Hello, players who still don't understand action economy and at this point are too afraid to ask.
And DMs, and also players who consider themselves rule lawyers and will own that shit all day long.
No fucking extra actions, no bonus action as a reaction, no free fucking objects.
It is a no fuck you!
Yeah, which goes very well with action economy. I'm Robert.
I'm Maddie.
Welcome back to Table Talk. What are we talking about today, Madison?
We're talking about homebrew, homebrew shit. I almost was going to make a dumb pun about tea, but I think I'm just tired.
That's so fair. It's fucking exhausting week. It's been an exhausting day.
Homebrew, for those of you that are unfamiliar with the concept, we've talked a little bit about it in previous episodes.
Shout out our podcast, you should go listen to those.
It's really cool. The hosts kind of suck though.
Specifically, Maps, Legends, and Lore, we talked a bit about how to create a universe from nothing, and homebrew is kind of one of the things that we've talked about in and throughout our episodes.
But today, we wanted to sort of zero in on the concept of creating your own shit from nothing, specifically in D&D.
I mean, you can do it in any other system. You can do it on mics, whatever, whatever, but D&D.
So, to not be redundant and cover how to make your own universe, because that was essentially an entire episode in and of itself.
Some of the big things that you'll run into as a DM when homebrewing are stat blocks, are going to be combat encounters that almost all of the time will be homebrew to an extent.
Magical items, specifically ones that you went tailored to your players.
Classes that may or may not fit a character as well as you'd want it to.
Races that you don't feel like you can't buy a character that you want to play.
Oftentimes, the most that I encounter it is whenever somebody wants to take a particular spell, or wants to rebrand a spell, or wants to change something about their weapon or their equipment, because it would just make more sense.
Which I'm totally fine with. I mean, homebrew in general is a term that's super broad, and it's basically just there to capture anything that doesn't come directly out of a sourcebook.
But even then, I would consider changing things in a sourcebook to figure a campaign.
Kind of homebrew.
I would also consider that homebrew.
Which is something that I don't think, I think it would be very rare for someone to go through an entire campaign and not run into a form of homebrew.
Because there's always going to be points, and we've talked before about like bending and changing rules, even if it's like for like thematic reasons, or just things that like feel right in the moment.
I can shut up as you go.
Yeah.
So what's really popular that a lot of DMs will do, not even just first time DMs, but I mean people that have been doing it for a while is taking an existing one shot because it has a lot of pre-existing information and counters, classes, etc., etc., taking that sourcebook or one shot, and then kind of doing their own story, their own take with it.
I mean that, I think that's the most common version of it, truly.
Yeah.
I mean sourcebooks on like Theros and Forgotten Realms, Capes and Crooks, which is entirely homebrewed by whatever fucking company makes it, I have to go back and look.
But like all of that is still kind of considered homebrewed to an extent, and then you essentially just take all that information that they've handily provided you, and then do everything you want with it yourself.
Yeah.
We talked about doing a Castlevania campaign at some point based off the popular game, and then now popular animated TV show on Netflix, and literally my initial thought was I'm just going to buy Curse of Strahd from Wizards, and then I'm going to rip and pull what I won from Curse of Strahd and rebrand it at Castlevania.
Yeah.
Because if there's a whole fucking sourcebook with fancy doodads and writings and encounters and items, fuck I look like going through and making up a whole universe, whole new classes, whole new everything, when there's already a book that's going to have 75, 85% of that there for me.
And with that, I mean there's the conversation of like pros and cons of homebrew versus like playing out of like a sourcebook or something, if you're going to like entirely homebrew something.
And there definitely are pros and cons to that. I've been playing at a table with a first time DM, and she's doing a wonderful job.
But she was like, yeah, I wanted to use a sourcebook for my first one just because it's going to be like a little bit easier because you already have stuff to pull from you already have stat blocks you already have combat encounters you already have maps.
Everything that you need is there for you. However, one of the things that can be kind of like a con with like going completely from the sourcebook and not really doing a lot of homebrew stuff with it is it can feel a little bit stifling because you're like bound to these rules into this world.
Like you can't make shit up on the fly as often versus with homebrew you can make whatever the fuck up you want.
Yeah.
But you don't always have like something concrete to go on.
The only thing that stresses me out about doing things that aren't homebrew or about doing a sourcebook is there's so much information to learn and try and commit to memory and to keep track of as you go through a sourcebook or a one shot and it's just like a lot.
Yeah.
So long as you can you don't have to but like they highly suggest you read off there are 60 different checks that are going to like it's going to say your players are going to enter the dungeon at this point they can make any number of checks and then it'll give you consequences for making those checks failing them not making them.
Yeah.
And then it'll give you like a fucking goosebumps book it'll then like choose your own adventure it'll then have several different pages of what happens based on which of those outcomes does or does not happen.
And if you've picked up anything from your knowledge of the interior from listening to any of our episodes players don't stick to the script.
No.
So as you can imagine those one shots and those sourcebooks get fucking giant really quick because they're trying to account for every generic possible scenario or or option or whatever the fuck that your players are going to choose.
And then another con for that is what do you do when your players try to do something that is so completely not an option in the book but isn't illogical or like weird enough for you to be like it just doesn't work or it doesn't happen.
Yeah.
That's what you're going to kind of like think in your feet and be like OK where I mean yeah that makes sense there's no reason not to do it like you know it doesn't say it in the book and no it's not a thing that you could do based on your character's tats or whatever pre generated character you're playing but like I'm not going to you know.
Yeah.
Like if it makes sense it makes sense sourcebook is not the DM you are the sourcebook is just a guide.
Yes.
But it can be a homebrew can look.
I think it's one of those things where like it can either look really really intimidating or it could be a lot more inviting and easy than a sourcebook and I think it's one of those things that like truly it just depends on who you are as a person.
I mean so far I have advocated pretty heavily is sort of pro homebrew but I do want to try and be a little more unbiased and talk about some of the cons that come with it for one when you homebrew something depending on what it is you're homebrewing it might not always have a one to one
translation in 5e in the traditional system that we've all played in for several years now and so you then have to figure out how your homebrew mechanic homebrew spell homebrew class homebrew whatever interacts with all of the rest of the normal regular rules and sometimes it's not that easy to translate
that's why like when doing the superhero campaign I was like am I going to have to homebrew races classes.
