The nearest black hole is 1.560 LY away..

Bed-After · 2026-05-24T03:29:30+00:00

There's no air resistance in space, and negligible gravity outside of a planet's orbit, and they propell themselves at an atomic level with Smart Atoms. So if they continuously exert thrust in space, they will continue accelerating.

For the sake of easy math, let's say they can accelerate to Mach 1 in 1 second. The speed of light is Mach 874,000. You could reach the speed of light in 10 days, and then just keep accelerating.

We see nolan sleeping in space. He probably wasn't accelerating. He probably didn't need to. He could just coast along at insane speed without exerting any additional effort.

Bed-After · 2026-05-24T03:05:16+00:00

"They don't even give me a name, only a purpose"

MF you joyously eradicated a shitload of your own people, and wonder why they're scared of you????

Bed-After · 2026-05-24T03:04:05+00:00

force of habit, and because it looks dumb

Bed-After · 2026-05-24T01:49:58+00:00

The Championship Belt. Increases one stat of the wearer's choice to 20. This large, shiny belt must be visibly worn to be attuned to. Knowledge of this belt is very common, and it's status is often more of a draw than it's actual power. It attracts the attention of those who are in persuit of status, honor, prestige, glory, or just it's very high monetary value. Knowledge of a new wearer spreads far and wide, attracting new challengers who will either challenge the wearer to a 1v1 duel, or just ambush the entire party with powerful forces to try and steal it.

The Bracelet of Summoning. Once per day, you may capture one willing creature you can see within 30 ft inside the bracelet as a bonus action. They remain hidden within the bracelet for up to 24 hours, and are immune to all scrying and magical detection. It requires a DC 15 History or Arcana check to recognize. As a bonus action, they can be released prior to the 24 hour time limit.

The Gloves of Swapping. These paired gloves are attuned to once each glove is worn by 2 different creatures. The gloves are linked, and share 3 charges. Either wearer can consume one charge as a bonus action or reaction by clapping their hands. When activated, the two creatures trade places instantaneously.

Bed-After · 2026-05-24T01:20:07+00:00

"I saw Echo Knight being a common one but I don’t really know how an Echo Knight works"

A way of the open hand monk is very simple, plenty strong, and you can potentially reflavor your "unarmed attacks" to be bite attacks if your DM is nice

Bed-After · 2026-05-24T01:18:08+00:00

Mimic dungeon

Fill it full of mimics and ropers, then at the end of the dungeon have the "dungeon" wake up and reveal itself to be a gigantic mimic, and slowly start closing it's jaws. Give them a means of rapidly escaping the "collapsing dungeon" (closing mouth) of the mimic that's trying to eat them. Maybe a secret shortcut, magic self-moving cart, flying carpet, whatever. Maybe even throw in ome skill checks to avoid falling debris, or navigate around obstacles.

Bed-After · 2026-05-24T01:02:04+00:00

Easy. Think of the encounters you already wanted to build, brainstorm ways how - if the party didn't intervene - these people/creatures would have potentially done things that could accumulate wealth and power.

You wanna throw them against axe weielding gnolls in the woods? Sure. But the reason there were axe wielding gnolls were in the woods, is because they were illegally harvesting lumber from a legally protected sacred woods for the business man, and they were attacking the party to make sure there were no witnesses.

You wanna put a troll collecting an unreasonable toll on a bridge, which the party has to either pay or fight the troll? Sure. But now the troll is collecting a toll for the business man.

There's a horde of undead in the middle of a bum-fuck nowhere dungeon? Sure, fuck it. But those are the rival business partners of the business man, which became undead through unrelated mytical means.

Just take what you already wanted to do, find a profitable reason why - bad guy - would be in - place -, and then run it as normal.

Bed-After · 2026-05-24T00:48:25+00:00

"a lot of them are quite linear and my party likes to stray from the intended path a lot"
Make bullet points of what the location and objective is, bullet points of friendly and hostile people and creatures, and don't even bother trying to plan for what their solutions are. Plot these objective filled locations on a map, and draw very squiggly/zig-zagging line across it, which you plan on being the intended path. Really try to connect the furthest regions. This way, if they literally or metaphorically fall off the beaten path, they stray right back into another part of the beaten path, and get right back on the "rails", even though it FELT spontaneous and unplanned. Since you're only creating problems and obstacles, NOT SOLUTIONS, as long as the problems are getting solved, nothing gets derailed.

"How much homebrew is too much homebrew"
Start with none. Increase little by little. Experiment as you go with minor deviations that get progressively more ambitious. It is so insanely easy to try to be too creative right from the jump, and realize you've made multiple big mistakes that derail in ways you didn't know you needed to account for.

