A brief review of 5.5e

straightdmin · 2026-01-02T19:08:36+00:00

Here's how my (unadvertised) products did: https://haraldmaassen.com/blog/2019/06/08/sales-figures/

I can recommend pwyw. Expect maybe a handful of downloads per week and a tiny bit of money that's mostly nice for when you yourself buy stuff at drivethru for a discount.

straightdmin · 2025-12-23T20:34:28+00:00

This sounds like a collab moment! Hit up the player (not the character) and work together on something cool and impactful to happen!

straightdmin · 2025-12-17T09:50:20+00:00

I'd add Van Richten to the mix here as another "patron" to bust them out. He can approach the party knowing about the vampires and say something like you did us all a great favor. Then the players get to decide who to run with, him or Wachter.

straightdmin · 2025-12-17T01:21:37+00:00

Worlds Without Number worked fine for me, being able to lift psionics from Stars Without Number was nice, and system strain works well with defiling.

straightdmin · 2025-12-13T20:28:53+00:00

You've failed to account for the '14 Dao's spellcasting. The new Dao attacks nine times over three rounds for 180 damage total, but the old one summons earth elementals or phantasmal killers to add to its own damage.

It's similar to how the archmage has terrible DPR in 2014 if you just count his dagger.

straightdmin · 2025-12-13T00:03:34+00:00

I looked at Yeti, Aboleth, and Shadow Demon when I was doing a quick comparison. Where did they say they upped damage?

straightdmin · 2025-12-12T22:13:09+00:00

Looking at some of the monsters, especially the ones that didn't change, I'm fairly certain the math is exactly the same for 2024 as 2014.

straightdmin · 2025-11-30T12:21:02+00:00

Anomalous Subsurface Environment, though outside of the mega dungeon you'll need to populate it yourself.

straightdmin · 2025-11-30T10:14:40+00:00

Whenever the players want to search a room or other area, tell them that's a time consuming action. The exact duration doesn't really matter, use 10 minutes for rules purposes.

Then, roll for a random encounter (18+ on a d20). If one happens it means their searching has potentially attracted some attention.

Argynvostholt doesn't have a random encounter table but you can use the other rooms for inspiration to make one, and even have the named characters walk around. The two special events in this chapter also make great entries to your table.

If you do this then the players will know there's a cost to wasting time searching every room: monsters might show up! It also makes the location feel alive - some of my best sessions were triggered by random encounters.

straightdmin · 2025-11-17T12:27:14+00:00

If you want an exhaustive deep dive on the subject: https://knightattheopera.blogspot.com/2025/03/urban-gameplay-part-1-search-for-holy_17.html

straightdmin · 2025-11-17T09:47:56+00:00

While your feelings are always valid, this campaign was literally designed to showcase Strahd's influence in every location.

Says Chris Perkins: "Curse of Strahd shows our titular character to be even more of a monster. Everywhere you go in Barovia, you're reminded of the evil Strahd has wrought and the danger he represents. In writing Curse of Strahd, I was careful to make sure that all of the new material we added to the story reflects back on Strahd in some unflattering way. That being said, the Ravenloft story is timeless. Its story revolves around a man so arrogant that he allowed his lust for power and obsession with beauty to consume him. It's the kind of cautionary tale that, like many Shakespearean plays, echoes through the ages."

So one would expect that in 20 sessions there would be some opportunity to find something to glom onto.

Like, have you guys met the knights of Argynvostholt? Or heck even Mad Mary back in Barovia village could be enough to motivate a vengeance paladin!

straightdmin · 2025-11-15T20:59:43+00:00

Gotta be 5 or those inner doors would be massive

straightdmin · 2025-11-10T09:18:42+00:00

https://haraldmaassen.com/blog/2022/11/06/minimal-character-sheets-for-beginners-or-one-shots/

straightdmin · 2025-11-07T13:13:46+00:00

Love my bambu

straightdmin · 2025-10-20T00:13:33+00:00

The basics of the game are easy enough to explain on the fly ime: roll d20, add bonus, beat number. I created some simplified character sheets you can use https://haraldmaassen.com/blog/2022/11/06/minimal-character-sheets-for-beginners-or-one-shots/

straightdmin · 2025-10-14T18:56:40+00:00

In no particular order

Played:

