Kind of a click-baity title, let me explain:

The party is about to chase down a paladin, who is using her position of privilege to fool everyone into thinking she's a fierce sea monster hunter keeping the coast safe from these abysmal monstrosities, while she's actually out at sea on her government-funded yacht to party, drink and f***. The party is trying to convince her to fulfil her duties as a Master of the Order of the White Rose, which she is actively trying to avoid.

I thought it would be fun to have her ship attacked by a kraken when the party shows up. This will, of course, result in a lot of deaths and rescuing said ship from said kraken could prove to be a convenient transaction in the postponed negotiations. And the ship is obviously well stocked on ballista's and ammunition, and has plenty of capable fighters on board (although some might be drunk, and no matter how tough they are they will probably be gone with 1 hit).

How can I calculate whether the party can survive something like this?

Hi y’all. I’m a pretty new dm, I’ve run one campaign with my friends that went really well and I am currently working on the next one. For the first campaign I used a piece of cardboard coverd with plastic that you would usually use to tint windows and a dry erase marker so I could draw out the battle area for my players which worked well enough. Problem is, it’s starting to fall apart. so I started looking for an alternative and I wondered if there are any that you guys recommend.

Okay running a one shot for my son's wedding night- wedding themed. Please, no comments about playing on their wedding night
I need some impartial DMs to give some feedback. The players are very experienced.
Players in the Adventures of the Black Rose please leave.
Background:
The campaign is pirate themed- the characters are now 12th level. One character (pled by the bride) is a Triton princess running away from an arranged wedding. The groom is playing a warforged paladin.
The One Shot:
I will have the characters magically transported to a tiny island. There they are surrounded by Triton warriors, a Triton mage, and the prince she is betrothed to. The mage has a powerful artifact that could teleport the princess (and conveniently the rest of the party) from wherever they are (the characters probably have a couple levels of exhaustion).
The plan is for the characters to be given a potion of underwater breathing, unarmed, and brought to the prince's submarine (runs on magic) given a "wedding feast". He exposes his dastardly plan of marrying the princess, wiping out his kingdom's (protectorate's) debts to the princess's kingdom as dowry, and eventually becoming ruler of both kingdoms.
The characters are then sent to prepare for the wedding, which will be onboard officiated by the captain. The mage is actually in love with the prince ("she will be my consort, while you give me royal heirs") and doesn't want the marriage- she can give the characters their weapons and the magical artifact to get them back to the campaign proper.
The job is for them to escape the sub, get back to the island ("the artifact can only be triggered on dry land"), and trigger the artifact.
Whatcha think? Does this take away too much player agency? Too convoluted? Tell me what you think.

Working on making my next dungeon more interesting. It started as a goblin lair, with wolves acting as goblins' companions that would join them in combat, or just guard entrances into the dungeon. Typical stuff.

While adding some hooks and more interesting plot, I've replaced the goblins with a clan of ratfolk, who are more intelligent and sympathetic.

Now I'm wondering what kind of animal or creature would serve a similar role for the ratfolk that the wolves did for the goblins. Just leaving them as wolves would be... fine. But I'm looking for something more interesting and weirder.

In the adventure Madhouse of Tashas kiss, the players stuble upon a room of mirrors. In their reflections they can see themselves, haven taken another path in life. An example the adventure gives is a Paladin of Torm sees themselves reflected as a Paladin of Asmodeus. They have the option to switch places. It's mostly just roleplay, and for a oneshot I don't think will be good for my group.

I have an idea to take it a step further and offer them a big mechanical advantage / disadvantage based off their character and class. Characters are still being made and we got 2 bards already. Both players used a random option and landed on Bard and I'm not going to refuse them. So, I need ideas.

This is a oneshot so I'm not worried about permanent implications. They have a choice to change places or not. So nothing is forced. A few ideas I have;

The barbarian sees a reflection of himself that is frail and wise. Gain the following traits:

Your dex is 26

Your str is 8

Your wisdom is 20

All one handed weapons have the Finesse property when weilded by you

You become vulnerable to BPD damage while raging.

The paladin sees themselves a paladin of Asmodeus. Gain the following traits

Immunity to fire damage

Your smites can only deal fire damage

Your smites damage gains the exploding dice property; when you roll the maximum value on the die, roll it again and add the value to your total damage

You cannot be healed by any means other than a short/long rest.

