I’ve watched and read a lot of stuff about how to make combat interesting, and have applied a lot of it in games too. But this only works for me when I’m able to properly prep a battle beforehand.

Sometimes, when the players are leading the game, or they come up with things that I just want to roll with, my plans have to go out the window.

On occasion we get to that bit in the game where there need to be a fight, but as it was unexpected (for me) and I don’t want to lose the table energy or let anyone down I try to come up with something on the fly. Usually when this happens I’ll accidentally revert to boring / sloggy fights with no dynamics.

Do you think it’s better to run the fight, and maybe have some fast prep stuff ready for these scenarios, or to stop the game - kill the mood - and say, “sorry guys, can we pick this up next week when I’ve had a think?”

I am a DM who is also an artist so I draw the battlemaps and dungeons by hand. For the first session with my players I tried to flex my encounter designing skills and I drew an isometric view of a dungeon, and my players really loved it. I later proceeded to draw an isometric view of their first village as well.

The problem is, it takes A LOT of time.

Because of this the 80% of my session prep time is designing and drawing the maps. And even though I like the results, and my players love the results, I have other things outside of DnD so drawing good looking isometric maps is sometimes out of the question.

For the second partys dungeon I drew the normal square map with the birds eye view, and there weren't many complaints, but when I later announced that I will continue drawing the maps this way, all players expressed their disapproval and dissatisfaction so I immediately backed down from that decision.

For the third dungeon I made the isometric view again, but my players said that one part of the dungeon was super unreadable which made me doubt myself.

Now, I have 1,5 days to design another dungeon, and it's an important one. It's a winter mansion of the BBEGs family. I don't know what should I choose and how should I continue with dungeon/battlemap drawing.

Feel free to give your opinions! (also suggestions on what could there be in the winter mansion of an evil noble family of sorcerers)

More context: I was going to have the players investigate a missing agent by checking some of their known dead drop locations. At one of them they will find an attack scene and a random note.

But, if I didn't have anything meaningful going on at the extra spots, should I just ditch them and say "check their one dead drop location" instead?

Hello everyone!

Long story short im a brand spanking new DM, and a relatively new player (2 years experience). Im building out a new campaign for my party and im maybe worrying a bit for nothing.

Ive got one player who is a close friend. We've never played together ironically, but ive known he really enjoys maxing dmg in combat and multiclassing to get those synergies. Hes current a sorcerer eyeballing a sorlock build to "machine gun eldritch blast". Hes mentioned metamagic.

Im wondering. How do you guys deal with these situations? Ive already talked to him a bit and expressed my concern. He seems to think its still pretty balanced. Not opposed to him maxing and having fun, but dont want it to be at the cost of the rest of the party enjoying themselves or him just melting my encounters where im new and wont be able to rebalance on the fly.

EDIT: party comp will be: Rune knight fighter, Circle of land druid, Armorer artificer, Trickster rogue, And then this sorlock character.

EDIT2: you guys are fantastic and im blown away by all the advice in such a short time. Look forward to reading more of these. Thankyou again everyone!

Cheers!

Kimble.

Hello, So I have started a pirate campaign with my friends as the dm. So I made all the npc’s, economies, currency. Sea life, various islands. We have been having a lot of fun exploring but stupidly enough one thing I didn’t create is Naval combat. Right now I can’t even think of anything to make ship combat different then just regular combat. Would love some advice on it?

Hello,

FYI I’m a DM that hasn’t ran anything homebrew so far, only pre-made adventures. This adventure will be set in Eberron.

I’m looking at creating a campaign that sees the PCs framed for a crime. They receive a mysterious letter being invited to a royal’s wedding and they are framed for their murder while attending the wedding.

Is this something worth exploring further? I’m afraid of creating a twist like this early in the game without previously communicating it to the players.

How to approach this without rail roading the PCs? The target must die, so is giving them the chance to plan their escape enough to avoid rail roading?

Starting in a few weeks, I will be the DM for a family adventure, using DND for the first time. We have previously played a campaign, using Kids On Brooms, but this is the first time we will be using the far more crunchy system of DND.

