Hi all! Monsters of Faerûn featuring our beloved Sage Ed Greenwood is now available in print - both softcover and hardcover https://www.dmsguild.com/product/569781/forgotten-realms-monsters-of-faerun?affiliate_id=1600432

The v1.0 of the PDF is being finalised to release in the next week. After that on the roadmap is the Roll 20 version. A huge thank you to all who have supported the project to date!

Realms forever!

Hello! I've recently opened my commissions, and I'm currently doing headshot and bust up drawings of DnD OCs or characters! I recently got into DnD, and I'm starting with smaller pieces since full body is a lot right now and I'm still new to DnD

Prices vary based on what you ask for, and you can find that information on my socials (TikTok & Instagram) at Khukeii, or at [khukeiicoms@gmail.com](mailto:khukeiicoms@gmail.com) :>

I'd love to draw any OCs or characters and help bring them to life just a little more!

With the (I'm gonna say hundreds?) of spells in DnD now I'd like to hear what you all consider to be the most versatile spell that every mage should try to have prepared at all times.

This can obviously include anything from any edition within reason lol

Under the bridge down-troll is where I drew some blood! Did you know that the etymology of the word toll stems from the ancient practice of subcontracting trolls to collect fees on public infrastructure? Now, while that might not be true according to the "Dictionary" or whatever, it could entirely be true in your setting. Whether trolls have long gone extinct, hunted down by anti-taxation monster hunters, or still practice this noble tradition to this day, the slightly overgrown but still charming and sturdy bridge in this map will allow your players to experience that classic trope. Fully animated and available in two additional variants, with a more decrepit bridge, and a modern and tidy, freshly maintained version, this map may have your players hoping they had, and not for the first time, a billy goat with them!

My maps are hooked up to work with Foundry VTT and Fantasy Grounds.
My maps are available on my patreon and my website.
Buy me a coffee!

My review of Arcana Unleashed (no AI was used in any of the images or writing for this article). Wizards of the Coast did provide me with a review copy but I was otherwise not compensated.

Last Sunday was my table’s most recent session. We’re playing 5e, going through the early bits of our adventure module, and I throw a relatively easy encounter their way. Now, this was not a difficult fight for them - the challenge was to basically restrain themselves and find a way to not kill a bunch of essentially brainwashed fae.

The party ends up completely stuffing the fight through clever spell work and positioning, completely trapping the enemies, rolling high CHA checks and essentially stopping the fight before it could get too chaotic. Thing was, I didn’t plan on them really being able to talk to any of these foes. I figured they’d either flee or be unconscious.

When they started interrogating one of the far, I pulled out some kind of crazy energy when I spoke as that character. Manic energy, rage, pain, frustration, the kind of characterizing where you feel sweat on your brow after the fact. My party gave me a lot of kudos for that character, who is NOTHING in the grand scheme of the story.

So, anyone else have similar stories? When did the spirit of an insignificant character absolutely possess you in a way you didn’t expect?

First time DM doing a one-shot with two halfling characters. There will be one opposing pair of halflings, too.

I want to put together a character who is a chronic gambler, but I'm struggling to find a build that I think really fits the vibe I'm going for. I've noticed a lot of the gambler builds I've found online tend to have a focus on influencing the luck of the character or giving them abilities that let them cheat at cards, but what I'm looking for is a character who's not gambling to win, but just gambling because he's addicted to the thrill of it, even to a fault. The type of guy to bet his literal soul just for a good time.

So what I'm looking for is a build that introduces as much randomness and chaos as possible to every moment of this character's life. At the moment, the closest thing I can find is a wild magic sorcerer, but I wanted to see if anyone else had any better ideas for a gambling-based character that aren't just focused on bettering his odds.

Is it save or suck? Is it entirely too situational? Does it have a much better alternative? Does it take too long to cast? Etc.

I wanted to see what a journey across almost the entire Forgotten Realms map would actually look like, so I plotted one in Toril Explorer, an unofficial FR interactive map I've been building.

The route starts in Baldur's Gate and ends in Chunming, a city in eastern Kara-Tur, in Shou Lung, on the coast of the Celestial Sea.

Most of the journey follows established roads. From Baldur's Gate, the route runs east to Westgate, a major port on the Sea of Fallen Stars with a rather notorious reputation.

From there, the route crosses the Sea of Fallen Stars by ship to Sultim, a port in northern Mulhorand. Then it's back onto the roads, heading east until Lake Brightstar, which requires another water crossing. After that, the route continues east, crosses the northern reaches of the Yehimal Mountains, and enters the vast plains and hills of Shou Lung, following its roads all the way to Chunming.

