#d&d&ee

The Setting

Few things can be as fun, or as agonizing, as forming the setting for a new campaign.  If you’re the creative type, you’re probably very excited for this step.  If you’re not, you probably nodded along very enthusiastically when I described it as potentially agonizing.  Regardless of whichever you are, I’m here to give you a quick (relatively...) rundown on how to ‘frame’ the world your players’ epic campaign will be taking place in.

Before going further, I want to be clear on one thing: this is D&D, and you are the Dungeon Master.  Everything is negotiable, and can be changed to create the world you’re looking to offer.

Step 1: Take a deep breath.

There’s a lot of text below this point, and it might make you feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.  Here’s a helpful tip to make this all more palatable: You don’t have to do it all at once.

If you want to get into D&D right away, read through the article, get a map set up, and follow the steps to flesh out a single kingdom or area of the world.  You and your players can get up to all sorts of trouble with that alone, and some campaigns can run their full course in such a “small” area no problem if need be.

Step 2: A map.  

You might have expected to start with choosing a name for your world, but honestly, that step isn’t very important.  What is important, however, is having an image to look at and imagine the world upon.

The more creative-minded will break out the art supplies here do it from scratch, and for that, I salute you.  The rest of us need some help, and there are plenty of resources out there to help you “generate” a map from scratch.  Personally, I prefer the fantasy world generator at D20srd (Link here).  It’s a fine enough tool, although it may take several tries before you land on an outcome you’d like.  The settings the map tool defaults at create a world that feels a little land-heavy in my opinion, so I recommend turning the %Water setting up to 65 or 70 if you want larger, proper oceans in your setting.

Step 3: The Inhabitants.

Humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, dragonborn, even tieflings!  That’s a lot of peoples that need a home, and I’ve only touched on what the 5e Player’s Handbook offers as default player races.  What about orcs and goblins?  Giants, dragons, and the like?  It’s a lot to take in, but it’s important we get them settled first, with one exception...

Gods.  Unless you’re the very small percentage of DMs looking to run a game without any deities, it’s time to start thinking on them and what you’d like.  If you have any aspirations of creating gods of your own, *now* is the time to do it.  Look at the map you’ve created, imagine the worshippers of the god you’ve got in mind, and then pick the place they exist.  That much is easy, and some of you might feel I told you something you already knew, so here’s something a bit more to think about: how powerful is this god?  How many followers do they have, and are they terrestrial (that is to say, are they present in the world?).  

Most importantly, once you have your gods selected, how do they interact with one another?  If you’ve taken peoples with contradictory gods and made them neighbors, how do they view one another?  As a nuisance, or is war on the verge of breaking out at any moment?  

With peoples settled, gods imagined, and their followers labeled, it’s time to take a step back and look at how to make it all distinct.  Who was left out, and if no one was, should they be?  Not everyone needs a homeland.  Some races, like tieflings, lend themselves to being scattered about the world due to their chaotic nature, and are oftentimes mistrusted in many areas for their appearance or less-lawful leanings.  

With these considerations made, look at the locales you’ve created and ask yourself: what ails these people?  What monsters lurk in the hillside and are common to their region?  Perhaps the dwarves in your mountains are in a constant battle with orcs.  Maybe the pious humans of one of your more lawfully imagined kingdoms find themselves beset by an unusual amount of undead.  Threats can be less visible too, ranging from expansive and unseen criminal undergrounds, to an ancient aboleth working to enslave a kingdom with a plan that spans thousands of years.

Finally, look at your kingdoms, your countries, and your smaller, backwater locales of intrigue, and imagine an alignment that best describes the region.  In a typical fantasy world, “Good”, “Lawful”, and “Neutral” alignments should be most dominant, as they’re easier to imagine as more stable.  You should still strive to have places, maybe not even particularly large ones (a chain of islands home to pirates, for example), that don’t quite fit the ‘good’ mold.  These can be as large as an entire kingdom in and of itself, or you can add them in later as small, seedy towns lurking in the shadow of a ‘good’ empire for its criminal underbelly to use as a headquarters.

Step 4: Beyond The Material Plane

Dungeons and Dragons wouldn’t be D&D without more than just the obvious world in your setting, unless of course you’re designing it that way.  Most of us, though, will want a variety of external planes to have players fight foes from and, potentially, even go to.

The default planes, I feel, do this incredibly well.  Roll20 has an article that explains them fairly well (found here).  At some level, you should be using what is already offered in the D&D mythos.  I recommend keeping the concepts of he Transitive Planes (Ethereal and Astral), and the Elemental Planes (Air, Fire, Water, and Earth) most of all.  The Ethereal Plane isn’t really a plane the way the others are, and some spells rely on it, so if you want something unique there, I suggest you just edit The Ethereal Plane to suit your needs.  

Let’s get to the meat of the issue - Outer Planes.  Again, I’m a big believer in the established mythos, but how much of it you use is up to you.  In addition to this, you can edit them in any way you please!  That new god you made, be it or good or evil, will have very little difficulty finding a proper plane among the established to call home.  Good old wikipedia (Link Here) has a very useful chart that explains the various upper, lower, and neutral outer planes.  Which of these you use is entirely up to you, and the framework offered lets you remove some entirely and supplement your own if you’re dead set on it.

In Conclusion...

Give it a name.  Any name.  At this point, you probably realize that the substance of the world you made is so much more important than the name.  The best part of all of this is, you made it, and until the players see it, none of it is set in stone.  You may hear ideas your players have for their characters and want to shape some of the world around it, to create a place where that character of theirs really belongs.  You may want to change enemies to fit their backstory vendettas as well, and that likewise can help make the world feel more varied and alive.

More than anything, I hope everyone who’s made a setting here hasn’t forgotten they’re here to have fun, or that nothing should ever come before that.

Continuation of the Getting Started series:

Getting Started: Combat

Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 1

Again, if you’re hear to learn about making a villain for your adventure/campaign and you’re a newer, less experienced DM, I highly recommend you look at my posts titled ‘Getting Started’ first, specifically the ones about making an adventure.

They can be found here:

Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part 1 Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part 2

If you’re here and have not looked into Part 1 of my In-Depth on Villains, it can be found here:

In-Depth: Villains, Part 1

Hello again!

