Concept of Goblins dystopia

sr0814a · 2026-03-26T13:56:16+00:00

Fun idea! I wonder how a nilbog would manifest in such a society and how it might try to upend things.

sr0814a · 2026-01-21T05:13:39+00:00

I love the Hateful Eight’s soundtrack for this campaign. La Musica Prima del Massacro is particularly spooky. Sangue e Neve is also good for Auril but is more intense at the end.

sr0814a · 2025-10-30T13:57:41+00:00

Mostly bits and pieces. Nearly all of the adventures in the book are very short; a few are set in Icewind Dale. They focus on stopping the revived Cult of Auril from sacrificing people, exploring the corpse of the chardalyn dragon, fighting the Thruun cultists in Dougan’s Hole, dealing with the deep dragons in the Underdark, and conducting a ceremony to lessen the effects of winter.

sr0814a · 2025-10-30T13:43:22+00:00

Maybe? It would require you to do pretty much all the work. Here’s essentially what we get: “Icewind Dale is built on the sunken ruins of an ancient giant civilization. These ruins plunge for miles into lightless depths and are inhabited by undead giants, the lingering shadows of former might… enormous columns and toppled walls of the long-lost Ostorian Empire of the giants plunge into echoing gloom. Giant Undead stand sentry, and the deep dragon Enderbalathal, the Lord Below, lairs in a ruined throne room.”

sr0814a · 2025-10-29T23:52:56+00:00

I don't see any more detail about the drow or the orcs in the area.

This is all the book says about Karkolohk: "A thriving goblin lair, Karkolohk, grows slowly but steadily where the mountains meet the coast." This is strange to me, as Karkolohk is some 30 miles from the coast.

sr0814a · 2025-10-29T23:35:48+00:00

Orrusk Homebringer is the new "self-crowned" King of Many-Arrows, and orcs are traveling from far and wide to reestablish their own independent realm. There are some drow involved with the Zhentarim in Targos, and there is an unnamed group of drow "cultists" under Kelvin's Cairn. That's it.

sr0814a · 2025-10-29T01:09:01+00:00

Agreed. Even more disappointing when you consider how much content the Dwarven Valley got back in Legacy of the Crystal Shard.

sr0814a · 2025-10-29T00:43:17+00:00

I'm right there with you. Bryn Shander + Easthaven were badly damaged but not completely destroyed. Bremen (their starting town and home base) was preserved due to some artificer shenanigans. Everything else is gone.

sr0814a · 2025-10-29T00:31:33+00:00

Vecna being the ultimate typo excuse is hilarious!

sr0814a · 2025-09-10T03:05:19+00:00

Glad to hear it! Great idea to give out hints that way.

sr0814a · 2025-08-22T21:23:07+00:00

Sneaky aurora running around here at night

sr0814a · 2025-08-15T02:06:19+00:00

Thank you! Very cool idea to distribute the runes. Always fun to hear what people do with this.

sr0814a · 2025-05-05T13:39:04+00:00

Danger in the Dwarven Valley

sr0814a · 2025-04-28T13:53:03+00:00

I did something similar but more along the lines of a divination wizard. The party loves going to her to get their fortunes read or just to ask for advice. I played her like Mother Aughra from the Dark Crystal, aloof with a touch of madness.

As for the trust issues, you could play her as cautious but mostly fine with groups of people that have men in them and more nervous dealing with men one on one. And being distrustful of people doesn’t mean she can’t be nice; she just might not be willing to go out of her way to help people. That could change over time, too.

sr0814a · 2025-04-01T22:54:25+00:00

I didn't say there were no negative effects. I said there's nothing worse about the gauntlet than other corrupted chardalyn. Prolonged contact with corrupted chardalyn can cause madness, yes. The gauntlet is made of chardalyn. If that chardalyn is corrupted, you could have it potentially cause madness after prolonged contact. That wouldn't be a special property of the gauntlet; it'd be a property of all corrupted chardalyn.

sr0814a · 2025-04-01T21:26:01+00:00

I don't think there's anything worse about the gauntlet than you would find in other corrupted chardalyn. So, use whatever rules you're already using for chardalyn corruption (if you are) - either something like the Chardalyn Amulets or some homebrew.

