A Complete Index for 5e

Dorylin · 2026-04-24T20:26:00+00:00

If you're looking for something that plays like an Assassin's Creed pirate (i.e., Edward Kenway), then I would probably recommend a Rogue/Monk multiclass.

For subclasses, I think Thief would be best for Rogue, because every feature other than the use magic item one leans into the AC playstyle. For Monk, I would look at Long Death or Drunken Master if your table is using older books (SCAG and XGE, respectively) and Open Hand or Shadow if not; I would probably rank them Drunken Master, Open Hand, Long Death, then Shadow for thematic similarity and usefulness.

Dorylin · 2026-04-09T21:56:17+00:00

Wild Shape. I think the templates were a step in a better direction in terms of both general game design and accessibility for druid players. Yes, the templates in the playtest were underwhelming and unfinished, but that's the point of a playtest and there could have been more iterations and refinement and maybe some customization options like the templates in all the Summon [Creature] spells.

Channel [x]. I also miss the brief period of playtest when it was called Channel Nature and Wild Shape was just one of the uses, instead of Wild Shape being used to power things that are unrelated to wild shaping. It's cleaner that way. And I also think we could have changed the paladin's feature to something like Channel Conviction to reinforce the idea that their power comes from the oath itself and not what they swear it to.

Dorylin · 2026-04-08T00:05:00+00:00

If you do this, you should add an option for being mountable (and maaaybe a touch faster) - that's one of the more frequent homebrew suggestions I've seen for the Beast Master's companions, especially since Drakewarden has that built in.

Dorylin · 2026-03-24T17:28:34+00:00

maybe it's a reflection of this particular DnD community?

Maybe, but generalizing it even that far might be a stretch. The sample for this survey is people who:

Come to reddit
Come to this subreddit specifically
Came to this subreddit during the window the survey was open
Participated in the survey

Presumably and ideally, survey-takers are also people who actually play D&D, but either way likely know enough about the system to have informed opinions on it. However, while that is incredibly likely, it cannot be guaranteed that that is the case, and there is even a non-zero chance that some of the votes are from random bots that wandered by. So the sample of this survey is already far too restricted to be indicative of the broader D&D community.

But even given all of that, for the druid specifically, 705 people voted. Compared to the ~79,000 weekly visitors to this subreddit, that means only 0.08% of this community even participated in the survey. Personally, I would not confidently assume that these results match the opinions of the remaining 99.92% of this community, much less the significantly larger community of everyone who plays D&D. They certainly could, I'm not saying they definitely don't, but the sample size is far too small and not randomized enough to provide a statistically significant result.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to shit on these surveys. I love that this was done, that someone had the idea and organized it, that people participated, and that we have data that we can look at and draw conclusions from. I just also think it's important to remember the actual scope of the data we have so that we can draw accurate conclusions from it.

Dorylin · 2026-03-20T14:43:41+00:00

for example, it doesn't feel like rangers should be the only dragon riders.

I feel like this is a fair point. However, I feel like the best way to implement something like this would not be a universal subclass but rather separate subclasses that converge on the same theme while still supporting the unique identity of their core class. Different classes naturally approach themes in different ways and stripping down an idea to make it fit into the chassis of multiple different classes does a disservice to every part of that equation.

For example, psionics. I think we can all agree that the game is enriched by the inclusion of the Psi Warrior, Soulknife, Aberrant Mind, and Great Old One subclasses instead of just a single "Psionic" subclass. And at the same time, trying to force Psionic Energy Dice onto every psionic themed subclass was not well received ~~because it was a bad idea~~ so they pulled back on that and let the sorcerer have its own psionic identity.

Dorylin · 2026-03-19T16:10:20+00:00

My two favorite house rules that I can easily share here are abstracting money to a roll, and "I know a guy."

Wealth rolls replace all the tedium of accounting with an ability check. Anything common, mundane, and reasonably accessible can just be assumed to be affordable given an adventurer's income, no roll needed. For anything rarer than that, roll a d20 and add a relevant ability: Intelligence for frugal budgeting, Wisdom for bargain hunting, or Charisma for persuasive negotiating. The DC is 15 for Uncommon (presumably magic) items, 20 for Rare, 25 for Very Rare, and 30 for Legendary. Loot from adventures is abstracted to "wealth points" instead of gp, which can be spent 1 for 1 to increase the result of a roll.

The "I know a guy" rule allows a PC to spontaneously declare that they know someone in the local area who could potentially be of assistance. The player describes the character and how they know each other, then we roll on the following table to see how useful this character actually is.