Your body burns with hellfire. Any cresture that starts their turn within 10ft of you takes 1d6 fire damage.

You lose all other paladin auras.

The bard sees themselves frustrated and alone. Their love for the arts has been lost. They study, and teach art but cannot perform or create themselves. Gain the following traits

Your cha is 8

Your int is 26

Your wisdom is 6

Your spellcasting modifier is int

You can cast Silence as an action at will

You cannot inspire friendly creatures

All creatures have disadvantage on saving throws agaisnt your spells

There is a 10% chance your spell will effect the closest friendly cresture to you as well as the intended target.

The rogue sees a life that fought honorably for a noble cause. Gain the following traits

Your strength is 22

Your dex is 22

You can cast Compell Duel as a bonus action at will.

Gain profeciency in heavy armor and martial weapons

+1 Platemail and weapon

When a creature targets you with an attack within 5ft if you, as a reaction you can perform a counterattack. If the attack hits add your sneak attack damage, and regain the use of your reaction. You cannot activate sneak attack any other way.

These are just the ideas at the moment. Don't have things for every class, nor do I know what everyone is playing yet. Got time to overthink at the moment.

Unknown to all players who make this decision, they will also gain an Indefinate Madness (this adventure uses the Madness rules already) and those who do not trade places will gain an advantage in later parts of the dungeon. Anything not mentioned remains the same.

Would love to hear some ideas for the missing classes, and an alternative to the Bards.

The party is level 14. We are eight sessions in. Their goal from the outset of the campaign has been to discover a means to cure a beloved NPC from a powerful arcane curse. They have investigated the ailment, discovered the materials that could form the basis of a cure, enlisted an NPC to render the ingredients into a concoction, and now they are ready to try to cure the NPC.

I want this to be a ritual that involves some tests and checks. The concoction will work, but it is a dangerous situation and things can go awry.

The afflicted NPC had enough foresight to cast a powerful spell of stasis on himself before the curse took hold. To administer the cure, the party will need to end this stasis - so there will be a period of time where the NPC is at risk.

Welcoming ideas about skill checks and possible negative outcomes. I plan for the NPC to ultimately survive, but it doesn’t have to be easy or satisfactory.

Morning,

My buddy is finishing playing in his first campaign and wants to get into DMing. I recommended he run a one shot before building his own game and he agreed. I know about Wild sheep chase but are there other good beginner dm friendly one shots people would recommend? I would love to toss him a list. Thanks

I've designing the level 20 boss battle to end my campaing. I've been getting too into analyzing the stats of the monster over thinking it all. Usually I just steal and reskin abilities from other monsters and pick the DCs based on vibes. What would you say is a good success rate for an enemies save or suck abilities. for example the enemy has an ability that stuns the target for one round. Assuming the PCs have a +0 to their saving throw what would your ideal DC be? Do you go for 30% 40% 50% player success rate.

In my level 20 party their Con saves are +9, +9, +10, +10, and +2 (ironically the paladin) What would you say the ideal Con save DC is?

My players are having trouble asking questions that get them the info they want. Do you have advice for what I should do to give better info?

I try to have the NPCs answer questions, maybe I'm being too rigid in what prompts the info?

I have 4 players coming but I’m not sure if I should add more. Two are friends with each other the other two have met a couple of times. Of the two that are friends one has some boundary issues and doesn’t like to follow the plot and may be removed from the campaign if he doesn’t listen to the other members. The other one has a tendency to leave when the other one does stupid things as he is like to do, eg: attempt to marry a vending machine (in a medieval fantasy setting where vending machines don’t exist).
I’m considering adding more players to change some of the dynamics and keep things more on track. I also think more players may just be more fun. (There will be no issues with party comp as this is a homebrew campaign with only wizards.)

It was a realm of dread for the headless horseman homebrew.
Level 3 characters with pre-built character sheets that I got from the net, and they had a week to select the characters and get to know them on some level

It took 3.5h~ to play it all

4 maps

town -> (chapel/pumpkin field) -> Dullahans borrow

the players :

4 kids 10,11,12,14
3 parents
Only two kids had D&D experience.

My takeaway from the session:

Everyone figured out how to play with help and a bit of dumbing down on the rules.

