r/dndnext

howdy,

Was running a one-shot the other day for a novice group of players, and had a funny story I wanted to share. To keep it brief, the party was snooping around in an NPCs quarters looking for some good gear to pocket. I had a player roll an investigation saving through which resulted in a nat-one.

As a result, I told them "You find a magical parchment piece of paper. It has some words written on it that echo with arcane energy"

this was when everyone suddenly was confused as if I just made a blunder. the table started to question "but I rolled a nat-one?", and I simply responded with "I know"... curiosity would get to the better of the group, and before a mage could cast 'detect magic' the paladin read off of the spell-scroll!

A cast of 'charm person' would inadvertently hit the groups druid (who succeeded the throw), and then the magical item disintegrated in the paladins hands...

moral of the story:

What's worse than not finding anything good? Finding something great, and accidentally wasting it!

*I don't think this would work for all players, so definitely know your audience; however, it did result in a lot of laughs as the party scrambled to 'undo' the action

Cheers!

Mechanically speaking:

• OVERALL THEME: If I where to explain "Ranger" in a simple phrase, what should it even be? If Paladins are "Holy Warriors", Monks are "Martial Artists", Wizards are "Studious Mages", what should describe a Ranger in a simple, effective way?

• DURING COMBAT: What should they be doing? Should they focus only on dealing damage to single targets and/or bundled-up groups, controlling terrain and/or enemies, supporting allies through cures and/or buffs, or even a mix of all the above? Should they be only Ranged, only Melee, a mix of both, dual wielding, sword as board, two-handing an axe, or what? Do they need anything beyond Extra Attack, or should they get a unique way of attacking or getting bonuses to their attacks?

• OUTSIDE COMBAT: What is their niche without violent means? "Nature & Exploration*" is a great start, but what does it even mean? Should they help with wilderness travel, general outdoors survival, animal handling, or what? And how should this work? Complex rules, simple advantage to specific rolls, Expertise?

• MAGIC: How magic should them be? Halfcasting, Mundande, Non-magical-but-still-not-normal like a Monk or Barbarian? If Halfcaster, is just that part that is magical about them, or does this seeps into the rest of the class? If Mundande or "Superhuman" even, do they get something to compensate the lost of magic?

• NICHE PROTECTION: What does they do that almost no one can do, like a Barbarian Rage, a Paladin Aura, Monk Martial Arts, Fighter Action Surge, Sorcerer Metamagic, etc.?

• ANIMAL COMPANIONS: Finally, what IS the Ranger relationship with Animal Companions? Should it just be optional, a feature on a On/Off switch or a permanent part of the class fantasy, always there?

For me, its hard to say what these answers even are, and nobody, not even WotC, seems to know the answer either, because that are so many different answers around that most don't agree with.

To me, at least, in D&D 5e/5.5e specifically (in other editions and systems, this would change most likely):

• MY OVERALL THEME: The discriptor would be "Druidic Warrior". Most will not agree with this, which does include me, but I truly believe it is what best fits in 5e/5.5e.

• MY DURING COMBAT: First, I woudl go with both melee and ranged, even if I would prefer a Ranged-only class for the Ranger, btu that's a personal preference. I think a mix of "Focus fire a single target with many attacks" & "Make terrain terrible to move through for enemies without penalties", be it because of slowing, restraining, damaging or something else more creative. They should be, first and foremost, Ambushers, Skirmishers and Masters of Guerrilla Tactics

• MY OUTSIDE COMBAT: Like I said, Nature & Exploration is the starting point. Favorite Terrain to me is a trap, however. In my mind, the should be baseline good or even great everywhere outside, and only then Favorite Terrain comes in and makes Rangers Impossibly Amazing in specific terrains. Most of all, they should be helping the party through travel, not only going on ahead and being a lone wolf.

• MY MAGIC: Outside D&D 5e, I would orefer them non-magical, but D&D is too High Magic to make it work to me without creating an entire new subsystem that would just go underdeveloped or fogotten with time, so Halfcaster it.

