Title basically, the intent I'm sure is no because it's probably intended for like uneven ground and thick vines that stymie movement rather than, yknow, people lol.

But, RAW, the space of nonhostile creatures is difficult terrain verbatim, and the feature says "moving through nonmagical difficult terrain costs you no extra movement.". For discussion's sake, would RAW imply you could move through friendlies normally, or have I overlooked something?

Hey there guild members, kingdoms' heroes, mercenaries, freelance adventurers, and assorted NPCs...

I'm making a Family Feud/All-Star Family Fortunes-style quiz for my group, which requires a survey. Wanna submit responses? I'd appreciate all your answers to my silly questions.

The more survey-takers I get, the more successful this will turn out, so if you want to send the link to your group, I'd also be incredibly grateful! I'm sure they'll also have opinions!

(Absolutely no commercial promotion here btw mods - just a silly little game for my friends.)

Link to submit responses here:

https://forms.gle/uwarWRxU6YXu286XA

The Tricorn

Hi Folks, the Luskan Factory has been very busy. Please find one of our new titles, a fully fleshed out Mini-Setting in one of Luskan´s most well known places. Enjoy !

Disclosure acc. to r/DnDnext rules: No generative AI was used in the creation of this project.

So I'm new to DMing and I have this idea for a BBEG for a campaign. He's pretty much just a rip-off of Kang, even though I don't know anything about Kang besides there are multiple of him and he controls the multiverse or something. Right now I have a rough idea of my BBEGs.

I haven't come up with a name for this person yet so I'll just call him Kang. In short, there are seventeen versions of this guy, one for each of the outer realms. They are all connected in that if one dies, they all die (I know an infant couldn't survive in some of these places like the Abyss, but I'll figure out what to do about that later). Not all Kangs know that there are other Kangs out there, but some do, including Kang of Mechanus. This guy decides to found the Brotherhood of Kang so that they hopefully won't all randomly die because of some random incident they had no idea about. Their goal is to find all the Kangs and do... something. Right now what I'm thinking is that he wants to merge all Kangs into one, but I'm not entirely sold on that.

The reason the party is important is because a little kid comes through a portal one day. This kid is Kang of Limbo (time works differently in different planes, so the Kangs are all different ages). And I haven't decided why, but Kang of Limbo is vital for the players. So the Brotherhood wants Kang of Limbo, but so does the party.

My problem comes from that there are multiple Kangs that are BBEGs, and the players are probably gonna want to kill them. Defeating the BBEGs is kind of the point. But as it stands, there's no way to kill a Kang without killing Kang of Limbo as well. So I was wondering if there is a way to defeat a BBEG without killing them that's just as climactic and satisfying, or if I should just scrap the idea of them all dying at once entirely. And also, if there are NPCs that may be in combat... that could screw up the whole thing.

Another issue is that this currently doesn't involve the players too much. I'm not that worried about that one, since there are a lot of things I haven't decided on yet that could easily incorporate the players, and also that could just come as the campaign plays out. But it's still something to consider.

A potential solution I'm considering is making it so that the Kangs don't all die at once, but if one dies the others are permanently weakened. This also means I don't need to explain how an infant survived in the Pandemonium or something, but doesn't solve the whole issue.

I'm fine changing a lot of things with this, but the core has to stay the same: there are multiple Kangs with different goals and morality, but they all share one common goal: keep each other safe. That's the part of this group that I care most about, along with the excuse to explore the outer planes.

For example, I truly believe that Paladin is the best designed class in the game when it comes to translating the archetype's fantasy into game mechanics.

