After a long hiatus, i present here the next D&D tool to get it’s rework : “Woodcarver’s tools”.

The primary goal of these being to make a simple, time off activity for the characters that use knives and daggers.

Purpose

Throughout history, whittling has been the pass time of many, either to create objects or as a means to train with wielding knives.

In this system you will see two purposes :

1- For the creation of small wooden goods: figurines, charms, utensils, pipes, instrument parts, wand shafts, holy symbols, handles, totems, traps, stakes, etc.

2- Doing at least 80 points of cumulative progress in a week will allow the artisan to deal 1d6 damage with daggers rather than 1d4 for the following week. No matter the quality of the end product.

Core Idea

Wood carving in this system is more about the pass time and knife training rather than the workshops and artisan work.

The wood carver doesn’t need a workshop to get results and can use few resources to get a finished product. And while the money isn’t the best, it is still a nice way to earn coin without having to spend much on a workshop, tools or material.

Wood Grades

To craft, the artisan needs one unit of wood, soft woods being better fit for whittling.

You can find a list of materials there that i am currently reworking for a proper PDF.

The resulting item can take magical properties depending on the materials used.
If the artisan uses a cursed oak as the item’s base, then the item itself might be cursed.

Item Complexity Categories

Similar to the Mason’s system, the final product is obtained with a cumulative DC, but the checks need to be at least of the “base DC” to make an impact.

Each check represents either an hour of active progress or a full day of passive crafting like during a travel while still allowing a survival check.
Each day the carver rolls : 1d20+DEX+proficiency.
If the artisan rolls a 15 for a standard item, then they can remove 15 from the 80 progress needed.
But if they roll bellow 12, time was wasted.

Quality Outcome

Once the cumulative DC is reached, the artisan makes one final check to determine the quality of the final result.

These are basically the finishing touches and represents how well the item is made.

The artisan can spend more time to try and fix or add details and repair mistakes. This amount of time is equal to half the original cumulative progress and another check is done at the end. Repairing mistakes might require sap or glue which can easily be harvested in a forest or bought in a town for a couple of silvers.

The final value of the item is calculated as :

(Material Cost x 2) x Quality Multiplier

Conclusion

It has been a few months since my last posts but this doesn’t mean i haven’t been actively working on my projects.
6 of the tools have been remade in PDF formats with a couple of fixes, with the modular weapon and armor crafting being the next on my list.

Pillar-run, my roguelike TTRPG is also seeing some progress, i am currently working in making a character and monster statsheet and i am almost ready to begin testing the system with my players.

If you want to see more about my progress, feel free to follow me on bluesky (@kiotw.bsky.social) where i will try to be a bit more regular.

Thanks for reading, if you like what you see, feel free to follow and subscribe, there won’t ever be a paywall to the content here.

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Well no longer.
After a few scheduling issues with my D&D group i was left wanting for a TTRPG system i could just throw on and have fun with my players without needing all the preparations.

Thus was born :

Pillar-Run TTRPG

With a system that takes from the best elements of D&D5e and Pathfinder2e to push for a more fluid, fast pace game and character building, the players start the session at level 1 and finish the session end run at level 20+.

Ideally a run should fit within a 4 hour session. With about 20 locations to go through, some combat, some puzzles and some traversal.

The players start the run at level 1 after choosing some stats and a starting item kit, at level 5 they choose an archetype that fits their build according to their two major stats and, as they go through the dungeon, they loot items and materials from loot tables aswell as powerful boons that can determine the direction of a run.

The system

The system takes from D&D5e and pathfinder2e, D&D5e being more efficient in the character building and pathfinder2e in the combat system.
The goal is to avoid choice anxiety and make levelling up fast and almost automatic.

Character building

Using the generally used 6 stat array (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma), the players start their run with in 8 in all stats and can allocate 12 points with no cost change (unlike point buy).
They can then allocate 6 proficiency points in the skills, tools and weapons they want, all before they start the run.

The 3 martial stats give “Stamina”, a resource that can be used for martial abilities and the 3 casting stats give “Mana”, a resource used to cast spells.

As they level up, the characters gain more points to allocate to the stats or skills of their liking.

Once the characters reach level 5, they can choose one archetype of many, which will work like classes.

the two highest stats of the character being a good guideline to choose which would fit the build best.

Ability scores

Each ability score are now more focused on a singular purpose.

• Strength is about dealing damage and intimidation. Using stamina to deal more damage in a singular attack.

• Dexterity is about speed and agility, avoiding damage and using stamina to do more attacks or make sure they hit.

• Constitution is about taking hits, and using damage taken in a way that benefits them, rewarding tanking.

• Intelligence is all about knowledge, arcane casters, potion and poison makers.

• Wisdom is about attunement to the world, from elements to nature, to spirits and gods.

• Charisma is about words and appearance, contracts, oaths and the arts. But also about taking attention and redirecting it.

Health and resources

player health is a base of 8 with constitution added to it. at each level the characters gain an additional 8+constitution modifier (even if it is in the negative)

Some archetypes will change the amount and so might some boons.
Mana and stamina are the resources to use abilities and spells.

Their total goes up as the character levels up, the total is calculated as 5+level+highest related attribute modifier.

A 5th level character with 16 Strength and 14 Intelligence will have 13 STA and 12 MANA.

Their archetypes and loot choices giving them different uses of these abilities.

Action economy

Using the 3 action system of pathfinder2e, combat will be quicker to parse.

The faster pace will also come from a focus on passive upgrades rather than an ever increasing list of choices that may cause the deadlock that causes TTRPG combat to drag.

Same for the monsters, who will tend to have 4 or 5 abilities at max for the more complex ones, the only exception being bosses.

Anatomy of a run

I want the runs to start at level 1 and end at 20 or higher.
With 20 locations each with it’s main challenge and some with optional ones, all taken from a rollable table, the players will always find loot.

Early game

From level 1 to 5 the players are in the early game, they have yet to choose an archetype and the run doesn’t have much special.
The idea is for the players to find items or boons they like so they can direct their build towards an archetype.

Mid game

From level 6 to 15 the players grow in power, with the ability to fight optional challenges to gain more loot or power and make their dream build a reality.

Late game

From level 16 and up, the players have their build and now can push them as far as they can until the final boss.
At this point balance is more of a suggestion and the reward is the players’ ability to wipe the floor with more encounters, until a proper challenge at the end.

The Pillar

On my part, the players will try to scale a pillar from the inside. A large black stone thing that refuses to make sense and shifts in forms and logics from run to run.
With 4 layers, each with 4 potential themes and look, no two run will be the same.
Each layer has 5 locations (5 challenges) and a guardian at the end to act as a test to move further.

Conclusions

Since this is very early in the making, the story is still pretty far from done, but there will be one that gives the characters reasons to try going further each run.

The characters start in a location called “the residence” where they will be able to build facilities and work with NPCs to get a better start each run.

There are many other plans, from the spell crafting system that i’d like to be usable in D&D5e to the possibility of going down into the foundations of the pillar for an additional 5 layers, heading the other direction.

This project started a week ago now, and i hope you want to see more !

I will post the early game out for testing once it is done which could take a while.

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A question with many problems to keep in mind and from which was born something i started to build recently.

What’s a roguelike ?

Starting with the basics, a roguelike or a game like “rogue” is a game where you play in a world that resets every time you die/fail.
It can be randomly generated or a pre-made map, but the throughline is that the world is very harsh, death is almost expected and you keep nothing but your knowledge of the world and it’s rules each time you start.
See games like Noita, risk of rain, peak…
Or if you keep powers or currency between attempts, the term “roguelite” is used.
See games like Hades, Cult of the Lamb, Slay the Spire…

The concept of a roguelike TTRPG falls into many small issues that i’d like to talk about and try to find solutions with you for the purpose of making this a reality.

A roguelike TTRPG

Problem 1- Pace

Starting with the base concept, roguelikes tend to have a certain speed to them. To be simple, it doesn’t feel very good to spend hours into a session only to be shunted back down to the start with nothing to show for it.

This is without talking about combat, which takes a lot of time in TTRPGs.

To fix this we could focus on a more “roguelite” game, where the characters loose progress but get to keep items or currency to make their next attempts faster and easier.
We could also find or make a system that has speed as a main focus.
This is considering a mix of combats, puzzles and maybe some terrain dangers.

Combat tends to be slow, puzzles need to take time and terrain or travel also necessitates waiting.

Roguelite?

Going for roguelite has benefits. Players feel less like they lost it all when being sent back to the start and might even be more willing to make sacrifices or take risks if they know they’ve made progress either ways.
This will also make the next attempt faster and have some novelty with the available tools.

Games Systems

While i like DnD5e, a major issue with this TTRPG is that it tends to be slow.
No matter the system chosen, the encounters need to be against dangerous creatures that can be quickly dispatched and can do the same to the players.
In this way, not only the dangerous encounters will push an interaction with the roguelite system but also keep the attempts relatively quick.
The encounters could also not be about killing other creatures but moving past them, killing being optional for greater rewards could help the pace.

Problem 2 - Death

A TTRPG is most often multiplayer, even more so when thinking of games such as these.
What happens once all of the characters die ?
What do we do if one character dies and the others keep going ?
For this we need the roguelite setup and a way to revive dead characters or something for them to do.

The roguelite

The first idea is to start players in a safe place where they can spend currency earned during the previous runs to gain simple benefits.
These could be magical items, Hades-like boons, spells, potions and many other stuff you can think of.

My main concerns would be magical items and potions.
Magical items to make the task easier and potions to allow for mistakes.
Another idea is that some purchases stay with the players, these should be reliable a generalist in nature.
Some more specific bonuses should only last one attempt.
Potions and scrolls for instance, don’t follow them after a failure, forcing the players to use them during their journey.

Some of these items could also be found during an attempt.

Revives

After a certain amount of levels or by using currency the players can amass we could allow them to bring back to life another character.
These should be possible but probably push the players to go out of their way to do so.
Getting an extra life should be difficult and impose a certain amount of risk, like an extra combat encounter or a blood sacrifice.

On the other hand if a character is dead the player should still have the ability to impact the game, either by helping the still living ones like a ghost, Or by taking control of a pet that can be downed but not killed.

Problem 3 - Context and goals

The overall system should fit a certain purpose. With a repeatable task and a certain goal that can be reached.
For this i’m thinking about the Hades games where you have a specific destination and something to do there that may take a few attempts.
Much like in Hades, i like the idea of maps being relatively static, the options are numerous and the encounters are rarely the same, but they all fit within a pool.
This will make preparing such a game achievable.
With that, encounters should be varied.
Some should be combat, some should be puzzle, some a mix of both.
A corridor where a trap creates zones of damage alternating from one wall to the next for example.

The Pillar

Now that we have a basic concept let’s look at what a game like this would look like :

In a forgotten valley between large mountain ranges is a pillar.
Black stone reaching high into the skies and burying deep beneath, it’s rectangular shape would stick out and gather attention if it were not a forgotten thing in the middle of nowhere.
One day a group of adventurers find the pillar and decide to study it closely. After finding an entrance, they head in, the darkened interiors offering a strangely furnished room. Living quarters, empty tables and holes within the wall with strange panels embossed with images of potions and swords.
Two staircases are available, one leading up, one going down.
As the group enters, a strange weight is felt, a curse is cast, closing the door to the outside and locking them in an endless cycle.
Whether they like it or not, they are now the subjects of the pillar’s owner.
To leave, they’ll have to understand the mystery of the pillar and it’s owner or please the owner with his own sick experiments.

A strange premise, a reason for the players to work together and choices to take.
With this you can also have a reason to limit the size of the encounter rooms or push the mystery further with the pillar breaking laws of physics.
At every attempt the players can pick a weapon and a boon and decide which way to go.

Conclusion

This is still in a pretty rough shape, but the idea is there to build on. For the moment i have a couple of projects in the running and this one is a part of them.
For the moment i’d like to have some ideas on what system to use.
When it comes to the setting itself i can vary, here we have the Pillar and resurrecting characters, but we could also say that the pillar suddenly appeared not far from a city. This way the players can change characters whenever they wish to.
An additional rule would be to reset the character levels at the start of every attempt and maybe have a couple of characters per player so they can try different classes over time.

Would you play this system ?
What would you add to it ?

If this inspires you, feel free to leave a comment and share this post. The concept is still very early in it’s creation progress but i’d love to build it into a proper thing.

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His god ?
The Bloom of the Hollow.
The very concept of something filling the void.
A new forest to replace the one that burned down, a new city after the fall of the previous one.
The Bloom of the Hollow is both destruction and growth.
Shouldn’t powers like these impact those who use them ?

The cleric problem

In D&D, clerics are one of the more powerful classes there is. They have access to very potent spells and features even if we don’t talk about healing.

No matter the setting, a cleric is bound to shape the region around them simply for their spells.
A plague ?
Not for long.
War ?
Soldiers keep coming back in good health.
Famine ?
The cleric can summon 45 pounds of food and 30 gallons of fresh water with a 3rd level spell.

The worst part is that the cleric is someone that tend to benefit from getting involved in city affairs, unlike wizards and druids who tend to remain in isolation.

When creating a world, clerics and the abundance of healing magic is something you always have to watch out for.

My solution ?
Clerics are rare. Gods like mine don’t tend to get involved, and when they do the consequences are unpredictable.
For that, clerics are hunted, seen as an ill omen like witches.

So healing, magic food and other miracles are rare and viewed with suspicion.

For a world like the sword coast, they should be rare too, and either sedentary or always on the move, so either only one city benefits or none can be certain of Clerical help.

The impact of a god’s powers

Something i find lacking, no matter the setting, is the absence of impact that magic has on those who use it.

By all accounts, if a wizard can send 10 fireballs into a fight without breaking a sweat, they should probably not look like a normal person.

The idea is that the more powerful the individual, the more visible this power is.
Even more so if they reach the high 17th to 20th levels.
Magic should be an almost physical thing and if not, it’s passage through a caster’s body should at least have some impact.

This grows even worse when a god is involved. Why would a god be able to measure the amount of powers to give to a mortal without harming or changing them ?

I believe that, no matter the setting, the power should be seen on the creature using it. Maybe it can find a way to resist the changes, but this has to be done actively.

Lets come back to the gods of my world :
The bloom of the Hollow represents constant change, destruction and renewal.
Over the levels, the cleric will start seeing changes in their own body.
An old wound healing on it’s own, a new one replacing it.
Later, more radical changes, a limb falling to give space for a new one with an odd shape.
A cleric becoming powerful enough with the powers gifted to them would eventually become something else. No longer their original race or ancestry they’d look odd, constantly shifting. This power could be harnessed, turned into the ability to disguise, but would also show a general eldritch form, one that refuses to settle onto a singular identity.

