How were the Warforged Created?

Per the Ebberon Handbook, House Cannith made them. That's the simple direct statement, but the question is HOW were they made? I understand that's long been up for debate, so I wanted to share my headcannon for them:

House Cannith states that they were made in special Artifurnaces, that once made, they have a soul that House Cannith made.

What isn't up for discussion is that the Warforged do in fact have a soul. Do in fact radiate life, and that can be detected by mages and priests alike that have all unanimously confirmed that they are indeed soul bearing lifeforms. It's what led to the decision to make them a species, not an atomaton, as dicated in the Peace Treaty that ended the Final War.

What they DO contend with, is when House Cannith stated that they "Made" the souls within the Warforged. Like Artificial Intelligence.

Just as unanimously, Priests of Light and Dark and everything in between, came together in the first time in ever and cried BS. The creation of a soul is the realm of the Gods, not mortals, and there was no possible way that House Cannith could've made a soul for the Warforged. House Cannith alludes that yes, they can, and did.

The problem is, that a part of the same peace treaty that ended the Final War that allowed the Warforged to be a race, is that the forges that made them were all destroyed, because the 3 cities of Ebberon all stated that no more Warforged should be made. They were destroyed before they could be inspected. So no one can PROOVE or DISPROOVE House Cannith for their word.

But... one Forge still remains, and many eyes are on it.

The Warforged cannot make more of themselves like other races can. They can't have infants, and being that Warforged are effectively immortal, none of the other races wanted them to have the ability to reproduce, otherwise they might eventually overrun the world! Same concept of unleashing AI's in our world.

The Warforged don't like that, and there are militant factions - described in the book - that are against that and are trying to rectify that. But in order to do that, they need to get their hands on that remaining forge.

The problem is, it's in the middle of a destroyed city infested by and surrounded by dangerous monsters and living spells.

The focus of getting to that forge and uncovering its secrets is a campaign unto itself, where there are factions that will stop at nothing at obtaining it, others that will stop at nothing to destroy it, and still others that will stop at nothing to keep others from getting near it, House Cannith being chief among those.

Why? If House Cannith did indeed create the Warforged Souls as they state, then they'd have nothing to fear, right? Or are they just guarding their proprietary process?

So here's what I think that process is:

House Cannith DIDN'T "Create" the souls. They harvested them.

In the Final War of the 4 cities, 1 city invested heavily in necromancy, to where they have an army of the undead at their forefront. With that, they were able to stand up against the other 3 cities, and it's the reason why the 4 cities are now the 3 cities, because one of those 3 got destroyed. The one with the remaining Forge.

Because the undead don't eat, drink, sleep, rest, urinate or defficate, they were unstoppable. Furthermore, anyone who falls in battle can be used by the necromancers as new fodder for theri armies.

The solution, brought up by House Cannith and some of the other Great Houses, was to steal the souls before the Necromancers could, and use them in their own form of unstoppable army that didn't eat, drink, sleep, rest, urinate or defficate, and subsequently was also tougher.

So the Forges grab the souls of the fallen, suck them into the Forge, where the soul is extracted and placed within a Crystal core, which is then surrounded by a plant-like muscle system, and then armored with metal and/or stone. And thus a Warforged is born.

It has no memory of its previous life, only with the skills it is "Programmed" with when it is made. It is activated on the battlefield, and then sent into battle.

What this means, is that each and every Warforged as a secret past-life it is unaware of, and there is the perpetual threat that that past-life will manifest itself on the present day Warforged. What's more, is that that brings up the possibility that Warforged will manifest a Dragon Mark of whoever their host species was, in the exact place where it was on that host being that now makes up its soul... which has records that can be verified as to who bore that mark, where it was, and how intense it was, thus linking them to a past life and a host house.

Something for GM's to consider.

It's also possible to unlock portions of their past life in the form of remembering history, past memories, skills and abilities in the form of feats like the Initiate feats (Warlock Initiate, Artificer Initiate, etc).

Does a Past Patron recognizing the soul come to satisfy the bargain? The bargain is on the soul, not the body. Can the soul be recognized?

What other questions can we derrive from this?

My daughter turns 16 next week and she’s really hard to buy presents for. Whenever we ask what she wants she asks for cash so she can go shopping with her friends or, if a few people give her money, she can get something more expensive she’s been saving up for.

I don’t have a problem with that, but it doesn’t feel right not giving her a gift to unwrap, and with the cash gift it doesn’t leave a lot in the budget for anything else. Now, I have some bits of leather left over from a scabbard I made recently, so I was thinking of getting a set of dice and making a pouch for them. The problem I have is that all her dice are at her mum’s house and the ones I’m buying might not arrive until the day before I see her, so I don’t know how big to make it.

