All in the title. The party just rescued an npc, but that is secretly a doppleganger that the bbeg tasked with luring the party away from their plans. I plan to drop the charade quickly within the session, as the doppleganger has another task : to steal their magical items and bring them back to his boss, one of the BBEG's lieutenant. If the dop makes it, that's it. But there is a world in which they would get caught, and turn into a party member to confuse the party, save their skin or gain an initial advantage in combat. To be clear this would be a scene where there are two identical party members present, the real one and the doppleganger, and the three remaining PC would have to guess which is which.

I saw somewhere on reddit someone advising to let the DM roleplay both characters, the PC and the dop, while the player would hand the DM notes and tips about what the PC does, so there would be fewer clues for the other players. I like this, but I'm not entirely sure as I'm afraid this would 1) slow the game down a lot 2) exclude the player being imitated even though they would pass me notes. But I'm also afraid that letting the PC rp their character while I do the dop or vice-versa would let the other players metagame too much and too easily guess which is which.

Any constructive advice or opinions ?

Hi there! Looking at getting into DMing, but I’m a little overwhelmed with the different options for VTT 😅 for someone who’s new to this, what would those who have tried multiple recommend? I’m not overly computer savvy so I know I don’t want to use foundry. Right now I’m considering Roll20 or DnD Beyond Maps/AboveVTT. I appreciate any input!

I’ve been running a homebrew Ravenloft campaign for about a year now. At first I wasn’t having any trouble coming up with stuff for the party to do on our every-other-week schedule.

However, the party got sick of the city they were in and decided to leave. Given the main villain for that arc was trapped in that city, that completely threw my long-term plans out the window. I tried to come up a new plan, but each time I came up with something, they changed their minds and went somewhere else.

Now, I have no idea what I’m doing, and each week is a struggle to figure out what sort of adventure to throw at them. I have a session tomorrow, and I haven’t the foggiest idea what to do with it. It’s been the same for the last few months, with me struggling to come up with something to throw at them each session and only barely managing to come up with a half-baked idea. Frankly, it’s torturous.

I tried suggesting we take a break from this campaign and run a premade module until I can figure out what the heck to do, but none of them liked that idea.

I used to love prepping D&D for my players. Now, I feel completely lost and devoid of inspiration. I need to fix that.

Help?

Hi everyone,
I’m a relatively experienced DM who has a started new group with a mix of experienced and new players. While creating characters, some of my players expressed their interest in having inter-party conflicts. That got me wondering: how would you all handle this?

To be precise, two of my players have backstories that could lead them on a potentially confrontational trajectory based on the factions that they support and their own flawed belief system. While I really like this idea since it adds drama, I’m still very wary of it. None of them sound like they are looking for an excuse to be the asshole and both of them have come to me asking if this might be potentially dangerous for the group. I think they genuinely have an interest in the central conflict of my setting and want to explore that with their characters. We will still have a session 0 obviously and will talk about it there. But my general hunch is that it’s a new group and inter party conflict should be for groups that know each other very well. Also, I think it shouldn’t be anything that crosses a line from which there is no coming back. That means no betrayals, no killing another PC or doing something unquestionably evil.

What do you think? Should I give them a green light if everyone is on board with it?

So I was thinking about running a west march's style campaign at my schools dnd club, and Im just wondering. Is it difficult. The only thing that might make things hard is how the club meets once a week for an hour and a half. That and I was thinking about running a points of light style world.

For context, I have a party of 5 level 13 characters. A lycan blood hunter, a gloomstalker ranger, a shadow monk, a Telepath Psion, and a clockwork sorcerer. I'm running this campaign in the 2024 ruleset.

The players are about to fight a character who has been important to the lore of my world for multiple campaigns and I want it to feel like an appropriately hard/epic battle while not immediately leading to a TPK.

