"The trees bend, twist and rearrange themselves as the sun fades, replaced by a single massive moon hanging high in the sky. You find yourself somewhere altogether different with bigger more gnarled trees, everything more vibrant with color in the bright moonlight. The bold browns, purples and blues around you don't feel real, more like something from a beautiful painting. Yet here you stand..." This is a one-shot adventure through one of the twisted fairy tale baronies of Thelanis. In it, the players find themselves in a strange land seeking an item they know little about. They will encounter a village whose people have been turned to shrubs, be shrunk down to a 20th of their size in a garden of tiny trees, fight a tree which is also a beholder, and come face to face with the Lady in Shadow herself. The adventure is for four level 5 players (though adjusting for 3-6 players would be minimal effort) and is expected to take around five hours. It is a great introduction to the planes of Eberron for DMs and players alike. It includes: * An exciting mystery to unravel * Three vicious new monsters to fight: earth bear, topiary beast, and the treeholder * Simple rules for running a skill challenge * A series of detailed maps for each combat encounter and an image for the puzzle encounter
After undead start appearing near the local town of Angstadt, the Burgomaster and Father become worried. What could be causing these foul creatures to rise? After conducting research, the clergy discover that the throne room of a celestial avatar is located only a few days away from the town. Perhaps this holy site could hold a relic capable of turning the undead?
Anamdael is a small town remarkable only for its peacefulness. However, the town harbors a dark secret: Long ago, a resident entered into a pact with a Night Hag, whose services come at a price. Travelers who once gave little thought to Anamdael now hear rumors of a strange cult in its woods. Your party is hired to locate and return a missing person, last known to be traveling to Anamdael. Before you may enter “Mother’s” land, you face your first test. Your responses determine more than you know and set the stage for an eerie adventure.
One crazy night in Waterdeep. Start as tavern bouncers. End up on the Astral Plane. All in one crazy night in Waterdeep. The party has been hired for a simple mission: make sure the Slumbering Prince tavern doesn't get wrecked during the rowdy Midsummer Festival. And what better motivation than 200gp per person for a single night of work. Sound too good to be true? Well, here's the catch: all damages to the tavern are to be deducted from that amount. And there is no shortage of festival-goers looking to unwind by wrecking other people's stuff. Over the course of the festival, the party must deal with drunken wizards, vain bards, loud goliaths, incompetent parade goers, complaining neighbours, disruptive satyrs, aspiring cultists, and a full-on tavern brawl. As well as an unusual number of strange slugs crawling around. Slowly they become aware there is something off about the Slumbering Prince. And when a reckless noble disturbs the secrets beneath the tavern, our heroes must soon delve into the hidden dungeon themselves. Down below, they discover the terrible threat: a planar rift that can only be opened on Midsummer's Eve, and the slumbering demigod that awaits beyond, the great astral slug Cthumbra!
Everyone who’s anyone has heard of Starburn Academy. The elite boarding school is famous for teaching students to excel in magic, history, fighting, and anything else a precocious child in the city of Seledor needs to know. But now, one instructor at the school is using his position to carry out a nefarious plot which is at best unethical and at worst deeply dangerous. The only people standing in his way are a mage with an unreliable reputation and the handful of talented children she picked off the street to infiltrate the school and get the evidence needed to take him down. That is, you.
We get it. Factions are an integral part of D&D, but it's not always clear how to use them in your campaigns. Luckily, Factions of Sigil has you covered for each of the twelve main factions found across Sigil and the Outlands! This supplement goes over the various rules and lore around the primary factions found in Sigil and the Outlands, making it easy for any new or veteran DMs to integrate the factions more into the core stories being told, and making them feel more useful for the players that choose to join. A cult of star spawn has popped up in Sigil, and the Hands of Havoc have asked the characters to destroy it.
Sometimes protecting the cargo is easy but getting the pay not so much. The Bottle has been waiting on the docks for two days, no one has come down and no one dares to go up to see what happened and that is your ship, that is the ship that is going to take you and your cargo across the sea.
