Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Druid Circles by a Factor of Three
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted circle back to the basics and discuss the druid class for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. In the video they look at all of the 5E D&D books with druid content. There are subclasses in the Player’s Handbook, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica and Dave and Ted look over the character class as a whole plus weigh in with their personal gaming experiences. Outside of official sources there are countless Circles created by players all over the world. We’ve created at least one ourselves and there’s more from the D&D design team included in Unearthed Arcana playtest documents as well as terrific third party products containing new options for druid players. Over at Dungeon Master’s Guild there’s currently 625 products tagged as 5E D&D character options with druid content too. But there is another source of homebrew content I’m looking at today — D&D Beyond, where people have used the homebrew tools there to create 291 Circles for druids. Let’s get into it and look at the best ones from three different perspectives.
Enhance Your 5E D&D Character — Join the Vargarian Collective Today!
In the annals of Nerdarchy’s content creation vaults for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons I recently discovered a document Nerdarchist Ted created about two years ago called Warforged Components. Originally created to swell ranks with steel soldiers, since the days of the Last War these creatures of wood, metal and magic became recognized as a new species who now seek their purpose beyond fighting in others’ conflicts. Warforged as a fan favorite character race and in 5E D&D the definitive official version appears in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. In Nerdarchy’s own campaign setting a similar but very different species pursues a much more concrete goal — total domination of the multiverse. Vargarians are a bio-organic species and like the warforged they are created, except the Collective fashions their kind by subjugating populations and absorbing individuals, grafting arcanomechanical parts and subsuming their minds. But why should they get all the wonderful toys?
Running a Conjuration Wizard Familiar Fight Club Campaign for 5E D&D
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted dicuss the potential for indulging fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons players and the all too familiar scenario of creature collection. Anything from a cute and cuddly critter to a fearsome monstrosity appeals to lots of players interest in taming beasts, raising their own monsters or otherwise gathering pets. They start by wondering what a 5E D&D Conjuration Wizard Fight Club might entail and proceed to break all the rules by talking about it — in front of a camera no less! When it comes to organized conjured creature combat Nerdarchy advocates ethical and nonviolent treatment of any and all summoned, conjured, created, fabricated, imagined or regular real world creatures.
Adventurers of Adventure Guild Wants You! Creating a Guild for 5E D&D, Step 2
Organizations in your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign world provide so many benefits for a Dungeon Master. Factions, guilds, cabals and any other collection of people sharing a common goal or interest can be quest givers, sources of information and structures for contextualizing any 5E D&D campaign setting. Even in the bleak land of Barovia, an organization like the Keepers of the Feather tells you something about the setting. In The Mandalorian, the titular character belonged to an organized tribe of warriors and the bounty hunter guild. In the first part of this series we went through the process of creating a guild for 5E D&D starting with the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The Adventurers of Adventure is an adventuring guild characters can join and gain renown with, earning benefits along the way. With Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica in hand the AoA can expand options for its members with Guild Spells and Contacts. The fly by night adventuring guild’s operating budget is pretty slim, so the selections might not top industry standards but hey — it’s free spells! So let’s get into it and proceed to step 2 of creating a guild.
Hooked on Adventure — Reversal of Fortune
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted roll some funny shaped dice and talk about all the ways a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons character can become a dice master. Between the halfling Lucky trait, Lucky and Bountiful Luck feats and a slew of class features the probability of creating a fun, effective dice master character for 5E D&D is quite high. These characters step beyond inexplicable good fortune to begin actively manipulating chance. Call it fate, destiny, karma or kismet the dice master character sees the cascade of cause and effect and inserts themselves into the process. Pretty heady stuff! Dungeon Masters can certainly get in on the action too, and odds bending creatures, areas or magic items can be weal for DMs and woe for adventurers. In Fat of the Land a Rural Pig Sty became a low level adventure for 5E D&D giving adventurers a chance to investigate strange goings on leading back to a small family farm. In this encounter unusual behavior spreads through a town to the misfortune of all.
