Homebrew Paladin Archetype: Oath of the Dragon Knight

Edit made 1/24/07: final version 1.0 update

Wizards has been releasing new class options lately in their online Unearthed Arcana releases. This inspired me to do one of my own. What I came up with is the Oath of the Dragon. A paladin who is bound to the service of a dragon or shares some link with them. The spells give the paladin some opportunities for AoE damage, and fun other abilities inspired by dragons! I also like the flavor of it for role play as well. I hope you enjoy this first draft and, keep an eye out here for any updates.

Oath of the Dragon Knight pdf

Roads Versus Railroads

If you have ever played a pre-written adventure sometimes it can feel like you are just walking down a hallway. This can be okay as a lot of times your characters are walking down a dungeon hallway. The decisions you are making in this situation are what doors do you want to open and how to fight the monsters.

However when a tabletop RPG gets boiled down to only this it can feel like you are on a train track just going. You may choose to blow the horn or disconnect the caboose, but there is only one direction you can go. It can feel like you are stuck on a track, and this is where the term rail-roading comes from.

I first started playing a little bit with the 3.5 edition of DnD but never got into a long term campaign until 4th edition. A lot of what I played had that feeling of being on a train track, but I was new to DnD so I was still trying to understand the rules and just enjoying the scenery. However once I started playing with more experienced DMs and seeing games online. I saw the open world type choices that were available to them, and quickly what I had been playing felt like a video game with extra work. This is what inspired me to DM knowing the limitless possibilities of a table top RPG how it can change to the players and the frustration when it remains rigid. You want your players to become DMs, the more the better, but preferably not out of frustration!

To keep players interested for the long haul they need choices or at least the illusion of choice so that the world feels real, this is called verisimilitude. Well how do you do that, DMs are people too and have day jobs and we cant create every aspect of the world so the players can just go wherever. Your absolutely right, but there are a few things you can do here.

Improv it all - have your notes about the world and make it up as you go. Create things as you play and flesh out the things the players seem most interested in between sessions. While this can be awesome, it is understandable if its not something that everyone can do, and sometimes people who are good at it can even get stumped. Some RPGs even encourage collaborative world building and is meant to be made up as you go so maybe a different game could help here. However if the thought of this makes you anxious or doesn't sound like your cup of tea then maybe...

Get a premade campaign - this goes the complete opposite direction of improv. In a premade campaign the world has been laid out for you. All the locations your players can go to, whats there and who is there. All you need to do is react to the actions of your party, and the campaign book serves as a guide to how to do that. The most recent Wizards of the Coast campaigns Curse of Strahd and Storm Kings Thunder do an excellent job of this. Then again maybe you want to do something original this is were building roads come in.

Putting your players behind the wheel - when you drive your car it's rare for most people to drive off the road. Typically we stick to the roads, we go to the grocery store, our jobs, the movies. Yet we choose which roads we want to take: the highway to get there as soon as possible, the back roads to avoid traffic, or maybe the scenic route to take in what is around you. You can take this in mind when you are building sandboxes for your world for the players to drive around in.

NPCs can be good passengers to have in the car as well. They can suggest interesting places to go, or warn of dangers that lay in certain directions. Just make sure you don't have these NPCs take the wheel or constantly steer the party out of danger. Because you are no longer giving the illusion of infinite choices.

Also I want to stress just because your the DM doesn't mean you have to know everything! It is perfectly okay to say hey lets take a 5-10 min snack break while I think about what is going to happen here. You are just as  much a player as the PCs, and remember it's a game for you to enjoy. Don't put unneeded pressure on yourself.

No matter which approach your take just remember to stick to it and do it a lot. Repetition will only make you better at weaving a world for your players to create wonderful stories in.

So will watching people better than you who have been doing it longer! Matt Colville has an excellent video on the subject you should give it a watch.

Making - Hawkeye (Marvel Avengers) 5E

When you do what Mockingbird and I do -- without powers -- you can't rely on super speed or flight as your weapons. Everything around you is there to help you hit the target. ...We are the weapons!  - Clint Barton

Hawkeye the expert archer/marksman and scout for the Avengers. A capable man skilled enough to go into battle with gods, super-soldiers, and mutants! That's who we are going to be making today.