The character is called Alethia. She is the daughter of the god of fire and almost represents the archetypal Achilles-like Greek hero with a shield and spear. Add crazy fire powers and high mobility on top of course. I want my players to feel like they are fighting a demigod who is better than they are when it comes to martial skill but allows the players to have those cool moments of breaking through that can surprise or catch Alethia off guard. The goal of the fight is to essentially wear her down to help her as she is currently losing her mind to outside influence.

The best I have come up with so far is a reskin of a 2024 pit fiend, changing the damage types of things like the poison to fit a more radiant/fire damage aesthetic. The issue, of course, is that the fight feels a little too glass cannon-y in terms of damage output and action economy. I don't want a fight that is fully over in 3 rounds after a few super explosive turns. A mechanic to reach out to her and try and convince her to stop fighting (maybe making her lose legendary resists/actions on a success could be cool too.)

I'd adore any random advice, ideas, or tips based on big fights you all have run. Thanks a ton in advance.

Thinking of running a One Shot on Halloween, for a few friends that never played any ttrpg. Any suggestions?

Last session my players were fighting in a tournament. the tournament had rules that I told them a few sessions back like "no outside help, no potions". During a fight, one PC role played a taunt to hype up the crowd and rolled well on a performance check. In the middle of it, i was like that was pretty cool, let's reward this somehow. I had a lapse in memory and improv-ed an audience member of the battle throwing a vial into the arena which turned out to be a healing potion. The players won the battle round to move on in the tourney.

For the next round (finals), each team had to sit one member out and watch from the stands. In an out-of-game discussion, one player asked if the person that sat out could discretely/inconspicuously help (ie cheat) the team in the battle. I said that they could try to deceive or hide that fact that they are helping the team but if they are caught, it's against the rules and results in automatic disqualification. Then, they said well what about the potion that was used in this last round. That was also against the rules.

That's when i knew I fucked up. I was thinking of ways to reconcile it but couldn't. After a bit and fighting my nature urge to defend my hypocrisy, my response was "I fucked up. You're right. Let's just retcon it and say that 'no help' rule only applies to the last round." They agreed and we moved on immediately. No harm no foul.

I guess what I'm saying here is sometimes the best thing you can do as a DM is just admit you made a mistake. You don't always need an elaborate in-game explanation to fix an inconsistency. Just own it, agree on a reasonable solution, and move on.

I have an idea for the generic starting tavern that adventures start in. It is a good setting for characters to meet for the first time and can be useful to set the tone for the game. My idea is to have a tavern that sits outside of time and space. Some people will enter it from their local city, some will find it after a day's travel in the middle of the forest/dessert/farmland that they have been traversing. It can even be accessed on a small island on shipping routes. In this way it does not matter what a level 1 player's background is, they can easily meet party members from all over and then exit together at a location convenient for the planned adventure.

I am planning to have the only constant be the Orcish Barman named Norm, who is a Brewmaster and always keen to gather new ingredients from all his patrons' homelands. He is friendly with a Nomad clan that can always find him and supplies him with what he needs for the day to day running of the tavern.

Any problems with this that anyone can foresee? Advice to flesh it out will also be appreciated.

Plot important NPC got taken into a bag of holding. If I know my players, they're going to go in after her. What sort of dark fairy tale style world do they find inside? Level 8 PCs

I'm thinking there's a village of people living in there, maybe a generation or two past the original victims so an outside world is just a story to them. Maybe an air elemental got trapped in there too to provide oxygen. There's a sun but it doesn't move across the sky, day and night are sudden unpredictable changes, and investigative work can reveal the "sun" is actually the opening to the bag.

​

I was thinking about dungeons.

• There are some that have only 1 point of interaction every 3 or so rooms, with inconsequential rooms like dining halls, storage closets, and lavitories easily bypassed after reading the description.

• others where each room has a monster, trap, puzzle, treasure, or something Interactable. Sometimes multiple per room.

Using premade maps is great, but sometimes they are just too large for what you want to run. Populating every room may be too time consuming.

