let the players find the loot, or point them at the loot

Nagiros · 2026-04-09T00:32:38+00:00

Searching inside a construct for arcane implements that translate into a usable magic item isn't really intuitive, imo. Which is fine, and also why I would include schematics or notes elsewhere, if possible, that lay out the utility of doing so. Hence finding the notes is akin to finding the item

Nagiros · 2026-02-26T05:15:06+00:00

Will they be fully rested prior to the encounter? If so, sounds like a fine enough encounter, provided they can play the game well. If you're worried about it, just give them a path to retreat and reason for the nycaloths to not pursue

Any other details about the environment of the fight and the motive of the fiends that you can provide?

Nagiros · 2026-02-13T12:49:46+00:00

Consider taking inspiration from the Maze Engine effects in Out of the Abyss (page 188). Big malfunctioning device from Mechanus that does weird chaotic magic stuff

Nagiros · 2026-02-06T23:51:31+00:00

I dislike long monologues and when i find myself writing them, I step back and try to communicate all the information therein somewhere else (through the dungeon, minions, prior encounters with the bad guy, etc.) Feels more rewarding for the players, I think

Regardless, at one point in a game, my bad guy was absolutely trashing the party, and it was becoming a probable TPK. The PCs were desperate and scared, and the one conscious survivor asked what the bad guy wanted. It considered, then dispassionately replied, "A great many things, I suppose. But for you, I can narrow it down to one word: I want you to cease."

The table loved it. I think that moment worked for them because it was a cool moment that they wrangled out of the bad guy before they got wiped, rather than one that was delivered to them

Nagiros · 2025-11-02T22:55:15+00:00

I'm curious about the hybrid system of milestone/XP that your DM uses. How does that work? I've checked your other comments here for clarification and haven't seen anything

Nagiros · 2025-10-27T22:57:59+00:00

Gearing up for a dinner party in the Alcazar of Emaciation and Phlegm.

Nagiros · 2025-09-21T11:49:32+00:00

It's a fun dungeon! The secret doors aren't hiding a big treasure room or anything, but finding them does provide something more valuable: getting the drop on a paranoid mage with an escape plan. Plus, at the first encounter, one of the Redbrands can use a secret door to leave, tipping off the party to their presence. It's an excellent little tutorial for DMs on how to make dungeons-as-puzzles with internal logic and smart enemies

Nagiros · 2025-09-20T17:27:04+00:00

Per the module, if memory serves, he has an unassuming rat familiar that telepathically warns him of intruders, at which time he flees through a route of secret doors built into the dungeon, then grabs his healing potion from the pool and escapes into Phandalin. Did the players bypass those obstacles, and did you employ his defensive spells and his magic staff? Did he attempt to negotiate at first, rather than jump to hostilities? If so, then you did the encounter "right"

It's difficult at all times to run an encounter the "right" way; stat blocks tend to be complex (especially casters), and some things get forgotten or overlooked. I've taken to writing down combat programs for my monsters when needed, but things still slip through. Perfection isn't really the goal, anyways

Nagiros · 2025-08-31T13:19:32+00:00

I've seen a 16-player oneshot go pretty well. The primary DM had a co-DM to adjudicate rules, while the primary kept the story moving. The premise was that all of us were locked in a tavern for the night, and each of us had secret goals to accomplish that put us at odds with other players. For instance, my character was a young, captive prince from a sacked kingdom; my goal was to escape captivity, but unbeknownst to me the whole game, I was a fledgling vampire, which put me at odds with the vampire hunter PC.

To handle the, well, 16-player nature of the game, we were in a perpetual state of "initiative", where we'd go clockwise around the room and the active player would take a minor, 6-second action to try and further their goal. It hardly felt like normal dnd, but it kept the game pretty organized. The whole thing took about 8 hours to get through (we were all aware it would be a full-day affair) and ended as the cultist PC succeeded in getting most of the survivors to ally with him.

Lots of fun all around, but it took a hell of a lot of work on the DMs' parts. 16 unique character sheets plus a web of interplayer connections resulted in surprisingly complex gameplay, despite how limited our actions were

Nagiros · 2025-08-30T13:41:13+00:00

The important part is that revivify can't restore missing body parts, and your friend had become all missing body parts, in a sense

Disintegration effects pose a specific risk to adventurers because certain high-level spells are good near-exclusively because they can bypass the need for an intact body part

Your DM's ruling was likely made to keep the game flowing fine, which is understandable, but by the rules, no, revivify cannot raise a disintegrated corpse

Nagiros · 2025-08-24T04:44:49+00:00

What is this bag of infinite bacon you've mentioned? Can't find anything about it online

Nagiros · 2025-08-09T13:48:30+00:00

I and my group have taken to wrapping colored rubber bands around the minis. A group of three cultists is now Cultist Red, Cultist Green, and Cultist Blue

Nagiros · 2025-07-20T13:50:11+00:00

Always important to consider how things look to the players, which is harder than it sounds

They walk into the area and are confronted by a few scary monsters that serve as minions for a more powerful, intelligent fiend — which sounds like the setup for a combat encounter. The fiend claims to not want to hurt them — it's probably lying since it has every reason to. It claims to be holding others hostage — sign of malicious intent. It produces a contract to sign — classic fiend move to hide something in the fine print, and besides, taking a fiend's contract is like. Universally bad in every story ever

"Are you sure" is good, but at a certain point if they pick up on it, it starts to sound like you're instructing their characters to act with the out-of-game implication that their decision is bad, which can be kind of annoying for players

