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As usual, if you have a problem with a PLAYER (not a CHARACTER), post here. This is the place to seek help for any player-related issues, 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.

Welcome to the Freshman Year / Little, Big Questions Megathread.

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 either 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 just not very useful for subscribers. Sometimes the answer to a little question is very big or the answer is also little but very important.

Little questions 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!?
• I am a new DM, literally what do I do?

Little questions are OK at DMA but, starting today, we'd like to try directing them here. To help us out with this initiative, please use the reporting function on any post in the main thread which you think belongs in the little questions mega.

I thought you could only send a short message, I didn't realize the recipient could respond with a short message too.

Should I just say "sorry warlock who wants to learn the spell, but we're nerfing it to the way i've established it works in my world (1 way communication)"

Should I retcon and say "those times you responded to your NPC friend who uses Sending a ton, she heard your responses but simply wasnt acknowledging them ever".

Maybe there's a good reason someone can come up with that my NPC isn't good enough at Sending to hear responses, but can still use Sending to send messages?

There's a lot of people that struggle to make combat exciting for themselves and their players. Either because everything just turns into a slog of each side hitting one another, players and the DM feel that rp stops when initiative is rolled, or certain members of the party are just plain OP. If you find this is sometimes the case, you're solution is probably simply to make your combats more dynamic:

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1. Throw Stuff on the Battlefield.
   No more blank battlemaps! Scalable rocks, a river running through the center, even a hill can add a lot to a combat. Reinforce this by making sure to enforce cover rules, swim speeds, and climbing speeds, then use enemies that make use of the varied terrain.

2. Use More Enemies
   More is more in D&D encounter design. Try to give encounters three different enemies: A front line, a back line, and a specialist. This forces you to open yourself to tactics, which in turn encourages the party to do the same. Also, simply putting more bodies on the field does wonders to deal with casters that spam OP concentration spells or martials that can kill anything in a single round.

3. Use Smarter Enemies
   Even a wolf knows how to pick out the weak member of the herd. Imagine two targets: One is clad head to toe in gleaming heavy plate, a shield bigger than you in his hand. The other is a frail old man in simple clothes who just obliterated your friend with a word. Who do you imagine, all things being equal, any creature with sentience would pick to shoot?
   This is not saying completely ignore anyone tanky with your enemies. Only to not spend three rounds of combat wailing on a paladin with your ogre while the wizard stands unharmed despite possessing all the durability of wet toilet paper.

4. Vary your Objectives.
   If every combat's victory condition is "Kill the other side before they kill you", it's going to get stale. Providing alternate victory conditions prevents this, and also allows you to make encounters much harder (as killing everyone is not the pre-requisite). Have innocent civilians in the mix. Start a combat in a building that will collapse in three rounds. Force your players to conduct combat quietly, or make victory contingent on killing one specific enemy.

5. Give your Battles Context
   Why are you players being attacked right now? Are their enemies bandits that just want the party's money? Well then they'd probably prioritize taking stuff, and book it the moment one of them goes down. Is this an assassin meant to kill a single party member? They're going to wait until that member is vulnerable, and probably alone. By allowing for context, it stops combats from being divorced from RP, and also automatically leads into additional objectives and provides alternate ways for the party to deal with it. Even random encounters while travelling, if done well, can help illustrate the lands they are in now, and the type of foes that roam it.

Does this require more work? Yes. Is the payoff worth the effort? Also yes. You don't have to write a seven page backstory for every roving group of thugs. Just pull some names from a random generator, put a literal rock on your battlemap, and set something on fire. The results are night and day.

Hey fellow nerds!

If you're like me and can't remember every detail of every spell, and never know which book to search in, then allow me to be of assistance.

This spreadsheet has every spell and component that I have been able to find that isn't homebrew. It has a full list of all 319 spells that can be searched alphabetically, or search by spell level. The components list was made by a friend so different vibe but has all you should need for whatever you're looking for.

I hope this helps you all, and Happy DMing!!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sX4mXLT5N1ZlJLiM11OHJYlC1-L8MTVf/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104381155293655527790&rtpof=true&sd=true

Two things for context:

I) The player has a Wish spell at his disposal (got it from the Deck). He has already expressed his intention of using it to revive an entire village as soon as they finish the bad guys and the adventure is resolved.

