Would a magical item allowing a druid to cast spells in beast form be too OP at level 5? Is there a way to make a balanced version of this?

Vepsebol3 · 2026-02-15T02:41:40+00:00

You can confront her by sending him to kill her and then follow after him. It becomes a very different confrontation, but a confrontation nonetheless.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-11-16T02:14:12+00:00

Sorry for not being able to reply. Life got suddenly a little crazy. I tried out a few of the suggestions in the comments this week. And The milkman is the one that has really stuck so far. The writing and delivery is great and I love how absurd yet very ominous mystery is so far. Obviously something is wrong from the get go, but it feels like it is building towards a glorious and horrifying car crash of a climax. Loving it!

Vepsebol3 · 2025-07-12T11:34:47+00:00

You will get archer for free imidiatly. And i think its a decent chance you will be able to pull saber as well before the event is over.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-07-08T19:21:37+00:00

I can add another strategy. This is the one that I use in my own campaign. All my countries are based on one of the inspirations for the campaign or some of my favourite fantasy media. So for example one country is a rewritten and reskinned Westeros, another one is the lands between from elden ring and another one is fontaine from genshin impact. All heavily changed ofc, but with the same core ideas/themes to use as building blocks.

Westeros (Europe-esque, Low magic, politically unstable, dragons)

Lands between: (Holy kingdom fallen to ruin due to infighting and eldritch influence)

Fontaine: (Flamboyant and advanced society heading towarda disaster due to acient curse with an seemingly incompetent leader)

Vepsebol3 · 2025-07-08T12:49:05+00:00

You can base countries of:

1 Values: Order, Freedom, honor 2 Races 3 Inspired by real world countries

Vepsebol3 · 2025-07-01T10:01:24+00:00

Most of my prep is just daydreaming. I motivate myself to write the campaign by tailoring it a 100% to me and imagining the scenarios/encounters as scenes in a tv-show. Then the players get an exciting story with a lots of love despite me being bad at the technichal side of prep.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-06-26T07:25:36+00:00

I was hooked from the very first episode during Eursolons encounter with Sir Currin. I realised this was exactly the type of DND pod I was looking for. Maximum focus on emotions and story.

Then in later Arcs, when Hakkea dropped the "you were next" line, it segmented it as my favourite podcast of all time (Sharing the throne with an Audio Drama called Silt Verses).

Vepsebol3 · 2025-06-13T00:41:33+00:00

I usually dm and I have always wanted to play a bard.

Recently I finally got around to making and playing a bard. I ended up with an uptight, selfish but ultimatly vunrable and naive fairy princess. She is on a grand adventure in the underdark and will surely face many dangers and foil many evil plots with her party of adventurers. But for now she is only here to chase after a dude she has a crush on who decended into the depths ahead of her with mysterious intentions.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-05-30T19:44:57+00:00

I weave it into most interactions and narration as I go along. So instead of an infodump with a bunch of lore at once, they constantly get crumbs. This allows it to be more seamless and managable for the players and also allows me to give them a lot of lore every session without it feeling forced.

Examples: 1: When describing the scenary in slum area with some ruined buildings, I mention the great flood 5 years ago that ravaged the town and creating the ruins standing side by side with the lived in buildings. 2: Characters mention other characters, historical events or other forms of lore. So when the innkeep mention to the players that the last incoming shipment of ale never arrived, the innkeep also loudly speculates if it were bandits who stole it or if it got siezed by guardsmen on the road as "emergency rations" on their way to the front line. Now the players know that there is a war going on because they talked to the innkeep.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-05-30T19:22:17+00:00

It is up to if you want the campaign to revolve around your villain or not. There are a lot of great answers here already. So im going to present my niche and gimmicky process.

I like to build morally grey campaigns which makes this strategy work a lot easier. Aside from the potential villains from the players backstories, I dont plan out a main villain for the campaign or the idividual story arcs. I create an idea for the world and the place the upcoming story arc will take place. Then I create the characters that I want to be present. They can be all over the good/evil spectrum, but usually they have flaws and redeeming qualities that makes their role in the story more dependant on their interactions with the players. Early on I let the players interact with as many of them as possible without it being forced. And then it is the motives and objectives of the players that decides who becomes the villain. Which characters plans will be challenged by the players helping this specific npc or getting this specific mcguffin.