Yeah.
All that playing and just regular like 5e cool everyone is a human.
Like you can change your background in your class but that's it.
Exactly and that's when you have to start turning to homebrew stuff to be like OK do they have this really like do they have this class that I would like do they have this tweak and finding pre generated homebrew stuff is truly the easiest go to way to do it.
There are so many reasons out there.
The con to it truly is finding quality homebrew that you then can continue to use because some of it's good some of it's not some of it's behind a paywall some of it's free.
I mean it's like any other PDF of D&D out there on the Internet like you just got to take time and sift through it.
Yeah.
The other thing that sucks about homebrew.
I have a couple of different things pulled up is combat combat encounters in particular when you do homebrew when you're not out of any kind of a sourcebook.
Like combat encounters become a lot more labor intensive because it's usually you having to figure out OK what kind of creatures are in this world.
Are there stat blocks for creatures that are similar to them.
Have I made stat blocks.
I probably fucking haven't so it looks like we're going to find a cobalt and then we're just going to rename it something different.
Yeah.
And then depending on how different of a universe you're playing in a different setting that it's like rebranding what they're doing.
And it can be fun but it could also be a lot of work.
Yeah.
Two websites that I cannot recommend enough are one it's called improve initiative.
I've talked about that previously on our combat episode.
It allows you to go in and physically make stat blocks.
You can build encounters and then sort of hit load encounter and it'll pull up everything you want on that encounter down to initiative health whatever whatever.
And that's the way that I find easiest to do it.
You can get it on your phone.
You can pull it up on desktop.
Definitely matter.
The other one is going to be cobalt plus fight club.
I think it's funny.
It is literally cobalt and then like the plus symbol and then fight club.
Interesting name.
So they have just about every creature imaginable from the majority of the source books both put out by wizards and not put out by wizards.
And you can essentially calculate how difficult a combat encounter is going to be for your players.
Which if you're doing homebrew combat encounters that aren't naturally designed to be for four or five level players.
It's really helpful to know whether or not you're going to fuck around and kill your players.
Yeah.
Because starting out especially if it's your first couple of times it's going to take you a little while to get a handle on just what your players can tackle and what they cannot.
And when you switch campaigns different classes different players that you're just going to have to relearn for every new group of players you go through.
And that can be kind of difficult.
But with cobalt fight club you can literally put in how many players at what level you want XP based non XP based.
You can add groups you can have it generate generic encounters.
You can find specific monsters and load those in there.
You can tell it how difficult of an encounter you want legendary status particular environments creature types category sizes alignments.
Like you can get really really customized with it.
So cannot recommend that enough but combat in my opinion is one of the most difficult things to go through if you're doing homebrew.
Yeah.
I think that kind of talking about balancing an encounter I think also goes to another point of homebrew when like if you're making something from scratch like if you were like completely homebrewing.
An item yourself and you're not just like pulling a homebrew item that you found on the Internet.
Which there are a lot of.
Yes I personally when you were talking about those websites I use Pinterest.
That's where I find so many things that I like I have so many Pinterest boards that are just either like cool magical items or like cool different races or classes and stuff like that.
And like I use reddit a lot or tumblr are all great resources.
But talking about balancing when you're making an item from scratch of like still keeping it within the realm of the game and like things that make sense and like there has to be balances like.
I wrote down like on my notes for this like Mary Sue's which I don't like the term Mary Sue personally.
But basically creating a character that is or a item or a whatever that is so powerful and it's so good and there's no downsides whatsoever.
I'm just the best.
Yeah.
For those of you that are familiar with comics or anime to prime examples of characters that are like that Superman is one of them.
Batman is one of them Wonder Woman kind of depending on if it's a man or a woman writing the story.
Gojo for those of you that watch anime from Chichitsu Kaisen I mean you'll you recognize them.
And characters or the items or like the figures in a universe that just like there's zero downsides they're broken is all fuck it's impossible to write around them.
It would be like Superman if there was no such thing as Kryptonite.
Kryptonite is a balance for Superman.
It's like it just super like without that review handed like an orc pistol.
Yeah it's like cool.
There's nothing he can't do.
As long as he can get the ammo for it like who's who's going against him.
Like someone who's ultra powerful and then they're also like integral to everything.
But just kind of balancing and like keeping in mind of like OK you're a level three character.
You're not going to have an item that is going to allow you to just cast one level nine spell.
Yeah.
Once per long rest.
That's just not that's not a balance that like you can keep and there's no like downsides of that there's no levels of exhaustion.
That's not going to happen.
It's interesting thinking about homebrew from a player's perspective like there have definitely been times where like I wanted a particular weapon to get buffed or I wanted to change it a little bit or I wanted to like homebrew something myself because I felt like it fit the character better than something else.
I mean if you're I mean you experience a lot on both sides of the fence 100 percent but I think as a player it's often times asking for something that you already have or have been handed to be modified.
Yeah.
It's I want this weapon to do this kind of damage instead.
I'd like to increase the range.
I'd like to up the damage.
I'd like to have this fucking cloak that I've been carrying on me since 06 to actually be worth a damn if I'm not going to get new armor like a lot of the times it's going to ask to rework an existing mechanic in the universe and then change it.
What I will say about that as a DM I'm super fucking inclined to say yes.
Like I don't think I've ever told anybody no unless it was just like a really broken or ridiculously broken request.
Oftentimes my response to the DM is going to be give it a couple sessions and we'll work it in naturally instead of just being like snap my fingers now it's more powerful now you have an extra spell slot now this is changed like.
Yeah.
Just give your DMs time to work that into the universe to because it is it just it takes you out of it.
I think from a writing perspective and as a player perspective to have like one thing change drastically and be completely different from session to session with there being zero in universe explanation for it.
Yeah.
And that's one of those things where like you can look at like XP versus Milestone and like we are a very Milestone heavy table.
Yep.
When it comes to like leveling up or like any benefits or something like that like in our current campaign.
My character is level three.
I have not taken my like level three like bonus I get from my class because it was it was it was a debate it was a I say debate it was a screen fight between Robert and I.
Because I didn't want what the effect was but I'm getting it anyway which is a familiar and I was like I don't want to show up to this with a cat so can I just meet the cat in the game.