What Do Your Unearthed Arcana Subclasses Say About Your 5E D&D Character? Part 3
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discuss Unearthed Arcana 2020, Subclasses Part 3. The latest playtest document for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons includes new subclasses for the artificer, druid and ranger. During our look through of this Unearthed Arcana it was the Circle of the Stars druid’s Starry Form feature that sparked a thought leading to uncovering the upcoming Mythic Odysseys of Theros book several days before the title leaked and was then officially announced. I wonder what the next leak will reveal? Until then, while Dave and Ted go over the Armorer, Circle of the Stars and Fey Wanderer in the video, over here we’ll continue looking at these 5E D&D playtest subclasses with curiosity about what sort of characters they might represent. So let’s get into it.
5E D&D Quarterstaff Not So Simple After All
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted examine what it means to fight with a quarterstaff in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Our theorycrafting videos like this one differ from our Character Build Guides in terms of specifics. We’ve been talking about roleplaying games with our friends for decades and turning on the camera invites other nerds into the conversation without tying down ideas to technical details. This video topic emerged while we were talking about the shillelagh spell and expanded into quarterstaves including wielding one in each hand or a quarterstaff in one hand and a longsword in the other like Gandalf is seen doing in the Lord of the Rings films.
Two New 5E D&D Feats for Grung
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted hop into One Grung Above to examine the grung as a playable race for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. D&D players from all over (myself included) fell in love with these small humanoid frogs who made their 5E D&D debut in Volo’s Guide to Monsters. Despite their monster entry showing grung as neutral evil slavers, the accompanying art portrays them as cute and the One Grung Above one shot from 2017’s Stream of Annihilation showcased how fun a party of grung adventurers can be. The stats and features for grung player characters have been around for a couple of years through the Dungeon Master’s Guild and were recently added to D&D Beyond to the delight of an army of grung aficionados, with all monies Wizards of the Coast would receive from sales of the product donated to Extra Life. But all that is only prologue to what I’m interested in exploring — creating some special grung feats for 5E D&D characters. So let’s get into it.
Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Illusion Spells by a Factor of Three
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted dive into the School of Illusion magic for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. More than any other school of magic, illusions in 5E D&D rely heavily on the Dungeon Master. There are 33 illusion spells across the official sources of 5E D&D and of course countless homebrew and third party creations. Browsing through the homebrew illusion spells at D&D Beyond I see there’s currently 1,433 of them! If we limit these lists to illusion spells for wizards we only lose 1 official spell (silence) but a whole bunch of homebrew ones, bringing the number down to 904. Since the nature of illusions in 5E D&D depends largely on how the DM reacts to them, it’s up to you and your group to determine how much versatility and power (or lack thereof) illusion magic holds. So let’s instead look at the homebrew illusion spells for wizards at D&D Beyond the way we looked at homebrew magic items for rogues and see what mystifying magic we discover.
Top 10 of All Time
Just like at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel with its thousands of videos celebrating tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, here on the website we’ve got thousands of posts too. Since 2014 we’ve been writing and posting new content here many times each week and this post marks the 2,064th publication. Since we constantly strive to improve our craft and recognize what readers, viewers and fans want we took a look at all the published posts to try and glean some useful info. The results track with what we already knew to some extent but with much sharper image came into view that’ll help us create more of the kind of content people enjoy. All this aside we thought it would be fun to share the Top 10 Most Popular Posts of All Time from Nerdarchy the Website. So let’s get into it.
Speculating on Mythic Odysseys of Theros for 5E D&D
During our weekly meeting this afternoon we worked on planning videos, including one discussing the most recent Unearthed Arcana 2020 — Subclasses, Part 3. While looking over the playtest material the most intriguing one for me is the Circle of the Stars for druids. One of the subclasses features in particular, Starry Form, caught my attention before I even got to the part with any game mechanics.
