r/DMAcademy

I am new to DMing and I always have some Kind of subplot prepared in Case my Players Just Go to random places Like for example a small town where Goblins have taken over the Mine, bandits are attacking any merchant going into or out of the town and the local priest is doing shady stuff with a local cult and all of it ist somehow connected to keep the Players busy for a couple of sessions. I also don't really Homebrew monsters and mostly Stick to the Standard statblocks. How do you Guys Balance Situations Like this is it really Just "I incrase the Goblins Stats so they are challenging for my Party" or do you Guys have any other ways to do that?

I'm running a campaign where the big bad is an evil Chronurgist who seeks to reset the world and rebuild it in his own image.

Obviously if this is your campaign, stop reading here.

I was thinking on how to make the final battle more interesting and I thought up this battle mechanic, and I wanted to know what you guys would think about it.

The battle will be commenced out of normal initiative, with the party having a cummulative turn. Any summons or reinforcements of the big bad will take their turn at the end of the party's turn.

Essentially, in the back of the room is a large clock. It ticks down from 12 for every action a player takes, be it a main action, a bonus action or a movement action. Once the clock cycles back to 12, the big bad will take his turn. The clock then resets to 11, and the big bad regains all his legendary actions. This will continue on for the clock's tolling until the clock rotates from 1 to 12.

At the last turn, if he's not defeated by then - his will had been done. He succeeds in his evil schemes, and the world is doomed to reset.

This gives the players a little over 4 rounds of full, Main/Bonus/Movement turns to play around with, potentially more if they choose to forego one or the other. This also creates tension as the fight grows on, and gives urgency to healing.

That's my opinion at least. I have no doubts that this idea is flawed in some way, and I would appreciate any way to make it better - or if I should scrap it as a whole.

Hello!

One of my long-running online groups has unfortunately lost our Forever DM to the horrors of real-life responsibilities, but we want to keep the group running. However, none of us have ever tried DMing before.
I offered to give it a go, as I have the most free time and experience being a player out of all of us.

I'm mostly worried about balancing things properly, as this is not something I've ever had to think about as a player.

I'm not an especially creative person, and I don't have a ton of free time, so writing my own campaign or setting is out of the question at least for now. So I've been looking for recommendations for a pre-written short campaign or mini-campaign to run to try to get the hang of things.
Eventually I want to run Dungeons of Drakkenheim for this group, as I've played through it as a player with another group and really enjoyed it, but I think it might be a bit much for me for my first time.

Problem: This is a long-running group of fairly experienced players. We've already played through Curse of Strahd, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Tomb of Annihilation and most of the Candlekeep Mysteries one-shots together. Most of us are also part of separate groups that are currently running other published campaigns (Out of the Abyss, Descent into Avernus, and Rime of the Frostmaiden respectively).

I saw a lot of recommendations for first-time DMs to run something simple like Lost Mines of Phandelver, but I worry that it might be a little bit too "DnD 101" and simplistic for an experienced group. I might be wrong though.

So I am looking for ideas as to what I could plan on running for them, maybe something not published by Wizards, that wouldn't be too simplistic, but wouldn't require an experienced DM to be run properly.

I was thinking about villains or BBEGs who seek to destroy the worl/kill everyone or something similair, but they can tend to have pretty boring motivations such as just power for power's sake or to feel superior or some other in my opinion relatively banal reason that I dont find very engaging. So, what do you think could be interesting reasons for someone to desire the downfall of humanity?

I don't mean a D&D campaign with political elements. I have a player who used to be a noble but was stripped of his nobility by corrupt officials. So he's trying to regain his nobility. I think it would be awesome to give him the opportunity to run for a political office in a new kingdom. I want this to be meaningful, and more than just a string of skill checks. How could I go about making this work?

I'm open to all ideas. I don't know what sort of position it would be, so give ideas if you have any.

With my DM we are building a homebrew Sorcerer subclass adapted specially to his setting, and we came to the agreement we wanted the 6th level feature to be a 'defensive fortress' type thing.

Essentially, you create a small area you cannot move and are well defended inside. You get +ac and + to all saves, but we still want a little more benefit to being in that area, so you could justify staying inside it and defending your position
Any ideas on what features would make this work, specializing on defense if possible?

Good day,

New to DMing wondering if this is an ok series of encounters for a party of four lvl3s using 2024 monster manual statblocks

Party is:
Eldritch knight fighter
Life cleric
Moon Druid
Aberrant Sorceror

They’re all fairly new players so want there to be a sense of danger but not looking to actually kill anyones character

The scenario is them heading to an old ruined chapel and then inside it

Encounter 1 - en route
1 x bandit captain
2 x bandit

Encounter 2 - outside chapel
2 x gnoll pack lord

Encounter 3 - inside chapel
1 x spectator

The hardest encounter according to the DMG should be the two gnoll pack lords but I’ve not had much experience in multi encounter days so just looking for some insight from more experienced heads

Let’s assume there are humans who remember a world before magic. There were stories, sure: holy men able to cure illness with water from a sacred pond; wizened recluses who could walk among the brush and beasts without issue; minstrels who could soothe not only a soldier’s night terrors, but their physical pains as well; and so on and so forth. They were only stories, tales told to children to lull them to sleep. When people went searching for those places, they found… nothing, and no one could recall or produce any record of such things ever truly existing.

