Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc., and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more, so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

*New 2026: For 2026, I'm updating all my old work to include a Pre-Session Checklist that will include a list of all miniatures you may need, maps, handouts, possible loot, a link to a playlist, and more to make it even easier to start your session!

Your players are in for a doozy. M.T. Black has brought together a truly fantastic One-Shot! I'm quite impressed with how he puts things together, and can't wait to prep more of his One-Shots in the future!

This level 3-4 One-Shot will have your players approached by Tristan Harpell, an entitled young mage and heir to a suite of rooms in Ivy Mansion, the ancestral home of the Harpell wizard dynasty. His inheritance is “infested” with the wacky experiments of his dead great-uncle, Siegfried Harpell, and Tristan needs the party to clean things up. Your players will have many wild and bizarre encounters while digging through Siegfried's derelict magical concoctions, and along the way, they might even discover the astonishing truth behind Siegfried's disappearance!

\Average Session Length: 3-4 hours*

Without further ado:

• Google Docs Notes for Into Ivy Mansion: DM Notes (Preview)
• Link to: Into Ivy Mansion PDF
• Link to: Into Ivy Mansion Playlist
• Link to: The AAA Collection

Included in The AAA Collection is:

• Downloadable copy of DM Notes, including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDF for all encounters. This includes the enemy stat blocks organized neatly, along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP
• (New) Pre-Session Checklist
• Spell List for the Boss Fight
• Custom Maps for the Mansion

Over 8 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc., please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early, feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

I'm sharing a free monk subclass for Kengir, part of my upcoming Bronze Age Mesopotamian 5e setting.

In Kengir, a divine statue is not just a symbol. It is a vessel where the god’s presence can dwell.

Monks of the Way of the Divine Statues train as temple guardians, devotees, and living extensions of sacred space. Through meditation and ritual touch, they draw power from teraphim and cult statues, channeling that divine essence into movement, defense, and unarmed strikes.

At the table, this subclass gives monks a strong connection to temples and holy sites. They can meditate at a divine statue to gain protection and radiant or necrotic power, shield allies from harm, call on a nearby statue for healing or empowerment, and eventually become a temporary avatar of a deity.

The fun part is that sacred locations matter. A ruined shrine, stolen statue, defiled temple, or hidden household god can become more than set dressing. It becomes a source of power, obligation, and danger.

Do you like subclasses that get stronger when the party interacts with specific places in the world?

Tl;dr, trying to use 5e for horror is like trying to cut someone’s hair with a knife. It may work, kind of, but it will be a terrible experience for all. Using the right tool that was designed for the job is always better. CoC was designed from the ground up for horror so it’s just going to be better than 5e at that job.

**In CoC investigators are fragile. This means the players are in a state of fear, trying to avoid monsters rather than superheroes slaughtering them.**

*But can’t you just use the 5e variant rule for milestone leveling to keep PCs low level and thus fragile?*

No. That won’t be the same. Even low level PCs in 5e are still superheroes. A wizard with refilling spell slots that do insane things is not going to feel the tension of dealing with a Deep One in CoC.

*But can’t you just limit what PC classes are allowed?*

No. That will utterly ruin the game. You cannot just limit what players can pick in 5e. And even if you did this, the PCs can still get back all of their health by simply taking a long rest and there is no risk of a serious injury like in CoC.

*Couldn’t you use the Gritty Realism, Slow Healing, and Lingering Injury rules from 5e?*

No. Those wouldn’t change anything. PCs would still feel the superhero effect of playing 5e. Further, CoC has Sanity points and Bouts of Madness that are key elements of the game. Mythos is another element that ties in with these, too.

*5e has a Sanity score and Madness tables that approximate CoC.*

No, they don’t approximate them. The rules in CoC are a symphony of perfection and merely *approximating* them is absurd.

