Slasher Oneshot System

 Merry Christmas and happy holidays, everyone!

The topic of this article is something I've wanted to do for almost a year, ever since I've run my Halloween oneshot last year. But only recently did I get inspired to try to make it into a system of its own. Originally, it was a D&D 5e hack, created to trim 5e of any unnecessary fat. I figured I could do better, and so I've turned it into its own system! Some hints of 5e are left in there, but I don't think it makes the system any less valuable.

Why right now and not on Halloween? Because I was busy, and I didn't have inspiration for that beforehand. If you want a funny reason, it's because I'm a programmer, and programmers tend to mistake DEC25 for OCT31.

Hopefully next year I'll get something more thematic for Christmas, and maybe even other holidays. Thank you all for reading, and enjoy your time spent with those you care about the most, regardless of what time of year it is. Have a nice day, and see you next year!

(Now let's see if my embedded file is going to work...)

Villainous Dessert: The Imperceptible Monument

Howdy! This article is part of Villainous Cookbook, but as you can notice, it doesn't follow the regular structure of these articles. The reason for that is, that this is something short, sweet, and not exactly interesting or fulfilling. I brought it up in a discussion on discord, and it actually started a heated debate, so it's fair to say that this build will be spicy. Maybe even the most controversial build of the series. Due to the backlash, I'm starting this article with a disclaimer.

I am a DM who is okay with dirty tricks. In fact, one of the GMs who I look up to but won't name is infamous for playing dirty. As long as these dirty tricks are there to make the story better, and to make the players' experience more enjoyable, I'm fine with using them. I'm not sure if either of those would be achieved with this build because this is less of a thing to defeat, and more of a puzzle to solve. When discussing it, I sparked frustration in people because this couldn't be defeated by the conventional means. I don't expect this to be enjoyed by everyone, but someone somewhere might find a use for this, so I'll post it anyway. But please, if you end up using this, use it to make your game better and to challenge your players, not to bully the player characters.

Regardless of how successful the article itself will be, I know I've enjoyed every part of putting this creation together. I've tried to break the sequester and imprisonment spells for a long time, so I am very happy to say that I managed to achieve both, and at the same time. Even if it does use homebrew.

It would probably have more parts to its legs. And arms. And fingers. And maybe a split up torso. But this is a cool gif nonetheless that I wanted to present it with.
Crystal Golem, by Marie Angoulvant

Imperceptible Monument

Ingredients: A pilot who can wear a spare piloting armor, a rich person, a powerful spellcaster with plenty of time (two of these could be the same person), and a couple of critters.

I'll go through the steps of building the Monument here because it doesn't need levels. We begin by gathering several crystals to simulate body. First 8 should be long enough to serve as arms and legs, without elbows and knees. We don't need joints here. It'd be nice to also have crystalline hands, which need two palms and a total of 28 digits. Try to find long gemstones for this so that they would resemble the body in those regards. Feet are unnecessary, they'd only add extra cost to the whole process. Finally, torso made up of two gems, and a gemstone head. Then again, you could definitely make the number of gems here smaller if you wanted to.

Next up, all but one of these gems should be populated by critters using the minimus containment version of the imprisonment spell. These could be animals, undead, anything as long as it's weak. A vile villain could use orphans or something, but we don't need to go that far. Leave one of the gems empty for now.

Now then, it's time for the only homebrew part of this build. We need a level 9 Maxim Master who will use a lot of jade dust to entangle the individual crystals with pieces of piloting armor. The way this works is using Maxims of Consequence that detect movements of the piloting armor, and are hooked up to the Maxims of Movement that copy those movements on the individual crystals.

I've been met with some remarks about how this fact invalidates the whole build. First, I should mention that the entire series of Villainous Cookbooks uses homebrew materials. My goal was to make interesting villains, even if they used some homebrew and some rulebending. But the more important part of the defense is, that the Maxim Master is based on conditional spells that are already in the game. These include magic mouth, programmed illusion, immovable object, and arcane lock. They are spells that, based on some condition, perform illusions or restrict/allow movement. I've been told many times that the spells available to the players are only part of what's possible, so I would say that conditional telekinesis is plausible.

Getting back on the tracks, we need our pilot to be able to see the outside world. So, centered on the inside of the empty gem, we project an illusory replica of the surroundings of that crystallic structure using Maxims of Information and Illusion, shown from the point of view of the head-gem.

Our pilot, wearing the armor, is afterwards imprisoned within the final empty gem, and each gem is targeted by the sequester spell. Thanks to the limitation of imprisonment being that only light can pass through, the user can make gestures and strike bodily poses and get the magic outside activated. Let's assume the condition for the imprisonment is that the structure has been nonfunctional for 3 days. Whether it's because it's been dismantled or because the wearer stopped wearing the armor (or just didn't do anything for 3 days is up to the DM).

Optional step, we can detect the pilot's mouth movements and produce sounds based on those to allow the monument to talk. Heck, if you wanted to, you could do a visual illusion (whether through Maxims or programmed illusion with a healthy dose of DM fiat) that could be triggered by the pilot donning or doffing a hat, which would let other creatures see it, but that's an afterthought.

Outcome

So, what have we achieved? Our Imperceptible Monument is permanently invisible and can't be targeted by divination magic (sequester), and is made up of objects that can't be destroyed by conventional means (imprisonment: minimus containment). Since this is a group of objects that are not connected and copy movements of an unreachable villain, each would have to be disposed of individually. Also, this thing is made up of objects, meaning it's inherently immune to a huge amount of spells. Fun fact: out of all cantrips, only fire bolt and magic stone can target and damage objects.

The biggest limitation of this build is its sight. Due to the way Maxim of Information is written, the pilot within will be at best capable of perceiving the world up to 30 feet away. If the players get out of that range, they're gonna be likely fine. Other limitations include the fact that the pilot can't cast any spells, and that this thing can't repair itself on its own. It's actually... kind of dull? Which is why I've distinguished it from the rest of Villainous Cookbook in both title and article structure.

How to Defeat It

The biggest point of criticism I've received for this was that "there is no interesting way to defeat it". And that much is true. Over the course of discussion, we came up with some ways of fighting it off:

• Dispel magic cast on each crystal (fortunately it can target even unseen objects). Which needs a lot of spell slots (4 limbs with 2 segments, 2 segments of a torso, head, plus however much is hands and digits of fingers). Whenever they dispel a gemstone, it falls off from the structure (leaving the rest of the structure in tact), and the caster might have to make separate checks to dispel 7th level sequester, as well as 9th level imprisonment on the gem.
• Anti-magic field trip. I regularly put into my worlds a null-magic zone that works as a permanent one, so it could provide a nice "aha!" moment to the players if they came up with this.
• Portal to the Astral Plane using bag of holding and portable hole, or different extradimensional magic items.
• Burying it alive inside of a hole through some clever planning. And let's be real here - being buried with a perception range of 30 feet only in a sequestered gemstone that keeps you alive whether you like it or not doesn't sound like a pleasant fate.
• Immobilizing parts of its body using the immovable object spell. Which, admittedly, is part of Dunamancy, which is something not even all wizards get access to. Alternatively, I've received a suggestion that uses one or more immovable rods.
• The wish. Because you know, wishes can solve anything

Sure these are unsatisfying, since not everyone could do them. What can a fighter do in a situation like this?

Perhaps it's me being naive, but I think that it's good to try thinking creatively in situations like this. How could one dispose of an imperceptible immortal structure pursuing the players? It needs some outside of the box thinking because no amount of attacks and damage rolls will resolve this problem. Some people out there think that's too much to expect from players. I have met groups that just didn't want to try thinking about a problem creatively.

If you wish to use the imperceptible monument in your own games, consider foreshadowing it first. Have the locals talk about the invisible being, about how no weapons, not even magical ones, seem to do anything to stop it. Have the players encounter it more than once, with plenty of time between meetings. This way, the players could have a chance to brainstorm solutions for this problem between the games, and cook up something neither I nor anyone I talked about was able to put together within the 24 hours during which the build has existed so far. Above all else, be open towards creative solutions. The ones I listed above are definitely not the only solutions out there. If the players try to net each of the objects, or find some spells that do indeed affect objects, the least you can do is be open towards them. Maybe they won't kill the pilot (who, let's face it, the pilot could be literally anyone—from the most competent warrior in the kingdom to a commoner, including even... other villains from my cookbook?), but they'll find a way to trap it. And that's fine!

Then again, you could also come up with your own weaknesses for it. RAW it doesn't have any extra weaknesses, but maybe you can figure something out. Maybe the imprisonment used is flawed somehow because the gemstones used were a little too cheap. Maybe the sequester can be overcome. Maybe the players could outsmart the villain inside because of his limited range, and limited number of senses. Your and your players' imagination is the limit here.

If they figure out dispel magic works, though, and if they manage to dispel its body piece by piece, the reward awaiting them is massive. Assuming each critter has one hit die, we're talking about 41 gemstones, 40 of which have a cost of at least 500 gp, and the one that holds the pilot has a smallest cost of 500 gp per every hit die the pilot has. This amounts to 20.000 gp worth of gemstones, plus the pilot's gemstone.

