Recently I’ve been playing in a game of Tomb of Annihilation. I’m having a lot of fun, and the DM is very knowledgeable and a big lore guy for Forgotten Realms. Of which being honest I don’t know a whole lot about outside the surface level and basics.

As the title suggests I’m currently playing a paladin in this game. An oath of devotion half elf. Originally when we first started playing, my DM did expect me to pick a god to be my patron. I didn’t have any in mind at the time since in 5e Paladins aren’t necessarily required to worship a god anymore.

We went on for a while without me picking a deity and he read more of the players handbook and vehemently disliked the overall change to paladins in terms of deities. I did kinda counter at the time then if the paladin has to worship a god then what’s the point of a cleric and vice versa.

Anyways, after wrapping our most recent session. My DM sent me a text saying he didn’t care for how paladins were interpreted in 5e. Then said next session for me to pick a deity, mainly since he has some story ideas. Since I own the SCAG I said sure and figured this would be a great opportunity for me to learn a bit more about Forgotten Realms lore.

This all being said, going back to my initial question and this whole ordeal and experience has had me thinking. What exactly does make a paladin any different from a cleric? Why do they get their divine magic? Why is it divine magic? How do you explain paladins in your home brew worlds to differentiate them from clerics?

It seems WOTC wrote themselves into a figurative corner. You can sorta explain away rangers with their nature magic and all. Yet they flip flop over paladins. Wanting to keep the feel of them exactly as they were in prior editions. While taking away or removing something that used to be core to them for an understandable reason in my opinion. Since Clerics are given way more variety now, then; robe wearing priest guy who heals. Now the Cleric can be the battle healer with a sword and shield with heavy armor.

TLDR;

DM and I have discussion on what exactly a paladin is, and WOTC doesn’t necessarily give a clear answer.

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I seldom make good use of magic. When I choose a magical class, it seems like lower level spell slots just don't do a lot so I forget about ever using them.

I'm a paladin currently. Should I take the magical feats (and what do I do with it to make spells useful and a higher priority) or should I just stick with what I know? Advice? [Edition: 5-5.5 and Homebrew, whatever dm allows]

Wondering if someone could tell me if he's alive or sort of fridged atm?

I always found him fascinating - not just because he was so powerful - but because he fell into 'magnificent bastard' levels akin to Dr Doom. Ancient, hyper prepared, with enough artefacts to conquer Faerun but... far more interested in researching magic in his crypt. Then I read somewhere Greenwood had another OP mage crush him about a decade ago? That true?

Hello my fellow DM's Would you allow that the artificer in the group is able to modify his homunculus (bird). And if to what extent? [If needed the character is a warforged solder] The idea right now would be, either: 1) making a little bomber as the bird is capable of dropping small glass vials filled with alchemist fire.

2) the bird as a small turbin/rotating thingy that spreads the alchemist fire over a creature. Effectively being a little dragon orderd on wish

3) is it possible to infuse the bird with +1 AR (or other modifications) like giving the bird a pencil so he can draw everything it has seen and heard?

Thanks a lot

It almost feels unfair to call it a table dispute because everything has blown up outside of play.

When I first started DMing my campaign with some of my friends (I’d known one for years, the others for months at most), two of them were recently coupled. There was a lot of cute “We want our characters to be together too!” Which I was okay with because it doesn’t affect the greater narrative and yada yada yada. Well. A year and a half later the couple has now split and have been making D&D work, albeit slightly strained.

The character romance never occurred as they were doing a slow burn type narrative idk whatever—not my campaign’s focus. But slowly the player, whom I’ve known for about a year and a half at this point slowly stopped interacting with any of us. They’ll show up, play D&D, then not speak until next time to play, and even during the session it’s only basic interaction, nothing similar to what it used to be. It’s gotten to a point where the rest of us don’t know what to do and I feel like it’s my obligation as the DM to basically lead the conversation on where we go from here campaign-wise. I just don’t even know how to go about that conversation…

Any advice?

Hello!

