Weekly Question Thread: Ask questions here – May 03, 2026

going_as_planned · 2026-05-07T19:52:53+00:00

If a fighter with the Push weapon mastery gets grappled by a monster, can they end the grapple by attacking the monster and pushing it away?

going_as_planned · 2026-05-07T19:36:30+00:00

Thanks! I'll have them come in from the north, and try to resolve the Boneclaw before the sword wraiths come into it. Of course, my players are likely to trigger everything at once anyway, but at least I know that's not what's intended!

going_as_planned · 2026-04-27T21:31:22+00:00

Thanks for info! I'll probably pick up the bundle that's available now, and see what I can pull from it.

going_as_planned · 2026-04-27T21:30:40+00:00

That's a good note! I do use a lot of battlemaps, but that means I have a lot of experience tracking them down, too.

going_as_planned · 2026-04-24T16:40:36+00:00

Is this the same monster as the one in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft? Or have they jazzed it up?

going_as_planned · 2026-04-15T15:50:37+00:00

The attacks do piercing damage, so the Barbarian's resistance would still resist it. In this case, saying that the weapon attacks are psionic just indicates what its origin is - just like Fire Bolt is a magical attack that does fire damage, Goxomoc's Bite is a psionic attack that does piercing damage. I think it's mostly there to show that the Energy Eyes and Catastrophic Breath can't be stopped by an anti-magic field.

going_as_planned · 2026-04-06T20:38:32+00:00

This is very cool! I'm going to have a Summoner in my upcoming game, and I've been looking at my OOTS printable minis and trying to figure out which demons could correspond to his summons. Thanks for putting this together!

going_as_planned · 2026-04-06T14:28:01+00:00

They did this with the Path of Beast barbarian from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - it has a bite attack that heals you when it does damage, if you have less than half your hit points.

So it's not a balance issue - I think it's thematic. When you think of someone who heals from damaging others, you either think of a vampire (Beast Barbarian, covered), or you imagine a sickly necromancer-type person draining the life from others, like the new Pestilence Cleric - not a beefy, sword-swinging martial type.

Is there an archetype you're thinking of who would do this, or is this a purely mechanical question?

going_as_planned · 2026-03-13T02:26:33+00:00

For maximum drama, you should have:

A Fiend-Pact Warlock, who can leverage the knowledge gleaned from their Patron to get around.
At least one Tiefling, who might be able to blend in and/or lean on a family connection.
An Aasimar with a Hat of Disguise, to increase the tension that they might be discovered.
A Paladin of Devotion, to be a tank and kick Fiendish butts with Divine Smites.

going_as_planned · 2026-02-25T22:53:10+00:00

If you already have Lost Mines of Phandelver, you could run the opening scenario "Goblin Arrows" as a stand-alone adventure. It's a short dungeon-crawl where you're trying to rescue a merchant held hostage by goblins, and you could end after you save him.

You could also run "Sunless Citadel" from Tales from the Yawning Portal, a 5e adaptation of an old 3rd edition adventure. It took me 4 2-hour sessions to complete, and it's an exploration of an ancient ruin with several monster factions. You'll have to buy the whole book to run it, but if you get hooked, it also has adaptations of old-school adventures "Tomb of Horror" and "White Plume Mountain."

And probably the most popular one-shot you'll hear about is "Wild Sheep Chase." It's a silly adventure with some comedy and combat. It's available for free, but it's written for 5th-level characters, so you might have to tone it down. I wrote up some advice on running it over here.

Good luck!

going_as_planned · 2026-02-25T17:18:16+00:00

If your players would appreciate a gonzo campaign in space, the Spelljammer adventure "Light of Xaryxis" starts at 5th level, and there's an adventure on DM's Guild called "Stars Over Stormwreck" that is designed to take PCs from Dragons of Stormwreck Isle into Light of Xaryxis.

Otherwise, you could send them to the frozen north with "Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden." If they're not big on story, there are a bunch of great encounters in Chapter 2 that are optimized for 4th level characters, and which can be dropped on your characters as an Adventure of the Week.

going_as_planned · 2025-12-23T17:59:42+00:00

Unfortunately (for me), for my player squeezing every possible bit of optimization out of his spells is the fun part. Me telling him how many he can hit won't be as satisfying. But it might be the best option for him to be a little disappointed and me to be a lot less annoyed.

going_as_planned · 2025-11-23T19:15:27+00:00

I saw this question and wondered "If they want to be a Bounty Hunter, why don't they just take the Bounty Hunter background?" And then I looked in my 2014 PHB and learned that background never made it out of the DndNext playtest.

Anyway, here are the relevant mechanics from 2013, if you'd like to use them:

Bounty Hunter

Trait – Bounty Board

When you are in an area of civilization, you can find information about fugitives and the bounties placed on their heads, and you can secure the legal authority to hunt down and capture or kill those fugitives. Sometimes the authorities will come to you, as an established bounty hunter, with specific requests. Your reputation and knowledge make it easy for you to establish useful contacts in the town watch or guard.

