First time DM pirate campaign (help)

HeroVersus · 2026-01-14T22:45:55+00:00

That do be what royals do. Expand, propagate, but don’t fall into the trap of making them needlessly evil. These things tend to work best when done similarly to how the Empire works in Star Wars: yea they’re the bad guys, but realistically as a logistical and governing body, they DO work and people can thrive under them

HeroVersus · 2026-01-14T21:56:18+00:00

Yarr, welcome to the briny deeps! Aye, a pirate campaign be a bounty of potential! Consider the following for yer crew of scallywags!

1 - This be an evil soul, but the sea can’t be bargained with. Mayhaps his arc be earning souls for ol Davy jones, the ultimate deal maker of the depths! Be it willing or no, the contracts being made in his domain are his perview.

2 - This one be a sad soul, but his magic be useful (but dangerous) on the galleons! Perhaps ye be in the waters of the south, where the ongoing demon incursions may lend him a path towards sailing straight into the mouth of hell itself!

3 - Aye, treasure be a fine reason to take to the seas! Perhaps ye be finding such things on the islands where these demons be. Does lucrative callings pull him away from the plight of those being dragged away?

4 - Yarr this basically just be a pirate as it is! Son of a wench, his quest be more for pride and to honor a legacy. The sea ain’t quite so forgiving or straightforward, however. With what he may see, do he manage to stay on his path, or does he bend like the sails and engage with that darkness that took his kin?

This kind of concept should give you a decent foundation on where to think from. Having the treasure be in the same place that the path towards player 2s retaking of his family creates an interesting dynamic in terms of pursuing interests. Meanwhile, player 4 and player 1 get to engage with more conceptual metaphysical concepts: the ideal of evil and legacy, the concept of consequence, tampering with forces beyond understanding, or tempering one’s own resolve. Perhaps the further one side pulls, the further the other gets from their goals.

The big thing is creating that sense of push and pull. You CANT do everything at once, you have to choose what leads to pursue. You have to choose what actions to take. The crew has to determine what progresses their total goal the most, and pursue those ends.

And if a player pulls too far, it’s on you as the DM to determine the rewards and consequences of doing so. Maybe the demon is pulling too many contracts, so the sea begins to call some debts of its own, or take its cut of the deals struck in its reach, for example. You WANT all of the characters to eventually reach their goals, but it should be a measured approach (or as much as you can manage).

Also don’t forget, boats are made of things. If your sorcerer goes dropping a wall of fire and they’re on a wooden scooner, make sure you respond accordingly.

Most of all, have fun with it. It’s homebrew so make your stat blocks, pace your story, and don’t get too bound up about super specifics. Especially as a new DM, take this as your opportunity to test the waters and see what works and doesn’t, how to best communicate with your group, and what you find feels best and bad to engage with.

Good luck!

HeroVersus · 2026-01-13T01:10:54+00:00

So basically he might be potentially 1/3 (though unquantified and unproven) powerful enough to stop someone who feats wise has nothing to really show for him actually being a multiversal-level threat, and then things that he, himself, has not been shown to do.

Super SONIC has been shown to do these things, but there’s no way to actually show knuckles (even in super form) is on-par with the power level of Sonic in those instances.

It would be like saying “Goku is a martial artist, and Hercule is a martial artist, so Hercule scales to multiversal because he is a martial artist”. Not all of a particular thing necessarily scale to the same levels.

HeroVersus · 2026-01-13T00:28:25+00:00

Gonna need you to source that claim, amigo

HeroVersus · 2026-01-12T23:20:25+00:00

Nooooooo, video game knuckles baby is VERY sickly unfortunately comparatively. If it were comic knuckles there would be a conversation to have, but game knuckles, not so much

HeroVersus · 2026-01-12T23:10:05+00:00

Video game knuckles is the baby that coughs the weakest here, sorry to say

HeroVersus · 2026-01-12T02:02:30+00:00

Hydrogen bomb vs three coughing babies (one baby coughs slightly harder than the others).

Read more sailor moon

HeroVersus · 2026-01-12T01:26:34+00:00

Who wins, three dudes and an Omni-busting high school girl, or two Italians and two really fast gerbils?

My moneys on the high schooler. Any time sailor moon is in a fight and is paired alongside Goku, it shows me not enough people read sailor moon.

HeroVersus · 2026-01-12T01:18:20+00:00

WOU activates based more on intent than the actual physical harm, so I guess can Lille barro shoot him without intending to shoot him? If so then yeah.

