Running a homebrew campaign for about 6 months, level 5 party of four. One of my players is a Charisma-heavy bard and honestly a great roleplayer. The problem is that every time I set up a fight, he finds a way to talk the enemies down, bribe them, or convince them they're on the same side.
I love that he's engaged and creative, and I don't want to punish him for playing his character well. But the other three players built combat-focused characters (a barbarian, a fighter, and a wizard who's been waiting to cast Fireball for weeks) and they're starting to get restless.
I've tried making enemies who won't listen to reason, like mindless undead or fanatics, but that feels kind of cheap and he's already started pointing out how convenient it is that all the unreasonable enemies show up now.
Should I talk to the table directly about what everyone wants, or is there a way to build encounters where diplomacy gives a partial win instead of a total skip? Anyone dealt with this before? What worked for you?

I reworote the Sweeping Attack maneuver cause the original version really sucks, I want to know what you guys think

"Once per turn you can forgo one of your melee weapon attacks to instead make a Sweeping Attack. All creatures within your weapon's reach must succed on a dexterity saving throw or take damage equal to your superiority die + your strengh or dexterity modifier on a failed save or half as much on a succesful one. You can expend additional superiority die and add It to the damage total."

edit: what about "superiority die" + "strength or dexterity modifier" + "half fighter level"?

So let's say my (high level) players are in an extremely lethal area, very dangerous, etc. During a fight a couple people have gone down already, they're starting to greatly fear a TPK, and the Wizard casts Word of Recall leaving behind the dead body of a PC. Is there any way to magically retrieve the body of that PC in order to cast Resurrection on it?

Obviously the extreme use of Wish would probably work, but having a 1/3rd chance of never being able to cast it again is a significant barrier. RAW, is there any sort of spell which could be used (even with advance notice, such as everyone getting a tattoo) in order to make sure they wouldn't have to either a) find someone to cast True Resurrection, or b) journey all the way back into that lethal area to recover it, hoping that the body is still present and being down a person doesn't kill them all?

EDIT: This hasn't happened yet, but they're facing the Tarrasque which has also become a portal to the Abyss, thanks to a previous player character. Their plan is to run at it, survive a round or two to figure out its fighting style, and then teleport away (hoping the interdimensional instability of the thing doesn't stop their retreat). Needless to say this plan has a significant chance of casualties, and an abyssal Tarrasque is unlikely to be reasoned or bargained with.

EDIT: There is no actual Cleric in this party, just a Wizard who can cast Word of Recall.

The Battle Master is built on a solid foundation, but I believe it suffers from poor scaling and a few underwhelming or nearly useless features. My goal with these changes is to make the subclass more interesting to play, improve its progression, and give it greater versatility.

Assume that any features I did not mention remain unchanged.

I've bolded the changes I've made to make them easier to identify.

Level 3: New Feature — Maneuver Versatility

Short Rest — Maneuver Swap. When you finish a Short Rest, you can replace one maneuver you know with another maneuver from the Battle Master maneuver list.

Long Rest — Maneuver Reassignment. When you finish a Long Rest, you can replace any number of the maneuvers you know with other maneuvers from the Battle Master maneuver list.

Level 7: Know Your Enemy

As a Bonus Action, you can mark a creature you can see within 30 feet of yourself, discerning its strengths and weaknesses. You gain the following benefits:

Intel Gathering. You learn whether the creature has any damage Immunities, Resistances, or Vulnerabilities. If it has any, you learn what they are.

Tactical Insight. You have Advantage on Charisma checks, Intelligence (Investigation) checks, and Wisdom (Insight) checks made against the creature or to gather information about it.

Predictive Defense. Whenever the creature forces you to make a saving throw, you can expend one Superiority Die and add the number rolled to your saving throw.

The benefits of Tactical Insight and Predictive Defense last until you have the Incapacitated condition or use this feature again to assess another creature.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a Long Rest. Alternatively, you can expend one Superiority Die (no action required) to regain one expended use of this feature.

Level 10: Relentless

Once per turn, when you use a maneuver, you can reduce the Superiority Die you would expend by one die size and use the reduced die's roll instead of expending a Superiority Die.

At 18th level, you can use this feature twice per turn.

Level 15: New Feature — Improved Know Your Enemy

Your Know Your Enemy feature gains the following benefits:

Additional Use. You can use Know Your Enemy twice per long rest. You can also have two creatures marked by this feature at the same time, and both creatures grant you the benefits of Know Your Enemy. If you expend a Superiority Die to mark a third creature, you must end one of your existing marks.