In a similar way, those who serve other gods turn to resemble the shape of that god’s power or identity.
The many eyed watcher’s clerics would find eyes growing on their skin.
The Absence’s clerics would loose recognizable features.
And those who follow “What sleeps bellow” would eventually become creatures that most resembles their behaviors.

This could also fit other pantheons, and less eldritch gods.
Maybe a god of beauty would make their most powerful clerics resemble them.
Or a god of light would make them emit light in all situations.

In a similar way i believe the other full casters of D&D should be impacted.
A wizard according to their school, a druid according to their surroundings, a bard according to their stories or art.

Conclusion

Overall i like the idea of a cleric resembling their god’s designs or powers. Almost changed to the god’s whims. (or involuntarily, mortals can be so fragile.)
Same with warlocks of more powerful beings, they eventually become a perfect vessel for the powers they use.
If a creature can be impacted by living too long in another plain of existence, why wouldn’t they be changed by the very power they wield ?

How about your characters, what would they look like if their powers changed them ?

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Hunting ice troll

While off road in winter the players find themselves between two hills of dirt and snow.
Going with the survival check for travel if a DC 14 is met, the players find the bear traps hidden under a thick layer of slush.
The character leading the party is hit in the case the trap isn’t seen.

Bear trap : DC 14 dexterity save, 11(2d10) piercing damage.

There are 3 more traps in the area, once triggered or noticed, a troll will attack with it’s companion.1

The Ice troll is accompanied by a polar bear and they are travelling to a new region, using the winter’s cold to do so.
While the ice troll cannot be reasoned with he can be scared away and will attempt to flee if hurt enough, carrying with him any downed creatures during the battle.

You can fin the troll’s statsheet here and the polar bear’s here.

Rewards

• 3 bear traps (see above for stats)

• 3 days worth of dry meat from an unknown animal (it’s venison, but the players don’t know)

• a bent iron longsword

Mimic ambush

On the path there is a dead brown bear. It’s open chest cavity suggests a pretty violent encounter.
To move forward the party either needs to go around and leave the path for a moment or move the carcass.
As soon as one creature is within 5ft of the carcass, it shifts and attacks it, revealing itself to be a large mimic.
Nearby, hiding as fallen trees or large rocks, another two, smaller mimics spring to life once the encounter starts.
The other mimics attack only if another creature is close enough to get it within the turn.

You can find the Mimic statsheet here and the larger Mimic has 2 additional hit die and 19 strength. Otherwise the statsheet remains the same.

Rewards

No rewards other than the harvestable adhesive and body parts.

Fleeing prisoner

For a final encounter we’ll have one that isn’t based on combat.
As the day’s travel ends the players find a man in his forties that looks injured.
He is wearing poor quality dirty and torn clothes and has a few crossbow bolts sticking in his back.

The man is a fleeing prisoner from a nearby settlement named Carl Renno who has been accused of the murder of a guard. He is guilty and originally claims innocence. If pushed, he’ll relent and admit to the murder but will still lie and claim self defense.
What happened is that the guard had caught him break into a house, words got loud and violence erupted.
There is a price on his head, the players can be certain about it because a fleeing murderer of a guard would normally see a rope a couple of days after judgement.

Renno begs the players to not turn him in, and let him get to the next city over, where he can prepare and leave the country.

Renno is in no state to fight and he knows it. He doesn’t have a weapon and being already injured he won’t survive the fight.

Rewards

• If the players turn Renno in, they’ll get a reward of 10 gold. (half if they don’t stabilize him since he’ll be dead)

• If they let him go, they’ll learn of his death a couple of days later as he bled out during his journey.

• If the players heal the man and let him go, Renno will find a way to send a part of his next thieving loot, an uncommon magical item.

The players could also find a way to make Renno stop being a thief, in which case they’ll receive a letter of thanks a few months later without anything else.

Making random encounters takes little time, they are quite entertaining for the same reason since the more social oriented ones tend to grow out of proportions.

The easiest to run remain the combat encounters, and they allow our fighters and barbarians to be engaged.

And you, what encounters do you like to run ?

Do you have one that has gone out of proportion ?

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After working a bit too long on the next systems trying to make them as interesting as possible i finally finished this next one that is the Weaver’s Tools.

The idea here was to make a general utility crafting using the many different materials to make many different things.
Additionally, a weaver has the ability to make travel somewhat safer, using dyes to help hide tents in the elements or making warm clothes for winter treks.

As always i am working on giving all the tools in D&D5e a proper crafting system that gives the players more options in both roleplay and mechanics, so if this is of any interest to you please subscribe, all my work is accessible for free !

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Weaver’s Tools

Making clothes, making items from fabric starting with the very base materials like raw cotton. The weaver is both artisan and artist, being great for a group’s coin purse and for it’s survival.

A weaver makes survival easier, both in the ability to prepare for the trips ahead and in the ability to make coin from commission from the wealthy.
They can make clothes, disguises, tents, flags and much more.

In the making of this system, i made the materials cheap to get, but the results take a while to obtain, making this a difficult endeavor for the traveler but still a possibility for those who want to spend travel time sewing clothes on the cart.

As mentioned in the previous reworks, the crafting uses a Quality DC. The goal being to make knowing a DC easy and not put additional work on the DM.
The DC is a standard set of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 determining the quality of the result.
(5-bad, 10-basic, 15-good, 20-excellent, 25-masterwork)
Materials, methods and sometimes items have a quality DC modifier that is a “+” or a “-”.
A +1 DC will change the set to 6,11,16,21,26. These DC modifiers stack, meaning that a material that gives a -1 and a method that gives -2 will lead to a quality DC modifier of -3 (2,7,12,17,22).
If the roll is lower than the lowest quality the item isn’t made and half the materials are wasted.

The tools

Weaver’s tools are a dexterity base tool, requiring the DEX modifier in the checks on making or repairing fabric items.
The weaver’s tools are separated into two different sets : a portable one and a workshop setup.

Portable tools

Portable tools have needles or various sizes to handle various materials, scissors/shears, thimble, a drop spindle and a few spools of thread.
They are relatively cheap costing 1 gold but due to their simple nature will make crafting much slower. (doubling the time needed to make anything)
They do not have any penalty on the quality DC.

Workshop setup

Workshop tools have a Jacquard loom, spinning wheels, tapestry frames and boards added to the needles scissors and other items.
This setup is somewhat expensive to get, needing a dedicated room and about 10 gold. They are a requirement if the goal is to make larger amounts of coin or bigger projects without spending weeks on them.

Weaving

The first step to make an item out of raw material is to weave them into fabric.
Doing so is the cheapest way to go but also the most time consuming.
Weaving from raw materials also allows the weaver to blend them to make a fabric that better suits the needs of the item made.

Materials

Standard raw material without blends :

Notes :
- "f" here refers to the money in my world "fairs" which is an equivalent to Silver
- Living loom silk and Shimmer are materials made by "Cottonneurs" a custom race i made for my game

Some materials are more complex and need either blending or a different process. Feel free to experiment with them.
Here are some common ones :

Process

The base crafting material of this system is a yard of fabric.
While sometimes you only need yarn and time to make a scarf, others you need bolts of 10 yards of make something bigger.
Weaving here is the process of going from raw material to a yard of fabric without taking the string/yarn into account.
This is the system’s language, flavor is free !

For this the weaver picks a weaving pattern and rolls a check of DC 10+modifier for the day spent working. (one check no matter how many yards made during the day)

Note : The lower time is with a workshop, the higher is with portable tools.

With raw material you can also make string and ropes :
- String makes 20ft per pound and takes 5 minutes per foot to make;
- Rope makes 6ft per pound and takes 15 minutes per foot to make.

Finally, making a net takes about 1 hour using 60ft of rope (or string depending on how thick you want it to be) to make a 5ft square.

Items

Once you have your yards of materials you can make items from them. I have made a simple list of items that you can pick from to get an idea of how much material and time is needed to make them.
The check is made at the end of the crafting against the quality DC.
The crafting DC is calculated from base material DC + pattern DC.

A weaver can use half the material and time of an item to attempt the check a second time or repair a torn item.
The result of the check (and change of quality) is taken even if it is lower than the previous one.

Note : double the time needed if using portable tools.

There are many other items that can be made from woven fabrics like tarps, awnings, curtains etc…
The base idea is 4 hours per yard in the crafting needed, but this can change on the count of complexity.
A scarf is a relatively simple item to make so you can make it take a little less, a more complex item could take 5 or 6 hours per yard.

Dyes

Dying can be done in any part of the process. (Though be reasonable, you can’t dye a tapestry’s strands after it was made).

Some dyes are relatively easy to come by : blacks, browns, whites, blues and greens are simple to find.
Yellows, indigo and reds are rarer but still somewhat accessible.
The hard colors to get are Purple, pink and orange which tend to come from rare flowers or hard to make materials.
This will depend on your setting, mine being set in 1800’s France.

Dyes are optional but some will give benefits depending on the setting.
Having rich purple silk clothes will certainly be well seen in fancy meetings or galas. Dyes can also serve as camouflage, dying a tent green or brown would give a bonus to a camp’s stealth if needs be.
Dyes are also crucial to make disguises, flags or more decorative elements which could be commissioned by rich individuals.

Price and selling

One of the main goals of this system is the ability to create valuable items through artisanal skills.

Because of the wealth of different items that can be made, the system uses the material cost as a baseline for the final product. (raw materials + dyes)
This is then modified by the quality of the product.

- Bad : ×0.5 base price
- Basic : ×1 base price
- Good : ×1.5 base price
- Excellent : ×2 base price
- Masterwork : ×3 base price

The worth of the time spent and skill are to be determined by the weaver when selling their work.
This base price also makes sure that, other than with a bad roll, the weaver gets their money back.

Conclusion

This system was pretty hard to make. The big issue being the amount of possible items that can be made, making standard material properties impossible to translate in D&D terms.
I do hope that i managed to make a working system despite these issues.

I have never woven anything myself so a lot of the knowledge there comes from time i spent researching. Though it is something i definitely will try at some point.

In other news i have decided to slow down the pace of uploads, mainly because the next one will take a lot of work.
Mason’s and carpenter’s tools will come together with a base building system.
So i’m going to work with the Bastion mechanics and have to look at how many tons of bricks you need to make a castle…

Another plan is to turn all of these tools in a singular PDF that you can download!

Now remains painter, carpenter, woodcarver, leatherworker, mason, tinkerer and glassworker.
With tinkerer becoming the ranged weapon and prosthetics crafting system, and leatherworker going with smith in an armor crafting system.

When it is running there are many things to keep in mind like the game’s pace, players interest, player actions and impact and of course playing the characters and rules of the world all the while trying to tell a story.
It’s a lot to juggle.

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1 Starting a game

The most difficult part of getting a game running. Knowing the game and it’s rules, preparing the world and story, finding the right players.

A lot to do but it’s not that complicated.

Getting players

It’s easy to find people who want to play, there are many of them.

Offline

This will depend of the region/country you are in. Sometimes there are game centers that advertise themselves as places to look for players, sometimes there are local boards/groups that you can look for with a couple of google searches.

The shops that sell board games and TTRPGs tend to have people who know where to look for, so you can start by asking there.

Online

Easier to find players online than offline, but harder to get a stable schedule.
For my part Discord servers such as Dream Realm, Crit or quit or even the official D&D server have been the main place to look for a game or players when needed. There are a wealth of players looking for nothing else than a game to play.

With this wealth of players it’s easier to say “no” to the ones you don’t like or feel like they won’t be good players. (though it’s usually better to give them a chance but no one is judging.)
When looking for games online the schedule should be PRIMARY in your request for players to make sure that you’ll get people who can show up as often as possible.

What to run ?

I suggest starting with either homebrew or pre-made one-shots (games that last one session). They don’t ask for much preparation and allow for a small and tidy story to easily wrap up in a couple of hours. (usually 4)

You can find some online, there are free one-shots that exist and i’d suggest starting with something free just in case DMing isn’t your thing.
These are both ways to get used to leading a game and to get to know some players.

Using a free online platform like owlbear rodeo or Roll20 for online games and just some print paper for the offline ones is good too.

The best situation would be getting the some reoccurring players. If you liked playing with someone, contact them first when organizing a new one-shot.

Once you are done with a couple of games you can start preparing for a larger setup, either a full campaign which could last a year or more, or a sort of skirmish that could take a couple of months.

Your choice on what sort of campaign it is, whether you make it yourself or take something already prepared, will alter the amount of time you spend on preparation and the control you’ll have over the story.

It is only when you got knowledge on what you want to run that you can look for longer term players.

Long term players

I got lucky, i was part of a game where i ended up taking over when the DM burned out on leading 3 games. The DM and a couple of the players from these games joined in to make the current party i have.

Despite this, looking for players shouldn’t be too much of a headache. Start some games, get some one-shots going as both player and DM.
You’ll find good players like this.

Once you get a group of 3 or 4, talk to them about your campaign, the themes, your ideas, sell them on your game. Some will accept, some won’t.
This way you can make sure to start with good players or people you enjoy spending time with.

Another way is to wing it. There are always many players looking for adventure so you can just advertise your game and get some interested people wanting to join. (schedule is crucial).

With players you don’t know it’s always better to do a “session 0” where their characters meet up and go in a small one-shot adventure.
Or if they join in the middle of a larger campaign, make them a guest feature of sorts. If they make a good impression and work well with the others, take them in. If not, tell them that you feel like they weren’t a good fit.

2 Playing the game

Now that you have your players and your game prepared, you can finally start playing.

Your preparation will mostly be the larger chunk of the sessions, from conversations with NPCs to combat improvisation is common but not overwhelming.
It’s easy to lead players towards a mystery since a lot of them are way too curious for their own good.
More on prepping a game here.

When playing characters you are doing theatre, expressions, impressions, intonation… You should try to show them but there is no shame in playing narrator.
Describe often, use colors, shapes, texture, temperature, even the “vibe” can serve in letting the players in understanding where they are and what they’re looking at.
As the DM you are both the characters and the window to the world.
For this i use visual aids like pictures i took or images i found, if i struggle i describe them.

Then you have your players to worry about.

During the game there are 3 things you need to pay attention to :

1. Pace

2. Interest

3. What are they trying to do

Pace

Game pace is hard to parse, noticing when one gets bored and look through their phone feels pretty bad but there are ways to fix these slow moments.
Here are a couple of lessons i learned with my players.