Race - Human Variant

So we are going to be staying away from magic, and try to get a lot of skills and feats for our build to make use of. So to start we are going with the Human Variant race.

Here is the stat distribution

Str: 12  Dex:15  Con: 13  Int: 10  Wis: 13  Cha: 10

we then add our +1's to Dex and Con bringing it up to

Str: 12  Dex:16  Con: 14 Int: 10  Wis: 13  Cha: 10

We ill take Perception as our skill as Hawkeye especially in the MCU is good at scouting things out and noticing small details.

For the Feat we are taking the obvious one here Sharpshooter. This feat not only has wonderful mechanics but also gives the feel that this guy is a master marksman.

Background - Soldier

So soldier you get athletics which is great for a human at peak physical condition, and Intimidation is good for interrogating the bad guys. Hawkeye also is a pilot though there will probably not be too many air vehicles in the game your playing. So vehicles land here will take the place of that, and for the game proficiency I picked cards.

Background Skills: Athletics, Intimidation

Class - Fighter: Battle Master

Okay lets get to the meat of the class here now, we get a few of the class skills available from Soldier. So here I went with Acrobatics, since again Hawkeye is quite agile and in great shape, and survival since he fits that scout role it should help with tracking and things like that.

Class Skills: Acrobatics, Survival

 Equipment most of the choices are pretty self explanatory, but for choice 2 I took a spear because at times Hawkeye fights with his bow like a short pole-arm so it might be good for melee, and he also does the same thing with a combat knife. At some point you might look into upgrading the light crossbow for a Heavy then you can use it for the higher damage and the longbow for longer distance shots.

Equipment
* Leather Armor, Longbow and 20 arrows
* Spear and Dagger
* Light crossbow and 20 bolts
* Explorers Pack 

Fighting Style: Archery

The +2 to attack is just so good here, and lets you have a shot at hitting with a sharpshooter attack at lower levels. 

Second Wind: Always useful to have a self heal don't forget you have it! 


Level 2:  Action Surge - Make it count as always but don't forget it recharges on short rest.


Level 3: Battlemaster: If we already had the meat for our Hawkeye build this would be the potatoes. The superiority die and maneuvers are going to represent your trick shots and special arrows.

My recommendations would be precision attack to help with those sharpshooter shots. For the other I would take pushing attack for position and extra damage, and disarming strike for the extra damage and to get the enemy to drop a weapon. There are many great choices here but I would pick from these 3.

Student of War: I would talk to your DM here, but If he is willing a Alchemist Supplies, or Poisoners Kit could be cool and allow you to craft some special arrows.


Level 4: Here we are going to bump the DEX up by 2, hit more often and harder


Level 5: Extra Attack, you will start putting out good damage a round now keep positioning yourself well as you will start to draw the ire of creatures. So keep your distance when you can.


Level 6: Here in stead of taking the DEX quite yet I think here would be a good spot to take the feat Observant. This bumps our WIS to a +2 , makes your Passive Perception go through the rough should be at a 20! Also being able to read lips has good role play and fictional positioning uses.


Level 7: Not only do you get another superiority, but two more maneuvers. Two i want to point out here is Distracting Strike, and Trip Attack. Both increase your damage, and allow you to set up members of your party for Advantage on their attacks. One more reliable then the other so take into account what your fighting and who is in your party. If your setting up a rogue Distracting Strike is probably plenty, but if you have another melee fighter with a lot of attacks it might be worth going for trying to knock it prone.

Know your Enemy: If you have the time to study your opponent can be good for trying to figure out what maneuvers to use.


Level 8: Here lets take the DEX score the rest of the way and get i up to the +5, again hit a little more often and a little harder.


Level 9: I really like Indomitable, in world full of magic your a guy with a bow or a sword. This is a chance for will and fortitude to overcome magics control or a stronger creatures physical dominance.


Level 10: Hey D10's for Superiority Dice, and you get another! Two more maneuvers as well still a lot of awesome ones to choose from!


Beyond 10th Level - I feel at 4-5th level this build already feels like Hawkeye but I like to do it out to level 10. Beyond that buff stats, and I would at least stick with fighter to level 11 for the next level of Extra Attack. Martial Adept is good for feat options another Superiority die and more maneuvers. If you are thinking about multi-classing Ranger is a good option the hunter abilities can buff your damage and get some spells to let you do neater things with your arrows.