Exploit Weakness. Creatures marked by your Know Your Enemy feature have Disadvantage on all saving throws against effects you impose on them.

Level 18: New Feature — Warlord

You learn all the maneuvers available to the Battle Master. These maneuvers count as maneuvers you know, and you can use them according to the normal rules for your maneuvers and Superiority Dice.

Revised Maneuvers:

Parry. When another creature damages you with a attack roll, you can take a Reaction and expend one Superiority Die to reduce the damage by the number you roll on your Superiority Die plus your Strength or Dexterity modifier (your choice) plus half your fighter level

Maneuvering. as a bonus action, you can expend one Superiority Die to maneuver one of your comrades into another position. Choose a willing creature who can see or hear you. That creature can use its Reaction to move up to its Speed without provoking Opportunity Attacks and add your superiority die to its AC until the start of your next turn

Rally. As a Bonus Action, you can expend one Superiority Die to bolster the resolve of a companion. Choose an ally of yours who can see or hear you. That creature gains Temporary Hit Points equal to the Superiority Die roll plus half your Fighter level (round down).

Sweeping Attack. Once per turn you can forgo one of your melee attacks or unarmed strikes to instead make a Sweeping Attack. All creatures within your reach must succed on a dexterity saving throw or take damage equal to your superiority die + your strengh or dexterity modifier + half your fighter level on a failed save or half as much on a succesful one.

As the spookier half of the year arrives, I'm starting up a Curse of Strahd campaign for a few of my friends. They have all played before, but only LMoP. Theyve told me that they wanted to make characters with actual backstories and stakes in the plot. I've run CoS before, and want to help them come up with fun characters. Right now, the best I have is a party of vampire hunters, but I'd love to hear more ideas for a party or individual characters.

Help plz?

2nd Edit: Because people seem to think I somehow am against a maneuver system for the martials or something like. Want to make it clear in a single line. This post's message is aimed against people that heavily criticize playtesters for disliking the original playtest, and people that for whatever reason would have like to see that first playtest as the final print. Anything that is out of this 2 points is out of the scope of this post, like for example a modern reinterpretation of the system with the current fighter, which is not something I am covering here (and actually do support).

Edit: This post is not against the idea of current base Fighters having access to maneuvers, in fact I too am in favor of it. This post is merely to explain what the original concept of the Fighter was, as many people believe it was something closer to what we currently have only with maneuvers on top, as have seen many people wish that WOTC never reworked it, when that was not what playtest Fighter was. I still would love for some optional rule to give it (and also other martials) access to maneuvers, or some other unique martial system.

There is a common thought upon hearing that the Fighter in the original 5e playtest had maneuvers that recharged each round, and that is that WOTC neutered it and the playtesters were dumb for asking for simpler stuff. I am here to (partially) defend that decision based on the original playtest and comparing it to what we eventually got in the official 5e release. Many people imagine a current 5e Fighter just with maneuvers on top, while the original playtest Fighter was anything but.

To compare, let's make the comparison on what a Fighter on this original playtest got, versus what the released 5e Fighter gets, level by level. As there were multiple playtests, some widely changed the class and the way it works, will only take the first one that released rules for the Fighter into consideration.

How Superiority Dice worked in this playtest, you get a certain number of them, with the amount and the size of the dice growing as you level up. You start with 1d6, at level 3 becomes 1d8 and at level 5 becomes 2d8 (the original playtest only went as far as level 5). All Fighters start with the maneuvers Deadly Strike (can add any number of Superiority Dice to a damage roll) and Parry (can reduce damage received equal to a roll of any number Superiority Dice), and your Fighting Style, which here works more like a pseudo subclass, gave you additional maneuvers at level 1, 3 and 5. To use them you spend one or more superiority dice depending on the maneuver, and you recharge all your dice at the start of your turns.

At level 1 both Fighters get to pick a Fighting Style, 5e Fighter then gets Second Wind, while playtest Fighter gets Superiority Dice with the Parry and Deadly Strike maneuber. Let’s imagine I want to make an archer, so in 5e I pick the Archery Fighting Style, while in playtest I pick the Sharpshooter Fighting Style. The Maneuver they obtain from it is Precise Shot, which lets them add a Superiority Dice to the attack roll if the enemy has half cover or three quarters cover, but only up to the additional AC the cover gives. Precise Shot is plain worse than Archery, as Archery is a passive buff that applies to all situations, while Precise Shot only works against creatures with cover, while not even securing it can roll high enough to bypass it.