1. Some players avoid attention and remain quiet more often than not.
   To fix this i single them out sometime ask about their character’s impression on the events or the region like “how is [Character] feeling about this ?” or “what is [Character] doing during the trip ?”
   When you want them to pay attention at a specific time give them a hint. Maybe a character speaks to them directly or you make them notice something the others don’t.

2. Some players take too much space, spending so much time describing or thinking about their next move that the others start to loose interest.
   In my previous game it culminated into a 1 hour long turn.
   For these players the easiest way to keep things going is to do give them a push.
   If they don’t know what to do, ask them to describe a plan, brainstorm with them.
   If they spend too much time on descriptions you can tell them. Or you can start describing things yourself.
   If the player is trying to do something that doesn’t fit the game’s rules, you can say no.
   If the player is taking part into another player’s moment, taking too much space in a situation about another’s backstory, you can firmly redirect the attention and talk about it with that player at the end of the session.

3. The group at times is lost for ideas on a puzzle or a plan. If you, as a DM, have a plan, You can look at the intelligence or experience of the characters and give them a hint as to what could be the best line of actions or hints to a puzzle.
   It is good when the players need to think, but when they are truly stuck ask them if they want a hint, it’s better to have a hint and keep going than staying in the same room for 4 hours.

Interest

Keeping players’ interest during the game comes with giving them things to do. Talking to people, taking quests, going shopping…
You can also get them to talk to each-other using a few prompts or by having a trusted player use them.
The important part is to make these options OBVIOUS. The players don’t know what’s in your head so they don’t know what they can and cannot do.
Make it clear and known when these options are available.
”As you arrive to [Town] you notice the jobs board has a couple of new pages nailed into the cork”

This can also just be you telling them what they can do.
Starting the session by going over previous events, setting up the tension once more, is also a good direction.

The reset

If your players are starting to loose interest mid-game you can initiate a “reset”.
Go back over the events, describe the area once more, pull them back in the story.
A video with a bunch of tips.

Music

If you are in control of the game’s music, get some without lyrics that can fit in the back of your game.
There are many ambiance music playlist on youtube though a lot are AI and those are VERY boring.
The goal if to avoid complete silence but also not grab too much attention.
You can make an exception with combat music though lyrics still should be avoided.

What are they trying to do ?

A question i ask myself way too often.

The answer ?
LET THEM.1

This is where the improvisation happens and where you relinquish control of the game to the players.
While you may have prepared the players to get in a castle they are legally allowed to enter through the front door, they might choose to try a stealthy approach. Let them and see the rolls work the story out.

This happened to my game when my players decided to burst into an wizard’s tower without asking, this lead to a battle they could scarcely win. To survive they had to give up valuable information which could have gone against them later on.

What not to do is going into “cutscene” mode and acting without the players’ input. Don’t get married to your preparation, a lot of times you’ll have to remove a whole chunk of prep because the players decided they had a better idea.

My players bypassed a boss fight by using a cube of force and harassing a fey into teleporting them. I knew it worked in the context of the story and had not prepared to counter this item, so it worked.

Whether it is your players outsmarting you or, more often the opposite, let them act.
If those mistakes are too big and would derail the story too much, you can give them hints to a better solution or tell them directly of the potential consequences, if they still want to go through, let them. At worse ending the session early or taking a brake to prepare for what comes next.

The idea is to keep in mind what they want to do and ask them regularly. With this you’ll play with them.

3 Conflict resolution

Like in any group, conflicts can arise between players.
Maybe you or others catch one of them cheating (lying on their rolls), maybe one of them has personal issues rising which can make a game hard to run.

The solution is always to talk and empathize.
If a player is cheating, maybe they just really like their character or are way too unlucky. The solution is to explain and adapt.
A character doesn’t die on rolls but on bad decisions, and failing is just a feature of the story, it’s not a problem to fix.

With personal issues i tend to have a conversation in private with the player, talking things through and seeing if they’re in the right mindset for a game while being a good support is my priority.

The DM tends to end up in the group leader position. People will come to you when they have problems and hopefully you’ll be good enough friends by then that you can chat openly about problems.

Keep the channel open, ask them if they’re good for the game a day or two in advance and cancel games when needs be.
When games are cancelled, you can spend the time to chat about other things.

There are few things that allow to build friendships faster than a D&D game, this is why i fell in love with the medium.
The only things it requires is a bit of time and some emotional maturity.

So what are you waiting for ?

And so it is, with misshapen wings that it forgot how to fly. Stuck and trapped in small rooms, loud machines churning, spinning their silk from the glands.
Arched back, weakened arms, no longer able to sleep.
Not a prisoner a living loom, a tool born to serve until replaced by sons and daughters.
The conspiracy of the guilds, the secret of a nation, the pillar of the silken economy. - Orel

Introduction

When i started creating my second d&d campaign i had for ambition to make it more gritty, with darker motives and themes.
The cottonneurs’ story is the worse, taking from the worse aspects of economic and political systems and pushing them to a potentially upsetting level.

If telling a story involving the worse humanity can do, and giving the players the opportunity to help make things right is up your alley, this ancestry1 is for you !

For more D&D and TTRPG stuff, feel free to subscribe, i’m currently making tools reworks for the 5e system and a whole lot of worldbuilding and GM tips.

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Cottonneurs

The cottonneurs are humanoid insectoid with fur, antennae and wings. They are moth-like in nature and their size is medium going from 5 to 7ft tall.
They are unusually adaptative. Their biology taking only a few decades to accommodate to the demands made of the body.
Coming from southern regions at first, they remained in small settlements, preferring isolation and silk trade being the rare contact with wider society.
In the 15th century this isolation came to an end as wars and conquest from growing empires ravaged the region.
The cottonneurs dispersed, and while still preferring isolation, they started being hunted by growing textile guilds.
This hunt split the cottonneurs into 3 wildly different heritages due to their adaptability and one special and more recent evolution created by a guild’s manipulation of the arcane rot2.

Cottonneur traits

Creature Type : Humanoid
Size : Medium (about 5–7 feet tall)
Speed : 30 feet
Age : Cottonneurs are born as larvae, and are only considered fully grown after metamorphosis at 13 years old which takes 6 months.
They live into their mid-forties on average. The oldest live until their late fifties.

As a Cottonneur, you have the following traits :

• Ability score increase : +1 dexterity

• Darkvision : You have dark vision with a range of 60 feet.

• Secondary arms : You have two slightly smaller secondary arms below your primary pair of arms. The secondary arms can manipulate an object, open or close a door or container, pick up or set down a Tiny object, or wield a weapon that has the light property

• Silk glands : As a cottonneur you continuously produce low quality silk, a square yard per day worth 1 fair (silver piece).

• Wings : you have long, cloak-like wings which allow you to gain a 30ft fly speed once you reach 5th level as long as you are not wearing medium or heavy armor.

Cottonneur heritages

The cottonneurs are separated into 3 main heritages and one special one.

The Living looms

Those who serve under the guilds became less than who they were. Considered like living machinery by the guilds to whom they are indentured to. Rarely free, they're often born in servitude inside guild basements. Over the years their biology adapted to the harsh condition.
As a living loom you gain the following traits :

• Ability score increase : +2 constitution

• Guild bred endurance : You can ignore one level of exhaustion’s worth of penalty. (you still have it but do not suffer it’s effects)

• Trained weaver : you gain proficiency in weaver's tools3.

• Industrial Glandwork : You produce an additional 4 square yard worth of silk per day.

• Guild conditioning : You never truly sleep, you can do a simple repetitive task during your long rest (like weaving, counting, sorting). during that time you are semi-conscious. The conditioning also makes you loose the ability to use your wings.

Cavelings

Cottonneurs who sought refuge in the mountains and caves quickly adapted to the darker and more cramped areas in which they dwelled. They rarely interact with society, remaining in their own settlements.
Within those settlements some have heard of the treatment that their kin suffers, reinforcing a culture of isolation to a point where few understand common.
As a caveling you gain the following traits :

• Ability score increase : +2 wisdom

• Echo sense : You gain tremor-sense out to 15ft while in contact with the ground.

• Sticky feet : you can attach yourself to walls, giving you a climbing speed equal to your walk speed.

• Cave carver : you gain proficiency in Mason's tools4

• Sunlight sensitivity : You have disadvantage on attack rolls and on Wisdom (perception) checks that rely on sight when you, the target of your attack, or whatever you are trying to perceive is in direct sunlight

Glamours

Glamours or “living ornaments” are brightly colored and often live in cities, serving almost as pets to wealthy nobles. Even in such cases they are rarely indentured “renting” their presence as decoration or ornaments to wealthy noble or guild gatherings. Their culture often focuses on charisma and the artistic pursuits.
As a Glamour you gain the following traits :

• Ability Score Increase : +2 Charisma

• Silken Glamour : You produce shimmer, a colorful silk, doubling it’s price.

• Dazzling presence : you gain proficiency in either performance, deception or persuasion checks.
  If you already are proficient you can gain expertise instead.

• Living ornament : You have advantage on charisma (persuasion, performance or deception) checks made in social settings where beauty, rarity, or charm are valued, such as noble courts, formal events or conversations with vain creatures.

• city dweller : you have disadvantage on any wisdom (survival) checks outside of urban environment, you also need better quality rations to not be sick.

Rotweavers

Guilds being what they are, they have decided to try their hands at making a brand new heritage of cottonneurs, abusing their adaptability to fit a new purpose.
In this case they made a weapon. Being brand new, the Rotweavers have neither history nor culture, there are at most 100 of them.
Using the arcane rot, the guild managed to create the rotweavers but have not used them yet.
As a rotweaver you get the following traits :

• Ability Score Increase : +2 Strength

• Rot silk : You produce rotsilk, a potent magical thread that has different effects depending on which rot infects you.

  • Blackened silk : The thread exudes a faint aura of dark spores. With 4 yards of rotsilk you can create a cloak that allows a creature to turn invisible in darkness. The Silk itself is invisible in darkness and is very sticky when untreated.

  • Tendrils : you no longer produce silk, instead you can extend fleshy tendrils up to 15ft serving as a rope or a whip (or a sticky expansion to grab objects)

  • Fiber Glass : your silk is sharp and with enough effort it can be carved into a weapon (with 10 yards for a unit of material, making it +1 if of good quality). The silk is sharp and transparent allowing to serve many other purposes.

• Powerful build : You are proficient in athletics checks. Additionally you have claws that deal 1d6+str slashing damage.

• Living Horror : People don't know what you are and fear you. You are proficient in intimidation.

• Heavy wings : Your wings are too heavy to use for flight. but you can use them to protect yourself like a sturdy carapace. making your base AC 12+Dex Additionally you can use your wings for cover as a bonus action you can extend your wings giving half cover to creatures within a 5ft line but sacrificing 2 AC.

Conclusion

As the end point of guild greed or as a culture of their own i’m pretty happy of the result of the cottonneurs. (Or silkborn if you don’t want the french accent).
I’d love to see the players use the produced silk in creative ways and this is meant to give out the tools for such interaction as well as giving a lot of background for the character.
As a DM with a party that doesn’t have any cottonneurs yet, i’m eager to see what they do with the knowledge of their treatment.
A living loom warlock who pledged his soul to a violent god to escape,
A caveling monk that effortlessly dashes across the walls
A glamour paladin vowing to save their kin while infiltrating wealthy guild gatherings.
So many characters that my forever DM self would love to try out.
And you, what character would you make, what story would you tell ?

Thanks for reading, i’d love to have some feedback on balancing if there are any issues. If what you see is interesting to you, everything i make is free to browse through so take a look and please share my work, helps out a lot !

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For this i decided to do like i did with quests and random encounters with tables that could serve as vague guidelines to make those prompts and encounters easier to come up with.

What i recommend is making a couple of rolls during prep time to have a backlog of those prompts and making them simple.

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The tables

with how much of a fan i am of rollable tables i have 12 to offer today, all simple enough since the goal is just to make travel more interesting.

This first table defines what subcategory of events you will be looking at.
Some (like 11-rot) are world specific so feel free to substitute it with your own stuff.
On the other hand You can use this table to decide what sort of encounter the players have during travel.
Rolling 12 here means that there will be a random encounter over just a simple prompt (like combat or something generally more substantial than a conversation starter).

1- Normal Nature

A way to make the world feel alive is by simply describing this liveliness more often.
Some of it can be useful, some can harm. Overgrowth or a fallen tree are small issues that need to be resolved, a pond or some animals crossing the path can just be things to describe during travel.
Maybe the players want to spend time fishing or hunting, here they’ll have the opportunity.
I recommend finding or taking (if hiking is part of your passions) pictures of regions like the one of your game. This’ll help with descriptions, even more so with these special moments.

2- Odd Nature

Nature not being always the friendliest thing in fantasy world, some uncommon or more magical situations can happen or be found by the players during their travels.
These can turn into full blown encounters but generally won’t. Sometimes, some things can’t be explained.
A mushroom circle can be a portal to another plane, or it can just be an odd biological event.
The idea is to not put too much mystery or attention onto these, let the players try to figure out what happened, let them guess and sometimes, give them an encounter.
Many dead animals could be just an epidemy, or it could be a curse.
An abandoned grove might have the corpses of the druids that lived there, or maybe they just moved away.
Overly friendly animals could be the consequence of magic, or maybe someone domesticated them.
When looking at these, remember that they don’t need to be huge plot devices or potential big events, they could be explained in simple ways or remained unexplained for the time being.

3- Normal social

Small social encounters that the players can use for their own benefits. These characters often aren’t important or might never show again, but through them you can build up the next step of the journey.
A lone traveler speaks of the king taking personal part in executions where the players are heading.
A very small settlement is willing to trade goods for information of the outside world.
A group lead by a road warden (inspired by the game of the same name which i recommend) needs help finding medicine for a traveler fallen ill.
Use these as ways of building up the next location, giving rumors in exchange of others or just for conversation.

4- Odd social

When we talk about bandits, it can be just them preparing to attack another caravan or just traveling back to their base. They don’t need to be aggressive, they can just be a group of well armed folks carrying a good bounty or tending to wounds after a failed raid.
The dead courier could have special information they were traveling with, or mundane letters and a dog named scratch.
A lot of the others are ways of buying rarer or illegal goods, or can serve as an opportunity for a better standing with the locals.

5- Normal history

Giving your world a sense of history is something that is less trivial than it first seems. Here there can be quiet reminders of old events or lost places of faith.
A small description, a couple of words written on a plaque, a half erased name on a lone grave. These are small things that can be built on but can just serve as a way to express a known history.
A long abandoned hamlet of a couple of houses where people just moved out, went to the city for the sake of living a more comfortable life.
Your players could even take over these houses for the night, or maybe they are maintained by travelers as a half way house and comfortable place to rest.

