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Quest Starters

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Pocket Full of NPCs for 5E D&D — The Reclusive Researcher

Salutations, nerds! Did your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons party forget to take identify? Got no wizard? Need a nerd who they can go to for the cleansing of cursed items or simply require a plot hook to motivate the party delve into the ruins of an exploded wizard lab? I’ve got a character for you.

Pocket Full of NPCs for 5E D&D — The Way Guardian

Salutations, nerds! Do you ever need to make a quick jaunt through the deep dark woods more interesting and yet still go smoothly enough to get to your destination in the same session? The last pocket NPC for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons I presented was the Lingering Spirit and today I’ve got a new one for you.

5E D&D demiplane

Pocket Full of NPCs for 5E D&D — The Lingering Spirit

Salutations, nerds! The last pocket NPC for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons I presented was the Identify Intern and today I’m introducing something a little bit spoopier. Some of my favorite D&D sessions have been ghost stories and that’s exactly where we’re going right now so I present to 5E D&D Dungeon Masters the Lingering Spirit character.

Halloween RPG Adventure Hooks Sure to Get Your Gaming Group Screaming

Nerdarchy is doing a Halloween one shot special with our monstrous friends from the McDonner Manor! Whether you’re running Quest, fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons or another tabletop roleplaying game we’ve got you covered with some ideas for you guys and ghouls! With the most spooktacular time of year in full swing it should come as no surprise many Game Masters are looking for ideas to run a quick and easy one shot for Halloween, Day of the Dead or a number of other holidays to incorporate into their campaign settings. To assist, I thought it would be fun to come up with a few prompts to help springboard your twisted imagination!

Pocket Full of NPCs for 5E D&D — The Identify Intern

Salutations, nerds! I’ve got another fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons NPC for your pocket today. Last time we went with a fence for shady types to give their ill begotten gains to for payment and now we’re going to be talking about the Identify Intern. This is the 5E D&D wizard the party can bring their magic items to if none of them knows how to cast identify themselves. Pocket Full of NPCs gives 5E D&D Dungeon Masters a variety of characters you can pull off the shelf whenever you happen to need them.

Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

Pocket Full of NPCs for 5E D&D — The Fence

Salutations, nerds! I’m back with another fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons NPC for you, something to keep in your back pocket for when your 5E D&D players need them. Last time we spent some time with a lycanthropic barbarian and this time we’re looking at something a little bit more utilitarian and subtle. I’m sure you’ve been in a situation where your rogue characters stole something and needed to get rid of it, right? Well, you’re in luck. That is the very situation this NPC was geared toward.

mtg adventures in the forgotten realms werewolf pack leader

Pocket Full of NPCs for 5E D&D — The Ulfhednar

Salutations, nerds! I keep a pocket full of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons NPCs I can reach for whenever I need to stall characters or they’ve made a request I wasn’t specifically ready for. Honestly, pulling characters out of the ether is a strong point of mine but I know for a lot of people this isn’t the case. And so, Pocket Full of NPCs gives 5E D&D Dungeon Masters a variety of characters you can pull off the shelf whenever you happen to need them.

D&D character rogue

D&D Quest Starters by Character Class — Rangers and Rogues

Looks like people are enjoying this D&D Quest Starters series so far and we are now more than half way through. The thought behind these ideas is to give simple little scenes for roleplaying, skill challenges or both, for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons characters based on their character class. These could take five minutes and can be great to give a player whose character does not normally step a chance to shine, or at least encourage them to roleplay their character. The advice here is designed to be generic but these ideas can hopefully inspire you to encourage your players. If a player latches onto the NPC you provide, then feel free to build on that scene over time to have it mean more and the character might keep coming back to the NPC or vice versa. That is why it is a quest starter — it can easily lead to some fun long term quests over time. Use the navigation bar at the top under the title to check out quest starters for other classes like barbarian and bard, and cleric and druid, and fighter and monk.

class to your class

D&D Quest Starters by Character Class — Fighter and Monk

Welcome back. Or welcome, if this is your first foray into D&D Quest Starters. The thought behind these ideas is to give simple little scenes that offer roleplaying, a skill challenge or both, for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons characters based on their character class. These things can take five minutes and can be great to give a player whose character does not normally step into the limelight and allow them to shine, or at least encourage them to roleplay their character. Only you know what each of the players in your game are capable of as well as what is going to interest their characters. The advice here is designed to be generic but these ideas can hopefully inspire you to encourage your players.

D&D Quest Starters by Character Class — Cleric and Druid

If you happened to have missed part one, D&D quest starters are designed as small scenes or quick skill challenges meant to get some roleplaying in. Maybe you use these when you feel a character needs to be put in the spotlight. Maybe you wrote story plot about one of the characters and you do not want to leave the others out. Bring in some quest starters and allow the roleplaying to begin. These can develop into larger stories if all involved like where the story is going but they can also be a simple one and done conversation. This series is organized by character class, and last time I did a large intro and knocked out bard and barbarian. So today we are going to look at a couple more. Do you have faith?

RPG player character

D&D Quest Starters by Character Class — Barbarian and Bard

As a Dungeon Master I try to incorporate specific D&D quest starters and roleplaying opportunities in for characters in my games. But some players like to make generic characters or not give enough material to inspire me. Other times what they give me is not appropriate at all times or where the campaign currently is. This has led me to make D&D quest starters by character class. These are jumping off points and ideas for generic character classes. These D&D quest starters might not be applicable to all characters of a chosen class and some of another class might be useful instead. These are designed to be a short one scene idea that should be complete in 5 or 10 minutes, but have the potential for much more based on how the roleplaying goes or how it is handled. Just because the encounter is overlooked does not mean the story needs to end there.