r/DnD5e

I'm rolling up a Grave Domain Cleric for an upcoming Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign and I'm considering leaning into a frontline/tank role rather than playing primarily as a backline support / caster, as the rest of the group would like to take those roles.

The character concept is a servant of Kelemvor who was raised in the church in Baldur's Gate and sent north after receiving signs that the balance between life and death was being disrupted in Icewind Dale. Mechanically, I'd like him to be durable enough to stand with the martials while still fulfilling the Grave Cleric role of battlefield control, emergency healing, and keeping allies alive.

We rolled stats and I ended up with:

• Wisdom 17
• Constitution 15
• Dexterity 14
• Strength 13
• Intelligence 13
• Charisma 13

Current thoughts:

• Start Cleric 1
• Take War Caster at level 4
• Medium armor + shield (Heavy armor asap)
• Focus on maintaining concentration on spells like Bless and Spirit Guardians
• Use Sentinel at some point if it makes sense
• Stay mostly single-classed Grave Cleric

The things attracting me to Grave Domain are:

• Circle of Mortality for clutch healing
• Path to the Grave for helping the party delete priority targets
• Eyes of the Grave feels thematic for the campaign
• General Kelemvor flavor

My concern is whether Grave Domain can realistically function as a durable frontline presence compared to domains that get heavy armor and martial-oriented features.

Questions:

1. Is a frontline Grave Cleric actually viable through the mid and late game?
2. Is a one-level Fighter dip worth delaying Cleric progression for Defense Fighting Style and Constitution save proficiency?
3. I've taken Acolyte background with the +2 bonus into Wisdom and +1 into INT. Would you increase Wisdom to 20 first or focus on survivability feats?
4. Are there any common pitfalls for Grave Clerics that I should know about before committing to the build?

For those who have played one, I'd love to hear what worked well and what didn't. I'm especially interested in practical experience rather than pure theorycrafting.

-Theron Vhal

If I’m creating NPCs (some of whom become important to the storyline of the campaign and may even temporarily become followers of the party) how should I go about determining their stats? Do I need to create a whole character sheet for them with individual skills and abilities or can I maybe take inspiration from stats from the monster manual?

If the latter how do I know which build / block of stats to go with for the NPC? Trying to make it as balanced as possible for the party, but so they have their own character it’s but don’t blow over in combat?

Also if they end up being in combat do I just run them like I do for the enemies? Where I take their turn but obviously so they’re on the players’ team?

I still don't get it...

Why wasn't (in DND 2014) hunters mark just scrapped and favoured foe made non-concentration so the rlanger can actually make use of its spell list?

I get that dipping for multi classing is an issue, but couldn't you just make it like the barbarian's rage where if you cast a non-ranger/druid spell favoured foe ends? Or even becomes concentration RP wise I kinda like that, when the ranger tries to do magic outside of their class they need to concentrate to keep focus on their favoured foe.

If that wouldn't work (and I am willing to hear why it's a bad idea) I'd still think the ranger would be more fun and not overpowered if you keep hunters mark and just make it non-concentration once you reach level 6 or something to stop people dipping one or 2 levels?

Like if you're going 6 into Ranger you kinda earned the free concentration given most campaigns end around level 10 so you only get 4 in another class.

Just sucks you can't easily play a melee Aragorn style ranger...

I am looking for a build for a character that is not EVIL or the BAD GUY, but he is not the typical good guy.

For example, I am tempted to take 3 levels of Rune Knight for Cloud Rune just so I can stab a party member that annoys me and have the damage hit an enemy. Bonus if I can add more damage to attack (E. Smite / D. Smite / Sneak attack).

Example if he heals (even if it is Cure Sounds from MI Cleric) his Kit looks more like a portable tourcherer's Kit than a healers hit. "Don't worry, this will not cause me any discomfort so just relax."

Basically, the part knows he is on their side but just 90ish percent.

I am also thinking GOO Warlock to get into his enemy's head.

Any ideas?

I’m current in a campaign and I’m in the process of making a deal with the devil (who in this world is the 4th strongest) I ran a few ideas by with the DM and he anticipated all of my ideas. my first idea was for my dragon egg to be hatched and for me to have full control of the outcome of the dragon (element, gender, size) second idea was for me to have to have all my previous memories of my past life and different dimensions potentially knowing what paths to take and what paths and what to avoid. third idea was I wanted my legendary equipment that can level up to be fully leveled up not having me work on them. I wanted to go against the grain and make something up. I have this luck coin with 14 charges and I wanted to have it rechargeable but I was thinking of changing it from a luck coin to a destiny or fate coin. I need y’all’s creative help to think of something that will catch my DM off guard. I want something I can use in and out of combat. something almost OP but VERY useful

I'm new to D&D within the last two-ish years and loving it. I'm part of a longer campaign where our current DM has really enjoyed my character building and background. They're looking to take a small break from our campaign this summer and have asked if I wanted to DM a mini campaign in the meantime.

