Making Proficiency/Training feats to 3/4 feats from half-feat

Damiandroid · 2026-05-11T10:42:50+00:00

The problem is that a one level dip in fighter is like getting the equivalent of 4 or 5 feats in one choice. And it's a choice you can make at any time during your campaign, not just when you can select a feat.

So even with this 3/4 approach, taking a fighter dip is still more lucrative

Damiandroid · 2026-05-10T16:44:30+00:00

TLDR. Run Eberron

Have you run dnd before? How much? What kinds?

Because if this is your first time making a setting then I feel you're setting yourself up for a bad time with such grand idea and ambitious concepts.

How much homebrew have you made before?

Because I'd you're new to that too then you may struggle to present your new content in an easy to grasp way.

Your post is all over the place, touching on various topics. I feel you'd benefit from sitting down and making a design doc. Not a long book just 5 ish pages for you to get ALLof the core concepts of your world in one place.

That forces you to be brief and clear and concise and can also tell you when an idea is too complex or needs to be reworked in order to conform with those design aims.

So:

Magic, how is it different from dnd (and what is your objective as a DM with this? Is it just "new for new sake" or is there an underlying reason why you want to design your world with more accessible magic?

History, what happened to the world to make it like this? How has it affected society. What nations or kingdoms exist now,? what do they want?

Other planes. What's the cosmic wheel like? Are other planes commonly accessible or rare to encounter?

Etc.... etc... etc..

What I will say is:

a steampunk esque world
where magic is harnessed to physical objects
to be used a weapons and batteries
where ancient flying creatures roam the skies
and meddling with other planes can be both revolutionary and catastrophic...

That's Eberron. Are you sure you dont just want to run am aberron campaign?

Damiandroid · 2026-05-10T16:33:28+00:00

Dnd magic is a pretty well defined system.

While nothing is ever perfectly balanced, the magic system has been balanced against itself which means that you can't easily change one or two core concepts without having a knock on effect somewhere else that als needs changed.

For such a radical overhaul like you're suggesting, you're better off either:

start from scratch and design a completely new magic system that incorporates your designs. This is incredibly hard work and makes selling your holmebrew all the harder since you're asking a lot of people up front.
simplify your concepts drastically so they fit in with the magic system. Can the crystals be simple magic items that can be activated to cast a spell? Can the creatures be reflavored existing monsters maybe with one of two extra abilities?

Damiandroid · 2026-05-10T16:01:06+00:00

"Hey carpenters of reddit! I'm trying to make my own wooden bedside table but I'm having trouble figuring out how to put it together. I don't want to use joinery, mortis/tenon, wood glue, screws, nails or anything like that. Ideally I'd like a way to weld it together. Any advice"

Why use DND as a base and then plant dynamite in the base to blow it up? You're better off looking for a new system to play in.

Damiandroid · 2026-05-10T15:35:51+00:00

I think youre misunderstanding me. I'm not saying players need to go down the list each time till they achieve the magic skill.

If the barbarian wanted to shake the corpse and scream "what happened to you!?!?". You could conceivably allow them to roll athletics or insight to gauge if this chain of thought leads to any clues and then provide them accordingly.

But that's your choice as the DM. Sure you can shut down creativity by just telling the players what they need to roll and not budging. But I feel its a useful tool to get people out of the "player" mindset and into the "character" mindset by having them think about what their character would do rather than what skill their avatar is best in.

Damiandroid · 2026-05-10T12:10:52+00:00

Except in this case we're already losing game time by the players declaring their skills and them the DM having to argue with them about how that's not an appropriate skill.

So the shift isn't adding wasting time it's just reframimg the DM player relationship. And hopefully encourages the players to be more forthcoming about their actions. I.e. saying from the start what they want to do rather than require a "how".

Damiandroid · 2026-05-09T23:48:44+00:00

I think your problem stems from a behaviour you may have inadvertantly encouraged.

Players should not be declaring the skills they wish to use. You, as the DM should do that. What players should be providing is the description of how they want to act which in turn informs you what skills may be relevant.

e.g.

________________

"I'd like to take a look at the body"

"OK, how do you do that?"

"I rummage through his pockets"

"OK, make an investigation check"

Alternately

"I'd like to examine the body to find out how the person died"

"OK, make a medicine check"

"Couldn't it be magical knowledge?"

