I'm starting a virtual campaign with some friends soon, and this is my first time making a DnD character (I have DMed once in the past when we were all starting out). I'm super excited and just kind of delving in now and finding all of it very fun.

We're going to be playing the Tombs of Annihilation campaign which I understand can be a difficult one for beginners. I am right now leaning towards making a Wizard character since I think that is most in line with my irl personality and would be easiest to roleplay, but I'm kind of overwhelmed by the options available to me!

Does anyone have tips on ways to stay organized and make sure I'm building a balanced character? Common pitfalls to avoid for a beginner? Tips for playing a wizard? I'm open to any and all suggestions, both about character design and newbie tips in general.

My D&D group mostly used Lego for the longest time, but we recently decided to give miniatures a shot because we were adding more people and I only have so many minifigs to share (unless you want Stormtroopers in your fantasy setting, that is!). A few weeks ago we met up to paint our miniatures for our new campaign and I think that was the most relaxing, calming thing I've ever done. We all sat in silence basically, noobing our way through the painting process and we had a lot of fun.

My character is a sheltered rich southern man who sounds a bit like a mix between Colonel Sanders and Foghorn Leghorn. He's a sorcerer and despite how is mini ended up looking, he does not cast bubblegum -- https://imgur.com/fr4tc6Z

But anyway, looking at it now there are some obvious spots where I messed up and certainly some things I'd do differently now. But until I'm able to get my hands on another miniature, I was wondering if anyone here had experience with painting miniatures and would be able to share some advice?

Hi guys!

I've always being curious about tabletop games, RPG, DnD and so on. The fantasy, creativity and engagement always interested me, but I've never met anyone who played it and never being involved with it (I'm in São Paulo, Brazil, btw).

So, to be direct, does anyone has any tips on how to start? I know there are "internet based" tabletop sites/communities, but I don't know how it works.

I'd appreciate any direction! Thanks!

I've been playing a Tomb of Annihilation campaign with some friends the past few months, and we are all relatively new players (each of us having played about one campaign before). As far as I know this is the first time any of us have been in a campaign where a PC dies. My level 4 wizard was suddenly and violently killed by a flesh golem.

None of us are exactly sure how to proceed, and there's some disagreement. A few of the people in my party think that any new character should be a level or two behind the party in order to further dis-incentivize dying. I personally think that is too harsh, and luckily it seems like we are reaching a consensus that my new character should be the same level, but I shouldn't be able to play as the same race and class.

This seems more or less reasonable to me, although to be honest I really enjoyed playing as a wizard so I wouldn't have minded doing so again. I'm mainly curious to hear how you all handle character deaths, and any tips you might have for making a new character mid-campaign.

So, I've been playing this campaign with some friends for a while where I am a crocodile-themed lizardfolk hick with a thunder cannon named Cletus Cornelius Crocodilius the 3rd. Much fun has been had so far, but today something extra special fun happened.

So a while back our party found a stone that basically makes whatever it's being wielded by as light as a feather. So naturally our undead pirate monk has been using it to fuck with Cletus by shoving it into his mouth and then pushing him great distances. I thought it was funny, the DM thought it was funny, and it'd give us all a great laugh. But, it did give me an idea.

See, we were all hunting down this nasty chimera, and after some scouting we knew it could fly. That was no bueno for us and we needed something to clip its wings. Suddenly, I remember that we have a stone that made me weigh about as much as a toddler. I also had several bear traps. And since I was a crocodile, I could grapple things with my mouth, leaving my hands, and my thunder cannon, free to attack.

So, we lure the flying chimera out with out bird-person bard, who lures it into range. We take all our ropes and strap the bear traps to Cletus and then an anchor line around his waist. We then have the sorcerer gnome cast enlarge upon himself, making him the massive size of a slightly larger than average human. He and the monk then chuck me as hard as they can at the chimera, which I proceed to stick to like a giant reptilian tick. I then spat the stone out onto the ground, and suddenly this tick weighed 800lb again.