At level 2, 5e Fighters get Action Surge, arguably one of the most powerful features for the level they get it, while playtest Fighters get nothing. Other than bonus HP, this is a dead level.

At level 3, 5e Fighters get a subclass, while playtest Fighters get one additional maneuver from their Fighting Style choice. We picked Sharpshooter as our Fighting Style so the maneuver we get is Snap Shot, which allows us so when we make any action other than attacking, we can make one ranged attack as part of the action, with the only drawback being that the damage of the attack gets reduced to a roll of the expended Superiority Dice, with no additional modifiers. Useful but highly situational.

At level 4, 5e Fighters get a feat, while playtest Fighters once again get nothing at all.

At level 5, 5e Fighters get Extra Attack, while playtest Fighters get another maneuver from their Fighting Style. We picked Sharpshooter so the level 5 maneuver we get is Shift, which allows us to spend a Superiority Dice to move 10 feet as part of the attack action. Again, good but highly situational.

And from level 1 we can already see the biggest problem with the system. It lets you choose between a damage reduction, damage buff, or a small ability, which is far from what people nowadays think when they imagine a Fighter with base maneuvers. If you compare, this is the same system as the criticized problem with the Rogue’s Cunning Strikes, which is that they must trade damage to use a minor ability. In fact as it stands, Cunning Strike is as close as possible to the original idea of all Fighters having maneuvers.

Just for added info, in an eventual playtest that still had the Superiority Dice concept that went to level 20, Fighters don’t get action surge until level 11, and extra attack bounces from getting it at level 6, to getting it at level 5 but making you choose when you get it between making it work only on melee weapons or on ranged weapons, and in either case each attack must be made against a different creature.

So no, the original concept of the Fighter wasn’t this complex thing that dumb playtesters were unable to accept. Rather was a not well thought system, as the only decision was “Do I want to make a bit more damage, is it more worth to use this niche ability that is only useful in a handful of situations, or I save my dice to mitigate damage?”. Fighters didn’t have dozens of decisions each round as some people seem to believe original playtest Fighters did, and had potentially even less decisions past level 3 compared to nowadays as current Battle Master is way more complex than the original maneuvers system. Did it have potential? Yes, I think so, specially at higher levels in tier 4, but as is, if the original maneuver system stayed we wouldn’t have Indomitable, Second Wind, actual subclasses, or Action Surge from level 2, which bring far more decisions into play.

My first experience with D&D was during the "D&D Next" Playtest back in 2013. I was feeling nostalgic and digging through my old files only to discover that I must have lost all those old playtest PDFs from back in the day. This makes me sad.

Does any better archivist than me still have those old (FREE) PDFs, and are you willing to share them with me?

Edit: What is your favorite memory from the D&D Next playtest? Mine was somehow TPKing the group on (one of) the first encounter of Murder in Baldur's Gate. That was also the first time I ran an "official" adventure. And the last for a while, haha.

Edit 2: For anyone also looking for the playtest PDFs, check out the link in this comment.

Inspired by Deborah Ann Would take, in a sense where you (as DM permitted) put a deliberate debuff for your character because it's their lore that causes actual consequence to the story or dice roll. My example:

1. A disadvantage or massive penalty to history roll because they are wearing a gift that slowly erases memory
2. Wisdom saving throw whenever he is attacked by fire-based spells or attacks, or get fear condition, because he survived a house fire

Though this look terrible from minmaxxing perspective, it's actually fun to play especially if your DM play along without exploiting that weakness too often

Meet Leaflet, a wiki-style note-taking tool for TTRPG campaigns!

What is Leaflet?
Leaflet is an online note-taking tool for players and GMs of TTRPG campaigns, such as D&D. As users create notes inside Leaflet Binders, the site links related notes together, resulting in a wiki-style view of your entire campaign.

Highlights

• Create notes for characters, quests, recaps, and more
• View your fantasy calendar and a timeline of events as they occur
• Track progress with counters and clocks (aka Tracks)
• Sharing and invite controls
• ...and more in development

Leaflet is available online at https://leaflet.page

What does it cost?
Leaflet is free to use with some limitations, with an optional premium tier for removed limits and advanced features.

