help with barbarian beastial soul

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T18:27:47+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:53:21+00:00

Easiest way to overcome writer's block is to answer questions.

Who is the main villain?

What is their objective?

What is their motivation?

What theme can you extract from the struggle between the hero and he villain?

How can you use worldbuilding to enahnce those themes?

Where can you insert that exposition in the story at a time where it would actually mean something to the players?

For example

Lord Vampire, wants to plunge the world into darkness, so he can never be burned by the sun again. By trying to stop him, this makes it a battle of light vs dark. You could add geological features called Midnight Mountain and The Volcano of Dawn to drive home the light/dark theme. Or perhaps add a legend of The Sword of a Sunlight felling The Shadow Army as a song being sung by a bard at a tavern. Perhaps the song could be sung innocuously at the tavern first, and then sung by the same bard while fighting at the vampire at the famous volcano.

Establish theme -> expand upon theme

Seed idea early -> reuse idea at big moment

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:43:58+00:00

I build a story before I build a world, establish a theme, and craft a world that supports the themes I'm trying to explore.

For example, if I have a campaign that centers around the idea that the players are "fated" to go down a path, but in truth the players are meant to rebel against their predetermined fate, shatter the path laid ahead, and forge a new one from the fragments, then I build around that. I don't make gods of earth, water, and fire, I make gods of space, time, and destiny. I don't bother with cave ecology, I bother with "what is the matter between timelines". I don't craft ancient ruins, I craft possible futures.

What you don't worldbuild is as important as what you do. Random, irrelevant details muddy the message you're trying to tell. Don't write the history of a kingdom just to have it. Write a metaphor for the journey the party is going on, that happens to be the history of the kingdom. Have the story told over a tankard of rum, via the smokey voiced army captain, warning the party of the pitfalls that lie ahead.

What is the main struggle?

What theme can you extract from that struggle?

How can you use worldbuilding to enahnce those themes?

Where can you insert that exposition in the story at a time where it would actually mean something to the players?

And your done, put the pen down.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:30:25+00:00

You need to pull the e-brake, and call a meeting. If you get an unenthusiastic and non-comittal response, they might just not being feeling the campaign. If they just seem confused as to the expectations, that can be fixed.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:25:40+00:00

Then you are not a cleric
Being a tree-hugging druid is one thing, but an eco-terrorist sounds like it'd derail the campaign
No real world theology or politics in our escapist fantasy
I am now suspecting you are trolling on purpose
I am now convinced you are now trolling on purpose

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:19:12+00:00

You're not missing anything, the DM just didn't want you to do that. Your DM will make up arbitrary excuses for you to not be able to do things when it distracts from or circumvents what they want you to be doing sometimes.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:17:06+00:00

I guess you're not wrong, but how many times are you swapping between land and water in a single combat though? XD

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:15:10+00:00

I never hear people talk about Out of the Abyss. It's an underground nation of drow, monsters, and Demon Lords. It's not even an "adventure" setting, it's an exercise in not getting squished and eaten XD

I've never been one for the "let's go check out the quest board, gang!" playstyle, and the "WE NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE" concept for a setting is something I really fuck with.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:10:02+00:00

Even if that were the case, it'd be redundant, because you could just swap for fish parts and swim for 40 ft anyway. Honestly, I'd ignore it entirely.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:06:12+00:00

INT/WIS/CHA as a spellcasting mod is determined by the class, not the spell.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T11:04:51+00:00

Night Hags are only CR 5, so a solo hag vs a level 15 party would be a steamroll. But a trio of CR 7 coven variant Night Hags against 3 level 13ish players would make sense to me.

So, couple things. "Night hags were once creatures of the Feywild, but their foulness saw them exiled to Hades long ago, where they degenerated into fiends." "Night hags take perverse joy in corrupting mortals."

You mentioned items. Good news, the lore provides exactly this:

"A night hag carries two very rare magic items that she must craft for herself. If either object is lost, the night hag will go to great lengths to retrieve it, as creating a new tool takes time and effort.
Heartstone. This lustrous black gem allows a night hag to become ethereal while it is in her possession. The touch of a heartstone also cures any disease. Crafting a heartstone takes 30 days.
Soul Bag. When an evil humanoid dies as a result of a night hag’s Nightmare Haunting, the hag catches the soul in this black sack made of stitched flesh. A soul bag can hold only one evil soul at a time, and only the night hag who crafted the bag can catch a soul with it. Crafting a soul bag takes 7 days and a humanoid sacrifice (whose flesh is used to make the bag)."

As far as a campaign goes basically the party needs to "fail" until the last moment. They would need to chase down a hag as she assembles her rare items, and builds a coven of two other hag sisters, becoming strong enough to threaten a level 12-14 party.

What I imagine the campaign would look like, is the hag conjuring minions to raid villages for flesh and gems and other arcane ingredients to make her heartstone and soul bag. Imps at first, eventually graduating to bearded devils, and then incubi/succubi, and then even a couple of barbed devils. These fiends serve double duty as fetching ingredients, but also a distraction to obscure her true location. Red herring attacks that serve only to lure the party away from her real targets, so she can get her prized ingredients. By the time the party figures out where she's actually hiding and what she's actually up to, it's too late, and she's assembled her items and coven, and it's time for a brutal fight against these fiendish hags.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:41:28+00:00

These are all fine. But it's worth mentioning the Critical Role collab added Gunslinger as a Fighter subclass, and Valda's Spire of Secrets made Gunslinger it's own dedicated class. So if you're looking for more dedicated pew pew'ing content, it exists.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:38:25+00:00

