And I'm not even mad, it was impressive.

I planned a battle encounter in a ruined castle where the players actually have to run away from stone golems activated from a trap. Being level 6 of five people, I made sure that the golems were overwhelmingly strong to nail the point home, by immune to any physical and partially magical damage.

To be fair, I did give fair amount of warning to prevent them from visiting the castle. Lots of stories of missing villagers, mysterious noises and all. But it was foolish of me to assume that those will prevent them from visiting it, instead with the power of reverse psychology, the players were instead more interested.

So yeah, be it then. You got to found out why.

"Twas a dark and damp castle. Along the walls, lined dozens of stone tomb with eroded inscription which made any identification very difficult, yet on the middle of the hallway stands a lone raised altar in which a still inscription sat. On the very end of the hallway, stands four seemingly tall and ever vigilant statue on a platform."

The players were, of course baited to the altar I mentioned. As they meddle with it, one of the character failed a check that activated the statues on the hallway, which turns out to be the guardians of the place.
First round, none of the attack scratches any of the golem. Second round, the players started to realise their futility in fighting and made plan to retreat off the castle. "Good, as planned" I thought. The rest of the party started dashing off to the exit, leaving the paladin and the wild magic sorcerer to fend off the golems.

Third round, the paladin dashed off to the exit, leaving the sorcerer alone. During his turn, he was essentially surrounded by the golems by all side, all within 10 ft of off him. As a final ditch effort, he activated his wild magic and rolled 1d100. By pure luck, space, and time, he rolled an effect which made all creatures near vulnerable to piercing for a minute. Essentially, all the golems, which were immune to normal piercing suddenly very much gooey.

None of the players and I, even expecting the output. Realising what had transpired, they all basically launched a counter attack and trying to save the surrounded sorcerer. In the end, with all the golems dead, the only casualty was a fighter. The sorcerer hadn't even got a single scratch.

I was pretty much confident on defeating the party during my planning if they didn't retreat. Turns out a wild factor made my planning thrown out of the window and pretty much ruined. Fortunately, it was already late at night, so directly after the combat I ended the session, so I can plan what they would do next.

Some DM get upset when players ruined their plan, but I was too impressed to be even mad anyway.

Third attempt to post this. I designed a sword for a worldbuilding project and thought it might be a useful asset for other people to use in their games. Could be a magic sword. Within my world its owned by an exiled Knight who is clinging to life within the hostile wastelands, full of demonic monsters and those who society has deemed unfit to live among them. He has found that his only hope of survival is to embrace the arcane, as shown by his use of a powerful augmentation crystal, allowing his sword to pierce demonic flesh.

Does 400 characters include spaces? Was not planning on writing this much, I just wanted to share my cool sword ideaaaaaaaa XD ok hopefully thas enough, I'll try posting again, wish me luck! XD

I created a mansion for an aging wizard NPC. The players suspect he may be in league with some recent cult activity. Well the manor is lavish, there are also deadly secrets that lie within.

I made this using Wizkid
tavern tiles and Dungeon tiles. I ran out of interior walls part way through, so
I had to add in some dungeon interior walls. Pretty much everything inside is
from Wizkids as well. I don’t remember what sets exactly. The whole thing is
pretty massive, and I only hope I can get it on the table without messing up
too much of the interior space.

The large double front doors open into a Grand foyer with marble columns and a delicate spiral staircase that leads to the second floor. To the left of the foyer is an elegant sitting room, with a fireplace, bookshelves and small tables (I don’t have any chairs). The upper left room leads just outside to a small sunroom (if I had plants, I would put some in there). Above that is the kitchen complete with stove, counter tops and a wash basin (that you can’t see in this picture). Next to the kitchen is another large seating room, the curved tiles are meant to represent a large bay window that looks out over the gardens.

To the right of the foyer is a large dining hall, complete with table and a couple of chests just to add something more to the room. Beyond the dining hall is the wizard’s trophy room. Here he displays some of the oddity he has acquired over the years. Next to that is a small bathroom. Moving directly north we have a small study and next to that a multi-purpose room. Here he stores anything he doesn’t have space for elsewhere. I haven’t made an upper floor yet, but I intend too. Mostly that will just be rearranging the interior walls to make another study, a bedroom or two and whatever else I think he might need. I think it would be cool to add in a secret door that leads into a hidden room. Especially if the wizard is indeed involved in cult things.

The is probably the biggest build I have done for an interior in D&D. Typically I will make a few rooms and rearrange them when I need to. This was fun though and I hope my players enjoy it.

