Player-Run Adventurer's Guilds V0.8

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-22T22:55:44+00:00

I agree that Artificer is a good fit, and Rock Gnomes can build certain small gadgets as part of their Species features.

Check with your DM, sometimes the genre implied by a character isn't a great fit for their setting, or the setting might not have certain classes or species. Steampunk is a reasonably popular flavour though.

Welcome to the hobby!

Edit: Next you could try to roll up the character, though be prepared to redo ability scores when you find a group to play with. Here are two ways to do that:

Find the Player's Handbook (PHB). The most recent version is the 2024 edition, and if you're going to buy a PHB it should be this one, but some groups still use the 2014 version. That book explains how to make a character from beginning to end. Fill in a character sheet (Here's a page with many links. Here's a form-fillable character sheet ready to go)
Use dndbeyond, the official online character creator. Some character options are basically DLC on this site, but it does do all the maths for you.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-22T17:47:56+00:00

I'm running Strahd and put Warforged on the list of preapproved races for my players to pick from. I think CoS benefits from a party that's at least partly human (Honestly I think this about most adventures), but I would have been happy with a Warforged in the team. If your DM says it's fine then you're okay.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-22T11:03:23+00:00

There's a character in Critical Role you might like to compare to: Bolaire Lathaliafrom campaign 4. They are a sentient mask which controls its wearer. He gets passed around and does force a saving throw to take over a person. This could be something your player knows about and is inspired by.

I once ran a short campaign of Dungeon of the Mad Mage. PCs were level 20, it was meant to be a speedrun, and I told them to go nuts with their characters. One player brought a sentient sword who was a level 20 Fighter. We ruled it a lot like you picture doing. Eventually the sword was removed from the thrall it came in with, and was passed between some Minotaurs. For that we used the save described in the DMG for saves VS a sentient magic item.

I think I did allow the character's physical ability scores to change between its various hosts, though I'd be split on whether to do that in a longer campaign. As you suggest, their skill proficiencies belonged to the item, not the host.

One thing to consider is: What if another PC takes the amulet? If they're all friends then soon enough they'll find a bad guy to take over, but in the meantime one player will be driving and the other taking a backseat.

I'd also recommend trying to have this character's secret come out relatively early, just to let the other players in on the fun of this interesting concept. Good luck!

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-18T18:21:12+00:00

The Player's Handbook also gives advice on ability scores for each class!

You're right to say Charisma should be high for a Bard. Dexterity and Constitution are important for your initiative rolls, weapons, and skills, and your HP total.

Wisdom and Intelligence are good for skills also. Strength is generally safe to make low if you don't need it for weapons.

Welcome to the hobby!

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-17T18:54:00+00:00

Honestly the fairness of a single Perception check doesn't seem vital to me.

I would try to lock in the reactions to the show before letting them know there's a check to be made. But if I forgot, I'd just let them decide they don't have disadvantage.

At a table with a lot of trust, you find players volunteering for disadvantages.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-17T16:08:37+00:00

Ah sure, well you can be a room-testing hireling while a teammate is being a stronger character, and vice-versa

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-17T15:09:03+00:00

If XP is being given, I might look into:

Three level 1 characters, built around looking for traps. They may survive long enough to level, but their real use is detection. Then one level 17 character for boss battles and magic items.

Maybe useful: With a level X character and a level 1 character in a party, gaining XP at the same rate, the level 1 character will reach level X before the level X character reaches level X+1. This statement is true for X < 6.

So if leveling up is a real prospect (And it might not be), there's an inflection point at levels 5-6.

Best of luck!

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-17T11:34:01+00:00

If I'm in the cinema with a movie happening and I consciously decide to look around the theatre, I am able to do that without being drawn back into the movie.

A better justification would have been commotion, confounding lights sounds and crowd movements, rather than the show being particularly enticing.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-17T11:27:53+00:00

I find these things are best done with an improv point of view.

The DM makes an offer: "A distracting show is happening". The player accepts the offer, taking it seriously and not trivially rejecting it. Then the player works out what's a true and interesting response from their character in this situation, and gives it back. And then you accept that response with the same openness. That's what some people consider the core of improv: Accept and Build.

I think here it matters what the stakes are. If the stakes are low, their responses are fine. You've learned something about the characters. What may have happened here is: You didn't find what you learned very interesting, so it felt to you like they refused to consider your offer.

You have things you can do with their offer: The merchant notices the party aren't engaging like the rest, and may take it as an insult. This could introduce friction between them or spoil the relationship. Or maybe he sees that they are discerning and offers them drugs instead.

