Yearlong Resting

Have you ever realized that the epic adventure you played over the course of years of actual time has actually lasted way less time in the game's world? Did recognizing that your characters have gone from level 1 to 15 in months of in-game time make it feel less epic and more like a guide for quick leveling in World of Warcraft? Maybe you'd like your legacy to live on in adventurers who you raise.

This is an idea of mine that hopes to fix all that, returning the campaigns that air of grandness that they deserve. It might not be developed for now, but that's because I don't know yet if it's worth developing. Please, entertain me for a moment as I try to sell you on an offer of long rests taking months, if not years, to finish.

Time keeps marching onward. The world needs heroes, and chances are you're not gonna be around forever. You're likely not adventuring every day, so how about you invest some of that free time in the next generation?
Art is drawn for the game Artifact, by Magali Villeneuve.

Variant Rule: Yearlong Resting

Using this variant rule, a short rest takes 8 hours of sleep, and a long rest takes 3d12 months of downtime. Any abilities that describe altering your sleep during a long rest, such as the Trance racial trait of the elves, instead alter your short rest in the same way. After a long rest, all of the character's hit dice are replenished instead of one half.

Why

The main goal of this rule is to provide a natural way for long durations of time to pass between the adventures to enhance its feeling of epicness. In the game as written, it's not worth it for the players to invest their resources or time into some long-term goal because of the adventures that span mere days. But with this rule, the heroes get some breathing space between significant adventures, letting them invest their time in various activities: whether it's crafting new equipment, building a house, training their successors, starting a family, learning new languages or tool sets, working a fairly normal job, or something completely different is up to the player. Once the adventure calls for it, the characters gather together once more to venture out and do what has to be done in a matter of several days.

Another important factor that this rule brings into the game is the age of the characters. How many times have you actually seen a character's age increase over the course of a campaign without using supernatural abilities such as the ghost's Horrifying Visage? With this rule in play, your characters will get older as their level increases, and the players realize rather quickly how their character will progress over the course of the campaign into becoming older and older. Once they get too old, they start to consider who to pass their art to next - should they raise a child of their own? Or perhaps they could find a competent promising young individual to train into becoming an adventurer. Their riches and their equipment are suddenly not theirs alone, nor does it belong to their adventuring party necessarily. What if whatever they leave behind could be inherited by someone they personally chose? Or they could just try their luck and keep chugging those potions of longevity.

A nice advantage that comes as a side-effect is a fact that players can more easily join and leave this campaign, or try out new characters. Usually, a player whose character dies introduces their new character in the next session, which can feel rather off. An established adventuring party mourns the loss of one of their own, only to walk into the nearest tavern, and let the first person who looks at them join their cause for no in-world reason. If the longer rests are available, players can describe how they got to meet this character in their downtime, months after the loss of their friend, and how they slowly but certainly accept the newcomer.

When doesn't the Yearlong Resting work?

This rule isn't meant for the games with time-sensitive plots. If the villain plans to destroy a kingdom important to the players within six months, it would be rather difficult (and kind of unfair) for the players to try saving it. You can give it a go if you really wish to, but I do not recommend it.

Additionally, during the lower levels (especially 1 and 2), the game can feel especially boring for the spellcasters who get to cast 2-3 leveled spells per adventure. While previously I claimed that this is the issue of the Gritty Realism variant rule that this house rule is based on, now I recognize that it is a weak spot of the house rule. Personally, I would either skip the first two levels of the game and start my players' characters at 3rd level or use Gritty Realism/regular resting rules until the player characters reach level 3.

Considerations

I've pondered this for a time and had a couple of discussions with others regarding this house rule. Here are my attempts to address some of the common concerns and issues that arose, in no particular order.

