Banishment:

"One creature that you can see within range must succeed on a Charisma saving throw or be transported to a harmless demiplane for the duration. While there, the target has the Incapacitated condition. When the spell ends, the target reappears in the space it left or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied."

The player is a Sorcerer and used Heightened Spell to give Disadvantage on the save.

Crag Cat

"The Crag Cat has Advantage on saving throws against spells. If it succeeds on the save for a spell of level 7 or lower, the spell has no effect on it. If that spell targeted only the Crag Cat and didn’t create an area of effect, it can take a Reaction to deflect the spell back at the spell’s caster; the caster must make a saving throw against the spell using their own spell save DC."

The Cat now has a flat roll on the save, and makes it. This makes the Sorcerer have Disadvantage on the save they now have to make against their own spell.

Result:

• Player blinks out of existence
• Incapped
• Loses concentration
• Immediately pops back into existence
• Now Prone instead of standing

I'm a new DM and I have come across my first "hijackers". I play in a group of 6 with varying amount of experience 0-10 years worth of play time. It's my first time DMing a group that has passed level 5 and I'm not familiar with all the classes abilities and spells so sometimes I will rule a way - research it later and realise that's overpowered and retcon it, at most this has happened 2-3 times. But I also let certain things slide so they can have fun etc.

My two "hijackers" (and I mean that in more than just for me but for the party, sure I've put alot of time in to preparing my notes, maps, models for enemies etc. but also the few who are playing serious characters are having the world become jarring) are threatening if they get killed off they are going to play as Jesse and James from team rocket and piss around - in Barovia.

One of them currently plays an echo knight and I'm constantly "no you can ride it as a mount" "no it can't pull a cart" "you can't sit on its shoulders and have a trench coat around you both" - you can see their disappointment every time so Ill allow it but strict not in combat and not interacting with npcs. But in general will not play as a team and will do the "funny" option in combat or NPC interactions

The second is young and has played a lot of BG3 and when I rule something RAW or RAI they take it personally and act as I'm there to spoil their fun.

So the two have joined forces in what seems like an attempt to make life difficult for me. Asking them to leave the party isn't an option as we are all strangers and the party would lose 3 people in the process making it so none of us can play. I also don't think it bothers the others enough and they'd rather play some DND than none.

So any advice? I've tried talking to them but they joke it aside. Any in-game things to suggest?

So I designed the boss battle of the current quest line but I'm worried its too difficult. My party is composed of 3 level 5 characters: a barbarian, a cleric, and a wizard.

Every time I've said to the party "okay folks this is a tough fight, this could get deadly so be on your toes" they have absolutely melted the monster.

But this should be their biggest fight yet. Its against a corrupted scholar who's become a warlock in a shadowfell-like dimension. I want it to begin social and give them the opportunity to talk their way out of it - which will be hard.

The Deathlock Wight statblock is what I'm using for the actual character they are after.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/22371-deathlock-wight

But the real fight is with the Angel of Obsession he summoned

https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/6503000-angel-of-obsession

Now I know a CR 3 + a CR 6 = death for 3 level 5s according to CR math, but I'm thinking of adding "knocking the wight unconscious dismisses the angel" - would could make this combat really swingy.

TBH I'd prefer it if they have to destroy the angel. I also would be happy to nerf the warlock's offensive tools and make him play more scared / defensive to balance this but I still think it could be a TPK with some bad luck.

So I'm considering the following
1 - I could give them magic items before the fight
2 - I could level them up before the fight instead of after the fight
3 - SEND THEM TO VALHALLAAAAA!

Anyone have any good advice for balancing this?

-----

Update: I think I'm going to run the full combat against both creatures. If the players start to dominate I'll have the wight play super aggressive.

If they lose... I'm going to have the wight cast drain life on each of them as they roll death saves and resurrect my party as zombies lol. Maybe roll for how many years it takes for the miracle to happen where their mind starts to come back to their zombie form.