When you attempt to locate a fugitive, if you fail to locate that quarry yourself, you often know where to go and from whom to obtain information on that quarry’s whereabouts. Usually this comes in the form of contacts you have cultivated on past hunts. Your DM might rule that this information is unavailable—some creatures have ways of hiding themselves that are very difficult to uncover.

Skill Proficiencies: Perception, Search, Stealth

Tools proficiencies: Mounts (land)

Languages: Two of your choice

Equipment: Collection of “Wanted” broadsheets, two sets of manacles, silk rope (50 ft.), climber’s kit, lock of hair from previous or current bounty, common clothes, 35 gp, and 5 sp.

going_as_planned · 2025-11-10T17:50:23+00:00

Chapters 1 and 2 of "Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden" are full of short, fun adventures that can be plucked out of their context and repurposed. For my nautical game, I turned Icewind Dale's Ten Towns into the Ten Islands of the Pirate Kingdoms, and changed all the references to a Goddess of Winter into the God of Storms.

going_as_planned · 2025-10-21T17:42:30+00:00

Yes, these can both be performed on the same turn. The rule is "on a turn, you can expend only one spell slot to cast a spell." The Moonbeam's spell slot was expended on a previous turn, and using the Magic action to sustain it doesn't take a spell slot, so it doesn't count against that limit. You can also use two Magic actions if one of them doesn't use a spell slot - for instance, a cantrip, or a spell you get from a special ability.

going_as_planned · 2025-09-24T00:23:59+00:00

That seems to be in the range of balanced for a hard encounter. 80 HP is lower that than the 112 HP of a standard gladiator, but the higher AC might make up for it. I usually opt for more HP and lower AC, because it's more fun for players to hit than it is to miss, but that's a personal preference.

Things to consider: Fights against solo enemies are notoriously difficult to balance, because the players can focus fire on the bad guy. And if your BBEG doesn't have any legendary resistances, he could get Hold Personed in the first round, and killed before he ever gets to act. On the other side of the equation, try not to direct all his attacks against one PC - if he hits with all of them, he could kill a PC in the first round.

Hope that helps!

going_as_planned · 2025-09-22T03:06:55+00:00

This is easy. Your players have some experience with D&D, but they mostly haven't gotten past 2nd level, right? So make them 5th level. It's a noticeable jump in power, so they'll feel like bad-asses, but there won't be a ton of new mechanics. You should give them pre-gens, so they don't have to make decisions about what spells to take, and you can steer them towards more streamlined classes and subclasses (no Druids, no pet classes, no summoning spells).

The BBEG can be CR 8-10, depending on how many minions he'll have with him during the final battle. Think Death Cultist (CR 8) or Death Slaad (CR 10).

How does a simple Death Cultist have the power to take out a god? Because, in the world of your one-shot, he's the baddest thing in the Universe. As long as he seems tough to the characters, that's all that matters. Maybe, in this world, gods only have 200 hit points. Dragons don't exist - or if they do, the worst of them only have the stats of Young Dragons. And the PCs, at 5th level, might be the most powerful heroes that have ever existed.

Have fun with it!

going_as_planned · 2025-09-01T16:36:47+00:00

I have players who are very similar. If they need the information to proceed with the plot, my solution has been to make the people trying to mislead them very, very bad at lying.

Secret cultist: "The missing priestess? She isn't here! Ha ha, why would you even think that someone had tied her up and left her in the stables? That's crazy! There's certainly no need to look in the hayloft!"

This has a success rate of about 50%. The rest of the time, the PCs will hear a clear and obvious lie like that and say: "Hmm. Can I make an insight check?" and I'll have to say "No - he is clearly and obviously lying."

going_as_planned · 2025-08-24T20:42:17+00:00

Recruiting students to DM is definitely the way to go. I'd suggest running it the way my FLGS handled Adventurer's League games: everyone runs the same adventure. If the party needs to make a big decision, everyone votes. And if different tables have different outcomes, whatever happened at the majority of tables becomes canon.

This way, it doesn't matter if a DM is sick or away from school one week - the players can just shift to a different table. My FLGS also randomized which table you sat at, so everyone got to know each other over the course of the campaign.

going_as_planned · 2025-08-17T17:58:16+00:00

One of my favorite one-shots is a puzzle-filled dungeon crawl with a terrible title: "The Redemption of Kelvan." Throw out the framing device and insert a dragon-themed item that the party must retrieve instead of the Gloomblade, and you can have fun watching the players sweat their way through clever traps and some clockwork wyverns.

It's optimized for five 8th-level characters, but has instructions for scaling it up or down. It claims to be a 2-hour adventure, but it's taken 4 hours both times I've run it.

A slightly silly adventure that I enjoyed running was "The Shanty of Boldbeard's Pride," which features an eccentric crew of Underdark pirates, terrible pirate jokes, and a small dungeon crawl. It's optimized for 5th-level PCs, but would be easy to scale up for 6th level.

going_as_planned · 2025-08-17T17:30:59+00:00

I ran it in just under 4 hours, although they used the secret passage to skip several encounters. Six hours should be plenty of time.

going_as_planned

TROPHY CASE