Advice for DMs from DMs. We create advice videos for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition geared towards helping you run a better game. Our D&D topics range from simple rules to advanced world building and everything in between. While most of our advice is geared towards Dungeon Masters, we also have content for players in the TTRPG space.
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I like to use 2.5 feet squares. Allows for the crowded atmosphere and realistic table / chair quantity per square foot. In combat large sized tokens can be used when not squeezing in a paniced crowd.
its basically the same principle I have with map making. where I always have to tell a story in every room. so that the player can piece together what happened.
I was recently playing as a goose warlock who's patron was the "Rage of Prey". A time old spiritual being born of the collective fear and anger of all creatures of the lower food chain. The Rage of Prey's goals were to upset the balance of the circle of life/food chain. The pact required the daily slaying of at least one predator (Wolf, Bear, people, ect) and the defense of all prey animals (except hostile ones like rats) in danger within sight (including markets, wild encounters, ect).
I'm remembering when I was running for an artificer, I basically gave them a rough guide on how much their abomination against the laws of psychics would cost, and the time frame, with making them do multiple rolls for various things. What this basically amounted to was it was rolls to save money and to save time, with the standard timeframe and cost I give them being the costs from screwing up as well, so if they rolled well, they saved money and time, because they didn't end up messing up something and needing it replaced. It is also, (entirely related) how I normally run artificers and crafting of items in general. Which is that I give a base cost, and time frame and then work from that.
My take. You must have a medicine stat to 15 or above it. Time for crafting is set to max 30 minutes. common potions have a higher success then the others. So hence the risk to waste valuable resources.
A Horse Sized Duck. Getting ready to play Curse of the Ganshoggr. Plenty of big ducks/geese in that one. They always say getting nibbled to death by ducks is tedious. I'd give the Giant Duck maybe an AC 8 The Duck can buffet you with the wings d 2-8 . save versus constitution or stunned for the next round. 100 duck sized horses you sweep with burning hands potentially. Cast and perhaps 10-20 of the little buggers the first round and likely panic a proportion of the rest. Second round maybe another ten as the bravest left try to swarm you. More flee. The third round some of the horses get close to you. Maybe your battle mage gets another spell off or a stomp and hack with a dagger as you leap , retreat out of range. The mop up will take a while but the little buggers are going to have a hard time hitting you and will get less and less interested in the pursuit to do their 1 or two points of hoof damage? Bite damage? A fighter I would definitely let cut through the horse ducks with their sword. So if they roll up 10 damage I keep cutting horse ducks until they run out of hit points, Maybe 2 1/2 horse ducks per successful swing? The Fighter loses their sword maybe there is a problem, But a swarm of these little fellows may get 6 attacks? 8 attacks? and what can the little hoofs really do. These are going to be quarter hit dice creatures. Probably a reach to hit say an AC 4(16) fighter. They will need a 20. I sense a Lilliputian stomping of the horse ducks.
I'm planning to use electrum pieces as a kind of commemorative coin with more collectible value instead of being used as actual currency. Kinda like when you collect state quarters. It can be valuable for someone but is not really that useful
This logic also applies to the concept of a door. Instead of an actual door, you can abstract it to the concept of an obstacle. Some obstacles cost time, like fighting a hoard of weak mobs as you watch your torches slowly snuff out; others might require you to guide an NPC through the dungeon so they can build a magical bridge over an impassable ravine.
My party's warlock is both generic and really original... He's a old one pact warlock that has as a patron a forgotten, eldrich dream godess who is also his "girlfriend" (wow, wierd patron warlock relationship, how original) Except... It's not just that... (All stuff I'll say was his idea, and only mentioning the things I allowed) He can only comunicate with her through visions in dreams, but she thinks that he's just a product of her imagination, as she's lost most lf her powers. He sometimes gets dreams revealing ancient knowlege, so old, not even most gods, archdemons or archfeys know about. He also doesn't age or is affected by any existing illness or sickness while asleep, and he could sleep for an unlimited ammount of time. He could also use telepathy (subclass skill) while asleep, but with greater power. Also, his character's objective was to bring back the cult of his patron, to then fall asleep to spend eternity with his beloved.
That's a really good advice but my solution is another system, I quit dnd combat without consequences and normally only doing the same thing every time.
