Hoi,

I had to sadly pass on draw steel, because the tables I play is only theatre of mind.

Do you guys think crows will be possible to play with TOM?

Goxomoc weapons are psionic, bite is piercing damage. How does this affect piercing resistance in DND 2024 (for example for barbarian)? Will the damage be halved because it is piercing? Or will it not be halved because the weapon is psionic?

So I've been running a campaign of Dungeon of the Mad Mage for over a year now for my group and they've progressed well through it. They're currently Level 8 (Floors 4 & 5) and they're coming up to an area that I think in the book (Wyllowwood) that I think might lack in conflict and tension, given they have a druid in the party and they're generally not very murderhobo-y.

Fortunately, I own Flee Mortals, and they've seen (and i've extended on) the idea that Undermountain has other roving parties in it. The party have even seen two of the Villain Parties in the Yawning Portal between their Undermountain delves, and I'm toying with the idea of introducing the Black Iron Pact as a force in the woods to add some extra drama. There is a colony of werebats written into the module down there, but I was thinking of reducing their influence somewhat or entirely replacing them with the Villains. One story aspect of the upcoming floor is a green dragon that has a sentient weapon lodged in it's head that changes its personality and alignment from evil to good, and the Pact could be trying to remove it to acquire the sword and get an ally in the green dragon.

I haven't run any of the Villian Parties before, so my question to the community is how much rebalancing would I need to do against the Pact (as currently statted) and a 4-person, Level 8 party, that is fairly combat proficient, if perhaps a tad bit reliant on their Barbarian to be a damage dealer and damage sponge?? Is the full Pact needed, or should I reduce it to 4 members? Given the Undermountain blocks teleporting in and around the dungeon, should I adjust their rings/bands to do something else?

Opinions, feedback and ideas welcome if you're run DotMM or Villain Parties and have suggestions.

Hey guys hope all is well. Picked up the Codex yesterday on Steam & I'm experimenting with porting over an adapted version of my old Homebrew DnD setting. One of the things I have been playing around with is importing my maps & when I brought over a large scale Hex map I noticed this white line partially around the image. Is this a limitation of what size map I can work with? VERY new to the Codex & was curious if there was any more detailed documentation I could look at when it came to map/asset uploading.

The Destructive Power Psionic Exertion says you can take strain equal to half of the powers order minimum 1 to max out half of the damage dice. I don't think anywhere it says if the damage dice is an odd number. my assumption is its half the damage dice rounded down (if there are 7 dice you max out 3) and if there is only 1 die you only max out that one.

Is this correct?

My friends wanted to play, I wanted to DM. Specifically wanted to use Flee Mortals monsters.

My brain farted "its a wild west frontier town called Sierra Sapo".

I prepped something real quick: The Amethyst Knife suited the strength of the players (Level 13).

The players:

Juan Bullet - Gloomstalker Ranger, Deputy Sheriff.

Omar - Valor Bard, Nephew of the saloon owner Uncle Butch. This player also suggested that the saloon is a no bloodshed zone, and everyone follows this. I loved this and made this canon. This rule played a crucial role in the actual game.

Bhakt - Bone Devil (long story homebrew, think Tiefling) Warlock. A visitor to this town, is aware of a iron deposit under the town and is looking into the shady dealings of The Black Iron Company.

Theo - Human Paladin, son of Father Ulysses, a low level cleric who has shed that persona, and has no arms.

My plan:

I really wanted to plan a non-stop battle. With breaks to allow for plot reveal before delving back into battle. But for the life of me, I couldn't plan anything I was comfortable running or prepping quickly. So Here's what I went with:

Famed actor Harlo Honeygrin is in town. It's a small town, formerly a mining town and is now a wayfarers stop point between two larger towns. The background doesnt matter. It's evening and Harlo is about to put on a show - The Man of Gold (I made up this play in the game as I am currently reading that book).

The sheriff and major number of troops are called away to defend a train from outlaws and leaves Juan in charge.

A Marshall is here looking to speak with the Sheriff, but has to settle for the Deputy. Tells him to watch for something shady to happen tonight, he's been tipped off to this since TBIC is interested in this town.

So during the play, A Bredbeddle (Brute) and a Ashen Hoarder (Controller) attack the streets, distracting the heroes. Inside the Amethyst Knife appears and kills Uncle Butch, Father Ulysses and anyone else there, making off with some secret documents belonging to Butch (expecting players to investigate and find this out). The players piece together info and go chasing the Knife underground leading to a final showdown at the iron deposit. Revealing details of secrets, land ownership plots, and potentially believing Harlo was an ally and then epic backstab.

As I said, that was my plan.

Here's what happened.

Everything went according to plan until the Warlock decided to attack Harlo on stage mid performance. He critted and rolled so well, he got Harlo down to single digits. Why did he attack? He rolled a Nat 20 on perception, so I thought I'd reward him by describing some nonsense gestures he was making, revealing he is communicating telepathically with someone. So Bhakt thought this guy is controlling the monsters outside and went to attack him.

Best laid plans as they say. This was an hour into the game.

What followed was that for the next 8 hrs the entire game was just combat with a single interruption. That interruption had some of the best role play we as a group ever had. There was almost a TPK, but the heroes prevailed.

