#DnD 5e Homebrew

[dungeon-strugglers]

✨New item!✨ Coldhand Ring, uncommon (requires attunement)

This iron band is ringed with frost and embedded with milky blue uncut larimar. The hand upon which you wear the ring is pale and ice cold to the touch. The ring has 3 charges, and it regains all expended charges daily at dawn. You can expend 1 charge while wearing the ring to do one of the following options:

Chilling Blow. When you hit a target with an unarmed strike or a melee weapon attack, the target takes an extra 2d6 cold damage and it must make a successful DC 13 Constitution saving throw or it can’t take reactions and its speed is halved until the end of its next turn.

Ice Javelin. When you take the Attack action, if your ring-wearing hand is free, you can replace one of the attacks with a special thrown weapon attack. As part of the attack, you summon a javelin made of ice and throw it at a target that you can see within range. The ice javelin uses the damage die and weapon properties of a typical javelin. Hit or miss, the javelin then explodes. The target of your attack and each creature within 5 feet of it must succeed on a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 cold damage. If the attack hit, the target has disadvantage on this saving throw.

The cloaked ranger rode into town on a reindeer, and a pall of silence fell upon the villagers. Icicles hung from its antlers and the fringe of the traveler’s mantle was stiff with frost. A young stablehand stepped forth and feebly offered to lodge the beast for the night, but the ranger’s only response was to hold out a frost-blackened fist. The stablehand instinctively responded, and a ring was dropped into his cupped hands… - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for almost 200 magic items (wow!), printable item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️ Thank you so much for your support! 💖

📜 Credit. Art and design by us: the Dungeon Strugglers. Please credit us if you repost elsewhere.

#dungeon strugglers #dnd #d&d #fantasy art #artists on tumblr #artwork #dnd item #ttrpg #d&d 5e #illustration #artist #animation #art #dnd 5e homebrew #d&d homebrew #dnd homebrew #hand drawn #homebrew #d&d ideas #d&d items #fantasy item #item #illustrator #drawings #drawing #dragon #digital #fantasy

[mostlyghostie]

Finished! I think.

A book, scribble and dice based D&D session.

I’ll be exploring the possibility of getting some notebooks printed with this as a wraparound cover, but in the meantime it’s just a fun drawing!

Shop / Instagram

#my art #artists on tumblr #books #illustration #fantasy books #dungeon master #rpg #rpg dice #d&d 5th edition #dnd 5e art #dnd 5e homebrew

[regal-bones]

A blade of swirling smoke and reddened eyes 💨🍃

This started as a joke but I think I committed to hard - happy 420 😎

you can support me on Patreon for £1 and help me keep making art!

#Sword #art #artwork #dnd 5e homebrew #animated #animation #animators on tumblr #illustration #illustrators on tumblr #artists on tumblr #dnd item #dnd homebrew #dnd #5e homebrew #homebrew #item #magic item #pretty #digital art #digital #dungeons and dragons #fantasy #fantasy art #fantasy writing #writing #writing tumblr #dnd commission #digital commissions #commission #Flashing tw

[anim-ttrpgs]

Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

#dnd #dnd5e #dnd 5e homebrew #dungeons and dragons #d&d #d&d 5e #dungeons and dragons 5e #dnd 5e #5e #homebrew #dungeons & dragons #critical role #crit role #dimension 20 #actual play #matt mercer #wizards of the coast #wotc #hasbro #ttrpgs #ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpg tumblr #tabletop #roleplay #roleplaying #roleplaying games #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop role playing game #fantasy rpg

[lonksadventures]

Now that every Startouched subrace is finished I can finally post all six sheets together!

Keep in mind that any lore or art I’ve made is meant as a building block for y’all’s ideas and characters and can be thrown out the window if you want! 💖

I just want to say thank you to everyone who has supported this homebrew project over the last year. The suggestions, ideas, questions and art that you guys have shared have helped me keep up the motivation to finish these guys and I hope you all like the final piece 💖

In the future I may make more dnd homebrew stuff but for now I’m gunna go lie down-

#dnd 5e #dnd 5e homebrew #lonksadventures #procreate #character design #dungeons and dragons #dnd homebrew race #dnd homebrew #dnd art #again tysm to everyone who left such nice comments and support #y’all are amazing 💖 #and if you saw a spelling mistake no you didn’t

[dungeonmastersconsortium]

Limit Break - An Experimental 5e OPTIONAL feature

I posted a while about an experimental feature for 5e that lets players do things not accounted for by the rules, or lets them do Cool Shit™ they wouldn't ordinarily be able to do! This is the VERY rough draft, while I work on tables of consequences for DM's that struggle with improvising or creating such elements off-hand.