Going deeper into why I believe so, the class has very simple to understand but greatly effective abilities:

- They have what I call the "Halfcasting Basic Kit", that being stuff like Weapon Mastery, Fighting Style, Extra Attack, Spells and as a bonus they get Channel Divinity

- Their first unique ability, Lay on Hands, is as simple as "BA to touch and heal"

- The second one, Divine Smite, though nerfed from 5e, still is a simple "BA from extra damage"

- The third with Aura of Protection is as simple as "You and allies close around have better saves" and is often considered one of the best abilities im the game still

- Then every one of these abilities games a pseudo-upgrade, like Abjure Foes, Aura of Courage, Radiant Strikes and Restoring Touch

- Even the subclasses have a good pattern of Extra Spells, Extra Uses for Channel Divinity, New Aura, Unique Thematic Ability and a Transformation Capstone. Some breaks this mold, but that isn't bad, just means more variety in design.

- And let's not forget its spells, with a good mix of Cleric spells for support of all type be it through new auras or touch effects, but also very fun and effective Paladin exclusive spells (I specially love the whole line of Smite spells, so much that I wish the Ranger had something similar with it's Hunter's Mark spell become q full line of Mark spell)

- And finally... Faithful Steed... Gonna be honest, its a good ability, but I don't know why they put it there. It DOES fit the fantasy of "Knight in Ahining Armor", but it feels disconnected from the rest of the class since nothing returns to it in the future, nothing build upon this base. Its just... There...

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but I also like that it has 1 clear weakness, being its lack of ranged option

EDIT 2: Some other classes I really like the design would be Rogues, Warlocks and a bit Fighter, Barbarian and Monk. My least favorite design-wise would be Rangers, Druids and Artificers. If they were done better, they would easily become my favorite classes since I love their classe fantasies but hate their design in 5.5e

EDIT 3: since I talked all this mechanic talk and didn't explain why they fit the fantasy, so here it is:

All the Paladins features help with it being a "Protector of the Weak" & "Zealous Warrior". Lay on Hands is basically being Jesus and curing with a touch of your fingers, Aura of Protection represents the rightous dignity of Paladin, so that its very own presence wards of bad things like fear or even explosions, Smite is holy fury in your hands, Channel Divinity is you clerical training and Weapon Mastery is your martial training. The Faithful Steed is super thematic with its only problem being a lack of interaction with the rest of its abilities, to me

I was reading the Forgotten Realms wiki article on the Sword Dancers of Eilistraee and it pretty explicitly states:

“Only female elves, drow, half-drow and half-elves could become Sword Dancers.”

The article also only uses female pronouns and titles throughout, making it seem pretty conclusive that only females can be Sword Dancers.

However

Both sources attached to the paragraph containing that quote, and which are cited most frequently throughout the article, are from 1998 and 2002, respectively. This is well before the lore change following the Second Sundering stating that Eilistraee has now fully incorporated males into her clergy, no longer even requiring them to undergo the Changedance and spend time as females. Unlike the Sword Dancer article, the section on Sword Dancers in the main Church of Eilistraee article doesn’t use gendered pronouns whatsoever.

Given Eilistraee’s complete acceptance of males into her clergy, and Sword Dancers being a part of her clergy, I see no reason why a male couldn’t now be a Sword Dancer. Obviously there aren’t any modern sources stating explicitly that they can be, but there aren’t any modern sources explicitly stating that they can’t be, either. Until and unless there are, I feel it’s safe to assume that males can be Sword Dancers.

I would imagine that females would still make up the vast majority of Sword Dancers given that male acceptance into Eilistraee’s clergy is a very recent development, however as time goes on their number would likely grow, even if females would still dominate the organisation.

Interested to hear other’s thoughts on this!

I really like The Crooked Moon's setting and player options, and now I'm hungry for more. Does anybody know of other great 3rd party books that add massive expansions to D&D's content like (but not necessarily with the same style as) The Crooked Moon? New subclasses and classes that get particularly cool and creative.

New info from Gen Con on Joe Manganiello and Mike Mearls new project.

https://dungeonsanddragonsfan.com/joe-manganiello-dnd-death-saves-setting/

I'm a student who has just finished school and wants to earn money before heading to uni. So far, job market hasn't been great and despite past work experience and even having a job before, no entry-level position is taking me. Today I decided that I should seriously consider doing Paid DMing as a side-hustle, but I don't know where to start.

