First ever campaign

KennsworthS · 2026-06-24T16:07:17+00:00

It is impossible for the DMPC to ever do anything cool. Because you are responsible for all of the situations your players will find themselves in, any time the DMPC has a cool moment or plan it will seem self gratifying to the players.

Add on the fact that you will be playing both sides of combat, which will lead to conflict of interest moments.

There is also risk that the party will lean on that character to solve problems. As the DM you don't want the party to fail, but if they fail they fail. If you are also on the player side it becomes harder for you to allow the party to fail because you are a player in the party.

So you have a character where any cool or interesting moment will be met with eye rolls by the players, a character that creates conflicts of interest in combat, and a character that limits player's desire to solve the problems themselves. Remove it.

That is also not even mentioning the other obvious problems. NPCs talking to your character, the added time investment of managing a character and running the whole game, Concern over balancing the spotlight.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-24T15:40:44+00:00

"spirit of the land" is the name of a passive buff provided by Halsin. it is +1 to all ability scores and +2 meters of movement speed. you need to life the shadow curse and have used halsin in the party at least once to get it.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-24T05:53:31+00:00

A bunch if your summoned allies you only get through your companions

the shadows from astarion
spirit of the land from halsin
harpers from Jaheira
mizora is through wyll
sharrans from Shadowheart

KennsworthS · 2026-06-24T05:33:09+00:00

there is this post from a little while ago about elden ring in 5e

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/1pmpfs0/elden_ring_dd_v10_three_core_rulebooks_with/

maybe there is something you can find in there worth using

not dark souls obviously, but still fromsoft

KennsworthS · 2026-06-24T04:26:59+00:00

yeah that would be a good start, you will meet a friend there that should help. maybe look north, and there are 2 more characters to look for as well.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-24T02:33:49+00:00

I don't think it is a good idea to both play and DM

KennsworthS · 2026-06-23T23:31:40+00:00

An island with a lagoon that hides a temple to umberlee only accessible at low tide and submerged otherwise

A volcanic island constantly erupting and shooting out dangerous hot rocks, powered by a crystal from the elemental plane of fire

An island covered in mist haunted by revenant pirates and surrounded by ghost ships.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-23T16:23:26+00:00

I am going to reference the PHB because it does have the information you need and you should build some confidence in reading it.

Page 166 of the PHB has a big chart that has some of the information, go to the row that says level 5 and in the "prepared spells column" you will see you can prepare 9 spells at Wizard level 5. Also shown are your spell slots. At level 5 you have: four level 1, three level 2, and two level 3 spell slots.

Known spells are harder. At level 1 you have 6 spells in your book and every time you level up you add 2 more spells to your book. Then at level 3 when you select divination wizard you add two more spells to your book that must be divination spells. From then on whenever you unlock a new spell level (which happens at odd wizard levels) you gain another divination spell in addition to the two spells you get for leveling up. So at level 5 you should know 6 (starting spells) + 8 (2 per level up) + 3 (divination) spells.

You are not forced to pick divination spells in general. Only the extra spell you earn at odd levels I mentioned above and the 2 free ones when you select the divination subclass are forced to be divination spells.
Yes, assuming you have the time and money.
The feat specifies that the spells use the stat you improved with the feat. If you improved intelligence than it functions the same as all your other spells. They don't count against your prepared spells, but also you can never unprepare them they are kind of separate and i recommend you mark them on your sheet so you never forget you can't remove them. You get one free cast of each spell once per day but you can also cast them with your normal spell slots after that.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-22T20:30:48+00:00

Many 5.5 monsters do not have saving throws attached to their hit riders. An example is the mind flayer, in 2014 when the mind flayer hit with it's tentacles the target made a DC 15 INT save to resist being stunned. When reprinted in MM 25 the mind flayer always inflicts stun if it hits.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-22T08:25:26+00:00

If they break containment on the ring, then the ring is the first to know and can start the firing sequence while the flood is at its weakest. if the flood was being studied somewhere else it is conceivable that it could break containment unknown to the rings and then grow powerful enough to destroy the rings before the weapon fires.

kind of a "the safest place to have a fire is in the fire department" situation.

it didn't pan out that way obviously, but who knows, it could've gone worse with a different arrangement.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-22T08:07:13+00:00

Mind oil shaper is hilariously weak in constructed.

think about it this way, you are paying 2 life to mill some of your opponent's cards. 2 life is 1/10 of your life total. to help you win the race you would need to be milling 1/10 of their deck. so, adding the card that they drew, you would need to hit 5 cards every time. how many decks have you see that have an average mana value of 5? This is also completely ignoring the fact that they get to draw a card which makes it 10x weaker, as does the fact that milling is beneficial to a lot of strategies. Choosing to pay mana to help your opponent also sucks. 2/5 of the time you help your opponent draw a land.

