Two New 5E D&D Feats for Grung
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted hop into One Grung Above to examine the grung as a playable race for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. D&D players from all over (myself included) fell in love with these small humanoid frogs who made their 5E D&D debut in Volo’s Guide to Monsters. Despite their monster entry showing grung as neutral evil slavers, the accompanying art portrays them as cute and the One Grung Above one shot from 2017’s Stream of Annihilation showcased how fun a party of grung adventurers can be. The stats and features for grung player characters have been around for a couple of years through the Dungeon Master’s Guild and were recently added to D&D Beyond to the delight of an army of grung aficionados, with all monies Wizards of the Coast would receive from sales of the product donated to Extra Life. But all that is only prologue to what I’m interested in exploring — creating some special grung feats for 5E D&D characters. So let’s get into it.
Hooked on Adventure — Fat of the Land
Hello! We are introducing a new series here on the website. In Hooked on Adventure we’ll take inspiration from our 3D printed terrain and miniatures to create encounters for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons you can drop right into your game. In Cultivating Chaos we turned the Rural Chicken Coop into an engaging low level adventure for 5E D&D pitting adventurers against demonic forces to save a family farm. In this encounter strange disappearances and transformations lead back to a small farm with a dark history. To enhance the encounter we used Dungeonfog, an online map maker and authoring tool designed for Game Masters, to create a map image for the Rural Chicken Coop. Check out Dungeonfog and use the promo code NERDARCHY to get 10% discount on your first annual and annual-CL (Commercial-License) order here.
Survival 101 — 5E D&D 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 Wisdom (Survival) check. The reason for this is Wisdom is the applicable ability score, while your Survival 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. We’re hitting the outdoors today and hopefully we live through it. I’m not just being cheeky because I have allergies — today’s topic is Survival!
Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Illusion Spells by a Factor of Three
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted dive into the School of Illusion magic for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. More than any other school of magic, illusions in 5E D&D rely heavily on the Dungeon Master. There are 33 illusion spells across the official sources of 5E D&D and of course countless homebrew and third party creations. Browsing through the homebrew illusion spells at D&D Beyond I see there’s currently 1,433 of them! If we limit these lists to illusion spells for wizards we only lose 1 official spell (silence) but a whole bunch of homebrew ones, bringing the number down to 904. Since the nature of illusions in 5E D&D depends largely on how the DM reacts to them, it’s up to you and your group to determine how much versatility and power (or lack thereof) illusion magic holds. So let’s instead look at the homebrew illusion spells for wizards at D&D Beyond the way we looked at homebrew magic items for rogues and see what mystifying magic we discover.
D&D Ideas — Tropes
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. This week’s topic is tropes, 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 last days for Out of the Box: Encounters for Fifth Edition Pledge Manager are nigh! We’re in the final push before sending everything off to the printing press. We just received a huge number of gorgeous illustrations from Kim Van Deun and evocative maps from Darryl T. Jones, and we gave the text an additional level of editing from Matt Click. Speaking of tropes, in Girl with the Dragon SNAFU adventurers might meet in a tavern but it’s anything but just another night at the bar! Check out the Pledge Manager here.
Tip the Scales with Hero Forge Serpentfolk and Nagas in 5E D&D
Snakes get a bad rap in our world. As a kid I recall people always being afraid of snakes with numerous claims about them being slimy, creepy and scary. The fact they have no legs and feet, in a way, makes them alien to most other things people interact with. When you add into the mix most snakes either crush their prey while it is alive or poison it to death or so it is comatose for consumption makes for a creature that can live up to part of its reputation. But worry not, snakes and not slimy. Their scales are smooth and like many reptiles fairly cool to the touch. My son is getting a snake for a pet as soon as the kind he wants is available from a local dealer. Not to get too deep on it, he is getting an egg eating snake from Africa so he does not make his sister upset by feeding mice to a snake. She just got mice as pets for Christmas. With snakes on the brain I was very excited to see Hero Forge release two snakelike options during their Treasure Tuesdays in February — serpentfolk and nagas.