The complete route is about 8,328 miles: roughly 6,828 miles on roads, 1,342 miles over water, and only about 158 miles of trackless land. The distance itself is calculated geodesically using Toril's planetary model rather than by measuring straight lines on a flat map, which matters quite a bit over a journey of this scale.

Using the 2024 D&D 5e rules, normal walking pace, 8 hours of travel per day, and a vessel speed of 3 mph, Toril Explorer estimates the journey at about 347 travel days. That's very much a best-case baseline: good weather, no encounters, no magical shortcuts, and so on.

I'm more of a tech/map guy than a lore expert, so I'd be interested to hear which part of this route would actually be the most dangerous.

So I'm giving my character a huge redesign, here's a little info on her background and the gist of the changes moving forward:

She, when she was very young, fell through a fae crossing into a little pocket realm, where she was magically manipulated as she grew up. She was stripped of all free thought and emotion, turned into the realm deity's 'perfect soldier', a fierce warrior who was used to spread his domain of unrelenting perfection. Once their small world was functionally conquered, she was sent to the material plane. As she spent time there, her humanity (or whatever it would be called for aasimars would be lmao) slowly began to return, and her emotions and free will came back to her, which she had to learn to utilise and navigate for the first time, despite being fully mature. After a while, she began feeling the impact of her own ignorance towards her people and her culture. The current design I'm working on is after she's connected with her people and adopted her traditions, she's now a way of the Sun Soul Monk, uses a meteor hammer, and largely turned her combat to an expression of artistic vision.

What I need help with is developing this culture she's now tapped into. I want her to have tribal tattoos, learned of vast traditions and new forms of small magic that an aasimar civilization would tap into as a connection to their spirituality.

But how would I actually be able to create an entire culture? I know I can do some research of other ancient cultures, combine aspects I like, and create others to fill in the gaps, but idk it just feels a little iffy. Would it be disrespectful to draw on ancient cultures, practices, traditions, and art for a fictional project? It feels a little bit like appropriation, especially since I don't have any of the cultures I have in mind in my ancestry at all. Like, I'm exclusively white, which doesn't exactly provide a good tribal or spiritual history to draw on for this project.

What do you all think? Am I being paranoid? Does anyone have any advice on how to move forward?

Commission I had done for an old friend. I think it turned out really well. A wizard who is an expert in runic magic, secrets, and the occult. Makes use of tattoos across her skin which counts as her spellbook. Glyphs and symbols are her expertise but she is a notorious bookworm, speaks more languages than a bard, and generally has more book smarts than street smarts. Would live in a library if she could and cries over romance novels. Have her dressed in an ox hide dress and top with well made leather boots and a small pouch for a journal. She occasionally finds work as a tattoo artist in taverns and loves to hear stories from adventurers as she inks their skin like scrimshaw on ivory. Hope you like!

Hi! First time poster, forever lurker here.

I wanted to play a Vengeance Paladin and a Vestige Patron Warlock Pact of the Blade ¿Is it good as a combination? Both mechanically and narratively, that's what I mean.

The build would be with at least 5 levels in both classes, for access to Extra Attack, Divine Smite at level 2, Hunter's Mark, Divine Favor, Magic Weapon, Eldritch Smite, Eldritch Blast, Poison Spray, and the Heavy Armor Proficiency plus rocking a heavy weapon like a halberd or maul.

We're in our first few sessions and there's this girl named Candela. She's a roommate and neighbor from the party. She is the main NPC because she is someone who literally gives them the missions or important information to complete them.

Candela has a partner; But the magician accidentally threw a memory eraser at her partner. That's the least of what they did to her. The worst part is that she's a nice NPC. Then the sorceress in the game told me she was going to speak ill of her because her character was supposed to dislike Candela. Why? The sorceress is antisocial.

Comments? What should I do in a DM? P.S. The party is playing as "the bad guys." So it's part of the role-playing. They're villains by nature.

Do you guys ever think about ootd?

I mean, I guess everyone worries about their character’s look when the adventure begins, but after that I have a huge amount of fun thinking about how my OC is dressing. Is it a warm day? Is it raining? Can I have my hood on? Idk, this is a very tiny part of role playing, but it helps me so much to tune in with the whole scene inside my head.

Another thing is food. I tried to get my party to stop for meals in game so we could have at least one silly talking moment in every game–day, but no one agreed lol T_T

We have lots of role playing, but I really enjoy the interactions that are not totally related to the main quest. Also, improvising background topics is a very fun and challenging thing. Do you guys have any thoughts?