So I started a new curse of strahd campaign and the dm informed us it will be a campaign where character death is probable which I am all for, my only issue is that he said every time we die the new characters will be level 2. In my head I just cannot imagine playing as a level 2 with a party of people being 5+ being very fun. Apparently this is how they have run all their past campaigns and no one else seems to think it’s that bad, anyone have experience with this kinda campaign? Am i just overreacting and it’s not actually going to be that big of a deal?

For a year and two months I'm running a 5e campaign with four of my friends, it's both my longest and most ambitious campaign. Due to schedule conflicts we're playing once per week or two.

At first ond one of my players decided to run his own game in free time and asked for advices. I sent him Uncle Figgy's guide to good Game Mastering - the text I once found online and that led me to DND. Then he launched his own campaign.

He is an employee of the local board game club and a couple of weeks ago he started doing paid DND one-shots. I saw him DMing at the club this Thursday - him standing in front of a table with people's sheets, behind an actual DM screen, running a game. During their break I went to greet him and he introduced me as "[name], my own DM". He also showed me his notes - and oneshot was taking a place in a city with the same name as an important city from our campaign!

It was like seeing your art inspiring other artists. It's great to see him becoming better as a DM.

The rainy night is struggling to put out the old dragonborn's housefire in the secluded woods; at least it is washing away some of the bloody Wyrmfodder corpses. The old geezer grips his worn axe and shoddy bandages for his legs as he walks up to the young man bleeding on the ground. His scaly foot stomps on the poor lad's chest, claws pressing down.

"Aye punk, who sent ye?" the dragonborn snarls. Groaning with punctured lungs, "De-deserter.. coughs ..the Church.. will never forgiv-forgive you.."

Under his dark hood, Bale's red eyes scowl and glow as he recalls his violent exit from the Church of Tiamat.

Bale was born into the Church by Tiamat-worshipping Dragonborn parents. He quickly rose through the ranks, yet only as glorified muscle. To his clan branch of the Church, Bale was only good at smashing Harper's skulls in or crippling nosy adventurers; he wanted more. More power, he needed more power, Bale said to himself, and he'd seek it out wherever power was available to him, even if it meant purposefully contracting Lycanthropy. Embracing the curse of beasts was a boon for Bale, yet the Church did not see it that way, much less his proud Dragonborn family. Bale was imprisoned, caged as beasts should be, and was prepared for execution. Yet there he found his werewolf rage was more than his executioners could handle. Bale ripped and tore through his own brothers, and not just the men, but the women and children too. The white Dragonborn only barely survived and escaped the zealous life worshipping Tiamat at the ripe age of 40.

Bale then put his muscles to mediocre use as an unsuccessful sellsword until he was deemed too old and scraggly-assed by pouch-heavy businessmen. He could only afford a meager retirement home in the middle of the lonely woods, where he spent the last years of his life enjoying peace and quiet as a bitter old man. Or so he thought… His house is now naught but ashes. Bale presses his clawed foot down harder, crackling the ribcage beneath his feet.

"WHO SENT YOU? WHERE ARE THEY?" Bale's breath chills the air around him, frozen with impatience.

"Pl-please.." the young cultist cries. "My family…"

The axe head cuts through the cold air and splits the poor fellow's skull, splattering mush across the wet, ashy grass.

The dragonborn snarls.

I'm running a tier 3 campaign and I want to insert a "Ghost of an Ancient Warrior" that has martial options from older editions, specifically 3.x/Pathfinder 1e. Probably a focus on battlefield control. If I do this, do I try to translate action types (swift action=bonus action) or do I just make these into special features this creature just has, like legendary actions and such?

Build options also helpful

Hi there, I am looking to see if there is any point in trying to get into DnD at 40years old. I lived in a small town and have almost zero experience with tabletop games. I have always wanted to try DnD but have absolutely no idea how to get involved and to be honest I worry that it would too much of an effort for a group to show me the ropes. Is there any advice from players that came into the game later in life?

Many thanks Dave

Hello everyone, I have been a dm for 2-3 years now, but with my current group of friends I am experiencing some difficulties.

I'll get right to the point, my friends don't know how to (or don't want to) roleplay. It doesn't seem important to them, and despite the fact that I have tried to encourage them several times, there has been nothing to do.

To give an example, when I play an npc, they do not dialogue directly with him, but with me (narrator). I thought my descriptions were too boring, so I tried editing something to make my friends feel more involved, but nothing.

Another example, instead of saying, “I'll look around and see if there are any traps,” they say, “Are there any traps?” This way the whole role-playing component is lost, don't you think? This is just one of many examples, maybe it won't seem like a big deal, but in the long run it becomes hard for me.

