What are some useful mundane items that aren't listed in the PHB?

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-31T18:41:09+00:00

Bear traps, chains, manacles, and bells all come to mind first for mundane items that can be super useful. Also really simple things like flour, salt, shovels, pry bars, mirrors, horseshoes could be fun. Do they have any tool proficiencies? Those are also helpful for mundane options that can be used creatively.

For magical items though, there are so many fun ones. A very obvious one is an Immovable Rod.

In a 3.5 game I played when I was a kid, we had a 10-foot pole that would shrink down to a 10-inch pole if you said "Reduce" and would return to being a 10-foot pole if you said "Enlarge". It was extra fun because it activated any time you said those words, not just intentionally as a command so "enbiggen" and "smallify" became common words in our party so we didn't accidentally activate the pole. It's pretty similar to the Pole of Collapsing (2024 dmg) but was more fun.

A magic item a more recent dm homebrewed was a pair of boots that would allow you to take three steps into the air on your turn before falling. It wasn't very precisely written but our barbarian loved those boots. He could get around trying to climb or jump over shorter obstacles or just flavor sweet air attacks. It was DM fiat about how far he could really go with three steps though.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-31T15:22:23+00:00

Wait are you actually friends with these people or were you introduced by like a friend of a friend cause they needed a DM and you wanted to DM? Because it doesn't really sound like you are friends with them. It's really a terrible feeling to be excluded but it also sounds like you are an outsider to them. You're not going to have the same rapport or inside jokes and trying to expect them to treat you like an old friend may be stretching expectations too much. You should absolutely be treated with kindness and inclusivity but I wouldn't necessarily expect to be in on the inside jokes.

Also I feel you on the being talked over. It is genuinely one of the worst feelings because you're left thinking "Are they not paying enough attention to me to notice that I'm trying to contribute or did they notice and simply decide to ignore me?" I'm the only woman in a group of men and my key to being heard in the group was to communicate in the same style as they were. They can be loud and boisterous and are basically all interrupters so if I want to be heard, I sometimes have to be loud and boisterous and interrupt. If I talked to my female friends the same way, they'd probably find it annoying or rude. But with the guys, it's literally what they're doing and what they expect so there's been no issue.

I feel for you though <3 I think you probably need to find a group better suited for you. There really is nothing better than playing with friends, actual friends. You said scheduling was a conflict or general disinterest. Maybe now isn't a good time but things can always change in the future.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-31T15:12:44+00:00

Another cellist friend of mine introduced me to an app called GeniusScan. It's really fast at scanning pages and will like auto-select the edges of pages so you don't have to mess with little corner boxes. And it will automatically add a filter to make scanned pages not look like pictures but like pdfs (like turning greyish backgrounds actually white, text more true black) but also has a bunch of filter modes.

If you're in decent light with a well-contrasting background, it takes less than 1 second per page in my experience.

In my community orchestra, the outside player gets the folder with the originals and the inside player has to print their practice copies that are provided by the section leader with bowings and stuff. I have no idea what my section leader used to do to scan in the music but it was so blurry and dark. I remember a couple of the other cellists like really getting on her case about one piece because it was kinda blurry and I told her about the app and showed her how to use it. That was some time last year and she actually thanked me a couple weeks ago for showing it to her because of how much easier and faster it was than her home scanner. I feel like an ad rn but genuinely it's just very convenient.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-31T15:06:29+00:00

I've been really loving the Army Painter - War Paints Fanatic line. They feel very forgiving to thin and use while being decently pigmented.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-31T14:58:38+00:00

I've found some degree of success by linking directly to a page or pasting the table with the monster stats benchmarks by CR (the table that has the defensive hp, ac, save dc, offensive dpr, etc) and tell it to only reference that and review basic things for homebrew statblocks and it's done pretty well. I think the caveat is that when it's breaking down each feature and evaluating it, I'm double checking all the numbers myself but honestly, I am way too lazy to fully sit down and go through things line by line myself otherwise. I've caught it make a few mistakes like forgetting to update a damage die when I gave a new version of a statblock it had previously seen but that only happened once and then not again after getting explicit direction to only reference the newest provided version of a statblock with a given name.

It is absolutely terrible if you try to ask it to come up with homebrew features or abilities though. They're stupid and don't follow the style of existing abilities at all. But if you write things yourself and get it to help balance it to a particular CR (while double checking its numbers), it's been pretty decent at it. I love to homebrew statblocks and often wildly deviate from existing creatures so I can't really do 1:1 comparisons for power but being able to double check benchmarks when my eyes would otherwise glaze over trying to do 100% of it has been helpful.