I proceed to spend the entire combat session locked to this thing, blowing chunks off of it with my thunder cannon until it is grounded and no longer able to fly. It was still a tough fight, but we managed to prevail in the end.

It then became a desperate struggle to cut Cletus out of the bear traps before the dead Chimera fell off the bridge we were fighting it on. Thanks to a few lucky dex saves from myself and the bird person, Cletus managed to leap off the plummeting chimera at the last second.

I love this game.

Hello tabletop community,

I am designing my first ever boss fight, meant to really challenge my players. I don't want to kill any of them off since we're all new and it feels weird to lose a character, but I also want it to feel threatening. I could use some advice about how to execute this situation:

Boss is a big mimic disguised as a blood fountain with 6 long tentacle arms, each of which will be it's own figure on the board that can be up to 3 tiles from the 3x3 mimic figure.

Four of the tentacles have weapons that can deal 2d6 damage and have 30hp AC11 (roughly making it in line with a Brown Bear for threat and HP). They can grapple (squeeze the target) instead for 1d8 damage per turn, escapable on DC13 strength.

Two of the tentacles have shield-like hard points that defend neighboring enemies by giving disadvantage on attack rolls against them. AC14 HP30. I couldn't find anything to base these on for an encounter designer app.

Main body has low movement (10ft), and has 200hp AC19, and loses 20hp per tentacle lost. It has a bite attack +6 to hit 2d8. It also floods blood through sections of the room, forcing player movement and dealing 2d8 poison damage. I based it on a Roper for difficulty and attacks.

I think this combination creature would provide a very interesting and movement focused fight, but I'm very new to DM'ing and I'm afraid of accidentally killing the players.

My questions are: (1) How do I avoid accidentally killing everyone? (2) Is this fight too hard for a newbie group of 5 new players? (3) Any other cool ideas I didn't think of?

My gaming group got to talking at our last game about how long we've been playing. Most of us were at 20+ years. I asked them if they'd ever played a 20th level character, and the answer was a unanimous no, so that's something we're going to remedy with the next campaign.

I got to fiddling around with characters and noticed that 5e caps itself out nicely once you hit 20th. No matter what you create, the limits on action economy, maximum spell/attacks, stats/scores all give rise to a nice plateau. The hit points getting huge is the biggest change, so you just end up trading healing word whack-a-mole for characters that can actually take some real punishment and using power word heal. Needs a wound mechanic so that going down has lasting consequences even if you get right back up, but that's easily workable.

I was bored and threw another twenty levels on for a 40th level character, and then another 11 for a meaningful dip into a third class. Just cap the character's proficiency bonus at +6/20th and nothing really changes except you have a far larger bag of tricks at your disposal. Twelve feats is like candyland. I'm anticipating some of my players are going to get ferret shock trying to keep up with their spell lists during combat. Too many choices, they'll make a hilarious mess out of it and it'll be fun. I have a tiny hourglass sitting on the table to keep the pressure up, I'm sure that'll get some use.

I told them to pick their favorite character they've played over the years that they want to revisit and make the best version they can, complete with character history, holdings, etc. They also have to explain everything on their sheet - every level, feat, item, holding, etc all have a story attached. You're a monk? Where and when did you get that training, etc.

Then one of my players turned me on to the epic level book for 5e from 2c gaming. It's perfect, plugs right into the limits and takes them up a bit, but also adds all sorts of epic madness. Every class/archetype gets its own ten level epic prestige class. That's the 'real' 21-30 I can use for their advancement. I can also torment them with the prestige evolutions from the campaign setting we'll be using. There's plenty of advancement to be had this way despite already being at 51st level. I'm working in all of their existing characters from adjacent games as well, so we've got a ready made pool of henchmen.

I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of spelljamming and planar travel in this campaign. There's probably a gods war in there somewhere too. I have my 2nd Edition monster manual binders right here, and a third of the critters in them can give these characters nightmares for days. I'm figuring I'll be making heavy use of Illithids as one of the main threats, that trailer for Baldur's Gate 3 has them back in vogue again. Psionics is such a wonderful foil for magic.