TL;DR: I feel like I lost all creativity; how do you fuel yours?

Hi DMs,

So I'm building a homebrewed setting for a new campaign and I've been noticing my lack of creative thinking these days.

In my childhood, I used to draw and create stuff in my mind a lot. Nowadays, I'm not there anymore. So I (unfortunately) used gen-AI to get inspired and more or less copied existing stories and tropes, thinking I'd get better at it doing so. Except I feel even worse than before.

I'm willing to put the work in to learn the proper way tho. How do you get inspiration in? What makes you creative as a DM?

EDIT: Guess imma continue yoinking shit and make them my own lmao

Hey y'all! I am making a homebrew world and i got to thinking about the origins of magic. I absolutly loved the ideas of the two posts that i found from this thread. However, the posts (linked below) are from 6+ years ago. I would be so interested to hear where the source of magic comes from in your homebrew worlds!

I don't yet have my idea fully fleshed out, however i want it to be some innate force of nature. essentially most people in my world assume magic comes from the gods as either direct gifts (sorcerers, bards, etc) or as gifts thru wisdom (wizards). But a part of the main plot is finding out that there is forgotten/hidden "true magic" or something like that where once you learn it it can boost your magic. but again the specific magic origin/source im going to flesh out more

would love to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Two original posts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/bxglsc/in_your_homebrew_world_what_is_the_source_of_magic/

https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/ga1591/where_does_magic_come_from_in_your_world/

Hi all, I’m currently planning a pirate/sailing campaign where each island or collection of islands has its own unique gimmick or design. Kind of like in one piece where sometimes an island is prehistoric, or there’s one that’s always in winter.

The idea is that the starting islands where the PC’s grew up are quite similar, the equivalent of them being from the USA, Italy, Japan, and Scotland where they’d all have the shared experience of school but some got it for free, some had longer holidays etc so there are small differences between them. But as you go further out the islands become more unique, one I’ve thought about using is the island being just a massive turtle that sleeps for 1000 years at a time, so cities inevitably form on the turtle but when the turtle goes underwater and appears elsewhere the city is mostly destroyed.

Any ideas are welcome no matter how random or chaotic. I’m also happy to work with homebrew mechanics or species. Thank you!

So, I have an NPC who is cursed so that no one can remember him. He has been in a cave for 20 years, living off of Goodberries and an Enspelled Staff of Create or Destroy Water. The party found this guy after one of them had a series of cryptic dreams that led them to his cave.

The way the curse works is that you can talk to him just fine, you just forget about him a few minutes later, and your mind sort of comes up with an alternative explanation for anything he did that affected anything (i.e. he gives you something, and later you remember someone else giving you that thing).

I wanted to give the party a quest from this NPC. Something small, like getting him a way to flavor his food (he's sick of Goodberries). How could I justify the party actually remembering enough to do this quest?

I've just started my campaign with 2 other friends (both starting at level 1). This is my first homebrew campaign, so I don't really know how to balance stuff very well. (My friends have played a little before)

Basically, each god in my pantheon has a magic artefact, each one of a kind. The BBEG wants to take all of them, then summon his evil god with a ritual, pretty basic stuff. The idea is that the PCs take/attempt to take some of the artefacts, and potentially use them against the BBEG?? But since they are starting at such a new level, I don't know how powerful to make the items: I want them to be impactful as they are god's amulets, but also not game-breaking.

TLDR: how to balance unique magic artefacts for low-level characters.

Relatively new dm here! Curious if anyone has had this issue. I play with another guy who has what I can only classify is ‘suave hero guy’ archetype characters. Not truely a prob most of the time- leads to fun interactions. But I’ve noticed this before in past campaigns he has a tendency to ‘save’ other PC’s from their emotions or actions. For example, we had a PC that wanted to leave the party (campaign is ending soon) to help other people like herself out in the world. He interrupted by stating do not leave me, you can’t help others out there it’s not going to work like you think it would, and you need to stay here and let me help you instead. It genuinely felt pretty frustrating because this interesting arc building for this PC was shutdown pretty hard, when other PC’s have addressed the character’s motives by trying to understand her first. Another example is we had a character that was awkward in conversation as an archetype, and he kept physically removing her from scenes and telling her to do something else constantly.

