#((and THEN I'm doing classes of which I have several homebrew))

[dartagnantt]

Breaking and Exiting | Magical untensils to break into and out of any situation

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here! I release everything for free, so your support makes this possible. I'm working on a new class for 5e! Follow the Kickstarter here!

Welcome to the new month, a combo theme of fortress and escape. While the intent for these items were to escape, they, admittedly, also work to infiltrate a fortress. Ha! Perfect segue between topics :)

Adamantine Battering Ram

So, the trait of adamantine weapons, besides bypassing damage immunities is that it autocrits structures and objects, like doors. Well, it makes sense then that you'd want an adamantine version of an object all about breaking down doors.

Counterfeit Skeleton Key

Doing things in alphabetical order is amusing sometimes. This is, as the name implies, a replica of the artifact in this list. Because of course you want a magic key that automatically unlocks any door. Did steal the idea of several conceptual versions of this item from media consumed long ago that I no longer know where it's from where it moulds itself to the lock it fits into and stays like that. Or I hallucinated that memory, I honestly couldn't tell you.

Inconspicuous Crate

A Metal Gear reference, haha! Also coincidentally not the first mind altering box I've made, huh.

Instant Hole

So, the robe of useful items potentially includes a window or a pit that you can just slap onto the ground or a wall, but that's the only way to get such a marvelous item. I thought it might do to make an actual item out of it. Yes, this is based on the portable hole from Who Framed Rodger Rabbit. I just couldn't name it such, because apparently that item already exists but isn't really a hole. Now is it?

Mithral Lockpick

I miss masterwork thieves tools. I also find the general lack of improvements for the most used tool a little odd, actually. It's not much, but it's nice.

Skeleton Key

Behold! The most common fantasy magic item in existence. Including the item of the same name from the elder scrolls that I borrowed some of its abilities of (AKA the unlocking of potential), and pathfinder's "Perfection's Key" which I borrowed the destruction method of. Strangely, the closest item 5e has is the chime of opening, which is a temporary item and loud. Neither of which I would recommend for sneaking.

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Dungeon Delver's Survival Guide

Oath of Integrity

Path of Iron

Stranger than Fiction

I also have three classes, and a splatbook over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!

[keplercryptids]

A Quick Breakdown of a Few Non-D&D TTRPGs (and how they compare to D&D)

hi it's me, your local ttrpg player and forever-GM, encouraging y'all to play something other than d&d. i wanted to share about a few ttrpgs in particular and how they compare to the d&d experience. this might be useful to some who want to try a non-d&d system with a little more guidance than "all of these look cool." i'm focusing on the three systems i have the most experience with, and i'm not going to delve into the game mechanics, but rather focus on the game experience.

also, hey!! if you learned to play d&d, i promise you, you can learn another system. d&d is complicated and often expensive, but other ttrpgs aren't necessarily like that! most ttrpgs, in fact, are much simpler than d&d and easier to learn. so don't let the barriers you may have faced with d&d discourage you from trying a new system.

Savage Worlds

experience: player in a homebrewed setting for about a year.

overview: savage worlds is a setting-neutral system, so it really lends itself to homebrewed worlds. character creation is looser and more flexible in some ways than d&d. you piece together the character you want rather than using a set class/race. i would say the biggest difference between savage worlds and d&d is what the name itself implies. the world can be savage! the dice are swingy in this game. you might be great at a skill, but it doesn't guarantee success the way it pretty much does in d&d. wins and losses tend to be bigger and more dramatic.

what i love: your "class" feels more customized to what you want. savage worlds rules can be implemented in all kinds of settings and worlds which is cool. "balance" isn't really an issue the way it is in d&d (but be prepared for those swingy dice!). combat can be deadlier in some ways, but the system doesn't rely on combat the way d&d does.

Blades in the Dark

experience: GM of a campaign for several months.

overview: blades in the dark is about a group of scoundrels, being scoundrel-y. my favorite line from the player's handbook is that you should play your character like you're driving a stolen car, and i just love that metaphor so much. blades is a game where you play bad people doing bad things (crime). you roll a number of d6s and if you get a 1-3, you fail; a 4-5, you succeed with a complication; a 6 is a total success. what this means in-game is that almost every roll you make results in something bad happening. this leads to a chaotic game experience where the pressure is constantly building until something explodes.

what i love: as a GM, i never prepped for more than 15 minutes before a session. you don't need to prep at all as a GM (either way, be prepared to improv your ass off!). the mechanics are also a delight and i know i will use some of them in most of my games moving forward (clocks! clocks are genius). it also has more of a collaborative feel than d&d. you and your players are making it up as you go and it FEELS that way, which is so fun.

Pathfinder Second Edition

experience: GM of a published adventure for just a few weeks!

overview: this is probably the system most similar to d&d. a lot of the skills, dice mechanics, spells etc will be familiar to you. if you like d&d mechanically but want more crunch and more balance, pf2e is a great option. it's definitely more complicated than d&d, but i don't think it's too complicated, if that makes sense. combat is easier to balance from the GM side and feels more dynamic in many ways at level 1 than d&d at any level. also pf2e has a sense of humor??? it's hard to describe but so many of the feats, spells and monster abilities are FUN in a way that's lacking in d&d. i plan to run my next campaign in pf2e and am excited to delve into using it for a homebrew setting.

what i love: character customization is off the fucking charts. if you're a 5e player, you'll be astounded at just how many skills and abilities you get every level-up. also, it's a game that's balanced, which as a GM i've noticed right away. combat is fun to run (i have NEVER said that about 5e lmao) and feels like you're actually playing a game, rather than giving a presentation the way a lot of 5e combat feels as a dm. every monster stat block is interesting and unique. and there's a rule for everything, which i personally like.

anyway, i hope this was useful! get out there and try a new ttrpg system, okay??

[sburbian-sage]

So I brought up with my coplayers, the idea of weekly D&D games? You know, could be fun, give us something to de-stress with.

They were kinda on board, but... well they're all trolls, and they're more familiar with FLARP, and said we should play that instead...

Is it just me though, or is FLARP like, a nonsense game??? It seems super dangerous, and I can't tell if it's roleplay-heavy, or more like a video game?

I guess it's kinda like Sburb in that way... Which, uh, kinda gets away from the point of this being stress relief. You know, somehow, my idea of us all sitting cozily around a table, eating snacks and cracking jokes, seems to have been subverted into essentially playing *another* live-action game where you need to act as a specific class and leverage nonsense abilities. Don't I get enough of that already...?

But hey, I can roll with the punches, I wanna at least *try* it. So yeah, any advice or tips? Have you ever played it?

Oh man. I'm all for cultural sensitivity, but only Alternia could produce a game like FLARP. It's somehow simultaneously "your rural cousin who doesn't know what a gameboy is takes rapturous joy in throwing rocks at roadkill because that's his only hobby when he's not plowing the field or learning how to read (he is 15)" and "this FPS/superhero movie was directly paid for by the government, enjoy uncritically and join the military now to die in WWIII". And that's putting aside that on Alternia "let's play FLARP" can either be a friendly engagement between friends or a socially acceptable pretense for murdering someone and jacking all of their shit.

But then again, maybe I'm the one that needs to live a little. I've never played FLARP, or at least I don't remember having played it (I do remember the severe head trauma, but not anything leading up to it), but I do have a scan of the FLARP handbook, and enough familiarity with "actual play" to understand the social conventions and playerbase. So if you wanna commit to this, listen up.

Standard TRPG stuff. Establish lines and veils and other safety tools, be a fan of the players, respect the Clouder as a fellow player. Don't be a killer GM who tries to "win", but don't hand out victories like candy because the game isn't fun without legitimate stakes. This is my advice by the way. The closest the book comes to this is "as the Clouder, the players are all your bitches, but keep in mind that they outnumber you and the only thing sating their bloodlust is 1) you running a good game 2) you're not worth much XP".