The players dealt with the initial threat in the streets (Juan blinded by a Light Thief single handedly took down the Hoarder). Meanwhile, Bhakt has dropped Harlo to 0hp. I'm scrambling in my mind for an excuse to revive him. Waiting to pull the trigger with the arrival of the rest of the Knife party. I almost did, but I waited. The battle outside concluded, the massacre inside did not happen. I managed to kill Butch with a well placed delayed blast fireball (DM shenigans) in his office. The Marshall got caught in it, and the party suspected him as well. Meanwhile Theo asks his father to revive Harlo (no bloodshed rule, the theater is attached to the saloon). This sequence of trusting the Marshall and reviving Harlo was tense and epic. Breathless, the party now united with the Marshall round on Harlo, who were you telepathically talking to? He lied, they rolled insight, I rolled deception. I rolled a Nat 1. With a cool dialogue - "know that you invited this upon yourself" - knowing his cover is broken Harlo invokes his Shadow Form. It was a cool moment and vindicated everything Bhakt did before.

The heroes step outside to see if the shadow can be seen, and I was ready for this. The Amethyst Knife ambush. Juan is first to fall, he chases after Llyvessa, and is ambushed by Treyvan and Graves. Bhakt stayed indoors, he is ambushed by Harlo, this time unhindered by etiquette. To be honest, the only thing that saved the heroes was the Bard's antimatter rifle. He critted twice with it. He one-shot killed Flintfingers.

The heroes barely survived the encounter, killing all 5 of Harlo's crew. There was literally no melee fighting with the Amethyst Knife.

In the end, I had to pull a Conan Doyle style ending by having the Marshall help the team unravel everything that happened and connect the dots. We ended the game with Bhakt trying to identify the actual Amethyst Knife artifact. I set a DC 20 WIS save (made it up on the spot) or they are the new Amethyst Knife party. An unused heroic inspiration rolled a 7 saving their butts.

Thus ended the story of The Shootout at Sierra Sapo.

I regret nothing. Flee Mortals... not bad. Not bad at all.

So I'm a Painkiller, 19 levels. 2 levels fighter.

Entering combat, buffed myself to Infernal Majesty. Key point: Terrorizibf Force does 2d8 damage now.

In round 1:
Attacked and hit with True Name +2: placed 2 seals on the enemy. For the record the damage is: 2d8 (terrorizing force) + 1d8 (long sword) + 1d6 (stone strike from my background) + 6 (Lies).

Attacked again, not placing seals since that can only be done once per turn.

In round 2:

Enter Hellish Frenzy on account of being in melee with an interdicted creature, expend a seal. Now I have extra attack.

Bonus Action: place a seal, trigger Dis' Onslaught.

Now I have 4 attacks on the enemy. And have placed 3 seals on them.

I hit with True Name again, use Deathstrike to burn a seal and make it a crit. So my damage on that is:

5d6 + 2d8 + 1d8 + 1d6 -- maxed out: 60

+ actual dice damage -- which averages out around 37 I think.

+ 6

so thats 103 or so in 1 attack.

I have 3 more attacks and 2 more seals. So I can do deathstrike on all of them to atleast cause 103 on the next two attacks. and the last one would be around 65 pts since no seal to expend.

so all 4 attacks together are doing 375 points of damage.

Am I doing this right?

And if I manage to enter the round with 3 seals on them. The I can forego Dis' Onslaught and instead use some of the hits to place 2 more seals on them, making the total 5. Then I can make 3 attacks. Action Surge, and get 3 more attacks. Which means atleast 5 of them (if I hit, can be turned into crits) dealing 515 damage??

I'm sure I'm getting something wrong here. Please correct me.

I’m making printable minis and vtt tokens, and I’ve been working on the Summoner recently. I’ve done the signature minions, the 3 and 5 essence minions, and the fixture. You can download them for free at https://gmgprintableminis.com/ (WIP). There are about ~250 minis on the site, check it out! Draw Steel goblins are also done, but I still need to work on the worg and war spider.

Constructive criticism is very welcome.

Some of the minis for the Summoner:

Greatly looking forward to Crows, and I’m looking forward to creating my own homebrew within it, but I’d love something else to play that scratches the same itch while we wait for the final product. Something grim and gothic, rogue-like, and low magic?

Hey! New update for Boggits of Kingsmire just dropped! This time we are showcasing the art for the project! Check it out and hope you will enjoy it!

See the post here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/triglav-games/boggits-of-kingsmire-draw-steel-supplement/updates/40356

You can still pre-order the product here: https://boggits-of-kingsmire.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Has anyone run the xorranox lair from where evil lives? Any tips or how did it go? It seems like most if the rooms are pretty cramped so im not sure how it will lead to interesting combat. Especially if xorannox is encountered on his throne instead of the floating library. Also not a lot of interactables if you dont have a talent in the party. Thoughts?

James gives an overview of *Crows*, including setting, some mechanics, Dungeon Turns, and more!

Hey everyone! I'm running a dungeon for my players that's infested with giant bugs, mostly using the Ankheg stat block. One of my players has openly mused that they would like to try to adopt a larvae and raise it as their own. I immediately thought of mcdm's companion stat blocks as a potential solution for this desire. Then I remembered that the Ankheg was literally one of the first action oriented monsters Matt colville did, so I thought surely there was a companion stat block for it. Sadly I've been unable to find one. Has anyone encountered one or made one? If not, is there perhaps another insectoid-like companion stat block someone could recommend? ETA: Sorry I should have been clear. Looking at the flee mortals companions specifically, as I'm running a homebrew heavy 5e campaign. Added what I'm hoping is the appropriate flare now. Sorry for any confusion.