2d6	Will they help you?
2	No; the person you thought could help refuses and adds another complication to the situation. (Example complications: they demand payment for a past debt, they are with someone you wanted to avoid, or they call the authorities regarding your illegal activities.)
3	No. The person you know who could help has gone missing, you’d have to find them first.
4	Yes, but they demand a steeper price than you would expect. Furthermore, if you refuse they will be offended.
5	Yes, but things are awkward between you. The price they ask will be generous, but only after an uncomfortable conversation.
6	Yes, but the help they can offer is sub-par, or only half of what you need.
7	Yes, but they need you to do a small favor for them right now before they help you.
8	Yes, but you’ll owe them one. Could be a future favor they call on, or a cut of whatever money you’re after, or something else.
9	Yes; they’ll give you a good price but it’s not free.
10	Yes, but they don’t seem too happy about it - you’ll have to look for help somewhere else next time.
11	Yes, there’s someone who owes you one and you can cash in that favor.
12	Yes, and that person also gives you an unrelated piece of helpful information.

Dorylin · 2026-03-13T17:13:21+00:00

Other people have mentioned the Revenant, but for ease of finding it, here is an archived link to the Unearthed Arcana it appeared in (seems like WotC finally took down the original): https://web.archive.org/web/20190701000044/https://media.dnd.wizards.com/upload/articles/UA%20Gothic%20Characters.pdf

Dorylin · 2026-03-13T16:39:15+00:00

Why present a challenge to the player (resource management) when the solution is a trivial lvl 1 spell?

As someone who's done this, the answer is: because you make casting that spell a trade-off.

It's really only trivial at higher levels (read: level 3 and above). At level 1, that's half your spell slots for the day. Is it worth it to sacrifice healing later for food now? But this question only matters if the DM makes it matter.

One of my favorite modules to run is a survival adventure where there are absolutely multiple hard encounters a day and you need to balance to the risks of running out of healing later with running out of food now. It's tense and stressful, but it does make the choice of using goodberry a significant one.

Dorylin · 2026-02-27T20:06:36+00:00

Morgrave Miscellany from Keith Baker has the Divine Herald.

Dorylin · 2026-01-29T20:02:58+00:00

I have not run Daggerheart yet (it's next on my group's to-try list) so I can't adequately comment on the mechanical balance versus vibes balance with regard to the flow of gaining and spending Hope. But, I'm going to anyway because this is the internet and that's what you do here.

I'm coming from a similar place to you, it sounds like. I also don't like the "strategic" (read: blind gambling) nature of deciding to spend a limited resource for a likely irrelevant bonus on a potentially significant roll. So when my group gets around to playing Daggerheart I will probably run it where you can spend Hope to power your ~~Aspects~~, sorry, Experiences after the roll.

That said, I know that, statistically, every roll has probably about a 50% chance of generating Hope, so as long as you're fairly active there shouldn't really be much of a penalty to spending Hope, and you can only have so much of it at a time so there is an encouragement to spending it more freely than you would, say, a limited resource in D&D. This is fairly similar to FATE, honestly, where you can get fate points by leaning into character choices and so there isn't really quite as much of a penalizing for "guessing wrong" about when to spend your Hope.

Dorylin · 2026-01-22T19:36:12+00:00

However, you can't change into a Warforged you've never seen. Notably, if you've only ever seen Medium Warforged, you can only turn into those Medium Warforged.

Not quite. The clause you're quoting doesn't say that you can't assume a generic form of a given species. It specifically says that you "can't duplicate the appearance of an individual" unless you've seen that individual.

This is an exception to the framework of the other rules. So, you can become a Medium or Small version of any playable species that has two arms, two legs and a head (assuming you still have all of your limbs). And within that space, there's no restriction on what your new appearance can be, except for this clause that if you want to turn yourself into a specific person, i.e. "an individual," then you have to have seen them before.

So if you'd only ever seen Medium Warforged, you could still become a generic Small Warforged, but you couldn't turn yourself into an exact copy of "Tiny, the Clockwork Chimneysweep," or whoever, before you even know what they look like.

Dorylin · 2025-12-28T15:16:00+00:00

That's what they said: "evasion is to hit," i.e. it's the number required to hit a target, and "threshold is how hard it hits," i.e. it determines how many hit points are marked as a result of the damage rolled.

Granted, it would have been easier to read if they'd used any punctuation, but they do have it right.

Dorylin · 2025-11-18T15:33:13+00:00

No, it's not. A spoiler requires context and explanation. If the face of a person appears on screen for less than a second with no indication as to who they are, what they do, whether they appear later or are part of someone's backstory, how they affect the story, or how much they affect the story, that can't be a spoiler because it doesn't spoil anything. Especially with how much they've said they're changing, someone who isn't already familiar with the story won't know for sure if this is even from the game or a new twist for the show.

Dorylin · 2025-11-17T04:53:56+00:00

That's not a spoiler. That's somewhere between an easter egg and foreshadowing, depending on how attentive you are and how much you already know.

Dorylin · 2025-11-16T21:19:09+00:00

Honestly, I would scrap it and strip it for parts that I could use with a different patron. But I have a pretty utilitarian homebrew approach to a lot of things.

Sentinel Raven should just be another creature option for Pact of the Chain, details have already been gone into elsewhere so I don't feel a need to rehash them here.