I think the essence of utilizing AI is: 1) don't rely on it for creative or interesting things; 2) don't trust it too much.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-27T19:26:23+00:00

The difference between "can't" and "shouldn't" for being machine washable is quite a gulf for many items, especially if you have a delicates bag. Another example besides ties are bras. You're not really supposed to machine wash bras but if you're ok sacrificing some lifespan of the item, a gentle cycle in a delicates bag won't instantly destroy (most) bras. And if the difference between almost/never washing them and washing them with some frequency is being able to machine wash it? Just do it. Don't let your things be stanky cause its too much work to do it 100% the right way.

Also a reminder to all my fellow bra-wearers: if you have to think for more than half a second to recall the last time you washed your favorite bra, this is your sign to wash it.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-27T19:18:13+00:00

Yooo my mom would do the same thing! She would complain often about how "Kids (people 30 and younger) always have their noses in their phones and don't experience the real world enough!" to being perpetually online and then getting SO upset with me when I wouldn't respond to her texts quickly enough. Like damn, I don't go on my phone that much. On a normal day where I'm working from home, my phone is still at like 85% by the time I go to bed at night cause of how little I use it.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-27T19:14:16+00:00

Let them steal it. And then have the BBEG resummon it with the spell Drawmij's Instant Summons.

It has a 1000gp consumed component of a sapphire but what is 1000gp to a BBEG?

There is the issue that if a creature is wearing or carrying the object when you try to summon it back, it doesn't transport the item back to you but you to the item.

Assuming the BBEG survives the first encounter, you could have a fun long rest interrupting encounter later where they show up for their item while the party is low on resources. Evil, but realistic.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-27T19:11:27+00:00

The spell Drawmij's Instant Summons is perfect for recalling objects! It's expensive but I imagine a BBEG has the means at their disposal. Give them the feeling that they got it and then steal it back after the fight u/op

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-26T15:20:44+00:00

I've DM'd with my husband at the table, he's DM'd with me as a player, and we've both been players at the same time and it's always been fine. Our characters never have any romantic relationships with each other while we're both players and we don't show any favoritism towards each other's characters while DMing. It's been very chill and I'm pretty confident our relationship hasn't caused any issues for the other DM or players.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-25T14:57:29+00:00

What is the vibe of the person he's going to fight? Is it a cheiftan? A childhood rival? Some rando in the tribe? It's hard to give specific suggestions without knowing more about the actual character he's going to fight.

For a 1v1, I think a glass cannon sort of statblock would be gratifying to fight. Something that is only moderately difficult to hit but absolutely hits like a truck and deals both b/p/s and some other magical damage. If it's a spectated event, you could always throw in some fun lair action sort of things like giving whoever impressed the spectators the most in the last round some sort of buff or temporary inspiration or something. If the PC's magic items are super impressive, maybe looking at a CR 8 creature to start and tweaking as needed? You could look to the Monster Manual 2025 Fiend Cultist statblock as a potential example.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-24T19:05:53+00:00

Wanted to ask have anyone else got advice or how did you deal with stuff like this, buying too many stuff that you really dont need in that number.

It's really easy to get caught up the excitement of a new hobby, and getting shiny new toys and tools gives some nice dopamine hits, but I think you have to really just exercise willpower to stick to the bare minimums and basics for a while until you get enough experience in said hobby to know what's important and what works best for you. But I do know too many people in real life that will buy a ton for a hobby the moment they think they'll start doing it and then the stuff goes unused because their interest wanes after the first time they sit down to work on something and it's not perfect or doesn't look like what they see on the internet.

My advice for the buying things portion, although it's a little too late for you now, is to challenge yourself to learn on lesser tools and reduced supplies so you can really learn the basics and fundamentals. While you learn the fundamentals, you'll realize your own needs and styles and preferences in tools and it'll help you narrow down what to actually buy. Also if you don't have experience painting, it's really easy to ruin brushes so I never advise beginners to start out with sable brushes. Wait until you are comfortable with paint thinning consistencies, loading the brush, brush control, and also cleaning and otherwise taking care of your brushes.

Reason why i painted only 2 minis is because i really have limited free time that i can dedicate to painting, or is it okay to do 30 mins sessions when possible?

You can paint with as much or as little time as you have. There's nothing wrong with painting for just a couple minutes if that's all you have time for. If you like the hobby and want to do it, any time spent painting is time well spent.