I am running into this issue for tonight's game. I am going to use the "Cloning Facility map by Tom Cartos" as a long abandoned research facility for monstrosities by a now extinct guild of mages. There is not a whole lot that i want to fill the dungeon with. Maybe 1 or 2 quick fights, some lore or loot drops, information from a researcher's notes, and bones from failed hybrids and the like.

The problem is that this map is 2 floors plus the entrance level.

How do I run this without it feeling as barren as the ending of KotOR 2?

I don't mind it feeling empty, i just dont want it to feel unfinished.

if you're a havokz GET OUTTA HERE

Ok GMs I need your help! We're playing 5e (2014) rules and running Candlekeep as a full campaign, hence why the levels are outta control.

My bard 11/sorc 3 cast Slow (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Slow) on the Bad Guy (Zikran, modified archmage / stat block: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/1528989-zikran). I failed my WIS save despite the bonuses (thanks, dice) so now I have a conundrum with Slow's ability to interact with casting.

Interactions so far:

1. Round 2: Bard casts Slow on Zikran
2. Round 3: Zikran attempts to cast {unbeknownst to players} Time Stop (casting time: 1 action, per roll20: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Spells:Time%20Stop/). Bard rolls 11+ so the spell will take another round to complete casting. This is the only thing Zikran can do this round (due to Slow, can only take 1 action or BA but not both) and next (must use R4 action to complete the spell, if I'm reading Slow correctly).
3. Round 3: As a reaction, wizard NPC attempts to cast Counterspell on Zikran, using 4th-level slot. He fails his roll. I do tell the team given the nature of Slow, he can try Counterspell again in Round 4 (before Zikran's turn). No one else has Counterspell, FYI
4. Round 3: I either forgot to re-do the WIS save for Slow or failed it (unfortunately my notes have failed me here), so we're gonna let the PCs have this one

We ended the session after round 3 and will pick up next time but I have questions for mechanics. There's a chance Wizard gets his Counterspell off (Bard is planning to goose him with Silvery Barbs, the brokenest spell of all time™). Buuuut TBH I really want Time Stop to go off obviously as it's a cool as hell spell, so assuming Wizard fails Counterspell 2: Electric Boogaloo:

• Are the spells Zikran cast during Time Stop subject to the Slow caster's d20 check?
• If yes, I think I understand that functionally he may need 2 turns to cast spells. Annoying but whatcha gonna do
• If no, then I have questions:
  • I ran this by my partner (also a GM), and his take is that Time Stop would break Slow's concentration as it's outside the flow of the same time, so that Slow doesn't affect any of the Time Stop spells. This seems broken, but as an evil GM I'm open to the argument obvs, I just want to make sure I'm playing fair. In this case, does this mean Slow is essentially superseded by Time Stop and Zikran would no longer be Slow-ed after Time Stop's turns resolve?
  • If Time Stop pauses Slow but doesn't break it, does this mean spells during Time Stop are cast as normal, and each turn I get another chance to re-do WIS save and break Slow anyway?

Anyway, as you can see I'm branching out in infinite directions and just need more rules guidance. TY to anyone who read thru this crunchy conundrum, and happy to answer questions if you need more clarity on insight!

Hello everyone,

im in a bit of a quandry with myself as i don't know what to do.

Our group reaches our 1 year anniversary and i wanted to present them with a little gift.
I hired an artist to draw a group piece of the characters. I told the artist to take their time and the piece will be ready in around november.

Now our anniversary is today and im curious if i should share something from the piece as teaser or if i should just reveal it when its done, none of my players know anything about it and it will be a total surprise for them.

I could tease it i have a preliminary sketch, but i thought maybe its best to wait until its done?

What do you guys think?

I've been running this campaign (the second campaign I've ever run) and I ran into this problem with character backstory.

You see, I set my campaign into different Arcs, a set of scenarios and issues that happen in the world which would give some material to develop their characters, some focusing on one of my five players. So I've been asking around for their backstories and most have been good but one of the players didn't give me one. And when I asked them again, they just gave me a one line simple story.