Hooked on Adventure — Cultivating Chaos
Hello! We are introducing a new series here on the website. Nerdarchist Ted takes inspiration from our 3D printed terrain and miniatures to create encounters for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons you can drop right into your game. For his first foray into this territory Ted takes a closer look at our Rural Chicken Coop and designs a fun low level 5E D&D encounter. It’s not uncommon for starting adventurers to take on work clearing out giant spiders or rescuing kidnapped townsfolk from goblins. For this encounter Ted spices things up with Abyssal forces terrorizing a rural homestead and sowing chaos. To enhance the encounter we used Dungeonfog, an online map maker and authoring tool designed for Game Masters, to create a map image for the Rural Chicken Coop. Check out Dungeonfog and use the promo code NERDARCHY to get 10% discount on your first annual and annual-CL (Commercial-License) order here.
RPG Crate Holds the Recipe for Adventure for 5E D&D
If you know anything about RPG Crate you might already be aware of their wondrous Recipe for Adventure cards. If you have watched the monthly RPG Crate game I have run for a while over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel you may have heard me talk about them. Recipe for Adventure cards are fun index cards that allow you to take your fantasy roleplaying game to a whole new level.
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.
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.
WizKids Miniatures Bring Eberron: Rising from the Last War to Life
Eberron is an amazing world and campaign setting for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, with many outstanding areas to play in and explore. Today I want to share something about heroes, monsters and other creatures of the world and representing them on the tabletop with D&D Icons of the Realms: Eberron: Rising From The Last War from WizKids. WizKids has been creating fantastic miniatures for a very long time. I have been a fan from the beginning. With Eberron hosting a number of miniatures that typically fall outside of the typical realm of what normal fantasy roleplaying games get into, we get a number of miniatures in the Eberron: Rising From the Last War set likely to be unique to our collection.
Speculating on Mythic Odysseys of Theros for 5E D&D
During our weekly meeting this afternoon we worked on planning videos, including one discussing the most recent Unearthed Arcana 2020 — Subclasses, Part 3. While looking over the playtest material the most intriguing one for me is the Circle of the Stars for druids. One of the subclasses features in particular, Starry Form, caught my attention before I even got to the part with any game mechanics.
“While in your starry form, you retain your game statistics, but your body takes on a luminous, starlike quality; your joints glimmer like stars, and glowing lines connect them as on a star chart.”
This vivid description immediately conjured images from Magic: the Gathering Arena, the online version of the incredibly popular card game. The newest set, Theros Beyond Death highlights the Constellation keyword and there’s a strong starry element featured in artwork and graphics from the set. That’s when it struck me — maybe we’ll see these and other Unearthed Arcana content in an official fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons book inspired by Magic: the Gathering. And after a little bit of digging around I believe that’s definitely the case.
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.
Wringing More from Halaster’s Tumultuous Templates and Mighty Conjurations for 5E D&D
Wow, D&D Spell Effects: Halaster’s Tumultuous Templates and D&D Icons of the Realms: Spell Effects: Mighty Conjurations are a mouthfuls for sure. If you are like me than you really dig using battle mats, miniatures terrain and effects to get more visual with your fifth edition Dungeon & Dragons or other roleplaying games. So I want to tell you about these two wonderful sets from WizKids. Halaster’s Tumultuous Templates and Spell Effects: Mighty Conjurations both allow you to add these lasting effects at your table so players and Dungeon Masters alike will have no question where any effects are, ending any potential dispute.
Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Magic Items for Rogues by a Factor of Three
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted carefully consider the best magic items for a rogue in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. In some respects this is an unusual conversation topic. Characters rarely get an opportunity to choose magic items. But it’s worthwhile to have goals and keep an eye out for particular magic items during the course of adventures. There’s two other situations I can think of when players have control over their characters’ magic items. In Adventurers League play items can be traded on a one-for-one basis for items with the same rarity. Making a trade costs each player involved 15 downtime days unless they’re playing at the same table. The other scenario is games beginning beyond 1st level. In our own monthly fan one shots we give players an option to choose magic item(s) for their characters this way, and I’ve played in many games with the same guidelines. Protip: for a tier 1 adventure or campaign try letting players choose one rare magic item to start and see what happens. For now, I had so much fun looking through homebrew Otherworldly Patrons on D&D Beyond that I’m going to do the same thing here and see what interesting magic items I can find for 5E D&D rogues.
