Michael E. Shea's Blog, page 30

Fantastic Lairs Kickstarter is Live!

Boss battles are hard. That's the first four words in Fantastic Lairs: Boss battles and Villainous Encounters for 5e. While we can build solid tools to improvise a lot of our D&D games as the stories of those games evolve at the table, building good boss battles takes time and effort. Fantastic Lairs is designed to help with that heavy lift.

Heard enough? Back Fantastic Lairs on Kickstarter right now!

Scott Fitzgerald Gray, James Introcaso, and I partnered up to make this book. Scott Gray and I have worked together now for years. Scott has been editing official D&D works since the 3rd edition of D&D with hundreds of credits including editing the three core books for D&D 5e and writing credits on Acquisitions Incorporated. Scott edited all of my recent books including Fantastic Locations, Fantastic Adventures, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

James Introcaso has been a freelance writer for many RPG companies and has writing credits on nearly all of the recent hardcover books from Wizards of the Coast including Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Descent into Avernus, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. Needless to say I couldn't be happier with the company on this project and already we've greatly enjoyed working together on this book and the book will be that much better for the partnership.

Fantastic Lairs will have between ten and twenty lairs, each with a well-tuned boss monster, designed so you can drop them right into your own campaign. If we meet all of our stretch goals you'll have lairs for all tiers of play from the 1st level shadow-touched cockatrice to the 20th level demon-touched ancient gold dragon. Every lair will have beautiful artwork and a full-color map ready to drop into your VTT of choice.

If you like the work I do here on Sly Flourish and have enjoyed my previous books, you won't want to miss backing Fantastic Lairs and helping to make it the best book we can make.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

1d100 Eberron Factions

Below is a list of 1d100 Eberron factions. Use these factions in combination with other random lists of monuments, relics, items, locations, or any other useful random lists to generate Eberron-specific details you might never have otherwise considered. You can copy elements of the list below to build your own more specific random lists or download a PDF of these 1d100 Eberron factions and print it out for your own DM Kit.

d100FactionDescription (Symbol)
1AerenalAncient kingdom of the elves. (Golden skull with blue glowing eyes)
2ArawaiSovereign of Life and Love. (Sheaf of bound wheat)
3ArgonnessenContinent of the civilization of dragons.
4AundairNation of arcane might. (Feathers surrounding a griffin on blue)
5AureonSorverign of law and knowledge. (Open book)
6Avassh, the Twister of RootsDaelkyr of unnatural and deadly vegitation.
7BalinorSoverign of beasts and the hunt. (Green antlers)
8Belashyrra, Lord of EyesDaelkyr of all-seeing.
9Blood of VolFaith of immortality. (Fanged skull surrounding a drop of blood)
10BoldreiSoverign of community and home. (Fire in a stone hearth)
11Boromar ClanPowerful criminal organization of halflings.
12BrelandNation of pragmatism and independence. (Two gold dragons flanking a bear's roaring head)
13Clifftop Adventurer's Guild150 year old adventurer's guild.
14Cul'SirArcane titan of Xen'drik.
15Cult of the Dragon BelowFaith of madness. (Grotseque mass of tentacles)
16CyreFallen nation of wealth and royalty. (Crown over a bell on a green shield)
17DaaskMonsterous criminal guild loyal to Droaam.
18DaelkyrThe unfathomable evil of Khyber.
19DarguunLand of goblins.
20Demon WastesFormer seat of the archfiends and home of the Carrion Tribes.
21DhakaanFallen empire of the goblinoids. (Wheel of blades)
22Dol ArrahSoverign of sunlight. (Rising sun over a blue field)
23Dol DornSoverign of strength of arms. (Longsword crossed over a shield)
24Draconic ProphecyEver-evolving prophecy of the dragons.
25DragonbornChildren of Argonessen.
26Dreaming DarkAgency of the Dal Quor Quori to control the nations of the world.
27DroaamNation of monsters led by the Daughters of Sora Kell.
28Dyrrn, the Stealer of ThoughtsDaelkyr of corruption and the slithering lord.
29Eberron (dragon)Progenitor dragon of the world.
30Eldeen ReachesNation of farmland and vast untaimed forests.
31Finder's GuildLoose collection of independent inquisitive agencies tied to house Tharashk.
32GalifarFallen kingdom of Khorvaire. (Gold crown bearing five jewels on green field)
33Ghaal���dar tribesHobgoblin tribes rising from the remnants of the Dhakaani Empire.
34Heirs of DhakaanGoblinoid lineage back to Dhakaan.
35House CannithDragonmarked house of making and manufacturing. (Bull's head beneath a hammer and anvil)
36House DeneithDragonmarked house of sentinels, bodyguards, mercenaries. (The three heads of a chimera: lion, ram, and green dragon)
37House GhallandaDragonmarked house of hospitality. (Wolf's head with human eyes)
38House JorascoDragonmarked house of healing. (Noble griffin within a laruel wreath)
39House KundarakDragonmarked house of warding. (Yellow manticore wreathed in flame)
40House LyrandarDragonmarked house of storm. (Three writing tentacles wracked by lightning)
41House MedaniDragonmarked house of finding. (Basilisk atop a pile of treasure, surrounded by tentacled eyestalks)
42House OrienDragonmarked house of passage and transportation. (Silver unicorn with a golden horn)
43House PhiarlanDragonmarked house of entertainment and espionage. (Five headed hyrda beneath a oak leaf)
44House SivisDragonmarked house of scribing and communication. (Cockatrice beneath a candle)
45House TarkananHouse of aberrent dragonmarks. (Beholder over a red shield)
46House TharashkDragonmarked house of finding, hunting, investigation. (Golden dragon surrounded by thorns)
47House ThuranniDragonmarked house of entertainment and assassination. (Displacer beast with steel claws)
48House VadalisDragonmarked house of animal handling. (Hippogryph beneath an elm tree)
49KalashtarJoint people of humanity and spirits of dreams.
50KarrnathNation of hardship and military tradition. (A red wolf on black)
51KhoravarCulture of Khorvaire's half-elves.
52Khyber (dragon below)Progenitor dragon, slayer of Siberys. (Black dragon skull formed of tentacles)
53Khyber (place)Underworld demiplanes.
54King's Dark LanternsSpies and assassins of Breland.
55Kol KorranSoverign of trade and travel. (Nine-sided gold coin)
56Kyrzin, the Prince of SlimeDaelkyr of gibbering beasts and sentient slimes.
57Lord of BladesWarlord establishing independence for Warforged and slaughter for the rest. (Bladed gauntlet)
58Lords of DustFiends born in the beginning of time with a dream of restoring their primordial dominion. (Fanged crown atop a skull crumbling to dust)
59MarguulInfamous bugbear raiders of the Seawall Mountains.
60Morgrave UniversitySharn university of lore and wisdom.
61Mror HoldsLoose confederation of dwarven clans.
62OlladraSoverign of good fortune. (Domino)
63OnatarSoverign of artifice and the forge. (Crossed hammer and tongs)
64Order of the Emerald ClawNecromatic warriors and spies cast out from Karrnath in service to Lady Illmarrow. (green flame-styled claw)
65Orlassk, the Master of StoneDaelkyr of petrifying beasts.
66Prince OargevLeader of New Cyre. (Crown over a bell on a green shield)
67Q'barraUntaimed nation of danger and opportunity.
68Redcloak BatallionElite unit of Brelish warriors. (Two gold dragons flanking a bear's roaring head)
69SarlonaContinent of the Inspired; spirits and psionists. (Crystal on a yellow oval)
70Shadow MarchesDesolate land of swamps and moores, homeland of the orcs.
71ShiftersThe weretouched.
72SiberysProgenitor dragon, killed by Khyber, ring of shards surrounding Eberron.
73Sora KellFounding hag leader of the Droaam.
74Sulatar DrowShapers of the elements dating back to the Age of Giants.
75Tairnadal ElvesElves dedicated to the art of war. (Cross glaives over a red arrowhead)
76Talentra PlainsSpiritual plains of halflings and dinosaurs.
77The AurumExclusive society of the rich and influential. (Crown surrounded by a linked chain on gold)
78The DevourerDark six diety of nature's wrath. (Bundle of five sharpened bones)
79The FuryDark six diety of passion and revenge. (Winged wyrm with woman���s head and upper body)
80The GatekeepersDruidic orcs protecting Eberron from aberrations.
81The KeeperDark six diety of death and greed. (Dragonshard stone in the shape of a fang)
82The MockeryDark six diety of betrayal and bloodshed. (Five blood-spattered tools)
83The OverlordsRuling fiends of Eberron in the first days of the world bound by the Silver Flame.
84The Path of LightFaith of light and self-improvement. (Cracked white crystal)
85The ShadowDark six diety of ambition and dark magic. (Obsidian tower)
86The Silver FlameFaith of good and protection. (Flame on a silver arrowhead)
87The Spirits of the PastSpiritual anchors of the greatest champions of the Tairnadal elves.
88The TravelerDark six diety of change and chaos. (Four crossed, rune-inscribed bones)
89The TyrantsCriminal organization of grifters and con-artists.
90The Undying CourtFaith of elven ancestors. (Golden death mask with sapphire eyes)
91ThelanisPlane of the faerie court.
92ThraneNation of faith in the silver flame. (Flame on a silver arrowhead)
93Umbragen DrowDeepdelving magefueled drow who battle the daelkyr.
94Valaara, the Crawling QueenDaelkyr of insects and arachnids.
95ValenarElven nation steeped in the art of war. (Cross glaives over a red arrowhead)
96Vulkoori DrowGiant hunters of the scorpion god Vulkoor.
97WarforgedRace of constructs. (Mechanical hand clutching a smith's hammer)
98WynarnRoyal bloodline of the Galafar empire.
99Xen'drikJungle continent of the fallen arcane giants.
100XoriatThe realm of madness. (Fleshy ball of gnashing, monstrous teeth)