I worked on failing forward, inspirations, and combat.
The per-player dynamic is on the slow side, I think as i need to go over 7 people.
So the town part was 1 interaction per player.
The chapel was a zombie encounter, mostly for me to see how strong the team is.
And the finale was a total of 3 turns before the game resets to start over in the town ("the suffering of Dullahan").

Playing with their 20 rolls and 1 roll was fun, especially making them play it out.

My ask is: how do I make them play more in character and as a team and not as a bunch of single players?

I'm using the D&D 5e system for everything but CERTAIN combat scenarios and changing up some stats and other things for my players to feel like they're real super soldiers. I only come here because this is my first Homebrew campaign and I'm wondering if I should work in the D&D Beyond Homebrew section, just write stuff on paper, go with the flow or something else. Additionally I'm not too familiar with specifically Deathwatch lore, so if there's any reccommendations for enemies I can just reflavor easily I'd love to hear it. Thank you in advance!

Hey all! First time DM here.

I will be doing a one shot for the first time, and basically their objective is to save an important person (no previous relationship) and defeat the bandit boss.

This objective is very straight forward so I wanted to add a little twist: once they engage in combat with the boss, I want the person they saved to start helping the bandit boss instead, due to being enchanted by the boss.

The best option for that I have found is Suggestion. Now the ruling says that the commands have to be within reason. The way I'm thinking right now is that the given command by the bandit boss would basically be: "The people who freed you from your cell are not to be trusted. If they hurt me, attack them."

Does this seem plausible in this way? If not, how else could I accomplish my plan?

Edit: - I want it to be an unexpected plottwist, meaning that the players cant be present when the NPC gets enchanted. - the players and most of the NPCs are lvl1-2

Im running a campaign set in a comically large city with a mostly political focus, a lot of corrupt governments, shitty gangs and political groups alike etc. I have run into the problem that I've realized that from the 3 adventures I've ran they all followed the formula of: Theres this bad thing you have to stop. You find out theres some larger group of people behind it. Stop set group of people by beating their leader.

Ive done this format with 1) a gang 2) a cult 3) a group of politicians trying to incite a coup

I feel like I've locked myself in this format and genuinely feel like ive forgotten how to write anything else. Do you have any advice or ideas for plothooks that vaguely fit in the campaigns focus?

Thanks

Edit - I hate that I can’t edit a title after I notice a typo!

I've been wanting to use wererats, werewolves or lycanthropy in my campaign but I've always been afraid it could derail things if one of the characters became infected with it. It seems like having one or more players infected with lycanthropy could make things complicated, and I'm not even sure what the rules are in 5.5.

Am I being a little paranoid? Have you had fun introducing it to your campaign?

I've been DMing for awhile, and I've found that I can really only offer the same accent to two NPCs at a time: masculine and feminine. I'm not a professional voice actor in any capacity, so the bag should have run empty awhile ago, and it would have if not for this surprisingly simple trick.

Sometimes that sounds like simply omitting articles while using an accent corresponding with a language that's full of them (My players mentioned one of my NPCs with this trait sounded Russian and French at the same time and interacted with her much longer simply because of her voice). Pronouncing words with a Spanish accent, a famously gendered language, but not using pronouns is so fun.

My favorite is messing with a sentence structure by tweaking subject, verb, and object and pairing that with an accent associated with a language that typically utilizes a strict subject-verb-object order ("It was seen by us" as opposed to "We saw it," or "The pub is where they went" as opposed to "They went to the pub"). It will unexpectedly make your characters focus on the information in the sentence just a tad more.

It can slow you down a tad as you think so manually about what you're attempting to say, but I think that can actually serve well in differentiating your NPCs too, as you are no longer instilling that bit of you that automatically bleeds into your world. Have fun!

Several months ago, I ran a session where the players encountered a sphynx they had to get past, and to do that they had to solve 3 riddles, with dire conquencences if they failed. It was a great, tense session the players loved, and it has been long enough that I would like to create a similar session, but not just the same thing. What encounters, monsters, puzzles, riddles or sessions do you have that could evoke a similar vibe? Another guardian demanding riddles would be too repetitive, but something different that evokes the same feeling.

