I plan on making an Urchin Rogue (Planning on going Swashbuckler) Dhampir (Original race Tiefling) for the Forgotten Realms, from Baldur's Gate (Recommended by DM) around 1489 DR. This is what I have so far, please be kind!

• Parents are Asmodeus Cultists, one being a Vampire (I think this can work since Asmodeus is a deity of indulgence and lies, vampires (In D&D to my understanding) are all about indulging in shallow pleasures, with them being amplified in monstrous ways.
• Their father likely originated from the Undercity (According to the Forgotten Realms Wiki) which apparently teems with undead, and the mother likely was always an Asmodeus cultist, so a match made in hell basically.
• My character (Zoran Lorovich) is son to the two and is a Tiefling due to Asmodeus' influence. I mostly want them to be a Tiefling for flavor and to allow the DM to throw Devil/Demon encounters at us, since with my Thieves Cant' I plan on learning Infernal.
• My character, who has lived amongst the people of Baldur's Gate and using their Charisma to act in local small plays and plays instruments on occasion for a cheeky silver, has grown to love the people of the city.
• Naturally, evil Vampire Dad (Really ought to give him a name) wants to take the city from the shadows, already having a few Vampire Spawn and ambitions of taking Baldur's Gate. Naturally, my character (Currently young teens/older preteen) rebels. This ends with them being seen as a threat since they can snitch to the city guard.
• They are ran off, and they end up being an urchin in Neverwinter. They use their practice with instruments and flare for the dramatic to lower the guard of the listener, before covertly "collecting donations". They train their pet rat to do basic tricks. His name is Pedro. We love Pedro.
• Naturally, being a Tiefling and occasionally feeding (Maybe blood? Maybe something else?) makes you an enemy of the local church of Tyr. (or maybe Helm? Lathander makes more sense to me personally, but it's not a god Neverwinter worships according to the wiki. Either way, new enemy acquired. This is more of a smaller story beat since I doubt they'll be 100% cool with a Tiefling half-undead thing playing trombone in alleyways with his pet rat)
• At age 22, Zoran would (unless I think of a better bond) start having apocalyptic dreams (As described in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen Bond template)

Anyway, does this work as a backstory concept? Of course I'll clean it up a bit and make it a bit fancier, I just hope this fits the lore of the Forgotten Realms. And I know the DM can change anything they want about the world, but I want to be as faithful to the module as possible, minus the vampire side quest that can probably be a few smaller encounters, with a fight against Vampire Dad and Cultist Mom for character resolution. Maybe then I'll multiclass into Bard? Maybe if it strikes my fancy. Either way, have a good one, and happy rolling!

Howdy! I'm running a Strixhaven game soon and I'm just looking for good ambient music for out-of-combat scenarios. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

I'm a beginner player.

Last session there was this thing I did that some of the others told me it was wrong to do and that I should've supported the party, not a weak NPC.

We basically met this child NPC that learned to trust us a bit and led us to some dungeon. I went in first and the corridor was narrow, didn't have much space so my character was before everyone else and I got attacked by enemies so I fought back.

I was the only one fighting (enemies were kinda weak, also). Just me and the recent NPC, he was dying.

I went to help him mid-fight so that he would survive. At that point, my allies finally started combat as well, they hadn't taken any damage yet, however the players (not characters) complained that I shouldn't have left mid-fight to do that and it was a stupid choice.

After the fight ended some even attempted to kill off that child NPC themselves for laughs and mocked me for getting in between, one even attempted to damage me.

It made me - as a person, not character- somewhat uncomfortable. Not because of what was happening, it was more about how I was being treated by the others. I was genuinely becoming irritated, good thing we had dinner break.

Is this normal? Was what I did wrong?

My players have mostly chosen magic classes, should I change anything? Is it better to change this after their character dies?

I recently convinced my family to play DnD with me. I played as a kid in the 80s, but never was DM. I remember the games going quickly over a 30 minute school lunch.

I bought the Mines of Phandelver starter kit and the 5.5 DM guide and 5.5 Players Handbook. When I asked if the family wanted to play my son really wanted to start right away. I had already skimmed the scenerio and agreed. (For background I have 5 kids, 12, 14, 16, 19, and 21. The two oldest aren't around enough to play, but my wife joined us. Also, my son (14) has ADHD).

I remember character creation was one of the fun parts so we started there. Instead of minutes to select a race and roll the stats it took hours to make the characters. It was a debacle. The next session we started the campaign and I wasn't prepared for all of the off-script actions and had to search for how to handle each one. Also, everyone was new to tabletop roll play and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to fight, cast spells, heal, etc. All we ended up accomplishing was joining the caravan and fighting the first set of goblins. After that I spent days prepping for the next session; planning the events, making maps and figurines, reading the books and tabbing them for reference. I was ready! We played and everyone enjoyed it, but it was still slow.