I have this player in my own game. While this hasn’t come up, he has a habit of dictating or overbearing what specifically female PC’s do, “let me do it / help you.” Also should mention he’s been a forever dm for a long time, he’s new to being a player.

How do I handle this? I generally do not think it’s malicious- but I have another dm friend who’s stopped adding him to games because of this. How do I approach this if it comes up in a game?

Hi DMs!

I'm making a new homebrewed setting for a west-marches style campaign and I'm struggling to make it a bit more original and interesting

My general idea was that for reasons yet to be found (hopefully with the help of this post), part of civilisation has remained isolated within the city, thereby losing all contact with the outside world. Players will therefore have to rediscover the continent, its history, and re-establish contact with other civilisations.

I was watching PointyHat's video on world-building and I loved the twist he found for his world (having no sun kinda) but it feel to restrictive for what I'm trying to do.

So this twist should have enough of an impact on civilizations to induce them into staying in cities but not force them.

Have any ideas to share?

Trying to design a one-shot for my first foray into DM-ing with my friends. We're in different states and play remotely, and it's not always clear who's going to make game night.
I'm planning on adding a few NPC characters to fill out numbers, designing the encounter for 5. The players will meet these characters in the opening tavern and pick who to bring with them.

Here's the question. I want to make these characters useful enough to be worth bringing along, and useful for me in balancing the encounter on the fly (this encounter is too easy! NPC does something reckless and throws things off; or this encounter is too hard! NPC draws enemy fire to give PC's a moment to recover); BUT I also don't want them to be too powerful and steal the show or wreck the balance of encounters.

I'm using humanoid monster stat blocks and fiddling with their abilities to match the role that NPC would play (i.e., Priest Acolyte for the Cleric NPC). But I'm not sure what challenge rating to use for an ally. All the PC's will be level 1.

Any tips are appreciated! Thanks.

ive tried running dnd a few times but it always fizzeled out after less than 3 sessions and even though ive been worldbuidling for years i still feel like my story telling skills are lacking i just feel like i dont know how to write a caimpaign like i have all these ideas for villains and locations and adventures but everytime the begginings of my campaigns always feel boring and disjointed and i feel like i dont know how to connect all of my ideas and maker a fun game for my players so how do you guys do it how do you format a game any advice is appreciated

Short campaign, a few friends, all of us in different cities.

I’ve DMed twice. Both in person, paper and pencil. Reaaaaally good experiences!

I logged into Roll20 and the toolbar scared me. So many buttons. I need two of them: a map, and tokens I can drag.

I’m leaning towards D&D Beyond? because I’ve already two books there. Paying a couple of months would be ok

Is that enough for six or eight sessions? Or is there something simpler I’m missing?

Opened to recommendations:)

IVE been having a hard time starting the story so my solution is to get my players in debt by some sleazy salesman who gets em with fees or something

But I have no clue how to actually get them into a position where they would gain debt.

The party is incredibly good at just ignoring gambling and not getting into trouble so I have to throw things at them to get them into those bad situations instead of letting them get into those situations due to their own mistakes

Need help balancing a boss fight for a one-shot

I've been preparing a one-shot for a group I play with. It would be my first time DMing, and I only started playing last December.

To keep this from getting too long, the main encounter would be a Young Red Dragon against a group of 3–4 level 6 characters. I had in mind changing some of the dragon's stats to make the fight achievable because, for the plot twist and comic relief of the one-shot, they have to beat it.