• Short-lived Races. What can one do about races that have a lifespan of fewer than 100 years? The solutions here would boil down to three options: either the DM doesn't change anything, or they alter all of the races to have a lifespan of at least 100 years, or they give players with such characters a reward during one of their adventures in the form of a magic item, blessing, supernatural gift, or some other kind of reward that increases their lifespan or lowers their age somehow.
• Old Characters. Players are heavily disincentivized from playing old characters since they're much more likely to die during the campaign. I see this as a plus since it always seemed to me ridiculous that an old studied wizard some player made up for their first session only knows 6 spells and a handful of cantrips when they begin adventuring. If you wish to let the players do this, though, consider implementing rewards that boost their lifespan or make them younger, as described in the previous bullet point.
• Hit Dice. It felt to me silly to have the characters regain only half of their hit dice after several years spent not adventuring. I'd probably bump this number up to all of the dice, but I wouldn't be surprised if any of you choose to ignore it.
• Long Rest Spellcasting. For narrative purposes, I would let the players cast their leveled spells even if they lack their spell slots during the long rest. As long as it's not abused just for the sake of powergaming, I'd be down with the players making a new teleportation circle or a couple of magic mouths between adventures free of charge (but not free of the expensive Material components).
• Downtime Activities. The current rules assume mostly that the downtime will last a couple of days, with some exceptions being crafting equipment or learning new languages. If this house rule were to be implemented, it would need a rework of the downtime rules to let the players perform the same downtime activities over long stretches of time with little to no (mechanical, not narrative) complications. This should include things such as building a house, starting a village, or creating a family of their own.
• Character Catching Up. In the case of a death, the player could choose to use their character's student or relative to use as the next adventurer. It is however likely that this character didn't reach as high of a level as someone who went out adventuring regularly. If this rule were to be more fleshed out, it should be considered whether they are going on adventures of their own, how to determine their starting level, and how they catch up to the party. When it comes to catching up, I usually have the character level up upon finishing every long rest until they match the highest-level party member. Of course, this assumes that all other characters are of the same level, and one can play the game with characters of wildly different levels, but it's easier this way.
• The Intensity of Adventures. The characters go out on an adventure for roughly three days and come back to unwind from them for months. During this time, they don't go on any intense adventures, but that doesn't mean they can't adventure at all. A character could go out to hunt some feeble creatures in their free time, whether it's to earn money or for sport. The important keyword here is intense. If it's a call to a major adventure that the players might want to play out, it might not make for a good adventure. At the same time, the DM should consider the fact that downtime is a time for calmness, which means that none of their players' adventures should be mediocre in order to keep the campaign interesting. The DM should keep increasing the importance and stakes of the quests that their players do outside of their downtime.
• 3d12. I chose the 1d12 because it felt like the most thematic die to represent a fraction of a year, with 12 sides representing vaguely the 12 months in a year. If your calendar uses more or fewer months, feel free to adjust the die's size to whatever fits your needs. On average, a roll of 3d12 will yield a result of 19.5 years, which can feel like a lot or too little to some DMs out there. You can adjust the number of dice, altering thus the minimum, the maximum, and the average number of months that passes between the adventures. I chose to go with 3 dice because it gives plenty of space for downtime between the adventures.
• Villain. Of course, someone who wrote a cookbook about them (yet to bind it into a single document) would think of the villains too. If you wish to have an overarching baddie, the most obvious ideal choice would be a creature that lives for centuries, such as a lich, a dragon, a vampire, or something different along those lines.

But What about the Numbers?

Mechanically, it is identical to the Gritty Realism variant rule, so if there's any question regarding the encounter balancing or resource management, search or the commentary on that about whether this incentivizes short rest classes or makes rogues into gods.

What I'd rather focus on is the complaint that this will make the actual campaign last way too long before the players make any progress. For this, I made a handy table that I'd like to share with you.

To keep things short, I followed the guidelines in DMG regarding the Adventuring Day XP budget and combined those with the required XP for leveling beyond the 1st level, which gave me a rough estimate for the number of adventuring days (and thus long rests) between each level up. Turns out, most of these take 1 or 2 adventuring days, with the only exceptions being going from level 5 to level 6, and going from level 8 to level 9 which take 3 adventuring days each. In other words, even if we assumed that each adventuring day will happen over the course of 3 sessions, you'll get a level-up on average once every 6 sessions (1.5 months of real time if you play weekly, 3 months if you play once every two weeks).