Like D&D, FLARP can be surprisingly versatile in the games it can run. You can run FLARP cooperatively or divide into competitive teams. You can also run campaigns that focus on intrigue. However, like D&D, it's also mostly about killing things. So don't expect good results if your ideal TRPG experience is "cozy and conflict-free emotional story about queer people gardening" or whatever. It's an actual game.

I know I said "establish boundaries" earlier, but I'm enunciating right now that FLARP can be lethal. I'm not trying to insinuate that your Troll coplayers are going to go into automatic blood orgy mode as soon as the game starts. All I'm saying is, muscle memory can be a bitch, and if I'm going to play paintball with military veterans who have own landmines and stuff, it might be a good idea to double-check the guns to make sure they aren't loaded with live ammo.

Don't go in with a solid idea of what character you wanna play. All of your stats are randomly rolled, and your two highest stats determine which class you get to play as. It's honest-rolls, baby, and like honest rolls they can provide uneven results. The Boy Skylark class sucks, but their endgame potential is unreal.

There are homebrew rules for point-buy attribute determination, as well as picking whatever class you want, but if you ask to use them your coplayers are legally allowed to wedgie you. Casually bring them up and insinuate that it might be a good idea, maybe.

Clear out a large area for play. One or five square miles at least. When the campaign hatches, the monsters will need space to propagate.

Don't rob yourself of the fun. Alchemize some low-tier beginner equipment, and don't use your Classpect abilities. The game is balanced around players not being gods. There are homebrew "epic campaign" rules, but it gets really stupid really fast. If your Troll coplayers can use psionics, either ask them not to use them, or allow your human players to use certain Title powers to "balance" it out.

Related note, classes can only use certain types of weapons which may not correspond to your Kind Abstratus. Normally using a non-Kind weapon ensures you don't get damage bonuses (and it applies damage penalties if it's a "real" weapon), but FLARP uses its own damage calculations based on class, level, and stats when you're playing it. You might think it's weird that SBURB seemingly respects FLARP as its own independent game type and will suspend its own damage calculations while playing it. Don't think about it too much. Also don't think about how the Boy Skylark is just the Page in all but name.

If you don't maintain strict time records, you won't have fun, your game will suck, and I'll kill you.

Happy FLARPing. And if it doesn't work out, try pilling them on another game. D&D won't work, FLARPing basically does all the same stuff D&D does, except D&D is for babies and FLARP is EXTREME ROLEPLAYING. Maybe try VtM. Or if there's a jadeblood among your team who thinks roleplaying as vampires is culturally insensitive, try Mage. Try to emphasize that you can do things in the realm of imagination that can't be faithfully done live-action.

[tangent101]

D&D Game Concept - working out issues

Several months ago I started working on a three-part adventure set in my own homebrew campaign world set during the second great apocalypse the world faced, when the Lord of Destruction emerged into the world to bring about the End Times. (The first happened over 500 Seasons earlier with the God Wars - Seasons on this world lasting for 450 days, so a year on this world is about the same as five years on Earth.)

Amusingly enough, while some elements of this might match Matt Mercer's Calamity on Exandria, the original concept of the God War and the End Times were crafted by me over 20 years earlier for my previous games set in this world. And while I've been playing in Golarion for the Pathfinder Adventure Paths for the past decade, I still have been meddling with my own campaign world from time to time.

A couple things to note: the Goblins of my world are tinkerers, perhaps closer to Tolkien's goblins than Pathfinder's - they're close to the size of dwarves. Elves rarely get over five feet in height and tend to live to be a very youthful 150 Seasons before they quickly grow old and die - however, after 30 Seasons, they start remembering their Past Lives and can pull upon those older memories. (Gnomes in my world are one of the four Elementalkin rather than fae folk, and elf-blooded humans are rare due in part to events leading up to the End Times - the Empire of the South was not a kindly empire and indulged in some truly dark alchemical magics in seeking immortality, which ultimately brought about their downfall.)

The Dead are arising, devouring the souls of the living, destroying the heart of the Great Empire of the South. Four Gods have been struck down by the Lord of Destruction, and one of Their corpses slowly makes their way toward the village where the PCs (a group of elves and goblins living in harmony together while hiding from human slavers) and the only chance the village has is for the PCs to enter into a ruined (formerly flying) Goblin Citadel to activate a weapon from the time of the God Wars to try and stop this Avatar of Destruction before It gets close enough to drain the souls from everyone in the village.

What I'm trying to figure out is where would such a weapon be found and how would the PCs be able to find their way to the weapon. Once they find it, the "conflict" will be trying to route ancient arcane power through broken conduits to empower the weapon and then aiming it to strike down the Avatar of Destruction... but getting there is half of the problem, and this is the bit that's giving me pause.

The PCs will consist of five archetypes (which can fit any class really, it's up to the PC to decide how to craft the character).

The Dreamer: Has dreams of the past and sometimes present.

The Historian: Has studied a bit about the past of the Goblin Flying Citadel and the goblins.

The Tinkerer: Loves to work with various old Goblin devices and owns a device from the Goblin Citadel.

The Explorer: Has explored the region and knows the region like the back of their hand.

The Guardian: Works hard to protect their brethren and has practiced hard in protecting others.

So. What I'm trying to figure out is how do the players learn how to reach the ancient arcane weapon and how to reach it. I have ideas on obstacles (such as goblin-crafted automatons who would detain intruders) but reaching this device... that's the odd question. So I was hoping people would toss out some ideas.

[dm-clockwork-dragon]

Hi! I've been playing the necroficer class, but I'm having an incredibly hard time keeping up with my party members while playing it. We just hit level 4, and my DM is concerned that this class just moves way too slow and feels so weak compared to everyone else. Is there an updated version I should be using (I downloaded it before covid) or do you have any advice for how we can modify the class to be more useful? We just barely hit level 4.

If you downloaded before COVID, definitely check out the Dropbox to see if your version is old. I am fairly certain I did do some updates during COVID, as I got a lot of playtesting done during that period.

That said, the power of the necroficer very much comes down to the horrors you are making. 5e monster manuals are sortof shit, and CR can be a really inconsistent gauge of how powerful a creature is. So sifting through the monster manuals (or even 3rd party MMs like those published by Kobold Press) to find undead that synergize well with your build can make a huge difference. At 5th level, for example, you get access to the CR2 Shadow, which is objectively broken, and I know most DMs will dissalow. But if you are struggling to keep up, your DM may let you. Also don't forget that you canp equip any humanoid horrors you make with weapons, beyond just the ones that come with the stat block. A skeleton archer is a different kind of threat than a skeleton with a short sword.

Also look at how you are playing the class. Are you trying to go for full DPS? Just trying to tank as much damage as possible for the party? Maybe you are focussed on making horrors that have a lot of utility, or fill gaps for skills or abilities your party is missing. Most of my classes work best when you specialize.

Beyond that, it's hard to give advice without knowing more about how you are playing. If anything, my playtesting always leaned towards the necroficer being too powerful, so It's hard to know where you are running into issues. It could be that you and your DM are reading a rule or ability differently from what I intended, but I wouldn't be able to tell without more information.

The simplest way to increase the power if you really need to is to just increase the CR level of the creatures you can make. But from my playtesting, you shouldn't need to. You are getting several monsters with a CR comparable to what the Druid can wildshape into, so it should be pretty viable to keep up with core classes, as long as you aren't consistently running into enemies with "turn undead" or similar abilities.

