Roll For Initiative

(Context: playing on Roll20.)

Player 1: *rolls nat 1*

Player 2: *rolls nat 1*

DM: You know what? How about you two refresh the client and reset the dice.

Me: You know that’s not how a random number generator works, right?

Player 1: refreshes and immediately rolls a nat 20*

Yet another 100 magic items! I’m procrastinating on classwork.

Fetch © Heather Frazier.

[The first of Flashback Summer posted with the original art from the Monsters of Twilight PDF. The inspiration was the Shadow Beasts from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. These were originally written for my run-through of the Council of Thieves Pathfinder AP, and I used them to make sure “Shadow Plague” encounters had more variety than just shadow mastiffs and shadows.]

Fetch CR 4 LE Outsider The darkness moves. Within the black sphere you can barely make out the outline of an immense ape-like creature, its body covered in a carpet of lashing tendrils. Its head turns towards you, a flat plate like a shield, studded with a dozen irregularly placed glowing red eyes.

Hulking brutes native to the Plane of Shadow, the fetch is a simple-minded creature concerned with little more than the spreading of pain. A fetch stands about nine feet tall, although their knuckle-walking gait hides some of that height, and weighs an average of 350 pounds. The fetches are composed of the very essence of shadowstuff—the only truly solid part of a fetch is its iron-like skull. A fetch’s body is an oily liquid that drinks in light, held into vaguely humanoid shape by a thick membrane. This liquid surrounds the fetch with its characteristic aura of shadows, and allows them to fit through tight places with remarkable ease. As a being of pure shadow, a fetch does not need food or drink. They seem sustained, however, by the causing of pain, at which they prove most proficient.

Fetches live on the Plane of Shadow in strictly hierarchical organizations somewhat like the associations of apes on the Material Plane. These fetch bands patrol a territory, which they defend aggressively from intruders. The largest and strongest fetch controls the group. Fetches have no language of their own, and are indeed mute, but understand the Infernal tongue. This innate knowledge, combined with their dim intellect and lawful tendencies, make them excellent followers. The kytons of the Plane of Shadow often use fetches as slaves and menial labor. Any offering of a live victim for the fetch to torture grants a summoner a +2 bonus on all Charisma checks to control a called fetch.

The Shadowshield Although fetches carry little if any treasure, their iron-hard skulls can be useful in the right hands. With one day of work and a DC 20 Craft (armorsmithing) check, a fetch’s skull can be turned into a masterwork heavy steel shield. This shield takes very well to magical enhancements—a shadowshield can be enhanced with the slick or shadow armor special abilities, and only costs half as much as an ordinary suit of armor to bestow with these abilities. A shadowshield is worth 800 gp.

Ore of the Weave

Get the PDF version here.

Presenting my most ambitious completion so far – a new playable mechanic to add an extra dimension of fun to your games!

tl;dr

It’s a lot like materia from Final Fantasy 7.

How It Works

You can get special weapons and armor that have slots carved in them wherein you can place magic stones called “Weave ore.” Equipping ore to your items allows you to cast spells and enhances your abilities.

What is Weave ore?

You’ll learn more about it when I publish my campaign (teaser!) but basically, some really smart wizards have figured out how to manifest solid chunks of the Weave. Each one is created with a specific purpose, from powering artifices to enhancing combat performance. This doc focuses on the combat ore.

How do you use it?

Step 1: get your hands on an item (i.e. a weapon or armor) with “ore slots.” Step 2: Find some ore. Step 3: Strategize about the best way to equip the ore you have to your slotted item. Step 4: Spend a short rest equipping ore and attuning to your slotted item. Step 5: Smash badguys.

What’s Inside

Lots! Expanded philosophy on the physics of the Weave, a detailed description of what ore is and how to use it, some important notes on slot configurations, advice on optimzing the way you equip ore to your items, oh! and 61 ore descriptions (read: “custom spells”).

Have fun!

