What Is A Dump Stat?

A dump stat is going to be the thing that you are worst at. In terms of what that looks like on your character sheet, 10 is supposed to be average. If someone were to have a 10 in all their stats, they are the average person in the world.

So it’s not just your lowest stat, it is a stat that is below that average. If you are even one less, at 9, you get a negative one penalty on the roll and you are lower than average with what you can roll. But that is talking about it mechanically, it is also a weakness in how you role play out that below average trait.

Playing A Dump Stat in Dungeons and Dragons

The first question to ask if if your character knows they have a dump stat. If you are just below average wisdom or intelligence you know that you aren’t as smart. If they are a fair bit below, now they start to think that they are smarter. Some of the physical ones, strength or dexterity, you might always know that you aren’t as good at, but is that how you are going to play it.

Let’s go through each stat and come up with a way to play it.

Strength

For strength, I think that there are two common ways that you could play it. First, you could have the character constantly try and get people to help them. Even for a meaningless task, like opening a pickle jar with a loose lit, or pull a small dead branch off a tree, they also have someone else help them.

Or on the other side of things, they could refuse help. They might know they are weak, but they are going to do it themselves. So when the big fighter or barbarian tries to help them, they get upset and refuse the help. It is a matter of pride that they will be able to do it on their own.

Dexterity

Dexterity is going to follow along the lines of strength. They know that anything slightly dexterous is tricky for them, so they never do it. In fact, really easy things, they try and make someone else do it. Or they are going to try no matter what.

Constitution

For constitution you can make it about them getting sick all of the time. If the weather turns, they get a slight cold. They have the sniffles about 90% of the year. When the group goes into the bar, they are a light weight and after a drink they are up on the table and possibly looking to pick a fight or hitting on someone at the bar and getting into trouble that way.

Intelligence

Intelligence is pretty straightforward as well. You just assume knowledge about things. If someone talks on a subject, you assume that you know more than they do. And you don’t really feel a need to look into it further because, again, you know. On the other hand, you know about libraries but wouldn’t think about going to them to find out information.

Wisdom

Wisdom is going to be more about how the world works. You think you know how criminals work on the streets. You think you know how things will play out in a situation, especially social. But you really don’t know how any of that works. If you are down a little, you’re probably worried about messing any situation up. If you are very low on wisdom, you just assume that you know what is going on and are a bit of a bull in a china shop.

Charisma

Charisma is probably the most interesting to have as a low stat mainly because charisma as a high stat is pretty narrow. Or at least how a lot of people play it, it is. But as a low stat, you have a lot of ways to go. You can just assume that everyone likes you, even though you are annoying. Being very quiet is another way to play it. Or try and overcompensate by talking loudly or being too affectionate, or whatever thing your character believes is the normal things people do that is most certainly not normal.

Final Thoughts

Dump stats are fun, mainly because it gives your character a chance not to shine. There are a lot of opportunities to utilize strengths. And a good DM (Dungeon Master) should present opportunities like that to players. But a chance to create a fun or interesting moment with a weakness, that is going to be as memorable as that great thing that you did. A dump stat is also a great way to bring in comedy or intended conflict.

An example would be a low dexterity character trying to sneak around the edge of a group of goblins versus the rogue doing so. They fall into the midst of goblins, now you have a weird combat that is going to start happening. Or a low charisma character getting flustered by some light flirting and accidentally proposing to a princess in front of the king. You will be talking about when those moments happen way more than when the fighter takes out the goblins.

So lean into it and have fun. That is the fun of a role playing game. Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever system you are using, is about that fun at the table versus winning the game. In fact, very few D&D campaigns reach the end, stories get too big or schedules change, but there are always going to be moments that you remember in the game.

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The Session

So, I didn’t have much time to plan anything for this session I was kept busy with a toddler and making dinner before people showed up but it was still a fun session which changed some things up again. You can catch up on what happened in what I called Session 22. But the players immediately jump back into it filling in Assendial on more of what had happened.

They were also curious about what was going on with the Winter Court. It turns out that the member of the winter court has been trying to broker and agreement with Strawgoh to use some students to deal with a Rainman. The group, Barrai, Bokken and Kip immediately volunteer. And try and broker a deal which the school actually takes care of for them. They wanted 60 gold for it but ended up getting 250 which they do agree to split 4 ways with Thrain.

They kill a little bit of time with Bokken getting another fight scheduled at the bar and Barrai wrote a letter to his patron. But Kip puts the time to good use and researches what Rainman are. They are fey creatures who hide in the rain and aren’t fully corporeal. But more so, they try and drown you with their aqueous form and that will turn you into a puddle.