… did I just accidentally make a puzzle with an actual monetary reward instead of a combat encounter?

Edit: After I finished the article, I started to look up art. It seems that Adventure Zone had something aesthetically similar enough, so I'll just use their art for this. Despite the fact that the Monument should be invisible.

Behold, my creation! I know you can't see it, that's part of the point.
Lucas and a Crystal Golem, by /u/tough_stough

Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Prophecy Breaker

Time travel is fun. But, time travel can be frustrating. Doubly so in a tabletop RPG. Ten times more if players can do it as much as they want, unless the GM wants to have a game that revolves around time travel. But tell you what? I figured that maybe having the time travel be restricted only to the villain would be a good thing.

With that being said, here I’ll have to break one more rule in order to make the overall build just a tiny bit better: it’s going to gain one feature from warlock, and the reason for that is that it’s gonna significantly improve this build. While I could make it level 21, I feel like that would be cheating, and setting a terrible precedence for future builds. I’ll just say it’s “0 levels of warlock”, so try to not mind that.

Let’s see where this goes!

Update: The "0 levels of warlock" turned out to be unnecessary, since convergent future's exhaustion can only be removed with a long rest, so I'm removing all of the bits addressing that.

Preface

The purpose of the Villainous Cookbook is to offer cool villain ideas for DMs. It uses homebrew player options sometimes mixed with the official ones, but it bends the rules a little to work better. While sometimes restrictions breed creativity, other times it's nice to push the boundary a little to make the villain more interesting.

The stats are left completely up to the reader. You can make them anything you want, as long as it's within some boundaries, and you don't need to spend any ASIs or consider the stat bonuses provided by the feats unless you want to complicate things for yourself.

Each of the builds is split into 4 Tiers, to show how the villain grows in power over time. At any moment, the villain should be at least on the same tier as your players if not higher, since you want them to be challenging. Unless noteworthy, I won't mention the specific spells, ability scores, backgrounds, or skills. All that I leave up to you so that the villain is more customized.

One last word of caution—while these builds might seem overpowered, making the homebrews seem overpowered, bear in mind two things.

1. We're adjusting the rules a little to make the character builds work better. If this demands an in-world explanation, say that this is an exceptional person who figured out something others don't know, or has a special bloodline/destiny.
2. We're crossing the homebrew streams. And that can oftentimes go wrong. I'm doing my best to use homebrews that I consider balanced and that I would actually allow my players to use in the games.

Now that all of that is sorted out, the time is here. And our villain who can travel through it too!

Prophecy Breaker

"Here's the thing about time: If you can't make the most out of any given moment, then you don't deserve a single extra second."

— Ekko, “Seconds”

Let's go on a journey, a journey through time!
Time Traveler for IFX, by JessiBeans

Ingredients list

• Any race
• Wizard 17: Chronurgy (Explorer's Guide to Wildemount)
• Fighter 3: Echo Knight (Explorer's Guide to Wildemount)

Tier 1

The build begins with 2 levels of fighter, understandably because it provides the most proficiencies, and 2 levels of wizard. As usual, this is a phase when our baddie is in the background, just doing their stuff and improving slowly.

When it comes to the fighting styles, I would recommend Defense, Blind Fighting, or Superior Technique if you really like the maneuvers.

Tier 2

All six of our levels go into wizard, fairly straightforward. An upside is getting haste and slow on this level, but I’ll write about spells in detail later.

Tier 3

Six more levels into wizard. Yeah, this build is turning out to be pretty straightforward, but that's mostly because I removed the previously mentioned "0 levels of warlock" build, and that removed some extra complications that were listed here.

Tier 4

Our final tier is about putting 3 more levels into wizard, and 1 last level into a fighter. With this, our guy gets 9th level spell slots, and an ability to actually travel back in time, to the point where there’s two coexisting copies that can interact with each other. Just say that the future copy is the echo, so that if they die, you could say that it’s actually created an alternative future or something.

Time Travel

So, what are all of the means of time travel the breaker is capable of? Here’s a comprehensive list, first going by tiers and then listing a handful of recommended feats, as well as spells:

Class Features

Second Wind (Tier 1). You rewind a part of your body, reversing some of the injuries you’ve sustained.

Action Surge (Tier 1). Two of you appear when you choose to do it, both perform one action, and one is left behind.

Temporal Awareness (Tier 1). When you feel threat of a combat approaching, your body’s instincts kick in to return your mind back in time a few seconds, giving you edge when starting the unavoidable combat.

Chronal Shift (Tier 1). Short rewind to slightly alter the conditions and see if it changes the outcome.

Momentary Stasis (Tier 2). A time stop localized on one creature.

Arcane Abeyance (Tier 3). A minuscule time portal for magic to go through.

Convergent Future (Tier 3). Multiple rewinds of time, until you reach a satisfying outcome.

Manifest Echo (Tier 4). A copy of you arrives from the future, though its fate is tied to yours. If it dies, the timeline has been changed significantly enough to prevent the existence of the echo in the first place.

Feats

Alert - It's extra training to the Temporal Awareness.

Eldritch Adept - Overall not that important feat here. Thief of Five Fates could be flavored as slight precognition powers and you ruining it for the target, most other invocations without prerequisites isn't too fitting for time magic.

Lucky - The objectively most "time traveler" feat despite being a little bland, it's like 3 more time rewinds.

Mage Slayer - Some benefits for protection against magic users, could be flavored as time magic overpowering the regular magic at times.

Metamagic Adept - Just like Lucky, this is awesome for time traveler. I would personally go with Extended spell could be explained as you elongating the spell's duration. Subtle spell could be you fast-forwarding your spellcasting, and/or a time stop for spell cast. Quickened spell doesn't need to even be explained. Twinned is a blast from another timeline. This is a feat where you can go hog wild and customize the breaker for your own personal use.

Mobile - Permanent speed boost to you.

Mark of the Eternal Citadel (CoFS:A) - Lesser restoration is like second wind, but for anyone and for very specific things. The other part is sort of time-rewindy, like an instinct that kicks in and lets you quicken your step for a moment. It's a stretch, but lesser restoration is nice.

Mark of the Storm Lord (CoFS:A) - Feather fall is great for saving yourself by slowing your falling speed, but the other benefit is the more interesting one here for me. I feel like I recommend it with all of my builds, and it's for a good reason. That feat is just so universally applicable, because most spellcasters (especially those who want to keep their distance) want to keep their distance. Extra movement speed for free, now that's awesome for anyone. Time traveler or not.

Spells

Let’s start with the obvious. You’ll want to pick haste, slow, and depending on your opinions on this spell, time stop. Another huge group of spells to consider are chronurgy spells that are part of Wildemount’s dunamancy spell list.

Now that the glaring ones are resolved, here’s the deal—the rest is all about how you flavor it. Sure, you could choose spells as you wish and use them that way too, but if you want more time travel spells, look for spells that fall into these groups (these are examples, not necessarily wizard spells):

• speed manipulation (longstrider, expeditious retreat, ray of frost, …),
• luck manipulation (bless, hex, bane, …),
• divination magic for seeing into past, future, or present someplace else,
• necromancy magic, flavored as rapid but temporary aging of people,
• regenerative magic of any kind, if possible.

Style

I’ve seen mixed opinions on Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, so here I’ll include one thing from the book that I would definitely consider for the build, but it's completely optional. It won’t make the build more effective, it just looks neat.

Choose the Artificer Initiate feat if you can spare it. Think how could time travel relate to any of the tool sets offered. One obvious option is tinkers’ tools, which would mean this person has literally built a time machine. But what if it’s something else? Maybe the time is like a river, that you can manipulate only with potions. What if you need to shape it with pottery tools?

My two personal favorites are calligrapher’s supplies and cartographer’s tools, explaining it as accessing the source code of the multiverse and rewriting it, either with glyphs temporarily written in the air, or by creating blueprints and folding them right.

The following three parts are tips on how to go beyond what I described with this build. Bear in mind that it could become too wild if done without a caution. They're presented in the order of least to most world-threatening.

Actual Time Travel

Now, you might tell me that this is kind of lame, because they doesn’t actually get to travel back in time. And sure, you could say that. But what if I told you that… there is an actual way to achieve time travel? It’s possible even for players, but it requires a DM’s discretion. And for an interesting villain, I think it’d be fair to say that we can allow this.

Have the breaker learn simulacrum and true polymorph upon finishing Tier 4. After casting the simulacrum (much easier to do through wish, but I usually ban wish at my games), you cast true polymorph on your simulacrum, transforming them into a gynosphinx. Finally, you find them a lair. You could even make it through demiplane if you want it to be someplace safe.

Now, whenever you are in the lair, you can travel forwards and backwards through time. Wait a minute, time travel restrained to a location, where a time traveler and their assistant travel through time and space? Hang on, I accidentally killed my ancestor, so what is all this wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff all around us?

Well, my friend, popular fiction refers to these as time paradoxes. Now now, no need to worry about that. Time travel is a tricky subject, and we can figure some way to resolve the paradoxes that can happen with it. The easiest solution would be different timelines, but that… can be tricky if you’re playing in an RPG, and if your players aren’t the ones doing the time travel.