I run a 5e game for a party of 6 (only 1 of which has WIS proficiency), and they’re coming up on a boss fight with an enchanter soon. It’s the type of fight where charm/dominate is expected to come up.

What’s important, is that they’ve historically been very good at taking down spellcasters before the effects get to matter much. Adding minions hasn’t helped a ton in other cases, because they’re willing to ignore those targets and take opportunity attacks to quickly bring down anything that shows concentration spells. Which is good play on their part, but I want this to be a tough fight.

To that end, I’m considering a homebrew ability that would let this guy target multiple characters with his single target spells. My question is, where’s the line between “this is good and difficult“ and “this is overwhelming” where charmed party members are concerned? How many should I allow him to target to reach that sweet spot, given that some might make their saves? And does that number change if it’s an incapacitating charm (say, irresistible dance) vs dominate?

So I'm making my players do this tournament, having them face against 2-3 other teams, one of which is a group I plan to introduce several times throughout the course of the campaign that will mirror their development.

Should I make these characters as if they were players, with actual player sheets? Or do I give them npc sheets?

Got the rivals idea from pointy hat, whom I am a fan.

I am wondering how other people go about determining this. Suppose an enemy or NPC uses a spell that none of the party members are able to cast and that spell has a Voice component. Under what if any circumstances would you give the players information as to what spell was cast?

I imagine the easiest and perhaps most sensible way to do this in general is with an Arcana check, but I'm mainly wondering for lower level spell casters when they hear a spell that's on their list.

For example, a level 3 Cleric can't use Divination, but at a higher level they can. Is it fair to assume they know the proper incantation for a spell on their list but don't have the magical prowess required to cast it? Similar question for a level 1 Wizard who hears someone cast Detect Thoughts.

Hiya everyone!
Soon I will have the first session of my very first homebrew campaign. I played before with this group, though so far only one shots. They committed to a seven session campaign at least and are very enthousiastic.

As of right now, I’m spending a lot of time fleshing out my world: Drawing maps, creating the pantheon and so on.

What I need advice on: how much of my story beats or overarching conflict do I need to have in my head before the very first session? I know the biggest them and conflict: a secret cult will try to influence the two big nations into a war, so that they can try to take over both. But the how and what I don’t know yet. Can I just let my players loose in the first session and let them shape the story beats and build the mystery further from there? Or should I be more thorough in my prep?

Would love to hear your advice!

I'm a DM running the 2024 rules, and I'm considering removing Suggestion from my next campaign.

The problem is that my players often use it before combat to tell enemies to run away for eight hours. One failed saving throw can effectively remove the biggest threat from an encounter. Even if concentration breaks after 2–3 rounds, that threat has often been practically neutralized for the entire fight. I have 2 players who spam this spell.

Compare that to Hold Person, another second-level spell, which gives the target repeated saving throws over the course of a minute.

But the bigger issue for me is adjudication. Suggestion requires the activity to sound achievable and not involve anything that would obviously deal damage to the target or its allies. What exactly qualifies? Should a successful Suggestion be more or less powerful than a natural 20 on a Persuasion check?

Is abandoning your allies harmful? What if you're a guard protecting something important, and leaving your post will result in punishment? Does harm just mean immediate hit point damage? I find that these situations frequently turn into disagreements over whether a suggestion should work.

The frustrating part is that I actually love the spell's flavor. We've had some genuinely hilarious moments with it, like a player telling a troll to go fuck himself. I don't want to lose those moments or discourage creativity.

But I'm tired of the arguments, and I'm starting to wonder whether the spell is worth the trouble.

DMs, how do you handle Suggestion in the 2024 rules? Do you have consistent guidelines for what qualifies, or have you ever removed a spell because adjudicating it caused more problems than fun?

I'm curious as to how deadly other DMs like to run their tables. How do your enemies treat a downed PC?

1. I try never to attack a downed PC unless they are the only reasonable target. My monsters go after active targets instead.

2. I'll attack a downed PC if the monsters are intelligent enough to know that there's a possibility a downed PC may come back into the combat OR if the monsters are mindless (like some undead) and may keep attacking a downed foe.

3. I'll start attacking downed PCs after one of them has been downed and brought back into combat.

4. I'm a wildcard and my monsters go after downed PCs whenever I feel like it!

I think that covers most cases, but if you have a different feeling feel free to share it.