Going over to the embassy of the Winter Court in the town they set-up a trap for the Rainman. They make it look like the powerful fey princess of the Winter Court is standing out in the courtyard talking. Bokken spots the Rainman who is watching what is going on, but has realized that something is off. Mainly that the rain is still rain not snow like it’d be turning into surrounding a member of the winter court. So the Rainman is looking around for someone who is controlling this illusion. Bokken charges and the group gets into battle.

Things didn’t go completely as plan. Barrai does a great job opening up a barrage of magic missiles on the one of the Rainmen. And that’s where the issue really is, while the Winter Court had thought there was one Rainman there win in fact two that had been stalking the embassy. They initially focus on Kip because he looks like he’s the smallest and weakest. But when Barrai uses his magic missiles which is way more effective against them, the second one switches it’s focus to try and drown Barrai. Unfortunately for Barrai he rolls a 0 (1 with a -1 modifier) when it grapples him and he gets hit hard with a lot of damage. Eventually he becomes a puddle.

Bokken finishes off the last Rainman and feels very guilty about letting Barrai die. Some of that also due to the fact that one of his attacks had dealt damage to Barrai while he was trapped inside the figure. Kip and Bokken manage to get the puddle that was Barrai into a water skin and they rush his puddle to Assendial whom Bokken had seen use the reincarnation spell before. She is able to use it on him, but he comes back not as a Tiefling but as a forest Gnome.

Behind the DM’s Screen

Like I said, this was a lightly planned session. When they started asking about the member of the Winter Court, I knew that is the direction that I’d been taking the session and two Rainman were going to make a hard/deadly encounter for the three of them. Turns out it was in fact deadly.

And Barrai, and the player, actually got to pick between two different races. Normally you just get whatever you roll but because Kip had used prestidigitation to help get the puddle form of Barrai into the water skin. I decided to make it more interesting than just a straight roll. The player could have picked between human and forest gnome. Thematically they decided that it made more sense to be a forest gnome after all the torturing of Dorin that he had done over the school year.

Have you had a character die and become reincarnated in a game before?

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The Session

There was a little bit of shopping as the players headed out of Castleveinea. Barrai picked up a few tinkered little toys, including a spider that jumped and a bird that toddled around as it walked. And Kip bought studded leather armor. Things were uneventful on the way back to the school, city, and tower, as they didn’t run into any more goblins. But Bokken did pick up some nice whiskey for sipping in the evenings.

Back in the town they picked up on the last lead that they had. They knew the address of Nahzir, the wizard whom Addruss had been working with. After spending a little bit of time looking around and asking about him, they end up at Moody’s Bar, where Barrai finds out some disturbing information, in the week they have been gone, Zaphir, who hates Barrai and Thrain has undergone a transformation of sorts, and still really hates them.

They do get a better idea of the location of Nahzir’s place of residence. It is a long term stay hotel sort of location. Barrai and Kip scope out one side of it from a restaurant just down the street, and Bokken disguises himself as part of a display at a florists. Kip uses his familiar Kraig to fly up to what they surmise to be Nahzir’s rooms window and Kraig doesn’t see anything inside, but sense that there might be something there. Bokken spots that there is a side entrance that some of the residence seem to be using.

As it gets dark outside, the group decides to break into the building through that side entrance. The lock is normal and they are careful, so Kip is able to pop the lock no problem and get inside. It is just a normal hotel and they make their way to Nahzir’s room on the third floor. They check the door for magical traps, but there aren’t any. Opening it up, Barrai lets his little bird toddle through and nothing happens. Bokken goes in first.

There is a flash and a bang as some explosive concussion is triggered. A figured wearing a cloak that obscures all of his body in shadow leaps out at Bokken nailing him with a couple of slashes. A fight ensues and Bokken has a rough go of it after taking a lot of damage to start and then missing on a number of attacks. Kip, unfortunately for him, casts a spell drawing the attention and ire of the cloaked figure who changes his target taking down Kip. Barrai and Bokken are able to do enough damage to taken down the being and they revive Kip as well.

They figure out that the creature is from the Fey Wilds and is an Arcane Stalker, more about them later. Getting the corpse into Nahzir’s room, they ransack it. Kip finds another coded book as well as two books on the Fey Wilds and one notebook full of notes on that subject as well. They also don’t find any clothes that would fit the Arcane Stalker, they just find clothing for Nahzir in there. The most interesting find, though, comes when Barrai opens up a dresser drawer, and in there, there is a scarab.

And that is where we ended.