A simpler solution would be for the player characters to be "anchored in time", possibly through experiencing time travel or through a different excuse you comes up with. Now, even if the breaker would cause a time paradox by killing the players while they were young, the players would be unaffected, as well as anyone who has traveled through time. But the rest of the world would indeed change to accommodate for this. People would be convinced that “you have died years ago, this can’t be right…”, despite the fact player characters are unchanged.

Bootstrap paradox is easy enough to resolve—just don’t have stuff come from the future and disappear into the past.

Finally, some of you may recall my article on Broken Prophecies. Since it was inspired by my original discord nickname, and so is this, I wanted to bring the article up since it has some neat timey-wimey stuff that could inspire you when using this villain. I know I would personally try to do a Groundhog's Day plot for example. Maybe I'll write an article in the future on how I would do it.

The Prophecy Shatterer

There’s one more cool thing that I wanted to mention. I started to write this after finding a curious reddit thread about how chronurgist wizards would be capable of instantly decapitating their enemies, if their attack roll bonus is low enough. So, if you’d make a prophecy breaker and wanted to add a touch of brutality to the experience, give them a heavy vorpal blade of choice, dump their Strength, and replace proficiency with the vorpal blade you chose with some tool set. I mean, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything allows you to give up proficiencies from a race, maybe we could remove it from a class too if we really wanted to. Maybe instead of using greatswords, this fighter has learned how to make pottery. Finally, to round it all off, choose Great Weapon Master.

Whenever you make a weapon attack, you add your ability score modifier, proficiency bonus if you are proficient with the weapon, and now you subtract 5 from it thanks to the feat.

For example, with a Strength modifier of -3 and no proficiency with the weapon, your "bonus" to attack rolls with this weapon is -8, which means that if you use your Convergent Future on anyone with AC 12 or higher, you'll automatically decapitate them (20 is auto-hit, even if after adding the bonus it's still lower than the AC).

While this makes for a frightening foe, bear in mind that maybe players should have some chance of escaping them. And that if the wizard is smart, they wouldn't bring their vorpal sword absolutely everywhere.

Infinite Wizard

There is a way to create literally infinite clones of yourself, but I'll be honest with you all—I will inform you of this, but recommend against doing it.

The premise is simple, though it requires wish or a ton of patience. After casting simulacrum once through the regular way, make sure you're well rested, and have them cast wish to create a simulacrum of you. From that point on, have the newest simulacrum create a simulacrum of you with a wish. This goes on until you get absolutely bored of it.

"This is awesome! Why would you not want me to do it?" Well, think about it: if the wizard is good and cares about the world, they could literally solve every problem of the world (or timeline, if we also do the gynosphinx trick). If he's evil, nobody will ever stand a chance, because he's gonna be present in all points of time and space. To some it might sound like a nice challenge, but wizards are scary.

Why should a time mage capable of time travel and de-aging themselves be a bearded old man?
Elyin Goldpace, the Timeweaver, by Raphael Massarani

Personality-wise and with motives, you can do anything here. I mean, it's a time traveler. Go wild!

Thank you for reading, I hope you've enjoyed this installment of Villainous Cookbook, and I with you have a nice day!

Variant Classes and Mental Load

Howdy!

Today, I figured I could try to write an article here to go along with the homebrew I'm posting on reddit at the same time, in order to explain the design behind it. But first, I should start with some theory as to why I'm doing this.

Mental Load

I like to make my own worlds for D&D, as some of you might have guessed. Part of it is the fact that I like making stuff, and I don't really enjoy studying someone else's work. And while it does have huge advantages, like the freedom of doing anything and using or limiting any materials as I desire, it does have its downsides. Primarily, the fact that players have to learn about a new world from the ground up.

We are all human on the inside, who tend to forget stuff every now and then. My games usually happen once a week (though right now they're all on hold), so during those 6 other days of a week, we tend to either forget about stuff that was going on at the table or misremember it. Mainly because we have other stuff to care about in our daily lives: this is just a hobby.

At the same time, there's the worldbuilding aspect of it all. How far do you want to go when building your world up? Because the less similar to our world it is in its names, patterns, and structures, the more realistic it can feel (as long as it remains internally consistent).

So the big question is... where should one draw the line? Let's take for example time-measuring. What are the names of days in a week? How many days does a week have? Should you even use weeks? How many hours in a day? How many days in a month? Months in a year? What are their names? How does the Moon's cycle fit into all this? Is there just one Moon, or multiple? How about the Sun, and its cycle? Or Suns, maybe it's a binary system?

You see what I mean? With each of these questions, it takes more effort to remember it. Sure, you can have your world use 13-day weeks, with 40 to 43 days a month, and a 7 month year, with unique names for days in a week, as well as weeks and months in a year, or even years. It's a wonderfully creative piece of worldbuilding, but don't be surprised if your players forget which month has how many days, or that it's still the same week and not a new one.

(Note: D&D 5th edition does use some of these terms, and assumes it's the same as our world's.)

That being said, I've experimented with time measuring too. In my last campaign I ran, I've used a 13-month calendar, each of the months 28 days long, and there were 1 or 2 days that belonged to no month. Besides that, no changes. Years had 365 or 366 days (heck, for the game's purposes just 365, we didn't even do a leap year), names of the months were the same and in the same order, with the exception of Mercidinus added between July and August, and one Moon was in the sky that aligned perfectly with the months of a year.

I'm pretty sure you've spotted the difference there. My system is going for simplicity and minimal mental load. One could argue that it's even less of a hassle than the real world's system! If I asked you "What day of the week is 17th August of 1960?", it would take you a while to figure it out. Within the calendar I used for my world, I can firmly say that it's a Wednesday, because the 17th of every month was a Wednesday.

I suppose this is an opinion of mine, so take it with a dash of salt, but making minimal changes and saying that everything else either happens to be the same or is translated (which is the excuse I used for the month names being the same)... it all pays off. With that being said, let's move on to the homebrew and the meat of this issue.

Homebrew and Mental Load

I like to add homebrew stuff into my games, either self-made or made by other creators I like. Races I like a lot because they allow for the greatest degree of passive expression. Subclasses are great too. When it comes to backgrounds, I don't necessarily search for those since PHB already contains rules on adjusting them, so at best I pay attention to the features homebrew backgrounds provide. Monsters are single-use very often, and magic items are something that the DM can control the presence of in their games.

The two missing things there that I see often in the form of homebrew are spells, and classes. Spells are the less surprising part, so I'll address it first. Truth is, I don't always know how much would addition of a spell change the world. One could argue that it doesn't have to be a publicly known secret, but even then I always believe that players aren't the only beings in the multiverse to know that spell unless they make it up themselves.

Classes are easier to understand, or at least I assume so. Usually, they take up multiple pages, so they take a while to read through, they add new mechanics, new subclasses, possibly new spell lists, ... Which at the end causes more mental load. Not just for the players at the table, for the DM running the game for those players too.

That all being said, it's not like I've never added new spells or even full classes to my games. I did, but when I do, I make sure I'm familiar enough with them.

So! What's the solution then if you want to spruce up your games? Well, may I introduce you to...

Variant Classes

With Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, class feature variants became official. And once I saw those, I figured that I may as well try to use them for something tangible. The first experiment of mine, the variant cleric that's a Monarch, was fairly successful despite not being perfect, so I'm going to continue with my works.

This time around, I'm presenting you with my own take on an idea I've seen numerous times in the homebrew community: a magical master of games. Gambit is a variant bard, that replaces the Song of Rest with various ribbons, and uses a gaming set as a spellcasting focus instead of a musical instrument.

I feel like this whole article could have been a lot shorter, but I needed to say all those things some day. I hope you've enjoyed reading this, and wish you tons of fun at your tables, regardless of whether you use my homebrews or not. Most of all though, have a nice day!

Commoner Magic: Of Saints and Grimms

Last time, I was burned out on the D&D due to its magic and trying to figure out how to resolve my problems with it all. Maybe the solution to the madness is to just... embrace it all. And make the world saturated with magic. And yet to make the magic rarer. So let's try out an experiment and see where this goes!

Note: Don't take any of this as a thing written in stone. This is me speculating on a setting from the ground up, figuring out what would it take to make a sensible high magic world. Of course, your world can and probably is different from any of the following.

Note 2: Whenever I speak "commoner" in this article, I don't necessarily mean the CR 0 creature. It can be any humanoid who is not an adventurer or related to an adventure. A city guard, a local priest, a traveling merchant, etc.

Edit: One last important detail I forgot to mention, a lot of these options come from the Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: Awakening. Thanks once again to Genuine Believer for awesome work that keeps inspiring me!

On the Magical Frequency

It takes a lot of effort to become most of the classes. Adventurers have a drive for this, but commoners, for the most part, don't. Barbarians, monks, fighters, and rogues all require some sort of training that could take up a long time. As for the spellcasters:

• Artificer and Wizard require some level of intelligence and large amounts of time to study and memorize everything necessary to perform your magic (or invent things, in the case of an artificer).
• Bard learn their magical arts by trial and error in guesswork.
• Cleric is someone chosen by a deity.
• Druid and Rangers share a connection with nature itself and are thus bestowed with its magic.
• Paladin requires martial training and eventually an oath they make, whether it's made with a deity in mind or not.
• Sorcerer has a magical ancestry of some kind that can manifest randomly.
• And a Warlock, ... well, they make a deal with some otherworldly patron.