We’re picking up right where we left off with the steps I laid out in Part 1.  They are:

Motive, Station, Mentality, Ability (Essentially, all of Part 1)

Introducing the Villain to Your Party (We’ll start here)

The Villain’s Lackeys

Evolution

The Hill They Die On

Most of the actual “Creating” happened in part 1 with identifying a villain’s MSMA.  This is only a small part of a villain, though.  Having a good one made does little if they way they’re presented and used isn’t also done appropriately.  For some, simply being a menacing figure is at the end of your dungeon is enough.  That said, you can’t simply having one basic, menacing figure after the next over a twenty level campaign, can you?

Introducing the Villain to Your Party

This is important, make no mistake.  When the party first meets the villain is just as important as when they kill it (assuming the villain doesn’t win, of course).

There are several things to consider when you introduce the villain, but the MSMA of that villain go a long way in helping you determine the details.  Here’s a few basic introductions to start:

1. The Guy At the End

This is the most basic of all introductions.  Essentially, an NPC in need of help will describe the villain to the players, and the players will run into them at the end of their dungeon and fight to the death.  Believe it or not, as basic as this is, it can be compelling even for a campaign’s BBEG.  

I recall a specific example here of an Aboleth who worked so secretly that discovering his name was an event of enormous importance in the campaign.  He was never seen (or interacted with) until the very final confrontation.  Rather, the players dealt with a legion of spies (in the form of Deep Scions) that acted as the main source of their player-to-villain interaction.

For simpler villains, you really can just stick them at the end of the dungeon and call it a day.  The scale may go up as your players increase in level, such as in who gives them the task, and what they’re there to accomplish, but at the end of the day there’s always room for a simple “they’re the guy at the end” situation.

2. The Power That Be

A powerful politician.  A corrupt member of the military or guard.  The ruler of an evil kingdom.  This villain is best introduced to the players through their importance to the region, without any mention to the fact that they’re to be an enemy in the future.  This builds precedence, and creates drama when their involvement becomes that revelation to really kick things off down the line.  It fits will with the noble-as-a-thief trope I went into detail on in Part 1.

In some cases, this villain meets with the players directly before the two groups turn adversarial.  They could be someone the players report their heroic deeds to, and are thus congratulated and even rewarded.  They could be a person of importance they bump elbows with while at a gathering for the rich and powerful, whether it be for something completely unrelated or not.  Regardless of what you do, when this chance meeting happens, I advise finding a way to show the villain isn’t entirely genuine.  This could be as blunt as them being mean to a servant, or dismissive of plights of people they think of as ‘beneath them’, but it can also be more subtle than them.  The villain could be trying too hard to appear kind to the players, such as by offering favors and help should the players ever need this.  This approach is particularly devious, as your players will never turn down a favor from someone who seems powerful (especially if it seems like going to them is what you intend for them to do in teh future).  In this way, you create a situation where the players learn of a plot by the villain without knowing who it is yet, and thus delivering their involvement directly to the villain themselves.

3. The Old Evil

Some villains have a history of being a villain.  They enact schemes meant to disrupt life for good folk and cause disorder wherever they go.  They may also be a great, roaming beast that’s awoken from a thousand year slumber that the players will need to assemble help against.  Regardless of your particular brand of ‘ancient, terrible evil’, you can be certain to evoke an entirely different atmosphere when you introduce this villain through a story reminiscent of the Boogey Man.

Of course, how you reach the ‘ghost story introduction’ of your villain is important as well.  Show the players the effects of the villain first, such as a village in ruins at the hands of their methods, or if the villain isn’t meant to pay off until much later, put the players IN the event that terrorizes a village/city/kingdom.

In Conclusion...

Regardless of how you choose to introduce the villain, and there are obviously more than the three I gave you to get started with, remember that your villain is unique.  Two different villains with the same introduction should play out differently, sometimes even drastically so.  A cocky, arrogant noble is going to be blithely charismatic, whereas a cold, uncaring sociopath who cares nothing for his people will likewise be a stalwart and serious individual.

The Villain’s Lackeys

This applies to every villain, even ones without ‘actual’ lackeys.  I know that may seem strange, but we’ll get that particular type of villain in a moment...

For starters, consult your villain’s MSMA.  Their station as a crime lord is going to put the criminal element front and center as far as lackeys is concerned.  In contrast, a warlock may have deep sea monstrosities, wicked fae, or terrible fiends at their disposal.  A crime lord who’s also a warlock might have both.  

How do you handle that situation, though?  Typically, the beings of a patron’s background (in the case of a warlock) are of a higher power level than commonplace thugs.  In this scenario, your crime boss might employ a wide variety of thugs, bandits, and the like, and have a single, somewhat powerful fiend/fey/eldritch horror as a sort of ‘mid-boss’ to the adventure.

Some villains don’t really have minions, but may live in places that are simply fraught with danger.  A Behir lives in a secluded cave, one that’s particularly hard to reach, and could have any arrangement mountain monsters between the players and itself.  This could be a contingent of trolls, or a group of stone giants.  It’s important to understand these aren’t true lackeys, of course.  In the instance of a villain like this, the players will be able to sneak by whatever stands between them and their intended target, which can drastically alter the course and pacing of an adventure.

More significant villains are going to employ a greater variety of minions, including other villains!  Keep this in mind when you have two greater villains operating in a similar realm, as a ‘mid-boss’ type, lesser villain can be the thread that ties the two together.

Other villains have far less complicated lackey situations, but ones that should still be heavily considered.  Liches and necromancers, for instance, will employ the undead.  It’s important to know a lot about undead minions when you select what they command, though.  Some liches may have apprentices who weren’t quite up to the task of achieving lichdom themselves, which would create a Boneclaw.  Other liches might have a Cadaver Collector employed, which suggests that they are mechanically inclined, a fact that can be reflected in their lair and the traps they employ later.  Finally, a particularly sadistic and wicked lich may be host to a Devourer, suggesting a connection to the Demon Lord of Undeath Orcus himself!  

A villain’s lackeys tell a story about the villain themselves, as well as what they do and what they might become.  In that vein, we move on to...

Evolution

This section will be short, but it’s important.  It does not apply to minor villains, as they are meant to come and go in a short period of time.  Moderate and major villains, however, can be the focus of multiple adventures.  Their schemes, as well as their defeats, can shape how they present in the later segments of an adventure.

A villain who succeeds in stealing a powerful object may acquire new abilities, or perhaps that same villain kidnaps a renowned tinker and adds mechanical wonders to its list of lackeys.  