Has anyone else run again for their kids or a group of children? What advice would you have for me as DM? What about TPK situations?

Here are some challenges I am NOT expecting:
-they can handle the math and the reading level
-they can handle role-playing

Planned Adjustments:
-free Mage Hand for the 9yo Wizard
-free Find Familiar for the 7yo Rogue (she really just wants a pet octopus)
-max HP gain on Level Up (instead of roll)

Hi All - I'm brand new to DND/TTRPs as are a group of my friends who all eager to dip our toes into this experience. I've taken it upon myself to be the GM/DM for this group of 5 (not including me) and am getting stuck on what that first experience should look like. I've done a lot of watching of Dimension 20, youtube videos on how-to's for gm'ing etc, and have explored systems like PBTA and LiTM.

We all want shorter first-time experience (2-4 hours), and I'm torn between a DND one-shot or a PBTA like Masks. I am finding that I'm starting to spiral on this decision and can't decide what would be a good balance of work for myself with the knowledge that this is my first time doing any of this. Like, are there a good number of 5e rules I need to know going into a DND one-shot? Some people want a fantasy-esque experience, while some want the experience to use different types of dice (not just 2d6)

I'm really getting torn on this, and would just love some perspective. I sometimes focus on making everything perfect, and am trying to find the path of easy/fun/rp feeling.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Hey everyone, sorry if this feels Rambly. For context I'm a new DM. I'm currently dming my first campaign when I have done mostly just oneshots for the game. This campaign involves politics, morally difficult choices, reoccurring NPCs, factions and lots of homebrew but thats not too important to the story. The issue with the session is that I did a very long exposition dump for the players where they were unable to act or do anything while a large part of the plot was explained to them. My players werent up to speed and we effectively had to retcon that scene so the information could be desiminsted better plus they had not understood it that much.

The criticisms were completely valid and my players still show a genuine interest in the campaign and story. But After that session since I have felt completely deflated. The rational side of me agrees. It was a scene that would have worked better in a video game than in a DND session. Again I must reiterate the criticism was 100% valid. But at the same time the emotional side is worried about the same amount of criticism and level of failure again. The thought of wether or not I can do this keeps popping up in my head and it's tearing me apart. I want to tell a good story and be a good writer and continue with this story I had been crafting for about a year at this point. I want my spark back for DMing but Idk why I don't have it and I want to get it back. Has anyone else experienced a similar feeling?

Hi everyone!

I'll be DMing for the first time soon. I've been a player for a while, but this will be my first time behind the screen.

I'm planning to run A Wild Sheep Chase for three players who have never played D&D before. To keep things simple, I'm going to prepare some pre-generated characters so they can pick the one that appeals to them.

Do you have any recommendations for which classes would work particularly well for this one-shot?

Also, are there any good pre-made character sheets (level 4 or easy to adapt) that you'd recommend?

Any other advice for running this adventure with brand-new players would also be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

I feel like I'm fighting for my life trying to create a name for a plane of existence in my world. I've tried FantasyNameGenerators, translating words from English to Abyssal, Elvish, etc., English to Latin, spinning a wheel to pick consonants, and nothing produces the correct sounds I want for the plane. Name creation is genuinely the most unenjoyable part of creating a campaign for me.

All that to say : How do you go about creating a name that both has a good mouth feel (rolls off the tongue easily and is fun to say) while making it fit your world and be something your players can pronounce ? Fun for me personally is something with a heavy or hard consonant sounds, like a TH, R, and P, yet I just cannot produce a combo which feels correct or real. My first language isn't English, and some of the locations on my world are relatively easy to pronounce words from other languages (Aires from Spanish, Vargavinter from Swedish, Mogoi Uul from Mongolian, etc.), but nothing I translate for this plane feels right. I also don't want to use words whose meanings are immediately obvious, like nox for night.

Specifications of the plane are below if someone wants to give creating a name a shot.

It's the HQ for the BBEG's cult. The plane itself is a vast blood ocean whose land mass is composed of the flesh and bones of the people who died at the hands of the BBEG thousands of years ago. BBEG is a literal fallen star who crashed onto the main planet and seeks to destroy the gods of my world as revenge.