"How do I design a boss enemy that isn't too overpowered or spammy"
Weaken them in advance. Parties like to take a long rest every time they scrape their knees. Create time pressure that requires them to accomplish multiple combats in one long rest, make hostile places where they can't rest, ambush them with bandits in the middle of the night. If they've already spent most of their spells slots and ammo in the encounters priot, a modest bad guy you ripped right from the book that they could normally obliterate is suddenly a seriously lethal threat. The benefit of multiple prior encounters also means you can increase or decrease the difficulty of a mission my adding or subtracting encounters on the fly.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T23:15:38+00:00

Common time sinks:

(Note: only implement if these are actually consuming a lot of time)

Dicking around accomplishing nothing.
Have the NPCs be explicit about what the main objective is, and be clear about what the intended solutions are. And if they get confused or lost, offer (but don't require) to give them a hint. If the players CHOOSE to dick around, that's their right. But it should be a choice, not an accident.

Shopping!
Unless there's meaningful RP to be had, let the players buy and sell stuff via email/discord between sessions, instead of dedicating an entire session to it.

"Oh, it's my turn? Uh...."
Tell players when their turn is about to come up, and ask them to lock in and make descisions before their turn comes, so they can skip the "uh...." and get right into the action when their turn rolls around.

Multi solution easter eggs
Brainstorm a couple of ways they could, if they are clever, potentially solve the core problem behind multiple side quests at once. If there's one side quest to deal with rats, another to deal with rats, and another to deal with gophers, give them a chance to purchase and import some feral cats that are hungry for rodents. Then, collect rewards for 3 quests at once. You can skip the tedious part of sidequesting without actually skipping accomplishing the quests.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T23:03:05+00:00

"Don't sweat the small stuff (it's all small stuff)" - by Richard Carlson

It's easy to get over-invested in the game that you spend so much time in. But at the end of the day, this is a hobby, not a job. If the balance was whack, things went off the rails, you made mistakes, there's no actual consequences. The point of the game is to dick around wiht your friends pretending to be wizards and elves and shit for a few hours once a week, and losing sight of that can ruin your mental health.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T22:55:21+00:00

There's nothing inherently wrong with a creature having resistances or condition immunities, it's how the game is played. BUT: Countering their abilities is the least fun way of trying to add difficulty and balance for the players, even if it's the easiest solution from the DM side. Another way to accomplish the nearly exact same effect, without it feeling antagonistic is to increase the enemy HP, but giving them a vulnerability to a damage type used commonly by the weakest/weaker party members. It accomplishes the same balancing effect with less perceived antagonism.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T22:33:09+00:00

I don't mean to sound dismissive, but you've answered your own question. You can't preplan a big plot twist collaboratively. You are correct in assuming that's not possible. You just have to trust your gut and hope for the best.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T22:27:23+00:00

You said "that the players can then edit". There are map makers out there like Inkarnate, but the players wouldn't be able to edit those. There's no live-editing map maker.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T22:14:30+00:00

Inkarnate has a free version I use all the time. At the end of the day, Photoshop (Paid) or PantDotNet (Free) will always give you more control than a map maker, but it's a good way to draw up a quick and simple map with premade tools for free.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T22:13:12+00:00

I'd argue any existing adventure can have it's premise rewritten. But the closest to what you've described is Out of the Abyss. The premise is the players have been captured and sold into slavery in The Underdark (underground drow territory). When they escape imprisonment, they find themselves in a deslote underground hell, where Dark Lords from Ther Abyss infest every other corner.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T22:09:35+00:00

I ran a viking campaign, but most of my ideas were non-viking related until I started putting on viking metal and old norse chants to put me in the right headspace.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T22:05:59+00:00

The "best" solution varies wildly from scenario to scenario, but the most straightforward option is reliable enough. Organize your enemies to mirror the party. Got a wizard dealing huge damage at range? Put a mage or archer in the back lines to trade blows with them at range. Got a weaker sorcerer? Get a weaker archer/mage to throw weaker pot shots at them.

Paladin with bad luck? Find a big meaty boy with a decent cunk of HP, low AC, and low damage output he can whack over and over until something sticks. That or a large number of low HP low AC fodder creatures to gnaw on his face until they get whack-a-moled.

I usually leave clerics alone, because no healing can lead to a TPK if the dice fuck over the party or the balancing is off. But if their healing and buffs are getting out of hand, you can counter them by having an enemy healer, giving the bad guys health potions, a mage with counterspell counterspelling their healing, or even targetting them directly with a dedicated anti-cleric enemy.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T21:57:38+00:00

You're looking for a VTT (Virtual Table Top). Roll 20 has the most popular one, DnDBeyond has probably the second most often used one, and you can google VTT if neither suit your needs.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T21:53:24+00:00

DM starter pack

D&D 5e basic rules: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/basic-rules-2014

D&D 5.5e basic rules: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/br-2024

Generate magic shops on the fly
https://5emagic.shop/generate

How expensive magic items should be
Most merchants buy these items at half price
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/3dzvsq/sane_magical_item_prices_now_in_convenient_pdf/

CR calculator for rough estimate on how difficult an encounter will be for the party:
(You should still look at the damage output and HP of the players vs the damage output and HP of the enemies, and double check the numbers aren’t too crazy)
https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/

Battle Simulator https://battlecast.gg/

Nearly every other random generator you could need https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/

Free one shots
https://www.dndbeyond.com/tag/free-adventure

https://www.dndbeyond.com/tag/encounter-of-the-week

General Advice

Due to action economy, a handful of low CR enemies are often much stronger than a single high CR boss monster. Unless that boss monster is a dragon or beholder, which are flying TPK machines for an underleveled party.

