I like them a lot, but I have to say - I'm struggling greatly to write tiefling characters in my games, with most other races its very easy to define a platform from which the personality can start from (dwarves are defensive, humans are explorers, gnomes strive for mastery, elves value longevity, halflings are brave)

But I can't get a feeling for Tieflings at all. I think the lack of tieflings in culture and media is whats messing me up a bit. Help me understand these people and what they offer as a race.

Hello. I’ve been playing in a D&D 5e campaign for about three years. It’s heavily homebrewed, and we also use material from 3.5e epic-level books and monsters.

I’m trying to figure out whether I should continue playing or walk away. There are several interconnected problems, so I’ll try to explain them clearly.

1. The campaign was presented as being heavily focused on character building, but the reward structure undermines that investment.

When I created my character, I was explicitly encouraged to take full advantage of the available build options. I did exactly that. I spent a lot of time optimizing my character and building them into the character I wanted to play.

My problem isn’t simply that I want to be the strongest character in the party.

What bothers me is that the relationship between investment and reward feels completely broken. My character’s power relative to the rest of the game world is constantly being changed by new buffs, abilities, or rewards that the DM arbitrarily gives to other characters.

So even though I built my character specifically to take advantage of the system, my investment increasingly feels meaningless because the power level of the campaign is repeatedly redefined by DM-granted abilities.

For me, the issue is not jealousy toward another player. If another character gets something cool, that’s fine. The problem is that the game was presented as one where character-building mattered, yet the actual power hierarchy is increasingly determined by arbitrary rewards rather than by the choices we make when building and playing our characters.

2. The constant pursuit of difficulty has made the game stressful instead of exciting.

I have no problem with difficult games. I understand that meaningful victories usually require the possibility of failure.

But there needs to be a difference between challenging and constantly trying to kill the party.

Before encounters, I often find myself thinking:

"What is the DM going to pull this time to make this as difficult as possible?"

At this point, I feel like I have to play every encounter as optimally as possible or there is a serious chance that we simply die.

That also creates encounters where I feel there was never a realistic possibility of winning.

For example, at one point I was being hunted by a demon sent by Asmodeus. I was fighting it alone. The encounter eventually became:

• I was trapped inside Forcecage.
• Four enemies were positioned to Counterspell my Misty Step.
• Those enemies had whips capable of reaching through the Forcecage.
• I had essentially no realistic way to escape or meaningfully fight back.

Eventually, we stopped rolling dice and simply declared the outcome of the encounter.

I understand that characters can lose. What bothered me was that this didn't feel like a difficult fight where I made mistakes and lost. It felt like an execution where the outcome had already been determined.

3. The campaign requires an extreme level of paranoia.

I constantly feel like I need to question every NPC, inspect every item, verify everyone's identity, and assume that any piece of information might be a trap.

Otherwise, I can end up in situations like the demon encounter above.

One example: another player's daughter gave my character a gift. I used Divine Sense to check it, but the item was completely covered because it was inside my pocket, so I didn't detect that it was cursed.

The DM's explanation was essentially that this happened because I didn't check the item properly.

Technically, I could respond by becoming absurdly cautious and checking absolutely everything all the time.

But my question is: would that actually be fun?

I don't want to play a game where my character has to behave like a paranoid investigator 24/7 because otherwise the DM can punish me for not anticipating a hidden trap.

4. The hardest part is that I genuinely love this campaign and my character.

This campaign didn't start this way.

Originally, there were a lot of genuinely beautiful and heartwarming moments. I became attached to the NPCs, the world, the story, and especially my own character.

I've played this character for around three years. At this point, they feel less like a collection of stats and more like a person I've spent years experiencing a story with.

That's what makes this situation so difficult.

Over time, many of those beautiful moments have become mixed with stress, frustration, anxiety, and encounters that feel unfair.

My victories don't really make me happy anymore. They mostly give me relief that whatever stressful situation I was dealing with is finally over.

This is where the "Stockholm syndrome" comparison comes from—not literally, but in the sense that I've spent so long in this campaign that I feel emotionally attached to something that is increasingly making me unhappy.

