Chris 
Part 1 was the beginning of the class alphabet, Part 2 was the heart of the martial classes, but let me welcome you to Part 3 – the Land of the Spellcasters. Magic holds a special place in D&D. It’s the spark that frees it from the mundane. The classes contained here each take that spark and do something wonderfully unique with it. So as they say, once more unto the breach…
Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chris here. Several weeks ago, we began a journey through my favorite D&D 5e subclasses – from the newer Armorer Artificer to the classic Moon Druid. I wasn’t planning for it to take three articles, but when I started to talk about each there was just too much to say for just one article. Blame my muse, or our collectively shrinking attention span.
Part 1 was the beginning of the class alphabet, but Part 2 steers us into what I consider the heart of the martial classes. My apologies to Barbarian, who is definitely not a guy you want to piss off despite his alphabetic limitations, but here we have the damage dealer’s sweet spot from Fighter through Rogue. Let the fun begin.
Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chris here. Over our many combined years at the table, we’ve created characters in every D&D 5e class available, as well as most subclasses, both published and UA. Looking back across the myriad campaigns, I decided to share my favorite subclass for each class.
When playing a spellcaster in D&D 5e, there are plenty of powerful and iconic spells to choose from. Fireball and Wish are two of the most classic examples, capable of ending an encounter in one magical flourish. Granted, those spells aren’t available at early levels or available to every caster, so we decided to shine a light on six highly-useful, yet remarkably affordable “underrated” spell options we’ve used.
Characters are the most important thing we deal with as DMs. How many campaigns suffer because the DM is tied to their story, instead of the party’s? I don’t have a number — it was meant as a rhetorical question — but it’s probably a lot. How do we get the best of both worlds, with a rich experience for both player and DM? The backstory, that’s how.
Any character worth his mettle has some sort of backstory — former soldier, disillusioned priest, etc. — but a history ignorant of the world they’re playing in leaves us with the same problem. So the task isn’t just creating a backstory, but rather creating a backstory in the world you’re given. Something to tether the character to the lore, history, and developing plot lines of the campaign world. Sounds daunting, but it’s no harder than your traditional backstory. It’s hitting the right story beats, as our friend DM Tony might say, that makes it all come together.
The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Sourcebook by Free League contains new races, classes, rules and generators for D&D 5e to help you bring the world of Middle-Earth to life at your table. It’s available in both hardback and digital copies, but be forewarned that you’ll need access to the rules of 5e as well. The sourcebook only contains the new information and lore, so the basic rules and combat are still handled in the traditional fashion
If there is one truly archetypal NPC, the bartender is it. Friend, confidant, drink deliverer, quest giver. They might be the first NPCs we create when fleshing out a new city, in addition to often being our player’s first roleplay interaction.
Now, everyone in your world doesn’t need to revolve around beer and crossbows (although if you feel it does I’m always looking for a new campaign), but there are fundamental pieces there that we can use to make our other NPCs more interactive and meaningful. I’d like to share three simple tips to help make all your NPCs shine like our beloved bartenders.
I can understand why it seems odd to many, but the real secret is that it isn’t really DM-less. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. DM-less and solo gaming help us to learn to use our imagination at run-time. So much preparation is geared towards anticipating scenes and encounters ahead of time that we often feel afraid to let the story run its own course. Using a DM-less system like Mythic Role Playing or a solo system like 5e Solo Gamebooks can help develop your imagination in ways to help improvise while the story is evolving.