Well I hope you enjoyed this one, which was suggested by the comments! So let me know if there are others you would like to see. Until next time happy gaming!

Failing Forward

Failing forward is a concept I have learned from watching more experienced DMs and from games like Apocalypse World and Dungeon World. Tell me if you have heard the following scenario before running Dungeons and Dragons...

The party encounters a door it is locked..

The Rogue/Thief steps forward and says "I pick the lock"

Lock Pick roll.... its a 4

The Rogue/Thief rolls again... its a 6

This cycle continues until the Rogue or another party member rolls high enough to meet the DC you had set. This same roll until you succeed situation, happens often for newer DMs that run a game that doesn't show you how to handle failure other than saying no or try again.

So before we even get into how this situation could look with failing forward in play. If there is something you want the players to see or to experience, then don't put it behind a skill roll. Because the above situation makes skill rolls feel like filler/time wasters. So the simple solution is to not have it there, however if you actually are wanting to present a challenge try failing forward.

Like the lock door situation there is a number of ways to handle the failed roll narrative and continue the forward momentum of the game. You might say this particular lock is too complex for you at your current skill level, this way the Rogue can longer keep rolling. Instead they need to think of a different way past the door. Breaking the door down, going through a window, searching for a key, etc. The players will then have to deal with consequences of having to take that route but it adds drama to the game.

But maybe you don't have multiple outs for this door there is one way in and its this door. A thing I like to do is the no matter the roll you succeed however if its a low roll just takes you longer. Then you let the players know that they are going to be getting random encounter rolls based on how long the lock picking is taking. Going this route creates tension of something coming around the corner to get the party. Sometimes nothing will happen, sometimes the patrol comes around the corner and sounds the alarm. It helps to encourage verisimilitude in your game, and also prevents the Rogue from being bad at lock picking :D

While this is a simple common example, always be mindful of how "failed" rolls can further the story in interesting complicating ways for your players. Some of your parties best moments might come out of it.

Making - Altair Ibn La'Alahd (Assasins Creed) 5E

"Nothing is true and everything is permitted." - Altair Ibn La'Alahd

Love Assassins Creed? Great me to and it's time to make Altair in 5e. Again this is just my take on it and is for fun so even if you don't like every choice I make here it will hopefully get your gears turning to how you would customize it for you.

Okay so Altair is apart of an order of religious like order of assassins. He utilizes a wrist blade, daggers, swords, and various weapons he grabs on the battlefield. So in this situation I think we are going to go with the on brand answer and take him down the rogue class path.

Race

So bit of a tossup here but any race with a bonus to dexterity would serve fine.I chose to go with the Human Variant for the feat, and to choose where I want the stat bumps to go. So for this build I went with the 27 point buy method. Here is what I came up with.

Str: 12  Dex:15  Con: 13  Int: 10  Wis: 10  Cha: 13

With the two plus ones from human variant I bumped up Dex and Cha. Dex since most of his class abilities are based upon it, and Cha so he can effectively intimidate, deceive, and persuade. This gives final stats looking like this.

Str: 12  Dex:16  Con: 13  Int: 10  Wis: 10  Cha: 14

For the Variant feat I went with Dual Wielder. Typically you will just be making the one attack in a round, but just holding the second weapon with this feat gives you the extra 1 AC which is great for low levels. Also if you choose to use the offhand bonus attack, because your surrounded and decide you want to fight or you maybe missed the first strike and want a chance for sneak attack damage still. This feat will let you have the main hand weapon you want, and then maybe a dagger in the offhand that we can flavor as the wrist blade.

Background

In Assassins Creed Altair is apart of a religious like order of assassins, who cause chaos to try and preserve peoples freedom and choice. So to represent that I went with the Acolyte background. You get proficiency in the Insight and Religion skill. You get to learn two languages I would pick two that make sense for the campaign your playing in so I would ask your DM what they suggest for the area of the world you will be playing in. The vestments and other priestly items you get here can also help you blend in with monks and clerics in the city, an effect Altair employs quite often.

Choice: Acolyte

Class

For Altair we are going Rogue, as for the archetype, surprise surprise Assassin is the choice. I will say I did briefly consider Thief for the use magic device feature, since Altair uses the Apple of Eden. However that feature doesn't come until level 13 and typically I like to do these builds with level 10 in mind, and Assassin gives us more tools and earlier to help achieve what we are trying to make.

