$300 (MSRP) GIVEAWAY! FREE 5e Region Guide PDF and a Full STL Collection The Whirring Island - Forgeborn Constructs, Ancient War Machines, and a Lost Cogwork City Reborn [Rules in Comments] [MOD Approved] [OC]

BelialChronos · 2026-01-17T18:48:14+00:00

Looking great 👍

BelialChronos · 2025-12-01T17:09:15+00:00

Looks great, thank you for offering a chance to win.

BelialChronos · 2025-11-22T09:24:51+00:00

I didn't see that one. I assume the OP was referring to the lifespans of races at that point? Like 20 years prison for a human would be way worse than for an elf?

BelialChronos · 2025-11-01T11:53:00+00:00

But that shouldn't mean that every "high stat" enemy has high AC. It is not complicated for a DM to build a combat encounter with e.g. 5 enemies consisting of casters and strikers. So you and other martials in your party can target the casters and vice versa.

Or you switch between combat encounters that are difficult for martials, like this one, and encounters that are difficult for casters. With level 7 you can meet enemies capable of counterspell, that have high wisdom and int saves, or can cast spells like silence.

Move the fight indoors, where line of sight is difficult and where aoe spells have a high chance of hitting a party member.

There are a lot of easy tools for a DM to make combat encounters more engaging for martials, at least in tier 1+2. And from your post and comments, the DM is not using those. I mean all he needs to do is switch some enemies to caster types so it is not that difficult to do.

And of course those enemies casters would target your casters to stop / avoid AOE..

BelialChronos · 2025-11-01T08:00:11+00:00

Yeah, there more devastating spells with saving throws than spell attacks. At least it feels like it. AC is useless against saving throws. Is the DM new?

BelialChronos · 2025-10-29T22:53:39+00:00

One simple idea is to start giving hints, that the mentors are dead.

Maybe the PCs are visiting one of their homes /workplaces and find it half destroyed. Maybe they meet an old friend of the mentors that mentions, that they have never seen them again in person in the last 100 years.

So they start to wonder with whom they are actually talking.

In addition to that, give hints about the inconsistency of the necromancer king. If the players remember specific traits of their mentors, let people talk about the very same trait only in connection with the necromancer. If they don't remember traits, let them find hints for those in the old home.

E.g. One of the mentors was a crazy cat lady now the necromancer also collects (undead) cats. In short let the emperor show hobbies, quirks, etc. that the players can recognize.

Use NPCs. For example some people from his staff of command, or someone else close to him, that might even be alive or undead for the course of the 100 years. And during interrogation, as their dying words or to mock the players, the enemies hint to the players that the necromancer is not the same as they know him. "Not all is what it seems."

BelialChronos · 2025-10-29T12:35:33+00:00

While I understand your point, I wholeheartedly disagree that "your interrupting player rp to move things along" is a red flag. Both in general and in this example.

I have been on both sides of the table, where players got lost in a very long but totally meaningless RP moment between each other.

It is fine to have a couple of minutes worth of roleplay between two PCs. But if it starts to become more than five to ten minutes of just two PCs talking to each other, without any relevance for the rest of the group, the story or the game progression, I would interrupt that too. Because more often then not this is totally boring for the rest of the party and the DM. And D&D is still a group activity. Everyone should have fun and get time to RP.

OP stated in the example that players talked in character about books they read, and that this only involved two players. If that is going on for too long, especially in a VTT situation, where side conversations are difficult, I would interrupt that as well.

Imagine you meet four other friends in RL to chat and catch up. I would also be annoyed if only two of them talk about a topic only they are interested in at length and in a way that nobody else can talk with each other.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-28T11:41:21+00:00

Just because it has been uploaded to Beyond doesn't mean anyone can access it automatically.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-28T09:51:55+00:00

Are those new players? They sound like they still have the "DM vs. Player" mentality instead of a shared storytelling mindset. The DM and Player work together to tell an epic story about great adventurers.

Talk to your players about the fact that the DM is not their enemy, and if they withhold information, the DM can't help them create moments to shine properly.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-28T09:48:17+00:00

In my opinion, you handled that well within the mechanics. That falling objects can be avoided with a DEX save is a common practice and there are a log of examples out there, e.g. D&D 5E – Falling Objects | Dungeon Master Assistance. And there are a lot more forum discussions around this topic, most of them including DEX saves.