“While in your starry form, you retain your game statistics, but your body takes on a luminous, starlike quality; your joints glimmer like stars, and glowing lines connect them as on a star chart.”
This vivid description immediately conjured images from Magic: the Gathering Arena, the online version of the incredibly popular card game. The newest set, Theros Beyond Death highlights the Constellation keyword and there’s a strong starry element featured in artwork and graphics from the set. That’s when it struck me — maybe we’ll see these and other Unearthed Arcana content in an official fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons book inspired by Magic: the Gathering. And after a little bit of digging around I believe that’s definitely the case.
Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Magic Items for Rogues by a Factor of Three
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted carefully consider the best magic items for a rogue in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. In some respects this is an unusual conversation topic. Characters rarely get an opportunity to choose magic items. But it’s worthwhile to have goals and keep an eye out for particular magic items during the course of adventures. There’s two other situations I can think of when players have control over their characters’ magic items. In Adventurers League play items can be traded on a one-for-one basis for items with the same rarity. Making a trade costs each player involved 15 downtime days unless they’re playing at the same table. The other scenario is games beginning beyond 1st level. In our own monthly fan one shots we give players an option to choose magic item(s) for their characters this way, and I’ve played in many games with the same guidelines. Protip: for a tier 1 adventure or campaign try letting players choose one rare magic item to start and see what happens. For now, I had so much fun looking through homebrew Otherworldly Patrons on D&D Beyond that I’m going to do the same thing here and see what interesting magic items I can find for 5E D&D rogues.
Learning the Secret History of Merfolk
As promised in The Secret History of Giants I’m following up with The Secret History of Mermaids and Creatures of the Deep, by Ari Berk. Along with The Secret History of Hobgoblins this series’ compelling cover art and design caught my attention and as a folklore and kitschy monster stuff fan I ordered them. Along with being enjoyable reads these interactive children’s mythology books are filled with fun ideas for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Let’s dive into The Secret History of Mermaids and Creatures of the Deep bring some fresh ideas to the surface for our 5E D&D games.
Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Warlock Otherworldly Patrons by a Factor of Three
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted get back to basics and discuss the warlock class for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. In the video they look across all of the 5E D&D books with warlock content. There are warlock subclasses in the Player’s Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurers Guide and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Dave and Ted share an overview of the character class plus weigh in on their personal gaming experiences. Outside of official sources there are countless Otherworldly Patrons created by players all over the world. We’ve created quite a few ourselves in our products, newsletter and posts here on the website. There’s more from the D&D design team included in various Unearthed Arcana playtest documents, and lots of terrific third party products contain new options for warlock players. Over at Dungeon Master’s Guild there’s currently 840 products tagged as character options with warlock content too. But there is another source of homebrew content I’m looking at today — D&D Beyond, where people have used the homebrew tools there to create 755 Otherworldly Patrons for 5E D&D warlocks. Let’s get into it and take a closer look at some!
Wringing Special Abilities from the Find Familiar Spell in 5E D&D
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted help get you extra familiar with the find familiar spell for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Part of the video includes a breakdown and brief summary of a spellcaster’s different options for the spirit that takes an animal form you choose. The celestial, fey, or fiend can take the form of a bat, cat, crab, frog (toad), hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish (quipper), rat, raven, sea horse, spider, or weasel. Warlocks who make a Pact of the Chain at 3rd level gain a few more options in the form of imp, pseudodragons, quasit or sprite. Some monsters like the gazer in Volo’s Guide to Monsters explicitly call out possibility for becoming a familiar and in fact any character can potentially gain the service of a familiar. In our Out of the Box book, Fibble’s Fantastic Familiars presents an opportunity for characters to acquire new and strange familiars too. Familiars come in very handy in so many situations in 5E D&D, but if I’m honest there’s something I miss from earlier editions of the find familiar spell, which at one point wasn’t a spell at all and granted special abilities to its master when the master and familiar are within 1 mile of each other.
