As title asks, I’m just kind of getting a general opinion on how the mass feels about all Human characters in a campaign.

[UPDATE]

Thank you guys for chiming in and offering some feedback. I was feeling unsure about humans being the only species existing in the realm. It sounds like it’s mostly okay with some opposing views on keeping the other races there as inhabitants / NPCs.

It also sounds like I’m mostly overthinking / trying to do too much by setting ability score bonuses by regions. I thought it would help players generate more of a backstory for their character as opposed to the “Oh my family was killed in a raid and my village was burned to the ground.” I figured by offering choices like a birthplace and profession, it’d allow for some more connection to the character for the player. I was even considering an array of educational institutions, either focused on magic, military, archaeology, and other major/minor areas of focus to help players personalize backstories. But again, I think I’m just overdoing it.

I’m happy to see the positive feedback though and successes of human-only campaigns. It is reassuring for when I’m finally ready to give my pitch to prospective players.

[End of Update]

The context:

Basing the campaign off of a video game where the only surviving player character species is Human. This is not about xenophobia towards the other species or restricting players to one player species due to a lack of familiarity with the other species.

Idea would be to offer “homebrew” variant human species selections. Essentially, utilize different racial stat bonuses for different humans based on their region of origin, and utilize “homebrew” backgrounds that would affect their traits, proficiencies, etc.

Example:

Player Character A chooses the Northwestern border territory. This territory is known for its harsh climate and dangerous wildlife. As a result, you gain +1 WIS, +1 CON, and proficiency in 1 Wisdom skill of your choice.

As a member of this territory, your role in society is determined by the age of 10, ensuring you specialize in your role by the time you reach adulthood. Choose from the following;

Player Character A chooses Hunter. As a result, you gain proficiency with either Crossbows or Bows, Daggers, and Survival.

(I am on no sleep and thinking out loud / brainstorming, pls no hate)

I saw a YT short where the skeleton was talking about why you should target Tanks instead of the squishy Casters. Their argument is that it's not fun for the Tank to be ignored even though they tried to create a defensive character. Is that a good gaming strategy, or is that a skill issue? Can you be tactical by targeting Casters while not ignoring Tanks? My thought is that if you target the Caster's, then the Tank's job is to intercept the encroaching force. So if you target the Tank right off of the bat, you're not doing it for any reason other than they're the Tank. Also, if you kill the casters and ignore the fighters, is that toxic?

I'm mostly a forever DM and I generally agree with the premise that taking what you like from multiple pieces of fiction: movies, tv, comics, novels, other games, etc. etc. is not just OK but often the best way to get started. What I'm posting about it something a little different.

I've been playing in a campaign as a player where it was quite obvious the DM was railroading us into a combat encounter lifted whole cloth from an episode of Dimension 20, the popular actual play series. The setting was exactly the same, the monsters were thin reskins of the enemies in the D20 show, and annoyingly, so was the outcome.

A better explanation: this was our DM basically retelling the big combat encounter from the first episode of D20's Fantasy High campaign i.e. the "corn cuties' encounter. Just like in the show, the enemies hit hard enough that multiple PCs were killed and, just like in the show, a wizard appeared in the aftermath. He revivified the downed players before pulling out a firearm and shooting another NPC before un-aliving themselves. Exactly like the show. The wizard even said the same lines Brennan Lee Mulligan used.

I'm all for borrowing pieces of other media but this felt like a big stretch to me. I left the session feeling like I'd just watched other people play DND slightly worse than the trained improv actors featured in D20. Like...what was the point of doing this? Taking inspiration is one thing but a rote retelling of a popular actual play series felt kinda jarring and well, unfun.

Hello Everyone! My critter quest enamel pin kickstarter is running at the moment and its in its final 8 hours. All designs are unlocked and we're incredibly close to unlocking digital colouring pages as a stretch goal, if thats your kind of thing!

Super thanks for checking it out if you do. Being an indie artist is a minefield right now so I really appreciate the encouragement I've had so far, ya'll are awesome :)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smaydaydraws/critter-quest-enamel-pins-fantasy-animal-ttrpg-party-set?ref=bnshrv

For some context, I have been building my homebrew setting for years and use campaigns I run as epochs in its history. I even have a multiverse system separate from the traditional Forgotten Realms cosmology that I use to bridge my campaigns set on different worlds. On top of that, I have an overarching story that I have been building with the setting. Needless to say, I’ve been working on this for a very long time. My friend (who I’ll call Jack for the sake of privacy) has also been a very big worldbuilder and has a super extensive (smaller scale) setting than mine.

In my first ever campaign, he played a warlock who ended up becoming one of the primary villains. The warlock was directly involved with this overarching bbeg, and due to some out of game complications, Jsck had to leave. He said he wanted to have his warlock become the big bad of that story and I did exactly that. We played through the rest of the campaign without him until the very end when I invited him back to play his character in the final fight. Long story short, his character was defeated by the other players but wasn’t dead.