6- Odd history

Finding a random sword in a stone could be a strong moment in a game. This sword certainly has history, perhaps it was placed there for commemoration.
Taking the sword out could get a ghost giving the party a good haunting, or maybe someone in a town over recognizes this sword as their father’s.

Similarly a dug out grave can be anything. A vampire escaping burial, or a close friend trying to resurrect his comrade.
A mass grave is a showcase of something truly awful happening in the past, it can remain unexplained or you can give just enough hints as to what happened and who the victims are to make your players guess at what transpired here.
With a couple of things to loot these findings can be truly special indeed.

7&8- Normal and odd weather

These are ways to keep the players on their toes, maybe a bit of rain falls while they don’t have tents to use for the night, or the strong winds could slow down their travel.
This is just a way to add flavor to an otherwise boring day.

Odd weather events are rarer and more dangerous. Wildfire forces the players to hurry or find shelter, a hailstorm would on the other hand just stop them in their tracks, having to hide beneath the tree line or create their own shelter.
These are supposed to be relatively rare, but will ask a few survival or constitution checks to find a place to take cover or push through the chaos.

9- Normal magic

Depending on your world magic can be plenty or pretty rare. In these cases the question isn’t how common it is to find but more about expected behaviors in magic or spell casters.
A wizard’s tower, a witch’s hut could be some things people can find. It is the players’ choice if they want to interact, help or hinder them.
When it comes to a monster’s den, consider the regional effects of the creature.
Perhaps the players see the impact of a gold dragon’s regional effects, or maybe the effect is more threatening like with the fiends’.
Give the players rewards if they decide to investigate or present the risk they are about the take.

10- Odd magic

Here two are pretty vague to give more space to the imagination. Maybe the god in question is an avid merchant who deals in Faustian bargains, or maybe it’s the god of silence rendering the whole region entirely quiet for a few hours.

A broken landscape can be towering shattered earth floating in the skies stretching into the clouds, or a big hole leading to an unseen space bellow.

When it comes to the cleric, my world has very weird gods and very few clerics, so you can change it to a powerful spellcaster travelling instead.

11- Rot

The arcane rot is one of the first things i talked about in my substack. To make a long story short, the arcane rot is a magical corruption of the region creating a whole new, often hostile biome.
This magical corruption stems from either broken powerful artifact or dead powerful magical creatures left to rot such as an ancient dragon or a lich.

These biomes tend to be small, but some have their uses and can be harvested for materials.
Given their danger, it would only be a matter of time until one manages to weaponize it and artificially expand the rot from another region.

Conclusion

Travel prompts can be many things, their main goal is to make travel a bit more entertaining.
I recommend having at least 1 prompt a day, privileging the normal ones and sprinkling larger encounters from time to time.
Keep it simple and reward the players for taking notice or roleplaying by giving inspiration and most importantly, have fun making these. Small, contained stories are very fun to play with and these are the opportunity to tell those stories that you can’t fit in a wider narrative.

Hey everyone, i am still working on the next crafting systems, but given inspiration has dried out lately i make no promises as to when the next one will be (hoping for this week but might be next Tuesday)
If these posts about DMing are of any interest to you or if you want to see my reworks of crafting systems, be sure to check my page out and subscribe if there are things you like in there !

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There he stood, his back straight, a book in one hand, a quill in the other. The black and ochre robes, stained in blood and mud, a meshed hood hiding his face. Staring, taking in the sight of the warzone. A historian, a witness, a tourist. Gifted with powers to heal, never to use them. - Orel

The gods of the black earth

In my world building process gods became a thing i paid particular attention to. Not for them to make their presence obvious, or to create another court of godly politics.
I wanted a power so far beyond the players that they could hardly understand their schemes, only to fall for their goals.
They are concepts, vague notions, moments and ideas. Their presence is sometimes felt or imagined.
And very few make their presence so openly known as…

The many eyed watcher

The “Many eyed watcher” was the first god i made for this setting. Mainly because i wanted to work on the rules and the existence of clerics and healing magic within this world, because i wanted it to be rare, and resurrection impossible.
So are the clerics, rare and seen with fear or disdain. The watcher’s fall into the latter.

The Witnesses

Those who follow the faith of the watcher are historians, witnesses to the events that unfold.
They are archeologists, librarians and travelers who have for only wish to track down the moving of history.

They are often great investigators who would rather put to word the sordid stories they found than share them to the world. They watch the world change and take notes but don’t act within it.

There is an ideology to this that doesn’t come from any curse outside of personal belief. Most of the people there believe in staying in the sidelines observing from the outside in.
This is why they enter the faith and why some of them gain a cleric’s powers.

Most of the powers the witnesses gain are small, maybe a couple of first level spells, or become the equivalent of a sanctified ranger at most. Mainly because they don’t need those powers, they are observers and gatherers of information.
As a consequence, most of the witnesses who’s job is to gather information are either rogues or rangers.

The 3 clerics

Within the faith there are 3 leaders who have been chosen by the watcher to lead the faithful. Contrary to the other clerics they remain in the open, they are known about even if rarely seen.
They have taken leadership roles in the faith and each cares for one section of what the witnesses are set out to do : Find, gather and archive information.

• The Past

An older man, admittedly too old to be human. A once brilliant historian turned to boundless faith through his maddened passion of history. For a while, he collected books and observed events as they passed him by.
Refusing to help anyone, remaining a passive witness to the events around him.
Such is the reason why he became the first of their ranks and the first cleric of the watcher.
Over the few hundred years with these powers he changed, physically. Turning into a many eyed creature himself. Bound to observe as the moments pass.
He owns the archives, having created them. Those around him write down all that they know, all that they are told by those who gather the information.

Despite his inaction, he remains a kind man and a great leader for the witness’s archival purposes.

• The Present

A younger man, though that means little in comparison to his old mentor. An warrior, a soldier who was perhaps supposed to die in war. Being the only surviving soul of a battle, only he could tell it’s tale, and the ones of his comrades.
This slowly took over everything in his mind. How many stories were left untold, how many were forgotten because none were there to observe and know the events.
It took him many years to find purpose, and just as many to become a cleric of the watcher.

He is in charge of the more active part of the faith, those who seek history through any means necessary. Breaking into vaults just to know what’s inside, bribing and blackmailing just to gain more information.
His appearance only recently changed, eyes growing on the skin and with that a growing distrust of the god he has been serving.

• The Future

The Youngest of the three. A woman in her thirties who has taken the powers of foresight gifted to her at heart. Using them to guess at where events could happen and acting accordingly.
From a young age she could easily guess at events yet to happen. Predict without powers, just assumptions from information gathered.

But not much beyond that, reveling in being proven right, never did she attempt to stop one from making a mistake. Finding more interest in the prediction than in doing anything with them.
She and her flock are always on the move, using information gathered to help the others be in the right place to gather more.

Popular reception

As said before, the witnesses are just that, observers of events by faith.
They’ll not lift a finger to help, seeing themselves as outside of history.

Great plagues, wars and many disasters have seen their presence, but none have seen their help.
No matter the powers of the clerics they’ll not be used for healing or killing. They’ll protect themselves, they’ll flee, they’ll use their wonderous powers to move quickly and quietly, to organize the greatest heists only to steal nothing.

Because of this, they are hated. Seen often as cowards or maybe the cause of disasters. Perverts only willing to look at the pain of others for their own faith and pleasure.

Because of this, they are often hunted by the common folk. Those who know better ignore them. Give them the information they ask for and move on.
They won’t do anything with it either ways. Only stock them in their own vaults, archive them for none to see.

Many have tried breaking into those vaults, but it seems that in defending them are the only moments where they are willing to act without restraint.

Story hook

When it comes to implementing such a group to your game, think of the value of an archive filled with ordinarily lost information. What could your players do with this and how could they reach those archives.

Through trickery or a heist of their own sneaking into and out of the archives or brute forcing their way through the libraries the most valuable of information could be theirs.

Or maybe they get hired by the witnesses to help in a heist made to find information without being allowed to look at it or steal anything, or as protectors in a warzone. Bound to observe without helping the injured.

Moral dilemmas through what knowing and gathering information means to a group. Maybe your players can gain entry and be allowed to talk to one of the leaders by giving secret information in return, needing to trust their faith in not sharing such information or using it against them.

I’m going back to talking about my world building project, but i’m not stopping the D&D reworks, i just need more time to work on them.
If this or my reworks are interesting to you please subscribe, Its free !

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If you have any quest or story ideas using the witness or any question about some details feel free to leave a comment !

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Have you ever wanted to make a special weapon that is just your own in D&D5e ?
Have you ever wanted to take the “Tinker’s construct” Minecraft mod and yank it into your D&D game ?
Well, i did.
While it’s not related to one specific tool i wanted to have a full system for my players to use to make weapons that feel like their own, and for me to make weird weapons for my NPCs.
The idea is for this system to be both modular and optional, so it doesn’t take away from the base D&D5e game, just adds onto it a whole kit to start making any type of melee or thrown weapons with different materials and styles.

Quality

With all my crafting systems reworks a base placed itself in front of it all, the “quality DC”.
Basically the DC for success when crafting a weapon is placed on a simple base with simple modifiers applied to it.
When it comes to crafting a weapon most of the DC comes from the head of the weapon and the material used.
The materials also changes the efficacy of the final product.
(A gold sword will bend easily)

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Smith’s or Tinkerer’s ?

Short answer - yes

Smith’s tools fit better, but this can depend on the material aswell as what is added to the weapon as an attachment.
To keep things easy to understand, think of what would make the most sense.
A whip would probably be made by a leatherworker, a wooden sword by a woodcarver.
But you can also make the call and say that a tinkerer or a smith can deal with the whole system on their own given the right circumstance.

Designing a weapon

A crafted weapon is made of 3 parts though most have only 2 :

• The head (blades, weights, piercers, they are the damaging part of the weapon)

• The grip (generally what holds the head, they are what allows the range or handling of the weapon)

• Attachments

With these three you can make a unique weapon that fits your character and allows for more player expression in the way they fight.

Extra rules and limitations

As you will see in the parts tables a new Tag has been added to limit this system somewhat and make sure the end results make some amount of sense.
For this we have “light” “medium” and “heavy” weight tags for the parts that are separate from the light and heavy tags of the end weapons.
The weight tags are here only for the different parts and show which part can go with another.
A Light weight head can go anywhere
A Medium weight head can have medium or heavy weight grips
A Heavy weight head can only fit a heavy weight grip.

If this limitation is ignored (like a maul with a dagger grip) the weapon becomes unwieldy and necessitate special training to be be used with proficiency.
These “odd weapons” can also have special requirement and special benefits though these will depend on the DM.
(For instance a Great sword with a one handed grip can have the damage of the greatsword but also allow the user to have a shield if they have 18 strength)

This training takes about a week with an athletics or acrobatics check at the end of each day of training. (The DC would depend on the base training the character has and what the weapon is).

Finally, all weapons that are out of the norm count as martial weapons when understanding proficiency.

Crafting

Material cost

When it comes to how material is needed for one part or another there are questions of logics and logistics.
When it comes to creating one item or another i consider materials as "units".
1 unit of iron is an ingot and can be made into one part. 1 unit of wood is the equivalent of a plank etc...
Calculating material cost comes with the following rules :
A light weight part costs 1 unit
A medium weight part cost 2 units
A heavy weight part cost 3 units.

Crafting DCs

As said above this crafting system uses a Quality DC meaning that the DCs are already set and are modified by the parts and the materials used.
This check is made at the end of the crafting process which would take a day’s worth of crafting if every part needs to be made and only 1 hour if they only need to be put together.

If the roll is lower than the poor quality half the resources are wasted and the weapon is not finished.
Very few can create an excellent or masterwork weapon, requiring specialized workshop and materials to reach this level which can offer large modifiers like a -5 to the crafting DCs making failure impossible and masterwork reachable.

Parts

Heads

Heads are the damaging part of the weapon

Grips

Grips are what holds the weapons together, they give the reach and weapon class.

heavy weapons can become versatile only with a strength requirement or special feature.
versatile adds a dice face above it's normal one.
Follow up allows a bonus action attack if the action is used for an attack.

Attachments

An attachment can be almost anything and more than one can be added on a singular weapon. They however have a tag to tell their location, meaning that you can only have one pommel attachment or one head attachment.
Pommel : attached to the bottom of the grip
Guard : attached between the grip and the blade
Grip : is or is placed on the grip
Head : is or is placed on the head
Special : either offers a choice or is placed on multiple parts.

Note : “f” is “fairs”, which is the equivalent to silver in my world.

Materials

There are many materials and they all have a small modifier added onto what they are used to make.
Their presence and prices will depend on the world you play and it’s era and you can add other materials at will without too much of a headache.
(Small note, i am no professional and most of these are made from a quick wikipedia check as to what material would have what properties)

Properties

Each material has properties that are either shared or unique to it.
Here are the shared properties :
- Light : Ignores strength requirements
- Soft : Likely to bend out of shape or break. deals -4 damage and has -2AC on armors.
- Magnetic : Is impacted by magnets.
- Conductive : -2 to saves against lightning effects but can channel lightning through. (can serve as focus for lightning spells)
- Durable : Is generally resilient to damage, -2 damage taken if worn as an armor.
- Flexible : Can be used to make bows.
- Heavy : Strength requirement of 15 if the resulting item didn't have one, otherwise +3 to it or whichever is the highest. Additionally, attacks deal an extra 3 points of the related damage.
- Brittle : looses 1 quality level on a nat 1, no roll.
- Hard : Difficult to work with but armors made with it gain a flat 3 damage reduction.
- Sharp : +2 to slashing damage.
- Fragile : Breaks on a nat 1 no matter the quality
- Elegant : +2 on charisma checks
- Tension : +1 to hit for bows
- Balanced : +1 to hit on weapons.

Woods

Stones

Metals

Gems/Crystal

All gems and crystals count as elegant except for glass.
Affinity adds an additional d4 of the damage type to a weapon or removes it from damage taken. On an excellent or masterwork result this d4 becomes a d6.

Leathers and cloths

When it comes to leather and cloths their effects are very few.
But you can specialize them with where the leather comes from. (Red dragon leather gives fire damage resistance to an armor or fire damage to a whip.)

Conclusion

This system has been a mess in the making but also one i have been working on for the longest.
Because of that i am very much usure about the balancing of it all. So, once again if you see any mistakes or issues you can comment or send me a message so i can correct it !

