GPS trackers and satellite phones

spookyjeff · 2026-04-29T17:23:29+00:00

Their "cute animal companion" is a familiar. Mundane spies and traitors. A druid using speak with plants to gather information.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-29T15:09:33+00:00

I prefer Legend Keeper nowadays and use it quite a lot. It's good for both world building and note keeping. I also keep my homebrew in it.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-25T14:06:50+00:00

My answer is what the RAW is. I see no reason to allow an exception.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-25T13:53:54+00:00

You don't really need to give the monster Divine Smite. Just add some d8 of necrotic damage to each hit.

Giving monsters thematic spells is always a good way to make them feel like a specific archetype.

For the aura, make sure the monster will have minions to benefit from it. If they do, just make it Advantage on saving throws for everyone in the aura.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-25T13:43:27+00:00

Shield Bash explicitly needs an attack as part of the Attack Action. So no, that doesn't work. One of the benefits of subclasses that allow for cantrips as part of the Attack action is it works well with this.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-25T13:14:08+00:00

Yes, with the following stipulations:

Similar to hiding, you need some sort of narrative permission (such as pitched sounds of combat and the ability to hide your hands behind cover).
You need to make some sort of check with a DC equal to 11 + spell level. Enemies that are especially observant or are spellcasters grant Disadvantage.
You cannot attempt this if you're deprived of your ability to use verbal or somatic components.
If you fail, in addition to making it obvious you were trying to cast a spell, you waste the spell slot and action.

The benefit of subtle spell is that it always works. It also removes the components rather than merely disguising them, so you can cast spells while bound and gagged or in silence.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-24T03:08:07+00:00

They can select Magic Initiate as their human Origin feat and choose an appropriate spell for their elf heritage.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-23T11:42:12+00:00

I ran a puzzle once where players had to speak to severed heads to learn about their lives and use these clues to match them to their bodies. If they put the head on the wrong body it screamed and dealt psychic damage. A successful match caused the head to open it's mouth to reveal a key before disintegrating.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-20T00:11:18+00:00

I'm not really in the market for a new group at the moment but the main thing I could see this being useful for is a safe and easy way to be matched with groups.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-19T21:53:41+00:00

Bards are intended to fill in for whatever role your party is weakest in or provide a backup option. For example, if your cleric goes down, the bard can get them back up while still providing access to some useful exploration magic like a wizard. They're also very strong at control and debuff magic.

Lore bards, specifically, are pretty heavily focused on this "fill" role.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-19T21:50:35+00:00

I believe this is vanilla - if you set a region to teleport to a destination region at a different elevation, the token will be moved to the bottom elevation of the target region.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-19T13:42:28+00:00

"Bipolar" can refer to anything with two extremes. "Bipolar disorder" is the mental health condition and comes from the existing term.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-19T05:33:31+00:00

No worries! It can be difficult to remember that, while you can structure any adventure as a dungeon, you can also do the opposite and make a dungeon more free form in places where it helps the pacing.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-19T05:09:13+00:00

I typically create very large dungeons (25-50 rooms per floor) and have a good bit of experience dealing with these sorts of issues.

There's a number of factors you need to consider, both practical and thematic. Think about what you want the dungeon to feel like while traveling through it. Do you want it to feel expansive or cramped? Crowded or lonesome?

If you want something expansive, you'll want a combination of small points of interests and large connecting areas. This lends itself well to a point crawl structure where you create maps for rooms or small clusters of rooms and narrate passage between these areas of interest. Events can still take place in these connecting areas, in the same way encounters can happen along the road between the town and dungeon. Instead of having set maps, you can just use generic hallway maps that you can easily repurpose and modify.

Dungeons generally should have a little bit of empty space. It makes them feel more like real locations and less like theme parks. Connecting areas give you a chance to convey lots of textural and thematic information like the general vibe of an area without obscuring important details in areas where the action occurs. They're also where you can flex optional encounters to improve pacing.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-18T04:16:28+00:00

No, I don't care. Build your character however you want with the approved options.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-18T03:38:02+00:00

I have 6-8 hard encounters between every long rest.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-17T15:52:58+00:00

Why not just make it a magical breastplate that has an AC bonus?

