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D&D Ideas — Thunder & Lightning

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is thunder & lightning, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of thunder & lightning these foreboding phenomenon may signal a successfully solved puzzle or herald something ominous for adventurers. Why not both? You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

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Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Thunder and lightning are elements of nature and storms but in 5E D&D they are also damage types. In previous editions thunder would have been sonic damage and lightning electricity. I kind of prefer those over the current. Thunder and lightning to me are very specific but old man rant aside let’s get into some uses for these damage types.

The more gamers I talk to the more folks seem to get away from traditional fantasy and want to add more modern or sci-fi elements into their games. I used to be a fantasy purist but I got bored and wanted to begin adding new elements into my games and go off in weird and strange directions.

Thunder and lightning as damage types got me thinking about how I could use them as hazards to spice up combat and exploration encounters in my 5E D&D games.

My first thought is mad scientist laboratory. Think full on Dr. Frankenstein. The doctor creates his monster when the adventurers arrive and it’s storming outside. Because of the thunder and whirring of machinery in the lab, Wisdom (perception) checks involving hearing will be at disadvantage. Remember too this lowers passive Perception by 5 involving hearing as well. This might make verbal communication more difficult as well.

This mad scientist’s lab makes the perfect place to have electrical coils placed about the area. These give off jolts of electricity between them at initiative count 20 as lair actions. Characters and creatures can try to maneuver their opponents in between these coils to cause lightning damage to them. If the machinery gets damaged the lightning instead begins firing off in random directions throughout the combat until it can be destroyed or turned off.

A successful Intelligence (thieves’ tools or tinker’s tools) check can disable the machinery so it isn’t a threat any more. For extra fun an even higher check allows the character to control it and direct the lightning attacks. For damage and DCs consult the Dungeon Master’s Guide chapter 5 in the section about traps. That will give you the tools to scale the difficulty to the encounter.

From Ted’s Head

A storm is approaching. This is what comes to mind when I think of thunder and lightning together. Individually they each represent something different but putting them together they become bigger — a representation of something foreboding whether it be frightened cries of a child or an animal caused by the cacophony of sound and light or an ominous storm on the horizon offering the potential of destruction and a change of something to come.

Thunder

When we have thunder we have a boom that fills the area. Without lightning the loud rumbling or crashing noise feels incomplete. In previous editions there were more sources of damage caused by sound and these were referred to as sonic damage, which made sense. In 5E D&D all sound damage is thunder damage and I feel this limits the scope for those looking to use it as a damage type.

In addition thunder is very often limited further by loudly proclaiming its presence. Many sources of thunder damage in 5E D&D do so quite loudly and indicate how far the sound travels. Dungeon Masters might even incorporate problems caused by these loud sounds, which is likely the reason these details are included. Consider characters adventuring underground like exploring a cave. Thunder damage might cause loose stone to fall and create hazards or even block certain areas entirely.

I imagine at some point in the future we’ll share our take on the destrachan for 5E D&D. This creature shows up in previous editions as an aberration in the 3.5 D&D Monster Manual and an aberrant magical beast in 4E D&D. Everything about it makes it a worthy adversary for heroic adventurers.

Lightning

The crackle of the electricity can be enthralling. Of all the elements lightning is an element of motion. Cold slows things down while fire heats things up and although flame can move its speed is nothing compared to lightning. Heck, if you look into another nerdy hobby you’ll find the fastest man alive uses a lightning bolt as his symbol. I of course speak of The Flash from DC Comics.

For you players out there if your character has an affinity for lightning perhaps they move a lot or like to run. Do they have a lot of energy? Perhaps they’re twitchy and very reactive even to small things and others might perceive them as nervous and twitchy. For the DMs out there any monsters or creatures with a high movement speed or lightning affinity are all things to easily fit into this theme. The top runner in my book would be the quickling. These fey creatures are found inside Volo’s Guide to Monsters. As a challenge rating 1 monster they can easily be added to any game right from the beginning.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

Let’s see. Dave focused mostly on lightning from a DM’s perspective and Ted considered both thunder and lightning mostly from a player perspective so I guess pondering the implications of thunder from behind the DM screen evens things out.

