Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc., and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more, so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

*New 2026: For 2026, I'm updating all my old work to include a Pre-Session Checklist that will include a list of all miniatures you may need, maps, handouts, possible loot, a link to a playlist, and more to make it even easier to start your session!

The Mountain's Toe Gold Mine has been suffering productivity problems as of late. You've been tasked with escorting a new overseer there. It's a rather simple job that pays well and could certainly be left at that...if your players are none too heroic, but something tells me they crave a bit more, a cave to explore, a mystery to be solved. Should your players be brave enough, they will discover a cave overrun by the Whiskered Gang, a group of wererats who declared this their new home. It will be up to your players to save the miners within. Perhaps they can negotiate and find themselves on an interesting side quest, or maybe they'll choose to eradicate those varmints...only time will tell...

Without further ado:

• Google Docs Notes for Part 3c Mountain's Toe Gold: DM Notes
• Link to: DM Notes for the Visually Impaired
• Link to: Mountain's Toe Gold Playlist
• Link to: The AAA Collection

Included in The AAA Collection is:

• Downloadable copy of DM Notes, including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Custom Maps of Mountain's Toe Gold
• Special PDF for all encounters. This includes the enemy stat blocks organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and spots to mark HP
• DM Notes for the Visually Impaired
• (New) Pre-Session DM Checklist

Index:
Dragons of Icespire Peak:

• Part 1 - Phandalin
• Part 2a - Umbrage Hill
• Part 2b - Dwarven Excavation
• Part 2c - Gnomengarde
• Part 3a - Loggers Camp
• Part 3b - Butterskull Ranch
• Part 3c - Mountain's Toe Gold
• Part 4a - Axeholm (Coming Soon)
• Part 4b - Dragon Barrow (Coming Soon)
• Part 4c - Woodland Manse (Coming Soon)
• Part 5 - Icespire Hold (Coming Soon)
• Side Quest 1 - Shrine of Savras (Coming Soon)
• Side Quest 2 - Circle of Thunder (Coming Soon)
• Side Quest 3 - Tower of Storm (Coming Soon)

Over 8 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc., please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early, feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

Hey, i wanted to ask what are the strongest builds for tier 1 and tier 2

We will be starting as lvl 4 so something that is also strongest at lvl 4, just was wondering if something will catch my eye. Thanks

We are using mostly only PHB and some 2014 stuff, but dm is open if we ll have enough reasoning so throw whatever

So I'm playing in a one shot and decided to play a circle of spores druid (we're playing with 2014 rules) and i need a full spell list for a lvl 11 druid lol. (Bonus points if some spells can be themed to be mushrooms/spores lol)

So this is a one shot that's designed to be punishing but fair/ beatable, depending on player choices.

I want to include a woods witch (maybe a hag) as a possible interaction/ moral choice situation.

The final encounter has x number of rounds before the ritual is complete. The idea to this encounter is it will cost you time (thereby reducing number of rounds before the ritual is done), but to balance this, it can provide benefits to the party.

The woods witch is unconscious out at her table, alchemy supplies in front of her. Her notes indicate she's working on a remedy to her condition.

There is obvious low or mid tier loot in the open, and her notes indicate the potion provided basically a full rest. There's also a magically-locked cabinet that they can't break into, but they can see it contains good loot.

The question for the party is do they take the easy pickings + the remedy and leave her to her fate, or heal her and hope for better loot? Now, my questions for you are:

• What is this high tier loot? Something like 3 luck dice? Maybe aid they can call in one time? A Potion of Strength + Potion of Maximum Power?

• Should the remedy cost them something? A hit to their max HP? A spell slot (permanently??)?

• Say there's 6 rounds in the final encounter before the ritual is done, as a base number. Now, the cost to the number of rounds in the final encounter due to going to the woods witch:

◦ Going here - does it just cost a flat 2 (?) rounds?

◦ Does it cost x rounds depending on what they do? Like:

▪ Steal her stuff = takes not too long = 1 round lost

▪ Make remedy = time consuming = 2 rounds lost -->Is this too complicated?

What class do you multiclass into and what level?

I have written quite a lot on diferences between OSR games and modern 5e, the difference in playstyle, relation with mortality, various mechanics such as gold for xp, reaction roles, dungeon turns and so on.

For quite a long time after I started to play OSR games, I was enamored, for I always wanted my 5e games to be more gritty, harder, yet still fair and with OSR I felt like I got that.

