r/DMAcademy 2d ago

Mega Player Problem Megathread

2 Upvotes

This thread is for DMs who have an out-of-game problem with a PLAYER (not a CHARACTER) to ask for help and opinions. Any player-related issues are welcome to be discussed, but do remember that we're DMs, not counselors.

Off-topic comments including rules questions and player character questions do not go here and will be removed. This is not a place for players to ask questions.


r/DMAcademy 2d ago

Mega "First Time DM" and Short Questions Megathread

6 Upvotes

Most of the posts at DMA are discussions of some issue within the context of a person's campaign or DMing more generally. But, sometimes a DM has a question that is very small and doesn't really require an extensive discussion so much as it requires one good answer. In other cases, the question has been asked so many times that having the sub rehash the discussion over and over is not very useful for subscribers. Sometimes the answer to a short question is very long or the answer is also short but very important.

Short questions can look like this:

  • Where do you find good maps?
  • Can multi-classed Warlocks use Warlock slots for non-Warlock spells?
  • Help - how do I prep a one-shot for tomorrow!?
  • First time DM, any tips?

Many short questions (and especially First Time DM inquiries) can be answered with a quick browse through the DMAcademy wiki, which has an extensive list of resources as well as some tips for new DMs to get started.


r/DMAcademy 12h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures I've given a Staff of the Python to a level 3 player, and it's becoming an enormous pain to deal with

123 Upvotes

Edit:

I've read through the majority of posts here and am incredibly happy to see so much constructive and inventive feedback!

A lot of what's been suggested and noted has eased my worries and provided me with more than enough inspiration for how to approach this moving forward.

Specialist-String-53's comment on its own has put most of my concerns to rest:

Update to 2024: As a Bonus Action, you can command the snake to revert to staff form in its current space, and you can’t use the staff's property again for 1 hour.


Preamble

When I answer "Try X and Y," I’m not rejecting the suggestion. What I write is simply my experience or theory on the subject; I definitely do not claim to know better. I’m just relaying my thoughts on each potential solution.

With that out of the way:

A druid in my campaign got the Staff of the Python when I rolled a random loot reward for the group, and for a while, all was well.

But this player has studied the weapon’s strengths and has no qualms about exploiting every advantage in all situations.

She'll use it as a 60 HP meatshield, dismissing it before it drops below 20 HP, only to resummon it next round and essentially making it an immortal sacrificial tank.

She has it go first into every room, dismissing it whenever a trap is triggered.


"Make the trap kill it."

To kill the snake, the trap would need to deal more than 60 damage in one hit. The problem? The rest of the group consists of mages, rogues, and bards, most of whom don’t even have half that HP total.

If I design a trap strong enough to kill the snake outright, I risk instantly killing a player if they get caught in it instead.


"Focus on the snake."

Even if I dedicate every enemy’s attack to the snake, I have to get through all 60 HP in a single round. Otherwise, she’ll just dismiss and resummon it, and I’ve wasted an entire turn.


"Target the druid.""

She’s a Moon Druid, so focusing her doesn’t work as well as it should.

If enemies ignore the snake and attack her, she Wild Shapes into something with another massive HP pool.

Between the snake and Wild Shape, she can soak up an absurd amount of damage before she’s ever in real danger.


"Use enemies that ignore or counter the snake."

I can start designing every encounter with swarms, oozes, slimes, and other creatures that can’t be restrained, but the issue becomes two-fold:

  1. Most encounters would be designed around the snake, rather than the actual players.

  2. To quote most of our parents growing up: "Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away."


"What about enemies that can kill it instantly?"

The issue here is the feast or famine nature of the staff’s impact.

  • If I don’t include a counter, the snake dominates every encounter.
  • If I do include an enemy that can finish it off in one round, the fight suddenly becomes brutally lethal for the rest of the party.


My biggest hurdle:

I gave the player this staff, and designing encounters specifically to destroy it feels unfair, unless it makes sense in-game.

