D&D Ideas — Travel
Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is travel, and we’ve got a few more new segments including a Product Spotlight from Nerdarchy the Store, an update on our end of the year mega giveaway and changes coming to our content release schedule. Speaking of travel check out the image below from our wildly successful Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition Kickstarter. In Down on the Farm, adventurers encounter an unusual merchant with a very select clientele. The Out of the Box Pledge Manager remains open for late pledges. You can get your hands on the book and all the add-ons including presale badges for Nerdarchy the Convention, or upgrade your badge to Legendary or Artifact level. There’s also a FREE encounter Seizing the Means you can download for a sneak peek at the sort of content you’ll find in the book. Check it out here.
A Homebrew Healing Cantrip for 5E D&D
Over at the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Facebook group I came across a post sharing a very intriguing idea for a healing cantrip for 5E D&D. I know what you’re thinking — it’s madness! — and believe me I’d agree with you almost all of the time. But I think there’s some merit to this homebrew healing cantrip worth considering. Maybe it’s perfect for your game or maybe it would break the system asunder. Character death in 5E D&D doesn’t occur with the kind of frequency it has in past editions. Your mileage may vary of course but the rules for death and dying lean towards the forgiving side. At any rate I think close wound is worth taking a closer look at and sharing with the D&D community. So let’s get into it and see what this homebrew healing cantrip for 5E D&D is all about.
Expanding the Go-To Druid Spell List with Unearthed Arcana and Solstice Magic
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discuss another entry in the go-to D&D spells series. This time they’re looking at druids for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons and the 3rd-5th level spells they gain access to during tier 2 play. Animals, plants and weather control feature prominently in druid spellcasting so it’s no surprise the spells that made the cut. Druids are so versatile and have access to a wide range of spells and effects, and they clearly have powerful connections to nature. The hardest thing about making the list of go-to spells was narrowing it down because the druid spell list contains so many incredible spells. In the recent Unearthed Arcana — Class Feature Variants all the 5E D&D classes get a little something new to play with, with druids getting an expanded spell list in the collection of playtest material. Let’s check it closer and see if anything supplants Dave and Ted’s picks.
How to Create Holidays in Your RPG Fantasy Worlds — Taking a Tip from Terry Pratchett
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! Blessed Yule! Phew! Happy Hogswatch! *Wipes sweat from brow* There are a ton of holidays this time of year, and that last one mentioned is what sparked the inspiration for this article. Hogswatch is a fictional holiday presented in the Discworld. During my annual re-read of Hogfather by Terry Pratchett I got to thinking about creating original holidays in fantasy worlds.
Centaur Knights and Fantasy Cultures in 5E D&D
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted came up with ideas for a classic fantasy character concept, a centaur knight. The image of an half human, half horse warrior in shining armor captivated me since I was a little kid and after helping plan this video, watching it and putting the Character Build Guide together I’m thinking about how awesome this concept is all over again. This got me thinking how there’s not a whole lot of centaur action going on in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, at least not in my experience. Centaurs get a bump in Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica, there’s a centaur mummy in Tales from the Yawning Portal’s Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and the terrifically named Centaur of Attention encounter in Dragons of Icespire Peak. And that’s about it in beyond the Monster Manual entry. Never a better time like the present to take a closer look at centaurs and by extension fantasy cultures for our 5E D&D campaign settings.
3 Christmas and Holiday Adventure Ideas from Folklore for 5E D&D
Salutations, nerds! And happy holidays. Today we’re going to be taking a second to talk about holiday adventures for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. We’re always mining folklore for monster ideas, and ideas for things to happen in a 5E D&D campaign setting, and there’s a lot of folklore surrounding the winter solstice. It’s the longest night of the year, and that’s always been something fascinating and mysterious to people. Ergo, naturally, it’s collected a lot of stories and folklore we can use to inspire a holiday adventure.
Following Leads and Finding Jobs like The Mandalorian in 5E D&D
If you’ve been following along with this series on creating a bounty hunter campaign inspired by The Mandalorian for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons you’ll notice I’ve mentioned a book called Remarkable Inns several times. This nearly 90 page resource details 8 distinct taverns and inns with wonderful detail along with tips and options for developing your own memorable establishments and everything that goes on within. When I prepped for the first session of our 5E D&D bounty hunter campaign, Remarkable Inns became an important tool for worldbuilding and providing an avenue to two very different paths the bounty hunting characters could take to begin their first contract. Let’s get into it.