• MY NICHE PROTECTION: THIS, RIGHT HERE, is the core problem with Rangers to me, because no unique mechanic its entirely life in D&D seemed to have sticked the landing just right. My two cents? Give them a Favorite Enemy that mixes "I deal more damage with a special Mark" and "even if they are not around, I learned useful multi-faceted tactics that can be used anywhere" like ignoring part of a creature's AC thanks to your time studying Dragons. Make Natural Explorer a series of Invocation-like options that you pick to not only be better at certain exploring situations (like stealthing, climbing swimming) but also give part of these bonuses to their allies, like an experienced guide showing how things are done. Allow them to create a "Hunting Grounds" area in a point they can see that give bonuses to you and your allies or debuffs the enemies.

• MY ANIMAL COMPANIONS: My biggest and most controversial take, probably, will be to make Animal Companions part of the main class, but not an always active ability. First, give Rangers a few Wild Shapes (like the Paladin has Channel Divinity), but instead of becoming an animal, you use them in two ways: 1) you can some a familiar, which can become a bigger, stronger creature depending on subclass 2) you can enter a Transformation State based on subclass choice. Some subclasses would have bith options, but most would only have one or the other. Hunter? Transformarion. Beastmaster? Better animal. Gloomstalker? Transformarion. Swarmkeeper? Could go either way, be it a Swarm familiar or a "Swarmed" Transformation.

Do I think these options I presented are perfect and everyone would love them? Far from it, but I still want to understand what people really want of a Ranger, and for those who don't know I give them my ideas to a thought experiment.

I am a player in a Curse of Strahd (5e) campaign. I am playing a monk and leaning towards grappling enemies in combat. I was thinking (haven't attempted yet): shouldn't I just be able to silence a grappled enemy by covering their mouth? To me, it would make sense to be able to do so since, lore-wise, most spells have a verbal component that needs to be said out loud.

Would it make sense to be able to do so? Maybe have the enemy roll a STR/DEX save? Or would it break the combat/be too over-powered?

EDIT: I do understand that it is not RAW, but I was thinking if and how it could be made to work without breaking the game. Also, I wasn't intending grapple itself to silence the caster; I rather intended grapple + additional action to "gag" the character and possibly having to use an action/bonus action every turn + concentration to keep/refresh the gag, and saving throw for enemy every turn. The idea would essentially be to take one enemy out of the fight while I am also essentially taken out of the fight.

EDIT2: The intention here is primarily for role-playing (being able to neutralize a spellcaster without harming them) rather than creating an unbalanced game-breaking mechanic. In hindsight, I probably should have titled the post as "how can I make this work?" rather than "would this work?".

EDIT3: I agree that it makes a lot more sense to be able to try to gag the opponent if I am restraining them, rather than just grappling.

Im planning to run Shattered Obelisk for the first time and was thinking of giving players the option to have a Bastion at level 5, since i know a lot of them like basebuilding games. But im a pretty new DM and never used these rules, do people like them? Have you ever ran a bastion? Did anyone else ever fit on into Mines of phandelver?

Most of the things I've found online about them have been negative, but it's also barely been out, so maybe people just haven't had the chance to work them out yet, idk. What do you all think about em?

I have a character idea of a succubus that is hiding from a group of demon hunters but while I was making her, I had trouble choosing what she would be exactly, to be specific she would be a bard/??? I just need help with the 2nd class she would be

Currently my party is sailing across a sea to go and slay a dragon that lives on a lonely island. Some of the party members and crew that hadn't sailed before are, naturally, becoming sea sick. One of the players had a great idea to use Suggestion to effectively make some members of the crew temporarily "immune" to sea sickness by suggesting them to simply ignore the imbalance of their equilibrium (which causes sea sickness, as best we understand).

Does this sound like something that can be achieved with Suggestion? It seems to me that it is an involuntary response from the body, not something that you really have control over or can intentionally "ignore".