Behind the DM’s Screen

So the main thing to talk about here is using supplemental materials. I picked up through Drive Thru RPG and Cawood Publishing a book of monsters and in particular Fey monsters, this came when I was reading a ton of Dresden Files and was thinking about a Fey based campaign, that is still on the table. That is where the Arcane Stalker came from. It was fun to use a different monster. I built them up with their movements and their description to make them feel more unique.

The Arcane Stalker is an elite warrior from the Winter Courts who is basically used to kill magic users. They have some magical abilities of their own, such a teleporting or dispelling magic. So I got to play around with that, I knew that they were there waiting on Nahzir for some reason, TBD for the players, but also they were going to be after any magic user first. Even though the tank Bokken is a big threat, the Arcane Stalker is all about taking out magic users. It gave it a logical priority that the players could figure out.

So grab some supplements from other companies. While I do have mainly Dungeons and Dragons books, I am also a big fan of looking for new things, and from some of the established 3rd party creators, like Cawood Publishing and others, you can find a lot of other cool things to use.

As always, does the session and campaign sound interesting as one to run or play in? If you use third party published stuff, do you have a favorite?

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The Session

It was finally time to bring Dorin back to his home. After a few days of carrying him around with them everywhere that they went, and trunk becoming more and more disgusting, they all decided to take him back. They rented a wagon for the trunk and hooked it up to Thrain’s donkey. Assendial, however, had questions to be answered and they decided to leave Kip, Karl, and Kraig behind, maybe to catch up with them later.

The travel started out pretty uneventfully as the group was just heading towards river that they’d have to cross. It was early in the year and the snows had just melted from the mountains. Their choice was to add a day or so to their journey in able to find a ferry to take them across the river instead of ford it. They figure if the water levels don’t look too bad, they can always follow the shorter route on the way back.

They reach a glade near a small brook where they decide to stop for the night. Barrai cleans out the clothes that Dorin had packed and cast mending on them, Bokken cleaned out the trunk down stream and Dorin was rinsing himself off. An owlbear with a rider on it charges out of the thicket and grabs at Thrain with it’s beak. A fierce battle ensues as Barrai tries to keep Thrain up, and Bokken charges in to stop the fight. Meanwhile Dorin rushes for his trunk and flips into it and starts floating down stream. The donkey spooks and runs back towards the town. Barrai heals Thrain and heals the owlbear which Bokken decides to keep as a pet, naming it Fukuro Kuma.

It takes them a while to realize where Dorin has gotten off to and knowing that it’s going to take some effort and that the ford is in the direction that Dorin will drift, they decide to go after the donkey. They take the owlbear with them, and they find the donkey a little ways down the road in a meadow where it’s headed more directly towards the town, but having pulled a wagon all day it has stopped to eat. As they get to it another group of goblins get there as well.

The party again faces off against goblins. This time Bokken and Barrai take the brunt of the attacks, which works out fairly well, though Barrai starts to get low on hit points. The two of them, mainly, manage to slash through everything and eventually, the time being around 10 PM decide to take their cart, donkey, and owlbear back to the road. Bokken keeps watch since he can just go into sentry mode, but comes out of it when he hears a siren off in the distance. He wakes the others but they aren’t sure if it’s a dragon siren off in the stance or maybe it’s the sire Kip has used before, but they decide to go back to sleep.

Behind the DM’s Screen

Honestly, not much for this time. I’m experimenting with something I normally don’t do. Since we’re not in the town, it’s less about social encounters and more about possible combat. So I wanted to see what stringing together a number of combats might be like. It’s interesting to do that and to see how quickly players spend resources.

How do you string combats together? Do you have a lot of little ones, a few medium ones, a little and a big one per day? Or do you do less combat encounters and more social encounters?

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The Session

After spending last session continuing their investigation, the party, Thrain, Barrai, Bokken, and Kip head back to the school to talk to Assendial. The school is still in chaos as the teachers are talking to the Half-Orc, Lasanial, whose room the group had found the second scarab in. Catching Assendial’s attention, they get her to come over and talk with them.

The chat is pretty brief. They fill her in on some of what happened and asked if they thought Lasanial was the culprit. Assendial says that he seems to be telling them the truth that he had no idea what had been going on. And they find out that Lasanial has made of lot of money in the fights which is why he had so much money and stuff in his room. They tell her a little bit about their suspicions of Addrus, but don’t go into full details as to why. But they do confirm that he should have only had four keys for the bank, from the school. Assendial says that she saw Addrus going to their barracks with Parrag while the party was out looking for him.