In the end, I think it's fair to say that the easiest class to become is a warlock. All it takes is to give up something for power. You don't have to be born into some powerful family, chosen by a deity, go through rigorous training or study, or do anything else intensive. With that being said, it's fair to assume that a majority of ordinary people who want some magical advantage would seek a way of becoming a warlock.

Yes, even you can be a warlock for a low-low price of your soul!
Serf Token for Magic: the Gathering, by AaronMiller

Culture of Warlockhood

Warlocks are part of public knowledge, possibly even more widespread than being a wizard or a sorcerer. It can be socially acceptable or unacceptable, depending on the culture you're in, and your patron choice.

People of this world split the otherworldly patrons into two groups generally: Saints and Grimms. The difference between them is quite simply seeing which of them is perceived as benevolent, and which is malevolent. Bear in mind, this is not about their actual nature, but perception. This allows for the same patron to be seen as a Saint in one culture and a Grimm in another. The patrons themselves can still be morally ambiguous if the DM wishes so.

I should emphasize that not everyone will become a warlock. Some just don't like the idea of relying on magic in their everyday lives. Of course, that kind of limits them in what they can do and how fast/well they can do it. Besides, soul is a rather low price. To quote one of the Saints:

"Ownership of your soul is not important if you can't be expected to receive a resurrection. And that's an expensive thing to arrange too! You have to get an expensive material, someone powerful enough to resurrect you, possibly your body too. If you'll be willing to give me your soul, I'll make it worth your time."
—Saint of Services 

Following are the saints I came up with so far, along with the professions they look after and some of their abilities. They're usually roughly 2-3 levels of warlock, but don't expect them to be perfect player characters: worldbuilding here takes priority for me over mechanics, so rarely I added an extra invocation, considered some spell to be a warlock spell, or broke the rules in another way. For now I decided to keep the original names for the clarity of the reader, but each of these could be flavored in a positive way. The Experienced section describes the abilities of those who have practiced their profession for very long and shared their experiences with others. Such individuals could usually be found in bigger cities where guilds are. Finally, I don't think listing Grimms is necessary, since those tend to work like regular warlock patrons one might expect.

Saints

Saint of Communication

Patron of: couriers, criers, heralds, messengers

• At-will: blade ward, magic stone; silent image
• Leveled (2 slots): comprehend languages, expeditious retreat, illusory script
• Awakened Mind. You can communicate telepathically with any creature you can see within 30 feet of you. You don't need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language.
• Devil's Sight. You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.
• Experienced
• Pact of the Tome: guidance, light, resistance
• Aspect of the Moon. You no longer need to sleep and can't be forced to sleep by any means. To gain the benefits of a long rest, you can spend all 8 hours doing light activity, such as keeping watch.

Saint of Crafts

Patron of: alchemists, architects, artisans (leatherworkers, masons, potters, smiths, tailors, ...), miners, woodcutters

• At-will: mending, prestidigitation; silent image
• Leveled (2 slots): feather fall, unseen servant
• Secrets of the Lost. Whenever you finish a long rest, you gain proficiency in two skills, languages, or tools of your choice. You remain proficient in these until you finish another long rest, at which point you can choose new ones to replace them.
• Additionally, you gain a swimming speed equal to your walking speed.
• Devil's Sight. You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.
• Experienced
• Pact of the Chain: wandering stranger**
• Awestruck Awakening. Whenever you finish a long rest, your mind overflows with the terrible secrets of your patron. You can speak to one allied creature over the course of 10 minutes, filling its mind with what you’ve learned. That creature can add your proficiency bonus to one skill or tool of your choice that it is not already proficient in until its next long rest. 

Saint of Education

Patron of: calligraphers, cartographers, librarians, printers, scholars, scribes, tutors

• At-will: mage hand, prestidigitation
• Leveled (2 slots): comprehend languages, unseen servant
• Recovered Memories (1/long rest). As an action while standing adjacent to a corpse, you can produce an iridescent acid that consumes the corpse over the course of 1 minute. Once the process has finished, you can reabsorb the acid to access the creature’s memories. You gain information about the creature’s last 48 hours alive and the most important memories from their final year of life.
• Eyes of the Rune Keeper. You can read all writing.
• Experienced
• Pact of the Tome: mending, message, seek phrase*
• Catalogue of Experiences. Whenever you use your Recovered Memories feature to absorb the knowledge of a creature, you can store the experience in your Book of Shadows, and make it come to life upon the pages of the book. You can copy and transfer any memories within your Book to another creature by touching them with the Book as an action.

Saint of Joy

Patron of: artists, jesters, minstrels, performers, street magicians

• At-will: minor illusion, prestidigitation; disguise self, silent image
• Leveled (2 slots): charm person, unseen servant
• Seeker of the Sound. You gain proficiency in the Performance skill and with all musical instruments. You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your warlock spells, and can play it in place of using a verbal spellcasting component. When you cast a spell that has only a verbal and somatic component, you can choose to cast it as though it only had a verbal component.
• Experienced
• Pact of the Tome: dancing lights, thaumaturgy, one of the following: control flames, gust, mold earth, shape water
• Scroll of Imperial Authority. Whenever you can see a creature charmed by you, you can use your bonus action to cause it to speak any phrase you wish. The creature thinks that it chose to say those words of its own volition, though they may not believe them to be true.

Saint of Lawkeeping

Patron of: Baron; Count; Detective; Duke; Inquisitor; Judge; Knight; Lawyer; Marshal; Priest (Canon); Reeve; Sexton; Sheriff; Taxer; Theologian; Warden

• At-will: blade ward, prestidigitation
• Leveled (2 slots): hex, illusory script, sanctuary
• Bound to the Portrait. You create and magically bind yourself to your Gray Portrait. The Gray Portrait is a Small or Medium object that weighs at least 15 pounds, has AC 15, 10 hit points, resistance to all damage, and uses your statistics for saving throws. It can be repaired at a rate of 1 hit point per minute. You can choose to see through the Portrait’s eyes at any time and are always aware of its current state. If your portrait is destroyed, you tirelessly construct another during your next long rest, and you gain no benefit from that long rest.
• If a spell has the sole effect of restoring you to life, such as revivify, the caster can cast the spell on the portrait as though it were your whole corpse without using material components, causing you to step forth from your portrait. However, if your portrait is destroyed and you are dead, you can’t be revived without the use of the wish spell.
• You can use your action to cure yourself of any effect that is causing you to be poisoned, diseased, cursed, blinded, or deafened, sending the affliction to appear on your portrait. You can’t do this if it is destroyed.
• Experienced
• Pact of the Tome: dancing lights, guidance, message
• Ledger of the Deceased. Whenever a creature that you can see within 120 feet of you dies or you touch a corpse, you can choose to have their name be magically inscribed in your Book of Shadows. That creature’s corpse is always considered to be present and whole within your Book. If your Book of Shadows is destroyed, all the names within are lost.
• Preserved Document. You are instantly aware of any attempt by the other parties to break the terms of any contract or written agreement signed by you. If the contract is broken, you become aware of it.
• Scripture of Natural Law. You can cast zone of truth once without expending a spell slot. This use recovers when you finish a short or long rest. You automatically succeed on saving throws against this spell.

Saint of Prosperity

Patron of: bakers, brewers, butchers, distillers, falconers, farmers, farriers, fishermen, fruit pickers, gamekeepers, gatherers, gardeners, grocers, grooms, houndsmen, millers, physicians, shamans, shepherds, smokers, soothsayers, surgeons

• At-will: light, magic stone, prestidigitation, sacred flame; speak with animals
• Leveled (2 slots): cure wounds, unseen servant
• Healing Light (3d6/long rest). As a bonus action, you can heal one creature you can see within 60 feet of you, spending up to 2 dice from the pool. Roll the dice you spend, add them together, and restore a number of hit points equal to the total.
• Experienced
• Pact of the Tome: control flames, druidcraft, spare the dying
• Leveled: lesser restoration
• Book of Ancient Secrets (ritual only): augury, ceremony, gentle repose, skywrite
• Grimoire of the Endless Rain. Whenever you finish a long rest, you can perform a percussive ritual over the course of 10 minutes to change the weather. When you finish, an unnatural storm with a 1-mile radius rolls in and follows you, gently raining and occasionally flashing with lightning.

Saint of Protection

Patron of: archers, executioners, guards, hunters, mercenaries

• At-will: blade ward, booming blade; mage armor
• Leveled (2 slots): expeditious retreat, hex
• Hexblade's Curse (1/short rest). As a bonus action, choose one creature you can see within 30 feet of you. The target is cursed for 1 minute. The curse ends early if the target dies, you die, or you are incapacitated. Until the curse ends, you gain the following benefits:
  • You gain a bonus to damage rolls against the cursed target. The bonus equals your proficiency bonus.
  • Any attack roll you make against the cursed target is a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20 on the d20.
  • If the cursed target dies, you regain 5 hit points.
• Hex Warrior. You gain proficiency with medium armor, shields, and martial weapons. The influence of your patron also allows you to mystically channel your will through a particular weapon. Whenever you finish a long rest, you can touch one weapon that you are proficient with and that lacks the two-handed property. When you attack with that weapon, you can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for the attack and damage rolls. This benefit lasts until you finish a long rest. If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefit extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon's type.
• Experienced
• Pact of the Blade.
• Aspect of the Moon. You no longer need to sleep and can't be forced to sleep by any means. To gain the benefits of a long rest, you can spend all 8 hours doing light activity, such as keeping watch.