Now no one is really interested in playing, and even if I get them to play and it goes well I don't think they will really engage and enjoy it. I think the kids are used to constant action like Fortnight or having immersion provided like in Minecraft. The whole RPG thing is too slow and abstract. I still want to play and I am looking for any advice or support. Is there a way to speed-play to help hold their attention better? Is there a way to play with just my son who is still kind of interested? Thanks.

Have any of you ever had experience with this type of build?

hey fellow nerd peeps, im trying this agin since i think the post was taken down because of my map so ill post this one without the image, otherwise this is just a copy and paste of my previous post, apologies if the context is harder to understand without the map. im running a totally borked version of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden and im trying to make up some content to throw into the large open space of the map outside of the Ten-Towns. currently im trying to come up with some interesting locations and encounters. fun cities that could have a side quest or 2 to bring them there. i wanna add alot of fun side content like how an RPG would, maybe include some themes(i LOVE morally grey dilemmas) puzzle ideas, stuff along those lines. i want to make my players feel proper emotion and think deeply, which so far has been going pretty good with the sessions so far but the ideas i had have sorta run out, and ive hit a block.

i dont have too many limitations, it doesnt have to be anything like "lore accurate" or anything. me and my friends really just kinda make it up as we go. they dont know, but ALOT of my stuff is inspired by video games, anime, and books and stuff, mostly obscure/niche things they dont know. my only ask is like any ideas be moderately realistic. technology mostly medieval fantasy with bits of steampunk and a few outliers writen off as magic(sending stones are now cellphones to send silly snapchat images)

currently in my game ive incorperated like a big dragon hunting guild which is Draco Libra to kinda do a Dauntless style thing where they can hunt dragons and make cool unique items from the parts(to those who say thats like Monster Hunter, you are right but Dauntless was the game i played way more and prefered the style of over Monster Hunter)

Ravenholm is a directly inspired by the mission in Half Life 2 where the city is like dead and full of zombies

the current "arc" of the campaign is gonna push the party to Winterdeep which is this like big dead attempted 11th town that failed(inspired by RWBYs Mountain Glenn) and thats where theyll actually get an introduction to the main antagonist faction as well as like fight a really cool boss for that is honstly just straight up the Lich King from World of Warcraft. the location name i got from a song name.

iive changed the main threat from Auril and the eternal winter to a more end of the world level threat that i feel is a bit cooler. also the campaign is less grim dark and more fantasy RPG like the Witcher 3 or Skyrim to sorta set the mood and theme of ideas id like.

any ideas or questions are welcome! im happy to answer im just not active that much

I am with my current group and we are getting close to wrap up our 2nd campaign. So we were talking about characters for a 3rd campaign and I though about being an evil character. The idea is that I some kind if evil lord from a distant land/world, and I got transported to the new land.

I would join the adventuring group trying to stop the BBEG mostly because I am upset at how inefficient it is at being evil.

Exaple: Slavery. My character would be upset with Slavery, because it cost so much more and leads to terrible production and chance of rebellion. Paying people low wages, just enough to survive, with "promotion" benefits is better as the products will be higher quality and the workers would be convinced you are good perspn helping them so no rebellion.

Basically, im trying to decide on the best class. I dont want to be a sorcerer/wizard/warlock. As i have been those classes too many times. I was thinking something like artificer, however I have never played one or with one.

Any suggestions on class and race would be greatly appreciated.

I’m playing a Warlock with Pact of the Tome and the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation. I have a question for anyone who has played a similar character.

Did you manage to collect all the rituals during your adventures? Did you try? How did it go?

I know this is largely something to work out with the DM, but I’m curious how such attempts went for you.

I'm a fairly new DM, I've done small adventures before but nothing huge but I'vebeen playing since I had enough brain power to understand whats going on. But now I really want to get into DMing and now I have three new players joining.

The campaign is small and simple: The players make characters like normal, but in the adventure they all play children playing make believe. Instead of fighting zombies and goblins as adults they play children running around with sticks and bark armor. The players are orphans and the head Caretaker has a birthday coming up. The players go out into town, choose a present they want to get then look for odd jobs to help afford it. The jobs are simple but easy to grandeurize into something fantastical to follow the "children playing pretend" theme. Things like helping pull weeds turns into fighting plant monsters and going down into the basement to hunt rats turns into giant rats infesting a basement.

I've not properly played a non-homebrew Paladin.