If your party is made up of a lot of powerful homebrew tho, then yeah, you may need to adjust the maximum CR of creatures you can make up a point or two. You could also bolster your character with some bonus feats. I found that the necroficer synergizes well with arcane initiate, or with the familliar feats from my familiar supplement.

[mephestopheles]

So, I'm running my own dnd campaign for several friends, and this is kind of like my fourth time running a game in total. I ran two-ish vampire/world of darkness games that petered out, and I ran a one shot prequel to the game I'm currently running now.

It's like 90% homebrew with just enough of the normal rules to keep things on a kind of track. I'm using gestalt rules for character building so each player has two full classes, and up to four subclasses.

And it is taking place in Space!

I'm not really worried about my players min maxing because a) I min max when I'm a player l, or rather I'll optimize, which is part of the fun of this game, and b) I have the tiktok sound of "get fuckin wrecked" to the tune of chicken dance in my head. So they've been warned.

It's also an all tiny campaign. The tallest player character is 3'5", and while they haven't come up with a name for their group, I've nicknamed the campaign, Some Assembly Required. They are all some level of chaotic and are bound and determined to do anything and everything, so I'm running with that in mind.

Also I ended the first session with the planet exploding.

[eldritchamy]

Hey, hello, how do I hear more of your world building because whenever you have it in tags of stuff, I am OBSESSED

I mean currently the answer is you have to be a specific person in my Discord DMs (and future housemate), who is the recipient of all of my infodumps about this particular topic.

The reason for this is that she's my ACTUAL DM (who runs a delightfully homebrewed Ravnica setting which takes a VERY liberal approach to MTG's concept of a multiverse), and my own homebrew Une-iverse is sort of the version of my characters and their story that exists in my head (I normally refer to this as "Story Mode") and is slowly being built out into its own whole world and, with any luck, several books. She greatly enjoys my infodumping in general, and has also been thrilled to have me as a player (in my first DND campaign!) because, and I quote, "Your passion and care for the story of your character is infectious." Her DMing style also very much jives with how I like to play the game, and the other players in the party, and their characters, are all excellent.

I'm pretty big on establishing and keeping to narrative arcs, and so far I'm pretty happy with where my character is in her journey as a person and how she's relating to the world around her, and in particular her story NPCs. One of my NPCs in particular (my favorite and the one I'm proudest of coming up with) she plays almost EXACTLY how I envision her, so every scene with that character is like a 5 pound brick of dopamine physically pummeled into my bloodstream through blunt force. She's also a very interesting character mechanically, so she's been the subject of QUITE a few infodumps about the mechanics of time and Second Sight and causality. I may make a post about that specifically, because I have a really cool way of explaining it.

When she first put out the call for a campaign she wanted to run, I was the first person to respond because I'd recently been in a bit of a DND hyperfixation (thanks in part to Critical Role) where I had turned a character concept I came up with several years prior into a functional PC. Her pitch for the campaign she wanted to run fit with the character I had started building, and I figured it was as good a time as any to actually get over my anxiety about it and actually join a party.

....While writing up my character's backstory initially, I was typing in a document that hit seven pages before my character was even born, if that's any indication of What I'm Like As A Person.

A fair amount got revised during and after character creation (I homebrewed an entire new 5e class (Witch) between levels 1 and 3 and she let me swap to it). I had some really cool ideas for her character backstory and her story NPCs (whom I, in an extremely on-brand obsessive fervor, had given some pretty deep backstories of their own), and she really enjoyed the creative direction I took everything character-wise and narratively.

And I STILL send her walls of text about character stuff and how they relate to things that happened and why they had the reactions they did to what events in their backstories and how everything interacted to make them such fleshed out and compelling characters.

Because when I get excited about a topic I am utterly, hopelessly incapable of shutting up about it. But she likes it and has a mutual interest in the particular topic, so she's ended up the person I direct all of the infodumps at.

As far as I can remember, I haven't posted anything about it except what's in either the "eldritch OCs" tag or more recently the "Uneiverse" tag on my blog.

I could be encouraged to post more about it, if enough people show an interest. I do think my cosmogony is pretty neat. I do need to work out a historical timeline, though, because currently some Pretty Major Stuff is a bit up in the air in terms of "ok cool but WHEN".

[unaugmentedmonkeyscantfly]

FIFTEEN QUESTIONS, FIFTEEN MUTUALS

tagged by @imxthexhandler

① ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE ? Well my first name was named after Mira aka Omicron Seti the star, but my middle name was for my dad’s grandmother Clara but Mira Clara sounded bad so I’m Mira Clare

② WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED ? Last night when I was watching clips from the readthrough of the Agents of SHIELD finale epilogue scene

③ DO YOU HAVE KIDS ? hell to the no, but I enjoy RPing as a father

④ DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT ? it’s one of my hallmarks

⑤ WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE ? eye color

⑥ WHAT’S YOUR EYE COLOR ? silvery with a couple of gold flecks (I refer to this color as Silmaril)

⑦ SCARY MOVIE OR HAPPY ENDING ? happy ending with scares along the way

⑧ ANY SPECIAL TALENTS ? I’m a hella fast reader, and I made my blog theme from  a template which is now basically unrecognizably different by self-taught CSS and HTML coding (I’m working on a site for my D&D group to have a compendium of our homebrew but it’s a little too noob-friendly and I’m like NO I NEED TO CHANGE THIS CSS VARIABLE AND IT WILL NOT LET ME), also I like to think I’m a pretty good worldbuilder

⑨ WHERE WERE YOU BORN ? a hospital in Tomball, Texas

⑩ WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES ? video games, D&D, I’ve recently gotten into dip painting, Magic: the Gathering, 3D character modeling (although as is true of any art project I pursue, I suck at doing it from scratch but I’m great at modding existing stuff), putting together flat-pack furniture (a functional 3D puzzle!)

⑪ DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS ? My sweet kitty Seylin

⑫ WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED ? I played softball little league, I was on the junior high soccer team, and I want to try out cricket and fencing.  And do esports count because I miss playing Overwatch and got to play alongside Muma my fav pro at Pax South which was dope

⑬ HOW TALL ARE YOU ? 5′2″, I am a smol

⑭ DREAM JOB ? forensic specialist a la Abby Sciuto from NCIS.  I know it’s not anything like presented on TV, but the whole field looks incredibly fascinating to me, from the mundane analyses of paint scrapes to the ballistics analysis

⑮ FAVORITE SUBJECT AT SCHOOL ? Chemistry although we didn’t do nearly enough experiments, but honestly I love what I’ve learned of ochem from researching stuff for @sippingteafromabeaker and various Sherlock RPs.  I want to go to college for biotech, but I’m 31 and with no proper internet, the dream is getting further away

[honourablejester]

im a very big fan of your homebrews, especially your subclasses, and i was wondering how much time you spend working on them? which took you the longest to develop?

Ah. Much like with my stories, that probably depends on what we're defining as 'working' on them. I tend to be a bit of a splurge writer, in that I'll have a concept percolating in the back of my head for a variable while (a few hours to a few years) and then at some point I'll actually sit down and get it put on paper/screen, usually all in one shot, although the last few years I've gotten better at doing part of something and then letting it sit for a while and coming back later.

For most of the subclass homebrews, I had them percolating in my head, the themes and flavour of them, for a few days or so, and then once I had time I'd sit down with the books, get other subclasses and classes up to compare them to, and actually sit down and get the abilities/mechanics plotted out. Then some time to refine/reword, possible a day or two (well, an hour or two over a couple of days), and then post it to see what everyone else thought.