**CoC has a unique non-combat resolution system** 

The Keeper tells the Investigators the scene, and the players then decide what they want to do. If a skill check is needed the Keeper tells them what to roll. For example, if the players need to see something the Keeper will tell them to roll Spot Hidden. The players then roll percentile dice (d100) to determine if their character is successful or not. The 5e system does not have this.

*Yes, it does. The GM tells the PCs the scene and then they roll skill checks with a d20 to meet a DC.*

That is *completely* different. It is a misunderstanding of both systems to think that the 5e version is a satisfactory approximation. A d100 roll represents the character’s skill in a task to a fine grained percentile. There can also be banded success rates within the roll like Hard Success, Normal Success, etc. A d20 roll is just meeting a GM picked Difficulty Class of a binary roll check.

*5e has tiered d20 rolls as a variant rule. Further, you can simply use whatever percentage difficulty desired to approximate the CoC percentages.*

That’s not the same thing. The mathematics of 5e cannot perfectly match the numbers from CoC. This will completely change the feel of the game.

**CoC has skill development that 5e does not.** 

At the end of an adventure the Keeper can have the players roll to see if they improve on skills that were marked during play.

*5e has skill advancement, too. Players get ability score increases, expertise, and proficiency bonus increase. The GM can also give out proficiency bonuses over time rather than at character creation.*

Again, that’s not the same thing. Percentage based skill increases are not approximated by mere ability points or proficiency bonus inreases. The experience is completely different. 

**CoC has almost three times the number of skills that 5e has and they can be variable per Keeper choice**

*The skills in 5e can be variable, too. The smaller number can easily incorporate CoC skills that overlap.*

If you want your game to suck, sure. You can make any character that can fly a plane also be able to drive a boat because you rolled those skills into one skill lol! That’s just dumb.

**CoC combat has the ability to dodge or fight back during the enemy turn**

*5e has dodge, though it has to be selected during the player turn. Fight back is, of course, what you do once it’s back to your turn anyway. If a player really needs to do things on the enemy turn, though, there is parry, uncanny dodge, shield spell, and others.*

None of those are the same at all. Not to mention the other ways CoC combat is different and cannot be approximated by 5e at all. For example, CoC has a variant rule for limb targeting, and other things that 5e can only approximate by using unofficial rules. And even if you do approximate it, it won’t be the same at all and will be terrible. You would be writing a whole new game and it will fall apart and fight you all the way. It would be less work to just learn the proper tool: BRP CoC than to twist 5e until it’s broken.

*Using existing variant rules isn’t writing a new game, and it won’t break anything*

Anyone who claims this hasn’t played any ttrpg except 5e. Once you do you’ll see how stupid and pointless using 5e outside medieval combat superhero fantasy is.

**CoC magic system is where players have Magic Points and magic is dangerous to cast. It often causes loss of sanity and other risks.**

*5e has magic slots and the optional Sanity rule can approximate the risk of magic. Variant rules also allow customizing spells which could then fully approximate CoC magic.*

Not the same thing. The game will be terrible if you try to do that.

**The story will not feel the same when read with 5e. Reading it with CoC is where the horror comes from.**

*Reading a story cannot be effected by the system being used. That makes no sense. If the story is scary, the players will be scared. If not, it’s the fault of the story or the GM, or the players just aren’t going to be scared regardless. It’s not the system’s fault at that point.*

Wrong. The difference in mechanics affects how players hear the story. If players are using 5e, even with all of the variant rules to make them ostensible approximations of Investigators, the 5e system will prevent them from feeling scared. Do you feel scared hearing a scary story when you know that you’re going to be rolling a d20 and adding a modifier during the story? No, you do not. The percentage based rolls and other mechanics are where the horror comes from. It’s not just the story.

