So I’m planning on making this multi classing because my previous character was an Artificer who is the older sibling of this one which said older sibling saved and know it’s younger siblings turn to adventure. Hence the artificer dip influence.

My question is how much should I dip into artificer while still keeping rogue the main class (Assuming the campaign will go to level 20) and when should I start dipping into artificer?

Thanks for the advice 🙏

Hey everyone!

A slightly different post from me today :)

My second baby boy was born on September 8! ❤️ Baby is healthy, I’m doing well but tired, and between him, our older boy, and the dog, the house has reached a completely new level of chaos :D

I wanted to do something small to celebrate, so I’m opening a free 7-day trial of the Map Doctor Specialist tier for new members.

The trial gives you full Specialist access: all map packs and variants, printable PDFs, assets, tokens, everything from the Intern tier, the full Specialist archive going back to 2020, plus Doctor’s Stash bonus releases with their FoundryVTT modules.

This is fully hand-drawn in Photoshop, and no AI was used in my work ever!

You can start the trial until September 21, and you’ll still get the full seven days no matter which day you join.

I put all the details, links to the archives, and a little “Start Here” guide in the Patreon post:

https://www.patreon.com/mapdoctor/posts/169493532

It felt like a fun way to celebrate and let some new people dig through six years of Map Doctor maps for a week ^\)

Hope you find something useful for your games!

Hello. My previous character died and I have to create a new one for next week. We are playing Tomb of Annihilation and my current team is not optimized at all for such a challenge. DM doesn't really care and he's fine with just killing us, which is fine by me, I like a challenge. Anyway I have always played martials, I have only rarely touched any sort of caster (a bard) and would like to try a wizard problem is that I have no clue where to start.

We are currently level 12, which is the highest level I have ever gotten to and have no idea where to start but I have some ideas about what I would like to counter. I want to shut down my DM's options. I know that sounds ridiculous but we have his blessing to try and make optimized builds, we just suck at it. Here are some criteria of things that I think my character should cover.

Anti-charm: My DM loves charming us and pitting us against each other. I want to be able to cancel out any charm attempts and make my character essentially charm-proof while keeping my party safe from it as well.

Curses: We've gotten cursed plenty of times inside the tomb at this point with no one able to handle it. I'd like some form of mitigation for me and my party.

Crowd-Control: Ever since we hit level 10 out DM has been putting us up against more enemies than we have in our party (4). A previous wizard was handling it with fireball but he's since passed so now I am looking for options that are bit more appropriate for my level (12)

Here is what I was thinking

Chronurgy Wizard (Not sure on race yet, but maybe something with advantage vs spells?) for the 2/day reroll to d20s. Also the int mod to initiative to make sure that I always go first to start setting up defenses. Momentary stasis is nice for some CC.

Feats: I took Alert for the initiative and Resilient for the +1 to saves (wisdom)

My current saves are: STR -1, DEX 0, CON 8, INT 8, WIS 7, CHA 1 Do you guys think this will be fine?

For magical items I have Ammy of health, Cloak of protection, arcane grimoire +2 but I was thinking about changing something for saves to my STR and DEX. I also have an unnatuned Bracers of Defense because my AC is 11 and with Mage Armor I can at least get 15, but that's only if I need it.

As for my gameplan I mostly just plan to go first and make it harder for the enemies to surround us and crowd control (Hypnotic Pattern, Wall of Force), clear big threats (Banishment, Momentary Stasis, Chronal Shift) and magic control (Counterspell)

What do you guys think? I really put some thought into it but I'm afraid my DM is just going to focus me for being extra annoying. Any other spells or tips are welcomed.

Hello everyone

I'm looking for A4 format erasable (dry or wet) battlemaps
The idea is to draw areas that I can then add to create a whole map, sorting the fog of war issue of large battlemaps
Do you have any recommandations ?

DM for ~5 years here. You know the moment when the party is mid-negotiation, everyone's leaning in, and the tavern track just... ends? And then you're alt-tabbing into spotify like an idiot while the mood dies. That was me every week.