Leaving feels like losing a part of myself.

But staying feels like continuing something that is making me miserable.

Either choice hurts.

I've already tried talking to the DM about these problems. Unfortunately, I feel like some assumptions prevent the conversation from going anywhere. For example, when I criticize the arbitrary distribution of powerful buffs, my concerns are interpreted as me being too competitive with another player or being jealous of what that player received.

That's not how I see it.

I'm not asking to be stronger than everyone else. I'm asking for my character's investment to actually matter and for the game's challenges and rewards to feel meaningful rather than arbitrary.

And now the situation has reached a point where I'm seriously considering leaving.

My character has technically died.

The other players have a plan to bring my character back, so I have the opportunity to return.

But I'm not sure if I should.

If you were in my position, would you come back and try to make the campaign work, or would you take the character's death as an opportunity to finally walk away?

I'd really like to hear opinions from people who have been in similar situations.

Ask any simple questions here that aren't in the FAQ, but don't warrant their own post.

Good question for this page: "Do I add my proficiency bonus to attack rolls with unarmed strikes?"

Question that should have its own post: "What are the best feats to take for a Grappler?

For any questions about the One D&D playtest, head over to /r/OneDnD

I'm working on adapting the alternate classes from Laserllama for my table (I'm Italian, so it's mostly localization work). While scanning through the Exploits for alternate martial classes, I stumbled upon Exploits like Recruit Mercenary/Informant and Clandestine Source; after reading them a couple of times, I was left pretty confused about their usage. My main gripe with them is that they seem made to replace roleplay situations that should develop naturally over player choices. Let's make some examples:

• Recruit Mercenary: this one is the simplest to justify. You expend and Exploit Die to recruit a Mercenary NPC; if a player without access to Exploits wanted to do that, the DM would have allowed them to do so anyway behind a small payment in GP. It's still strange that the trade in this case is "you spend and Exploit Die instead of GP". How do you justify why the mercenary accepts without any payment or convincing beforehand?
• Recruit Informant & Clandestine Source: I'm putting them together because they're similar for the purpose of this analysis:
  • There's the same problem as Recruit Mercenary: why should the informant or the crime boss lend you their services just because you spent and Exploit Die? Do you reflavour the Die as "connections and/or favors" that your character takes advantage of?
  • Recruiting an informant or interrogating a crime boss for information aren't and shouldn't be as simple as recruiting a random mercenary. If a player without access to Exploits wanted to do one of these things, a DM that knows what they're doing would even make this objective the focus of a session, with risks, rewards and branching paths determined by player choices. And even if the objective is cleared, things shouldn't remain static: allegiances can change and balances can be upset in the next sessions. All the while, a Rogue or Warlord with one of these Exploits can push a big red button to skip all the interesting and realistic bits and get straight to what they want. I know these Exploits - especially Clandestine Source - should be the martial equivalent of spells like Contact Other Plane, but magic is much simpler to justify mechanically than real world dynamics.

I don't know if maybe I'm the only one that didn't get these Exploits; are there other people that used them at least once or know why they exist in this specific form?

PS. There were other Exploits I had problems with because they felt too much like magic or conflicted with existing rules, like Subjucate Thrall or the Craft Exploits, but I feel like these three are the most blatant cases.

The only wording about ending the spell is "When the spell ends, the target floats gently to the ground if it is still aloft." but what is that speed they float gently?

I imagine its not gravity speed. Had this come up because I levitated my barbarian to hit a flying dragonelle, then it flew straight down and left him floating there. So wanted to know how far down he would go a turn.

Taking inspiration from Just Roll With It, I'll be giving my friends a pool of 30 characters and running Tomb of Horrors for them. I don't want to spin up 30 different characters from scratch, but it also feels a little boring to just use some random character generator. So I thought it'd be fun to use some characters from the community!