The party rushes over to the barracks to look for Addrus and confront him and try and get more information from him. They burst in and see Parrag lying face down on Barrai’s bed. Addrus is no where to be found in the room. Barrai goes to try and wake Parrag and Bokken steps outside to see if he can see anything suspicious. The place is still noisy, but Bokken hears something from the other side of the barracks and decides to investigate.

We drop into combat at this point; as Bokken goes around the corner and sees Addrus, the friends whom he’d met with in the market for a meal the time Bokken was following him, the adult whom had been with them, and Castillia. They are all making their way towards a wagon, though for Castillia it’s against her will. Bokken raises the alarm to the other three and charges into battle.

Things start out going well for the group. Bokken takes out one of Addrus’s friends in the first round and makes his way towards the wagon where it looks like they are going to try and kidnap Castillia. The other three come around the corner to see the battle in full swing. Turns out that Addrus friends can use magic and are slinging around magic missile spells at everyone and they do a fair amount of damage to Bokken. Everything moves along nicely for our players as Kip, Thrain, and Barrai keep things interesting for the friends and Addrus, including Barrai throwing down a sleep spell. However, that sleep spell knocks out the two friends who are moving Castillia and Castillia just as Bokken reaches the wagon.

The adult, clearly frustrated with how the battle is going, decides to join the fight and drops a fireball on everyone, minus himself and the horses. Most of them manage to make the saving throw, but with the damage that they already have taken, it takes down all of Addrus’s friends, Bokken, and Kip. Thrain casts a magical darkness over the wagon as Barrai heals Kip getting him back into the fight. Addrus comes charging out of the darkness and throws two daggers taking down Barrai. And the adult, in the darkness, disappears, which surprises Thrain as he can see through magical darkness. Thrain rushes into the dark, to avoid being attacked and seeing both Castillia and Bokken down casts Spare the Dying on both of them. Outside of the darkness, Addrus comes to attack Kip to take him out, but Kip casts the second sleep spell of the battle and Addrus falls asleep.

At this point in time we drop out of combat and the teachers, some second years, and Sanphire come around the corner to see what has happened. Thrain drops darkness so that they can see everything, and Assendial heals the party and Castillia getting them back to their feet. She tells all of them to come join her for a conversation. As they head back, Bokken grabs a few things from the wagon, Addrus’s trunk, a cloak with the initials L.M., F., and A.O., he also stops to check on Parrag and grab Dorin’s trunk again. Parrag is just unconscious, so Bokken lugs all of that to Assendial’s office. She heals them all again and that brings Parrag back to consciousness.

They fill in Assendial on what happened with the fight, but then say that Castillia might know more. She tells Assendial that she’d seen Addrus go out of the barracks with some people so she’d decided to investigate because Barrai and Kip had asked her about Addrus. Going into the barracks, she’d found Parrag unconscious and been grabbed two of Addrus’s friends who were still in the room, shortly after that the fight started, so Parrag might know more. He says that he wad spotted Addrus so he’d gone to ask him about the extra key, why Addrus had borrowed his shirt, and why he’d gone missing. Of course, Addrus’s friends had been there and they knocked him out. Assendial asks them some more questions, but nothing much more comes to light. The group tries to get paid for their investigation, but Assendial basically tells them no because she knows they’ve taken money from some of the other rooms.

Behind the DM’s Screen

I came up with this idea for a fight after last session. I had originally planned for them to run into Addrus at the bazaar, where he’d been before, but the group went to the bank and the bar to look for him instead. I figured, since time has passed, he’d have made it back to school, but with the year end, he’d probably be looking to ditch quickly as well, especially once he knows the party has been sniffing around.

I actually had a plan of how I wanted this fight to go, did it go that way, nope. In my plan it was going to be a countdown of a few rounds until something happened, the fireball, and then whomever was left in Addrus’s group would make a break for it on the wagon. However, I put in modified Acolytes into the fight as Addrus’s friends, they can do some things, but not take hits from Bokken when he attacks it turns out. I should have gone with less but tougher ones if I were to do it again. So when Bokken got close to the wagon and the boss who was based off of the [redacted] template. That boss decided it might be better, not really planning on fighting, to set off his attack early and drop a fireball on everyone. I let the players roll for that just in case it waited a round before it happened, but it didn’t.

I wanted this more set piece type fight also in this session as we’ve gotten through the first year. Now the players have their next mission that they decided, deliver Dorin home, and also have a villain who can come back. Overall a successful and fun session.

