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?
New 5E D&D Roguish Archetype — The Enforcer
Recently while talking, we at Nerdarchy realized fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons rogues just haven’t gotten as much love and attention from all of us as we would like, especially in the realm of homebrew content and subclasses. That’s a real shame too, because the rogue is one of the staple classes of the fantasy genre on the whole. As a class, I find it interesting that rogues are sort of disenfranchised. Even the definition for the word rogue implies someone who doesn’t travel the beaten path. Rogues are usually the tricksters, those who argue for pragmatism, usually devoid of morality and other such inconveniences. I’ve often wondered why there was never an enforcer rogue. We’re familiar with stories of criminals employing some muscle to intimidate their enemies. Why isn’t that a thing we can do in 5E D&D? Well, now we can… as an Enforcer Roguish Archetype.
Stealth 101 — 5E D&D 5E Skills and Skill Checks
Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons revolves around ability scores (physical and mental character traits) and how those scores apply to proficiencies (what you’re good at). Both are represented numerically, with modifiers to any number you roll on a d20 whenever you make a skill check. Ability checks are written like this: Ability (proficiency). For example, your Dungeon Master might call for a Dexterity (Stealth) check. The reason for this is Dexterity is the applicable ability score, while your Stealth proficiency allows you to further modify the skill check. Quick disclaimer: any 5E D&D DM can require or allow any ability check or skill proficiency check for any reason, even outside this purview. This article is meant as a guide for new players and DMs to explain how skill checks work and what they look like, narratively.
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!
Dragon Stew is the Perfect Recipe for Cooking in 5E D&D
I suppose you could say I’m a foodie. I love trying new cuisine and flavors. Helping my girlfriend, a national food publication editor, in the kitchen is a lot of fun and I frequently make cooking analogies to help explain lots of things. So when I saw an announcement for Dragon Stew: a 5th Edition Cooking Supplemental I started counting the days until the Kickstarter went live. No joke! You can check out the tweet for yourself. I wasn’t the only one looking forward to Dragon Stew with great anticipation either. The project funded in 45 minutes and it’s nearly 500% funded at the moment. Any time I see new content for 5E D&D with unusual twists like this I become very intrigued and with cooking and culinary skills taking the forefront in this project I am absolutely thrilled. So let’s get into it and see what Dragon Stew brings to the table when it comes to cooking in 5E D&D.
New Arcane Tradition Beardomancy was Only the Beginning
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted share a video inspired by Beardomancy from Chance’s D&D Spellbook. In the video within the video Chance creates an animated short and goes over a homebrew spell for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, the wizard cantrip beard whip from our Beardomancy product. Ted and I worked on the project together for our April Patreon rewards in 2019. We wanted to do something fun to celebrate April Fool’s Day and over the years no small number of people proposed we come up with some beard related content. Beardomancy grew from these sentiments. It got unruly at times but with proper care we tamed the tangle of content and came up with a new Arcane Tradition and school of magic and replete with magical lore and mundane enrichment for beardomancers ready to drop right into your game.
Turn Up the Heat in 5E D&D with a Go To Artificer Spell
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted continue the series on go to spells for spellcasters in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. This time they’re discussing the artificer, the first official new class for 5E D&D since the Player’s Handbook. In particular Dave and Ted take a closer look at tier 2 artificer spells. During this tier of play from 5th-10th level artificers gain access to 2nd and 3rd level spells. They also gain two Artificer Specialist features, Tool Expertise, Flash of Genius, an Ability Score Improvement and Magic Item Adept. It’s those two Artificer Specialist features I’ve got my arcane eye on and I’m curious if there’s any interesting interactions between 2nd-3rd level artificer spells and their specialties. So let’s get into it and see how much magical energy we can squeeze out of the 5E D&D artificer through their Artificer Specialist choices.
Play a Support Character Like a Healbot for 5E D&D
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube Channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discussed the idea of a healbot character for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. The term healbot comes from the world of Massively Multiplayer Online video games and refers to a character whose primary goal is monitoring the health of the party and keeping their hit points up. In 5E D&D or other tabletop roleplaying games this role doesn’t exist in quite the same way but essentially a support character who heals and buffs the party could be considered a healbot. Certainly characters and adventures in 5E D&D are much more immersed into the campaign setting and there’s more to adventuring that clicking buttons on cooldown. At the same time being the party healbot or support character can be immensely satisfying and rewarding in several ways. So let’s get into it.