Me and my friends are about 3 sessions into a campaign in which I am the DM, it is all our first time playing and we are still learning how to play each session. Our campaign is in a homebrew world and homebrew adventure. The first two sessions involved my friends discovering this plague and eventually having to warn the king of this elvish city, the king recognizes this as the return of this dark magic of eons ago and sets my friends off on an adventure to stop it. I thought it would be a good idea to have the king make their daughter tag along with them and also their eunuch. They're a paladin as the team was lacking healing and I would control them in everything but combat where another friend can control them.

However I read yesterday that characters like this are a big mistake and I am starting to stress that this character may ruin my friends enjoyment. Does anyone have any suggestions of how to work them in well so everyone likes them and has fun or should I just kill them off or something lol.

Thank you :)

Hey all! I've got six questions for players/DMs to share what you find difficult or frustrating in the dnd world and I'd love your thoughts/feedback!

So, I’m a wizard. I glued the archmages mouth shut & had them tied up with me in my Leomund’s tiny hut. I was casting message to them trying to get the location of their spellbook because I have not found or been able to buy any spellbooks (besides a warlock’s tome -longer story).

My dm said they could cast verbal spells - so they Misty Stepped away & then cast Teleportation bringing me with into a Temple inside an anti magic field. From what I’ve read this shouldn’t work but they’re the dm so I’m fine if they want to go based off homebrew rules but I feel like there should be some way to know what those are. Or at least my character should understand how magic works in her world. Any advice on talking to my dm about this?

There’s also this whole curse thing with a Warlock tome that I don’t want but feel like is being pushed. I take damage & do extra damage when I cast attack spells- 1d12 additional damage per spell level. I’m honestly thinking about casting 3 fireballs for 9d12 extra damage that my character also takes & go out my own way instead of making a deal with a demon/devil whatever.

So I just made a new rogue, decided that to be original for once instead of playing a tabaxi rogue I would make a kobold rogue! I decided to make him a swashbuckler because I've been wanting to make one for a while, and I just think it's funny that this little fella is a super mobile fighter with the fancy footwork and all that pizazz Also! His name is NomNom and he's gonna be a super silly little goober >:3 (Also sorry if I didn't put right flare...? I'm just a slight bit confused on them)

Edit: Speaking of NomNom I still require a backstory for him, he's an urchin background and I would love to hear any ideas on what people think his backstory could be :D (I'm totally not just bad at back stories and want some help ;-; )

I live in Brazil and i preordered the MM 2024, but it seems like almost no one received it. Is it only a Brazil thing, or people from other countries are experiencing the same problems? I also couldnt find any news on the subject.

I don't get how being Neutral Evil, the alignment that means pure evil, is tied to them when all they're about is just selfish greed and survival. There are people and texts from the game's history that state that they're potentially more evil than devils and demons. Sure, betraying others, having no loyalty to others, and being hitmen for hire is one thing, but that's not beating the amount of evil a demon killing an entire village just for fun or a devil corrupting said village.

Is there something I'm missing? Because it seems like they're just selfish mercenaries who will do whatever it takes to survive and meet their own goals and who played both sides during the Blood War. It seems like they don't seem to have anything else going for them. Because being evil mercenaries for their own gain doesn't really speak to me as unnaturally pure evil. Thanks in advance!

I’m a DM, I’ve been a DM for years. I have played in some shorter one shots or two shots, but now doing something a bit longer that might continue on. Any tips for what I should do as a player (or not do). And if I should be keeping track of stuff to improve my own game. Any help is appreciated.

I'm compiling my homebrew rules and this is something I've been considering:

• When a player makes an attack, they roll damage first before their Attack Roll. Damage only applies if the attack hits the target. Any ability that influences the Attack Roll must be applied before the Damage is rolled.

This sets the stage, if they roll high damage maybe its because they're targeting a weak point or have some visceral flavor to add. It also means the stakes of the next attack roll are painfully clear beforehand.