Now, with this piece, I wanted to look at something related to one of the criticisms I often saw levied against old school D&D and OSR games, mainly that they are unbalanced, too many save or sucks and difficulty just for the sake of it. Compared to nowdays, where even if CR could use some improvements (although it is quite a bit better with the 2024 iteration) it can still produce balanced encounters if followed properly.

And there is truth in both of this statements, but it ommits something - not maliciously necessarily - that balanced was not required for pre Dragonlance D&D and OSR games. The game did not make a promise of balance, but rather one of fairness, the DM, or as it was first known, the referee would be impartial. It is important to point out that you were not heroes, but anti-heroes at best, who might've offered some help only if you got something out of it. This stemming of course from how the game was emulating Conan style pulp fantasy, rather than the heroic epic fantasy later adopted following the success of Dragonlance.

So to cut it short, fairness and balance are not the same. One is about impartiality, while the others is about making sure that the danger the players are facing is winnable, without the requirement of underhanded tactics to tip the scales. One is pulp, the other epic. Both can be good, but we have to be aware of the distinction and not judge them against the same standards. Hope you will enjoy the piece!

Full article here: https://therpggazette.wordpress.com/2026/07/21/when-balance-replaced-fairness-two-different-promises-dd-has-made/

Saving throw changes

Everyone is proficient in every saving throw, so a Level 11 fighter is getting a +3 bonus to their wisdom saves on top of their Wisdom Modifier.

Previous Saving throw Proficiency is changed to Expertise meaning you double your Proficiency on saves, This means as you level up you keep up against Level equal CR saving throws instead of getting worse if the Saving throw is not of your Primary ability score.

Example: in 2014 (don't if the table was changed in 2024) a CR 1 creature is expected to have a DC13 save and a CR 11 creature has a DC17 save. A Warlock with 10 Wisdom has a 45% chance to make the Save against a Level equal CR creature at level 1 but only a 35% chance to make the Save against a Level Equal CR Creature at level 11. with this system a Warlock would have a 55% chance to make the save at both level 1 and 11 against a level equal CR monster. 

If the Saving throw is of your Primary or Secondary stat then it gets Better For each ability score increase you put into it rather than Needing to get it too 18 and 20 at level 4 and 8 to keep up with the Math of the game. Basically switching it from What people think PF2E is like to how PF2E actually works. 

This also massively buffs any Advantages you have on Saving throws from your Species. 

Class DCs (Such as a Monks Stunning strike or Rogue's cunning strikes) and Spell Save DCs are now 10+Prf+Stat meaning most casters will start with a spell Save DC of 15.

Every Class Has a Class DC at level 1 now with it being tied to the Classes Spell Save DC and is used for class and Subclass abilities. It is equal to 10+Prf+ Primary stat (Which is substituted in some cases for certain subclass like Psi Warrior for another stat), at class level 5, 11 and 17 you receive a +1 bonus to your Class DC meaning it tops out a Base 20+Primary stat. If you multiclass you apply the highest Class DC bonus to both Class DCs you have. 

Feats and Species based DCs use your Class DC scaling. Universal Stuff like Grapple and Shove now use a Formula of 10+Prf+Ability score modifier or 10+ athletics Skill Proficiency+Ability score modifier (E.G if you have expertise in athletics your DC is going to be 10+Prfx2+ability score modifier)

This mechanic is to basically make sure the Saving throws you force on other creatures stay consistent with the Scaling Saving throws of the enemy so you don’t enter 3.x true namer style scaling  (getting worse as you level up).

And also because saving throws being incredibly inaccurate is just going to make the game more Toxic and swingy given how many Instantly shut down this creature effects exists, basically the same reason One Hit KO moves are banned in Smogon competitive pokemon.

I've run one campaign before and it wasn't particularly enjoyable for the players. I put way too much combat and very little story into it so it just kinda ended up being boring, so, I want to take an already existing module that would be good for me as a second time DM, but also good for the players because they will be playing for the first time. What would you recommend?

I've been playing D&D with the same group for years, always around a real table. Recently I moved to another city for a while, so we're looking at VTTs like Roll20 and Foundry to keep the campaign going.

I've watched a bunch of videos, and maybe I'm missing something, but... why are they all so complicated?

When we play in person, we basically use character sheets, pencils, dice, and our imagination. That's it. Then I open a VTT and I'm greeted with dozens of buttons, menus, automation settings, effects, macros... it feels more like learning a new piece of software than sitting down to play D&D.