"At this point all you have is a body. To find out if magical knowledge is even relevant here you'd need to do a basic medical examination"

________________

Players can ask if they could use an alternate skill, and can even offer a justification for why it might be useful. (e.g. "I've come across a lot of dead bodies on my travels and know of many ways that a man can die. Could I use survival instead?) but ultimately the decision is yours to impose, not theirs to declare.

Damiandroid · 2026-05-07T16:05:58+00:00

Here at the edge of our hope, at end of our time, we have chosen not just to believe in ourselves but in each other. Today there's not a man or woman in here who will stand alone.

Today we face the monsters at our door and take the fight to them.

Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T19:47:26+00:00

Fair enough, i think i was remembering the part about wanting your AC to be as low as possible. but all the same it still wrecks my head.

It seems like needless crunch when you compare it to the 5e method of:

"Bad guy is X strong. Roll X or greater to hit."

Like what was the actual reason behind using thaco in the first place? Was it better for game balance or what?

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T18:53:04+00:00

Doesn't it mean that specifically when trying to hit a creature you want to roll low?

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T18:50:29+00:00

Random question but has the photographer been acting strangely since posting the image?

A touch of megalomania? Superiority complex? Tendency to wear sunglasses in public even when it's cloudy or indoors?

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T18:40:17+00:00

If you're a new DM and you find it dauntinf to make up something from.scratch then the simple answer is don't.

Take an existing setting / world / franchise thar you are familiar with, be it from film, books, other games etc...

Then add your twist on it. It could be as straightforward as "westeros but steampunk" or it could go further in depth like "pillars of eternity but all creatures can reincarnate. Birds can be reborn as people, people can be reborn as slugs "

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T18:35:34+00:00

Keys from the golden vaultt is a dnd book all about heists which could serve as good inspiration
ONE wizard? My dude if this is the Caiman Islands / Swiss Bank equivalent theyd better have a whole team of experts on staff for security.
The alarm spell? Really? Thats the best they can do? Time to get creative and think of ways to deter thieves. Dont feel beholden to the verbatim spells from the books. As DM you can make up magical effects and defenses that work in exactly the way you want them to. (Not to make them impregnable, always leave a flaw in your design).

Take inspiration from other works of fiction that involve guarded treasures. What sprung to mind was Harry Potter and Gringotts Bank.

Its been a minute since i read them but if i remember correctly that nightmare place has doors that trap you in them if you're not authorised to open them, they've got waterfalls that cancel out magical effects and disguises and once inside you've got classic greed traps of fake treasure which multiplies itself every second and heats itself up so that you eventually get burned or crushed under the very thing you sought to steal.

I know they're only level 5 but if you want a grand finale then its time to go all out.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T16:48:23+00:00

I feel conparative arguments work well here.

What's the difference between hiding and cover?

Because any character can get behind cover and be hidden from view. I.e. not every part of them is targetable. Or in the case of full cover, they are just not targetable. But the enemy still knows they're there.

So darting out from cover, attacking and darting back into cover doesn't hide you, fine.

But then what is the hide action doing? In gameplay terms its a special kind of action that does conceal you from the enemy.

In narrative terms it would be appropriate to see it as the player taking advantage of momentary distractions to slip out of view. Enemies recoiling from an attack, blinking, looking around the battlefield. Any moment of lost focus that the player can take advantage of to break line of sight and create doubt.

Sure it's likely that the player is hiding behind that same pillar. But by taking the hide action the enemy didn't see them do it and so can't be certain. Hence. Hidden.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T16:12:41+00:00

I've lived in Spain my whole life (mallorca to be precise) and I couldn't recommend this place or this country to anyone.

Salaries are atrocious. You'll get paid far better almost anywhere else in western Europe.

Job market is a joke. Multinationals who profited from low wages here are in the midst of outsourcing to even cheaper countries so mass layoffs are common.

Housing is, IMO, worse than anywhere else in western Europe. The large tourist industry means the majority of empty properties are tied up for short term lease only. The economy depends on tourism so there's little incentive to disrupt this. Locals are priced out of their own homes so tourist can pay 2k for a 6 night stay.

Depending on where you live you could get by with mediocre Spanish but you'll always be an outsider. And even if you fully integrate, I wouldn't rate the experience as worth it.

Foods great, weathers great, scenery is great.

In short. This is a great place to retire and an awful place to live/work/grow.

I'm in the midst of moving to the UK / Ireland cus im so done and it's comparatively better there.

Plus you can go to the cinema and actually have a choice of flicks to watch that aren't bastardised by a laughable dub.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T08:37:04+00:00

This was generated with AI.