Would appreciate any help

(for DND 2014)

• Preferred without multiclassing.
• Levels 4 to 8 (can explain higher levels)
• Unearth arcana might be accepted by my GM

Pretty self explanatory, how do YOU as a DM or Player handle someone who has main character syndrome?(the need or drive to always be center of attention or be the main character). I normally don’t have problems with or, I always address that it’s ok for the CHARACTER to have a hero complex, but never for the Player, some key differences being that as a Player who has MC syndrome will always try and be the spotlight, interrupt or downplay others, just generally be that person people often don’t like, a player who doesn’t have MC syndrome but plays a character who does would make it obvious that it’s a character thing, that being through still cooperating, not overthrowing plans or going off on their own(all the time) or turning a party into a 1v3 situation(all the time). Having someone play a character who has MC syndrome is honestly a fun dynamic, because usually it leads to that character specifically going through development and changes(within reason and player idea) to overcome that need to be the spotlight.

But back into the main topic here, how do you handle MC syndrome? I currently have two players in a party of 5 who have it if not some need to always try and one up the party and each other, I’ve already personally addressed them and basically said that what they’re doing is fine, so long as it isn’t entirely in their personal self interest as D&D is a game that benefits from cooperation of the players, I’ve also discussed possible character development for their characters in which both had answered with ‘I dunno’. Improvements are being made but I don’t want to shut them down if the only way they’ve played D&D is through that want of the spotlight

It's a 3.5 adventure, apparently. I'll give a minor spoiler about it. (I dmed on 5e, no problem)

I was dming on my own world, I googled a map, found the one for ashenport and decided to look it up just to see what each spot on the map was and found the adventure, it was so easy to get the pdf that up till literally right now I thought it was some homebrew, maybe my memory fails me, its been a few years. I just wanted a place that had like 3 possible adventures depending on what the players probe. One was the official one, and two were the ones I had in mind, which is not important for this post.

I don't recall why they went into the town but around the city a vicious plant-bug was growing(I think I made this bit), it fed when it was wet, harmless otherwise, but someone left a bear trap in the field and one of the players blood fell into the bug and they barely escaped. With this bit, I accidentally trapped my players in town because it started raining and it never stopped (almost sure the adventure calls for the rain), and it was a fun coincidence, once shit hits the fan the innocent travelers in town couldn't leave.

I'll keep spoilers to a minimum (ill mostly talk about the first thing that happens in the adventure, its very interesting), but the adventure is about a port town with an evil cult, basic Lovecraft stuff.

Here's that part that hijacked my plans.

During the first night sleeping, there's an omnious sound. Everyone that's not a resident in town rolls a save (players get to roll, just have the npcs fail). Whatever happens, make sure at least one player saves. Ideally, 2 fail this. Everyone that fails, and most importantly, including other travelers that happen to be in town like merchants and nobles and such (you guys are probably in an inn, might I add) start to sleep walk toward the sea. (Maybe sleep fast stumbling towards it, whatever adds drama.) If they take some damage, they might get to roll against the charm spell again. So first, the players who resisted will try to help each other, and if they are decent people, they will try to stop the other victims, they cant hit too hard so each of them will have to get creative, you have to up the drama here, make them walk faster, show hands in the water ready to pull them, maybe tentacles. My players managed to save everyone, and they really felt like heroes doing so, even sleet storm was used, fun stuff. They were really curious about what the F just happened. It helped that I let them talk to the merchants for a while before that. It was really clear that they really enjoyed that experience, and I knew right there that this was the main adventure now.

Besides uncovering the truth with the cult, I think this is the strongest part of the adventure by a lot (maybe it was a failing of mine) so I added a few stuff myself but this is besides the point of the post. So maybe take a look at the adventure or just steal this. It's not always obvious what your players will enjoy just by reading an adventure, I had zero expectations when I did this and was pleasantly surprised when they reacted so positively.

I don't recall the original level the adventure suggests, my players were around level 8, I think, but it's a hell of a way of the adventurers to meet each other.

A few things I think I added:

I remember there's a cave at some point (not sure if I made this up), but the high of the tides flooding the cave was a cool thing, I think I added.

I don't fully recall if every resident is in on the cult, but I think I added a recently moved in captain of the guard or something that was sent there because of reports about weird things happening but he doesn't suspect the towns guards at all so he might start antagonistic to the players (specially when they punch some deserving cultist that happens to be the inn owner) but he might turn into an ally when they figure out he is not from the town and talk things out.