On the contrary, a villain who is defeated may set itself up to better counter the players’ own abilities, or retreat to a place where it is more powerful.

This can happen in reverse, as well.  Players may simply find a villain becomes more nuanced and dangerous as they grow closer.  The tactics used to achieve victory may prove less effective as time goes on, or they could reach a point where they need to evolve by finding outside help.

Whatever the case, always be mindful of how the successes and failures of your villain are going to shape their actions.  It keeps things from becoming stale, and empowers the notion that the players are fighting a specific character, and not just ‘whatever the DM throws at them that session’.

The Hill They Die On

Another short section, and the one we’ll conclude on.  There are scenarios where your players will kill a villain before you planned to have them die, and that’s fine.  

Applaud your players for pulling something like that off, whether it be because they were exceptionally clever, or your own inexperience made it possible.  It’s at this moment I’ll say something I may not have said yet: always be ready for the next adventure.  If your players pull off a surprise victory ahead of schedule, knowing what their next adventure is to be and letting them find their way to it will allow you time to finish the session without canceling too early.  This will then give you time to prepare assets and properly build the entirety of that next adventure.

Unexpected scenarios aside, your villain has a limit.  There is both a point in time when the villain must truly ‘lose’, and when your players will yearn for something new.  There are a few ways to do this, but what’s most important is to understand their motives.

A necromancer looking to learn about the undead will die on the hill of ‘backed into a corner with nowhere to go’.  It’s not significant, but a necromancer of that sort is not a significant villain.  A necromancer working tirelessly, maybe even selflessly, to use profane magics to resurrect a loved one will sooner die before let the players foil their plot, and that is the hill they die on.

Some villains will still try to escape after their plot is foiled, only to find they have nothing once truly beaten.  This villain may fade into obscurity, beaten but not dead, or that villain may develop a personal vendetta against the players.  That adventure finds the players as targets, with the villain pushed to their absolute limit as they attempt to assassinate the players in a murderous rage with no regard for their own well being.

Villains have an expiration date; a period of time where their involvement as the players’ main antagonist is interesting.  You can save them if you want, keep them alive to be used as a lackey to a greater villain, perhaps purely to strike at the players out of spite, but they are still no longer the main antagonist in that scenario.  

Ever wanted to make a Monstrous Adventurer?  A kobold? A goblin?  A bugbear?  A Yuan-Ti?

It looks interesting, right?  It’s an exotic creature, one you probably only know as an enemy or a quirky weirdo.  They’re strange, but carry an untamed aesthetic, like a wild animal someone foolishly tries to keep as a pet.  But… they’re restrictive.

Part 2: Orcs

Orcs are tough, vicious fighters.  They raid, they plunder, they pillage, and they’re pretty damn good at bein’ scary.  They also have the most diverse warmongering hordes in all of D&D, accepting Ogres, Trolls, and Half-Orcs into their ranks without a second thought, and having no qualms working with other creatures like Giants if it helps them accomplish their goals.  It is divine command that drives the orc lifestyle, so what then would an orc look like if it were raised away from it?

>>>Link Here<<<

With this variant origin homebrew, you’ll be able to start a lore-friendly version of an orc of almost any flavor!

Next part hopefully out before May.

Haven’t posted in a while, still check though in case anyone has questions about a post/needs DM-ing advice.  If you’re wondering why, it’s because it’s difficult to come up with ideas for a good, substantial post.  So much of running a game happens in the moment, and there’s nothing I can do to write about that, and I’ve already dropped long guides on how to get started with the creation of settings and adventures.

As an added note, I’ve updated the Zealot document in my older post.  I’ll repost it here for anyone interested (and yes, I know there’s a Barbarian sub-class called Zealot.  They’re different enough where one shouldn’t ever be mistaken for the other though, and there really isn’t another word suited to it).

Introducing: The Zealot - A 5e class for the holy, monster hunting, vigilante, gun-toting lunatic in all of us!

>>>Link Here<<<

That said...  I have new homebrew content as well!

Unearthed Arcanas, and Why I Did It Anyway

ARTIFICER!  Yes, yes, Wizards has a brilliant class guide for Artificers already, but that’s a class tailored to the Eberron setting.  It’s also quite boring by my tastes, following a “1/2 caster” archetype that already exists in both the Ranger and Paladin classes.  It gets the job done well enough, but an Artificer isn’t just someone who makes magical equipment and is somewhat technologically inclined (unless you’re in Eberron, in which case it is what it is).

The actual definition of Artificer is “A Skilled Craftsman or Inventor”.  Yes, if you didn’t know, Artificers were something people at one point in our own mundane world were called.  I took that to heart with the development of a completely different Artificer.

As a warning, I’ll say now that this Class is probably not a good one for beginner players.  It’s complex, and offers a degree of freedom not seen anywhere else.  It also operates under its own rule-set, and has a flavor all its own, which is WHY I felt inspired to see it made.

Without further ado...

Introducing: The Artificer - A 5e class for the tinkering, steampunk, technomancer in all of us!

>>>Link Here<<<

This is version 1.0 of the class.  There are a lot of risks taken with its creation, as the rules it follows and the things it’s capable of don’t fit the mold of any other class in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.  It comes with three full archetypes:

 The Thaumaturge: A Spellcasting-focused Artificer who pushes the class’s bizarre spellcasting methods to the limits, and succeeds in unexpected feats of magic no other class is capable of.

The Power Jockey: Power Armor.  Enough said.

This is post is titled “In-Depth”, and it is done so because it talks about the aspects of combat and building encounters in D&D that are beyond your basic ‘understanding locales’ and KFC nonsense.

If you want the beginner’s post on Combat, go here:

    Getting Started: Combat

That said, in my Getting Started post, I didn’t go into detail on certain aspects of running an encounter.  This was intentional, as someone who’s just started should’t be concerning themselves with quite so much.  But what about the rest of us?  The people building encounters for players at level 3, or 5, or 9, or 14, or... you get the picture.

As per usual, I’m going to break this post down into certain key segments:

Experience, and Why You Shouldn’t Always Listen to the CR

Special Enemy Abilities

Moving The Goalposts: How to Make Parties of Particularly Deadly Player Characters Feel Their Weaknesses

One Big Foe

Depending on your level of experience, one (or all) of these bullets will jump out to you as things that have needed adjustment on your end.  Here’s some tips and insight on how to manage all of these factors, starting with some advice to keep experience values from affecting how you structure encounters...

