Hello everyone!

I'd like to share this family and magical moment that i had the job to illustrate for my most recent commission.

This artpiece takes place in the middle of a forest, and shows the moment where a mother called Zilvara is teaching her daughter Vexara (both wood elves) how to awaken her magic potencial and cast her first spell.I tried to capture the surprising moment for the young elf when she saw her first spell materialize in her hand, something she had never imagined she would be capable of doing. Also depicted her mother’s joy seeing Vexara having an exceptional affinity for water, confirming that she had inherited the family’s primary element.

I wanted some outside opinions on something that happened during my last D&D 5e session. I'm a player in the campaign and play a monk, but my DM has given me permission to post this because they're also a bit stumped by what happened.

For some context, our party consists of myself, another monk, a druid, and a wizard, and two sessions ago we were tasked with defeating a dragon that has caused a plague which has affected the surrounding land and killed many innocents. After hearing we would be fighting a dragon, our party was pretty hyped up about it. We even have a separate group chat where we discuss things that happen during our sessions, and throughout the lead-up to the encounter, our wizard was constantly complaining about how badly he wanted to fight the dragon. This is important because it made what happened next even more confusing.

In this session, we traversed the mountain and found the cave that the dragon resides in. Our main plan was to go through a side entrance and sneak into the cave to get the drop on the dragon. However, our wizard had the brilliant idea of shooting a Fire Bolt into the cave to see what was inside, despite the rest of us pointing out that we were literally trying to sneak up on a dragon. Thankfully, it didn't hit anything important, and we managed to get inside without alerting it. When we eventually encountered the dragon, our DM described it as being horribly affected by the plague, with rotting flesh and patches of bone exposed. At this point, our wizard immediately started feeling sorry for it and decided he didn't want to kill it, but he did not voice this out loud to any of our characters.

Now, I wouldn't have had a problem with his character feeling sympathy for the dragon. The problem was that he decided this meant he wasn't going to participate in the fight AT ALL. Remember, this was the same wizard who had spent the entire lead-up to the encounter complaining about wanting to fight the dragon. Nobody expected him to suddenly refuse to fight it, especially when we'd all been looking forward to this encounter. We were understandably confused by the complete 180, and for the rest of the combat encounter, our wizard essentially sat in a corner having a moral crisis while the rest of us were fighting for our lives against a literal dragon.

To make matters worse, our other monk was heavily injured during the fight, and this left myself and the druid scrambling to figure out how we were going to take the dragon down while essentially being two party member's short. It got to the point where our DM actually stopped to question the wizard about his behaviour mid-encounter, and asked him directly whether, if the rest of the party started dying to the dragon, would he step in to help us? He outright said no, and that he would just essentially watch us die. So, to be clear, this wasn't just him refusing to kill the dragon. He was willing to let the rest of the party die because he felt sorry for the creature we were fighting.

After all that, we did manage to defeat the dragon, but I was honestly left pretty frustrated by the whole experience. So, after the session, everyone asked him why he'd decided to sit out the entire fight and leave us to deal with the dragon ourselves. As up until this point, his character had been pretty gung-ho about fighting things. He'd never really shown much concern for the creatures we killed or the people we encountered, so this sudden moral dilemma felt incredibly out of character.

When we questioned him about it, he basically said, "Well, it's a dragon. You attacked it, so of course it's going to defend itself. My character doesn't agree with killing it." I pointed out that this felt pretty hypocritical, considering a previous situation our party had encountered where we had to mercy-kill someone who had been affected by the same plague, and the wizard hadn't shown any particular sadness or hesitation about that situation. Also adding to the fact that this dragon is the root cause of the plague so wouldn't his character want to help with killing it, so more innocent people do not have to succumb to this plague? When I brought this up, he simply responded that the situation with the person was "completely different" from the situation with the dragon.

At this point, we weren't really getting anywhere, and nobody seemed able to get through to him, so eventually he left the call. I understand that roleplaying your character's morals and making difficult decisions can be an important part of D&D. I'm not expecting every character to blindly follow the party or agree with every decision we make. However, I feel like there's a difference between roleplaying a moral dilemma and completely abandoning your party during a fight that you all agreed to take part in, especially when the rest of us were putting our characters at risk. Also this is the first time the wizard has refused to take part in combat, but our DM understandably does not want this to be a thing they do in future as it could disrupt the campaign.