What one took me longest ... With the subclasses, a lot of them are rather impulsive on my part, concept-wise, for almost all of them it was mostly 'this would be cool, I want something that feels like this, how would I do that?'. I think the Oath of the Outsider Paladin maybe took me longest in the 'actually plotting out the mechanics' phase? Or possibly the Fleshweaver Artificer, just because paladins and artificers are classes I have a shakier grasp on. I also took a bit of time on the Circle of the City Druid, because there was a lot of comparing subclass abilities across several classes for that one (warlock, most notably). The Darkness Domain Cleric also went through a few revisions, there's half of a whole other version of that one that went in a somewhat different direction ability-wise that I deleted halfway through and restarted.

The Path of the Whaler Barbarian was one of the fastest, just because the Ahab quote sketched such a clear concept for it. Starsworn Rogue was also very clear and concrete in my head. Sorcerers almost always come quickly, once I have the spell list nailed down for them, the rest usually follows quickly. If I've got a clear concept and the class feels friendly to me, it goes quick.

Generally, though? You're looking at a couple of days to percolate, and then a couple of days to write/revise, and I YOLO it from there.

I'm an impulsive writer, I really am.

[nerdythebard]

#17: Arachne, The Weaver

Once a beautiful and talented weaver of cloth, proud Arachne paid a hefty price for placing herself on an equal level with the gods.

Welcome, Gods and Goddesses! We continue our journey through the Greek pantheon, with this crafty weaver, who challenged Athena, the Goddess of Crafts herself, to a contest. She chose to portray the gods as prideful and flawed beings, which was proven true when Athena (unable to cope with losing) transformed her into a spider. Now, Arachne comes back, to spin her web in D&D!

Next Time: DESTROY MY ENEMIES AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!

Let's see what do we need to spin this build:

World Wide Web: Pretty obvious, we need to be a spider in the highest possible degree, and we got to have some gossamer to prove it.

High Single Target Damage: We trap enemies in our webbing and inflict poison damage. We're a very effective melee assassin.

Sneaky Jungler: With how many traps she can lay to block paths and deal damage, Arachne is a great mobility-heavy character and would've made a fantastic scout.

---

In the world of D&D, Arachne would've been a drider. Those who had failed Lolth, the Spider Queen, receive her punishment by becoming a hybrid of a spider and a drow elf. Since we don't have a playable drider race, there are several options: we could pick a regular drow, modify a centaur if we really want that spider back, but I've decided to reach out to the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica book.

Simic Hybrids begin their lives as regular humans or elves, only to be fused with different life forms later. Give your Hybrid spider legs sprouting from their back, or a spider back altogether, and we have post-transformation Arachne. We get a +2 Constitution and a +1 to one ability of our choice (let's get Dexterity). We get 60 feet of Darkvision, the ability to speak Common and Elvish, and we get to pick two Animal Enhancements (one now, the other at 5th level): let's get Nimble Climber, which gives us climbing speed equal to our ground speed.

We're going to touch upon Arachne's past as a crafter, by giving her the Guild Artisan background. We gain proficiency in Insight and Persuasion, proficiency with one type of artisan's tools (Weaver's Tools are what we need), and we learn one language of our choice. We are going to replace the Guild Membership feature with one found in the newly released sourcebook, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. Trauma Survivor fits Arachne's story pretty well. After our experience with Athena, we are now an expert on how to deal with divine punishment. We are aware of nonmagical recovery techniques, common resources, and misinformation about curses that are divine in origin. We also know how to speak to doctors, clergy, and local leaders and can convince them to shelter one person (other than us) for up to one month.

ABILITY SCORES

Let's start with Dexterity, we are a good climber, sneaky stalker, and we don't have those eight legs for nothing. Constitution is next, big spiders have a big number of Hit Points. Follow that up with Charisma, for the spark of pride and manipulation that ultimately became our downfall.

Intelligence is next, Arachne was smart enough to pick up weaving and excel in it. Wisdom is on the lower end, her boasting and hubris towards the gods was not a wise move. Finally, we're going to dump Strength. We just need other abilities more.

CLASS

I really wish Mike Mearls, the co-creator of D&D 5e, would release his homebrew warlock Patron – Lolth, the Spider Queen; it would've made this build much easier. But since he only shared it on Twitter (here), I'm not going to include it.

Level 1 - Druid: We begin with some connection to nature. Druids begin with a d8 as their Hit Dice and [8 + Constitution modifier] initial Hit Points. We start with proficiencies with light armour, medium armour, shields, clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, scimitars, sickles, slings, spears, and Herbalism kit... Phew!

For Arachne, I would suggest going with a simple studded leather, and perhaps a dagger or two. Our saving throws are Intelligence and Wisdom, and we get to pick two class skills (let's get Perception and Survival). We know Druidic, a secret language of the Druids that let us write encoded messages, and we start with Spellcasting. Much like Clerics, Druids have full access to their spell list and can prepare a number of spells equal to [our Wisdom modifier + our Druid level] after finishing a long rest. We start with two cantrips:

Infestation creates a cloud of insects and parasite to appear on one creature within 30 feet of us. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or take 1d6 poison damage and move 5 feet in a random direction (damage increases as we level up).

Poison Spray creates a small cloud of noxious gas within 10 feet of us. A creature within range must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or take 1d12 poison damage (damage increases as we level up).

And we have two 1st-level spell slots... which we can use to cast one 1st-level spell: Entangle causes vines and weeds (or, in our case, spiderweb) to emerge from underground in a 20-foot square area within 90 feet of us. On a failed Strength saving throw, any creature in the area is restrained for 1 minute (concentration).

Level 2 - Druid: We unlock the Druid's signature feature here. Thanks to Wild Shape, we can assume the form of a beast we've seen before twice per short or long rest. When we first get this feature, we can only transform into a beast with a CR of 1/4 or lower that doesn't have a swimming or flying speed. With this, we can go full spider mode, whether it's a Tiny regular spider or Medium-sized Giant Wolf Spider.

At this level, we also get to pick our subclass, our Druid Circle. To even further focus on Arachne's life post-curse, we're going to pick Circle of Land. We start with learning a bonus cantrip: Primal Savagery lets us transform our nails and teeth into claws and fangs to act as natural weapons. We can make a melee attack on one creature within 5 feet of us. On a successful hit, the target takes 1d10 acid damage (damage increases as we level up).

Natural Recovery works similarly to the Wizard's Arcane Recovery. During a short rest, we can recover some spell slots we burned. The spell slots have to have a combined level equal to or less than half of our Druid level (rounded up).

We also get to pick a specific type of Land we represent and get some associated Circle Spells. Those spells don't count against the total number of spells we can prepare, and they are always prepared for us to use. Let's choose the Underdark as our Land of choice. We'll get the spells when we hit the next level.

We also can learn another 1st-level spell: Jump triples the jump distance of one creature we touch (including ourselves) for 1 minute.

Level 3 - Druid: We get two spells from our Circle:

Spider Climb gives us (or any creature we touch) the ability to move up, down and across vertical surfaces and upside-down on the ceilings without the use of hands for 1 hour (concentration).

Web covers a 20-foot cube area with thick, sticky gossamer for 1 hour (concentration). The webs are considered difficult terrain and lightly obscure the area. A creature that starts or ends its turn in the webbing must make a Dexterity saving throw or be restrained for as long as it remains in the area (they can make more saving throws on their turn to try and break free).

We also unlock 2nd-level spells: Earthbind targets a flying creature within 300 feet of us. Yellow strips of magical energy (or, in this case, enchanted spiderweb) loops around the target, forcing it to make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, the target's flying speed is reduced to 0 for 1 minute (concentration). An airborne creature safely descends at 60 feet per round until it reaches the ground or the spell ends.