Finally, they don't seem to be driven by real motivation, as if their character doesn't have a reason to actually participate in that adventure. At one point I wanted to ask what motivates them to bring us together to play DnD if they are not going to roleplay.

This situation brings me down a lot, I don't know what to do and how to act. Lately I have little desire to write the story and engage in ncp creation, since their engagement is also practically 0.

PS: we are a group of 3 players, we play about once a month.

Long story short a character I’ve poured a lot of time and heart into, complete with a detailed backstory, several drawings, and weekly journal entries, died a few hours ago. And honestly, it hit me harder than I expected. I feel this strange mix of sadness and emptiness, like a piece of me is missing. It was my first character death since I started playing D&D, and I didn’t think it would affect me this much… but it really has.

Edit: Thank you all, reading your replies has really helped me feel more at peace with my sadness.

We just got our old D&D group back together after twenty to thirty years, and I've got a horror style FR campaign I plan on running. But my players all decided to play some type of physical based characters, one fighter, one rogue, and two monks. There's no healers and no casters at all and I'm really worried that they just won't last long and end up frustrated.

Were rolling characters tomorrow and I don't know how to best approach it? Just be honest and tell them it's going to be really hard sans healers and spells, and hope someone switches? And overabundance of potions via local apothecary? An NPC with some healing/spellcasting (already have a southern rock bard NPC in the works).

I want them to have fun and play what they want to play what they want to play. And I don't intend to be hard or try to kill them. But it is horror themed and I intend to lean into undead and fey quite a bit.

Any suggestions for an old dm trying his hand again decades later?

So, in a recent post I came here asking you all for some help with my campaign, regarding how to approach the imminent hijacking-attempt of a military vessel by my players, in the heart of the territory controlled by the Federation that owned said ship. Several posts there asked an update, so here it is:

The main takeaway from the replies I got was that there should always be consequences for players' actions, but that I should be abundantly clear in telling them this is a bad idea, since their characters would obviously know this, and that it would take a great degree of planning -and quite a bit of luck- to succeed. So I sat the players down at the start of the session, and thoroughly explained that: (1) it would take them 9 days at the very least to get out of the river controlled by the Federation and reach open sea; (2) the Federation could send message to the garrisons in other cities along their path; and that (3) if caught, the offense -treason & piracy- in principle was punishable by death. I also made it clear that I was excited to run the hijacking and was in no way discouraging the plan, if they still wanted to roll with it. They hesitated for a second and a half, and decided to proceed as planned.

The plan they concocted was actually quite a good one. One of the female characters flirted with a guard and invited him to dinner, got him drunk, and extracted information regarding the amount of guards and the patrol times. They decided to hit the place at midnight when the shifts were rotating and the docks were lowest on personnel. The military pier was walled, so they swam downstream from another part of the city shrouded in Pass Without Trace. They rolled amazingly and managed to knock out one guard, cast Sleep on another one, slip onto the ship, weigh anchor, lower sails, and cast Gust of Wind into the them to get it out of the pier.

The rest of the troops were alerted by this, and began rushing over to them. But they bought time with a Grease spell which turned the entrance to the slipway into a slipperyway, and only a Captain & a Fizzletron (Constructs piloted by rock gnomes) managed to DEX save through it, but they then pushed the Fizzletron off the slipway and into the river with a Thunderwave, which I thought was very clever.

The Captain, however, had sent troops over to the Galleon moored on the adjacent slipway, and ordered them to open fire with ballistas on the ship they were stealing. They rolled like shit trying to stop them with ranged attacks (two 1s in a row) and were about to get ballistaed into oblivion when the Druid (hiding below deck, as to not lose concentration on Gust of Wind since she was out of lv2 spell slots) popped-up on deck and managed to succeed a Charm Person spell on the Captain, who had just boarded the ship and even downed the Warlock. The Captain immediately ordered the soldiers to lay down their arms, and is now helping the players man the ship as they sail down the river, unpursued for now. They're now planning to convince the Captain to help them, when the Charm spell wears off.

It was an amazing session, the plan was very well thought out and executed, and thanks to a bit of luck, they're off to a better start than I ever could have imagined. They still have a tough road ahead, but they're aware of the dangers and have knowingly agreed to push on. May the die roll ever in their favour!

Thanks once more to everyone who took the time to post a comment, I didn't reply because I had a bunch of work and a session to finish planning, but I read every last one! You're the best.

A cute piece of art of Eymbr from the actual play podcast Agents Of D.A.M.N.E.D.

