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Drezek’s Tip of the Day #7: Max Hit Point Management for Home Brew rules
Maximum hit points, as determined by the Rules as Written, are calculated using the average of a character’s hit die. This can be tough at low levels when a single blow from an enemy — say, a mimic disguised as a chair (sorry Crane) — can end a character’s campaign. Fortunately, many campaigns, including ours, use a common home brew rule that allows players to take the maximum of their hit die each level, instead of the average. This home brew rule is welcomed but it creates a problem for the D&D Beyond character sheet. The sheet uses the RAW when…
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DM Crane’s Tip of the Day: Streamlining Sessions
On reviewing various guides and tips and tricks articles online for Dungeons and Dragons—targeting DMs and players alike—it seems to me that the most common complaint of either demographic is often how sessions can drag on in certain spots. This can be especially troubling given how infrequent it can be to marry up everyone’s schedules and find the right time of the right week of the right month where everyone can get together and play. I can’t speak for everyone, but for me I sometimes feel a bit of latent pressure as the DM to make sure the session is…
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Protected: Devoted Session 4.1: Lessons from an Unthief
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Drezek’s Tip of the Day: Tip #6 – Custom Skill Checks
For most people, this can be ignored. The character sheet lists every skill in the game, adds your bonuses, and gives you a roll button. DM needs you to roll an Intelligence (Investigation) check? Just click the button and it rolls. The sheet adds your INT bonus and any proficiency or expertise you may have. Simple. The one place where it’s not straightforward is when the skill check uses a tool. Tools are not skills and, therefore, aren’t listed in the Skills menu. For tool checks that aren’t used frequently, it’s simple to just do it manually. If you need…
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Drezek’s Tip of the Day: Tip #5 – Managing Feats
Feats were such a HUGE part of 3.5e but seem to be much less powerful in 5e. Maybe it’s because of the proficiency bonus system that kind of improves everything you do. Either way, managing feats in DnDBeyond is pretty easy but not as apparent as things like skills and abilities. Easy to manage, but somewhat hidden. The big area on the lower left of the character sheet has a bunch of cascading menus. Select Features & Traits, then Feats. All your selected feats will appear there. Selecting Manage Feats will bring up that wonderful sidebar with every available feat…
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Drezek’s Tip of the Day: Tip #4 – Inspiration
This is an easy one. But worth discussing because Inspiration is a completely new concept to DnD as of 5e and one of the few entirely metagaming rules out there. Inspiration is a reward the DM gives to a player for doing something consistent with his personality, background, alignment, etc. The player than can elect to use his inspiration to gain advantage on any dice roll. It can only be used once until the DM awards you inspiration again. So Inspiration is either on or off. And on the character sheet, that’s all it is: an on/off switch. If the…
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Drezek’s Tip of the Day: Tip #3 – Managing HP
I remember playing DnD as a kid and wearing a hole in my character sheets where I was constantly erasing and rewriting my hit points. As you’d expect, DnD beyond has a great system. In the upper right section of the character sheet, your calculated hit points are displayed. DnDB does all the work for you, taking into account any bonuses or penalties. But what happens in combat? If you take damage, simply click in the box (circled below) and type the number of hit points of damage you took. Then click the DAMAGE button below. Your sheet will reduce…
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Protected: Devoted Session 3: Into the Village
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Drezek’s Tip of the Day: Tip #2 – Links to the PHB
There’s a lot of information on the character sheet and it’s doubtful that any player has it all memorized. This is especially true for skills, actions, conditions, items, and feats that don’t get used very often. The DM may tell you you’ve been tackled by a villager in a tavern brawl and you now have the grappled condition. In a normal pen-and-paper game, that would result in finding the Player’s Handbook and flipping through it to find the section on Conditions and then finding grappled. But DnD Beyond has virtually every word on the character sheet linked to the free…
Curse of Strahd 