Generally, when I prepare dungeons for sessions I use several pages that ultimately get misplaced or separated when my players finally find their way to a dungeon – leaving me wither with a description of the dungeon and the map, or with the monsters and treasure. To save myself a lot of grief I put together a Dungeon Crawl worksheet where everything can be easily condensed (saving me the embarrassment of telling my players I need time to find all my notes).
Electrum and platinum in D&D
I’ve already established that I’m against electrum (EP) and platinum (PP) as currency in D&D, but why am I? Isn’t it nice to have a wider selection of currency that you as a DM can hand out to your players, and will help break down larger numbers when you players become unbearably rich after months and months of play?
Well, yes I can see a use for platinum, but electrum makes my brain hurt – and others with me. I don’t understand why they were brought back having been absent in 3e and 4e (where the core rules only had CP, SP, GP, and PP as currency).
The main issue I have with electrum is that we have a base 10 counting system in the world, and all (as far as I know) currencies used around the world uses base 10 (one larger denomination, and a decimal denomination). Therefore, electrum becomes a rather confusing coinage and hard to work with as it’s worth 0.5 GP (5 SP and 50 CP). Instead of quickly converting between different denominations you actually have to think about it, and that takes away from actually playing the game.
An argument for electrum as a currency is that it actually was a currency in ancient Greece and Lydia (now Turkey) around 600 BC , and possibly for a time in ancient Egypt (c. 2490-2475 BC). Furthermore, since electrum is a naturally occurring alloy it is more easily obtainable than gold and silver, and also harder than gold (making it more suitable for use in coins).
However, in a game were magic and dragons exist I don’t need that level of realism. What I do need is a currency system that I won’t have to think about too much. I don’t want four or five different denominations – three is more than enough, thankyouverymuch.
Alternative Character Sheet
It’s been about a year now since we started with 5e and it didn’t take us too long to realise that the character sheet needed a bit of tweaking – some things that seem to have been deemed very important during the development of 5e are not important to my group, and some others that seem to only be on the character sheet as an afterthought are very important.
After a few months of playing the original character sheet became so inadequate my players had to take to adding extra note sheets just to keep track of their equipment and traits… And that was the reason I put together a new alternative version.
The alternative sheet only has gold, silver and copper as currency (since I decided ages ago that I do not use EP and PP in any of my D&D games – I’m a DM, not an economist). I also added a new section of the spell page for rituals, and tweaked the number of spells per level (as a spellcatser obviously will have more low-level spells and fewer high-level ones).
Monsters of the Underdark (part 2)
Following the theme of Underdark creatures to fill the gaps in D&D 5e’s Monster Manual, I also adapted the Sinsiter and Night Hunter (from the 3.5e supplement/monster compendium Monsters of Faerûn).
Usually when I adapt or modify creatures from other editions I do change the CR if I feel the creature is either too strong or too weak to be the CR they were previously. As a consequence, in Monsters of Faerûn the Sinster was CR 3 and the Night Hunter CR 1, but my 5e adaptations are both CR 2.
SINISTER
Large beast, lawful neutral
Armour Class: 13 (armour type)
Hit points: 52 (7d10+14)
Speed: 10ft., fly 50ft.
STR 18 (+2) / DEX 15 (+2) / CON 15 (+2) / INT 12 (+1) / WIS 14 (+2) / CHA 10 (+0)
Skills: Stealth +4, Perception +3
Senses: darkvision 120ft., passive Perception 13
Languages: telepathy (Sinister)
Challenge: 2 (450 XP)
Monsters of the Underdark (part 1)
About a year ago some of my D&D players started asking about an Underdark campaign, where they could play creatures of the Underdark, as a contrast to the generic fantasy game we had been playing for a few months at that point. Each week their inquiries grew more incisive until I agreed to start working on something.
The main problem is that we are playing 5e now, most of my players are only familiar with this edition, and as of yet there are very few Underdark resources for 5e (three playable races and a limited number of creatures, as of last count).
Over the past month I’ve been working on adapting or converting some of the Underdark creatures to 5e, and thought I should share them – starting with two spiders adapted from the 4e Monster Manual, and a small creature from the 3e supplement Races of Faerûn
BLADE SPIDER
Large beast, unaligned
Armour Class: 14 (natural armour)
Hit points: 32 (5d10+5)
Speed: 40ft., climb 40ft.
STR 14 (+2) / DEX 16 (+3) / CON 12 (+1) / INT 6 (-2) / WIS 11 (+0) / CHA 6 (-2)
Skills: Perception +3, Stealth +6
Senses: blindsight 10 ft., darkvision 60ft., passive Perception 13
Languages: –
Challenge: 2 (450 XP)
dice & dungeons 