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As always, i am still working on a few other crafting systems, many of which are a bit less complex than this one or a few of the preceding systems. At the moment i’m working on the Glassblowing tools so if that is of any interest to you, subscribe !
You’ll see it for free when it’s done !

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Introduction

To continue on the tools for travel cartographer’s supplies came next in the list of reworks to be done.
The cartographer is the one that understands the land best and the one most capable of planning out a route for ambitious travelers or caravans needing to go off road.
The system is on the creation and utility of maps for intrepid travelers.

As always i am working on making all the tools in D&D5e a proper crafting system that gives the players more options in both roleplay and mechanics, so if this is of any interest to you please subscribe, i post twice a week and all my work is accessible for free !

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Cartographer’s supplies

Making a map, reading it and preparing travels according to information gathered, a cartographer is the best choice when traveling through dangerous lands or finding specific locations.

A cartographer is an investigator and traveler at heart, being able to recall locations and maybe even predict and help avoid potential dangers that often come from traveling the lands.

The tools

Cartographer’s supplies are an intelligence base tool, requiring the INT modifier in checks relating making or modifying a map or using the tools.
The cartographer’s supplies have paper and ink to make the maps, but also has a compass, rulers and other measuring tools that allow a better understanding of distances and the terrain.

There are also magical tools that only a few cartographers have which allows them to predict weather patterns and arcane shifts in regions.

Making a map

Making a map is the main focus of the cartographer, they spend time and coin to map out an area and adding to their understanding of the region. It necessitates travel and/or research, following a road, finding land marks and working with other cartographers and travelers.

To make such a map the cartographer must understand the region and make a Cartographer's supplies check when they have enough information about the region. The result of the check will determine the map’s quality and usefulness according to the quality DC system.

The quality DC works with modifiers that come from material, location or information you have.
- 5 is poor quality
- 10 is basic quality
- 15 is good quality
- 20 is excellent quality
- 25+ is masterwork
With modifiers, if you use ink that have "- 1 to quality DC" it means that the DC for all qualities are lowered by 1.
All the modifiers change the DCs but do not impact your roll.

The cartographer can make such a map without travelling but will need a significant amount of time and research, following old maps, talking to adventurers or other travelers.
A week's worth of research using investigations, history and various charisma checks, keeping in mind who and what information would be accessible for such a research endeavor is necessary for making a usable map.
Additionally the cartographer would need to spend money or favors to gain the information necessary for a good quality map.
This can be alleviated by spending more time on the research, up to a month to get a masterwork map without any traveling.

Finally the cartographer gains a bonus to the final check depending on how much research has been done about the region :

The bonus gained from research can stack twice.

Once the information is gathered the cartographer takes 12 hours (one day) to make the physical thing.1

Material

To make a map the cartographer needs paper and ink.

Using a map

The quality of the map has an impact that is greater than just modifiers to survival checks, with additional information on each levels of quality. But they still offer benefits otherwise.
For instance not having a map could cause the travelers to fall into dangerous terrains or happen onto a monster’s hunting grounds.
Having a poor quality map means that there could be mistakes within, maybe some missing landmark or a misplaced town.
Any good quality or higher maps have additional details that the travelers can make use of.
Maybe it has the location of a goblin camp, or a grove.
The higher quality the map is the more details and information can be gathered from it.
A masterwork quality map could have annotations on where to gather fruits and where to hunt in the wilderness, it could warn of potential dangers and have tips on how to traverse them.

Fixing a map

The cartographer can add onto their map given new learned details or to widen the region covered by it. For this they can spend an amount of time that depends on the changes made or the additions to the map, from 1 hour for small fixes to another 12 if adding a new region.
Fixing a map's flaws by traveling or doing extra research is possible, needing to have either been in the region or spending another week's research to do so.
At the end of which, another check is made and if it is higher than the current quality, the map is improved.

In this way, the cartographer gets to make another roll without spending resources in the process.

Conclusion

The cartographer is a character that helps travel. Using a high quality map to find a monster’s lair or the location of a grove is something i am going to play with in my own campaign.

The investigator part of the cartographer is not often used but i find it almost impossible to avoid as a means to use rumors and stories as ways to gather information about the region in my own maps.

There could be an issue that comes from the creation of such maps as a visual thing within the campaign according to the roll of the cartographer but for that you can have your own map of the world and a version that the players have. Giving them the means of adding annotations to this map is also a good way of involving them in the world.

Maybe they note the location of a monster’s lair that they can’t take on yet, or the location of a hermit’s house.
There can also be magical maps that help with avoiding bad weather or tracking caravan locations.

As i keep working on the crafting systems of DnD5e i’ve come to realize that some tools are more interesting than others. So in the future i will post a “weapon crafting system” and an “armor crafting system” rather than leatherworker, tinkerer or smith’s tools.

If you have any criticism or ideas on balance, feel free to leave a comment, these systems are for the most part untested and i’d love to hear some feedback !

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Introduction

Continuing the hard task of reworking all the crafting systems in DnD5e to actually include crafting has led me to some of the more complicated systems that would require something more to make sense.
The next step is Cobbler’s tools.

Because footwear rarely matters in a D&D game i decided to create an incentive and a few mechanics to make those actually matter aswell as a modular system added onto the creation and maintaining of those shoes and boots.

As always, if you are interested in my reworks of all the D&D5e tools, you can find those i have done on my page along with other writings that i have done over the months for free !

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Cobbler’s tools

My vision for the cobbler is a simple one : the cobbler facilitates travel and social situations.

With travel being the main focus, the cobbler allows for a bonus to survival checks or a greater safety during those travels in exchange for materials and preparation.

Ideally a cobbler would work alongside a leatherworker and a cartographer in order to prepare the right footwear for the right terrain and if anything goes wrong during the travel, the cobble will be able to maintain the party’s boots.

So while not being the most important member of the team they still allow to save coin on the buying of shoes and boots for travelling.

Boots are made for walking

Before going into the crafting system lets make a quick system to allow footwear to matter during travel without being too much of a hassle to keep track of.

For this, the system will only point to extreme/visible situations and we won’t go too far down into the intricacies.

This system is optional but will probably be welcome if your player wants to play an aspiring shoemaker.

Terrain penalty

Some terrain types are harder to travel through than others, imposing slower travel and/or risks coming with the survival check.

Here is a table of terrain types and penalty if the wrong footwear is used.

Sick : is a stacking effect much like exhaustion but it is weaker, imposing a penalty on all checks by 1 per levels and stacking up to 4, at which point the sick creature will start getting exhaustion every day. The creature saves at the end of each day to remove one stack or, if the disease is strong enough, avoid it growing further.

This is of course a template, feel free to change the penalties to be weaker or harsher depending on the terrain.
For instance small dunes could imply a flat -3 penalty on the survival check or a lower DC.

The right shoe for the right job

Now that we’ve looked at potential consequences in using the wrong footwear for travel, lets look at what the ideal footwear would look like depending on the terrain :

Note : My inspirations are European during the 18th and 19th centuries so feel free to come up with weird shoe types for weird terrain types or decorated shoes or boots, the cobbler was also an artist and shoes have always been styled after the culture making them, allowing for some world building.

Wearing appropriate footwear shouldn’t just be about avoiding penalties. (or you can choose either systems).
If the traveler has the right footwear for the terrain they either avoid the movement penalty (like snow shoes in deep snow) and/or get a d4 to add to their survival checks to travel.
When it comes to social situation a bonus to charisma if they wear the right shoes and a penalty if they’re in their mud trudgers in the middle of a gala.

Maintaining boots

Given the many travels an adventuring party often does, maintaining materials is often a given. To make this as painless as possible, there are 3 ways footwear can degrade :

1. poor/failed survival check

2. wrong footwear for the region (each day)

3. hitpoints (optional)1

When one of the conditions is hit, the footwear will loose in quality up to becoming useless.

Travelling shoeless ?

If a trickster fey or the players' poor decisions forces them to travel bare feet, there are consequences to that. Firstly, they have to roll a constitution saving throw at the end of the day against an exhaustion point, added to the penalty seen above. They are also much slower in their travel pace

Optional rule : "bruised feet"
After travelling a day without footwear the character gains this condition, removing 10ft until lesser restoration is used or a healing item from the alchemist system.

Making shoes

Now that the cobbler has a reason to exist, let’s make a way to create shoes and boots for the travelers in need.
When it comes to making this system a lot of the modularity is absent. Instead, the footwear is purpose made, and depends on 3 factors :

1. Purpose

2. Material

3. Addon

As the rest of the crafting systems, the "quality" of the crafting matters, here mostly to give it more survivability in harsh environments and even, in case of a masterwork, a small bonus to survival checks or to movement speed.

Tool rules

Cobbler’s tools is a dexterity based tool, meaning that you use your dexterity modifier along with the proficiency modifier if you are proficient in those tools.

Using cobbler’s tools require little to no setup when it comes to maintaining footwear. When it comes to crafting shoes or boots, the cobbler has access to a hammer, an awl, a knife, a shoe stand, a cutter, spare leather, and thread.
With about 4 hours the cobbler can make a pair of shoes or boots given they have the materials for them.

Quality

As in previous systems we have here the return of the Quality DC.
The quality DC allows the players to know what they need to roll to get a result when crafting.

• bad : 5-9

• basic : 10-14

• good : 15-19

• excellent : 20-24

• Masterwork : 25+

The quality here has 2 purposes :
Firstly it acts as the hitpoints of the footwear, a poor survival check or a poor choice of footwear for the terrain will lower it’s quality.
Maintaining the footwear using cobbler’s tools can improve the quality but takes 2 hours and half the materials used to make the boots.
The quality also allows for additional effects with the shoes or boots.
As long as they are of at least “basic” quality they gain the benefits cited above (1d4 added to the survival check) and if they fall to “bad” quality, they only avoid the penalty from the terrain.
Finally, masterwork boots or shoes can gain an additional trait like +5ft movement speed, +1 or +2 to stealth or charisma checks depending on the purpose of the footwear.
Basically, the better quality it is, the better it is at it’s job.

Purpose

The purpose of the footwear is what defines it.
It’s shape and goal, how much material and what sort of travel it allows.

The price modifier is the material price according to the table bellow.

Materials

A shoe's purpose is only useful if the materials works with it. Here are a couple of materials that can be used :

Notes : You can easily add more material types or more specific materials with their own small benefits.
Additionally the price here is in "Fairs" which is the equivalent to silver.

When it comes to magical materials be creative.
Using red dragon leather could allow one to step on magma without taking fire damage. A white dragon's leather could freeze the water beneath. A quickling's leather might give an additional 5 to 10ft walking speed.
Basically the boots give a simple modifier related to the creature it’s from.

Addons

Addons are little things that give an extra purpose to the footwear used. They should be simple and useful.

Addons generally as simple and situational benefits that the players can use in a pinch. Sneaking a poison bottle into a gala with the hidden compartment, travelling through an ice sheet using studded soles or sole spikes. Or maybe the fighter wants to be better at kicking people they don't like with an iron toe cap.

Conclusion

The cobbler’s tools are i think one of the simpler systems i have made so far. Not just because it doesn’t have many different options but also because most of it is optional.
While it can allow for interesting mechanics, they won’t become the highlight of a party contrary to what alchemist tools, cook’s utensils or calligrapher’s supplies are so far.
The importance given to shoes and boots depends on whether the DM can risk the tedium of asking the players to maintain their shoes or not.

I’d love to hear some feedback on this one and know how you would make a system that allows shoes to have their role to play in a DnD game.

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As always, thanks for reading, and if you want to see more, make sure to check out my other reworks and posts, all accessible for free !

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So today, i will share the resources i use the most while of course separating the free from the paid ones.

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Free tools and resources

Tools and rules

Finding the system and rules of DnD5e is surprisingly simple, while the official Open gaming license (OGL) has the main rules and a few options, it is very small compared to what the whole of DnD5e contains.

The issue encountered here is that most of these free resources that contain most of the DnD repository could be considered “piracy” even though they don’t always fall in the proper legal area for this.

5eTools

Starting with the big one !
5etools is a compendium of everything DnD all the while being entirely free. They have the player options, the items and the monsters aswell as tools the DM can use on virtual tabletops such as foundry and roll20.

5etools is in my opinion the most complete tool you can find online with more quality of life and utility than any other websites, even the official ones like DnDBeyond.

With encounter builders, CR modifiers for the bestiary and a few generator tools like the “this is your life” under player options and the loot generators you’ll find most of what you need here. It can even help you create your very own homebrew using the text converter, which takes your standard creation and turns it into a JSON format with a PDF to boot (so if you know a bit of HTML formatting you’ll feel right at home)

Thieves guild

While being far from my favorite tool to use, there is no denying the usefulness of this website.
And while it isn’t as much of a compendium as 5etools, it does have a few tools that i have been using now and then when DMing.
Mainly the shop generators and the harvesting tables.

Thieves guild has many of the standard generators gotten from tables in the DnD system aswell as some new ones that are very useful like tavern menus, shop inventories and other loot generators.

It has a couple of big flaws however.
The first being the adds. While i understand that a website often needs those to survive, the adds on this website are full page and somewhat frustrating.

The other is that it lacks in utility. You have tables to roll on yes but there isn’t much outside of that.

5e wikidot

Yet another compendium.
It’s a place to find all the resources you need as a player to make your character.

It is however much easier on the eyes than 5eTools for quick character creation. The UI is simple, the text is big and all the information is easily accessible.
Otherwise there isn’t much else to say.

DanDwiki

Not just for 5e and mostly homebrew, here you can find a lot of what people create on the side for this game.
It’s fun and while it also has most of the DnD systems in the website, the large part of it remains the homebrew.
I find that i can easily be inspired by what is made there and while the website is very old web, it is also the best place that i could find to have access to older editions.

So, when in need of odd or specific rules, this website often has you covered with an odd or specific homebrew!

Falindrith's Monster Maker

By far the simplest and best way to create monster statsheets.
Nothing less, nothing more.

If you want a pretty stat sheet for a monster that you want to make, this tool will basically convert what you write into each section to any type of file you want to use, from JSON to JPEG.

It’s easy to use, quick to learn and entirely free, what’s more to say ?
Here's the link to it so you don’t fall on the knockoff that i fell on a few times.

Generators

What better than a (non AI) generator that takes from tables and such to help with inspiration ?

OMGM

Oh my game master is a simple, cute and free tool that allows you to quickly get anything you need without adds.

