Travel Times for Cities in Faerun (North)

I was just needing distance between some cities in Faerun for planning travel and ran across a useful post on Reddit.  The thread included a table giving distances in miles.  I'll include it below so it is easy to find.

Making Tools Useful - Herbalism Kit

One of my players recently pointed me at a series of posts on Dump Stat Adventures that focuses on fleshing out what some of the various tools do in D&D 5E.

The post of immediate interest defines the Herbalism Kit and some associated recipes.

Impact of Critical Hits

A little while back, in response to a critical hit rolling snake eyes, my group adopted a house rule as follows:

Instead of rolling dice for damage twice, roll them only once and add the maximum result possible from those dice, example on a critical hit: a d8+2 attack, does 8 + 2 + the result of rolling one eight sided die. This assures that critical hits are impactful, always resulting in more damage than is typically possible. Note: As per RAW, spells that roll a d20 to hit, can critically hit. (Added 11/6/19)

Some things about that rule change are in my mind excellent.  It eliminates the snake eye critical, or more generally all critically that hit for less than a good normal hit.  It also speeds things up by eliminating the need to make extra rolls or borrow dice (though that can be fun too).

Critical Misses

A little while ago, I adopted a house rule that made critical hits more impactful and speeded them up just a bit, that is, critical hits roll normal damage and add the maximum dice roll as a bonus. As an example, a sword that would do 1d8+2 damage, will do 1d8+10.  This causes critical hits to always do more damage than normal hits and eliminates the need to roll an extra die or double the roll (depending on how crits are being handled).

This change feels good to me, it makes crits impactful, that is what everyone expects them to be and it doesn't slow things up, actually steam lines things a bit.

The unintended consequence is that it penalizes damage done via saving throws which can't crit at all, and now they miss out on the possibility of a damage jackpot. It also creates what feels like an asymmetry between impactful critical hits and a simple auto-miss on a roll of 1, a roll sometimes referred to as a critical miss.

Mind Sliver (UA) Allowed?

One of my players asked me recently if he could use the Mind Sliver (MS) spell from Unearthed Arcana on his Wizard.  I'm inclined to be very careful about adding spells that are home brew or a play test status.  It's easy to have unintended consequences that cause ripples that I'd rather avoid.

MS is a cantrip offered to four classes, Bard, Sorc, Lock, Wiz. It  does minor (d6) damage and imposes a d4 penalty on saves if its target fails an INT save.  That is an amazing effect, one of the very few,  perhaps only spammable ability that affects saving throws and it hits INT a rarely targeted stat that is often low and fairly easy to judge before the cast.

Magic Item Costs or Values

The magic item pricing system for D&D 5e, if we can call what it a pricing system, combines uselessness with insanity.  I'm going to delve into my thoughts on the subject in this article and point to what seems like a reasonable alternative.

Scaling Cantrips?

Ism't it curious that the damage cantrips scale while the utility ones do not.  To some degree that makes sense, there are more powerful utility spells covering some of the same things as cantrips, but certainly not all of them.

If utility cantrips were to scale, they must do so carefully so they do encroach on abilities provided by higher level spells.  Fortunately, this and other potential pitfalls have been considered by the OP in this thread: Evolving Cantrips.

I'm far from certain that I want to use the home brew he suggests, but it seems worth a look.

Here is a link direct to the newest (as of today) incarnation of this brew: Evolving Cantrips & Psionic Talents V2.5. The "printer friendly" version isn't browser friendly, it dies in Safari, seems to work in Chrome.

Shadows of the Apocalypse

Joe has recently had the opportunity to join a campaign being DMed by Jonathan in his home brew world, titled: Shadows of the Apocalypse.

To no one's surprise, I have begun a journal and created a background document for Jin my changeling bard.  The documents are linked here, be warned that these reflect his thoughts and view point and as such may both be incorrect and spoilers of a sort, though my intent is they will allow up to date players in the campaign to review events and be ready to play at each session with a good memory of what "just happened" even if it was weeks ago IRL.