Choice: Rogue

Level 1:

Stats:  Str: 12  Dex:16  Con: 13  Int: 10  Wis: 10  Cha: 14

 For skills we get to pick 4 on top of the two we get from our background, and the free one from the human variant race. So we are going to grab the things Altair needs for parkour, being sneaky, getting information out of people, noticing thing etc..

Skills: Rogue:Acrobatics, Deception, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth
           Background: Religion & Insight
           Human Variant: Perception

For the equipment we are grabbing the blades! You don't get a scimitar by default but you can always flavor the look of the sword you are using how you want. You may be thinking why now bow, although it would be useful I don't remember Altair using one that much and makes sense if hes trying to keep a low profile. So maybe a crossbow later might fit but you will be mainly sticking to daggers, and darts you pick up later for ranged attacks. An the explorers pack over the rest as Altair ends up traveling quite a bit but the tools in the burglars pack could be used to good effect as well.

Equipment: Rapier, shortsword, explorers pack, leather armor, 2 daggers, and thieves tools


Expertise: Stealth is the first obvious choice here you need to be able to sneak up on the enemy and the better stealth you have the easier that is. The 2nd choice is a little tougher we want something to get into places your not supposed to and to approach targets from unexpected ways. So Acrobatics will help you get up to rooftops and other levels, and Thieves tools will help you get into doors.

     Choice: Stealth, Acrobatics or Thieves Tools

Sneak Attack: Use it whenever you can
Thieves Cant: Dont forget to use this when trying to gather information

Level 2:

Cunning Action: Remember to be using this to hide as a bonus action, I see so many players use this just for disengaging and dashing.

Level 3:

As we discussed earlier we are taking the Assassin archetype here.

Bonus Proficiencies: proficiency in poisoners kit and disguise kit. Take the opportunity to harvest and make poisons when you can. Also start using those priestly vestments to go undercover. Less obvious mechanical benefits here but with some thought you can get more damage from poisons, and use the disguises to get yourself surprise and advantage.

Assassinate: Make sure to pay attention to this. Take note of any time you can get the surprise drop on the enemy a free critical at the start of a fight is a big deal especially as sneak attack scales and if you can get some good poisons prepared. Also the advantage on the first round is good when you don't have time to prepare or setup.

Level 4:

Ability Score Increase: We are going to bump our Dexterity by 2 here, that will bump our mod up by +1. This +1 increase will affect our attack, dmg, AC, a bunch of skills so good value here.

Level 5:

Uncanny Dodge: This ability is going to be your friend. You will want to hang to that reaction for this, however if there is a chance for your opportunity attack to get sneak attack its probably worth doing that.

Level 6:

 Expertise: You get to pick two more skills here, I would say go for the skills that are coming up alot in your campaign, adapt to the environment your playing in.

Level 7:

Evasion: Remember that your saving for no damage instead of half! You will be probably passing alot of your Dex saves too, so this can be life saving to not forget this.
 

Level 8:

Ability Score Increase: At this point finishing bumping the Dex score up to 20 for the +5 is the safest choice. However a feat like mobile or sentinel could also be useful.

Level 9:

 Infiltration Expertise: A neat concept though the situations in which you will actually get to make use of it will probably not be that often.

Level 10:

Ability Score Increase: Here you get an extra ASI compared to other classes besides fighter. I would say bump a stat up to suit your play style, and same if you want to take a feat. I will list out some neat feat ideas. I personally would take Sentinel here to try and get sneak attack off multiple times a round, but depending on party composition or other factors may not fit for your campaign.

Feats:

Alert: More reliably act before enemies for purposes of your assassinate ability
Defensive Duelist: Useful to be able to raise you AC for one attack but, your reaction probably better spent on uncanny dodge
Lucky: This feat is just always good no matter the class
Mage Slayer: If you find your DM throwing a lot of caster at the party could come in handy.
Martial Adept: Having maneuvers not only gives you mechanical benefit but flavors the build more as a master warrior. Feinting attack, Parry, Disarming Attack, Trip attack all useful
Mobile: Lets you easily get to the target you want to be hitting.

