New Circle for Druid 5E D&D — Worshipping the Froghemoth
Nerdarchy recently partnered with Pacesetter Games & Simulations as well as Vallejo Paints. Use the promo code staynerdy15 for a 15 percent discount on their products. We’ve taken this partnership and built some and cool content for 5E D&D. We kicked things off with Horris the Horned Lord. Most recently we moved on to Abalor the Abhorrent and a dark druid 5E Circle — the Circle from the Beyond. Abalor is based off of the froghemoth model from Pacesetter. It’s a great looking model. You can see it below as painted by Jake Kosman using Vallejo Paints. The froghemoth D&D monster was reintroduced into 5E D&D in Volo’s Guide to Monsters. Part of the awesome Nerdarchy, Pacesetter, and Vallejo team-up is a contest to win a froghemoth both painted, unpainted, and the paints to paint your very own froghemoth miniature. There’s a bunch of ways to enter the contest to win the minis and paints. Check it out here.
D&D Villains: The Charming Monster
Salutations, nerds! I’m back, and ready to hop back into some villainous discussion, and today we are going to be talking about the charming monster. I’m talking about the succubus who smiles even as you know she’d flay you alive if you let your guard down. The nobleman with the winning smile who pays the party with one hand while he’s bribing a pirate mercenary to shake you down for the artifact you refused to sell him with the other. The comely vampire with a high body count. These are the villains who try to charm their way out of trouble. The ones who might try (and sometimes succeed) in seducing party members— often to horrifying results. There is no disgusting description to go with this monster, I’m afraid, they simply are a picture of beauty and grace and are made monstrous
Monstrous Humanoids in 5E D&D
Over the years Dungeons & Dragons has offered many different races for players to choose from. I know that some Dungeon Masters are very much against anything that does not look normal. Let’s forget the dragonborn and tielfing and play with humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes and halflings. With those races there are plenty of options even without all the subrace choices. But if you are like me you enjoy all the choices and you want to play the things that are bizarre and interesting. If you happen to look around this site you will see many different monstrous humanoids I statted out for 5E D&D and even made up some of my own, so feel free to poke around. I’ve had a fondness for monstrous humanoid races from the beginning of my roleplaying days. The Complete Book of Humanoids was always my favorite, with races like the wemic, the ogre mage and of course the dino people — saurials. I used this book over and over again playing second edition AD&D. And now Deck of Many has an free PDF designed for anyone who enjoys anthropomorphic characters for 5E D&D.
5E D&D Monsters Become BFFs and Adventurers Pay the Price
One of my favorite things about Dungeons & Dragons is the monsters. There’s so many incredible creatures throughout the history of D&D! My go-to method for creating adventures in my own games is starting with a monster and developing ideas from there. It’s no surprise the Monster BFF series from Nerdarchy the YouTube channel ranks high on my list of likes. In this series the crew takes two or three 5E D&D monsters, puts them together and discovers what sort of encounter emerges. I’ve had the privilege of sitting in on two planning sessions for these videos and contributing ideas. The first one got me hooked enough to work on an adventure based around the monster pairing. And the second one, in the video below, I helped turn into Nerdarchy’s first Monster BFF product over on the Dungeon Master’s Guild. The Roper Wrangler’s got ropers (duh), it’s got fomorians, it’s got faerzress, it’s got an Underdark location — basically it’s got deadly peril for adventurers who stumble across this encounter. Because sometimes a creature’s gotta hit a creature with another creature.
Big Monsters Have More to Love for Exciting D&D Encounters
Part Dungeon Master creativity, part player buy-in, exciting D&D encounters with big monsters in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons have a lot of moving parts to consider. Whether a low level party needs to deal with an awakened tree situation, or a group of characters at the pinnacle of their adventuring careers take on the tarrasque — or Tiamat herself — there’s more to consider than hit points and armor class. Adventuring ain’t easy, and anything from a pack of goblin bandits all the way up to Acererak itself are dangerous foes. But when huge and gangantuan sized D&D creatures squares off against the party, the threat escalates by orders of magnitude. A clever DM looks beyond the stat block, and collaborates with the players to create an immersive and memorable experience.
D&D Villains: Sympathy for the Devil
Salutations, nerds! Today, I’m going to talk about villains again, and this time we’ll be discussing sympathetic villains in your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games. I’m talking about the wizard whose been vivisecting people trying to come up with a cure for his wife’s ailment and save her life. I’m talking about the planar being who has cut a swathe of chaos across the land trying to get home. I’m talking about the blackguard who was betrayed by his people and had his heart stained in darkness. These are the D&D villains you almost want to fix. The ones who tug your heartstrings and make you hesitate to kick their butt. These are the Mr. Freezes, the Princess Lunas, and the Magnetos of your D&D campaign.