Experience, and Why You Shouldn’t Always Listen to the CR

I’m going to go ahead and start this post by saying that, in my opinion, no custom campaign should ever really bother with experience.  This is a guideline (admittedly a useful one), but it can grossly limit a DM’s creativity and flexibility when building an encounter.

So, you can either assign experience values yourself based on the difficulty (because, yes, an encounter can be worth MORE experience than the CR suggests as well), or you can simply inform your players of when they’ve earned a level-up as your campaign’s story dictates.  I’ll give some advice on this, but first, let’s talk about the why.

A vampire has a challenge rating of 13, and awards 10,000xp (split evenly among the group).  It’s a difficult foe, with regenerative capabilities, Legendary Actions and Resistance, the added complication of Misty Escape, incredible story-centric skills (shapechange, charm, etc), and even the ability to summon minions.

It also only has 144 hit points (on average).  In a straight up, no non-sense fight, you’d be downright shocked to see how low a level some parties of 4 can be when challenging a “dreaded” vampire and coming out on top.

So, what gives?  Why 10,000xp for something that has such a strong chance of being outright blown up?  Well first of all, a vampire has legendary resistance and legendary actions baked in because it’s meant to fight with others.  The chaos of a packed battlefield is what makes a vampire the CR 13 menace it claims to be.

But that’s my point: A vampire is not a CR 13 creature when alone, not the way many dragons fit their CR when they are.  For instance, an Adult White Dragon (also CR 13) has the same Legendary Resistance, Legendary Actions, much more HP, a higher Armor Class, a deadly breath weapon (12D8, save DC 19, YIKES!), and a far more powerful array of standard attacks.  What’s more, dragons of this size have Frightful Presence, which severely ups the creature’s action economy (more about action economy in One Big Enemy later...)

At this point, the Adult White Dragon already seems stronger than a Vampire, but it pulls way, wayyyy ahead when you factor in its nightmarish 80ft Flying Speed.  If this isn’t proof that you can’t always trust the CR rating of a creature, I don’t know what is.

So, how do we go about assigning level-ups in a way that keep us from worrying about the sudden deluge of experience an overrated monster offers?  Simple!  You forgo experience altogether!  Some players like the illusion of experience, though.  To accommodate this, plan out all of the adventures you wish to have spanning a “level” and then split up the experience rewards based on the difficulty of individual missions.

If your players understand and trust you enough to handle the level-ups without the bells and whistles, it’s up to you to plan their distribution.  The best way to do this is to look at the greater adventure at play in your campaign and take stock of your villain.  Your players should be strong enough to handle them when the times comes, but not so strong that they walk right over the poor sod.  Use those benchmarks to create the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ points of the level ups you need your players to get.

After that, use important encounters to space those level ups out.  Here’s a few examples of events that are well suited to triggering a level up:

Defeating one of the villains most powerful minions.  This one is obvious, and a classic.  As an added bonus, it cements the feeling in your players that they’re getting closer to final confrontation.

The conclusion of an important meeting, or the coming of a particularly plot-important revelation.  This one is a bit more complicated, but again fits well with the feeling of progression.  Typically, this is best used when your players have gone through a lot of combat since their last level, but are lacking in some plot-significant baddie to mark the occasion.

Difficult Side Quests.  Yeah, sometimes the players get dragged into something completely unrelated, but it’s nice for these to have weight and not feel like a waste of time.  If you’re worried about your players going off and doing other stuff to the point that they’ll become too powerful, remember that you can fill the final boss encounter with additional minions to bring the difficulty up to par.  Alternatively, you can use the story you’ve created to put a sense of urgency into the players, and also create consequences for their wandering.  A necromancer threatening to ascend into a lich is a terribly frightening prospect, and makes the players feel like they’ve lost ground for running off to level up more before the final confrontation.

That’s really all there is to say about experience.  It’s not a terribly detailed subject, but it’s one I want Game Masters to understand.  CR, like everything else, is just a tool.  Treating it as gospel will make balancing encounters that much more difficulty in the long run.

Special Enemy Abilities

I sincerely hope that this is a short subject, because it’s not a particularly complicated one.  What’s it really about, though?

Well, sometimes that Specter enemy you’re throwing at your players was created as a result of something unique.  The Monster Manual already gives us a ‘special’ version of the Specter in the Poltergeist, but that doesn’t always fit the flavor of your specter’s circumstances.

Let’s start with a few examples of why a creature might have special abilities:

A pact, blessing, or curse from some greater being.

The unique way in which it came to be.

Life in a locale not typical to its species.

Some detail specific to your setting.

There’s a lot more, but these should give you an idea of when to get creative.

In the instance of the specter, we’re going to combine 1 + 2, in which someone died at the hands of a particularly horrid and dark god.  At this point, you have to ask yourself: how much stronger, or weaker (because yes, they can be weaker), is my ‘special’ creature?

So, our ultra horrible nightmarish entity has doomed a few pour souls to a particularly vile magically induced death.  What comes of it?  If the entity is supposed to be particularly powerful, then make the specters more powerful too.

We’ll start by upping the HD from a flat 5D8 to 5D8 + 20, which is a significant increase for any party that has trouble dealing with a Specter’s natural resistances.

It can’t just be more powerful though, can it?  No, the rule of cool is important, and we want this new version to do something cool that will tip your players off to how unique it is, as well as match the dark entity that created them.

In this example, I’m using an evil god of my own design known as Goddenfeir.  Without going into too much detail and boring you all to death, Goddenfeir is a god obsessed with the concept of complete nonexistence, and finds it unattainable.  Wraiths, specters, and the like created by Goddenfeir carry this sense of oblivion deep within their being, and manifest abilities to go along with it.  Here’s what I gave the specter:

Breath of Oblivion - Recharge 5-6, 15ft Cone.  Targets caught in the breath must make a DC 12 Dexterity Saving Throw, suffering 5D6 Cold Damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one.

This is a frightening ability, especially when the prospect of multiple specters comes into play.  In my own campaign, this was done to pump up Goddenfeir himself in a simple event that wasn’t meant to threaten the players that much, merely show them that he’s there, and that even something as harmless as a Specter (CR 1 normally) can potentially become very dangerous with his dark influence.

