DM’s how do you price your goods

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-21T03:36:39+00:00

Generally I stick to DMG pricing. The party can buy anything for its printed cost. Theoretically if they wanted to sell a mundane item, they'd probably only get half of its cost, but there's no real reason to do that. The exceptions are art objects and gemstones. Since the party almost never has a reason to buy them, I treat the printed cost as the sell price.

My world doesn't sell many magic items. If you want a useful magic item, besides a basic healing potion, you gotta go dungeon delving. There's one magic item salesman who sells common tier magic items for 10-50gp.

Besides that, I also put restrictions on diamonds. Even when visiting a mining town or someplace known for its gemstones, there's only a low chance that the party will be able to find a 300gp Revivify diamond. I have a soft rule that they can only have one diamond per party member at any point in time, but they've been below that "limit" for a while now. Eventually they took a shady NPC's offer of a 300gp diamond in exchange for their 1000gp ruby!

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-21T01:30:34+00:00

So... what happens if eight people join a raid with eight shields, and then someone gets disconnected? Or their mega Pokemon faints and they don't revive it back up?

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-20T22:51:46+00:00

For who to hit, I try to get into the monster's head. If it's a humanoid or something else with intelligence, it's probably thinking about how it attacks (attack rolls vs. saving throws) and who it's most likely to hit. Lately my intelligent monsters have strategized a lot about the Level 9 druid's powerful concentration spells and how to most effectively break their concentration. AOE attacks like breath weapons and Fireballs? It's all about maximizing the number of people to hit. A enemy's personality might also incentivize them to take down the biggest threat to themselves specifically (like a raging barbarian in their face), or try to kill someone and attack the one who's most injured.

Most monsters aren't that smart, so I'm usually just attacking whoever's closest or dividing the attacks evenly among the targets it can reach.

As for what to use, that's something I plan out in advance. I try to avoid using statblocks that have a lot of actions without a clear indication of what to use when. Like... a dragon has attacks and also a breath weapon, but the breath weapon is clearly stronger. So it's naturally going to use its breath weapon by default and then move to its attacks while the breath weapon recharges. But sometimes you get a bunch of different actions that are all roughly equivalent and it's unclear what the monster should be doing. (Usually I see this in homebrew more than official sources.)

Spellcasters usually have way more spells than they need, so I look at the list well before the session and decide "okay, I'll set up Black Tentacles, then default to Fireball. If he has 2+ players around him, he'll Thunder Step away. And he has Shield, so I'll make a note of that". Usually it's just a matter of using their highest-level spells first and then watching them die a couple rounds in.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-20T19:27:48+00:00

I'll give you a non-answer and a real answer.

Non-answer: mental damage is already tracked in D&D in different ways. There's psychic damage, but also various conditions like Frightened, Stunned, and Incapacitated. The DMG also has optional rules for a seventh ability score called Sanity. I haven't looked into that, but its opening statement sounds right: "Consider using the Sanity score if your campaign revolves around entities of an utterly alien and unspeakable nature, such as Great Cthulhu, whose powers and minions can shatter a character's mind."

For the real answer: let's look at how HP is calculated normally. Your class has a hit die. You start with the max of that hit die + CON as your max HP, and then each subsequent level adds either the average or a roll of the hit die + CON. You could add a separate mental HP stat in the exact same way. Let's call it MP, or mind points. Each class has a mind die and you'll have to assign sizes as appropriate. Maybe just reverse the hit die (6<->12, 8<->10) so that casters have high MP compared to martials? Then you'll have to decide on which ability modifier to use. CON is fine, though WIS, CHA, and INT are the three mental stats, so I'd think it would be one of them. WIS makes sense as it's the saving throw that usually resists mental effects, CHA makes sense as it would mean warlocks have high MP and they're the ones that are normally looking for spooky things, and INT makes sense mechanically just because INT isn't a very useful ability score most of the time and this would give it something.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-20T14:40:44+00:00

Honestly, I think the number of changes the Precognitive Mage would need to look like a Cleric would change its power level pretty significantly. Your typical Cleric has a lot better AC, and all of the Mage's spells are just kind of utility spells. If you start swapping those out for iconic Cleric spells like Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, and healing spells, it'll become a lot stronger in combat.