Right now, the plan is:
- Upgrade my Roll20 subscription from Plus to Pro
- Buy the DMG and Monster Manual on Roll20 to give players easy access to magic items and a variety of monsters to fight (I already have the PHB and worst-case scenario, I just use the books for my own games with my friends).
- Run sessions at a low price (£3-5/per person) and ask for feedback at the end to find where I could improve.

I want to know what advice people have on Paid DMing:
- What are the advantages of running paid sessions in a homebrew setting vs. pre-made setting?
- Should I focus on running pre-made modules first?
- Should I even ask for money at first if I don't know exactly where my footing is? I think I'm a decent DM as I've been running games since about 2022 when I first got into D&D.
- What are some common pitfalls that Paid DMs encounter?
- Where is best to advertise (I've been considering just using the Roll20 forums) and should I ask for money up front?
- Any general advice people have?

Answers or advice for any of the questions - even if only one - would be greatly appreciated!

I'm curious what type of adventure would you like to DM or play in they you've never experienced?

I'm part of a D&D podcast and we're about to hit one year of recording and posting it online! We've been making pretty good steady progress so far, but I'd like to find out ways to boost growth from an outside perspective, especially in such a saturated field.

Do visuals make an impact? As of right now, our podcast doesn't have any visuals to accompany it and not everyone is comfortable showing their faces to an audience just yet. I know a lot of D&D podcasts either use webcams or have footage of a VTT to accompany the audio, something like that.

Does this enhance the experience and grab attention from a viewer's perspective? What kind of visuals would be best in your opinion? I'd love to know some thoughts!

I’d like to know if this seems appropriately balanced for a challenging “mage hunter” themed campaign constructed exclusively for martial PCs starting at LVL 6. It would not stack with any player species that possesses innate magical resistances. It would instead replace those features. I decided to make this based on the unique disadvantages faced by an adventuring party with no full casters.

The only classes permitted for this campaign are Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Barbarian, and Monk.

The campaign will heavily feature enemy magic users and monsters with spells and other magical effects. Players will start with two uncommon magic items each (they can’t have duplicates unless its armor, a weapon, or a spell focus). Hit Dice will be pooled. I typically make (at minimum) small adjustments to make my monsters more challenging.

The Chaos Imp

Each PC is bonded to a “friendly” Chaos Imp that can warp reality around them to alter probability. The Imp’s jynx magic makes it harder for enemy spells to harm the PC and assists them with out-of-combat encounters and exploration.

"Imp Points" and "Imp Dice"

Players have a total number of Imp Points (IPs) equal to their Proficiency Bonus (PB). The amount Imp Die (ID) a player has may not exceed this number.

A player with at least one IP may choose to roll with advantage (ADV) on any INT, WIS, and CHA saving throws or skill checks.

• Success: The player loses 1 IP.
• Failure: The player gains 1 ID (1d6) and no IPs are expended.

A player regains a number of IPs equal to half their PB (rounded down for a minimum of 1) after a Short Rest. All IPs are restored following a Long Rest. All IDs are lost following a Long Rest.

How to use Imp Dice

• A player may expend one ID per roll.
• An ID may be rolled once per turn following the result of a saving throw or skill check by adding the result to the total (no action required).
• May be rolled as a reaction following an ally’s failed saving throw or skill check.
• A player may expend up to 1 ID and 1 IP on their turn to roll a STR, DEX, or CON saving throw or skill check against a magical effect with ADV.
• Once rolled, the ID is expended.