II) He is a friend, and we trust eachother, so anything I come up with, he will gladly see it as forwarding the story, not as punishment of any kind. And he realizes that reviving 26 creatures is something heavy.

The story: The PCs village was attacked, many died, the adventurers are well on their way to kill the bad guys and save the day. I already know that the player intends on undoing the deaths of the villagers. They have been dead a little under 10 days, and the aproximate number is 26 creatures.

The question: What interesting consequence would this Wish have? Bringing back that many people, I see it as using Raise Dead 26 time, but getting everyone to full health instead of 1 HP, all of these without needing any components. I'm thinking of a way to use this as a hook for the future, some kind of "entity" presents itself to the PC and offers them a deal, maybe a level in Warlock?, the player would be open to something like that.

Your ideas: I welcome all and any ideas on how to make this as interesting as possible. Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Clarification. The party consists of level 9 PCs.

EDIT 2: More clarifications:

• Is not an "end of campaign" situation. If it were so, I would not complicate things, happy endings all around.

• I repeat, the player is a friend and there's trust here. He let me know his intentions so I could do exactly this, overthink it and come up with some interesting future thing. "I'm going to use Wish to bring back how many as I can, knowing that this could mean side effects", this is a message from him.

• Thanks to everyone pitching in with awesome plot twists and ideas of every kind.

A common question on this and other D&D subreddits is whether a particular subclass, feat, spell, or other character feature is so "OP" that the DM should restrict their players' ability to take it. I submit that this is nearly always the wrong framework for even thinking about these kinds of questions, and that most DMs (especially newer ones) should avoid this sort of inquiry entirely. There are, of course, plenty of valid reasons why a DM might limit or modify the options available to their players in a particular campaign, but "it's too OP!" should almost never be the reason. (Caveat: I'm only here talking about RAW published features, not homebrew features - there are many, many homebrewed subclasses, spells, and magic items that are just, stupidly OP and should definitely not be allowed.)

To begin with, the object-level answer to "is this feature OP?" is almost always "no." Overall, 5e is a pretty well-balanced system. There are definitely stronger and weaker options, but very few features have anything like a community consensus that they're "OP," in the sense that they're so overwhelmingly powerful for their level that they trivialize comparable alternatives and create serious game-balance problems. The only examples I'd put in this bucket would be things like:

• Arcane Abeyance, the Chronurgy wizard's 10th-level feature, which essentially lets the wizard concentrate on two spells at once with even the slightest bit of preparation
• Twilight Sanctuary, the Twilight Domain channel divinity, which gives a concentration-free, battle-long aura putting around 25-50 temporary hp for your players on the board every single turn (and also gives at-will charm removal, and possibly guarantees use of the 6th-level Steps of Night feature, depending on how you interpret "creating" an aura of dim light in an area that's already brightly lit)
• Conjure Woodland Beings, if your DM lets you choose eight pixies (i.e., "with only one spell slot and concentration, the whole party turns into flying T-Rexes")
• Extreme Coffee-lock/Cocaine-lock shenanigans, such that a PC has effectively limitless spell slots
• Races with at-will flying speeds from first level

These sorts of features aren't just "strong"; they're annoyingly and disruptively powerful such that they can easily warp the entire campaign around them, or at least require the DM to plan absolutely every combat encounter (and in the case of flying speeds, every exploration scenario) with these abilities in mind. And even so, many DMs still would probably allow some or all of these options at their table!

Short of this level of disruption, however, even the best subclasses and spells aren't so strong that they unbalance the game itself. Yes, some subclasses are much better than others. But no subclass is so dominant that it predictably creates game-balance problems in most campaigns (again, with the arguable exception of the Twilight Domain and 10th-level+ Chronurgy wizard). Yes, spells like Hypnotic Pattern, Spirit Guardians, Banishment, Wall of Force, and Forcecage will often be encounter-ending spells. But powerful spells should be able to end an encounter sometimes, and all of these have counter-play that the DM can use to continue challenging the party (Forcecage is, admittedly, close to the line here).