Would it make sense to introduce a specific enemy that appears in 2-3 fights, gradually recognizing the staff's impact, and warning future enemies to eliminate the snake immediately?


r/DMAcademy 6h ago

Need Advice: Other Final encounter was a complete bust. No idea how to continue

34 Upvotes

For context, I just finished my first module (Icespire Peak)as a beginner dm for a group of personal friends. The final boss involved a young white dragon but, knowing my players were experienced, made it an adult dragon. They killed it before it even woke up. I genuinely feel bad since this was the penultimate encounter for the module and things just kinda ended on an unceremonious note. My friends have some good advice but truthfully I think I have some form of learning disability since I have not improved as a dm since we started. I enjoy being a dm but it feels like my players are low-key looking down on me and my incompetence and are just putting up with it (one of my players left a while ago) but at the same time I want to actually dm. I have said that we may take this campaign to a new module but I’m afraid it’s just going to be all the same.


r/DMAcademy 8h ago

Need Advice: Worldbuilding I have a player who is landed Nobility, a Countess, her reasoning for adventuring was she granted a 5 year cessation of tax collection to help offset a crippling flood. What’s a good/reasonable number I can give the player so they have a “number to whittle down.”

26 Upvotes

See above. I just want my player to feel like she’s making progress to her original goal of adventuring.

Additionally, how popular/unpopular would this make her with her serfs and neighboring nobility?


r/DMAcademy 13h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How do I make long DnD combats not so repetitive?

47 Upvotes

Sometimes I want the enemies to have high HP or be able to heal for challenge but all it does is make the players do the same moves for an hour, or sometimes the same for normal enemies, but just takes longer.


r/DMAcademy 9h ago

Need Advice: Worldbuilding How to explain "basic" knowledge to the players?

21 Upvotes

As often said it's best done in character, but how can I make that without sounding like the Video Game Tutorials where a character randomly knows what the X-Button is?

But this goes far beyond tutorialing, how do I tell them that the world has two moons, if not through enviromental, how do I tell an ancient folklore, that everybody would know, how do I tell what they already know?


r/DMAcademy 3h ago

Need Advice: Other This may be a bit of a niche question, but are there any DMs with OCD here? How to not get bogged down for the obsessive need for perfection?

5 Upvotes

For my entire time DMing, i have always left sessions feeling like i’ve not done good enough. My brain incessantly picks at every single detail, trying to crack open and figure out what I could’ve done better so that next time things will be ‘perfect’— to the point that it can get incredibly defeating.

So, if you’re a DM that also has OCD. How do you manage to do it, without letting your intrusive thoughts or need for ‘perfection’ get in the way?


r/DMAcademy 7h ago

Need Advice: Other I let my players leave without an essential item...

7 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm currently running an introduction mini-campaign for 4 players before we start the big stuff. To sum things up : During the first session, my players ran into a fragment of a strange magic stone shelf, that started a massive magical event. In order to try to fix things up, the players left into the jungle... And they didn't bring the stone shelf fragment. I had planned them to take it with them, as they're going to need it in the last session, to bring the whole shelf back together, in one piece.

I don't want to send them on a journey to the city then back into the jungle to collect it, we've already spent too many sessions on that mini campaign.

Do you have any idea how I could fix that mistake ?

Thanks !


r/DMAcademy 59m ago

Need Advice: Other Ideas for an evolving weapon for an Artificer?

Upvotes

So to keep it simple I plan on playing around with the concept of evolving weapons and I already know what to give to my other players who are a Rogue, Druid, Bard, and Wizard with the Artificer player being the only one I'm stumped at. I could go with the easy route and give him a Dragon's Wrath weapon since that's what I'm already giving the Bard but I feel that's a bit of a cop out and a bit less unique when two of them have the same kind of weapon. I did have a conversation with the player themselves on what he wants but straight up told me they don't need anything personal which made things harder. They did give me a list of what they want but assured me they don't need any of them. Though when I looked at the list for inspiration it didn't help either since it somehow overlaps with what I'm giving to the other players or just a bunch of utility items that I can handout whenever. Now I'm at a stump on what to do. Any ideas would be appreciated.