I'm mostly just curious if it's something you guys would accept or find reasonable? It's mostly for RP purposes so I think, even if it doesn't make sense, why not? Asking for my own understanding really. Thanks!

Hide Action

When you take the Hide Action, choose one of the following options. Both options require you to make a DC 15 Dexterity (Stealth) check. Record the result; creatures that might detect you compare their Wisdom (Perception) Checks against it when necessary.

Become Invisible. You try to vanish from sight while only Lightly Obscured or while positioned behind Half or Three-Quarters Cover.

• If you are not behind Three-Quarters Cover, you have Disadvantage on your Dexterity (Stealth) Check. At the DM’s discretion, taking additional measures to improve your concealment — such as dropping Prone or otherwise enhancing cover — can negate this Disadvantage.
• On a successful check, you become Invisible to all creatures that fail to meet or exceed your Stealth result with their (passive) Perception checks.
• You are no longer Invisible, are no longer obscured or behind cover towards a creature.

Become Hidden. If you are already Invisible, you can use the Hide Action to become Hidden, hiding your presence and location from other creatures.

• While Hidden from creatures, they are unaware of your presence and location.
• At the DM’s discretion, certain activities can break the Hidden condition and reveal your presence. Examples include: Making an Attack, Casting a Spell, speaking loudly, or moving in a way that gives away your position. If this occurs, other creatures may immediately know your location, even if you remain Invisible.

---

Invisible [Condition]

While you have the Invisible condition, you experience the following effects.

Unseen. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.

Attacks Affected. Attack Rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your Attack Rolls have Advantage.

Circumventing the Condition. If a creature uses Special Senses to "see" (e.g. using Blindsight), you don't gain the benefits of this Condition against that creature.

Ending the Condition. The Feature, Spell, or rule that granted you the Invisible Condition also states how and when the Condition ends on you.

---

Hidden [Condition]

While you have the Invisible Condition, you can also try to fully hide your location. While Hidden, you experience the following effects.

Surprise. If you’re Hidden when you roll Initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.

Unknown Location. Other creatures cannot descern your location. If previously alerted, they might still suspect your presence.

Circumventing the Condition. Creatures can use Special Senses (e.g. Tremorsense) to prevent you from being Hidden from them.

Ending the Condition. You stop being Hidden immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy can see you, you make an Attack Roll, or you cast a Spell with a Verbal Component.

Noob here, first campaign ever.

Currently building my Battle Master Fighter, my DM is running a Game of Thrones post Ice and Fire campaign and starting us out at level 5.

I'm stuck on which origin feat I want to take, hoping someone can steer me in the right direction which would be the most logical choice?

Right now my AC is 17 but I think my DM is going to give me some extra gold so I'm going to be able to bump that up to an 18. Strength is 18 and my Con is 16.

I'm leaning towards lucky but alert seems like a good option with Battle Master but then I'm worried about taking too much damage and considered tough.

Appreciate the feedback.

Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc., and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more, so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

*New 2026: For 2026, I'm updating all my old work to include a Pre-Session Checklist that will include a list of all miniatures you may need, maps, handouts, possible loot, a link to a playlist, and more to make it even easier to start your session!

The Lost Mine of Phandelver is a classic, one of the very first Mini-Campaigns that new DM's run. Heck, it's part of the starter set after all! The issue, though, as with many other modules, is that it doesn't describe the best way to transform the contents of the book into an actual session. The Book-to-session conversion can be difficult. Between figuring out when things should happen, understanding motivations, and even balancing encounters.

Well, fortunately for you, 99% of that work is done! Only a few things are really left:

1. Consider the needs of your group. As you've heard or are about to hear a million times, every table is different. If you plan on combining this with a campaign, you'll have to make tweaks here and there. (Bonus points if you include your players' backstory)
2. These notes aren't meant to be end-all-be-all. Tweak to your heart's content and don't consider any of what's written to be set in stone. For me, having notes like this helps give me the confidence to go off the rails and follow along with what my players want. It helps me understand where things were meant to go and why. Having that understanding allows me to guide the players and create other new and interesting stories. These are all things that will come with experience, though, so don't freak out and enjoy the journey!