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Thrain and Barrai spooked by the noise decided to book it towards the direction of the mess hall. There they run into a stone wall and Barrai thinks it’s a dead end but Thrain, with his dwarven eyes study it and see that there appears to be a single stone, large, that looks like it’s loose that he could push out of the way. It takes some effort and Barrai’s help but they push the door out of the way and they see that they are in the cellar where they were supposed to have gone for shelter during the dragon attack.

Bokken thinking that everything is good leaves Sanphire up in the tower after their dagger throwing competition and heads back into the mess hall through the kitchen. In the kitchen he is caught by Narius. But Narius, after having gotten beaten up by their group once decides not to fight him and just finishes drinking his water. Bokken settles down watching the door for the night.

Thrain and Barrai thinking that they are being smart decide to loop back around, sneaking outside to see whom they can see who was following them down the tunnel. They make it to a corner and they see Sanphire, out of the tower where he had been keeping watch, going to pick up the two daggers. One of the daggers is lying by the trapdoor which is propped ever so slightly open by a piton. Barrai, thinking quickly, decides to try and cast sleep on Sanphire. However, the spell doesn’t seem to have an affect on him, instead there is a thump from down inside the tunnel and Sanphire notices the trapdoor and the piton. He throws open the trapdoor and messages Tormin. Tormin sees the trapdoor and looks surprised by it. He wakes up the other teachers and they all come out. Barrai, watching the proceedings notices that neither the teachers Dadellous or Linken seem surprised or as surprised as they should be by the trapdoor. Or at least as surprised as Assendial and Tormin did. Barrai and Thrain sneak back inside.

Inside they go back to sleep and are awakened early in the morning by Assendial and Tormin who wake up all the students. Tormin tells them about the secret tunnel and that something was found underneath the barracks where the dragon had attacked and where Castillia had gotten her leg broken. They then tell the students that they are going to question them one by one and start on that process while Linken and Dadellous continue to study the tunnels.

Bokken is the first to go in to be questioned. He steps in and realizes that the room has had some spell cast on it, a zone of truth, and that he has to tell the truth, not Liar Liar style but he cannot right out lie. Assendial is sitting there and she asks him if he knew about the tunnel or any secret passage prior to Tormin telling them about it. He answers truthfully that he did. She asks him what entrance to it he knew of, he answers truthfully. She pulls out four items, a necklace, a scarab, an amulet, and rock with runes etched into it, she asks him if he knows which was found down in the tunnel underneath the barracks. He answers truthfully that he doesn’t.

Barrai is next, and he also fails his saving throw against the zone of truth. Realizing this he hems and haws a bit about it. Assendial asks him to clarify if he knew about it, and he hems and haws some more. She next asks him where an entrance is, he gives a vague answer but not a lie about how a place as old as this there are probably several entrances. Finally she asks him which of the items was under the barracks. He guesses that a dragon would probably want the items that have the most value and that the necklace, amulet and scarab are all golden. Or maybe it’s the rune covered rock because that’s different.

Parrag goes in next followed by Thrain. Thrain who has a very high charisma doesn’t fail the saving throw and he and Assendial know it. She asks him if he knows about the tunnel, he answers truthfully that he does. She asks him if he knows where they are or if he’s been down in there. He successfully deceives her that he knows less about the tunnels and where they go then he actually does. She pulls out the items and asks him about them, about their origins, which was found under ground, what he knows about their magical properties. Thrain is 100% truthful with her that he really doesn’t know much about them. She believes him.

Everyone else is sent back into a large group except for Narius, Addrus, Barrai and two second year students. They are all brought into one room together with all the teachers and are asked a couple of questions, the first that they had to write down was how many different directions the tunnel splits at it’s single junction point. Narius says outloud 4, but had written down 2. Addrus says 4 and has written down 4, Barrai says 4 and has written down 4, one second year has said 4 and written down 4, the last one has written down “?” and says 4. Next they are asked where the four directions of the tunnel go. The first 2nd year just writes down “I don’t know” and says “I don’t know”, the next one says “Moody’s Bar, the field, the cellar, and the tower” and has written that down. Barrai has written down “Not not the field, not not the cellar, not not somewhere fun, and not not somewhere awesome” and says that. Addrus gives the same answer the second year who knew all the directions. Narius, on the other hand, gives all the right answers but only had written down “the field, the food, and the drink”.

The two second years are let out of the room as is Barrai while Narius and Addrus are kept in the room to answer more questions.