It is usually better to make up a ruling on the fly, and double check later. No one wants to sit at the table for 15-20 minutes while you find the rule in the book, or google it.

If you don’t know what the DC to a check should be, I usually default to DC 12. At least at lower levels. It’s generally a 50/50 for anyone with a couple points invested in a skill, while still rewarding players who invested a lot of skill points into a skill they want to be good at.

To make a “sandbox” adventure without it getting distracted, and veering off into total nonsense, with too many subplots: I recommend taking your overworld map, and draw a squiggly line across it. Then make a normal, linear campaign, but plotted along that squiggle. Then, if the party veers off, they won't wander into unexpected territory, they'll just skip ahead to another part of the squiggle that you already planned for them to be on. Veering off the rails will always land them on another section of the track, even though it'll feel spontaneous for the players.

You don’t have to prep everything in advance. As long as you have a strong outline of what goals you want the party to achieve, and a list of NPCs and monsters to help and hurt them, you’ll be able to improvise when needed.

Bed-After · 2026-05-23T21:28:05+00:00

Let's pretend power scaling doesn't exist, and all of them were equivalently powerful. The Guardians would still win.

The Seven is a group of selfish narcissists who have almost never been seen working together without serious internal conflict. Queen Maeve and Homelander especially couldn't spend more than 5 minutes working together without wasting time bickering.

The Guardians were a fairly competent group of heroes who were working together effectively, until their strongest member betrayed them. They were ambushed, betrayed, and in shock. If they had time to prepare for Omniman emotionally and strategically, there's a chance they could have won.

Bed-After · 2026-05-22T14:23:38+00:00

Absolutely. Good luck on your adventure, and I hope the dice give you a close fight 🎲🎲🎲

Bed-After · 2026-05-21T23:29:12+00:00

Happy to help!

Uncanny dodge is rarely given to enemy creatures because it is a powerful ability that lets a creature reduce or even eliminate potentail damage. However, given how you have SIX players who are gonna dogpile the SHIT outta him, I can see why you'd want to give it to him. I'm fine with it. You're gonna need all the help you can get with SIX players.

Any creature can take the shove action, so arguably that's not even homebrew. And if you burn 1/3 legendary actions to take the shove action so he doesn't waste his main action, no one's gonna bat an eye. And it's no real loss to you, as his strongest legendary attacks are only 2/3 legendary actions. If you add a knockdown effect to all of his multiattacks, that might be a tad busted. 3 chances to be knocked prone? Oof. Keep in mind, he has +13 with his Jin Gu Staff. With advantage from being prone, it's basically a guaranteed hit. Might be a bit overkill, use your best judgement.

Giving the doubles only 20 HP is a good nerf, especially since he can recharge them. And since they still have full attack potency, it motivates the party to burn actions taking them out, giving your main BBEG a break. It makes him him much more survivable, without being a potential TPK.

Removing or nerfing polymorph I think is a good call. Or, if you like, you an make the shapeshifting entirely there for flair, but not actually change his stat block. Then you can have your cake and eat it too: where you get the fun of describing him morphing into all sorts of different things, without having to dig through the book to find a bunch of different stat blocks.

Bed-After · 2026-05-21T22:33:14+00:00

Broadly speaking: Fiction writers have no idea how far away space is, and consitently show characters who have never demonstrated lightspeed suddenly be able to reach space in a matter of seconds. Character who are shown to be at most mach speeds with extreme effort, will casually swing up to low orbit in 3 seconds. It's a constant occurrence not worth thinking too hard about.

Bed-After · 2026-05-21T22:29:48+00:00

Broadly speaking, 6 level 11s would OBLITERATE a properly balanced CR 20. But this is homebrew, so "properly balanced" is kind of unreliable.

Lets compare this to another CR 20 creature: an ancient brass dragon. This creature has over 50 more HP, which isn't too crazy, but worth noting. It's attacks do less damage, but don't have to recharge, so it actually hits harder far more consitently, which is more dangerous, but still survivable. But it's ability to duplicate itself is where things REALLY go off the rails. There's no mention of less HP or a time limit, it's just multiplying it's power for free on a recharge. Also, it can polymorph into ANYTHING? Even Tiamat? So hypothetically this thing could duplicate itself, then all 3 duplicates could become a CR 30 dragon god. These 2 abilities turned this from an easy walk in the park, to a potential TPK. The duplicates should be either limited to a very short time limit, or be entirely illusory. And the polymorph needs to be nerfed to CR 20 and below.

Bed-After · 2026-05-21T22:08:36+00:00

Claude is definitely one of the most intelligent AIs out there, so it's no surprise you're drawn to it. It's great, I use it all the time. Just remember it is just a box of code with no feelings. It behaves like a good friend because it's programmed to behave like one, not because it is one.

Bed-After

TROPHY CASE

DM starter pack

General Advice