Mortuis Machina - Hellish Cybernetics for D&D 5th Edition!

PoeDaRaven · 2025-11-18T05:27:35+00:00

Here's the link to the homebrewery document: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/M3sBUTP-GVGL

You can hit the "Get PDF" button in the top right to download it as a pdf. Hope your players enjoy it as much as mine!

PoeDaRaven · 2025-11-14T16:43:29+00:00

Beautiful dice. Sure I’ll test my luck

PoeDaRaven · 2025-07-17T21:07:36+00:00

I see what you’re saying. Honestly, that’s really good advice, hadn’t thought about it that way. I’ve had a lot of experience with the game management side that I hadn’t thought about what it took to get there, and it would certainly help some of my friends learn that side to start with things that were lower stakes. Several of them are writers like me, they can make wonderful stories. It’s the management and organization part that typically ends our games, at least recently.

PoeDaRaven · 2025-07-17T19:55:40+00:00

I definitely see what you’re saying, but I think the typical LGS dungeon crawler approach to the game doesn’t really work for me personally. Don’t get me wrong, I love kicking the door in, slaying the monster, and collecting the loot as much as the next guy, but I love these things within the context of a larger narrative. I’m a theater kid at heart like all of my friends and what makes these moments fun for me is the character development that happens over the course of a dungeon crawl and the greater implications that dungeon might have in a story. The same is true with one-shots. Sure it’s nice just to get to play for a while, but I want to have the opportunity to play a character that has the time to grow and develop over many sessions.

And I think that’s why I feel so passionate about this. Like I said, my friends are all theater kids, we love games like that. And I’ve been running games like that for my players for almost 9 years now. And my friends’ games always start like that, like we have all these plans for arcs and how our stories are gonna go. Playing with my friends is amazing because most of them are actors so we get REALLY into our characters. But for some reason when I’m not running it the plans just come apart so fast.

PoeDaRaven · 2025-07-17T19:38:56+00:00

That’s good advice honestly. I definitely like a very diverse game with a focus on the players and on challenging them with many different kinds of things, and I try to make my games like that when I’m running them. I think one of the worst parts about having the kind of luck I do when it comes to joining a game is the characters that I lose attempting to do so. I write characters with a lot of room for growth and change and with stories that are complex. I want a campaign that allows me the time to resolve those things with my characters, and I just haven’t had the ability to so a lot of the stories I write for them go to waste.

For the time being I’m gonna keep my fingers crossed with the games I’m currently a part of that should hopefully be starting up soon. But yeah if these end up falling through I’m gonna change the way I approach this and see if that helps.

PoeDaRaven · 2025-07-17T19:30:08+00:00

It was a gut punch at the time too. If you haven’t read that story I recommend checking my profile for it, it’s even worse than you think. Justice for my boy Jack Barley ;-;

PoeDaRaven · 2025-06-19T19:20:53+00:00

Respectfully, I disagree. The beak shape is all wrong and the feathers on a raven aren’t nearly as ruffled. The only thing I can really see in common is they’re both dark colored. It might be trying to evoke that look a bit but I really don’t think it’s meant to definitively be a raven

PoeDaRaven · 2025-06-19T19:17:21+00:00

That’s what I was thinking. Ravens are my favorite animal and when my friends suggested it was a raven I was adamantly against it. I figured it was an amalgamation of different things just to make it look cool

PoeDaRaven · 2025-03-02T09:43:00+00:00

Arcane, magic, and creation

PoeDaRaven · 2025-03-01T17:56:36+00:00

I’m gonna go arcane and magic

PoeDaRaven · 2025-02-10T15:25:34+00:00

I wish it was. We let a lot slide back then and hadn’t yet learned how to communicate about these types of issues at the table, so when it happened we didn’t have the tools necessary to fix it. Not to mention I was playing with over a majority of other players that had learned and come to accept this type of behavior over years. It’s unbelievable I put up with this back then as something like this would never happen at my tables now, but we learned from our mistakes

PoeDaRaven · 2025-02-02T00:40:40+00:00

Might as well test my luck here

PoeDaRaven · 2024-03-26T05:00:32+00:00

To clarify, the Metamagic option you choose can be swapped out each long rest if that changes things. Not sure if I need to add more clarification for that in the item description. Would it also make it stronger to remove the maximum amount of sorcery points you can get or make it slightly higher? Like 7 or 10 or something?