Background
Around this time last year, my table was working on creating some shared notes for our D&D campaign, but the tool we were using at the time was frustrating a few of us (and was injecting lots of AI into the service). I wanted to build something that was easier to use, had more features, and was by-humans-for-humans.

The result is Leaflet, my homegrown small business and passion project over the last year or so, and I wanted to share it with the wider D&D community.

Who are you?
I'm a software developer in Colorado, USA, working on Leaflet alongside my day job! My plan is to put any proceeds from Leaflet back into the business to make it even more useful. As a D&D player myself, I want to create tools and resources for the community that are actually useful - not just an excuse to turn a profit.

Is this really AI-free?
Yes!

• Leaflet does not offer any LLM or image generator integration
• Leaflet was not vibecoded
• Leaflet was built with well-researched open-source libraries

I've been working in the software development space for 7+ years professionally, and Leaflet was built by hand by me over the course of about a year and a half. While AI continues to flood our news headlines, Leaflet does not have any plans to integrate generative AI features. Your notes are home to the creativity and stories that you tell at your table, and those deserve to be private, protected, and accessible.

Submitting questions & feedback
I would love to hear from the community on your thoughts about the tool, what works well, and what you'd like to see implemented. Leaflet includes a "Send Feedback" link that will go directly to me, so I recommend reaching out there first. You can also email our support address and browse the help page for more information.

Thank you for your interest, and I genuinely hope Leaflet can be useful to you and your table!

I'm not going to say this observation holds true for every player/character, but it's something I notice with some regularity.

For all the talk of "why would you play a boring human when there are so many fantastical options?", a lot of players seem to use the "interesting" aspects of their character as a crutch. They'll pick something exotic like drow or tiefling, think "that's really cool" and then feel like their job of making an interesting character is done. Instead of developing the character during actual play at the table, it just becomes a footnote on their character sheet that lets you know they're cool.

This isn't limited to character races/species either. It can be applied to other elements of a character backstory. They'll have some defining trait with maybe even pages of backstory to support it, but then that stays there in those pages. Their work of making something interesting finished before the first die was cast. The worst extreme of this imo are "joke characters" that rely on a single gimmick.

For all the dismissal mundane races with straightforward premises get, I've often found they can be the ones who are more willing to develop a character at the table where it really matters. Most of the personality that comes out during roleplay isn't found on a character sheet and players shouldn't rely on them to hold that element of play.

Hi, I'd like to GM a tier 3 campaign, yet I also know most of the playerbase only has experience with tiers 1 and 2.

I thought it would be useful to first run a short adventure (think 3 sessions) that's heavily linear and only really has an excuse plot for a string of combats that tutorialized common tactics and attributes of the game, because just walking up to the enemy and bonking it with a stick can end badly at that tier.

Given I'll deal up with strangers I think starting from basics might be good. Like here's a single mob. Now here's a group of them. Now some of them can fly, what can you do about it?. Now the enemy has a spellcaster, what can it do? Now the enemy is invisible, how do you detect it?... Etc. Etc.

Since I didn't want that to be too long I thought on preparing up to 6 combat scenes. I'd also want to hear your thoughts on which mechanics would be good to include, mobs that work on this premise, etc.

The latter is a part of an exchange explaining the rationale of having metaphysically pre-destined morality on thinking creatures. You want the bad guy to be easily recognizable, but why does he have to be /born/ with evil-identifying features? Why not have it be something like a mark or transformation you can only get from deeply aligning yourself with fucked up and repulsive acts?

I'm currently trying to make a Hill Giant guy basically be like Sweetpea from Adventure Time (kind big boy) but I'm conflicting with the lore that they're all born ravenously evil and I'm not sure what to do. This is my first time DMing and I feel restricted.

Hey everyone!

I've just released The Red Tithe, a folk-horror one-shot I've been working on, and I thought I'd share it here, especially with Halloween coming up.

The adventure takes place around Hollowmere, an isolated village with a rather grim tradition. For generations, whenever nightmares and strange disturbances begin to plague the village, one of its inhabitants is sacrificed to keep an ancient horror imprisoned beneath the local church.

But this time, something has gone wrong. A blood-covered survivor has fled the village, claiming that everyone is dead, and the characters are sent to investigate.

The adventure focuses on investigation, exploration, some unsettling discoveries, moral choices, and, of course, combat.

One of the main things I wanted to do with this adventure was make it playable at three very different level ranges: 3-4, 10-11, and 17-20. The story remains the same, but encounters, DCs, and enemies are adjusted for each tier, including three different manifestations of the final boss, the Blood Moon Beast.

