Immerse Yourself in the Ashes or Ardor Campaign with New 5E D&D Subclasses

Over at Nerdarchy Live we’ve been playing various RPGs on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. eastern. The group of us rotate Game Master duties after each campaign ends, which typically run 12 sessions each. For our current campaign we’re playing Ashes of Ardor with fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons set in the amazing world of Aulmn, a homebrew creation of Steven Partridge. During our session zero we decided we’d all play 5E D&D subclasses of our own Nerdarchy creation. With this campaign winding down, while we prepare for our next one — a superhero campaign using Cypher System — we thought we’d share some insight from this experience. Let’s get into it.

Bringing our 5E D&D content to memorable life

At the moment Nerdarchy offers over 65 subclasses for all the 5E D&D classes we’re able (sorry, artificers). You can find most of them spread throughout the various titles in our store, which themselves come directly from our Patreon where supporters receive them as monthly rewards. We put together an preview of our Patreon right here on Nerdarchy the Website along with a free bundle of content you can snag, which includes a Player’s Guide with previews for all our subclasses. Check it out here.

Deciding on a subclass to play proved somewhat challenging because of course we love them all so much. After playing them for a while now we’ve been having an absolute blast. Steven’s world of Aulmn is super creative and engaging and drew everyone deeply into the setting as our party’s story emerges. Here’s what each of us have to share about our experiences with each subclass plus Steven’s takeaways as our Dungeon Master for the campaign.

Below you’ll also find images of all our characters, which we put together using the awesome tools available from Hero Forge. We’ve been blown away by what Hero Forge can do for years now and if you poke around here on the site you’ll find lots of posts inspired by what those folks offer like new magic items, creatures and more. We highly encourage you to explore Hero Forge if no other reason than playing around and creating representations of your own favorite adventurers. Check out Hero Forge here.

Dave

Nerdarchist Dave here and I’ve been rocking Gorthum Mage Killer in our Ashes of Ardor 5E D&D game run by expert DM Steven Partridge. Gorthum Mage Killer is a minotaur Path of the Spelleater barbarian. In essence I am playing a spelleater minotaur.

I’m actually playing one of the Nerdarchy subclasses Steven wrote in a post, which hasn’t found its way into a product yet. In our Order of the Wizened book there is a monster called the spelleater minotaur and inside Horris the Horned Lord you’ll find the creature again along with a greater spelleater minotaur too. Steven turns the concept of this monster into a Primal Path for barbarians — Path of the Spelleater.

We are onto the second iteration of the Primal Path. The first iteration felt a little underpowered and included more Intelligence based skills. The revised version amps up the combat features. A Path of the Spelleater barbarian still gets access to an Intelligence based skill and even a cantrip now. This barbarian path is all about shrugging off magic, which makes the Spelleater feature a lot of fun against spellcasters. Steven lets me use the features of the subclass for some interesting noncombat situations in our game too.

This particular 5E D&D barbarian Primal Path is great for Steven’s campaign world. Most people there are weary and mistrustful about magic. I really lean into this with Gorthum. In addition I took the Mage Slayer feat. I’m always itching for a fight with spellcasters in this campaign.

Path of the Spelleater source: Slake Your Dark Fantasy Magic Hunger with the 5E D&D Path of the Spelleater Barbarian

Doug

When it came time to create a character and we’d decided to play our own custom subclasses I knew straight away something from the Beard Dimension was for me. Of all the many things we’ve created I love this quirky stuff the most. We’ve already seen the School of Beardomancy wizard in action during two campaigns — our D&D In A Castle game and Nerdarchist Ted’s current Untraditionally Arcane. While the Path of the Barbhairian includes my favorite feature name (Brutal Balayage) since Dave already chose to play a barbarian I went in a different direction with the Shaggy Soul Sorcerous Origin.

This campaign is really neat especially because I feel like I’m participating in, discovering and contributing to the world all at the same time. I believe Steven developed the Aslari culture at least somewhat in response to my choice to play a leonin character. The short summary of this culture contained lots of hooks on which to hang my roleplaying, which I’ve been enjoying tremendously. Because Aulmn is a living world and Steven’s grasp of it is so deep I get a real sense of the things my character Dasytrichos does and says influence the further development of the Aslari, which is an amazing feeling!

Ashes of Ardor is also the first time I’ve played a sorcerer for more than a one shot and I’ve loving every moment. All of the spells I chose come from the School of Beardomancy (except catnap because of course). Spells, Metamagic and the Sorcery Points fueling them all make me feel incredibly magical and since all my magic is so closely related the character feels more like a superhero with prehensile fur than a traditional spellcaster. There’s a few things I’d like to go back and revise with some of the spells like adding options for casting At Higher Levels, which we’ll take a closer look at once the campaign ends.