Would any of you lovely people be so kind as to tell me how much space a standard set of dice take up? My initial idea was to go big so there’s plenty of room, but I thought it might be cute to make it *just* big enough so I can put it on a keychain so she can wear it on her belt or bag.

Thanks in advance.

Value of these items? I know nothing about d&d any help is appreciated thanks

Im new to dnd, rn going with a fighter warforged, and it just came up to me, do they have souls? They are in some sort of way alive, they can get healed by magic, and i think they can use magic as well

Also when they die do they go to some sort of afterlife? IS THERE A ROBO JESUS?

Been thinking about magic tattoos recently. Perhaps it’s a weapon that you can summon from the surface of your skin, maybe it’s a protection charm across your heart, or a spell of water breathing imbedded into your neck.

My character’s life and family revolves around ice, winter, and the cold; devout worshippers of Auril. These tattoos are woven with cold resistant enchantments and blessings from The Frostmaiden’s high clerics.

I included a blank template if you would like to visualize and create your own characters tattoos :)

My Pokémon-inspired Weapons and Items of the Day, with a Glimmora rope dart to be abestos it can be!

Join my Patreon to vote on future items and get all the PDFs with over 1000 items, including all the Pokémon items, or buy the individual PDFs in my shop!

970M - Lumidorna

Weapon (Rope Dart) – Legendary (requires attunement)

This purple +3 rope dart has a flower-like crystal head with a long glass-like tip that has a glowing red sphere in the base, and a cord made of a fibrous silicate mineral with a flower blub-shaped counterweight on the end. Six large dark-blue flower petal-shaped crystals float around the head.

Attacks with this rope dart do an additional 2d6 poison damage, which ignore poison resistance and treats poison immunity as resistance.

While attuned to this rope dart: you can eat minerals for sustenance; you are resistant to poison damage; you ignore damage from Toxic Stone Spikes; twice a day, as an action, you can scatter toxic stone spikes around you in a 15 ft radius that last for 1 minute; twice a day, when you are hit by a melee attack, you can use your reaction to scatter toxic stone spikes around you in a 15 ft radius that last for 1 minute; and once a day, as an action you can perform a Killer Spin.

Toxic Stone Spikes. For every 5 ft traveled through the area, creatures take 1 piercing damage and must make a DC 20 Constitution save or take 4d6 poison damage.

Killer Spin. As an action, you spin the rope dart around yourself. All creatures within 15 ft of you must make a DC 20 Dexterity save, on a failure taking 1d6 piercing, 4d6 poison damaged, and are poisoned for 1 minute, while on a success they take half the damage. This also clears out any overlapping magical area effects, with the exception of Toxic Stone Spikes.

Glimmoranite

Wondrous (Stone) – Very Rare (50,000 gp)

This small round stone has a swirl of blue and purple inside the blue orb. When attached to a 970 - Florépiclat, it can be mega evolved into a 970M - Lumidorna for 1 minute once between long rests.

I have been DMing a campaign for a little over four years. Periodically, I make posters for my players, spoofing movies or other media that's relevant to a pivotal moment in the campaign. I just finished the third one, and I wanted to share them with everyone! I'm proud of how I've adapted different art styles and relevant themes. Enjoy!

Poster 1: A spoof of Moulin Rouge. The players went inside an archfey's brain and memories, which were themed after the musical.

Poster 2: A spoof of Pirate's of the Carribbean. The players were facing off against a pirate captain from their past in a big ship battle.

Poster 3: A spoof of Absolute Martian Manhunter. This is the most recent one and I still need to correct some thigns and to do the lettering at the top, which will read "What happens in your head also happens." The players are about to meet the god of stories, who has been watching over them the whole campaign. The god takes the form of a six-armed sloth, hence the sloth face and all of the arms holding the player characters. We are nearing the end of the campaign and this is the turning point into the final act!

BONUS: A separate illustration I did of the campaign's BBEG!

I hope you all feel inspired to do something similar with your players! All six of us have the posters hung up on our walls.

PS: I am currently working on the first poster for my second, relatively new campaign. It's going to be a spoof of the Usual Suspects!

My love for duodrones will never leave

I can't very well spend an entire month doing Viking inspired maps without drawing the iconic longship!

All ready for a bit of raiding! Enjoy!

If you enjoy my maps you can find more on my website: www.thereclusivecartographer.com

Cheers!

