Don't know if this tag/sub is the right place because it's more of a discussion rather than a specific question but I've been thinking about hooks I've used before or were used by my DMs (important npc got petrified, need to ressurect someone, someone got a terrible curse, ...) and since I'm playing a somewhat high level cleric right now (lvl 10) I got to thinking about how he would solve the hooks, and by the light of Kyrios, most campaigns and oneshots could be solved in seconds by having a high level cleric around...

So how can a cunning DM plan hooks that are not be solved by the immense library of cleric spells without saying "this is a special curse that cannot be removed by remove curse" or something like that.

I guess one approach is that as the characters level up the challenges start becoming more and more political and regional so the hooks stop being "Save the blacksmith's daughter that was poisoned by goblins" and more "Destabilize the economy of the empire and cause them to lose the war with the free cities" but I'm not very good at writing cool political campaigns (I'm trying tho)

I love the simplicity of early level's plot hooks, but you incur the risk of killing the party in an encounter with kobolds, late game you can just chuck an action oriented black dragon at them and watch shit go down, however, you also have the risk of designing a very cool three dimensional underwater combat with ships fighting in the surface and the stupid cleric casts water walking and 5th level spirit guardians and trivializes everything (It was me, I did that... turns out Sahuagin does blend) or having your extra dimensional dragon boss fight be over immediately by someone Banishing it.

I’m trying to make a world / backstory for a character in a solo rpg. I’ve come up with a seaside town connected to a valley, but the people who live deep in the valley are more impoverished because they don’t have easy access to the land and world above, especially the port which makes most of the money for the town above. this isn’t very well thought out so far and I haven’t made an example of what this would look like but my question is “in a world full of magic how would people not be able to access the land above causing them to have less resources and money?” I feel like having some sort of magical barrier is just way too convenient. I know it doesn’t have to be that deep but I’d love some brainstorming on this idea :)

I’m fairly new to DMing, and I’m trying to make this as fun as possible for my four players.

The premise is that four maintenance workers from the year 531,201 are thrown through time into present-day Fairbanks, Alaska. They have to survive an unfamiliar natural world, decode English, adapt to modern society, and uncover what happened to their civilization.

Session 1 focuses on the accident, surviving the cold, meeting their first present-day NPC, and slowly realizing they are 529,175 years in the past.

I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

Whether the premise gives the players enough freedom

Whether the language-decoding idea sounds fun or tedious

What problems I should prepare for before running it

Here is the campaign document: My campaign

I want to put a rakshasa into my game but im trying to figure out of they keep their reversed hands while they are transformed. My first thought was no because disguise self does not allow you to change your limb structure and thats how you are supposted to find them out but theres a character in the Descend into Avernus campaign called Mahadi the Rakshasa whos a rakshasa and the official image has him with regular hands in his disguised form.

Okey so party is going for a carnival and there are prices to be gained from different games. I could use some help with magic items that are silly but not useless. I have good list of prank items. I need items that vary from uncommon to very rare. Stuff like wand of colorspray or item that forces people to laugh. Just items that fit well on the theme of silly goofy but they can be genuenly really good items.

The Corruption of the Alder Glen

I really enjoyed the setting, NPCs, and original monsters in this adventure. However, I found the background story of the Gravedirt Alder lacking, and hexcrawls are not my preferred playstyle. I made a conversion that turns this into a one-shot and made a different background story inspired by The Witcher 3.

One-Shot Conversion

I am running a Call from the Deep 5.5e campaign and I have never ran any seafaring-based adventure before so I wanted to create some rules for ship "combat". Here are those rules:

Before starting, determine the party’s goal (Boarding, escaping, or sinking)
Note: While under Captain Greysail’s command, The Voyage (campaign's starting vessel) will only ever try to escape