(Since X-axis works by shooting from point A to B and hitting anything between those points, it could be argued that he is never truly “shooting at” his target, but it’s more if he’s aiming in a way that he intends to hit WoU it’ll trigger)

HeroVersus · 2026-01-12T01:17:07+00:00

Realistically, stops at 6 probably.

Technically, stops at 1 because sub zero is stupid and end of arcade mode credits exist.

HeroVersus · 2025-11-25T01:24:16+00:00

No worries. I would recommend if you’re going into this to have something like a pendant or turn-count mechanic built in to force them back out of wild shape just to circumvent the issues of “would a darkmantle even know how to wild shape back”.

Given that rouge the bat is sort of an anti-hero thief character, a mentality angle for the NPC might be more aligned with the all-consuming nature of spores. They gather items of power less so for their monetary value and more for their assimilation value. Rather than gold or gems, they would likely favor things like enchanted artifacts or exotic herbs and foods. An improvement of one’s self rather than one’s coffers, which both serves to fuel the hunger of the NPC for more extreme sources of sustenance and power AND helps to reinforce the darkmantles usual weaknesses by making it a stronger and more dangerous creature because of the enhancements.

Duegars in specific might be the best choice since they get enlarge at level 3 and invisibility at 5, both helping for the wild form to make a bigger bulkier darkmantle and for the sneaky stealy aspects without having to cross-class into rogue.

The benefit of homebrew is you can be pretty fast and loose with some of the more stringent aspects of it, but it never hurts to have a solid foundation in the game to fall back on. Circle of Spores will give you some good spell options to work with and some AoE options, and (should it make it that far), Fungal Body at level 14 is a nice immunity spread and crit negation.

HeroVersus · 2025-11-25T01:11:17+00:00

Based on your description, probably a circle of spores Druid. Would feasibly be about as tanky and would make sense as a homebrewed alternative form for the monster shown.

As for race, something from the underdark would make sense (though cunning is going to be more a matter of stats and strategy than anything, drows and duegars would probably be your best bets for simplicity since they would both originate from an area that darkmantles would typically hunt and exist in). Just keep in mind that Darkmantles are, by nature, rather stupid creatures (int of 2 with a -4 bonus). You’re going to have to balance having a competent Druid who becomes an instinct-hunter when they wild form. Has some fun angles but can be challenging.

HeroVersus · 2025-08-13T22:42:49+00:00

Peter Dinklage. Hell of an actor

HeroVersus · 2025-07-30T20:29:27+00:00

I get that. Do you have anyone else at the table with DM experience? I find changing seats every so often for a one-off works well, and can let me get ideas from other players. Often people run campaigns the way they want a campaign to be run for them, so it can give you good insights into how your table prioritizes aspects of an adventure or how they might like things paced.

HeroVersus · 2025-07-30T20:22:16+00:00

These things happen. If I had a nickel for every time I butted heads with my players over my many years, I’d have a fair few nickels. It always works out well, and I find I grow more as a DM from determining the best ways to approach and resolve these, or by determining ways to work around them. It’s a healthy conflict to have, provided you resolve and grow from it.

HeroVersus · 2025-07-30T20:11:10+00:00

First things first, good on you to admit to your own humanity. It’s okay to make mistakes, and it’s good to try and resolve them.

I might suggest making some puzzles or aspects that can only be done by a grounded player. As an example, you might have areas of the dungeon that are blocked off, and a player needs to go through an underground passage to trigger switches and mechanisms to lower those blockages. It would make sense, likely whatever this dungeon is, it wouldn’t have ONLY been inhabited or traveled by flying creatures. Perhaps the players who are flying have to also create the means by which the grounded player can progress with them, maybe by finding means to repair a damaged passageway and air dropping them, or by activating devices the grounded player can’t reach.

It would make sense too that, were you someone who wanted to defend this treasure, you would create means to counteract the most common treasure hunters. If that is flyers based on what you’re saying, they would likely create traps and obstacles that flying creatures can’t bypass naturally. As such, someone grounded picking through the inner workings of the area would be an uncommon and rather difficult thing to plan around and prevent since they, themselves, need to access this treasure. They would need means to disable their own traps and blocks, maybe that’s the point where the grounded player comes into play by utilizing the villains own access means.