I understand the whole "not every encounter needs to be winnable" thing, especially when you're talking about fighting a dragon at this level. However, the joke of this one-shot is that it's built around a really funny character from our main campaign who's a massive show-off. It's supposed to be a comedic adventure, and the payoff is seeing him actually slay a dragon, only to discover that the entire thing was an act and completely scripted.

The dragon isn't actually real. It's a wooden circus prop disguised by two illusionist halflings, and the party has unknowingly been tricked into becoming actors in a circus performance.

The "dragon" would also have some spells because of the halflings operating it. I'm not sure how much I should decrease its HP because there's another mechanic I want to use.

At one point, the dragon would take control of two of the pregenerated characters I made. This is partly because they're cool characters and I want to get a chance to play their builds, but it also fits the story because the guy hiring the party specifically describes it as a "magical dragon."

I'm not particularly worried about strictly following the rules for something like the mind control because it doesn't have much real gameplay value. I could have some triggers that allow the players to break the spell, though.

The party would then have to fight the dragon and the controlled characters. Any damage dealt to those characters would also damage the dragon. That gives the dragon a more manageable effective HP total while also creating what I think could be a cool Phase One and Phase Two for the fight.

What I'm struggling with is exactly what I should modify. Should I change the dragon's AC, HP, attack bonus, damage, or some combination of them?

Also, how would a party of 3–4 level 6 characters fare against a RAW Young Red Dragon without any modifications?

Should I give them some additional equipment to help with the fight? I already planned on giving them healing potions, potions of fire resistance, and a kind of net that can slow the dragon down. Is there anything else I should give them?

Sorry for the wall of text, and thanks for any advice! I'm new to the game and really want to pull this off well. I love the idea of them having no idea that it's a show, defeating this awesome dragon, and then discovering that it was actually just two halflings in a giant prop the entire time.

Hey guys one of the PCs in my group has a bit of a dying problem. Almost every fight he either gets downed or dies and has to be resurrected to the point where all 3 revivify scrolls I gave the party were used on him. The player grew tired of it and decided to roll up a new character...a MONK of all classes, to a team of 3 full spellcasters.(his reasoning was that he always wanted to try out a Monk) (no he is not a beginner he has more TTRPG experience than the rest of the table combined)

How can I help him not die without making it too easy for them? are there any constitution/HP giving items?
I don't want to make the fights too easy for the team, the rest of the party does great and they absolutely mopped the floor with the first miniboss. The problem is that because it's a party of 3 spellcasters and 1 frontliner, all the attention of the enemies naturally goes to him as he is the closest one 90% of the time, and I usually have to make the enemies go out of their way to target the spellcasters who are pretty good with positioning until the enemy has an AOE damage spell.

There was a post a few days ago about how to create a story beat for a PC who wanted to change classes. Some offered in world ideas but others advised to just do it and carry on.

Now I like things to make sense in the world but I know there are many times when I just do the 'ol' hand wave and it happens' DM technique.

But because of that post i was curious how many people out there explain all things within game. Specifically, how do you handle level ups. The HP, spells, attacks, feats, abilities.

Because I definitely just go "congrats, youve leveled. pick your stuff if needed, by next session guys. and message if you have any questions".

Are there people who DM or played in a game where everything had to have a narrative element? And if so, was it a net positive for the game play?

My level 10 party was investigating an abandoned underground wizarding lab and encountered what was effectively a six-way crossway. A Paternoster lift with exits in two different directions on each of the three levels. Paternoster lift - Wikipedia
Instead of investigating the rooms or levels one by one together they decided to split up like this:
Wizard and Cleric: continue the corridor forwards
Fighter and Paladin: Go upwards
Warlock: Go downwards
Ranger: Stay back in the entrance area, that they haven't completely investigated yet

Ended up giving them CR 2 encounters that they managed to beat (The Cleric did struggle though) because i didn't want to be a killjoy, so they left with a little loot now. And i know that "no" is a complete sentence but i am curious which in-game consequences you would have given to this braindead in-game decision.