Jin's Journal
Jin's Background

Yawning Portal Series

Roy is running an ongoing series of modules, so far from the Tales of the Yawning Portal publication. As of now, we have largely finished the "Forge of Fire," the adventurers needing only to exit the place, we think.

I have started keeping a journal for these expeditions, which I expect to break up into different documents for each module.  The journal can be found at:

Forge of Fire

I have also created a channel on my discord server, if you are playing in this campaign, you are invited to join the server, let me know your screen name and I will be able to grant access to the campaign channel.  Note the campaigns on my discord server are all private.

Bear It D&D Discord

One Shot Adventures

This past Monday, our regular session was canceled as two players were going to miss the session.  There was some desire to run a on-shot adventure, which is a bit of a challenge in our relatively short play window (4 hours at max).  This got me to thinking about how to make it possible to pull off.

We really need two things to be ready to roll quickly, a set of characters and a scenario to run.  That got me to looking around the web and I ran across some useful pages for both issues.

Creating Characters: Point Buy vs Rolls

One of the longest lasting element of any character are his opening stats.  It feels great to roll those dice and get monster stats.  It feels a lot less great to come up with middling numbers. Often times a DM will allow a reroll, but their is a tendency for some people to just accept what they have rolled and possibly be unhappy with it for a long time. 

I've always favored point-buy or similar approaches as they result in the same resources for all players.  This starts everyone off on an even playing field and pretty much assures that class abilities will matter.

I ran across an article that discusses the benefits of point buy on the web, and want to share the link here: Dungeon Solvers: Why You Should Use Point Buy for D&D 5e Character Creation

Another approach that allows rolling stats, is a collective pool.  All the participants roll up their set of stats and then the numbers are put into a common pool. The players then take turns taking the number of their choice from the pool.  Most likely in an order determined by high rolls, reversing in the next round, so that the person who picks first in round one picks last in round two.  The next two sets of rounds can retain the same order or determine new orders.

Discord Server

I just setup a Discord server tto be used as an augment to campaigns I am playing in.  A link is provided in the list to the right and below.

Bear It D&D Discord Server

Much of the content on the server will be private.  You will need to join the server and let Joe know your discord name so that he can set your access appropriately.

Trouble in Dessarin Valley (TDV) Campaign

Joe is running a campaign for a newly created group that recently formed at Huzzah Hobbies.  The campaign is based on the published adventure titled: Prince of the Apocalypse. It being a Wizards published adventure there are plenty of spoilers available online, participants have been asked to avoid spoilers, you know, because they will spoil elements of the adventure. 

Session Notes are shared via Google Docs (they contain spoilers up to the current point of the adventure). If participants wish to have edit authority, please ask the DM for authorization. Because they have been getting long, very long, I have split the most recent sessions into a new doc and likely will keep splitting them as they grow.

• Session Notes -- Level 1-4
• Session Notes -- Level 5&6 
• Session Notes -- Level 7+

Campaign Timeline and an overview of the Fareun calendar has been added to my google docs for this campaign.

Group treasury maintained by Jon: Ellandra Silverhand's Ledger of Coinage and other Assorted Valuables

House rules and conventions in use for this campaign are spelled out in a PDF reorganized in February of 2020. It can be accessed from the list of links in the player's tools section: Joe's House Rules & Rulings.


Corona Home: https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/6351060/trouble-in-dessarin-valley

Factions in Trouble in Dessarin Valley (TDV) Campaign

Factions are like political parties, religious organizations, or secret societies. Players can have connections to some of the five factions: the Harpers, the Order of the Gauntlet, the Emerald Enclave, the Lords’ Alliance, and the Zhentarim. The relationship may be friendly or adversarial. All five factions have their own reasons for opposing the spread of Elemental Evil. However, none fully comprehend the gravity of the threat at the adventure’s start.

From a strict campaign perspective, the factions don't necessarily have a direct impact, though they might become important dependent on develops/