D&D Next - 5e Discussion

I will soon be starting a new #DnD 5E campaign. I've done that in the past, and for the most part the system has worked for me - except for one thing:

NPC stat blocks for spellcasters.

For everything else, NPC and monster stat blocks include all the information you need to run them in combat. Not so with spellcasters - for with them, you have to look up each and every spell they might use in a fight, and that takes me away from the game.

So I am wondering: How are others handling this issue? Have you found any ways of simplifying spellcaster stat blocks so that everything you need to run them is on a single page?

Copy-pasting u/marimbaguy715 from the Reddit page discussion:

For those who don't want to read it, it's fairly similar to the Tasha's class. Changes include:

• Magical Tinkering crafts distinct items from a list
• Infusions/Replicate Magic Item has changed in flavor but is very similar in function. You now no longer infuse non-magical items to make them magical, you're always replicating magic items. But all of the old infusions are included as magic items (if they don't already exist as magic items, like +1 Armor for Enhanced Defense). The major change here is that there are way more potential magic items you can make, as it gives you broad categories to pick from (e.g., at level 6, you can make any Uncommon Armor/Wand/Weapon that isn't cursed).
• Flash of Genius now lets you know if a check or save succeeded or failed before you use it
• Spell-Storing Item can go up to level 3 now, rather than level 2
• Soul of Artifice's Cheat Death was changed slightly, and you no longer are going to get a +6 to all saves (instead you get +1d6 to all ability checks)
• Alchemists' get more potions, those potions are Bonus Actions, the Alter Self potion is gone (replaced by a "choose any other effect" in the random table), the subclass has a few numerical boosts, and at 15th level can cast Tasha's Bubbling Cauldron 1/day for free
• Armorer has a new option called Dreadnought that does more damage, has reach, can make you Large (and later huge), and can push around creatures. Other options got numerical buffs.
• Artillerists' Eldritch Cannon can choose their option each turn rather than being stuck on one option for the whole fight
• Battle Smiths' Steel Defender got numerical tweaks
• All subclasses can craft items related to their subclass faster (Alchemist - Potions, Artillerist - Wands, Armorer - Armor, Battle Smith - Weapons)

It didn't get sweeping changes, but since it's a recent class I don't think that should be too surprising. I'm hoping this means we might see a return to Eberron soon, but it's equally possible this just gets put in the first Xanathar/Tasha-esque book.

Crawford and Todd talking about the artificer

Direct link to PDF

Hi folks, just acquired this module and had a flip through, reading the intros and some parts of the first two levels. Here's a quick overview in case you're interested. This is a Paizo-official 5E conversion of a Pathfinder 2E module -- I haven't played the Pathfinder version so cannot offer any comparisons.

TOC page:

The module goes from L1-L11. There's nice little starting town 20 minutes away from a megadungeon. The dungeon has 10 levels and you should level up after completing each level. The town exists as a home base you can return to as needed, and also to provide support NPCs and plot motivation. At first glance, it appears that there is at least one event triggering in town each time you complete the level, approximately.

BBEG is an undead sorcerer who was defeated 500 years ago and is slowly rebuilding their power. Very necromancer themed, but not a Lich per se.

I like the layout of the module. Each level spells out the expected loot on page one, gives you a decent synopsis, and gets underway with minimal hassle. I haven't read everything yet, but of the description blocks and such that I read, it is thoughtfully crafted but also leaves options for the DM. A good example is the "floor boss" on level 1 who you can convert into a useful NPC if you diplomacy them or let them live. Downside: it might lead to FOMO for the players as they provide a lot of written branches and consequences.

The Monsters are well constructed and have unique enough feel. What's interesting is that they borrowed a few monsters from other publications and copied them in whole-cloth (with credit given on the credit page). For example, the Froghemeth comes from Necromancer Games (via Frog God Games), so it seems like they're really leaning into reinforcing each other as publishers.

If you've run megadungeons before, this is probably nothing partcularly groundbreaking. But if you're looking for a well crafted 5E megadungeon, this looks like it has a lot of potential. My guess is you could easily spend a year on the module if you're meeting weekly :)

Devabhumi is a campaign setting for 5e and Pathfinder inspired by the myths and legends of Ancient India.

This campaign setting will take you to a distant place nestled in between the sea and sky-scraping mountains. It is a land where gods and mortals live together, boons and curses change the destiny of its inhabitants, and senses are easily overpowered by the diversity of the landscape.

