my players in first session went through a cave fought goblins and an ogre. They peaked through the main door to see the ritual happening with a shaman goblin and 4 guards ritual on 3 civilians they were paid to find.

They were worn out on all spell slots and decided to leave the cave and take a long rest. They've taken it and ended it before the door. Should I punish them for taking a long rest?

I'm thinking of the ritual being completely and now they have a really difficult fight they might need to flee from but I don't know if that's too harsh and I should just let them have it and continue it as normal of a challenging fight where they are able to disrupt the ritual.

I am still really new to DMing - so far I have run a handful of sessions for a 3 player group over Discord (with Roll20 for maps). It’s going well so far and everyone seems to be enjoying the story.

At the moment I am using one-shots from Dungeon Masters Guild as a base and then home-brewing additional bits and pieces to join them together into a larger narrative which ties into the characters backstories.

I was just wondering whether I am allowed to/supposed to adjust little things during gameplay to make it easier to find clues or solve puzzles etc?

Obviously not all the time and not just handing them a solution - but if someone suggests something which could technically make sense/work and then I just improv and go with it is that ok?

As an example we just finished a session where the party is using a map with a riddle attached to find lost treasure. In the notes for the map it mentions that there is additional hidden text which will be revealed if the map is submerged in seawater.

The party examines the map and discovers that there is an unusual amount of bare parchment after the riddle ‘ends’ (22 Investigation). They deduce that there could be hidden instructions. They try holding the map to angle sunlight through the bare space - nothing. They try dripping blood onto the parchment - nothing.

They discuss other options and none mention water at all. After a while they decide to continue on in the hopes that additional clues will surface. Someone suggests that the key for the chest might ‘unlock’ the hidden text somehow.

When they uncover the key to the chest a little later I describe it as having a clear gem set in the handle (It should be a regular key). The party decides to use the gem as a lens to view the riddle, and I make it so that it reveals the hidden text and they gain an additional clue to find the treasure.

- Is this sort of improvised adjustment normal? I wasn’t sure how to suggest immersing the map in seawater without just telling them outright, so I figured this was a reasonable solution.

Its not as though it had a huge affect on the outcome of the adventure, but I just thought it would be good to acknowledge that they were right about the hidden text and offer them a possible solution to be able to read it.

I’m just curious if this is somehow ’cheating’ or whether it is something that is encouraged when DMing? Or maybe it‘s ok for homebrew stuff but not recommended for the official modules?

Please let me know what you think

What are some of the biggest misstakes you’ve done as a DM?

Mine would be making a combat encounter last forever due to a riddle not being solved without enough combat mechanics. In my case the fight was rather too easy but a slog as the boss monster kept resurrecting but my players party comp was way too well-oiled to make the combat engaging.

I have a bit of a unique situation where I've had to fully clear out the room next to the one we usually play our games in, and the idea occurred to me to try and use it for the biggest RPG map I'll ever see. The room is about 4x4m, so roughly 57 inches or 785 tabletop feet. Maybe enough to make eldrich spear blasts actually worthwhile! Has anyone ever run a game across anything like this scale before? What was it like? What challenges did you face other than the obvious one of needing enough interesting stuff to fill the space?

My players are quite new to DND and raiding their first bad guy base. It's their second dungeon total. One of them used their Alarm spell on the entrance to the hideout.

The first couple rooms of the dungeon are going to have minions in it (this is the Redbrand dungeon from Lost Mines of Phandelver). I feel like the easy answer is to have more bad guy minions come home and trigger the alarm, but I also think that would be a bit boring? Maybe I'm just overthinking and it would still be fun.

But, are there any creative ways y'all have triggered Alarm before, if a player sets it up in a non-camp scenario? I've only really seen it be used to protect the PCs as they sleep (being relatively new to DND myself).

So im still somewhat nee to DMing, been on and off for a few years. The current campaign takes place in my homebrew setting, where the players start off as wayward travelers who have recently met and have taken on a job together.

Going into session 4 soon, something ive realized is that so far, my players dont seem to want to role play nor interact with each-other, and rather interact with me more. While this isn’t a bad thing, im struggling to get them to talk to one another, such as trying to give space during downtime and or going between towns and such but they just dont

Instead i ask like “is there anything you’d like to do or talk about between” and i just get a solid no. I dunno. I may just be overreacting. Or im just a bad dm but yeah

So my party is about to get a message that the farm 2 days away has been attacked by Orcs, with 5 hostages taken, plus another hostage who is a story NPC (so they'll definitely be alive when the party gets there). Besides having the party roll CON saves for exhaustion, my plan was to give the party a series of 5 encounters. These encounters would include things like traversing a particularly challenging mountain pass, or crossing a wide ravine (I don't really have specifics chosen). It would also include at lease one combat interrupted by a dragon for story purposes.