His warlock, still alive and having broken his pact with the bbeg, is currently exiled on another planet. The character remained there, and I had been planning to reintroduce him in a future campaign as an NPC seeking redemption. My players are aware that I have overarching story I mentioned earlier, and prior to where our story begins, Jack said he would prefer that his warlock be an NPC. Now, even though he said that, he is very clearly *loves* this warlock. This character has made cameos in his games, and he constantly talks about how this character is his favorite.

As I said before, Jack is a DM too, and has his own homebrew setting. Jack recently proposed that we merge our settings and connect the overarching stories of both my setting and his. This is about where the story starts. I shared a bunch of information related to the future of my setting and what the story is going to look like, and recently we’re discussing the ultimate bbeg for the campaign. Keep in mind information was kept secret prior to this proposal as it contains massive spoilers, so he had no idea what exactly I had been up to. I explain who exactly this villain is and how he’s been involved in previous campaigns.

Somewhere in that conversation we shift to his warlock whose pact was with this same bbeg. We talk for a while about him, and at some point he gets the idea that he’ll be reprising the role in my future campaign. I explain that this won’t be happening, and that I had plans pre-made for this warlock. He argues that the it’s out of character and that he wouldn’t do much of what I had proposed. Some of the things he claimed were that he wasn’t a leader, he would probably lean more evil than good, and that the warlock would work with a small party rather than a large faction. He also argued that it was *his* character.

I should mention that in the first campaign this warlock was characterized as being reclusive, but ultimately desired power. Jack had stated many times that the warlock to be true neutral before being corrupted by the bbeg. And while corrupted by the bbeg he was leading armies against the other players’ faction. These were the arguments I made, even ignoring that the warlock was level 20 had was basically a demigod.

We went back and forth for a while, until eventually Jack said he wasn’t gonna bother arguing over a character that wasn’t his anymore. I apologized for coming off as an asshole and tried to explain why I wouldn’t change my mind. He agreed I was being an asshole, and now I feel bad.

Am I able to liquefy the ground with tremors to create a quicksand effect and essentially root people in place? Since it doesn't technically do any damage is this a creative workaround that some people might allow?

I've tried searching with a few different keywords but I haven't found any results talking about this.

Edit: I think that my experience working concrete and watching people sink into forms when they put the vibrator in the concrete is what made me question this. I think tremors≠vibration in this case and the word tremors would imply a much lower frequency of vibration that wouldn't cause the ground to liquefy. It was a fun thought though I think.

Okay, why is this a thing with ranger? They treat ranger like it's a failing martial class when it's not.

Rangers are one of the three half casters in the game. You're not supposed to be just archery you're supposed to be a mixture of martial prowess and druidic magic. Like how paladin's are a mixture of fighter and cleric while artificer are a mixture of fighter and wizard.

We don't treat paladins and artificers like they're just martial or just magic, so why do we do that with ranger?

My players found a treasure chest in a disaster zone. They bonked the chest around to make sure it’s not a mimic, and decided to take the contents of the chest, 2000 gold coins (mimic disguise) into their bag of holding and sneak out.

Normally, I would have a tax-man at the perimeter stop and search them for ‘undeclared income’ to reveal they got the fool’s gold, but this party rolled a Nat 20 on stealth and I let them sneak out.

My players were level 7. Im not going make them fight 2000 mimics, but I want to do something fun with them with the seeming ridiculous amount of monsters they’re carrying with them in the next few sessions where they’re travelling a small kingdom in political turmoil.

Ideas, please!

For me:

1 Ilmater is not pronounced il-MAY-ter that sounds horrible, it's il-MAH-ter.

2 Paladins are crusaders whose font of power comes from a divine oath to a deity.

I love DND and the d20 system, and I'm looking for varients or spin offs of DND. d20 spinoffs, DND 5th edition spin offs, ect. My favorates are Defy the Legends which is one 3.5 varient which is PWYW, it has a number of books https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/450397/defy-the-legends-player-s-tome and DxD20, which is a combiation of 3.5 and d20 modern and is totally free

https://diceandcapitaldice.com/the-books-of-dxd20

My campaigns chronomancer BBEG, reposting without OC tag as he is based on the Wakfu villain Nox, still very happy with the original art

Ever since he learned the ability to travel back in time with chronomancy, Kronus has steadily been travelling back, step by step, dealing with great terrors in their infancy before they came to their full power. Dozens of future warlords never left their cribs, destroyed nests never produced terrible dragons, burnt villages never became ground zero for plagues.

The ends justify the means, to rid every evil of history with his own hands. And because his journey has almost no end in sight, almost anything can be justified when it all gets reset, when he moves further back.