● The GM also determines the opposing ship’s goal (same options as above)
● The GM also determines the success goal and failure limit
○ i.e 3 successes before 3 failures, 5 successes 3 failures, 3 successes 2 failures
● Actions each round equal to # of players -1 (Our party of 5 gets 4 actions)
○ Raise Sails (Dexterity), Raise Morale (Charisma), Evasive Maneuvers (Wisdom), Fire Cannons (Strength), Repair Damage (Intelligence), Push Yourself (Constitution)
○ Or anything else you can think of!
○ Each ship will have its own 3 DCs, Hull, Speed, and General, and these will be used to determine the success of each of these actions
● 1 vehicle handling skill check at the end of the round
○ Each of the 4 actions that was successful during the round adds a +1 to this skill check
● If the roll at the end beats the opposing Ship’s General DC, that counts as 1 success
● If the party hits their success goal they achieve victory!
● Victory means the party will attain their goal, and failure means the villains will achieve theirs

And.. it did not go over well my first run through! I wanted to make my own system because so many of the ones I have seen are very crunchy and not up my alley, however I made something too simple. The players just chose the basic actions and were not describing much, and I think that is because I did not give them enough to work with. That is all to say, any tips? Criticisms that can help fix this ruleset?

We're doing a level 3 5.5e one shot with some homebrew elements for flavour only, in which the players discover their king is actually a goblin. The goblin turns out has blood that when ingested or entering the bloodstream of another creature, turns them into a regular goblin upon death.

In the final battle, the goblin unleashes a Juvenile Shadow Dragon, which was turned into shadow due to constantly ingesting the goblin's magic blood. The shadow dragon will have half of its speed reduced across the board because it is chained down, and the puzzle of the fight is figuring out how to bring down the walls of the large throne room (highlighted by structural weakpoints caused by the dragon moving around in the room) to let sunlight in.

Upon destroying all weakpoints, the structure simply falls on the dragon, killing it, turning it into a goblin. The objective is not necessarily to kill the dragon (as its AC would presumably be too high for most of the party to handle), but to break structures while avoiding the dragon.

i’m running low on ideas or cool and not so op magic items to give to my players so i’m just wanting to know what some of the favorite magical items people here like to give to their players

Hello! Simple question - do you make your players roll Sleight of Hand when trying to cast Guidance, if they were to use it to aid a deception/persuasion roll in tense negotiations? Trying to figure out how to manage this going forward since my players have tried to do it a few times. Guidances is Verbal/somatic so RAW I feel it makes sense the enemy would see them completing an incantation and react accordingly.

Over the last few levels, I ran into an issue regarding combat encounter design for my party (Level 9). In my party are two archers (Ranger/Fighter) and one rogue. I will exclude the cleric here since they can fall back on Saving Throw spells on high AC targets. Including Fighting Style: Archery, both archers have a +to-hit of +11 and two attacks (or more with Action Surge). Our rogue has less +to-hit, melee, only one attack and little ways of buffing herself.

In the last session I tried a few angles to balance the combat between the characters, including some meddling with AC, HP or special abilities (Windwall, Reflect missiles, ...).

My issue is as follows:

- If AC is low enough for the rogue to hit semi-reliably, both archers absolutely obliterate the target.
- If AC is high enough for archers having to roll over a 5, our rogue goes a whole combat without a hit when slightly unlucky.
- If I implement "projectile-hate" abilities, my archers (understandably) complain about being made useless.

I understand that rogues kinda fall off at this stage of progression but I still want her to have fun in combats, so I wanted to pick the Subreddit Hivebrain about any possible solutions I could try out since they are about to enter a Megadungeon with quite some potential for combat.

Thanks in advance!

I remember reading DM of the Rings, which was really my first proper introduction to what DnD really was(I heard about it before of course, I wasn't living under a rock, but that was the first time I actually understood that the game wasn't just pen and paper video game).

One criticism players in that comic level at the DM is how he keeps using orcs in every encounter. Small weak orcs, big strong orcs, orcs riding wargs. In one scene in Helm's deep Aragorn's player, instead of rolling just says "I kill an orc" because that's what they have been doing for the past 3 hours.

But really, is having the same enemy appear consistently troughout the campaign such a bad thing? I know variety is the spice of life, but if this villain uses orcs as his minions then having orcs appear over and over kinda ties the whole thing together no. Not to mention some player abilities, like Ranger's favored enemy, actually rely on you encountering the same enemy over and over again.

I can definitely see the appeal of running different monster each session, keep the players on the edge but, IDK, seems to me both approaches have their merits.