Here you can get cities, NPCs, traps, travel prompts, landmarks and inn, all generated from home made tables, downloadable as pdfs and the cute art is a big plus in my books.
Go support it if you can !

Monster shuffler

A quick NPC stat generator.
If you need a bandit group that isn’t the simple DnD5e statsheet or if you need an enemy to take hints from DnD classes, here’s the tool for that.
These sheets are editable and there is a community made compendium or creatures that you can use in a pinch.

Fantasy names generator

I mean… of course this is here, it’s a pretty old website and has so far been the most reliable source of names for NPCs in my games.
It’s easy to use and the old web page has it’s charms. It does what it needs and all for free !
Link

Virtual Tabletops

Sadly there aren’t that many that are free so here i’ll share the only ones i know of that can be used for free.

Roll20

Roll20 is a standard resource for DnD games online, it can be used for free and while utility is pretty far from it’s best it has the basics.

I do not recommend the paid tiers, i have used them but it is better to use something else if you are to put money into your game.

Owlbear rodeo

I sadly never used this tool but from what i can tell it holds many more settings and uses than Roll20 does, and while it has some paid options, they don’t take away from the free version.
From what i can tell there also isn’t any issue with server hosting and is all done in browser.
So, i suppose, if you want a virtual tabletop for free, this looks to be the best option out there.

The paid ones

In here i’ll put the paid services and tools i use for my campaign. Some have a free option but i won’t recommend that free option because i find it too restrictive.

Foundry

My VTT of choice, it’s a bit complex and can be a headache but you can do a LOT with it.
With mods and many games systems you can chose from it’s one of the better tabletops out there. It’s also a one time payment (€44.00)!
The problem is server hosting. You’ll have to take care of that or use a third party hosting service for which i use Forge.

Inkarnate and Dungeondraft

Inkarnate and dungeondraft are map makers using stamps.
They’re easy to use and not too hard to learn.
Inkarnate is a subscription fee to get full access to the assets and is my favorite amongst the map makers out there.
I have made HUNDREDS of maps with this tool and at 25€ a year i can’t complain.

Dungeondraft uses content packs to add more assets and is easier to import to some VTTs. It is also available offline which is a big plus. It’s also less expensive at about 20€.
Adding more content is where i find issue, Inkarnate has many more mainly because it’s a subscription fee. Dungeondraft works with content pack that can be expensive. But still are one time payments.
It’s a question of preference.

There are many other resources online for playing TTRPGs but a good reminder is that these tools are optional.
A TTRPG can be played with a pen and paper. The rest is just a plus.

As i keep reworking the D&D5e’s crafting systems the next one on the list ended up being the Alchemist’s kit.
There were many issues i encountered in the making of this system hence why it’s late.
So, in opposition to the other systems i have made, the creation of potions, balms, bombs and poisons leaves more to player creativity and a bit of a wilder mind to do with this system as they please.

As always, if you want to see more of my reworks, take the time to subscribe, it’s free, and i try to post twice a week.

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Alchemist’s tools

The crafting generally does not require a lot of setup needing only a covered place where to mix and prepare the product. However there is a benefit in having a proper room made simply for the art of alchemy, as it will allow for the creation of multiple products for the same amount of resources.
Additionally this system is made to be relatively vague, allowing for much more freedom in the creating of potions or other alchemical products alongside the DM.
But to give some guidance as to the effects of certain ingredients, i have made a simple system that is like the other crafting systems and doesn’t require much arguing with the DM.

The time to make a product varies but is generally 1 hour unless said otherwise by some recipes/ingredients.

Purpose

The alchemist can quickly become the backbone of any good adventuring party.
Potions, poisons, weapon coatings and all the many other possibilities can make the difference between certain death and a successful encounter.

Here creativity is key and it is recommended to the DM to sprinkle the information into the campaign about what recipe and reagent do what rather than give everything at once.
Let the player experiment and find out how the system works through recipes or experiments.
The benefits of the alchemist vary wildly, for instance they could use a poison using Sal volatile against a dragon to force it to waste it’s breath attack.

The tools

Alchemist's tools are an intelligence based tool that focuses on the crafting of potions, elixirs, bombs and pastes that can be used by adventurers during their travel.
For this, they need bottles, vials and small boxes to house both their reagents and compounds aswell as ways to heat and mix them to create the products.

To make an alchemical product the alchemist needs 1 base compound, up to two reagents and can include a catalyst.

Quality

As the other systems the crafting of alchemical products is governed by a Quality system which will define how good the end result is.
However this system won’t be based on a simple DC like the others, rather the DCs are calculated by the ingredients and the situation.
Starting at a DC 10 + ingredient modifiers + situation modifier.

If the DC isn’t met, the product will be of lower quality, or wasted if failed by 5 or more.
A product of a lower quality is less effective at what it’s supposed to do, with either a lower dice face for healing or damage, a lower range or a lower duration.

If the DC is met by 5 or more, the product will be of higher quality. Which will make the dice face higher, have a longer duration or have higher range.

Additionally, the DC of the product (the save to resist a poison, or check to see through a thick fog) is the roll the alchemist made in it’s crafting.1

Crafting and materials

When it comes to creating an alchemical product, there are 3 moving parts to keep in mind :
- Base compound : The base of the product and what determines the main behavior of the result. (if it is a potion, a weapon coating or a balm)

- Reagents : The ingredients that determines what the result does, the alchemist can use up to two per product.

- Catalyst : An addon at the end that either applies a simple modifier to the end result or allows for a special effect with unique recipes.

Base compounds are always purchased in bulk. They have 4 uses, meaning they can make up to 4 products until completely used.
A critical success (or 10 over the DC) on the crafting will spare a use of the compound.
The reagents and catalysts are single use only, meaning that the better the workshop, the more an alchemist can get from their ingredients :
- “Alchemy on the go” will produce only 1 product and the DC is higher (+3)
- “A poor workshop” will make one product
- “An average workshop” will make 2
- “A good workshop” will make 2 and the DC is lower (-2)
- “A master workshop” will make 3 and the DC is lower (-2)

Dice Face and amount

To make a relatively simple guideline i have decided to make a few simple tables to help in the making of alchemical products.
This determines how much a potion heals, how much damage a poison deals and what is the best way to use one product or another.

The dice face relies on a prefix added in the description of the ingredient :

When it comes to the amount of dice used, it depends on the way the product is administered. (once again this is a general guideline and can be changed)

When it comes to balancing all of these effects in both the dice face and amount, can be changed according to the rarity of the material or with what other reagents the ingredient is paired with.

(for instance adding red vitriol to arsenic would improve the strength of the poison, even more so with the right catalyst. This of course comes with the option of giving that poison a special effect with the poisoned condition)

Something that helps the value of this system is Specialized poisons.

Understanding poison resistance and immunities as applying to magical or standard poisons not only improves the value of crafted poisons but also opens the door to the creation of a specialized poison against a creature or creature type, with recipes needing to be researched or bought from another alchemist.

Maybe using silver powder with arsenic and some ferment of Iron makes a powerful poison against cursed creatures that have a weakness to silver.

Or maybe using Antimony makes a poison that damages the abilities of a fire elemental.

Base Compounds

The base compound is what holds everything together, it gives the product it’s purpose.
Some serve the same purpose but are cheaper and pose the risk of an adverse effect if mixed with the wrong reagents.
When bought, 1 compound has 4 uses, meaning it can do 4 products until used up completely.

(My campaign uses Fairs (f) as the main coin which is an exact equivalent to silver. So aqua vitae is 15 gold)
The base throwing range is 30ft, applying time is 10 minutes, the gas radius is 10ft and last 4 turns, a coating can be used for 4 hits or ammunitions, a balm/applied sludge lasts 10 minutes or until removed with an action.

Drinking an acidic liquid isn’t recommended but can be done, dealing 2d4 acid damage with aqua fortis and 2d6 with aqua regia.
Drinking Oleum poisons the drinker for 1 hour and monster blood can have an additional effect depending on the monster which can create more unique potions.

Reagents

Reagents are the core of the effect, they are what will guide the end product and one is needed per crafting. (if the alchemist is making 3 potions at once in a master workshop they'll only need one ingredient)

Reagents are separated into 4 categories : Vitriols, salts, minerals and herbs.

Vitriols

A vitriol is a dust that comes from other alchemical works. They are expensive and predictable as to their effects. They can all serve as a pigment, except for the sweet vitriol.

Salts

Salts have generally weak and niche effects and are often used in addition to another reagent to improve or stabilize potential side effects.

A vomiting agent removes the poisoned condition if it came from being drunk or waste an enemy’s turn. The acid neutralizer allows the usage of other compounds, same for the acidifier.

Minerals

Added as either shavings or powders, minerals have a wide variety of uses, they need to be used with an acidic compound to dissolve it into the product.

Herbs

Herbs are simple reagents, they tend to have two effects and are cheap but 1lb is needed per crafting. Making them the heaviest reagents to travel with. Additionally they need to be treated, dried or pressed to be used. Taking one additional hour of preparation. 1lb of materials leads to 1 reagent.

When it comes to effects, Calming can give an extra hit dice in short rests or can help remove a fear effect if potent enough and Addictive forces a wisdom saving throw of DC-10 or start needing to take more.

Monster parts

Due to the amount of monsters i can't give a list of what one would do, but keeping in mind the monsters' abilities, you can easily create your own.
Like giant's blood or nails creating giant strength potions or a quickling's blood for speed potions.

Catalysts

Catalysts are addons that modify, change or add to the effect. Special recipes have a catalyst to differentiate them from what would otherwise be a "normal" product.

This is also an invitation to play with interpretation, delaying an effect can mean many things, from making it happen later, to making it happen in stages.
”Binding effect with the blood” can mean the benefit of a potion lasts longer or that a poison is more potent.
Basically, go wild.

Special recipes

When making this system i wanted to allow my players to create weird potions from simple descriptions of what the ingredients do.
Or start with an idea in mind and go from there.
”How could i make a potion of speed using this system ?”
Well, with Aqua regia, lead, salt of tartar and ferment of platinum.
Aqua regia to use the lead, salt of tartar to make it drinkable and ferment of platinum to reverse the lethargy. (but the potion makes you faster AND dumber for 10 minutes)

To help inspire, i made a few recipes, working with ideas and going backwards to what would fit best as ingredients.

Alchemist’s Fire

- Effect : 1d4 fire damage per round for 3 rounds; sticks to surfaces.
- Base : Oleum
- Reagent : Sulfur
- Catalyst : Calcination Dust

Smoke bomb

- Effect : Creates a 20ft smoke cloud, obscures vision for 1 min.
- Base : Smoke Tincture
- Reagent : Sal ammoniac, any pigment
- Catalyst : Sublimation Dust

Paste of the salamander

- Effect : Applied to armor or clothing. Grants resistance to fire for 1 hour.
- Base : Oleum
- Reagent : Antimony, Tin salt
- Catalyst : Hermetic Binder

Caltrop bile

- Effect : Moving through the 10ft square of Bile will cause 1d4 damage per 5ft of movement and count as difficult terrain
- Base : Black Bile
- Reagent : Iron

Hangman’s poison

- Effect : If drunk, the creature must make a Constitution save or take (10d4+50) poison damage.
- Base : Aqua Regia
- Reagent : Arsenic, Hemlock
- Catalyst : Arcane Ferment
- Note : Creating it is dangerous, needing a master workshop and dealing (10d4) poison damage to the alchemist on a failure.

Red queen

- Effect : Heals 4d4 HP, then grants 1d4 temporary HP per turn for 1 minute. gives Haste for 3 turns. But once both the effects run out, the creature will take 2 points of exhaustion.
- Base : Aqua Vitae
- Reagent : Red Vitriol, foxglove
- Catalyst : Ferment of platinum

Oil of sharpness

- Effect : When applied to a weapon, it becomes +1
- Base : Oleum
- Reagent : iron

Conclusion

This system is one i really like but had a lot of troubles with. The biggest issue is that it’s usefulness depends on both the DM and the player’s agreements on what can be done using it.

But even with the “basic” system it can create powerful potions and still be as wild as the special recipes.
From healing mists to flashbangs, from fear toxins to cloud fire. The potential is almost endless without even starting to play with custom effects made by a DM.

The biggest issue with the base DnD5e system was the lack of wonder and experimentation that would normally be the alchemist’s whole thing.

With this, your players can become the balls of chaos they’ve always wanted to be.
And if you’re the game master, why not use these too ?

What would you make with this ?
If an idea comes to mind, do share it in the comments !

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It’s free and helps me out lots with getting feedback and maybe in due time, making a proper D&D5e module !

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Introduction

Continuing on the quest to rework all the crafting systems in D&D 5e to be more interesting i decided to finish the kit and allow my players to basically open a tavern or inn if they felt like it.
For that, i have the cooking system already posted, and now with today’s addition, the possibility to make alcohols.

As a reminder i am reworking all the crafting systems in D&D5e and might even create a few more depending on my inspiration. So if this is of any interest to you, take the time to subscribe !

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Brewing

To make alcohol the first necessity is a keg that is resilient and well treated for travel if it does travel, if not it can remain in the home of the brewer since the roll comes at the start of the brewing to avoid wasting the player’s time with a bad result. (So they can choose to waste materials to try for a better result)

Purpose

Wines, ales and spirits do not tend to offer bonuses to the players apart from being easy to sell and some can provide a lot of coin if brewed well and sold to the right people.

However, with some more esoteric materials, the brewer can create a more potent alcohol that can have some magical effect at it's end point.

Brewing alcohol takes a while, from weeks up to a year in game, but if done right it can provide enough coin to make it worth the time.
This can cause problems to certain campaigns given it requires either a lot of downtime or a long standing campaign that allows the profits to be of any use.

I also recommend using either the bastion system or a player home that could allow the players to have some uses for the system all the while being able to move around your world and take quests.

The best option is to make a sort of “Tavern Keeper” campaign, where the players are trying to make a good tavern with a kitchen and brewery as they travel to fetch rare materials to make more expensive products.

Brewer’s Kit

A brewer in the party is mainly a money earner. They can also serve as way to get more socialization between the characters or a way to play with sanity or tiredness in adventures where rest and entertainment are something to keep in mind.
They are also the best way to get in the good graces of powerful and wealthy people.