This setting book features:

• Devabhumi Setting Guide & Player's Guide PDFs: This project features a full-length guide to the world of Devabhumi, stocked with real-life inspired lore, and a shortened Player's Guide to introduce your players to this world.
• 8 New Races: Playable races inspired by mythical creatures of Ancient India, including Nagas, Asuras, and more! New Karma Mechanic: In Devabhumi, your actions have lasting effects and potential consequences. What goes around will inevitably come around.
• A New Pantheon: Consisting of powerful Devas and Devis, this Pantheon includes 25 total gods with unique domains and boons.
• 30 Unique Weapons & Equipment: A vast collection of weapons, armor, magic items, and miscellaneous items from Indian history.
• 20 Monster Stat Blocks: A legion of monsters, creatures, and spirits inspired by old stories and ancient Epics of India.--

Check out Devabhumi here: https://devabhumi.itch.io/devabhumi

I’m posting this because the DnD homebrew community is hosted on a different server than the rest of the RPG network, and some people might not know it exists.

Universal link: [email protected]
Alternate links:
https://lemmyverse.link/c/[email protected]
https://lemmy.world/c/dndhomebrew
https://ttrpg.network/c/[email protected]

DnDHomebrew is a community dedicated to sharing and giving feedback on homebrew material for DnD 5e. It doesn’t see regular activity, which is a nice change of pace from the UnearthedArcana subreddit (where low-quality AI-written homebrews are posted daily), but it can get a bit monotonous in the long run. I’ve tried keeping it active over the past few months, and there are other content creators sharing great pieces of homebrew, such as Consort’s playable dragons and magical items. However, I’d love to see more activity from other users as well.

Please join us if you feel like sharing your homebrew rules, classes or whatever, or if you'd like to spice your games with additional options!

-- Help the Duke's ghost find his head—and his killer—in Murders at Lorelahc Manor. Now LIVE on Kickstarter!

The two intricate murder mysteries in this adjustable D&D 5e campaign are designed for characters level 7 and below.

Treat your players to a lavish underground ball and a **chronomancer's party gone wrong **with this 100-page setting and campaign. Equipped with lore about Lorelahc Manor, the Rock Sea, and the Umbral Glade, you'll be able to expand this campaign well beyond the average runtime of 5–8 3–hour sessions (15–24 hours).

This 100-page book is available in PDF, print (softcover or hardcover), and as a Roll20 module. The book includes:

• 2 murder mysteries that can be run separately or together with an average runtime of 5-8 sessions (15-24 hours)
• 2 unique murder weapons sure to surprise your players!
• Mysteries able to withstand spellcasting for PCs up to 7th level, but simple enough to be solved!
• Over 40 custom human-made art pieces, including 20+ fully illustrated NPC suspects, villains, and monsters!
• 6 sprawling maps totaling 50+ keyed locations

Click to download a free sample encounter!

Find the full campaign HERE!

For many years I've been pronouncing Sigil as Sij-ill, like the word sigil. Recently I read something in a post from WotC saying that it is pronounced sig-ill (hard G). This just sounded weird to me, so I am continuing to say it with a J sound. You know, like in GIF 😏

Anyway, are there any other names of things in D&D that made you go "huh?" when you heard the official pronunciation?

All premieres at 9am PDT:

• Monday, July 1st - Spells
• Tuesday July 2nd - Crafting Sneak Peek (this is a short video; no premiere)
• Monday, July 8th - Monk
• Tuesday, July 9th - Sorcerer
• Wednesday, July 10th - Cleric
• Thursday July 11th - Bard
• Friday July 12th - New Dragon Designs

Monks at level 12 decrease the fall damage they take by 70, which means they're almost guaranteed to take max 20 points by falling from more than 200 feet (99,67% chance according to anydice).

That means level 12+ monks can jump from airships and other flying objects at basically no risk in order to infiltrate some place (especially way of shadow) or surprise their enemies.

Do what you want with this knowledge.

cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/7479802

2024 Player's Handbook Reveals (all premieres at 9am PDT)

Monday, June 24th - The Rogue Tuesday, June 25th - The Warlock Wednesday, June 26th - The Druid Thursday, June 27th - The Wizard Friday, June 28th - The Ranger

Wotc dropped a big video today all about the upcoming edition. There's a few articles breaking down some of the information out there already.

Hi, my name is Khan and I am the person behind Devabhumi. I am of Indian origin, and I have always been interested in non-European rpg settings. There is such a treasure trove of untapped stories, monsters, and legends in Indian Culture, which can provide fresh and unique content for your campaigns.

Devabhumi is a high fantasy TTRPG setting inspired by the history and epics of Ancient India. This setting features:

• 100+ pages of lore
• 8 new races
• 20+ historical weapons and armor
• 25 monsters inspired by Indian folklore

And much more!

You can check out the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/silvercompassmaps/devabhumi-a-dandd-5e-setting-inspired-by-ancient-india

I'm looking for monster lists for Journeys through the Radiant Citadel.