The group decides to go to Moody’s bar, since they assume that the trapdoor and the hidden door into the cellar will be blocked off for good now, and they should try and find another way in. Moody’s Bar is the one where the fighting circle that Barrai and Thrain had made some money before, and they had seen Sanphire and Esmelda fight. Bokken decides to give them a good cover as they search around. Barrai and Thrain spot Zaphir, an older student from another school whom they’d swindled before in a fixed fight. They go up to him and see if he wants to bet with them on the Bokken fight. He recognizes them and knowing that they had taken his money before, he orders two beers, plus he has one in front of him. When the beers arrive, he takes one in each hand and smashes them into the faces of Barrai and Thrain. A bar fight ensues and Thrain unleashes an eldritch blast on him, plus hex damage and takes him down. The bartender kicks them out of the bar so that they don’t get in more trouble since technically Zaphir started it, and they head out just until Zaphir is gone. Then they sneak back in wearing fake moustaches (a Dwarf and a Tiefling) and join the crowds who are getting ready for the first fight. They get their program which has the betting odds and see they can get 5 for one on Bokken, slightly worse than normal first time fighters. So Thrain puts down two gold and Barrai puts down 10 gold, that he’d stolen off of Zaphir. And the announcer came out….

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the week night fights…. Let’s get ready to rumble………”

Behind the DM’s screen:

Most of this session was ad libbed. I had some plans for them down in the tunnels, but because of choices that were made, mainly Bokken heading back when he did and not picking up the daggers things changed. Had he picked up the daggers even, they could have gone through the cellar, come back around, and repeated the process. I’m assuming they would have been the ones to find the odd object in the tunnel under the barracks, instead of the teachers. And that was going to be my main plan, things clearly went differently.

One thing that was a lot of fun was the Zone of Truth just to see the different tacts and different successes for passing. I like how Zone of Truth works where you know as the person who is in it what is happening so you can talk around the truth, but the caster also knows if you pass or fail. It makes for some interesting moments in gaming.

And Zaphir being at the bar was totally something the players asked about. So the fact there was a bar fight is on them, Zaphir survived to fight another day.

We’ll have a few weeks off now from any more Tower of the Gods. I’m in the midst of moving and seeing as this is remote, I’m not sure when I’ll have my computer and full set-up ready to go again.

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The idea for this campaign is clearly the wild west, we’re looking to create something that feels less like high fantasy and more like cattle rustling and duels at high noon. And, borrowing a little bit from the Lord of the Rings, the people mining for gold have dug to deep. And now monsters are pouring out of the mines and troubling the towns and villages out in the wild.

The players can start out with some smaller things, some cattle going missing, accusations and weird occurrences happening down by the mine. I’d almost give it another worldly vibe to it, to borrow a little bit from the board game Shadows of Brimstone.

Now, you have a couple of ways you could go for the bad guys, you have have the mines leading into the underdark and going so deep for some special magical material has caused them to disturb the residents down there and get them to fight back. Or, I think most interestingly, make it the Gith. The reason the Githyanki and Githzerai are more interesting is because you wouldn’t expect them. But they live in a limbo area and almost have a pirate vibe to them, so give them a stagecoach, train robbing vibe and they are out there to get this magical materials that makes magic much more common. Almost an Eberron style where there are trains, people have their wands which is a common weapon that can just sling six charges of something like a six shooter.

So as the players dig deeper they find out that what they thought was happening isn’t actually it. The Githyanki and Githzerai are certainly causing issues as their magical materials are being grabbed from the mine, but what the materials are being used for is now being called into question both by the Githyanki and Githzerai but also by the people who run the mines and give the players a mystery of what is happening there.

This unravels a big conspiracy that leads all the way to some other monster who is the real monstermind behind the mines and who is getting these magical materials in order to invade limbo and take out the Githyanki and Githzerai and make them into mindless drones, in fact, some sort of massive mind flayer would make a lot of sense here as the Gith do not like Mind Flayers.

Finish the campaign with some sort of epic western battle, the mind flayer is coming to town for a showdown at high noon, but the players don’t have a shot with a direct confrontation, so their only hope is to intercept the flayer while they are still on the train. And if you don’t want to do a mind flayer, do something like a vampire or someone who can glamour or mind control their way into the hearts and minds of the people.

That could be where you wrap up the campaign, but now that you’re touching limbo and the outer reaches of the worlds and planes because of the mine, and now that the magical material has such value, you can even have a bigger bad come after it. Maybe while all of this is going down and the players are dealing with the big bad mind flayer or vampire, there’s a cult that suddenly springs up with a charismatic Rakshasa as it’s head who is working on summoning something even more powerful from the outer edges of the multiverse into the world to rule it all and for the Rakshasa to rule under it. So similar feeling to the first part of the campaign, but different in that instead of going out somewhere like the vampire or mind flayer was planning on doing, it’s trying to bring something here, and even if something happens to the Rakshasa, it will be back.

