All words presented in this blog are purely opinion, not fact - unless specifically stated otherwise in the post.

Monday 4 March 2019

Dungeons And Dragons; Home Brew

Last week I mentioned that I run a D&D game. I also mentioned that I write my own campaign rather than using an adventure that's either been brought out by Wizards or created by other DMs. I also have created several Homebrew items and abilities, which I thought I'd share with you here.

So the First one is an item I built for my group's 4th level barbarian/1st level Spellcaster. They were at a decent level but their spells were pretty much useless and so they were never using it. I created this item as an 'ancient artefact' that the party could never get any more of.
The item;
'Ring of Hidden Power'
A ring that can be activated as a part of any other spell.
The ring has 5 charges, each day at dawn it restores 1d2+1 charges. One charge can be expended to augment a spells caster level by one. Four charges can be used to maximise the spells potential caster level.

The second item was built for the same campaign, but for our beguiler (basically a 3.5 version of the arcane trickster rogue). The player was struggling with their character because they'd built the character for the city we were going to with all of the rogue hiding and lock picking stuff, he had very little combat utility but it took us a year to get there and it was getting frustrating.
The item;
'Everwand of Emulation'
This wand has no specific spell that it can use, instead it emulates any spell up to spell level 3 that is cast into it. To cast a spell into the Everwand of Emulation a spellcaster must sit, holding the wand for an hour and then cast the chosen spell for it’s full costs. Once the spell has been cast the wand will cast that spell until for one week and the spell fades at dawn on the seventh day. This ritual can only be performed once a week.
This wand has 5 charges, each day at dawn it restors 1d2 charges. The wand consumes 1 charge for every spell level that a spell uses when cast through it (minimum 1 charge). And the spell’s caster level is considered the caster level of the person who cast the spell into the wand, when they cast it.
Spells with ongoing triggered effects (i.e. call lightning) only use their initial effect.


The third item was for the Paladin in our group who had miss-built her character for what she was hoping to do. She was wanting to get in the thick of things and fight, btu hadn't put any points into strength, and so could never hit. I didn't want to just give her strength, I wanted to make new game play and utility, not just a buff.
'Circlet of accuracy'
The circlet has ten charges, each day at dawn it restores 1d6+1 charge. One charge can be expended to add one to their attack roll before rolling to attack. Three charges can be expended to add one to their attack roll after rolling to attack. Five charges can be expended to re-roll an attack but the player must then take the second roll (even it it’s worse).

The final thing I'm going to talk about is a feat I built for D&D 3.5. This came about because our Barbarian wanted their character's main thing to be that they kill monsters and then Kill them. Which sounded cool. she wanted to be a chef in the game and when I really looked into the cooking crafts and professions in D&D 3.5 it was very meaningless. Food meant nothing except that you had to eat something twice a day. Professions meant nothing except you could roll on it to get money when the opportunity arrived.
So here it is;
'Monster Cooking'
Prerequisite: Craft (cooking)
DC = monsters (CR x 1.5) + 10 (rounded up)
Time per 4 meals:
Take 15 minutes at -2
Take 30 minutes at -1
Take 1 hour at no change
Take 1 hour 30 minutes at +1
Every 60 minutes longer gives the player an additional +1 to their cooking roll up to +5.
Critical fail; all who ate any take 1d6 of damage of the creatures element or poison if not applicable)
Fail; it's fine, the food sustains you for 6 hours with no bonuses.
Success; All players who eat the food gain +1/10th of the Monsters highest stat (if multiple equal stats roll for the stat) for 6 hours or until their next meal. (e.g. successfully cooking an adult black dragon will give the player +2 strength).
Critical Success; as well as the stat change from success players get 1 of the monsters hit dice + players con health. (e.g. a crit-success cooking an adult black dragon gives the players 1d12+con modifier hp)

So to sum it up; the barbarian can cook monsters and if she passes the DC (difficulty class or target number) then all those who eat it will gain a bonus based on the stats of the monster that she's eating.

So those are just some things I've home brewed for my players. I've also re-built the Paladin class and the Hexblade class to make them more interesting, but I feel like they'll be a bit hard to comprehend here.

I hope that you find that interesting. Perhaps I'll start talking about the campaign itself soon. Who knows!

Cheers!
- James