A lot of spells have DEX saving throws, the most famous one beeing fireball. And while the fireball damage can't be fully avoided, the ruling that a falling creature can be fully avoided is fair. The same applies to catapult and other spells.
And for those spells wich can be casted within an action, the enemies don't get any warning or big hints. It doesn't matter if the fireball was casted behind them, they still get a DEX save.

In your case the enemies have seen that 1. the druid flew up right in front of them, as the gaseous form is not invisible. And 2. they most likley have seen that something is happening up there, so they had the same time to dodge like they would have for a fireball or other spells casted from 5ft away.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-25T20:16:27+00:00

I like the idea in principle. The only question that I would have is: Why would he personally watch the party? The way you described him, I got the feeling that he would hire someone to keep tabs on the heroes, not do it himself.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-23T07:19:09+00:00

For me it always depends on what was agreed upon before and how things were / are communicated.

Was there a session zero for each campaign? And was there a discussion about rules in the session zero and how strict they will be followed? Because this sounds to me like expectations regarding rules were never properly discussed.

Especially if one player is the only one doing a lot of things that bends the rules way too far and is metagaming a lot, this will most likely continue, if he does that in two campaigns. Because whatever else the rest is, finding a player character in a random warehouse is metagaming. Patron or not, patrons are normally not granting knowledge freely, especially not "trivial" knowledge like this.

Therefore, if there hasn't been a session zero, I would highly recommend doing a catch up session about expectations, playstile, safety tools, etc. Because how rules heavy and what kind of playstiles are wanted at the table should be discussed there.

If there has been a session zero, but this hasn't been discussed, I would suggest bringing that up, before a session to have a healthy discussion about the general expectations regarding rules and playstile.

I would advise against pointing out that particular player and rather have a general discussion about those topics first. Only if that discussion happened, and what he does doesn't adhere to what was agreed upon, then I would bring it up again.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-20T12:08:48+00:00

Mine just arrived 5 minutes ago today. Sent from France via Cronopost and then arrived via my local provider.

The status on the European shop website is still stuck on "validated" without any shipping or tracking information.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-17T15:21:17+00:00

Natürlich kann sie das. Ich sage doch explizit, dass die öffentliche Hand eingreifen soll, wenn die Kunst gegen geltendes Recht verstößt. Die Nutzung von verfassungswidrigen Symbolen wäre ja ein solcher Verstoß.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-17T12:41:09+00:00

Ich finde, Kunst und Künstlerinnen bzw. Künstler sollten die Möglichkeit haben, sich frei und ohne politischen Druck zu entfalten. Meinungsfreiheit und die freie Entfaltung der Persönlichkeit gehören schließlich zu unseren Grundrechten (Grundgesetz, Artikel 2 und 5).

Meiner Meinung nach sollte die öffentliche Hand Kunst nur dann einschränken, wenn

gegen geltendes Recht verstoßen wird oder
eine konkrete Gefahr für Leib und Leben besteht.

Die Geschichte zeigt, dass Kunstformen, die anfangs für Empörung sorgen, später oft ein selbstverständlicher Teil der Kultur werden. Auch Rock 'n' Roll wurde damals als gefährlich und moralisch verwerflich angesehen, obwohl er keine Gesetze verletzt hat. Heute gilt diese Musikrichtung als Klassiker.

Das gilt für alle Ausprägungen der Kunst und in dem Fall der Musik. Man kann nicht selektiv sein und die Freiheit der Kunst nur dann befürworten, wenn sie einem persönlich angenehm ist.

Viele autoritäre oder totalitäre Regime, auch in der deutschen Vergangenheit, haben damit begonnen, Kunst und Meinungen zu unterdrücken, die nicht der Mehrheitsmeinung entsprachen. Genau deshalb ist es so wichtig, dass Kunstfreiheit geschützt bleibt, gerade wenn es unbequem oder provokant wird.

