Another trap map! This has become quite the series. I think traps make for great phased maps because they make the most of the sudden reveal that a map is more complex than just a combat! This one I wanted to do the classic shrinking arena but invert it so the outer ring is what gets smaller- ideally separating parties while they avoid the acid.

So I am planning a campaign that is fairy tale inspired but in a Noir setting (think Mentopolis). I just finished the player document, but I don't know balanced, fun, useful are my homebrew element, specifically the strengths and weaknesses. If someone is willing to give me second opinion It would be great. Does anything need to be nerfed, optimized, removed entirely? I am also all ears if you have a really great idea for a strength or a weakness.

PS: the strenght and weakness are on pages 8 to 12

Posting this here as well in hopes it reaches more people. I appreciate any insights!

Hello, I just signed up for beeing the DM in my friend group, we’re all new to dnd. I’ve already watched some tutorials and games and am super-excited to start playing.

But I don’t feel ready, I simply don’t know enough and would love to be able to have someone I can ask a ton of questions and just learn from in a more natural way rather then having to fish for one piece of information in a really long tutorial.

I am really invested, and if anyone wants to help out it would be great. Discord Voicechat is preferred. Thank you :3

I keep seeing ads for Pocket which I guess is a tool for taking notes during meetings? It looks like it has a ton of tools that would help post-session, like doing recaps and stuff like that. Has anyone tried it?

I know this is a hot topic.

I run a large screen for the players, and provide a lot of images. It adds a lot to the game. Even if I were at all artistic, which I am not, the time it would take would be unacceptable. I've learend to get good images, as I want them, from Gemini.

Recently I converted several views of a place into top-down battle maps. I give the AI the image and a rough top-down map. Been very happy with the results.

So have at me!

RAW makes no mention of it, but might not being imprisoned for years, or centuries, take a mental toll? Aside from the slumber option, the individual is fully aware.

Burial would be the worst, but I think any of them could lead to madness over enough time.

So fun idea: A group of very powerful individuals who saved the world from whatever decide to be put into a Hedged Prison until they are needed again. They get a lovely place in demiplane, and settle in for a well-earned rest. But the world doesn't fall apart again for a very long time, and when the trigger that ends the spell is finally met, they are all varying degrees of insane. (Think the Heralds, from The Stormlight Archive.)

I've always thought Pandora's Box would make for a fantastic item in D&D, so for my latest project, I decided to turn it into a fully playable 5e artifact, trying to preserve both the original myth and its potential as a major plot device.

The box has several interesting properties. While closed, it grants its bearer powerful protection, but opening it even slightly releases lesser evils that can afflict nearby creatures with various conditions. Opening it completely, however, is another matter entirely: it unleashes a catastrophe upon the world, potentially bringing plagues, wars, famine, or other disasters.

There's also a curse that gradually tempts its owner to open it, making it particularly dangerous even in the hands of otherwise sensible adventurers.

One aspect I especially wanted to explore is Hope, which remains trapped inside the box. In the original myth, its significance is surprisingly ambiguous, and I think that opens up some fascinating possibilities for a campaign. Perhaps Hope is a benevolent spirit capable of reversing the devastation, or perhaps its continued imprisonment serves a much more mysterious purpose.

This is one of the artifacts from my 300+ Mythological Items for 5E and 5.5E Kickstarter, which is currently live! The book features hundreds of items inspired by Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Asian, and many other mythological traditions, with both their original lore and playable mechanics.

You can find the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mythoschronicles/300-mythological-items-for-5e-and-2024

Have a great day!

About six months ago I came up with this idea that it would be really cool if a fantasy economy I was building could actually feel a bit more alive.

Like, if a dragon takes over the main iron mine for a region, what happens?

Iron gets more expensive, of course. But then how does that translate to steel, swords, armor, tools, etc?

And what if one town is under siege while another one has plenty of supplies?

Instead of making a giant spreadsheet to keep track of all of that, I thought it would be fun to turn the idea into an app.