Saint of Services

Patron of: bankers, chefs, cooks, innkeepers, merchants, servants

• At-will: prestidigitation; detect magic
• Leveled (2 slots): identify, illusory script, unseen servant
• Weight of Gilt. You have a single coin known as a Gilded Coin. You can summon the coin to your hand or dismiss this coin as a bonus action regardless of its location. Other creatures see this coin as 1 gp or other appropriate currency of equivalent value. You are always aware of who is in possession of your Gilded Coin.
• As an action, you can choose to convert all currency you have in your possession into an equivalent value in any other denomination or currency. For example, you can convert gold coins into an equivalent value of silver or copper pieces, or change them into other currencies you’ve seen before. Additionally, you can choose to conceal currency you possess in a pocket dimension, which you can access using a bonus action. If you die, the currency reappears on your corpse.
• Beguiling Influence. You gain proficiency in the Deception and Persuasion skills.
• Experienced
• Pact of the Chain: sprite

* found in The Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: Awakening

** found in The Compendium of Soulforged Artifacts. If it's not available, feel free to use a CR<=1 humanoid statblock without spellcasting instead

Final Notes

I'm afraid that these all feel same-y, with stuff like prestidigitation and unseen servant repeated too many times, but then again the pool of options useful for ordinary villagers in the warlock class is rather small. If you're a DM who wishes to use these, you can adjust these as you want: add or remove spells or features, change specifics of how these features work, etc. So far I didn't make up any lore or names for the Saints, because I wanted to present this idea and gather feedback on it before investing more time into this. If I receive enough suggestions, requests, or inspiration, I could make a continuation and/or update. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Elder Relics

I started to play Hades, and since then I found it hard to stop. Its visuals and music are great, the gameplay is awesome, I love the story, and it's clear that Supergiant Games have made yet another masterpiece. There's one part of the game in particular that I found fascinating, and decided I should incorporate in the D&D somehow. I figured that instead of publishing it once ever and not telling a word on my blog, I'll instead talk about it on my blog first and then publish it all at once, possibly after I get some feedback and expand on the concept. This is meant to solve problems such as oversaturation of magic items in the group, as well as power scaling and synergizing items in interesting ways. In one form or another, I know I've tried to make it many times before, but the truth is that there's no one perfect way to do it... or is there?

No, but this is a fair attempt.

Elder Relics

"This weapon is far from ordinary, for it has the power of its former wielders imprinted into it. You just have to search the world for these heroes to uncover your weapon's full potential."

Elder Relics are magical items that possess the power of keeping the power of its previous owners hidden within. Most often, they take form of a weapon, but other items such as armor sets, cloaks, gloves, and many others are not unheard of. Their origin is mysterious, but it's certain is that no mortal hands could have created any of these relics.

Will of Their Own. While the Elder Relics seemingly possess a will of their own, it's not known whether they are actually sentient or not. There is no known way to communicate with them, as any attempts in the past have failed, but they do seem to be able to choose their bearers in many subtle manners.

Aspects. The Elder Relics were involved in some of the most significant events in the history, wielded by a variety of heroes, yet not recognized as one and the same due to their different forms and differing locations. When the Elder Relic is held by a bearer it has chosen, its appearance will change, enveloped temporarily in wisps of light and darkness until its form reflects the character of the one holding it. Each of these Aspects holds a different power, which means that the weapon could potentially lose any resemblance to what its previous mythical bearers were used to.

According to some rumors, it is possible for the Elder Relic to exhibit multiple Aspects at once. Supposedly, this requires the bearer to persevere numerous hard situations and growth in character.

General Guidelines

When creating the Elder Relics, it's recommended to follow these guidelines:

• Follow the guidelines for crafting regular magic items.
• Every Elder Relic requires an attunement by a creature whose aspect the Relic currently bears. Elder Relic is a rarity of its own due to the complexity these items bear.
• If the Elder Relic possesses properties that grant a +X bonus, none of the bonuses should be +3 or greater, and the sum of all such properties should be no greater than +3.
• None of the Elder Relic properties should assume that the bearer has access to a specific racial trait, class feature, or a feat.

When you're putting an Elder Relic into your game, consider which of the players do you want to give this Relic to, and which of the listed properties fits their character the best. Then, consider some of the legendary heroes in the past that could have used this weapon for their own benefit, and which aspect fit each the most. Try to create a backstory, or a myth related to each of these heroes. Bear in mind that you do not have to come up with all of them at once—you are the one who determines which Aspects do the players unlock and when.

WIP Melee Weapons Pack for
UE4 - Great Hammer, by Elliot Sharp

Tenacious Warhammer

Weapon (warhammer), Elder Relic (requires attunement)

The Tenacious Warhammer is a relic known for its abilities of granting people the willpower to stay active even in the direst situations.

As soon as a creature chosen by the Tenacious Warhammer grasps it, the weapon transforms into an aspect of the creature, determined by the DM. A creature can attune to the warhammer only if it currently bears the creature's aspect. Whenever the attuned wielder of this warhammer makes a Wisdom saving throw with advantage, they can reroll one of the dice once.

If the bearer has uncovered any other Aspects of the warhammer, they can choose which of the aspects the warhammer will bear after finishing a long rest. Starting at 5th level, they can choose 2 aspects at once. This number increases to 3 aspects at 11th level, and 4 aspects at 17th level.

d10	Aspect Property
1	When you hit a creature with the warhammer, you can choose to deal an extra damage equal to your current number of hit points. If the creature is reduced to 0 hit points, your lose one half of your hit points, otherwise you are reduced to 1 hit point.
2	The warhammer gains a thrown (20/60 ft.) property. You can use your bonus action to cause the warhammer to fly directly to your hand if possible, avoiding any obstacles on the way.
3	You can use an action to cast the earth tremor spell (save DC 11 + your proficiency bonus) from it by striking the ground with the warhammer.
4	On your turn, you can move along vertical surfaces without falling during the move. At the end of your turn, you can prevent yourself from falling by anchoring the warhammer into a surface within your reach. If you use the warhammer, it is no longer anchored.
5	The warhammer can be used as a tool. When it's used this way, you can craft at a rate of 30 gold pieces per hour.
6	The warhammer's damage die becomes a 1d12, and you can't be disarmed of it.
7	The warhammer deals an extra 1d10 cold damage to any target it hits, and such target's movement speed is reduced by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.
8	You can announce one creature's crimes or sins on your turn (no action required). If the warhammer deems these misdoings to be worthy of a punishment, whenever it deals damage to this creature, it deals extra 3d6 psychic damage.
9	You have a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with the warhammer.
10	You have a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with the warhammer.

My Problem with D&D's Magic

First of all, let me inform you that this article will be reposted both on my blog and on the reddit, plus the reddit will be linked on several discord servers I’m a member of. The reason why is because I need as many opinions as possible, and I want to get a discussion going. I would prefer the most if your responses were on the reddit post, due to the ability to directly reply to other replies while keeping things organized and easier to read. If you can’t reply here for some reason, you can reply on the blog, or ping me on the Discord on which you saw this with your reply. Thank you.

Core Problem

Admitting you have a problem is the first step in fixing the problem. I’ve been burned out for about three months, unable to DM my D&D campaigns. It’s for multiple reasons, some of which include the slow erosion of my group’s enthusiasm for the games, their need to overthink the problems at hand, and the worldwide situation these days. But none of those can compare to my biggest problem. I don’t have enough suspension of disbelief in my own worlds anymore. I can’t seem to run high hard magic worlds, and I don’t know how to move on, how to solve this problem, which is why I’m writing all of this. I need help.

In order to clear some things up, let’s start with some definitions.

Magic Alignment

Who here loves alignment charts? Love or hate them, there’s one for magic systems and I need to talk about it in order to properly address my issue. I’ll try to avoid getting too wordy with these, since this essay is already gonna be very long, so I apologize ahead of time if there will be any oversimplifications.

On one axis, there’s the hardness of magic. Hard magic has defined rules, soft magic barely has any. A neat way to think of the purposes of these is that hard magic is a solution, and soft magic is a problem, very generally speaking.