Multiclass:

After level 10 you can just keep going on Rogue, but a cool multi-class option is Fighter. Champion gives you the opportunity to crit more often, and Battle Master gives you a lot more of those useful maneuvers, and eventually the ability to make more attacks a round.

So I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on building a character like Altair and you take and make it your own. Comment and let me know if you have any requests for future "Making" posts.

Homebrew Race: Moon Elf

Hey everyone so, I like to make some homebrew content especially for 5th Edition D&D since it is fairly easy to customize for the kind of game you want to run. So I thought I would share some of that content with you. On occasion I will pretty the information up, and add some images. Now the images them self I don't own, and so this stuff should never be sold or used to misrepresent the IP they came from.

So that being said, I wanted a race called Moon Elf. What I landed on is fairly similar to the wood elf race in the Player Handbook, but there is some things flavor wise that are different. The Shadowmeld ability is inspired right out of Warcraft, and is meant to mimic the mask of the wild but in different fictional situations. An Wildspeaker is meant to represent a more mystical connection to nature and partial celestial origin. So check it out maybe you will find it useful for your games.

Moon Elf

5E Ranger Rework Thought's

Since the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons has been released, it has received overall positive feedback from most users. However a common criticism is that the Ranger class feels inferior to the other classes in both mechanics for combat, and mechanical support for role play. So we will just go through and look at the changes and I'll give my thoughts.

Overall I will say I think it is a solid rework, and is much more playable especially when it comes to the Beast Conclave. It probably only needs a few more small tweaks before made official but even then I think those would come down to personal opinion.

Base Ranger Class Changes

Favored Enemy - Finally they gave this ability some teeth, yes it is super circumstantial on when the benefit occurs. That has been a general complaint about favored enemy, yet I see the benefit here almost more in flavor. Also its creating a case where the mechanics are helping to support the role play of the character. The Ranger should be able to do more damage against enemies they have been hunting and fighting for a long time. Does it fix the overall strength of the class no, and I think that is why maybe there is some disappointment at this ability, but I think its a total success in mechanics supporting the fiction. Also I think the overall strength of the class gets addressed in other areas.

Natural Explorer - Another example of ability that used to not support the fiction of the class and does now. Before you had to pick a specific terrain to be good in, but it made no sense for a range to be good at traveling through the woods and then being inept as the other classes once they are in the grasslands? Also the Outlander background which any class can take felt almost as useful as this class ability. Also the adding of advantage on inattentive rolls and having advantage on creatures who haven't acted yet makes range a decent 2 level multi-class. Where as before multi-classing into ranger just didn't make much sense for mechanical reasons.

Primeval Awareness - My biggest gripe with this ability was that Paladins have a similar ability called Divine Sense. However for Rangers they initially decided to make it require one of their limited spell slots. Now I realize they did not want you to be able to spam the ability, however it was never something that was that game breaking. So I'm glad to see its now more readily available for players to be able to lean into this ability more. Mechanically it is still fairly the same but, the added interaction with beasts is a nice touch again more opportunity for mechanics to support the fiction of the class.

Greater Favored Enemy - A common sense ability here lets the ability stay relevant, and allows the character to have played the campaign and to pick an enemy that fits the setting the DM has laid out for the players.

Fleet of Foot -Not much to say here other than its good for melee rangers, to not always be following behind monks, rogues, and barbarians, trying to play catch up.

Hide in Plain Sight - Another ability that feels like it fits the ranger well, and its not often that players get to set up ambushes for enemies anyway. So I don't think it would be something that gets abused often. I would almost think it would be okay to give this ability to the Ranger a little earlier but its better than not at all.

Vanish - On the first read I hated this ability because it feels like this should have been included with fleet of foot. Since Rogues get cunning action at level 2 letting them use a bonus action to dash, hide, or disengage. However not being able to be track except by magical means I think is the meat here so that a Range could do the thing where they just disappear around a corner. Still think its a little weak as a level 14 ability.

Feral Senses - This is a fine ability, but not many characters will make it to level 18 and so the usefulness of it seems a bit too little too late.

Foe Slayer - Again not many players will ever make it to this ability, but its fine for level 20 to tack on more damage to go after that Tarrasque!

Ranger Conclaves
 
Beast Conclave - This was definitely the one that needed the biggest rework. At most time your animal companion was a minor help at best, and a constant inconvenience at its worst. The beast did not scale and Wizards seem so worried about the beast being over powered at lower levels that they limited it greatly, and it did not scale well.