I have a rough story and setting idea that I think will be a lot of fun. It involves a Cabin in the Woods type "twist" where all of the PCs turn into creatures from the Monster Manual that they will unknowingly choose. I'm struggling with the math behind it though.

I know CRs vaguely mean a party of 4 of that level could reasonably defeat the creature. But we'll have a party of 5, all with Monster Manual CRs and I'm not sure how the math would work there...

Anyone have any tips of how I could weigh some of these numbers to make for a fun, challenging, but doable encounter? Thanks in advance :)

Im trying to build an orc armorer artificer but i dont know which infusions would be cool or powerful to choose. I rly wanna be a front liner with the dreadnought mode. I also don't know what spells are actually good for artificers as they are half-casters and i have never played one. Any advice is greatly appreciated!!!

(Oh yea my sweet dm gives us a free feat at lvl 3 so dat would also be great) Edit: As someone pointed it out there are no infusions in 5.5e so yeah just imagine i wrote magic items instead of infusions

After seeing more people talk about the 2024 monsters, I’m starting to think the bigger question might actually be encounter building.

One of the most common frustrations I had with 2014 5E was that encounter balance often felt more like a rough suggestion than a reliable tool. Sometimes a “deadly” encounter got deleted in two rounds, and sometimes something that looked manageable on paper became way more dangerous because of action economy, terrain, or one bad turn.

With 5.5e, I’ve seen people say the new encounter building rules work much better, especially when paired with the newer monster design. But I’ve also seen DMs say they still have to rely mostly on experience and instinct, especially when resources, rest pacing, magic items, and party optimization get involved.

In my experience, the biggest issue with 2014 encounter building was that I often had to mentally correct the difficulty before the fight even started. If the party had strong magic items, good control spells, or just better action economy, the listed difficulty could stop meaning much very quickly. I could still make good encounters, but it was more because I knew my group than because the system was giving me a really reliable estimate.

So I’m curious how it has actually felt at your table.

Do the 2024 encounter building rules feel more reliable than 2014?

Are combats easier to make challenging without becoming unfair?

Or are you still mostly eyeballing difficulty the same way you did before?

I’d especially like to hear from DMs who have run both versions for the same group.

Bastions are one of the 5.5e ideas I keep going back and forth on.

On paper, I really like them. Giving the party a home base, NPCs, facilities, and something that grows alongside the characters sounds like exactly the kind of thing that can make a campaign feel more grounded and personal.

But in practice, I’m not fully sure how naturally they fit into every kind of campaign.

In my experience, players often like the idea of having a base, a ship, a guildhall, a tower, or some kind of home between adventures. But once the campaign starts moving, especially if the party is traveling a lot or following a more urgent plot, it can be hard to make that home base feel relevant without forcing the campaign to bend around it.

So I’m curious how people are actually using them.

Have Bastions added something meaningful to your campaign?

Do your players care about them and interact with them regularly?

Or do they mostly feel like a cool system that only really works if the campaign is designed around them from the start?

I’d especially like to hear from DMs who tried them for more than a few sessions.

I'm a loot goblin. There I said it.

This also means that I'm the defacto book-keeper-loot-tabulator. I can't say I hate it either because I feel like collecting things in game provides a future potential for AMAZING improvisation.

For example, one session we were in a tavern and there was someone at a nearby table who looked familiar (npc), but introduced himself by a different name. I took out my "vial of toenail clippings" and tossed it on the floor near his feet. I called out "Soandso, I'm sorry for my clumsiness, could you grab that for me?" The npc had to make a roll, but he failed and outed himself. It was awesome.

It's situations like this that make me want to hoover up as many things as are reasonable (while keeping the game flow moving). In this campaign I happen to be an Artificer, so this might even prove more useful as I can create all sorts of weird shit.

Anyway, I keep a shared Google Doc so the other party members can see it too -- it's basically items + currency we get as a group. The DM also drops in the descriptions of special items we acquire over time as a place of reference for us.

How do you handle this in your games? (As a dm? as a player?) Is this normal? Am I NORMAL? LOL.

- Vallon, LVL7 Artificer, Artillerist sub-class.

I mean exactly what I said.

Hola a todos,

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Hi there, first-time poster here.