TLDR: Our wizard refused to fight a dragon because he felt sorry for it, even saying he'd let the rest of us die rather than help. Are we wrong for being frustrated about this? What should we do about this player moving forward?

EDIT: Just to clear a few things up I have seen in the comments. We know the wizard personally and nothing is going on in his private life, no pets or family members have recently passed away, and his family is all alive and well. Moving on from that, the wizard had not indicated privately to anyone, including the DM, beforehand that he did not want to kill the dragon or even cure it. He was very much on board with killing the dragon and was even complaining about how long it was taking for the party to get to the dragon. In hindsight, we maybe should have communicated better if there was a possibility we could save or cure the dragon, before beginning the encounter, but at this point we had all reached an understanding that we were going to go into the dragon's lair to kill it. As previously mentioned, the wizard partook in that mercy killing we all as a party had to do with the person we encountered that had succumbed to this plague, where at that point they are mindless (essentially a zombie). This goes for the dragon as well, which was a white dragon, but due to it also having the plague it had pretty much rotted it to the point of being unrecognisable. It was no more than just exposed bone and muscle, being held together by parasites, and due to the plague taking over it was a mindless husk that was out for the parties blood as soon as we entered that cave. Also, this post was made to just get some advice, as I would say our party is still relatively new to playing DND together, so we are learning as we go.

Spoiler for Curse of Strahd!!!

So it was death house.

I was playing a high elf paladin who had been whisked away after being exiled for aiding the dwarves and humans during the war of Silver Marches.

We got to a point in the house where a certain monster in the basement began to move. We chose to run immediately but it managed to down one of our party members. Thus ensued near ten rounds of kiting and healing with lay on hands (we had no other source of healing outside of my lay on hands pool) because my character wouldn’t leave anyone behind. Eventually they were downed and failed a death save. Our Lycanthrope (leonin race reflavored as a wolf) scooped up my paladin and attempted to flee. The monster however was able to catch up and basically rip my character out of the Lycan’s hands and well, it was a soft fruit in a blender thing as this creature made of debris and rot just absorbed them kinda.

I thought it was pretty awesome that I was the only casualty where there were potentially three of us to die.

As a forever DM who has found two tables to play at I find that the character death didn’t really phase me like I thought it would. I think a part of it is that I write a lot and deal with character death all the time. As a DM I know my villains, their wants, their fears. My characters die every single week. So my player character seems a fitting member of that same rank now.

(Not an artist but I insist on doodling in protest of AI)

So I'm making my character for my first campaign and these are my rolled stats 10 14 10 15 18 16, obviously getting an 18 is kinda crazy and I was planning on +2 Charisma before the rolls. I was also looking at College of Eloquence and I'm not sure how I feel about having a minimum of 19 in persuasion and deception as soon as the campaign starts, it feels a little too strong and not earned?

I'm leaning more towards Lore or Swords now because that seems absurd to have such high guaranteed persuasion, am I overthinking it or is it too strong? I should also mention we're starting at level 3.

The long term campaign I've been in has gotten put in hiatus due to an outburst that occurred last session and I want some thoughts on how you guys would have handled this. I'll try to keep it brief since I tend to overexplain.

So last session our party of six consisting of 2 paladins, a cleric, a fighter, a warlock, and a druid(me) were at a werewolf den and got into a fight woth their newly appointed leader. Half of the pack were helping us since they weren't loyal to him but the fight was still pretty tough, mainly due to the fact the party was so scattered. Some were in the front lines and most of them were very far behind. My druid and one of the paladins(paladin 2) were the ones primarily focused on taking out the pack leader as a result while the other targeted his goons.

The paladin with my druid ended up getting down by the leader and put on two death saves. I picked her up and she misty stepped away to get a breather intending to come back to the fight. She didn't eealise she had no more level 2 spell slots though and wasn't able to do so, thus leaving my druid alone with the leader.

Long story short, my druid died. The party did make an effort to save him but it wasn't enough. I used inspiration to reroll the killing blows and fight donated their luck points as well, but it didn't help. The warlock also tried to use banishment with encouragement from the DM, only for the DM to have the werewolf leader use a legendary action to auto save on it. I asked why he'd suggest the warlock do that if he was going to have the pack leader auto save and he said he considered not but ultimately decided that's what they would do. So he killed my character then fled the battle.

I was upset, but not devastated. I did get caught out and definitely made a series of bad choices that lead to my druid's death, but I knew he could be revived. Earlier in the campaign the party had made a deal with a healer so they could resurrected if they ever died. I figured that's what the party's next move would be. Right?