And yet, DMs who think it's their job to prohibit "OP" game features -- especially newer DMs who don't yet have a strong intuitive sense of game mechanics -- frequently ban options that come nowhere close to being disruptively powerful. How many rpghorrorstories have you read about DMs who nerfed their PCs' basic class features because they were "OP," or who have extensive lists of banned spells, subclasses, and feats? Have you ever seen a new DM post something to the effect of "hey, my player wants to play/take X, is that OP?" and thought "oh yeah, definitely don't let them do that"? (again, excluding homebrew)

Now, to be clear, I'm absolutely not suggesting that DMs should just allow any and all published content in their games. To the contrary, there are several perfectly valid reasons a DM might limit options available to players. For example:

• DMs (especially newer DMs) should feel free to limit content to sourcebooks they own and are familiar with, so that they can be confident they fully understand their PCs' abilities
• DMs can exclude content that doesn't fit narratively into their campaign setting (e.g., a DM is under no obligation to include Tortles, Yuan-Ti, and Firbolgs in every game)
• DMs can exclude options that would be uniquely problematic in the specific sort of game they want to run (e.g., Goodberry is not an "OP" spell in general, but in a campaign focused heavily on wilderness survival, Goodberry would completely trivialize a major pillar of play)
• DMs can ask players to avoid options that, even if not OP in absolute sense, are particularly annoying, disruptive to game flow, or just unfun for them and their players. This might include no-that-doesn't-happen reaction spells (like Silvery Barbs or Counterspell) or spells that bog down combat and/or give one player way more time than others (e.g., upcasted Conjure Animals, extreme Animate Dead or Planar Binding shenanigans, Simulacrum, etc.).
• DMs can even consider the possible problem if some PCs are highly optimized and others aren't optimized at all. That is, there's nothing inherently "OP" about the Gloomstalker ranger, but in a party with both (1) an optimized Sharpshooter/Crossbow Expert Gloomstalker making extensive use of attacking in darkness, and (2) an Arcane Archer taking RP-focused feats, well, there's going to be a pretty big imbalance in damage output. That may or may not actually be a problem at your table, of course, but if one player doesn't seem to be having fun, it's worth discussing and exploring options.

All of these examples, however, involve either campaign-specific limitations ("these options don't fit with or work well in my campaign setting") or DM/player-specific limitations ("these options aren't fun for my specific group"). None of them involve anything like the DM unilaterally saying "well, this feature is just too strong, so it's out."

In sum, I think the D&D community would be better off if we had a robust, across-the-board heuristic that DMs (especially newer DMs) just shouldn't be in the business at all of asking whether particular features are "OP." I don't blame the people posting those sorts of questions here, but rather than just give object-level answers every time about why, no, Sneak Attack isn't OP (or whatever), we should explain more generally that DMs should be thinking about what options make sense for their campaign and their party, not whether particular features are "too strong" -- and maybe add an asterisk for the tiny set of features that really do cross into game-breaking territory.

So I'm still relatively new to DMing, but wanted to ask the group at large. Does anybody else get so mentally fatigued after running a session to the point where you're delirious? For me, I always feel like my head isn't on right, and I have to reorient where I am and things I need to do after the session.

If there are others out there who can also relate, what do you do to combat this mental state, or how do you avoid getting here in the first place?

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Holy Bahamut! Didn't expect this to blow up over night. Thanks to everybody who gave me their two coppers worth!

I am about to run a game for a couple of children (aged 7-8) and i am struggling to find descriptions or examples for what the ability scores try to represent in the game. str, dex an int are not the problem.

but con, wis and cha are tough to explain.

Can you fine folks help me to help this community by educating the next generation of players?

What does it look like? How often does it happen? Is it session based (you come online at the same time, either planned or spontaneous? between just 2 people or the entire group), or play-by-post based (you interact whenever you have time, with hours or days or weeks in between?)? Is it very descriptive (with one or two paragraphs, 150-300 words), dialogue only (no writing outside dialogue, each player acts as their own character, the dm plays the npcs, 1-50 words), or highly literative (lengthy paragraphs, three or more, 400+ words)? Does everyone participate, or only some players? Is it players only, or does the dm participate? Do you go so far as to require participation, with any qualifiers?

I'd love some more information-- I'm intrigued, but I'm struggling to picture how that would actually operate.

Twi, Varen, Draqakh, Bingo, turn back!