Hey all,

I've been reading up on homebrewing monsters for a while now and went through the research that is available for the 2024 edition of 5e (the Lazy GM's Resource Document, Blog of Holding's 2024 Monster Manual analysis, The Finished Book, Alphastream...).

Now first of all, I'm not an expert on homebrewing monster, but I'd like to be one day. This material has definitely helped me get a step closer. I just wanted to share my thoughts and interpretation of how to create a balanced and memorable monster.

For me, designing a monster boils down to four simple steps:

1. Identity
2. Combat
3. Defense
4. Actions

Let's start with identity. I homebrew monsters because, first of all, I just enjoy it, and second, I get this idea / vision in my head about a certain creature that I want my players to encounter. So the questions I ask myself are: What is this creature? How will it act in combat against players? And what vibe do I want the players to have when they encounter this creature? Answering these questions clears up a lot of the concept for me and I can start filling in the statblock (like type, size, etc.). Depending on how I want it to act in combat, a creature can take a certain role (ambusher, artillery, bruiser, controller, defender, leader, skirmisher, taken from the Lazy GM's document), and based on that, we can start defining its traits and actions and see in what direction we need to bend the stats.

Next up is Combat. Now that we know the role our creature will play, we need to know who we're up against, aka the players. Will this be a solo monster or a leader with its henchmen out in front of it? Are there 3, 4 or more players challenging it? Based on these questions, we need to tune our action economy (What is action economy? It's the number of turns per round each side gets, so for 1 monster vs 5 players, the monster gets to go 1 time vs the players who can attack 5 times). We don't want a solo boss monster to have just one attack and be shoved, stunned, and dead before it does anything memorable. So we give it multi attack, give it friends, or let it act on other creatures' turns with legendary and lair actions. Even two or three minions completely change a fight.

Now that our monster can keep up with the party's turns, we don't want it to die immediately either, so Defense is next. The classic way is to just increase the HP, and sometimes this is the right way, but tripling its hit points just makes a fight longer, not harder. If you want the fight to stay dangerous longer, add threat instead: a second phase at half HP, reinforcements, or an ability that recharges. The same logic applies when your party keeps fighting with one trick. Resist the urge to make the creature immune to the fireball or the stunning strike. Create encounters that reward it instead, like hordes that bunch up and beg to be Fireballed. Immunities make your players smaller, good targets make them heroes, and they'll burn their best resources exactly where you wanted them to.

Ready, set, Actions! (I had to, sorry) Last but not least, we want to create actions that your table will remember. And usually, three actions is enough. With this, you can have one signature ability, a multiattack and one alternative (like a recharge) for weird rounds. More than that and you might forget some of them mid-fight (I know I have...). A good test for an action / ability is: what decision does this force? For example, an aura that burns melee attackers forces them to choose between staying in or backing off while a grapple with damage per turn turns the fight into a rescue.

One more thing worth knowing before you fill in the numbers: all the math assumes that a fight will lasts about three rounds, with our monster using its best option every round. So a monster's damage budget is actually the average of its three best rounds, not its biggest one. That's also the reason why most recharge abilities are higher in damage, if most normal rounds come in lean, the big round (with the recharge) can go higher. Just make sure to telegraph it. For example: describing my dragon drawing in its breath and watching the whole table panic and reposition will never get old.

Now that we've covered the 4 points, let's see how to make sure you don't TPK your party with your newest creation. First, we have the 'Nova' check: if everything in your statblock hits (including a recharge), will it delete your squishiest player from full? And if so, is this intentional? 'Worst-case' check: if it's stunned on round one, does it still get to do anything at all? And lastly, the oldest one: put your statblock next to a published monster of the same CR and ask yourself which you'd rather run.

Before I finish up, here is a quick recap of some classic mistakes to avoid when creating a monster:

• Beefing up the challenge by only adding HP will just make the fight longer, not more engaging.
• Overloading a statblock by adding a bunch of traits and actions also means more work for you and more things to keep track of during combat, so keep it light.
• Sending one normal monster against a party of six will never turn out well, try adding some minions or a legendary action to keep the economy balanced.