Animal Companion - The most standout thing here to me is the ability to bring you animal companion back. Instead of having a factory of animal companions that you take with you to die, you can finally role play a ranger with a strong tie to their animal companion and it nor be a burden on the player and is supported by the mechanics of the game.

Companions Bond - At first glance this looks like a nerf, the animal doesn't get multi-attack and the ranger doesn't get extra attack. However the beast finally gets upgrades to be more survivable and to scale as you level up, and it get its own turn and actions. Wizards identified that to make your animal do anything it felt like your actual character was getting half a turn. It fits thematically and if you really want extra attack you can multi-class into fighter or barbarian for 5 levels. Also I really like that your roll for a personality trait and a flaw for the animal companion it really drives home how they are thinking of the companion in this rework.

Coordinated Attack - Here is where you kind of get extra attack except you are giving it to your animal companion. This is pretty strong at level 5 if you are a two weapon fighting Ranger between you and your beast your getting 4 attacks in a round.

Beast's Defense - Good ability increases the companion's survivability, its doubtful your companion will get many magical items that effect it so it needs abilities like this to keep up.

Storm of Claws and Fangs - Circumstantial when you can use this to good effect, but cool that you can use it. Also I like the fictional flavor of an animal being surround or backed in a corner just lashing out everything surrounding it.

Superior Beast's Defense - Again more survivability here to dela with the escalating amounts of damage monsters can dole out.

This incarnation of the conclave seems much funner to play, and I like that they took the time to not just improve the combat mechanics of it but make the mechanics support the fiction of the class. This was definitely the archetype that needed it the most.

Hunter Conclave - The hunter conclaves remains mainly unchanged, except for adding extra attack for the class here. This was already the more playable archetype for the Ranger. So it's good they didn't tinker with it too much and just improved it with the changes in the base part of the class.

Deep Stalker Conclave - This was originally put out in an earlier Unearthed Arcana release, and they have refined it and put a new version of it here to go with the rework of the class. I'm assuming the inspiration from this comes form the Drizzt books, and I think they pull it off. All the abilities really play into moving in the shadows, and surprise attacking enemies and getting away. Iron Mind  in particular is a stay out of my head mind flayor buff and fits this conclave well. I like that hey also added extra known spells as that also felt like a limiter on the class. I hope they add that to the other conclaves for the final release. For example Hunter conclave would get hunters mark for as a free known spell, and Beast conclave could get cure wounds or maybe speak with animals.


I know the players I DM for are excited to actually try this new Ranger or to try to multi-class into it. I hope they do I think this iteration of the class will work out much better, and am interested to see what the changes bring to the table.

D&D 5E Bachelor Party Adventure

Here is the link to the adventure I wrote up as well as the character sheets: 

The Bachelor's Party Adventure
Character Sheets

Recently I got to run a short D&D one-shot adventure for my friend's bachelor party. I was excited to do this but instantly had a few concerns. First I would be running for 10-13 players, and I didn't know each players experience with tabletop rpgs. Second was I knew it needed to be relatively short two hours or less so we would have time to do some other things that evening.

The first thing I did was take care of the characters. I wanted everyone to be able to see everything about their characters on one sheet of paper. So I thought instead of doing full on class characters, I would use characters based on NPC stat blocks. RPGTinker is an awesome site that lets you make custom versions of these and scale how powerful they are quickly. I made a bunch of 4 hit dice ones to match minis I already had. I made about 13 characters I will include with the adventure that you can just print off and hand to your players if you dont want to make your own. One fun thing we did is I laid all the sheets out with, the corresponding mini, and let the "bachelor" pick everyone's character for them.

Then I surfed the internet for bachelor party adventures. Well the internet had forsaken me I found a lot of stories about adventures run at bachelor parties but not something I could just run. This is what inspired me to save my notes, and them up so you can run this yourself if you have a bachelor/bachelorette party coming up.