And like that's I mean that's not technically homebrew but that's kind of like the same thing of like it's going to be something that like will be introduced and I think that those moments make it more impactful and I think it makes it more fun from a player's perspective because there's not a lot that as a player you get to interact
with.
You get to directly interact with it comes to homebrew like a DM does because you're like you're not picking the magical items that you're getting most of the time unless you're like in a shop or you find something really cool and you send it to your team and you're like hey can we put this in the game.
Is really the only way that you're going to be interacting with it.
Yeah.
Magical items have been touched on a couple times those are another really big point of contention for me when talking about pros and cons.
It tends to fall more on the side of cons because magical items skies the limit.
Like truly magical items are like the MacGuffin of the D&D universe they can be anything like Mary Sue they can be anything all of the time whenever point blank period.
Yeah.
You have a magical item that gives somebody like a wish spell and then kills them immediately after fun concept like they got it.
Yeah.
And then you have somebody a sword that like gives them plus like one like you roll an additional d4 with the call damage.
That's cool I guess.
Like or you could give somebody armor that basically makes them like unkillable like truly skies the absolute limit like I'm just looking up random like homebrew magical items.
It comes to I have somebody saved my Instagram because that's where I get a lot of mine.
Pull up and show as an example.
I humbred one for Madison in our World Serpent campaign where the whole items concept was storing failed wild magic surgeries.
Yeah that one was fun.
Let me see if I can pull up the just really bad.
I had another one that I found online and then kind of changed for one of my tankier players.
It was basically like a wall of scales that they could summon and would give them a higher AC reduced movement speed higher HP.
And that was just like an item that they had to become attuned to that was pretty much that.
I mean how every magical item I gave him my last campaign was entirely humbred.
I think there were maybe a couple that I took inspiration from something else.
But like truly I have done so many homebrew magical items and it is exhausting because the way that I like to hand magical items out is to be very specific to the character.
Yeah.
I like items that grow with the character I like items that are meant to stick with them for extended periods of time and help them on their arc or they put like both the item and the player go on an arc.
Because I don't I mean frivolous fucking magical items is fun when you're doing a dungeon crawl campaign.
Yeah.
But when it's like anything that's like narrative based or sort of you're aiming for longevity handing somebody 16 different magical items in a chest because they've got a really tough boss is like okay.
It's like cool.
That's okay versus like one really cool item that is like tailor made for that character because of the way that that character plays or because of what that character is lacking sorely like one of the characters was like a very squishy necromancer and they got armor like a magical armor thing because
it's a war armor.
That like that was something you got hit once and died.
Yeah.
That's I think that's probably my biggest advice to for anybody that's interested in coming up with home for magic items even if it's just a player for themselves like spend I would say at least three to four sessions if you have the time for that just as a DM watching how they interact
watching how they plan combat encounters watching what downfalls and pitfalls they have as a character naturally versus like ups what are they really good at what are they bad at.
And then sort of coming up with ideas that you can support them mechanically and then kind of rolling those ideas into a magical item and then starting small and getting big because like leveling up is one of the most fun parts of the game.
Yeah.
You level up a magical item to and if that thing suddenly becomes a lot more fun because it's like now they have something to spend their downtime on.
They have things to ask questions about they have an item that they can go to in a pinch like it just adds another sort of layer to their character because they have this thing that they're actively trying to improve not just themselves.
Yeah.
And I think it's also like it's it's a physical reminder of like moments in a campaign if you're doing it that way of like Taylor making them which is really fucking neat and if I mean it's been very clear throughout this podcast if you've listened to any other episodes.
I'm someone who loves things and I love reminders and I love like touchstones.
And so being able to like for a character to have a item that is directly reflective of like what they've been doing who they are of like even if it's something as simple as like oh yeah you get a lock it from like your great grandmother and you always have it and then suddenly you find out that it's magical.
I think that's still like pretty impactful because it's something that is directly tied to you.
And like for example in terms of watching and how difficult that process can be if you want to do it right.
I have given pretty much everybody in the campaign at this point some form of magical item with the exception of Madison and then as they're she's had a lot of moments she's role played quite a bit often more than other people because it's just who she is.
But there still hasn't been anything like there wasn't there hasn't been any moments I guess so far in the campaign where I was like that's the thing that she needs.
That's what I'm going to give her. But like with Dakota's character Sebastian he has a run in with his father. He's going through like this.
He's kind of he's fitting the we get to watch him discover his superhero identity become a superhero in real time trope.
Yeah.
Whereas everybody else is feeling a different one his is like superhero origin story.
And so I thought it would be really cool to do like a father who's not a retired hero but is one of the best years in the city has an estranged relationship with Sebastian and then basically sees that his son is being a hero or trying to be one and then gives him a magical item that's there to sort of guide him to be more like him and
rather and less like himself.
Yeah.
And then that item ends up being used in a really big emotional moment for that character and so there's already some negative connotation which is exactly what I was hoping was going to happen. Yeah.
Now it's like here's this really powerful item that's going to get me really far as a hero but also it's come from somebody who I don't appreciate.
And so part of I don't want to give too much away because he's going to listen to this he listened to all of them.
And so part of my idea for that arc then is like I'm so interested to see what path he will take with that item. Is it going to be I'm going to learn how to use my powers and tandem with this item and make it my own.
Is it I'm fully going to embrace the power the item gives me and then really just lean into that sort of more hardcore ruthless nature.
Is he going to throw it away entirely.
And then there are things to that I have written about the item that he will find out when he levels up when he does key moments with the items. Some things are like phrase based as well that he's not going to say normally so it's going to have to come down to like an emotional moment.
And then for for one of the we have two Elijah's for one of the Elijah's his magical item at this point isn't really an item that I've given him but more something based entirely in his own like power.
He has kind of something like a venom suit toward a deal it's all shadow based.
But all the benefits that I'm giving him in terms of a magical item are happening organically through his own power.
It's not like an item that I'm physically handing him it's him being able to do fun unique creative things with his suit with his shadows with his powers.
And then been kind of the same way playing vault. His is also kind of evolving in that similar direction. I'm sure he will end up getting an item he's kind of moving in that direction right now but part of what I'm exploring with him in terms of magical items is how far can he push his power.