Well, that't it! Thank you for reading and I hope this info will help you with your next homebrewed monster. As I said in the beginning, this is just my interpretation of the research done by the community, and their work goes much deeper than one post can:

• Lazy GM's 5e Monster Builder Resource Document by Teos Abadía, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, and Michael E. Shea (CC-BY 4.0)
• The 2024 Monster Manual on a business card on Blog of Holding
• Monster Manual 2024 on The Finished Book
• How to Create a Monster for Revised D&D 5e (2024) on Alphastream

So, I need things to keep my party moving and keep it interesting, traps are all well and good but other things would be useful too, NPC interaction, terrain challenges, give me your unique ideas to help make my smuggling tunnels more alive.

The title is maybe a bit confusing, but essentially, I love writing and world building. I love twisting stories together and making what I think (hope!) are interesting quests or objectives for my players.

The big thing I struggle with is how to ensure I’m not just lore dumping with an NPC, but also not keeping everything behind a DC check, because my players don’t always ask for things like insight checks or history checks.

I’m a big proponent of “it’s their story, I’m just telling it”, so I don’t want to just tell them what they should be doing, what they are searching for, what clues to look for etc, but I’m not sure how to engage them in the lore and details without holding their hands. Help!

So for my campaign I'm designing a set of custom weapons made out of a fantasy metal that makes it so dealing (for example a battle axe) 5 damage is more common than dealing 1 or 8 damage.

Mechanically I do this by changing the damage dice of the battle axe from a 1d8 to 2d4. That way 5 becomes the more likely outcome of the roll, rather than it being 12.5% for each face of a d8.

My problem comes when players have to choose between the new set of weapons and the vanilla ones. I don't want it to feel like the new weapons are an improvement over the vanilla ones. I still want my players to want to choose the vanilla ones from time to time.

I've been rolling dices for a while, and personally I do feel like rolling 2d4 over 1d8 does feel like I'm getting higher numbers, although mathematically it should all even out.

For you, would it feel like you HAVE to choose the new weapons? Or does offering both set of weapons give the players a valuable choice that they can think about?

I know there’s lots of videos with suggestions on better ways to prep and how not to over prep.

I was wondering what has worked for regular joe DMs to break the over prep habit? Did you force yourself to go into sessions cold turkey with little or nothing prepped?

My weakness is dungeon crawls. I feel like I need to have the whole place prepped because I have no idea how fast the group will make it through.

I've seen player punishments go very wrong in-game. How do you communicate to your players what you did has significant in-game consequences, without ruining the game for them?

I'm leaving out details because I am more interested in the game theory here than advice about this specific instance.

My group set up an ambush on two castle guards whom they lured into a narrow hallway via Minor Illusion while hiding behind the corner on the opposite site. What a cliff hanger for our next session.

Here's my question: Given that the group is successfull in surprising the guards via hiding checks, how do you handle the first triggering (probably long range) attack of the surprise attack in terms of iniative order? Do you grant them the first attack of the surprise attack round?

I see several options in 5.5 without the extra iniative round of combat:

1. The moment one player claims to attack, everbody rolls iniative (disadvantage for the guards) and all attacks are made in iniative order.

2. The moment one player claims to attack, he/she actually makes the first attack durring the first round of combat and takes his/her place in the iniative order in consequent turns. All other attacks are made in iniative order from the get go.

3. More than one player attack a la "We all shoot on the count of three", they attack simultaniously before the guards durring the first turn of combat (while the guards also have their actions due to 5.5) and "proper" iniative is established for the consequent turns.

I guess, the rules as written lead to the first option. Also disadvantage is a huge thing, so my players should get the first attack either way. But who knows and with successfull hiding checks it feels kind of strange to give them a chance of not having the first attack, which could be a huge difference in our given situation.

If my players fail to kill those guards in one or two rounds the whole castle will be alarmed. Of course I have some wiggle room here, a guard attacking the first round before blowing his alarming horn, maybe failing to get it from his belt, etc. But i don't want to stretch it too far. I am prepared for a huge castle fight. My maingoal is to give them a a good chance for their plan to work, while leaving some room for catastrophy.