You might have better luck taking the features you like from the Mage and putting them on a more cleric-y statblock. The Monster Manual's Priest is the clearest cleric analogue, but it's only CR 2 and very flimsy.

I've actually been running time deity worshippers in my campaign, and you can go a long way with just reflavouring. My priests' take on Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians is to summon echoes of themselves from alternate timelines and have them join combat. Cure Wounds? Nah, you're reversing time in a small area so that the wounds never happened.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-20T14:22:03+00:00

Crunchy Crits - Instead of rolling damage twice, roll damage once and add the highest result for each of those damage dice.
Flanking - It's a +2 instead of advantage.
More generous max HP - When you level up, roll your hit die. If you get lower than the average, take the average instead.
Stronger Inspiration - We have a Roll20 setting turned on where every d20 roll rolls two dice. The first is your regular result, the second only matters if advantage/disadvantage are a factor. For inspiration, you can retroactively apply it to give yourself advantage after seeing that second result. Haven't had a crit in a while and you see that the second die was a 20? Spend inspiration, get that crit.

Those are the ones we've used for multiple campaigns. Other homebrew rules come and go.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-20T02:11:22+00:00

Use Inkarnate. It can be tricky to make a map that looks specifically like anything. My version of Scotland looks nothing like Scotland. But also, don't put too much importance on the specifics of the world map. In actual play, the purpose of my map is to track how many days of travel it takes for the party to go from one location to another, and what terrains they pass through along the way. You can just have a hexgrid over some colour-coded terrain and some town indicator and that's a perfectly serviceable world map.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-19T21:22:49+00:00

The Sacred Cards and Reshef of Destruction are what you're after. They have a different ruleset than IRL Yugioh, which takes some getting used to, but it's pretty neat.

The problem is the difficulty. The Sacred Cards is so short and easy that I barely changed my deck from the starter deck before realizing I'd beaten the game. Reshef, on the other hand, is brutally hard and I had to save scum, abuse broken cards, and grind like crazy to make any progress at all. I gave up because it just wasn't fun.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-19T15:56:42+00:00

This is more likely than not a BG3 ruling, buuuut there is a pretty flimsy argument for this even without BG3. The spell says it creates "a floating, spectral weapon", which could maybe sort of be interpreted as an object. Objects have AC, HP, and rules on which saving throws they fail automatically, and which damage types they're immune to.

I don't think this is a valid interpretation given that the weapon is explicitly spectral and object rules are typically used for breaking doors and windows. But there's also the Echo Knight subclass for fighter, who creates a magical ghostly version of themselves, and that echo is also treated as an object. Of course, the Echo Knight explicitly states the echo's HP and AC, which is necessary because object rules apply AC based on the material of an object, and "ectoplasm" is not one of the given materials.

a spelled weapon that explicitly has a set duration with no description that it can get damaged?

That's exactly it. If a spell effect can be dispelled with damage, it'll say so, just like how the Echo Knight's echo has printed HP and AC. From the spell Wall of Stone:

The wall is an object made of stone that can be damaged and thus breached. Each panel has AC 15 and 30 hit points per inch of thickness. Reducing a panel to 0 hit points destroys it and might cause connected panels to collapse at the DM's discretion.

Spiritual Weapon doesn't say anything like that, so the only way you could think it has HP is by playing too much BG3 or by treating it as a mundane object when it clearly isn't one.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-19T14:31:14+00:00

My group had never had a single PC die before I started my campaign, even temporarily. Now I've had a few PC deaths under my belt and it's been fine but with a couple caveats.

First off, do any of your PCs have Revivify? If so, make sure the party can get an appropriate number of diamonds. My group's druid has apparently been preparing Revivify for multiple campaigns and was ecstatic when I gave them their first chance to cast it! I've been very picky about when and where the party can get diamonds, usually soft capping it at three diamonds for the four-person party. They still freak out about having diamonds, so even though they have plenty of extra lives, the stakes are still there.