The Easier Option

As /u/BladeBotEU has pointed out to me before I started writing all of this down, a much simpler option would be to make leveling up take much longer instead of long rests. But I hoped to get some discussion going mainly regarding my idea, to see if it's worth working into a proper document or not, instead of taking someone else's idea that they already use and running with it to the public.

An even easier option would be to announce a time skip every now and then, but that feels rather forced to me as a DM unless the players request it for some reason. I've never personally seen a group of players request that their party takes a break for several years, but I've heard at least one person tell me about it.

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I felt this is a neat enough idea to write an article about really quickly. I was mostly inspired by an animated indie series Tales of Alethrion that's all about an epic fantasy adventure that weaves its epic tales and complex relationships over the course of decades. Maybe one day I could make this a core aspect of my own RPG instead of trying to push it into D&D, but until then this is all I can offer. An idea, a bunch of recommendations and considerations, and if I get enough feedback on this, maybe a written supplement on this in the future.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

10 Guidelines to Moderating Magic

I think it's finally finished, or at least the first version of it is.

The 10 Guidelines to Moderating Magic is my document, in which I gathered all of the rules I came up with on the blog over time, added some things, edited others, and condensed them enough to put them onto a single page.

With that out of the way, here are the 10 condensed rules in text form, followed by the document itself. The document can also be found in my homebrew collection.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Cover art is Chef, by Stephen Stark.

10 Guidelines to Moderating Magic

Rule 0: BGC

For the purposes of these guidelines, BGC stands for background character—a humanoid character that isn't important to the plot. DM can determine which of these guidelines to use and whether they apply to player characters, villains, other NPCs important to the plot, and to the non-humanoids.

Rule 1: Maximum Level

BGCs can't multiclass, and their character level can't surpass the lowest of the ability scores their class requires (as per the Multiclassing Prerequisites table) minus 10.

Rule 2: Knowledge of Magic

The highest level of magic that a BGC possesses detailed knowledge of is determined by the magics that they come into contact with frequently, as well as the community they live in.

Communities by Level:

1. Village
2. City
3. Magic School
4. Castle
5. Tower
6. —

Rule 3: Awareness of Magic

BGC's awareness of the magic's existence rises with the perceivability and frequency of its effects.

Rule 4: Training Duration

For a BGC, reaching a specific level requires training that lasts a number of months equal to twice the level they wish to learn. The DM can choose to extend this duration by a number of months equal to 5 minus the BGC's Intelligence modifier.

Rule 5: The Standard Spellcaster

The most frequent spellcaster in society would be the one that's reproducible in the most reliable and easily accessible way.

Rule 6: Magic Costs

The recommended cost of a spell provided by a spellcasting service equals 12 gp 5 sp × (2 to the power of spell's level), halved if the spell is cast as a ritual, plus the cost of a costly material component, halved if the material component is not consumed. For the costs of magic items, use the Sane Magic Item Prices.

Rule 7: Magic Item Crafting

With the exception of spell scrolls and potions, a BGC can start making common magic items if it's a 5th level spellcaster. Uncommon items require 2 more levels, and for each increase in rarity, this amount increases by 1.

Rule 8: Permanent Spells

A spell with permanent effects should be used more often the lower its level is. These spells include: find familiar, arcane lock, continual flame, magic mouth, Nystul's magic aura, glyph of warding, fabricate, Mordenkainen's private sanctum.

Rule 9: Illegal and Regulated Spells

The DM should carefully consider what magic is illegal and/or regulated.

Recommendations for Consideration: spells that cause harm, enchantment spells that manipulate others' actions, necromancy and conjuration spells with a chance for the raised/summoned creature to break from mage's control, wall spells, arcane lock, continual flame, control water, detect thoughts, dimension door, divination and spells of a similar character, enlarge/reduce, glyph of warding, knock, Leomund's tiny hut, magic mouth, modify memory*, Mordenkainen's private sanctum, reincarnate*, teleportation circle*.

