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Perception is good for discovering information that isn't immediately obvious. Investigation (since the two are often misused or misunderstood) is used when trying to figure out what the information means. A low-INT, high-WIS character might see a spot on the floor that foot-traffic avoids and...

With a big enough axe, then sure ;)

For encounters... I don't have the required DM experience to do it by feel, so I use math. When I created the dungeon my players are currently going through right now, I came up with a list of creatures they might encounter for the "dominant", "pet/ally", and "random" types. I then calculated...

In our game, he killed off half the NPCs on the way to the Darklake town. He slit the character's throat in their sleep and drug them off to some hole to finish his "ritual". It was like three days before the others got wise, discovered the remains of one of their comrades painted across a cave...

Strangulation rules in 5e take for freaking ever if the stranglee had enough time to hold their breath. I think a character can hold their breath for 1+CON_mod minutes for a minimum of 30 seconds. Just one minute is 10 opposing grapple checks they can use to break free, so just strangling...

In my current campaign I created a multi-leveled labyrinth dungeon with the BBEG on the bottom floor. I created the encounters for each floor by calculating approximately what level the PCs would be as if they had cleared the previous floor. So each floor gets progressively harder in its encounters.

In my campaign, the team of BBEGs has a set of legendary McGuffins. These McGuffins are the keys to an Old God's prison (who the bad guys are trying to free) and the PCs have to recover them in order to keep the Old God from escaping.

I see people complaining about hand-axes being too OP for simple weapons and should be martial weapons (or have their damage reduced). However, historically, that is not the case. Hand-axes were the everyman's weapon. The were cheap, had multiple uses, and you didn't need a whole lot of skill in...

Mending is also handy when you come across oozes or other things that inflict acid damage and penalties on your weapons/armor. Need to fix the door you just broke down? Mend. Snapped axle? Mend.

Have the players get involved in a feud between a clan of giants and a dragon nest. Make sure to throw in the obligatory star-crossed romance plot.

My wizard was fortunate in that, during the campaign, we rescued a powerful NPC that was adept at making runes. She was able to tattoo a rune onto my wizard's hand that let him cast Witch Bolt as a cantrip as long as he had it prepared.

From my experience playing a necromancer, I actually found the Animate Dead and Raise Undead spells to be not very helpful. The undead are only really useful as cannon fodder or a meat shield for a couple rounds against stronger enemies, but their casting time makes it so the only way to use...

Slightly off topic, but I remember one campaign we did where we were on a ship for a few days. The ship's officers were named NPCs, but the regular crew we just referred to by numbers. At one point "Generic Crewman Number 12" got killed by sauhagin(sp?). His post got a replacement that we dubbed...

Effects I give for crit fumbles generally aren't debilitating. They usually amount to a jammed crossbow, getting a blade stuck in a door/wall, butter-fingers that cause the weapon to go flying at the opponent instead, etc. Those usually require an action to amend. Sometimes, if there's another...

How do you prep your campaigns? Graph paper maps, .txt files for NPCs and plot points, excel spreadsheets for random encounters and/or map legends. How much do you write before hand, and how much do you improvise? Too much on both counts. I often write story points that don't get used and...

Bears usually maul people who poke them. Involuntary planeswalking can be quite a gruesome mauling.

Another good thing to do is probably limit a merchant's stock, have them sell items for greater than the RAW price, and buy items for half (or even less!) than the RAW value. The merchants have to make money, too! Maybe, if the adventurers turn out to be regular customers for certain merchants...

I've been toying with the idea of a "galactic scale" sci-fi campaign. What I think I've figured out is that the PCs will have an Obi-Wan figure that will point them in the general direction of the plot, but he will get killed off before he can give the party any details. So they will have an...

Getting any money out of investing in property also requires quite a bit of downtime. I remember one campaign my wizard decided to invest in some rental property. He put down a "sack" of platinum coins. However, that campaign had virtually zero downtime. We went from level 3 to mid-teens in...

There's no such thing as fair in love and war. If the NPCs are the type to use dishonorable tactics, then make them use whatever they've got. It's only considered cheating if they lose. We call it "good tactics" if they win.