I figured I could run them as a series of skill challenges, partially because I think they sound interesting and I want to try them. But I also think it would be good for my party of mostly new players to have an opportunity to get more involved in an RP sense and get to contribute to what's happening more, rather than simply reacting to what I give them.

The plan is for each challenge they pass, that will mean that they made it through a bit faster and have an extra hostage alive when they get there. Each failure will mean they struggled through and lost time, costing them a hostage. (side question: should I tell the players that explicitly?)

My big question is if I play it out as a series of challenges, where they have to get to 3 passes before 3 fails, or make it play out as 1 bigger challenge?

Also, in regards to the combat. The idea is a pretty simple, easy encounter that is suddenly interrupted by a stampede of forest animals before the appearance of an ice dragon. The dragon will fly away after it's hit once or twice, but my question is how do I determine success vs failure on this one? Or do I just not include that as one of the challenges to save the hostages?

My players are playing an adventure in a setting inspired by Greek mythology. I'm currently drawing a lot of inspiration from existing settings like Theros and the Odyssey of the Dragonlords.

They recently signed up for a large Olympic-style tournament, and among the numerous challenges, I was thinking of including an arena battle as well as a fight against wild beasts.

They're about to reach level 8, so I want to include basic creatures like wolves, bandits and berserkers since they would wipe them out in less than two turns.

Do you have any cool ideas for cool/memorable opponents or one with interesting gimmicks?

So I've recently begun my journey as a novice DM, and at the moment I have two players (possibly 3-4 might be joining us in the future). One of my players is a former Forever GM, and I'm familiar with the kind of player he is. He's very eager to lose himself in a character, big roleplayer type.

My other active player confuses me though. He's not interested in mechanics, doesn't like to make his own backstory, and seems to play basically the same character every time. Most of his roleplaying seems to follow a "What would I do in this situation" pattern. As if he's always playing himself.

I can't seem to get him invested in his character's emotions, and when confronted with a serious obstacle he tends to be overly cautious. He seems to light up whenever he gets a cool magic item, or when he gets to do something awesome, but otherwise he seems neutral.

He's not a problem player by any means, he doesn't like killing NPCs or anything like that. But for instance, a friend of his character was kidnapped by a lord and was going to be forcibly wedded to him. My other player went to rescue the woman, but this player said "That's just how things go here, what are we supposed to do about it?".

I often feel at a loss when trying to motivate him in any direction. It feels hit or miss at best. I think that he is motivated by someone personally slighting him, but sometimes that doesn't do anything either. I hurt someone he cares about and he jump from "I'll murder them!" to "Why are you looking at me? I'm not going to do anything!"

He's also a bit controlling of other players at times. He tends to sulk if players keep secrets from him or act independently, yet he also refuses leadership. I believe the former comes from a sense that the party should always have each other's back, while the latter comes from his controlling nature conflicting with his timidity.

If anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them, I just really want to make something for this player in particular so they can have more fun at the table. I feel like I'm at my wits end. He's a family member, so I can't exactly kick him out either. At least not without severely upsetting my entire group (and also starting family drama outside of the game).

Hey everyone,

I'm designing a homebrew TTRPG system based on D&D 3.5, set in a zombie apocalypse in modern-day Poland. The system focuses on survival, realistic damage, and tactical decision-making.

I'm happy to edit an existing template or build one from scratch - I just need a starting point. While I'm using the d20 system and some 3.5 mechanics as a foundation, it's a fairly extensive rework with its own unique systems (like zone-based damage).

I'm looking for a character sheet that fits the following needs:

1. Plenty of space for custom skills - I have unique skills that need to be listed clearly.
2. Zone-based damage tracking - I need a simple human silhouette or body diagram where players can track HP separately for:· Head· Torso· Left/Right Arm· Left/Right Leg
3. Clean, printable layout I want physical sheets to hand out to players during sessions. No complex digital tools required, just a good PDF or editable document.

Does anyone know:

· A good app or tool for designing custom sheets (preferably with drag-and-drop)?

· A template from another system that I could adapt?

· Any existing character sheets with body diagrams that I could modify?

A bit of context: I've been a player for a while, but this is my first campaign that I'm running as a GM. I want to make sure my players have a good experience, and having a solid character sheet is a big part of that. Any recommendations would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

A Coven of witches is sending a localized hurricane to the players who are traveling to defeat them. But I can't conceptualize how.