As it turns out thunder on its own doesn’t really carry much water in 5E D&D. Outside of two distinct magic items (hammer of thunderbolts and staff of thunder and lightning) there’s very little mention of thunder at all except where it refers to the damage type or pops up as a descriptive word.

“Heroes come to Ysgard to test their mettle not only against the plane itself, but also against giants, dragons, and other terrible creatures that thunder across Ysgard’s vast terrain.”

After doing quite a bit of research into 5E D&D thunder I noticed something else too. Despite the tremendous noise caused by the concussive bursts of sound thunder damage represents it does not inflict the deafened condition (almost nothing does by the way). Instead the effect most often accompanying thunder damage is being knocked prone or pushed away. Weird, right? Maybe not so much though since the deafened condition is really underwhelming. There’s practically no mechanical drawback to it.

It seems to me both thunder damage and the deafened condition ought to pair nicely and it’s going to take a bit of DM creativity to to achieve this. We get a ton of questions about how to make combat more exciting and dynamic and I’m going to take a cue from them to segue into another kind of encounter — social interaction.

I’ve written many posts and expressed in quite a few live chats how the rules and guidelines for social interaction simply exist at all. But if these musings don’t satisfy your craving for dynamic social interaction consider the following encounter.

Characters arrange to meet with an important NPC in the pursuit of whatever quest they’re on at the moment. This NPC is a well-known figure and being seen with adventurers wouldn’t be a good look so the meeting takes place during a crowded gathering. To illustrate the goal here consider a lively indoor concert.

Right off the bat everyone inside the venue is subject to the deafened condition while performers play extremely loud music. If you’re keeping score this means no one can hear and automatically fails any ability check that requires hearing but with a little tweak insofar as no one can hear anything clearly. Interparty communications become strained, remaining aware of their surroundings becomes difficult and navigating the throng grows troublesome.

Incidentally this is another terrific opportunity to reinforce how following the steps of how to play 5E D&D makes the best use of skills, which I imagine becomes incredibly pertinent to this situation. There’s a lot going on with a large crowd, persistent high volume, a big space and a delicate meeting to manage.

The party eventually arrives at the meeting spot and now they’ve got to contend with all the same difficulties with an even greater challenge too — exchanging important information with the NPC while neither side can hear the other very well.

I like the idea of an encounter like this because it incorporates several small pieces of rules material to build the dynamic quality. Not the least of these is the three step how to play process I referenced earlier, which gives the DM space to describe the scenario and players the opportunity to react. A large concert venue, loud noise causing difficulty hearing and an important conversation to engage with an NPC.

The other half of the equation that I left out — the part pertinent to this editorial — in the thunder damage and this part is easy peasy. Monsters attack!

Whether the adventurers or the NPC are the target is up to a group’s DM but as I imagined this scenario coming together I couldn’t help but think either or both sides of the interaction might have enemies and with foreknowledge of this meeting going down these adversaries planned accordingly.

Unfortunately there’s no easy way to find monsters who deal thunder damage but there are some interesting standouts in the immunity-to-the-deafened-condition department. A slithering tracker makes perhaps the perfect monster for this scenario. They can’t be deafened, they’re extremely good at tracking and infiltrating its entire schtick is flowing into places where a normal creature can’t go and bringing its own brand of watery death down upon its quarry.

The other candidate is an oblex spawn. Like the slithering tracker it cannot be deafened and is also very good at getting into places it ought not be. In addition these fantastic ooze creatures feed on thoughts and memories too, which fits perfectly into this dynamic social interaction encounter hinging specifically on exchanging important information.

Either monster’s appearance begs the question who dispatched the creature and why? Now the players’ interest in piqued and even if the NPC they met with was the intended target they may take it upon themselves to look into the matter. Presto! The players take the wheel and steer the course of their own story.

*Featured image — A pair of obelisks invite heroes to solve a name puzzle then best a spirit for gifts of fate in Standing Warning, one of 55 dynamic scenarios in Out of the Box. Find out more about it here. Find out more about it here. [Art by Kim Van Deun]

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