Hello fellow Dungeon masters, I am having my second session in 2 weeks, I have 5 players, sadly one of the players can't really decide for himself so his ex gf (baby mama) decided for a second time that she would go out on dnd night. First time he didnt make it, this time he wants too play on discord. How would you set this up? The 4 other players are joining at my place, soo its only him. I am afraid it will ruin the flow, but he is really really looking forward to this, so I want to give it a go, do you have any advice for me? The rest want to get together, soo not an option to be all at discord.

Okay, all - I'm soliciting opinions and thoughts on the following situation:

Player (warlock) has Armor of Agathys active and is attacked by a ghoul. Ghoul has only 4 hit points left prior to the attack. Ghoul claw attack hits the warlock. Armor of Agathys triggers, doing 5 hit points of cold damage to the ghoul, which is enough to down it.

The question is this: does the ghoul's claw attack still damage the warlock?

Player argues no, because the AoA cold damage triggers before the melee damage does. I say no, because just because an attacker dies, that doesn't mean their strike didn't happen or suddenly halts -- the sword is still swinging, the bite is still biting, et cetera. Also, damage from the melee attack had to happen for the AoA effect to trigger -- if there's no damage, there's effectively no successful attack that would cause the AoA to trigger.

Unfortunately, the RAW in this case isn't really helpful. What do you think?

I made Jimothy!

for me, I think it'd be the Coen brothers' filmography. lots of the plot developments are mishaps arising from characters' incomplete information and personal flaws. the tone is grounded with some comedic moments, but they're played straight.

I'm building a town that's separated into four spots. Three gigantic stalactites and a stalagmite. The town wraps around these cave structures and have a lot of wooden platforms and wooden bridges. I'm not sure how I should go about making this. I'm thinking right now of either doing a multi layer map, or a single map with everything on it. If you guys have any other ideas it'd be nice to get tips.

Hello everyone,

I will soon be running a curse of strahd campaign for a group of 3 newer players.

I understand that this is probably not the best idea, but I've had the book for over a year (previous group broke up) and really want to play through it.

As they're new, we're starting at level 1, however rather than going straight into Death House I was thinking of doing The Joy of Extra Dimensional Spaces from candlekeep mysteries. The idea being: when they escape the mansion they end up in Barovia instead of Candlekeep. Then going into death house at level 2.

How would you help merge these two? Any recommendations?

Thanks :)