* This spell is of 5th level, so unless it's public knowledge that it exists, it technically wouldn't be illegal.

Rule 10: Two Witnesses

For any important activity where the use of magic could prove to be a problem, a BGC should have at least two witnesses present. If the BGC can afford it, at least one of them should be able to cast counterspell/dispel magic.

Doubled Creature Types

Alternative title: Are we the monsters?

I had a neat idea about D&D 5e, so I've decided to make a short article about it.

Intro

What creature types can you find naturally on the Material Plane? For the sake of clarity, I would say that a creature type naturally on a plane is a creature type that's integrated within the plane's ecosystem on a long-term scale. This is not a trick question, let's just go through them:

• Beast
• Dragon
• Giant
• Humanoid
• Monstrosity
• Ooze
• Plant

Mini-rant: Giant is just a Large or larger humanoid, it shouldn't be a creature type because it's more of a size category.

I could in theory add more creature types, but these will suffice for now. Now try to tell me, what creature types can you find naturally on the Upper Planes? As far as I am aware, just celestial. What creature types can you find naturally on the Lower Planes? Fiend, maybe one or two extras.

What if there was a way to introduce a bit more variety to the various planes of existence? Let's think through this thought experiment together, and make up a system of Doubled Creature Types.

Finding an art to represent the idea of a double creature type was hard enough, so I'm gonna just go with this art, call it a "fiend construct", and call it a day. ... Addae. That's not a bad name actually.
Arcane Construct III, by CaconymDesign

Doubled Creature Types

Let us begin this journey by splitting the creature types into two halves: General, and planar.

• General creature types include beast, construct, dragon, humanoid, ooze, plant, and null (more on that later).
• The planar creature types include aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, monstrosity, undead.

(I left out giant because of my mini-rant above, feel free to put it into either category.)

Now, each creature gets assigned two creature types. In most cases, one should come from the general, and one from the planar half. Understandably, which types go where is up to everyone, but that doesn't matter.

The planar creature type determines the plane of the creature's origin. The general creature type determines its function within the ecosystem of the plane. Plants are there for the herbivores to consume, oozes consume the corpses, humanoids make civilizations, etc.

So what does this give us? More variety to all of our planes of existence where we apply these, of course! Why restrict yourself to just fey, when you could have fey beasts like talking wolves or sacred deer, fey plants who can talk to you and bind you in its roots, fey oozes that glitter or something, and other stuff. How about a corrupted bear turning into an aberration beast? A constructed celestial? A fiendish dragon? All these and so much more are suddenly open to us!

What does that make our player characters though? What is their planar creature type? Well... monstrosity is the best fit. Monstrosity covers anything that's on the Material Plane (as far as I can remember) that isn't a beast or a humanoid or anything else like that. So every human, elf, or other humanoid race has a creature type of monstrosity humanoid. Every beast of the Material Plane has a type of monstrosity beast.

What does that make the previous monstrosities, like owlbears or medusae? Monstrosity null, or simply monstrosity. Null is a simple creature type add-on that you can add on top of the planar type to make something that's just... too generic to use two creature types (unless you want to experiment a little, making medusa a humanoid or owlbear a beast).

Could there be a creature with two general creature types? Yes, for example, a wolf overgrown by plants could be one. Could there be a creature with two planar creature types? Yes, for example, the elemental titans could be both elementals and giants.

What about stuff like charm person or Wildshape? Do they now work on all these new creature types? Up to you. If you want them to work, go right ahead and experiment! If you don't want them to work with them, make up a houserule along with these that reads "whenever the rules say something affects a humanoid, it affects a monstrosity humanoid unless I say otherwise", and analogous for other creature types you're worried about.

