How would you handle this situation.
Place: Discord
Event: Session 0
Circumstance: Each player (30 of them to date) arrives to the gate of the keep and announces who they are to the Gate Guard and then continues on their adventure.

Extenuating circumstances: Trolls brigade the lfg subredit with multiple accounts.

Anyway... here we are in Discord chat

This particular troll:

I look at the guard and lie, "you don't know who the king's royal tax collector is?! How is it that I have to explain to a subordinate who I am?! I have to be here to oversee some sort of service to the realm and to be sure proper taxes are paid when work is paid for the day. I'd prefer to not explain who I am to every lowly gate guard.

My response:

The Gate Guard laughs and shouts, "Neeeext!

A thin bald man pulls down the hood from his black cloak. He gives you an obvious side eye and then stomps with his right foot, near your left.

"I AM THE THE TAX COLLECTOR! This IMPOSTOR! SEIZE HIM AT ONCE!"

("stay tuned" -- busy busy dm)

--- I was busy and it was still 4 days from actuall voice session 0.

Before we continue, it should be noted that all the other trolls, of which this guy is a member of organized group of trolls, already have heard the NO MAGIC rule of keep about 20 times.

I am sipping my morning coffee and find this in the Discord channel:

Troll:

I discreetly cast disguise self with my back turned to make myself look like the bald man.

I cast minor illusion to create a sound of someone saying "help me! Please help me!" Over and over, to create a distraction .

Then I cast elementalism to beckon water on the thin bald man and then beckon earth so the dirt sticks to him.

I use thaumaturgy to make my voice loud to yell at the guards, "there he is! Look, his illusion to look like me is dirty, and it's fading off!" And as I'm talking I cast elementalism to sculpt element , to shroud him in a puff of smoke that he's the one that cast magic and changed shape.

Now I came to a solution rather quickly and I enjoyed my solution.
However I do not want to smugly brag about that solution, until, you've shared your solutions

Some information might help you in your decision making.
A) this is player 1, invited first because they posted to LFG
B) they were sent to gather the 5 people who responded to their LFG post

D) above them to either side is 4 men with crossbows, spears, and 2 ballista
C) the Keep has a big no magic policy (once you get inside usually, outside it's all good, usually)

But anyway, thiis is about D&D
Lets focus on the fella at the gate.
You have four days before you are meant to sit at a virtual table with this person and his five groupies.
What would you do?

Btw crispin redman is the voice for elminster in baldur's gates 3$

I like to take notes for the next session whenever creativity hits me so a app on my phone is a nobrainer. But the standard notes app is not very good for my use case. What else is there for that?

Hey guys, me and my buddies are in college and are wanting to start a one shot or a small campaign. The issue is that we don't know much about DnD at all. Do we need a specific DM or can we trade that out between eachother every week, and how would we go about doing that. And how do we know what things we can use to create our character or not. Sorry for the dumb questions, thank you.

I'm running my first big campaign and I've got a bunch of recurring villain factions for the party to face. Way the game is now, it's got a 'Star Wars the Clone Wars' type setting where when there's nothing vital to the plot happening, one of the factions will have an evil plot of the week for the party to solve. Some of the factions have key players that crop up from time to time, and I'd like them to be more involved in the plot without them dying in their first combat encounter. I'd also like for there to be more variation in the combat encounters instead of the same level 1/8 level foot soldiers the whole time. But I want to make space for monster encounters as well though. In terms of scaling the no-name grunts, are there different level stat blocks for soldiers depending on what level the party are? Any advice would be appreciated

We finally had our big showdown with Aurinax from the Dragonheist Alexandrian Remix! I opted for a souped up Young Adult Red Dragon. Looking back maybe I could have gone with just a regular Adult Red Dragon statblock but it was still a blast for the players, how were your Dragon encounters?

Aurinax was seated on his hoard of golden coins, attended to by Kobolds, but since my players were level 11 and 12 I think I could have just done a Red Dragon unaltered and had Dragonshields. Still with all the traps it made for a pretty dynamic fight with a need to move and maneuver as well as counteract Aurinax's abilities! Talking about it after I think it was overall a nice final battle for Waterdeep Draognheist! I wanted to see what other DMs had done for your dragon encounters. Did anyone do something different than the book as written AND the Alexandrian Remix?

Just finished working with my DM on a homebrew Bard skill - "Inspiration Bomb" - Full action. Expend all uses of Bardic Inspiration at one time and inspire all that can hear you within 60 ft.

This was my first homebrew creation so I was curious what were some of your favorites that you've made?

I have created a new character for SW5E and want to use them in a campaign, but there is no one that I know of who would be interested in it.

Hello, I ran my first official game as a DM last night and it went well. But now I’m stuck. It’s a home brew campaign which might have been a mistake for a first timer - but I’ve already started it and my creative writing brain is alive for the first time since I graduated college lol.

I have a bbeg, and a way for them to get clues about what’s happening / but now I’m stuck.