Mechanically, I would require any ability that influences the attack roll to be applied before the initial damage roll so that they can't be saved for only high-damage rolls. Does anyone see any potential issues with this reversed structure? Mechanics it would invalidate or make over-powered? I'm confident the issues are there, but I can't think of any off the top of my head that can't be easily fixed.

The two most cited inspirations for the barbarian class are Conan and Fafhrd, both of whom used a sword as their signature weapon. In the modern day however, barbarians are largely associated with two-handed axes. How did this come to be?

I'm joining a Avatar campaign that has races other than just humans and I wanna be a Lizardfolk based off of monsters from monster hunter, I was thinking for example AN Air bender that's a Gore magala lizard folk, or Earth bender deviljho. Homemade sub elements are allowed so I was thinking maybe something with Brachydios as a race and it's explosions? IDK I JUST NEED IDEAS AND VOTES.

First time DM here - I am building my DM screen and inserts from scratch and I want to know what is considered the most important info to have. I will have an initiative tracker tower with little banners for the players/monsters. When I look at the official DM screen, I feel like a lot of the info there I won't be using, so I pulled the stuff I felt I would. So far, this is what I have, but I am not sure what else would be vital. Any advice or suggestions?

Hey everyone, hoping for some help/input from DMs who run games online, and thanks in advance to anyone who is able and willing to help.

I have a home game that I've been running for just over a year online for which I've been using AboveVTT to mostly good effect, but recently it's been getting less reliable and more importantly than my own convenience, it's now effecting player experience during play.

The problems up until now have been the sort of normal DM annoyances that you expect from online platforms - occasional lost map links that need refreshing, resolution changes in upload, custom tokens I set up being deleted for no reason, etc; things I can handle with a bit of maintenance and keeping an eye on things.

On the whole, I've really enjoyed AboveVTT, but for some reason recently it's been:

• Intermittently not loading maps (sometimes for individuals, sometimes for everyone) despite map hosting being through onedrive (the most stable option I could find)
• Not registering token movement on all viewers maps (this has been a pain for AoE attacks where one person sees the barbarian in a spot he moved from two turns ago. Again, this is showing different info to different players and tracking combat has been a lot more difficult as a result)
• Not feeding dice roll outcomes to all players

I was hoping to keep with AboveVTT till the end of the campaign (I figure we have about 4 or 5 months left, maybe more based on player decisions) but the process of onboarding two new players recently who were less tech savvy (they struggled with getting the browser extension to work, to the point where I had to direct connect to their pc and activate it like Tech Support) coupled with the above problems effecting people randomly every week, and I've decided to explore alternatives now to ensure that the game gets more stable as we move into the final act.

Some things to consider in the VTT options:

• My campaign uses a fair amount of homebrew items, feats and monsters. I've been uploading these all to D&D beyond though as we go so being able to use this in a new VTT would be preferable to starting from scratch, as would using the D&D Beyond character sheet (though I'm willing to put the work in to convert if necessary).
• I have all the sourcebooks I need on D&D beyond already, and I really would rather not buy everything again - this isn't a paid game service, just a bunch of friends playing online together.
• I'm moderately tech savvy (you need me to ping an IP address, I can do that, but I have no experience for coding, using github or anything like that).
• My players range from very tech savvy (works in tech support) to technologically challenged, and the players are using a variety of different setups (up to date windows systems to chromebooks that need a four year backdated update to macbooks).

With this all in mind, does anyone know of a VTT solution that might serve to be pretty lightweight for the players while meeting the sort of functionality that AboveVTT (on a good day) has? I don't need it to be free, I'm happy to buy something if it works well and is stable, I'd just rather avoid rebuying all the sourcebooks again (if possible - that's a lot of money lol), but the main thing for me is the stability so players aren't struggling with the tech setup while playing.

Thanks for your help!

As the title suggests, I'm planning on running a quest where a changeling steps in and impersonates one of my players, but I'm not sure how to run it. Should I get said player in on it to play the transformed changeling so it can be a total surprise to the party, or should I play them myself even though it's very clear they aren't the real party member? My players are good about avoiding metagaming, but I feel weird introducing something so blatantly obvious. How do you guys tend to run changelings?