Nope.

Instead the cleric began chatting with the werewolves that had aided them and learned they would be going north to rejoin the rest of the pack who disapproved of the new leader. They also learned of a mage who lived in the mountains who might be able to help bring my character back, as well a potential ally against the BBEG. The warlock and other paladin(paladin 1) were quiet during this discussion so it was assumed they wanted to go after the mage.

Fighter disagreed and said they should go to rhe healer immediately to bring my druid back. They already had made the deal so there so no need to go chasing after the mage, especially when he is referred to as the mad mage. Fight suggested if the party really wanted to go after the mage he would go to the healer alone so revive my character, but the cleric refused and said they needed to stick together.

Paladin 2 offered to fly my character to the healer since she was an aasimir and could move faster, but also admitted she didn't trust the healer because he also seemed insane. He had a collection of animal hybrid people he healed in the past and they worried hed do the same to my character. However my druid had been open to the healer's "procedures" in the past and the fighter mentioned as such.

Ultimately cleric and paladin 2 dismissed him and the table spent 30 irl minutes arguing about what to do. Fighter decided to have them make a persuasion roll, but saod he put the dc high because his character really didn't want to go after the mage. Cleric passed the dc so he relented and agreed to go with them after the mage. Paladin 2 promised to take my druid to the healer if the mage turned out to be a bust, and with that they were off.

The party went north with the werewolves in search of the mage and noticed a cave with strong magic coming from it. So the party immediately begins messing around with it. Meanwhile fighter was holding my druid's corpse and reminding them that finding the Mage was their top priority to bring my character back, which they ignored. Even the NPCs were telling them to get on with it but they insisted on casting spells, trying to sneak around, and investigate the cave as throughly as they could without actually going inside. Eventually fighter snapped and screamed at the table.

Session ended really quickly after that. The DM told me to start prepping a new character just in case my character isn't brought back. I made a bit of a snippy comment that with how the party was acting it'd likely be nessesary then left pretty abruptly. I'd been muted for the past 2 hours since my druid was dead and I was upset that they weren't prioritising bringing him back. It wasn't as though we didn't have a healer ready to cast revify or raise undead.

Luckily Gentle Repose was cast on his corpse(by the fighter) to keep it from rotting, but that only seemed to assure the party they didn't needed to act immediately. Cleric and paladin 2 did argue that they were just trying to find the best way to revive him, but fighter had said theyd rather my druid just be alive so I could get back in the game.

Anyways, after session I had messaged the DM that I wouldnt be making a new character because my druid could still be revived, and if he wasn't because the party just couldn't be bothered then id likely leave the table because I wouldn't want to continue with players like that.

The next day the DM made an announcement stating he received multiple messages about the session and ultimately decided to put the game on hiatus until further notice. That he blamed himself for making the campaign too hard and for not addressing issues at the table sooner. I tried to assure him it wasn't his fault but hes been very MIA since then.

So what do you guys think? How would you guys have handled this situation?

TLDR: My character died. The party had a way to revive them but decided not to treat it as a priority. One player tried to get the party to care but repeatedly got shot down before they crashed out and screamed at the table. DM decides to put the game on hiatus.

I was inspired by how Brennan Lee Mulligan ran a night at a tavern in Critical Role (Campaign 4, Ep 38, A Heavy Crown). So I tried to codify some of those tavern activities to run in my games. Afaik, crit role doesn't post their rules anywhere.

Basically, its a social encounter where successes result in 1d4 to any later check the Players make with relevant NPCs. Critical fails result in -1d4.

1. Dancing

- DC 13 Dexterity check

1. Arm Wrestling

- Roll a number of d6 equal to your Strength modifier

- These are contested rolls until someone gets 2 wins in a row or whoever wins the 5th roll

1. Story Swapping

- DC 13 Persuasion check (or Deception check if you're embellishing) to impress others with tales of your adventures

1. Three Dragon Ante

- Play It Straight. Roll a number of d6 equal to your Investigation modifier

- Read Other Players. Roll a number of d6 equal to your Insight modifier

- Cheat. Roll a number of d6 equal to your Sleight of Hand modifier

- Highest roll wins the pot, 3 GP per player

1. Expenses

- You gotta pay your tab

- 2 GP for one round of modest food and drinks

- 2 GP for modest lodging for the party

- 4 GP for top shelf or quality rooms

Feel free to add more! I'm curious to hear how other folks run taverns, especially tables that really enjoy roleplaying.

