What’s the real difference between a dagger and a scalpel when in the hands of a master. These rogues use their knowledge of anatomy to cripple their target and help their allies. They also have a touch of magic to further augment their talents with life and death.
can randomly generate just about ANYTHING. awesome for dms
Tabletop Audio: background music and sound effects for the ambience.
PCGen – a character creation program that handles all the tricky and tedious parts of building characters, including NPCs.
d20pfsrd.com – all the free information you would ever need to play Pathfinder, an alternative to D&D
DiceCloud: Interactive character sheet that can be edit and shared with yourself or others easily. Pulled up anywhere with internet connection on PC, Mac, or mobile device. Use it to also mark down health, death saving throws, spell slots, experience, and more on the fly.
DnDMagic: List all spells currently available from Player’s Handbook and Elemental Evil.
5th Edition Spellbook app: Make spellbooks for all your characters, manage spells, prepare spells. Keep track of Spell Save DC, and Spell Attack bonus on your mobile device.
Squire – Another character creation and management app. Contains most of the basic info and spells already, with options to create spells, items, classes/subclasses, etc. This is the free version, but pro has more options for DMs, including initiative order control.
RPG Generator – An app that randomly generates things from NPC appearances to criminal gangs. It’s free and a great on the fly DM tool.
Kobold Fight Club: A generator for building and managing encounters. Good options to help narrow your monster picks and will calculate the XP to help you manage the difficulty. You can also save your encounter and it has tools for keeping track of encounters as well.
Medieval Fantasy City Generator: A nice tool if you need to map out a city but are having some trouble coming up with it, or you just need something on the fly.
Donjon: A site with all sorts of generators, tables, and other resources for various tabletop rpgs.
Weak Magic Item Generator: A generator for specifically making items that are weaker than a +1 item in 5e. There are a lot of interesting effects included on this generator and it is fun to play with.
Fantasy Name Generators: A one stop shop for any of your naming needs. There are an absurd amount of generators here.
Give your players a “disintegration gun”. What it actually does is shoot people into the future. In the final session all the people they shot with it blink into existence around them at once.
“I created this thing over two years ago as a
joke item. One of my players became convinced that I was trying to
trick them, and that it was a real Deck of Many Things. His paranoia
spread, and the party nearly killed each other over it. After some
impromptu group therapy, they decided to leave the Deck be and never
speak of it again.
So now you get to use it. Have fun!”
Deck of Certain Things
Wondrous Item, Legendary
A set of 10 cards that come in a small box. “Deck of Certain Things” has been crudely carved into the box’s lid in Common.
Before
you draw a card, you must declare how many cards you intend to draw and
then draw them randomly (you can use a d10 to simulate the deck). Any
cards drawn in excess of this number have no effect. Otherwise, as soon
as you draw a card from the deck, its magic takes effect. Each card must
be drawn no more than 1 hour after the previous draw. If you fail to
draw the chosen number, the remaining cards fly from the deck and take
effect all at once. Once a card is drawn it cannot reappear.
Once all 10 cards have been drawn, a pair of Gloves of Thievery appear in the deck box, along with a note thanking the Deck’s owner for the fun.
The cards are decorated with shoddy-looking artwork, seemingly scribbled with crayon. They are:
Acorn: 3d8 terrified squirrels are transported to your location from elsewhere on the material plane.
Fireworks: Your weapon explodes into a shower of brightly-colored glitter. It reforms in 1 hour.
Prospector: A wooden chest containing 10,000 pieces of counterfeit gold drops at your feet. The coins show a winking jester on both sides.
Liar: For the next 1d12 hours, telling a lie causes your trousers to ignite, dealing 1d6 points of fire damage.
Honey Jar: Summons
a friendly sentient bear named Sigmund, who acts as an apothecary,
selling the party potions from his backpack. He vanishes after 1d20
minutes.
Wallflower: You instantly succeed on all Insight checks for 24 hours, but fail all Intimidation checks.
Invitation: An imp appears in a burst of smoke, kicks you in the shins, then vanishes.
Nightmare: All items worn on your person, with the exception of undergarments, turn invisible for 1d4 hours.
Quill: A
flameskull appears in front of you, delivers a heartfelt soliloquy,
then explodes in a pillar of green flame. All creatures within 5 feet
must make a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d10 fire damage.
Infant: For
the next hour your voice is replaced with the shrill cries of a baby.
You are unable to communicate through speech or cast spells with a
verbal component.
I’ve never actually played D&D before but I wanted to try my hand at creating some really dumb in-game items so here we go!
The Statue of General Unease: players who come within ten feet of this old, faded grey statue must make a DC 13 wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the player just gets sort of…creeped out. All wisdom, intelligence, and charisma-based skill checks are at a disadvantage, because it’s really hard to think properly, you guys, with that weird statue staring over my shoulder like that. You’re seeing this too, right?
The Tie of Persuasion: a nondescript black silk tie that once belonged to a used cart salesman. When worn this object grants the wearer +7 to all charisma checks involving the sale of vehicles. (Or: flip a coin. If heads, +7, if tails, -3)
The Wild Card: it looks like any regular six of diamonds. However, with a subtle tap it can change into any other card at any time. Additionally, once per day you can use this object to transform into a wild animal of the DM’s choice for the duration of one hour.
The Ring of Detection: glows faintly in the presence of humans.
The Wand of Indeterminate Magical Effect: this wand radiates immense magical power, but more often than not attempts to cast any kind of spell with it will fail. Once per day, you can roll percentage die. On any number from 2-99, nothing happens. On a 1 or 100, the user casts a Wish spell.
A hulking paladin voiced in your best Patrick Warburton impression who uses the names of obscure polearms as expletives
A ranger who aspires to be a fashion designer, and hunts rare beasts to obtain their hides and fur for use in dressmaking
What initially appears to be a dwarven runecaster with a badger familiar, but it turns out it’s actually the badger who’s the runecaster, and the dwarf is her personal assistant
A compulsively stealthy rogue who insists that all their thievery is in support of a sick relative; it’s not entirely clear whether there’s one sick relative or many involved, as the details change every time they tell it
A bard outlawed from their home village after making a pun so terrible that it killed the blacksmith
A swashbuckling fighter who enjoys lavish hospitality on account of their fearsome reputation, but is secretly just very skilled at stage combat and can’t actually fight their way out of a wet paper bag
A star pact warlock with maxed out Bluff impersonating a cleric of a benevolent sun god
A mysterious druid dwelling on the outskirts of town who everyone politely pretends not to notice is actually three dire raccoons standing on each other’s shoulders in a feathered robe
Not everything a DM tries works out as intended. Sometimes a story arc falls flat, or a little extra description causes the party to halt for a few hours to fiddle with a rock…. it happens.
I was in a Lovecraftian GURPS campaign set in UK in the 1980s that ground to a halt for a solid hour because one of the players was adamant that we calculate the exact cost of plane tickets for our team.
Truly, rules lawyers are an eldritch abomination.
lifehack if the players are obsessed with something give it to them. Often a small interesting answer will make them stop faster than a hundred boring ones.
once my players rifled through some dead goblins’ clothes and i didnt expect that (dumb, i know) so i put a “very smooth pebble” in a pocket and the players were so interested in it they almost started a fight over it
ProbablyPartyPoison 