The Creative Advantage of Random Lists

Random lists help push our creative minds in new and interesting directions. The Lazy DM's Workbook is full of random lists for this reason and products Waterdeep: City Enounters showcase their value as well. Random lists and a creative brain together are a D&D superweapon. We don't use random lists on their own, we use these lists to push our brains out of a groove and explore ideas we never before considered.

As we run a campaign in a particular world, it helps bring the players into the world when we wrap pieces of our adventures in lore so our players can learn about the world as they explore it.

Random tables for monuments, items, and villages in the Lazy DM's Workbook don't have any particular world's flavor or lore to them. We have to add that. If, however, we're playing in a world like Ebrron, we can use a list like the one above so we can combine our other random tables with world-specific lore.

Use this list along with your other random lists to make the world come alive.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Running Hordes: The Lazy Way to Run Lots of D&D Monsters

The heroes stand atop a mountain of bones with one hundred skeletons swarming in. The cleric holds her holy symbol aloft and waves of radiant energy tear through the skeletons, shattering dozens of the creatures before the rest roar in.

Our heroes stand atop the ruins of an elven watchtower, blades and spells ready as forty orcs charge in. The stout warrior cleaves into them, slicing off four heads in two vicious cuts.

Our heroes stand atop a cliff of ice, a thousand foot drop behind them and twenty five wights in front, their eyes blazing blue and their black blades ready.

These are the tales of high adventure we know and love. We all remember Aragorn standing alone atop the ruined tower facing a horde of urukai in Lord of the Rings. We all remember John Wick facing off against a whole club of eastern European thugs. And we all remember the seven samurai facing off against fifty town-ravaging bandits.

The mechanics of D&D combat generally presumes the characters will face somewhere between three and twelve bad guys in any given battle. This is why characters have a huge advantage against a single opponent.

Our stories need not be limited by these mechanics. We can, with a little work, run any number of monsters against the characters. Ten? Twenty? Two hundred? Ten thousand?

There are many imperfect ways to run huge hordes of monsters in D&D—situations in which the characters face twenty or more monsters in a single battle. They all require some level of abstraction from our standard combat rules. Some are simpler than others. Some use tables, others you can do in your head. You may have your own preference while other DMs have theirs.

In this article we focus on one particular method for running hordes. I selected this one for a few reasons:

You can do the math mostly in your head.
It doesn't take much more time than running smaller numbers of monsters.
It scales to any number of monsters we can imagine.
It still treats members of a horde as separate monsters when it matters to the players.
It focuses on the fiction of the situation instead of getting bogged down in mechanics.

Summary Guidelines for Running Hordes

Here's a summary of my preferred techniques for running hordes. It breaks down into three large parts: tracking the damage done to the horde, tracking the horde's attacks and damage, and adjudicating areas of effect.

Tracking Damage Done to the Horde

Track damage inflicted to the horde instead of individual monsters in a single damage tally.
Write down the hit points of a single monster in the horde to keep track of it. Round it to the nearest 5 or 10 to make the math easier.
When the damage tally takes enough to kill one or more monsters in the horde, remove those monsters, reset the tally to zero, and carry over extra damage.

Tracking Horde Attacks and Damage Output

Determine how many monsters in the horde attack a given character based on the circumstances of the battle. When in doubt, divide attacks equally among those characters the horde can reasonably attack.
When the horde attacks, assume one in four attacks succeed. If the horde has advantage, assume half succeed. If they have disadvantage, assume they all fail. Adjust this up or down depending on circumstances. If someone casts shield or has a crazy high AC, remove a couple of successful attacks.

Adjudicating Areas of Effect

When the horde is hit with an area of effect like turn undead, hypnotic pattern, or fireball, adjudicate the results with these guidelines:

Determine how many creatures are in the area of effect. Assume it's a lot of them.
Assume one in four creatures in the horde succeed on their saving throws. Adjust this up or down depending on the circumstances. For a truly heroic moment or to make your life easier, assume they all fail.
If the horde takes damage high enough to kill a single creature, remove all affected creatures. Extra damage doesn't carry over.
If monsters in the horde are incapacitated, separate them from the main horde and remove them from play.
Add up any remaining damage done to creatures who survive and add it to the current tally for the horde. If this kills more creatures, remove them, reset the damage to zero, and roll over remaining damage.

Other Tips for Running Hordes

Use evocative narration to describe the characters' heroic battle against huge hordes of enemies. Hordes are there to show off the might and heroism of the characters.
Use only one type of creature in the horde. Don't mix up multiple horde types in a single battle. Use the same stat block and create variance in your descriptions.
As desired, mix in normal monsters with your hordes. A horde of forty creatures might be led by four lieutenants and a boss. Run these extra monsters as you normally would.

The rest of this article dives deeper into each of these ideas.

A Variety of Systems

This system for handling hordes is just one method of many. Other methods include:

The "Handling Mobs" section in chapter 8 of the Dungeon Master's Guide .
The "Running Large Numbers of Monsters" section of the Lazy DM's Workbook .
4e-Style "minion" rules in which each monster in a horde only has one hit point but a successful save never kills them.
The Mob Damage Calculator.
Reskinning bigger monsters as a horde of smaller ones.

It's possible you will prefer one of these other systems to the one proposed in this article. That's fine. What works well for you and your group is the one that matters. The end of this article describes the advantages and disadvantages of these alternate systems.

The Basics of Running Hordes

When we're running large hordes of monsters in our D&D games, we generally skip the use of miniatures and we worry less about any individual creature in our battle.