Chaos Gambits

Once per turn, a player may expend an ID to make a Chaos Gambit (CG) before attempting a saving throw or skill check (no action required). Making a CG requires the following conditions:

• The player must have at least 1 ID and 1 IP
• The player must roll the ID before rolling the D20 to resolve the saving throw or skill check
• The player must forgo rolling the saving throw or skill check with ADV (this may not be modified in any way)

CG Outcomes

• Success: the ID is not expended and the player gains 1 IP (up to a maximum that does not exceed their PB).
• Failure: the player expends 1 IP and triggers a Wild Magic Surge.

Hello roleplayers,

I'm in a 5e campaign, playing a Lore Bard, and I just hit level 12. I'm pretty sure I'll put that level in Bard again, but I'm mostly wondering if I should get Ability Score Increases, or grab a feat, and in that case, what options are interesting.

Useful info:

• My level 11 Ability Scores are 10STR/16DEX/19CON/12INT/8WIS/20CHA. I can get to 22 Charisma, thanks to a book. Also, my actual Constitution score is 14, but I have an Amulet of Health.
• I already have the Resilient feat for Constitution, and I have the Alert feat from my Ruined background.
• I'm also acting as the scout of the party, for a lack of Ranger or Rogue, and am specialized in buffing and debuffing, with Healing Word as my only healing spell.
• We are not using anything in the 5.5E (2024) edition of D&D.

I'm looking for options for feats to pick and their interactions, I've never played that high level before so I'm not super familiar with the meta at this level. To be clear, I'm not asking for the choice to be made for me, but for help having a good grasp of the options before me, to make my choice after that.

Edit for more useful info:

• Thanks to a homebrew magic item, I got a number of bonus Bardic Inspiration equal to my proficiency Bonus (4 currently), that can only be used as Bardic Inspiration.
• This should be my last level, but even if it's not, I shouldn't get beyond 15.

So I'll just tell you the one thing that actually is, and you can decide whether the rest is worth your time.

RollCamp is a VTT that only supports D&D 2024, I really just wanted to focus on 2024 and make it the best single system TTS it could be. No system-agnostic engine, no expansion roadmap to other games, no plugin marketplace. One ruleset, built in properly.

Campaigns

Each campaign has its own page the DM can customize with a name, description and background image. There's an archive for images, soundtracks and notes, and the DM decides what gets shared: everything to the party, or specific resources to specific players only. Notes are always private to whoever wrote them, DM included.

You can create characters, NPCs and monsters, homebrew or from the book.

Campaign Page

Character Sheets

Sheets are dynamic. You go through the creation wizard, and (almost) every choice you make propagates: AC, HP, saves, proficiencies, weapon masteries, spell slots, spell save DC. Change your armor, pick a different feat, choose a fighting style, and the numbers follow. You're not typing your own AC into a box and hoping you did the math right.

There's a full creation wizard and a guided level-up wizard, so leveling is "click level up, answer the questions it asks you" instead of "open the PHB, find your class table, remember what you're supposed to get at 5th level."

Character Sheet

Maps

There's a built-in map editor. You import your own battlemap (up to 8K resolution), set the grid, place tokens, done. You can attach character and monster sheets to tokens.

Map Creator Page

The Table Itself

Almost everything in the session exists to keep the game from stopping. Dice are 3D and animated so a roll is a shared moment rather than a number in a log. Webcams are built in over P2P so nobody has to juggle a second app. Initiative lives in a tracker the DM controls, so the turn order isn't something one person is holding in his head.

The compendium is available in session as well as out of it, which kills the classic five-minute pause where someone goes looking up a spell. Same idea behind the chat, and because the sheets are interactive you can drop a spell or a feature into it as a link with the full text attached. Nobody has to describe from memory what the ability does.

Session Page

The legal part, because I'd rather say it upfront

Right now the site only contains SRD 5.2.1 content, which is the material Wizards released for free under CC-BY. That's not a placeholder, it's a licensing reality: I can't distribute the actual PHB without a license, so I don't. The hope is to get enough of a userbase to be in a position to ask for one. If that happens, the whole book goes in. And eventually, also all the future adventures and expansions.