So I started to put one together myself first thing I did was look for great D&D puzzles. I found one here I liked a lot and took it for my first encounter. I thought it was a good idea to combine combat and puzzles since I would only have time for 3 main encounters to happen. So I went with that Vatruvian Man combat puzzle for the first encounter, for the 2nd encounter I wanted another combat/puzzle. My friend getting married has math and statistical degrees so I wanted to poke at that a little bit and created the Sanctum of Numoku. Basically it is a cavern with a portal, that can be turned on by putting in the right glyphs into a 9x9 grid. The grid itself is actually just a Sudoku puzzle, which I handed out copies for people to try and figure out. I got the Sudoku puzzles here. While this is going on Orcs are falling from portals in the ceiling while they are trying to solve it. There is a joke on the internet I saw somewhere about orcs just waiting in line to go through a portal to fight so this is making of that.

For the last encounter they get to their goal to find it under attack, by monsters way more powerful than they can handle. Adult Red Dragon, Frost Giant that sort of thing.  Throughout the adventure players have been getting scrolls from a crazed wandering merchant. The scrolls are filled with super powerful spells, and legendary weapons to give the players the ability to beat these creatures. For a bit of fun to activate these scrolls the player had to read the arcane words upon it. For our arcane words it was 3 Cards Against Humanity cards and created some great foul mouthed gross hilarity. However even with these scrolls it was pretty assured many deaths would occur in this encounter but that's okay for the "bachelor" was given the "Ring of Binding" earlier in the adventure.  The ring has some circumstantial abilities to poke fun at marriage and wedding tropes, but also an ability to bring allies back to life. I added this for 2 specific reasons.

1. Increase the importance of the player who the bachelor party was for.

2. Its no fun to be dead and watch every one keep playing. Its a one-shot and is meant to be quick fun so keeping everyone involved as much as possible is important.

So please download it give it a try, change it to fit your group of players. Most importantly have fun with it it is a "party" after all.

Making - Cloud Strife in 5E

So I have a quirky habit in that when I get a chance to play in a TTRPG, I tend to not be that original when first making my character. I think it stems from pouring all of that into when I am game mastering to try and make original cool NPCs for players to interact with. So when I am making a character to be a player I tend to base their look and in game mechanics on an existing character. Whether it be from video games, anime, books, movies, etc... I enjoy trying to figure out ways to make these characters work in a system. I also see quite a few threads on Reddit by people asking for help trying to do the same thing with various characters. So I thought I would make this an ongoing series of posts about the characters I have come up with. By no means am I saying that the way I make the character is the definitive way, its just the approach I took.

"Stay where you belong; in my memories!" - Cloud Strife

So to kick things off I wanted to do one of my favorite characters. from one of my favorite RPG's. So we are making Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy 7. So to me he seems a fairly obvious candidate for a Great Weapon Fighter. The other 2 things I need to decide are background and race.

Race
Lets start with race so Cloud is obviously pretty strong to be able to lug around the huge Buster Sword, but he is also pretty acrobatic so I want him to have a decent dexterity score as well. So to get some versatility with our Stat Scores I am going to go half- sun elf. The Sword Coast Adventurers guide introduced making your half-elf be a specific type, and we are going to do that to swap the skill versatility for the free cantrip from sun-elf. For the cantrip I am going with firebolt, to have a nice long distance ranged attack.

Choice: Half-Sun Elf , free cantrip = firebolt.


Background
I tend to do the background selection before I fill out what you get from your class that way when you pick your skill proficiency your not picking ones your getting for free from your background. For background it is pretty straight forward here to take Soldier. In the game Cloud is from a military organization called SOLDIER. However two honorable mentions here are the Inheritor background and you could make the item you receive the Buster Sword.

 Choice: Soldier  Honorable Mention: Inheritor


Class
So for class Cloud is pretty archetypal of the Fighter class, and is pretty straight forward to build. So when building these characters I am going to use the standard array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. If you play in a group that rolls stats you might be able to make some other cool things work.

Choice: Fighter

So I am going to place those number as follows: 
STR: 15 DEX: 14 CON:12 INT: 13 WIS: 10 CHA:8

We are going to then apply are two +1 to stats to STR and INT and then we get the +2 to CHA it then looks like this.

Stats: STR: 16 DEX: 14 CON:12 INT: 14 WIS: 10 CHA:10


For skills we are getting athletics and intimidation from the Soldier background. So were going to take acrobatics for all the flips, and the second was tough and I think any of them is a decent choice but went with investigation since your trying to track down the bad guy and figure out their plans.

Skills: Acrobatics & Investigation Honorable Mention: any of the other choices


For equipment we are going to take the following.