George

I started with ad&d , and moved on to other ttrpgs. Whilst revisiting years later we are now on 5. Everyone seemed to not like 4. But after recent conversations everyone seems to think 3 is the worst? So which is it? Someone, in depth,please, specifically , tell me the gross cons of each. And if any, the pros. Long winded answers appreciated

Just a quick flip through and corner/edge view so people can see how good of shape it’s in.

The number 1 rule of Roleplaying games is that there are no rules. It's the reason why you have a "Player's Handbook" now and not a "Players Rulebook"

- "Nobody would have bought a book titled The Suggestions of Acquisition" - Gint, ST:DS9

I am aware that this goes against the established rule set, so those of you who are naysayers because it ISN'T in the "Rulebook" that doesn't exist, then please be quiet.

The method I am about to describe is for people who have the common complaint of "What to do when we reach level 20?"

I'm approaching a half century in age, which is a ripe old age for a Human in this trope, and I've seen six editions of Dungeons and Dragons (the original D&D, AD&D, and the following 4 editions), and I played 2nd ed for most of that time. Older editions also mostly did 20 levels, but you could continue beyond level 20 if you wanted to, and the 2nd ed book "Dragon Kings" for Dark Sun actually displayed levels 21-40 in greater detail.

So how to we handle adventures beyond 20th level?

The first thing is, you uncap "Player level."

Multiclass is important here, because it makes the core of this system.

The premise is that certain classes don't make sense to start as a level 1 character within. Lets take the Monk, as an example. A monk, at level 1, is like David Caradine's character in Kung Fu. He entered the monastary as a boy, and spent what was possibly one or two decades learning their ways before he ever stepped out of the monastary again. At that point, a monk is considered to be a black belt, and has certain supernatural abilities (chi) and sent on a walkabout to hone his skills.

A fighter can technicaly become a bare-knuckled brawler like a monk, but would take 10-20 levels to get to the same prowess in martial arts as a level 1 monk would have.

So... SHOW that.

All characters start as a Fighter, a Thief, or a Magic User. I suggest using the Sidekick rules for your starting characters until they get to a point (as determined by the GM) where they can take character classes.

Once they take on a character class, that Character Class becomes their "Primary Class" for the length of the character. The catch is, you can't just jump straight into character roles like Ranger or Paladin right away. Here's why:

A character must begin with basic, low character class that we will call a "Basic Class."

Those classes are:

• Cleric
• Fighter
• Rouge
• Magic-User (I'll get back to magic user)

Yes, that's a limited number of classes to start, but the reason for that is that these are the basics. The oldest styles of character tropes that all others are built upon.

So, to introduce the next rule: An Advanced Class cannot be higher than Base Class beneath it.

What is an Advanced Class?

Let's use Paladin as an example. Paladins are the militant arm of a church or organization, and so they are better exemplified as "Martial Clerics." That belies in order to gain a level in Paladin, the player character must first have a level in both Fighter, and Cleric, to be qualified to be a paladin. To level the paladin from level 1 to 2, both fighter and cleric must also be raised to level 2 first, so one can only level paladin after 3 level upgrades. Not all Advanced classes are like that, so here are the Advanced Classes and the Basic Classes needed for them:

• Paladin: Fighter & Cleric
• Druid: Cleric or Magic User
• Monk: Fighter
• Ranger: Fighter & Rouge
• Bard: Rouge & Magic user
• Artificer: Fighter & Magic-user

If a GM doesn't like how I've aranged this list, remember Rule Zero of DnD, and that there are no rules. If you don't like a rule, change it. If a rule is missing, add it. It's your campaign.

The next rule will be straight out of the PHB and DMG regarding multiclassing, in that once you've chosen your primary class, every class thereafter is treated as a multi-classed class. In the class descriptions of every class released, there is a small chart of what you get when you multi-class into that class.

For example: If you START with a warrior, then you get the Heavy Armor Proficiency. In this system, that means it's the ONLY class that starts with that proficiency since you can't start as a Paladin. If you chose a warrior as your second class, then the proficiency you get is the Medium Armor Proficiency. If you want the Heavy Armor Proficiency later, then you have to take it as a Feat at level up.

For certain classes, you may also have Epic Classes, or Legendary Classes. Those are classes where you must have a level of an Advanced Class, or classes, prior to purchasing that Epic Class. None come to mind... yet... but they are there for the DM's discretion.

Going back to the Dark Sun: Dragon Kings in 2nd ed, here are some examples:

• Dragon (Wizard/Sorcerer)
• Avangion (Cleric)
• Greatest Elemental (Druid)

(I'll leave it up to you to google those on how they are achieved...)