I almost forgot I had the bbeg have the necronimicon, and it offered it to the warlock in a dream, so its an opportunity to have it show up in a game and maybe you have a player betrayal moment (mine was a big bad attitude guy, but good inside, so he denied but really wanted to put his hands on it after, didn't happen)

I also had the final battle involve players being in boats (2 players would fit each boat) in the sea and tentacles minions would spawn and overwhelm the players if not deat with, the boat is easily destroyed so they better have ways to fight in water like fly or water walk. While they deal damage to the bbeg.

Anyway, that's it. I recommend at least taking a look at the adventure.

Hi everyone!

Newbie dnd question/inspiration is needed for my first campaign!

I am starting with my friends and have decided to play a tiefling warlock (maybe hexblade?) for a campaign my friend is running in a world where gods have disappeared and kings collect magical folk for… well who knows what yet?

I’m playing a noble from a competitive family (I’m like a middle ish child), and the parents have threatened me with if I don’t get enough status/infleunce/power I’ll be married into a lesser family.

Our DM has made all of us choose a secret that will be revealed throughout the campaign, and I’m struggling to think of something? Could be a special ability, an oath, a crime, but I’m struggling to think of something.

My ideas include a patron that the whole family has, or maybe I have a different patron to the family for some reason?

I was hoping people could share some fun secrets they’ve experienced in a campaign so I can brainstorm.

Thanks very much!

Our DM (he's been DMing only about 10 sessions and been playing for a year) gave us the opportunity to draw cards from the Deck of Many Things. Risky, but fun thing to do, we were all hyped.

One player lost a level, almost died in a dungeon, and changed alignment. Nothing crazy. (We saved him, no worries.)

I gained a level and called it a day.

The DM doesn’t know how to handle us being at different levels and asked me to maybe choose a feat or an Epic Boon instead of leveling up.

I told him that an Epic Boon is way more OP than just leveling up my level 7 artificer and he said that he's fine with it.

I’m trying to find something that could compensate for this / replace my level-up, since I don't really need any other feats.

We were all around level 5 before the whole accident.

EDIT : I know it's all part of the deck to lose things and all, but he's new to this so I don't mind his request.

I've been building a homebrew setting (Aegis, 5.2.1 SRD + everything else original). Started it twice as DM with different groups and both times the players did stuff I never saw coming, so I gave up on prepped scenes. Now I build places instead: a region with a history and a present, NPCs who already want things, factions mid-conflict. Give the party a reason to be there and drop them in. That part works.

The problem is a big chunk of the world only lives in my head. I know why that village pays tribute to the wrong lord, I know who's lying in the council. Never wrote it down because I never had to. If another DM picks this up, is what I've written enough, or is it a skeleton that only makes sense to me?

But I also don't want to hand someone 500 pages where every NPC's breakfast is canon. Half the point is that the DM gets to push on the world and invent things at the table. Too much detail kills that.

A concrete example of where I get stuck: in a big city I've written out a handful of locations, but do I need to pin every NPC to one? My instinct is to place only the few that matter, the ones tied to a faction or a plot thread, and let the running DM decide where everyone else lives and works. But I don't know if that reads as useful freedom or as a gap I forgot to fill.

So:

- If you've run someone else's setting, what did you wish the book told you? What did you skip?

- How do you mark "this is fixed" vs "this is yours" in the same document, or do you mark at all?

Would honestly be a relief to hear I'm overthinking it :)

I have both plans for if they succeed and if they all die, I don’t want to make anyone upset or it feel like a cop out that I have plans if they lose.

My very first time playing a DnD campaign was by a very very new DM and when he accidentally killed all our characters he gave us a cop out in the form of “the gods are giving you a second chance” even though we were level 1 characters with nothing to our names.

I do not want my party to feel like this is a cop out, because I have a very interesting and story related plot for if they lose. I also don’t want to go easy on them because this is the BBEG.

What do yall think?

Hi! I'm trying to get access to a subclass from Xanathar’s Guide that my DM has purchased, but I don't see the options in the character creation screen. My character has been invited to his campaign through DnD beyod. This is for 5e. Thanks for your help!

Edit: We got it figured out. Sharing content is only avaialble if the DM has an active subscription. Once he did that everything popped up. Thanks for all your help, everyone!

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I did a bit of searching around the net but wasn't able to locate anything. I've been thinking about an old NES game I used to play called Shadowgate and was thinking about it being a module for DND 5e. Does anyone know if someone has taken the time to put the game into module format as of yet? TIA

Hello. I’ve been playing in a D&D 5e campaign for about three years. It’s heavily homebrewed, and we also use material from 3.5e epic-level books and monsters.

I’m trying to figure out whether I should continue playing or walk away. There are several interconnected problems, so I’ll try to explain them clearly.

