Some of the new items from my fave D&D NPC’s refurbished Slightly-Cursed Items Shop, in which she sells my players items ranging from effectively useless to legitimately deadly – but always entertaining. Feel free to use these tragedies!
UH SCUSE an first of these things sound EXTREMLY ROOD
[In an attempt to make the dragons of my setting more interesting, I have been attempting to make them more distinguishable visually beyond just scale colors. Here are my ideas.]
Black: Black dragons accentuate their already skeletal appearance with bony protrusions and white coloration appears and yellows with age that, to the untrained eye, look like rotting carcasses submerged in swamp muck.
Blue: Rather than scales, blue dragons sport rough hide akin to the real-world komodo dragons. They have top-set nostrils and their notable large horn have a rock-like texture, allowing them to hide below the sands of their desert homes to ambush traveling herders, caravans, and other creatures of the desert.
Brass: Taking suggestions.
Bronze: Taking inspiration from the Monster Hunter franchise’s Royal Ludroth, my bronze dragons sport a larger tail with flatter ends to help propel them through the water, and have “manes” of natural sponge that both grows with age and its upkeep promotes their marine lifestyles.
Copper: There is not much change physically, save for a strong emphasis on their scales turning green as they age; the oldest of which being dubbed “Malachite Dragons” because of it.
Gold: When first born, gold dragons betray their namesake and are a dull gray, and are fairly unimpressive. Their grandeur comes with age and the consumption of the precious metal that they are so deceptively named after. They are essentially divining rods for gold, and before the arrival of man to coin gold into currency in mass amounts, gold dragons would sniff out ore veins to consume. As they consumed more, the gold would begin to layer onto their scales, giving them their brilliant golden hue, and making them one of the purest sources of gold on the planet’s surface.
Green: Inspired by the “iconic” Jurassic Park dilophosaurus and Monster Hunter’s (similarly colored) Rathian, green dragons sport hidden frills on top of a mane of poisonous quills.
Red: Red dragons sport, on top of their trademark red scales, sport beautiful mane-like plumage, light feathering on their wings, and large feathers on their tails on fiery golden yellows and oranges. They take great pride in their down, almost as much as their hordes, and to insult or damage them is to provoke their wrath until either party expires. The thick oils that coat these feathers allow red dragons to literally erupt into flames without needing to worry about singeing their beautiful displays.
Silver: Taking suggestions.
White: To protect them from the frigid cold and freezing waters of the arctic lands they call home, white dragons are covered in layered, oily, downy feathers (similar to penguins). They also sport nostrils on top of their heads so that they can ambush prey from the water (and with their natural strength, below ice as well). Imagine how fully wyrmlings are!
[Dragons, in my eyes, are not only massive, powerful, and magical creatures, but also majestic and unique enough amongst themselves to warrant some interesting traits.]
I mean, the official D&D art already has pretty distinctive looks for the different types of dragon. These are all cool ideas, but it’s not like they were just boring and samey to begin with.
[I recognize well and truly that they were varied to begin with, but I wanted to give them a more personal touch that pushed the differences between them further. It’ll definitely bring some more interesting reactions and interactions to my tables when i introduce them.]
I see Silver Dragons as being kind of like a mix of Monster Hunter’s Legiana and Kushala Daora in terms of look and general feel. They just look super awesome and together their main things (flying really well and ice breath) really have an awesome feel to them!
[As I mentioned when talking about Kulve Taroth and my gold dragons, I know very little about MH:W, ironically, given my love of the franchise, but I do like the imagery Kushala Daora inspires and Legiana too for what little I know.]
Black dragons: they might live in giant goopy pools of black acid, and thus when they appear they may be more drippy goop than visible flesh and scales.
[Well, black dragons already make their homes in mucky swamps. Like the idea for a jewelry-adorned silver dragon, a black dragon in a specigically acidic swamp is more an individual rather than an overarching feature, but I’m definitely gonna keep this idea in mind.]
can randomly generate just about ANYTHING. awesome for dms
Tabletop Audio: background music and sound effects for the ambience.