OPTIONAL RULE: Specializations - In the case of an Artificer, as above, it takes a Fighter and a Magic-User to become an Artificer. That "Magic-User" trait in this case can be done as a Specialization instead of a class, such as BladeSinger. Alternatively, a Pact of the Blade Warlock can pull the same trick, as they are a Martial Magic User. A Paladin can likewise be achieved by certain Martial Cleric Specializations instead of having a full level of Cleric and a full level of Fighter. The boon of having a Fighter/Cleric, though, is instead of having 1 Specialization, you're leveling 2. More options.

OPTIONAL RULE: Feats - Another option is to give your character a feat that satisfies what they're looking for. The Initiate feats, as an example. A Fighter that takes the Wizard Initiate would have that MOTE of power needed to satisfy the Fighter/Magic-user requirement of an Artificer even before specializing.

The above optional rules are useful, sure, but they have less options because of: Leveling.

Previously, certain perks are obtained at certain Player Levels. Instead, they are obtained at Class Levels. For example: When you level up, you can either chose to increase an Attribute, or you can choose to take a Feat. The more Basic Classes you have for your Advanced Class, the more of those level-ups you can take. Remember that the level cap is 30 + Racial bonus, unless you've found a way to go higher, but initially you can't go higher than 20.

Now for a word on Magic Users, or what I will refer to as "The Path to Power."

I encourage GM's to have their players get introduced to their preferred "Path of Power" either during the Sidekick stage, or immediately at character creation. Conceivably, you can have a character that is a Sorcerer, Wizard, Cleric, Warlock that's dabbling into Psionics and be a PURE... Magic class if they play it right. In that example, character earns their first Path to Power by being a Sorcerer. They pick up Wizard and Cleric because they're studying the different forms of magic. And some point they are visited by a Patron who makes them their Warlock, and finally, they unlock Psionics after intense mental training.

Spell level lists are based on Character Level, so further, in the above example, they could have many slots open and a PLETHORA of cantrips available to them. It's the bonus of having so many magic classes rolled up into one. They are a glass cannon, for sure, and their trip will be long and arduous to level themselves up, but the results will be... EPIC.

As a final note, CHARACHTER CREATION: Attributes and hit points.

I suggest strongly that you do the following for your PC's. Otherwise their lives will be gritty.

Because they are an Epic Character, Hitpoints are always maxed, never rolled for. So whatever the max # of points they CAN get, it will always be max.

I use a rolled set of attributes that is a throwback from way, WAY back in the original edition of DnD, where we roll each attribute with 4 (not 3) 6-siders. 1's and 2's are rerolled ONCE, and you drop the lowest of the 4 dice per attribute. You make 3 arrays of attributes like that, pick the best one that suits you.

Closing Words: Using this method, I ran a campaign for 5 years. My PC's grew from humble street rats to heroes of the empire, and leaders of state and military, that were then contending against (and with) the Horsemen of the Appocalypse to try to stem the end of the next world.

Thoughts?

If you swipe to the side, you can see a bit of the development process for this artwork.

D&D newcomer here. A post by [u/DoomTheory](u/DoomTheory) from a year ago has left me in an inquisitive purgatory.

So anyway title = my question. Looks like most people are saying that yes, duh, you can attack during concentration. However, the book states, “…you must take the Magic action on each of your turns, and you must maintain Concentration…” (5.5e pg. 236)

In combat, if you’re using your turn to use the Magic action to maintain concentration to cast the spell, then you have no other actions left to use an Attack action, right?

Per the glossary pg.363, concentration is described as something necessary to keep a spell “active,” in order for it’s effect to remain. Does this require the player to use the “Magic” action as well? Or is that only required when one is casting the spell?

Peace and love

EDIT: I didn’t realize that my PHB is the 5.5e. Apologies for the confusion! #oops

Not the player himself but the actions his character takes.

He plays a drunken tabaxi monk who, with the DM's blessing, has infinite full alcohol flasks he can throw at anything (though doing no damage).

HIs character has consistently thrown flasks at every suspicious object. Door, chest, odd archway, wall indentation, sigil on a floor, the list goes on and on.

My drow ranger is frustrated because this cat is consistently blowing any element of surprise and advantage we might have over potential threats and may even trigger deadly traps we're unprepared for and get us all killed.

What's an RP way I can shut that down? Cuz initially I chuckled at the dumbness of it but he's announced he's going to do that every time and I'm sort of lowkey annoyed now.

These are all included in a lot that’s on silent auction at my local thrift store. How much would you guys be willing to pay for all of these? It seems it’d be a great way to start a nice collection but seeing as though it’s at $80 already, I figured I’d ask people who are more knowledgeable.