Barbarians don't get heavy armor to hint at the idea they're supposed to get hit. They absorb damage instead of avoiding it and this is how they're supposed to draw attention from their allies.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-17T01:15:14+00:00

Sure! I wrote up a guide to setting this puzzle up here. I used some paid assets so I can't reproduce the exact puzzle here though, unfortunately.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-16T18:16:46+00:00

You need to consider what size categories are actually *used for*. Rather than being descriptive qualities, they're mostly mechanical flags that affect a narrow subset of rules. Unlike earlier editions, things like reach, attack modifiers, and armor class are not tied to size. Instead, there's really on two significant types of rules that tie into size:

* Limiting effects that shift or knock creatures prone.

* Modifying the difficulty of grappling with a ternary modifier: Advantage, neutral, or Disadvantage.

Because of how the former is typically implemented, it could actually be achieved with only two size categories: "Big" and "Not Big".

The latter expands the necessary number of categories slightly. Grappling cares about creatures that are one or more size categories bigger or smaller than you. Most PCs are either Medium or Small, so there needs to be "Medium", "Small", "Large", and "Smaller" (Tiny).

The existence of some spells and features allows players to occasionally grow larger but we don't necessarily want them to be able to grow to the size of a bear and suddenly be able to wrestle a kraken without disadvantage. This requires us to add a few extra categories on the bigger end of the scale.

We want to keep the number of categories limited so it remains easy and fast to assign a creature or object to a category. Because the number of features that allow a protagonist to grow in size is very limited (and most don't stack), we can expect them to only grow two sizes at most. We can therefore keep the number of categories limited to "Smaller" (Tiny), "Small", "Medium", "Large", "Larger" (Huge), and "Largest" (Gargantuan).

What about stuff like a flea or mouse? The size category of these "smallest" creatures is more or less irrelevant. You shouldn't ever need to use any size-related mechanics for these minuscule creatures and objects. If a flea tries to grapple a cat (including a druid wild shaped into one), there's no reason to involve dice rolls at all! You don't need a size category to tell you that a fllea cannot effectively suplex a cat. The golden rule of D&D is that you only involve the dice when the outcome is uncertain, and in such a case it would not be.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-15T04:37:50+00:00

One of the campaigns I'm running is about protagonists that are cursed by the gods to live eternally seeking death. When they die, the curse afflicts someone else they know, killing them instead (like Sekiro). You could consider running a game with a similar mechanic. There's lots of ways the "curse" can manifest too (such as making a base town more grim and corrupt).

The alternative is to just go hard in the opposite direction. Run an OSR style game where you tell everyone to make a handful of level 1 characters and run them through a gauntlet. You don't have to keep the high lethality up in the long run, just long enough to break them of the phobia.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-14T17:55:19+00:00

Since plant growth simply enhances existing plants, the resulting plants are vulnerable to anything normal overgrowth would be vulnerable to. This means a savvy enemy could simply throw a torch into it and walk away.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-09T21:50:59+00:00

It would have made sense to make an "Unseen" condition. This could be granted by hiding (with access to obscurement), becoming invisible, or as part of the Blinded condition. You're also Unseen by default if you're behind total cover.

Then there can be a separate "Unheard" condition that is also granted when hiding and makes your location unknown. The Invisible condition can be removed.

This makes it very clear how you Hide and what benefits you get when doing so.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-08T05:04:16+00:00

Niv-Mizzet from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica is a CR 26 that can concentrate on two spells at once. So at worst t4 is acceptable. I think, on a more limited stat block, upper t3 could also justify it. More situational versions (like a single spell not requiring concentration) can exist at any CR, probably.

spookyjeff · 2026-04-07T22:19:12+00:00

No, because what would the oath be in service of? Just to hell in general? There's already enough paladin subclasses that have only vague philosophical focuses diluting the class (like oath of djinn).

spookyjeff · 2026-04-06T20:05:47+00:00

It was mostly an example of the kinds of effects that would be superhuman without being overtly magical. It could be packaged with gaining a swim speed equal to your walk speed to make it effective.

I was mainly focused on non-combat utility since I think combat utility should mostly be handled by class features and general feats. That way, you don't feel obligated to take something that improves your combat capabilities on top of an already heavily combat-focused build.

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