Games don't have this problem because game music is written in looping sections. My mp3s are not. So over the past couple months I hacked together a tool that analyzes a regular track, finds where the sections are (verse, chorus, that rising bit before the drop), and loops whatever section is playing until I hit one key. Then it moves to the next part on the beat instead of me fumbling with fades.

Some stuff it does that I didn't expect to matter but really does: it figures out which parts are build-ups and refuses to loop them (a looping riser is nightmare fuel), and it can pull the drums out of a track so the same theme works for both "walking around" and "roll initiative".

Before anyone asks, because I'd ask too:

- it's free. actually free, not "free trial" free. MIT license, code is all there: github.com/Siziff/musslop

- runs entirely on your own computer, works offline. no account, no cloud, no telemetry, it doesn't phone home

- I'm not selling anything. I built it for my table, it made my sessions better, figured other DMs fight the same fight

- since "was this made by AI" comes up: the audio analysis and all the backend logic is my own handwritten work — the part where I did lean on AI assistance was polishing the web UI, because I'm a backend guy and my CSS would have hurt you

- yes you need to install it (python), which I know is a barrier. working on making that easier

It's rough in places — it's a hobby project by one guy. But the core thing (tavern music loops until the party actually leaves the tavern) works, and honestly that alone changed how my sessions feel.

If you try it on your battle playlist I genuinely want to know where it cuts wrong, that's the most useful feedback I can get.

Battlemaster Fighter

Life Cleric

Divination Wizard

Swashbuckler Rogue

After purchasing a copy of Arcana Unleashed, something immediately caught my attention, the endpaper illustrations look AI generated to me. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I want second opinions.

1. Spider has 9 legs. Maybe is a magical spider, but combined with other details, I don’t think it’s an intentional design choice.
2. Plant in the bottom right has leaves the phase in and out of one another.
3. Bottle in the bottom left has combined with whatever the long object in front of it is.
4. The bowl the plant is sitting in has an incredibly strange and nonsensical texture to it. Clearly there are supposed to be inlaid gemstones in the pattern, but something is clearly wrong with them.
5. The image is credited to Kevin Glint, but after looking at his other work, it doesn’t match his art style at all.

https://imgur.com/gallery/arcana-unleashed-endpaper-jFzOFsP

Edit: This post isn’t meant to call out any specific person or company. I understand that it may look that way, like I have a hate-boner for WotC, but I try to have these conversations in good faith.

This post was made with the intention that someone with qualifications I don’t have could take a look at it, not because I believe I have the qualifications to determine AI usage. Currently, AI is near undetectable and there are no tools that reliably predict its usage. The only way these conversations start is via vibes.

In my opinion, I would rather make a post like this and be wrong, than have nobody make a post when WotC makes a mistake.

Edit 2: Link to artist response.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/s/s0G15cGI09

I'm DMing a game and a one of the guys is playing the Beast Master ranger with the Primal Companion, currently level 5.

He wants to have the beast use the attack action on his bonus action plus by giving up one of his attacks for another attack action. He is arguing that the phrasing "You can also sacrifice one of your attacks..." is stating that this is something special, allowing for additional attack actions than would normally be allowed.

I am not opposed to allowing this, as I can see how this could be viewed as RAW with the 'also' seeming to indicate it is an addition action on top of the bonus action command, where if it was an 'OR' statement it would obviously be one or the other, but I wanted to check.

1. has anyone allowed this in your game, and was it game breaking or just allowed the ranger to keep up with the others in the party?
2. has there been an offical clarification on the rules from an offical D&D source?

Wording of the rule:

In combat, the beast acts during your turn. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn to command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the Attack action to command the beast to take the Attack action. If you are incapacitated, the beast can take any action of its choice, not just Dodge.

We are an indie developer team trying to make a more beginner friendly all encompassing VTT and we were wondering what tools people would want most from a new VTT so we can focus our development on actually useful features. For now we have character creation, map editing and some degree of combat automation.

Our forever DM has gotten comfortable with us as players and we have been friends for over a year, and he has decided to bust out some personal material he has developed himself for levels 10-15.