We run these huge battles mostly in our descriptions augmented by some quick sketches of the situation. The players may want to find choke points where they can't be attacked by the whole horde all at once. We can use miniatures for the characters and then draw large blobs to represent the hordes and the groups they form up into. If the characters are defending a tower from a horde of orcs and there are three ways into the tower, we can represent the tower and place the characters' miniatures so that they can clearly see where the choke points are. We don't need forty orc miniatures, a big handdrawn blob with "orcs" in the center works just as well. People will get the idea.

Our goal in these battles is to adjudicate the situation. What makes sense given the current story and situation?

Tracking Damage: Tallying Damage Against the Whole Horde

When we begin a battle against a horde, we write down the number of creatures in the horde and the hit points of one creature within the horde. Round their average hit points to the nearest 5 or 10 to make life easier.

When the characters attack the horde, they still attack versus the AC of a single monster in that horde. When they damage the monster, add the damage to the single damage tally for the whole horde. If the tally goes above the hit points of a single creature, we remove the last creature damaged from the horde, reset the tally, and roll over any remaining damage. This is similar to the "Cleaving through Creatures" description in chapter 9 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. A single powerful blow might kill multiple creatures which, of course, is awesome.

For example, a fighter faces off against a horde of skeletons and hits them with three attacks, inflicting 36 damage. We remove three of the skeletons (10 hp each) and add 6 damage to our tally. Next turn a rogue backstabs a skeleton for 19 damage. We add 19 to the 6 (25), remove two more skeletons and roll over 5 to the damage tally.

If a bunch of monsters in a horde are damaged with an area attack spell, we first figure out how many monsters in the horde it hits and then apply the damage to those who would be hit. If the damage is higher than the hit points of a single monster, we remove them all and don't worry about rolling over excess damage. If they don't take enough damage to kill them, we add it all up on the tally and see how many monsters it might kill.

For example, a wizard casts fireball on a horde of zombies and we adjudicate that it can hit sixteen zombies (20 hp each). The wizard rolls 27 damage for the fireball. Three quarters of the zombies fail their saving throw, taking 27 fire damage each, and are instantly killed. The remaining four take 13 damage each or 52 total added to the tally. This is enough to kill two more and leave 12 damage on the tally. Two zombies remain, one badly scorched.

This tally idea seems complicated but it scales well for any number of monsters. You can run a dozen orcs this way, or one hundred skeletons, or five hundred goblins and the same system applies.

Track damage done to the whole group in a damage tally and remove monsters as the group takes enough damage to kill a single monster.

Adjudicating Which Characters Get Attacked

It's possible, given the size of the horde, to just use the damage tally idea above and still roll monster attacks normally. If you're running around twenty creatures with single attacks, rolling individual attacks isn't so bad. If you're running a LOT of monsters, though, you may want to abstract the attacks to speed up gameplay.

First, you need to decide who's getting attacked by the horde and how many monsters within the horde are attacking them. Start by looking at the situation. Does the horde have ranged attacks? Are any of the characters up front and likely to take on more than everyone else? Our base assumption should be that the monsters attack the characters equally. If there are fifty orcs and five characters, ten orcs will attack each character. If one character manages to hide from the orcs, the orcs divide their attacks among the rest. If a circumstance means that the monsters simply can't attack, for example if there's a choke point and they don't have ranged attacks, they miss out.

Determine based on the circumstances how many within a horde attack each character. Begin by assuming they divide their attacks equally.

About One in Four Attacks Succeed

In any given match up between weak monsters and strong characters—the likely situation when a horde attacks the characters—we can assume that about one in four monsters in the horde will hit when they all attack.

This is a loose approximation and we can adjust it based on circumstances. Such circumstances might include:

The characters have extraordinarily high ACs, like the use of a shield spell or some other big boost to AC.
A character has a particularly low AC and might get hit more often.

In these circumstances we can either choose to round up or down when determining how many creatures succeed or, if its a big enough bonus, we can change it from one in four succeeding to one in eight or one in ten if things are going against them or one in two if they have advantage.

Start with one in four and then slide the gauge up or down depending on the situation. This is a nearly math-less way of determining how many monsters succeed or fail that we can do in our heads without the use of a table or tool. Thus, it's the lazy way.

If the horde has advantage, such as those having pack tactics, we might increase this to half of them succeeding. Likewise, if they are at disadvantage, we might lower it to one in ten succeeding, or even less.

When the creatures in a horde have multiple attacks, we pool all of those attacks together to decide how many total attacks hit. If eight thugs attack a single character with their multitattack, we begin by assuming two of them hit with both attacks (one out of four of them) but remembering that the thugs have pack tactics, we might increase that to four successful thugs and eight total attacks hitting for 5 damage each (40 damage). Thugs make dangerous hordes.

Assume one in four monsters succeed on their attacks and adjust accordingly.

Adjudicating Areas of Effect

When the characters face off against a large number of monsters, they're almost certainly going to fall back to area of effect spells like fireball, cone of cold, shatter, turn undead, or hypnotic pattern. Adjudicating areas of effect against large numbers of monsters takes a few steps but once these steps are wired in, it isn't too hard.

First, figure out how many creatures are in the area of effect based on the situation. Are the monsters all packed up together? Are they spread out? Consider the size of the area and how many you would think would be piled in there. Lean towards lots of monsters being within the area of effect. It's cooler that way.
Assume one in four monsters succeed on their saving throws and adjust to suit the situation. For a more heroic situation, assume they all fail the saving throw and describe the awesome results. Don't nitpick the details, round in favor of the characters and focus the description on their success.
If the damage of the area of effect inflicts enough to kill a single creature, those creatures die and are removed from the horde. If it's close (like a 14 point fireball against skeletons with 15 points), make your life easy and kill them anyway.
Add up the remaining damage that didn't kill the creatures and add it to your horde damage tally. This may kill additional creatures so remove them too.
If the effect includes a status effect of some sort; three out of four of the creatures will have failed and are under that status effect. You might remove them from play and describe their impotent attacks in the narrative instead of tracking things.

These steps might seem complicated but most of the time it will work out well. Areas of effect should be very useful against huge hordes of enemies.

When hit with an area of effect, determine how many creatures are in the area, roll damage, remove those who die, carry over any remaining damage to the horde and remove additional dead creatures.

Many areas of effect abilities, such as turn undead, don't inflict damage but inflict some other status effect. In this case, we can assume that one in four succeeds while the others fail. We can keep track of these incapacitated enemies separate from the rest of the horde or simply remove them from play. When a character wants to target one of the creatures who are under the status; like a skeleton restrained by an Evard's black tentacles spell, they can simply state it and we adjust accordingly.

Calculating Challenge Ratings

I've talked here at length about the flaws of D&D's encounter building rules and offered numerous solutions. Many times when facing huge hordes of monsters, the encounter is very likely deadly. This goes up significantly if the challenge rating of the monsters in the horde are higher than CR 1/4 or 1/2.

You can still use my simple encounter building guidelines to determine this however, and get an idea how many monsters in a horde are on that edge of deadly. Here's a summary of my simplified encounter building rules:

An encounter is potentially deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than half of the sum total of character levels, or one quarter if the characters are below 5th level.

Thus, if we have five 10th level characters, we know that more than 100 skeletons in a horde is potentially deadly. If we have five 7th level characters, more than 34 thugs is potentially deadly.

These battles against hordes can swing one way or another easily, though, given the sheer number of them and the potential to get wiped out with big areas of effect so, of course, your mileage will vary.

Don't hang on too tight to encounter building rules when running hordes.

Other Guidelines for Running Hordes

That covers the basics of running monster hordes. Here are a few tips to make running huge battles easy and memorable.

Go big with descriptions. These battles are all about epic storytelling. Don't focus on the mechanics in your descriptions. Instead, focus on the story. Describe the screaming hordes of orcs charging the characters only to be blown away by a fireball. Describe the hordes of skeletons charging up the hill or the silent wights marching forward. Focus on the fiction first and last. Let the mechanics help shape the story.