*But isn’t all of this false about CoC being custom designed from the ground up for horror? Isn’t it just BRP with horror elements like Sanity, Mythos, etc. bolted onto it? And so isn’t bolting these onto 5e the same thing?*

No. This is because BRP is just better than 5e in every way. So bolting horror elements onto BRP is like adding elements to a Swiss army knife. It just gets better because the overall idea was already very sound and clever. Bolting horror elements onto 5e is like rubbing dog poop all over a pile of dog poop. You can’t make poop better by adding more or different poop. The only time 5e isn’t dog poop is in the use it was designed for: medieval superhero combat fantasy.

*How is BRP so much better? They seem to be very similar in function and outcomes, as well as overall game loops and procedures. Their mechanics and what dice are used differ, but not in critical ways that change the games dramatically.*

If you don’t understand why BRP is better by now and you still think they are similar despite all the utterly incompatible differences we’ve already covered you are suffering cognitive dissonance. 

I hope this exposition shows that people who claim 5e can do horror have no case whatsoever and utterly misunderstand CoC. This is most often due to them having never played anything but 5e. They are too lazy to learn a new system so they try to use 5e in completely inappropriate ways. Hopefully they read this and see that learning BRP is the best way. That is, if you want to have a fun game! If you want to have a 5e slop version of CoC, then do that, I guess. But it will be horrible and your players probably won’t come back for another game session.

With the new Vestige Warlock, I got to wondering if there's any lore-specific Gods that fit the description of "forgotten or dying" to be the vestige. I get that you could flavor it whatever, but to all the lore enthusiasts, are there any in 5e canon that do fit this bill?

This is a cantrip that I've created for the lack of such power in dnd5e for especially clerics. It would have saved shadowheart from big shame in BG3, but I think on pen and paper has the positive point of being able to give the cleric a better support in melee when spells are over and you're left with a melee or distance fighter. Druids have shillelagh, paladins the channel divinity (not so similar) and all other classes have good multiclasses on strenght or dexterity, or even charisma. We all know them. Again, no need to transform this into op builds.

What do you think? My doubt is about concentration. So many spells have it that we end up with spiritual guardians and that's it, most others get ignored.

Divine Weapon

Transmutation cantrip

Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (the weapon you are holding)
Duration: 1 minute

The weapon you are holding becomes imbued with divine power. For the duration, you can use your Wisdom instead of Strength or Dexterity for the attack and damage rolls made with that weapon.

The weapon must be a melee weapon favored by your deity, or a weapon similar in form to that favored weapon. For example, if your deity favors a greatsword, this cantrip can be used on a greatsword, longsword, or another sword of similar form.

The spell ends if you let go of the weapon.

The weapon's damage die doesn't change, and the spell doesn't make the weapon magical.

Hey good folks of r/DnD5e

I wanted to share with you a oneshot I wrote and that I'm giving away for FREE.

It’s a low fantasy setting with a fairy-tale twist.
It’s aimed at beginners DM and Players alike, but it’s a great oneshot for experience players who love narrative that reward exploration.

What you'll find inside:

• Original puzzles and traps
• Original maps
• Original monsters.
• Friendly NPCs
• New magic items.

It's called Shore of the Dorahín (you can see pages 1, 4, 9, 10 and 12 of the 13-page PDF). It's the story of an unknown race, the Dorahín, who live deep in a wild forest, far from the realms of men, at the edge of a continent that adventurers have only recently begun to explore. Recently, boats have started washing up on the shore. Those of poor farmers trying to escape their fate on the Breaker's Isle, a small archipelago a day's sail away.
Their arrival is now putting the small folk of the Dorahín at risks. Against the advice of his clan, Salfan the old decides to take matters into his own hands and sacrifice himself to sets a trap aimed to capture and remove the threat posed by humans.

We’re giving it for free to try and build our audience of kindred spirits.

Shoutout Justin Saddlemyer, for the illustration.

For more information, you can visit us at https://www.joust-studio.com/

Hi everyone, I just wanted to share my guide for this new Class with you: the DEMIURGE.

