Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Astral and Ethereal Went From Interchangable to Overcomplicated. How Can D&D Fix Them?

As introduced in the original Dungeons & Dragons supplements, the astral and the ethereal planes seemed like two names for the same place. D&D characters visited both planes for the same reason: to snoop undetected. Either way, travelers pass through walls. On both planes, travelers braved the psychic wind. Monsters with attacks extending to one dimension invariably touched the other as well. The two planes shared the same encounter tables.

Today, thanks to decades of new planar lore, the astral and ethereal now differ. Instead of psychic winds, ethereal travelers face ether cyclones. On both planes, travelers fly around at will, but on the ethereal, creatures have a sense of gravity. Planar diagrams show the astral plane touching outer planes like the Hells and Limbo, while the ethereal touches the elemental planes. (Nonetheless, characters will still use plane shift and portals to travel the planes.)

Despite these differences, when the fourth-edition designers simplified the lore in their Manual of the Planes (2008), they dropped the ethereal plane. No wonder fans felt incensed!

How did D&D wind up with the Coke and Pepsi of planes? Do their redundancies just add useless complication to the game’s cosmology as the fourth edition designers seemed to conclude?

Two magic items that appeared in Greyhawk (1975) introduced the ethereal to D&D. Both oil of etherealness and armor of etherealness put characters “out of phase,” letting them through solid objects and making them immune to attack except by other creatures that can also become out of phase. Only a mention of creatures that can see ethereal things reveals that ethereal travelers are invisible rather than merely intangible.

One spell that debuted in Greyhawk introduced the astral to D&D. The astral spell let casters send their astral form out of their body. The form can fly at the speed of 100 miles per hour or more “and nothing but other astral creatures could detect it.” so the spell offered a superb way to find the best treasures and the worst traps in the dungeon.

The astral spell offers no more detail about astral travel, but fantasy gamers in the early 70s likely understood the concept. In Doctor Strange’s comic book appearances of the time, the Sorcerer Supreme frequently traveled in ethereal, astral, or ectoplasmic form; the superhero’s writers used the terms interchangeably. Gary Gygax included every idea he found in fantasy and folklore in his game, and gamers in his circle knew Doctor Strange. Brian Blume, the co-owner of D&D publisher TSR, was a fan. The teenage artist Gary recruited to draw the original D&D cover patterned the image after a panel in a Doctor Strange comic. Gamers could also consult books like the Art and Practice of Astral Projection (1975). Back then, astral projection attracted popular attention and even the U.S. Army took the paranormal seriously enough to launch a research effort that included astral projection.

The Eldritch Wizardry supplement (1976) frequently mentions ethereal and astral travel together, making the two dimensions interchangeable except for the magic item or spell required to reach them. The distinction between oil of etherealness and astral spell created one big difference in play. The oil made the body ethereal, so when the effect wore off, the user gained substance wherever they had traveled. With the astral spell, the caster’s astral form left their body behind and then returned to their body when the spell wore off or when something destroyed their astral form. This let someone scout while nearly immune to harm, but they could not physically travel to another place.

Until the plane shift spell debuted in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook (1978), characters could not bring their bodies to the astral plane. Plane shift enabled travel to and from the astral and ethereal, making visiting either plane equally simple.

In the AD&D Player’s Handbook, Gary’s urge to gather ideas from other sources led him to complicate the astral spell with more lore from astral projection. Some real-world investigators into astral projection claimed that during their out-of-body experiences, they saw an elastic, silver cord that linked their astral form to their physical body. Based on this, the astral spell added cords that tether astral travelers to their flesh and blood. Breaking the cord kills the traveler, so the cords potentially add some risk and tension to astral projection, even though “only a few rare effects can break the cord.” When Charles Stross created the astral-dwelling githyanki for the “Fiend Factory” column in White Dwarf issue 12 (1979), he wisely gave them swords capable of cutting the silver cords, adding some real peril to astral travel.