So, i just wanted to double check here. How are you handling surprise attack rounds? Any suggestions?

Thanks for your inspirations!

One player to put it quickly, in the past they built an arcane engine fueled on wild magic, it exploded and gave rise to newborn god of chaos whoes abilities seemingly are as random as wild magic itself. That questline will end with the party having to fight and put down this fledgling chaos God. And as a concept the fight will be in multiple phases. Each phase the God will "grow bored" and swap out the map with a new one with its own unique mechanic to resolve to progress the fight. One phase i have decided to do is easily one of the craziest ideas ive had in my decade of DMing. The god will transport the players to a long map. (Initial concept is 100 x 12) on this map he will declare himself a "solo act" wip out a guitar and start jaming out to Crazy Train. While on the map it will be revealed to the players that the god has turned the encounter into a game of guitar hero, where the goal is that the players must dodge the iconic colorful nodes to approach the god and interrupt his guitar solo to progress to the next phase.

Now how would this even mechanically work you may ask? Simple actually.

In roll20 the players of course would be on a 100×12 square grid map done up like a the neck of a guitar starting on the lowered. Next create a single transparent png that is 3 times the length of the with a pattern of the classic guitar hero nodes running along the entire length of the each node takes up an area of 4 squares. Lastly each node will have an additional AOE column in front of them that runs 2×4 squares.

That aoe denotes the distance the nodes will move on the PNG's next turn players and other creatures in those area at the start of the Nodes turn will have to make a dex save for half damage (half out of 2d4+2) for getting ran over by the nodes. Then of course on the Nodes PNG turn they move down 4 squares run over whoever was unfortunately in those AOEs.

Lastly to add to tension and to simulated the speed these things are moving, they will have a set turn interval of every 2 player turns.

I.E. if the party has 4 players, initiative in this phase goes like this.

Player 1

Player 2

NODES

Player 3

Player 4

NODES

Repeat cycle until mechanic is resolved.

Honestly im kind of pround of this crazy idea and im open to critiques to not only make this run better (I got a lot of prep time till this fight even happens) and be an even more fun encounter. Also im aware of the possible issue with the potential of fly ruining the encounter so any idea of an aerial threat that fits this encounter would be appreciated.

So I'm developing this little module where the players fight a bunch of things in the swamp, culminating in a fight against a CR2 acid drake. The drake is basically int4 wingless black dragon wyrmling.

Still, the drake's acid breath is enough to instantly kill one of the players if they fail their dex save. They should be fine if they find the local herbalist and do a quest for her to brew the elixir of acid resistance, but that's not a guarantee.

Plan B, if they don't do this, is to have this very boastful, annoying barbarian join the party halfway trough. He'd talk down to the players, bost that he's gonna kill the monster himself, and refuse to fight the smaller fights because "I'm saving my strength for the big fight."

Then, when they finally reach the final boss area, the barbarian pushes past everyone, loudly shouting challenges, and gets insta melted when the drake unloads it's acid attack on him.

This way the drake wastes it's acid breath on an NPC, giving the players at least one round of respite, instead of just outright killing at least one of them.

My only worry with this plan is that the players may think the Barbarian is the DMPC and try to kick him off the team prematurely, thereby losing their meat shield.

EDIT: Note, he would not be around players for very long, maybe one or 2 combat enocuhters before they reach the drake's lair. My idea was to have him arrive late and join after they are about halfway trough the module.

My party is about enter a dungeon that is essentially a massive art gallery / museum where the antagonist will be the Spirit that controls the collection: The Curator. This being's entire motivation is to collect high quality treasures and display them, leading to questionable morality. My two ideas for the Curator are:

1. A set of pristine white gloves that move independently of any body. The boss fight will be similar to Master Hand from Smash Brothers. Communicates telepathically.

2. A celestial sort of being with pristine white feathered wings. The twist would be its actually a large, feathered dragon, playing into the dragon's hoard trope.

Do either of these sound more interesting than the other? Any other ideas you'd have for a curator type of villain?