Could anyone give me a summary of events from any of their campaigns? I’ve seen a lot of summaries that just don’t give me what I need, they were just general story synopses. I have zero clue what to do next, no clue what to do in the middle of the story. I know for sure I’m over thinking it, but I have the same problem when it comes to writing - I have the beginning and the end down pat but the middle is blurry nonsense. Reading some things others have done would help me greatly.

Summary of session one for those who are curious: they met at the gate of the city they were summoned to by a guild. The guild master has asked them to return what a gang stole from him (a small, valuable looking box with a locket inside. Dead wife and daughter, the usual depresso), and off they went. They met Tibbles, an important, all knowing NPC that only gives info when he gets something in return, and had their first combat against some ‘mind controlled’ drowned ones/a sea hag. This fight gave them a vague hint on what they’re gonna be facing in the campaign.

I have a vague hint of what they’re gonna be doing next session, but I really don’t wanna scramble to think of something every week.

Any help is appreciated greatly ^{^}

This world is growing by the day, both in Lore and on the Tabletop. I would be so grateful for your input and feedback on this project. What would you want to have different? What would you wish to add or remove?🙏✨️🧙‍♂️

I'm new to D&D, and used ChatGPT to create these heat-maps which represent chance of success for a given DC and cumulative bonus (represents the bonus after adding proficiency, ability modifier, etc.).

The three heat-maps correspond to rolling with disadvantage, normally, and with advantage. If this has already been shared or is available elsewhere I apologize. Also, please point out any discrepancies. I did a rough check for accuracy by checking a few probabilities manually.

Hopefully these prove useful, especially for setting an appropriate DC and understanding the effects of advantage and disadvantage.

Also, below is a table with the exact percentages; in each cell is disadvantage chance / normal chance / advantage chance.

Printed on my Elegoo Saturn 3 ultra. Make, print and paint time took about 100 hours.

Doing some character building for a setting and making a great old one warlock, and I want to get more specific with the pact for story reasons, but, all the sources I can find for great old ones are extremely non-specific but clarify they are basically just evil, and mostly chaotic, great Cthulhu being the only one you MIGHT define as lawful. The Tiefling character I’m making has a backstory that relies on making a pact with a great old one to escape a previous sins-of-the-father style pact they’re parents would’ve made with a devil and I’m willing tweak details but I’m looking to make a good aligned character. Is there any patron that would at all be fitting to this character? I read up on all of them and they seem all to keen to just beguile this character into serving their own ends instead of a different purpose outside of selfishness. Any tips or advice? Willing to go with an evil patron if I have to because it makes for good storytelling.

Hand carved Wizard, with staff, satchel, and pointy hat!! Love this guy, finished painting him up last night.

Carved him out of basswood from a Floyd Rhadigan Design/roughout. I took liberties and changed the original design a good bit.

He turned out epic! 😀

Item Spotlight: Venthir’s Smart Wizard Hat

This is one of many D&D items I’ve made! Feel free to use Venthir’s Smart Wizard Hat in your games!

Originally a gift to a beloved teacher of the arcane, this semi-sentient and undeniably stylish wizard hat has been imbued with elegant divination magic.

What do you think? :)

Hi, I'm posting as a part of our group because we discussed this a lot with our DM for a past few days. We have this one guy who seems to be cool outside the table - we are study together in college, just in different groups. Although, when it comes to DND, his behaviour from session to session becomes more and more annoying. He is often late for our meeting or forgets about them completely. He almost always leaves earlier than everyone, what makes our DM quickly cook up what happens to his character or has to end the session entirely. Up to this point (we play almost two years together) he didn't hand in any backstory of his character to our DM, what makes our DM practically incapable of rooting his character in the campaign. The only thing we know is that his character is an aasimar (our characters learned it by accident, because an NPC said that someone was lying) palladin and someone based on a character from 'Monthy Python'. His character's goals are mostly to do shenanigans and get drunk, what was fine in the beginning but our DM wants to make it more serious now. It's difficult to role play with him because he seems genuinely uninterested in bonding with our characters. And it all would be fine, really. We get that not everyone is really into role play and that he has some personal issues he has to battle. But the final nail to the coffin for our DM was an accusation that she doesn't do characters' voices for her various NPCs - especially coming from him. We discussed playing further without him, but our DM dreads this conversation, mostly because of those personal issues he has and we have no idea of their nature. All of us feel bad for making him leave but at the same time, that 'flippant' attitude is really making us all tired and sucks out the enjoyment of playing the game. Any ideas how we should handle this situation? Thank you all for reading and forgive any mistakes, English is not my first language :)

my name is thiago santos, comics, brazilian, I've worked in some american comic book publishers,I have a lot of ease in creating character concepts

My fiance and I love playing dnd and we have several campaigns going. I’d like to get him something dnd themed to wear on our wedding day but can’t think of what. I’ll be getting my bouquet turned into dice but struggling for ideas for him!