Like, for each of the planes in there, here's a list of appropriate monsters. It's OK if they're fan made. It's not always clear to me exactly which real-world–culture is the basis of which plane (maybe that's in the book or maybe it's supposed to be vague), but that's fine, I think these settings look awesome, but one of the main thing missing to easily expand them are encounter tables, which I could throw together if I knew like "OK, on such-and-such plane there are owlbears and stirges" or something like that.

@[email protected]

Hi, my name is Khan and I am the person behind Devabhumi. I am of Indian origin, and I have always been interested in non-European rpg settings. There is such a treasure trove of untapped stories, monsters, and legends in Indian Culture, which can provide fresh and unique content for your campaigns. Devabhumi is a high fantasy TTRPG setting inspired by the history and epics of Ancient India. This setting features:

• 100+ pages of lore
• A karma mechanic
• 6 new races
• 20+ backgrounds and feats
• And much more!

You can sign up for the Kickstarter here.

We are going live in a week!

Sup, everyone? We are finally getting close to release and wanted to show off how you can convert your D&D Beyond character into Nurl with a single URL copy/paste. We deconstruct all the data and present it in a way that is much easier to understand for new players. For experienced players, it removes the cognitive complexity of the overwhelmingly large amount of data presented. This means your brain uses less energy reading the sheet so you can instead devote that to role playing!

This is the "out of battle" sheet preview which is just a teaser on other things the app does with the character sheet data for you.

Check out this 20 second video preview

If you like where we are going you can sign up for early access on our website

I've noticed a big gap in the Epic game session realm when it comes to good tools for enhancing the gameplay. I've seen attempts, but nothing on the level of what it could be.

This past weekend, I was a part of an Epic session and validated a feature set on the app I'm building which resulted in a response of "This is perfect" from everyone that night (including the admins running the Epic).

When it comes to Epics, an easy way to ensure everyone is having fun is to keep the interactivity of all groups high. Secondly, make something positive out of the negative situations. For example, there was a feature we added this weekend to which if someone failed a task, they had to donate X dollars to a charity that was the focus for the event itself. I found this was a really fun way to enhance the game play to make something positive out of negative situations. Basically, people were still having fun rather than getting upset because it resulted in philanthropy. Obviously, anyone could also donate at anytime - but you get the gist. More smiles and laughter than disgruntled faces.

This is one of many examples I see that works really well. Additionally, I'm happy to announce that r/nurl will support Epic game sessions in our upcoming release which you can read about on our blog.

If you are interested in were we are going and the vision to make playing TTRPG easy for everyone (including people on the spectrum or ADHD), you can join the waitlist and get early access to the app before we publicly launch: https://nurl.website

I hope this brought some "inspiration" to all the DM of DM's that love hosting Epic game sessions and happy adventuring!

Hello everyone!

My name is Casey Baggz and I'm the Founder & CEO of Nurl a new app that uses advance algorithms to deconstruct the rules, player sheets (and everything else that makes TTRPGs hard for players and GMs) and presents it in a holistic and conversational way. Likewise, we also add in realtime notes & chat (similar to Notion and Slack/Discord) and combine it with an extension library so you can have all the tools you need in one magical place.

I've been working hard to make sure we ship in less than 10 weeks and so far have received a perfect-score feedback from all players/gms we have user tested with ranging from 13-50 year olds who have played anywhere from "being curious" to 20 year vets.

Today, the waitlist is officially open and if you join you will get access to the app before the general public. I'm currently a GM and started as a player and built Nurl because I have yet to find a good solution for a tool that helps streamline the game in an elegant way that works with IRL/hybrid sessions (i.e. it's not a VTT).

As a game master, there is so much time and improve you need to have to deliver great sessions. As a player (new or experienced) character sheets and rules can be extremely overwhelming, intimidating, and confusing.

Today, I can confidently say that Nurl will help remove that burden and enhance your games so you can spend more time focusing on the story vs. planning.

If you are interested, you can join the waitlist at https://nurl.website

Mostly not MCDM's fault. Issues with shipping are out of their hands.

But unfortunate that this arrived after I no longer play the game it's designed to be compatible with.

Sourcebook for D&D 5e that introduces a new subclass for every single class in the game, focusing on using hit dice to power abilities.

Hasbro lost a billion dollars this year, but D&D made a tonne of profit. And they laid off 1100 people. What I can't understand is how they're business model works. And how laying off 1100 people will allegedly save $400 million dollar (someone check my math, but does each employee cost 350k+ each?)

Anyway

[email protected]

WoTC is partnering with FoundryVTT to enhance it's 5e game system. They will also be selling the revamped books later this year.

There is no overlap with DND beyond, unfortunately. More info at FAQ below:

https://foundryvtt.com/article/dungeons-dragons-arrives/#faq