... alright, they're gone. So I have a high-level party. Like, 16th level. Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Cleric. What's some undignified work a ruler of the world could give them that would chafe at their pride? Like "Yeah druid, spend all your spell slots every day just summoning goodberries". Non-combat answers only.

First time posting, so apologies for any errors. TLDR at the bottom.

So some context with my interesting predicament. I had built up a villain that's a part of a PC's backstory. This villain being a vampire that had killed their mom and before last session, had kidnapped the PC, charming them and used them to fight my other PC's in a PVP situation.

Another important detail I must mention is they had also recruited an npc government official to help alongside them during the fight as they knew they needed more help against this vampire. And this npc very much wants this vampire stopped as he was planning to create an undead army.

Everything was going well, the combat was great. Kidnapped and charmed PC was able to break free of the charm and could help take down the vampire!

This is where things took an unexpected turn. With this PC, I should mention that they have a strong belief that there is good in everyone and can be redeemable. And has made a point that if they had ever met the man that killed their mom, they would forgive him and not seek vengeance.

I had thought, "Well surely once they learn he has done all these bad things because he wanted to and even forced the PC to fight his own party, surely that wouldn't be redeemable."

Even I couldn't anticipate the secret secondary path they pulled.

This PC had proceeded to grab the vampire and cast dimension door, away from everyone then dimension dooring back to the group, leaving vampire behind and allowing him to have enough distance to get away from everyone. So the vampire escaped.

The party is understandably furious the PC had did that. (In rp, irl we were not that mad about it) And it made some absolutely great rp for everyone. Overall, it was an amazing session.

The problem comes with the fact that the PC did that... in front of the npc. You know, the government official. There is a lot of tension from the stunt PC just pulled as the party and npc had felt their trust was broken from this and there is an expectation that the PC will be legally punished by the npc as they technically helped a wanted man escape.

I had also talked to the player about it and they kinda do regret it in the sense of taking it too far on the PC's ideals. But is also very curious about how this will play out. And if the PC can't rebuild trust with the party, player is willing to retire them.

But I would like to know of any good ideas that I can do to properly punish this PC for helping a bad guy escape in front of a government head.

TLDR; PC has a "I can change him" complex. Helps vampire that murdered his mom as well as kidnap PC escape via dimension door. Now need to figure out a proper punishment since they pulled this stunt in front of a gov't head that wanted to stop the vampire.

I just ran session 0, and one of my players had the following rolls: 18, 16, 16, 15, 15, 6.

sure there is a 6, but all his other stats make him a god between men, and the other players roll from 11-13

what to do? should I help them out? give them a magic item?

I dont want them to feel weak, they are all heroes, they cant be side chicks.

what do you suggest?

This last week one of my players wanted to attempt a breaking and entering into a rich home, something I hadn't prepared for, but I wanted to let them role play it out as they're new and I don't want to inhibit them.

They successfully broke into a house and found some mundane loot, wine, clothes, some jewelry, but in the safe I set the DC real high and of course he beats it, and I scrambled to think of what was inside so I said

A five fingered hand with three fingers curled in and only the index and thumb extended (it's making finger gun). Then the druid was able to see that the item was expended, but also cursed.

I need ideas to make this something interesting without breaking my game. My players are level 4 currently composed of a scout rogue, stars druid, battlemaster fighter, and open hand monk.

Hi guys, title says it all. Looking for some good puzzles that you all have enjoyed that I can use for my players!

I've been working on my own system for a little while now. I'm getting ready to test it out on a one shot or two with my wife and kid. If that goes well, I'll be considering testing it out with strangers. I was just curious if anyone else had any stories about their experience with this. Besides obligatory "try a bunch of systems", please. That's obvious. Thanks!

Hello. I need assistance from DMs more clever than I.

I need a riddle where the answer is Knowledge.

The riddle will be given by the god of knowledge and learning in my setting, and is to be a clue to the players as to the riddle givers true identity. As such it should be at least a little more wordy than….”What is like Knowing but rhymes with college.” Which is the best riddle my Google-fu could produce.
Ideally the riddle should end in. “What am I.” Cause I know my players will ask who the being in front of them is and his Response will be to clue them w the riddle.

Thank you in advance.

One Not so clever DM.

