A Group of Rangers is Called a Lodge
Salutations nerds! Today we’re going to be talking about rangers in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Now I don’t know about you but I’ve heard them taking a lot of grief lately for being one of the objectively less powerful classes in 5E D&D, but that wasn’t always the case. I’ve also heard rangers attacked for having less of a class identity as some of the others out there, but I don’t feel like that’s true at all. So let’s delve into the woods. Let’s do some tracking and nature stuff. Let’s walk a couple of miles without it being difficult terrain and see how far out this ranger stuff goes.
Gamer Community and Group Identity
Group identity is important to tabletop roleplaying games. Heck, it’s important to any group of people. We as gamers see ourselves as a community. Whether they admit it or not, people need community. “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human,” Aristotle wrote in Politics. The lone wolf is actually quite a rare phenomenon. Now, if you want I can go deep into scholarly literature about collective identity and start quoting research, but I won’t. After all, while I may be working toward my PhD, such academic stuff isn’t everyone’s cup of meat.
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!
Adventurers of Adventure Guild Wants You! Creating a Guild for 5E D&D, Step 1
I can’t tell you how many times our discussions about fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons around Nerdarchy HQ include talk of organizations. Character build guides, adventure hooks, character stories, Dungeon Master or player tips and a whole lot more often raise a point about creating some kind of group. There’s a multitude of benefits to coming up with this kind of content, not the least of which is providing context in a campaign setting. Organized groups of people tell players something about the world their characters exist within. Whatever cause or goal brings an organization together illustrates something important, at least to the members. Organizations represent a useful resource in a DM’s toolbox whether it’s one a player came up with as part of their character’s backstory or one already established in a campaign setting. In my 5E D&D games there’s an organization all players become familiar with from the start. New characters begin their careers as new recruits of Adventurers of Adventure, and they’re always looking for more.
D&D Ideas — Plants
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. This week’s topic is plants, which we discussed in our exclusive Patreon live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST with Patreon supporters and talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy, by signing up here. The Pledge Manager for Out of the Box: Encounters for Fifth Edition remains open, but not for much longer. Production on the book has been in full swing, with almost all the incredible art from Kim Van Deun and maps from Darryl T. Jones received. We’re giving everything an additional level of quality control to put our best foot forward when we deliver these products. Speaking of plants, in Menagerie a very powerful plant creates an unusual scenario within a deep forest glade that isn’t even close to what it looks like! Check out the Pledge Manager here.
A Group of Monks is Called a Fellowship
Salutations, nerds! Today we’re going to be talking about monks in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, and I have been waiting an eon for this because it comes with music. Okay, so those monks read more like clerics than actual monks in terms of the 5E D&D class, but humor me this once. It’s been stuck in my head for what feels like an age and if I have to suffer, so do all of you. Of course 5E D&D monks tend to feel more like the martial artists you would find in a Xiaolin temple than the shaven headed eastern kind who spent most of their time reading and writing while a lot of the rest of the populace didn’t know how to do that. We’re talking unarmed strikes, flurry of blows, catching arrows in midflight…monks are pretty awesome. In fact, I think that’s the adjective I’m going to use for them.
What Do Your Unearthed Arcana Subclasses Say About Your 5E D&D Character? Part 2
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted take a look at Unearthed Arcana 2020, Subclasses Part 2. The playtest document from the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons team presents new subclasses for bards, clerics and sorcerers. Once again we were in the midst of our weekly video planning meeting when a new Unearthed Arcana showed up via social media, but it turns out this was a leak! Someone took an educated guess at the URL for a follow up to Unearthed Arcana 2020, Subclasses Part 1 and they were right, sort of. There was a playtest document but it was not a version Wizards of the Coast planned to release. So Dave and Ted headed back to the set to film a new discussion about the College of Creation, Unity Domain and Clockwork Soul. And since we dig themed series of things around here, I’m curious what sort of characters represent these exciting new subclass options. So let’s get into it.
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.
Grognard’s Fifth
Your stalwart old lady grognard finished her first fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign last night! And my character survived!
First, a little backstory. A little more than a year ago, I read about Nerdarchy on Facebook and watched some of their videos. I learned they were right across the river in New Jersey! At the time, I hadn’t played (as a player) a D&D game in decades, and I’d never played 5E D&D. However, the popularity (it seemed everyone was playing it) and my desire to play D&D again caused me to reach out to the Nerdarchy guys. But how to make myself stand out from the thousands of emails, comments and fan mail they received each day? Hmmm. I know! I’ll rattle off my gaming resume! (TSR, GW, etc.) And they responded!
D&D Ideas — Media
Welcome once again to the Nerdarchy Newsletter. This week’s topic is media, which we discussed in the exclusive Patreon live chat we do every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST with Patreon supporters to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy, by signing up here.
Learning the Secret History of Giants
Browsing around Amazon recently I saw a recommendation for The Secret History of Giants, by Ari Berk. The compelling cover art and design caught my attention and I'm a sucker for folklore and kitschy monster stuff so I ordered a copy. Turns out the book...
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.
Mythology of a 5E D&D Dwarven Artificer Specialist
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted tinker with ideas for playing an artificer in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. A while back we did a video series about the best race to play each 5E D&D class and with the artificer being the only new official class since the Player’s Handbook we were compelled to add a new title to the series. The discussion on YouTube brought up some intriguing ideas and if I’m honest the artificer class itself didn’t really captivate me until I was watching the video. One of the races they mention for potential best artificer doesn’t make the final cut for them but for me it shot to the top of the list and remained there like mountain bedrock. At least for my own growing campaign setting the best artificers are dwarves.
A Group of Fighters is Called a Club
Salutations, nerds! Today we’re going to be talking about fighters in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons and honestly I feel like this is going to be the most difficult one because as far as all the 5E D&D classes go, I feel like fighters have the least cohesive class identity. So let’s see what we can coax out of this one. Fighters…fight things. And that’s pretty much the unifying feature. Some of them cast spells, some of them are just straight up masters of weaponry, some of them are ranged and some of them are melee. It’s not even a more interesting word than that, it’s just ‘fighters fight’ because that’s what they do. But there’s something to be said about simplistic melee, and something else entirely to be said for groups of fighters, especially when they’re trying to keep up with classes like wizards and rogues. There’s a trope, the badass normal, and that’s what I think of when I think of a straight up fighter. Someone who is just good because they’re good and not because of any magic or special trick they use. They keep up, and they keep up with people who should be way over their heads, and that alone is worth the effort.