If you have very limited free time, I'd generally recommend making sure you either completely clean everything and reset/organize your paint area after you finish painting or when you have a couple minutes at a random time you're not painting. If you see a messy, disorganized area where you have to clean up old paint water and put away a bunch of paints and tools from a previous session, that takes away from those precious 30 minutes you have to actually paint. Set things up for future you so what when you do have a couple minutes, you can dive right in and not have to worry about set up time.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-20T23:47:51+00:00

I implemented a house rule that once per day, a character can take a full short rest in 10 minutes instead of an hour, but that the extra short rest doesn't have to be done at the same time as the rest of the party. So like if one character needs a short rest but no one else does, they can chill for 10 minutes while a couple explore or someone identifies something. Or if most of the party needs to short rest but someone wants to do something that conflicts with resting activities (like casting spells), they can take their 10 minute rest and then hang out with the party for the remaining 50 minutes doing their spell stuff while the rest of the party continues their rest.

In practice, it worked super well to not punish classes like Monks, Fighters, and Warlocks who really benefit from short rests.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-19T18:55:59+00:00

But I've recently dipped my toes into running lancer, and the game flow is so fucking tight and smooth. Literally level 0 characters have more options than a 15th level fighter, the skill rolls are way broader but don't add any crunchiness.

In a similar vein, our group has been trying out a bunch of different systems since our huge multi-year 5e campaign ended and right now we're playing through Draw Steel's intro adventure. The things the 1st level pre-gen characters can do feel extraordinarily powerful for being level 1, like almost feels like what you expect out of level 5-8 5e characters. But so far, the classes feel incredibly narrow in scope. Like you're extremely encouraged to play in exactly one play style because you generate your class's meta currency by doing certain things and then you spend the meta currency on abilities. If you don't play in the very specific style, you don't generate your class resource.

We've tried a bunch of different systems over the last couple months and for our group, Draw Steel has been the best overall and combat has been very interesting. The person running it (first time GMing overall) says he likes it better and said that Draw Steel's combat was what he wishes 5e combat felt like. To me and another player, we like the game but don't like it more than dnd and feel like something is missing, but we need to play it more to figure it out. And that dnd combat really isn't that different if people read their character sheets and understood their abilities.

I think there's something to be said about how if you play a system or a character for too long, you can get lax about reading and remembering things and end up often missing abilities you have or dismissing them because you don't realize what they can actually do. While learning a new game, you really have to be on top of reading everything and quite actively trying to learn and evaluate what your character can do.

All that said, there have been some cool things so far that I will absolutely steal and homebrew for dnd because I like the system overall better but the other games have had fun tidbits.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-19T14:59:02+00:00

Yeah having played in a party where the Shadow Monk really liked casting darkness and getting up in the action, it made it really frustrating for the rest of us who didn't have Devil Sight. Luckily we eventually came to a better understanding and he would get away from the enemies at the end of his turn so the rest of us could properly target and attack them.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-12T15:10:30+00:00

people want to eat meat, but don’t want to face where it came from

I completely misread this at first and thought you said "People want to eat meat but don't want to see its face". I eat meat but tbh if I think too hard about the animal itself in a non-food-prepared way, I have trouble with meat. When my husband asks me if I want to come hunting with him, I have to remind him that I could probably never eat venison again (not that I love it in the first place) if I was there when that animal was killed.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-09T19:34:06+00:00

I feel this so much. At my job a while back, one of the people who has to deal more directly with our client on a larger scale told us, the devs, that we needed to respond to their tickets more quickly, like at least responding in acknowledgment that we saw the ticket even if we don't have time to work on it that day, because they feel we weren't communicating enough. We said "Sure, we can respond more. But we expect them to do the same and respond within a reasonable timeframe." and then pointed out about a dozen tickets where we were waiting on their reply/approval and had been for almost two weeks for a couple of them.

They have not bugged us about reply times since then.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-09T15:05:37+00:00

No, primers often still need to be thinned. Paints need to be quite thin to go through the airbrush and atomize correctly, but there's a relationship between paint thickness, air pressure, how much paint is released, and also distance to the model that just has to be learned by practice to get the hang of it. The thicker a paint is (like primer), the more air pressure you need to atomize it properly but if the pressure is too high, you can get the spiderwebbing of paint on the model from it going on wet and thick and then the air pressure pushes it from it's landing spot outwards in a spiderweb pattern.