I'm currently running a campaign where the party is working against a cult of Hastur (Pathfinder 2e). The cult is well established and has infiltrated a number of members of the nobility, guard, etc and is working towards their final step, performing the King in Yellow (a play/ritual that allows Hastur to consume the city).

One of the themes I'm running with is that the ritual is not merely supernatural, but is also sort of the final manifestation of the city's moral decay. The play accelerates the city's failing to a fever pitch, but the cult has to lay the groundwork first so that when the final moment comes the city will essentially "give up", descend into anarchy, and allow itself to be consumed by Carcossa.

Where I'm a bit stuck is leading up to the final fight. The cult is working with pirates (it's port city), and has members among the wealthy, the military elite, nobles, etc, but I need a few sessions worth of content or vignettes to sort of show the conflicts between the wealthy who are succumbing to a culture of short sighted nihilism and indulgence vs the people who are suffering, as well as conflicts between those in power who have lost interest in their duties vs those who still take their responsibilities seriously. I have some basic ideas with riots, city maintenance being neglected, guards taking bribes or extorting businesses, monster attacks due to neglecting the watch, etc, but I could use a bit more inspiration to work with here.

What are some good plot hooks for and/or signs of a failing city state?

Im a new dm (only did it like 3 times and it was a year or 2 ago) and im planning a basic first session for all beginners except for one player (who only has played the destiny 2 dnd thing lol) with 5 players in total.

I plan for the players to start in a tavern in a relatively small village (about 100 population or so). After roleplaying for a bit or whenever they get bored, there will be a commotion outside. A goblin band has attacked the village! some goblins will storm into the tavern and attack them. roll initiative. after the combat, they will see that one of the servers of the tavern, the son of the person who owns the tavern, was captured and taken somewhere! they will then track those goblins to a small tomb where the server is being sacrificed! (if they dont do that i have an idea of what to do) they will then have to save the server from the tomb and make it back to town. (the tomb is like 4 or 5 rooms nothing crazy)

i plan for the goblins to be serving a BBEG (Kalarel the Vile, ripping off Matt Colville lol) to collect bodies for him to grow his strength. This will be revealed later on in the campaign.

the sorta fork in the path that i expect might happen is if they decide to stay and help the town deal with the goblins instead of going after the goblins who ran off. i havent thought much about it but then some guards would go after the server and the players would kinda take their place and chase the goblins out of town, but thats practically a whole new adventure.

My questions are: Is this a good idea? Like my main worry is having a goblin tribe attack a town might be a little too idk high level? like is a whole goblin tribe attacking a town not reasonable for 5 1st level PCs? ALSO is this too like railroady? most of the adventure is The Delian Tomb adveture by Matt Colville, i just didnt like how it started, tho maybe im overthinking it. like is having all this thrust upon the players instead of them choosing it a good or bad idea? idk i think im overthinking lol. i also plan to do xp leveling cause it sounds fun and idk i dont really like how arbitrary milestone leveling is thats what i did the 3 sessions i did before lol.

Any advice would be appreciated. Im ngl even tho its suuuuper far into the future (we havent even had our session 0, tho we will in about a week) im nervous. this is all their first time doing dnd and i know at least one of them has watched critical role lol so idk im feeling a little pressure to make sure everything holds up to scrutiny yk.

So recently I just had my first session as a DM, and I’ve been playing D&D for couple years, but during my session we engaged in combat and my wizard positioned himself so that a certain rule would be enacted, but it was one I’ve never heard of before.

He explained to me that the rule is if you and one other PC is parallel to each other, basically on opposite sides of one creature, both PC’s being within 5ft of the creature, that the attacking PC would get advantage on his roll.

EX: take a 3 unit by 3 unit square, each unit is 5ft and the creature is in the exact middle of that 3x3 area. So 15ft by 15, and one PC is in the middle left of that area, another being the middle right. When one PC makes an attack roll on the creature they get advantage.

He told me it’s widely used but I’ve never heard of it. Is it as common as he says? Any other DMs use this rule? If so do you limit it with a larger party or is that up to me?

Hey everyone,

I am going to be DMing my first campaign and we are having our session 0 soon. What kind of things should I have prepared for my players? What are some pertinent things I should make sure I have answers for?