Feedback is welcome, but if you're a dick about it, I'll block or ignore you as usual. I know it has been a while since I posted new original content, and this is a new feature/system to tack on to your games, so PLEASE feel free to reblog it for additional exposure so I can get more feedback. More feedback and more exposure means more original content, in the long run!

#dungeons and dragons #d&d #dnd #d&d 5e #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons 5e #dnd 5e #dungeons & dragons 5e #dming #5e homebrew #homebrew #dnd homebrew #dnd 5e homebrew #ttrpg #d&d homebrew #original content #original work

[losttrailsmaps]

Delve into the depths of a mesmerizing aquatic realm, where shimmering coral cities and bioluminescent creatures coexist amidst the currents of magic. This realm harbors arcane wonders, vibrant sea life, and hidden mysteries waiting to be unveiled by brave adventurers!

Howdy everyone! Welcome to another map pack, one that is influenced by a very classic setting!

This pack includes 17 total maps including Ocean Floors, Sunken Ruins, Underwater Temples, and more!

Check out the full map pack here.

My full Table of Contents

#roll20 #battlemap #dnd #ttrpg #battlemaps #dnd maps #pathfinder #dnd stuff #wargaming #dnd5e #dnd art #dnd 5e homebrew #dnd 5e #gurps

[hollowedkingdoms]

Good evening everyone, we have a surprise for you!

We have come a long way since the beginning of this project and after a while of deliberation we thought an update is in order. Here is the new cover of the future players guidebook for the Hollowed Kingdoms Project.

Made by @mebis-art-dump who did an amazing job of bringing this cover to life.

#hollowed kingdoms #hollow knight #dungeons and dragons #dnd 5e homebrew #hollowed kingdoms project #dnd #dnd 5e #art #fanart #cover art #book cover

[homebrew-a-la-traumaverse]

Subclasseptember Day 18: Niche

The Politician - Homebrew Rogue Subclass

Why isn't September the 7th month of the year? Whoever designed this calendar ought to be stabbed.

"Niche" as a prompt was designed to encompass weirder subclass options, ones that probably wouldn't work in every campaign. This one, for instance, could do some absurd things in a subterfuge-heavy campaign, but might not fare so well in a dungeon crawl or a wilderness expedition. But I wouldn't be surprised to see people figure out ways to get creative with the prompt.

#homebrew subclass #my homebrew #subclass homebrew #homebrew #dnd homebrew #5e homebrew #dnd 5e homebrew #subclass #subclasseptember 2023 #subclasseptember #dnd subclass #dnd rogue #rogue #dnd #dnd 5e #dnd5e #d&d 5e #5e dnd #5e #dungeons and dragons #ttrpg #dnd dungeons and dragons #dungeons and dragons homebrew #dungeons and dragons 5e #d&d homebrew #d&d

[not-a-crow-in-a-hat]

The life isn’t for everyone but it’s the life for me

#dungeons and dragons #roleplay #dungeon master #rpg #d&d players #diy #homebrew #d&d #dnd 5e homebrew

[dungeon-strugglers]

✨New item!✨ Friction Wraps Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement)

You have a +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls with your unarmed strikes while wearing these wraps.

Punching with these wraps generates intense heat that is diffused into the target with each subsequent blow. When you hit with an unarmed strike while wearing these wraps, all subsequent unarmed strikes you make before the end of this turn deal an extra 1d8 fire damage. The damage stacks with itself to a maximum of 3d8 with each hit, and then the heat is released and the process starts over. - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for almost 200 magic items (wow!), printable item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️ Thank you so much for your support! 💖

📜 Credit. Art and design by us: the Dungeon Strugglers. Please credit us if you repost elsewhere.