Moving The Goalposts: How to Make Parties of Particularly Deadly Player Characters Feel Their Weaknesses

Adding this category was very much so an afterthought, but it’s an important one: some player parties are just too damn good at killing things.

So how does a Dungeon Master kill-, er... challenge such a party?  Simple: you move the goalposts.  Not every encounter needs to come down to ‘killing the other guy’.  Not every encounter needs to be combat, either.  You could throw a puzzle at your players, or a particularly deadly trap (or a combination of the two!).

When you are looking for a way to give your oh-so-powerful band of murder-hobos a fight that will leave them quaking, you want to change the goal of the overall fight.  Here’s some basic examples of how to do that, for you to use straight up or to inspire you to create one of your own:

Evacuation!  A town is under attack, and its enemies are legion.  Have your players brave the town and help the people trapped within escape, fighting through the endless hordes all the while.  This can be easily done by enticing them with a great deal of gold for every person they save (and then making them increasingly difficult to get to, of course).

Trapped!  Sometimes, the only play is to run away.  Again, we have an endless horde situation, but this time your players are working against the clock (and their own limited resources) to secure a means of escape.  Speaking of clocks...

Stall/Rush!  Some parties are strong because they blow enemies up super fast.  Some parties are strong because they’re just so damned resilient.  Whichever the variety plaguing you, making a fast party take their time (such as with an enemy who’s invulnerable for a series of turns at the start of a fight) can be devastating.  Likewise, forcing a slow party to get the job done fast (say, defeating a powered up Ogre Champion with the key to the lift of the collapsing mine they’re in).  

This is a pretty bare-bones set of examples, but I think they demonstrate pretty well that a lot of parties are only really strong when the game is being played how they expect.  Dungeons and Dragons isn’t just about killing the bad guy, though.  Sometimes the evil player campaign requires taking someone alive, or the good player campaign needs the players to make an ally of an enemy.  Whatever the demand, there’s always a way to move the goalposts and show your players they’re not as unstoppable as they think.

One Big Foe

I saved this for last specifically because it’s what reminded me to return to an combat in an In-Depth post.  In the Getting Started: Combat post, I talked about KFC and how it shows us that quantity > quality when it comes to making an encounter more difficult.

But what about when when you want to hit your players with a proper, ginormous monster?  Some monsters are already built for this, like Dragons and Beholders, as shown by the presence of Legendary Resistance and Legendary Actions.  Legendary Actions, in particular, are there to help even out the action economy difference.

Action Economy

You have 5 players.  They are each level 3, and you’ve called in a Hill Giant (CR 5) to pick a fight with them.  With the ability to deal 36 damage in a couple of attacks, it’s pretty clear that a Hill Giant is a deadly foe.  Surely it will-, wait, no, the players killed it in 2 rounds.

How?  Your 5 players only had to average 10 damage each to deal 100 damage in two rounds, and the Hill Giant has a low Armor Class and an average HP of 105.  The Hill Giant, if lucky, did 72 damage total.  In all reality, it did much less, with several points of damage going over as a player fell unconscious, or 18 points vanishing into the abyss as your giant rolled a natural one or just outright missed.  What’s more, no one in the party probably even bothered using a potion or other consumable, and next to no healing spells (if any) were used either.

This is where we even things out...

Legendary Actions

Hill Giants do not have legendary actions, and shouldn’t, but when one big enemy is alone, giving them legendary actions can help improve the threat they pose to the party without diluting the experience and adding more small enemies to back it up.

For a Hill Giant, we give it a pool of 2 Legendary Actions, which it takes at the end of a player’s turn, and is refreshed every time the Hill Giant’s turn ends.  It’s Legendary Actions would then look something like this:

Move, 1 Action - The Hill Giant moves up to half it speed.

Club, 1 Actions - The Hill Giant swings its greatclub at a target..

Hurl, 2 Actions - The Hill Giant scoops up a rock from its pouch and hurls it at a distant target.

At this point, the Hill Giant is suddenly terrifying.  2-3 turns feels like an eternity when it gets two attacks on its turn, and up to 2 additional attacks through the use of Legendary Actions.  We made it more mobile as well, a fact that will truly terrify the squishier members of the group who rely on keeping their distance.

In the end, though, a Hill Giant still only has so many hit points.  The fight would have to go terribly, TERRIBLY wrong for 5 player characters to all die to this one Hill Giant.

It’s important to think about what you want your legendary actions to accomplish for a creature.  I set the boundary of two attacks, an attack and half of its movement, or a single ranged attack, and then made the total legendary action uses match the pool of actions themselves.

Ever wanted to make a Monstrous Adventurer?  A kobold? A goblin?  A bugbear?  A Yuan-Ti?

It looks interesting, right?  It’s an exotic creature, one you probably only know as an enemy or a quirky weirdo.  They’re strange, but carry an untamed aesthetic, like a wild animal someone foolishly tries to keep as a pet.  But... they’re restrictive.

Part 1: Kobolds

There’s no way about it: a kobold grovels, cowers, and begs.  It knows pack tactics from growing up with other kobolds.  But... what if you don’t want to be that kobold?  That outcast in exile?  That sole survivor of a massacred clan?  

How about a way to be your own kobold?

>>>Link Here<<<

With this variant origin homebrew, you’ll be able to start a lore-friendly version of a kobold of almost any flavor!  

More parts to come at some point in the future (but probably not for a little while, as Grinding Gear Games owns my soul starting Friday...)

I go over Villains somewhat in my Getting Started series of posts, specifically in the ‘Making an Adventure’ segment.  It’s enough to get a Dungeon Master started with a simple villain, but I didn’t go into much detail on how even the examples were made or why those options in particular were brought up.

If you’re interested in something simple, or simply don’t know much about making an adventure in general, you can find those posts here:

     Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part I

     Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part II

For everyone looking to do a little more with their villains, the sections below will detail several methods I employ, as well as how and why I go about using them.  These can especially helpful if you have trouble keeping your players engaged and focused on your villain.

To do this, and to better explain it to others, I’ve broken my method down into several parts that will not only help you organically create a villain, but also tie that creation into their introduction to the party and act as inspiration for the adventures you create going forward.

The steps in question:

Motive, Station, Mentality, and Ability (Part 1 ends after this...)

