I have always had a bit of doubt about the overall benefit of the Great Weapon Fighter fighting style and the Improved Critical ability for Champions in 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, so I dig into it a bit below.
The Ten-Towns of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden provide rich plot, roleplaying, and excellent modular encounters for your 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons game. These early adventures setup the core tension of the adventure, and provide some of the most obvious ways to allow heroes make an impact on the region. What follows here are a few updates, changes, or additions to Ten-Towns to spice up your sessions in different ways. The factions section below provide a bit more political context to the adventure, the Sacrifices to Auril section provides a bit more background and context for the dangers faced and how each town is adapting, the Winter Survival Gear and Travel section enhance the survival mechanics in the setting. Like any remix, this is just a skew toward a specific style of running the game, use what you find useful and ignore the rest. Many of these core components setup remixes for individual encounters I will post over time.
With the publication of Tasha’s Caldron of Everything, the game introduced the concepts of Supernatural Regions to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. Areas that have variable and mysterious effects that might be invoked by specific actions or conditions. Within Icewind Dale are localized arcane phenomenon zones said to manifest The Heart of Winter, that is the conjunction of planar regions brought into alignment with Icewind Dale as a function of Auril’s ongoing enchantments. Small clusters of these supernatural phenomenon ebb and flow across the region and it has been growing in frequency, intensity, and size as time progresses.
5th edition Dungeons and Dragons has a bit of a rough patch with its skill checks model. Given the variability of a d20, all or nothing skill checks can be a fairly harsh mechanic. Indeed, there’s some evidence all or nothing checks is not the designers intent. The DMG Chapter 8 provides some alternative methods to consider with skill resolution under Resolution and Consequences which all hinge on a single die roll mechanic. In cases, there may be some utility using a progressive success or failure system instead of a single checks. Particularly in non-combat encounters, it is best to build skill checks in a way to build tension from failure rather than a collapse. DMDavid sparked a thought after a specific example posted on twitter, how to handle falling with failed climbing checks. Progressive failure and rising tension meshes well with the Thrilling Heroics Rules I posted awhile back. In fact, it compliments it enough that I thought it useful to post some examples here.
Livestream of my discussion on 5e D&D campaign prep, talking about Failures and Rising Tension, creating Thrilling Heroics and more. Join me every Saturday at Noon EST on Twitch and YouTube to join in the conversation.
Owing to a small thread on twitter earlier this week, I listed out the options 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons provides for effecting rolls. This is useful for creating your own roll effecting homebrew rules, if you want to understand the relative power level compared to other elements in the ruleset.
This post contains the remixes and changes I used for the Lake Monster quest picked up in the town of Bremen in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. It runs similarly to what is written in the module with a different backstory, delivery and climax. You can likely use this remix as an independent encounter in any game, but to get the most out of it you will need the module.
Thrilling heroics have always been an important part of adventuring in table-top roleplaying games. The rules of 5th edition are great for covering most basic action but occasionally players want something more exciting to happen. The swashbuckler may want to distract opponents by kicking the table at them, or the cavalier leaps from their charging horse to make a more devastating attack, this is all part of thrilling heroic action at the heart of adventure based roleplaying games.
I had one of those unpleasant exchanges on a Dungeons & Dragons 5e group the other day, where you offer some resource that works for you and someone comes out of left field and goes on a racist tirade. It’s social media and I’m pretty good at ignore things like that personally, but the idea that folks new to the hobby might not realize the cheap tactics and toxic behavior behind replies like the one I got.
Remixes have become a great way for DMs to talk about how they are using published content in the wild for their actual 5th edition games. It focuses on how you arrange or change the elements to suit your individual game and style, and avoids the o-so-very-internet thing of labeling things as broken or awesome.