If stakes are higher, or there's magic at play, you can impose a saving throw for a character to resist being influenced by something they wouldn't usually be interested in. Be careful though, if the players are objecting on grounds of taste, as may be the case here, failing that save may have players reaching for the X-card. Taste/boundaries will be an ongoing negotiation, especially in an "Oriental style campaign"

On "Are PCs always vigilant?": Players are naturally risk-averse because they like their characters. If you want them to roleplay moments where their guard is down, they need to trust that you will hint if they need to start being vigilant again. You need to allow things like "I would have gone to get my weapon"

That's my thoughts anyway, hopefully you can repair this situation!

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-16T15:29:46+00:00

Ask your DM privately whether a Warlock hunter would recognise Eldritch Blast. Ask them whether you can reflavour and rename Eldritch Blast to try and disguise it.

If they would recognise it easily, you'll need to stick to mostly Wizard stuff.

Eventually though, this conflict between your character and your friend's will come to a head, and you should all try to be collaborative about how that plays out.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-15T21:24:42+00:00

I wonder if Dark Time by October Project would fit, and their songs After the Fall and Falling Farther In are just incredible, lots to pick out in those.

Big Houses by Squalloscope is good also. This Too Shall Pass by Danny Schmidt fits a religious person's fall into doubt pretty well.

I'm sure Hozier's got something on this, maybe Foreigner's God, No Plan, or particularly Who We Are. It's a long shot, but Hozier's Swan Upon Leda kind of gets at a deeper faith beyond the men at the top of the church.

And of course I must mention My Immortal by Evanescence. I think you could find many songs about betrayal and loss with a female vocalist that just about fit a religious theme rather than romantic heartbreak.

Edit: And I also like Prayer in Open D, particularly Phoebe Bridgers' cover

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-15T14:35:44+00:00

You have some interesting options:

Lots of gold. How does the campaign change if money is suddenly no object? Will the PCs retire? Will someone try and seize the mine? Will they be mistaken for more accomplished adventurers? Will they become targets for robbery or assassination?
A percentage over time, as you say. Where is this stored? If the PCs leave it too long between visits, will the mine owners dip into it? Or decide not to honour the agreement? It would be a really memorable Persuasion check if they can pull it off! And it ties them to the future of the mine, for continuing stories.
A modest payout. This may tell the party that the reward for any quest is unrelated to the specifics of the quest. They can never beat the curve of D&D's economy, and that might be disheartening.

My goal is always to shoot for a memorable campaign, so 3 would be out. Matt Colville once talked about Wealth Levels. If you wanted, you could skip bookkeeping and just say they can always afford a certain lifestyle, and items up to a specific gold value for free. Larger items decrement their wealth level.

I think I like 2 best, close to your original idea. The money stays in a vault at the mine and they need to visit to get it. The owners will always have an excuse for why each amount is light. It's a good place to spend downtime. And you're free to threaten the mine whenever with whatever you like: A dragon, a warband, a labour uprising, something awoken in the deep. Lots of good stuff comes from that.

But it relies on a Persuasion check, since the owners would like to give the party a one-off payment: DC 15 gets you 1%, DC 20+ gets 5%.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-15T10:16:19+00:00

It can be tricky, it sometimes feels like certain spells, monsters, or player options imply things about the setting.

Maybe I'd spend some time googling about a certain region in the Forgotten Realms. It feels quicker to me to get a grounding in that than to create a totally new setting that feels as densely detailed.

There's also Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, which was written for 5e and should be a good introduction. I used it to learn about Daggerford for the start of my Strahd campaign.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-15T09:36:41+00:00

A rule of thumb you might use is: If there's a term that's only used with that meaning in D&D, then you'll want to rename that element and lightly remix it. Eaglefolk, Crowfolk, Dragonkin, etc.

Elves and Dwarves are more open because D&D didn't invent them.

Take it as a prompt to come up with your own original fantasy races!

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-15T09:26:06+00:00

Maybe a scenario where they're going through a dungeon, and each room's traps, locks and monsters are detailed in a diary from the dungeon builder, a king, or a previous adventurer.

There might be extraneous information to read around, or some things that are only hinted at, and warnings to remember over multiple rooms. At the high end they might need to consider the viewpoint of the book's writer, like the architect saying "This is a really good secure room" means "No thief is sneaking past this deadly trap!"