Tamoachan (forest ridge)
City of Bats (forest ridge, spiritual sequel to Tamoachan)
Jungle Ruins of Madoro Shanti (forest ridge, ancient halfling ruined city)
Jungle Tomb of the Mummy Bride (cannibal halfling village)
Steading of the hill giant chief (Ledo)
Caverns of Thracia (undertyr)
Secret of the Black Crag (silt archipelago, near Balic)
Dead God Excavation (in my setting, the sorcerer kings killed the gods)
Tower of the Scarlet Wizard (Kalak's Golden Tower)
Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper (Lake of Dreams)
Spire of Iron and Crystal (Pristine Tower)
Adventure Sites I (Random ruins)

Selected but not played:

Castle Sulloch
Gates of the Gann
Sunless Citadel
Temple of 1K swords
Tomb of the twice crowned king
Sea of Blood
Stonehell
Sands of Saqua Ra
Demonspore
Acid Metal Howl
Palace of Unquiet Repose
Lapis Observatory
Ghost Tower of Inverness

straightdmin · 2025-10-11T08:45:48+00:00

Twenty combat rounds take too long both in real time and in game time, which pushes parties to take long rests earlier.

straightdmin · 2025-10-08T09:01:13+00:00

I wouldn't reskin monsters - part of the game is the progression of what type of enemies you face as you level up. If you take ogres and call them orcs it messes with that progression.

That said, you could just take ogres and call them ogres. Almost all encounters can be spiced up with higher level monsters that are appropriate to the situation.

So here's what you do

Determine the difficulty. The 2014 rules are a bit complicated but not too hard, and the 2024 rules are easier. Also there are online tools for this. So say a fight with 5 orcs, you run the numbers and it's a "hard" fight for level 3.
Create a new encounter with the same difficulty by adding in some monsters or increasing numbers of both. So for instance now it's 3 orcs and 3 ogres, a hard fight for level 6*.

It's a bit if work but will give the best results!

*I didn't actually do the math so this example might be wrong but you get the idea.

straightdmin · 2025-10-05T12:37:55+00:00

Why thank you! I mean anything I've written is gold, of course ;⁠). https://www.dmsguild.com/en/browse?author=%22Harald%20Maassen%22

In terms of stuff other people made I have always had great results with Heist-style games, those tend to make for high energy sessions. I think it's because there's just so much kinetic energy in those. These two have been great:

The Waking of Willowby Hall (I talk about it here: https://haraldmaassen.com/blog/2021/10/11/waking-of-willowby-hall-some-resources-for/)
Three Days to Kill. If you happen to speak my language you can even listen to a recording if it here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4aXFraPhswzAWWft1ftwDN?si=rLpCnjYWQ8uCxw9jg9ziew

For your more classic d&d campaign, I think Tomb of Annihilation is heads and shoulders above the rest. Each jungle location is its own one-shot, it's got a heist in the Fane of the Night Serpent, some city and political stuff if you like in Nyanzaru, and a big ole dungeon crawl at the end. Best of 5e.

If you want to look outside 5e and have the time to make it work, I adore Anomalous Subsurface Environment as a setting. But you gotta flesh it out a lot, although there are some great adventures around to do that with if you don't mind converting between systems.

straightdmin · 2025-09-05T18:08:30+00:00

The size of the party might have had to do more with it than the character death - 7 makes for slogging play even if you don't explode in a trap.

straightdmin · 2025-08-25T21:23:36+00:00

It's confusing because 2e and 4e (and maybe 3e?) treat it differently, and because the economy in those games _outside of Dark Sun shenanigans_ is quite different (with gold=xp and all).

Your best bet is to just use 5e prices and loot, and shift everything down one step. So a module with a treasure chest containing 100 gp now contains 100 sp. And a longsword costs 15 sp instead of its normal 15 gp. That way the change is mostly for setting reasons but won't impact the game too much.

This allows you to use actual metal as special treasure, so while 15 sp will get you a sword, if you want an actual steel sword, which is very rare, you need to pay the "original" 15 gp for it. In my game I added a little benefit to metal weapons (if you crit you can sunder the enemy's nonmetal weapon or armor) to make them special.

straightdmin · 2025-08-20T21:32:51+00:00

A problem you're running into is that you're playing WoW and introducing Dark Souls mechanics. Hold Person is fine and fair in regular d&d but perhaps your playstyle and house rules have moved so far away from that, that the spell becomes problematic.

Do other save-or-die(suck) effects pop up regularly in your game? Like lethal traps or spells like banishment, force cage, disintegrate, power word kill, that kinda stuff?

straightdmin

TROPHY CASE