In the July 1977 issue of Dragon magazine, Gary Gygax printed a diagram that showed a difference between the astral and ethereal planes. The astral stretched to the outer planes like Olympus and the Hells, while the ethereal reached the inner, elemental planes. This proximity hardly made a difference in gameplay, since Gary never explains how astral travelers can navigate to Olympus, or why someone might care in a game with plane shift on page 50 of the Player’s Handbook. Besides, with Queen of the Demonweb Pits still years away, a DM who allowed players to travel the planes lacked any example to follow.

As far as players cared, the astral and ethereal just offered ways to snoop while undetectable and unblocked by walls. The choice of plane depended on the available magic. In 1977, D&D co-creator Gary Gygax would write about how astral and ethereal travel “posed a headache for DM’s.” In Tomb of Horrors (1978), he writes “Characters who become astral or ethereal in the Tomb will attract a type I-IV demon 1 in 6, with a check made each round.”

The Manual of Planes (1987) finally created differences between the astral and ethereal that factored into game play.

The astral no longer overlapped the material plane, so astral travelers lost the power to scout and spy. At best, astral travelers could find a portal called a color pool leading to the material plane and use it as a window to scry. Instead, the astral became a crossroad of connections to other planes. The astral gained those color pools and also conduits that work like portals but looked different. Years later, the fourth-edition designers fully realized this idea of the astral connecting to the outer planes when it made the Heavens, Hells, and other outer planes domains floating in the astral sea.

The ethereal still allowed invisible, intangible scouting, but it now extended into the deep ethereal, a place that connected to the elemental planes and various demi planes. The deep ethereal seems like a useless complication that stems from a diagram Gary printed in that 1977 issue of Dragon, because it resembles the astral plane, and besides players travel by plane shift and portal.

By the 90s, as D&D settings started proliferating, D&D designers started looking for ways to connect them. The Spelljammer setting gave characters a way to pilot their fantasy spaceships between Faerûn, Krynn, Oerth, and so on. The Planescape setting uses the deep ethereal to create similar connections between D&D worlds.

The astral and deep ethereal are different thanks to Coke versus Pepsi nuances of flavor and because each plane led to different places. (Does that feel like too much complexity for few gameplay rewards?) In practice, plane shift and portals mean that few visit the astral except to fight githyanki and no one visits the deep ethereal ever. In today’s game, the new Spelljammer setting uses the astral sea to connect D&D worlds, leaving the deep ethereal with no reason to exist. (Update: The Radiant Citadel of Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel exists in the deep ethereal, which provides the feel of a magical place disconnected from the ordinary, but without the problems created by locating a city in the astral where nothing ages.)

If I were king of D&D, I would adjust the astral and ethereal with some changes:

Drop the deep ethereal, keeping the ethereal as the sole, overlapping plane of creatures out of phase. The deep ethereal rates a description in the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide, but I suspect no fifth-edition character has ever visited it.
Drop the astral projection spell and the silver cords. The ability to spy from the astral plane disappeared in 1987, so the astral spell just rates as a pointless nod to a passing interest in the paranormal.
Make the astral sea the plane of portals and conduits that serves as the crossroads of worlds and planes.

Why Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Is Utterly Different From the Fantastic Films of the Past

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Through most of my life, I learned to expect movie producers and their creative teams to show contempt for the science-fiction, fantasy, or comic book stories I loved.

Once, not too long ago, movie producers would license a genre character or work of fantastic fiction, say Asimov’s robot stories, Dungeons & Dragons, or any video game, just looking for a familiar name to put butts in seats on opening weekend and to give marketing a head start.

If it was sci-fi, fantasy, or a game, then the producer and almost certainly the creative team didn’t know or care about the story and characters behind the brand. So, in the 80s, when Cannon Films licensed Spider-Man, the producers planned a film by then-hot horror director Tobe Hooper where Peter Parker turns into hairy, 8-limbed spider hybrid more like Cronenberg’s fly then Lee and Ditko’s character.