Are all these features actually things people use? Or is it just feature creep over the years?

One thing I also don't really enjoy is the amount of automation. I don't want every attack and spell to be a button that automatically rolls everything for me. I actually like looking at my character sheet, adding the modifiers myself, and rolling the dice. For me that's part of the game, not something that needs to be optimized away.

I also have mixed feelings about things like spell VFX, animated maps, and dynamic lighting. They look impressive, don't get me wrong, but I feel like they also take away a bit of what makes tabletop RPGs special. I enjoy imagining what the fireball looks like, or picturing the hidden room in my head, instead of having everything shown to me.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

Are there any VTTs that are closer to the experience of sitting around a real table? Something more streamlined, with a clean UI, minimal automation, and just the essentials?

Or is there simply no demand for that, and most people actually prefer feature-rich VTTs? I'm a software developer, so part of me is wondering whether it's worth building something like this, or if it's just a niche idea that only appeals to me.

I'm considering a more selfless reason to seek out immortality for an aasimar undying warlock I have planned for a back up: Their death would cause bad things to happen.

They'd be the last of a bloodline, one's existence being a safe guard of sorts, keeping something at bay. So they made a pact, seeking out immortality to ensure that protection remains way beyond their normal lifespan.

The thing can't be too crazy bad either, maybe something more local and not like a world ending threat. Like, more something that provides a new quest for the surviving party members if my character dies and not something that releases the big bad. It should add to the campaign, not take it over so to speak.

Maybe something that can show some effects if my character would ever be dead briefly before getting resurrected, which would put the safe guards back in place.

Like maybe their ancestor who could have been a full blooded angel could have sealed some demon away, or kept a powerful curse at bay but couldn't destroy it, and it cost him his immortality and a lot of power to do it. So he'd have had children to ensure the protection holds after his death. But over the course of a few centuries, there's now only one descendant left.

So what could the bad thing kept at bay be?

The 2024 SRD description says

* - (the powder of a crushed black pearl worth 500+ GP)

It does not say "consume". Is this a typo? Usually if a spell requires powder, it consumes it.

Hello all, thank you for taking the time to read this! I am a beginner at the start of my second campaign (first one was the dragons of stormwreck isle, but I used the premade paladin) and would appreciate some input on how to go about building my character. I have decided to go with an ancients paladin, race will be either half-elf, wood elf or variant human and there are three build directions I am interested in. Firstly an axe and board tanky paladin. For fighting style I will go with dueling but uncertain of how to proceed. Second is a polearm build with polearm master and later on sentinel, felt this would be a good crowd control machine with all the opp attacks and the ensnaring. Lastly there's a build inspired from my current (and first) bg3 playthrough which is a greatsword wielding wood elf. Between these 3 styles, which one would you go with? I still don't know what our party will consist of, thus would like my character to not be dependant on buffs by others. Looking forward to your thoughts, thanks for reading!

I invented a trick-taking game with 5 suits of 10 cards each and 5 special cards. Each suit beats two suits and loses to two suits. The suits are Crown, Sword, Shadow, Spell and Coin.

Shadow beats Crown and Spell and loses to Coin and Sword. Coin beats Shadow and Crown and loses to Sword and Spell. Spell beats Coin and Shadow and loses to Crown and Sword. Sword beats Spell and Coin and loses to Crown and Shadow. Crown beats Spell and Sword and loses to Coin and Shadow.

Alternatively you can use five elements, Wind, Fire, Lightning, Earth and Water (kinda like how a popular ninja manga/anime does it)

The five special cards are as follows: Shield removes all pentagram (suit) effects and makes cards win by number only, but cannot win a trick itself. The Fool beats the led suit card with an 11. Dragon wins the trick outright. Storm reverses the suits that beat and lose to each other for the trick, potentially turning losers into winners. It cannot win a trick itself. Void kills the trick, any card can be played after it is played regardless of what suit was led. Void cannot win a trick.

Play goes as follows: 5 cards are dealt to each player. The player left of the dealer leads any legal card (anything but the fool)

Players follow suit with the highest played card in the suit taking the trick unless trumped by a suit that beats it.

Players that cannot follow suit can play any card in their hand, whether it wins or loses against the suits played.

In the event of a three or four way tie, the tied players all draw and flip one card in a showdown round. It's resolved with rock-scissors-paper-lizard-spock rules at that point.