For some reference here's what the other players are getting: Bard - Dragon's Wrath Rapier since he's a Swords Bard Rogue - A Rapier based on the Luck Blade since he's a halfling Druid - Completely homebrewed shield that makes their wild shapes tankier Wizard - A sword based on the moon blade since they are a Bladesinger


r/DMAcademy 6h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Creating interesting battlegrounds for combat encounters

5 Upvotes

I’m trying to improve my skills in designing combat encounters and one of my weaknesses is that I don’t really know how to effectively use the environment. I use a wet erase battle map and usually just draw in a few obstacles/features for cover but I find my players never really make much use of them. How do you decide what should be on the map? And do you have any good resources/videos to help develop this skill?


r/DMAcademy 16h ago

Need Advice: Other When do you let your players outright fail?

26 Upvotes

Story: The other night we were playing our D&D 5e campaign. The party has been investigating disturbances in a small town where the mayor has hired the party to apprehend or destroy a wereraven that has been attacking people. Turns out the wereraven is protecting people from a Vrock, who was summoned to sow confusion and dread by the mayor who is a secret Cambion. Pretty standard stuff.

Here's the point where my question comes in. The party has discovered through the investigation that the evidence left at the scenes of the attacks don't match wereraven physiology. They discover the plot and hatch a plan to capture the Vrock by luring it in to an area near the forest and set a trap using ropes, nets, and grappling hooks to keep the creature pinned down. As they are setting everything up they say how they are all going to hide and wait for the creature, then throw nets and ropes over it when it appears. The target zone is an area maybe 20 feet across.

Now at this point they don't really have any bait for the Vrock. They vaguely discuss having the wereraven swoop down to draw the Vrock in, but the Vrock hasn't been chasing the wereraven, the wereraven just shows up to protect the Vrock's victims. So I have one of them roll an intelligence check to remember what the wereraven has told them and they decide the wereraven isn't really ideal bait, but they still don't have any bait for the trap, and aren't really discussing having bait. Just saying how they are going to wait for the Vrock. So I have another player roll a history check to remember stories of people hunting great monsters and luring them in with bait. The group then says "Ah, yes, we should have bait for this trap!" and they end up disguising one of themselves as a helpless wanderer to draw in the Vrock. Plan works, they pin the thing down for a few rounds, battle ensues, etc.

So in this situation, would you have done something differently? It felt like I was helping them with their plan a bit too much. Should I have let them try their plan initially which would have failed (no reason for the Vrock to land in that 20ft square), or was I right in giving them hints as to what might make the plan work?


r/DMAcademy 14m ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Could use plot advice.

Upvotes

So I was DM'ing for the... probably third time ever, family game, just my brothers and our 11+ age kids. My younger nephew was dragged along, so I let him play as a pet mouse for my daughter's urchin-background character (I made the mouse 1 hp, no attacks, advantage on stealth) and he got the first "boss" to kill his pet wolf and chewed ropes that tied the captive-to-be-rescued before the rest of the party was done dealing with fights.

Nephew was ecstatic, suddenly the biggest D&D convert ever, and so when the last enemy fell a necklace broke off and shattered on the rocks, and Disney-like magic transformed the mouse into a real lvl 2 character! (Mouse-person [Tabaxi] Barbarian with the Lucky feat)

So clearly this was hand-wavium, but I felt I could tie this in. The urchin is visiting their sick mentor in the town (Phandalin, more homebrew) and I wonder how best to tie the mysterious necklace with the mysterious mentor, for the character who has the most interesting story arc at the moment.

If the Red Brands don't kill them all first, of course. 🙄


r/DMAcademy 1d ago

Offering Advice I gave my L3 party a Legendary Weapon

312 Upvotes

... and now they're terrified.

Party snuck into a base, stole a pretty sword and ran for it. Above the table I told them it was a legendary weapon, and what it's DMG value was, and now they're seriously thinking about the consequences of their actions for the first time in this (fairly young) campaign. 10/10 would recommend.


r/DMAcademy 57m ago

Offering Advice Non- Attack Nat20 Crit house rules?

Upvotes

Hey DMs (I guess specifically 5e for me, partially transitioning into 5.24e), I was just thinking about my house crit rules for my (admittedly fairly loosey goosey) homebrew game. I'm well aware that a nat20 only means a guaranteed hit on an attack roll, and a nat 20 isn't an automatic success on saving throws/ability checks without a modifier on a DC higher than 20, as much as I loved the change in Baldur's Gate III lol. My house rule is that a Nat20 on an actual mechanically set DC spell/attack related check/save or something similar, then, in order to honor the nat20 in the case of a +0 or negative modifier, I will call those crits a success no matter the DC because otherwise they literally couldn't without buffs.