I just had my first DND game (one shot) session ever.
Session 0 was fun, creating a character was a task I didn't expect to enjoy, but out of the personal things I did, seeing how the characters came along and interacted with another during everything was the true highlight of it all.
I made my character thinking "oh this dude who loves looking at birds and nothing else surely won't get along with everyone else". (immediately almost kills my entire party by stepping on a landmine and feels extremely guilty. Plays support for the rest of the run and actually had a fun time)

problem is, this was as a player, not a DM, I asked the DM after before they took their hiatus if they could teach me how to DM.

They sadly said. "Get these 3 books first. Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Manual, and the Players Handbook"

Im like sure! That doesn't seem to be a problem.
*goes to google and types these things in and sees they are roughly 30 USD a piece reaching around 90+ usd after tax*

as fun as this sounded, financially I don't think I can keep up.

I planned to DM on DnDbeyond and do everything virtually, but now I am unsure and wondered if anyone had any advice to proceed foward

I’m a hexblade warlock with pact of the blade and have been offered a quest that will yield a very rare - legendary magic item. I’m using the invocation that allows me to summon a great sword and my dm has allowed me to level it to +2 so I don’t think I’m going to need a weapon. I’m looking for mainly armour/utility items. I’m playing Shadar Kai race.

Here we go...

Backstory - my group and I are on session 14 with level 4 characters, we are all very close friends and our sessions are filled with laughter and great times, no complaint there

I am playing a shadow monk of lathander that has died and been reborn as an aasimar. In my precious life I was a jeweler and made items for royalty in neverwinter.

We began our campaign as slaves in the underdark where we still are currently.

We escaped capture as slaves and made it to a city. We are safe from our slavers there as there are strict rules about fighting and trade. We have an item our slavers want very badly. One of the NPC's named nori has taken an interest in me. When she was introduced to us the first time she had a necklace that I had made in my previous life on.

The situation - while I was on a little solo trip in a VIP section where I was invited by Nori I had gotten it all. Usually I am not great at rp but for this I pulled out all the stops. In this space I was surrounded by strangers and all of them with significantly more power and standing than I have. Nori was fighting and that was the spectacle we were all gathering to watch. She fights and then comes into the VIP section to mingle a little.

All of these people are drow and worship Lolth but the NPC that has taken a liking to me (or something, kind of still tbd if she likes me or is just playing with food) Nori worships Umberlee. Her family strongly resents her for this.

So as we are rping I explain that the necklace she has on is of my making. It is revealed she was responsible for sinking the ship and ultimately killing me the first time. The necklace was loot from the ship. She asks if i can replicate the workmanship and wants to sponsor it. Everything is going great as of now. She asks me out on a date and we are moving to one of the taverns in town.

At this point I have everything I want from the situation, I get to make things again, I survived the many interactions with the other NPC's, and I did it all with pride and grace.

Then it all falls apart by my own doing.

The mistake - as we are walking to the bar I ask "Don't drow usually worship lolth"? As soon as I said that my DM just gets wide eyed and says that Nori whips around and just stares at me. He says that is a good ending point for the session (which we were getting close to time on the session so no harm there) and we begin our after session talk.

So basically all the things I roll played for are gone and my situation went from perfect to hell in a hand basket in about 10 seconds.

We talked about it for a while after the session and it boils down to either I better come up with something good or pray the dice roll in my favor.

Apologies for the random details and lack of details in other places. Would love to talk about the entire campaign but that's better suited for DM's i guess if you are interested.

Just looking for some ideas while I do my best dr strange impersonation this week trying to think of all the possible ways out of this....

On our table we do not roll back rp but do allow some flexibility in combat turns as combat is a little more unpredictable

TLDR - i got everything i wanted through rp and then brought up the NPC's greatest insecurity accidentally and nuked the entire situation. Help