Dungeon set no.2 - now with extra vines, cages, and sparkles.

Download links:

A lot of DMs say you should always run a ‘Session 0′ before you officially start a Campaign. A Session where everyone makes Characters together and gets to know what kind of Campaign Setting you’re running and what kind of D&D they’ll be playing…

But there aren’t really “Rules” on what to do before you set up a Campaign, so I thought I’d throw my metaphorical (and very fancy) hat in and say what I think a DM should do in a Session 0 before they start a New Campaign.

Set Boundaries. Some Players have different ideas of what they want from their Game.

Some don’t care for all that blood and gore, some don’t like that ‘Everyone hates Orcs’ kind of prejudice and some would rather you use the ‘Fade to Black’ approach to Romance rather than describing the gritty details. 

By speaking with your Players about their boundaries and letting the Table know what you’re cool with, you’re setting these boundaries early so you as a DM know what you’re working with when it comes to your Players and how comfortable they’ll be at your table as you’re telling the story.

Set the Theme. Find out what kind of Adventures the Players want to go on.

Do they like to solve mysteries, do they care about war and political intrigue, or would they rather go into a big ol’ mega-dungeon at Level 1 and walk out of it at Level 20…

Getting an idea of what the Players would like to see in your Game is a great way to get a baseline framework for your whole campaign, and can help the Players feel way more invested in your Game because it’s something they’re super interested in.

Set the Rules. Talk to the Table about what kind of Rules (Homebrew or Not) that you’d like to put in your Game.

How should the Party Level up? And when? 

Do they level up once they’re back in town? Or only between game sessions?

Are you using Milestone Levelling or Regular Ol’ Experience Points?

This is also the time to talk about all those Variant and Optional Rules: Are your Players okay with Variant Encumbrance? Do they want to use the Optional Feats Rules?

Setting up the Rules you want to implement into your Game in Session 1 by telling the Players in Session 0 gives anyone at the table the chance to say ‘I want to use this Rule!’ or 'I don’t like that Rule I think it’s Dumb.’

Sidenote: This is also the perfect time to set some “Table Rules”. 

Who brings the snacks? Are Phones allowed at your Table? How do you feel about rule debates and unannounced dice rolls?

A morningstar whose achingly beautiful singing voice is only somewhat lessened by the unbelievable filthiness of its songs’ subject matter. It insists on attempting to “soothe” hostile parties with its singing, with mixed results. Able to use bardic inspiration with total of 5d6 available dice, refreshing on a long rest.

A spear with encyclopedic – albeit erratic – knowledge of nearly every topic. Consulting with the weapon grants advantage on Intelligence-based skill checks. However, on a failure, the spear’s advice is wildly, disastrously wrong. Any check benefiting from this effect is made in secret by the GM; the player is not informed whether it succeeded.

A crossbow whose ambition is to curate a great exhibition of the arts. It thinks it has excellent taste; it really, really doesn’t. Capable of appraising the market value of any art object it encounters down to the last copper piece, though it will report its assessment very grumpily if it feels – as it often does! – that a particular piece is over- or undervalued.

A battleaxe obsessed with Hegelian dialectics, a subject on which it’s prepared to hold forth at great length. Once per day, the axe’s wielder may split a single object of size Large or smaller into two undamaged objects embodying its opposing attributes by striking it. The opposition thus demonstrated is often obscure, though the axe will happily explain.

TATTOOIST

Magic tattoos! Need I say more? This is an artificer subclass (UA) for D&D 5e.

ELVEN HALF-RACES

Homebrew for all of the elven half-races possible with races from the PHB! Time to throw the boring old human half-elf out of the window! This was made for 5e. Open images in new tab for better quality. Have fun playing, and feedback is much appreciated!

This is the 5 floor dungeon we created to accompany our Temple of the Couatl.

The maps above come with a full 70+ page adventure, items, NPCs cards, minis, monsters and more.