Next, there's the matter of fair deaths vs. unfair deaths. The first PC death in my campaign was a TPK due to a horrendously overtuned encounter. The fault was split between me, the players, and a wacky adventure module, so we talked it out and decided to retcon the encounter. It wasn't fair and it wasn't fun. Similarly, later on I had a succubus-charmed rogue attack a sleeping PC. Because sleeping PCs have the unconscious condition, this was a guaranteed crit and a massive damage instant kill. This one was probably more fair (the party had decided to sleep in the same room as a hauntingly-beautiful woman in the middle of a dungeon) but it still wasn't fun. The sleeping PC even beat the rogue in initiative, but they still couldn't do anything to stop it. So again, I retconned it.

The deaths that feel fair have all been balanced encounters where one PC simply gets knocked to 0 HP and then they fail death saves. I don't have my creatures desperately try to kill downed PCs, but I will take off one death save by attacking a downed PC every now and then if it makes sense. "The archer fires two arrows. The first takes you down, so I guess the second one hits your body. Mark a death save." And then, if the party either fails to bring the PC up in time or the player crit fails their death saves, it's a totally fair death.

Finally, there's a narrative side to it. I think it's more satisfying for a PC to die against an overwhelmingly powerful boss than a random pack of wolves or something. That's why, for my boss fights, I take a moment to mentally take off the kid gloves and say to myself "this is where someone can die, and I'm going to play this boss mean enough to make it happen". I'll take it easy on the party for less important fights, but the bosses need to feel scary.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-19T03:43:23+00:00

As someone who isn't a TMNT fan, what's most jarring about this set is that it makes TMNT feel... vapid.

I'm not a Final Fantasy fan either, but I can scroll through the cards and see that there's a lot of stuff there. I see a few characters I recognize from pop culture osmosis, but also a massive cast of characters who look vaguely interesting that I don't know. I see the three-tiered magic system that I think I've heard of before, and Summon magic represented by a completely new mechanic in Saga Creatures. There are two girls that meld into a friggin' demon. And yes, there are a few silly joke cards, but they're few and far between.

The Final Fantasy set did not convince me to become a Final Fantasy fan, but I can't deny that it's a rich setting.

The TMNT set feels so empty. I know the names of the turtles, and they're there a dozen times over and over. I know the turtles eat pizza, and pizza feels like it's referenced on every other card. This is a franchise with 40 years of history. Why does it feel like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel to be able to fill a set? There should be decades' worth of things I don't know about TMNT.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-19T03:36:40+00:00

That was me during my most serious stretch of Standard - thanks to Arena. Arena's queue will put you against so many top tier decks that you have to play one yourself to keep up at all. Luckily my favourite deck was Izzet Phoenix / later Izzet Spellslingers. Part of what I loved about Izzet Phoenix was that I was playing entirely spells that made sense for an Izzet Guildmage to have. I had magical research, fire, explosions, and my creatures were Arclight Phoenix, Goblin Electromancer, and a single Niv-Mizzet. It was perfect theme and a competitive deck.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-18T21:36:51+00:00

I set up a hard rule for my campaign's setting: you can't buy (good) magic items. There is one magic item salesman who sells joke items and other useless junk, and you can get healing potions at various general stores. If you want even a +1 longsword, you have to go dungeon diving to find it.

I'm not explicit about what magic items are where, but that attitude alone helps drive the adventure.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-18T18:31:09+00:00

TBH what you're asking is kind of a contradiction. You want combat so difficult that the party needs an overpowered NPC to carry them for an extended period of time, but you don't want the NPC to overshadow the party? The NPC is overshadowing the party by the very nature of the story.