So what do you think about it, is this a campaign that you’d play in or run? What part stands out to you as the most interesting?

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A Behir is a monster that lives in the underdark and is a huge creature that lives in the tunnels, paths, and dark recesses down there. The advantage for the DM of it being a huge creature is what it has some fun abilities. It can swallow your medium sized PC’s no problem or wrap it up and constrict it. So it’s something different than your normal bite and claw attacks that you get. In fact, while it can certainly bite you, and needs to do so to swallow you, it doesn’t have a claw attack at all. Instead, it gets lightning breath which is something that the PC’s will undoubtedly appreciate.

Now, this creature is clearly not one to be trifled with, at a CR of 11, you are looking at a party of four at eighth level to be able to take it down in a hard combat. If you’re adding in any additional monsters, it is going to be even tougher to take down and you’re probably looking at a party of level 10 or so with a couple of additional opponents that aren’t just one hit cannon fodder.

In game, I think there are some good ways to use it and I would definitely recommend using it. Because it’s attacks are so different and it has a lot of HP and a decently high armor class, it’s going to be a challenging battle. The attacks are really going to add variety to your game with what otherwise might just be a standard hack and slash encounter. You can certainly use a behir as a random encounter, but I have some other ideas as well.

One idea that I like is to use it as a form of drow transport. It’s a huge sized creature so why not let it pull something. Going back to something I did in a game of mine, have it be a drow circus that the wagons are being pulled by a bunch of behir. This could really start off as a social encounter where the player characters interact with the drow in the circus and eventually find themselves are participants on it to find out that the main attraction is going to be them taking on a behir with some drow elite warriors or assassins not really partaking in the battle, but forcing the player characters back into the confrontation with the behir if they try and run. All while there is a cheering audience around them. As a side quest, I think it could be really cool, even just as something that the players find themselves in for no great reason other than their curiosity, it would give a nice standalone session of and something to do on the way to a larger quest point. I could see using the circus caravan as a way to move the players more quickly through an area to get to where they need to go, but also to have, then the circus battle happen, so not really plot related, but cuts out some of the down time with something more interesting.

Less of a combat encounter, but more of a how do we get away from this, have your players stumble across a pack of behir. Maybe, the players have been tracking down a group of duergar who have something that the players want, some information, ideally written down, and the poor duergar have stumbled across this pack of five behir. Even at level 20, 5 behir are deadly to a party of four, theoretically. So the question then becomes, for the players, how do the player characters get into the area where the dead duergar’s packs are, search the packs, and get back out without the behir killing them as well. Can they figure out a way to chase the behir away, or maybe they can somehow stealth in, or maybe it’s an attempt to out pace, unlikely, or outwit the behir. It could even be a way for them to lure a behir or two at a time and take them out, but give them the situation and see what they come up with. Though, I’d maybe have them run across a behir before hand so that they know what they are getting into.

Are behir a monster you’ve used in your games or seen used in a game? I know that Matt Mercer in Critical Role used a behir in either episode 27 or 28, sounds like introduced in 27 anyways. So that’s something to checkout for ways to use a behir as well. Would you use a behir in your game?

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What Archetype Of Character Do I Want To Be

This is pretty big, but we’re talking about a pretty big generality here, do you want to be a sneaky character, or maybe a helpful one, maybe you want to be able to rush into battle or sling spells from afar. Think about the broad terms that you can play. Bring this general idea to the table for your character creation as it’ll give you something to build off of and help you make more informed choices. Another way to do this is to think about your favorite people, normally in fiction, but could be from the real world, and think about what makes them them. If you love Yoda, what is essential Yoda, we have the age, the wisdom and the force powers, but when he was younger, slightly, also could be a nimble fighter. So look for those characters or people you really love and think about what would make them an interesting D&D character.

This Is a Chance to Play Pretend But Start Similar To Yourself

Now, I just got done saying, pick your archetype and pick whatever sounds like fun, but infuse it with your personality. Playing a role playing game is great because you get to take on other personalities and dive into a life and a world that isn’t you, but for your first character, unless you’ve done a lot of acting, it’s going to generally be you. Even if you don’t want it to be, unless your a seasoned actor or improv performer, you’re going to drop back into playing yourself or making decisions based off of what you’d actually do. So instead of pulling away from that and being frustrated when it does happen or feeling like you aren’t on the level of Critical Role, instead make your first character like you, but with a few twists on it. Give yourself a few fun things that you can interact with that are different than yourself, but keep general personality pretty close to your own, because most of the time it’ll end up there for your early player characters.

