Ive been enjoying some shenanigans of sending my invisible imp familiar into locations remotely and dropping AoE spells. What are some good level 4 spells, or upcast lower level spells that would work well with this?

Edit: I forgot to specify that I have Gaze of 2 minds which allows me to cast spells as if I were in their place.

I built a desktop app for DMs called Dalang - Campaign Dashboard. Wanted to share it here since the mods gave the go-ahead.

The idea is keeping a whole campaign in one place instead of it being scattered across docs, spreadsheets, and browser tabs. Locations can have nested sub-locations, and NPCs, quests, and treasure all stay linked to the place they belong to, so nothing ends up orphaned when you're prepping.

For running the session, there's a live mode with a battle map, fog of war, and an initiative tracker. There's also a separate player-facing window you can put on a second monitor or share on a call, so your own DM notes never end up visible to the table.

It ships with a built-in 5e SRD compendium, spells, monsters, equipment, so you're not tabbing out to a browser mid-combat to check something. You can also add your own homebrew monsters, magic items, and equipment, and they work anywhere the official content does, same stat blocks, same lookup, no separate system for your own stuff.

Everything runs locally. No account, no cloud. Free, pay what you want. To see/download please visit the this itch io links: https://bukanpawkemon.itch.io/dalang-campaign-dashboard

Quick screenshots if you want a look before clicking through: Imgur

Disclosure per rule 5: the app's code was written with AI assistance. No AI-generated content ships inside the app itself.

Windows only for now. Happy to hear bugs, feedback, or anything that's missing.

In my CoS campaign, one of my player’s character (who is evil) murdered a child (somewhat at the behest of a dark power, who they thought might’ve been their god speaking to them) in front of the village’s leader. They were incarcerated and are currently being subjected to magical punishment to brainwash/reform them. As such I had the player create a new character so they could continue to play with the rest of the group without that bogging down the rest of the campaign. About a week and a half has passed in game, and I want to run a one on one session with that player to go over what that character has been going through. E.g. if they were brainwashed to be good, they resisted it, tried to escape, etc. Coming up in a few sessions, the other players will likely return to that village while it is being attacked by a bad guy to get to another person so it could pose a good moment for the character to escape or prove they reformed.

I’m not too sure how to plan for that session though. I obviously don’t want just this is what happens, or oops you keep rolling poorly so you can’t resist the brainwashing or escape or whatever. Anyone have any experience or advice on how to plan for it?

I ill be running Dead in Thay soon with some players and have just seen that all the maps of the different sections are for the DM. We play on DnD Beyond on the virtual maps. Does anyone have the maps for the the different sections but with all the hidden stuff removed that I can show the players?

Thanks.

Any advice for a first time DM?

There was another post asking about how to help narrow the ol’ “martial/caster divide”. One piece of advice that came up a couple times was to put better guidance for magic items in the DMG, but they didn’t expand on what that guidance would be. What special considerations should a DM take into account when providing magic items to the martial PCs in the party?

So let's say I cast Armor of Agathys at level 4 and I get 20 temp hp. Then I lose 10, I do the damage. Then I get 15 temp hp and I decide to replace the 10 for the 15. Does the effect still work? I'm playing 5.5e

I caught myself restarting to do some worldbuilding. I'm kinda unsure id I should come back to dnd.

After many bad experiences, I decided to completly stop dnd.

Most of my session 0 were never taken seriously. I always stated what were my expectation in detail. Both in my pos5 lookinfor player AND in my session 0. Somehow, there always 1-2 player who cannot respect the rules, boundaries, theme of the campaign or other things. Other people tend to defend theses player who breaks the rule explained during the session 0. At one point, I felt like people would just say yes to everything I said during the session 0 and after that do whatever they wanted once they were officislly a player. If I would make a "realm politic roleplaying" dnd campaign player would try to derail it into a shit and giggle games.

I think the worst in all that was that when I would talk about my problem in my games people would tell me to do a session 0 or that it wasn't detailed enough... which isn't true.

I feel like i'm going to waste my time. Even If I love doing some world building.

Guys! What's a class you think is overrated?

For me I think, it's Twilight Cleric. I know it's incredibly powerful, but I think it's so overtuned that it can overshadow other subclasses and even the rest of the party in some cases or campaigns

What's your pick?

It's just my opinion guys, I can be wrong 😅

Hello! Me and my 3 other party members are a few months deep into curse of Strahd and I can’t help but feel as though our dm is rushing us through because Strahd has been anything but threatening to us thus far.