Included in my posts are:

• A Downloadable copy of DM Notes for each part of the LMoP, including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDFs for every encounter. This includes all the enemies' stat blocks, organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP.
• Additional PDFs for allies and commoners
• A variety of maps for each part of the campaign
• Spell lists for all relevant fights
• Handouts for various spell scrolls throughout the campaign
• A playlist for each part of the Mini-Campaign!

Without further ado:

Index:

The Lost Mine of Phandelver Index

• Part 1 - Intro and Cragmaw Hideout (DM Notes Only Link)
• Part 2a - Phandalin
• Part 2b - Redbrand Hideout
• Part 3a - Reign of Iron
• Part 3b - Thundertree
• Part 3c - Cragmaw Castle
• Part 4 - Wave Echo Cave
• Part 5 - Side Quests

Over 8 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc., please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early, feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

i am not the best ad homebrew itself, but i'm good with concepts and ideas, so i'd like to see if i can find people to work with to make a homebrew project.

So, i'd like to know where is a good place to look that up?

((side note: i have no money to pay so i'd need a place that accepts not paying work for this)

Suppose I cast Major Image on a moving object, like making a wagon look like a luxurious carriage or a ship look sinister. Does the illusion stay fixed in space, floating in the air as the vehicle moves away, or does it move along with it, as if "attached", so to speak?

Something I've been thinking about is how to handle Horde and Alliance characters in the same party.

Back in older WoW, the faction divide was much stricter. Playing together across factions simply wasn't really a thing, and depending on when your campaign is set, having an Orc, Human, Forsaken, and Night Elf casually adventuring together could feel very strange from a lore perspective.

Modern WoW is obviously much more flexible about this, with the factions cooperating far more often and cross-faction gameplay becoming increasingly normal.

Of course, the era your campaign takes place in makes a huge difference. A campaign set during the Third War or early WoW might justify much stronger restrictions than one set in the current timeline.

I'm not sure yet how strict I'd want to be. Part of me likes preserving that faction identity and making Horde vs. Alliance actually matter, but at the same time I don't really want to tell someone they can't play the character they're excited about just because another player picked the opposite faction.

How are you planning to handle it in your campaign?

View Poll

Pretty much like the title says, I'm worried they will feel too similar in combat like I'm playing the same character in 2 different campaigns.

edit: thanks for the replies, I think I'll play sorcerer in my second campaign.

Long time listener, first time caller. I'm playing a really fun gnome wizard character that just recently acquired the Staff of the Magi in a long trek through the Shadowfell and some light grave robbery.

Wizard is level 10 and only has access to 5th level spell slots. Some of the staff's charged spells are cast at level 7. Can the wizard cast those using the staff or should he continue to cast Fireball and Lightning Bolt as prepared spells until reaching a higher level? Plane Shift is also in there.

EDIT: Thanks everyone! Being able to remove Fireball and Lightning Bolt (and others) from my prepared list is awesome, really opens up a LOT of possibilities. Plus, this character is very chaotic so having this staff is going to be very fun for him.

We had a game session last night where we fought a monster that have stat block of biomancer. Its signature ability is a Bolstering presense: each ally within 30 feet regains a small amount of HP for free at the start of their turn.

There were also around a dozen lesser spellcasters (CR 1–3) with it. The Biomancer was healing them, while they were preventing us from getting close to it. There were fewer of them at the start, but because we were making a lot of noise, more of them came running in from nearby rooms.

The problem was that whenever we dropped these minions to 0 HP, they started making death saving throws. Our DM said that normally monsters don't make death saves because there is no one around to heal them, but in this case they had someone who could heal them.