Use the same type of monster for the horde. Don't try to run multiple monster types in a single horde. Trying to track two different hordes is really difficult and gods help you if those hordes get mix up together.

Reflavor for variance. If the story dictates that the horde has different kinds of creatures in them, use a single stat block and reflavor the creature in your descriptions. If the characters are getting attacked by both pirates and sea spawns; use a single stat block to represent them. In your description you describe some of them as more humanoid looking pirates and others as more twisted sea creatures. Yet, for you, the stat block is still the same. No one will be the wiser.

Use three groups or fewer. When you split up your hordes into separate horde groups, keep them around three or fewer. One is best and easiest to work with. More than three and life gets complicated.

Mix hordes with normal creatures. While running multiple types hordes can be difficult, a single horde can work well when mixed with normal single creatures. A horde of fifty orcs might be led by an orc war chief and four armored ogres. You can run the war chief and the ogres as individual creatures like normal and the horde using the guidelines above. It will make for a complicated fight but it isn't out of the question.

Now let's take a brief look at some alternate systems for running monster hordes.

Alternate System: The Dungeon Master's Guide Mob Rules

Page 250 of the Dungeon Master's Guide includes a brief section called "Handling Mobs" with instructions and a table to help adjudicate hits when lots of monsters are attacking a single character. The general idea is that, instead of rolling dice, you figure out how many monsters are likely to hit given their attack bonus and the AC of their victim. We can use the same table in reverse to determine how many creatures make their save against a characters' spell or ability.

The guidelines in the DMG are solid. If you have the table on hand, it's a fine way to adjudicate how many monsters succeed in an attack. You can also reverse-engineer this table to also determine how many monsters would succeed on a saving throw.

Unfortunately, these guidelines don't tell us how to easily track hit points for a large number of monsters so we need some other system for tracking hit points. The horde damage tally can work well for this.

Alternate System: The Lazy DM Workbook Table

Page 7 of the Lazy DM's Workbook includes a table similar to the one in the Dungeon Master's Guide and offers a way to track hit points by building a huge hit point pool for all of the monsters and then every time that pool takes damage equal to the hit points of a single monster, removing that monster. This latter part is actually difficult when used at the table and I now prefer the solution in this article. The table itself, however, continues to serve in the same way the one in the DMG serves.

Alternate System: 4e-Style Minion Rules

If we want a simpler system for tracking damage done to monsters, we can steal the idea of "minions" from the 4th edition of D&D. In this system, every creature in the horde has only one hit point. If they take damage, they die. They take no damage if they succeed on a saving throw, however, so you can't just wipe them out with a single fireball unless they all fail their saving throw. Damage, in this case, does not carry over.

This system works well by requiring no bookkeeping. Monsters are either alive or dead. They don't actually have hit points. If they are hit, they die. If they are missed, they survive. It's a deviation from the core rules but a clean system none the less.

Alternate System: The Mob Damage Calculator

A while back I wrote a mob damage calculator intended to help DMs determine how many monsters succeed on attacks or saving throws. You plug in the data and it spits out the results. This script works well enough but requiring a script to figure this out isn't ideal. Thus, I recommend easier systems for determining success. If you prefer this to other systems, go with the gods.

Alternate System: Reskinning Bigger Monsters into Swarms

Likewise, I wrote another article on reskinning big monsters into swarms. This system seems elegant but it fails as soon as the characters try to hit the "swarm" with an area of effect spell. A fireball should be very effective against a swarm yet does nothing special to a single big monster treated as a swarm. The same is true with spells like hypnotic pattern or abilities like turn undead. Against a big monster swarm, its either all on or all off. That isn't ideal. Thus, I prefer systems that still treat monsters in a horde individually.

Another Tool for Fantastic Stories

This article outlines a simple system for running large numbers of creatures against your characters. As lazy dungeon masters, we let the story take us where it will and use the tools we have on hand to make them as exciting and fantastic as possible. Now when our epic heroes are standing on a mountain of bones in the undead world of Thanatos surrounded by two hundred ghouls, you have the tools on hand to let the story flow into this epic situation.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

The Grendleroot in Eberron

In a previous article, we looked at how to place Blackclaw Mountain, the primary location in Fantastic Adventures, Ruins of the Grendleroot, into Avernus, to expand the hardback adventure Descent into Avernus. Today we're going to pull up the mountain and drop it in another world entirely, the world of Eberron. How can we put this limitless mountain into the lands of Argonnessen, Khorvaire, Sarlona, or Xen'drik? Let's take a look.

Grendleroot's Points of Reskinning

When we look at the material in Ruins of the Grendleroot we can identify the following areas where reskinning helps situate it in an existing game world. These include:

The origin of the Grendleroot itself
Deepdelver's Enclave
The Magocracy of the Black Star
The Order of the White Sun
The rest of the history of the mountain
The adventures themselves

For a quick reference, here's one way you might reskin Ruins of the Grendleroot for Eberron:

The Grendleroot is a huge dragonshard that has pierced through Khyber and into Xoriat, the realm of madness.
House Tharashk runs Deepdelver's Enclave and runs a branch of the Finders Guild there. The Finders Guild is an excellent group patron for Eberron characters in Blackclaw Mountain.
The Magocracy of the Black Star are leaders of a Xoriat cult who worship the daelkyr. Much of the iconography in Shadowreach shows images of Xoriat and the daelkyr.
The Order of the White Sun is a branch of the Church of the Silver Flame. They fought back against the aberrations of Xoriat but gave up when the massive dragonshard known as the Grendleroot, burst fourth and killed many of them. They sealed the entrances to Blackclaw Mountain as a dangerous portal through Khyber into Xoriat.
As part of Khyber, many of the deepest tunnels of Blackclaw Mountain lead all over Eberron. Much of its history comes from these outer reaches.
The glyph titans of Blackclaw Mountain are arcane giants of old from Xen'drik. The Caretakers are powerful aberrants from Xoriat who studied one of the daelkyr.
The other dragonmarked houses have representatives in Deepdelver's Enclave and can show up throughout the adventures in Ruins of the Grendleroot.

The rest of this article dives deeper into these ideas and offers alternate paths you may make when reskinning Ruins of the Grendleroot for Eberron.

The Origin of the Grendleroot

The origin of the Grendleroot is one of the main elements that root Blackclaw Mountain in the world of Eberron (pun intended). Perhaps the Grendleroot is a living spell gone awry—a continually growing parasitic casting of wall of thorns or spike growth. Perhaps it is a piece of Khyber, the dark progenitor dragon who killed Siberys and formed the dragonshards. Perhaps it is the will of Xoriat, the plane of madness that has grown like cancer in the depths of Eberron.

It may even be part of the weapon or an aftereffect of the Mourning, the cataclysmic event that destroyed an entire nation. In this case, the Grendleroot wouldn't be particularly old; only a decade or so, which will change your timeline.

Of these ideas, the idea of a shard of Khyber piercing into the plane of Xoriat works well with the theme of the Grendleroot. The Black Sun the Grendleroot calls out to may be a particularly powerful daelkyr (see the bestiary in Eberron, Rising of the Last War for details).

Deepdelver's Enclave

Deepdelver's Enclave can be kept mostly as-is. Explorers from all over the lands might meet here to explore the strange depths of this mountain. House Tharashk might be the custodians of the enclave, as explorers and hunters. The Finders Guild of House Tharashk engages in dragonshard prospecting, a good match for the relic hunting found in Ruins of the Grendleroot.

The alien ways of the underworld of Khyber allow it to connect to all sorts of places across Eberron. Thus Deepdelver's Enclave could have explorers from many distant lands. This fits well with the melting-pot intention of Deepdelver's Enclave. Everyone is welcome and many diverse faces can be found there living in harmony.