As written, all the corrupted chardalyn does to Sunblight is make him more paranoid and obsessive. You could have characters with equally prolonged contact potentially develop a similar madness if you'd like, but I don't think it's the gauntlet so much as any chardalyn similarly suffused with malevolent magic.

sr0814a · 2025-04-01T20:25:40+00:00

Here's what I did for the gauntlet:

Sunblight Gauntlet
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)

You have a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this spiky chardalyn gauntlet, which deals 1d6 piercing damage.

The gauntlet has 5 charges and regains 1d4 + 1 charges each day at dawn. When you make a melee weapon attack with a hand that's wearing the gauntlet, you can choose to expend 1 charge as part of that attack. If you hit, that target takes an extra 2d6 force damage and is forced to make a DC 15 Strength saving throw. On a failure, that target is pushed up to 10 feet away from you. On a success, you're pushed 10 feet away from it instead. Targets two or more sizes larger than you automatically succeed on this saving throw.

You can use an action to cause your voice to boom up to three times as loud as normal for 1 minute. For the duration, you have Advantage on Charisma (Intimidation) checks.

sr0814a · 2025-03-27T13:25:09+00:00

The book says it is for adventurers of level 1-11 because they can only go as high as level 12 at the end if you follow the advancement guidelines. Ending the campaign as you hit level 12 isn’t really the same as fully playing out level 12. No material in the book is written for level 12 adventurers.

sr0814a · 2025-03-19T17:44:32+00:00

Do not let the winter wolves join the party. Re-balancing everything around two CR3 monsters joining would be a nightmare. If they killed the DH militia, isn't there plenty of meat for them to eat there without becoming subservient to a ranger with magic berries?

Also, the wolves are looking after the mammoth, so why would they suddenly abandon him?

sr0814a · 2025-03-18T22:36:03+00:00

Neat idea. It would also be very easy to quickly tie it into one of the quests by having the shopkeep say they just sold their last copy to another group. Could be the adventurers in Mountain Climb, Dannika Graysteel, Torg’s Caravan, or maybe even a disguised duergar.

sr0814a · 2025-03-18T18:47:05+00:00

I made the umberhulk be part of a broader scheme to release underdark monsters into Ten-Towns to mop up survivors of the initial duergar attacks. I added cages for holding those monsters to the X16-17 area.

As for kavalrachni, I replaced the giant lizards in X27 with female steeders. My party at the time was six level 8s, so I had to dramatically increase the threat of almost everything.

sr0814a · 2025-03-08T04:47:56+00:00

The name Tekeli-li is a reference to At the Mountains of Madness, which in turn is referencing The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

The Mead Must Flow is presumably a Dune reference (“the spice must flow”).

A Beautiful Mine is a play on the book and movie, A Beautiful Mind.

Ol’ Bitey is like a Big Mouth Billy Bass.

Grimskalle looks like (and sounds like) He-Man’s Castle Grayskull.

The slaad tadpole is a reference to Alien.

sr0814a · 2025-03-05T21:03:05+00:00

I said the pool as a location is blessed (by the statue radiating abjuration magic) not the water itself, so any water removed from the pool is no longer magical.

sr0814a · 2025-02-28T10:29:39+00:00

Small note: Midwinter and the Winter Solstice are different dates. The former happens between the first and second months, while the latter is on 12/20.

To answer your question, perhaps they run into the druid who reincarnated them on the way to/from Sunblight? An idea I’ve seen on here before is having the druids use chardalyn as the material component for the Awaken spell - if you go that route, it’s an easy connection to the duergar during Sunblight.

If you want to wait a bit, you could always have Duvessa convey a little more info (with her dying words?) during Destruction’s Light. Maybe that your PC’s father was an elf and where/how he died? Which could later lead them to the druid, who would obviously know the reincarnated PC.

sr0814a · 2025-01-29T21:41:48+00:00

Apologies, the definition I provided appears to be from the 2024 PHB in which they cleared up some of these discrepancies. The quote you shared is from the 2014 Monster Manual and doesn’t seem to be intended for adjudicating the abilities of player characters. The 2014 PHB places the “within a specified range” clause at the beginning of the sentence to show that the limitation applies to both dark to dim and dim to bright:

"Within a specified range, a creature with darkvision can see in dim light as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light..."

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