He's a character that doesn't have really an upper limit to how strong you can get and he's kind of figuring that out especially in the last session so depending on which route he takes that then as a player will determine if I give him a magical item or if it's like a shadow situation where we do something.
So it's a shadow situation where we just see how like what the upper limits are because sometimes players don't need another item they just need to have more creative freedom and control over the powers they already have as a character like yeah don't always need an item.
I mean that's what the item that you were talking about that I was home brewed that basically stored wild magic searches was like I I had made armor I was doing fine in combat.
I was a spell sniper and like a spell slinger so there was no reason for me to have like a weapon.
So like what do you and I've got a fuck ton of spell slots because I was a sorcerer warlock multi class.
So what do you give. Well I'm someone who likes to use my wild magic surges and I like try to get a wild magic surges often as possible so giving me something that can either increase my chances of a wild magic surge.
I double or store my wild magic surges when I don't want to so I can turn them into spell slots later was something that was very very helpful and it wasn't necessarily the item that was like the item was not doing.
I'm like phrasing it wrong the item was an item to the character in the class and less about the item itself.
Yes. Which is like a very similar vein as to what you're talking about.
So I mean that's I mean just based on that alone right like you can already start to see how complex magical items as a concept can be.
They don't always have to be material they don't always have to have a concrete mechanism or mechanically introduce.
Sometimes they can just be a natural power that you then label as a magical item.
And that's why I think when there's when there are a constant homebrew one of them is that you have infinite creative freedom to take with it.
Yeah. And if you want to give your players a super personable experience you're going to do homebrew and you're going to match everything to them and it's going to take a lot of thought and a lot of time to put it together.
I remember there was when it was the session before we were getting our magical items in the last campaign and it was a day where I just remember Robert was sitting on the couch being and said audibly to me that he was like I'm working on getting magical items today and watching.
I think I watched him go through like all the stages of grief as like hunched over on the couch scrolling through like Instagram on his phone and like on his laptop at the same time trying to come up with items and like be like OK this item is cool but I don't like these
effects and I've got to change it and reskin it and not really what I went for that person or player like yeah.
Inspiration I mean if anybody is listening writes or is a creative person you know that inspiration kind of strikes at the most random times and I very much take that approach with magical items hence why Madison doesn't have one yet because I just haven't found anything that I think
fits the character and I'm not going to just give her a half ass one for funsies like yeah cool your level three you're at the bottom of the food chain you need an item here's like a coat that's bulletproof have fun.
Cool I already have a costume so.
It's like you just you have to be kind of creative with it sometimes in homebrew allows for that but it also makes it a lot more difficult because you want to make it's that thing of like.
When you're when you really are passionate about a project and you're like it's never correct it's like there's always something that could be better.
And that constant like well how can I improve it what am I going to add to it I'm not going to turn this project in because I don't like the way that it looks and I need it to be perfect if I'm going to turn it in and it's like almost that like procrastination thing.
At least that's the way that like.
I interact with them yeah no I kind of agree so.
Another topic we can talk about in terms of homebrew and take a little bit more into a stat blocks so we've talked about how to create combat encounters truly a lot of it is just like we mentioned before.
Feel out your players what are they capable of what are they what kind of combat challenges do they want are they super hardcore I want to feel like death every session or is it.
I want to fucking knock some goons and be a hero.
Yeah or do you want something in the middle which is what I tend to strive for is it lets me have fun let's them have fun it's still challenging whatever whatever whatever.
So you'll figure out how many of what combatants are put in there how to base stat blocks off of existing creatures but if you want to do the nitty gritty and really get into a stat block.
You're going to have so there's a lot there every creature has its own has its own ability scores so strength ex con intelligence wisdom charisma.
Every one of them is going to have hit points in armor class a walk speed a swim speed a fly speed they're going to have their own saves if they do have any plus to save so they're going to have their own skills their own senses their own languages and then they're going to have.
This stupid fucking ambiguous thing I almost wish they would have just never put on creatures to begin with which is called a challenge rating.
It is not really understand challenge rating is notoriously difficult to understand what a challenge rating means in terms of players so a challenge rating if I remember correctly.
It's like how many ex level characters does it take or how much effort is it going to take to kill this particular creature.
I think Madison better description.
I'm just straight googling it and it's not helping the way that I've always taken it is basically here it is here it is.
I found it from the front pages of the monster manual.
If you can't tell I haven't read through that a lot. A monster's challenge rating tells you how great a threat the monster is according to the encounter building guidelines in chapter three of the dungeon masters guide those guidelines.
Those guidelines specify the numbers of adventurers of a certain level that should be able to defeat a monster of a particular challenge rating without suffering any deaths and appropriately equipped and well rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster that has a
challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths for example a party of four third level characters should find a monster with a challenge rating of three to be a worthy challenge but not a deadly one.
So there's another thing but I'm going to stand how fucking absurd that is so that means that one tenth level creature is technically the equivalent of four level 10 characters which I have never found to be the case in anything I have ever thrown at you all.