So there it is. A short demo of an idea, without a proof of concept. I'll probably include them in some of my future brews, along with a write-up as to how they should be handled and which of the creature types is the "dominant" one. I feel like I could make a booklet on planes now, except I don't have much time, energy, attention, and ideas for that kind of stuff. I got some ideas for it, don't get me wrong. It would be a cosmology of my own, possibly similar to the one I've presented on this blog previously, or maybe a new one. It definitely wouldn't be a carbon copy of the Great Wheel, at best I'd merge some of the planes together to get the essence of all the interesting things in there. But any of that is a promise I can't make, I already have so many other ideas I could work on, and yet I feel like these days I have less and less time to work on them.

Intimidating Revenants

My first D&D character was named Wilson. He was a gnome monk, who got shipwrecked when he was sailing once with his great-great-great-grandpa. What? I looked at the lifespan of the gnomes and drew conclusions. Either way, 20 people survived together on an island, and Wilson built a raft for him and his triple-G grandpa to go home on. Unfortunately, by the time he was done, his triple-G grandpa was murdered. Wilson left the island on his own, swearing vengeance for his relative. Yes, the backstory is silly, but then again it was my first character, and one for an Adventurer's League. During his short life, he managed to find exactly zero other survivors from that island, so his desire for revenge was unfulfilled. He died in a TPK to a group of wandering ghouls while our party was trying to rest in a dungeon.

Revenge! It's one of the easiest character motivations to make. It's a bit of a fake motivation though, because what will they want after the revenge? I never got to figure that part out for Wilson due to his early death. My headcanon is that after his death, he has turned into a revenant. Unfortunately, it's been years since Wilson's death, so nothing can be done now to save him.

Revenants

Where I'm going with this is this: Revenants are cool. They're undead reanimated corpses seeking the revenge that their soul demands. Their hit points regenerate, they're immune to being turned, they never get exhausted, charmed, or frightened, and of course—they're always on the move. Approaching. Tracking. At all times. There's also another detail that most people miss at a glance—it has no negative modifiers. Pretty cool, right?

There are downsides too, of course. Revenant's CR is 5. This means that once the players become high enough level, that revenant who's still tracking them becomes nothing more than a nuisance. Their +7 to hit and average 25 damage against their main target could come off as a bit underwhelming. And since the revenant is assumed to be on the move without any company, it's either gonna be a super easy encounter, or an extra that the players will not find interesting. And that's not even mentioning stuff like planar travel!

In other words, I feel like a revenant could get... boring. Let's try to change that today, now that the long intro is out of the way!

Why though?

Before we give this creature its boost, we need to answer an important question: why are we doing this to our players? Well, there could be a couple of answers. A backstory from a player, a challenging enemy they make, ... or something far more sinister.

There's a type of player that plenty of Dungeon Masters (and possibly even other players) doesn't like, and it's understandable why. The "murderhobo", for the purposes of this article, is a player who kills creatures that are innocent. For the sake of simplicity, an innocent creature is one that the DM did not expect players to fight because there is no real reason to fight it. I've spent some time with such players in my party, and it can break the immersion. Thus, it could be reasoned that a DM could use the revenant as a sort of justice for the murder of innocent creatures.

Warning: the revenant is a nasty creature already, and what I list below is completely untested. I have actually got no clue as to how one could make a revenant interesting, I've run a revenant only twice in my games ever. I just wanted to write up some cool things for DMs who want to add some extra spice to their revenant to make them a bit more effective. But as it goes with any spice, do not overdo it! A meal with too many spices in it is gonna be a mess. Choose which of these you want to do, and leave the rest be.

Number 1 way of making a revenant scarier: give it a gun.
Seriously though, a ranged attack of some sort would be a really good thing to have.
Revenant, by Zak Foreman

Inevitable

The revenant has got one year to get its revenge. So let's find some way of making them better!

• Every time the revenant dies, its CR increases by 1. We don't really need to be precise with the system—each point of CR increase increases its hit points maximum by 17 (2d8+8), and both its regular damage and the extra damage against sworn targets by 1d6 each. For every 3 points of CR, its AC, attack bonus, and DC increase by 1. These numbers are not perfect, but they are good enough to make it scary.
• Every time the revenant dies, it gains one level in a class of your choice. Don't bother with hit points, just add 9 for every level up. Don't bother writing down their proficiencies with toolsets, weapons, armors, or whatever—just say that they have this or that, ignore unnecessary clutter! Focus on combat stuff. If you want them to do magic, give them warlock spell slot progression with doubled spell slots (but still single Mystic Arcanum uses) to make DMing them easier.