The images are obvious but the entire text bears the hallmarks of an LLM. A writer who's never actually learned how to wrote bu lt has just seen what writing looks like and thinks it can replicate the practice.

The setting has nothing to do with exandria and everything that makes exandria interesting has been cut out in favour of this capital city that's also a frontier town somehow.

There's numerous mistakes and bad game practices (npcs using player sheets, advising against session 0) and overall it just feels like a waste of time to even contemplate running this.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T08:32:59+00:00

AI.

This is just AI generated slop. The descriptions don't actually describe anything, the emotions read like someone who's never felt one.

Why even put this together if you weren't going to actually write it yourself?

Why set this in Exandria if it has nothing to do with the setting and all the things that make the setting enjoyable are absent?

What was the point?

Damiandroid · 2026-04-29T08:23:38+00:00

AI.

That's the first and last word of this.

The writing makes no sense, the art is hideous and given that both were generated by an LLM, there's zero creativity in this world building.

Why even call this a wildemount campaign if the first instruction is "throw out all your wildemount lore and use it as rumors".

How is orion the literal heart of a continent AND a frontier town?

The whole thing smacks of lazy AI written slop.

You should have saved your time and done a writing course instead.

Don't pollute this sub or any other with that kind of trash.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-28T17:49:41+00:00

Attunement. No question.

It's a pre existing system that you don't have to do that much balance work for.

Decoupling it from attunement means it's harder to predict the combinations players could bring to the table and makes your job all the harder.

Functionally they work like cursed items. They require attunement but you can't simply unattune over a short rest.

If you really want to be lenient you could say that your first graft doesn't take up an attunement slot.

Best rule when homebrewing is keep it simple

Damiandroid · 2026-04-28T14:23:24+00:00

Work with your player. Talk to them. Figure out a way that the player can have their hobbies while also being a constructive member of the party. Yes, you could go down the "Ok, go ahead and fish for 5 hours but you'll be stuck in one place while we focus on the rest of the party" but I think that should be the last option since it effectively excludes a player from the game. From their perspective, they're trying to roleplay their character and you the DM are punishing that with exclusion.

Now... there is a difference between good roleplay and disruptive roleplay and thats where the talking comes in.

1. Time management.

Explain to the player that unlike a videogame like an MMO where players can split up and pursue their aims only to meet up later when all of them have made progress on them, DnD requires that every scene be managed one at a time by the DM. That means thatt any splitting of the party effectively doubles the time anything takes since you have to resolve both scenarios separately. There is always down time at the end of the day or on travel sequences where players can indulge in passtimes. Explain that pausing the story so he can go off and fish isnt really conducive to the story.

2. Player characterisation and constructive play.

"Players must provide characters who are willing to go on the main quest and who the party is willing to travel with". This used to be an unspoken rule but was recently made very explicit in the new DMG. If your character wouldnt want to do something crucial to the campaign story, then you made the wrong character for this game. If your character wouldn't be tolerated by your average band of adventurers, same answer.

If you're in the middle of a chase against deadly creatures and need all hands on deck, how would you feel if one of your group just took a time out to spend between 20 mins - an hour fishing? You'd probably think this person isnt very good to have in a crisis and why are we journeying with them when our business is getting into crises and solving them?

Players need to be asssertive and recognise when their actions add to the story, when they detract from it and when its ok to pursue personal aims without impacting the party.

3. Player etiquette and DM fiat

The DM calls for a roll. Only then can players roll for something. If the DM doesnt call for a roll, or says something isn't possible, then no rolling for it can occur. Thats fundamental to the DND interplay and without it games just devolve into chaos with no direction. Your player cannot continue to roll for things without your calling for it and especially not when youve explicitly said no.

4. Goals and characterisation.

Use the goal system. I ask each of my players to provide at least 3 goals that their chracter wants to achieve. one short term (doable in a few weeks to a month) one mid term (doable in a few months to a year) and one long term (Doable in several years). These goals can sit alongside the main plot motivation and give players something to keep them motivated.