Level 4 - Rogue: Abandoning all magic for the rest of the build, we will now focus on Arachne's stealth potential. Multiclassing into Rogue gives us proficiency with leather armour (which we already have) and thieves' tools. We can also pick one class skill (Stealth).

Rogues start with Expertise. We can choose two skills we're proficient in and double our proficiency bonus (NOT ability modifier) when making checks using those skills. Let's get better at Perception and Stealth.

We also get Sneak Attack. It lets us add a d6 (starting with 1) to any creature we hit with an advantage (or if there is another creature hostile to our target within 5 feet of it) and we're not incapacitated. The attack must be made with a finesse or a ranged weapon. We also learn another secret code language, Thieves' Cant.

Level 5 - Rogue: At this level, we learn how to take Cunning Action. We can now use the Dash, Disengage, or Hide actions as bonus actions during combat (I also like to include Aim from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything).

Our racial ability also gets enhanced, we can now pick our second Animal Enhancement. With Carapace, we can increase our AC by 1 when not wearing heavy armour.

Level 6 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 2d6.

We also get to choose our second subclass, our Roguish Archetype. For Arachne, we're going to pick the Assassin archetype. We get proficiency with the poisoner's kit and the disguise kit, to make our kills even more inconspicuous, and we get the Assassinate feature. We have an advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn't taken its turn in combat yet In addition, any hit we score against a creature that is surprised is a critical hit.

Level 7 - Rogue: We finally get our first Ability Score Improvement! Let's put two points to Dexterity.

Level 8 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 3d6.

Starting from this level, we get Uncanny Dodge. From now on, whenever we're hit by an attack, we can use our reaction to halve the damage.

Level 9 - Rogue: We can pick two more skills to apply Expertise to. Let's get Persuasion and Insight.

Level 10 - Rogue: Halfway through the build and we get Evasion. If we're subjected to a spell effect that would make us take half damage on a successful saving throw, we instead take no damage.

Also, our Sneak Attack becomes 4d6.

Level 11 - Rogue: Time for another ASI! Let's raise our Dexterity to 20, to become the speediest spider in all the realms.

Level 12 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 5d6.

We also get another subclass upgrade. Infiltration Expertise lets us craft a new persona for ourselves, complete with identification papers and clothing. We need to spend seven days (and 25 gold pieces) to establish the history, profession, and affiliations of our new identity.

Level 13 - Rogue: Another ASI! This time, let's secure ourselves some better Charisma and put one leftover point into Intelligence.

Level 14 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 6d6.

We gain Reliable Talent. With this, we can elevate our skills to the anime protagonist-level of good. From now on, whenever making a check for a skill we are proficient in, we cannot roll lower than 10 (it is up to your DM whether or not this eliminates the Natural 1s).

Level 15 - Rogue: One more ASI for the road. Let's raise our Intelligence to an even number, and boost Strength a little to start removing the negative modifiers.

Level 16 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 7d6.

We also unlock another subclass upgrade: Impostor.

By observing a target for a minimum of three hours, we can unerringly mimic their speech, writing, and behaviour. The mimicry is well enough to fool the casual observer, and we have an advantage on all Deception checks made to maintain the facade.

Level 17 - Rogue: Late-game Rogues are real powerhouses. This time, we get Blindsense. We can sense invisible or hidden creatures within 10 feet of us.

Level 18 - Rogue: With Slippery Mind we gain proficiency in Wisdom saving throws. Also, our Sneak Attack becomes 8d6.

Level 19 - Rogue: This is our final ASI of the build. Let's put two points into Strength to get rid of our only negative modifier.

Level 20 - Rogue: Our capstone is Rogue 17. Our Sneak Attack becomes 9d6, and we get our final subclass upgrade: Death Strike. Whenever we hit a surprised creature, it must make a Constitution saving throw (DC = 8 + our Dexterity modifier + our proficiency bonus) or take double damage of our attack.

---

And that is it. Arachne, the great cursed spider. Let's see how we did:

First of all, we're a powerhouse of infiltration and mobility. With +5 to Initiative, Reliable Talent and Expertise, human impersonation, and even Wild Shape to transform into a harmless, inconspicuous animal. Additionally, Blindsense prevents us from being surprised and even if it happens, we can take a punch or two.

Our AC is 18 with studded leather armour, and we've got 163 Hit Points on average.

Unfortunately, our Wisdom suffers a little bit, especially since it's responsible for what little magic capabilities we have. Slippery Mind gives us some help against saving throws, but it's still our biggest weakness.

---

I think this is my favourite build so far, with just how good it turned out. Let me know what you think, what would you like to see, and if you're enjoying this series. I'll see you in the next one!

- Nerdy out!

[dartagnantt]

School of Illusion: Revised | Fixing what would be the best subclass ever, if it weren't for the meh

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here! I release everything for free, so your support makes this possible. I'm working on a new class for 5e! Follow the Kickstarter here! I've also started making a new system based off of 5e, 6th Dawn! Become a patron and join the playtest.

The official 5e illusionist wizard is one of my favourite subclasses ever and I've had a bunch of fun with it when I could get away with using illusions. But, that caveat there is responsible for a few design choices I've made with wizards recently.

Illusion Savant

Firstly, the school savant feature. First, as reasonable as it sounds to give you bonuses for scribing spells of your chosen school, all it does is encourage you to NOT take schools of the appropriate type. So, it needs to change.

Secondly, as an illusionist, I found myself struggling to prepare illusion spells AND be useful, and when you think about it, a cleric has 10 more spells avaliable to it than the wizard. The goddamn paladin has the same number of spells as a wizard. So, solution time. Take the pathfinder 1e approach and let you prepare additional spells of the given school. Really, it's just a more versatile version of the subclass spells mechanic.

Lesser Illusion

I won't lie, the Improved Minor Illusion feature is perfect. Minor Illusion is not only the only illusion cantrip, it is basically the quintessential premise of illusion distilled. And letting you use both parts at once is great.

Portable Illusions

The Malleable Illusions feature sounds good at first. "You can change the nature of your illusion" Except that just gives away the fact that it's an illusion, no? The only good use I've had for it was at level 14, when I got Illusory Reality and combined it with Hallucinatory Terrain to make a discount Mirage Arcane.

So, instead I've opted solve another limitation I've had with illusions. Illusions are anchored to where you put them. Which is fine, most of the time. But I know for a fact that I've used Major Image illegally to chase gnolls through a cave disguised as a lava flow, but god was that fun. And another instance, where I distracted a monster with an illusion while we went by, but that just meant I wasted a spell slot and a 10 minute spell for a 2 second encounter. Feels bad man. I can think of a lot of more interesting uses if you could attach an illusion to something else so you don't even need to care.

Guise of Innocence

Illusory Self is a feature, that sounds great, and it really is quite strong. But I felt like it didn't do much. Several times it just didn't come up because it wasn't an attack roll, but then others it didn't matter because multiattack is a thing, so I'd burn my reaction and my only use of this feature and then be vulnerable anyway. This was the feature I agonised over the longest. I knew I didn't want another feature that modified how illusion spells worked, but I felt like a reaction defensive ability would just be admitting defeat. So, I asked, "what would my illusionist do?" And my illusionist would make himself seem benign. So, we now have a version of sanctuary which seemed quite neat.

Unreality

I won't lie, this is the other half of this subclass being the best subclass in the game. But it's also part of the 'parts that could be better'. The first time I used it, I used it amazingly, in my opinion. However, I also used it wrong, because I made creatures real. Which is just objectively cool. As is bonking people with illusionary pianos

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Oath of Discord

Modular Airships

Lightspawn

Aasimar Reborn

I also have three classes, and a splatbook over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!

