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I'm going to recommend following Oofta's advice. I've played the Champ 3 / Barb X character and found that it felt a lot like a barbarian that crits more. This might be because the first five levels were Barb. To get into what Mearl's was thinking of regarding the champion, think of a movie...

I haven't been happy with the monsters as a direct port from 3.5 to 5 because of the HP and AC changes in 5e. The HP seems too low in 3.5 as compared to 5e and thus the monsters will not last as long. I would recommend using kobold fight club to calculate the encounter difficulty until the PCs...

I think you have it. In my games the telegraphing of NPCs that are only interested in money comes primarily from the conversation with the PCs. I also provide bits of information on NPC body language based on some passive insight scores. Often times, the NPCs will try to escape, and say...

I didn't manage a direct tie in as well as the others above, but I used the faction ties to draw attention to the PoTA story. My players build up Phandalin to Tribore using some kingdom rules. They have ties with the Lords Alliance because of that. Yartar is a Lords Alliance controlled town...

I did run Red Hand of Doom in 5e. I moved the story to Northern Faerun and replaced the hobgoblins with orcs. I ran the story on the table top, which was before we started using Roll20. As hastur_nz mentioned, I would also recommend using generic templates from Volo's Guide and the Monster...

I noticed up thread that you mention in your game that you merged some of the casters and amplified the effectiveness of spells. Do you say the warlock has more power because of the changes you've done in your game? What do you perceive that gives you an indication that the warlock classes...

Awhile ago I did a lot of reading and re-reading of the text in the PHB on the warlock to get a better understanding of the class. This is the first time I've seen a warlock for a RPG, outside of the WoW warlock. The common theme of the warlock that I see through the descriptive text and spell...

My current approach is to use a percent of the daily XP per the DMG. In your case the total daily XP for that party is 70500. The easiest encounter would have a total XP of 10% or 7050 XP. The hardest I would recommend is a 45% encounter at 31725 XP. These XP values do not use the multiple...

Some time ago one of my players was concerned that Two Weapon Fighting style was inferior to Dueling style. I took a look at Dueling, Two Weapon Fighting, and Great Weapon fighting styles. I took a look at how these play out with our house rules on a critical and with a barbarian, fighter...

You touch on a good point of how a DM communicates the dice rolls in the context of the fiction / game to the players. When my rogue players makes a stealth check to hide before sneaking out and shooting an enemy, I let the player know if the NPC perceives the character. In my mind this keeps...

In SKT the DM is given the opportunity to put the PCs on an airship and thus gives the DM an opportunity for interesting aerial combat. Think about how you may approach that. In addition, the PCs will potentially be in combat with a lot of giants. In my opinion, it's best to avoid these...

In my mind 10 minutes of repeated activity (stealth) boils down to a passive score. Many players like to roll to determine what their stealth is, so not all players would agree. With these rules I may consider comparing the median passive stealth score of the group to the passive perception of...

I also am running PotA for a higher level group. Keep in mind the story is designed for levels 1 - 15, with the ground level keeps being level 3 - 6. The below ground temples are levels 7-10. The Fane of the Eye is about level 11 or 12. The dungeons where the archomentals are being summoned...

I'll have to double check, but I thought a druid acquired the attack capabilities of the creature it turned into. Therefore, transforming into a giant elk gave an ability to knock prone. Transforming into a wolf gave the ability to use pack tactics.

I haven't played a monk, but I've seen two played by others. The first was a Way of the Four Elements monk in my home game. I added house rules to make the sub class more fun to play for the player and the group. The second is a Open Hand monk in an AL game I played in. The player enjoyed...

My first thought was using two levels of exhaustion to recover all of the features that are recovered on a long rest. That would mean all of the BM dice are recovered, all of the ki points are recovered, all of the sorc points are recovered, etc. I don't like the idea of all of the spell slots...

Control is the tricky part. Neither the PC or the NPC loose control of the elemental. In addition, giving a command to the elemental is not an action per either spell. The situation could have turned into 5 minutes of the PC commanding and the NPC commanding with the water elemental turning...

In last week's game I had an NPC with a conjured water elemental. The PCs defeated Scholar and obtained Drown. Since were near the end of the game time the PCs wanted to get past this conjured water elemental without a fight. They used Drown's ability to cast Dominate Monster. They then...

Another way to look at the math and how well a class plays or how fun a class may be is to look at the resources available to the class. Does a wizard or sorcerer have enough spell slots? Does the sorcerer know enough spells? Can the fighter use their battlemaster ability enough times per day...

I'm not sure what the fire cult is doing because I haven't read up on them as much, but I have the air, earth, and water cults down. The "hidden" locations (Riverguard Keep, Feathergale Spire, Sacred Stone Monastery) each seem to be a way for the cult to recruit and acquire materials for that...