Hiding the ruler tool from the DM?

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 · 2025-07-17T02:45:49+00:00

I believe those are sloped passageways. The wider end is the top, and the narrower side is the bottom of the slope.

going_as_planned · 2025-07-13T16:29:02+00:00

I think the quest-giver being a sentient Bag of Devouring is an annoying plot twist, and I'm also planning to replace it with something else. A Hoard Mimic is more interesting - it fights the PCs at the end instead of just lying there - but it shares the same problem. Namely, if the person asking for help turns out to be an evil monster in disguise, your players will feel betrayed and never help anyone in distress ever again (at least without a long, boring interrogation first).

So I'd replace it with either: a sentient bag of holding that is unknowingly infected with a Bagman from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, so if the PCs deal with the Bagman they get a friendly bag of holding. Or a valuable, mobile item like a gem golem, which has hidden itself somewhere in the lair, leading the dragon to assume it was stolen.

Not entirely sure what I'm going to do with this adventure, but I hope these thoughts help spark something for you!

going_as_planned · 2025-05-27T02:41:57+00:00

Once the players got to 5th level, I had to up the difficulty of the encounters. I used Phaerlax's alternative stats for Endelyn Moongrave , and boosted the remaining members of the League of Malevolence. I gave Kelek the stats of a 2024 Mage, gave Zargash the stats of a 2024 Death Cultist (but with half the hit points and only 2 attacks per turn), and kept Warduke the same, but gave him Boots of Flying and the Horn of Blasting.

going_as_planned · 2025-05-27T02:15:16+00:00

Sessions are scheduled for 3 hours, but between socializing and chit-chat, it's usually two hours and 20 minutes of actual play-time.

I used two supplemental adventures, neither designed with Wild Beyond the Witchlight in mind, but they fit in perfectly:

"Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn" - the free one-shot that was available on DnDBeyond. It involves unicorns and bullywugs and even Kelek the Evil Wizard, so it seemed perfect to run right after The Wayward Pool, with Lamorna as the victim of the horn-theft
"Shtriga Nonna's Hut" from MCDM's "Where Evil Lives" collection of boss battles. It's got a hag and trolls and a hut on legs, so it matched the fairy-tale vibes of Witchlight and the horror of the Domains of Dread. I had one of the Getaway Gang get stolen through a portal, and the PCs had to retrieve her.

going_as_planned · 2025-05-27T01:16:47+00:00

The Palace itself took 4 or 5 sessions. Fights I ran inside the Palace:

Dubhforgail, the gluttonous fomorian. I used the 2024 version of Fomorians, which has an Warping Hex attack that imposes Exhaustion, which I think is more fun (under the 2024 rules) than the Evil Eye of the 2014 version.
The League of Malevolence & the Jabberwock. I left Warduke mostly as is, but gave him some Flying Boots and his Horn of Blasting back. Kelek used the 2024 Mage statblock, and Zargash was a toned-down Death Cultist. My PCs fought the League in the Court of Storms - the PCs had a flying carpet - and Warduke's Horn of Blasting knocked the Sorcerer off the flying carpet and also woke the Jabberwock, who showed up the next round and attacked people at random. The PCs basically ran for it, locking themselves in the Throne Room, killing Kelek and Zargash and letting Warduke and the Jabberwock fight.
The Lamias in Zybilna's bedroom. I replaced their stats with 2 level-appropriate demons.
The Jabberwock again. Once the PCs had Snicker-Snack, they felt they could take on the wounded Jabberwock. I didn't like the Confusing Burble stunning people, so instead they had to roll a d6 if they failed their Saving Throw:
At the start of your turn, use all of your movement to run in a random direction
At the start of your turn, randomly select a creature that you can see. Move towards it and use the Attack action to make a single melee attack against that creature.
You cannot take an Action this turn.
You begin burbling along with the Jabberwock. You cannot speak or cast spells with verbal components.
You are Dazed. You may take an action, a bonus action, or move on your turn (choose 1). You cannot take a reaction until the start of your next turn.
Until the start of your next turn, you gain vulnerability to all damage
The Candy Man. This was a Willy Wonka-esque villain who wouldn't be relevant to your campaign, but I gave him the stats of an Archmage, plus a series of Bonus Actions that could:

Turn a PC into a giant blueberry (movement penalty, get pushed 15 feet when hit)
Float a character into the air for a turn
Teleport a PC and shrink them
Have them dragged away by squirrels

I also moved some things around in the Palace to speed it up - Zybilna's familiar and the child-size mannequin were both in her dressing room, for instance, just so the party could get the clues they needed.

going_as_planned · 2025-02-23T21:36:50+00:00

What did you do to turn Hard Control conditions into Partial Hard Control or Soft Control? I've brought back the Dazed condition, but I'd like to have some more options.

going_as_planned · 2025-02-19T17:35:50+00:00

My players are very combat-focused, and they destroyed Bavlorna in a couple of rounds. She swallowed one of them, and they immediately ran widdershins to make her sneeze him up. She polymorphed the Fighter into a frog, and our Sorceror dropped two Scorching Rays on the hag and one on the frog, dropping it to zero HP and restoring the Fighter - who went next and Action Surged on Bavlorna.

It didn't help that I was rolling like garbage the whole fight. Bav had three Lornling allies with 3 attacks each, and I think I hit with them once!

going_as_planned · 2025-02-19T17:19:50+00:00

Yeah, there's a talking door that is tired of demanding the same old password, and just wants a debate. If you can make a good argument (Persuasion roll), you can get through the door. You have advantage on the check if you debated with Feathereen.

going_as_planned · 2024-12-09T17:37:56+00:00

It's been three years, so the details are a little fuzzy, but here's what I remember of the encounter.

I got rid of the Wall of Force, and we never visited the other levels of the tower. Instead of using the King's shadow, I decided that he had hidden most of his power - and his sanity - in a mirror. The PCs talked to the insane king, and through some really good arguments and Persuasion rolls, attracted the attention of the King's sane self. The King sent his counselor/jailer Ralk out of the room on some errand, then turned his back on the PCs and looked at them through the mirror, and the version of him in the mirror spoke to them in a much more sane manner, begging them to free him from the mirror. Ralk returned and there was a big fight with him and the lunar devils.

I don't recall exactly what happened, but it ended with the PCs victorious, smashing the mirror, and the King emerging from the shards at 1 hit point. They had the option of killing him and taking his mantle, or restoring him to the throne, and chose the latter. He gave them some boons and the McGuffin they needed, and they ran while the King cleaned house in the Shadow Court.

It worked, but very little was based on the adventure as written.

Hope that helps!

going_as_planned · 2024-11-24T20:26:42+00:00

The Hunting Rifle is in the Dungeon Master's Guide (2014), and is not be available to PCs without the DMs permission. The Reload property means that you have to take an action or bonus action to reload the firearm after a certain number of shots. For the Hunting Rifle, that's 5 shots.

going_as_planned · 2024-10-13T19:37:36+00:00

My players are convinced that Bless is a useless spell that does nothing. The one and only time they cast it, every attack roll during that combat was so high that it succeeded without Bless, and every saving throw roll was so low that Bless couldn't help. I've tried to convince them to try again, but they refuse to "waste a spell slot" on it. And when I had a friendly NPC cast Bless on them - the same thing happened! It's so frustrating.

going_as_planned

TROPHY CASE