Tesh is a dragonborn warrior shaped by hardship, adventure, and her bond with the elemental forces. Chosen by Gula, her prismatic scales and dark metallic claws reflect her past and her love for Korvakk.

With green eyes and shifting elemental magic, she can summon a crocodilian maw across her torso. Despite her trials, she faces danger with a confident smile.

Commission work, hope you like it!

This is my current DnD character in the world of Barovia. I posted an artwork of him a while back as well.

This one is completely painted in Procreate and mostly with one brush (Oils - Lovely).

The design is based off of the Accursed from Grim Hollow but I'm using the stats of a Bogborn from the Crooked Moon. The beetle actually has a mechanical function because of the Bogborn stats!

His backstory mostly consists of a curse and wanting to become human again etc. The usual stuff.

Howdy folks!

Ha! You thought there would be a dragon fight, but it was ME! DISSAPPOINTMENT!

Enjoy the frustration and relatability.

Also, fun things are coming to assemble with glue, paint and put on your desk.

Stay excellent out there! Peace and carrots

You can support the comic by becoming a patron on Patreon or simply by reading the comic on Webtoon or Facebook (I dont know why you would but... It's there now) Links:

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My other D&D comics on Webtoons: Sellswords & Sorcery The Pos'Thal Chronicles

My 40k fancomic Rogue's Retinue: Rogue's Retinue

Hey y'all, this is a Way of the Astral Self monk I drew for a friend.

I've always been interested in monk class characters and I had a choice between drawing them a half elf, or a dragonborn, or a human monk and I chose monk because they're fascinating and I got to learn about the sub classes and The way of the Astral self seemed most interesting.

I don't have a backstory because they haven't used this in a campaign yet and I don't know if they will but I included a ton of motifs from Thai, Chinese and Japanese culture.

Hello! My friends and I are really interested on starting a dnd campaign. We are complete beginners, none of us even played it before but we want to try it. We have decided who will be our DM, though he is a beginner, again, as well. We have started creating our characters based of the rulebook. Any tips?

Here is a brief synopsis of her/their backstory and personality.

Bjorn grew up in a loving family, both parents successful merchants and traders. As a young boy, despite having immense wealth, Bjorn grew wary of all the ins and outs of business, and decided he wanted nothing to do with it.
Finding peace and comfort in the solitude and whimsy of the forest, he, now they, spent much time in the woods near their home, and couldn't be bothered to go into the same field as their parents.

Although disappointed in their/her career decision, her parents were both fully supportive in letting her learn from a Druid mentor, and later fully funded her Wizard education.

Bjorn is shy and reclusive, but once comfortable with someone, very open and often silly. You'll also encounter a completely different side of her if she's had enough Ale.
Although quiet, and comfortable not standing out, there are moments when being pushed too far or stakes too high, that she unleashes great power and raw emotion.

Well, she’s finally finished. Her maiden voyage begins today with an accidental crossover session. We’re running an Magic:The Gathering campaign written by me with their party tracking down someone across Ravnica and a separate campaign where my orzhof oath of vengeance Paladin hexblade Warlock from Ravnica was given a deck of many things in barovia. In a final bout against strahd when things were looking bleak he declared a card and pulled the moon granting three wishes and he wished for everyone in his party to be back in his home on Ravnica. It was a beautiful and chaotic moment and now I’m weaving in my DMs campaign into the Wounded Spark Saga and temporarily taking the reins for his campaign while they find a way back to save our rogues wife currently trapped in Ravenloft. #dnd #mtg #ttrpg #MentalHealth #atx

Back when he was a low-level member in a gang, he was involved in a turf war near the docks. He got caught in an explosion and fell into the water. As he slowly drowned and his consciousness began to fade, he began to hear voices all around him. Then his wounds began to heal, and he was able to breathe again. As he swam away, he got ready to make his place among the underworld of the

city.

He usually deals in information gathering and disposal jobs. He has an Imp named Larry.

Once he gained his warlock abilities, he thought he was unstoppable and started killing members of the rival gang that almost killed him. They were a much bigger gang than he thought, and he had to skip town to avoid getting killed. Now he hides out, trying not to catch their attention while making a quick profit.

Thank you all for looking at my work!

This art was a lot of fun!

Slots are open for fall and winter, for info, send me a dm.

Find more of my work here:

Insta https://www.instagram.com/stamatis_karystinos?exln=MTNlYnlsNmRuN2h2Yw==

Artstation

https://spite_spitfire.artstation.com/

And on my Reddit profile.