The Magocracy of the Black Star

We can reskin the Magocracy of the Black Star in a few different ways. The archmages themselves may be cultists of Xoriat and the daelkyr. The massive statues of the archmages may in fact be statues of the daelkyr themselves.

The magocracy might instead be reskinned as powerful leaders of the cult of the Dragon Below. This works well if you choose the Grendleroot to be an ancient shard of Khyber.

The Order of the White Sun

The Church of the Silver Flame fits the Order of the White Sun perfectly. These seekers of the light could have come to the mountain to rid it of its dark influence or to battle the cult of the Dragon Below or the cultists of Xoriat. A particular branch of the Church of the Silver Flame may have come here and then been routed as the Grendleroot, in whatever manifestation you choose, grew. The Church of the Silver Flame could have abandoned the site, marking it as a poisoned well leading through Khyber to Xoriat and sealed it up. See the sections on Khyber and the Church of the Silver Flame for details on the church's interaction with Khyber and Xoriat.

The Remaining History of the Mountain

Connecting Blackclaw Mountain to the deepest depths of Khyber lets you draw on histories from all over Eberron.

Much of the rest of the history of Blackclaw Mountain can be tied to other elements of Eberron's history. As part of Khyber, Blackclaw Mountain can have strange underworld connections to any part of the world and thus their histories. The arcane giants of Xen'drik fit in well as the strange glyph titans in Grendleroot. The aboleths can be easily replaced with the mind flayers of Xoriat. There are many hooks in Grendleroot upon which to hang the history of Eberron.

Tailoring Grendleroot Adventures for Eberron

As both Eberron and Grendleroot have their roots from the original ideas behind Dungeons & Dragons, There is little to change with the adventures themselves. Sprinkling in the dragonmarked houses, criminal syndicates, cults, fiends, and otherworld entities throughout the adventure can make it feel like a rich part of Eberron. The best thing you can do is dig deep into Eberron, Rising of the Last War and let its lore flow down throughout the caves and crevasses of Grendleroot while you run it.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Running Descent into Avernus: the Fall of Elturel

Note, this article contains spoilers for Descent into Avernus.

In the popular D&D hardcover adventure Descent into Avernus the characters travel into the first layer of hell to save the city of Elturel which has fallen through Faerun into the realm of fire and blood. As written, the adventure takes the most monumentally visual moment in the adventure, the fall of an entire city into hell, and handles it off-screen. Given the unlimited special effects budget we have in our D&D games, I can't imagine why we wouldn't let our characters, and our players, witness such a moment.

Luckily, we have the DM's Guild and many authors on the Guild recognized this flaw. Many adventures set around the events of Descent into Avernus let the characters witness the fall of Eltruel. I chose one in particular for my own running of Descent into Avernus, The Fall of Elturel by Anthony Joyce and Justice Arman, and it worked beautifully. In this outstanding small introductory adventure the characters begin in Elturel and hunt cultists of the Dead Three outside of the city before witnessing the city's fall into Avernus.

This adventure sets up a much stronger start for Descent into Avernus than the hardcover campaign adventure includes alone; unfortunate given its size and price. Beyond showing the most iconic moment of the whole campaign, Fall of Elturel also gives the characters a stronger connection to the city and a greater desire to save it. With some tweaks and modifications to both Fall of Elturel and Descent into Avernus we can build a strong first act for this campaign in which the characters witness the fall of their city and seek revenge against the cult of the Dead Three before uncovering the plot of Thavius Kreeg and the Vanthampurs.

The Characters as Hellriders

One way to tie the characters into both [Fall of Eltruel] and Descent into Avernus is to start the characters off with a strong connection to the Hellriders, the knight paladins of Elturel. I wrote this Descent into Avernus Session Zero worksheet to reinforce this connection for my own game. The backstory of the Hellriders plays prominantly in both Descent into Avernus and the Fall of Elturel and builds a strong and powerful character arc that exists through the whole campaign. The characters need not be Hellriders themselves but their drives and motivations may be much stronger the more closly they're connected.

This includes being well connected with Reya Mantlemorn, a captain of the Hellriders. The woman is a powerful member of the Hellriders despite her young age and makes for a perfect group patron for the characters. Working with your players to build connections between Reya and their characters is a great way to bind them to her and her devotion to the Hellriders.

After Elturel's fall, Reya's drive for vengeance can motivate the characters to hunt down the cult of the Dead Three, even though this is a false lead. While hunting the cult they can find out that Elturel hasn't been destroyed at all but instead lies trapped within Avernus. They can also learn of the conspirators who caused it and where to go to save the trapped city. This motivation can drive all of the actions of the characters to find the shield of the hidden lord, travel to Candlekeep, and make their journey into Avernus itself.

A Modified Chapter Path

If we begin our campaign with Fall of Elturel as the lead-in to Descent into Avernus and begin the characters with strong ties to both the Hellriders and to Reya Mantlemorn we can come to a different quest arc for the first chapter of this adventure. Here's an example quest checklist:

Meet with Reya Mantlemorn and Gideon Lightward, leader of the Hellriders in Elturel. Witness their failed negotiation with the High Duke Ulder Ravengard.
Hunt for cultists of the Dead Three in the outskirts of Elturel while the negotiation continues.
Defeat the cultists.
Witness the fall of Elturel.
Jump two tendays later when the characters arrive at Baldur's Gate led by a note they received from Reya Mantlemorn who says she knows who destroyed Elturel and seeks their help to get revenge.
Meet Reya and Tarina at the Elfsong Tavern. Learn of the cult of the Dead Three under the bathhouse.
Go to the bathhouse and hunt the cult of the Dead Three.
Learn that the Vanthampurs are sheltering Thavius Kreeg, learn of the excavation of the shield of the hidden lord, learn of Thavius's strange puzzlebox.
Break into the Vanthampur villa, deal with Thavius, acquire the shield of the hidden lord, and acquire Thavius's puzzle box.
Head to Candlekeep and learn the fate of Elturel.
Travel to Avernus.

This approach can take us through chapter 1 of Descent into Avernus with a stronger motivation and character connection than the book, as written, has on its own.

Making Campaign Adventures Our Own

As written, Descent into Avernus doesn't include the strong drive necessary to bind characters to the story of the adventure. With the Fall of Elturel and some modifications of our own, we can build in a much stronger motivation and better connections to the rest of the adventure. Often we are called upon to make such modifications to any published adventure to tailor it to our group. This adventure seems to require it more than most, but all adventures run better when we make them our own. Big hardcover adventures include a wealth of material we can twist and reshape into an excellent story for our group. It isn't the published books that make great campaigns. It's how we use them.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Using D&D Monster Stat Blocks as Templates to Mash Monsters Together

Back in the third edition of D&D, monsters could be augmented with monster templates to give them a new feel. The fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, for the most part, lacks these monster templates. A handful of monsters, like the dracolich and the shadow dragon, have templates you can apply to turn one monster into another.

Though the Monster Manual lacks many templates like this, we can learn from the templates it does have to see how we can turn any monster into monster template.

We'll do so with a horrifying creation of my own; one I unleashed in my Waterdeep Dragon Heist game—the ghoulish crocodile!

The "Modifying a Monster" section in Chapter 9 of the Dungeon Master's Guide offers sound advice for modifying monsters to suit the story we have in mind:

Need a fiery phoenix? Take the giant eagle or roc, give it immunity to fire, and allow it to deal fire damage with its attacks. Need a flying monkey? Consider a baboon with wings and a flying speed.

In many cases, this advice alone is enough to serve as a monster template. Such small reskins of monsters often do the trick. We can take this one step further, though, and mash two monster stat blocks together to form a new variant creature.