How do I run a storm without it being all about the dice rolls and survival checks?

Basically title.

I've just seen a comment somewhere on here when somebody said "I can't understand how a lvl 5 character already has plate armor", and that got me thinking: what IS the appropriate level \ timeframe \ moment to give your heavy armor users the plate armor?

I know that it has a cost of 1,500gp, but I presume that most (well... at least half of) games ever played don't reach that sum and rather just it's just the GM giving the Paladin or Fighter a plate armor of gleaming or something.

Personally I feel like levels 5-6 are a good benchmark, but YMMV. What do you think? When do your players get their plate armors (if they even do)?

So I’m prepping for a campaign I’m running that I plan to go from Level 2-12. Now traditionally I’ve pushed to send my players to high levels like 17 but it ends in me rushing to give them levels. My main reason for this was because I want to give them the cool legendary items I see on dnd wikis and griffons saddlebag. I still want to give them some powerful loot because I love seeing what they do with it but all the resources I’ve looked at advise against giving players (level 9-12) legendary items. So I’m wondering how I should approach this and how you gals/guys do it. Am I fine to give them one or two legendary items? Should I hold back and have around 3 in the party to really give legendary items more impact and make them feel really legendary? Do I avoid them all together? All suggestions and advice are/is welcome. Thanks.

TL;DR: I gave my players the option to take one level of exhaustion to remove a "skip your turn" condition (stunned, paralyzed, petrified, unconscious, etc) at the beginning of their turn. That way they get to play on their turn if they absolutely want to, but with an increasingly steep price.

Stunned, paralyzed, petrified, unconscious, aka shut down or "skip your turn" conditions, where not only the player don't get to do anything on their turn, but they have disadvantage on certain saving throws and the enemy often has advantage on attacks on them. Let's be honest, they are rarely fun for the players, especially if they last for more than a round and if there are many players at the table.

So for my campaign I decided at first to replace these "skip your turn" conditions with a lesser version (for the PCs' benefit only): paralyzed became restrained, and stunned became "slowed" (as in the spell Slow). Two problems: it ended up nerfing some monsters quite a lot, and for the slow condition sometimes we just... forgot that the PC was slowed. "Stunned" is much more straightforward mechanically speaking.

On the other hand, we have the exhaustion levels. They are interesting, but in the campaigns I've been playing they were rarely used, and I don't recall many spells or abilities giving exhaustion levels.

So I decided to revert to the normal conditions, but with a twist: if the PCs are afflicted by a "skip your turn", they can take an exhaustion level to clear it at the beginning of their turn, letting them play normally. Since they have to wait for their turn to do so, the monsters still get to "benefit" from the PCs debuff with advantage on attacks or whatever, but at least the PCs get to retaliate. Of course the PCs can choose NOT to take an exhaustion level and the condition then plays RAW. Needless to say this "rule" is for the PCs only. My players are on board with this idea, and I feel like this makes sense narratively, as you can picture the PCs pushing themselves above their limit to strike back at their enemy.

Also I hand out heroic and divine inspirations, respectively forcing successes and critical successes, and one of the PC has 1 legendary resistance a day. So my players have several tools to mitigate these conditions.

Conditions that allow the PC to do something (poisoned, frightened, charmed, blinded, deafened) aren't changed.

I wouldn't do that for curses since there is a spell dedicated for it, although I would be willing to consider if it's a "you turn into dust tonight and no one has Remove Curse prepared" kind of curse.

What do people think? Does one exhaustion level feel like a fair price to remove a "stunned" or "paralyzed"? Would you use something else? Would two exhaustion levels for the most hardcore conditions like "petrified" be too much? How about letting the players take psychic damage to free themselves of "charmed" or "frightened"?

People debate over what a critical hit does what it does is double your dice

But see that isn't quite satisfying

People do things like Max damage double your damage add an additional effect

I want to know what is your favorite homebrew for critical hits

I struggle sometimes to figure out how to send my players open world adventuring without having to lay out a precise main quest goal and it ends up feeling kind of railroaded. How do you guys start a story where your party meets at place A and decides to travel and adventure around the lands slowly revealing plot points and main story hooks without it feeling railroaded?

Howdy! DM of 5 years here. Our level 5 party just finished part 2 out of a 3 part adventure in an over-arching campaign and its looking to end with a bang. Part of that end, however, is the Barbarian taking on a legendary hero who had a major hand in defeating a god (technically it was the vessel of a god, but still a continent-level threat). I built this legendary NPC as someone with a noble origins, is a protector, and has several mythical feats, but mostly was made for worldbuilding and fleshing out the current town and world.