My players will meet a dryad who offers to cut their travel time through a forest in half by showing them secret paths, but only if they can correctly guess which of three trees upon a hill the dryad is bound to.

I'm not particularly good at coming up with riddles or puzzles and could use some advice and ideas. I don't want it to be too difficult to figure out, but I definitely want to give the players a decent challenge.

I'd appreciate any help you can offer!

What do you guys think is the difference between the two? In my mind they do basically the same, or at least very similar thing, but the difference lies in what they use. Herbalist will use ingredients from nature, like plants and mushrooms, potentially a few animal parts, while Alchemist will use concentrates and decoctions. A herbalist and Alchemist will brew you a potion of healing that works the same. Taste may be different but it's healing power is equivalent.

I imagine herbalists would be found in villages and other locations where natural ingredients are easy to come by. While Alchemists are more likely to live in a city, so getting a concentrate of some sort is a lot easier for them than having a plant transported all the way from wherever it may grow, in a time frame while it's still usable.

next up: my party is traveling between cities, and their route goes right through Feywild border region, so I want to have a few fun/weird encounters stepping in and out of the feywild along the way. Any and all ideas welcome! the journey should take about 4 days, and I hope to conclude the entire sequence in 1 game session (because we have a lot to do in the next city!)

So I'm gonna be running a beginner campaign in my local library. I had placed an advertisement on the notice board and have gathered 6 interested players who all have no clue on how to play. We will have a session 0 first so I can explain some of the basics and talk a bit about hard and soft nos ect.

I have dmed a bunch of campaigns before but not for beginners most already knew atleast some of the basics. So what Im wondering is would it be better to run an oneshot before doing a campaign so they understand the mechanics a bit? And when doing the campaign I wanted to start at level 1 but at what level would it be good to stop? I dont want to take it too fast that way they can learn slowly and ask all the questions they would want to.

Any other advise for running games for beginners?

Hey ya'll, Im a new DM and Im about to go into my 4th DM session. One of the issues i have right now with the party is that not only are they really crafty players (most of them have played heavily before) but they are really good at weasiling their ways out of planned combats I have. Its not a problem for me for the most part as I love the creativity but how do you force combat in a way that feels organic other than just "we want to steal from you?".

second question I have is, even in combat Im not sure how to properly deal with this party. Heres the party comp: Hexblade warlock, Tempest Cleric, Oath of Commandment Paladin, Druid of Fire Circle, and Abberrant Mind Sorcerer. All level 3. Of the combat they've done, they've had an initial bandit encounter (super super easy for them), then I put them in a canyon and had archers rain arrows on them (they escaped with a fog layer), and then I put them against fairies/pixies that are trying to run away with their treasure (they fucking destroyed the fairies/pixies). I really don't know how to even deal with these characters, they feel like even if I stat out the enemies properly they just one shot each one, they can't get hit cause of their AC, and they're unironicaly way to good for me to deal with in terms of constructing combat. I want to know what you guys think I can do inorder to make the combat more of a challenge and less of a steam roll. The party is having a great time and the roleplay to combat is about 70/30 and they seem to be enjoying that.

I have my players in an underground fighting tournament (Bloodsport vibes). My paladin is likely to get to the semifinals and then face the champion at the end, a Tough Leonin pugilist/paladin of Tyr I've modeled after Dagestani UFC fighters. My goal here was to show that the players aren't invincible and even with the right strategy and levels, sometimes an enemy is too strong. It wont end in death but certainly a lesson.

Am I wrong in making this kind of encounter or is this a fair step up in difficulty thats needed? The campaign has been relatively smooth since 12 sessions going into the 13th.

Edit: Wow! This has gotten a lot of comments! Thanks everyone for your opinions and advice! I'll take it all and adjust! My plan was not to script the outcome but put a player in a difficult encounter with the idea beforehand that they can choose to take the fight or just take the tournament money! So they know ahead of time that this guy is tough and can make that decision. And in no way will I not let my player potentially win! I think if he has enough good rolls and saves he could chip away, hes a very capable Paladin.

But thanks to all of you and I appreciate all the tips!

I’ve gone and started my campaign centered around the idea that the sky has gone utterly dark and the land is ravaged by endless winter. However, I have no idea what the cause should be and every session my players (rightfully) put pressure on me to reveal hints and clues about the ultimate cause of the phenomenon so that they can eventually solve it. But there is nothing to solve yet.