Ideally such changes can be done without writing anything down. We don't have to make up a new stat block. Instead, we just flip between two existing stat blocks and build a new variant monster on the fly.

It's time to make our ghoulish crocodile!

First, what is this terrible creature? In my game, the ghoul crocodile is an undead crocodile, created by hags, with a fiendish taste for mortal flesh. They feed off of the refuse that the hags discard or, if they get the chance, they'll feast on mortals they come across.

Let's go to the stats. First, we choose a primary stat block. We choose the base stat block by picking the one that has the most attributes of our new monster. In our case it's the crocodile. We use most of the stats of this primary creature including hit points, armor class, attributes, and the like. Then we add on a handful of attributes from the ghoul stat block to build our monster such as the ghoul's undead traits.

When it comes to attacks, our ghoulish crocodile has its normal bite attack but gains the paralysis of the ghoul's claw attack. That's easy to add and fun to see in practice when the crocodile bites someone, grapples them, and tries to paralyze them at the same time. Ouch!

There we have it. Our very own ghoulish crocodile without any real work. When we're running it we flip between the two stat blocks when we need to reference its abilities. No need to write anything down.

Our ghoulish crocodile is certainly more powerful than a normal crocodile, probably one or two challenge levels higher, but that doesn't matter if we have a good understanding of the capabilities of the characters.

This monster mashup works for these low challenge monsters, but what about a high challenge one?

The Stone Giant Lich

In my Storm King's Thunder game, I replaced Kayalithica the stone giant leader with a more villainous stone giant lich dug up from old Forgotten Realms lore called the Dodkong or Death King. This stone giant lich ruled over his land of Dodheim and, in my game, attempted to tear open a rift between the world and the negative material plane. He was even in league with a particularly vile archlich who, like the Dodkong, sought to bring death to Faerun but that is another story.

When we look at both the stone giant and the lich stat blocks, we see that, in just about every way, the lich is the more meaningful of the two. Only its size makes a stone giant lich different than a lich. The stone giant's hit die is bigger (a d12 instead of a d8) so its hit points will be higher (18d12+90 hit points with an average of 207 and a potential max of 306). For just about everything else, we stick to the lich stat block.

Thus, the fast way to make a stone giant lich is to take a lich, increase its size, and give it a bunch of extra hit points (200 to 300 is an easy round number).

And we're done!

We even have time to build a couple of stone giant death knights as well. Take the death knight stat block, add about 30 extra hit points, and increase the dice on its longsword from 1d8 to 3d8 (an extra 9 average damage a hit) to account for its huge longsword. All of the rest of the death knight stat block works just the same.

We might be tempted to spend a lot of time getting the details just right but, honestly, it doesn't matter that much when it comes to the game itself. Our time is likely better spent elsewhere like thinking about the villain's motivations, its goals, and what the characters will witness if those goals begin to get met.

Embedding Fast Modifications Into Our Head

Tricks like this bring a great value to our game. When we're able to quickly modify an element of the game in our head right at the table, we have flexibility to help us continually move the story into a fun direction. We can certainly spend an hour or two building a custom monster for our D&D games, and many DMs likely do this. Instead, however, we can recognize what matters most and wire in quick tools in our head to let the story take whatever turn it takes.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Tier Appropriate Adventure Locations

The characters' levels in D&D mean something within the fiction of the game. Chapter 1 of the Dungeon Master's Guide describes the four tiers of play and the impact the characters have in the world as they increase in levels. These include being local heroes, regional heroes, global heroes, and extraplanar heroes. I argue that there's one additional tier, tier zero for 1st level play, in which the characters meet and circumvent their first real threats together as an adventuring party.

It isn't always easy to understand what sorts of adventures fit into these tiers. Newer dungeon masters might ignore the tiers of play and throw low level characters into world-saving stories. Many argue that there's nothing wrong with that. Of course, if it works for you and your group, go with the gods.

I argue, however, that the true impact of epic threats comes when characters have made their way there from one giant rat in a basement and ending with a face-off against the demon prince of undeath himself in Thanatos, the undead layer of the Abyss.

Epic tier characters by Jared von Hindman.

Breaking down the tiers of play into five ranges (1st level, 2nd through 4th level, 5th through 10th level, 11th through 15th level, and 16th level to 20th level) gives us a model of progression through an epic story.

Going beyond the basic descriptions of the five tiers I offer up the following lists of fifty adventure locations broken out for each tier. Use these tier-appropriate locations as inspiration to build your own adventures at various levels of play, letting the scope of the threat and the location surrounding it grow as the characters grow in power.

Tier 0 Adventure Locations (1st Level)

Infested ruin
Bandit campsite
Kobold hideout
Decrepit crypt
Forgotten cellar
Cultists' shrine
Small monster's den
Old watchtower
Abandoned warehouse
Goblin caves

Tier 1 Adventure Locations (2nd to 4th level)

Bandit hideout
Orc raiding party
Hobgoblin war party
Haunted crypt
Monster infested farmstead
Overthrown castle
Corrupt villa
Unholy temple
Decrepit sewers
Forgotten mine
Ancient ruins

Tier 2 Adventure Locations (5th to 10th level)

Warlord's Stronghold
Young dragon's lair
Unholy tower
Ancient city
Sunken vessel
Crimelord's Den
Giant's lair
Drow vault
Dark temple
Death trap ruin

Tier 3 Adventure Locations (11th to 15th level)

Adult dragon's lair
Planar gateway
Earthmote
Volcanic lair
Lich's sanctum
Archmage's tower
Demonic rift
Dark Fey court
Unholy cathedral
Beholder's lair

Tier 4 Adventure Locations (16th to 20th)

Fallen God's Temple
Cyst of the Lower Planes
Demon Prince's Lair
Archdevil's Citadel
Derelict Astral Vessel
Ruins of a dead world
Alien corpse of a dead god
Ancient dragons lair
Archlichs multiplanar tower
Elder evil moon

The Horror of the Giant Rat

Low-tier locations need not be boring. Even a kobold's lair can (and should) contain ancient mysteries, deep histories, and fantastic features. The threat of a squirming nest of oversized insects can be as scary as a host of greater demons sitting atop a mountain of monstrous of bone. Low level adventures aren't boring adventures. Every giant rat is a terrifying encounter. We need but read Stephen King's Graveyard Shift to see how horrifying rats can be. I wrote an adventure for the patrons of Sly Flourish called Regnum Rattus: The Rats in the Cellar to hammer home this point. Low level adventures can be as exciting as high level ones.

The Continual Escalation of D&D

D&D has entertaining stories to tell from 1st to 20th level. The scope of these stories are not the same across this range of levels. The threats grow larger, the locations become more dangerous, the stakes become higher. Enjoy the stories we share across all of these levels. Make every threat real. Make every journey fantastic. Let your story grow every adventure into its own epic tale.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

The Only Dungeon Map You'll Ever Need

Dyson of Dyson Logos, the best site for D&D cartography on the internet, posted about how D&D BECMI creator Frank Mentzer used a single map over 30 times when running D&D in public. Dyson [recreated the map] in his wonderful printer-friendly style.

This idea resonated strongly with my lazy dungeon master philosophies. What if you only had one map in your DM kit? If you could only use one D&D map for the rest of your games, which map would you grab?

Clickbaity title aside, I'm not going to give you that one single map. But I will help you find your own ideal map and we're going look at a few great examples.

Hopefully this article will help you answer a question you may never have asked yourself:

Which map is your map? Which map is your go-to map when you don't have anything prepared and need a map to run your game right now? What map can you print out, stick in your kit, and use for the next 40 years?

