5E D&D How to Pick your Character Class
Dungeons and Dragons Character Creation can be an agonizing decision for any nerdy ass gamer like myself. Whether it’s your first D&D Character or your 1,000,000th D&D Character these can be tough decisions. So how is gamer to decide?
Let’s start off by asking ourselves some questions before jumping into Dungeons and Dragons character creation process?
- Do we want to base our D&D character on Story Elements or Mechanical Elements?
- What role do want to fill Warrior, Spell Caster, or Skilled character?
We can further break things down mechanically by narrowing down your choices. There is also modeling the mechanics to the story elements you are interested in.
Dungeon in a Box Unboxing — August 2018
There are several subscription crate services out there that cater to us the gamer. The lovely folks over at Dungeon in a Box decided to send me a copy of what they do so I can share my unboxing with all of you who like these type of things. This being my first adventure into Dungeon in a Box I am not as familiar with them as I am with other monthly subscription boxes. If my information is correct Dungeon In a Box is supposed to offer everything you need to run the adventure within. So you open the box and you are prepared to play some games.
Methods of Choosing Your 5E D&D Character Race
Based on the placement in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, choosing your character’s race is a top priority in character creation, second only to generating ability scores. The chapter begins by illustrating the diversity within the D&D multiverse, describing exotic places from the Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms to Sigil in the Planescape campaign setting and the myriad races living in those places. Only after painting the picture in your mind of fantasy races like dragonborn, tieflings, gnomes and dark elves — “people of varying size, shape, and color, dressed in a dazzling spectrum of styles and hues” — does the PHB mention humans. That’s pretty significant. So if choosing your character’s race in D&D is so important, how do you make such an impactful decision?
Dungeon Crate Unboxing — August 2018
Hello happy gamers. It is that time for another unboxing of a Dungeon Crate subscription box. Dungeon Crate is an awesome gamer crate designed to get you awesome adventures, swag and gaming accessories to use at your gaming table delivered to your door every month. I personally have received every crate — and even helped curate one — since the first box has gone out. Each Dungeon Crate typically features 5 to 7 items to use at your gaming table.
Dungeons & Dragons — Your Fun is Wrong?
As fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons YouTubers we get the question of whether content is official pretty often. Honestly the only time it really matters is when you are playing organized play like Adventurers League. Anything else really is homebrew Dungeons & Dragons even if you are playing prewritten D&D 5E adventures set in an official D&D campaign setting.
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.
Warforged Druid 5E D&D Character Build
Nerdarchy has been doing 5E D&D character builds on YouTube for over four years now for the Nerdarchy and Dungeons & Dragons community. We have made 5e D&D character builds of super heroes, sci-fi heroes, and characters from novels. Sometimes we make optimized builds. Other times we make what we call our unorthodox character builds. Recently we started a new 5E D&D character build series — our Adventurers League Legal series. It started with a request to make a paladin/College of Whispers bard multiclass. We followed that up with our zen archer build. Then we took another request for a Gloom Stalker ranger/Assassin rogue build. The most recent one we created was a warforged druid 5E character build.
RPG Crate Unboxing — August 2018 This Begins Season 3
Hello fellow adventurer. It is time for another unboxing and we are diving into RPG Crate subscription box. August 2018 marks the third year of RPG Crate and all the exciting things that means. This is box No. 25 and I have most of them. My gaming shelf and T-shirt collection are all the more powerful for it.
Making a Memorable NPC for Dungeons & Dragons
We’ve all watched Critical Role, it’s a great show. Matt Mercer does an exceptional job of creating memorable characters far too numerous to recount. I talked a bit in another article about how to place spells on an nonplayer chracter wizard depending on their roles but let’s talk about NPCs in general. NPCs are a staple of every roleplaying game. From Dungeons & Dragons to GURPS, to Star Wars. Not every NPC should be a boss. If you build every NPC as a boss, the players will try and kill it every time. There is the old D&D adage if you don’t stat it they can’t kill it. This is a true statement, but they’ll still try, then they just sulk building new characters. Personally, I prefer to stat out NPCs, so I can get a better idea of what they’re capable of. If you want to make a dwarven forge master, great. How did he learn his trade, where did he come from? Is he gifted? There are all kinds of things to consider. We’re going to look at some options today about how to make NPCs a little more memorable and how to fit them into you story.
Critical Successes and Critical Failures from 1 to 20 in D&D
The critical hit is a staple of fifth edition Dungeon & Dragons and is integrated into the game’s mechanics. Critical hits and critical misses have a long history in D&D, and in roleplaying games in general. Many games have had critical miss or critical failure mechanics baked into the rules, but 5E D&D does not. Nonetheless, many gamers who are used to the concept of critical failures like to insert this concept into the game. The results are mixed, and many considerations should be made by a group before making any decisions about tweaking these rules.
Villains: The Hierarchy of Heinousness
Salutations, nerds! I’ve been on a bad guy kick recently and because of that I want to talk about D&D villains and how to use them. This is going to be broad strokes — a top down look at how bad guys can interlock to make a Dungeons & Dragons campaign feel more connected. I’ll get back to this topic again soon and get into some more specifics.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Highlights the Serious Business of Adventure
The newest adventure for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons takes players to a familiar city for some, Waterdeep, and puts them at the center of a dramatic heist involving 500,000 gold pieces. Offering Nerditor Doug a break from running our home group, I offered to run this one as Dungeon Master and share my first impressions of the book. What follows are my thoughts after my initial read through of the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure as well as some ideas from my own game prep notes I’ll be using during our sessions.
D&D Dungeon Design: How big is too big?
It’s right in the name of the game Dungeons & Dragons. For decades we’ve all sat there with our graph paper or loose leaf and sketched out maps for terrifying dungeons. Some dungeons now even have a place in the game history like Tomb of Horrors. Over time dungeons have even evolved to a thing called the megadungeon, much like Rappan Athuk from Frog God Games or Undermountain as featured in the upcoming Dungeon of the Mad Mage. These super dungeons are huge and go on for days, with shortcuts through out just to get back to the surface occasionally. These aren’t designed for your typical “Go in, kill the goblins, loot and run out” adventures. The big question for dungeon design now is, how big is too big? You don’t want the party to say they’re done part way through, and you don’t want to be designing it and toss the map aside in exhaustion. Let’s look at some things that should help you mentally with dungeon design and how it relates to your story.
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.
Handling D&D Treasure Troubles: Tips for Counting Coppers
Salutations, nerds! Today we’re going to talk about party funds and how to manage your gold flow in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Hilarious that I’m the one talking about this one, right? If you have a Dungeon Master who doesn’t like to dole out a ton of treasure, or if you’re playing the early levels, here are some tips and tricks for making your gold pieces go farther and streamlining treasure distribution at the table.