On the other axis, you have high and low magic. I have written in the past about various types of low magic, so I know this is not a good thing to turn into a one dimensional spectrum. For now, let’s just put forward some types of low magic, and assume there are opposite types of high magic:

• low power: magic that’s not that powerful (throwing firebolts / throwing fireballs / casting meteors from the sky)
• low frequency: magic that’s not so frequent (a single wizard in a tower / a wizard school / a city where anyone can cast magic to some extent)
• low possibility: magic that can do very few things (one school of magic / some schools of magic / all schools of magic)
• low reliability: magic that’s prone to not doing what you expect it to (think wild magic sorcerer compared to most other spellcasters)

Statement: D&D’s magic system is assumed to be mostly hard, and either medium or high on all of the types described above. Proof:

• With relatively few exceptions, such as wild magic surges or the wish spell used for something that’s not a spell nor on its list, magic is very predictable, and assumed to be a tool to be used by the players to solve their problems. Therefore, it’s mostly hard and in the majority of the cases medium or high reliability magic.
• Wish exists, therefore high power magic. Okay, jokes aside, the D&D’s magic is capable of so many powerful things, that it would be ridiculous to say it’s not high power, RAW. Casting meteors, cancelling magic in areas, becoming immune to all damage temporarily, imprisoning things potentially forever, and literally making your wishes come true… Keep in mind that the fact that the game has you start with cantrips and low level spells doesn’t mean that this magic doesn’t exist in the world. Therefore, it’s high power magic.
• The only thing I can think of that D&D’s magic can’t do is time travel. And even that is something that some homebrews try to fix, as well as one monster in the Monster Manual. Oh wait, it can in theory be done with a wish, assuming the DM is benevolent enough to let it. Even then, there’s very little that magic can’t do. Therefore, it's a high possibility magic.
• Now the frequency is the hardest one to prove, because it depends on the world your players are in. Dark Sun has less magic than Eberron (though it has psionics, but I’m not gonna bother with that). Best I can get regarding the intended frequency is Creating a Bard section, which suggests you could be an apprentice to someone else, or have attended a college (or something else). Let’s just agree it’s medium frequency for now and move on.

Reasons for My Issue

To keep this segment short, it’s a culmination of history, options, exploits, information spreading, and believably. Most of the worlds are hundreds if not thousands of years old, and have all the magic in the PHB, possibly XGE, allowed (possibly with few exceptions like a common ban on the wish I see here and there). Some people however like to be optimal and invent new ways of using spells, which could mean that they’d figure out all sorts of exploits, for the better or worse. This information could spread to other settlements, whether by merchants, adventurers, or other people who travel often for one reason or another. Which, in my opinion, means that the more common a spell is, the more likely someone is to know of it, and thus of some commonly known ways of countering it. After all, in real life we iterated over the course of hundreds of years on all aspects of real life, patching flaws up with new ways constantly in an ongoing arms race. It’s not something I see done often though. Let’s do three example scenarios to demonstrate what I mean.

• Shop. You are a person who buys and sells goods. But how can you make sure that you’re not buying something cursed? How do you protect against mind-influencing magics of 2nd level that would force you to give people anything they want for free? What if they’ll just fireball your shop? Or turn the thing they want invisible, and bring it out?
• Prison. Imagine you’re put in a completely average nonmagical prison. What’s the easiest way to get out using magic? Misty step. Alright, you improve the prison by removing windows or any openings one could see through. You cast a different spell. Okay, how about we put a gag in the caster’s mouth and tie their hands behind their back? Well, they can eventually untie them and ungag themselves with a free hand. Even if they couldn’t, they could still cast their spells if they were a sorcerer with Subtle spell metamagic option, assuming the spell doesn’t need a Material component. Dimension door would require you to build your prisons either 500ft underground or 500ft up in the air, and even then… someone else could just use a different teleportation spell to port in, grab the person, and port out. So you say screw it, cast the Mordenkainen’s private sanctum, and prevent all teleportation. Except what if they are a druid? They just turn into a tiny beast, escaping any constraints you put on them and getting out without really being seen (if they are a spider or a flea or a fly or whatever tiny). Even better if after loosening the gag, they cast invisibility on themselves, and then escape. I guess you could poke out their eyes and cut off their hands and tongue, but… is that an okay thing to do in a game of D&D? What if your table isn’t fine with it? Long story short, you either have to put them in an antimagic field (which is an 8th level spell, so the question is whether every prison can afford it), or put magic-suppressing manacles on them. Maybe you could also keep them at 0 hit points by regularly delivering punches and casts of spare the dying, but you’d need a lot of spellcasters for that if you had a lot of prisoners.
• Audience with You. So you’re a king, huh? Good job, good job! Except… how close to you are you willing to let that group of adventurers? I mean, it’s kind of hard to tell what everything they are capable of, so they could be hiding their powers in order to surprise you. If they’re within your reach, they could cast bestow curse on you. From 30 feet away, you’re still vulnerable to suggestion or charm person. From 60 feet, you can still be dominated, disintegrated, turned to stone, or affected by the heat metal spell. I could still go on and on, increasing the distances furthermore, but let’s just say that an eldritch blast could have a reach of 600 feet by picking the right invocation and spell sniper, and then there are spells that don’t even really have a range, such as dream. You could be killed in your sleep without anyone knowing. You could be killed by a sorcerer who subtly utters the power word: kill without moving their lips. An adventurer can teleport into your room while you’re asleep, disintegrate you, and teleport out. Enjoy being a king.

And all of that is just three areas that would be everyday matters (kings meet new people every day, right?). Long story short, the words of how magic works would spread, and people would figure out over the hundreds of years of history (or life in some cases) commonplace solutions to some of these problems. Which in turn would be a headache to do. There’s 485 spells in the game already, and with Tasha’s Cauldron, I’m pretty sure we’ll get 15 more. And that’s just assuming people protecting themselves from magic, instead of involving the magic in worldbuilding itself to make the world a better place. I mean, how many of you guys reading this know how to make your own fridge and computer/phone? I assume most of you use these on a daily basis despite not knowing how to create them from the ground up, including all the components inside of them. People who are benevolent would share their magical creations with the public to make the world a better place and be remembered by history for something good they did. But that’s a secondary problem to me, since it relies heavily on the frequency at which magic exists.

With all that said,… what are some of the solution suggestions I’ve received?

Solutions

• Limit the Maximum Spell Level. Yes, I plan to do that one actually. I feel like character level 10 is good enough capstone to limit the power of players and anyone else in the world. However, that alone is not a full solution, because that would eliminate about 120 spells from our soon to be 500. Honestly, if it were up to me, I would limit the world’s magic all the way down to cantrips, eliminating nine classes, some subclasses, and some races. But I doubt players would enjoy that being each campaign they are in from now on. I also received a suggestion of “you should try a different system” as a reply to that so many times, that I’m including it in this list.
• Limit the Availability. Okay, so how common is your world’s magic then? One in one thousand? That means there’s still ten magic users in your settlement of 10,000. And even if you did limit it, that doesn’t mean that since the magic is rarer, less people know about even the roughest things that it’s capable of. Information would still spread, and people would still seek ways of protecting themselves.
• Eberron. Some people tell me that this is what Eberron is about, and while I like the world for what it is, I still don’t think it addresses the questions of dealing with magic. Just as an example, I went through all the mentions of “prison” in the Exploring Eberron book. While it does have a Grieving Tree eldritch machine that’s a prison and a couple of other things, it doesn’t address stuff like druid wildshaping to escape the grasp of the tree, teleportation, or what would much smaller cities and towns do in order to keep themselves safe. Then again, who knows, maybe it’s mentioned in the other Eberron books that I didn’t go through fully before writing any of this.
• Different System. I’ve been looking for one, and I have yet to find it. However, I’m doing this because my players are clear about preferring 5e since they’re already familiar with this and we all are busy. I am also working on my own system, but that’s too much to elaborate on here and now.

I need help. I want to entertain myself and my players, but I am too frustrated with 5e’s magic being too… good at doing stuff. A world that’s too familiar with the magic would look very different and have all sorts of preventive measures that would take away from the players’ fun, while a world that’s too unfamiliar with the magic would be too easy to exploit by the players, making them and me as a DM ask “Why haven’t they thought of this yet?”

I hope this starts a discussion. Sorry if it’s too long, but I needed to collect all of my thoughts in one place on this topic. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

My 200 Word RPGs

Hey there! Long time no see. Well, kind of.

I've got to be honest about something. Despite all the iterations on the D&D worlds I've done in the past, I got burned out once again. I might write an article on that later, but tl;dr of it is "too much magic". So I've been lately browsing minimalistic RPGs, while also trying to make some.

For the last three years, I have participated in the 200wordRPG challenge. My games were far from popular or good, but it was a good exercise for me since my homebrews tend to have overly wordy features. A limitation of 200 words is surprisingly confining, yet something that doesn't feel like it takes a long time to write. Besides, it takes even less time to read. Unfortunately, this year the challenge has been canceled, meaning I would either have to wait until 2021 to post these, or I may as well just post them right now to share them with you all.

So the plan is simple then! I'll post each ruleset, and then give my design notes, as well as anything I couldn't manage to fit into the rules. These are my three 200 word RPGs that I made.

(Note: Only the Deviants one is a submission of mine. While I could share the other two, I doubt they're worth your time.)

Deviants

Deviants is my last entry so far, and it's a Lasers and Feelings hack inspired by videogames like Prototype and inFamous. It's assumed to be a superhero game, where the player characters are superpowered individuals, each controlling their own element. The big catch here is that the more injuries you sustain, the harder it is to use your powers until you run out of those. It also uses a choice of a roll between 2d6 and 1d12, because I feel like if you're rolling a die in a system like this, some variety can be nice (although either of the options is optional). When it comes to my goal of making a very simple superhero game that's light on rules and even has some worldbuilding, I think I succeeded.