Survivor

Alright, we got the aspect of it being defeated nailed down. How about making it remaining alive scarier?

• For every day the revenant remains alive, its speed increases by 5 ft. When it dies, its speed resets to default.
• For every week the revenant remains alive, one of its scores increases by 1 permanently. The maximum is 30.

Escapist

The revenant is cool and all, but what if it gets... stuck? Like, what if it has no way of getting to its sworn targets?

• If there are no sworn creatures of revenant's revenge on the same plane of existence as the revenant for 24 hours, the revenant teleports within one day of travel of the creature it's tracking. At the same time, if it gets trapped someplace like a coffin buried twenty feet under, for example, it will always find a way out within 24 hours. If it doesn't, fate itself will help him out. Literally deus ex machina.

Economist

Action economy, am I right? Players will sooner or later have too big of an advantage when fighting a lone traveling revenant. So let's fix that!

• The easiest solution is to give it 3 legendary actions every round. Making one Fist attack is a good start, as well as moving up to its movement speed. The third could be the Vengeful Glare or anything else cool you could come up with. If it's too good, make it cost 2 actions.
• Now this is a nasty trick that could get rid of your murderhobo problem if you have one, but I have to warn you—this is a force to be reckoned with. Every time your players kill an innocent creature (as defined above), it doesn't turn into a revenant. Instead, it's going to inevitably join the revenant, as an eternal companion. Its shadow. With each shadow, the revenant's actual shadow gets darker and darker, until it's just inky blackness. When the revenant finds the targets they seek revenge against, all of the shadows emerge and assist them in the fight. This is more than lethal, and could result not only in a TPK, but also at the end of the world due to the way shadows work, so... apply at your own caution.

Terrifying

"But Proph," I hear you say, "all this stuff is nice and all, but... it's just mechanics. It doesn't really make them scarier." Well then, let me introduce you to a renewed revenant description. Consider this something to describe.

Whenever the target of its vengeance looks in the direction in which the revenant is, they see the revenant's glowing eyes. These eyes can be seen regardless of distance, as long as the two are on the same plane of existence and the revenant is in the direction in which the target is looking. They are visible regardless of any obstacles in the way—trees, buildings, creatures, even your own eyelids.

Furthermore, whenever you would normally dream, you instead get a first-person view from the revenant's perspective. Whatever it's doing, you see it as if you were doing it. It's always on the move, and you are aware of it the more time you spend sleeping. For every 6 hours you sleep, the revenant comes roughly 40 miles closer (assuming we didn't use the speeding up rule above). Do you really need that long rest? Does your party even want you around if you keep getting attacked by this thing? How many days has it been? How many days until its one-year lifespan ends?

(Both of these I stole from the worldbuilding subreddit. I don't remember who wrote them or what discussion was the comment posted on, but if you are out there, please contact me now and I'll link your profile in this article!)

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"Thirteenth day of Icemelt. Ever since I successfully assassinated my target and got attacked by that ugly thing, I've been on the run. Whenever I look back, I see the yellow glow, the same glow that its eyes radiated. I tried so many things, but no heroes want to help me. So I got rid of them. What's more, I don't have enough money or time to research a solution for this. I've started to sleep only every other night because of this thing. My paranoid mind dreams of its movement increasing in speed, as its inky black shadow follows it everywhere. Yesterday, I saw another yellow light on the horizon. They're next to each other, moving in unison. I did not kill anyone else though! Is it... its other eye? If you find this diary, know that this monster has murdered me!"

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Thank you for reading, I hope I have provided you with some new inspiration, and I wish you all a nice day!