So what is the equivalent of four level 10 characters will two tap a fucking tenth level like a CR 10 creature in like two turns two seconds period versus a fifth level of a challenge rating of five like a five creature in a party like a group of four players that are all level three still going to be challenging
to find is that the amount of crazy the amount of creativity in action economy that comes from four individuals versus one creature that has at max three actions a turn yeah the creature is going to fucking die yeah the creature is going to die like it's only when you start doing like CR 11
1213 1415 that those lever those lower level groups of players will not be able to handle and so there is that description from the monster manual but you will find it very very rarely lines up I'll say it also says with the
caveat this is a appropriately equipped and well rested party hey this shit sucks do you have something you want to send in to make it better criticisms topics you'd like to see discussed or an advertisement you'd like to run maybe you even want to sponsor an episode
if so shoot us a message at mc460 at evansville dot edu or dms on instagram at crescent magazine or will never get better like these fucking guys most of the time it's not going to be that
also knows that they don't define what appropriately equipped means yeah like what does that mean does that mean they've got magical items and you're going to have to figure out what the fuck that is if you're doing homebrew like you just got to feel it out but anyways to go to
well rested part is really what's getting me here is crazy as fuck challenge ratings mean nothing generally what your combat encounters are going to look like if you'd like to do the middle like I do you're going to have a bunch of lower level CRs and you're going to have one slightly larger CR creature or multiple large CR creatures but only very few or just one really really big thing with the environment being more of the
challenge or mechanic being more of the challenge and less so the creature yeah like I'm going to put a fifth level fucking let's say a CR 10 a spellcaster in the back of a room I have four level sevens eights that are like have to charge through the area he's going to run out of fucking options
really quickly because we all if all four of them go in a different direction and they all four take a base of actions or choose to shoot him he's dead period like there's nothing I can do so that's when I would give them a room that's going to be difficult for that to do in
I'm going to give them a significantly more narrow spaces I'm going to lay traps I'm going to have that wizard set up some sort of backup plans or like I guess sort of oh my god what am I what am I trying to think of like oh contingency plans for like if certain things happen so if
if that wizard starts getting hit a fuck ton with ranged attacks maybe I'm going to give them a spell that wards off ranged attacks if I know that the party consists of two barbarians a ranger and I don't know fucking mage maybe I'm going to put a lot more physical barriers in the way like difficult terrain to keep those barbarians from just rushing me at the very
end so it's not always going to be as simple as put one large creature in an empty field and let your players go nuts yeah because it's going to be really boring for them it's going to be boring for you yeah just try to roll in mechanics in terrain in like more creative solutions
and obstacles rather than just dropping a bunch of little guys and a big guy or two big guys or one big guy like yeah you'll feel it out and it's also a thing of you can have fun with that to be like okay
make your players play smarter like it could be a thing where you know if you take out this like bigger creature than all of the little ones are going to stop existing because maybe they're constructs that are like being kept like fucking working
100% by a concentration spell or something like that yeah and then like so on and so forth so
the example step like I have pulled up it's an abaleth which is why abaleth are the things that yeah those are the things that like the fuck people mentally so abaleth basically sit in holes in the ground sort of in the underwater
kind of areas and then basically make creatures their slaves and then they go out and do their business above
they're kind of notorious in the dnd community is being like evil tell it like telekinetic octopuses
they're very interesting but anyways it has a CR of 10 challenge rating and 10 it speaks deep speech telepathy of 220 feet
it has dark vision it has passive perception it has a skill in history of plus 12
that's that means if it makes a history check for some reason the abaleth will get a plus 12 to that and also as a plus 10 to perception
please tell me I want to pause you for a second please explain to me a scenario in which an abaleth is making a history check
to remember where somebody went to remember something that has happened in the village that it's been keeping hostage
okay that makes more sense I was like role play brain and I was like why is this abaleth gonna see something and be like hmm
no the way that I would play that is an abaleth has taken over a village and the players very quickly pick up that all the people aren't quite right
and maybe the abaleth is then going to roll a history check to remember something specific about like maybe the players rolling inside check into a character
and instead of me rolling deception on behalf of that abaleth control the creature I'm gonna roll history to see if the abaleth remembers the appropriate information
that's where I would kind of roll it in and the reason that is is that abaleth have an intelligence score of 18
they have a strength score of 21 what the fuck
their tax is 9 because again they're octopus their constitution is 15 wisdom is 15 charisma is 18
so they have some pretty fucking high stats with the exception of dexterity
they have traits called amphibious they can breathe air and water they have this thing called mucus cloud where basically they can squirt ink and mucus in an area underwater with them
that basically makes everybody make a constitution saving through disgusting if they fail they take damage
yeah she gets fucking crazy and that one is fun it says that a disease creature can breathe underwater only
so all of your air breathing PC hop into the water to go fight the abaleth or they all get yanked this thing releases mucus cloud
you all failure con saves now all of you can only breathe underwater
that's fucking evil it's evil that's crazy
probing telepathy is also be the fucking terrifying for you to not realize that as a PC and go up to like get air and you just fucking
so this is where the history checks come in so probing telepathy is another trade it has a creature communicates telepathically with the abaleth
the abaleth learns the creature's greatest desires if the abaleth can see the creature
so that's gonna be like you walk into its layer and it's immediately gonna try and strike up conversation with you and then if you have conversation with it
it's now gonna know a lot of information about you
so on so forth it has it has attacks so it has multi attacks individual attacks it has like basically what are akin to legendary actions
oh it does have legendary actions
it has three of those again stab locks and get
I wanna talk about legendary actions and explain those
yeah so stab locks and get wild and crazy legendary actions the way that they work generally speaking
there are two different ways that I've seen them done one is that you have an infinite amount of them
and you can only do them at the end of another characters or players or NPCs turn
the other way I've seen them done is that you only have three of them for the whole day
and you still have to follow that rule of you can only do them after another I don't know NPCs less PCs turn
what legendary actions are designed for is to create really difficult or unique creatures or NPCs
for instance the three legendary actions that the abaleth has
detect the abaleth makes a wisdom slash perception check
tail swipe the abaleth makes one tail attack
and then psychic drain which costs two actions one creature charmed by the abaleth takes 10 psychic damage
or 3d6 and then the abaleth gains hit points equal to the damage the creature takes
it also says here that it has on the little thing that I'm looking at on improved initiative
or on yeah improved initiative slash combat tracker
I can mark how many legendary actions I've taken I can mark how many creatures I haven't slaved
but there are two ways to do that so let's say Madison spends her turn running 30 feet towards the abaleth
the abaleth is say 10 feet so just out of range
the abaleth can then or the DM then can make the choice to do a legendary action
which I could say okay he has 15 feet of range on his tail attack Madison is not within range
I'm gonna spend a legendary action at the end of Madison's turn and roll one tail attack