I’m a pretty experienced DM, while my players are fairly inexperienced. For context, my least experienced player has only played three times, and my most experienced player has played fewer than ten times and recently started DMing another group (he asks me for advice pretty often).

As for me, I DMed Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus for almost two years with a weekly group, and I also ran a homebrew Percy Jackson & the Olympians campaign set in Québec (where I’m from) for about a year. I’ve also DMed a lot of one-shots and I’m an experienced player as well.

Over the last year, I ran two one-shots with this inexperienced group: “The Madhouse of Tasha’s Kiss” for Halloween and “Yeryl’s Super Happy Fun Murder Dungeon” for April Fools’. They really enjoyed them, and I’d now like to start a short campaign lasting two to three sessions of approximately five hours each. However, I’m struggling to find a suitable campaign for that format.

I’d really like to use official material, but I mostly find longer campaigns. I’m also very open to homebrew campaigns, but I haven’t found anything that really matches my taste on DM's Guild.

Does anyone have any suggestions? If it helps, my players are level 5, and both one-shots were set on the Sword Coast. They like to RP with their environment and the NPCs but not so much between themselves (unlike my other group who could talk in character for hours).

The actual text of the Shilelagh spell states that, "For the duration, you can use your spellcasting ability instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls ..."

It does not say that you must, but rather that you can. Nevertheless, on reddit and elsewhere, people assume that you are required to use said spellcasting ability. This makes no sense given the dissection of wording devoted to other spells.

Can anyone offer an explanation for this?

I've noticed that a lot of DMs just aren't aware of cheap and free ways to improve immersion, especially in the days of the internet:

• Some shot bottles have shapes that make for perfect potion stand-ins.
• There are online apps which can create the fonts and borders useful in making your letters of recommendation and decrees look close enough to the official things for gameplay.
• Giving maps and old messages the look of being older is simple with putting the finished product in wet coffee grounds for a while before drying and cleaning it off. A lit and blown out match can be used to give a paper the look that it was salvaged from a fire.
• If one is willing to put in the time, libraries offer all sorts of music that one can use for mood.
• One can buy or download pictures from a National Geographic with articles about ruins, tombs and treasure hoards for an effective visual impact.
• Tattered old books acquired for pennies at a Book Fair can stand in for old tomes, especially when the title has been worn off.
• Occult symbols for what the characters see upon breaking into the cult's headquarters can be found online with ease.

Now that people have had some time to read and actually play the revised rules for Dungeons & Dragons 5.5e for a while, I’ve noticed that a lot of discussions still come down to people interpreting the rules in very different ways.

At my table and in online discussions, some rules seem to be misunderstood or misapplied pretty often. Sometimes it's because the wording changed compared to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and other times it's because the new mechanics interact with older assumptions.

Some examples I’ve seen people get confused about:

• how weapon masteries actually trigger and when they apply
• the revised exhaustion rules and how punishing they really are
• hiding and stealth, especially when a creature can attempt to hide in combat
• changes to certain spells and how their wording affects old tactics
• class feature updates that work differently than they did in 5E

I’m curious what others have run into in actual play.

What rules in 5.5e do you think are currently the most misunderstood?
Have you had to correct something at your table that people assumed worked the same as it did in 5E?

Bonus question: was there a rule you initially misunderstood yourself until you saw it used at the table?

I just made a monk for a new campaign and we all did 4d6 drop lowest and I got some good stats and I’m wondering if it’s to broken strength 13, dexterity 20, (18+2) constitution 12, (11+1) intelligence 11, wisdom 17 and charisma 5. Keep in mind I rolled in front of the other players and DM so these stats are legit and I’m worried a AC of 18 is way to broken for lvl 1.

I've been quietly building a 5e boss encounter supplement for a while. It's finally real and I'd love some honest feedback before launch.
It's called MEGA BOSSES. The concept is simple: 8 fully built boss encounters, each with unique mechanics designed around who the boss actually is, not just a stat block with legendary actions stapled on. There's original art, encounter structure.
The team is small. A professional fantasy author and a DM who's been writing original adventures for years, the guy genuinely lives for encounter design. I'm the third piece, creative direction and also the one trying to turn this into a sustainable thing I can do for a living.

We have a mystery boss that unlocks at $1,000. (Chronus the Anomaly)
I'd love to hear what you think, even if you just take a look. Every bit of support counts.

🔗 Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frameforge/mega-bosses

Disclaimer: The art is AI-generated because I can't draw and the budget isn't there, but every word and every monster in this project was written by a human with real care and passion. I didn't have many options, so please don't hold it against me!