Then, the writers and directors hired for genre projects usually showed contempt for the original creations. They came from an era when popular fiction featured detectives and cowboys, where science fiction and fantasy meant drive-in creature features and bedtime tales, and where comics were for tots. So, when they adapted for the screen, they kept the title and the bits my parents knew—that D&D included dragons, that Superman liked Lois Lane, and that Spider-Man climbed walls. Sometimes, we still hear big shot writers and directors boast that they avoided the books or comics in favor of a new direction. Such creators see a property’s original writers and artists with a certain arrogance, as hacks who lacked the capacity for serious creative works. Surely a serious filmmaker can do better than whatsisname.

To win at the box office, a movie needed to reach far past the comparatively tiny audience of fans for a character like Spider-Man. You would lose your house just selling to 10-year-old Superman readers; you had to reach golfers, bikers, bridge groups, and so on. To free grownups from the embarrassment of buying tickets to something as infantile as a comic book character, the Superman (1978) producers gave a fortune to Important Actor Marlon Brando. For 15 minutes of screen time, Brando received $3.7 million up front, plus 11.75% of the film’s take, right off the top. In that environment, producers made no attempt to please fans by staying true to a source. They never even bothered to learn what made the property resonate. Besides, nerds will see the movie anyway.

Since that Superman movie reached theaters, Hollywood’s approach to sci-fi, fantasy, games, and comics changed completely, and the D&D movie shows just how much.

Now, someone can make a big-budget movie about a game that those golfer and bridge players once considered a cultish pastime for misfits who can’t handle reality. (Adults make-believe as wizards! Can you imagine?) Rather than keeping the brand and dumping the rest in favor of a fresh direction, the filmmakers invested enormous creative energy in mining D&D lore for its wealth of evocative ideas, and then put them on the screen. The filmmakers went on to create vivid characters, give them growth arcs, and then cast stars in the roles. The story even matches the unpredictable turns of a D&D game. “What we really tried to capture was the spirit of gameplay, where nothing goes the way you expect it to,” co-writer John Frances Daley says. “So we would set something up in our story that the DM would have very painstakingly created for the players, and with one wrong roll of the die, it all goes to crap, and they have to figure out a way out of it. It’s unconventional.” And for the biggest twist, the filmmakers created humor from the characters and the situations rather than metaphorically winking at the camera and making fun of the property, as if to say we made this movie for a buck, but we’re too important to take this seriously. The 60s Batman series shows how that goes.

Things have changed, but when we learned of a new D&D movie, we still braced for a disappointing goof on D&D that mocked the game and its fans. The movie steers clear of that sort of insult.

Still, seeking to make a good D&D movie that will please both fans and a wider audience is far, far easier than sticking the landing. I’m old enough to remember how filmmakers reacted to Star Wars by trying to copy its elements. All the knock offs disappointed—despite the presence of both robots and spaceships. Making good movies always proves hard.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves sticks the landing.

The Legal Fight Over Happy Birthday and What It May Tell Us About D&D’s Rumored OGL 1.1

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Remember when chain restaurants celebrated birthdays by sending a parade of servers to your table performing a clapping birthday chant only heard in chain restaurants. The staff never sang “Happy Birthday to You” because until 2016 the media giant Warner claimed to own a copyright to the song. Anyone who wanted to perform “Happy Birthday” in public needed to pay for a license or risk the attention of Warner’s lawyers. Before 2016, Warner collected about two million dollars a year licensing the song.

The story behind those license fees may reveal insights about the rumored plans of Wizards of the Coast to take a cut from publishers selling D&D-compatible products.

Both the words and tune to “Happy Birthday” date to the 19th century, and they appeared in print together in 1911, so their copyright probably expired long ago. In 2010, a law professor researched the song and concluded that it almost certainly had already left copyright. Meanwhile, Warner made sketchy claims that their copyright held and collected $5,000 a day, year after year. Those paying for a license surely knew that Warner’s copyright claims might die in court, but why suffer the expense battling a media giant with $2 million a year at stake just to save something like the $5,000 license fee the movie Hoop Dreams paid to include the song. Paying for a license proved safer. Warner’s plans would have kept them collecting license fees until 2030 if not for a meddling documentary filmmaker who raised money to take Goliath to court.

How does this story parallel Wizards of the Coast’s rumored bid to use a new Open Gaming License to collect license fees from those creating D&D-compatible content?

