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Starting Equipment for 5E Sidekicks

This table gives the starting gold and magic equipment for a sidekick at any level.   Level Starting Gold Expert Equipment Spellcaster Equipment Warrior Equipment ALL - Leather Armor, One Simple Weapon,  Two Tools Simple Weapon, An Arcane Focus OR Holy Symbol OR Instrument Chainmail, One Simple Weapon, One Martial Weapon, One Martial Weapon or One Shield 1 25 - - - 2 50 - - - 3 70 - - - 4 90 Leather Studded Armor instead of Leather Armor Any uncommon potion Any Armor instead of Chainmail 5 110 Leather Studded Armor instead of Leather Armor Any uncommon potion Any Armor instead of Chainmail 6 130 Leather Studded Armor instead of Leather Armor Any uncommon potion Any Armor instead of Chainmail 7 165 Leather Studded Armor instead of Leather Armor Any uncommon potion Any Armor instead of Chainmail 8 195 Leather Studded Armor instead of Leather Armor Any uncommon potion Any Armor instead of Chainmail 9 220 Leather Studded Armor instead of Leather Armor Any uncommon potion Any Armor instead
Recent posts

An Analysis of Two House Rules in 5E: Disadvantage Shooting into Melee and Flanking

 A game I am currently playing in is using a couple of houserules that Pathfinder players will be familiar with adapted to 5E. Given the nature of these rules, I wanted to investigate how much they affect play, in particular, how much they favor melee over ranged attacks vs base 5E. The rules can be summarized as follows: An attacker firing at a target engaged in melee combat (i.e. threatened or threatening a target with a melee weapon) has disadvantage An attacker flanking a target with an ally (i.e. an ally is on the opposite side of the target) gains advantage on their attacks. These rules should not be confused with existing 5E rules: If you're using a ranged attack (Ranged Weapon like a bow, throwing a Melee Weapon with the Thrown ability, using a spell that makes a Ranged Spell Attack), if there is an enemy next to you, you have disadvantage on that attack. Certain feats or class features might negate that penalty, but by default, you the attacker are distracted and suffer di

An Analysis of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything: Optional Rules,

 Tasha's Cauldron of Everything starts off with a set of optional rules for customizing characters. These rules have drawn a lot of discussion on the internet, so I wanted to do a dedicated post just to address them For reference, we're talking about pages 7 and 8 under "Character Options" in TCoE. As a quick summary, these rules give optional rules for: Adjust racial ability scores, languages, proficiencies, and personalities Making your own lineage (race) Changing skills and subclasses after the game has started Okay, let's address the racial customizations and adjustments first, since this comes first in the text, and is, by far, the most talked about optional rule on the internet. This change adds some interesting dilemmas. In particular, once must assess whether all of the races are still balanced if you can move ability scores wherever you want them. Let's look at some specific extreme examples: Human: +1 to everything Variant Human: Two +1s and a feat M

An Analysis of Tasha's Caldron of Everything: Spells

 I am going to be evaluating "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" for incorporation into my own games. I figured I would go ahead and record this analysis on my blog here so other folks can follow along and glean some useful information from the time I spent. I tried to find an in-depth analysis elsewhere, but at this time none so detailed as this seems to be available. You will not find any of the text in its entirety in this blog. I will be referencing the first printing of the book, so please refer to that as you read along. There are no released errata for the book at the time of writing, although there are errata from other books that affect some of this content. There are 21 spells in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. This includes Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Lightning Lure, and Sword Burst cantrips that were originally published in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. There are 9 spells that allow you to summon creatures of various types. Three spells are notabl

The Importance of the Little Details

 Tonight I started a segment in a small village with a straightforward plot. A seer, that the party needs to get a prophesy from, is having terrible nightmares. Since the nightmares block his prophetic dreams, they have to figure out how to get rid of them. Seeing how the party is all monster hunters, they suspect a monster. I improvised a lot. The rich local who ran the caravan stop, trading post, and stables, with a walled compound is not to be trusted -- the local healer told them so. It was clear she hated him.  When talking to the old man, he spoke to them through a small window in his front gate and quickly sent them away. They sent in their little invisible mascot, a mischievous sprite named Freelay with a penchant for apples, into the compound to check things out. When he didn't return, they sent his mount, a Tibetan mastiff named pip to track him and found he was still inside. They talked to the man again and gained entry after some good social skill usage. He was obviousl

Designing a Dungeon

Dungeons set so much of the tone for D&D and similar games. Everyone has their story of that great dungeon crawl where something amazing, crazy, or stupid resulted in one of those epic gaming memories.  We all love a good dungeon crawl. But what makes a dungeon crawl good and how does the GM design that perfect dungeon? Dungeon design is often about balance between realism and attain a dramatic story effect. If you are rolling up a random dungeon, you are not designing. Put away the dice, cards, and random map generators, and let's do some thinking. Only you know what you are looking for in your game for your plot. It depends on what your players want. It depends on where the story is headed. Before you get started on dungeon design, have your goals in mind. In fact, if you can, design a few rough encounters you might like to see. Leave the details for later. A dungeon was originally built for a reason. Answer the questions: Who built this dungeon? What was it part

Fixing Passive Skills

Jeremy Crawford has recently rules that passive skills are 10 + mods and that a skill that is rolled can't be lower than that. Let's ignore that and see what makes sense. Consider that passive skills are a tool for the GM to save time and avoid rolls giving away things going on. In addition, keep in mind that class features like the rogue's reliable talent, already give a minimum value of a roll of 10 on skill checks, and we don't want to overshadow that. First, passive skills are not the same as the active versions. In 3.5, this was quite clear in the way we split up skills. Spot, listen, and search were all different skills. Now, all three of those are combined in Perception. Passive skills cover the more spot and listen aspects for scenarios when the PCs aren't specifically focusing on looking and listening. Active skills cover the cases where the PCs take actions to do those things and do things like search. The DCs to see something between active and passive