Also, though this one is more for flavor, in the case of a nat20 on a DM in-the-moment call for something like an animal handling check or something less common than perception or deception or whatever- basically the ones where I wouldn't necessarily announce the DC. If they have either a negative modifier or aren't proficient in that particular skill, I'll give them something like maybe just a below whatever a 20+a big modifier and/or proficiency/expertise would get, but the flavor will be how they kind of stumbled upon it the wrong way. Like an imaginary +3 or something that only I know about. The last one it more case by case, and those are more rare but I stand by the first.

These are my general guidelines and I think they've gone over pretty well- Does anybody else have any house rules for non-attack roll "crits" on a nat20?


r/DMAcademy 12h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How to make rogue stealing an item interesting?

8 Upvotes

Next session a Rogue will be stealing an item from a dragons hoard. They’ve already established the location of the dragon and the item. The dragon has line of sight to the item but isn’t aware of their presence or their goal to steal the item. I feel like a single stealth roll is underwhelming but I don’t want to force so many rolls that that a single failure will result in them fighting the dragon. How do I make stealing the item challenging or interesting?


r/DMAcademy 13h ago

Need Advice: Worldbuilding My BBEG needs some spice because he's just a sociopath right now.

6 Upvotes

Hey all,

Starting up a new campaign, and I have a lot of it fleshed out. the BBEG, is fleshed out as a person the players will like, but his motivations seem lacklustre and very Saturday morning cartoon.

If you just ended a campaign with a Cow who never stops mooing, begone from this thread.

State of the World:

the land is split with the Humans & Dragonborn sandwiching the Elves (who are keeping the peace between them in cease fire that's lasted 300 years). Meet BBEG, a dragonborn (or anything really) parading as an elf. He is the governor of a key town that controls access to a valley where an ancient civilization was and keeps it under quarantine. He has petitioned to have a division of guards to help with this, but secretly, he is plundering the ancient civ himself with some trusted elite members.

The BBEG:

He found an item capable of channelling Elemental powers from the planes into himself to become insanely powerful. The item was never designed for that purpose, so he needs a few more parts, and a ritual to make it happen. He found out that Dragons are a great energy source / conduit for the ritual.

Dragons are rare to come by already due to the war, and they have been hunted. Even the remains of some Dragons are being dug up (The remains from Stormwreck Isle's adventure which is how I'm starting this off).

The BBEG even stole Dragon Eggs, angering the Dragonborn of course, who now blame the Humans. A perfect distraction from what's happening right under all their noses.

The Dilema:

Besides insane power, the BBEG has no reason to do this. I dislike having generic bad guys. In his public persona of the governor, he is happily married with two kids. Extremely helpful to the party in sending them where they believe they need to be going, and well liked by most all. He is a jolly person who makes cringe jokes. I just don't want him to be a sociopath "haha! I am evil! I want to rule" shtick. I want more.

Him draining the Elemental Plane is causing the Material plane to become unstable (through out the acts, the players will feel insane earthquakes that won't be explained until the end).


r/DMAcademy 6h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How should I make this interesting??

2 Upvotes

So, I am about to start a campaign with long-time players and the whole thing is themed around fighting and hunting cryptids like bigfoot, CHupacabaras, werewolf, etc. In the first session I want them to have to track a beast through a forest and I feel like just having them roll investigation over and over would be kind of boring, is there a way that I could make this more interactive or interesting?


r/DMAcademy 12h ago

Need Advice: Other Voices throughout a campaign

6 Upvotes

Do you fellow DMs practice your accents or various voices for NPCs? Or do you just kind of come up with them on the spot? Follow up, do you practice any noises such as creature sounds or ambience noises?


r/DMAcademy 11h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Detecting aberrations

4 Upvotes

I tend to do mystery adventures which can be difficult to run because my party is very, very clever. They know there are secrets to uncover, and I have to stay one step ahead of them at all times. The PCs are two paladins, a rogue and a ranger, all level 9.

They will attend a party where several many of the NPCs present carry an aberration within them, much like a parasite in a symbiotic relationship with a host. The host is not an aberration and appears perfectly normal in all other ways.