[anghraine]

I'm still thinking of GW2 as a TTRPG à la D&D 5e, and contemplating:

a) as in my original post about it, the extent to which species impacts stats, because it does seem a bit strange (if mechanically understandable) that being slim and 3 ft tall vs a hulking 8 ft would have no impact whatsoever for martial classes, and that having a magic-friendly culture has no benefits to spellcasters, but veer too far in that direction and you smash into shitty racial essentialism.

b) If I'd try and essentially "map" GW2 professions etc onto something 5e-ish and simply exclude categories that don't fit The Lore (no, you can't be an aasimar in GW2! dragonborn would be super interesting, though).

Some would work easily, at least thematically (warrior -> fighter, guardian -> paladin, ranger -> ranger, thief -> rogue), but others are more difficult, esp spellcasters, since GW2 spellcasting is so specialized—an elementalist simply can't use mesmer abilities, but an Evocation wizard or an elemental-themed sorcerer can use illusion magic, even if an Illusion wizard would be better at it.

c) It would be pretty painful to lose crafting, since it's so integrated into GW2 and so much fun (for me, anyway!). Maybe integrate it into backgrounds (homebrew something to make Guild Artisan more appealing, say, while permitting things like Noble or whatnot—or hybridize backgrounds to some extent à la D:OS2).

d) Actual storytelling, lol. One of the things that had me thinking about it is how the GW2 story is in some ways not very MMO-ish despite much of the game's mechanics being dependent on interaction between players. In-story, there is one Pact Commander—your character, and what they're like is dependent on your specific choices. Other players are ... "adventurers" or something as far as your story is concerned (even as each is the Commander in their own story).

Like, there's not much going on to reconcile your individual significance to the story with the actual experience and interactions that make the game function. Contrast something like City of Heroes in which the premise is was, as you might guess, that you're having adventures in a city with a sizeable population of superheroes that includes you, so the existence of other superhero characters made perfect sense—I much prefer GW2 and its story/vibe/politics, but in that respect COH made more intuitive sense.

It's not a big deal because unexpectedly powerful random adventurers don't seem that odd in GW2's setting, but I've sometimes wondered what the story would be like if they'd taken GW1 more local instead of less (in general, you're operating as part of a larger organization in the GW1 storylines and assisting people much more important than you, usually with the vague assumption that you're one of several people doing this, so this wasn't much of an issue there). Like, speaking of D:OS2, something more along those lines in terms of a protagonist with a party and not "several hundred thousand people simultaneously are and are not the protagonists of this story."

A TTRPG would be harder, in some ways, because making one player the Pact Commander and the other players their, idk, minions would not really work. But I think it'd be doable to tweak the story so it could (no reason there can't be multiple commanders, but like... four or five, not 300,000, lol). Hmmm. Also, you'd definitely have to balance the overarching plot vs the difficulties around railroading—make more use of factions and make it an active choice, say, to correspond to the Orders of Tyria, but also just give players more freedom in general without completing sacrificing the story because someone rolled badly or Leeroy Jenkins'd something.

[paintedwarpony]

CRITICAL ROLE REWATCH C2E110

(And further ranting and raving and campaign predictions...)

Hey guess what I'm back to talk about today you guys?

Verin Thelyss? Always. But not for this episode.

HOW ABOUT SOME MORE GODDAMN HINTED MULTICLASSED EODWULF.

Yep. You bet.

For those of you just joining this Ted Talk I posed a theory months ago that Eodwulf is NOT infact multiclassed as a paladin for the Raven Queen/Matron of Ravens as most of the fandom has considered. But is something far more dangerous and terrifying.

That Eodwulf is in fact multiassed as a War Domain Cleric.

WHICH IS BAD.

VERY VERY BAD.

At least from a D&D combat campaign point of view. Because essentially it creates an absolute malestrom of a NPC. And it turns the gut to think of the kind of fight it would put the Nein through.

*coughTPKcough*

Because the facts are this. Eodwulf is already a very highly trained, extremely powerful wizard, which is dangerous in and of itself. Add to that fact that he's ALSO a homebrewed Volstrucker and considered one of Ikithon's elites. That means there's going to be all kinds of shit mixed up in that bag of tricks that we haven't seen or yet to speculate.

My basis as to why I think Eodwulf is a cleric of some kind leans heavily on the fact that Matt Mercer himself very often grumbles and complains during campaign about how "unfair" it is that the Nein have two clerics. Yet to date the Nein have not actually gone to combat with a full party that includes a cleric (that may change with the Tomb Takers, who knows) but its certainly not an oversight by any means. I'm positive Matt is saving the use of a cleric enemy for a particularly nasty encounter or series of encounters.

Because lets be real

Clerics will fuck some shit up no matter what their domain is. Between the ridiculously long list of spells they have access to and the ability to pop other members of their team back up clerics are brawlers in the disguise of supports.

NOW HERE'S WHERE IS GETS DANGEROUS CONCERING EODWULF.

Considering Eodwulf is a wizard, and a homebrewed Volstrucker at that theres going to be alot of fire power there but Wizards are notorious glass canons unless handled or multiclassed correctly. Caleb is EXTREMELY powerful mage wise BUT he still follows wizard format to balance him from becoming to powerful. At lvl 13 his AC 15 (jumps to 16 with Mage Armor) and he has 96HP. They're at a point of the campaign where they are coming up against creatures that deal out damage in the 50s, 60s, 70s, or more in one shot. And in turn the Nein themselves are starting to be able to do that kind of damage back.

Which if Eodwulf was just a wizard played by wizard stats, even just slightly homebrewed, wouldn't make him much of a threat.

BUT THROW CLERIC IN THERE AND MAKE IT A WAR DOMAIN CLERIC?

You just turned that glass canon into a GODS DAMNED SHERMAN TANK.

That gives Eodwulf access to martial weapons, heavy armor and a PLEATHORA of other equipment that most wizards could only look longingly through a shop window at before. Not to mention the spell list expansion. His AC jumps. His HP jumps. His attack ability skyrockets as he could both cast spells and make (multiple with certain effects) physical attacks in the same round. His magical longevity bolsters as he can save spell slots until more opportune times to but continue to cause damage with physical strikes.

Not to mention the aspect of keeping the rest of his side of the fight up. Healing up other Volstrucker, Astrid, fucking Ikithon himself to keep them in combat. Hell even using FUCKING REVIVIFY to bring one back if he needs to.

Counterspell? Got it. Cure Wounds? Got it. Guiding Strike? Yep got that, too. Divine Intervention? Sure thing! Fireball? Pssht, for sure.

Considering the hint in C2E110 that Eodwulf favors electricity the same way Caleb favors fire I wouldn't be surprised if he has friggin' Chained Lighting as a go to favorite spell.

BUT I DIGRESS

Some more hints came into focuse during C2E110 to support this theory but the biggest one was said by Eodwulf himself. When questioned about what he did on the front lines Eodwulf admitted:

"I am not much of a front line fighter..."

Its kind of a throwaway line BUT is very much known and considered within D&D that paladins (like Fjord) are considers front line fighter types. But wizards AND CLERICS OF ALL DOMAINS are considered SUPPORT LINE. That they hang back and try to stay out of the thick of danger. Despite the abilities of a cleric to be absolutely savage in combat, as displayed by Jester and Caduceus over the campaign, they're still considered 'support/support line' classes.

It might not be a huge hint but the only time at the table Eodwulf showed any small bit of his own personality was when he bragged just a little about himself and admitted to liking being called a 'living magical weapon', he was also incredibly honest and forthright when he answered questions or spoke about their duty, parents, the torture that he'd been put through at the hands of Ikithon and his faith in the Matron of Ravens was no secret and peppered casually into his conversation. I think that if he was in fact a paladin Edowulf would not hesitate to talk about his pride at serving the Matron of Ravens AND the Empire in direct combat. A wiz-pally combo like that would be formidable but...