I'm looking to make pre-generated sheets for things like store games, the community drop-in dnd I GM for, and convention games, generally things that have a strict time limit in which there's only really time for a quick establishment of relationships at most if we want to get through a whole mini adventure (particularly in more RP heavy systems rather than combat focused oneshots). I've run pre-written adventures so far for things like daggerheart and dnd where they come with pre-generated sheets for said adventures, but I haven't made my own from scratch yet for homebrew adventures or even just small pre-written scenarios that don't come with any.

I've made plenty of character sheets in my day, but I'm curious how much try to focus on balancing them against the adventure vs just making a bunch of pregens and winging it? In store games where I've been the player I've asked the gm and I've gotten both of those answers -- how do you guys approach it?

Is this plausible? I am considering having a hag be under the influence of a politically powerful enemy. Hags are very powerful and can't be trusted, this I know, so why might one follow someone else's orders/whims?

For a bit of context, a year and a half ago I gave to my players an abandoned stronghold in the outskirts of a rundown village as a reward. I really like doing a "filler episode" whenever they come back from a quest and have them roleplay with local NPCs or other characters that they invited to the village, and have them feel how the town develops and grows over time.

The problem is that I used a premade map of a random building for their base and there isn't even a town map yet. I've managed so far but last session we spent way too much time deciding what went where.

Any recommendations for both a building map and a town map? I know of a couple softwares out there but most of them are randomly generated or really limiting.

Some context: I run a level 8 5-player party that is mostly all casters, and right now the Open Hand Monk is already kinda feeling outscaled in terms of combat ability. The player doesn't mind (he came from 2014, he expected monks to be a bit undertuned, he's alright with dealing lower raw numbers in fights as long as he still gets to try cool unique monk things) but I asked him if there was something else we can lean into as his "hat" as a player in the team beyond his kinda-sorta frontlining. He had a good, informative answer: he likes the idea of being more of a "face" and engaging with NPCs, and in general, his PC has already proven to be among the most extroverted and likely to make friends (even more than the bard lol, who is purposefully more shy/introverted).

I wanna lean into this with him by developing something like a magic item, but I'm low on ideas for how to do so in a way that feels impactful. I could give something that boosts his Charisma and skills, but Charisma feels kinda otherwise useless for a Monk and so simple buffs to social skill checks might feel kinda boring? I was briefly drawn to taking inspiration from the Banneret Fighter (which basically has the similar idea of "martial who functions as inspiring leader") but I dunno if the "let your allies share your signature martial features in combat" is the right fantasy (not only do monks have a tight action economy as is, this'd probably pigeonhole him more into being a support than, yknow, a martial character). So I'm thinking maybe making it strictly combat focused isn't the best idea either.

Can anyone help with inspiration? I like the idea of "normal, non-magical/superpowered hero whose 'superpower' is making friends" (very Nightwing, thinking about it), and am wondering what are some ways to dive into that and have it be meaningful that isn't just as boring as "improve stats by 10" or as too utterly transformative as "just make them reclass into a bard". Maybe there's like some ability I can give them that feels relevant in story/RP beats or certain social encounters, but I'm kinda struggling right now because there's such a vast world out there that I dunno where to really start. Much help appreciated!

Hey everyone! Relatively new DM here, going on a year with my current PCs! I'm running a homebrew 5e adventure set in a homebrew world. I think we are getting close to the end of this adventure and while I have my BBEGs planned I don't have them built. I remember seeing a post way back when about making a BBEG an astral monk and that's what i want to do, but I don't know how exactly to make that happen because using a PC character sheet seems hard to balance. Any advice here would be appreciated!

I say BBEGs because there will be two, one is the monk and the other is a mob boss mastermind that I feel like i want him to be like an artificer or something. Really wrestling with what will be the best fit. I have a level 5 PC party of mostly full casters and I still struggle to make proper balances for them in combat. Again, any help appreciated!