PCGen – a character creation program that handles all the tricky and tedious parts of building characters, including NPCs.
d20pfsrd.com – all the free information you would ever need to play Pathfinder, an alternative to D&D
DiceCloud: Interactive character sheet that can be edit and shared with yourself or others easily. Pulled up anywhere with internet connection on PC, Mac, or mobile device. Use it to also mark down health, death saving throws, spell slots, experience, and more on the fly.
DnDMagic: List all spells currently available from Player’s Handbook and Elemental Evil.
5th Edition Spellbook app: Make spellbooks for all your characters, manage spells, prepare spells. Keep track of Spell Save DC, and Spell Attack bonus on your mobile device.
Squire – Another character creation and management app. Contains most of the basic info and spells already, with options to create spells, items, classes/subclasses, etc. This is the free version, but pro has more options for DMs, including initiative order control.
RPG Generator – An app that randomly generates things from NPC appearances to criminal gangs. It’s free and a great on the fly DM tool.
I CANNOT believe I don’t have anything under my DM Tips and Tricks section for encounter building! So I’m going to try and give some advice (but I’ve included some links at the bottom to some good posts about encounter building, which I’ll have to reblog soon!)
Encounters can be tricky. You want to have the “perfect” hook to entice your players and you want the encounter to go smoothly – perhaps not as planned but at least smoothly.
However, I think it is highly important to know that how these encounters make your players feel is the key. In the long run your players may not remember the name of the barmaid who gave them that valuable piece of information, or the history of the haunted tavern they’re forced to stay in – they’re gonna remember how you made them feel.
So you want to make your encounters harder? I’m assuming you understand that encounters come in environmental, social, and combat forms!
Environment encounters could be something like a natural disaster such as: the entire village is underwater and someone must rescue the innocent people! Those are already pretty difficult challenges and they’re pretty time consuming.
Social encounters can be peaceful, difficult, or all around terrifying. It all depends on the NPCs your players are encountering – hehe. To make social encounters worth it for your players think deeply about the NPC they are dealing with. Perhaps the suspicious blacksmith was wronged in the past and that explains why he refuses to give out that vital piece of information. Or maybe that priest comes off as pretentious because of his past life as an orphaned street beggar. Giving your NPCs backstories and flavor can really spice up any encounter.
When it comes to my NPC I like to think of WWH – Why, What, and How. Why have the players encountered (or sought out) this NPC, What do the players need to know from the NPC and what do they want to get from them, and how will they get it.
For example: The players have ended up in on the merchants ship because they heard through tavern gossip that she was the best person to go to for exotic animals. The players need to buy a purple quail’s egg for a tyrant king’s birthday party and they’ve been sent to find one as quickly as possible. How will they get this from the merchant who, after a quick glance around the ship, has a whole hoard of quail’s eggs – they can choose to buy it for a hefty sum, haggle and bargain with the merchant, or try to steal it (they almost always try to steal it). This merchant, however, is very friendly and trusting of most people so she would have no problem lowering the price for the party, as long as they do her any favor she may need in the future.
Combat encounters are very hard for me to come up with. I’ve typically had the habit of saying something like “You’re walking towards the castle and out of the bushes explodes a hungry hungry hippo. Roll for initiative” buuuuuttttt you can make combat encounters harder simply by giving the player’s opponents more hit points or more powerful attacks – instead of 2d6 fire damage maybe it deals 4d6 fire damage. I have a link below by dndplus that goes into more detail about combat encounters because unfortunately I am not so sure what else to say about combat encounters – I have so much to learn!
I hope I’ve helped even if it was just a little
xx
Chelsea
THIS post elaborates on some environmental encounters such as the natural disasters I mentioned!
THIS is a post of some random wilderness encounters! Very good stuff!
THIS post is SO detailed about combat encounters – much better than what I had to say!
THIS post breaks down encounters in environment, social, and combat encounters just like I did and is worth the read! It doesn’t explain how to make encounters harder but it’s a good base for building encounters!
Creator's Archive 