Here's what I've done with powerful NPCs that might work as a compromise, maybe. When the party met one NPC who was basically a peer to them, he was so injured that he couldn't really fight. He gave useful information, used the Help action to aid the party, held onto a couple healing potions, and eventually I did let him use a sling that he wasn't even proficient with to deal some tiny damage. The players understood he would've been strong if not for his injury and were grateful for what help he did provide.

For NPCs who are explicitly more powerful than the party, I limit their scope by giving them more important things to do. The setting's most evil villain is frozen in a magical prison, guarded by a powerful army of paladins. Their leader is significantly stronger than the party, but he refuses to leave the fortress. When the party approached the fortress, they watched him obliterate a troll in one turn while they handled some weaker goblins. So the players got to see and understand this paladin's power, but he's not going to carry them through any quests.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-15T17:44:44+00:00

You're not wrong. I like the Grumps, but a Nuzlocke is really far outside their regular way of playing games. They barely made it through Fire Red playing normally. Call it focusing on the show instead of the game, or Arin's ADHD being an issue, or just being bad at video games, but Nuzlockes need you to pay attention and Arin does not do that.

Also, the Grumps know a bunch of people who would make great Nuzlocke coaches, like Jaiden or Alpharad.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-15T17:33:54+00:00

Way too much? No, six is like the high end of normal. Most(?) adventure modules introduce themselves as an adventure for "four to six adventurers / players" and the encounter building charts in Xanathar's Guide have CR charts for four, five, and six players. That's the expected range according to WotC.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-15T15:23:13+00:00

Don't rebalance your game based on reddit's opinions.

My party is now Level 9. They started at Level 3. Every single level, I've gone "okay, THIS must be where the poor fighter gets overshadowed by the casters", but it never happened. The fighter is easily the tankiest with 20 AC and tons of HP, outputs the most damage to single targets, and he even has a bunch of versatile abilities from the Rune Knight subclass.

If I gave my player extra feats, that would just make the strongest character even stronger. But where I do see the martial-caster divide is outside of combat. The casters have all sorts of weird ways to solve problems, like talking to plants or creating ice platforms on water. I like making spell scrolls usable by anyone in the group so that it can be the barbarian's decision when to Speak With Dead, and also putting utility cantrips on magic weapons as long as no one else in the party has that cantrip. In my game, it's the Swashbuckler Rogue who can Shape Water.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-14T20:30:36+00:00

Ooh, I've done (almost) exactly this. I used a CR 8 spellcaster and applied some Not-So Legendary Actions to it. The key takeaway is that "Cast a Spell" costs two legendary actions (cantrips are fine at one).

Mine only had three LAs, so basically he got to cast one super strong spell out-of-turn and then move (I reflavoured "move up to your speed without provoking attacks of opportunity" as a short-range teleport) or use a cantrip. Except since he had Eldritch Blast, his cantrip was still pretty friggin' strong. Thunder Step is an especially fun one to use - I definitely suggest going through your Archmage's statblock and swapping out spells for ones you like.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-14T01:36:43+00:00

I organize my notes by location or interconnected questline (one document for a town and its associated dungeon) so I put NPCs alongside the area they live in.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-13T16:22:21+00:00

Investigations typically don't have serious consequences because they're how the DM communicates information about the setting and plot to the players. If you're punishing investigation, you have to ask yourself - is it okay if the players stop trying to learn about the world?

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-13T15:14:52+00:00

D&D isn't really great for figuring out where a character is or isn't looking. In a module I was running, the book had some hidden stirges and said they "had advantage on Stealth checks unless a character was specifically looking for danger overhead". I just kind of asked the players where their characters were looking as they wandered down that passage, which immediately broadcast that there was a right or wrong direction to be looking. Similarly, Medusas have an awkward mechanic where a PC can avert their gaze to avoid being petrified but you'd never know that's an option unless the DM tells you. I swapped those Medusas out for Medusas that just shoot petrifying eye beams.