#dungeon strugglers #dnd #d&d #fantasy art #artists on tumblr #artwork #dnd item #ttrpg #d&d 5e #illustration #artist #animation #art #dnd 5e homebrew #d&d homebrew #dnd homebrew #hand drawn #homebrew #d&d ideas #d&d items #fantasy item #item #illustrator #drawings #drawing #dragon #digital #fantasy

[ookamimonster]

the revenant

#dungeons and dragons #dungeons and dragons 5e #red dragon oc #dnd 5e #dnd 5e homebrew #dragon oc #veruxam #digital art #OokamiMonster #warden campaign

[regal-bones]

A blade of creeping mycelium and falling spores for @/platyshroom (Twitter!) 🍄🌀

If you’re interested in getting a commission done yourself, DM me!

Or you can support me on Patreon for £1 and help me keep making art!

#Sword #art #artwork #dnd 5e homebrew #animated #animation #animators on tumblr #illustration #illustrators on tumblr #artists on tumblr #dnd item #dnd homebrew #dnd #5e homebrew #homebrew #item #magic item #pretty #digital art #digital #dungeons and dragons #fantasy #fantasy art #fantasy writing #writing #writing tumblr #dnd commission #digital commissions #commission #Flashing tw

[mostlyghostie]

A new commission, a collection of fictional books from a customer’s D&D game!

Really fun to draw and imagine how all of these fit into a campaign.

Shop / Instagram

#my art #artists on tumblr #books #booklr #illustration #bookstack #dungeon master #d&d 5e #dnd 5e homebrew

[liath-art]

;w; It's finished! I can finally share The Lord of the Forest theme inspired by antlers! The standalone page is already up on my Patreon. The actual 3 page set will be up on my store in a day or two! I am super happy with how it turned out. ;w;

#art #my art #myart #dnd #digital art #digital #dungeons and dragons #character #character sheet #sheet #page #in person #custom #custom character sheet #5e #dnd 5e #dnd 5e homebrew #dnd 5th edition #dnd 5e art #asset #patreon #preview #druid #nature #ranger #antlers #deer #leshen #green

[foundry-fabrications]

Hey folks! It took WAY too long to get this out, but it's finally done. Well, technically it isn't done, but I'll get to that in a bit. One weird thing that needs explanation at a time.

So, as one can tell, I didn't just make statblocks for the behemoths, write some lore, and call it a day. I've discovered that I really don't like making statblocks and dealing with all the nonsense that comes with it (CR is a joke, and I'm not laughing). So, in typical Foundry fashion, I tried doing something weird that requires more work and ultimately still required me to make statblocks anyway. Yeah, I'm not smart. 

So I made them templates instead. And while I was tempted to give up and just do the obvious thing since I was just going to end up with stats anyway, making them templates makes a certain amount of sense from a lore perspective and I genuinely think is an interesting idea worth pursuing. Quick lore tidbit, behemoths are likely the result of normal creatures becoming mutated by aether (it's not certain, but there are signs of this origin from what I've read), so a template makes logical sense. So, as long as I pick appropriate creatures for the template examples, the end result will get you pretty close to the behemoths in game. Sure, they're not perfect, but it would be easy to tweak them to better suit your game.

So the other behemoth in the room is there are only 3 behemoths here. I had intended on releasing them all at once. Turns out there's like 30+ behemoths AND 5 basically legendary behemoths. So, I'm splitting them up into their elemental categories, and the legendaries by themselves. I already have the Blaze behemoths written out, so those won't take nearly as long. As I complete each category, I'll update this post and make y'all aware of the additions. By the end, I'll have one document with all of them in it, a brew to rival Flesh & Bone. 

But for now, a quick break to work on something else my ADHD has compelled me to rework. Stay tuned for that. Anyway, stay safe, don't forget to love each other, and I'll see you next time.

Enjoy my work? Consider leaving me a Tip or supporting me on Patreon! Patrons gain access to high quality PDFs for all of my content, weekly updates, early access, and more!

#dungeons and dragons #5th edition #dnd #conversion #homebrew #5e #dnd 5e homebrew #5e dnd #dnd homebrew #dauntless #slayer #magical items #phoenix labs #monsters #behemoth #giant monsters #kaiju #aether