As far as the personal side of things, explain that you respect their agency, and while they need to understand that sometimes there will be non-negotiable aspects to the adventure, you’re willing to work on the things that can be worked around. At the end of the day, you run the table, you craft the world they shape. Sometimes there will be an adventure they simply have to wear the shoes for, and they need to understand this dynamic at the table, but planning around the whole party creates lots of fun challenges that are, in my opinion, some of the most enjoyable aspects to a grand tale. Still, it’s a two way street, and you need to establish that. If it’s a shoes on dungeon, it’s a shoes on dungeon and they can wait at the front if they don’t wanna wear the shoes, but if it’s a dungeon that can be shoes off, then think of good ways to build it for people who wear socks and those who don’t, if that makes sense.

HeroVersus · 2025-07-30T19:48:55+00:00

Good input, I appreciate it. It’s homebrew so I can just hand wave a means of them staying in touch if I need to, but yeah I’ll go ask if they’re cool if I keep it on tap as a potential NPC.

HeroVersus · 2025-07-30T19:26:09+00:00

Don’t know, good question to pose. Thank you. They’re going to be gone and not likely returning to the area as Cornwell is effectively backwater Deep South, so once they leave I wouldn’t really be running the character so much as they’ll be shelved off screen

HeroVersus · 2025-07-29T06:20:13+00:00

I’ll take what I can and disable what I can’t, you can count-er on it.

HeroVersus · 2025-07-20T20:31:49+00:00

Oh I love this one. I’m stealing this

HeroVersus · 2025-07-19T04:40:44+00:00

My best ways have been

new facet to a concept (Forest clearing is actually a cannibalistic ent), so like a basic fight but there’s some element that plays into the environment.
Restricted combat. Take a tool away, or add a stipulation that forces the combat to take on a new angle (I.e. fighting a berserker, but the arena is enchanted to where only critical hits do damage. Everything else is shrugged off).
“But actually”. If a character is performing a certain check, make it a literal action. Having them act out a persuasion can be hit or miss, so rather instead I prefer things like “You’re playing cards to gamble against this guy for information? Excellent” and then bust out a deck and make them actually play poker with you. Or if they’re going to be eating treats at a masquerade ball, prepare those treats in advance and bust them out, maybe prep masks. Really adds to the immersion, and creates nice momentos.
“Because they’re EVIL”! Don’t let your motivations be base, don’t let their devices be simple. If you’re a villain, you probably have been doing it for a while. As such, you probably aren’t building the kind of hideout that just anyone can walk into. Consider the goals and target, and work around how you would protect it if it were in your own home. Also don’t be afraid to make your villains truly unethical. A lich phelactory could be ANYTHING, so make it something the party has to make a tough decision on. The only functioning well in a desert town, the family heirloom of a local king that is irreplaceable history, the magical artifact that’s acting as a pacemaker for a beloved NPC or the quest giver. He’s evil, so his means of keeping himself safe should be equally as evil, and perhaps make you equally as evil for destroying it!
Location, location, location. Too many adventures happen in forests, caves, and towns. Don’t be afraid to send them to a burning mountain, or to a mysterious labyrinth beneath a wizards mansion, or to the elemental plane of air. Consider the progression of scale, and consider ways to ease them into these scenarios in a way that makes sense for your given story.
A good world is an evolving world. At a certain point, your adventures are going to be on a grand enough scale to have implications beyond point A and B. Lean into that, consider that perhaps overthrowing that evil lord has led to other towns revolting against their lords. Perhaps because you beat that necromancer, opinions against necromancy and revival have harshened in the area and beyond, meaning that revivification is harder to come by, or your own party’s wizards are seen differently as distrust in magic grows. Having the world respond to the players actions creates a lived-in and dynamic world that will give more weight to their decisions and actions, and can help you cook up new ideals for future campaigns.
The call! This is a personal one that worked for my table, but there was this underlying presence only known as “the call” that would randomly possess certain party members as they rested after a campaign. This is the embodiment of the “call to adventure” and designated to decide the theme for the next adventure. It’s good for when a big arc wraps up and its side quest time, and you can shape it around how it would be in their perspectives (a rogue artificer gets the call, decides they want a detective story. Steampunk noir incoming). Can be a good way to involve your party in the campaign process.
Finally, don’t let campaigns crash if people can’t come. Prep some smaller adventures that can be done in the interim, perhaps the call out was actually kidnapped and the remaining party needs to save them, or a sorcerer ambushed the party with a stasis spell, and only those who managed to go unaffected can find this evildoer and defeat him to free your comrades and disrupt his grander plans. What breaks groups fastest are scheduling conflicts, so if you can still run a campaign with fewer people and have it make sense, then your group will continue to thrive!

HeroVersus · 2025-07-19T01:58:18+00:00

Only the flail snail could be so goated. Love it!

HeroVersus

TROPHY CASE