A Wiz-War Cleric combo thats a homebrewed Volstrucker and backed by the goddess of death...

Its gonna get real ugly really fast for the Nein if they have to fight him.

I fully believe Eodwulf can be flipped to the Nein's favor but I think to manage that he needs to be separated from Ikithon AND Astrid. During C2E110 he took ALL of his cues from Astrid, looking at her EVERY TIME before starting to speak or reacting to anything. He only acted a little more independent when they were outside the tower. Everything about Eodwulf's demeanor and behavior suggests someone so very lost and used to being bullied or directed one way or another that he doesn't think twice to follow instructions or vomit back up beliefs he was 'taught' but might not be his own. People like that bury their personalities and only find their way to the surface when they're separated from the supervision of their influence. Caleb as expressed multiple times he wants to win both his friends back with a much heavier emphasis on Astrid than Eodwulf. Astrid seems a much more difficult person to turn to their side imo and habors to many secrets and ulterior motives and its worrisome the way she does execute her will over Edowulf. Its clear by some of the interactions at the table that Astrid was very much the 'leader' of the Blumentrio, as she several times tried to cue Caleb with looks to stop or change his behavior and actions. Caleb has been free of Ikithon (and Astrid's) influence for so long now and grown so much in the care of his found family it didn't even cause him to balk but it worries me that if Astrid were introduced into the Nein her influence and manipulations that she does still hold over Eodwulf may start to sink in and control Caleb again as well. The encounter certainly rattled him and left him repeatedly insisting "freeing" her specifically over the course of the campaign since.

But thats a whole different can of worms...

If the Nein turn Astrid to their cause I'm almost positive Eodwulf will follow her. He cued to her FAR more than he did to Ikithon and that speaks volumes.

But I would so much like to see Eodwulf on his own, see his personality and see his own decision to join the Nein's side or not.

But truly... if the answer is 'not'...

Its not going to be good...

[reddpenn]

Hello! My wife and I *died* laughing at the Infinite Sandwich Beast boss fight! She wanted to know what would've happened if someone had actually eaten the sandwich. Not necessarily *approached* it, per se, but like used Mage Hand or something to retrieve it. I'm more of a nerd and am curious what sort of stats it had. (Also, we're both in love with Lilly and the Apparition!

(Referencing this post!)

(Also, shamelessly plugging my DMing music blog!)

Eating the sandwich would have skipped the boss fight entirely, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen and didn’t even bother to make contingency plans for it.

Let me tell you about Siru.  Siru is a halfelf who multiclasses as our druid/rogue, which is a weird class combination that makes sense with his backstory but would take entirely too long to explain here.  The important thing to know about Siru is that he is physically incapable of NOT antagonizing my NPCs.  This is such a basic law of the universe that I can plan my sessions around it.  The sandwich wanted to be eaten, therefore Siru could not possibly eat it.

Anyway, homebrew Pathfinder stats under the cut.  This is copypasted directly from my notes, so the formatting’s not all that organized.  The party was pretty low leveled at the time, so adjust as needed.

Notes:  Fire and heat based attacks do double damage to all forms of the beast.  Weapons can get stuck inside its cheesy body and may require a strength check to dislodge.  Krysali is immune to sticky effects because of her Riverfolk racial trait, but her weapons are not.

PHASE 1 (75 HP)The infinite sandwich beast attacks!!

AC 10Touch 5

Fort +3Ref -3Will -3

Strength +3Movespeed 10 ft

Cheese fist punch. (2 slams with fists) BAB +2 1d8+3 per fist Sticks you to the ground (DC10 strength or escape artist to escape)

Cheese fist launch.  (Rocket launches a cheesy fist across the battlefield) BAB -1 d8+3 strength check dc10 to avoid being flung backward leaves long strings of sticky cheese across the battlefield

Toothpick barrage. (Flings sandwich toothpicks in a cloud of shrapnel from its body) BAB N/A. (DC18 ref save to dodge) 3d4 damage

Tomato soup jet. (Takes two turns.  Spends one turn swelling up like a frog)(Sprays a high powered jet of scalding hot tomato soup across the whole battlefield.  Melts all cheese it touches.) BAB +5 d10(If you puncture it before it spays, the attack is stopped but a localized jet shoots at you.  DC10 to dodge.)

Flop. (Falls down on top of you) d4 crush damage you are now stuck to the beast

PHASE 2 (50 HP)It hunkers down and starts to swell, like in its tomato sauce attack.  Its body gets harder and harder until it’s a cocoon of rock hard cheese and bread.

AC 18Touch 10

Fort +5Ref -10Will -3

Strength +3Movespeed NA

Flail. (A huge ball of stale bread, with spikes, begins flailing around its body at anyone who comes close. Severing the flail reveals a weak spot on the cocoon with AC 10) 1d8 damage

PHASE 3 beings after 6 turns, or when it is destroyed.

PHASE 3 (ANGEL) (30 HP) If not destroyed:  it explodes into a massive deluge of tomato soup, doing 2d10 damage if not dodged (DC15). An angelic being with beautiful bread wings rises.

AC 5Touch 5

Fort +1Ref +10Will 0

Strength -1Movespeed 10

ButterslickCovers the arena with butter.  (DC10 not to slip when moving.) (-1 to attack rolls)

Pretzel wrapLands and extends its braided pretzel wings to wrap a player.Player is pinned. (-4 to AC, must pass DC10 check to cast spells)(Also beings to form a bread lance)

Bread lance. (Forms a huge lance-shaped baguette with a sharp end.  Controls it psychically) 1D6+2 damage

Has a large runestone embedded in its chest.  Removing this ends the fight, regardless of HP.

PHASE 3 (ABOMINATION) (20 HP)If destroyed:  a slurry of soup erupts from it (DC10 to dodge if close). A partially formed third stage of the boss fight rises, misshapen.  It only has one wing, so it crawls along the ground, leaving a slick of butter everywhere it goes

AC 5Touch 5

Fort +1Ref -5Will 0

Strength -1Movespeed 10 ft

Pretzel wrapLands and extends its braided pretzel wings to wrap a player.Player is pinned. (-4 to AC, must pass DC10 check to cast spells)(Also beings to form a bread lance)

Bread lance. (Forms a huge lance-shaped baguette with a sharp end.  Controls it psychically) 1D6+2 damage

May also scratch and bite at the players for 1d4 damage.

Has a large runestone embedded in its chest.  Removing this ends the fight, regardless of HP.

[5ecardaday]

I'm new to homebrewing, and I want to know if you have any tips or tricks on how to make monsters, items, magic, classes etc. Any help is appreciated!

Sure, I’d love to help. I’ll go ahead and put all of the advice under a read more though, since it’ll be kind of long and I don’t wanna clog up uninterested dashboards.

For making monsters, the best place to start is absolutely page 274 of the DMG. Contrary to the obvious, I would actually recommend tossing out the rules for determining the CR of your monster based on its attack, damage, etc. They’re long and difficult to use, a full 20 steps, and may leave you feeling locked in to using only the abilities provided in the chart it gives, rather than trying to branch out and design your own. Instead, use the table on pg. 274, meant for quick monster stats- it’s all I’ve ever felt the need to use. 

As some people have pointed out, the chart isn’t spot on, but it’s not meant to be, and it’s just close enough. When making a monster, I start with the CR, then try to make sure what I end up with lands near those ranges. If some fall a little bit, or even a lot, above the recommended values, decrease other ones instead. If your monster has a high AC, consider reducing its health a bit, or keep its health high but make it slow, with few attacks and lower damage output. I rarely use the chart anymore, and instead found overtime that I basically internalized the ranges I kept working with.