Rule of Dice

Here's a quick little post to talk about my personal rule for all of the dice-using RPGs I've GMed so far, that I have developed over years through trial and error:

Rule of Dice: If it's impossible or guaranteed in the available time, you shouldn't have to roll for it.

Let's break down what this means:

• If what a character is trying to do is impossible, they shouldn't even get to roll.
• If a character would definitely succeed in something, they don't even have to roll.
• If it's only a question of rolling high enough and there's nothing stopping the character from rolling over and over again, they get to succeed automatically.
• "[...], you shouldn't have to roll for it." This is the most important bit to me. It means that the DM shouldn't just have the player roll their die pointlessly if they can't succeed, or can't fail. Because if they roll a 20, and they fail anyway, that sucks. I personally as a DM communicate this to my players when it's relevant, for example "You don't need to roll the die to try to kick the troll to the moon, you automatically fail because I know your bonus to the roll is too low" (of course, not this verbose every time it occurs). If a player really insists on rolling, well then they can go ahead, but they already know my answer without even involving a die.

What does this rule do:

• Removes unneeded die rolls, saving time.
• Removes some cases of unfulfilled expectations.
• Keeps the game a little more grounded.

D&D Role play crit fail 20, by Blanca Vidal

At the end of the day though, you should play the game how you want. If your table likes moments like when a dwarf rolling down a hill rolls a natural 20 multiple times in a row and begins to fly against all known laws of aviation, or you all enjoy the sound of math rocks going click-clack (I know I like the sound), then I say go for it! I'm just here to formulate this into a proper rule to help anyone who was searching for it.

Whether you agree or disagree, I hope you'll have a good day! :)

Roamer, v1.0

 Howdy! Yesterday I posted my first homebrew of 2021, and I almost forgot to repost it here, so... time to fix that!

Roamer is my attempt at a biker artificer that's part of my updated version of Manual of the Ancient Internet. The idea for this subclass started as a joke, where I figured that since artificers can use artisan tools for spellcasting, maybe they could also use vehicles. While the logic of it is silly, more and more I saw people demanding it, so I tried to patch over any remaining flaws, and posted it to Reddit. Not 24 hours have passed, and the post has become my highest rated homebrew posted to Reddit. I did not expect this kind of response at all, so I'm thankful to everyone who liked the first iteration. That being said, the iteration was far from perfect.

So the big question is, how to improve this? Sadly, I'm afraid I'll have to overhaul most of it.

• I'll have to swap out phantom steed, sleet storm, and Rary's telepathic bond for different spells. Hopefully, I'll find something more fitting for a biker theme.
• It seems that it might be for the best to convert the drifter from an object into a creature. It would work much better with mounted combat, it would probably also be easier to target with spells and effects, and hey maybe I could even fit an ability to talk in there so that any potential dreams of a Knight Rider could be realized easier.
• One possibility would be to merge Roadkill into Drifter with toned down damage, and then come up with something new for Roadkill. I do have some ideas, but I'll see.
• The drifter needs to be faster than an average human that takes the Dash action.

I'll see when I get to fix it. It's playable at the moment, just not really compatible with the mounted combat and not as exciting as other artificer subclasses due to a rather underwhelming 3rd level. Before I really get to fixing it, I'll need to finish my work on the other content to be included in the Manual of the Ancient Internet:

• Artificer Specialization: Roamer
• Bardic College: ???
• Martial Archetype: Virtual Guardian
• Iconic Archetype: ???
• Monastic Tradition: Way of the Hand and Eye
• Sacred Oath: ???
• Ranger Archetype: ???
• Otherworldly Patron: ???
• and finally, updated rules for creation and piloting of your own mecha.

Some of these names I'll keep to myself for now, since they're not certain just yet, and a bit of a surprise for now. I have also considered writing up a section on custom spells, as well as feats and maybe extra lore, possibly some monsters, but I don't think I have enough content to write up with those in mind just yet so don't expect them to show up in the next version.

Until then, I should get back to working on the Villainous Cookbook. Thank you for reading, and 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.

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!