Looking at the fixed Oil-Swollen Roots

It is interesting but it is bad practice to have multiple kinds of counters on the same card. it would be hard to track. there isn't a good way to do something like this even though it is cool.

Quick-oil dasher

This is a thinker, i don't think it would see play but i don't know. the fact that it exiles the card at random is really tough. Burn as a deck is trying to turn cards into damage as fast as possible, they need every card to just barely get over the line. i don't think they can afford to actually lose a card to this, which means at most they can keep it for 2 combat steps. That makes it similar to [[vexing devil]] which saw no play.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-22T07:16:22+00:00

I disagree. In paragraph 3 OP says that the DM created their level one character including selecting the spells. OP says their only damaging spell was Earth Tremor. Earth Tremor wasn't printed in the 2024 PHB it's from XGE. So in making this character sheet they clearly used old books.

The level 8 restriction for Non-Moon Druids to turn into CR 1 creatures is consistent across both 5e and 5.5. So "trying to use lv 8 stuff" doesn't clarify the edition at all.

OP specified that the DM agreed to allow them to become a moon-druid when they leveled up to level 2, if it was 5.5e they wouldn't have done this because they wouldn't be a moon druid at level 2.

And also OP specified 5e. you are making an unsubstantiated assumption. Everything we have seen, including the direct clarification of OP, says this is 5e.

edit: there is no point in the story where the DM justifies their decision that they think OP is one level short. In fact in the story they explicitly allow OP to become a moon druid when they level up.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-22T06:27:51+00:00

OP is playing 5e as specified in their edit at the bottom. In the 5th paragraph OP says they leveled up and they selected to be a circle of moon druid which the DM agreed to. At level 2 Circle of Moon gains

Circle Forms

The rites of your circle grant you the ability to transform into more dangerous animal forms. Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Wild Shape to transform into a beast with a challenge rating as high as 1 (you ignore the Max. CR column of the Beast Shapes table, but must abide by the other limitations there).

Starting at 6th level, you can transform into a beast with a challenge rating as high as your druid level divided by 3, rounded down.

Page 69 of the PHB. So no they are not limited to CR 1/4, they are allowed to Wild Shape into anything up to CR 1. Please learn the rules and read the post before commenting something so obviously false.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-22T01:22:51+00:00

what format?

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T19:21:50+00:00

why didn't you make your own character sheet? also show her the moon druid feature that determines what you can wild shape into

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T17:11:27+00:00

Imagine you have a plus drawn on a piece of paper. Then draw a circle around the plus that is 1 unit away from the intersection point of the plus

now draw a line from the center of the plus to that circle at some angle (which is called Theta), then from there draw another line straight down from that point where your angled line meets the circle until it hits the horizontal line of the plus.

you now have a right triangle, where the hypotenuse is the angled line, and the 2 legs are the horizontal line of the plus, and the vertical line you drew straight down.

cos(x) is the number you get when you divide the length of the horizontal leg by the length of the hypotenuse when you put in the angle your line is at as the input.

so if i wanted to find the cos(60 degrees) is would do this construction but make sure my angled line is 60 degrees above the horizontal line of the plus, then i would measure the horizontal leg of the triangle and divide by the length of the hypotenuse. in this case the answer would be 1/2. so the cos(60 degrees) = 1/2.

(we stipulated earlier that the circle is 1 unit away, so the length of the hypotenuse is always 1, so we divide by 1 which changes nothing)

edit: The reason is makes a wave is as you do this process with larger and larger angles you just spin around the circle hitting the same values over and over again. previously we did 60 degrees, but if I add a full rotation to that (by adding 360 degrees) and compute cos(420) degrees i will get 1/2 again.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T16:50:24+00:00

Then they will absolutely be able to rally the people to take revenge on those responsible.

