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Give Players Rarities Instead of Magic Items

Nov 19, 20232 min read

One of the parts of prep I like the least is generating good treasure. Especially at the end of an arch when the characters are getting something really good.

I want to give them a magic item that ties into the campaign, their class, and their backstory. Unfortunately, that either means I need to brew up something that I think they will like or just snag something from a book or online. Either way, my batting average with getting it right is pretty crap. It always feels like I am pushing the story for their character rather than letting the player tell me their character's story.

So what is a fix that is more engaging and lets me be lazy?

My most recent experiment is to give my players rarities instead of magic items in DnD. I say "Harbighar looks into the chest and finds a Rare magical item. Your homework before the next session is to tell me what that magic item is and the lore behind it."

The player can go home, find or make (with approval of course) an item, and come up with some lore for it. So far, this has turned out to be a great solution! The player gets an item that fits their build, my prep time is significantly lessened, and most importantly the player engages in the story. Creating the lore for the item and why it is significant for their character grows the world in an amazing and collaborative way and makes the player feel more connected to the story we are telling together.

Give it a try!

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Making Pets in 5th Edition DnD

Nov 11, 20233 min read

"GM, can we please please PLEASE get a puppy???"

In the course of a campaign, it is almost inevitable that at some point, the party will get a pet. Maybe they try to pass an animal handling check to tame a wild monster, maybe they find a strange egg in a dungeon, or maybe they take a lost dog in after doing their "best" to find its original owner. Whatever it is, the desire for animal companionship is a core part of us and so, a core part of the characters we create.

I hate saying no to players in these situations. It is fun to have animal companions and my entire ethos is: If it is fun, we should do it.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of good official support for pets in 5th Edition DnD. Just giving them a monster stat block makes balance harder and really screws up the action economy. There is also the possibility that a big AOE hits the CR0 Mastiff that you gave them and Fido is instantly killed which makes you feel bad.

So, what is the solution? How can we give the party a pet without breaking the game? The best answer I have found is to treat them the same way we treat magic items!

Making Pets in 5th Edition DnD

If we think of pets as analogous to magic items, we can solve a lot of the problems they present. Instead of taking their own turn and breaking the action economy, we can make using them a bonus action or reaction for the character or even any of the characters in the party. Giving them a single effect or ability saves us from needing to memorize a monster stat block, and we can hand wave them getting hit or being targeted since they do not have any hit points! Here is an example:

Eldritchling Pet

As a bonus action, you can mentally command this tiny aberration to hover, fly up to 30 feet, and use one of its abilities or complete a simple task such as picking up a small item or pushing a door shut.

Dead simple. It is missing a few things though. We need some abilities. We also need a way for the pet to level up as characters do. For that, we can steal a little bit from another mechanic: cantrips.

Some cantrips gain additional abilities when players reach 5th, 11th, and 17th level. We can steal this framework to level up our pets giving them new and more powerful abilities as the character levels up. This gives players more options and keeps the pet relevant as more bonus action abilities become available to the character.

Here is our example with some abilities:

Eldritchling

Pet

As you gain power, so does your pet. Depending on your level, the Eldritchling can use one of the following abilities:

Level 1: Attack. The Eldritchling makes an attack against a creature within 5 feet. It uses your spell attack roll and ability score modifier. On a hit, it deals 1d8 Necrotic Damage.

Level 5: See. The Eldritchling mentally reaches out towards up to two creatures within 60 feet. The targets must succeed on a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC, or else take 1d6 Psychic damage.

Level 11: Grow. The Eldritchling’s size becomes medium and it can attempt to grapple up to three creatures using your spellcasting ability instead of strength.

Level 17: Become. The Eldritchling’s size becomes large and it can make four attacks or attempt to grapple up to ten creatures. If a creature it is grappling dies, it consumes that creature and you regain 1d10 hit points.

A final word of advice: Make the Level 17 ability really good. In my experience (and the data backs this up) campaigns rarely get to that level and if they do, the balance is pretty broken anyway so make it crazy and fun.

I hope this helps you give your players fun pets and keeps balancing the game easy! If you want to check out more pets, please consider becoming a Patron! It is free for the first seven days and I release weekly GM advice, monsters, magic items, and now pets!

Make Everyone's Lives Easier by Rewriting Descriptions in 5e

Nov 3, 20233 min read

Lately, I have been finding myself rewriting a lot of item and spell descriptions and it has made my life a lot easier.

"What do you mean, Jack," I hear your voices crying from across the digital ocean. "Is that not a ton more work?"

My answer: Kind of. But the extra work has made my sessions run much smoother and removed one of the biggest headaches of running a game: time spent looking up and trying to understand mechanics.

We have all been there, right? A player has an item from ten sessions ago that no one remembers how to use and we have to stop the game to listen to the description.

It sucks. Not a fan...

This is where my newest habit comes in: Rewriting the descriptions (and excuse me if I am the last person to realize how helpful this is). Well, maybe re-format is a better word. Here is what I mean:

Rewriting Descriptions in 5e as Bullets

I have made no secret of my dislike for the wordiness of 5e (even if I am frequently guilty of it myself). Item and spell descriptions, keyed rooms, adventures, you name it. Everything is so chock-full of text that my eyes glaze over and I have to read everything twice. But not so with bullet points. Bullets are the silver bullet (sorry) that slay blocks of text. They convey the mechanics in an easy-to-write and, importantly, easy-to-read way!

Here is an Example:

Have you ever had a player pull out an Eversmoking Bottle mid-combat? Here is the item description:

Smoke leaks from the lead-stoppered mouth of this brass bottle, which weighs 1 pound. When you use an action to remove the stopper, a cloud of thick smoke pours out in a 60-foot radius from the bottle. The cloud's area is heavily obscured. Each minute the bottle remains open and within the cloud, the radius increases by 10 feet until it reaches its maximum radius of 120 feet.

The cloud persists as long as the bottle is open. Closing the bottle requires you to speak its command word as an action. Once the bottle is closed, the cloud disperses after 10 minutes. A moderate wind (11 to 20 miles per hour) can also disperse the smoke after 1 minute, and a strong wind (21 or more miles per hour) can do so after 1 round.

I don't know about you but I find that to be a pretty mealy description. There are rules about how obscured the area becomes, how heavy the bottle is, the rate of smoke coming out of the bottle, the rate of smoke dispersal, and how to close the bottle. It's a lot. So here is my fix. Cut out the text that does not affect anything (we don't need to know how much the bottle weighs) and bullet the rest.

As an action, you can remove the stopper from this bottle to cause the following effects:

A thick cloud of smoke pours from the bottle in a 60ft. radius.
The area inside the cloud is heavily obscured.
For each minute that the bottle is open, the cloud's radius increases by 10ft.
The cloud's max radius is 120ft.

The cloud persists as long as the bottle is open. Closing the bottle requires you to speak its command word as an action. Once the bottle is closed:

The cloud disperses after ten minutes;
or after 1 minute of moderate wind (10-20mph);
or after 1 round of strong wind (21Mph+)

And voila! With a few bullet points, some judicious bolding, and a few minutes we have made a dense block of text into an easy-to-decipher magic item.

Next time you are prepping for a game, give rewriting descriptions in 5e a try! It will make things run just a little bit smoother and save you and your players a bit of a headache.

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