D&D Villains: The Enemy With the Inhuman Face
Salutations, nerds! I want to talk a little bit more about designing and running the bad guys in your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons game. Specifically, I want to talk about the kinds of bad guys that cannot be reasoned with. Dark creatures that could never be mistaken for “human.” I’m talking dark gods. I’m talking the tarrasque. I’m talking the massive thing on the horizon that just swallowed the cathedral and made the party feel so small in Session One in a single bite, yes. I’m also talking about smaller demons. I’m talking about the insectoid creature that keeps hollowing out people’s bodies and using their meat puppets to its own ends. These are the inhuman monsters so alien there is no connecting with them and the only chance you have is running them through before they do more damage. If you even can. If you’re even sure where to hit it.
Legendary Dragons Kickstarter from Jetpack 7 Takes Flight
Coming on the heels of their most recent Kickstarter Masters and Minions, the Jetpack 7 team is right back at it with a brand new project. Legendary Dragons: A 5th Edition Supplement puts all the focus squarely on the most iconic creature in all of fantasy — dragons! All the majesty, terror and epic peril of a dragon confrontation will claim its rightful place as the most extraordinary encounter a D&D adventurer can face. Legendary Dragons: A 5th Edition Supplement for the world’s greatest roleplaying game is live right now, so go check it out and help dragons become the feared, world-shaking menaces they are meant to be.
Cover-to-Cover Awesome Inside Creature Codex from Kobold Press
Kobold Press, you did it again. By now, backers for the Creature Codex have the publishers’ follow-up to the much-loved Tome of Beasts in their hands, and what a follow-up it is! Over 400 5E-compatible new monsters lurk within, ready to burst from the pages and inspire your own fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventures and campaigns. Designed by an impressive host of designers including Kobold-in-chief Wolfgang Baur along with personal favorite Dan Dillon joined by a warren of others — plus creatures commissioned by monster patrons — Creature Codex has a lot to love. And with art direction and design by KP mainstay Marc Radle guiding a team of incredible artists like frequent collaborators Bryan Syme and Marcel Mercado along with a whole bunch of others, discovering each page of this massive tome is a visual joy. So let’s get to it.
The Dungeons and the Dragons of Dungeons & Dragons: Green Dragon Lairs
There are many concepts and values I find important to playing Dungeons & Dragons. This may shock you, but two things high on that list are dungeons and dragons. I like taking the dragons listed in the Monster Manual (and even beyond) and creating their D&D dragon lairs, sprawling dungeons with varying levels of complexity. This segment we’ll head back to the Monster Manual proper and take a look at the green dragon. What makes this dragon so unique and it’s lair deadly in it’s own right? Let’s explore introducing a dragon and green dragon lairs, together.
Make Combat More Interesting with Monster Abilities for D&D Creatures and NPCs
Hey nerds! I’ve been playing Diablo 3 recently and that has inspired me to create about a dozen new special monster abilities to add your D&D creatures and NPCs in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. These abilities are designed to make combat more interesting and probably harder. I have not done any playtesting of these, so feel free to send me a message on Twitter with your thoughts.
Quick and Easy D&D Adventures Redux
Hello! The following post originally appeared on my own site The Long Shot. At the time, I’d gotten back into tabletop gaming a few months earlier after a long time away, first through D&D Adventurers League when I lived in Austin, Texas. That’s when I first discovered Nerdarchy, which inspired me to start running fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games when I got back home to Cleveland, Ohio. These days I’m all in here as nerditor-in-chief, but I got an alert that traffic was booming over on The Long Shot because of this post on creating quick and easy D&D adventures. I thought it would be fun to revisit the topic, with commentary on how my perspective might have changed on creating great adventures, and share it here with y’all. And there’s a TL;DR at the bottom to help make quick and easy D&D adventures even quicker and easier.
WizKids Miniatures Review – D&D Icons of the Realms – Monster Menagerie 3
I know everyone who collects or uses miniatures on their gaming table buys them in different ways. If you are a casual user or player you might buy a few things here or there. I have done a couple of articles so far where I bought the booster brick, which comes with 8 boxes, of minis. I feel this is a good method to really see what the set is all about and gauge what the split is going to be much easier than if you buy a single box every so often. But that is my strategy. Please feel free to do as you like. Today I wanted to talk to you about D&D Icons of the Realms: Monster Menagerie 3, a series of WizKids miniatures for use with Dungeons & Dragons or any tabletop roleplaying game. This set was released in March 2018 and I have bought some previously but recently I got a booster brick to really get into the heart of it. You can take a look at the full gallery of miniatures in the set over here.
WizKids Miniatures Review — Pathfinder Battles — Jungle of Despair
Hello again. I sometimes feel most of the articles I write seem to be reviewing products but I am certain I do more than that. Today however, as I am certain you can see from the title, it is another review. This time I am diving into the Pathfinder Battles series of WizKids miniatures and looking at Jungle of Despair. It is a great set and you can see the full set listed here.
The Art and Science of D&D Encounter Building
The question recently came up at Nerdarchy whether the fifth edition D&D encounter building system is art or science with regard to the experience point guidelines set out in the Creating Encounters section of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I am in the camp that says it is both art and science.