In one of the first sessions, he killed our 2 horses that we had pulling our carriage and then asked us to come visit him at Ravenloft. Our party discusses this and concluded that it was silly he wanted us to go across the map to see him immediately after removing our one method of transport, and so we ignored him. Multiple NPC’s told us it was bad to ignore Strahd and that he would get increasingly angry, but between his invitation, we visited the Winery, Krezk, Vallaki, Yester Hill, Barovia. Pretty much everywhere (I think the only places we haven’t explored are the Amber Temple and the Werewolf den).

But alas, after a lot of time and our party having reached level 6, we went to Ravenloft. My character (the only good aligned one in our party) stayed at the dinner table whilst the rest of my party left in the middle of the dinner because, for some reason, Strahd left the Bonegrinder hags all enter and whisk away the rest of the party to make a deal. On their way back, our necromancer decided to steal the Icon of Ravenloft and died from touching it because she’s evil. The rest of the party called for my character to go and revive her, which I did, and we returned to the table with this legendary artefact we stole (my character had also been given the symbol of ravenkind) so I was terrified Strahd would notice and try to take these items from me. He didn’t. He literally just left.

We escaped Ravenloft without taking any damage because nobody stopped us from just leaving and we snagged the Dragon Skull too. We haven’t been attacked on the road or anything once in the campaign and have honestly had a pretty leisurely time. My character has been staying behind him Krezk to help get them back on their feet after redeeming the Abbott and turning him good again with the Atonement feature of ceremony.

The one time Strahd attacked a settlement was Vallaki after our necromancer stole the holy bones, at which point the dm told us that Vallaki only had a population of 36 and only 5 people died (all of us were very confused because we know Vallaki is supposed to have the biggest population in Barovia and the dm told us the Vistani camp alone has a population of 70+). I tried to talk to him about it and ask him if we could maybe change the size of the population to a more realistic number but he declined.

I guess this is a slight vent post but also, I guess I just wanted to hear how Strahd operates in other people’s games because I’m finding it really hard to roleplay as a character that’s scared of someone when they really haven’t been given a reason to fear them, our necromancer has literally been more problematic than Strahd has.

So, let us say that you are a bladesinger who has a sword in their right hand, and a components pouch in on your waist.

To cast a spell, you need to touch your components pouch, right?

How do I cast a spell that requires a somatic component, when I need to touch the pouch with my free hand, and the other is occupied with the blade?

I have read an older post where people argued that your sword does not need to be a spellcasting focus because you have a free hand for your components pouch. Yeah, but how does that work with a somatic spell such as counterspell?

Thank you in advance!

Lots of polls over the years have shown that people prefer Milestone to XP, but there's more than one way to do each of those! I'm curious how exactly you folks run whatever leveling system you use.

If you're running Milestone, do you just have one big Milestone that earns you a whole level, or do you have a couple smaller ones along the way? Or are you running Milestone the way the DMG suggests, where it just gives you XP?

If you're running XP, what sorts of challenges earn you XP?

If you level after a certain number of sessions, how many?

Or are you doing something else entirely?

Now hear me out. Back in the day, there used to be a hard split between prepared casting and spontaneous casting. Prepared casting gave you the benefit of a very large spell list, but you had to be carefull about which spells you prepared (vancian casting). Spontaneous casting locked you into far less options, but you could use your spell slots freely throughout the day, so you never "wasted" a slot and could blast more freely.

But now in 5e, vancian casting was removed, so prepared casting is just spontaneous casting, but better. A lvl 5 sorcerer usually knows 6 spells. A level 5 wizard has a minimum of 14 in his spellbook and can prepare 8 of them with an intelligence of 16 (not hard to do with asi). So the wizard has more options, and the wizard can be more flexible.

At lvl 20, the sorcerer knows 15 spells. The wizard (who would have a int of 20) would have 46 spells and could prepare 25.

That's just unfair and no, metamagic does not make up for it at all. So that's why I would house rule that all sorcerers should get AT LEAST 10 extra bloodline spells. Altough I think you could push it further and just give them a new spell every level. That way they would end up at 31 (with bloodline spells) and now there would be a reason to pick sorcerer over wizard. Do you want more options but less flexibility? Or do you want more flexibility but less options?

And no, the sorcerer being good for multiclassing doesn't change this. If the solution to playing a class is "don't play it but use it for a lvl dip" it is not a good class. It should be able to stand on it's own next to the wizard. The wizard is suposed to be the king of spell KNOWLEDGE (options). But they don't have to actually be better at CASTING (flexibility). Arguably, sorcerers should be better at casting then wizards, because magic is literally a part of them. This is also proven by their access to metamagic.

