D&D Ideas — Myths and Mythology
Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is myth and mythology, 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. Characters can become part of an ancient myth themselves in Standing Warning, one of the 55 encounters from Out of the Box, our wildly successful first Kickstarter. We kept the Pledge Manager open as long as we could so people who missed backing the live project had an opportunity to get the book and all the add ons at presale prices. But the book goes to the printer soon and that means the Pledge Manager is closing! March 23 will be the final day of the live Pledge Manager, so there’s still a few hours to take a look and discover the best things for you and your players including custom Nerdarchy dice, Game Master screen and resource decks, the book itself and the ArcKnight pack and more. Check out the Out of the Box Pledge Manager before it closes March 23 here.
Get Tangled Up in Hairible Ideas for D&D
Salutations, nerds! Things are about to get a little hairy in April. All right, that was almost a bald faced lie. Things are about to get a lot hairy. That’s right, we’re revisiting Beardomancy. And if you liked the beardomancer, get ready, because you’ll be in for a good time with the Hairible Ideas supplement for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Last April’s Beardomancy was so popular with players (and us!) that we couldn’t bear to part ways with the strange world of the Beard Dimension. This time around it’s not only wizards who’re having a good hair day, with beardomantic energy affecting five other classes, new magic items and spells, and literally every creature in the entire game.
Challenging Epic Heroes — High Level 5E Monster Design from Monster Mastermind Ryan Servis
Hey there readers! Ryan from 2CGaming here, and I’m an expert in Tier 3 & 4 play for fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a tough area of the game to play in. The players are likely wielding characters of obscene power and your monsters are struggling to keep pace. Everything is more complicated and the hours you just spent carefully constructing your arch-lich villain got smashed to smithereens by a paladin scoring a lucky critical hit on turn one. These problems are hard to overcome and are omnipresent in high level 5E. But fear not, for these obstacles are not insurmountable. It’s totally worth the effort too, as high-level games are uniquely spectacular when run well. I’m here to share with you a process by which we make Tier 3 & 4 games some of the most exciting experiences at your game table by showcasing how we at 2CGaming approach monster design.
Top 10 5E D&D Summoning Spells by a Factor of Three
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted carefully conjure some conversation about summoning spells and effects in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. There’s 17 spells with the summoning tag in official 5E D&D sources according to D&D Beyond and of course untold numbers of homebrew and third party creations. Looking at homebrew summoning spells at DDB there’s currently 818 spells with the power to conjure things into existence. Unlike the analysis of illusion spells, this time we won’t limit the list to wizards. Spells that add more creatures into the mix can be challenging to manage for players and Dungeon Masters alike. But it’s also fun to play a conjurer or summoner. I played a character focused on summoning in an earlier edition and I had a great time organizing info and collecting miniatures for the various creatures they could conjure. There’s definitely a few homebrew summoning spells I discovered while writing this I would have enjoyed casting back then. So let’s look at the homebrew summoning spells at D&D Beyond and see what sorts of strange conjurations a spellcaster can call forth.
Theros? But What About Your Favorite D&D Campaign Setting?!
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted speculate on what we might see in the upcoming fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons book Mythic Odysseys of Theros. Since I already shared my own speculation in the post we published when we discovered the new book before any official announcement that’s not going to work here. Instead I’ll take the opportunity to consider a perspective we see and hear a lot as regards MOoT and the previous Magic: the Gathering material brought into the 5E D&D multiverse, Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica. There’s a lot of D&D players out there who see these M:tG settings crossing over with D&D taking away from the game and giving short shrift to campaign settings of the past they’d like to see updated for 5E D&D. According to Wikipedia there’s nearly 30 official D&D campaign settings in the game’s history, last updated March 14, 2020 to include Exandria. The campaign setting for Critical Role’s adventures became an official part of the D&D multiverse with the release of Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount.
Learning the Secret History of Hobgoblins
Never one to leave a writing series dangling, I promised in The Secret History of Merfolk to follow up with the third and final book in the series by Ari Berk. The Secret History of Hobgoblins presents another tapestry of folklore and kitschy monster stuff...
Shapechangers are Taking Over Your 5E D&D Campaign
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted fulfill a community request to create a master of disguise for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. In the video Dave and Ted discuss skill, feats, class features and spells players have to work with for making a master of disguise character. There’s plenty of options in 5E D&D for characters seeking to disguise themselves, from mundane to magical means including inherent abilities like a kenku’s Mimicry trait and a changeling’s Shapechanger trait. Players who focus on their character’s ability to alter their appearance open avenues to adventure a more straightforward character might not find easily accessible. But for Dungeon Masters, fear not! You’ve got even more tools to work with including a robust list of creatures whose mastery of disguise open up pathways for you to introduce adventure too — right under the party’s noses! Let’s get into it and take a look at creatures with the Shapechanger trait making them masters of disguise for 5E D&D.
D&D Ideas — Demiplane
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. This week’s topic is demiplane, 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 website for Nerdarchy the Convention is live! Our first annual event takes place Halloween weekend 2020 at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. We’re hosting this convention for nerds, by nerds in our own little sort of miniature plane with defined limitations and variable traits. As the site continues to grow we’ll be updating regularly with new guests, events and announcements up until it’s time to let the games commence. Check it out here.
Join the Fight for Freedom at the Planar Zoo!
“Welcome to the Balip — Nop Pop. Trust me, it sounds more terrifying if you spoke my native language. Here we are freedom fighters, naturalists and, well, if I may be so bold, heroes! I am sure by now you have seen or at least heard of the Planar Zoo. Ran-Kitra has been taking creatures from their homes and putting them on display. Humans, orcs and other intelligent species are taken from their families and shoved into unfamiliar surroundings to be watched by those who purchase tickets. It is up to us to rescue them and return them to their native homes.” — Excerpt from a recruitment speech for Balip — Nop Pop
Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D — Locke & Key on Netflix
Hello adventures and adventurer planners of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. At Nerdarchy cleave to the concept that whether you are a player looking to make a backstory or a Dungeon Master developing an adventure hook you can get inspiration from anywhere. I am always looking at whatever I am doing to see how it can inform or inspire the games I run and the material I create. If you are familiar enough with Nerdarchist Ted, you are probably aware of my go to game. If not you can check it out here. Recently I have been bingeing the Locke & Key show on Netflix. I am not going to spoil the show so worry not. All you need to know for this post, which is in the trailer, is there is a house and it has keys that are magic. This is a simple enough concept to run with.
Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Magic Items for Exploration by a Factor of Three
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted carefully analyze the best magic items for a exploration in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. This is another unusual conversation topic, like the one on magic items for 5E D&D rogues. Players rarely get an opportunity to choose their character’s magic items. But it’s worthwhile to 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. So let’s get into it and look at homebrew magic items for exploration from D&D Beyond.
Running Hags in your D&D Game
You know those childhood shaping Studio Ghibli movies? Whether it’s the bloody Princess Mononoke or the captivating Howl’s Moving Castle there’s always been something special about the fantastical worlds crafted by the Japanese production company. Today, I want to hone in on one aspect they get really right: the idea of the magical crone. To avoid spoilers for Critical Role Episode 96 onward, skip the following spoiler section. All the spoiler people gone? Cool.
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.
A Group of Wizards is Called a Coven
Salutations, nerds. We have arrived at our wizardly destination for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. You know, the ones in the pointy hats who constantly gather up in big towers and work together. As I was mentioning last week wizards group up in order to...
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?