Overall I’m both grateful and proud to play in the Aulmn setting. I even play in Steven’s other campaign set in Aulmn on his Quill & Sword channel where the same sense of discovery, participation and contribution makes that game a fantastic experience too. We won’t reach high enough level in Ashes or Ardor to get the Shaggy Soul sorcerer’s 14th level feature but hopefully we’ll revisit this campaign in the future and in the meantime I’ll keep on slinging beardomantic energy around any which way I can.

Shaggy Soul source: Hairable Ideas

Robin

Salutations, nerds! I’m glad to participate in a tandem post with the rest of the cast of Ashes of Ardor. This has been an amazing campaign in no small part to the fact our DM for this game, Steven, has spent a lot of time crafting a living world that is a joy to spend time in. But also because I’m getting to see a lot of subclasses I wrote brought to life.

I’m playing one of those, myself. Senta is a Thought Thief rogue and the idea behind it was a rogue with access to the thoughts of those around them in order to anticipate their movements and bring a little bit of control to the battlefield. It just so happens Steven’s dwarves in Aulmn are already kind of psionic so the concept fit very well.

And I’m really enjoying it! I love having a use for my reaction most rounds. I always forget to take opportunity attacks when they come up, and being able to interject and help close by friends on the field is very up my alley in terms of play style. The fact Steven gave me access to the message cantrip and Telepathic Bond expands the concept even further.

I’m super looking forward to going forward in this campaign and getting access to some of the later features. But no spoilers — at least unless you want to go pick up a copy and play it for yourself of course.

Thought Thief source: Dark Paths: Shimmer — Thought Thief

Steven

Running Ashes of Ardor has been an incredible experience. It really makes all the difference to run a game when you have an awesome group of friends who trust each other. That being said, the thing the players keep praising is the world.

I’ve been developing my dark fantasy D&D setting of Aulmn for about five years now. It started with me trying to think about what I like in a setting. For starters I knew I wanted a cosmic evil, something the players would enjoy putting to rest and would have no moral qualms about — something unabashedly evil. That’s where the Umber Horde came from, initially, as an army of undead zombies.

I love when fantasy settings incorporate a plethora of races, but where each race has its own unique culture and traditions. I don’t like when fantasy just transplants a culture from our world and makes them half-animal, then calls it good. I believe fantasy cultures should be nuanced and draw from many inspirations to avoid appropriation and to make them richer and more distinct.

I also don’t like when fantasy and sci-fi code a race as all being the same, with the same religions and beliefs as all others who share their ancestry. That’s just not how races should work.

This is where the development of the different races and cultures came into play. I wanted each race to have a role in the world and have a strong heritage and vibe. Being a fan of practicing accents, speech patterns and accents were a given for me to easily help distinguish peoples.

As a fan of games like Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, Suikoden and more I really wanted the races to also be colorful, with players being able to meet multiple people from all walks of life from other cultures. But people also need things to rally for — and against.

That’s where the cosmic horror comes into play. I like the idea of eldritch evils, the idea of “true sins” taken from media like the Witcher and I love when magic is mysterious, old and weird. This is how Chrom and the rules of magic were made. By tying Chrom to the Umber Horde, the undead waves now had a uniting factor in a cosmic evil representing hunger.

Honestly, I could wax on for hours about Aulmn and how it came to be. Hopefully explaining a bit of my inspiration and why I did things can spur you to ask what you like in fantasy, sci-fi and whatever else to empower you to make your own world you can share with others. If you’re very blessed you may even find yourself gaming with a group as amazing as Team Nerdarchy has been for me.

Ted

I am Stron Graden, the Circle of the Stone Gaze druid. A Circle of the Stone Gaze druid draws their powers from nature as all druids do but they have a special affinity for those creatures with the ability to petrify others. Stron favors basilisks, so much so he took time to study ritual magic to call a tiny basilisk friend to his side. For flavor I am using find familiar and using the stat blocks of a tiny lizard, which is a-okay for me.

The Circle of the Stone Gaze druids’ features rely primarily on the petrified condition. Through this connection they can add to their armor class as a reaction, which has been fun and who knows? Maybe it will come up for other things as well. I have not had a chance to remove the petrification from another but I thought about it when we encountered the tieflings. This begs the question how this Druid Circle would interact with the concept in Steven’s world of Aulmn because the tieflings there are inspired by the Gargoyles from their eponymous animated series. So far I am loving this campaign and really do not feel I need to tweak anything. It might be underpowered at the earlier levels but all in all I am happy to play this fun Druid Circle in a rich and flavorful world.

Circle of the Stone Gaze source: Garden of Statuary

*Featured image — Ashes or Ardor and Quill & Sword both take place in the world of Aulmn. The former campaign includes adventures in the southern continent of Ord while the latter goes down in Voirais to the northwest. Ashes of Ardor can be found on our own Nerdarchy Live channel (and below!) while Quill & Sword can be found on its own YouTube channel of the same name here. [Cartography by Steven Partridge]

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