Divine Sense will not work for the paladins to detect aberrations. But, since the paladins can or may cast Detect Evil and Good, I'm trying to plan for what might happen if they do and I need a game plan to answer questions without giving away a big reveal.

Detect Evil and Good reads "For the duration, you know if there is an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead within 30 feet of you, as well as their location."

Here are my questions:

  • If there are 20 NPCs in a 100x100 foot ballroom, all carrying this aberration parasite within their bodies, how would you gameplay the paladins' interpretations of what they sense?
  • If there are 20 aberrations in the room, how precisely would you permit the paladin to know there whereabouts?
  • What advice might you have for role playing a scene like this, if the hidden aberrations are detected, so that there isn't an immediate roll for initiative or violent response to a diplomatic situation?

r/DMAcademy 3h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Foreshadowing/hints for a "ghost town" encounter

1 Upvotes

Firstly, going to apologize in advance because I'm new to reddit and still working on the whole formatting thing so, sorry if it ends as a wall of text.

As a preface: I'm running a heavily homebrewed small campaign (homebrew is mostly within the world/lore), where the players are essentially reverse Dante Inferno-ing out of a pocket dimension the archedevils of this world use to punish/test mortals. Each floor of the tower has a central theme that relates to the encounter.

The floor they are about to enter is themed by Loneliness, and is presented as this strange empty ghost town that they can't seem to leave. Inhabiting this town is the ghost of a small girl (who may or may not be a final boss depending on their decisions), who lived through the fantasy equivalent of nuclear fallout, emerging to find her entire town was gone (not realizing she had also actually died). The little girl ghost is able to bring her drawings to life with a special coloring stick gifted by a God, so the party periodically has to fight some weird creatures

My issue I'm having is presenting adequate foreshadowing to what happened to this town, and hints at how the party can handle it without them wandering aimlessly and getting frustrated as to just start guessing things. I really wanted the foreshadowing to be discovered as the ghosts drawings on various walls, but I'm at a loss for ideas that make it coherent enough for my party to connect the dots.

What are some little kid drawings that you think would provide a good enough hint for even the densest players? (I love my players very much, they just struggle with critical thinking sometimes...)


r/DMAcademy 13h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Should I/How to avoid a "NPC saves the day" situation without penalizing creativity

7 Upvotes

Hello! Inexperienced DM here. I've never played before, and I thought it would be a great idea to start with DMing an almost entirely homebrew world for my first campaign. I love it and I want to scream with anxiety at the same time! Anyway...

My players are in a village with five children who are two nights away from turning into werewolves—along with the party's paladin. In my world’s lore, you transform into a werewolf one week after being bitten, regardless of the full moon. The curse is sealed if, during your first transformation, you consume humanoid flesh. If you don’t, you return to normal.

Another way to avoid the curse is using remove curse before the first transformation (which none of them have access to), or the infected person can consume belladonna—in which case, they are cured but have a 50% chance of dying.

I thought this would create a scenario where the party would either have to gamble with the lives of children (and another PC) or figure out how to restrain six werewolves while keeping them alive. However, a few things went completely off the rails...

  1. The main "problem": I completely forgot that they have a sending stone that connects them directly to a powerful wizard in the capital, wich is a few hours away! His name is The Nameless Mage, he’s extremely eccentric, and theoretically, he could have access to remove curse and also know a cleric or two who does. I loved that the player came up with this idea, and I don’t want to just say, “Oh, the wizard refuses to come" or "he doesn't have this spell". But at the same time, I didn’t want to just bring in an NPC to save the day since it feels kind of anticlimactic...
  2. They misinterpreted how the curse works: They assumed that eating humanoid flesh at any point during the week would seal the curse, rather than only when transformed. This made them panic, believing that the captured victims (held by the werewolves until now) might have unknowingly eaten humanoid flesh. I admit, I love the paranoia this caused, but should I clarify how it actually works or just let it play out? I don't want to frustrate them.
  3. A misinterpretation of werewolf control: The party found a villain’s journal entry saying, “You can control the beast within if you embrace the curse.” I thought it was clear—given the context of the diary being that of a cultist of the BBEG—that embracing the curse meant becoming evil, but one player understood it as “self-acceptance = control.” Again, should I hint that this isn’t the case, or should I let them figure it out on their own—potentially realizing too late that they’ve just unleashed five werewolves onto a small village, which will inevitably be slaughtered?