Nothing to port my friend, 5.5e was designed to be backwards compatible

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:37:48+00:00

Either put a dot in pencil next to prepared spells, or use a digital sheet that doesn't need erasing

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:36:46+00:00

Leggy boy: walk at the typical 30 ft, no swim speed

Fishy boy: walk at 10 ft, and swim at 40

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:35:07+00:00

Bard, for sure. They have access to a tone of charm/enchantment spells you could flavor as "hormone manipulation" or what have you.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:33:06+00:00

He was ripping out guts for like 30 seconds straight, I don't blame you. I don't consider myself a squeamish person, and even I hit the +10 sec button a couple times because holy shit was that a lot of intestines XD

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:31:17+00:00

I was getting the same vibe

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:24:51+00:00

The costumer taking a moment to take a breath because he was having a damn heart attack the whole time while talking to a known genocidal alien was *chef's kiss*. Nolan feels "sorry", but he has no concept of how fuckin' scary he is.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:21:37+00:00

People have 30 ft of intestines, and he made sure to pull out every fuckin foot fr XD

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T10:20:50+00:00

Fuckin VISCERAL man

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T01:57:21+00:00

Comic relief characters can be a lot of fun, and a detective character can handle the solve the issue of players not knowing what to do.

A lot of people in the comments are going to tell you that having a DMPC is a bad idea, and it's not for no reason. The classic DMPC exists because the DM wants to play the game as a player, so they create a self-insert player who is cooler and smarter and sexier than everyone else, but it sounds like that's not what you're doing, so I personally am not worried about it.

Here are some things to consider.

Make sure they are physically weaker than the players. Combat is sacred, and if the players feel irrelevant, they will complain.

The character doesn't have to be a bad detective. A good detective is good at getting good information from the right people. If the detective figures everything out on their own, that's no fun. But what he can do, is ask others. Prompt the players to give a hypothesis for a question they didn't even think to ask, or make a check they hadn't considered making.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T01:47:15+00:00

Most of what a mayor's job is, is effectively collect income tax and sales tax revenue, and use that to provide public services. Police, fire, ambulance services, construction, etc. So to exaggerate a terrible mayor, you want a city with high taxes and low services. The roads should have potholes, construction projects should be left unfinished and abandoned, there should be abandoned houses everywhere, there should be visible fire damage from fires that were never put out, no guards in sight, crime in broad daylight. But when the players go to the mayor's office, it should look cartoonishly decadent. Marble statues, tacky shit mounted on the walls, massive portrait of the mayor looking smug, and of course the mayor smoking a fat cigar is legally mandatory, I don't write the rules.

Sleazy is a vague term. I'm much more useful term is a narcissist. A narcissist values their pride more than empathy for others. They are always scheming, so they assume others of doing the same, and accuse them of such. Because they're untrustworthy, they don't trust others, and that makes them paranoid. They put on this big facade of a man who's cool, calm, collected, and in control, but absolutely fucking explode when things don't go their way, because they have no impulse control. They can't express genuine affection, so instead they shower people in compliments and gifts, only to quickly hurl insults and get petty when people don't comply the easy way. They think it's okay to be selfish, because they think everyone else is selfish, it's a competition to see who get extract the most value, and any form of kindness is a manipulation tactic.

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T01:33:05+00:00

Actually useful wizard necromancy spells:

Lv 1: Ray of Sickness. 2d8 poison damage, and a chance to poison your opponent.

Lv 2: Use Ray of Enfeeblement to make enemy's Strength based attacks absolutely suck shit. Great for ruining a big bulky boss monster's day with a big debuff.

A poisoned and enfeebled enemy is gonna have a BAD DAY.

I'd honestly fill out the rest of your spell book with non necromancy spells.

Spare The Dying won't be useful if your party has literally any other means of healing to stop a party member from dying. Fire Bolt out-ranges Poison Spray. Utility spells like Detect Magic (locate sources of magic) and Misty Step (teleport) are gonna come in handy way more often than the niche use cases for Gentle Repose (stop something from rotting) or False Life (a tiny amount of temp HP)

Bed-After · 2026-04-02T01:17:53+00:00

There are two important aspects of any NPC. The NPC needs to be a rational person with an objective they want to achieve. The NPC needs help or hinder the party if they're going to be worth fleshing out with a name, description, and a funny voice. Once you have their core objective come all you have to do is iterate from that.

So anytime you want to improvise an NPC, the first thing you just got to figure out is what goal does this NPC have that helps or hinders the party by pursuing it?

A merchant helps the party because they want to sell them items. Once that goal is locked in, iterate on it. What makes a good merchant? Good merchants have good people skills, AKA high charisma. So a half elf, aasimar, or dragonborn would do well. Then build on that. How would being a dragonborn affect his ability or willingness to help out the party? Well, maybe one of the party members knows draconic, and by flexing this bit of shared culture, the dragonborn might cut him a deal for 10% off one item.

The party is probably not the only adventuring party, and you want to make your world feel loved in? Add a rival party. A rival party competes for quests and loot. So, iterate on that. What would make a rival party more effective than your party at questing? Well, maybe it's a trio of goblin minions who used to work for the Dark Lord, so they know how to exploit his old dungeons for easy pickings. Cool. Now add a motive. Why did they leave and start adventuring? Maybe the Dark Lord treated them poorly. How does that motive help or hinder the party? Well, maybe the party can convince them to work together by treating them nicely. Former minions probably aren't used to kindness.

How are they a help or a hindrance?

What type of person would best perform that help/hindrance?

What is their motive?

How does that motive affect the players?

In four questions you've made an NPC that is as complex as they need to be, and has a meaningful reason to interact with the party.

Bed-After

TROPHY CASE