campaign in progress at level 6. The group is great, but I'm having super mixed feelings about the character I made.

On the one hand, the other players seem to like my character a lot, and it seems to mesh well with the party, especially combat. On the other hand, I picked a class I wouldn't usually play, and also made a character with a lot of qualities different from myself, which I've never done before. I also tried to "fill a missing role" in the party which I maybe shouldn't have worried about.

I'm having a hard time embracing the personality and concept of the character I made, but the other players seem to like the roleplaying I've done. It's a strange feeling and I've never felt this conflicted about a dnd character before.

The way I see it, I basically have 3 options:

1. Tough it out and see if the character grows on me. This would probably make the other players and dm happy, and it's possible I could become more comfortable with the character. However I worry about getting too far in and still wanting to change characters.

2. Modify my existing character's backstory, personality, or subclass/multiclass. I'd think this would be less jarring than starting with a whole new character, but I'm not sure it would really solve the problem for me.

3. Ask the DM if I can change characters completely. I think the DM would probably allow it, but I worry about hurting the cohesion of the story and the table by doing this. I also don't want to be "that guy" that creates a lot of extra maintenance/headache for the DM or dampens the experience of the other players, especially since I'm a late addition to this group who has already been playing for a year.

What do you think I should do?