As a newer DM, I have not read the book myself. Today I decided to sit down and read the whole book cover to cover (5e) and take cliff notes as I go to get some pointers, as well as deepen my knowledge of the lore. I know it's not REQUIRED to read the full book in order to DM, but I feel like I could sharpen my skills by doing so.
I'm working on my next campaign and am a bit stuck on which flavour of fantasy to pick from. I saw them in the DMG and was hoping for more clarification and your reccomedations for how to proceed.
So the 3 flavours I'm stuck trying to choose between are:
- Heroic Fantasy
- Epic Fantasy
- Intrigue Fantasy
I was wondering if I could get some clarification on...
- What are some of the pros and cons of the flavours
- What are a few examples of the flavors of fantasy at work.
- What to keep in mind when making a campaign in that flavour of fantasy
- What to keep in mind when making characters in that flavour of fantasy
- Which is your favourite
Any and all advice and information you can give me is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much <3
I vaguely remember it being in the Treasures section.
As the title says, Chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master's Guide has a Special Features section with a few tables to add some extra history, descriptors, and effects to magic items. The purpose of these are to help differentiate magic items from each other, and I think they do a great job of that. But none of the tables are very long, so I decided to expand two of them, the d20 minor property and d12 quirk tables, into d100 tables. Already posted them online before to a positive reception and polished it a bit more since then. Thought I'd share the result with this sub as well. Let me know what you think of them, or if you have questions.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U9-9pLUAAy6nMLLAIVkIi5VSMd3u-lOoWCJYlSk9dBo/edit?usp=sharing
These quirks and minor properties are meant to exist alongside any other properties a magic item already has. You can add more than one quirk and minor property to the same item, but these tables already include a chance to get more than one effect if you roll high. Some of these effects can prevent the use of the item to some characters, or make it much less useful to them, so I allow my player characters to take items with annoying quirks to crafters during downtime. In exchange for a fee, the crafter can re-roll the quirk/property on the table, or just remove it altogether. If a player character crafts a magic item themselves I give them a small discount on the crafting price if they roll on the quirk table when they finish the item.
Many of these results will likely require or benefit from some adjustment depending on the item in question. Some results mention attunement, which not all magic items require. In that case you might want to give the item some sort of 10 minute bonding ritual before it can be used, but which doesn't count towards the attunement limit. Or maybe the effect happens when anyone uses it. Or it might be better to just re-roll and get another result. Some fine tuning can also just make for a more fun item. If a magic sword rolled for the Poisoned minor property (can produce a vial's worth of basic poison each day) its poison might come out from the hilt of the weapon. Or maybe it's instead applied directly to the blade. If a magic ring gets that same property, maybe the wearer is subjected to the poison when a command word is spoken. I think these tables work best with small adjustments like these, but for the most part it shouldn't be required.
This started as just a way to make magic items more un
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Monster Manual is your best friend. Player's Handbook is a DM advice goldmine. Quick start rules are the game running bible. Pathfinder 2e has some of the best advice in the universe. Reading FATAL made me better than Matt Mercer. Matt Mercer's twitter is an example of a perfect tier 4 adventure. Rick and Morty is D&D perfected.
I'm in the process of creating my own campaign, and am looking for inspiration for my campaign bible and the player's guide I'll be handing out to the group. Thanks!
Being the cheapskate that I am, I don't want to spend too much Are there periods where the price for the rulebooks drops?
The DMG has a lot of good information in it but it is big and difficult to read cover to cover. Plus a lot of new DMs in the age of digital books may only search through the book online for one specific rule at a time as situations come up (I'm guilty of this...). So what is your favorite rule/variant rule/bit of info from the DMG that you think most people forget about or have never heard of?
For me its renown. I really like the idea of quantifying a character's status in an organization using renown points and giving rewards as they gain renown and move up in the organization. I've never seen this used in a game I've played in and I didn't know it was in the DMG until recently but I will be implementing it in my next campaign for sure.
Does anyone else find it odd that the Treasure Hoard Tables (for all Challenge Ratings)..... don't have any Electrum Pieces on them?
- CR 0-4: https://i.imgur.com/zBOKeIq.png
- CR 5-10: https://i.imgur.com/LeJlK4P.png
- CR 11-16: https://i.imgur.com/u1XIctl.png
- CR 17+: https://i.imgur.com/ADKwzBt.png
Wizards of the Coast needs to stop their blatant discrimination against Electrum Pieces!
I use Fantasy Grounds Unity to explain and setup a characters class specialization features to optimize game play.
Fantasy Grounds Unity - D&D 5E - Dungeon Masters Guide - Cleric Class - Death Domain