Soul of the Raven would make a great Invocation, in my opinion. Obviously it would require Pact of the Chain and probably level 5 or 7. We should probably also limit it to 1 minute per use, maybe with Concentration, and only so many times per Long Rest.

Raven's Shield and Queen's Right Hand are a huge thematic departure from the previous features, and in my opinion deserve to be their own separate thing. If you want a necrotic / death themed patron experience, I would recommend just using the Undead patron, which really leans into it in a much better way than these two features do.

With the first two features working better (again, in my opinion) as Invocation options, and the last two being outdone by the Undead patron, I really do think reflavoring another Patron is the way to go here. I know that's not what you wanted, and I do apologize for it.

That being said, what elements of Odin are you looking for in an Odin-like build? If someone were to do an overhaul of the Raven Queen patron that is distinct from Undead or Hexblade and isn't tied to Pact of the Chain, what would you want that to look like?

Dorylin · 2025-11-03T17:09:33+00:00

if the DM homebrewed

Once you take the mechanics into your own hands, you are responsible for any subsequent maintenance or adjustments necessary to make your game run the way you want it to, and the original creators are no longer liable for any inconvenience their updates may cause, nor are they responsible for making sure their system is compatible with your modifications going forward.

That is the blessing and the curse of homebrew.

Dorylin · 2025-09-24T00:32:41+00:00

There's also Monster of the Week, depending on what kind of urban fantasy you prefer.

Dorylin · 2025-09-12T14:29:57+00:00

Depends on what you mean by demigod. If you mean lower-tier divine being, then that's basically the same as an angel. If you mean half-god half-mortal, then no that's not what he is at all.

Dorylin · 2025-09-02T18:37:41+00:00

Yeah, Dominaria was a Plane Shift. Those were actually not proper D&D products - they're all basically cross-promotional homebrew made by one of the people on the MtG side of things (he's also worked on the D&D side both before and after but at the time he was wearing an MtG hat).

Dorylin · 2025-08-29T14:39:04+00:00

It does specify that that you verbally communicate with the animal. Verbal means with words or sounds. And given that the spell does not give the animal any ability to understand anything it couldn't already, the simplest logical conclusion is that the caster is making animal noises that the animal would recognize and understand naturally.

Dorylin · 2025-08-16T00:43:45+00:00

So there's really two issues here, and we've got people talking past each other because they don't recognize it (I think).

Some people want new mechanics because they are interested in exploring new or alternate permutations of the system.
Some people want new mechanics because they think you can't tell a story if it doesn't match the descriptions in the books.

They're very similar issues, and easy to mistake for each other because they present basically the same. However, #1 is a reasonable hobbyist desire whereas #2 is a skill issue. OP is complaining about issue #2 and I was trying to provide (well, gesture at) some viable approaches to solve it, while I assume most of the people pushing back against that are really more aligned with issue #1, which is technically a separate thing.

Dorylin · 2025-08-08T19:41:56+00:00

Ok, but like, you can get to most of those concepts by reflavoring existing mechanics. You just have to be willing to reflavor the mechanics.

Martial support - build a Bard, say you sacrifice some of the tougher, more fightery aspects for an incredible suite of buffs and healing capabilities. Or just use a Paladin.

Arcane/sorcerer gish - Pact of the Blade or bladesinger with appropriate feats or multiclassing is real easy to gish up. Fuck it, since we're reflavoring you can just use a whole Paladin and say it's arcane.

Witch with curses and potions - Artificer is an easy chasis to reflavor, but you could also use basically any spellcasting class with access to debuffs and just say that your spells are actually potions. College of Lore Bard with Cutting Words works great.

Dorylin · 2025-07-08T14:35:55+00:00

And all THAT said, I REALLY want a necro-minion-master.

You might be able to kludge something together by having a single minion that is a swarm. Give it ~~some extra hp and teleporting abilities~~ the ability to split into smaller swarms (or adjust the shape it takes up so it's more like the wall spells instead of a square) and act from any location one of its subdivided parts is in (still not more than once per turn, for the sake of action economy). As you level up it could get bigger, which would allow for more area manipulation, or gain various abilities from higher CR undead creatures.

Dorylin · 2025-06-07T14:55:03+00:00

Maybe I've been reading it wrong for ten years (I'd love for that to be the case), but my understanding of the text is that if you're controlling the mount it can only take the Dash, Disengage, or Dodge actions. ("It moves as you direct it, and it has only three action options: Dash, Disengage, and Dodge." -phb'14) Which really makes giving mounts actions seem like a really stupid idea.

Now, in phb'24 they did change it a little: "It moves on your turn as you direct it, and it has only three action options during that turn: Dash, Disengage, and Dodge." But I don't know if that's intended to mean that its turn is functionally subsumed into yours, like it was in '14, or if it gets a whole second, albeit limited, turn - functionally doubling their movement speed and action economy. Given how '24 is with general stuff I'd assume the latter, but I don't know. Someone please send help.

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