What do you mean "video isn't made up of particles"? Oh well...
Enjoy your power, by Supermare

On the flip side, this system would be super easy to break by choosing your Power to be 2, and choosing a superpower that is useless for most situations, like controlling magma since few cities are near to an active volcano. This way, you could be an average schmoe-Joe who's good at everything, which is certainly a flaw of this system.

Overall, it's meant for short superhero games with an extremely easy character creation process and some assumptions regarding the setting. I'm not surprised that it won nothing, especially seeing how much competition there was last year, but I'm kind of proud of it nonetheless. If I had to fix anything, I would probably remove the "sleeping for 8 hours" line, because it's too wordy and unnecessary for this game. I would probably use those words to ask the players to choose something that's commonly found in their environment if I figured out how to use few enough words for that.

Shifters and Robots

I know that Among Us is all the hype lately, but this game was really made way back around June. The premise of this game is that there are two shape-shifting aliens blending into a group of robots, trying to find each other. It's a hidden roles game akin to Mafia, One Night Werewolf, Bang!, Town of Salem, or indeed Among Us, but with a twist. All roles are hidden, so the shapeshifters will have to try not killing one another, and instead if possible figuring out who the other one is. If they manage to reveal their own role and challenge the other shifter, they get an instant victory, otherwise at least one must survive until everyone else runs out of bullets. Because unlike most hidden role games where players have to vote who gets eliminated, here that responsibility is in the hands of each player. Anyone can choose who gets eliminated, but only once. Do you save your bullet and run a risk of someone being randomly eliminated, or will you choose to do so right now?

Design-wise, I wanted to make a different-feeling hidden roles game, where the majority is more antagonistic towards the minority rather than how it usually is (for example, with the few mafiosos knowing each other and eliminating the majority of players). The whole formula has been boiled down to a bare minimum so that the variants could try out something experimental, so I'd say this is pretty nice.

This one was actually even playtested, and I must say it's a surprisingly fast-paced game. I could see this catching on if I played it more often with more groups of friends. There are even four variants that are not mutually exclusive included to bring the challenge up for the entire group. Now you have two bullets, and/or an unknown number of shifters to look for, or need to make fast decisions. And while "mandatory cardboard robot heads" sounds like a joke, it could make a hidden roles game that much more challenging to play by obscuring everyone's faces.

I would recommend the trial music from Danganronpa for the faster version, and once the game is over, listen to some Porter Robinson, but that's just silly ideas.

Twists and Tales

The last 200 word RPG, for now, is Twists and Tales. It's an experiment on my side because I found the idea of having diceless RPGs neat and wanted to try my hand at making a minimalistic one myself. The gist of it is very simple: when you try to do something, anyone can try to make you fail, and you need to thus expend points in order to succeed in the thing you were trying to do. It's super generic, the GM is optional, and anyone can make you spend points, possibly regaining points if it's an in-character hindrance. I feel like with some testing and maybe even changes, this one would be great for online environments, where die rollers are not always readily available, as well as for beginner groups or groups that just seek a simple storygame RPG.

My goals of having a minimalistic general use GM-optional diceless RPG have worked, but it comes at a cost. The ruleset is pretty bland, which makes it open for any scenario but at the same time, some people want it to work for something specific. The three stats I'm still not so sure about. And overall, this game promotes an adversarial gameplay loop where the player characters are encouraged to be douchebags to each other, getting even rewarded for it. It could be great for drama, but I'm afraid of this ruining friendships. Then again, I have very little experience with storygames and drama RPGs where players are encouraged to play against each other, so I can't tell for sure.

The one thing to tinker with is the numbers. Currently, the scene goes on until either everyone agrees, or you run out of all the scenes. You can regain points other than Twists, but not Twists, which means that you get at most 10 x number of players Twists that you can use on various complications. In a 4 player game, this would be 40 complications for a single scene, spread across 4 characters. At the same time, the minimum number of complications would be 20 - if everyone expended one point at the same time, plus the one left out person also expends their points on things. If I had to compare it to a system I'm familiar with, in D&D at 5th level as a martial class you make 2 attack rolls on each of your turns, let's say you get attacked twice, and the combat lasts 3 turns. This translates to a total of 12 "Twists" to resolve, just for one character. Which makes me feel like I'm on the right track here.

That's all I had to share with you all for today. I hope to get back to the Villainous Cookbook, got a couple of villain ideas on the back burner ready to boil sometime soon, as well as some other ideas for articles. Life just has a way of keeping me busy, which means it takes me a long time to type all this out. I just had these games ready and wanted to share them somewhere, so I figured I may as well share them here with anyone who reads this.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Memetic Lunatic

I don't know how many more Villainous Cookbooks I'll write up, so while I do still have some ideas, I may as well put them down on paper. Or blog, I suppose. Lately, I've been considering villains whose whole gimmick is just dealing damage in creative ways. It's extremely tempting to go down that route, but... at the end of the day, I decided to try to keep my standards up for as long as I can. This is not about optimization, it's about story themes. Here, I've decided to write up a villain who's gonna screw with the minds of the party just as much as the players who control them.

Preface

The purpose of the Villainous Cookbook is to offer cool villain ideas for DMs. It uses homebrew player options sometimes mixed with the official ones, but it bends the rules a little to work better. While sometimes restrictions breed creativity, other times it's nice to push the boundary a little to make the villain more interesting.

The stats are left completely up to the reader. You can make them anything you want, as long as it's within some boundaries, and you don't need to spend any ASIs or consider the stat bonuses provided by the feats unless you want to complicate things for yourself.

Each of the builds is split into 4 Tiers, to show how the villain grows in power over time. At any moment, the villain should be at least on the same tier as your players if not higher, since you want them to be challenging. Unless noteworthy, I won't mention the specific spells, ability scores, backgrounds, or skills. All that I leave up to you so that the villain is more customized.

One last word of caution — while these builds might seem overpowered, making the homebrews seem overpowered, bear in mind two things.

1. We're adjusting the rules a little to make the character builds work better. If this demands an in-world explanation, say that this is an exceptional person who figured out something others don't know, or has a special bloodline/destiny.
2. We're crossing the homebrew streams. And that can oftentimes go wrong. I'm doing my best to use homebrews that I consider balanced and that I would actually allow my players to use in the games.

With all that out of the way, our next villain is a secretive wizard type. Spying, watching, possibly everpresent.

Memetic Lunatic

"Paranoia is knowing all the facts."

— Woody Allen

"This Spy has already breached our defenses... You've seen what he's done to our colleagues! And worst of all, he could be any one of us... He could be in this very room! He could be you! He could be me! He could even be-"

— Blue spy, "Meet the Spy"

This build might not contain a character who traps others in the mirrors, but it should be something far scarier. I hope. Look, this was the best I could do for a representation of a shapeshifter, okay? Credits to Magic the Gathering's card "Identity Theft"

Ingredients list

• Doppelganger race (homebrew we'll make up for this villain)
• Wizard 18: Shrouded Arts (SargeBriar homebrew)
• Warlock 1: Perfect Chord (CoFS:A)
• Sorcerer 1: ? (Tweaked Sorcerer)

Tier 1

Let's hit things off with a quick start. We'll get both of our dips of choice — warlock and sorcerer, as well as the wizard, for a good start. The combination we've got going on here is something that requires an explanation, so let's put all the relevant information down below.

When you cast spells that require a material component, you can ignore that component unless it has a value, such as the specially marked sticks, bones, or similar tokens worth at least 25 gp for the augury spell, in which case the components are required. [Sorcerer: Spellcasting]

When you cast a spell that has only a verbal and somatic component, you can choose to cast it as though it only had a verbal component. [Warlock: Seeker of the Sound]

When you cast a wizard spell, you don't need to provide verbal components for it as long as you can provide somatic components.

Now, this might seem like they don't make much sense, so I've made a small chart of what this means for all combinations of spell components. Bear in mind that they don't need to perform these somatic components, they only need to be capable of providing them.

V, S, M* → V, S → V → (nothing)

V, M → V → (nothing)

S, M → S

* assuming Material components without cost that are not consumed

With all this in the pocket, X can cast spells either using Somatic components (in case of S,M, or S spells), no components (V,S,M, or V,S, or V,M, or V), or with all components as written if Materials are consumed or cost stuff.

For our wizard subclass, we chose Shrouded Arts to also get a secretive spellbook that can be stored within the lunatic's mind. Much more interestingly though, the lunatic gets the ability of memory suppression — a number of times equal to your INT mod per long rest, you can force a creature to make a Wisdom save, making it forget something that happened within the last 10 minutes on a failure. You can, however, use this only once per creature, so be careful about what you use this for. Probably go read the feature itself before using it to make sure you're doing everything right there.

When it comes to our sorcerer, the subclass is a rather free choice by the DM's tastes. If I had to recommend any from the Tweaked Sorcerer document, it would be the Imperial bloodline, as well as the Aberrant. With Imperial, our lunatic shapeshifter will get one of my all-time favorite homebrew class features: an ability to cast command using three words instead of just one. The potential here is so much greater, more than tripled. With the Aberrant, you could pick some of the spells from the psionic spell list and cast them without some components. My personal choice here would be hex, and I'll explain that as well as other spell choices after explaining the tiers.