alternatively let's say all of your players are scattering like roaches
and trying to hit this thing from six different like six different sort of ways or in its layer
I can then say okay at the end of this player's turn I'm gonna use a legendary action to roll a perception check
to see if I can figure out where all of my players are at
and that's generally how legendary actions work they can only happen at the end of another character's turn
or PC's turn or NPC's turn not its own explicitly not its own it has to be after another one
and there are two different ways to do it they refill at the end of every turn or at the end of each round
or you only have three of them period those are legendary actions
I do not recommend trying to homeroom legendary actions I recommend looking up examples of them
and then using them because those can get really really broken really really quick
I was like as a player I hate legendary actions or the one thing that will piss players off more than anything
when they're in a combat encounter
because you finally feel like you've got even footing with something and then it goes legendary action no
there's also
it's just people are throwing dice people are yelling the DM is getting called literally every single name
that is like legal there are also something called things called legendary resistances
so it works similar to legendary actions let's say
let's say somebody Madison again let's say she's a spellcaster she cast fireball the ablith and the ablith
which does not have this but let's say for instance it does it has three legendary resistances
Madison hits me for like 60 damage with a fireball I can say I'm going to burn a legendary resistance
and take half damage that's the one that pisses me off the most that's the one that pisses people off the most
is not the legendary actions it's legendary resistances because that's what can fuck a player out of getting that killing blow
yeah it's it works the same way you can only use it at the in in a reaction so let's say
three characters hit the ablith one turn after another after another if I burn a legendary resistance on player two's turn
I cannot then burn another one on players three or three some DMs will not do it that way that's the way I like to do it
because that's just kind of like fucky if you say I can do it whenever I damn well please or I'm going to burn all three on just your turn
fuck you fireball no fireball again nope twins bellard's blast also no
is it you're saying that I feel like that's something that is definitely happened at our table
yeah similar things have happened at the table because I've made characters in in in PCs that were designed to kind of be that sort of character
all of this walking you through a step block just to give you an idea on what on how difficult it can be or could be to home or something
yeah I highly highly highly highly highly cannot recommend that enough highly recommend when you're trying to homebrew a step block
find a creature find an NPC find a pre-generated step block that you like that is close enough and then re-text or it maybe change some of the wording in the step block
but unless you have a lot of experience under your belt do not try to make that shit on your own
you will get really but you will get bogged down so quick it is ridiculous
and there's literally nothing wrong with re-skinning it is the easiest way for you to be able to do things and guess what no one's going to fucking know
no one's going to know whether you spent hours homebrewing this thing or if you just took a fucking abalith and slapped a new name on it
and unless you're like player is a fucking like rules lawyer and is like really really anal about it
I despise rule lawyers I hate them
I feel like every DM does
they have I mean they have their place but also none of your business
shut the fuck up
here's the thing that gets me about rule lawyers
when you as a player are correcting another player that shit pisses me off and we're going to do an episode about like pet peeves at the table
and honestly we were talking about like we're going to add to that list I'm going to write that down right now and I'm going to get into it more than
I think I'm going to put it on there already
did you?
yeah I'm pretty sure I did it on her pet peeves because that shit pisses me off
it drives me nuts especially when the DM is trying to do I'm not going to get too into it
anyways homebrew pros and cons con fucking stat blocks have fun with that shit man
anything else for pros and cons of homebrew
I mean we talked kind of about like the general boundaries of like having a kind of a guide to take from which is really nice
and I think it's also there's definitely things you don't have to do a campaign that is either all sourcebook or all homebrew
I highly recommend both
blend them you can start straight up following everything out of a one shot including the dialogue prompts
and then you can end with a completely homebrew thing
I think that that's like totally okay and it gives you a starting point it gives you guidelines
it gives you a general idea or like an outline basically of what you want your story to be
but it also gives you like enough freedom where you can like just make shit up because that's part of the fucking fun of it all
I think also being a DM trying to be aware of how familiar you are with the setting will determine how like essentially the level of need you have for a sourcebook
yeah so for instance my very first campaign that I ever did I placed it in a fantasy universe
I know a lot about fantasy universes I've watched plenty of TV shows animated TV shows cartoons I've played D&D for a year and a half two years previous to DMing my first campaign
like I've just consumed a lot of fantasy based content
I definitely wish that I had not have homebrewed everything in my first campaign because it was really difficult
but it was a lot easier because I knew my content pretty goddamn well
like it is a lot easier for me as someone who has indulged in a lot of fantasy content to improv and
improv roleplay characters names locations items history background because it's all generally kind of the fucking same
versus if I tried to say someone put me in a fucking Harry Potter campaign and they were like
have fun homebrewing no sourcebook I'd be absolutely fucked because I haven't read Harry Potter damn my life
yeah so that is where I would say no I'd actually like to use a sourcebook at least for a little bit until I get my footing underneath me
it's like they're like training wheels if you know you're gonna need them use them even if you don't think you're gonna need them have one ready
so that when you run out of things to talk about or use there's a prompt you got some you can just throw in there really quick
and sometimes it's one of those things and like I gotta make it till the end of a session and it's always one of those things where like
I'm gonna be like trying to get a little bit of a look at the actual things that I'm gonna be like doing clips of it from different like actual plays
and like a better thing that is existed at the table sometimes and this is also like as someone who has done a lot of improv
sometimes your brain just goes blank sometimes someone is talking to you and you're having a full conversation with them like in your
in it and you're like doing the thing and then someone goes oh what's his name and you just break like your brain just stops
having a book open where you can be like it's Gerald is gonna be so helpful and it's gonna help you get back on your feet because your players are always going to pull you out of it
because they're gonna do something bad shit and you're just gonna go I need a minute and you're just gonna be like I what yeah general what the fuck are you talking about
when it comes to preparing for sessions unless you're somebody that just likes to be super prepared you only need to know enough to get you through the end of the next session
you only need to know enough about your world so that if somebody goes so have these two heroes fought before you have enough to say yes they have no they haven't
if it's like what I know one of their battles knowing having enough information to know about what some larger like villains would be in that setting is gonna be just enough for you to go yes this hero has fought this villain
it was a big thing this person walked away unscathed or that was like the birth of this character's popularity in this story if they want to pursue that you go on your downtime you can go to the comic book store and buy a fucking comic
yeah I don't have any more information to give you yeah but I don't need to know like who hit who first the motivations for the fight starting where it happened when it happened why it happened I just need to know the gist yeah it happened here's who it happened between