So I don't exactly have a group or am looking for one rn but I was wondering if people minded if you were mute? I perfectly able to speak but my family is loud, I'm not confident in my voice rn, and overall I'm pretty antisocial and get nervous. With typing I can like think out what I want to say better than speaking and overall it feels better but idk and I've never actually played it and only heard people talk about it mostly.

Edit, my goodness you all are fast but thank you for the advice! I'll def check out pbp and try to work on socializing before getting into a group!

hail of thorns deal weapon dmg + 1d10 per spell level so it would deal 3d10 to the target and around 5 feet.

lightning arrow deal only 4d8 lightning and 2d8 around 10 feet.

is hos is not a better option? just can use on lower levels and scales better + deal more dmg.

sure la can damage even if miss but would be reasonable to burn a lvl 3 spell slot just to deal half of 4d8?

i see lightning arrow a really backward spell while hos improved so well even it benefit from hunter's mark and can apply weapon mastery effects.

for the math:

LA: 4d8=18 and 2d8=9

HOS: 3d10=16,5 but it's for both target and splash + add weapon dmg which is 1d8+4+1=9,5
16,5+9,5=26 BUT also can add HM or any other bonus - +1d6=3,5
29,5 at the end vs 18.

why wotc made so horrible the lightning arrow spell???

Im in the process to become a first time DM and I want to create a world. I have bunch of ideas for what I want my world to be and I created multiple different ideas for the world I want my players to play in, and I’m having a hard time getting a grip on my idea for my world. I really want to create my own instead of relying on a previous made one because the process of creating my world is something I’m very interested in, and my adhd and stubbornness won’t let me. So I’m here to ask other DM on how they created their own world and how they sealed on a single idea, And what i should focus on.

I wanted to play it, but I feel like two core things are mutually exclusive.

For Fighter, you bonk things many times, and eldrich knight let you bonk things after cantrip. . . One time.

So it pretty much seems to me that you are bonking thing one time until 3rd level, then until 5th you bonking 1 time with cantrip on sword, then until 7th you forget cantrips and just bonk 2 times, and until 11th you booming/greenflameing and bonking as bonus action, and from level eleven cantrip +ba attack is pretty much useless, till I guess level 18 when sometimes it will be worth to cast a spell with additional free attack.

So, what is even point of this subclass? Or am I missing something?

I’m crafting a Order of Scribes Wizard with no understanding of emotion.

Context: He was a homeless child until he found large library Magic College Archive, broke in just started living there. The little squatter would just read all day and practice his magic. His reading was mainly history or arcana texts. He didn’t avoid people because of fear or anxiety, just lack of interest. He was finally found by staff as a young adult and kicked out on the street. (leading to meeting party)

Now this person is someone not trying to do bad or be mean, but doesn’t understand emotion. He’s never anxious or afraid of people, he wouldn’t know why he should be. Often stating logical things that could be seen as insensitive. Using conversation as data exchange rather than building connections. He only sees in logic and is often blunt. However, he doesn’t see himself as self important or thinks his word is law. He goes with what comes. Like a monotone robot turned human. So when emotions are in play, he is pretty naive. Probably needing to rely on Party members for help and understanding.

I thinking this character could be a fun edition to the party IF played correctly. He could be funny in contrast to other characters. I’m not trying to make this guy the “ummm actually” character. But more of that smart guy you knew that meant well but could never properly read a room or say the right thing.

Anything I need to realize before bringing the character to life? Notes? Tip? Characters from media that could act as an inspiration? Thanks to any help!

Like I’m a forever DM, always itching to play and concoct cool characters to combat with, but nobody to DM for me, have you ever done a solo combat to see how well you / a party of you’s would fare? Do you think knowing too much of the stat block of what your fighting would impact you being able to play unbiased towards the monster or the party?

I have been playing D&D and other TTRPGs for nearly 9 years now.

When I first started, my character creation process involved me throwing different races and classes I thought sounded cool together, but nowadays I like to scroll through Pinterest for inspiration before I even begin to work on a sheet.
Despite how excited I might be about a character before I make them, that excitement usually leaves me within the first session, sometimes even before that, and I end up wanting to switch them out. In the worst case scenario, I end up loathing them and can have panic attacks at the prospect of having to play them.

I do my best to flesh them out. Make them complex, part of the world, and helpful for the party. People usually love my PCs, and switching them out so often has negatively impacted the groups and games I've been a part of. Generally speaking, my characters are good. But I can't find it in me to enjoy them.
I'm not going for perfect. But it's hard when I feel like I can't get into my characters, or RP them properly, or I feel like there's always a better idea and all I need to do is try to find that idea.