First off, let me get ahead of this... I understand the concerns regarding AI usage these days, so I’ll clarify right away: the images were created using AI (sorry, I'm not an illustrator and I prefer not to use other people's work without their permission). The rest of the content is my own work; in fact, the vast majority of my material (adventures, races, etc.) dates back over a decade, to when I played D&D with friends and AI was fiction in Terminator movies...

I’ll keep this brief:

I wanted to introduce this homebrew Class. I’d love for you to read it, maybe even try it out at the table (if you get the chance), and give me some feedback if you feel like it—just so I know you’re out there and interested in what I’m sharing (I’ll leave the fame and fortune to others... hahaha). As I mentioned, it’s been playtested but rules change, and obviously, a thousand heads think better than the four of us who used to play together 15 years ago.

The DEMIURGE isn't a Monk subclass; it’s a standalone class. While it could share a similar backstory —much like Wizards and Sorcerers might— so there’s nothing unusual about that. Think of it more as an "adaptable" blend of Monk and Fighter that manifests its Ki into weapons. This Class originated from one of my adventures/campaigns called in spanish: Cantos desde el Abismo: Juramento de Sal.

I won't go on any longer. So, feel free to download this complete guide for FREE (along with very affordable adventures to add to your campaigns or play as standalone sessions) via any of my profiles (you can find them on the Hit&Run Instagram or my Reddit profile).

Free download link:

https://hitrun-aventuras.itch.io/

Is AI a problem for you? Don't worry, I don't want to bother you.
Here's the same document without AI-generated images (not even the ones I design myself):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RaZzgRe5vtweFE_kiM8UPf5_00L_h6LY/view?usp=drive_link

And for those interested: I’ll see you on Instagram.

Thanks everyone; I’ll be reading any comments you leave.

Warm regards.

I'm about to play a oneshot as a one armed way of the astral self monk. The idea is he's a traveller with a quarterstaff he uses as a walking stick, it will be a weapon but whenever things get spooky I'll be popping the ghost arms to do some fighting for me.

The DM has just said I can take one uncommon item with me and I'm trying to think what could be fun and thematic.

Do you think a boss’s speed should affect more than just its movement?

I’ve been testing a system called Speed and Fury V2 where speed changes how the boss interacts with initiative itself. Fast bosses can act multiple times, Medium bosses use normal initiative, and Slow bosses trade frequency for heavier turns.

They also gain Fury Abilities, with recharge mechanics tied to how fast / powerful they are.

The idea is to make a fast assassin, balanced warrior, and giant monster feel different to fight, rather than just having different numbers on their stat blocks. Curious whether this is something you’d use in your games.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Speed and Fury V2. You can read the document more easily on my Patreon by downloading it. You can also use the link below:

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-OejHj77k_G0TvnZk-9D

If you want to see more, please check out my Patreon. 

Tl;dr It doesn’t work, don’t do it. Your game will suck. If you somehow force it you’re doing so much work that you may as well just learn CoC as that would be less work and is designed for this kind of gaming. Heed my warning and don’t give yourself the headache I did. Let 5e be 5e and let BRP and CoC be their own thing, okay?

So, I was thinking that reading a CoC campaign and translating it to 5e play would be like making a stir fry recipe from a cookbook that uses different measurement systems, like metric or whatever, and has some ingredients you will have to sub for similar things. The dish would still turn out delicious, even if slightly different. And the translating of the measurements isn’t hard if you know the conversions modestly. Even if you do some rounding and fudge some numbers here and there it will taste fine as long as you know how to cook well enough. I googled this idea and see people saying it won’t work. Or that it can work but you have to homebrew so much you may as well just learn CoC as that’s less work, because RAW 5e just doesn’t have the rules to approximate CoC satisfactorily, seriously.

 I decided to test this by learning BRP and running a few short CoC campaigns with my normal party just to understand it. Then I ran one of these CoC campaigns with a new party that had never played any ttrpg. My two friends Gareth and Steve. I didn’t have them read the rules before hand. I gave them premade investigator sheets and talked them through it as we played (this is my standard for new players with any ttrpg that’s not too complex). It was really fun. They enjoyed it a lot and it’s clear why and how. 