Quality

In the brewer’s system, Quality holds less of an impact than it would on the other systems. They aren’t the main focus after all, since the time invested is what makes or breaks a good spirit or wine.
Quality here points to the price at which the result can be sold.1
- Poor (DC 5) : ×0.5 base price
- Basic (DC 10) : ×1 base price
- Good (DC 15) : ×1.5 base price
- Excellent (DC 20) : ×2 base price
- Masterwork (DC 25) : ×3 base price
(Reminder : Quality is a base DC that moves depending on the goal, the materials and the situation. If a bad quality material is used, all the DCs are heightened by the amount specified on the material and vice versa if the material is of good quality.)
(ie. if the keg used isn’t covered there will be a +3 quality modifier, making the DCs : 8,13,18,23,28)

Kit and Keg

The brewer’s kit is a wisdom based tool meaning that a character uses it’s wisdom modifier to make it’s check and adds the proficiency after if it applies.

The brewer’s main “tool” is the Keg. A generally wooden barrel treated specifically for the purpose of brewing.
A keg alone will allow the crafting of most ales, beers and wines but will not be enough for spirits, since they require a distiller.

A keg is a heavy thing and while relatively cheap (f being the equivalent to silver coins in my campaign) effort is needed to transport the barrels, or they need their own room to be built in.
Additionally, the On the go barrel is the only one that can survive poor weather without being under any cover. If done with the others, the check will automatically fail.
If uncovered during the process, the brewer has a week to safeguard the barrel or loose the whole batch.

Specialized room here refers to something that is almost impossible to reach in D&D worlds, air conditioning.
Perhaps the players can look for a spell or special materials from which to build their brewery.
The bonus could be a necessity to reach the highest qualities of the most demanding drinks.

Resource need and cost

To make any kind of alcohol the brewer needs resources, all processes need yeast with 1lb needed no matter the size of the barrel.
Yeast can be bought at a local inn or brewery, the yeast can be grown or kept by using 1lb of flour and water.
It is recommended to the brewers to have a barrel of the thing at home.
1lb of yeast can be bought for 5 fairs or (5 silver).
1lb is needed per batch and with a barrel 1lb can be made each week using the same amount in flour.

When it comes to the rest of the ingredients the brewer need 1lb of material per yield of the barrel, if there are multiple ingredients, the requirements remain the same (if there are 3 ingredients, 1lb of each leads to 3 bottles)
Barley, hops, wheat and malt are cheap, all coming at 3 dents (3 copper) per pound
Fruits like apples or pears come at 8 dents per pound.
Spices or herbs come at 10 fairs (1 gold) per pound
Honey and sugar come at 10 fairs aswell.

This can change depending on how far the buyer is from the farms or depending on the region’s production.

Beers and Ales

Beers and ales, nothing more necessary to a hard worker’s life. They are cheap to make and not too hard to sell. Making them a common sight in inns where they’ll always buy some.

Rot ale needs to be taken with an antidote or it will force a DC 20 constitution save causing 2 points of exhaustion on a failure.
In consequence it’s rare to see outside of large cities and wealthy taverns.

Wines and Meads

Wines and meads are worth more than beers and ales, but require months to get right.
They often also are the direct path to a noble’s heart since they are the ones to collect the most of them.
So aside from the cheaper ones, the best place to sell a good wine, is to the wealthy.

Spiced mead has a standard fermentation but the duration can be halved if mead is used as an ingredient.

Ice wine is often done in the north or in mountains since the frozen grapes need to be kept cold during the fermentation process.

Sparkling wine needs riddling (needs to be fermented a second time and moved to gain bubbles) (meaning 6 months and then 3 more).

For the Blood wine, the blood must be treated for two months in a silver decanter. Then it is mixed with the grapes and left to ferment.

Spirits

Spirits are harder to make, requiring a setup for distillation, in consequence, they are more pricey. Some can be aged for better results.
This cannot be done on the go requiring a distiller which cost about 3000f (or 300 gold) and can make 20 bottles at a time in 4 hours (bottles that then can be aged.)
The Distillation happens at the last day of the brewing time, the product can then be moved to a barrel to store and age.

A masterwork brandy, once distilled, will be pretty expensive and it's price will be multiplied by 1.5 per year aged. Spirits of any lower quality will take months to reach higher qualities up to excellent with 1 month of brewing per quality, they cannot be aged more than that.

The distillation needs to be done in a silver decanter for the corruption Elixir.

Conclusion

This was a strange one to make. From the bit of research to trying to figure out prices and brewing time, there are a lot of moving parts that can be changed with some testing.

The worse part being that testing this system could take a long time given that patience is it’s central aspect.
So, more than ever, i need your opinions.

I would also like to add that a lot of these drinks are inspired from my campaign’s region, the goal of making a system like this is also so you can add and remove any parts of it at will without breaking the whole thing.

In your campaigns you should also consider the access to water. I implied it in the system without touching on it, but it is important to note that most of these do require some water, so the home base will require a well.

I also like the idea of adding more products relating to monster or magical effects.
For example you could make an ale that allows one to climb on walls (even if drunk climbing is not advised)

I am currently still working on the Alchemist set, so it might be the next one to come out.
I also have a full modular weapon crafting system at the ready, though i still need to work on the materials aspect.

What do you want to see next ?

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Where man made hills stand, where the spoils of the mines piled up, where a grassland turned to rolling hills. And, in the center of it all, nestled into the oldest spoil tip, a mining town carved out of slate bricks and logs has become the start of a story to impact the whole region.

Writing as a DM for a campaign and making your own world is something that will push you to create many towns and cities.
Today i want to share my process and start talking about all the points of interests in my world. We’ll be looking at the place where my campaign began, Terreneuve.

First steps

Making a settlement starts with it’s placement, understanding why it is there and why it still exists.
The economical reasons as to why the place exists is the first worry to know why it exists and in what state it is (is it rich or poor…)
The second one is the culture and the faith and finally the notable places within the settlement.

Terreneuve

Economic

s

Terreneuve is a mining town in the south of Armoix. It is a very pretty old settlement that is a little isolated from the rest of the nation.
Given it’s situation as a source of coal, it has a lot of importance for the country but is a place where few workers remain for long, people go there to work and leave as soon as they have the coin to get somewhere better.
The work is hard but often well paid enough to make many heed the call.

Because of the coal trade and the thorough underground mining, the lands around have been marked with spoil tips (see pic)
These piles of slag and earth have marked the terrain and created many hills all around the region.

Culture

The fact that many people move around and few stay for too long has made it so those who remain within the region have become like elders and know each-other well.
They hold power through the respect garnered after years of work.
The older baron, a Halfling is beloved by the people who live within the town and has allowed people to move freely and act to their will. Even allowing a witch to work within the city as a healer.
She as well as the workers of the city form a tight nit group that tries to protect each-other the best they can.

The company

This city is a company town, while not officially controlled by the owner of the mines, a guild man called “Marc Millet”, the town has been under his rule for a while.
He uses threats and bribes to keep the guards under his thumb and through them he has managed to take full control of the town.
With this amount of power and the syphoned wealth from mines, he has become an almost nobility despite the law forbidding this position of power for a man from a guild.

The aesthetics

I took as inspiration the north of France, a place close to my heart which sadly doesn’t have much old buildings left.
It was the coal mines that shaped the region, Terrils (spoil tips) still shaping the land in regions.
When it comes to the look, the north of France is built with a lot of adobe bricks, the red houses are pretty recent but have a unique look to them which we can use for some of the buildings there.
Terreneuve itself is a poorer aspect of these towns up north.
With mud and cobble roads, with shacks to house the workers and nestled against a spoil tip to help defend the town, the poverty takes precedent over the red adobe. As for the mines, they sprawl out under foot, a large labyrinth of narrow corridors and rails for the minecarts full of coal and stone to be brought topside.

The quest

This place was the first step of my campaign and the way for me to introduce all the factions of this world in the appropriate way.

Introduction of the city

The players enter the city looking for a job, the mines have stopped producing and the guild needs people to investigate.

As they enter they city they realize that it is poorer than it should be given the trade that comes out of there.
As they go to talk to Marc Millet, the job giver, they see him living in an impressive mansion that has been built next to the guild warehouse.
The man even has a page, showing himself as nobility.

The job

He blames the workers for the mines for a monster’s assault in the mines which has stopped the production.
In truth a wyrmling and some kobolds have made their home in the mines, lured by an adversary guild who wants to take control over the town.

Clearing the mines is dangerous but doing so leads the players to meet the workers and some of the inhabitants in the town.

The next steps

The players then get to choose what they do in consequence of the fake noble’s hold on the town and thus get to shape the future of the town.

In my game the players chose to help the baron find his successor and remove Marc Millet from his seat of power.

But yours could choose to get a powerful ally in Millet or to help the other guild make a play against the town.

Conclusion

The mines of Terreneuve was in my mind the best place to start my campaign given the conflicts brewing within.
The encounters in the mines being built around level 2 characters, they managed to get the wyrmling to leave willingly and threatened Marc Millet enough for him to try to kill them.

in my quest to rework all of the tool systems in D&D, the second to get my attention is the Calligrapher’s supplies.
Calligraphy being the art of penmanship gave me quite the inspiration despite the fact that the base D&D5e tool has very little to offer that actually relates to the art.
Being more about investigating and understanding another writer.

Recap of my goals

If you’ve read through the cook’s utensils segment you can skip this since it will be a quick recap of the rules and ideas at the center of my reworks.

Quality

The first idea is to make all the tools in D&D 5e to have most if not all the information you need within the crafting system itself.
As such not forcing the DM to scramble at numbers trying to figure out some DC in the middle of a game.

This came in the form of the Quality roll.
5 : Poor quality
10 : basic
15 : Good
20 : excellent
25 : masterwork

Quality is a base DC that moves depending on the goal, the materials and the situation.
If a bad quality material is used, all the DCs are heightened by the amount specified on the material and vice versa if the material is of good quality.
(ie. if the ink used to write a document is bad and has a +3 quality modifier, the DCs would be : 8,13,18,23,28)

Goal

The end goal is to remake all the tools with one rule in mind : it has to be modular and optional.
Modular in the way that options interlock with each-other to work to a final goal, and optional in the way that a player can opt out of using that system without any other rules changing

Calligrapher’s supplies

A calligrapher in an adventuring party may not seem very useful at first but, from the ability to create mundane documents or copy magical scrolls if given the right materials, the calligrapher can offer a party a bit of utility that they often lack.

Basics

A calligrapher is a person that has great control over penmanship and is both an artist and a scholar. Calligrapher's supplies can be used with Intelligence or Dexterity.

Tools

Within the calligrapher’s supplies there are the following items :
ink, a dozen sheets of parchment, and three quills.
There is also the option to get a paintbrush or paints instead of ink though the system is mostly centered around inks.

Role

As said before the calligrapher has for main feature the creation of documents.
Whether it be invitations, books or artworks the calligrapher can make them with a relatively simple roll.
If the calligrapher wants to create a forgery, that forgery needs to be of the same materials as the original or be taken with a DC 5 points higher than base.
For one to see through the forgery the reader needs to make an insight check against the quality score.

Additionally the calligrapher can copy down magical scrolls. It is difficult to do so but still a possibility given the right materials.

Mundane items

The quality modifier in the crafting of mundane items is mostly about price or quality of a forgery.
For the price, the price modifier is applied to the combination of the materials used.

Mundane materials

To create a mundane item using the calligrapher’s tools you need paper and ink.
These apply a modifier to the final DC to create the item in question.

Ink

Mundane inks are simple, they are a bonus to the quality of a mundane work of the calligrapher. They can also have a special effect added onto them that serves specific purposes of the writer.

The gilded ink’s goal in my world is to avoid forgeries, so if you want to make an important document for the players to try and make a copy of, like an invitation to a gala, using this ink adds to the challenge.

Paper

These prices can vary depending on the era you choose. My world having the recent invention of the papermill, the price of paper tends to be cheaper than it would be for a more medieval world.

Magical scrolls

The more difficult part of the crafting of this system was to find a balanced way to make spell scrolls. So if you have any criticisms, do let me know !

checks

For this system i have decided to change the DCs by simply removing the lower brackets and considering them a fail.
Failing in such way wastes the materials used (or half of them if you want to be kind to your players)
depending on the quality of the scroll it can either have a bonus or a flaw that is rolled on the following table :

Alternatively the DM can choose the flaw or bonus depending on the spell, allowing to have more unique flaws to spells.
The flaws and bonuses are flat modifiers added onto the caster’s ability.

The Level of the spell is added onto the base quality DC.
Making a first level scroll of basic quality for instance would have a DC 11. For a 2nd level a 12 and so on. The quality DCs are the following :
10 : basic - 1 flaw
15 : Good -
20 : excellent - 1 bonus
25 : masterwork - 2 bonuses

Rules

Creating a spell scroll is no simple endeavor, even less so for those who aren't wizards.
To create a spell scroll one must know the spell or have a written version available to them when crafting. They must also understand it's inner workings. Studying it for an amount of hours equals to twice the level of the spell with at the end an arcana check of DC 12+spell level.
If the check is failed the calligrapher has to do another study session to attempt the roll once more.
The Calligrapher must be at least trained in arcana to attempt this roll.
A Cleric, Druid or any other spell caster can make one of their prepared spells into a scroll, they will however have a harder time making it.

The time to create a spell scroll is calculated in the same way it is for a wizard to place them onto their spell book with a similar price range as well. However a wizard cannot use other materials for their spellbook.1

who can craft scrolls ?

When it comes to creating spell scrolls the calligrapher doesn't have to be a caster but rules apply.
If the calligrapher is a spellcaster other than wizard they get a heightened quality DC by 5.
Making it so the calligrapher needs to roll at least a 15 to get a result out of a spell scroll.

A non spellcaster has the DC heightened by 10, needing a 20 to get a basic spell scroll.
Any calligrapher that isn't a wizard can only create up to 5th level scrolls using these tools. But some inks can remedy this limitation.

Materials

Crafting magical scrolls requires magical materials to work. If one part of the scroll is mundane it will not work.

inks

For the monster blood ink, a red dragon’s blood for example could add to the fire damage or a mind flayer’s blood adds to the psychic damage.

Papers

Getting resources from an archmage can be part of a quest to try and make a much more powerful spell. It can be a good idea for a quest.

Conclusion

While the mundane crafting is relatively simple, it took a while to put together the magical section.
Crafting scrolls is something that i find very interesting in D&D and is strangely an unused system even though it can be of great uses for the players.
Having a more straight forward system may make the players use this system a little more.
Even more so if they need to prepare a lot for the encounters.

This system also helps with the world building, making magic attainable to most but incredibly difficult to make work safely.

Either ways i am still working on the other tools and i am finding some issues with the “middle” parts of the crafting systems, those who’s final result is a part for the next ones. (like glassblowers for alchemists, leatherworker and weavers for armors etc…)
Though for them i feel like an arcane twist could have great results.

