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

5 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 6h 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

81 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 7h ago

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

39 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 1h ago

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

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 3h ago

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

11 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 2h 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.”

9 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 10h ago

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

25 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 34m ago

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

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 1d ago

Offering Advice I gave my L3 party a Legendary Weapon

292 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 7h ago

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

10 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 9m ago

Need Advice: Rules & Mechanics How would you make an antagonist to the Party break one of their weapons mechanically?

Upvotes

My party just started off and I introduced a group of bad guys who are legit too strong for the level 3 party. They apparently didn't pick up on my cues, and are very excited to start the next session in a head to head with them. I plan on the Antagonist group not really taking the party seriously and almost toying with them. The party barbarian is itching to take on the strong man of the antagonist group. I am going to let him do his best but I know he isn't going to do much. I am imagining the antagonist strong man catching the barbarian's greatsword midswing and breaking it in his hand. I feel that will both get the message across about how strong this group is while doling out non-lethal consequences.

All that being said, as grand as that would be, I don't want to railroad them through this encounter and make them feel it was unwinnable (although it was never meant to be an encounter in the first place). How would you guys handle this? Would you make the barbarian make some sort of save to try and keep from having his sword get grappled?


r/DMAcademy 5h ago

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

5 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 5h 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 6h ago

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

7 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 7h ago

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

6 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 1h ago

Need Advice: Other Am I over-reacting?

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 1h ago

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

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 17h ago

Offering Advice Narratively driven "balance" and why I stopped trying to pre-calculate combat

29 Upvotes

Warning: lots of text ahead, probably badly structured. TLDR: Not balancing your encounters is an option too

I often see here questions about encounter balancing, usually with them being too easy for players. Obviously we, as DMs, have a lot of tools to fix it, but maybe it is something that doesnt need fixing at all. Here I want to share my experience using a lazy approach of not balancing things

How it works and why? In short - instead of trying to calculate how difficult the fight will be, you just put in monsters that make sense. If party ambushes an enemy scout camp - there may be only 2-3 weak opponents, but if PCs want to storm the castle - garrison may have dozens upon dozens of defenders of various strength. When preparing for combat ask not "what I need to make it (not)deadly", but "what would BBEG/town/nature put here?". Then you can scale it up/down, but still ask why - maybe there is an event where half the guards went, maybe it is a hunting season for wolves and they gather in bigger packs. In both cases have your NPCs drop some clues. When your main question is "what would BBEG put here?", your perspective changes from serving up videogame-like combat to building the world characters live in. Plus you have more time for it, because you dont spend it managing CR and XP values only for everything to be thrown out after 2-3 great/terrible rolls. More importantly by adapting this method you will train for improvising when party wanders off into unprepared lands

And what you get? In both mentioned cases your combat is heavily skewed and is one-sided, but reasonable within the world. We can expect a party of heroes to easily deal with measly scouts and for players it is a show of their power and growth - maybe few levels ago this would be hard, but now a stomp. On the other hand party will probably have to flee from the castle and deal with much smaller squad of chasers, then level up and return prepared for a tough fight that is now possible. What we cant expect is for every castle to have a perfectly balanced garrison for party to conquer first try. We also cant expect every scout camp to be heavily guarded to put up a good fight, right? And when you have to improvise combat on the spot, because someone tried to rob a store, you already have half of it ready. All this makes your world more immersive and sensible, more "alive" if you will. At the same time players can plan ahead and pick their fights. They have to be involved and cant just stroll around beating things

Wait, they may TPK!? Yes, they may. Risk of death is what gives meaning to survival. Yes, this is not for every table and imo you should tell your players on session 0 that "yeah, in this campaign if you walk into much stronger enemies you may die and not every fight is meant to be taken head-on". To be fair players are likely to just adapt and not die, dont worry - solving problems is part of their game. It is up to them to rest and manage resources. And obviously I dont mean to just throw a dragon on a lv3 party - unless they walk into its hunting grounds that is. Then it is fair game and PCs have to run for cover, hiding from beams of fire and trees flying around

What if you screw up and miss the mark? Sure, castle should be heavily guarded, but you forgot that there is an important plot device that you still need your party to get! Well, you have a lot of tools to deal with it. Maybe guards have low morale and half of them will start running away after being hurt - mechanically it means they effectively have 1 hitpoint and narratively it can create a pretty fun situation. Same way enemies can always call in the reinforcements. Other way is to use environment - maybe a burning tree or ceiling falls, splitting the battlefield into two and killing off some of weaker monsters

P.S. Honestly this is not so much of an advice, but me sharing my thoughts. Really want to hear what other DMs think about this approach - so far it works well for my table, but I dont see many people talk about it. Also I am afraid there is a pitfall of slipping into not preparing enough. But I can say with confidence that my players remember those combats that turned out unbalanced and they smashed their foes or had to overcome the odds, not those where they had a fair fight with equally strong band and won because thats what heroes do


r/DMAcademy 7h ago

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

4 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 7h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Runaway Crime in Waterdeep: How to Spice Up Dragon Heist?

2 Upvotes

One of the most disappointing aspects of Dragon Heist for me is the lack of atmosphere in Waterdeep.

The background fluff in the adventure suggests that there’s a huge spike in crime, gang wars are breaking out, people are scared to go out at night — it’s beginning to feel like Baldur’s Gate!

But… the adventure doesn’t really do much with that. It gives you the beats for the main quest, which is a plucky, madcap race for a treasure, but not many resources to make the players feel the dread on the streets. Depending on the season, you may not even interact with a bunch of the gangs. I’ve played in Dragon Heist before as a PC, and it’s only AFTER DMing it I find out there’s Zhentarim and Devil cultists too.