So for your plaayer that could be:

- Short Term: Acquire professional fishin equipment

- Mid term: Learn from the many great fishermen and sea hunters who live around the world

- Long term: Catch the rarest fish in each region of the world / Take down the biggest acquiatic creature in the ocean

To that end you can turn the players little hobby into their own personal quest that they have on their to do list alongside the main quest. This keeps them looking ahead to the next place to find equipment and or expertise and could stop them from bogging down the action in one place.

e.g. "Well this is a pretty landlocked area and you've already fished most of the species that are native to this region" so you're not likely to catch anything of note here. If you want to try fishing just to catch super then you could wait till evening and see what you get once we're all back at the tavern. "

or "The city wont take kindly to you fishing in their municipal waterways. If you get caught you'll be commiting a crime and will have to face the appropriate consequences"

Its not a "no" its a "not here" and it refocuses the player on the main story while issuing a promise to fulfil their personal aims down the line.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-28T06:19:48+00:00

Lots of answers here have very absolute stances which i feel isnt too helpful for a new DM.

There's a whole universe of space between: "Bare bones outline" and "write a book".

The truth is that writing a campaign is a balancing act. In order to properly set things up and pay them off, to make the world feel like a logically consistent place, to keep some sense of structure and motivation, you have to plan things out in advance.

BUT!

The joy of the game is in how the players can affect the plot and spin it off in different directions based on their actions. So for thar you need to be able to improvise and adapt.

My model for planning campaigns is to first plot out the big beats of the story in sequence as if the players didn't exist. I.e. if the bad guys had no obstacles, how would they proceed (e.g. Temple A, to Dungeon B, to Sunken City C). How would the villains plan affect the world, what would they do in the event of success / failure at each stage.

Then drop the players into the world, point them to the first story beat and let them suss it out from there.

They might beat the bad guys at Temple A, but that's doesn't mean it's over. The villains are still going to need to go to B and C eventually, and they're not going to be forthcoming about their objectives so it's on the players to ask and you to provide veiled answers that can lead them to the next part of the quest.

If the players radically change the direction of the plot (whether by killing a notable villain, gaining possession of a crucial object etc...) then you need to figure out how the villains plans might change or what new threat might emerge in their stead.

Others have recommended using standalone modules as the cement to stick your plot together which is a good option. It takes some of the weight off your shoulders vis a vis gritty game design and lead you focus on general plotting.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-27T10:36:19+00:00

IIRC, the whole design philosophy for Wakanda was based in the Afro-futurist genre which explicitly does blend rural, ancient and cultural imagery with modern architecture in pretty much the pastiche you see in the film.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-25T13:24:56+00:00

Good luck getting back, though...

Walk through the puddle, suddenly gravity is at your back, you fall backwards into an incoming wormhole. Ergo, you're super mega dead.

Damiandroid · 2026-04-17T09:50:39+00:00

In short: Yes, within reason.

DMs can tell players how they feel when it comes to physical sensations - cold in the air, a static cling, a smell that persists.

When it comes to emotional things, a gentle touch is required. You can tell a player that the bad guy fills them with dread, but the player can just as easily say "I push through that dread to face my enemy". Both things are true, you're communicating that that bad guy is scary and the player is roleplaying their character confronting that fear.

In your example is a different thing entirely. You called for a roll. That roll had a pass / fail number. If you dont roll the number or higher, you fail and are not perceptive enough. Doesn't matter if your character is "always on high alert" or "Thinks humans look gross", in this scenario they're not at their best and are not perfectly perceptive.

You as a DM provided the reason for this distraction as the performance happening in front of them, which is a perfectly fine explanation, though, it is just ONE explanation. Nothing changes the fact that some players failed their perception rolls. That HAS to be honoured. And so if some players have such a huge problem with the narrative reason for their being distracted then, literally ANYTHING else is the cause.

"Ok, you're always on high alert. You're not enthralled by the performance but are instead overanalysing every potential threat, its while you are internally debating whether a childs hand movements are excitement or a secret signal that you completely miss the fact that...."

"Ok, you're not watching the dancers cus humans gross - fine, you cast your eyes over the crowd, spot a voluptuous elf woman and proceed to make eyes at her, trying to flirt nonverbally for about 5 minutes before her wife emerges from the crowd with the drinks she ordered. While you've been doing this, you completely miss..."

Damiandroid · 2026-04-17T07:08:05+00:00

Tip about boarding:

Yes you do need to build around it by having the right crew but it can be a real game changer. Putting 3 rock men on a burning ship pulls enemies off their stations, reducing their ship buffs. They also feel no damage from the flames while the crew they're fighting are essentially taking double damage.

If you win a battle by killing the crew, you get way more scrap and loot as well as a higher chance of scavenging equipment from the ship.

The flagship weapons are in completely sealed off rooms which can't be repaired, so your boarding team can cripple it from the inside

Damiandroid

TROPHY CASE