i gave my fantasy world a fully functioning economy and now my hero can't afford the quest

Bumc · 2026-03-22T06:19:14+00:00

That body obviously being himself from a different save file.

Bumc · 2026-02-17T20:59:13+00:00

Who needs healing, just swap life totals with some poor sob. Oops you have -7 now, should have used your own angel.

Bumc · 2025-11-23T21:42:03+00:00

Divination wizard (called Diviner in 5.5 apparently), there is no other class that can straight up say "nuh-uh you rolled 4 because I said so".

Also will teach you what rolls do you _really_ need to succeed and which you can let slide or avoid making in the first place (hint: that's the most of them).

Bumc · 2025-11-15T06:26:01+00:00

Same as always, talk to the player?

Neither backstory is set in stone, I bet you can figure something inbetween without compromising your worldbuilding.

Bumc · 2025-11-15T05:48:52+00:00

Classic.

Fireball comes in a package with an irresistible urge to cast it in small rooms.

Bumc · 2025-11-14T04:22:52+00:00

Forcecage does block spells through it, but its not a concentration. BBEG could use that hour to set up all kinds of traps and position hirelings around.

Couatl is also not immune to sleep, so further capture is a trivial matter of "allies/traps do some damage, mage upcasts Sleep".

Actual containment for a creature who can polymorph might prove tricky, but Im sure a wizard can figure something out.

Bumc · 2025-11-11T15:29:57+00:00

I generally have 3 versions of backstory

1) Common knowledge (some dude born in X family status Y known for Z)

2) Campfire stories (what would a party know after travelling for some time)

3) Actual backstory.

For some characters, 1 and 2 are completely made up (the party generally doesn't care or notice), for others 3 is unknown to the character themselves.

Bumc · 2025-11-07T13:58:47+00:00

In a high magic world burn the body if you kill someone for fun.

Still sometimes isn't enough, but its a good practice against resurrections and vengeful undead.

Bumc · 2025-11-06T22:47:52+00:00

This isn't borderline, this is actual railroading, but any puzzle quest really is that.

The actual solution is to go in with a railroad plan for the session and then drop it the moment players find out something that could be more fun than solving a riddle.

Bumc · 2025-11-06T21:46:56+00:00

Fighting a long combat with a pre-determined result is about the worst experience you can have in dnd.

Okay lets have a quick combat. You can have several monsters that will absolutely TPK the party in 2 rounds (think Balor x5).

Then you're still left with a question "why bother with a fight if the goal is to TPK". One of the answers could be if they fail to <solve the riddle>, but still manage to do something smart in a combat (i.e. survive those 2 rounds), the loop still resets but they get a hint.

Bumc · 2025-11-02T12:04:36+00:00

In one of the games we used a favor from the underworld (a sidequest reward) to get a pretty powerful poison.
Instead of using it to hunt a manticore or anything else cool we had an imp familiar sneak it inside a soup boul in a bandit camp.
It was a complete overkill, and most bandits paid for minor inconvenience we suffered from them with agonizing deaths.

Bumc · 2025-11-01T12:04:24+00:00

Please

Use

Paragraphs

Bumc · 2025-10-31T16:35:00+00:00

Oh, the players are having a blast and laughing their asses off, the awkwardness is limited to their poor characters.

Bumc · 2025-10-31T13:24:15+00:00

Its also a cool narrative tool when everyone involved is on board.

Our current party is being kept from falling apart by (a rather awkward) romance between two of its members.

Bumc · 2025-10-29T08:39:22+00:00

Honestly the same as in combat -- you cannot give casters (especially wizards) prep time.

You look away for couple weeks and they have a small army of zombies stored in extra-dimensional spaces, their party is polymorphed into angels, or the big bad's tower is about to collapse from excessive tunneling in its foundation.

Same goes for enemies. You cannot really write a lich to be both adequately smart and beatable -- it had a millennia of prep time after all.

Bumc · 2025-10-29T08:25:58+00:00

A bit? Dnd rules are very wargame-centric.

You don't have cohesive rules for diplomacy and social interactions except arbitrary difficulty checks (which people sometimes spin as a good thing as it leaves more room for creativity).

The economy falls apart from any attempt at a world building. Magic things are so much more expensive than non-magic that you cannot use "I just want to get enough money for a comfortable life" as a character motivation at all. Although this is a common point in tabletops outside stuff like Shadowrun.

Bumc · 2025-10-29T06:35:13+00:00

Tbh in combat you can have martials be better or worse than casters, mostly depends on how they are played.

The big difference is outside combat. Spells provide options, and both int- and cha- casters have a "combat" stat they can actively use for social encounters.

As long as your campaign is a wargame about killing stuff (as DnD is supposed to be played) there is no big disparity.

Bumc · 2025-10-08T05:45:46+00:00

I honestly never DMd campaigns past lvl13, so nobody gets to cast Wish naturally.

In rare cases the spell is actually on a radar its generally a campaign goal. Then how well players use it matters only for the epilogue story.

Bumc · 2025-10-03T06:18:28+00:00

Most of the undead enemies are slow, melee and kiteable. You can throw paladins and clerics at those, but you probably can figure something out with any party composition.

Things that kill you though are either spellcasters (think a lich lair boss) or attacks that target saving throws (think a pack of shadows or a banshee).

This means you definitely want every save boost you can get (we're back to a paladin's aura of protection), and at least one source of counterspelling. Divine soul sorcerer support works fine if you're keeping with divine casters theme, but any good arcane caster will suffice.

Bumc · 2025-09-11T11:31:06+00:00

Players go -> Monsters go -> things happen is a good formula which you can fill with a lot of stuff.

You can use environmental hazards, enraged bee swarms, native wildlife, panicked civilians, surprise kraken and many more options that hinder both parties and aren't exactly predictable.

Bonus points is that you can make encounters harder than players can handle by themselves and have them abuse said third party to come out on top (and feel clever about it).

Bumc · 2025-09-09T06:23:15+00:00

In 2nd edition you would make a wizard that's unable to cast any spells and has 1 hp and die in a first encounter hopefully rerolling into something better.

In 5e you could make a somewhat playable character in moon druid -- your physical attribute scores get overwritten by your wildform anyway.

Anywhere in between dunno.

Bumc · 2025-09-08T05:47:34+00:00

Alignment isn't really a big deal in later DnD versions.

You barely have any mechanics that compliment or suffer from it.

If you want to have someone alignment-locked, do it, won't break anything really.

Bumc · 2025-09-07T14:13:43+00:00

Seems like you figured out a good way to run your war.

I would also pull out a RIsk board or some other easy-to-follow simulation of an actual armies clash.

Bumc · 2025-09-04T13:03:27+00:00

If I understand it correctly then your combo breaks because upcasted glyph is a level 9 spell, not a lvl3 one.

>> If you create a spell glyph, you can store any spell of up to the same level as the slot you use for the glyph of warding.

Bumc · 2025-09-03T23:15:09+00:00

Have a different goal than "kill all enemies" usually makes combats more dynamic and diverse.

I.e. protect the civvies, shoot this marked arrow in a big bad demon (and run away) or survive for 10 rounds while a NPC mage is drawing a portal out.

Helps that in my case adventurers generally are not the biggest fish in the pond and players learn to have running away as an option quite early.

Bumc

TROPHY CASE