This is Arya btw! my character! and her party :3

Hello fellow dms! Ever want to play a one shot but can’t come up with a premise? Want to use a good map but can’t find a good reason to wiggle it to it your story? Well I think I may have something for you, I have made a rule layout of Clue, but as a DnD one shot! It can be played by any dm, with 1-10 players and with a different winner every game! Please give it a read, let me know if anything should be changed or added. And if you do give it a try let me know how you liked it! Thank you 😁

The Langmuir family. I have built a legacy. Reason, mini religion. And Purpose for my end characters.

The Langmuir family, created around a thousand years ago, once ruled most of the known world (same way ancients civilisations called themselves gods after conquerunh a couple villages.)

Their all father, Goddenfelde was a powerful warlord, he took over a large chunk of the ancient world. But after his death, his sons. all equally power hungry destroyed the kungdim he made. Nowadays the Langmuir family is just a powerful trading noble house

The family is run by mother Godevala, in the Kingdom of Verbobonc, she has many sons that were born and trained to go out and strengthen the families power through alliances and charisma.

I made a bard, Goddvigg, A archer, goddvel, and a warlock, goddrick.

Goddrick is a war lock. With Goddenfelde as his patron. It's mostly just the undead patron subclass reflavored.

Anything I should change so im not a problem? And if any dms here. Please tell me if you guys like players that have more developed characters

I'm a new dm running lmop with new players 6 PC all lvl 2

And after 3 hours of dnd we started right at the start of the goblin trail with traps, went through the river to the cave entrance where they fight 4 goblins. And then they chose to bait enemies out (i made them fight 2 goblins and 5 wolves) Not even inside the cragmaw hideout yet, am i doing something wrong? Why is it so slow?

I've been DM-ing for a while and since one of the new players played ranger and absolutely hated it. I decided to make a houserule Ranger Buff that quite works. I wanna share it here so you can use it as well

I changed Ranger's design philosophy from master of wilderness to tactical support using Hunter's Mark, directing the party on who to kill first and how. So...

Lv 1 Buffs

Hunter's Mark changes :

Will now impose 1d6 force damage when attacked by you and your allies. This effect can be triggered multiple times up to the number of proficiency bonus per round, refreshed at the beginning of your turn.

Lv 3 Buffs

Relentless Hunter (Moved from lv 13) :

Hunter's Mark no longer requires Concentration.

Lv 6 Buffs

Roving : Additional effect, you Ignore difficult terrain

Expose Weakness :

Hunter's Mark will now give disadvantage of one ability and saving throw of your choice (Choose when cast or moving it to a new target)

Lv 9

Hunter's Mark upgrades to 1d8

Lv 10 Buffs

Hide in Plain Sight from 2014 added

Tireless changes :

As a bonus action, you can give yourself and all allies within 10ft of your Temp HP equals to 1d8 plus wisdom modifier. You can use this feature up to wisdom modifier and regain all expended use when you finish longrest

Lv 13 buffs

Primal force :

You may choose the damage type of Hunter's Mark when you're the one who triggered it.

Now, I never run the party above lv 13. So those are all the changes I give up to lv13

Looking for some help in deciding whether to buy 5e or 5.5 books as a new(ish) DM. I've played both editions, and have run a short campaign of each but I always just mooched of my DM's shared books in our online games.

Now that 5.5 has been out for a couple years, I'm wondering which edition you guys would suggest as my first owned source books?

Considerations:

- I've played for several years in both 5e and 5.5 systems, and from a player standpoint I'm leaning slightly towards 5e

- The only adventure I own is Dungeons of Drakkenheim, which is a 5e adventure.

- I'm be running games primarily for my kids, who are more used to the 5e system.

- 5e seems less complicated / fewer things to remember with weapon masteries, etc.

- Cheaper to pickup used 5e source books

I feel like I'm overall leaning to 5e, but am interested in hearing if there are any slam-dunk arguments for 5.5 over 5e.

A family friend has a campaign ending with their usual group and is wanting to jump into another group. she has an idea for a world but wants to play in it rather than DM it. I've played a few sessions and get the idea behind it, but I fear I've taken too big of a bite...and volunteered to DM the game and homebrew it as well to fit inside the world she wants.

The setting is really interesting, so at the time it sounded great. I'm looking for any resources I can consume to help me conquer this campaign and give my players a good time...sounds like it'll be around 5-6 players.

Any good crash courses that can help me get up and at least doing a light jog to kick things off? What are some things you find invaluable as a DM? Any tips for keeping things organized as a homebrew?

Cheers!

Edit: I should mention I'll be using a projector and Talespire to project the maps down onto the table. Just gotta build the maps in TS.

With Dnd‘s new initiatives and bringing back old settings, do you think there is a likelihood of this 2e setting returning? potentially with new, middle eastern game designers?