When designing a magic item or spell, it’s back to the DMG again. If you have an idea for an item, check the abilities it gives against some spells with similar effects, then compare the levels of those spell(s) against the chart on pg. 284, which says what levels of spells match to what rarity of item. It also works in reverse, and if you want an item of a certain rarity, you can determine some basic ideas using the effects of spells that match to that rarity level.

Spells themselves have a “damage per spell level” table on the next page, pg. 285, that I use all the time still to check the range of a damaging or healing spell. Non-damaging spells are just best compared to other spells of levels close to what you want, to see how similar in strength such an effect might be. Beyond that, you just have to consider the balance a given spell might have on any type of campaigns and parties. If you make a spell that acts as a roleplaying tool for finding clues in an investigation, consider how strong the given effect would be in a campaign focused on dungeon-delving adventure, and then how the same spell might work in a noir-themed campaign focused on detective work, and try to strike a balance between the two.

No matter what you’re designing though, consistency in flavor is the key to making it shine. If you make a monster, don’t redesign the wheel. How many times have you seen a large, armor plated hulk who swings with his claws/fists, and has a secondary focus on grappling? How many monsters of that type can you pick from the 5th Edition Monster Manual alone? But take away the grapple-focus, and give it a reaction that let’s it curl into a ball instead, increasing its AC and giving it resistance to damage. Given you’re likely pairing such a creature with a spellcaster anyway, give the caster some basic healing spells, and now you have a unique threat. Or keep the grapple-focus, but lower its armor, and instead give it a reaction to puff spikes from its body. Now when creatures hit it, it can use a reaction to turn the tables, dealing damage to them in turn, but also immediately damaging any creature it might be holding. Your players may think twice about rushing in to use physical attacks, and now they need to think through the challenge the monster presents.

If you make a spell or an item, the same rule applies. You know what item I hate from the 5e DMG? The circlet of blasting. I made the mistake of giving one to a player once for an important personal quest as a reward, and they never used it. Why? Because it’s boring, both mechanically and flavorfully. I later had another quest alter the circlet, breaking it and causing the jewels to fall out. A blacksmith the players helped offered to reforge it, and made it into a pair of glasses with the jewels at the edges- same effect, stats no different, but now they’ve used their “Cyclops eye beams” several times. 

Make sure what you design, either a spell or a magic item, feels unique from other items in the game, and that it’s ability is something you’d want to use given the chance. Spells are hard in this way because they have a wide design space when you first look at them, which becomes more narrow as you realize 5e tries to make sure casters can’t do anything and everything- a drastic change from older editions.

This “uniqueness factor” is the single most important part of a class or subclass. If it ends up unbalanced, the people who playtest it or users in places such as r/unearthedarcana will let you know. But only if they look at it first- and they won’t give it so much as a glance if they don’t fall in love with the concept. Because of this, don’t just copy-paste abilities from other (sub)classes, because you’ll wind up with a boring, muddled concept with no clear direction or identity.

If you struggle finding a concept that feels interesting, don’t despair. Take a moment and look at the world around you for inspiration. My (very obvious) go-to is Magic cards- I’ve turned them into a whole concept of their own at this point, with rules I follow, both on a mechanical and flavor level, based on the rules inherent in the design of both 5th Edition and Magic. I’ve also got another blog, @powerattackpublishing, where I’ve made content based on other pop-culture, from video games to books. The real world and all its history can also be a powerful inspiration. My friend @kor-artificer recently made a Highwayman Rogueish Archetype for DM’s Guild, based on the local history of where they live, and it’s full of fantastic flavor. Even other RPG’s can offer great inspiration- games such as Shadowrun and Pathfinder seem like obvious choices, but other less-likely games can be full of hidden gems.

Identifying these concepts and deciding where to take them can be difficult and intimidating at first, but the more you do it again and again, the easier it becomes. My skills as both a writer and a game designer vastly increased when I began reading and studying games other than D&D and look-alikes, and even more so in the 8 months since I started producing content every single day. No matter what, keeep making things, and if you get stuck on a concept, be willing to move on. No matter how much you like the idea- move on. No need to abandon it entirely; just come back later. But once you’ve made something else, or several other things, you might discover some strong ideas to use for the things you moved on from that make them work better.

This turned out to be incredibly long, now that I’m looking at it, sorry for that. If you’ve read all the way through it though, and you’ve found it the slightest bit helpful, then I’m glad for that. Hopefully this gives people some advice on not just where to start, but how to keep going, and even some advice on how to make things that aren’t D&D-related at all. The concept of being unique and fun to play is definitely not restricted to one roleplaying game.

[homebrew-a-la-traumaverse]

50 foot walking speed vastly outpaces every other race (other than legacy Aarakocra). Which, of course, is kinda the point. Gives you insane mobility on any class, but especially Rogue and Monk to maximize your ability to say "You're too slow!"

Brave and Nimbleness are definitely more connected to the Sonic version of hedgehogs compared to their IRL counterparts, but this is explicitly a Sonic homebrew so that's fine.

Spin Dash and Bounce are where I'm particularly concerned about balance. A 2d10 at-will attack puts you on par with 5th level casters in terms of raw damage, but you also get aoe damage, movement, and forced movement to go along with it. That's not even getting into using it as a monk to Flurry of Blows multiple spindashes in one turn. The lack of scaling also makes it weird - at low levels your spindashes are significantly better than normal attacks, but after you get Extra Attack they fall off. There are several potential changes to address this:

1. Make Spin Dash have limited uses. Its AoE is similar to the Dragonborn race's breath weapons, so it would fit. PB/LR, or maybe 1/SR would work.

2. Allow players to use the Spin Dash/Bounce as part of the Attack action, replacing an attack; that way, they remain relevant even after gaining Extra Attack. Alternatively, have them scale like Dragonborn Breath but limit them to 1/turn" or something similar?

3. Tone Bounce's damage down in line with other at-will options. Racial weapons deal 1d6+mod damage to a single target; 2d10 and half on a successful save is on average a lot more. 1d10+mod and nothing on a save, or 2d10 and nothing on a save, would work.

Thankfully, numbers are just about the easiest things to change, so that shouldn't be an issue. I'd also change Spin Dash to a Strength save instead of Constitution, as Strength is almost always used to represent knockback effects. Bludgeoning damage would also make sense in place of Force, which in D&D is usually used to represent raw magic. (Though I guess I'm not too well read on Sonic lore, maybe that actually is what's powering spin dashes?)

Finally, a wording issue: "The Attack DC is based on your dexterity" makes it very unclear as to how these abilities are intended to behave, as normally such abilities aren't referred to as attacks and just say "The DC for this saving throw is 8 + your Dex modifier + your proficiency bonus) Do you add your Dex modifier to the damage like a weapon attack?

Hope this helps!

Hedgehog

Race

Size: Small

Speed: 50 feet

+2 to Dexterity, +1 to Constitution

Languages: Common, Hedgehog/Halfling, choose 1 other

Brave: You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.

Nimbleness: You can move through the space of any character with a size larger than yours.

Spin dash: As an action, you can curl into a ball and dash forward 15 feet. Anyone within the path of the attack must roll a constitution saving throw. On a failed save, they take 2d6 force damage and are pushed five feet back. On a successful save, they take half damage and are not pushed back. The attack DC is based off your dexterity. A spin dash counts as an unarmed attack.

Bounce: As an action, you may curl into a ball and jump on an enemy within 5 feet of you. The enemy must make a dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the enemy takes 2d10 force damage. On a successful save, the enemy takes half damage. The attack DC is based off your dexterity. A bounce attack counts as an unarmed attack.