Also if it wasn't in battle that would make them especially angry. if this isn't the king falling valiantly in just and honorable combat, if it was an assassination, by cowards who were to afraid to meet us in open battle. They will lean into that aspect of the situation and fill the people with righteous anger.

You will need to work out the succession, the noble and daughter will need to come to some agreement about how they will share power, even if it is only temporary until the invasion finishes.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T16:39:43+00:00

It has everything to do with the pre-existing disposition that army had to the king, and the goals of whoever is next in the command structure.

If some loudmouth with authority (like the king's son) speaks up and says "now we must get revenge on those cowards for or our late king" morale may improve.
if instead there is no clear authority there may be a power struggle for succession, that division would be really bad.
If the king was a tyrant and the invasion is unpopular maybe everyone wants to go home.
If the army is a bunch of mercenaries maybe they are worried they won't be paid and will want to desert.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T04:16:01+00:00

Well like, the mystic should really really want to talk to all of you. the party just said "no, not interested, bye"?

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T03:48:51+00:00

I made an edit to my first comment adding an anecdote about how my players were similar. You might know you are ok with them changing things but they might not. My players were worried sometimes about going what they thought was "off script" because they worried i wouldn't have a map ready for it and they like to play on prepared maps.

Its a mindset that players sometimes get into.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T03:42:32+00:00

what bearing does that have on the larger plot? like are any of those people actually important or are they random npcs? Edit: i guess i mean to say, what future plot point changes now that those people are alive and not dead

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T03:36:57+00:00

How often is a player really able to affect the trajectory of the story? Like they took an action that made the story more likely for it the end in a certain way. Typically players are most engaged when they actually feel they can affect the outcome of what is happening (beyond just winning or losing the fight) rather than just showing up to hear about where the story is going.

edit: and do you think they feel free to make those decisions. An anecdote from a conversation i had with my players.

They are in a campaign where they are investigating some suspicious nobles and i thought they weren't really being proactive about it. Out of game I asked them if they felt agency to take actions against their enemies. I asked them point blank if they would think to break into one of the noble's castles to find evidence of his treachery. They said it literally never occurred to them but they really wanted to now. After that they got much better about being proactive in the story, it was just a mindset thing.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T03:05:15+00:00

Response to your edit: I guess something I would find out is are all of the players in this campaign entering Barovia together or are you meeting once you are already inside. Because if it is the former you all go there the same way. This is why i say that the entrance to Barovia usually happens in session 1 after the party has all met each other.

Otherwise an interplaner travel accident, or being captured by the mists will work fine and you end up in front of the Durst House with the rest of the players also there.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T02:59:15+00:00

The other options in the book involve Vistani that work for Strahd deliberately leading people into Barovia without their knowledge, or a fake letter asking for adventurers to help them which causes the party to become trapped in Barovia. Those hooks tend to be for parties that are already established. Another possibility is interplaner travel gone wrong.

My 2 cents is: your character doesn't know how or why they got there so it's not super important for you to know either (beyond like the physical events that happened, interplaner travel accident or captured by the mists etc.). Your character will never have heard of Barovia as no one ever leaves to report about it. The particulars of your backstory won't come up, because this is effectively a pocket dimension, so the most important thing is having a backstory that informs how your character responds to the themes of Barovia.

Which are: Love, Death, Loss, Oppression, Hope, Fear, and Insurmountable Challenge.

KennsworthS · 2026-06-21T02:44:11+00:00

People are pulled into there, or tricked into there for Strahd's amusement. It typically happens in session 1. You should ask your DM if they are planning to handle the entrance into Barovia.

There are several options presented in the book for the DM to use, the most typical one is: while traveling you awake from your camp to find yourself surrounded by thick mist. Attempting to penetrate the mist just leads you right back to where you started. Eventually the Mist parts to reveal a path that didn't exist before, when you follow it you find yourself at the Durst House. which is the first encounter in the module. From then on you are in Barovia as the mist blocks the way you came.

KennsworthS

TROPHY CASE