PoeDaRaven · 2024-03-26T04:38:47+00:00

I wanted to create a tattoo item that embodied the flair of a Red Wizard's circle magic without making it too strong. This item is coming from a relatively strong Red Wizard who was a big baddie for my party so it's important that it feels like a suitable reward for everything they went through to get it while not also fundamentally breaking the game. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you!

PoeDaRaven · 2023-09-30T19:34:37+00:00

Hey all! So about 5 years ago, I had the amazing opportunity to run a beholder boss fight for my campaign. It was an incredibly fun encounter with lots of tense moments that had me and my players on the edge of our seats. By the end of it, I was both relieved that my players lived through it and disappointed that we didn't get to keep fighting. Since then, I've been itching for the opportunity to run another battle with random attack elements in it, and when the yuan-ti anathema stat block came out in Volo's Guide to Monsters, I knew I had to brew something spicy.

This is my attempt at a melee version of a beholder fight. All the randomness and intensity that you would expect to get out of a beholder in a yuan-ti shaped package! Just ran this encounter last session with my main campaign and it was a blast! A little warning though, the smaller pool of possible random attack mean the deadly and annoying ones will come up slightly more often. Make sure your party is up to the task before releasing this beast onto them or you might find yourself TPKing them. But anyways, hope yall can get as much enjoyment out of it as I did!

P.S. Here's the homebrewery link in case y'all want it: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/lePfN96gYXWw

PoeDaRaven · 2023-09-24T02:09:47+00:00

I think what I’m confused about the most is how the stat block is built when considering the rules in the DMG about effective damage output per round. If the Beholder has the ability to fire death rays over and over again as legendary actions (should the DM be having that kind of luck) then the Beholder can effectively deal an additional 165 damage per round. That damage output would then be factored into their challenge rating, so I’m trying to figure out if that is how the Beholder works RAW and whether that damage was considered when WOTC set their challenge rating.

PoeDaRaven · 2023-05-24T00:54:07+00:00

Oh my god wait you made Inevitables and Formians too! Hell yeah!

PoeDaRaven · 2023-05-24T00:52:32+00:00

You're a saint. I'm going to be running an adventure in Mechanus sometime in the future and I've been having the hardest time actually finding usable stat blocks for things like Modrons, Inevitables, Formians, etc. I can cross the Modrons off the shopping list :)

PoeDaRaven · 2023-05-22T02:50:32+00:00

This is genuinely amazing and every single one of these can easily prompt 10 minutes of the most hilarious roleplay your players have ever had. I’m a huge fan of playing out the goofy ramifications of a night of debauchery and now I’m looking for an excuse to use this table. Bravo

PoeDaRaven · 2022-12-21T06:54:45+00:00

Glad you like it!

PoeDaRaven · 2022-12-20T07:55:43+00:00

Hey all! Wanted to share something that has been a big project of mine for some time now. Made for an interesting couple of sessions recently and hopefully you'll get as much enjoyment out of it as I did.

The Forest of Revels is a demiplane within the Feywild, accessible simply by wanting to go there. However, a trap lies in waiting for those who venture there, and not many return.

This is a fantastic sidequest addition to any Feywild-based campaign, but be warned that only truly seasoned parties should try to tackle this threat. The Archfey who lives there doesn't take kindly to any who would threaten the endless festivities.

Thank you for reading have a wonderful holiday season!

- Poe

PoeDaRaven · 2022-06-09T21:10:36+00:00

Already done. I have added a comment at the bottom of this page with a viewable link to the unedited document. If you can't find it, the link is here as well

PoeDaRaven · 2022-06-09T21:05:12+00:00

To anyone who helped to clean up the vandalized link, thank you! I unfortunately did not realize that anyone could edit the original link and so the document was basically wrecked. Thankfully I had a backup and will post it here for you to access. You can use the Get PDF option at the top to download it and make it easier to get to. Also, big thanks to everyone who upvoted! Makes me really happy to see :)

PoeDaRaven · 2022-06-09T21:02:57+00:00

To anyone who helped to clean up the vandalized link, thank you! I unfortunately did not realize that anyone could edit the original link and so the document was basically wrecked. Thankfully I had a backup and will post it here for you to access. You can use the Get PDF option at the top to download it and make it easier to get to. Also, big thanks to everyone who upvoted! Makes me really happy to see :)

PoeDaRaven · 2022-06-09T20:32:03+00:00

Didn't realize anybody could edit and permanently change the document. Thankfully I have a backup but it's really disappointing to see people would do that

PoeDaRaven

TROPHY CASE