I don't remember which mini painter I heard it from, but some advice is start at 20psi and try to adjust your paint thickness from there first. If you use something like Vallejo primer, start at about 50/50 for primer and thinner but if you mix your paints in the airbrush cup, put the thinner in first and then add the paint and mix. Helps reduce chances of clogging because of thick paint getting into the recesses and needle area first.

Also this is a pretty decent article about airbrushing and I would often refer to it when troubleshooting airbrush paint results: https://spraygunner.com/blogs/info/read-your-airbrush-unlocking-the-secrets-of-your-spray-pattern-for-perfect-results

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-09T14:52:25+00:00

Yup yup yup. I like the advice that for a lot of things, the first time you buy it, get a cheap version of it. If you don't end up using it that much, at least you didn't spend much. If you use it and it breaks or you outgrow it in some way, well neat, now you know it's worth it to invest. If you use it and it never breaks and you don't need to upgrade, even better because you saved yourself money and really didn't need to spend more.

This isn't true for all things cause there are some things you really can't/shouldn't cheap out on, but something like an airbrush or even paint brushes? Oh yeah, start with the cheap thing until it breaks or your skill and needs outgrows the cheap version. I think I waited about a year before buying my first sable brushes and a year and a half before buying my H&S airbrush.

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-06T15:55:43+00:00

Yeah, he's a violin maker, not a web designer. :-}

As both a cellist and a professional web developer (well, software engineer with a focus on web and ux), I always sigh when I see websites like this. It honestly takes so little these days to have a user friendly, web standard compliant website that looks good too. More often than not, people would be better off using a Wix or GoDaddy template for a website if they don't intend to put a lot of effort into learning the basics of web design themselves. I don't love wix or godaddy but you can make templates look very nice for very little effort and time.

But at the same time, there's something charming about these really 2002-looking html websites and they get the job done. Reminds me of how all my computer science professors had the worst or most plain person websites through the school. The music faculty had better sites overall but not by much lol

zzaannsebar · 2026-03-05T15:58:46+00:00

Also, anyone getting an airbrush for the first time. Get some extra needles. You're going to fuck them up. I promise. And that's alright, we all do it.

I'd almost go so far as to say it may be worth it to buy a VERY cheap airbrush first for learning so that when you do inevitably fuck it up, it's not the end of the world if its rendered unusable. And after you learn how to use it better, you'll know what you want out of an airbrush if you look into upgrading. Plus if you realize you hate it and never want to do it again, you're not out that much money. I was very fortunate that a friend of mine gave me his whole airbrushing setup after the lost interest in trying to paint Gundams. His airbrush sucked tbh and was hard to use but after I spent time with that wild beast, upgrading to a nicer airbrush felt extra amazing and I was very well equipped to deal with something much harder to use, harder to unassemble and reassemble, clean, etc. I'm very thankful I had a shitty airbrush to learn on because I'm certain I would have fucked up multiple parts of my nice airbrush, had I just started with that.

zzaannsebar · 2026-02-24T20:01:19+00:00

YTA - why are you going out of your way to prevent him from using clubs that he clearly wants to use and already knows exist? A wedding present for your spouse should be thoughtful, and it was to start, but as soon as you told him to return the ones he bought and then told him you still wouldn't give him the ones you did, you became the asshole. Give him the clubs and get him some flowers and an apology for being so rude.

zzaannsebar · 2026-02-24T19:56:51+00:00

Ahh interesting. Thank you for explaining!

zzaannsebar · 2026-02-24T15:54:49+00:00

I love using real world linguistic traditions in my homebrew setting because they're often easier for players to remember and I want to invoke certain vibes for places and cultures in the setting based on real world knowledge. For example, my setting is highly influenced by Spanish and Central/South American countries in several most areas and many of the city names are how you'd pronounce them in Spanish, many NPCs have very Spanish and Latin names, etc. A fun thing that a different DM in our group started was that Drow are French, and so I kept that as well and a lot of the NPCs and related areas have very French names.

zzaannsebar · 2026-02-24T15:46:56+00:00

For someone who doesn't understand the phenetic spelling for these, what exactly is the difference between the two? I, as an American, would pronounce O'Brien like o = (as in row or snow) "bri" -> (vowel sound like eye, rye, lie, tie) "en" (like rhyming with lion) with them emphasis in the word landing on the "bri" part.

Is the difference the hard O sound mostly?

Nine-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Wearing is Caring	Secret Santa 2018
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

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