Introducing the Villain to Your Party

The Villain’s Lackeys

Evolution

The Hill They Die On

Some of these steps are going to take less time than others, and some you might choose not to do, but all of these choices are equally important to the process of creating villains that will be unique and varied across a campaign.

Motive, Station, Mentality, and Ability

Why they do it, the means they have, what type of person they are, and what they’re capable of really sums up the framework of a villain in every way imaginable.  This arrangement, their “MSMA”, can be used for every character, but it’s especially important for a villain, even if it’s only a minor one.

     Motive

The motive precedes everything else.  Regardless of who a villain is, they have something they want to do, or, more important, you as as the DM have a story you want to tell.  The scope of the motive is very important here, and should be enlarged to match the importance of the villain.

A minor villain should have a very basic motive...  

A necromancer abusing a town’s graveyard to create undead (whether it be for a purpose or just to expand their knowledge and experiment) is a very good basic motive.  You know this is a bad guy breaking the law, as they care only to further themselves and do it at the expense of others.  Their work is dangerous, illegal, and was probably discovered because some poor soul was eaten by one of their zombies.

A moderate villain should have a quirk to their basic motive, making it more elaborate and take longer to accomplish...

That same necromancer becomes an entirely more dangerous foe with a deeper purpose to their motive.  They could be relatively kind, believing in the long run that their ‘work’ will benefit the world more than it harms it.  In this way, the players’ journey for justice becomes less obvious than black and white, as the necromancer might make a good argument for their actions and drag an adventure out by taking time to reveal whether or not they’re at all to be trusted.

A major villain should have a motive that would inspire incredible effort on their part, as well as instill in the players that they fight someone who may be more determined to succeed than they are to stop them...

A necromancer, like many dangerous wizards, becomes their most terrifying when they are pursuing a singular, seemingly out of reach goal.  Having a truly sympathetic reason to enhance this can help, a common one being that a necromancer seeks to use necromancy to restore a loved one whose death has left them beyond saving by ordinary magical means.  Some players may even be sympathetic to the cause, and think helping the villain and keeping them out of trouble would be a wiser course of action, but then discover the ancient ritual they’ve discovered (or the new one they’ve invented) requires the sacrifice of hundreds, possibly even an entire town or city.  The scope is massive, one that befits a major villain, and offers opportunities for their plot to unfold over time instead of all at once.

Understand also that simpler motives can be used for major villains as well, especially if the villain themselves (like a dragon) has the means and power to threaten it on a massive scale.  For instance, a bandit might seek to take over a town, while an elder dragon could scheme to seize an entire kingdom!

These are just examples, the text in bold is what you’ll want to focus on.  Giving you more than the frame and some examples is somewhat impossible here, as the villain’s motive is essentially the foundation of your adventure/campaign.

     Station

A character’s station in society sets the stage for your adventure/campaign.  That station can also demand you explain how a character gained certain abilities, such as why a noble might be a master thief, or why a street urchin has grown into a crime lord with powerful magical abilities.  

In this way, a criminal mastermind is revealed to have risen to power through their own natural and incredible sorcerous powers, or perhaps because a powerful patron turned them into a warlock when they formerly had nothing, and made them fiercely loyal because of it.

All of this is a tool to combine locales and form a unique backdrop.  It can insert fiends into a narrative, or fey, or other bizarre creatures.  It can give a character seemingly acting alone interesting contacts from their past, or can act as a major revelation that spells doom for the villain (finding out a master thief is actually a noble can be shocking, as well as give the players a more powerful way to go after such an evasive opponent).

How you use a character’s station to advance and enrich a story is entirely up to you, and you may not even use it at all.  It’s simply another tool to improve your adventures and storytelling ability.

A character’s station can be incredibly exotic, though.  If your great villain is a dragon, their ‘station’ in life is now something entirely different.  Luckily, the Monster Manual will tell you about these creatures in their entries, and you can then extrapolate a result based on it.  In this way, a dragon becomes an overlord with its own army, or a solitary creature with an elaborate and dangerous lair.  

Likewise, an Aboleth might live off in some secluded place with a small population of creatures worshipping it as a god, or it could be hidden beneath a kingdom, and in the process of enacting a scheme to take control from the shadows that’s been thousands of years in the making.  In the first example, an Aboleth is a potential moderate villain, whereas in the second, it’s a major one whose identity as an Aboleth may not be discovered till very late in the campaign.

     Mentality

I’ve touched on this a bit already, back in Getting Started: Making An Adventure, Part II.  A villain’s mentality is not something you should skip, as it influences much of how they scheme, and also how they fight.  We spend our entire lives interacting with others, so imagining a way for a person to act isn’t all that difficult.  That said, let’s talk about why you might choose a specific way for someone to act based on the situation...

In the example of a noble who is secretly a master thief, a change in mentality can create a completely different series of adventures and confrontations indeed.  

For instance, you might make them arrogant and haughty.  They’re not so much cruel in their thievery as they are oblivious to how it harms others, and as a result find the sport of the whole thing its attraction.  This character is unlikely to do much killing, and may serve as a prime candidate for the players to try and capture alive (as they don’t necessarily deserve death).

On the other hand, that same noble might becomes a menacing, dangerous, and possibly even horrifying opponent when you attach the moniker of sociopath to how they act.  They might take things simply because they want them, or to prove their superiority and stave off the boredom of a boring noble lifestyle.  This same master thief might start as someone who finds the players chasing him as an amusement until they discover his identity, at which point he become something closer to a manipulative politician or assassin.  The players could find the noble working to pin his own crimes on them, or simply using their own stealthy abilities and ability to plan shrewd and cunning heists as a way to exterminate the players before they can prove they’re the thief.  Unlike the arrogant sportsman, this thief is now a murderous threat who doggedly looks to undermine, imprison, and even kill the players to save themselves.

When deciding on a mentality, understand that a character who is innately insane in some significant way will be much quicker to attempt to kill the players.  In this way, you get a villain who will try to fight the players immediately.  The less insane a character gets, or rather, the more stable they are, the more time you’ll have to build towards a confrontation (a big deal, especially if you plan to have many and the character in question is a major villain).

You can also have a kind character as your villain, such as in the example of a necromancer trying to bring back a loved one.  This villain is nice as you can have them ‘win’, but decide not to kill the players because they’re trying minimize casualties in their scheme.  This sort of villain might have their mental state degrade over time, or all at once when the players finally get the upper hand and ruin their plan.