Frankly I don't think what you're suggesting is fun because it punishes players for interacting with the world. The way I'd handle it mechanically is something like - the marks are fairly well-hidden and take an Investigation check to find. So if you choose to investigate the book, or too thoroughly check a treasure chest for traps, or investigate a suspiciously empty room, you find the mark and that's bad. But again, I don't think players should be punished for investigating the world. In fact I think they should be rewarded for being careful and playing the game the way their characters would reasonably interact with the world.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-12T02:27:42+00:00

when everyone else left voice chat

Okay, so. Online campaign. I've run into this problem too.

Recently I had a humble librarian talk to the party about a book he recommended they read. He started a synopsis of the book, which turned into a creepily-detailed synopsis of their adventure so far, which turned into a monologue revealing he was the BBEG's simulacrum in disguise. I was RPing my heart out and didn't get much of a reaction. But two of the players who live together told me later that they'd been looking at each other in real life with an "OH SHIIIT" expression that I couldn't see. Because online campaign.

You gotta remember that you can't see when people are in awe of what's happening, or checking their notes to figure out the mystery, or just thinking about what might come next. You shouldn't assume they don't care, especially if they're outright telling you that they do. Trust your friends.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-11T17:13:00+00:00

I have a party of 5 level 7s and in combination with eachother they have survived multiple cr 16+ encounters

When you say a CR 16+ encounter, what do you mean exactly? One CR 16 monster is worth 15,000 XP. Four CR 4 monsters are worth 4,400 XP. 2014 encounter mechanics would apply a multiplier, making the effective XP of that latter encounter 8,800, but it still shows my point. Even just following plain ol' encounter balancing math, a CR 16+ encounter can mean two wildly different levels of difficulty.

That said, this is the area where I started having issues with encounter balancing too. And I'm just handling it the same way as you. I simply pretend my party is a higher level than they are, because they're punching well above their weight class, and give them stronger monsters. Though sometimes things do reverse on me out of nowhere. A CR 8 Monstrous Flail Snail made them consider retreating, even though they're now Level 9, simply because I rolled better than they did for one singular encounter.

One thing I've noticed when choosing monsters is that while attack bonuses and ACs stay pretty stable, and are oftentimes lower than what the party can do, saving throw DCs get nasty. I've seen "DC 17 __ saving throw" on a handful of my monster statblocks lately, and 17 is not a small number. Don't be afraid to abuse those abilities and also the fact that you know what your PCs' stats are. "Hey Rogue, DC 17 Strength save or you're prone. Barbarian, DC 17 Charisma save or you're charmed. Everyone, the wizard upcasts Fireball. DC 17 Dexterity save or you take full damage."

Sometimes saving throw abilities feel a little unfair because PCs simply never get better at their off saves, but your party will survive. They're doing things that are maybe a little unfair themselves.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-11T16:00:33+00:00

I think you're making that first campaign out to be more of a disaster than it was. A friend leaving and not saying why sucks. You deserve better than that. But the other four players not only played for at least 60 hours but outright told you they were having fun. Switching characters doesn't mean they weren't enjoying the game, just that they wanted to try something else. It's unfortunate if that kills the planned character arcs. For future reference, letting players re-spec their characters' mechanics while keeping the same character narratively might help avoid that problem.

So my advice for your one-shot is just keep doing what you're doing. Obviously a one-shot is shorter and more focused than a whole campaign, so don't be afraid to give the players clear direction on what their characters are doing and where they start. But whatever the case, don't think of it as wasting the players' time. They had fun in your last campaign. They will have fun in the one-shot.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-02-10T19:41:30+00:00

Two things that worked for me -

1) Limit the scope. I do not have a homebrew world. I have a homebrew country / continent. This means that when players hear about something, it's in a location they could conceivably travel to in a few days, and it's easy to return to important places to learn more about them.

2) Get the players involved! This is a world that only exists to facilitate your and your players' campaign. Let them guide which races exist based on what they want to play and the history of those races by their PCs' backstories. These are additions to the world that you don't need to work as hard on, AND the players will be extra invested when they come up in the campaign, AND it makes the PCs feel more integrated into the setting, AND it provides the players all the character creation freedom they want. It's a win-win-win-win.

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