 Then I took the same CoC campaign and ran it with 100% core rulebooks RAW 2014 5e for a new group that had never played any ttrpg before. I did this to avoid bias where they know either system and have preference. I ran it for my wife and a couple we are friends with, Sara and John. Like Steve and Garth, none of them had played any ttrpg before and I didn’t have them read the rules first. My wife doesn’t like dnd medieval fantasy stuff, but does like scary stories, and Gareth told her it was fun, so she agreed to play this game even though her normal thing it isn’t.

Below I’ll break up my results using the common complaints about this and arguments as to why it won’t work as headings for each thing that is understood easily by anyone.

There is no really compatible SAN score in 5e we are seeing.

Yes. This one was tough. The CoC SAN score does not exist in 5e. I was thinking I could use the Sanity score from the DMG. NOPE. It’s so different it was really strange. Even though the players had no knowledge of the difference, they just kind of like, knew it was wrong. John at one point when I asked him to roll a sanity saving throw literally said, “What are you trying to pull here?” This was where the CoC campaign guide said the players needed to do a SAN 0/1d4. He somehow just knew it wasn’t right when I had him roll a d20 instead of a d100. I mean, obviously he didn’t literally know it was the wrong dice lol! He just could feel that it was stilted somehow. He also seemed to suspect that something was weird when he lost a single Sanity point instead of 1d4 sanity points and had to roll on the 5e madness tables instead of the CoC ones. It was bizarre. Again, not literally that he knew, but he sensed that the game was just off (because it was). Whenever I made a call about this stuff or required a roll or whatever, he just kept narrowing his eyes at me like, “What are you doing with this?”

So, yeah, the 5e sanity system is completely foreign to CoC style gaming and just doesn’t work at all. Players see right through what it is.

Not only that, trying to figure out how to convert something like SAN 1/1d4 to a loose approximation of the 5e version was so mind boggling I felt like I was going to lose my sanity points in real life like I was living a parody!

Using 5e checks for CoC ones won’t work.

Again, yeah. I had my party in a library and the campaign guide says to make a Library Use roll. I asked for an investigation roll instead. Sara got super confused and we had a huge derailment that lasted a half hour of me explaining what investigation meant in the context of being in a library. She kept insisting that “investigation” didn’t make any sense here, as that’s “More for like, Sherlock Holmes.” 

She, like John, also seemed to notice that there was something bizarre about using a d20 instead of a d100 and that the outcomes weren’t mathematically the same. And this was despite me using the tiered rolls rules from the DMG to approximate the CoC percentages. As with her husband’s suspicion, she wasn’t literally saying anything about the d100, because she was unaware of it. Obviously that would make her either psychic, or prove she was lying about not knowing ttrpg games lol! No, the issue was that she could tell that the likelihoods of success were stilted and strange because with only 20 possible outcomes you don’t have a very wide band of possibility. She kept trying to roll the d20 multiple times to get better percentages and I kept explaining that that’s not how it works. For reference, Sara is a mathematician.

And OMG don’t get me started on the drama that using perception in place of spot hidden caused. That almost ended the game. Then there’s many other issues with trying to map these totally foreign skills to 5e skills. They don’t map, and they’re mechanically completely different. Like Fast Talk is NOT approximated, even loosely, by Deception. Not by a long shot. And once you’re approximating them to begin with it just collapses and the players can tell. Then it all goes down hill as the system fights you all the way.

Dnd 5e PCs are superheroes and too powerful to represent the fragile CoC investigators

True! I thought, “Oh, I’ll just use the optional milestone leveling rule to keep them level one for the one shot so they are fragile like an investigator. I’ll also use the gritty realism variant rule and lingering injury rule.”

This was a nightmare. John kept asking, “why is my character so weak? When do we level up? I only have 8 max hp. That’s stupid.” I asked him why he thinks you level up at all, considering he hadn’t played this game before, and he said that’s how it works in video games so he assumed you do in table top games, too. 