Criteria for a Single Awesome Map

Before we start digging through maps, let's decide what makes a great map we can use again and again. I'm going to use some of the criteria found in excellent articles like the Alexandrian's Jaquaying the Dungeon and DM David's 5 Tricks for Creating Brilliant Dungeon Maps from Will Doyle. I'll also be adding a few of my own criteria specific to the purpose of finding a single versatile map:

The map shouldn't be linear. The characters might see the final room even if they can't get to it.
The map should have some sort of cross-slice such as a river, a ravine, or an earthquake that splits it up.
The map should have multiple entrances.
The map should have loops.
The map should have secrets
The map should have unusual paths.
The map should be big, but not TOO big. Probably around 15 to 30 rooms or so.
Many rooms should be unique.
The map should have a mixture of worked stone and natural formations.
The map should be easy to print on single sheet of paper.
The map should be easy to use and easy to improvise while running a game.

This list isn't perfect but hopefully it helps you consider what your own criteria are for finding an ideal map.

Example Ideal Maps

I found this topic inspiring enough to ask on Twitter what maps people would use if they could only use one. Here are a few maps people chose and some of my own that I think work particularly well.

Tears of the Crocodile God designed by Will Doyle, cartography by Mike Schley, in Dungeon 209.

Warlock of Firetop Mountain by Dyson

Note, I'm only showing the bottom half of the map here. It's huge.

Dwarven Outpost by Dyson

Vault of the Dracolich by Scott F. Gray, Teos Abadia, and myself; illustrated by Mike Schley and available on his website

This is obviously my favorite. This map happens to be included in the appendices of the Dungeon Master's Guide so you likely already have it on hand!

Caves of Chaos from Keep on the Borderlands remastered by Dyson

When looking for your own ideal map, I can't recommend scanning through Dyson's map library enough. It's one of the best D&D sites on the net. You can also check out the wonderful maps of Mike Schley and pick up high resolution versions of them for $2 a piece.

Why Limit to a Single Map?

Why would we limit ourselves to just one map? Why aren't a bunch of maps more useful? After all, my own book, the Lazy DM's Workbook includes ten maps of the ten most common locations we'd come across in D&D.

Most of the time we can pick and choose which map we want for a given situation. Dyson's map library let's us pick from nearly 900 maps, for example. Other times, however, keeps our D&D improv toolkit small. The fewer items we have in our kit, the easier it is to grab the thing we need when we need it. If you're familiar with your single ldeal map, if you can close your eyes and visualize it, it will be easy for you to use it during your game. One map may not be enough for you but I'd recommend starting there and branching out to your second, third, fourth, and so-on when you absolutely need a different map than the one you have.

Obviously as we run our games we'll use lots of different maps. The intent of this article is to give you ideas for a single map you can keep on hand for those occasions when you're caught flat footed and need a solid dungeon with no prep at all. Having a single familiar map you love and adore will give you a great tool to use when your game goes in a direction you never expected.

What's your ideal map? Send links and pictures on Twitter!

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Seven Samurai, the Perfect D&D Adventure

There are fewer movies more influential than Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and this movie's story makes for a nearly perfect D&D adventure. The theme of Seven Samurai may be a perfect D&D situation to keep in our back pocket for many adventures to come.

Seven Samurai is the story of a village under threat from a large group of bandits who plan to raid it as soon as the village's harvest is complete. The villagers travel to a nearby town to hire samurai to defend their village from the coming attack. There they meet Kambei, a samurai who cuts off his sacred topknot and shaves his head to look like a monk before saving a young child from a bandit. With Kambei's guidance the villagers convince six others, including the hulking and child-like Kikuchiyo played by Toshiro Mofune. Mofune would partner with Kurosawa for many other films including Ran, Yojimbo, and Sanjiro; all of which make excellent D&D adventures.

The seven samurai return to the village, teach the villagers how to defend their own village, raid the bandit's own fortress, and then defend the town from the bandits' bloody onslaught.

It's a story of such purity that it's no wonder it's been copied over and over again.

You can see where all of this is going for our D&D games.

The Setup: Heroes Needed

Seven Samurai's hook is perfect for D&D. A village of poor farmers comes to the characters and begs them for help. They have nothing to offer and the job is exceedingly dangerous. Heroic characters will have no trouble grabbing onto the hook. More materialistic characters may have to stretch but you can always go with one of the hooks from Magnificent Seven and give them hints that there's great treasure in or around the village even if there's no outward sign. Who knows, there might actually be great treasure at the village but even most of the villagers don't know it's there.

The villagers need the adventurers to help them fight off an attack by a powerful force. We can change up this force however we want. It could be skeletons who rise up every thirty years and attack. It could be a group of goblins, orcs, or hobgoblins. It could be fire giants. It could even be bandits.

For some arbitrary reason the attack hasn't come yet and the characters have some time to prepare before it does.

The Situation: A Tale of Two Lairs

When our characters arrive at the village, it's a perfect time to drop them into the situation. There's the largely undefended village and there's the bandit camp about a day's ride away. We can wrap either of these in fantastic locations. Maybe the bandits reside in a ruined castle. Maybe the village sits on ancient catacombs. It helps if the village has some interesting features that aren't obviously defensive but could be. Rivers, canyons, and other natural features might give the players ideas on how best to defend it.

Instead of plotting out the adventure, we just set the stage for the players and let them decide how they want to handle it. Maybe they want to take the fight straight to the bandits. Maybe they want to build a sturdy defense against attack. Maybe they choose a mix of both. All options are on the table when we run it this way.

If you want to see a more detailed example of a Seven Samurai-based D&D adventure, check out The Night of the Decimation an adventure I ran for 4th edition years ago.

Not Necessarily Good Villagers

Just as in Seven Samurai, our villagers may have a secret. Maybe there's a good reason these bandits hunt them down. Maybe the villagers murdered the bandit captain's brother with false accusations and a sham trial. Maybe they have hidden a powerful and evil artifact that brings them great bounty. Maybe they delved too deep. Maybe, long ago, they hunted and killed adventurers for the coin and weapons they carry. You don't want to push this secret so far that the characters abandon the village. That's not much of an adventure. But building sympathetic bad guys and questionable good guys is always a fun twist to the story.

A Simple Adventure Framework

Dyson of Dysonlogos recently discussed a map that D&D luminary Frank Menzer used often when running games at conventions. This map, Frank said, served him in over 30 games. It was his go-to map when he didn't have another one handy. Shake up what's inside this map and players don't know they're getting a rehashed map.

We can use the adventure outline of Seven Samurai the same way. It can be our go-to adventure outline when nothing else is handy. All we need to do is fill in the following blanks:

Who are the villagers asking the characters for help?
Who are the bandits preparing to attack the village?
What makes the village fantastic?
What makes the bandit hideout fantastic?
What dark secret do the villagers hide?
Why haven't the bandits attacked already?

Here are six options for each of these questions to get our minds moving:

Who are the villagers?

Refugees
Halflings
Dwarves
Elves
Dark elves breaking away from an evil city
Sha'sal Khou Githyanki and Githzeri (See Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes)

Who are the bandits?

Skeletons
Hobgoblins
Frost giants
A horde of demons
A legion of devils
Wights led by a lich

What is the village like?

Sits atop an ancient elven city
Sits atop draconic catacombs
Has a floating monolith in the town's center
Uses technology from a crashed airship
Lies within massive monuments to dead gods
Is surrounded by once living trees now dead

What is the bandit hideout like?

A hollowed-out volcano
An ancient cairn
A ghostly tower that only appears every 30 years
A ruined fortress
A lair built out of a giant skull
A planar ship

What dark secret do the villagers hide?

They hunted witches long ago
They defiled a holy ground
They made an unholy pact
They sit upon riches
They hold a dark relic
They harvest the energy of a dying celestial

Why haven't the villains attacked already?