It's a 75-page adventure, compatible with both 5E and 5.5E, designed for 3-6 characters and roughly 4-6 hours of play. I've also included 6 custom monster stat blocks, 3 battle maps (8 versions in total), and 4 tokens.

It's available on DriveThruRPG if anyone's interested:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/589448

No generative AI was used in the creation of this adventure.

I've also posted several preview pages, including some maps and monster stat blocks, over at r/JonnyDM if you'd like to take a look before deciding.

Hope some of you find it useful for a Halloween session or your ongoing campaigns!

I really love the Triton race, but I have to admit, I kinda miss the fish tail... However, I wanted it to be a passive ability, you know? LMAO, am I crazy for thinking that? 😭 Or would I have to spend a turn to transform??

Hey all, it has been a while since I posted here!

A bunch of you liked the old DPRcalc dice calculator because it let you model out DPR without needing a DDB character sheet, but it didn't let you model things like "smite on crit" or bouncing attacks, or more complex builds.

So… I spent a few months rewriting the engine with a few goals:

1. Accurately represent any and all legal D&D rounds, both 5e (2014) and 5.5e+(2024).
2. Make the interface faster and easier to enter data, streamlining the common use cases, while still allowing for the most complex ones.
3. Make all features in DPRcalc use the same engine. Previously the analyzer had a bunch of bespoke functionality not present in the dice library or exposed on the dice calculator page
4. Make the underlying dice library open source and easy to use.

Try it at https://dprcalc.com/dice, it's ad-free and free to use as always.

Here is what is new in the 2.0 engine:

• Drastically Simplified UI: The minimum amount of data entry required has been heavily reduced. Infrequently used options are now hidden by default to declutter the workspace, and the system handles things like auto-dice-doubling for critical hits automatically.
• Menu-Driven Scaling: Instead of manually entering damage dice and modifiers, you can now add attacks, spells, and damage riders directly from a dropdown menu. These come with sensible defaults that automatically scale with your character level.
• Targeted Damage Riders: You can specify exactly how and when riders apply. For example, you can set Sneak Attack to only apply if a hit actually lands, and you can explicitly check boxes to dictate which specific attacks (e.g., Dagger Attacks but not the Flurry of Blows) can trigger it.
• Advanced Conditional Effects: It is now trivial to model optimization staples like "Smite on crit", attacks that explode on a max roll (Sorcerous Burst) or bounce to a new target on a matching roll (Chaos Bolt or the updated Chromatic Orb).
• Action Dependencies: What happens if that "Smite on crit" doesn't trigger? You can now model dependencies, such as setting up a different Bonus Action attack to only occur if the first condition fails.
• Attack Frequency: Similar to the analyze page, you can now specify certain attacks to only happen a specific percentage of the time (perfect for modeling Great Weapon Master's Cleave, Hew, or an average Attack of Opportunity rate).
• Complex Pre-Built Examples: The update includes numerous examples showing exactly how to model mechanics like Bless, Hunter's Mark, Graze, and even an absurd Rogue/Paladin/Monk/Ranger multiclass that combines and tracks a massive stack of separate features in a single round.

You can read the a breakdown of the engine rewrite on Patreon if that's your thing. For the developers and coding-inclined optimizers out there, the underlying dice library running the math is completely open source so you can use it for your own projects.

Drop any bugs, feedback, or feature requests in the comments!

Oh and if you like data visualization or math, here is a little thing I made showing how the math all works: https://yipe.github.io/dice

Disclosures

This supports all 2014 and 2024 5e content. The site is ad-free, free to use, and has no affiliate or referral links. This is a self-promotion post for my dice library and dice calculator app. This was lovingly (and slowly) built by hand, but AI (Code Rabbit) is used for automated code reviews since the math is pretty hairy.

So my dm is letting me homebrew a race that allows me to "double dip" into some pact blade invocations, he's also using Unearthed Arcana, and allowing me to import a single 2024 invocation. My invocations are as follows: Devil's Sight, Improved Pact Weapon(lv9: superior and lv10: ultimate Unearthed Arcana) thirsting blade(lv12: devouring 2024 import) Rebuke of the talisman, protection of the talisman, and finally bond of the talisman. My build is a talisman pact hexblade

Im genuinely interested in your thoughts and suggestions.

Edit: my dm is fully aware of this build and on board.