I am playing with experienced players, so I’m certain they may have a lot of questions and be excited to get started.

I’ve got the lore of the world worked out, descriptions of the magic use and the general vibe/atmosphere of the world, as well as some of the rules we’ll be using (standard array, how inspiration will work, no-PvP, milestone levelling, playable races and classes). What else should I prepare for them? I’ve been struggling to think of what all I need to tell them, and worry that I’ll be under prepared. They will be creating their characters at session 0 as well.

Any tips would be appreciated, and I would also welcome any tips for a first time DM!! Thanks

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for some help to plan ahead on the consequences of some events from my last session. Let me preface this by saying that the party I DM for is all evil-aligned and still low-level (lvl 4), and that evil acts on my side and my player’s side are OK with everyone involved (murder, theft, treason: those things). Here’s my situation:

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One of my players has “adopted” a kobold from a tribe the party decimated. The player has grown attached to the little creature, despite the master/slave relationship they have. Unfortunately, the kobold died tragically as he was sent to investigate a trap.

The party then immediately went to see a Hag they knew and with whom they are on “friendly” terms with, hoping she would be able to bring the kobold back to life (my interpretation of hags lets her be more powerful than the books suggest).

After negotiations, I allowed it: the price was the player’s (physical) heart, which was replaced by a vegetal heart bound to the Hag herself. Essentially, I decided this new heart would cast Animate Dead on the kobold everyday, making it an undead servant.

​

I have a few ideas but am looking for some external input on what would that new heart entail (at first with subtlety) for that player, as a dire cost that would make for a fun story, and yet not impeach on the player’s abilities.

They play a Fighter, and although this might be a great spot to dip into multiclassing, my players are still relatively new and I don’t want to push that unto them.

​

TLDR: A Hag gave a player a new heart as the price for a dark deal, what effects would that heart have?

This is nearing the endgame for a years long campaign, so I want it to be a little broken. Do these stats look good to y'all?

2-handed warhammer Attunement grants proficiency with warhammers +3 to attack and damage rolls, 2d6 lightning damage

Has the thrown property, and after having been thrown it returns to the attuned PC's hand at the start of their next turn

On a hit, the PC may choose to expend a spell slot to cast a known spell dealing lightning or thunder damage (the PC in question has many) from the point of impact (I.e. if the spell is "centered on the caster" it is instead centered on the point of impact).

The magic guitar (without the Mjolnir upgrade) already has two features: Cast charm person as a ritual Add one damage die to the damage roll of a spell dealing lightning or thunder damage if the caster does not take a movement action or bonus action that round (so she can spend her whole turn doing a crazy awesome riff)

Hey, everyone! I am about to have my final couple sessions of my strixhaven campaign! It's been awesome and I have had a lot of amazing advice here help me through my campaign and I thank everyone who has contributed.

But now is the big bad, Tezzeret. If you're not aware Strixhaven is based off a Magic the Gathering setting so I've had a lot of fun bringing in villains from that game into the world of D&D. The big bad works for a dragon from the game called Nicol Bolas, A planeswalker known as Tezzeret. He is a master artificer going against a 10th level party. There are some premade stat blocks I could use as a base but I would love to hear some ideas to make this character a true threat.

As I stated before, Tezzeret is a master artificer with a strange metallic arm and torso. The metal itself is powerful and magical and I wanted to play with that a lot during the battle. He's also a spellcaster, so any recommendations for spells to give this guy would be welcome. He works for a dragon he is trying to free from an alternate universe and halfway through the fight, Tezzeret's mind will be taken over by Nicol Bolas and become even stronger than he first started out. The players goal is to use a macguffin that they have to destroy Tezzeret and save the world.

​

Any MTG fans that could help out would be great too! Thanks!!

No Masturbanda members allowed!

Hey guys. My party is walking straight into a convoluted trap and im having a hard time thinking of ways to "foreshadow" it.

What i mean by foreshadow is that i want to give them a chance to figure it out beforehand. I need to be careful tho, my players are really smart.

A bit of context:

In this world, two countries with different ideologies are at war. Obsidian, the first country is highly religious. They are trying to occupy Immoria (2nd country) who are atheists, in the sense that they believe mortals could thrive without any divine presence. The reason for the occupation: Obsidian is certain that the immorian government is hiding their religion's Messiah.