At the end of the 5 tricks for each hand, the player with the most tricks won takes the round.

Winning 3 tricks at any point ends the round.

In the event of a tie in a round because one of the special cards made it so only 4 tricks were won, a showdown occurs between the tied players, winner takes the round.

You can play as many rounds as you like in a match.

I got really bored and wrote this up in unity so players could connect and play with me during games if they REALLY wanted to gamble. The rules are also in a PDF. If you're interested, DM me. I just wanted to share.

Essentially what the title says. I'm running a campaign, and today we had session 1. One of my players revealed that once they level up they could create multiple bag of holdings at once. Naturally, I'm a little scared. I don't want to say "no doing that", because my first campaign felt pretty railroady, but I also don't want it to ruin the campaign. This player is know to be a bit of a meta-gamer, so I'm a little worried. Any advice would be great!

I'm currently in a state of feeling like I bit off more than I can chew as a fairly new DM. I have some experience but currently my first homebrew campaign is going a little rough. As much as it breaks my heart I'm wanting to wind it down and step back into a module for my own comfort and the comfort of my players. A lot of them feel lost and I am starting to accept my mistakes as a learning experience.

Despite all that I want to run a prewritten module, but I have one big problem which is that the vast majority of prewritten content starts at level 1 and I just don't want to bother with level 1 D&D in the slightest. The early levels bore me to tears with level 1 in particular consisting of the players having nothing more than sharpened sticks and hot rocks to fire at enemies while a single rat, kobold, or goblin can roll a lucky crit and instantly vaporize several minutes if not hours of character creation. Most of my friends also have plenty of experience with D&D (this isn't a new set of players getting into the game but rather a long-time player trying to get into GMing) and I know that they equally find the extremely low levels to be dull.

Yes I am aware that a good number of these adventures will take the party to level 3 (or at least level 2) in their first adventure that the GM is more than able to skip that part and just start at level 3. But even then a new problem presents itself of a lot of adventures still ending at that extremely low level. Many community favorites like Dragonheist end around level 5 or so and personally I'd like my players to at least experience Extra Attack and Third Level spells for more than the final boss?

I do currently have some thoughts on adventures to run but am making this thread to see if anyone has any suggestions, as well as any recommendations within the group of adventures I have listed. I have this posted tagged as 5e 2024 because while I'm open to the 2024 ruleset (about 90% of it anyways) I obviously understand that a good portion of adventure modules were written for 2014. I don't mind taking old adventures too much however as modifying combat is something I have found myself comfortable with, mixing in monsters from other official sources or homebrew sources to make combat more exciting. I don't mind if for every "the party fights 5 bandits" encounter I have to sprinkle in 2 homebrew bandits to balance out the power increase with 2024. Anyways here were the adventures I was considering which might give a general indication of the type of campaign I want to run:

• Out of the Abyss (I have heard this can be very challenging to run, especially when the party travels back into the Underdark after escaping the first time.) (Comments have told me that the campaign has poor structure.)

• Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden (I'm ideally looking for something with more roleplay opportunity and I don't know if Frostmaiden has that on offer.)

• Keys from the Golden Vault (I have ran a few adventures from this book and enjoyed them greatly, but I am not a fan of bouncing the players between interconnected plot points without an overarching cohesive narrative. While the structure of Golden Vault allows for a more piece-meal narrative (PCs being contacted regarding "jobs") I'm still not a major fan of the piece-meal structure.)

• Dungeons of Drakkenheim (I have heard that this campaign is VERY deadly / hardcore but also offers a lot of roleplay opportunity.)

• Ryoko's Guide: Wrath of the Kaiju (I own these books but they are structured as a collection of Heliana's-style "Hunts" rather than a full campaign. I don't want to bounce my players between campaign hooks nor do I want to spend a long time trying to construct "downtime" narratives between adventures. Wrath of the Kaiju is far more flexible with its CRs which is a big positive for me, but I'd want to stretch out the campaign to be more than a 5-level romp which would require more work on my end.)

• Candlekeep Mysteries (Honorable mention of sorts: less interested in Candlekeep than Golden Vault, although I have run adventures from it and enjoyed them. Same issue with Candlekeep as I have with GV or Ryoko's.)