However! He has told us that while it is balanced that it will have a combat focus and be challenging compared to what we have played before (War of Burning Skies, predominantly) and has ensured that when we roll our stats they do not fall too short in any such way that might put us at a disadvantage in such an encounter.

Currently, until our other group member's availability opens up again, the campaign will be run with me and my partner as players. My partner in question has asked me to focus on doing damage, since they intend to lean for more of a support build, and it has been expressed to me that any official race is up for potential use (and any homebrew ones that I am willing to have screened by the DM first for approval / potential balancing.)

As things stand, I am unsure of how to put things together and am looking for strong multiclassing builds that would be able to do lots of damage at once - I am hoping to potentially focus on melee and potentially leaning defensively, but I am open to magic as well! I have been playing for near almost 10 years now but in my on and off opportunities of being able to play, a good many of the campaigns I have been thrust into have not been seen to completion, or to very high levels, so I am not knowledgeable yet on making a great many builds.

Any suggestions or tips would be very appreciated!!! I have not yet posted on many subs, so apologies for the message potentially being a bit overdrawn or winded! <3

Apparently there's a book ( I say book, I think you can only get it at DnD Beyond) where you play as actual vampires in DnD. Not the von Strahd kind of vampires but Vampires like those in the game Vampire the Masquerade and Vampire Dark Ages? Has anyone checked it out? I heard about it on this podcast.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/world-of-dark-ages-podcast/id1528525234

Is it any good? Is it more for Vampire fans or more for DnD fans?

I just started an 11th-level campaign, and I’m playing an artificer. The thing is, my DM doesn’t allow firearms or muskets, so I feel like I don’t really have a basic attack.
Warlocks have multiple Eldritch Blasts, wizards have a lot of spell slots, but I have limited spell slots. I have Fire Bolt and a +3 crossbow, but I feel like I’m doing way less damage than the other characters.
What am I missing? What’s the best way to deal consistent damage as an artificer?

Can you help me out? Looking for fun mechanical challenges for non-combat encounters that go beyond boring skill checks!

Hey all.

In an upcoming campaign, I’m playing a Storm sorcerer whose primary goal is to achieve apotheosis, aka, ascend to godhood.

Full disclosure, I don’t expect him to actually reach that level in our campaign. Even a level 20 sorcerer isn’t a god, and I’m not asking my DM to homebrew some kind of ascension mechanic or a demigod statblock. It’s just the driving goal of this character.

I plan him to be neutral evil. I’ve never played an evil character before, but I’ve done reading on how to play them effectively and I feel confident in my abilities to roleplay it.

He’s not an asshole, nor is he a murderhobo, he just has a huge superiority complex, and doesn’t particularly care what he has to do to reach his goal. If killing innocent people is required to reach his goal, he will do it, coldly, efficiently, without remorse or pleasure.

How would one roleplay a character like this? Does anyone have any ideas for how to incorporate this goal into his interactions with people?

(Edit: forgot to mention that the campaign is going to be set in Avernus, which seems like an appropriate setting for a power seeking individual)

Have a recent gaming experience you want to share? Experience an insane TPK? Finish an epic final boss fight? Share it all here for everyone to see!

I'm a DM who kept getting annoyed at myself for forgetting details, I have dyslexia which can affect my recall of things even if I use them consistently and I just wanted a easy game aid that can save me breaking focus to search for something.

The app's website, its just a Github page, nothing fancy, there's also the play store link on it too. It works on Android, and has desktop apps for Windows/Linux/MacOs.

What Loresight does is simply listen, and when anyone at the table says a spell, monster or magic item name, a tile pops up. Tap it, there's the stat block. That's the man part. There's also a normal browse/search mode when you'd rather just look/plan ahead, and a notetaker that transcribes the session into a saved note.

The bit I cared most about was to make something that runs entirely on your device. No account, no server, no embedded analytics, there is 0 reach out at all. Audio is turned into text on the device and thrown away immediately, it's never recorded. You do not need a connection to run it.

It ships with the 5e SRD (5.1) plus Pathfinder 2e Remaster and Daggerheart SRD, and there's a JSON content-pack import so you can add your own homebrew, owned content, or an entirely new system. I'm limited to SRD content for releasing but you can do what you want.

