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My group absolutely wants to play a mega-dungeon, Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. I am a bit worried on how to handle resting in such an environment. I usually try to have some story reason that encourages the players to push on, not taking a long rest after every major encounter. I don't...

Hi there! I am currently DMing the 5E Essentials Kit adventure Dragon of Icespire Peak for a group of 5 players. In that adventure there is one encounter [SPOILER WARNING] called Shrine of Savras in which the group encounters "4 orcs per characters plus 3 ogres", if they are level 4 or level 5...

Does anybody have a map for the Danoran Consulate in The Dying Skyseer? I don't need it for combat, but to give players an idea of the layout while investigating the events leading to the death of Nilasa.

Hi there! I ran a shortened version of the Zeitgeist adventure path in 4th edition, and am now starting to run a 5th edition version with new players. In comparison I noticed that from the Sabotage encounter the two fire sprites that were part of it in 4e have been removed in 5e. I am wondering...

In the "Keep your powder dry" and ZEITGEIST 5E rules, most firearms have the muzzle-loading property: "Because of the extreme times required to reload this weapon, you must spend an action or bonus action to reload before you can shoot again". I am a bit confused about the "bonus action" part...

As only the fighter and ranger get the two-weapon fighting style, I don’t see the option to wield two weapons discussed much for the paladin class. I would like to discuss this option. Paladins get a series of “smite” spells, which they can cast as a bonus action. The problem with those is that...

A dungeon crawl which consists of a series of door-monster-treasure encounters can become pretty boring. More interesting dungeon rooms present the players with some decision to make. Now we all probably encountered rooms of the type "You enter a room with a red button on the wall. (If somebody...

I’ve been looking at advice on building a bard using archery on the internet. However I found that a lot of theorycrafting is done for high-level characters. My bard will start at level 4, and the campaign might end before he reaches level 10. So some of the great advice I read (e.g. using the...

I am playing at a role-playing club, where we are currently running a long event which is basically a series of dungeon crawls with many players and multiple DMs. Only rule, players need to be back at base by the end of the session. Then the next session can be a different mix of players with a...

sorry, accidental double post

One of the factors getting a lot of new players into D&D is the videos of groups like Acquisitions Incorporated or Critical Role they see on Twitch or YouTube. As a result, many of these new players think that what is shown in these videos is “how D&D is played”. But as a veteran D&D player, I...

I have a specific question about running chapter 9: Mantol-Derith in Out of the Abyss. If you haven’t played that adventure yet, my question might contain spoilers, and you are unlikely to have an answer. I am currently preparing chapter 9 of OotA for my group. I do understand the series of...

As a DM I have two groups. None of the players are extreme min-maxers, but their characters are all reasonably optimized: They have an 18 in their main stat at level 5, they took a race that gives a bonus to their main stat, they selected spells and weapons that do good damage, they try to have...

There are two basic ways how a DM can give out xp and levels to his players: Either for each fight or other xp-worthy activity, or in some "milestone" system where reaching a certain point of the adventure gets the players to a predetermined level. Many of the official WotC campaign books are...

I like watching YouTube videos of people playing 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. It can be fun by itself, and sometimes it helps me as a DM to see how another DM and group tackled some scene from a published adventure. However I noticed that the production quality of D&D 5E YouTube videos varies...

I don't see the level 1 Paladin "smite" spells (Searing Smite, Thunderous Smite, Wrathful Smite) used very often. While they can be situationally good, the fact that they require concentration means they don't mix well with more standard spells like Bless or Compelled Duel. Fortunately the great...

When handing out magic items in my campaign, I want them to feel useful and special, not random and occasionally useless. Thus for example I check what types of weapons my players can use before putting a magic weapon in a treasure hoard. And if one of my players is a lot weaker than the rest of...

Looking at the published WotC adventures to date I noticed that most of them start at level 1 (or the main story starts at level 3-5, with a small adventure provided to get there from 1) and end between level 10 to 15. I don't see any adventures starting at level 10 to 15 and ending at 20. I...

I am looking for an adventure for low-level characters in which the players experience a few days of a war. I could invent one on my own, but if anybody knows of an adventure already published in publications like Dungeon or EN5sider, I'd gladly get some ideas from that. The purpose is for a...

In a different thread two people wanted to "correct" a calculation of awarded xp of mine, by pointing out the xp multiplier from the table in the DMG on page 82. Then others chimed in, pointing out that those multipliers were only for calculating encounter difficulty, not for awarding xp. That...