and it's one of those things where like it's so tricky because we've talked like before about the like the beauty is sometimes in the specificity and that is what sometimes makes a lot of these things like so impactful and so grounded into real is the specificity but also at the same time you don't need to be that specific
like yeah it's really great for you as like a player or a DM or like anyone to know like the nitty gritty details of something but you're not gonna be able to do that for everything yeah sometimes you're just gonna have to be like oh yeah I think I met that guy before his name was
uh fucking I don't remember his name but I remember kind of what he looked like yeah pro tip is a DM let your players figure out the specificity for you truly like what saves me time and time again is when they ask a question to or when they ask a question and I don't have an answer for it I make them roll for it
that gives me time in the time it takes them to roll to figure out what my answer is gonna be yeah or roll again every time I'm having them roll I'm trying to think of something else to give them because it's like either I have that information on hand or I don't
so force your players to be the ones that drive that specificity yeah you know and it kind of similar vein and this is not something that we had written down as a note but now it's something I'm just gonna like I guess ask or bring up where like having a conversation about
um yeah what the fuck is about yeah um I immediately lost it no it's still in my head I'm just trying to figure out how to phrase it you'll get there um I believe in you with the idea of like players driving things and this is also coming from I was rewatching
um misfits and magic which is a season on dimension 20 again the other night just because it's like one of my comfort shows and I was playing in the background and one of the things that I love watching with them is how they will build the story like the
and this is something a bria iron guard does really really well just passing the baton to the players for a moment for them to describe something that is happening in the world or something that they are doing of like there was a moment where for misfits and magic basically it's like a harry potter knockoff it's very good and there's a moment where the owl is coming in like delivering the letters and
um a bria passes it off to erica ishii and is like describe what this character is doing and they were describing how their character she was like in her bedroom and she was like on her laptop doing something and she was like and then suddenly the the owl slams into the window
and like erica was the one that made that choice and it was fucking funny and like it was just a thing that like a bria picked up and started rolling with and it happened a couple more times I think that's just a really interesting thing I think there's definitely like a level of like
I think letting your players build the world as much as you do is is super important it takes a lot of work off you as a dm it also lets them kind of define aspects that they might like really want to themselves um I mean yeah that there's so much that can be said on that in particular
and like passing the baton from like dm to player yeah and sometimes that's difficult to find moments um to sort of insert that like I know it's difficult for me oftentimes to figure out when to pass it back and forth because like there's a balance to be struck between me telling you all a narrative and then you playing the narrative
yeah and um and so it's just it's definitely one of those things you've got a balance it takes practice and it's also a thing as a player of like knowing where the boundaries are because there's so many like funny moments and once again calling back to dimension 20 where a care where a
PC will just make a throwaway comment on something and be like oh yeah I know him there was a moment where um Ali Beardsley as uh Kristen Appleby's goes oh yeah I know that guy like I I went to their like I went to that church camp and they were like the the cult you
mean this this dangerous cult and Ali Beardsley was like oh yeah like I know the handshake and everything and like that became canon of like as a player sometimes there's going to be an interaction and you can like there are moments where you can interject and be like oh yeah I know that dude
you sold me a faulty watch or like something like that but also knowing where the line is of like 100% don't get too crazy with it yeah like it's it's one thing to draw connections that are fun and kind of in the moment and it's another thing to be like actually this really big significant
world changing universe altering event happened and I was like right there for the whole thing yeah it's like that's a bit much but yeah I don't know about that one yeah you might have like seen some shit but I don't know about all that you might have hit your head a couple times
like you're level three calm down you were you were dropping your head it's alright yeah you take a moment do a long rest because I don't think you remember and all that backs correctly bro back the fuck up Jesus um yeah no I can't agree with that more I think one of the other things
that I wanted to talk about in terms of homebrew is character builds um we talked about encounters we talked about concepts mechanics magical items character builds and everything that's sort of entailed in that again go listen to previous episodes
you'll get a better idea what I'm talking about races backgrounds features classes feet like clifftacle class features subclasses um again sky's the limit you can change any of that if you damn well please and I think usually my approach to homebrewing um character builds
or things for characters in particular when it comes to their creation is getting narrowing down a really specific concept that that player has for that character before we even begin picking the options yeah so that's what I did for for this last campaign um for uh Caps and Crooks was I had them all come up with a concept and some of them already had an idea
because I mean I sent them all the information or some of the information they needed and I told them here are some things about the world here are some things that you'll be doing here are some things that blah blah blah blah blah blah come up with a character concept um and so from there it's just sitting down and having a conversation with that player and figuring out okay this is the class that would best fit that character um but maybe that class needs to be reworked maybe that feature needs to be changed a little bit maybe
okay you're a shadow character but you picked a class that doesn't give you access to any shadowy um spells
well let's go ahead and homebrew that all of your spells still take on the appearance of shadows or they all have an extra five feet of reach because whatever whatever um that's when you like in terms of character builds being creative and being homebrewy
it's a little easier because it's really easy to just pull on pre-existing pre-existing stuff and then make modification to it yeah modifications to it as you go what's difficult and what I haven't had to do yet and I don't want to do is coming up with classes entirely on my own
yeah that's gonna be like a week month long year long project trying to come up with classes advancement tables
yeah that's so much class features subclasses I've never done it I don't recommend you do it find something you like and then tweak it from there man
which I think at this point is just a lesson for this whole episode find something you like that already exists in the world and then tweak it
I'll say if you want to look in and there's several things that are like official canon to D&D now and like in the source books and shit that have come from homebrew Matt Mercer has made several um
looking up to double check some things blood hunter that was a homebrew thing that like officially basically got picked up by um by wizards same thing with the gunslingers that was um
pretty sure wasn't it created for and I could be wrong on this so if I'm wrong no I'm not um wasn't that made for couldn't tell you
I don't know the history of classes truly um well critical role as just a group as an organization has like fully paved the way for like a lot of content
yeah source books character models classes races you name it they've done it yeah one of my favorites from Matt Mercer is the Bard College of Maestro which is like a conductor
um it's funny it's really cool it's like really um yeah unless basically what we're telling you is that unless you're Matt Mercer who has an army of writers and a lot of money to hire them
don't do it yourself or if you're just Matt Mercer himself or if that's just your job is D&D also don't do it unless you're him yeah or do it and have fun figuring that out I guess
I mean I encourage creativity but also like know your limits in terms of like don't and that's the something we've talked about before of like you are not the actual plays that you're watching and listening to