Most people using the OGL probably don’t need it to sell their creations.

In the 80s, Mayfair Games published a line of generic adventures and supplements compatible with AD&D. When the cover of Dwarves (1982) boasted a product “suitable for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,” TSR sued. In Designers & Dragons, Shannon Appelcline writes, “Intellectual property law as related to games is an unsettled subject. The general understanding is that you can’t protect game mechanics, except with a patent. As a result, a game manufacturer’s primary protection against other people using its IP is a trademark. Other publishers can’t use trademarks—like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons—in a way that would cause ‘confusion’…but that didn’t limit their use entirely.” The suit ended in a lopsided settlement for Mayfair where the company gained a perpetual, royalty-free license to use the AD&D trademark with certain restrictions. Insiders say that TSR feared the legal precedent that would be set if Mayfair won.

Could a modern publisher sell a D&D-compatible product touted as “Suitable for use with Dungeons & Dragons?” The courts would have to decide, but signs point to yes. For a final answer, a publisher would need to risk a potentially ruinous legal entanglement with Hasbro.

Surely, much of the popularity of the 20-year-old OGL stems from a possibly misplaced sense that it offered D&D-compatible products free protection from any legal issues. The question of whether products needed the license or not seemed moot.

Still, most publishers of products suitable for D&D could probably skip any license. During the fourth-edition era, when most publishers avoided fourth edition and its restrictive Game System License, Goodman Games produced a line of “4E Compatible” adventures that omitted both the OGL and GSL.

For years, movie producers opted to pay for “Happy Birthday” despite dodgy copyright claims because a license fee offered a safe and predictable option. Although a 25% royalty on revenue over $750,000 may seem unaffordable, this would simply represent Wizards’ opening offer. The company has likely approached the big OGL publishers to negotiate better terms that won’t force anyone to court. Today, the rumored OGL 1.1 suggests that Wizards of the Coast may bet that publishers opt for the safer and perhaps cheaper option of simply paying for a license.

One More Inspiration: Why I Made Color Maps for Battle Walker From the Abyss

Monsters of the Multiverse Should Have Given Foes a Boost, But it Didn’t. Next Chance: 2024

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As part of setting the math at the foundation of a Dungeons & Dragons edition, the game’s designers target the number of rounds a typical fight should last. Fifth edition aims for 3-4 rounds. Monsters deal enough damage to feel threatening to level-appropriate characters over those 3 or so rounds. In a deadly fight, that damage might match the characters’ hit points.

PCs	Avg HPs/PC	Party HPs	CR of 4-5 monsters, barely deadly challenge	Avg MM/Volp’s Dmg, monster of that CR	Avg Dmg/rnd, 4 monsters	Rounds to defeat all PCs
Five Level 2 PCs	17	85	5 x CR 1	10	50	1.7
Five Level 4 PCs	31	155	2 x CR 1 2 x CR 2	10 15	50	3.1
Five Level 8 PCs	59	295	5 x CR 4	25	125	2.36
Five Level 12 PCs	87	435	5 x CR 6	35	175	2.485714
Five Level 16 PCs	115	575	4 x CR 6 3 x CR 5	30 35	230	2.5
Five Level 20 PCs	143	715	4 x CR 9	45	280	2.553571

According to a table calculated by freelance designer Teos “Alphastream” Abadia, fifth edition lands that 3-round target . At most levels, a deadly group of monsters needs about 2.5 rounds to slay typical characters. That number assumes every monster attack hits, and that the characters never bother to heal while failing to kill a single foe. Short of terrible luck, most groups will survive 5 rounds or more, finish their foes in 3-4 rounds, and win a potentially deadly encounter.

Fifth edition’s linear math seems sound, but as characters level, they keep adding on extra abilities that resist, block, and heal. Character power doesn’t grow linearly, it surges. As levels climb, that linear increase in monster damage becomes increasingly ineffectual.

From player feedback, the D&D team learned that monsters often fail to bring as big a threat as their challenge rating suggests.