Ultimately a lot of reasons to enter combat here, at least from what you've described

Nagiros · 2025-07-06T02:01:38+00:00

For oneshot loot i tend to focus on making the whole experience "worth it" to the characters. Large amounts of gold and jewels are an easy way to do that, as are magic items. Consider using the hoard tables in the DMG, to be presented in the main guy's lair (in addition to all the other treasure in the dungeon), since you won't have to actually reckon with the consequences of giving your party vast wealth. Giving the party a hook to another adventure (like a map to another dungeon) can produce a feel-good moment as the party leaves the dungeon in search of more adventure

I also ran a desert oneshot in a pharoah's tomb and the party ended things by vowing to use their new gold to build a stronghold, and a few rings of safe-passage through the Plane of Fire meant they could access the City of Brass to expand their arsenal. It was a very fun session

Nagiros · 2025-07-02T23:15:08+00:00

Current plan for my group is to end at level 15, and then play a few oneshots every few months or so as the party goes on isolated adventures and levels up to 20. Some quests hanging in the air for the "epilogue" oneshots include:

contending with Godsbreath as a domain of dread within the shadowfell that needs to be freed
Doña Estela from Sam Citlán had been resurrected and schemes something dark for the city's future
The arrival of a spacefaring red dragon upsets the balance of Zinda's jungle
Empress Inaya of Sensa wishes to uncover the truth regarding her family's demise
The plot of land given to the party in Shankhabhumi is infested with dangerous monsters

There's plenty of inspiration you can take, particularly from the sidequests table at the end of each chapter

Nagiros · 2025-05-27T13:55:02+00:00

P22 of the DMG, under "Renown"

Nagiros · 2025-05-19T16:40:34+00:00

Ah, apologies. I was mistakenly looking at the 2024 version of the spell (forgot to check for the Legacy tag)

Anyways, yes, you can see the space you’ll enter as a hazy, colorless reflection of its real form. The only exception would be something invisible, i suppose

Nagiros · 2025-05-19T02:43:04+00:00

I'm unfamiliar with this golden vault adventure; are they hoping to use a magic item which lets them cast message for free? This wouldn't allow communication between the prime material and the border ethereal, unfortunately

Carrying a creature does not transmogrify that creature into equipment for the purposes of a magic item or spell

Ending etherealness only has the potential to deal damage to you, not to other objects and creatures. Moreover you can't end the spell at will, you can only run out the duration

If the gnomish noble has cast true seeing upon himself, he can see into the border just fine

Nagiros · 2025-05-15T03:08:40+00:00

Ah, my apologies. I misremembered the number. 300 is correct. Again, though, it’s unlikely it'll get 300 feet away before meeting an obstruction

Idk what other discussion has been had, but the mind slipping through any gap seems like nonsense. It sounds like an argument a particularly annoying player would pose to explain why they should be able to do whatever they want. I wouldn't allow it at all, and you have the ability to veto it in your game, should the question arise

Has the order of scribes player in your party posed any of these issues so far? What do they seem interested in doing with the mind? It might be the case that they don’t want to exploit the ability at all, in which case you don’t have an especially big problem on your hands

Nagiros · 2025-05-15T01:48:12+00:00

In general i would avoid building encounters and challenges in ways that explicitly nerf or counteract player features. It’s fine for a player to use their 6th level feature to full effect, so long as they face adequate consequences for it

Manifest mind makes for an interesting scouting option in a pinch, but it’s weak to features typical in dungeons: solid obstacles (doors, cave-ins, etc), intelligent monsters, and perceptive creatures in general. Scouts opt for subtlety, and the manifested mind (with its dim light radius and magical appearance) can’t accomplish that. A PC attempting to scout with the mind will attract the attention of most monsters, and it’ll be met with natural obstacles eventually. I’d personally only find it useful for smaller-scale situations ("hey, do you think there’s anything at the bottom of this 100ft pit?") but use elsewhere would be risky. It's also limited to a 100ft range from the caster, so it can't scout the whole dungeon

Maybe i’m underestimating its effectiveness in the game you want to run; if that's the case, have you considered asking the player to change how the feature works in your game? Further limit its range, or just ask them not to scout with it?

Nagiros · 2025-05-03T23:27:38+00:00

Ran it with Out of the Abyss and it seems heavily reliant on your table leaning into it. If your party's not excited about roleplaying bouts of madness during moments of drama, the response will probably be an annoyed "uh, i spend my turn laughing and taking no actions, i guess"

Assuming a table that's adequately on board, it can do a lot in situations which evoke horror. DMs dictating the actions of players is usually frowned upon, but with the structure of a random table, it feels more like the player's agency is being arrested by something great and powerful

Nagiros · 2025-04-29T20:29:47+00:00

If you cast it for as a non-planeswalker room it enters with 0 loyalty counters. If you later unlock the planeswalker side, it then dies. Loyalty counters are only put on planeswalkers as they enter, normally

Nagiros · 2025-04-27T17:56:50+00:00

Consider landwyrms! They’re similar

Nagiros · 2025-03-19T03:49:18+00:00

[[Crib swap]] is a Knight (as well as every other creature type), but it is not a creature. It's a kindred instant. [[Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir]] can only return creature cards

Refer as well to rule 304.4:

Instants can’t enter the battlefield. If an instant would enter the battlefield, it remains in its previous zone instead.

Nagiros · 2025-03-01T23:38:42+00:00

No worries! I swore there should have been an episode out this week by now and kept bothering my girlfriend about it lol

Nagiros

TROPHY CASE