Then, all at once, at the height of some emotional outburst, a child calls forth a bolt of fire from a bloodline long suppressed; a fervent prayer is answered; a lutenist’s “Thy Mother” joke causes actual pain.

I’m trying to wrap my head around if I do this, what needs to be taken into consideration?

I’m trying to wrap my head around the 2024 Stunning Strike / Stunned interaction and I can’t find a clean narrative way to explain it at the table.
Rules-wise (as I understand it):
If the target fails the save, they become stunned.
If they succeed, they take a milder effect (like speed reduction / advantage against next attack depending on wording).

The confusing part is the movement logic in the newer rules language.

In older 5e intuition, “Stunned” = basically frozen in place (speed 0, no movement). But in the 2024 wording, Stunned no longer clearly shuts off movement the way Paralyzed or Restrained do???

So RAW ends up feeling like:
On a failed save, the target loses their actions but may still be able to move normally
On a successful save, they keep their actions but are partially hindered in movement

Which produces a weird narrative inversion at the table:
The more you fail, the more mentally locked you are, but not necessarily physically rooted to the ground.
My problem is purely narrative framing. Mechanically I get it WoTC wanted to prevent such hard cc and stun-locking, but it’s hard to describe in-fiction without it sounding backwards. Players expect “stunned” to mean “can’t move.”

Has anyone found a clean way to describe this in-world so it doesn’t feel like:
“you failed harder so you get more freedom of movement”?

Looking for phrasing that makes sense at the table without re-litigating the rules every time it comes up. I also imagine many folks just default to 5e because this felt so jarringly confusing.

Hi all, I'm planning a fairly last-minute one-shot for a group of inexperienced players, I've got the premise down, but I need to come up with some group challenges / tasks for them to complete - I thought I'd check if anyone had any nice ideas!

The idea is: One of them is a demon in disguise, they need to find out who. It'd be like a DnD the traitors / The mole / Werewolf / Million Dollar Secret / etc... One of them is lying, the rest need to find out who.

The set-up is: They've been captured by a demon casino-owner, who will let them go when they finish his final game. They all must play with/against each other to find the Demon. They've all also been infected with Demon's blood, and will turn into a Demon at the end if they don't find a cure.

The plan is for them complete 4 tasks. Each task will give them a chance to get 2 potions - 1 potion will be a cure, one will potion be a dud. At the end, after all the tasks are completed, they choose which potions they want to take and which to ignore out of all of the potions they have collected.
During each task they will have a chance to try acquire a clue as to which potion is the safe potion.
The Demon knows which one potion is the cure, and is trying to get them to take dud.

So currently I'm trying to come up with some task they have to complete in-game: They could be combat, puzzle, skill-based, team-based, or anything engaging, that isn't too long so we can get through them all with discussion at the end.

If anyone has anything they've done before that sounds like it could fit, or wants to throw out any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks!

Ok, I need help getting out of a problem I created.

I gave my players a staff that could cast awaken, but only on plants.

I intended it to be strong, and wasn't worried about the balance, because this is a campaign set in the desert.

I completely failed connect the dots that I had the staff appear... In the middle of a giant building sized plant.

I ended up allowing them to cast awaken on the plant, and it wrecked its way out of there and is now loyal to the party (only for 30 days, sure, but the party is already making it clear their goal is to spoil and love it.)

The problem I'm having is that this is supposed to be a more sandboxy campaign, this was how their first arc concluded (so they are level 4 going on 5), and the plant is very powerful because of it's size.

I'm now worried that this is going to derail a campaign that has otherwise had some great character interactions, and I'm trying to get it back on track. Can anyone give me some advice on how to handle this?

Obviously retconning the plant is an option, but that would feel really weird and bad for the players that made such a big decision that I approved, and I'm not sure how to balance out the campaign otherwise.

Hello
i'm still pretty new to DMing and i'm struggling with balancing my encounters. most seem too easy, even when i add some hp to enemies on the fly (i don't want to "cheat" too much).
I'd appreciate tips that go beyond "use CR or XP rating"

the current encounter that just started at the end of last session is as follows
3 players, 1 npc all 4 are lvl 4, Barbarian, Wild Magic Sorcerer, Ranger and a Rogue/monk (thats the npc, partially played by them or me).
they have encountered a Banshee and currently 4 Skeletons tho one died in round one by a crit from the Barbarian.
they are freshly rested but the Ranger has taken about 1/3 hp damage, because she was attacked by a shadow just before the fight and i rolled pretty well. i can add those into the fight if needed i'm thinking?

This is also a decently big moment in the current story, they are supposed to get to lvl 5 after this fight.