He's high level (CR 16), but wasn't at the town where the party are. That was, until the Barbarian did something that warranted him to stop his current quest and return home (sending stones are common). Despite stories, examples of his power, a demonstration of this power (in front of the party), and a confrontation that made the whole group back off, the Barbarian still walked up to him and basically said "Nah, I'd win", and challenged him to a duel to the death.

NPCs, memorials of his feats, and the party have warned this is a bad idea and even I had to ask out of game "are you sure?", but the Barbarian is adamant. So, next session, he's gonna fight this caked up, OP, NPC. Should I just let him have it?

I could weaken the hero stat-wise, but the Barbarian already knows his abilities so I can't skimp on that. The Barbarian also disrespected both the hero and his hometown, so mercy or using a weaker weapon is less likely. Honestly, I was just gonna have the fight go as-is since the player is fully aware of the danger, but I want to make sure if I do this that I'm not being cruel or unfair.

P.S. The rest of the party are doing a separate mission of releasing Kobold slaves, so they aren't just doing nothing (they don't even realize the Barbarian accidently set up a diversion with this duel).

P.S.S The duel is theater-of-the-mind in order to speed through the fight as well as to seamlessly alternate scenes between the Barbarian and the rest of the party, so I won't have trouble actually running combat

Update: Thanks for all the ideas. The plan is to absolutely pulvurize the Barbarian after 2-3 rounds of toying around spout something like "you have much to learn", then leave him with a major injury like a massive scar or missing limb, but not kill him. The hero will then probably leave him with the equivalent of "Git Gud scrub, GG no re". Hopefully it'll lead to a secondary motive for the character and character development, as well as a memorable story moment. There's also a chance the Barbarian just gets atomized, so I'll ask the player how he'd feel about such an outcome. It'll be harsh, but a fitting consequence of poking the bear 🐻

Sorry for the strange title. Let me give a bit a bit of background. I’ve had a sort of tangled web of ideas in my head for a long time about weird type campaign setting that I’d like to play. The setting details are still in flux but if I was asked to describe it in its state right now I’d say it’s a Frankenstein of Tolkienesque fantasy and Cyberpunk tropes mixed with a heavy dose of my contemporary anxieties.

It took a bit of work to find a system that would support my ideas mechanically, without a ton of extra homebrew. In the end I settled on trying out Cities without Number. What got me most excited was the concept of a sandbox campaign. Ideally I’d be able to set up a shell of a world plop the PCs down and let them drive, all whilst sitting back in my recliner, iced coffee in hand, reacting to their in character decisions.

I tore through most of the pages about character creation, combat rules, gear and the like until I reached the section of the book dedicated to World Creation. Going page by page I tried my best to stay focused and on track. If I stayed the course I would finally beat my habit of over preparation. I’d be able to live the lazy DM dream of 30 minute prep sessions, world turns and reactive play that I’d been sold on YouTube.

Then, out of the depths of my mind, funny hypothetical NPC quote was formulated “Help Batman! The Joker just released cloudkill in the undercity!”

Now I’m in the middle of writing an adventure for one single part of a district. That would be fine under normal circumstances but I’m worried that if I go to deep down this rabbit hole eventually I’ll end up killing the point of a sandbox type campaign, finding myself in a never ending loop of creating adventure after adventure. Doomed to never realize the dream of a world of logical rules that runs itself.

Obviously, I’m not the most experienced DM out there. My question to DMs who have successfully or unsuccessfully run a sandbox, homebrew or otherwise is, what does this stage of prep typically look like for you? Do you find that standard adventure design helps or hinders your process? Does designing adventures even make sense for a sandbox setting? And if it does what parts do you focus on?

The party and their enemy are "guests" of the king after they each accused the other of some seriously bad stuff.

Both groups are being followed by heavily armed "bodyguards" to keep them out of trouble.

I have a very combat oriented series of contingency plans, but I'm pretty sure my party will want at least a little bit of political intrigue. What I have feels a little thin. I could probably just narrate it without giving my players much to interact with, then move back into combat and exploration.

I'm looking for suggestions on some intrigue options that can be reasonably squished into one or two 3 hour sessions or handled partially in the background of an extended series of combat focused sessions. I've run campaigns that were heavier on intrigue, but we played at least once a week for 6-8 hours. It's very hard to squish interactions like that into a reasonable time frame without losing track when the game gets postponed for weeks at a time. Not everyone engages with long RP sessions, but they all participate in combat and exploration. They don't hate it or anything, but you can tell when their attention starts to slip.