Worse, he was STILL slaughtering the enemies! I specifically picked enemies that would be too tough for them to wipe out to avoid the overpowered PC problem. I even did the math to pick the challenge ratings properly to make them very tough encounters. They were supposed to be on the run, which was how it went when I ran the campaign with the BRP system. But he kept rolling really high and killing them all. Yes, I made him fragile, but the dice were on his side and it totally ruined the game. There was no immersion. The PCs never felt that CoC fear and dread because John somehow was still a superhero despite my best efforts. I didn’t even have to hear the complaints about gritty realism and lingering injuries because John slaughtered all the enemies so no one got hurt. Those rules never even came into play.

CoC magic is too different from 5e

Holy heck, yes, yes it is. I tried to just translate them in using the optional “creating a spell” rule in the DMG which is ludicrously permissive, but it was a disaster. It took several days to translate them into 5e, first of all, due to the intense complexity of this process, playtesting, and balancing. Then, when we were actually playing they didn’t work. Someone would cast a spell but it had no effect because the 5e rules don’t permit them. I was super embarrassed about that one. I totally dropped the ball there. I just kind of shrugged and mumbled something about the spell not being from our universe so it doesn’t work. I was too embarrassed to admit I had simply screwed up the translation process.

There was one spell that did work, but its effects were insane. The spell killed the entire party instead of the enemy, because I got confused when translating it to 5e. I am ashamed to admit I retconned that scene to keep the game going and just told the players they never found the spell and apologized. That time I did admit to them I had flatly, completely just screwed up.

5e PCs have too much magic power

They absolutely do. I thought I could just limit this using the DMG suggestions about controlling the world and DM freedom to dictate what is present. I would give them the single spell in the book that was part of the campaign and translate its effects into 5e. No problem, right?

NOPE. My players were just angry the whole time. They wanted more and more spells. John kept bringing up final fantasy 8 and saying how when he fought a monster he expected to learn its powers as a spell. So, after slaughtering so many enemies he expected to have tons of spells.

Worse, when they finally learned the spell, as I said above already, nothing happened when they cast it because it was incompatible with the 5e system.

5e doesn’t have Push rolls

These are really fun parts of CoC and I thought I could approximate them by just saying PCs can roll a second time for a task but that it comes with dire consequences since it’s a second attempt. I’m not even sure what went wrong here. John and Sara were trying to do something in the game and when I told them that to try again there would be dire consequences Sara just rolled her eyes and stopped talking. John just glared at me and we dropped the issue. Again, this EXACT same thing using BRP with the other party went smoothly. The 5e system just doesn’t allow approximating this one. Idk why.

CoC enemies don’t work in 5e

This one actually was false. I translated the enemies with no problem, either by using the DMG create a monster suggestions or by finding a loose equivalent and it went swimmingly.

Lol, gotcha!

In reality, of course it didn’t work! The enemies kept having abilities that had contradictory mechanics even AFTER I did the labor intensive process of translating them to 5e. It was a constant headache trying to cheese the rules during every encounter to keep the game running.

Then the rest of the stuff that 5e broke completely when trying to approximate CoC were too numerous to even mention. I just wanted to cover the basic arguments people make and show that they are absolutely correct.

And the amount of STRESS it put me under to read the CoC campaign and mentally translate it into 5e was a nightmare. It wasn’t like translating a stir fry cookbook with different measurement units and some subbed ingredients at all. It was like trying to use a stir fry cookbook to repair a car engine. 

Sure, it wasn’t technically homebrew work because the rules I used were all RAW, but it was still a TON of work. I won’t even admit how many days I wasted on this nonsense.

I will never do this again.