So what kind of character would you build if you were making a character that's already the master of his/her/its? tiny corner of the D&D universe? What do you do with those 51 character levels?

Any races allowed, of course. Racial abilities are the least of it at this point. Origin can be from any campaign setting, past or present.

Has anybody had much experience playing DnD or other tabletops with children? I've been toying with the idea of making a fairly straightforward and simplified RPG using Story Cubes and GURPS that kids can get involved with easily and have fun playing. I'm specifically aiming to play with my daughter (8) and my niece (5) on a big family holiday in August, though I see no real reason that this couldn't work with adults as well.
Essentially, the conceit would go along the lines of each player rolling a limited number of story dice to help with character creation and such. I'd ask the players a few simple questions about their powers (for example, are you more of a wizard or more of a warrior?) to get some basic stats stats together (STR, DEX, INT, CON), and then use story dice myself to quickly improvise a short one-shot session.

Does anyone have experience playing with kids, and if so - any pointers? Am I being too ambitious about children's ability to imagine stuff in this way? If so, are there any good systems out there that are good for young people to pick up and get stuck into roleplaying with?

There isn't really a great mechanic for learning skills and languages in dungeons and dragons. This makes it a bit lacking if there is a certain amount of off-time between adventures and missions. It would be cool to think some sort of mundane dnd. Like mini-games in video game RPGs that make your character a little bit more personal. A quirks mechanic, that adds a certain way your character acts in the every day or what your character normally does. The risk is that it could turn into too much of a dice roller and the players might engage less with the story. What do you think?

I want to hear stories about your beloved characters that you've created. What's their backstory, their style, their hooks, their interesting achievements, etc. Got a pic? Post it! Wrote a lengthy history? Share it!

I'll post mine too in a bit. After a character death in Curse of Strahd, my DM and I decided to reveal Rictavio's secret identity as my new character, a Water Genasi Tempest Cleric :)

On that note, no Strahd spoilers please!

Hello Tildes community,

I am soon going to DM my second ever mini-session for a small group of fairly new players. I'd like to send the group into a haunted tavern that has an unusually intelligent mimic in the basement that has been eating tourists that pass through, leaving behind undead creatures throughout the basement.

My primary goal with this is to help the players (most pretty new) understand how to conserve their magic instead of firing it all off in each battle, so I wanted to prevent them from long resting. I figure I could magically lock them inside when they arrive, and then let them learn that if they should rest, previously killed undead creatures (like Minotaur Skeleton or zombies) resurrect after about an hour.

I am looking for two pieces of advice. First, I'd like to know good creatures to put into the dungeon that would provide a challenge, but not be too devastating. I looked at Wraith, for example, but a Wraith could easily one-shot any of the casters in the group and instantly kill them, which isn't fun. What should I be using instead? Remember that each individual fight doesn't need to be too hard, I just want the group to start feeling the strain of resources getting exhausted.

Secondly, the primary DM (who I am running a single session for) has said I can level up the party to 6 during the dungeon. Does this essentially heal the whole party and refresh their spell slots, ala most RPG games? I'm a bit confused how this part would work, tbh.

Thanks for your help, and big thanks to everyone who answered my last question about a Kobold Brewery. It was a blast, and the party loved it, particularly some of the traps that y'all came up with. By the time the party escaped, the entire brewery was on fire, which was amazing.

Appreciate your help!

Today we had the first session of my first DnD campaign as a player. Myself and another player both showed up with clerics with a hermit background. Not only that but both of us have the deaths of our mothers as key backstory. (We're different races, though.) The birthday paradox is at play here. Get a half a dozen people showing up with independently created characters and you're more likely than not to have two of the same class.

Still, it weirded me out, like we're copycating each other or something. I haven't been this weirded out since I found out another person on the cross country team had the same middle name as me. (I have a unique first and last name, so I'm not used to sharing a name with other people.) I'm probably definitely overthinking this. It doesn't help that this is my first character and I'm self conscious about the whole thing.

Have any of you other Tilda Swintons ever had a character that was similar to another player in your party? How did you react? How did they react? Have any of you had a hermit cleric with a dead mother?