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There he sat, a throne of silk and stone stained by the blood of his kin. The runt of the litter turning ambition to massacre, turning a hopeless dream of the crown into reality.
Emil Sakriant II, last surviving member of his family by his own design and maybe the first of a new era. - Orel

Introduction

When making my world for my second D&D campaign i already knew what sort of leadership the region would have, given the inspiration came from the early 1800’s France, a King felt in the right place for it.
But i didn’t want to look like the simple sort of kingdom we often find in TTRPGs or medieval fictions where a king ends up being either this wise old man or a tempestuous young sort fueled by greed. (or any mix of the two)

So i spent a certain amount of time only to end up at the middle. A man in his 50’s who’s spent his youth destroying any signs of opposition only to learn the meaning of subtlety and becoming much more dangerous.

History

Youth and aspiration

Born in 1764, young Emil was the last of his brethren. Having no hopes to ever touch the crown, remaining a prince for the rest of his life if lucky.

His ambitions came at first from his own name, that of his grandfather Emil the first, a feared old ruler that founded the first long lasting peace through more blood spilled than any predecessors.
From his name, an idea, an obsession with what he could do with the crown.
From this foolish desire, grew a ruthlessness and ability to scheme at a young age, he learned to fight, trick, kill before reaching his 20s.

It is little after his 20th birthday that his schemes finally paid off, mounting his brethren against each-other, a war of succession quickly started.
Emil II took advantage of the chaos, allying with guilds and betraying them when the time was right, not fearing the idea of spilling blood himself.

The war lasted only a year, with the last of his kin either disappeared or publicly hung, his victory was total in 1785 and now, was his time to rule.

The age of settlement

The first decade of the King’s rule was one of settling scores and getting the right people on the right side.

Through laws, restrictions on the guilds were loosened, through covert violence, those who sided with any of his brethren during the war were dismantled.

This lead to the first crisis in his rule :The campaign of the slits. After a coal miner’s guild was disbanded in the town of Liettre, it’s old members decided to revolt and attempted to take over the town.
After having a lot of success, the crown sent an army to settle the matters, and quickly spun the information coming out into a story of betraying nobles and peasants forced to fight.

The disinformation worked, showing the king as a hero and liberator, despite the ashen land he left behind.

The decade basically showed what sort of king Emil II was, a scheming and manipulating man, but didn’t any show his greater ambitions.
What he showed to the common folk was a hero, a liberator from his darkened bloodline.
What he showed to his closest underlings, the 4 dukes, was a ruler hell-bent on stabilizing his rule, making allies not through trust but through fear and respect, through gifts and unconditional support.

The Guild age

From 1790’s onwards to 1810, the king showed himself as a great ally to guilds and nobles alike, keeping the both as separate as possible through a binding charter called “The status of nobility” which forbids the guilds or any of their members to hold any noble title or noble powers.
If they want to rule, they’ll have to do so through bribes and schemes.

This wasn’t seen as a good thing from the guilds at first, but the purpose of the charter quickly made itself clear as they found themselves obligated to give greater and greater gifts to the crown and it’s noble houses to keep their power.
These gifts often took the form of information to the king, sharing secrets became a source of wealth and power.

It is during the early 1800’s that the city of Cetra saw a revolt, and through that revolt many guilds supported a new regime.
When the Baron at the helm of the revolt fled, the crown took out it’s frustration on the guilds that dared support him.
Not being able to spin the narrative as he did in the past in Liettre because of the innkeeper’s guild centering themselves on the sharing of information, Emil Sakriant II decided that the age of the guild was finally over. And as the last leaders of the Innkeeper’s guilds disappeared, a new era was ushered.

The Flame Years

After discovering the power of the Inkeeper’s guild and meetings between guilds and foreign leaders, Emil II found his new ambition, the destruction of the guild age.

Portraying himself as an almost volatile leader after the Baron’s revolt, taking advantage of the information he couldn’t control, guilds and nobility started treating him like a dangerous beast. Giving him great gifts in order to remain by his side and trying to direct his anger towards their own enemies.

Emil started wearing armor almost permanently and carrying a greatsword which was gifted to him by one of the guilds.
The image was a ploy, a means to an end.

Now in his 50’s Emil Sakriant II is gathering information and playing guilds against each-other. Hiring assassins, planting evidence and using young adventuring parties to push his ambitions.

Storytelling

Now that we have a history and an ambition, we can look at how we can tell stories with our dear king.

My goal in my campaign is to get the players in the same room as him, building him up as a dangerous and violent mad man, only for them to find an extremely cunning person who is both at the center of their problem and their only solution.

Maybe the king allows the group to trespass, only to use this as a way to get what he wants.
Maybe he allows the protagonists to know about corruption so they end up coming to him for a solution, giving him the upper hand on any possible deal since, they want something from him.

As the thumbnail shows, my main inspiration is a character from the witcher series, mainly his appearance in the witcher 3.
This “maddened” and brutal appearance being only a tool to get his way behind more cunning than suspected.

The best part in all of this is : “what if he is right ?”.
What if the guilds are a problem for the country, what if they need to be taken care of ?
Over my campaign, my goal is not only to show the players the violence and danger of the crown, but show them in following, the brutality inherent in some of the guilds.
Two wrong sides.

Only time will tell which they choose.

Conclusion

As a conclusion i want to briefly give a few tips as to story telling in D&D and choice.

The ideal setup is giving the players just enough information so you know where they’ll head to next or what they would do in a situation.
If they get a letter talking about a guild fighting for territory, they’ll probably investigate.
Doing that, you can build up characters and assumptions about the world.
The players working with the guilds will see more and more alarming signs about them, but also the good sides like safety and the support they can get working with them.
Once all of this is built up, show them an example of corruption and through that quest, build the character of the nobility and the king.
Show them the result of crossing the king, like public executions or the remnants there of.
With people talking about him wielding the executioner’s axe.
When everything is built up, you can finally show the king. Allow a conversation that shows him not just as a cunning man, but a powerful monster with an almost endless ambition.

There, the players can make a big choice. Side with guilds, side with the King, or… as players tend to do, find a third solution you never thought about.

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As i was writing the first pages of the world building for my new campaign i realized that with the importance the guilds had in my stories, i needed the players to have the means to place themselves with or against them even in their downtimes.
For that i decided to look at the tools in the DnD5e system and was left wanting for something a little bit more developed.

Problems and solution

The crafting systems in DnD5e are useful mostly for flavor or up to the DM’s will on the minutia of what can and cannot be done.
A big problem with that is the fact that if the players don’t see options, they generally won’t do anything with these tools.
The idea should be giving the players a general idea of what they can do so they can build on the system if they want to.
Even better if the game’s difficulty demands the players to prepare and use everything at their disposal since you can make it so crafting gives them an edge against the threats they face.

Quality rolls

To make the whole system easy to keep track of when it comes to DCs i have based my many crafting systems on the final check being a Quality check. Meaning that you don’t roll to see if you succeed, but you roll to see how well the final product works or how good it is.
Each part in the crafting and the situation in which it is crafted, impacted the quality DC making it either easier or harder to end up with a good result depending on how well prepared the players are.
Whenever we’ll be talking about modifiers to the Quality DC, we’ll be talking about this :

• 5 - Poor

• 10 - Basic

• 15 - Good

• 20 - Excellent

• 25 - Masterwork

For example, if we have a poor working environment or some bad materials we might have +4 and +3 to the DC respectively, meaning that the DCs are 7 higher than they used to be. (like getting a 12 on the check would lead to a poor result and a 17 for a basic result)
These can also be lowered in good conditions or with good materials, leading to an easier good or excellent result.

Cook’s utensils

A cook in an adventuring party doesn’t seem to be important at first but end up being the one carrying a lot of the travelers’ needs.
With the right system, a cook can be central to a party’s survival and success, giving powerful buffs to the party and warding off exhaustion.

Basics

Cook’s utensils are a Wisdom base tool, often working with survival, nature and other types of checks to do different things.
The activity of cooking itself can also take from Dexterity if the player wants to.

Tools

Within the cook’s utensils there are the following items :
a knife, a metal pot, a ladle, a stirring spoon and a few other miscellaneous like forks and skewers.
If the player wants a cauldron or a pan, then they’ll have to get one separately.

With the base tools most meals are available to the cook, but having a pan or a cauldron could make some foods easier or possible to cook. (And with a cauldron in larger quantities)
It is also recommended for a cook to have more materials like salt, vinegar or some jars readily available during their trip to preserve meat or fruits/vegetables.

Role

We often see the cook's role as just the one who prepares the meals, but in an adventuring party, the cook also tends to the butchering and harvesting of meats aswell as preserving and cooking the harvested materials.

Butchering and Harvesting

Butchering

After slaying a creature, a cook can attempt to harvest meats or ingredients from the creature as long as it has some to be harvested. (no getting meat from a skeleton or plants from a rock)

For this, the cook may add their proficiency if they are proficient in cook’s utensils to the survival check for butchering the creature. (essentially giving them expertise if already proficient in survival)
The DC to harvest the products is 10 or the CR of the creature whichever is higher.1

This check does not tell the cook whether eating the harvested materials is a good idea or not, for this the cook has to make a Survival/Arcana or Nature check depending on the creature type. The DC is either same as the harvesting DC or set by the DM.

Harvesting

When it comes to finding edible plants the cook does not have the bonus a Herbalist would have.

But a cook can still make a Cook's Utensils check using wisdom or intelligence to recognize what plants they can use or not while cooking.

The Numbers

As to avoid having to look around to know how much a mimic weighs and how much meat can be harvested from an Elk, here’s a handy rule that you can follow on how much meat can be harvested or how many plants can be found in the wilds :

I found that The Thieve's Guild has a pretty neat resource on the harvesting part of the process and when it comes to meat and leather amounts aswell as odd parts, they can serve as a good resource for DMs.

When it comes to plants finding something edible or useful comes with a survival check, the DC of which depends on the DM to find some or any depending on what the players are looking for.
Splitting the DC 5 by 5 when it comes to the amount of success with a minimum of 10 is a good way of balancing plants of differing rarity. Getting enough for a meal in a few hours of looking with the DC determining how successful they were in gathering in bulk.

Preservation and Preparation

Now that the party has harvested some materials, the goal is to make them last long enough to serve as rations or to be used later in the main base for quality food.
This is where the Quality modifiers start to appear.
Freezing food isn't included here mainly because it "keeps it good" for a very long time.

If the players get a "bag of colding" or another way to freeze food, it will last basically forever. So this method has to be earned or balanced in expenses like a fuel to keep it working.

Preserving meat

Note : a lot of it is driven either by my personal tastes or by my guesses on how easy it would be to cook with meat preserved with these methods. So i could be wrong….

Preserving plants matter

Note : same as before… because i love compotes.

Preparation

Preparing food in this context is "making sure it is edible".
Some creature parts take from their statistics, for instance a green dragon's meat could be poisonous.
These materials therefor require special treatment in either the way they are cooked or need to be prepared prior.
Neutralizing a poison might come from drying the material first, or cooking it at a very high temperature or for a long time. It can also come from cooking it with an antidote (or keeping one at hand when eating the meal if you are feeling spicy).
Given that there are MANY creatures and creature types this sadly has to be in the DM's hands. Despite this here are a couple of ideas :

• Food from a fire centered creature : Cooling the material in ice or water for a day or up to a week to avoid fire damage.

• Food from a cold centered creature : Cooking requires higher temperature. Using a smithy's oven for instance.

• Food from a poison centered creature : Resting or cooking it in a broth that contains either an antidote or a potion of poison resistance. (or coated in it for a time)

• Food from a radiant centered creature : Repent for what you have done needs a ritual to clear the meat of effects.

• Food from a necrotic centered creature : needs a ritual to clear the meat of effects, but still might be rancid given most of them are undead…

• Food from an acid centered creature : Drying it is a necessity to not suffer damage.

• Food from a lightning centered creature : Curing the meat in salt to avoid damage.

The other types aren’t as impactful in my opinion but different creatures might have different impacts depending on what it is specifically.
A creature born from a curse might carry that curse within it’s harvested materials, basically go wild my fellow DMs, if a player makes a point in harvesting everything it shouldn’t be too much more prep to give the results an additional step to be eaten healthily.

If the materials aren’t prepared or treated those who ate it would have to make a saving throw (generally constitution) or fall ill with an illness that depends on the type of creature. (becoming sluggish with cold types or being poisoned for the day with poison types)

Meals

Now to the main event !
The meal quality comes back to the Quality DC established prior with the first big modifiers coming in play here :

• Unfamiliar Ingredients : +2 to +5

• No tools / makeshift cooking : +5

• spices : -2

• Rare Ingredient : -2

• Exotic Ingredient : -5

Now these can be adapted or removed depending on the setting and the character’s backstory or on the world in question but i think these are generally good rules to start with.

Quality effect

Different meals have different effects when cooked. But the quality offer a base effect when it comes to mundane foods.23

Meal Types

different cooked meals have different effects if they are at least of good quality.

This is built in a way that it is relatively easy to add more meal types. If you want salads, cakes or any other meal types you can easily add one with it’s effect.

Ingredient rarity and spices

Spices

Spices are a somewhat expensive but easy to use way of making the meal taste better. I put them in rarity levels which might change depending on your setting but i think that it is a good general idea that the more expensive/difficult a spice is to obtain in your setting, the better the effect.

Special ingredients

There is something that we should keep in mind when it comes to fantasy worlds and that’s monstrous parts.
What if the players want to cook with the eyes of a basilisk ?
What if they want to use a dragon’s tongue ?
I think these special ingredients should have a special effect depending on the creature’s main attribute.
These effects don’t have to be impactful and can be relegated to flavor (literally), like a mimic’s meat tasting the way the cook wants it to taste (which could lower the cooking’s DC).

Conclusion

I have spent a while figuring many of the crafting systems and how to make them more interesting, and i think this one is so far my favorite.
This system not only makes the cook actually useful but it also gives me plenty of ideas of quests to put the players through.
Maybe a noble wants to taste dragon meat and it is on the players to fetch and prepare a grand meal for the client.
Maybe the players want to start a bit of a restaurant, or maybe they want to prepare for a dangerous encounter and need all the help they can get.

As an often ignored part of the games, the well being of the adventurers is also something that we can make a point about here. Allowing the players to roleplay their character in a new way like what meal would they prefer or why do they like cooking ?

Either ways, i am planning on reworking all the tools in the DnD5e system aswell as making a modular way to craft weapons and armor (which is almost done already).
So if you want to see more of that, do subscribe and comment what you’d like to see next !

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