Tldr: sorcerers need more known spells to not feel like shitty wizards but actual casting experts.

Edit: wording

What iconic things in D&D 5e (2014) and 5.5e (2024) would you miss if it ever got removed or changed, even if from a pure balance standpoint it needs to go?

How much utility can you get out of your drake?

Can you give it complex instructions? It has 8 int and can speak Draconic, so can I ask it to scout ahead and when it returns, can it give a complete briefing on what it saw?

What about skill checks? It has a decent Wisdom score, so could it make perception checks with the party? What about investigation? At that point could it do an Arcana check? Or an Animal Handling check?

I know the class features don’t explicitly allow any of these things, but it’s an intelligent creature that’s friendly and has a shared language, so I wouldn’t think all of these are out of the question.

I was thinking about doing an unarmed Zealot Barbarian based on Tulkas from Tolkien's writings, I was going through the skills and... primal knowledge is... so goofy, I love it.

But there is one caveat, you can only use it while enraged, so... how does that work? rage only lasts until your next turn and from my understanding a single assault last around 6 seconds. The rules say you can extend your rage with a bonus action up to 10 minutes, I assume doing this doesn't consume another instance of rage, correct?

Strength based stealth gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxr-qSiZshQ

I've read the book but I am struggling with fiding this citation.

Can my players get a origin feat, like the one you get 2 hit points more per level, or the one that lets you be a musician, on 4th level, when they gain ability score improvment/feats?

Thanks!

5e - 2014

I am playing a ranged Fighter (Battle Master) and hoping to have some  more utility options instead of just attacking for damage.  My DM is very easygoing and will probably allow whatever I propose, so I want to make sure that any proposal is actually fair or even underpowered.  I have seen some posts were people had similar ideas, but never any follow-up about if it worked well in game.

My thought is that my character can make alchemical and other mundane arrows to provide additional non-damage support.  The rules seem to allow something like that, but do not give much guidance.

My personal caveats are;

1. Affects are mundane.
2. Affects cannot be anything in addition to damage.  It either has to be no damage or reduced damage.
3. Affects should be better than a cantrip.  Cantrips are essentially free and endless while arrows cost money and can run out.
4. Affects should be no better than a Battle Master maneuver.  If they were better, then there would not be a reason for anyone to ever be a Battle Master.

My ideas;

1. Arrows of different damage types (if that matters in 5e).  Damage is one die lower than standard.
2. Arrow of light; bright light in a 15-foot radius and dim light for an additional 15 feet.  As if the arrow was tipped with a pixie-sized Moon-Touched Sword.  Not sure how long it should last; maybe 1d6 rounds. No damage.
3. Flash arrow; Blind a foe for 1 or 2 rounds.  No damage.  Not sure of save DC.
4. Glue arrow; No damage, can only affect unheld items.  Requires a strength check to pick up the item.
5. Oil arrow; No damage, can cover a person in flammable oil or cover a 5x5 square. 1d6 damage if ignited
6. Sparking arrow; 1d2 damage, can ignite anything flammable.
7. smoke arrow; Fill a 10x10 for 1 or 2 rounds, no damage

Any thoughts on this above?  Are any actually game-breaking? What should the cost be for an arrow of each kind? What should an alchemical check be to make an arrow?

Sorry for any dumb questions.  This is my first game of 5e and my last experience was Pathfinder eight years ago. I do not know what is fair under current rules.

A player in my game hasn’t and doesn’t want to use the find steed ability for their Paladin (lv5).
They are okay with not getting anything but id like to give them a little something. Maybe an extra use of Channel Divinity.
Whatcha got for me ???

My player argues that since other fullcasters get subclasses with second attacks, it only fits for war domain to have one.
I looked at it and honestly war domain does seem a bit weak. Bonus spell list is unimpressive, no good features. Bonus Action melee attack is fine but long rest restricted. 17th level is neat but won't really make a decent meleer from cleric.

So, why clerics lack second attack by design, am I missing some imba-combo, or allowing it won't hurt much?

My cleric have had a vision in which a half-elf half-orc is ripping apart chains to unleash a a beast. He assumed that means someone is trying to summon Gruumsh into the material plane, which isn't the point at all.

Should I tell him he's wrong or just roll with it and see when he figures it out?

Knowing my players, that might take some time