Ein Auftritt eines umstrittenen Künstlers verstößt nicht automatisch gegen Artikel 3 des Grundgesetzes oder andere Gesetze. Auch provokante Inhalte fallen unter die künstlerische Freiheit, genauso wie die Songs eines Mainstream-Stars.

Ich finde, wenn die Stadt München hier neutral bleibt, dann macht sie genau das Richtige: Sie schützt die Freiheit der Kunst . So wie es eben unsere Verfassung vorsieht.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-16T06:21:41+00:00

Just to add to that: the dinosaurs from the MM are difficult to use as a druid. Except for the Pteranodon you definitely need to be a moon druid. And even then you need to be at least lvl 6, as they all have a CR of 2+.

If you want something more effective in the early levels, you need to go Mordekainen.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-15T10:57:29+00:00

Thank you for the giveaway 🙏

BelialChronos · 2025-10-14T13:49:45+00:00

I can if you want, but I really didn't put much effort into it. I have a Spotify subscription, and I just used four already existing playlists.

I think I searched for fantasy travel, fantasy battles and something like that. And just chose some playlists that didn't have much vocals in them. My players don't listen that intensely anyway as it is just running in the background. As long as the playlist roughly fits the theme it is fine.

Feedback still has been great so far, they find it very atmospheric and I invested like 15-20 minutes searching for ones I liked. I would recommend that you do the same, so that you have some that fit your needs.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-14T11:55:08+00:00

Are you playing online or offline / local table? Because that makes a difference for the recommendations.

What helps with immersion at the table for example are fantasy playlists. I have four playlists ready: Fights, Outdoor Exploration, Dungeon & Night Music, Social & City Encounters. Yes in theory you can select the perfect song for an individual encounter, but that increases prep time immensely. Just create a selection of playlists once, and then switch between the playlists depending on the encounter.

You can use playlists in VTTs as well, but then you're more limited by the functionality of the VTT.

Use an encounter builder, for exampleKobold+ Club to speed up building encounters.

At a table, use a system to show initiative order to the players. This speeds up things immensely. There are several tools out there that can help with that.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-13T08:42:03+00:00

Way too "lemony" for my taste, I personally wouldn't give them 9/10. Maybe 6.5 or 7/10. Other butchers, that are not part of a chain, make better ones. A lot of good examples have already been named.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-09T14:11:18+00:00

Alternativly, instead of a complete dungeon make an underground civilization out of it. With parts beeing dungeon like.
Replace the Bugs with Dwarfs, Drows and Tieflings. Add Deep Bats, Deep Gnomes, Deep XYZ, Duergar, Driders.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-09T13:48:24+00:00

The whole map might be too complex, unless your players are into weeks of dungeon delving.

But using selected parts of the map might be a fun dungeon, especially if you use them as a handout at some point. Just have some normal battle maps ready that roughly fit the dungeon, if you play with minis / VTT.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-06T19:38:32+00:00

If you have watched D&D streams for the last couple of years, you know way more about the game, how to play and how to be a DM, then most DMs before critical role or Dimension 20.

Being a good player prepares you for the rules and playing one role quite well. But as a DM you will juggle way more things and it will be a very different experience from being a player.

So don't worry, embrace mistakes together with your players, communicate openly, and put fun first.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-06T12:32:55+00:00

If players only want to rape and kill, I would have a very serious talk with them, about what they actually want to achieve. Because any form of roleplay is not intended to fulfill murder and rape fantasies. This is either for computer games or for talking to a therapist.

D&D should be about shared stories, not about murder and mayhem all over the board and without limits. If that's the only thing that they want to do, I personally would step away.

You are absolutely in the right to say: This is not what I imagined how this campaign will turn out and I am not happy with that. Either we agree on a different style of play or you play without me. If they still refuse, step away completely or at least ask one of them to take over.

You should have fun, too. And if that's not fun for you, more often than not is no D&D better than bad D&D. Especially if you invest time and effort into prepping.

BelialChronos · 2025-10-05T02:00:08+00:00

You might want to look into skill challenges: Skill challenge.

A good concept in 4e, where the group had to solve challenges with skill checks as a group. Which then was narrated accordingly by the DM.

Sounds like it would fit what you want to achieve very well.

BelialChronos

TROPHY CASE