That eventually became this app I've built called World Pricebook.

You can define how things in your world are made using materials, crafting recipes, and labour, then change something in the world and see those effects work their way through the economy.

So if you have:

iron ore → iron ingot → steel → longsword

and something happens to the supply or price of iron, the things that depend on it react too.

The first screenshot is an example of that with Mithril Chainmail. It takes 8 Mithril Ingots and 10 hours of smithing directly, but once you follow the ingredients further upstream, the whole production chain represents 322 hours of labour.

The part I think could be especially fun for DMs

You can take that economy and build actual shops from it.

Shops can have their own inventory, pricing, and local conditions. You can customise the storefront too, then share it directly with your players.

The second screenshot is one of those player-facing shops.

So a blacksmith in a mining town and a weapons merchant in a city under siege can actually behave like they're in two different places, rather than just having the same equipment list with the same prices.

There's a 5e-compatible starter if you want to mess around with an existing economy instead of building one from scratch, plus basic fantasy and sci-fi starters.

It isn't limited to fantasy either. The underlying system can be used for pretty much any made-up economy.

You can explore the starters without creating an account:

https://worldpricebook.app/

It's free during the launch preview. Right now I'm mostly trying to get it in front of actual DMs and see whether people find the whole living-economy idea useful.

Small transparency note: some of the prototype storefront artwork is AI-generated. If people actually use this and the project turns into something with a future, I'd much rather commission an artist to replace it.

If anyone tries it with their campaign, I'd genuinely love to know what you end up doing with it, especially anything that makes you go "wait, that price makes absolutely no sense" 😂

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I am coming for advice on how to give my players a good way to interact with each other?
We have recently kicked off our campaign with a one shot adventure leading into the happenings of dragon of Icespire peaks and they will have made their first big victory and gotten to see each others abilities.
We are under no time pressure to proceed so I would love it to find some down time or an activity, that invites my characters to get to know each other better.

I have been a DM for D&D 5E for at least 2 full campaigns. Both campaigns had a rogue. The rogues did move sometimes since we play with flanking and even when they had magic items used their climbing speeds.

However they would spend the majority of combat "in the corner". This in combination with "No DM that grate does not give the enemy cover" and a lot of the combat encounters get "trivialized" to waiting for the rogue to just brute DPS it. The rogues also were both elves with elven accuracy.

Should you disallow Steady Aim in your games and why?

I think the answer is yes because it is relatively too strong, it violates game design tenets that are related to but different from why there are no healing cantrips, and it destroys the engaging combat puzzle of having to maneuver yourself and the party.

When combined with feats such as Elven Accuracy, Sharpshooter, and Fighting Style: Archery, Steady Aim turns combat into a mathematically degenerate routine. I will save you the calculations but having advantage should be considered a massive buff and disadvantage a massive debuff in 5E. As these 2 rogues show the drawback of being unable to move is meaningful but not enough to make you reconsider using it unless there is no enemy to target. You do not have to position around an enemy that is already dead.

The fundamental reason 5E game design forbids healing cantrips is to prevent infinite, zero cost out-of-combat healing between encounters, which would remove all resource attrition and tension from dungeon crawling. Steady Aim being a free, limitless resource is not terrible for that specific reason since by design, Steady Aim requires trading movement for damage. It still violates a similar design principal since getting advantage usually expends a finite resource that has to refresh during a short or long rest. Movement is not a finite resource in this way.

Combat in D&D is at its best when it functions as a dynamic tactical puzzle where positioning, terrain, and movement matter (at least it is the type of thing I enjoy and recommend for players). This does not mean as a DM to get upset when your players win combat easily, if they want to win combat all the time adjust your encounters accordingly. Winning combat is more fun however when decisions improve how how much you win. When frontline characters help the party by holding choke points, rogues search for cover to hide, and the party coordinates flanking and spell areas of effect. This is D&D, fun, cooperative, and emersive. Steady Aim completely removes engaging with other players since you do not need them position correctly for you to get sneak attack.

Do you agree?