Setting is an abandoned, haunted Castle, cellar. all about a magical Amulet they are searching for. they found the amulet but that angered the Banshee.

so big questions i have here is, how would you make this encounter a bit more interesting/dangerous? how to make them more interesting/dangerous in general?

thank you in advance (feel free to ask me to clarify stuff if i forgot any information)

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"While wearing this circlet, you gain the following benefits:

You have resistance to psychic damage.

Your thoughts can’t be read by telepathy, detect thoughts, or similar magic unless you allow it and you are aware of the target attempting to do so.

Psychic Ward. You're capable of harnessing your entire being into fighting off mental intrusions. Whenever you make an Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma saving throw, as a Reaction, you can expend one of your Hit Dice and roll it, adding the number rolled to the saving throw. You can choose to use this feature after rolling the save, but before the outcome is determined.

Whenever you succeed on saving throw against a spell or effect that targets only you this way, you may force the creature that targeted you to take 2d10 psychic damage."

Hi all,

I'm a new DM running a completely homebrew campaign and my players have gotten very attached to collecting gold, looting, and shopping after big story driven adventures. Their home kingdom is a fairly standard medieval fantasy setting with a traditional gold economy.

The neighboring kingdom they'll be exploring soon is meant to feel ideologically and culturally opposed to that system. I want it to be a society that relies very little on gold internally, with more emphasis on community, obligation, reputation, or resource-sharing instead of straightforward capitalism.

My problem is figuring out how to make that work mechanically in a satisfying way for players.

A few things I'm struggling with:

• If players complete quests or are hired for dangerous work, what does payment look like instead of gold?
• How do I recreate the fun shopping trip after adventure vibe in a society that doesn't revolve around currency?
• How do I keep rewards feeling tangible and earned? Right now players defeat bandits, get loot, sell valuables, buy gear, etc. The loop feels intuitive and rewarding.
• What would conflict look like in this society? One of the main themes that my players are grappling with right now is the class difference in their home kingdom and how that has shown up for each of them. How would class difference or it's adjacent show up in a society that doesn't value money?
• If this kind of system has existed historically or in other fantasy settings, I'd love references or inspiration.

I suck at understanding economy, but I've decided this might actually be a great way for me to learn too. Any and all suggestions would be super appreciated!

TL;DR: I'm building a kingdom in my DnD campaign that operates very differently from a traditional gold-based fantasy economy. I want to rely more on things like reputation, obligation, communal support, or resource-sharing instead of capitalism. My players currently love the standard loot > gold > shopping gameplay loop, so I'm trying to figure out how to make rewards, quests, and shopping still feel satisfying and balanced.

I am finishing up my first ever campaign and am in very early planning for my second campaign! I’ll be running The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and I have a new player who wants to join.

She’s interested in playing a Light Domain cleric who is blind and can only see things illuminated by her own magic. Since Witchlight is (from what I understand so far) a more chill, whimsical campaign, I’m open to being a bit flexible with mechanics.

One idea I had was giving her something like a “Staff of Faerie Fire” with limited daily uses (refreshing on a long rest), so she has to be intentional about when she uses it. I was also considering (maybe generously) allowing the item to hold concentration for her, so she can still function in combat without being overly restricted.

That said, I’m still very new to DMing and I know I tend to get excited about ideas without fully thinking them through. I wanted to get some outside opinions before committing to anything. At the end of the day, I’m also totally fine just treating the blindness as flavor with no mechanical impact.

What do you all think? I’ve never done homebrew before (this is only my second campaign), so I don’t want to accidentally go overboard. I am interested and open to hearing other ideas and suggestions that you all would do .

So here’s the skinny: My party has a draconian sorcerer with a split personality (very Jekyll and Hyde) one is nice the other is mean and he’s spells are flavored depending on who was in charge of the body.

(Before you ask yes I know a sorcerer can not change his spells I’m the DM and it’s a rule of cool)

The party come across a genie in a bottle and are granted a wish with like 90 sec in real time to use it. The cleric of the group who found the bottle wished for the sorcerer to have his curse removed.

The player did not expect this to happen and has asked me to help him figure this out.

Here’s the crossroads:

• The simple choice is to merge and play a character with a new personality.

• I could split the character into two wholly different characters and let him choose which one to keep and I take the other away and use him for my own purposes.

• I could split them and give him 2 characters to play in game (one of his ideas)

What do we think? Give me your thoughts!

Hello! An ex-player wanted to rejoin the campaign. Since I already found his replacement, we'd have 7 people now. I loved having 6 but I wanted to see if you guys have any tips for 7? I did tell him this was a trial run so I might kick if it gets to be too much.

I'm not super interested in splitting into two campaigns since one is already a lot of time to do. I've adjusted enemies to give some magic resistance, a "if incapacitated, paralyzed or whatever you make 2 attacks immediately" and other tricks from forge of foes.

My players are going to try to interrogate an NPC who unknowingly works for the BBEG. He is a researcher and very smart. How do I make it a fun challenge? I want it to be difficult but I want them to be able to get some info from him.

To keep a very long story short, the main gimmick of my campaign is that the big bad is a hive mind who has thousands of its bodies hidden throughout the world. So if they were to enter a bar that is secretly only populated by these hosts and try to fight them, how would I do that?