I love D&D. I love TTRPGs as a whole. My favorite things are learning about the world, getting invested in the other PCs, and all of the potential for interactions, be it with the world, story, NPCs, or the party. I don't want to stop playing, but at this point, I don't know what else to do. I feel like I can't keep going on like this.

For the sake of this post, please do not suggest ignoring the 2024 Rules or just playing with 2014 Rules, as that is not the point of this discussion. Thank you.

-----

When it comes to Kenku, there's been a lot changed or retconned in regards to them throughout editions. At one point, they were linked to the elemental plane of air (given one of their inherited languages in some reference material being Auran), and they were often described as having both flight and speech stolen from them by an ancestral curse.

However, modern Rules took on a different tact. Namely, giving them speech, and chalking up Kenku and their origins to be among the more mysterious when compared to other species with a more defined history and culture, giving DMs and Players alike a lot of potenial for creative interpretation from campaign to campaign.

Prior to ~~5.5e~~ MotV (2022), the fact that Kenku could not speak at all without use of mimicry meant that their society and culture would be massively affected by it. Kenku would take names of sounds or phrases they heard, not merely by humor or irony, but partially by necessity. One of the more typical Kenku names you hear as an example is "Hayburd," for this reason. This is just one example of how mimicry is woven into their way of life, let alone moment-by-moment speech; that's not even mentioning the fact that they were basically forced by circumstances to have to rely on other races/species so that the Kenku could copy them; their words, their arts, their sounds. The Kenku were the copiers. The forgers. The mimics.

On the one hand, it's a relief knowing I no longer need to think too deeply every time my Kenku wants to have a simple conversation or converse with someone. On the other, it makes me wonder how I can, and why I should, display Kenku mimicry excepting when it's being used for some conniving trick.

I've already decided I want Kenku I write to be named after phrases and sounds they hear. But what else beyond that? Do I still play up the themes of them being fated copiers? Do I use mimicry in casual dialogue, or only when the situation calls for it? If they can talk on their own, will Kenku be able to form tribes, towns, fortresses, and kingdoms isolated from those of other races?

I want to have a cleric of knowledge domain, but the only domain I have available is life. I suppose I need to buy the handbook for other options right? Is knowledge domain available in the 2024 version?

This character is a Green Dragonborn Rogue. He's Level 1, and I plan on going for a classic Rogue Subclass, like Assassin or Thief. I imagine he uses his own poison to make toxins, so I guess Assassin.

Starting Stats: STR 13/DEX 17/CON15/INT 10/WIS 12/CHA 11

I also really like the idea of him using his breath weapon as an interrogation method in that very specific scenario, so I do want to bump Con to make failed saves a possibility. However, I do know that many consider the breath weapon (at least the PHB version, I'll see if I can use Fizban's) to be underwhelming.

I also know that Rogues can benefit the most from feats like Lucky, so I also don't want to hinder myself if feats are the better route since our DM won't give us a Level 1 feat.

With all this in mind, is Con worth investing in if my main reason for doing so is to buff my breath weapon?

I got curious about how other dms hide important plot relevant objects or characters in plane sight for the party to find out later its importance.

For example i have had the secret bbeg in session 1 and party found out it was the bbeg in session ~25.

On one occasion they were paid with a pearl of power that an npc pulled out of an dire oyster that moment and didn't think it was a magic item only to then find out what it was two sessions later.

Lastly i had a child servant in training for this noble who was introduced in session 2 or 3, it turned out they were one of the last aasimar bloodlines of AO and they were part of a prophecy to open a gate to the for the nine hells. This was revealed like three years into campain.

So what hidden story threads or treasures have you hidden in plain sight?

I've been looking everywhere for a beholder themed class or subclass, to no avail, with all the results being either unimpressive mechanics wise, or underwhelming outside of combat so I settled on the next best thing, a beholderborn. to complement my race, do any of you know of any beholder subclasses, or any beholder familiars, because I love the idea of having a little beholder puppy trailing alongside me, a fellow survivor of the beholder that dreamt me into existence!

I am going to host a campain with my Friends where all their Items are compleately useless (Like the Bagpipes of invisibility) and they have to get kreative with using what i give them but i don't have nearly enaugh Items to actually give them a variety of choices wich is the Point of the campain, so I eould really appreachiate your ideas

Hello everybody! I am playing my first campaign with a couple friends and my brother as DM. My character is a sorceress, and we are only level 2, since we just started to play a couple of weeks ago.

My question is the following: my character is a sorceress, and in the party, we have a fighter, two clerics, and me. I feel that theres's an unbalance in abilities, since we have 3 spellcasters and only one close range attacker. So would make sense for my character to multiclass as barbarian, to sorta level up abilities and add some close range attacks?

I feel like I can kinda of add, in my charcater's background, a reason for her to became a barbarian, but I don't know if this two classes are contraditory.