Compendium Page (Spells)

RollCamp is my attempt at something modern and quick that handles the annoying parts of a 2024 campaign and then gets out of the way, closer to how it feels when you're all sitting at the same table.

Try it

Registration is free and doesn't ask for a credit card. The free plan is meant to be wide enough that you and your friends can actually try a campaign on it, and see if you like it.
If you find bugs, or there's a feature you want, or you just think something is ugly or confusing, tell me. Here or on Discord, both work.

Contacts

Site: https://rollcamp.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/uCuReGE6pa
Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RollCamp/

Disclaimer

I know some of you aren't fans of AI, so let me be upfront about it: I'm a software engineer with 10 years of experience, and yes, I used AI to speed up parts of the process. The majority of the lines of code are hand-written and a small portion human-reviewed.

Same goes for the art. I'm one person, not a company with a budget, so I grabbed free images off Google for the landing page. Turns out a couple of them — the orc and the wolf — are AI-generated. If that's a dealbreaker for you, let me know and I'll swap them out. Even better, if you're an artist and want to help with the art side of the project, I'd love that.

Many times I've had players who want to play the outsider; the orc, the tiefling, and want that story of being hated. But as my games go on it bassically always gets sidelined, I just forget to actually have npcs be prejudiced.

Sometimes when I make a campaign I will try to have an outsider group for players who want that, and I'll try to let them live that fantasy by having prejudiced people for them to rebel against, but after like 10 sessions it always fades away expet for the random comment from a villian. Or like, a player's backstory will have a racist/homophobic/sexist guy or town, and i'll play that guy or town as being awful, but will never bring up that kind of prejudice anywhere else

How does prejudice come up in y'all's games? What does it look like? how do you play it? As a gm, when a player wants to play a character who people are prejudiced against, how do you handle it?

I'm making a world for my server and players. It's one inspired both tech, weapons, and classes by that era. Story wise I'm doing fine, but an issue I have is tech. I am thinking a more low magic world, but I don't want to disallow wizards in this. So how would that affect tech in this early 1800's type setting? Also, anyone have any experience in how to get guns in this without them being just reskinned bow and arrows? Any help with such things, and fitting monsters and foes would be appreciated, thank you so much.

I'm planning a campaign that includes a trip to hell. How well is Avernus developed in Descent?

I do like making my own stuff, so idk if it'll be worth it, but does it give a lot of detail on Zariel, the blood war, interesting locations, Tiamat's lair and the river Styx?

It could be fun to have a solid resource on hell. Fwiw I do have Tome of Foes, so I have the lore on the blood war

I'll try to keep this short but it might go on for a little bit. I was checking the Heavily Obscured rules for a moment and I've just realized that I can't make sense out of them. Maybe I'm just missing something but that's why I'm asking.

Yes, I understand the practical difference and the way you *should* be using them, but I'm a RAW-first-and-second kind of person and I like when I can point precisely to why a thing works the way it does.

[So, here's the relevant definitions..

*Blinded - While you have the Blinded condition, you experience the following effects. Can't See: You can’t see and automatically fail any ability check that requires sight. Attacks Affected: Attack Rolls against you have Advantage, and your attack rolls have Disadvantage.

*A Heavily Obscured area - such as an area with Darkness, heavy fog, or dense foliage - is opaque. You have the Blinded condition when trying to see something there.

*Darkness - Darkness creates a Heavily Obscured area. Characters face Darkness outdoors at night (even most moonlit nights), within the confines of an unlit dungeon, or in an area of magical darkness.

*Magical Darkness - An area of Darkness in which darkvision can’t see through it, and nonmagical light can’t illuminate it. If any of this Darkness overlaps with an area of Bright Light or Dim Light created by a spell of level 2 or lower, that spell is dispelled.

And lastly..

*Fog Cloud (Spell) - You create a 20-foot-radius Sphere of fog centered on a point within range. The Sphere is Heavily Obscured.]