Now usually I would think this is fine but for this campaign, it kinda makes it hard to incorporate them into the narrative. In my first campaign, we had 2 players and I based the campaign's main objectives and main goal around those 2. But when new players joined, lots of them didn't have any narrative justification to keep adventuring so they felt unmotivated.

In my new campaign, I wanted to incorporate each person's story to give them that motivation and to make their characters feel more meaningful. But if they don't give me anything I can't do much. I don't want my players to feel left out bc that brings down the entire team.

So now I have to decide. Do I:

A. Make up a backstory for them

B. Try to politely force them to make a backstory

C. Ignore their backstory

(note: the player is much younger than the rest of my players so they get bored more easily. I didn't want to ignore their thing bc I know it would lead to them being very passive like our last campaign)

I'm looking for recommendations to build out a megadungeon and I expect I won't need to reinvent the wheel to do so.

I think it's mostly a boilerplate dungeon, save a few pre-existing lore details:

• The "dungeon" is actually a large tower belonging to an ancient city submerged in a thick layer of toxic gas. This tower, preserved by a crystal barrier, was repurposed into an arcane engine to lift portions of the city out of the gas. The base of the tower (functionally, the boss room) is some sort of esoteric engine chamber
• Several centuries ago, this tower became populated by a Thri-kreen cult in search of an ancient relic. Its structure was repurposed into a nest. A hero sealed the immortal cult leader in the heart of the engine, making his immortality into an endless source of energy to keep the flying city afloat.
• The cult either dispersed, leaving the tower abandoned, or continued living there and spending centuries trying to free their immortal master? No established answer for this one yet.

So all I'd really need is a mostly-vertical dungeon (perhaps just a tower dungeon turned upside-down) that has some ancient Moria/Atlantis vibe with some reasonable expectation that a small community lived (or currently live) in it.

The bug/hive part can probably be window dressing, but obviously "giant ant hill" would be cool to pull details from as well.

Any recommendations for existing material I can either salvage or steal whole-cloth for this?

I'm making my own campaign and i have 2 ideas for the start, branching from the same event.

Both start with the party in a tavern (basic i know) but i plan on a dragon attacking and destroying the entire city, including the tavern the part is in.

The difference is this

Campaign idea #1- The party survives the attack, awakens in another town and their first big attack is finding this dragon that destroyed their homes and getting revenge for whatever reasons they come up with, probably tie the dragon to something bigger to make it more interesting

Campaign idea #2- The party DOESNT survive and has to fight to regain their bodies. And I had the idea that they'll each slowly find their bodies, but they're possessed by something and now the party has to fight themselves throughout the campaign in boss fights to regain physical forms and then continue with something later on. Probably fighting whatever entities took their bodies

So I use Lego for most of my NPCs and monsters. For an upcoming adventure, I've put together a shadow dragon primarily from the parts from a set with mostly black pieces, but also a lot of purple and pink accents. Not a problem, shadow dragons are all about corruption, I'll flavor it as having been an amethyst dragon before being shadowed up.

But it occurs to me that (mundane) shadows can be dispelled by shining a light upon them. What if my players want to uncorrupt the dragon? That sounds like an excellent plot hook (and a wonderful excuse to put off properly fighting a dragon for yet a later date (they've encountered two others, one as a carefully planned deus ex machina, the other as a carefully earned ally).

So my question is this: what sort of magic ritual do you think would feel appropriate to purify a dragon that is 90% corrupted by the magic of the shadowfell, wielded by a malevolent shadow hag?