Worldbuilding through Language in 5E D&D
Worldbuilding is a passion for many fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters and many players. Part of what drives this passion is a desire to make a place, a nation, a people or a culture feel alive and turns things like the simple concept of an orc or goblin that player characters sweep aside with swords and spells into cultures deserving of a deeper look. One deeper look to make the world feel more alive is the concept of culture and language to help define a people. Some cultures have a deep understanding of a written language, and others a verbal tradition. They may have customs and beliefs different from ours, but plausible within their own environment. How a people communicate can define how they behave. Their collective understanding of themselves and the world abroad defines itself through language.
Animate Objects for Fun and Harvesting Poison for Profit in 5E D&D
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discussed a killer combo for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Using poison coated daggers and the animate objects spell a character could drop some serious damage (and serious coin) with the right kind of poison. In the video they mention several varieties of poison from the 5E D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide and brainstorm a few ideas how to inject a little poison into the storytelling adventure of your game. Like most of our talks about games the fun part is imagining how these things play out at the gaming table and make the story of the adventuring party more interactive. On one hand, a player interested in trying out this killer combo could explain their intention to the Dungeon Master and hash it all out during downtime. On the other, the quest for poison could become a central theme for a campaign. Either way the players initiate the course of action, and with the DM guiding them towards telling the story of their characters the games become more memorable experiences.
D&D Ideas — Dice
Old Monsters Create Extra Life Through DM’s Guild’s Fiendish Folio
Did you know the Extra Life D&D team has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last few years for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals? One of the ways they raise money is through special products available through the Dungeon Masters Guild. The most recent of these is Mordenkainen’s Fiendish Folio, Volume 1: Monsters Malevolent and Benign, a collection of monsters for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. The creatures contained within first appeared in the Fiend Folio, a classic title from first edition AD&D. Back when I was a fledgling young nerdy D&D player the Fiend Folio was very special. There was one older kid in the neighborhood who had a copy and everyone loved flipping through there. The death knight lurked in there. And drow. And svirfneblin! I can’t wait to see what this new iteration contains. So let’s check it out.
A Simic Hybrid and A Vedalken Walk into Ravnica…
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted took a look at the Simic hybrid and vedalken races from Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica. In their discussion they talk what character class to play for both of these fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons races. Like the rest of the videos in this series they consider which 5E D&D character class makes a good fit for the race’s ability scores and features, along with some ideas for unexpected character classes. The world of Ravnica presents a very different place than a traditional D&D setting, and not just because a vast, sprawling city covers the whole of the known world. Powerful guilds rule the Ravnica planar city, and both the Simic hybrid and vedalken share common ground with one in particular. The Simic Combine happens to be my favorite of the ten guilds. And since Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica contains so many juicy random tables let’s take a look at them from a Dungeon Master’s point of view and see what sorts of adventures might await Simic hybrid and vedalken adventurers in a 5E D&D campaign.
Lord of Blades is the Ultimate Artificer — But He Needs Your Help!
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted took a thorough look at the new character class for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, the artificer. 5E D&D players have been champing at the bit for some time to see an official version of this longtime favorite class first seen in D&D 3.5. Artificers are a integral part of the Eberron campaign setting, so it’s only natural the 5E D&D version comes in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. Since Dave and Ted covered the artificer class in great detail in the video below, I’m going to take a look at the class from a Dungeon Master’s point of view.
This New 5E D&D Freezing Condition Puts Characters on Ice
Baby, it’s cold outside! Snow peppers the air, ice clings to roads and the frigid wind cuts through your layers like a cutlass. With the frigid weather upon us, it occurs to me there isn’t really a canonized condition for being overcome with cold as of yet. Granted, exhaustion technically covers this basis, but exhaustion doesn’t quite evoke how I would tend to think of cold affecting characters. With the current rules, a Captain America or Aang sort of scenario with a player being flash frozen into stasis doesn’t really work. That person would just die under the rules of exhaustion. This, compounded with the consideration that we have a couple of cantrips to codify how cold affects creatures, I propose a separate condition called “freezing.”
A Group of Warlocks is Called a Cult
Salutations nerds! We’re going to be talking about warlocks in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons today, so take a moment to get yourself into the head space of quiet meetings in out of the way places, dark cloaks and the smell of burning wax and dust amid ancient books and forbidden knowledge. Some 5E D&D warlocks are big deal spellcasters working at the right hands of their patron and some are cultists working for scraps of power. Some are genuinely friends with the entity bestowing their magic.
