Blog

Leveling Without a Cause – Can it Be a Thing?

I recently finished up a short D&D story arc that was only 6 sessions long. As I was preparing my material, I thought it would be interesting to incorporate a room in my mysterious mansion that was a secret hidden area. This area would allow the D&D characters to level up an extra time than what was initially planned.

Now when you are running a game and are choosing to do milestone leveling it is easy as you will have the knowledge of what level the characters will be in every area and can plan appropriate challenges. If you are like me and like to throw in some crazy things now and again, it can be a major surprise to the players when they stumble upon a room like the one that I will describe below and manage to gain a full level it can make the players extremely excited to have the encounter. If you like this concept, you could literally have the room show up and it is the only way players can level and opening the door they see the insides and might jump for joy.

The room of awareness, exercise, and understanding

When you step into the room the door closes behind you. The walls seem to be made of a bizarre soft material. The first thing you notice is the statue like being in the very center of the square room. Some basic cots are stretched across the floor to the rightmost wall. There is just enough for everyone in the room. To the left seems to be a shelf with a day’s rations, again for every single person in the room. Along the back wall lies a small bookshelf with a number of interesting books. Whoever examines them finds a book with some more advanced techniques in whatever area you might be interested in studying.

The real magic of the room is the training dummy. Only one person can activate the dummy at a time. If you spend one hour exercising your chosen craft, be it martial or magic you can advance one character level. The training dummy appears to be a nondescript humanoid with extra arms and is immune to all damage types. As you practice martial maneuvers with it, it will circle and move about the room, like any sentient sparring partner. It always fights at a level above your own. If your preference is magic, it compels you to release your magic upon it, whereupon it nimbly dances away from your casting, resisting attempts to move it, and slips aside from your mental grasps. It shows new sequences of magic and helps to unlock your new class abilities.

After you do this you are overcome with fatigue and must start your long rest, even if you are not subject to magic that can put you to sleep. You can only access the benefits of the training dummy once ever.

Any objects, such as books, the dummy, cots, and leftover food, that are removed from the room immediately vanish and appear in the room if any attempt is made to remove them. The room is indeed magic and many mages have studied it over the years, but it is rarely, if ever in the same place twice, though some have said it has been in two places at once.

The Dead Aussie Gamer made an amazing character that I felt makes the perfect example of what I envisioned for this:

I asked permission to share this as it is so cool. But that is just one option of the infinitesimal options that you can build using the ever-growing tool set that is Hero Forge. While for the longest time, I was using the site to build my characters and have my custom mini sent for me to paint at home, I was able to order the STL files and then have it 3d printed in color. Totally amazing.

I still like to do all those things but with the screenshot, like above I know that people are creating, coloring, and customizing their characters and showing them off. You can get tokens for your VTT so it is the character as you see them. You can even buy bundles to get a set of STL files ready to unleash upon your players.  I love making a cool mini as a special boss for my campaigns from Hero Forge. So go to Heroforge.com and start designing your own characters ad NPCs.

Thanks for reading. Until Next Time, Stay Nerdy!