At this point, our villain is a fairly competent spellcaster who almost never requires components for the spells, and can pull off a variety of 1st level spells. Not too shabby if I do say so myself, although as always, you want to keep this one in the background during the Tier 1. Maybe this tier could be reserved for backstory purposes.

Tier 2

From this point on, it's rather straightforward — our multiclassing is finished, so we dump all of the levels into the wizard, transforming our shapeshifter into sorcerer 1, warlock 1, and wizard 8 multiclass. We pick up spells of up to 4th level, get two Ability Score Improvements which could also be exchanged for feats, and we get 6th level feature of the Shrouded Arts wizard — Out of Mind's Eye. Once per short rest, you can make yourself invisible to one creature for 1 minute using your bonus action, provided it fails its Wisdom saving throw, or until you affect it with a spell or an attack. Nothing too extra, but then again it doesn't require concentration, so it's fine.

Tier 3

Our wizard reaches the juiciest part of the build, with fifth level spells providing several of really cool tricks they could implement. They also gain the ability to cast disguise self at-will, making themselves seem 3 feet taller or shorter. The lunatic also learns how to use the Shroud of Oblivion once a day, a powerful one-hour lasting ability that erases you from memories of creatures that encounter you, as well as divination spell sensors. Let's move on to the Tier 4 to get to the juicy spells.

Tier 4

Finally, we gain the last four levels in the wizard, meaning we get to learn Spell Mastery! We also gain all the spell slots up to 9th level, missing only one 7th level spell slot when compared to a regular level 20 fullcaster. Not too shabby if I do say so myself!

Before we address the spells, there's one more bit to discuss.

Why Doppelganger? (And Story Background)

Originally, the build assumed that at Tier 4, the lunatic would turn themselves into the ultimate shapeshifter, but... at the second thought, and seeing how this would make them lose all class features, I opted for a much simpler explanation that explains also the backstory of this character. They've been chosen by the ultimate forces of chaos and fear to spread paranoia across the lands in the most terrible way. They have witnessed the ultimate life form, and they ask the shapeshifter to turn everyone into this ultimate life-form.

For our shapeshifter, we could assume that they're a changeling, but it'd be much easier to just say they're a doppelganger. All they need from the statblock are the shapeshifting and mind-reading traits.

The life-form they've witnessed was a CR 0 doppelganger. Start with the statblock of a regular doppelganger, reduce its hit point maximum to 4, its damage from attacks to 1, and its bonus to hit to +5. You could also remove Ambusher if you want the doppelganger to be able to wield a weapon without it affecting the CR much.

With this knowledge in mind, the memetic lunatic walks the world, transforming the poor common folk into doppelgangers while remaining unknown using...

Alright, I can't do this any longer. Let's talk spells.

It's a Kind of Magic

Sadly, despite hyping myself up to this part for the entire article, I don't think I'll just hand you the complete spell list. Instead, I will give you spell recommendations to consider for every spell level, with a brief description as to why.

Forget - a cantrip from CoFS:A, perfect for the moment when you get caught. Just forget everything about who you are, and act natural. No amount of insight checks or truth detection will help out here, since your lies are not deliberate. You genuinely don't remember.

Magic Stone - useful for reflavoring the spell into tossing any general tiny magic item at the players, as a signature weapon of sorts. Whether it's playing cards, spectral knives, needles, or actual rocks is up to your imagination.

Encode Thoughts - not on any of the spell lists listed in this build, but it's worth noting. I love the flavor of this spell, and I could imagine this working really nicely with the forget cantrip hand in hand. The lunatic literally pulls a memory out of his head as a thread to keep somewhere safe for the duration of the forget spell.

Minor Illusion - superior for distracting folks. A true hero will always pursue the call for help. But... will they remain a hero, if these calls will always lure them into traps? Will they turn paranoid about all these folks who need help?

Friends - I've argued several times with others about how asymmetrical Charisma checks are in D&D. A player can always attempt to make one against an NPC. But an NPC making one against a player is acceptable only when the NPC is lying or performing. An attempt at being intimidating can always be made fun of, and persuasion can be met with suspicions even if the inquisitive rogue of the party rolls a 19 on the expertised Insight. Imagine though how creepy would it feel to be told that "You feel some enchantment magic wearing off as you exit the shop. Someone has cast friends on you, and it did not feel good. You think they did not have the best of the intentions, and you should do something about it."

Prestidigitation - so awesome I don't even need to introduce it. Create small objects, make illusory markings, mask odors, tastes, heat up or cool down meals, light small fires like torches or campfires, do harmless illusions, ... This is a must-have for most wizard builds I play.

Charm Person - in case you're about to be caught by the party.

Command - players hate losing the agency over their characters, so this is a great choice of a spell to annoy them with if you can pick it.

Detect Magic - lost sight of the party? With this thing, you can quickly find them in any crowd. I mean, think of all those magic items that they constantly wield. Even items marked with Nystul's aura apparently show up as magical to this spell.

Disguise Self - self-explanatory, you'll look different. Combined with a shapeshifter, however, this makes for a nasty trick. Most people expect only one layer of disguise.

Find Familiar - screw the free advantage, this is your scouting tool.

Fog Cloud - a getaway in case things go really wrong.

Hex - also screw the extra damage here. Do you know what this is? It's a free disadvantage on one ability score of your choice. No save, no verbal components to be heard due to the way lunatic is built, this thing is just an absolutely nasty tool to use. Even better when you use a 5th level spell slot for 24 hours of disadvantage. Perfect for high Wisdom characters, since you're trying to stay hidden.

Illusory Script - cause the players to panic by showing them a letter on a bulletin board or someplace else that only they can read. Even better if a few of the party members can't read it, or the opposite - few of the party members actually can, the rest sees it as gibberish or a lot of scribbles.

Silent Image - distracting illusions. Unseen Servant is useful for the same purposes.

Arcane Lock - perfect for locking a route during a chase scene, just don't forget to have enough gold dust on your person for at least three casts.

Detect Thoughts - you're a doppelganger, you can do this one at-will! No need to bother with it then!

Invisibility - fairly obvious.

Magic Mouth - randomly enchant doorways and similar to emit whispers audible to the players while they are within 30 feet of it. Could also work with screams for literal jumpscares.

Mind Spike - great for keeping track of the players.

Misty Step - escape tool.

Nystul's Magic Aura - make magic items out of nothing, Hide cursed magic items. Or turn into a child, befriend the party's paladin, and get him to give you a high five, delivering the spell through touch and making their creature type Fiend after 30 days of recasting it. Do this with the entire party. Next time they encounter a wary paladin, have them freak out and call an inquisition on them because of their fiendish nature.

Phantasmal Force - go read the spell and you'll see why this one is here.

Rope Trick - escape tool.

Skywrite - write creepy messages in the sky for your players to see, as well as everyone.

Suggestion - a must-have on the Spell Mastery for this build. With this, you can change anyone's mind and make them do your bidding.

While I would love to make just as detailed analysis of higher spell levels, I'll just run through the spell lists to write out the names. It's up to you to figure out why I wrote these down.

3rd level

Bestow Curse (upcasted at 5+ level)

Feign Death

Glyph of Warding

Leomund's Tiny Hut

Nondetection

Sending

4th level

Dimension Door

Dominate Beast (especially if they have a pet)

Greater Invisibility

Locate Creature

Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound

Phantasmal Killer

5th level

Dominate Person

Dream

Geas

Immolation

Mislead

Modify Memory

Scrying

Seeming

6th level

Contingency (scariest thing in the world? a wizard who's prepared for an enemy they know far too well)

Disintegrate

Flesh to Stone

Globe of Invulnerability

Guards and Wards

Magic Jar

Mass Suggestion

Mental Prison

Programmed Illusion

Soul Cage

True Seeing

7th level

Mirage Arcane

Project Image

Sequester

Symbol

8th level

Antimagic Field

Clone

Dominate Monster

Feeblemind

Glibness (more on this in the future)

Illusory Dragon

Maddening Darkness

Maze

Mind Blank

9th level

Foresight

Imprisonment

Mass Polymorph

Power Word Kill

Time Stop

True Polymorph

Wish

More spells could apply, but I don't feel like rewriting even more spell names here.

One final mention to give is to give the lunatic an Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location. That way, they will be much more difficult to find. Other magic items are optional, at your own discretion.

Maybe this one would have been better to use instead of the first picture. Then again, both show off regular shapeshifter stuff — this shapeshifter tries its best to blend in.
Doppelganger - The Elder Scrolls: Legends

And this is how you make your players paranoid — by introducing a being that goes around the world, transforming more and more people into doppelgangers — beings who can turn into anyone and read minds at-will. And at the same time, a being who can look like anyone, render themselves forgotten and unseen, and blend in with the crowd, while remaining undetected. Making the party distrust any NPC they ever meet, possibly shooting them with a moonbeam or even murdering them, just for the fact that they could be a doppelganger. What? You came here for a villain, right?

Until next time, thank you for reading, and have a nice day!