and I don't mean that in a negative way it is just sometimes you've got to manage expectations because no one's going to go into something and automatically be perfect at it
a lot of the actual plays that are popular enough to be watched are popular enough to pop up on your feed and your Spotify the people that are in those actual plays have either done it for years or first time doing it with experts
or people that live normal lives outside of that and have backgrounds in the things that they're doing like improv like being creative like D&D in general
yeah like Brennan Lee Mulligan has played his whole life Matt Mercer has played his whole life yeah
Lou Wilson is accomplished and has also played for a good portion of his life yeah and it's also one of those things of like for me looking and being like because I'm someone who like does have aspirations of like I mean I'm
we're doing a D&D podcast you can kind of tell what our aspirations are
of being like well why am I not on that level why am I not I'm a 21 year old college student
I'm from Indiana while I have a background in theater that's not enough to like well you know I mean just
that's the real I'm fucked I'm from Indiana
truly the rest of it is irrelevant
but it's just one of those things that's like you know you're not gonna pick up a hobby or pick up a job or pick up a task and automatically be great at it
you can have a talent for it you can have a skill for it but you're not gonna be shooting 100 all the time
sometimes you're gonna miss sometimes you're gonna fuck up
100% practice
yeah but yeah again kind of tie it back into what we were talking about originally character builds races etc fine stuff that you like to pre-exist and then tweak it to fit
the character the player the whatever
yeah and that's just the most fun way to do it in my opinion because you don't have to do a whole bunch of extra shit you can just kind of tweak what you like and then rebrand it
a lot of it for me is just yes we can make that spell look like this
yeah yes it can do a little bit of extra whatever yes you can get an extra 5 feet of reach
like a lot of the time it's just like that's the extent that truly can I get just a little more can we take it tweak it just like a little
bit I mean we did that last session there's a character there's the shadow character and then my character is nightlight and it's not in any of the thing this is just completely like flavor is I was like she glows a little
yep I think that's fun and funny shadow character also fully ran vertically up a fucking skyscraper yeah does not have climbing speed by the by he was just like now could I argue that if I use all of my actions in my turn to run vertically up this thing
I can use my shadows to like sort of spider-man my way up and I was like you know what if you're gonna spend your whole fucking turn doing it I'm not gonna take that away from you
the crossover between homebrew and rule of cool is like it's it's damn near a circle yeah no at 100% is last session I got advantage on something because we established in the game that the shadow character has a weakness to bright lights
or to light and I was like hey my character glows can I get advantage can I like can I blind him because he's in a coma right now and he just attacked me
yeah I'm not a built-in mechanic in the universe yeah really there's nothing in the fucking source book that he would that would even indicate that shadow based characters because they don't exist in source book would have a weakness to light
yeah but here we are yeah and it it ball of light did it baby and it was truly just I it's not even like a cool glowing it's like a flash like glowing yeah it's just like turning on like a little flashlight on your on your
something to me like I look you're blinded bitch yeah but it's like her fingertips check there was a moment she was helping in a mechanic shop and they were like oh we need someone to hold the flashlight it was just her standing there with her fucking
and one of the examples that I thought of earlier will probably tie this off kind of soon just because we're on our shit to talk about
but what one of the best examples I could think of of rebranding or reworking something is
character vault is all electricity based but kind of in a more different way instead of just like having lightning powers he wanted the concept of the character originally was to be like super fast like like the flash like Barry Allen like Wally West
Wally West is a yeah yeah I don't know for some reason that name sounded fucking weird Wally West Barry Allen it's a weird fucking name but we kind of mold around the character and without giving away too much as Madison is sitting directly across me and Dakota will listen to this
no you can go ahead I'll have my ears kind of landed on like and this is revealed a little bit a couple sessions ago that he's sort of like an avatar for electricity for like a sort of again I can't really get into it but powers bestowed he picked sort of a background that meant that he inherited an ability and he is now the avatar for lightning slash electricity
sort of in the new modern age but with the class in particular that fit him best was jumper as opposed to speedster because a lot of the perks and a lot of the things by the way is like a teleporter teleporters are you get advantage on teleporting and so on and so forth like when you teleport your immediate hit after and before that you have
advantage and blah blah blah blah blah you're also the only person in the game who can teleport you're also the only person in the game teleport and speedster is fun you get a lot of fun cool perks I mean truly what capes and crooks was able to do with the speedster class is really fucking awesome and I can't wait to introduce a character that has those abilities
but so far I haven't but when I do it'll be cool anyways speedster was the concept for the character that was the class that we were thinking of when we were imagining the character but jumper had more perks and more abilities that he liked as a person
so the way that we did it was we still wanted it to look like he had the speed of a speedster but had the abilities of a jumper so when he teleports it's not just like instant I mean it is because the game mechanic is instantaneous but rather than it looking like him just appearing like disappearing in one spot and appearing in another spot
because capes and crooks says that whenever someone teleports to the jumper ability like a little puff of smoke happens or a portal opens for him it's jumping at the speed of electricity slash lightning between electrical outlets hopping between the lights
hopping between any source of energy or electricity within the room and that's how he gets around so quickly is by essentially turning himself into raw energy and then bouncing from outlet to outlet to light to fixture to fucking stove to whatever he can essentially jump between and then it looks it's as fast as looking as though it's instantaneous
so he still has like this sort of image in the world he's in of being ridiculously quick but has the abilities of jumper because it fit the character more in terms of creation it's not necessarily homebrew but in terms of talking about rebranding something to fit the appearance of something that you would like it to be without having to pick a whole fucking different class
and then it's like we did that and I think that's something that a lot of us did in this particular campaign
is that didn't necessarily traditionally fit what their abilities were but we we did and then just sort of homebrewed it like homebrewed the classes and the the spells appearances to look like what they wanted their players to look like yeah I mean even looking at the class my character is playing is mystic which is basically the equivalent to wizard like they get their their powers from a book
I didn't want to do that so I was like okay I like the idea of like comic books being that book how do I get powers from a comic book well they don't have like spells written in them in the traditional way so it became okay well she's someone who can copy the powers of people that she reads about
and people that she's very familiar with which when you start thinking about that and we've talked a little bit about her arc is probably going to be her coming to realize oh this is a power of creation as opposed to just a power of copying and like learning and reading
once it gets like further down the line and it's just straight up power of creation you're no longer relying on a book which does that is that still really a wizard it doesn't fucking matter because this is homebrew and this is our own thing that we're doing and it doesn't have to necessarily be tied to that
yeah like it's turned into what you want to be turned into what the players wanted to be what fits best for the universe have a good rest of whatever the fuck day time it is whenever you listen to this we'll see you get another episode of Table Talk goodbye