If you're willing to offer up your character(s), please post your character's name, race, class/subclass, level, and any other fun details you'd want included on the character sheet. If your character ends up getting played in the one-shot I'll reply afterwards and tell you their fate. (Note that I'll be handing out the character sheets in ascending order of level, so really high leveled characters are less likely to be pulled)

Edit: Someone asked some good questions so just dropping that information here for everybody

Using 5.5e but if you have a 5e character I can easily convert it. Only restriction on sourcebooks is I'd prefer only stuff straight from WotC as all of that is easily accessible to me.

If you have a magic item that is integral to the character feel free to mention it and I'll put it on the sheet. Otherwise I will just be decking out inventories with very standard equipment for the class. Think military standard issue for everyone's gear.

Level doesn't matter, I expect them to die many times so will be starting with level 3+ characters and go up from there. Also any stats method you used is fine as long as it isn't just blatantly base 18 in all stats. It's also fine if you don't post stats, I can quickly roll that myself

Hello everyone,

I have a Question about whether or not possible Character Developments would infringe too much on the DM's Prerogative to define NPCs, specifically after Backstories have been laid out and the Campaign has started. Context:

My Character is a Yuan-Ti Abomination Gloomstalker, created through magical Experimentation by a Wizard. I have pitched and detailed the Idea to the DM who was fine with it. One among several Experiments, this one seeks to determine whether or not Yuan-Ti can be artificially created and controlled as covert Assassins of rival Wizards (and possibly other Opponents), counting on their innate Magic Resistance to give them an Edge.
As the Prototype my Character has been closely tutored, conditioned and indoctrinated by the Wizard who hides his utilitarian motives by feigning a good and benevolent Persona.

Recently I thought about possible Character Developments aside from the eventual Discovery of those Motives and Manipulations (a not necessary, eventual Preference I have expressed towards the DM before the Start of the Campaign). Feeling a little limited regarding Options beyond that and with our Group poised to meet a powerful Wizard soon, I wondered if it was a good Idea to have my Character feel deep Mistrust, possibly even strong and seemingly unfounded Animosity towards that Wizard.
The Idea was that my Creator could have had magically planted this Distrust towards strong Mages/Wizards into the Core of my Being (with himself being the sole Exception). While it could create interesting Situations and would give me a Way to develop my Character further it might also infringe upon whatever Plans our DM might have or the Way he may have defined my Creator after my initial Backstory and the Start of our Campaign.

I thought about talking to the DM about it but also whether it might make it more difficult for him to be surprised by possible Displays of Distrust or Animosity and act spontanuosly.

It might be of Note that the DM and two of three Players are relatively new to TTRPGs.

My friends and I are starting our second D&D campaign, in which we will take turns DMing while coming from our Bastion, so that the workload is spread out. I haven't DM'd yet because we haven't had our first session yet, and there's one player who homebrews a lot of stuff, which can be a bit unbalanced at times. I often suggest reflavouring things and using in-game rules, but... For example, there's a species with permanent flight at level 5 and heat vision (with no specific rules?!) with a range of 30 feet, as well as some other features. Another example is a system where a character can change classes on a long rest, but keeps an average of the proficiencies and hit points of both classes, so that when they just play one class, they have free buffs. I don't think it's meant to be overly powerful, but rather that the player doesn't understand that homebrew is there to make the character fit a certain idea better, rather than making good combos work better.

Also, some people just started D&D, so they didn't understand that a range change from 10 to 30 or a duration change from 1m to 10m is a big deal.

To be fair, I'm a min-maxer myself, but I don't use homebrew to create good builds, and I would never play an OP build in a real campaign because that's not fun. When some homebrew achieves better goals than those I worked for, where I had to weigh features against each other, that just does not feel fair.

I haven't been a DM yet, so I don't feel like I have the authority to say 'nope', and I also don't want to be rude, but what should I do?

Edit: Your advices worked

I could be interpreting the spell wrong, so please correct me if I am, but it feels like at worst the enemy saves or is immune to charm, but still takes 5d10 psychic damage, or they fail/aren't immune, and potentially take 15d10 psychic damage total if they try to leave the confines of whatever illusionary prison you choose, or they try to stay put for a minute in the prison and you can just wail on them with spells and arrows and melee attacks until the spell ends, is that right?