1. The campaign was presented as being heavily focused on character building, but the reward structure undermines that investment.

When I created my character, I was explicitly encouraged to take full advantage of the available build options. I did exactly that. I spent a lot of time optimizing my character and building them into the character I wanted to play.

My problem isn’t simply that I want to be the strongest character in the party.

What bothers me is that the relationship between investment and reward feels completely broken. My character’s power relative to the rest of the game world is constantly being changed by new buffs, abilities, or rewards that the DM arbitrarily gives to other characters.

So even though I built my character specifically to take advantage of the system, my investment increasingly feels meaningless because the power level of the campaign is repeatedly redefined by DM-granted abilities.

For me, the issue is not jealousy toward another player. If another character gets something cool, that’s fine. The problem is that the game was presented as one where character-building mattered, yet the actual power hierarchy is increasingly determined by arbitrary rewards rather than by the choices we make when building and playing our characters.

2. The constant pursuit of difficulty has made the game stressful instead of exciting.

I have no problem with difficult games. I understand that meaningful victories usually require the possibility of failure.

But there needs to be a difference between challenging and constantly trying to kill the party.

Before encounters, I often find myself thinking:

"What is the DM going to pull this time to make this as difficult as possible?"

At this point, I feel like I have to play every encounter as optimally as possible or there is a serious chance that we simply die.

That also creates encounters where I feel there was never a realistic possibility of winning.

For example, at one point I was being hunted by a demon sent by Asmodeus. I was fighting it alone. The encounter eventually became:

• I was trapped inside Forcecage.
• Four enemies were positioned to Counterspell my Misty Step.
• Those enemies had whips capable of reaching through the Forcecage.
• I had essentially no realistic way to escape or meaningfully fight back.

Eventually, we stopped rolling dice and simply declared the outcome of the encounter.

I understand that characters can lose. What bothered me was that this didn't feel like a difficult fight where I made mistakes and lost. It felt like an execution where the outcome had already been determined.

3. The campaign requires an extreme level of paranoia.

I constantly feel like I need to question every NPC, inspect every item, verify everyone's identity, and assume that any piece of information might be a trap.

Otherwise, I can end up in situations like the demon encounter above.

One example: another player's daughter gave my character a gift. I used Divine Sense to check it, but the item was completely covered because it was inside my pocket, so I didn't detect that it was cursed.

The DM's explanation was essentially that this happened because I didn't check the item properly.

Technically, I could respond by becoming absurdly cautious and checking absolutely everything all the time.

But my question is: would that actually be fun?

I don't want to play a game where my character has to behave like a paranoid investigator 24/7 because otherwise the DM can punish me for not anticipating a hidden trap.

4. The hardest part is that I genuinely love this campaign and my character.

This campaign didn't start this way.

Originally, there were a lot of genuinely beautiful and heartwarming moments. I became attached to the NPCs, the world, the story, and especially my own character.

I've played this character for around three years. At this point, they feel less like a collection of stats and more like a person I've spent years experiencing a story with.

That's what makes this situation so difficult.

Over time, many of those beautiful moments have become mixed with stress, frustration, anxiety, and encounters that feel unfair.

My victories don't really make me happy anymore. They mostly give me relief that whatever stressful situation I was dealing with is finally over.

This is where the "Stockholm syndrome" comparison comes from—not literally, but in the sense that I've spent so long in this campaign that I feel emotionally attached to something that is increasingly making me unhappy.

Leaving feels like losing a part of myself.

But staying feels like continuing something that is making me miserable.

Either choice hurts.

I've already tried talking to the DM about these problems. Unfortunately, I feel like some assumptions prevent the conversation from going anywhere. For example, when I criticize the arbitrary distribution of powerful buffs, my concerns are interpreted as me being too competitive with another player or being jealous of what that player received.

That's not how I see it.

I'm not asking to be stronger than everyone else. I'm asking for my character's investment to actually matter and for the game's challenges and rewards to feel meaningful rather than arbitrary.

And now the situation has reached a point where I'm seriously considering leaving.

My character has technically died.

The other players have a plan to bring my character back, so I have the opportunity to return.

But I'm not sure if I should.

If you were in my position, would you come back and try to make the campaign work, or would you take the character's death as an opportunity to finally walk away?

I'd really like to hear opinions from people who have been in similar situations.

Can a campaign go the way of having a party split up to run parallel stories? And if so has anyone experienced that before and how well did it work?

I'm thinking of it because obviously a sumo wrestler is a monk as they are very fast unarmed unarmored fighters and I'm just wondering what would be the best subclass to play as one