They need time to prepare
An ancient pact dictates when they can attack
They can only attack on a full moon
Prophecies describe their attack
They await their leader's arrival
They await the opening of a planar gate

Answering the six questions gives us a nearly unlimited framework for a Seven Samurai-based adventure. Like Menzer's map, we can keep this framework handy and use it just about anytime we need an adventure.

A Perfect Situation for Any Level

This adventure seed can work well at just about any level of play. For low level adventurers we can fill out the villains with bandits, bandit captains, maybe even a cult fanatic or some trained death dogs. For higher level versions we fan fill it out with thugs, drow, hobgoblins, orcs, and many other humanoid races. For higher level versions we can use giants, wights, or vampire spawn. We can recreate Soth's Charge and fill out the coming villains with revenants sworn to destroy the village led by a death knight. That's a challenge for just about any level character.

A Simple Seed for High Adventure

What makes Seven Samurai such a great story is its simplicity and the wonderful characters. We can capture this exact same benefit in our D&D game. The characters matter more than the story in our D&D games. The story can be simple: protect the village from marauders. The excitement comes from the choices the characters make, their interaction with the village, and the results of their defense.

Keep the seed of Seven Samurai in your pocket and you're always ready for a fantastic adventure.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh Chapter 7: Tammeraut's Fate

This article is one of a series of articles covering the hardback D&D adventure book, Ghosts of Saltmarsh. You can read all of these articles here:

Ghosts of Saltmarsh Session Zero
Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh Chapter 2: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh Chapter 3, Danger at Dunwater
Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh Chapter 4: Salvage Operation
Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh Chapter 5: Isle of the Abbey
Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh Chapter 6: The Final Enemy
Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh Chapter 8: The Styes
Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh Chapter 7: Tammeraut's Fate

Like those articles, this article contains spoilers for Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

A Potential Conclusion to Ghosts of Saltmarsh

You may have noticed that this article came after the one for The Styes. Though confusing, it was with intent. When running Ghosts of Saltmarsh as a single long campaign, it may work better to bring the Styes in before Tammeraut's Fate and then run Fate as the final conclusion to the whole Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign.

A Homebrewed Hack

As a stand-alone adventure, Tammeraut's Fate is built around an island about to be overrun with undead pirates. It includes a new town, some encounters with harpies and a peryton, and the defense of a hermitage on the island. There is an optional foray to go down to the wreckage of the Tammeraut on the bottom of the sea bed where a rift to the abyss pours out the poison of Orcus, demon prince of undeath.

In our version of events, as part of the larger Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign, we're going to reskin just about all of this adventure; not because it's bad as written but because we want to tie it together with everything that's come before.

Let's look at an alternative series of events and locations to end our Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign.

Our New Story

In our hacked version of Tammeraut's Fate there is an island out in the black seas that sits on the borders between the world and the abyssal realm of Tharizdun, the Chained God. This island has a huge monolith on it connected to a vast ethereal chain that connects it to Tharizdun's prison world. The ghost ship Tammeraut under the command of the undead Sea Prince Syrgaul, sails around the island along with an avatar of Tharizdun, the juvenile kraken in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book.

Deep in the sea, a huge rift in the surface of the ocean floor opens wider and wider as the two worlds draw together with the vast chain. The characters must find the island, destroy the monolith, delve through the rift to the other side, and destroy second monolith on the other side of the realm before fleeing back into the world. It's an epic story for the conclusion of our epic game.

We can break the quests for this story down into the following:

Battle the Tammeraut.
Kill the juvenile kraken.
Shatter the monolith on the island.
Go through the rift in the Endless Nadir to the abyssal realm of Tharizdun.
Shatter the monolith on the other side.
Escape back to the world.

Time for a Ship Battle

Tammaraut's Fate is the perfect opportunity to drop in a big ship battle into our Ghosts of Saltmarsh game. We can drop the ghost ship Tammaraut into the strange alien mists that surround the island above the Endless Nadir. We can use the same stat blocks used for the drowned pirates in Tammeraut's Fate but feel free to throw three dozen or so standard zombies into the mix as well. We can use any of the ship maps included in the appendices of Ghosts of Saltmarsh for the Tammeraut and let the players have fun destroying the ship with spells like wall of water and control water.

This is our big chance for an awesome sea battle so let's make the most of it.

The Isle of the Monolith

Out in the black seas lies a primitive isle that few mortals have ever seen and from which none have ever returned. It's an island of twisted organic rock, black spires piercing out into the sky, and a monolith that is clearly formed by conscious design and yet is millions of years old.

For inspiration of this island, read the story Dagon by HP Lovecraft. It's the perfect description of the antediluvian isle with a monolith depicting creatures no mortal has ever seen before. It's the perfect model for our cursed island.

The island itself has hollow spires of volcanic rock that contain a series of caves and tunnels. I reskinned this Dyson map for the location. If the characters sink the Tammeraut, they might hole up here as the undead crew comes ashore and hunts them down. A half-crazed mage might be likewise holed up here along with his apparatus of Kwalish; a good opportunity for some stressful roleplaying and access to a fun vehicle for exploring the Endless Nadir.

Other older and stranger creatures might live on the island. Native chuuls or even worse aberrations might wander freely on the island.

If the characters decide to destroy the monolith directly, they can do so with a series of Strength (Athletics) and Intelligence (Arcana) checks while they defend the hill upon which the monolith sits. Destroying the monolith breaks the chain on this side of the rift but the other must be broken as well to seal the rift completely.

The Endless Nadir

The Endless Nadir has changed hands many times. Originally, once a vast abolethic city, the Endless Nadir has fallen through the hands of sea elves, tritons, and even sahuagin. Now it is abandoned to all but the worst aberrations of the sea as the rift to the prison realm of Tharizdun grows.

We can steal location details of the Endless Nadir from the adventure Chuul in Ruins of the Grendleroot complete with a large abolethic ziggurat, a huge pillar of ancient recordings, and a twisted temple altar. All we have to add is the great rift in the center of the city and a huge ethereal chain leading up to the island above.

At the altar We might put a star spawn larva mage reskinned as a Tharizdun chained guardian along with a pair of star spawn hulks.

And where does that chain lead if we follow it down into the portal?

The Prison of Tharizdun

We can channel our own version of Hellraiser when the characters travel into the prison realm of Tharizdun. You are, of course, able to build out your own version of this dark world yourself but here are some of the key features I threw in mine:

It is a world of black acidic oceans that will boil the skin off of mortals if they are not careful.
The sky is dead gray with swirling storms and a tiny blue sun.
Strange ancient geometric shapes float and twist in the air.
An island of white bone sits in the black sea with another huge monolith atop it.
Tharizdun himself can be seen in the gray mists, a titan bound with spiked chains tearing into his flesh. His head is encased in black metal covering his eyes but not his screaming mouth. A single crack has exposed one eye which is the source of his influence towards mortals.
His malevolence manifests into armies of star spawn grues, star spawn manglers, and star spawn hulks. They crawl and swim through his cold acidic seas and over the island.
His angels, *star spawn larva mage reskinned into chained angels, float above the seas, their chain-forged wings floating out behind them like streamers. A half dozen of these monstrosities can be seen across the black sea.

The characters cannot survive long in this world. They must make it to the bone island and destroy the monolith before the chained angels arrive and shred them.

With the monolith destroyed they have only moments to make it back to Oerth or be trapped forever within Tharizdun's dark plane.

Some may not make it back at all.

End of the Threat of the Chained God

With the rift sealed, the remaining characters can return to Saltmarsh knowing that they have ended the threat of the Endless Nadir. Perhaps they might clean up any threats still posed by the Scarlet Brotherhood or even the vampire Xolec. Instead we might leap forward a year and see how our character faired after their long struggle fighting for the safety of Saltmarsh. Such one-year-later montages are my personal favorite way to end a campaign.

Thus closes another fantastic tale of high adventure.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.