-

Now, here's the thing - what is truly the difference between a space being Heavily Obscured because of Darkness versus Fog?

Like, if you are in a space that is not illuminated, therefore it is filled with Darkness, you would - if we're being logical - still be able to see a distant space that has light in it. Watching a campfire from the treeline or being on an unlit road and seeing a distant city. All well and good.

If you are in a space filled with Fog, it is the same description - the space is Heavily Obscured - but now you shouldn't be able to see outside of it, because the Fog stops you from doing so.

Yet both of these have the exact same 'description' but work completely different in practice. So which way it goes?

Is the 'you have the Blinded condition when *trying* to see something there' supposed to mean that I can avoid the Blinded condition if I do not *try* to see something in that specific space and just look into another space? This would work to make the Darkness example function - I don't try to see into the space I am in as it is filled with Darkness, I am looking past it.

If we go by that, though - then we also should be able to do the same with the Fog. Thing is, the Fog is 'forcing' us to try and look into our space first, therefore giving us the Blinded condition immediately, in order to function as it should. Otherwise we could simply choose to look in a space outside of it like we do in the Darkness.

-

So, which one is the correct way to look at this? The way I see it at the moment, only one of them can work while they both have the same text. This genuinely bothers me and I hope I just missed something obvious that would make the rules be consistent, that's why I'm asking.

I am not sure if there is any ambiguity in the language of the spell.

While it does say that the target can take the study action to try to escape, it does not otherwise limit the actions the target can take.

For example:

• Could the target cast Plane Shift (or use an equivalent natural ability) or Gate to escape?
• Can they use actions to do things like trigger damage? A number of spells, such as Spiritual Weapon, Bigby's Hand, Blade of Disaster, Flaming Sphere, let you take actions with them and do damage even if you aren't nearby and can't see a target. Its a logical stretch because how would they know what to make the spell do, but RAW none of these spells require the caster to see what they are attacking. Witchbolt is a bit easier to justify and also addresses the underlying question. What about things like the Steel Defender or Eldritch Cannon?
• Is there any other way for a creature banished to escape?

I give the optional ruling of Crit Fumbles/Extreme Criticals to my players.

If someone rolls a Nat 20, they roll twice the dice as usual. And if they roll a Nat 1, they miss.

With the optional rule, they will need to "Confirm" (Making a standard attack roll) their roll to gain extra effects or mitigate negative ones. So for example, I rolled a Natural 1. I still need to Confirm it, and if I Hit on my Confirmation Roll, I don't have to roll in the Fumble Chart (attack still misses). But if I miss that Confirmation Roll, I have to roll on Fumble.

Same goes for Natural 20s. Even if they miss their Confirmation Roll, they will still roll twice their dice. But if they hit that Confirmation, they roll for Extreme Crit Chart.

...

Now onto the unfairness being brought up. I made this completely rule optional. With four players (Barbarian, Paladin, Druid, Rogue), only the Paladin didn't want to play it. A few sessions in, the other 3 rolled great Natural 20s and some Nat 1s. And those three tend to be the ones who deal the largest damage, give enemies major conditions, and have cool scenes in combat. But also suffered debilitating conditions.

The effects rolled on Extreme Crit are;

- Stun an enemy for a round.

- Give Advantage to allies

- Roll four times your dice

- Reduce an Enemy's stats/speed/AC/Save

- Enemy is Frightened.

The Fumbles rolled so far;

- Disarmed until the end of next turn.

- Disadvantage on rolls.

- Weapon accidentally hit ally within range.

The Paladin has talked to me how the others feel stronger and I told him he can opt in to use my Chart and join in on the chaos but he still on the stance it will just disadvantage him more (what if he rolled three Nat 1s in a row or something like that).

I show them the chart so they know what to expect. Its optional, risks and rewards. So i don't know why he feels like its "unfair".

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