Equipment: Chainmail
                     Greatsword & a Rapier (no reason for the Rapier, so pick what you like)
                     2 Handaxes
                     Explorers Pack

Fighting Style: Great Weapon Fighting using a great sword you will get a lot of use out of this since your damage dice are 2d6. 

That is it for the level one choices, so from here I will just list out things of note for subsequent levels I will typically not list out all the way to level 20 since most campaigns end before then, so we want to achieve the main part of our build long before that.

Level 2: Nothing here except for Action Surge this will serve as our "Limit Break" so when you describe what you are doing flavor it up and make it sound cool!

Level 3: So I debated on the Martial Archetype a bit between Champion and Eldritch Knight, but ended up falling on the Champion side of the fence. Since in the film Advent Children he doesn't use a lot of magic also most of their magic comes from materia they place in their weapons and armor. So I think just getting magic weapons and armor fills that role nicely. So I went with Champion because Cloud is a heavy hitter and improved critical will hopefully help us crit more often.

                Martial Archetype - Champion


Level 4: This is your first Ability Score Improvement of ASI. However we are going to take our first feat here instead! Taking Great Weapon Master will help you start to mow through the lower AC fluff that get thrown into fights, and you will quickly be starting to buff your + to attack to help offset the -5.

              Feat: Great Weapon Master

Level 5: Extra Attack you will really be able to start laying the hurt down in a fight with the two attacks, and you get the bump in proficiency bonus.


Level 6: The cool thing about fighter is you get way more ASI levels, so now we are going to bump up strength to 18, for a +4. 

             ASI: +2 STR

Level 7: Remarkable Athlete from Champion

Level 8: Another ASI we are going to put 2 more into STR to get us to the max of 20 for the +5.

               ASI: +2 STR

Level 9: Indomitable and an increase in proficiency bonus. Should be at a +9 to hit now with out any magical bonuses, so still at least a +4 when making a Great Weapon Master Strike.

Level 10: You get to take another fighting style my thought here is to take defense to increase your AC by 1 as AC is always hard to come by. However if you want to maybe move into some dual wielding occasionally to mimic Clouds Fusion Sword fighting style two weapon fighitng is also an okay option.

             Fighting Style: Defense Honorable Mention: Two Weapon Fighting

From here on out its however you want to flavor your character from here. You could continue to buff your stats and take more feats as fighter. Magic Initiate can be good for some more magic options, as well as Heavy Armor Master to help mitigate a little bit of damage.

You could also multi-class here a bit Paladin for Divine Smite to add some more punch when you hit, or critical which you should be hopefully doing a lot with improved critical. A 3 level dip in Barbarian is also good if you want to forgo armor, and the Rage/Reckless Attack/Action Surge can make your "Limit Breaks really pack a punch" and the Bear Totem path offers alot of damage reduction as well.

Well I hope you enjoyed the build, and if you didn't totally agree with it that's okay make it your own. Hopefully it at least gets your gears turning to do your own!

Rolling a New Blog

Hey everyone, Randy here and welcome to the blog. I wanted a place to just blurt out my thoughts on tabletop rpgs, and board games. These thoughts will mainly be about 5th edition D&D to start, but will branch out as we start getting into a rhythm here. These thoughts will mainly be about adventures I play in, thoughts about the classes, game balance, party dynamics, maybe some random tables, and character concepts.

So who I am? I am a half Korean/Caucasian American living in the Midwest. I grew up loving board games, and have been fortunate enough to have video games in my life since a young age. I love rpgs, and am an aspiring game developer and designer, both video and tabletop.  For now I am a multimedia designer/animator/developer , which is so close yet so far from what I would love to be doing but is pretty good for now.

I run a bunch of 5E D&D games for my friends throughout the week, and make way too many characters that I probably wont have the opportunity to play but I am always hopeful :)

I have also become a collector of board games, huge Final Fantasy fan (please XV don't suck) , and I am a host on the Roll For Topic podcast. On Roll For Topic I created topic tables to roll on, that create random topics for us to to talk about. The topics cover pop culture an media, tabletop, video games, books, movies, and so on.  If you would like to listen you can find the cast on iTunes and Google Play, or you can listen here.

Okay well that is it for now hopefully you will be reading a lot more from me soon!