Combat encounters can be fun for many reasons: Sometimes players relish a chance to flaunt their characters’ power by destroying overmatched foes. Sometimes players think of an ingenious tactic that leads to an easy victory—everyone loves when a plan comes together. But for most players, such romps would become tiresome if the game never offered hard battles. Difficult fights challenge players to fight smart, work as a team, and stretch their characters’ abilities. Tension builds until the group almost always wins. Fifth edition’s design makes hard fights feel more dangerous than they are. That’s one of the edition’s best features. But fifth edition lacks monsters able to consistently deliver fights that feel hard at higher levels.

When a battle falls short of expectations, we all feel disappointed. Teos writes, “The worst games I encounter are those where the story of the game, and the expectations of players and DM, don’t match the challenge level. It’s supposed to be the cinematic clash with the great demon, but it’s lame. It’s an ambush by a terrifying beast…that can’t deal any real damage.”

Sure, DMs can swap tougher monsters, but as levels rise, the options dwindle. And the game’s weak monsters force changes to every published adventure not aimed at low-level characters.

DMs can always add more monsters, but that approach suffers drawbacks too. More monsters means more mental load and more time running foes for the DM. all that adds more idle time for the players. More monsters also take more damage to defeat, potentially turning a slugfest into a grind. Fewer monsters mean faster paced, more exciting fights, as long as the monsters can threaten.

To help DMs run foes at the threat set by their challenge rating, Monsters of the Multiverse changes some monsters. These changes mainly appear in monsters that cast spells. Rather than burying the best combat options in a spell list, the new stat blocks spotlight the most potent powers with full descriptions. This helps DMs run a creature effectively during its typical 3-4 rounds of survival.

Still, better tactics can only do so much. If every monster book included a copy of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, the poor creatures would still prove overmatched.

The problem circles back to how the monsters’ linear rise in damage fails to match the characters’ escalating ability to heal, block, and avoid damage. Somewhere in tier 2 the monsters start falling behind and the gap widens as levels increase.

So I hoped that Monsters of the Multiverse might update monsters to close the gap by increasing damage. The book does not.

To be clear, extra damage doesn’t aim to kill characters. At low levels, the designers assume players have little invested in their characters and will accept a few casualties. But for experienced characters, fifth edition boasts a design that makes deaths rare. By level 5, revivify makes total-party kills more common than individual deaths. By level 9, raise dead and more powerful spells can make death a dramatic choice. Players only fear disintegration. Extra damage does make players feel jeopardy though, even in a game that makes death a mere setback.

So what are the D&D designers afraid of? Why no changes?

Are the designers aiming for a game where monsters just serve to help PCs show off? I call this the Washington Generals style of game, and it offers a perfectly fine style for folks who enjoy it. The Washington Generals were the deliberately ineffective opponents who enabled the Harlem Globetrotters to showcase their basketball skills.

Are the designers afraid of making the game too dangerous for newer players who happen to play mid- to high- level games? Ironically, the game causes far more deaths at 1st and 2nd level. Just look at the 1.7 rounds 2nd-level characters survive a near-deadly encounter. Every fifth-edition character I’ve lost died at 2nd level.

Are the designers wary of side effects? For example, in games I’ve played where monsters automatically deal double damage, concentration spells become much weaker. I love wall of fire and spirit guardians and want them to last.

Do the designers want to avoid trashing their challenge rating spreadsheet and the game’s assumptions so close to an edition update coming in 2024? Surely the designers take some pride in their game and feel reluctant to change the math behind its monsters. The designers know DMs can adjust their games to account for what might seem like matters of taste. Besides, most campaigns hardly reach the levels where monsters fall seriously behind.

Obviously, DMs have the tools to adjust, just like we adapt all our games to the taste of our players. I just wish the D&D team had seized the chance to offer us better monstrous tools.

Watch Me Talk D&D on the Designer’s Den With Ginny Loveday

Why Does Rime of the Frostmaiden Have Just One Magic Weapon?

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Spoilers for magic items in Rime of the Frostmaiden.