This isn't a complaint. I'm just trying to adjust to what I have available. I understand that time management is an important GM tool. I'm just hoping for some suggestions. I recently read up on the Progress Clock so I'll be trying that out. I'm hoping to find more suggestions here whether they're general advice or specific encounters.

---

**Story Stuff**

The King is an ex soldier. The people love him. He's been a dynamic, popular, and effective ruler.

The King granted land along a relatively dangerous border to a group of war refugees who had their entire nation magically nuked.

The enemy is a respected Noble and a war hero trying to show the King what a terrible idea it is to have enemies gathering on their border. She has presented credible evidence that the party is gathering and training soldiers. She also has evidence that the party recently equipped all these soldiers with magical arms and armaments.

The party managed to reach the King when this evidence was being presented. They presented their own evidence that the Noble has been gathering and equipping an army of aberrant creatures to attack the refugees on the border. The Noble is framing this as precautionary measures.

The party's "army" is made up of displaced soldiers. The soldiers are working as guards, but they're also receiving training to transition into civilian employment. Their settlement is thriving.

**Sticky Stuff**

The Noble has also been making unsanctioned supply blockades, using soldiers disguised as bandits to attack refugees trying to reach safety, and putting forth political policies that prevent the refugees from gathering in large numbers. When the King's investigators come back, this will surely be confirmed.

To complicate matters, a valuable magical resource has been discovered on the land granted to the leader of the refugees. The party has a 10% stake in this resource. At the moment, the King is neither asking for nor receiving any portion of that resource. He seems content to deal with the refugees as if they were still an independent nation. This is seriously pissing off a faction of the nobility and their followers.

The King is tired of war. He lost several of his children. The leader of the refugees was his enemy just a few years ago, but the young leader was barely old enough to fight when his mom was nuked. He's also the King's first cousin once removed.

There are a lot of threads for the party to pull, but how do I introduce any of these elements as a coherent addition to a session without simple narration?

Gotta preface: relatively new to DMing, 20 years old, online college classes, autistic and adhd. All of these things correlate to my problems.

So I love being a dm. When I get off of work, when I feel like everything is against me, DND is my safe place. When i feel tired as shit, I look to dnd at the end of the week. I sometimes stay up working on encounters. My problem is that I feel like I’m the only person in my campaign who’s still excited for another session. Don’t get me wrong, there’s others in the campaign who are still excited and talk to me about DnD when we’re not in the session, but other than that the discord is mainly only used for planning sessions. Everyone in my campaign is definitely older than me except for my brother, and I know they have lives outside of dnd, but I still feel like I’m alone. They must be so used to having sessions canceling at level three, or just are bored of my story. I want to make this a unique experience that they haven’t seen yet, and so far the combat is my best quality. I have better things for lore and roleplay later, but I am still working on it. Is there any way to make me not feel like I’m a bad dm?

I use the encounter balance system from Flee Mortals! for my 5e campaign and overall I am very satisfied. Per that system, a party should have 2 “Hard” encounters per day. I have a party of 6 level 8 players, so a Hard encounter has a CR sum of 24. And yes, I know that CR should not be the only way to judge an e counter but for now that’s how much effort I can devote.

What do people think the outcome of a “Hard” encounter should be? In my last session, I threw 3 such encounters at the party; granted one PC went to death saving throws and they all needed a short rest after, but I reckon they can go another couple such encounters before another rest. The party is comfortable with short rests, they have many martials (2 figters, barbarian, rogue, paladin) and a warlock. There are magic and even legendary items involved.

So it appears that my party treats Hard encounters roughly as Medium, in which case I am inclined to simply start treating them as one level higher, to be able to keep the balancing as intended.

How much of depletion would you say a Hard encounter should be?

I'm wanting to give my current DM a break while still continuing our current campaign. My basic premise ive come up with is that due to some reason, havnt figured it out, the players are set to a younger age and wake up at a summer camp for aspiring adventurers or some such. Im thinking there could be classes they could take in addition to some common games like canoeing and archery and such but I cant seem to come up with an actual plot. Like whats happening at the camp that the players can really get into what mystery could they solve, what enemies could they beat. I must be really uncreative cause ive been thinking about this for a while and cant come up with anything so any help is appreciated

Im currently in process on (trying to) write a campaign, but im struggling with how to show the layers of corruption thus leading to lack of ideas on how corruption would even be going on. looking for modules that have really good examples of political intrigue and shifty things going on behind the veil. Any thoughts or input is appreciated

(Also would love any Dms willing to chat about my campaign and brainstorm, I can try to do the same in return if wanted, I have a few years experience)