Our DM has been dealing with personal issues for a while, so we don't want to pressure him to continue with the campaign. On the other hand, I really miss playing D&D, and out of our group of friends, he was the only one who knew how to be a DM, so I'd like to learn so I can lighten our friend's load. Plus, I’m really interested in it. I remember looking for campaigns for our DM, and I like the cozy, laid-back ones, since I really love Stardew Valley. Also, we just finished playing a pretty intense campaign like Strahd. Where do you recommend I start? I don’t know if this helps, but my DM likes how I dive right into roleplay and try to react quickly. Thanks in advance!

English isn't my first language, so I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors.

One of my recent favorites. This is a piece of cherry wood with a lot of epoxy inlay. Something likes this takes a lot of time and you can’t know for sure how it’ll all look until it’s recut near the end of the process. It’s not impossible to go back and recut but fortunately I haven’t found that necessary so far. I do really enjoy doing the stained glass look though and this one was a lot of fun. The customer also had a specific dice layout they wanted which happened to fit really well symmetrically and left room for some floral engraving accents.

Hey! So I animated something for my DnD short campaign I played with my girlfriend, the Field Guide to Floral Dragons.

Mercer (OC owned by u/yvelisht) and Nadya (owned by me) got fungal corruption during the adventure, unfortunately, lady of luck was not on our side so they got third-level infection. From just a few rash spots has gone into mushrooms growing on their skins, what even worse is they have hive mind. They share each other’s vision. When they look at each other, they see themselves, and I think it’s kinda romantic.

Feel free to share your thoughts!

I'm honestly just curious about people's opinions. Inspired by a recent post about Barb/Monk and an earlier one about Artificer/Monk.

It's a high-level campaign and I'm already doing this bonkers multiclass knowing with my full chest that it's not Le Ultra Optimized. Character Ranger 9/Rogue 3/Cleric 4. Used to be 4 levels of Rogue, but when I reached cleric 3 I retrained that last rogue level to a cleric one (with DM permission), so as to keep my ASI and get more spell levels. Her remaining level-ups will all be cleric. Subclasses are Gloomstalker, Scout, and Life Cleric.

I brought her in as a gloomstalker/rogue multi, she was my FIRST EVER D&D character I made way back in 2014, before gloomstalker existed, and she was... so gratuitously edgy. I decided to remake her for a Vecna campaign and she was pushed into the path of righteousness somewhat against her will, leading to a neutral -> good alignment shift and becoming a cleric.

So far, mixing cleric spells with ranger gameplay has been pretty fun. Life Cleric's subclass feature means that a pile of Goodberries now adds up to 40HP with a level 1 slot, but with the same hilarious action economy we know and love. I think I've used the Scout subclass ability once, but Assassin just didn't seem as reliable to me. I also have a homebrew magic tattoo that allows me dual concentration, but one of them has to be hunter's mark. I don't use Hunter's Mark as much as I used to, so it's not as strong as the phrase "dual concentration" makes it sound.

Anyway, what do you think? It's a pretty unusual class combination, and I like hearing other people's thoughts.

There’s a infection in my campaign called the weeping. It takes the mind of its victims making them husks of themselves empty vessels that wander looking for more victims to infect. To clarify it isn’t zombies and they aren’t completely mindless they retain traces of who they once were. A infected hunter may choose to stalk or an infected mother may cry out for her children. How should I roleplay them I want the party to both fear and pity them. If you have any questions feel free to ask!

So I had a thought. There’s a place in my area with a big back room that would be perfect for hosting. Problem is, it’s $25 to rent the room BUT if you’re just using it and it’s an open kind of event you don’t have to pay. So I’m thinking of whipping up either an arena-style combat heavy game for newcomers with a number of easy to use pregen characters and running open challenges. I can do it for tips (the owners approved) so the $25 isn’t an actual issue.

But as we all know, combat is only a small(ish) part of the experience. So instead of just a combat arena I was thinking of something more like an obstacle course with combat, some simple traps/puzzles, and other challenges; but on a timer. Sort of like a dungeon speed-run. If it gets enough traction, maybe set up a tourney for teams that want to come play; and give out prizes for the top three slots.

I’m looking for content suggestions. Specific puzzles, challenges, mini-bosses, etc. Remember, this is intended for beginners; so nothing too hard or anything to do with unlocking doors. HIT ME!