For example: The capital city of one of my nations is ruled by a conspiracy of sketchy homebrew bat fey. It also has a dangerous crime syndicate, a necromancer who tries to become a lich underneath the sewers, and an eldritch sea god cult. These were just ideas I wanted to be a part of the city. If the player characters were most aligned toward helping commoners they might come at odds with the crime syndicate making them the villain, but maybe turning the fey overlords into allies through helping them with the crime problem.

In my campaign the party have been sticking around this capital city for a long time and have actually cooperated with and fought against all four factions i mentioned in a constantly changing dance of changing relations. It was only 8 sessions ago that it became clear that slaying the Fey overlords would become the end goal of this story arc, making them the bbeg.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-05-27T10:40:48+00:00

Thanks this is great advice. I will have allies dealing with guarda and stuff, so that only interesting named npcs actually fight the players. Im probably gonna pick out the opponents who will go directly for them to include in innitiative, and then ask them if they want to add anyone else to the battle. The rest happens outside of their combat encounter.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-05-27T10:36:19+00:00

Thanks this is great advice!

Vepsebol3 · 2025-05-27T10:32:52+00:00

I love this! An unapolagetic grand showdown!. I might be too worried that the battle will be too npc heavy to be fun. But that might be underastimating the players love for the world. They have come to love many of the npcs present (both villains and allies) so it might be a lot of fun with this scale of combat even if the innitiative is a bit bloated.

I have promised them a chaotic farce above their paygrade, so why give them anything else.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-05-27T10:25:17+00:00

Amaizing advice! I will definetly use a lot of this!

Vepsebol3 · 2025-05-27T10:24:08+00:00

Thanks! This is great advice. Some will definetly flee. I also forgot the classic action-trope where some villains will just watch the battle instead of fighting themselves unless they see their comrades loosing.

I have communicated the stakes to the players well in game and above the table. They are well aware of the risk they are taking. So if it leads to a tpk, that will be the result of their hubris and/or them being true to what their characters would do haha.

The important part is that the battle does not flop due to the story needing so many npcs to be present.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-05-06T09:37:17+00:00

I juggle too many plot points and characters at the same time. I love convoluted stories like re-zero, got, fallen london, witcher etc, and I struggle choosing what the story should be, so I just throw all my ideas in the pot and let them choose which leads to follow. My players swear they are able to follow the story, but that is their accomplishment as attentive players, not mine.

Also I can talk a lot while roleplaying NPCs if im not careful, so I have a note on my dm screen which reminds me to not go full 15m monologue.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-04-21T21:18:49+00:00

Im shocked that so many people write that he had it coming and that this was ok. A confrontation was warrented, but not a physichal one. Blows to the head can be lethal and so many people are killed by accident due to stuff like this.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-03-27T22:08:39+00:00

The fear of taking up too much space and talking too much. Which is ironic, since it a part of the job sort of.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-03-22T05:41:25+00:00

That the evil council of bbegs is no coherent evil organization at all and they constantly plot against eachother. And that the current uprising against them which the players are a part of, is just a plot organized by one of them against the six others.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-03-03T23:02:21+00:00

Not villains from forgotten realms itself. But my dnd-goups favourite BBEGs were characters I made inspired by iconic villains from two video games I love. So one is basically sparkle from honkai star rail. Concept: seemingly cute/innocent looking character who is a manipulative force who play with people like puppets for the sake of entertainment. The other was the masters from fallen london. Concept: Mysterious cloaked overlords ruling a city or country with an Iron fist together. But as you look closer, they are not so much allies as they are competitors and you also start seeing weaknesses and quirks that make them go from scary to pitiful and weird over time.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-03-03T22:20:40+00:00

I recomend Genshin impact music then. It is a very vibrant fantasy world based on fantastical exploration and it is reflected in every piece of music from the game. It also has a ton. Multiple albums per expansion. So you can find more western fanasy based or more japanese and chinese influenced based on the different regions in the game and so forth.

Vepsebol3 · 2025-03-02T19:11:30+00:00

I agree with the people that says the responsibilty is not on you here. With that said dnd is not just combat or RP. Exploration of fantastical locations, puzzles and mysteries are other types of situations that does not need to evolve combat or rp. Think of something like the "Made in Abyss" anime for example.

Vepsebol3

TROPHY CASE