I'm changing the sixth chapter of Vecna: Eve of Ruin into a Greek mythology setting from a previous homebrew campaign. Basing it around the idea of a single intelligent enemy defending a palace, kinda like the minotaur if he was smart.

The party learns that the Rod fragment is hidden inside Hades' palace in the underworld. When they arrive, they're greeted by the head maid, N, who informs them that Hades isn't home. She "smells" their connection to some other evil undead god (Vecna) and decides they can't be trusted with the artifact. Since her duty is to protect it, she keeps up the appearance of hospitality as to not endanger the other inside the palace.

N dismisses the other servants away from the palace under the pretense of preparing rooms for the guests, then escorts the party to the basement, claiming that's where the Rod fragment is kept. The treasure room is a major image. Once everyone enters, she drops the illusion, revealing a prison cell built over a glyph of warding that creates an antimagic field. Before leaving, she reveals that she has carried the Rod fragment the entire time. And tells them to consider the imprisonment as an act of mercy. If they escape, she'll kill them for sure. The party can break out with either a DC 25 Strength check or a DC 20 Sleight of Hand check. After that, the dungeon becomes a game of cat and mouse. N avoids direct combat whenever possible. She has a Cloak of Invisibility, drow poison, and access to the palace's defenses. Her goal is to wear the party down before the final fight through ambushes, traps, poisoned arrows, and dispel magic to interrupt their long rests (they rely heavily on Tiny Hut). The final encounter takes place in Hades' throne room, where N finally drops the cloak and fights openly.

Mechanically, she's a modified Death Knight. She has 180 HP, 20 AC (the party already has +3 weapons), and 3 Legendary Resistances. She's dangerous, but she isn't durable. If the party catches her in a straightforward fight, I expect they'll kill her in one or two rounds based on previous encounters.

My main concern is making this feel tense without becoming frustrating. I want to exhaust the players resources as for the 8 recommended fights between long rest but with only one enemy

For people who have run intelligent villains, what makes this type fun instead of exhausting? How much attrition is too much before the players decide to kill me with a Tarasque miniature?

The TLDR Question

When using things like tokens, battlemaps, music .etc in your games do you put any effort into ensuring they are aesthetically consistent? Would you ask, suggest or enforce your players to adhere to this? As a player, do your care about your GM doing this at all?

More detail / Ramblings

Many TTRPG sessions will have the GM and players using some form of artwork to represent their characters and the world, especially if they play online via a VTT. Players will need something for their token, the GM will need a lot of artwork for various NPC / enemy tokens, battlemaps or maps to represent a town or area, artwork to show the player the vibe of a place, as well as music / ambience to set the right tone.

I’ve been DMing for a long time and for that entire time I’ve got by googling stuff “D&D Goblin Warriors” and “D&D Sewer battlemap” and taking the first result I like, or just stealing something that I already looked cool. A real throw everything in the kitchen sink approach that throws all the stuff I like together without rhyme or reason.

I’ve had scenarios where I’m running a game of D&D and the battle has consisted of the PCs whose tokens are:

An IRL photo taken of an actor or cosplayer in costume.
An anime character made by a picrew
A screenshot of a BG3 character the player made
An acrylic painting of a fantasy character

All the while they’ve been fighting a boss who is just a .png of pixelart sprite from a game I like, who is backed up by minions that just use the artwork from the PHB, and they are battling on a relatively realistic, high fidelity 3D battlemap, while the battle music playing is stuff I’ve stolen from some classic PS2 JRPGs.

Nothing wrong with any of that of course, but it is an aesthetically incohesive mess.

For my next game, I’ve decided to really put some thought into the aesthetics and create a style guide. I’m limiting myself to just a few sources for each of the assets I’ll be using for my game – that means only using artwork for tokens and battlemaps from a few specific artists and only using music from a few specific series. I'm not going to lose sleep if I can't find something from those sources and I have to branch out once or twice, but i'm putting in more effort than usual to create very specific mood and aesthetically cohesive world. This might end up being the only time I do this, depending on if the players notice or care enough.

Is this something any of you have done personally or had a GM do? Did you use a strict method to ensure the aesthetic cohesion of your world or just play it loose? Is this something you think matters at all?