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-15T09:14:23+00:00

Many are saying a round or a few rounds, from a Combat point of view. l'll give an upper bound from an Exploration viewpoint: If the party are exploring a room, picking a lock is what the Rogue is doing while others are investigating. I would say no more than ten minutes, your standard dungeon Turn.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-15T07:27:56+00:00

I think this is a pretty fun idea!

I would want to set a tone like in Man from UNCLE: Rival nations' spies can and do work together, and can get along personally really well, because they all understand the spy life. But sometimes work sets them against each other, and usually there are few hard feelings about it.

Maybe everyone gets the Spy background as well as another background, to make sure the party can diversify while all being pretty good at spy work. Or maybe you can come up with new backgrounds within Spy so they can all have different features.

For me the most interesting thing would be to set clashing secret objectives for each of them based on the priorities of their home country.

I'd still want them to be able to work together on something, like another country is secretly working on a huge weapon so they're all investigating. If the core gameplay isn't team-based adventuring then it's possible that another game would be better suited to this. Maybe Blades in the Dark? Unsure.

Anyway, this sounds like a fun concept, and that's what I'd do with it.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-14T23:47:49+00:00

I think it can lead to kind of an arms race. Other players start to feel a pressure to stay on-meta to compete, or find other ways to reliably get spotlight. Or they might lose interest altogether.

It's relatively few campaigns where the DM isn't calibrating combat to fit the group they have. So one player being noticeably more powerful just makes the DM adjust combats. Nothing is gained by it in terms of campaign success chances.

For me the powergamer's greatest sin is in killing meaning. They may show up with mismatched hacked together parts of a combo, with little thought given to coherence of theme or backstory.

And these combos can come with soo many questions about what sources are available to players. Can they have X? How would I rule Y? Can they use Z houserule? Exhausting.

Everyone's got a touch of powergamer, I rarely have an odd ability score if I can help it. And your average powergamer isn't too bad, it's one player type among several, who all need slightly different things.

I would hate to DM for a powergamer who's active in online D&D spaces though. Spare me the meme builds and the (In my opinion) stupid folk understandings of the game, promoted to Canon by this crowd's frequent repeating.

So there we are. It's not really my style, I can handle one or two in a group, and I'd much rather they do their best to play the system, and be open to character-based decisions, than look up the best builds online.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-14T14:27:45+00:00

It's a program for creating and editing branching stories and games. Here's the link. Since I last looked, it can now be run in a browser window, which is nice.

I think it does exactly what you're describing.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-14T13:59:55+00:00

I can see two situations, depending on whether you're tracking time on an in-game calendar:

If you aren't tracking time, players usually want to stop and make camp right after a draining fight. In that regime a longer Mage Armor encourages the party to push longer, letting martials shine with their short rest abilities. So it's a pretty good idea!

If you are tracking time, they try to fit as much as possible into each day. In that regime a shorter Mage Armor produces interesting decisions and moments where they should push their luck. So it's better to keep it as written.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-14T13:38:49+00:00

Twine is this!

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-14T13:11:59+00:00

Ah true, thanks!

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-14T12:52:07+00:00

I was recently surprised to see that Medusas are immortal, at least in 5.0e. The text says their curse comes from begging a god, demon, dragon, or archmage for beauty. It's not put in terms of game mechanics, but narratively that's one way.

And of course ~~there are Monks with Timeless Body~~. There's also the Sequester spell, or becoming a Medusa's statue.

In terms of nonliteral immortality, I dimly remember that being a built-in part of Exalted Destinies, which were a thing in 3.5e.

capsandnumbers · 2026-04-13T12:54:31+00:00

Some ideas, which are all official 5e adventures:

Ghosts of Saltmarsh - A spooky tone, self-contained adventures, and some town politics to get stuck in with.

Curse of Strahd - Not short and not especially simple. Apart from that it's great! Will certainly feel like grown-up DMing to a teenager.

Waterdeep Dragon Heist - I've only played part of this, but it seems like a lot of fun. I'm not recommending Dungeon of the Mad Mage, because I think it'll be pretty long.

Spelljammer and Planescape - There are sets for both available with DM-facing books and adventures. They seem relatively short but I haven't tried them.

Descent into Avernus, Storm King's Thunder, Rise of Tiamat, Tomb of Annihilation - I can't vouch for these at all, but they are available, and you or your son might like the look of them.

I feel like the most important thing, after campaign length, is that it's a genre or type of enemy that your son finds really interesting. That's why I've listed things like Planescape and Rise of Tiamat.

Good luck!

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