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Author: Ted Adams

Nerdarchy > Articles posted by Ted Adams (Page 2)

Brains vs. Brawn when Faerie Dragons Square off With Ogres in D&D

Sometimes an idea hits you and you have to do something with it for fear of losing something interesting. Such an idea hit me like this and who better to share it with than all of you out there? I found a pair of D&D monsters that are as opposite as you can get but are on almost the same power level exactly as one can be. An ogre and a faerie dragon (older) are both a challenge ratting 2 monster, though I would have to say it would be a different fight going against one than the other.

Make NPCs Essential in Your D&D Games

In my games I have seen characters develop long lasting relationships with NPCs. Nerdarchist Dave’s dwarven wizard Uthen-Gar crafted a magic item as a gift for the elven librarian who initially looked down on him for being a dwarf. I felt it was a rich relationship built over years of game play. That same dwarven character found a wife, even though we did not play out a romance, and became wed before the campaign was over. While romance can happen we developed that dwarves often wed as political arrangements to strengthen the clan. It was not originally planned that way but that’s how it panned out and it was awesome! I have had non-player characters on my mind and I’m interested in exploring concepts surrounding them from both the Dungeon Master and player perspectives.

Feel the Fallout of All-Out Dragon War in D&D

With Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen on the horizon for D&D, I have dragons on the brain. I only read the first three books in the Dragonlance novel series. Sadly, I felt Raistlin was so over-hyped that the draw to read other books was greater to me than to continue. But as awesome as Dragonlance is this is not the focus of today’s musings. Instead I want to explore more broadly the concept of using a war of dragons as a backdrop for a campaign.

Conflict Constructs is the Battle Bots of D&D

I keep looking for way to add more magic and more non-standard fantasy into my D&D games. I feel the way the game is going is to keep increasing the magic in the world and I am on board for this. We have the normalization of the construct-like race in the warforged (and now true construct with the autognome). Baldur’s Gate: Decent into Avernus gave us magical hell vehicles usable by individuals or the whole party. Nerdarchist Dave even began a campaign with some minor conversions to use them in a post apocalyptic setting. I am sure there are other examples as well if you look at other third party stuff. But why stop there?

Explore the Darkest Shadows of D&D at Your Peril

The other day I was lying in bed before falling asleep and an idea jumped into my brain. It is a weird concept but nothing groundbreaking — a dark elf riding a displacer beast. If you know me you know displacer beasts are my favorite D&D monster, so much so I think it will be my next tattoo. My imagination cascaded from there. I I jumped from a dark elf on a displacer beast to what can I do with shadows? Focusing on the “dark” in dark elf lead me to think about shadow powers, which lead to the shadow monster and the terror they can elicit.

Creatures and Characters in Your 5E D&D Games Need More Limbs!

I love when something really stands out in a fantasy world. When you watch the Avatar movie your eyes can go wild seeing all the glorious plants and animals distinct to the world of Pandora. I feel such details and features makes a setting more real. In a typical Dungeons & Dragons plenty of creatures possessed of loads of limbs or extra limbs might make you question why this came to be. The behir seems to be lizard like but has legs like a centipede for example. This distinction makes a creature a little more unique in a world of strange and interesting creatures.

Add Sci-Fi Elements to Your 5E D&D Games

The more I see artificers in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons the more I feel it is possible to add a lot of extra elements to my games. For years Eberron has shown us mixing fantasy and science fiction can be a lot of fun. Magic trains and fantasy sentient robots easily mix into our 5E D&D games and offer us some new options for games and stories. I have lots of new thoughts and ideas not typically explored as fantasy quests. I want to share some of those with you.

Make Your 5E D&D Magic and Magic Items More Mysterious

It is not unheard of to hear me talking about fifth edition being my favorite of all the editions of Dungeons & Dragons but in some cases I think they got it wrong. One of these examples is the ability to know the properties of magic items simply by spending a short rest or one hour essentially communing with said object. This means the character who dumped Intelligence and Wisdom and has no proficiency in History, Arcana, Investigation or heck, maybe even Nature can tell you exactly what an incredibly powerful magic item is after spending only 60 minutes considering the object.

Defend the Forests of Your 5E D&D World with a Radiant Treant

A while back I wrote about Treants. These glorious creatures exist in the realms of Dungeons & Dragons but why do we not have a variety of options such noble creatures. Other creature types have martial versions and spellcaster options and ones with extraordinary abilities. Sure, it is easy to combine some monsters together but not everyone is ready to do this. For those folks and any Dungeon Masters interested in more treant variety I am making my first treant for fifth edition D&D.

Play Your 5E D&D Dragons with Big Brain Energy

Dragons are immortal creatures who grow in power and size but it is not only their physical stats reaching immense proportions. Mentally dragons are one of the most intelligent creatures in the realms. As a 5E D&D Dungeon Master it can feel a little intimidating to run dragons whose intellect is much more vast than our own. Even DMs with genius level IQs are still not up to par with the intellect of elder dragons.

Run Your D&D Encounters with a Battle Pack

There are all sorts of ways to run encounters in D&D. Whether you are using hazards, lair actions, legendary actions or just monsters there is a lot to keep track of during an encounter. Today I’m exploring going one for one with the party. Typically a good group of adventurers comprises a warrior, a sneaky character, a healer and some kind of damage dealing spellcaster. In the years I have been playing very rarely do I see combats being pitted against such an encounter unless we are in direct opposition of another adventuring party.

Adding Magic Schools into Your Fantasy World

There has been a recent rush of ideas talking about schools teaching magic in relation to fantasy gaming. As a gamer who has been playing for decades this does seem like an alien concept to me. Before you get all up in arms about it I am not opposed to the concept. It just seems rather odd to collect a group, possibly a large number, of untrained magical practitioners and keep them all in a confined space.

5E D&D time Out of the Box

Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Backgrounds by a Factor of Three

I know, it’s crazy. Nerditor Doug wrote so many of these but now I’ve taken over, at least for this one. Backgrounds in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons have so many criteria so we get to see how they all stack up. But like usual we are going to look at the backgrounds and evaluate them three different ways and see which of these fan created backgrounds you want to add to your 5E D&D game.