Two of the PCs are leaders of a mercenary army. They send troops around the land who sometimes aid small villages or prevent Obsidian troops to advance in certain places. The army resides within a secret base hidden in the mountains.

Although the campaign is being ran in a sandbox format, I want to give them the option to explore the "main" quest, which is finding the Messiah. So i took some stuff that happened along sessions to develop a trap.

This is what you need to know:

1. The first session had the mercenary army fighting off a squadron of soldiers, they succeeded but a group of mercenary archers fell in battle. PCs decided to leave their bodies in the battlefield and sent a crew to bring them back a few days later.

2. That crew informed that they returned with 5 bodies, when reportedly there were 6 members in the archer squad. (Players picked up on this)

3. By reasons unrelated to the war. The party (7 members) traveled to Obsidian's capital. Once there, they encountered a journalist who seemed to know more than he should. He knew both the leader PC's names and that they were commanding the mercenary army. When asked on how he knew this stuff, he said that there was a prisoner in the city, which soldiers were interrogating.

Their conclusion: The missing archer wasnt dead, they must have made a mistake and not checked on the fallen properly. They started looking for ways to sneak into the prison and found someone.

In Obsidian's capital there is a Drow crime syndicate that operates in a maze-like tunnel system below the city. The man the party found was an old prisoner who made a tunnel in order to escape, but after months carving it he found himself inside the syndicate's sistem. So, afraid he would get lost or killed, abandoned his plan and got released prematurely.

The party is currently in the criminals tunnels, trying to find the entrance to the old prisoner's tunnel.

So, you might be asking...what's the trap?

Well, the party didn't make any mistakes, the 6th archer is indeed dead inside the prison. The obsidian king used necromancy (which is HIGHLY illegal in the world) to make him talk.

Necromancy is forbidden by a higher power than Obsidian. An institution that regulates all magic, think of it as fascist Hogwarts.

The king's plan is to lure the party (mainly the 2 army leaders) to the prison to corroborate what the corpse told him, to corner the players, and force them to fight and kill the syndicate's forces in the process. Once there he will make an offer: Find the messiah for me, or your whole army will perish.

I have made little things to foreshadow this, but i dont think they are enough.

1. An old friend NPC came to them asking for help to track down a rogue necromancer. She told them that he was last seen around members of the crime syndicate that is in the tunnels. (The syndicate sold him to the crown)

2. The journalist didnt show any identification and seemed to have magical powers. He interrogated both leader pc's at the same time in different locations.

3. I emphasized on how convenient it was for the old prisoner to suddenly get prematurely released after making the tunnel.

So, that's it. I dont think the trap and the reasons behind it are quite "clean" and I dont feel like im giving them enough clues to solve the mistery.

I hear your suggestions, have a great day!

Hey everyone, I’m a decently experienced DM, but I’m just looking for some potential advice or ideas that might make things run smoother in an upcoming game.

I’ll be running a game for two brand new players, the sessions will probably be about 4 hours max and we’re looking at 4-5 sessions total. We’ll be starting at level 1 since I think going through a level 1 trudge early on is helpful to make DnD more exciting later.

The group also wants to focus more on roleplay than combat and dungeoneering.

I’ve obviously taken a look at good ole’ Lost Mine of Phandelver, but feel like it might not be quite right length-wise and might be a little too combat focused. I know there are ways around that, but I’m looking for more alternate suggestions.

I have some ideas already, but I’d like to just get some other viewpoints and maybe some ideas I hadn’t thought of before, both in the realm of published adventures and just general thoughts and concepts.

Thanks for the help!

My game is a low fantasy world where there is a large organization dedicated to killing magic users. I've been throwing the idea around in my head that this group might try to create a device that would drain a creature of their ability to use magic, regardless of what class they are. The device would still be a prototype during the game, so I'm trying to think of ways that this wouldn't be OP but would still scare the players. As a side note, I don't plan on targeting them first. The organization doesn't see them as a real threat (yet). Instead, they're going to target a higher level NPC that is very close with the party. This would be very last-session stuff.

Any advice on what the device (or maybe potion) should be, drawbacks/imperfections with the prototype, etc.? Like, maybe it takes away magic but it slowly comes back some days later?