So I'm running a D&D 5e campaign, and so far have been doing "theatre of the mind". But it has it's limitations when I want the players to use actual combat strategy in some areas. I have experience a few years ago with using a 25mm paper grid for 3.5e and Pathfinder, which worked well because it was quick to draw a map with whiteboard marker.

Now I have a 3D printer, and I'm wondering if anyone has any dungeon tile recommendations, considering the following:

Firstly, are there any systems that are quick to assemble/disassemble as the players discover new rooms, or we need to clear table space?

Second, stability of the map is important. If a player knocks the map with their hand, will everything collapse, simply shift slightly, or is it rigidly held together?

Third, community: A larger community that contributes (and takes contributions) would be better than a propriety system that doesn't allow homebrew designs.

I've seen a few systems (openlock, openforge, and almost any keyword combination that I can think of is on kickstarter), but I'm finding it hard to get a feel for how popular the systems are, and how well they actually work when on the table.

Does anyone have any recommendations on a good system? I guess i'm most interested in the game flowing smoothly, but I'm not opposed to going to a blank paper grid if that's really the better solution.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I'd really like to hear others' experiences as well.

Without getting into too much detail in the OP, I find myself constantly needing to reflect upon my actions due to things that transpire in my group's weekly D&D sessions. I need to constantly examine and readjust my behavior so that our group can survive.

I don't mean "survive" as in our characters, nor reflect upon my character's actions. I mean my own. The way I express myself to others. The lack of attention I have given to my teammates when they narrate their dazzling combat maneuvers. The visible disinterest in an RP dialogue that doesn't involve my character which makes my friends uncomfortable and unable to enjoy themselves. The offhand comments I make about a character, or the DM, that has a huge impact on the player (it's easy to get hurt when you put your heart into building a world or a hero and someone slights that). The time I knocked my friend's character unconscious to beat the bad guys, which resulted in him sitting there for multiple turns just watching us play. All of these things have had a real, out-of-character impact on us as a group, and have caused major conflicts.

Our group is still going strong. We are working hard on being good friends to one another. But we're all really putting our heart into this game and it's so easy to hurt one another. It's been teaching me so much about being a patient, respectful, and "honorable" human being. I'm shocked, honestly. I hope I haven't hurt my friends too much on the road to this path.

How about you, Tilders? Has D&D just been a game to you, or have you also found an avenue for personal growth?

So since we no doubt have many rpg gamers amongst us, I thought I'd start a weekly or bi monthly thread to post about looking for groups, looking for members and the like. So if you want to, why not come and make a post.

I myself happen to be looking for people who'd be up to play a spot of Shadowrun or preferably Cryptomancer.

Hi, im looking for some reccomendations of short campaigns, like 3-4 months sort of thing- I'm planning to run in 5e, but im pretty open to any other systems people can recomend- what are peoples faves, what are they playing through at the minute?

I have started playing D&D basic with my family as a way to spend time together away from devices.

I found the original character sheets:
http://www.ultanya.com/2015/10/throwback-thursday-character-sheets.html

Anyone else have favorite character sheets for D&D?

So our little group gained an extra player and after our last session two people were going away for sometime (married couple) so our DM came up with a fantastic way to introduce our new person, our DM asked all of us to come up with a backstory for our characters and what he did was very creative.
We are playing The lost mine of Phandelver, our last session we had run into a Nothic not long after we had a long rest. So our DM set the scene that our married couple would watch over us while the rest of us went to sleep, this is where the backstories we created came up. We all had reoccurring nightmares about the worst moment in our lives and had to change the pivotal point of the dream, as each of us changed the dream they would pop up into the next person to help along the way. Once the dreams were all complete we found ourselves in a 5th dream with an unknown Gnome wizard who fought a necromancer and became cursed and was the Nothic, once we broke that spell our new member joined the party.
I should add this was the first time our DM tried anything like this and since we are all rather new to the world of table top RPG it was really great.

So how was your last session? anything fun or not so fun happen?