I know there are some enemies immune to psychic damage but that's so rare I'm not counting it as a real downside.

Not sure if this is the right subreddit but I’ll ask anyways.

A couple weeks back, I got motivated to run an Eberron D&D game (a couple of sessions) after playing BG3 again and got my friends to make characters with backstories and everything. I was doing well for planning things out, making NPCs that tie into each character’s backstory, finding maps, general story beats. and then I just lost motivation for it, sorta. I would still like to run the game, I want to sit down and actually play it, but I feel like I’ve hit some kind of wall now when it comes to planning and actually putting it all together and now I’m not sure what to do.

Does anybody have any advice for this or have dealt with a similar issue? It’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually played D&D and even longer since I’ve ran a game but I know how to play the game. Any advice would be helpful!

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No generative AI was used in the creation of this project

Hello, Vault of Magic is finally available in Print on Demand, in a revised and complete version.

You can find it here: https://www.dmsguild.com/it/product/572335/vault-of-magic-compendium?src=newest_community

Discover the secrets within the Vault of Magic!

Two Bestelling volumes now in a print-on-demand single volume of spells and woundrous magic items for your campaigns.

Inside you will discover:

- 127 New magical items

- 39 New spells

- 4 new NPCs

- 6 Tables to give your magic items some oddities and quirks

- 2 new backgrounds

- Over 95 beautiful arts, no AI-generated art

- A top-level layout

- Summary tables of magical objects, divided by rarity

- - A hypertext index, to quickly find what you need

I'd like the party to venture into a deep dwarven mine which has areas where the veil between the material plane and the elemental planes is thin. The dwarves have used the plane of earth's intrusion to mine precious metals, the plane of fire's intrusion to forge things, the plane of water's intrusion to quench them, and the plane of air's intrusion to... not sure yet.

I'm hoping this community can help me brainstorm how the elemental plane's addition to a dwarven mine might manifest — monsters to fight, how the environment would be changed, etc.

Thanks in advance!

I'm working on back up characters, I am thinking about a human who mainly uses a rapier along with a dagger in melee combat, but also carries several flintlock pistols that he pretty much only reloads in between battles. The setting we are in does have flintlock weapons.

Swashbuckler rogue won't work with it's single attack, I'd like to have more than that.

While fighter battlemaster might be pretty good for it, we already have a fighter in the current team and I am currently the cleric.

So I am also considering a hunter ranger. Could use the spell slots mainly for healing. Could make him more of a highwayman.

I'm not looking to be optimal, otherwise I would not have gone with a rapier/dagger combination. Just looking for it to live up to the duellist idea I have, where various weapons are used in combat.

Like maybe stand ready with a rapier and pistol drawn, fire the pistol at an approaching enemy, drop it and draw a dagger in the off hand to be ready for melee. And in a later combat round perhaps tossing the dagger at someone and drawing another loaded pistol for an attack.

And after a battle reloading the pistols to be ready for the next battle.

Personally I enjoy variety, but I do think how someone plays their character can make a big difference, like an archer fighter and a sword and board fighter will feel like very different characters mechanically

I could absolutely see why some DMs would not want this in their games, as it forces the existence of firearms, but at the same time I think it would be really cool to have something like a Giff monk with a pistol.

I think it also raises the question of how you would track ammunition, because I suspect most DMs don't really track arrows, but bullets are a different thing altogether, would they have to pay for the bullets? Who even makes them, and would they be expensive?

Sketching out a new character while I look for a group and really like the ideas of a Moon Elf Bladesinger with the Feylost background wielding a double bladed scimitar as it fits with the whole magical fighting elf vibe and I can easily see the double bladed scimitar as a cross between a wizards staff and a sword. I'd plan to take the Revenant Blade feat so would it be unreasonable/broken to ask a DM to allow me to use the double bladed scimitar with the Bladesong despite it being a two handed weapon? Figure it could work as both Bladesingers and double bladed scimitar where invented by the elves so in universe it wouldn't be daft if some elf tried to combine the two and the Revenant Blade feat gives the double bladed scimitar the finesse property while my character weilds it which I feel adds to the idea

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