DMing is all about bringing your ideas to the table, but some ideas reach beyond the story and dialogue to change the way the game is played. Today, 3 Wise DMs open a Pandora’s Box of DMing ideas and inspiration for D&D 5E.
From campaign setting ideas to new weapon rules, combat formations, vampire and dragon age categories, and more, in this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave pitch the craziest D&D house rules and setting features they’d love to play with in the future.
If you don’t see the podcast player below, click here to listen to the episode.
1:00 Campaign ideas
- Dark Sun for 5E: Could you resurrect the survival desert setting full of slavery and cannibalism?
- Spelljammer space travel for 5E (Note: we recorded before WotC revealed it’s happening)
- Planescape for 5E: Plane shifting between different, wacky worlds and dimensions
- Call of Cthulhu in Ravenloft with PCs like Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker
- Celts vs. powerful nature spirits vs. Romans in a pseudo-historical setting with limited NPC magic
- A prehistoric game with more intense magic and active gods, but low-level technology
- Clerics vs. Wizards: A world where arcane magic has been branded heretical
- Do you need to limit PC class selection in worlds with low magic or low technology?
25:00 Mechanical ideas for combat and encounters
- Technologically low and high-quality swords with non-magical +/- bonuses
- Injury rules and not recovering all your health after long rests
- Weapon wear and breakage
- An aside on Viking sword and shield usage
- Capping hit points at a lower level
- Combat formations: shield walls, pike hedges, etc.
- New weapon properties and action: long reach, weapon grapples
- Called-shot attacks (Aim for the eyes!)
- Weapons that give an AC bonus
- Improving the shield bonus, but making it something you can lose
- Heirloom weapons that get progressive bonuses/powers as the player advances in tiers
62:00 Magic and magic item ideas
- Expanding spell concentration (perhaps by allowing a familiar or item to hold concentration on one of your spells)
- Creating unique spells
- Places of power where players can cast unique spells
- Rare spell components that boost the spells cast with them
- Rebalancing charges
71:00 Monster ideas
- The bag man and other Candy Man type horror monsters
- Giving dragons wider age categories and introducing mightier Great Wyrms
- The Corpse Flower garden
- Expanding vampire power levels and roles
- Spirts of the Land
82:00 Final thoughts
Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but this looks like a description of a video, but I can’t find a link to said video!
Sorry about that, Ashton, try it now.
I’ve played in games with your weapon quality idea Thorin and in paper it sounds cool but in practice it sucks. There’s nothing worse than getting kneecapped by a crappy weapon that breaks just when you need it. It adds a random element where you can get screwed at any time and there is little you can do about it. It also tends to overemphasize strength scores because it’s “guaranteed” damage even when your weapon is lame. Worse still it unbalanced martial classes at lower levels because the mage’s magic missiles, for instance, are not subject to the same penalties.
“A world where arcane magic has been branded heretical”. Hmmm, I seem to recall writing a novel based on that idea 🙂