D&D Ideas — Holiday Adventures
Arcana 101 — 5E D&D Skills and Skill Checks
Skills are a staple of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, and in this series we’ll explore each skill in depth. Hopefully by the end of it all you’ll answer instinctively when asked to differentiate Sleight of Hand from Stealth from Performance. As a quick disclaimer, every 5E D&D Dungeon Master has their own right to call for any skill check in any situation; this is just meant as a general reference. Today’s we’re looking at Arcana, the quintessential skill when it comes to magical understanding.
How to Play D&D for the Rest of Your Life for Free
Approximately every single day someone, somewhere asks the D&D community how to get started, the resources they need and what books and accessories to buy. Content creators love this question! It’s like candy and they might as well ask for links to everyone’s third party products. I kid (but not really). The most common response points people towards the core rulebooks: Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual and Dungeon Master’s Guide. For tighter budgets, the PHB makes a solid standalone start. Those looking to invest more money into getting started could do worse than Volo’s Guide to Monsters, or Xanathar’s Guide to Everything for more player options. Then of course there’s widely beloved products like Tome of Beasts from Kobold Press. You could add The Lazy Dungeon Master and Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master to your shelf for deeper insights into running the game. And adventures! Holy moley there’s a lot of them. Gotta have adventures to run for the burgeoning game group, right?
You don’t need any of these things. And you could play D&D on the regular for the rest of your life without spending a single copper piece.
A Group of Paladins is Called an Order
Salutations, nerds! Today, we’re going to be talking about paladins in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Grab your trusty steed and shining armor and get ready to do (hopefully) good things in the name of your order. The current 5E D&D paladin model draws power from the strength of their convictions, which aren’t necessarily good or in service to any particular deity. That much is true, but imagine being so confident in your beliefs that the magic actually agrees with you.
D&D Party Composition — Playing an All Barbarian Party
Over on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted explore the idea of an all barbarian party for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. People really enjoy the video series and I’m having a blast with the concept here on the website. Playing an all barbarian party in 5E D&D looks to split in the video comments between people who think it sounds great or who are already playing such a campaign, and those who feel like there are too many drawbacks. Dave and Ted can give you the insights into 5E D&D party composition and over here we’re continuing to build the scenario we started with the all bard party — a campaign setting of academia for each particular character class. So let’s get into it and consider what an all barbarian party composition in a 5E D&D academic setting could look like.
D&D Ideas — Alliances
Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is alliances, and we’ve got a promo code to go along with this week’s Product Spotlight from Nerdarchy the Store, plus an update on our end of the year mega giveaway and changes coming to our 2020 schedule. 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. Speaking of alliances the image below is from our wildly successful Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition Kickstarter. In Dinner Party, alliances between adventurers themselves get put to the test. The Out of the Box Pledge Manager reamins 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.
What You Do and How You Do It Are Two Different Things in RPGs
Over the holiday break I received a very exciting email from Free League Publishing. Backers of their recent Kickstarter got a great surprise with an Alpha PDF of the Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying core rulebook. Notwithstanding my Dungeons & Dragons advocacy the evocative art drew me into this game, something Free League accomplished for me already with Tales from the Loop. Those two Free League games share another similarity. Both games clearly define what you do when you play them. D&D will always be my favorite game, and folding elements from different genres into the swords and sorcery setting is as much a part of the D&D tradition as armor class and hit points. But the way stories are told through different game systems with tighter frameworks is fertile ground for exploration. A couple of cliches come to mind when the ubiquitous nature of D&D intersects other tabletop roleplaying games, so I thought it might be useful to consider them and maybe broaden the horizon for both camps.
Acrobatics 101 — 5E D&D Skills and Skill Checks
Skills are a staple of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, but many Dungeon Masters find themselves unsure of when to call for a player to roll Investigation vs. Perception, or Deception vs. Performance. In this new series we’ll explore each skill in depth, and hopefully by the end of it all you’ll answer instinctively when asked to differentiate Sleight of Hand from Stealth from Performance. As a quick disclaimer, every 5E D&D DM has their own right to call for any skill check in any situation; this is just meant as a general reference. Today, we’re looking at the first skill you’ll see at the top of a skills list on your character sheet: Acrobatics.
Your Aasimar Character’s Angelic Guide is a Link to 5E D&D Adventure
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted take a closer look at the aasimar for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons with an eye towards what character classes fit well with this playable race from Volo’s Guide to Monsters. As always they start with a broad look at the race both mechanically and thematically, diving deeper into each subrace with expected and unexpected class choices. Whether your aasimar character for 5E D&D is fallen, protector or scourge, they posses powers granted from their celestial heritage including darkvision, resistance to necrotic and radiant damage and the ability to heal with a touch. On top of all these amazing abilities, aasimar receive a special link to an supernatural being too. The angelic guide doesn’t carry any explicit mechanical attributes. But it is a really cool aspect of a character to explore and incorporate into your roleplaying.
Factotum for 5E D&D Far From an Absurd Character
Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discuss a character concept shared by fellow YouTuber and player in my first and only live stream D&D campaign, Puffin Forest. In his D&D Story: A Most Abserd Character video, Ben (the talented animator behind Puffin Forest) shares the tale of Abserd, a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons character with one level is every character class. The video is hilarious of course, as Ben’s videos tend to be, and it has millions of views. In our video Dave and Ted talk about how to go about creating this sort of absurd character for 5E D&D and the implications — mechanically and narratively — of doing so in the first place. But for my money I’m reminded of one of my favorite character classes from D&D history and maybe this Abserd character isn’t so absurd?
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.
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.
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.