And also a brief section of adventures I am not looking to run:

• Curse of Strahd - I have played through this campaign about one and a half times as a player and many of my friends have played through it multiple times. I obviously have nothing against CoS nor do I think it's a bad campaign, but along with the fact that my group has already experienced it I also think CoS' darker themes clash with my DMing style (I have always said that the tone I like is "James Gunn" / "Guardians of the Galaxy" where while characters are able to find humor in their situations, they also take the setting seriously. I feel like that mood clashes with Strahd's Grimdark aesthetic.)

• Tomb of Annihilation - I have run a (third-party) jungle adventure rather recently, and in all honesty if I was going to run another jungle adventure, I'd just run that module again to let myself have another crack at it with experience.

• Princes of the Apocalypse - A friend of mine tried to DM this and he got past the intro before ragequitting out of boredom. I was literally there lmao. From my experience PoA seems to put the onus on the DM to do all the RP and most of the worldbuilding with little direction written in the book, and given that RP is what I struggle with personally (I don't really need direction to make encounters) this really doesn't seem up my alley.

Hello! I had an idea for an interesting campaign! I was looking for help to flesh it out, or to throw it out there for someone to possible use.

The main concept is the players are the “evil” in the world, but without them knowing. Sort of a they fight the fake “bbeg”, and before the bbeg is defeated it starts begging to know why they are doing this to its world. This is when the story would flip perspectives to all of the “good deeds” they have done such as destroyed villages or economics and so on. I think I got the inspiration from two things, one being when Tony Stark is confronted for the avengers killing the mother’s son in foreign lands. The one I take more inspiration from would be “I am Legend”, and how the original ending was supposed to be showed that will smith was really the villain.

I think the easiest way would be to have the players “transported” into the world, but i’m not too sure.

I’m open to all suggestions no matter how far fetched and honestly would just love to see this idea fleshed out!

I was thinking it would be somewhat possible if you have them make connections to each place they visit, memorable npcs and so on. But say the “bbeg” was a powerful king abusing his nation, after he was defeated and some of the corrupted knights as well. They would find out other nations are pillaging along with taking slaves and so on. It’s definitely a there is no right answer morality type of situation cause the king is evil but the kingdom isn’t. But killing the king, weakening the kingdom, or even damaging buildings through fights show what would happen in a more realistic human way.

edit: wanted to include my comment in the post

https://atlas.mindmup.com/level-1-6-cleric-spell-prep-1ovy2l/

Something that has bugged me for awhile is barbarian seems to get shafted when it comes to subclasses. What I mean is in terms of flavor they do get a ton of angles but in terms of play it really does just boil down to types of DMG and mechanisms of how to do said DMG.

Something I really want to see is a subclass that gives them some sort of buff to social encounters and/or something that gives them more defensive abilities. A barbarian based around heavy armor and tactical uses of rage. Using it as a drive in battle instead of just losing themselves to it.

Barbarians feel like they're always locked into the same stat spread str>con>dex>Wis and then dump the last two. It'd be great if we could use armor in a subclass. Armored speed or unburdened iron something like that. Just anything to change up the monotony of what a barbarian is defined as.

I've been running a pre-made D&D adventure with some friends for a while now, the problem is that one of the players ended up having to leave town to study, and the excuse I used to explain Her absence was due to her patron (an archfey) sending her to the feywild to carry out some mission there. The thing is, she came back for a while and we're going to take advantage of that to play just one session with her. I was thinking of saying that she was in the city equivalent to the current city where the players are, trying to complete a mission, and she encountered difficulties, so she called them for help. But I I have no idea what kind of enemy I can put for 5 level3 players defeat in a section

I have been planning on releasing paid 2014 5e Homebrew for a while (under a different name, this is not promotion) and decided recently to attempt make the entire thing compatible with the 2024 version, including substitutions for all the rule changes while using the superior 5.5 terminology but allowing people to use both rulesets.

This is most prevalent with providing options for subclasses at 3rd level or the (very beloved to the 2014 community) subclasses at 1st and 2nd level. And I never stopped to wonder if adding all this quality of life to bring both versions together was a good idea or not. Branding my creation as “compatible with both versions” might be a good selling point but I was curious if I’ve got it all wrong.

Am I going about this the wrong way? Or is it genuinely a good idea to bridge the gap and make something for everyone?

Quick information: my homebrew currently consists of a couple hundred pages, 9 classes each with 10 subclasses, 10 species, over a hundred spells, couple dozen feats, variant rules, and almost a hundred subclasses for all the base game classes.

Sure it’ll take me a while to optimise it for both versions but I think it will overall help with the longevity of the project. Any suggestions or feedback is appreciated.