5E D&D Character Build Guides — From Community to Creation to the Game Table
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted addressed a concern from the video audience community regarding character build guides for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. They share a great discussion on the motivation to create character build guides and character builds in general. These days we imagine and create characters for 5E D&D but building characters is a nerdy tradition throughout all the editions of the game. I certainly created far more 2E AD&D characters than I ever played, and we played a lot. Since we outline and research video discussions together as a team, I thought it would be fun to share how we arrive at our version of character build guides for 5E D&D. So let’s get into it.
Factotum for 5E D&D Far From an Absurd Character
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discuss a character concept shared by fellow YouTuber and player in my first and only live stream D&D campaign, Puffin Forest. In his D&D Story: A Most Abserd Character video, Ben (the talented animator behind Puffin Forest) shares the tale of Abserd, a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons character with one level is every character class. The video is hilarious of course, as Ben’s videos tend to be, and it has millions of views. In our video Dave and Ted talk about how to go about creating this sort of absurd character for 5E D&D and the implications — mechanically and narratively — of doing so in the first place. But for my money I’m reminded of one of my favorite character classes from D&D history and maybe this Abserd character isn’t so absurd?
Centaur Knights and Fantasy Cultures in 5E D&D
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted came up with ideas for a classic fantasy character concept, a centaur knight. The image of an half human, half horse warrior in shining armor captivated me since I was a little kid and after helping plan this video, watching it and putting the Character Build Guide together I’m thinking about how awesome this concept is all over again. This got me thinking how there’s not a whole lot of centaur action going on in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, at least not in my experience. Centaurs get a bump in Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica, there’s a centaur mummy in Tales from the Yawning Portal’s Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and the terrifically named Centaur of Attention encounter in Dragons of Icespire Peak. And that’s about it in beyond the Monster Manual entry. Never a better time like the present to take a closer look at centaurs and by extension fantasy cultures for our 5E D&D campaign settings.
Tier 2 Sorcerer Spells and Unearthed Arcana Metamagic in 5E D&D
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted shared their insights on the 5 best 3rd-5th level sorcerer spells in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. These are the spell levels a tier 2 sorcerer gains in 5E D&D. This popular series breaks down the spell access spellcasters gain in each tier of play. For sorcerers, Dave and Ted focus on the Metamagic options available to the class and how they affect spell choices. Since Wizards of the Coast recently shared a playtest document with new sorcerer Metamagic options, I thought it might be useful to take a look at Unearthed Arcana — Class Feature Variants and see if any of the new stuff there has an effect on this discussion. So let’s get into it.
What do 5E D&D Paladin Spells Say About the Class and Yes, There’s More than Just Divine Smite!
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discussed five essential spells for tier 1 paladins in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. This cover 1st level spells only. Since there’s only 16 of them total (Unearthed Arcana — Class Feature Variants doesn’t add any either) and I help plan the videos, what else do I have to say about it? In the video comments there’s several “what about <spell>?” My thoughts on these are same as any other time: what about them? We looked at the list and made our choices. My curiosity about tier one 5E D&D paladin spells isn’t so much determining the best or essential ones. Instead I’m wondering what do 1st level paladin spells tell us about the character class, particularly from 1st-4th level?
Unearthed Arcana — Class Feature Variants Impact on 5E D&D
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted took a long look at the most recent Unearthed Arcana — Class Feature Variants. There’s a ton to unpack in the 13 page playtest document. For me these class feature enhancements and replacements illustrate more of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons original design intent of modular content for our games than the actual core rulebooks. Sure, there’s feats and multiclassing and stuff, but I’ve been playing 5E D&D since the D&D Next days and I’ve only met one person for who really considers those optional and not included in their games. Even the Uncommon Races (dragonborn, gnome, half-elf, half-orc and tiefling in the Player’s Handbook) allude to them as optional, and in practice they’re essentially ubiquitous. Two concerns come to mind as regards Unearthed Arcana — Class Feature Variants. And since Dave and Ted break down what these variant options are, let’s get into what they might mean.