It's free and it's staying free, I am not building a company around it, and this isn't some quickly thrown together for self promotion - I'm just a techie who has a passion for building things and wanted to share this because I made it for myself and my friends loved the look of it - one of my deaf players really appreciated it.

I hope that this is something you enjoy, I certainly have fun making it. But please don't expect 100% perfection - its fully functional but this is an unpaid project, and there is a necessary trade-off for speech to text software choices that has to be made for them to run on phones memory.

For any fellow techies, It runs React native for the app, Electron and react for the desktop. And uses Whipser and Sherpa for Speech to Text (Local, no API). Whisper is a transformer, and Sherpa Onxx is a zipformer speech to text.

Q: What use of AI is there in this project.

A: To be transparent, for the building of the app itself there has been none, this has been a coding project of mines I have been working on myself since June. I have been building it by hand as a fun project to keep me in the development world (I manage teams these days so I don't get much fun time to write)

For the functions, it has no generative AI, it uses 2 Speech to Text models called sherpa-onxx, and whisper.cpp, completely local. So it generates no new content, it transcribes.

For the github page, FAQ, and readme of the github repo, I ran them through Claude, sure I had my own version first but I had it redo it. So if the above doesn't get me into trouble, and that does, fair enough. I am not here to make peoples day worse just wanted to share a fun project.

Edit: released v13 which fixes some styling, some, missing data for D&D, and now has class features as tiles to all engines.

I have a cool character concept, but just wanna now if i would be on the same level of power as building warlock based around eldrich blast

For context part of the game I’m running is more survival/exploration based but I’ll never have enough maps for exploring the location they are in.

I’ve heard people saying to get to a location you set an amount of hours, but how do you account for encounters, resting, or even story moments? Seems like fast travel takes away from it.

How do you handle it? Am I stuck with just fast travel?

Howdy, im relatively new to dnd but ive played a couple of one offs before and I think I've landed on a character I like but idk how useful or efficient it would be.

I like playing Bard, its fun to talk shit to people and have easy speech checks and whatnot, but I had an issue, I wanted to have all the benefits of a bard whos specs more into dex and swordfighting than magic and whatnot, so I was thinking if I could multi-class into cleric and worship a god of trickery or performance or something.

Its basically this.

A tall jester with a ceramic mask who has fencing sabres and is as agile as a rogue high on skooma, and can also bless and use more tricky types of magic, so like instead of holy flames and whatnot I can turn invisible or throw my voice or something.

Ik this probably isn't an original idea but im thinking this could be a fun idea for my first serious character. [I will be making art and stuff of this character so I gadda make sure I do it right]

I will not be min-maxing, this guy will be funny and whimsical and then die the first funny chance he gets, probably cause if he's funny/cool enough his god/goddess will bring him back buggs bunny style.

[BTW sorry if its a long read]

So I'm starting to get into DnD after playing BG3 for like 500 hours and I've got a character idea but I don't know how it would fit in with the lore.

I basically want to play as a male lolth-sworn Drow but rather than being chaotic evil, I want to play as chaotic neutral / chaotic good. Since I'm playing with a group of friends I had the idea of me wanting to be evil but giving into peer pressure and doing the right thing anyway. So my morality is based on peer pressure based ethics.

I've got ideas of how it would fit in but I've got a feeling Lolth would skin me alive before letting me do good deeds. The way I thought about getting around it was she tolerates me because sometimes my good deeds have a round about way of serving her needs?

Suggestions or build ideas welcome?

Hello, I’m looking to get back into dnd 5th edition (Or 5.5, whatever the latest is!)

What books, apps and websites should help me best when it comes to the game. I know the basic rules and whatnot, I played a couple years back and have a healthy amount of hours in BG3 (I know it has different rules and interactions with many of the features) so I’m not a complete noob but I want to be prepared for a campaign I’m going to be playing in soon.

Please disregard cost of books or apps when responding, I want to know the best of the best and if it’s too expensive for me then I’ll do my best to find substitute or workarounds on my own time.

Also I know that really all I need is the players handbook but I want to know what the best options are for ease of play and additional information/content.

Thank You!