As written, Rime of the Frostmaiden includes a typical number of magic items, but only one useful magic weapon, a +2 trident. That count excludes the Berserker Axe, which attaches a harsh curse, and 6 laser rifles, which I don’t count as magic. Some players will relish letting their rogues and rangers become raygun-blasting snipers, but many players, including those with greatsword-wielding barbarians, may not fancy where a laser rifle steers their character.

Dunegon masters can change the adventure’s loot to fit their players, and you, I, and the designers all know it. Surely though, the lack of magic weapons comes by design, from a choice the authors made because they felt it enhanced the adventure.

What motivated this choice?

The stinginess reinforces the scarcity and struggle that sets the adventure’s early tone. ThinkDM writes, “It’s meant to convey desolation at the surface level of Icewind Dale, literally and figuratively. This sets a contrast to the high magic stuff happening later in the adventure.”

The adventure mainly avoids granting magic items that only suit a particular class or character, favoring wondrous items, protective items, and even a wand of magic missiles that any character can use. This avoids the awkward moment when the party finds a +2 longsword even though everyone wants a rapier. (DM hint: When you announce the find to that party, pronounce “longsword” as “rapier.”)

D&D’s fifth edition design aims to play fine without magic items, but a lack of magic weapons weakens fighters, rangers, and rogues against creatures resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from non-magical attacks. Every character suffers moments like when the fireball-blasting sorcerer enters the forge of salamanders. However, the game makes creatures resistant to non-magic weapons common enough to lead the designers to give monks and druids fist and claw attacks that count as magic. The D&D Adventurers League gives out magic weapons to any fifth-level character who wants one. This avoids both penalizing the classes that need them and the awkward moments when a group finds the wrong type of magic sword.

In Frostmaiden, a certain infestation of vampires could overwhelm a party without magic weapons. At best, that barbarian spends a night feeling ineffective. Hope you found a laser rifle.

Dungeons Are Contrived for Fun Games

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The ancient Egyptians used canopic jars to store the stomach, intestines, lungs, and liver of corpses embalmed as mummies. I’m surprised that as a longtime D&D fan, I learned that fun fact only recently. Credit Jen Kretchmer, the author of The Canopic Being from Candlekeep Mysteries. The group for my D&D weekend started our tier 3 games with this standout adventure that built mummy lore into an ingenious villain.

After playing the adventure, I remembered that the dungeon’s lack of stairs caused a silly controversy. A preview by James Haeck reveals the feature. “It’s filled with fantasy elevators, and ledges are accessible by ramps rather than by stairs. If you have a player in your gaming group who wants to play a wheelchair-using character, this is a great adventure to borrow dungeon design ideas from. After all, it is a fantasy world. If it’s a player’s fantasy to kick ass in a wheelchair, why not?”

Some D&D fans grumbled that such a dungeon defied history or D&D tradition. In D&D, any closed environment meant to be explored, infiltrated, or raided qualifies as a dungeon, and those places almost always include substantial allowances to make play more fun, most often including oversized spaces with plenty of room for fights. D&D dungeons owe as much to history as fire-breathing dragons do. As for D&D tradition, the original 1974 D&D books recommend sloping passages and sinking rooms as tricky dungeon features. Dungeons can make such allowances and still murder characters.

James asks, “If we didn’t mention that the dungeon was fully accessible here, would you have even noticed that there were ramps instead of stairs?” True. Nobody noticed.

Upcoming on DM David

How to Make a Mind-Controlling Sorcerer Who Forces DMs to Keep up with Some Fast Thinking

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I made a character who can short-circuit adventures and force dungeon masters to do some fast thinking. Does that make me a troublemaker? I feel guilty as charged, but I blame curiosity. I wondered how experienced Adventurers League DMs accustomed to quick thinking would manage the character. While I haven’t played Poggry enough for a statistically significant sample size, I have made DMs visibly pause and ponder ways to make success in social encounters a bit less sudden.

My sorcerer Poggry favors spells like suggestion that influence the unwise and weak-willed. Normally, in a Dungeons & Dragons world, suggestion raises the anger of folks who prefer to keep spellcasters out of their heads.