If motive is the frame for your adventure, a villain’s mentality is the style it’s built in.  A devil can be menacing, or silly, or both.  A necromancer can be brooding, or misunderstood, or wicked.  A thief can be a smiling, sporting fellow who really doesn’t mean anyone harm, or a cold, egotistical maniac who’ll kill you to keep things quiet.

     Ability

And here we are!  If your villain is a dragon, or an aboleth, or a beholder, or a devil, or a hag, you know their abilities.  You might choose to add some, as their station and mentality might push them to have unique quirks in that way, but their abilities are pretty static.

For humanoid figures, a character’s abilities are split into two major categories: player abilities, and non-player abilities.  One of these is obvious, and makes for a relatively easy to construct character - You make them like a player, and maybe splice in something extra from their unique background or through a magical item they wield.  The other, being of the non-player sort, can be more complicated.  If you’re well into a campaign, creating a character who will act as a worthwhile opponent to your players shouldn’t be too hard.  Otherwise, you can look for something at the Challenge Rating you’re shooting for and rig up abilities with similar number values. This can work from CR 1/4, all the way up to CR 26 (it gets a little more complicated after that).  

These abilities, no matter what they are or how you got them, should match the character in question.  A bandit chief, lord, or king, depending the scope, will have mundane powers and incredible natural combat ability.  An archmage, on the other hand, will deal exclusively in magic, while a warlock, or the priest to an evil god, might have a mixture of the two.  

The abilities of a villain also give us clues to the minions they might keep.  While a noble’s station can give them an army or order of knights to command, their dark dealings with a great old one of some sort (as a warlock, in this example) could add powerful, otherworldly beings to their arsenal.  

A character’s ability also denotes how a final confrontation might be structured.  A dragon lends itself to being a single, big foe if that’s what you’re after, whereas a humanoid foe will carry with them tricks or allies to shore themselves up.  The necromancer, obviously, will enter into battle with undead at their side, but the master thief might create a playground of deadly traps and abuse their evasive nature to lure players into them, before finishing them off after the trap has done its work.

The nice thing about deciding a villain’s abilities is that, after the first three steps of MSMA, it’s probably something you’ve already got lots of ideas for.  They’re a bi-product of the first three steps, and help to enrich the overall story instead of just being a creature’s vague capabilities.  By having all of it work together, you have the foundation for a compelling core to your adventures and campaigns, one that will likely prove more engaging to your players.

This will end Part 1 of the post.  I knew the MSMA section would be longest, so I included that here.  It’s also a lot of substance, and good enough to help a lot of players building NPC characters in general without the other half of the post.

*EDIT* - The link to Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 1 has been repaired.

We covered part 1 of Making an Adventure here --> (Link Here), and dealt with all the trappings of a single-stage adventure.  This post will cover the ins and outs of a multi-part adventure, and even a multi-part campaign.

As per usual, it’s intended that you’ve read the posts:

Getting Started: Settings

Getting Started: Combat

Getting Started: Making an Adventure, Part 1

This will ensure that nothing said herein goes over your head, and also that you have two very big pieces of making an adventure already figured out.  Those being where is the adventure happening, and what are you killing?

Part 2: Multi-Part Adventures

In Part 1, we learned about Flags and Characters, two of the greater cornerstones for any D&D (or other tabletop game, for that matter) adventure.  After all, pulling your players in, and giving them something to sympathize/empathize/hate is a large part of what elevates any tabletop game from just getting more experience and loot to something more.

For multi-part adventures, we return to an old topic and learn how to string everything together...

     Flags, Part 2

That’s right!  Those events that trigger the adventure’s start in the first place are making a comeback!  What you learned in part 1 was only the beginning.

You see, an adventure doesn’t really end when you get the last room and kill the bad guy.  It does sometimes, even most times, but sometimes the big bad evil guy in the last room is working for someone else.  Sometimes, that bandit taking prisoners is working for a far more nefarious slave trader, or that rogue necromancer is actually part of a cabal that seeks to destabilize a prosperous kingdom for their own nefarious means.  It’s usually nefarious.

So how do we get from ‘just a bandit taking prisoners’ to ‘bandits all over are taking prisoners to fuel an underground slaver’s trade’?  The answer, of course, is Flags.  Flags for this sort of thing need to be more nuanced, though.  They need to reach the players organically, and typically play off of the players’ own tendencies.  Here are a few examples that would propel such a scenario forward:

The Bandit Captain in charge had a note on his/her person which details where to meet when ready to sell their prisoners.

Another group of prisoners at the site overheard something important from one of the bandits before the players rescued them.

Upon reporting the incident the players escaped from to the authorities (the guard, or whoever happens to be in charge of keeping order where they’re at), the players hear word of several similar incidents happening all over the kingdom.

Each one of these flags can push a player to a new adventure on their own, but you don’t always want to do that.  Sometimes, flags connect to other flags, and keep players out of the action a little longer while they work to figure out where all the clues lead.

It’s very important when connecting flags to other flags, however, that you keep you party’s tendencies in mind.  You might enjoy a sprawling tale of intrigue filled with dialogue and sparingly used combat, but D&D is about fun for everyone on both sides of the DM Screen.  If you want lots of story to happen between encounters, look for ways to keep your more combat-oriented players happy by peppering in single encounters or even entire one-offs.

For instance, following the theme of the bandit slavers, let’s say we gave the players the third flag.  They’ve spoken to the guard, but the next clue hasn’t been as forthcoming as they’d hoped.  The guard informs your players that the bandits don’t stay in one place for very long, and that while they’d love to have the help, they just don’t know where to send them.  This results in another flag, one the players didn’t realize they triggered when entering the guard house, through which an associate of a separate criminal element informs them that their boss wishes to speak with them.

At this point, we segway into...

     Characters, Part 2

A criminal is not lawful.  A dedicated officer of the law is not chaotic.  This, however, does not restrict them from being good or evil.  A guardsman can be corrupt, or carrying out the laws of an evil master.  Likewise, a criminal can be Robin Hood-esque, with a heart of gold, and embarrassingly sticky fingers.

When players are pushed to make criminal contacts, it’s important to understand that not every criminal need be their enemy.  This holds especially true when there are bigger fish to fry, and the suave, charismatic fellow who makes a living running illegal gambling dens and peddling less destructive substances (petty drugs, bootleg liquor, etc) is likely to hate a cabal of slavers moving into his territory as much as the guard.