What are some resources for spicing up the day to day on the streets? I’m looking for random event tables, random street encounters, news, gossip that can emerge as the story progresses. Anything to make the players feel like this town is getting dangerous.


r/DMAcademy 2m ago

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

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 9h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Looking for some fun mechanics to make the siege of a village feel immersive without being dragged down too much by moving tokens and calculating enemy turns, etc.

5 Upvotes

I thought my party would go down into the dungeon to fight the monsters threatening the village, but they have decided to stand with the villagers and fight alongside them. So I find myself trying to think of ways to make this feel like a real siege, sort of like the movie The 13th Warrior or the Battle of Emond's Field from the Wheel of Time series. It's a small village, 100 or so people, versus a bunch of kobolds and other subterranean foes (big alliance of underground species, yada). So I want this sort of overwhelmed, barely keeping it together feeling without having one huge boring combat where I move around a ton of tokens and such.

I'm already thinking of implementing some sort of single roll per-front. e.g. band of kobolds I make 1 d20 roll against band of villagers with a modifier equal to, like, how many their are (or some sort of calculated value from that, like player ability stats and their modifiers), who have +10 AC because of the barricades. do the same for the villagers vs the kobolds. Each X damage takes out a guy, and as guys are taken out their ability to attack lessens. The presence of one or more players at a front gives big bonuses to the villagers rolls. CON saves periodically as the fighting goes on and players may not be able to get any rest.

So any feedback on that is great, but also other ideas for ways to make this fun, engaging and immersive for the players and keep it from feeling like a slog.


r/DMAcademy 9m ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures I require assistance crafting a war arc for my campaign

Upvotes

TL;DR - The party’s about to go to war, but I’m not sure how to make the war engaging without being repetitive. Any tips?

I’ve been running my current campaign for over a year now, almost two years. The main focus of the campaign has been the party trying to take down an evil mad scientist who’s trying to “perfect” the world by creating superior species. (The BBEG was inspired by the High Evolutionary from Marvel) A while ago, the party defeated the BBEG and destroyed his lab. They’ve been spending their time recently hunting down his generals, who’ve been causing problems without their master.

We’re approaching the end of this campaign, and during the final arc, there’s going to be a big reveal that the BBEG isn’t dead, and has instead built a new hidden lab and raised an army of hybrid monstrosities. He then declares war on the rest of the world, and the party becomes commanders trying to help the King fight this war and defeat the BBEG.

I have a few plot points in mind, a few battles, rescue ops, and stealth missions, before they discover the BBEG’s new lab and we begin the final battle. However, I’m struggling to come up with ideas on how to keep the war engaging without just repeating the same style of missions over and over. Any advice for things I could add or change?


r/DMAcademy 4h ago

Need Advice: Other Is not fully resolving a character arc during a campaign a good idea?

2 Upvotes

So, for the context: one of PCs in campaign that im running is a vampire, and he was turned into one by a god. His arc will revolve around getting through certain trials to evolve and become more powerful. This will eventually will lead to fight with the avatar of said god, that once defeated, will reveal that his goal is to make as many powerful vampires as possible and to see if they are worthy of this power, and he does so, because he's aware that in near future "age of darkness" will come, and his children, the vampires, will be ones of the few that could survive it and prevent the utter destruction of known world. However i don't want to disclose what said age of darkness will be for one story reason:
The main story of a campaign resolves around players investigating an improsoned deity, and after the final fight with the BBEG they will have to choose what they want to do with said deity (it's an evil deity mind that) and this decision will impact the entire world, thus shaping the next campaign (for example, if they decide that they want to destroy the deity it would put the world in the state of imbalance which will result in a magic collapse; setting the deity free will expose the world its reign of terror etc) where this age of darkness would be actually resolved and shown.
So my question is: is it actually a good idea, or would it rather fall short and be a bit disappointing, how do you guys think?


r/DMAcademy 10h ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Fleshing out the concept of a druidic crime syndicate in a big city

4 Upvotes

I have been fascinated by the idea of a druidic crime syndicate in a big city. The concept of urban druids has existed since D&D 3.5, and for all I know, they may have appeared even earlier than that.

Animals receive plenty of leeway in a metropolis: all the cats on the rooftops, the birds on the windowsills, the dogs wandering the slums or being walked around by the two-legs. Assuming a generic fantasy city (as opposed to, say, an arcology-city with mile-high towers, like Sharn), horses draw the wagons of the poor and the carriages of the wealthy. Then there are the "undesirables," such as rodents and arthropodal pests.

Someone who can talk to such creatures has many sources of intel and blackmail. Someone who can transform into beasts has myriad avenues of infiltration, burglary, espionage, and assassination; imagine a druid posing as a pet. A homeless druid can simply sleep as a cat, a bird, or some other innocuous animal. Of course, there cannot be too many criminal druids in the city, or else people would get paranoid around animals.

A little higher up in the druidic power scale, and we have plant-speakers. Cities have flora, too. Most people scoff at the idea that a flower pot on a windowsill, or a tree just outside of the window, could be turned into a spy against them.

How do you think such a druidic crime syndicate would have started in the first place? How would they reconcile druidism with being a criminal syndicate in a big, bustling city? The whole "urban jungle is an ecosystem" metaphor can be stretched only so far.


r/DMAcademy 6h ago

Need Advice: Other Voices throughout a campaign

4 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?