According to the Player’s Handbook (p.203) spells like suggestion with verbal components require “the chanting of mystic words.” After making that incantation, the caster gives the suggestion in what D&D designer Jeremy Crawford calls “a separate, intelligible utterance.” Most Dungeons & Dragons worlds make magic common enough for ordinary folks to recognize spellcasting when it starts. In a D&D world, suggestion starts fights or finishes them. Unlike charm person, targets of suggestion don’t necessarily know they succumbed to a spell, but the mystic words reveal the magic.

So Poggry took the Subtle Spell metamagic option. “When you cast a spell you can spend 1 sorcery point to cast it without somatic or verbal components.” Suggestion still requires a material component like a spellcasting focus, but the caster just needs it in hand, so sorcerers able to hide their hands under something like a cloak can cast spells without notice. No wonder evil sorcerers favor capes. And just as real-life magicians sport bare arms to show that they have nothing up their sleeves, perhaps spellcasters in D&D worlds keep their hands empty to appear trustworthy.

Aside from the need to hide a focus, Subtle Spell turns suggestion into a sort of Jedi mind trick. If a target saves, they just ignore a bad recommendation. If they fail, they follow the suggestion and feel persuaded. The Sage Advice Compendium explains, “Assuming you failed to notice the spellcaster casting the spell, you might simply remember the caster saying, ‘The treasure you’re looking for isn’t here. Go look for it in the room at the top of the next tower.’ You failed your saving throw, and off you went to the other tower, thinking it was your idea to go there.” You can never know the source of the impulse, although a rash enough action might imply magic at work.

As a bonus, sorcerers boast real charisma, so when a subtle charm person seemed like too much, Poggry could charm to persuade. He combined a talent for deception with disguise self. I like heroic characters, so I imagined Poggry as a positive fellow from a bad situation who gained such talents for survival. Sample dialog: “It’s nice that you get to sleep on top of beds here. Where I come from, we always had to hide underneath them.”

If you opt to explore evil impulses by combining similar magic with a sociopath, share your plans with the rest of your group and gain their consent. A darker take on a manipulative sorcerer makes establishing hard and soft limits as described in Tasha’s Cauldon of Everything especially important.

Players of sorcerers commonly complain that their characters’ know too few spells, and choosing spells like disguise self over attack spells makes that limit even tighter. For a more versatile alternative with the same spellcasting tricks, you could design a caster such as a bard with Subtle Spell from the Metamagic Adept feat. Pick the College of Eloquence for maximum persuasion.

Using suggestion to tell enemy combatants to go jump in a lake gets old. When I played Poggry in combat-intensive adventures, he proved a bit dull. When I finally played him an adventure with a masquerade ball, intrigue, and exactly one fight, he became a delight. My poor DM for that session might disagree.

Spells like a subtle suggestion can potentially reduce an adventure full of diplomacy and intrigue to a few failed saves. Combined with a knack for deception, a spell like disguise self can turn an assault on a stronghold to retrieve some mcguffin into a solo milk run. Either spell can wreck the expectations of a written adventure. Such magic can force DMs to imagine ways to reward a characters’ talents while leaving room for the rest of the party to contribute. Think fast! (Or just call for a break to dream up new complications.)

DMDavid

Dungeons & Dragons design, advice, tools and inspiration

Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Astral and Ethereal Went From Interchangable to Overcomplicated. How Can D&D Fix Them?

Why Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Is Utterly Different From the Fantastic Films of the Past

The Legal Fight Over Happy Birthday and What It May Tell Us About D&D’s Rumored OGL 1.1

One More Inspiration: Why I Made Color Maps for Battle Walker From the Abyss

Monsters of the Multiverse Should Have Given Foes a Boost, But it Didn’t. Next Chance: 2024

Watch Me Talk D&D on the Designer’s Den With Ginny Loveday

Why Does Rime of the Frostmaiden Have Just One Magic Weapon?

Dungeons Are Contrived for Fun Games

Upcoming on DM David

How to Make a Mind-Controlling Sorcerer Who Forces DMs to Keep up with Some Fast Thinking

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