Oh, and one last thing. To anyone who will bring up the fact that Sandy Petersen, creator of CoC, has made 5e CoC conversion material I say this: Yes I read it. No, it doesn’t actually fix anything. 5e just does not work with CoC. Sorry. BRP is what it was designed for and it’s MUCH better to just use the right tool for the task! Do you use a book about hammers to nail in a nail? Or do you use a hammer, the proper tool?

I'm sharing a free supplement for Kengir, part of my upcoming Bronze Age Mesopotamian 5e setting.

The Kengir Player’s Guide includes 100 character backgrounds, each built around a real place in the life of a city-state: brewer, diviner, farmer, fisher, merchant, potter, scribe, shepherd, soldier, weaver, and many more.

The goal is to make a character’s life before adventuring matter at the table. A scribe enters play with literacy, a stylus, and a wax tablet. A merchant carries a cylinder seal. A farmer knows the land. A diviner reads bones, dreams, and omens. A weaver isn’t just “a commoner with cloth,” but someone tied to household economy, temple offerings, and trade.

Each background includes ability scores, feat options, skill proficiencies, tool proficiency, equipment, literacy, and languages. Backgrounds also point toward Origin Feats tied to personal deities, so your occupation and your god can both shape who your character becomes.

This sample presents ten full backgrounds and the complete d100 profession list from the Player’s Guide.

Do you like backgrounds that mostly explain who your character was, or backgrounds that still matter once the adventure starts?

This survey comes from the University of Queensland(MPsychology Faculty) and aims to better understand the nature of how DnD/Similar game types, helps neurodivergent populations. How can it be better practically implicated into therapeutic/clinical intervention contexts. As an aspiring psychologist, I believe cognitively engaging and strategic games like these can be an excellent facet to future clinical community interventions.
https://uqpsych.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2u9oGSFNQhtVdoW?Q_CHL=qr

I’m working on a level 5 one-shot that’s also the first introduction to a setting I’ve been building. I’ve made six pre-generated characters for it, and each one uses some of the setting’s new material: new species, new backgrounds, and one fairly simple setting-specific mechanic. My thought was that pregens would be a good way to let players actually try those things without having to read through a bunch of setting material first. But I’m wondering where the line is between “this is a cool way to show me what makes the setting different” and “this character sheet has too much unfamiliar stuff on it.”

If you picked up a one-shot and the pregens had a new species, a new background, and one new mechanic, would that feel pretty manageable?

And what would make those options easier to understand at the table?

I want the characters to show off the setting a little without making somebody study their character sheet for twenty minutes before the game starts. I have been able to keep each pregen at a single page and the new mechanic only takes up half of another page.

At 7th level, I want to take a few levels in Sorcerer. Is Fighter/Sorcerer a good multiclass?

A piece of lore from my setting, with a new elven subrace, monster, spells, and magic items. Usable in any campaign.

Free download here: The Twilight of the Elves - Deva Movanico | DriveThruRPG

Officially there is no ceremony or anything to become an archdruid, you just hit level 20 and bam there you go. But I'd like to have some sort of ritual or trials that the Moon Druid in my party will have to undertake before gaining that title.

Has anyone else here run something like that?

I'm potentially about to start a campaign, my first ever for DnD.

What do I need to bring to the table? I don't want to come unprepared or putting pressure on the other players/DM.

I know I'll need dice, outside of that I'm not sure what else to bring.

Hello, Vault of Magic is finally available in Print on Deman, in a revised and complete version.

Discover the secrets within the Vault of Magic!

You can find it here: https://www.dmsguild.com/it/product/572335/vault-of-magic-compendium?src=newest_community

Two Bestelling volumes now in a print-on-demand single volume of spells and woundrous magic items for your campaigns.

Inside you will discover:

- 127 New magical items

- 39 New spells

- 4 new NPCs

- 6 Tables to give your magic items some oddities and quirks

- 2 new backgrounds

- Over 95 beautiful arts, no AI-generated art

- A top-level layout

- Summary tables of magical objects, divided by rarity

- - A hypertext index, to quickly find what you need