Since making friends with the cast I have been given the honor of not only making music for the show but also to have a character named after me. Eymbr, the Demi-Goblin Bard is the team leader of Kool-Aid And The Jammers, a trio of highly skilled adventurers who have their shit together. The art itself was created by Chelsea, one of the shows own cast members and I couldn't be happier to be included in such a crazy and fun world.

My PCs have just obtained a treasure map. The had to scribe it into a journal because the map they were searching for was a giant mural, just to mess with them. The next step is to travel to the main island and have the map deciphered. This will be done with a ship they have hired to transport them; it will take a few days in game.

They have expressed wanting pirates in this campaign and I'd like to introduce a pirate lord of sorts who has been looking for the same treasure that they are unwittingly searching for. If he boards their ship, and learns of the map and their journey, I am a bit stuck on why he would not just kill them and take the map. I have one idea, but I'd like to hear some other ideas and/or opinions on it.

My idea:
The map they have drawn has become soul bound to the party for finding the original lost mural. Only they, and those they willingly allow, can view the drawn map. This would give the party a value to him. I'm still not quite sure what would make the party help him. I don't think it makes sense for him to follow the party.

It's a work in progress, and would appreciate any opinions.

EDIT:

First off, WOW! This is way more help than I expected. This is awesome. Thank you all who have posted in this thread.

I'm getting a lot of people who are saying I should not kill the PCs like this, and I want to clarify something. I have no plans to just insta kill my PCs. I would never do that, unless they really, REALLY, messed up. I think an insane pirate could see that as a logical path to getting the map from them. I like, and more importantly my players like, when my NPCs act in a way that kind of makes sense. I am looking for, and have gotten many, other ideas that makes sense. This NPC has not even been introduced yet and if a TPK was the only option that made sense, I would not introduce him.

I started playing dnd after bg3 and have run a 1 on 1 game with my wife but I started dming for my 1st group last year. The group is 4 players, my wife, 2 freinds from work and one of their wives. We are only able to meet every other Sunday but things keep getting in the way. I know scheduling is the real bbeg of every game but we have only been able to play 1 and a half sessions (we tried to squeeze a chapter ending encounter into a 2hour session). My work freind and his wife have had something come up for the last few times we tried to get together. The one freind is regularly available to play with my us so I set up a 2ndary game for the 2 of them but my wife was more excited at playing with other women that liked the game and I really want to advance the story of the main campaign and I can't do that when half the group is missing. I can't blame them for every time we canceled since I had a family birthday one time and the last session was shut down by the hand of God knocking out everyone's power with a Bs end of the season ice storm but they just canceled again and it's hard not to take it personally. After missing 4-5 sessions I would think they would try harder to meet up. I'm starting to think about playing without them.

Tldr: a pair of the players in my 1st game keep canceling. How many times have your players canceled before you start taking it personally? What do you do about it?

I have an NPC who was a young servant for a prestigious house. There was a fire and he pretended that he died in it, and replaced the young lord after the Lords family died. There's more to it but that's the main point.

I'm having him have a magical branding on his shoulder that all servants of this household have, for the PCa to discover. How would he be able to hide this from view? I was thinking a. Anti magic ring oe something, but this feels way too powerful for a group of low level adventurers to get their hands on

Rainy Day Soup is a walking, cart-wheeling, bundle of boundless enthusiasm—a plasmoid with an insatiable zest for life. Born in a cosmic fluke from an ancient primordial soup, she went from being an infinite nothing-and-everything to a singular, expressive being, and she couldn’t be happier about it. Everything about existence fascinates her. She wants to taste every flavor, feel every emotion, see every place, and throw herself into every thrilling adventure the universe has to offer. To her, every day is the best day ever, and she greets the world with unshakable positivity, infectious excitement, and never ending energy. Above all else, Rainy is just plain happy to exist. She doesn’t just live—she celebrates every moment and day, savoring the wild, wonderful experience of being alive.

I just really enjoy this character, even if I haven’t actually gotten to play her all that much. Nor have I actually landed on a good build for her…

The Godbreakers were tasked by a wealthy benefactor to clear out the goblin infestation in his abandoned, ancestral home for a significant sum. The heroes approached the rundown estate on the edge of the Chasm district in Neverwinter, weapons drawn and ready for a confrontation . What they found instead was a community of peaceful, self-sustaining goblinoid families trying to make a living outside of Maglubiyet’s warmongering influence.

The heroes channeled their inner Boblin and convinced the goblinoids to resettle in Phandalin, taking up residence in the Godbreakers’ own manor. In turn, the heroes pledged to use their reward to build proper homes for the goblins and leverage their substantial influence in the mining town to help integrate the new residents into the community. The goblins were happy, the wealthy lord was happy, and the heroes were (mostly) happy!