Constitution Is Your Friend

I don’t care that you want to be this wispy elf wizard who is gaunt and stares off into the distance while vowing to never eat again, constitution is your friend. It’s easy to think that it mainly matters for fighters or barbarians or anyone on the front line, and that stat is very important to them, but a -1 on constitution for a wizard who has D6 for their hit die, that means you start off with 5 health. There are a lot of monsters that can kill you at that point. At worst have a 0 in constitution, but most classes and characters, I really think having a +1 one is huge, even if your just taking the average of your hit die, that +1 is really important, and if you’re rolling for your hit points each level, that keeps you from ever doing too poorly.

Backgrounds Can Evolve

With the background you are picking some personality traits, ideals, flaws, and bonds. For your first character I’m telling you to keep a broader picture of who they are going to be, and the background can feel like it’s locking you in. Talk with your DM, and they should know this already, but backgrounds and personality are fairly fluid in the first few sessions. You might have wanted this charismatic Barbarian, but instead they are kind of a dick to everyone. Or maybe you want them to be the face, but instead they use their charisma as a quiet confidence and less of the face. Less the background will be changing, but the personality traits, flaws, bonds, and ideals might change and evolve as you go. Totally expect this to happen, especially if you are going with a bigger departure from your own personality.

Finally, Being Bad at Something Isn’t Bad, It’s Good

When playing an imaginary character there’s a strong desire to be good at everything, because who doesn’t want to be awesome at everything all the time? But that’s not going to be the most fun character. It might be pretty fun for you, but it won’t be fun for the other people at the table if you’re better at the things they’re supposed to be good at. But beyond that, you’re playing a character who is supposed to grow and evolve throughout the game. And, you are also going to be put in more fun and interesting situations if you aren’t good at everything. Maybe you’re the fighter, why should you be good at sneaking around, you’re just ready to bash stuff with a sword, so when you fail to sneak all the time, that’s something you can play into. Your deficiencies on the character sheet are not weaknesses but role playing opportunities for you to create a fun and memorable character.

Now, there’s a whole lot more I could talk about when building your first character, and I’ll probably go more into the details of it in future articles, but these are some big picture items to consider when building your first character that might be overlooked. What general advice have you given new players, if you’ve played a bunch before, for their first character? What piece of advice stands out to you from this article?

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In our case we have our city of “paradise”, Zenefil, and there’s a deity in the world who has created this for the adventurers to find. Now, that sounds great for our adventuring party, but the world otherwise really sucks. There are powerful chromatic dragons that are ruling the lands with fear.

So this is clearly going to basically be the whole thing getting to the paradise of Zenefil, but generally if something sounds too good to be true, it probably will be. And the deity should definitely have put a limit on how many people can actually get in. So while I said adventurers, everyone and their mother is going to consider themselves adventurers and probably be willing to kill to try and get there. Plus, then you’d have the dragons who would be trying to stop the people from leaving because they need subjects to torture or it’s just dull.

Beyond the dangers of the other people going and the dragons, I’d make it sort of a puzzle/mystery sort of thing where players need to figure out clues and decipher things that the deity is giving them in order to eventually make their way to Zenefil. This will do two things, it’ll weed out some of the weaker NPC’s that they might run into for a while so it becomes less chaotic, it also kind of gives you points of timing for other NPC’s. Beyond that, it allows you, the further they get away from the dragon kingdoms towards Zenefil, they should start seeing more monsters and natural things like that.

You can also add in less natural things as well, depending on what you want to do with Zenefil. Do you want it to be an amazing sanctuary and refuge against the dragons, or do you want it to be a equally as bad, if not worse place. Now, you can have the players need to fight at this point and try and defeat the deity or the deities monsters/henchmen.

This is going to be more exploration focused in some ways as your clues can lead them to various landmarks along the way and put them into unique situations. Also it’ll be an exploration into what the player characters are deciding to do with the other NPC’s that are running about as well. I think that there’s going to be a lot of interesting stories to tell with that, will the PC’s help some less fortunate NPC’s, will they leave an NPC that is injured out there who can be brought back as a nemesis? Is there another group that is their arch rivals? Play around with those emotions and groups of people, heck, even family members.

So, would you run a game like this? Would this be something that you’d do for a whole campaign? For me, this is a higher level campaign, or the second arc of a campaign. If you can set-up the dragons as rulers in the first one somehow, then you could create the paradise/Zenefil part as the second arc at a higher level. It would give the players less competition and more reason to not just worry about their own survival.

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