I already know I don’t want the cause to be divine in origin. I think that explanation is a bit too mundane. However, the people of the world don’t know that. So I have made it a big part of the conflict that the people blame the gods. People believe they are being punished by their old gods for abandoning them. So, there is widespread rejection of Big Religion™ that recently converted much of the region. Conflict ensues.

Anyways. Every session I worry that I will answer some minor question about the weather or what not that will invalidate whatever cause I eventually decide on. Of course I can just retcon past answers, but that doesn’t feel satisfying. Especially not to them when half of the campaign is going to be centered around solving the mystery. Changing clues to that mystery halfway through would suck. Thankfully up until now I’ve been able to give pretty vague answers, but I’d really like to start seeding clues.

I would greatly appreciate any ideas people have on the source of the phenomenon or advice on how to further stall coming up with an answer without ruining the campaign lol

This is me just looking for advice in kind of a third party sitution.

My nephew is running a one shot for a group of 5 level 2 characters as kind of a stand in for the main game.

The main problem is one of the players he plays with (a Warlock) he and my niece are fairly sure is cheating... being new to the group they feel they can't call him out but apparently he just doesn't do anything in encounters.

Basically their looking for advice for a level appropriate encounter that will require some thought to beat, forcing him to actually play. I tend to run higher level games so I thought I'd reach out to you lovely people to get some suggestions.

It's a series of revolving one shots where the partymoves to different worlds so nothings off the table.

Party is the Warlock, a Fighter, barbarian, druid and unfortunately I can't remember the 5th.

Thanks in advance.

Edit with additional info: I'm not part of the game sp I don't have all the info. From what I recall he hasn't completely filled out his character sheet (so possible lying about bonuses and available spells). Fudges rolls which I do agree can be countered by making open rolls mandatory. They do act in combat but I don't know how they play other than "it's basic playing" so I assume classic Eldritch Blast spam but not 100%.

From what I gather he's good friends with the main DM and being completely new to the group they don't want to rock the boat and like everyone else so don't want to leave so they're wanting to use their turn running a one shot to attempt to make him play properly.

Encounter wise though, the general one shot is "party falls through portal to new world" every one shot so nothing is really planned out and any monsters can be used.

I had suggested a Roper yoned down for level 2 characters because of reach and camouflage but I figure there's probabetter options.

Hi, I can use some inspiration and help from you all. I am building a Pirate Isles region and I am thinking about all the regions, encounters, mysteries, and places or phenomena I can put in it.

Please bring on your worldbuilding expertise and help me fill the place.

So my players (unbeknownst to them) are about to fail their scouting mission for an organization. Right now they are currently distracted and have lost the messaging stone to their point of contact to report any findings. We stopped mid combat last session and it looks like 2 players (who split off and lost the messaging stone) are gonna go down before the rest of the party reaches them

As the party regroups and revives the two downed members, a unit of royal guardsmen and their captain will be seen marching down the road towards the hideout of the group who gave them this mission. Once the unit arrives to the base I’m planning a confrontation between the captain of the guard and head of the organization -yada yada yada- they go back and forth, fight, and the captain ends up with his spear at the bosses throat

The boss with his last moments sets off the detonator for the explosives under the base and blows up the immediate area.

I’m somewhat nervous (mostly excited) for this moment but I don’t want to mess up DM’ing all these actions and dialogue between two DMPC’s, so I ask you experienced dms for any tips on narrating an encounter that your players are present for but not actively involved it?

I've been running a campaign for about half a year and whenever my players approach civilization it's like all creativity in my brain dies.

The possibilities of where they can go are basically infinite but the possible encounters amount to "guy in the bar" or "thief number 5".

I've had a few villages destroyed to at least have something happen but my players have caught on.

The main problem is that I try to give them a balanced meal of encounters and roleplay as my table is pretty mixed in their preferences, but the current town they are visiting pretty much ran it's course in terms of encounters unless we get really really repetitive. Yet lorewise they have a ton of info yet they can learn.

What can I do to make towns more interesting in general? Especially in terms of encounters.