The way I see it, there are 4 types of character advancements in RPGs: Trade Progression Downtime Progression Narrative Progression Achievement Progression Trade Progression is where you trade some form of character advancement currency, such as levels, experience points or ability score points, in exchange for a character advancement option. This is the main form of character advancement and has the greatest power bandwidth (it can accommodate the most power). Other forms of advancement shouldn't exceed trade progression. The issue with crafting is it is Downtime Progression, so you either have to keep its power well below Trade Progression (can't allow crafted items to be on par with Trade Progression based character power) which means you have to nerf or cut them out. This is what the extreme restrictions come from, people can sense this need. The solution is to incorporate Trade Progression into Crafting. The Artificer does this to a degree, but not how anyone wants. The solution is to sell "game physics" to players as Trade Progression, through feats or experience points or some other Trade Prog based currency. Then restrict their crafted items to what they can back up with their earned Physics Properties. If you have the Invisibility Property, you can incorporate invisibility into your crafted items. This is where Downtime Progression comes in. At this point you use Downtime Progression to judge the difference between crafted items, rarer ones take more time and cost more stuff. But the overall scope of your restrictions with this Downtime Progression is very muted, because you don't have to back up the whole value of the power exchange with Downtime Progression.
In the new setting that I’ve been working on, I took the meme of fighting always happening at Waffle House and turned that into a tavern. The Orc’s Tusk is a tavern that makes cheap but tasty food (like Irl Waffle House), serve cheap and tasty drinks, and has cheap lodging too. Payment options include: just paying the few copper for your meal or you can fight one of the Orc’s working in the bar and if you win, you get your food for free. It’s not an easy fight to win since the Orc staff were once adventurers/treasure hunters and decided to open a tavern when they retired. The bar gained so much popularity over a few years that it’s hard to not find a location in any town/city in the land. There’s at least 1 Orc’s Tusk in each small town or larger in the world (just like how Waffle House has a lot of locations in America). I essentially made Waffle House canon in my DnD world with a fun DnD twist
I would like to DM or play the founding of an Adventurers Guild. Some years ago I played with a group that had a guild: each player could have different characters than, when not used, will act as the guild npcs. They were really meticulous, they had a stat block were they keep track of the guild's notoriety, its possession, ect... The only thing I didn't like so much was the requirements to become a member: you have to be an experienced adventurer (be the same level as everyone else), so it had an elite-oriented, classist vibe (plus my first ever character was level 15 😅). But I liked the idea and it allowed to have different adventures, with different PGs or party compositions, without reworking the setting and background story every time. It allowed also some rotation in the masters, so you could do a long story focused campaign an the let the master breathe a little, while another was making a short adventure.
This is how I did it: two sets of token for each guild positive and negative you can use cardboard buttons or whatever. Rules: - Guilds exists only in larger cities. Players aren't in a large city - they don't get to access a guild. - Guilds are divided into Espionage - Martial - Magic - Scholar (there can be more than one guild for each - and interactions are obvious) - Guilds are used to make missions easier: Need to know location in a map (Scholar's Guild), need to find out enemy movement (Marital) , need fake documents/a one extra D20 for a deception check (Espionage Guild)... etc. - Guilds , if membership is required, you have to run missions. You get a token for each mission completed. - If you decide that Guilds are enemies then for each token obtained from one guild subract (or add negative token to competitor guild). Want to give you Bard or Rouge something to do? Create an internal power struggle in an Espionage guild. Want your fighter to level up faster and obtain favor from the local ministry? Join a Joust. Your wizard wants an excuse to dip toes in another school of Magic? OOOOppps this Magic guild only accepts wizards dedicated to the School of Illusion or Evocation... sorry NO, Necomancy ( _use the knock spell three times at dusk when the sheep bleat_ )
Our general DM (I'm the other guy who DMs for our group) absolutely abhors shops unless it's specifically for a few magic items. For everything else, he pushes for purchases and sales to be done whenever possible (like if we're in a town) at a fixed rate (20% of the price if we sell, 100% (adjusted) if we buy)). It's a bit annoying because, imo, stores can be a really interesting spot for roleplay opportunities: other customers may be there, the store can have some oddities, a "general store" in many small towns make for fantastic and logical "places of interest". Who knows the most about what's going on in the village than the main supplier of goods, the man or woman who takes the orders of others, etc.?
I’m making a one shot of the players being hired by a baroness to try and solve her ghost haunting problem, as the ghost keeps leaving her cryptic and threatening messages. The plot twist is that the ghost actually has a massive crush on the baroness and is trying to woo her while failing spectacularly. Thanks for the video!