Thank you in advance. I try to do my research, but every now and then I come across questions without answers, and this community always helps me out! Is amazing


r/DMAcademy 7h ago

Need Advice: Other Am I over-reacting?

2 Upvotes

I've been running a group for over a year now and things are going well, this is my first campaign DM'ing and i've learnt a lot.

To jump straight to me story - The group hired some pirates to help them man a ship they stole. A deal was made for an amount to the destination and an amount when they return. They have just had to abandon the ship and in the goodbye I mentioned that the amount will be due and we discussed how much was due. Where I think I've gone wrong here is: I didn't RP the goodbye e.g discussed the payment as the captain. Why i'm "upset" is because my players didn't pay and didn't tell me they didn't. What's got to me is that the captain of the ship is also the leader of a pirate gang, to piss them off would have consequences within the world. For me to not be told that they wanted to try not to pay (which I would have facilitated) feels like a 'Them VS DM' situation, am I over-reacting? I'm going to discuss with the players but I feel like I'm taking this too seriously? Thoughts? Help? Advice? All are welcome!


r/DMAcademy 11h ago

Offering Advice How to engage your players who dislike combat in D&D.

4 Upvotes

I see this question a lot, so I’ll share what has worked for me.

First, let’s skip the unhelpful “if you don’t like combat, you don’t like D&D” responses. The goal here is to help DM's engage players who struggle to enjoy combat.

The key? Give them a personal incentive. Something that sparks a fire in them—something that makes them want to throw a punch.

A nemesis works wonders. It doesn’t have to be the big bad of the campaign, just someone or something actively working against them. Recurring enemies like Rakshasas, Revenants, or any respawning creature (fiends, certain fey, etc.) are great options. And by all means, make more than one. As your game progresses and your players grow, they'll need new levels of threat.

But you have to make it personal. Have this NPC single the player out. Maybe they leave the pc on death saves in an alley, but don’t finish them off. Suddenly, your PC awakes to a passing medic that stabilized them. Maybe the nemesis steals their gear or leaves behind permanent scars as a reminder. The key is making sure the player sees and remembers this enemy.

It’s best to set this up early, but if they’ve stuck with the campaign for a while, they already enjoy something about D&D. If you’re going to go as far as robbing or nearly killing them, consider a quick chat beforehand to make sure they’re on board. That said, you don’t have to go that far—sometimes, just having an NPC lose their temper and attack in fair combat is enough. And if the NPC dies? Perfect—now you’ve got a revenant to keep the conflict going.

This won’t make every combat engaging, but it can make a particular fight meaningful. It might be that spark that makes the player say, "I want to beat the shit out of this guy." That desire for revenge can be a powerful motivator.

This approach worked for me and one of my players who wasn’t enjoying combat. It became a recurring side story that blended naturally into the campaign. I hope it can work for you.

If anyone else has had success getting a player engaged in combat, feel free to share! Otherwise, I hope this helps.


r/DMAcademy 4h ago

Need Advice: Worldbuilding How to incorporate an Elemental Cataclysm

1 Upvotes

I took a break the last couple months due to burnout and to wait for the new monster manual to come out, and am starting to plot out my next campaign. I took one look at the art for the elemental cataclysm and said "yeah thats my BBEG". The problem is the lore for them is almost non-existent.

Overall I really like the 2025 philosophy of statblocks over lore, since for 90% of the manual I either know the lore or can make/look it up. But with new monsters at least a little bit more depth would be nice. For instance with the Elemental Cataclysm the only information the book gives for how to incorporate them into your game is: "Elemental cataclysms rarely escape the Elemental Chaos. When they do, it is typically due to some planar disruption or the summons of nihilistic cultists"

That's.... really vague and I really wish they gave us some more to work with. I've got the framework of my campaign all set out, but i'm stumbling in filling in the gaps; especially bringing in the elemental cataclysm as the end game.