That’s not to say that someone who makes a living being dubious will be forthright about this, though.  We are, after all, looking to keep the players entertained as the story runs its course.  In this way, you as the dungeon master have a new option to keep things fresh and varied: having this seedy, criminal mastermind demand something of the players in exchange for what his own criminal network knows that the guards do not.

Possibilities for this include:

Clearing out a safe house in some out-of-the-way place that has been overrun by dangerous, native creatures (Hi, Critical Role!)

Dealing with yet another, far worse criminal that the players’ new contact would like gone (a murderous mugger, or someone peddling extremely destructive and dangerous drugs perhaps).

Going somewhere on the character’s behalf, such as to an auction they can’t afford to be seen at, and carrying out business in their place (a possible non-combat option, for the rare party that thrives on that sort of thing)

On the other hand, you can keep the party going by taking any one of these things and connecting it to the bandit slavers instead.  Perhaps the safe house is overrun by them, or one of the bandit slavers’ more notorious members is nearby and needs to be dealt with.

Whichever path you choose to take things, it’s important to remember the characters involved.  Our new party contact is still a criminal, and what they’re doing can be a complete flip on what the players perceive.  Who’s to say they’re not working with the bandit slavers from the start, and these jobs are intended to get the players killed?  In the event of this, plant an ambush in the job the players are sent on, one with a flag that fingers their new contact as the dubious mastermind stringing them along, and prepare an additional adventure in which the players get their revenge!

No matter how it happens, your players will return to this new contact.  Whether they find the next flag by rifling through their things after a hard won fight, or have it given to them after finding their new contact to have the heart-of-gold they hope, they’ll feel a sense of accomplishment over completing that leg of this multi-part adventure.

     Characters, Part 2a - Villains

At this point, assuming your multi-part adventure isn’t a campaign in and of itself, your players will probably have a name, and maybe even a face, to attach to their enemy.

It’s at this point you need to understand your own villain, and their motives, to keep the way they fight the players in line with their beliefs.  Here are a few examples of ‘general archetypes’ you can apply to the ultimate ‘Slave Lord’ your players will end up encountering:

A garden-variety sociopath, uncaring for the emotions and plights of others, and arrogant enough to believe no one is capable of stopping them.  This character is cruel, and oftentimes oblivious to it, and carries with them a colder, joyless demeanor that might unnerve others.  They’re also intelligent, but suffer for their overconfidence.  A character of this sort will attack other characters the player know, possibly even using them as hostages, but may be too confident to consider the failures of their plans and how they might trace back to them, or think to have a Plan B for their own safety.

A born and raised criminal, seeking great wealth to rise above their status as a powerful name in the underworld and potentially seize power in a far more meaningful way.  This character is smart, ambitious, and aware of their own faults.  Their lack of sadism and sense of purpose will have them shy away from the more brutal tactics of the sociopath, but will make them more difficult to track down or catch.

A literal demon.  Yes, that’s right, a demon.  Some crimes are worse than others, and fiends, such as demons or devils, enjoy the prospect of corrupting others.  How better to corrupt than to not just subjugate people, but to aid others in subjugation as well?  The fiend is not like the other options because it is not human, and while its lack of empathy might seem similar to the sociopath, a fiend can be far more theatrical in nature.  Where the sociopath if cold, a fiend can be downright jolly as they act out their sadistic desires.  A fiend might also command other fiends, and the appearance of any fiend itself can be a major flag to send the players scrambling for answers.

The corrupt noble.  Oh yes, nothing quite sums up a villain like someone already in power abusing their station as a means to gain even more wealth and power.  This character might seem cruel and uncaring, but their inner monster is typically more nuanced than that.  An instilled belief that the lower classes are not to be thought of as people, while horrible, typically means the corrupt noble thrives on a sense of superiority, and accepts other nobles as worthy of their time.  As an addition to the corrupt noble’s tendency to abuse power, it is very likely that they have corrupt guards working for them as well.  When using corrupt guards, remember that they can rope in legitimate guards as well, and try to remind your players that not everyone they kill might deserve it.

     Wrapping it up

Yes, yes, it’s time to end it.  Your players have followed the bread crumbs, met an interest cast of characters along the way, and finally cornered the mastermind of whatever evil scheme they worked to stop.

What now?  Well, you know your villain.  Make their last words quick, as any monologuing is almost guaranteed to be interrupted by a player looking to get a cheap shot in.  

You know the characters involved in your over-arching story of your multi-part adventure (or maybe even campaign, if it spanned enough time).  When the fighting is done, and assuming the villain hasn’t come out on top and ended your party’s adventuring for good, you’ll want to think about how these characters react, and how they might get in touch with the players to offer congratulations or thanks.

That aside, you know how to build a combat encounter, and at this point, you probably know the party’s capabilities well enough to make it just a little more difficult than the other tough ones they’ve had so far.  If the adventure they went on tied in to the greater theme of their setting, perhaps it can them an audience with someone important (a powerful lord, or even a king) as a result.  Whatever the reward you give them, recognize the time it took for them to achieve their hard-fought win, and make sure it’s at least a little better than the usual.  If you’re worried about giving them too much, something special, like a favor from someone powerful or a grant of land to do with as they please might also suffice.

And yes, when the ultimate villain of the adventure is dead, you can add yet another flag to an even greater threat.  I suggest taking the players to a new region if you do this, though, as a change of scenery (and local problems) goes a long way towards keeping things fresh.

     In Conclusion

This is it.  At this point, with a setting, an understanding of how to build combat encounters, and the know-how to make your own adventures, you have all the bare bones tools to run your own game of D&D.

You’re probably going to make mistakes, whether it be in your own performance or some of the decisions you make (the most common one probably being to give your players too much loot/gold).  That’s fine, so long as everyone is having fun.

That is, after all, all that really matters: having fun.  If you’re doing it, and your players are doing it, then you’re doing it right.  Realize this as you do things, and understand the players are driving the ship.  This will destroy your hard work on occasion, but that comes with the territory.  If your players are ever abusive or uncaring of the hard work you put into organizing the game, don’t be afraid to walk away!  You are not there for their enjoyment, and they are not their for your enjoyment.  You’re all there for each others enjoyment, to hang out and have a good time with a bit more theatrics and dice rolls than usual.