Hiya I am a new dm coming back after about a five-year hiatus I played dnd with friends and dm’d about 5 years ago. I am now trying to pick up the hobby again, running for people I meet through the dnd 5e Discord. Currently I am writing out the adventure and I wanted help with setting up a game. The idea: level 5 players each of their own renown are hired to go seek out these beats of legend, some have awakened from magical seals, others have spent millennia gestating and are now wreaking havoc, or are intelligent enough, such as dragons, to give their power to lesser creatures like kobolds and lizard folks staying under cover. I wanted help the game to be about players traveling to the far reaches of the world going from fighting like a local legendary monster like a crazed earth elemental to fighting dragons and krakens cleaning up the world and making it safe. Any tips with making world traversal fun and making the world feel alive during these long adventures.

A player of mine wants to play the new Vestige Warlock and go full summoner with Pact of Chain / IotCM Invocations, Battle Familiar and Summon Beast.

While I'm already worried having three more bodies on the battlefield that are all controlled by one player, the damage, tanking and utility of the build seems insane.

Doing some basic math a Vestige Chainlock with Friendly Familiar and False Life invocation has a total of:
 

• Level 1: 33 HP - 1 Attack - 13.5 DPR (9 sustained against AC 13)
• Level 3: 109 HP - 3 Attacks - 27.5 DPR  (17 sustained against AC 14)
• Level 5: 236 HP* - 4 Attacks - 51.5 DPR (37.5 sustained against AC 15)

(considering the BF has resistance on all damage with CM)

The spells lasting an hour and only one needing concentration adds to the absurdity, not even considering circle casting.

I'm all for allowing players to make cool concepts and strong builds, but it seems to put quite a lot of mental load on me as DM and creates a big power rift between them and the rest of the party.

My thoughts on solutions so far:

• More AOE attacks/spells
• Focusing summons
• Close power gap with better rewards for other players

While doing more AOE seems fair, focusing summons and having a disparage in rewards doesn't. How would you approach this? I'm very much leaning towards reducing the UA options each player can take. Not outright banning any in particular, but not allowing an S-Tier Subclass using S-Tier feats and spells from the new book, if the synergy is that strong. Or am I just entirely missing something?

PS: We're playing the starter adventure of 5e, so it will mostly be tier 1 play.

This post is a partial follow up to my previous one, I'm linking it because it does give some context on the campaign and current situation.

Basically I had this dungeon prepared (and added the monster that was suggested in this previous post), and I had this idea in mind: once they'd reach the end of the dungeon, they'd basically be on top of this mountain where this old temple's church would have been, and from there they would have seen this extremely important event. Basically, in the church, there would have been this cult leader (that they beat in the past, but managed to escape, and is now stronger) talking to this otherwordly individual (Nyarlathotep in disguise, secretly commanding the cult). The mere presence of the individual would have let them feel fear from the distance, but they would have managed to see him tear a page from a book, give his thanks to to the cult leader and told him to burn the rest, while he'd make sure to spread the rest. Then, he would have noticed the party, told the cult leader to 'not fail this time', summon a creature to help him out and then just leave by disappearing.

Basically, this temple belongs to an order who protects old secrets (and they pray to such a goddess), and Nyarlathotep used the cult to find the information within this book. What he took is an old secret (that he is aware of) in regards to this world, and his intention is to spread it to destabilise various nations, religions and so on (won't go in details to keep this short), knowing the proof of it will do that. The rest he wanted burned, because it contained some information on himself, as he is also partially involved (and of course, he does not wish to reveal information about himself).

This would have been his soft introduction, and the party would have been able to witness one of his disguises.

Combat would have come after that, and I planned for this cult leader to start burning the book if he thought he was going to lose (so towards the end of the combat), then the party would have been able to either stop him from doing so (and getting the full text), or having to stop it from burning in the upcoming turns (getting therefore a partial version of the text, some words burnt out and so on).

Issue: the wizard had Arcane eye prepared (forgot he took that), and while his arcane eye couldn't get through the dungeon's door leading into the mountain, he sent it flying above until the top, he saw the church and got the eye closer to the spot. This moment was very cool in game, and I wanted to reward the player, so I 'anticipated' the event, making them feel dread through the eye as they witnessed this individual discussing with the cult leader they knew, and taking a page from the book. He was happy that he managed to spy on them! Thing is, Nyarlathotep has blindsight, so at one point I had him look directly at the arcane eye (which had my players surprised and more fearful), I described the summoning and then him disappearing.