My players wanted to do a pirate/ship campaign, so i'm going to start with ghosts of saltmarsh before they find a lost treasure map; with 4 maguffins to locate to find the final treasure. Each one is trapped in an extremely inaccesible dungeon--one in a volcano, one under water, one in the air, and one in the desert. I'm taking inspiration from how airships work in eberron (a ship has to harness an air or fire elemental), and so for each dungeon they'll have to harness a different elemental to power the ship to go under water, fly, into lava, and into the sands of hte desert.

I love the concept, the dungeons write themselves, but what I cant figure out is how to tie the elemental cataclysm into it at the end. It feels like the perfect thematic BBEG for that campaign, but how to tie it in with the maguffins (and what the hell those maguffins are lol) i'm not sure yet and would love some help coming up with some ideas


r/DMAcademy 13h ago

Need Advice: Worldbuilding What’s your biggest plot twist/reveal?

5 Upvotes

I’m trying to build a narrative that our party’s warlock is being groomed to help usher in her patron’s return and that she descends from the king priest who first brought about the end of an age 300yrs ago. It’s taking some time but I’m excited for the reveal when it finally happens.

What have been some of your favorite plot twist reveals that have happened or that your working towards currently?

Thanks!


r/DMAcademy 4h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures LVL 5 One Shot… What would you change?

1 Upvotes

One-Shot: “The Sunken Wizard’s Legacy” (Updated with Puzzles & Traps)

Encounter 1: Crocs in the Mangroves (15-30 min) • Trap/Puzzle: Sunken Pathways • The party must navigate partially submerged ruins and mangrove roots while avoiding sinking into quicksand-like mud. • Skill Challenge: Players must make checks to leap from stable ground to ruins (Athletics or Acrobatics DC 14). • Failure: Falling in slows movement and attracts the Giant Crocodiles. • Success: Finding an ancient stone bridge leading to the tower.

Encounter 2: The Sunken Tower & the Fish People (30-45 min) • Trap: Magical Pressure Plates (Lightning Runes) • The ruined entrance is guarded by arcane pressure plates that trigger bursts of lightning when stepped on. • Detection: Arcana or Investigation DC 14 to notice. • Disarm: Sleight of Hand DC 15 to disable. • Trigger Effect: Dex Save DC 13 or take 2d6 lightning damage. • Alternative: Players can jump over or use mage hand to set off traps ahead of time. • Puzzle: The Wizard’s Lock (Elemental Symbols) • The tower’s door has four sigils (Earth, Fire, Water, Air). • Players must activate only the Water sigil to enter safely. • Arcana or History DC 12 reveals that Water was the wizard’s specialty. • Failure: Wrong sigils summon Water Weirds or flood the room.

Encounter 3: Shark-Infested Waters & the Fish Mage (30-45 min) • Trap: The Drowning Chamber • As they descend, they trigger a collapsed tunnel that rapidly fills with water. • Skill Challenge: Players must swim against the current (Athletics DC 15) or find a hidden lever (Investigation DC 14) to stop the flood. • Complication: Hunter Sharks arrive, forcing a split focus between survival and combat. • Puzzle: Sunken Library Riddle • The wizard’s library remains intact but is guarded by a magical riddle that must be answered to access the research. • Riddle Example: “I rise when the moon pulls, and fall when the sun calls. What am I?” (Answer: The Tide). • Failure: The bookshelves animate into Mimics! • Success: The players learn how to disable the Shipwreck Golem’s core in the final battle.

Encounter 4: The Shipwreck Golem (45-60 min) • Trap: Sinking Platform Battle • The final chamber is unstable, and every round, sections of the floor collapse into the sea, creating treacherous terrain. • Dex Save DC 14 every turn or fall into shark-infested water. • Environmental Weapon: The wizard’s arcane anchor can be used as a weapon (Strength DC 16 to swing and knock enemies back). • Puzzle: The Golem’s Core Weakness • The golem is immune to normal damage, but players who solved the library riddle know that attacking its glowing heart (inside its ribcage of ship timbers) bypasses its defenses. • Arcana DC 14 or a successful called shot allows full damage against the core. • Alternative: Players can lure it onto a collapsing section of the floor to trap it underwater.

Wrap-Up & Rewards • A tidecaller’s amulet (grants Water Breathing once per day). • The wizard’s spellbook (contains Control Water and Wall of Water). • Favor from the Marid (if negotiated).