We actually brought many of these monsters to 0 HP — Fireball was doing work — but they just kept getting back up, over and over, thanks to the Biomancer and the healers among their ranks.

We simply didn't have enough actions to get any of them to three failed death saves before they were healed again. In the end, we had to retreat after dealing a huge amount of damage, but without actually killing any of them.

So I'm trying to understand: is this really how the Biomancer is supposed to work? Is this RAI?

It feels extremely strong to me, especially when combined with a large number of weaker minions. Or is this interaction already accounted for in its CR? After all, it's a CR 10 monster, and my experience on that tier of play is pretty limited.

I wanna run a campaign in Har'Akir that opens with the players waking up finding themselves individually buried alive under sand and they have to escape, but I can't find anything saying how digging works when you don't have a burrowing speed so idk what's the best depth to bury them all in.

My plan so far is to have a timer for how much air they have left before they need to start holding their breath and have them athletics/strength check their ways out with people above having the option to help dig out the others if they get out first.

Hey there, its been a while! i've been away for a few weeks because life happens sometimes. again, i feel like some positivity is nice to spread arround from time to time, and im curious about your ideas for characters again.

this time i want to ask about warlocks: did they do a pact to gain power or did they steal the power? do they have to deal with the orders or their patron? is it devils, undead or just jeff, the guy that works at the local market? we listen, but we dont judge. people are allowed to say some things that come to their head or ask a question as long as its done in good will.

i want to know about the inspiration (a character idea you came up with or something from a work of fiction?), the races, the classes, the stories, your experiences with this character, strategies...

to start, i would like to bring up a few examples of characters i made:

-Ensted Da'Mont: a man that has lost all of his fortune due to being betrayed by other noblemen. sold his soul to a devil so he could gain power and slowly take care of them... one by one.

-Amanda: a girl acused of apostasy, Amanda had to run away from her village and was about to starve to death until she came to a cult. they venerated a dead elven god, and they planned to let nature overtake the land and destroy the civilization of man, a mission that she gladly accepted. its a homebrew subclass im working on (pact of the forest, still in progress).

EDIT: *Ability score, not attribute.

Hey folks!

Hoping for some feedback on a new Warforged homebrew variant themed around the concept of a blank slate robot designed for adaptation.

The lineage would get most of the same Warforged features: constructed resilience, sentry's rest, integrated protection (no AC bonus), specialized design. However, they would not get any Ability Score increases. Instead, they would have no level cap on ability scores. They could continue to increase their abilities however high they wanted with no max, at the same rate of +1 to modifier per 2 levels.

Additionally, they could also increase their ability scores beyond 20 with magical items that normally do not allow this. To do so, the magical item must be integrated into their design, similar to integrated protection, taking one hour to do so, in addition to any attunement time. There would be limits on the number of magical items which could be integrated in this way, and items which are not integrated cannot increase ability scores beyond 20.

Assuming standard array and that the PC dumps all 6 ability score increases into one slot, the max a PC at lvl 20 could achieve is a 27, which would be a ±8. This honestly does not feel that overpowered to me, considering proficiency bonus is already +6, meaning for a proficient roll the Warforged PC is rolling a +14 vs a regular ±11, which is only a ~27% increase. That's basically just advantage.

Thoughts on this? Overpowered? Any balance tips welcome.

I was playing around with a hypothetical combat today using a Moon Druid vs a smart monster with knockback. The moon druid cast moon beam and then wild shaped into a dire wolf and ended their turn.
Then I had an inspired idea. I had the monster run around the moon druid (out of the moon beam), and did their shove attack so they are pushing the dire wolf into their own moon beam. Dire Wolf rolled a one on their strength save and now they have a shitty decision to make.
They can:

• Make a con save and take 2d10 radiant damage (half on save). Then make a concentration check for moonbeam since they took damage
• Be reverted to their true form

OR

• Voluntarily drop concentration right before they are moved in

Pretty sweet move for a monster that knows what they are doing.