After that, they took a short rest, so some time passed. I used this time to have the cult leader order the cultists within the dungeon to prepare (as they would have otherwise been unaware of their coming, and so they would have found some of them doing mundane stuff like playing cards or eating), now that he knew of their arrival.

After the short rest, they entered the dungeon, and we closed the session after a battle they had with some cultists.

The issue I have is that the cult leader would have had a ton of time by now to burn the book, in my original plan he would have had to face them in the moment, making things harder.

So I'm trying to find a justification for him not having burned it already, because I did want to give the party those informations, or a way for them to restore the burnt book, but I can't find one in game as far as I'm aware (as mending wouldn't work here). The cult leader isn't even stupid, they are a spell caster with 23 int...

So, how would you do it? how can I justify them not burning the book yet, or how can I give them the information still?

I've made yet another attempt at a homebrew subclass. Im really trying to build my skills in this so I'd appreciate any constructive criticism or advice on it.

Rogue: Gambler

Cards and tricks are child's play. The real thrill is to gamble with your life. Living on the edge keeps your wits sharp and your blades sharper.

**Level 3**

*Bonus Offer*

While bloodied, your AC increases by 1.

*House Edge*

You have Proficiency in all Gaming Sets. You have advantage on deception rolls for cheating while using them.

*Rake*

When making a sneak attack, you can remove 1D6 from your sneak attack damage to use it to heal yourself instead. You can choose to remove an additional 1d6 to use in this way at level 9, 13, and 17. Once you use this ability an amount of times equal to your Dexterity modifier, you can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

**Level 9**

*Call*

When you use Uncanny dodge, you can instead choose to take the full damage and use the reaction to retaliate with an opportunity attack instead.

*Bluff*

As a reaction, immediately when you trigger a reaction from another creature, you have the benefits of 1 illusory duplicate as described under the the Mirror Image spell until the start of your next turn. Once you use this ability an amount of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest. At level 13 and 17 you gain an additional illusory duplicate as described under the Mirror Image Spell. Each additional duplicate extends the duration of this ability by another turn.

**Level 13**

*Heads I win, Tails you lose*

At the start of initiative, Flip a coin. On heads you have no penalty to your next cunning strike effect. On tails, you gain an extra bonus action on your first turn.

**Level 17**

*All In*

Taunting fate your whole life has made you no stranger to death. You've learned to perfectly imitate it when it comes knocking.

When you make death saving throws, you do so with advantage but each success and failure counts as 2. You can't be the target of an attack during this time. During your turn, when you stabilize on your own without interference or assistance, you gain the the benefits of a short rest and are invisible for 1 minute. As long as you're invisible in this way, you leave behind a lifeless body double where you fell.

Wanted to see if anyone else has had a similar experience. I’ve noticed as I become more experienced as a dm the shorter my sessions become, used to be 6 hours then 4 now 2.5.

The amount of combat in my games has always been low (a majority of sessions there is none) so I don’t think that’s the cause.

Surprisingly the game feels about the same to me. In how much ground is covered per session.

This seems like a plus but it has me uneasy- I’m afraid I’ve defaulted into cutting through everything unnecessary, those details I do think can add a lot of charm and immersion.

My players seem to be having just as much fun so It’s not an urgent concern but I am curious if this has happened to any of you, going from 6 hours to 2 hours seems significant so I’m surprised I can’t pinpoint what I’m doing differently lol :)

Thanks much!

I can't name a single creature which regains more than 20 hit points per round, even including the extremely powerful ones, like Zariel.

Why is that so? At CR 26, shouldn't regaining 20 hit points per round be nearly negligible?

I feel tempted to increase the monster regeneration for my table, but I'm worried it could break the game