Wolpertinger, Wererat - Well! is a two-hour adventure for 1st-4th level characters, designed for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, with an urban theme, exploration, humor, and a small mystery to solve! Waterdeep, the City of Splendors, is brimming with exciting opportunities for adventurers - seemingly at every corner, backstabbing between rival guilds, intrigues among the noble houses, and treasures in forgotten places beckon. But today, a little girl is in trouble and needs the help of our heros in rescuing her pet "bunny"! This adventure is an unapologetically linear dungeon crawl – short, straight-forward, and to the point. It follows the three-pillar principle: combat, exploration, social interaction. The idea is to spice up the classic formula with varied challenges that result in a short, entertaining session. This makes this an excellent adventure for beginner players and DMs! Detailed support is provided for the DM in the form of roleplay advice for six completely fleshed out original NPCs, advice on the three pillars in each scene, and scenic sensory descriptions for every scene to make the adventure come to life. Included with this adventure are: + an original custom monster, the wolpertinger + six original fleshed out NPCs, including personality traits and roleplaying tips + 20 original (but mostly useless) magic items + six original diseases + one original trap + a complete original hand-drawn dungeon map covering the entire adventure
Player characters attacking the lair of monsters that have been menacing the local village is a common D&D trope. This adventure turns the trope on its head. In Goblin Defense, the players create goblin PCs, and have to fight off repeated attacks by adventurers who are stronger and better equipped than they are. Starting at level 1 and running until level 7, this module encompasses 16 battles against unique and typically themed groups of adventurers built using player character classes and rules. The module is designed for 3 players, each of whom takes on an individual role within the tribe, granting unique bonuses or options for actions outside of combat. Goblin Defense can also be played with 4 players, but is not recommended for 5 or more players without substantial revision. The players aren't alone. Each commands a squad of goblin minions who can help in combat... but goblins are fragile, and adventurers hit hard. Life as a goblin is often brief and violent. Many will die, but as long as some survive, the tribe will carry on. A simple ruleset is provided for managing actions during the downtime between each attack. During this time, players can work to train their minions to use better gear, hunt for food for their tribe, recruit replacement warriors, brew potions, and - most importantly - improve their lair and its defenses by adding walls, traps, tunnels, doors, alarms, and anything else their creative minds can come up with. As the exact layout and placement of defensive features is critical, this is designed to be played on a grid. A PDF is included with the map scaled to print on 24"x36" (Arch D) size paper, available at most print shops. DMs may enjoy the chance to briefly try out many different character class and subclass combinations as they attack and eventually fall to the goblin pests they're trying to eliminate. Page count: Information for the DM only 6 Information for the players 4 Adventurer statblocks 37
Bring your chilling campaign to life with this companion supplement for Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden! Tales from the Frozen North presents 10 handcrafted encounters between 15 to 90 minutes in length for your adventures across the frozen wasteland. They are specifically written around the themes of paranoia, isolation and secrecy, with a particular focus on exploration.
"You enter some sort of corridor, but it is a far departure from the airship hallway you expected. The walls and ceiling are rusty chain-link fences and the floor is a corroded mesh of iron slats. Beyond the fence is a void of black, unmoving emptiness which carries the faint scent of ozone and rotten meat..." Inspired by horror franchises such as Silent Hill and Saw, Flight of Madness is a one-shot horror adventure in which the players must venture though an airship which has been warped by the plane of Xoriat--also known as the Realm of Madness! During the adventure the players will attempt to save the crew from unspeakable horrors, uncover the nature of the madness that has afflicted the ship, and face off against the one who appears to be responsible for all of this. But is everything as it seems? The adventure is for four level 5 players and is expected to take around 5 hours to complete. It is a great introduction to the darker side of Eberron for DMs and players alike. • An exciting mystery to unravel, with multiple interpretations and endings • An alternative to the madness mechanics provided in the Dungeon Masters Guide, which is integral to the final encounter of the adventure • Two terrifying new monsters: the winged torso and corrupted captain • Detailed battle maps as well as a map of the ship • Newspaper hand outs for the end of the adventure • Terrifying monster art WARNING: This is a horror adventure aimed at mature audiences and as such includes extreme violence and disturbing scenes. Before running this adventure it is recommended that you confirm that your players are comfortable with the adventure’s contents.
The Ghost Tribe of Orcs have been driven from their home under the Sword Mountains by some terrible evil and they now see Phandalin as their best option for a new home. The heroes, who are on their way to Phandalin for a much needed rest after their adventures in the Lost Mine, must make it to town in time to warn the inhabitants and help prepare for the orc attack. Orcs to Phandalin is the first of four parts in the After Lost Mine series and will detail the trip to Phandalin. There will be three subsequent adventures: Part II, which details the battle to save the city; Part III, which details the trip to the orc’s cave settlement; and Part IV, detailing the party’s mission to deal with the terror from the Underdark that drove the orcs out of their home.
Centuries ago, a beholder named Yeryl fled from the place of his birth and wandered the countryside in search for a place to call home. After many sleepless nights spent carving out a safe nook for himself in the wilderness, he at last slipped into slumber. In his dreams, he found an ideal place for his lair: long-abandoned ruins hidden amidst a dull and barren valley. Yeryl spent years transforming the place to suit his paranoid designs. Visitors were rare enough, and the few that made it to Yeryl’s lair were quickly destroyed or forced into the beholder’s service, building the lair ever deeper and more magnificent. As time went on, Yeryl finally completed his task. Safe at last, but with nothing to occupy his mind, Yeryl was struck by melancholy; was this lonely and empty life truly what he had chosen for himself? On that day, Yeryl made a decision: next time an adventurer came to his lair, he would welcome them in. With this resolution in mind, Yeryl began to dismantle his traps and replace them with ones he considered to be more fun. Unfortunately, for all his good intents, Yeryl has not yet realised that killing people is a bad way of getting them to like him. Yeryl's Super Happy Fun Murder Dungeon is a highly obnoxious and mildly ridiculous collection of traps, combat and puzzles designed to test your players' wits and patience. It is optimised for a group of four to five 3rd level players, but the text also contains a guide for level adjustments for different sized groups.
The PCs are sent to investigate a sculpture of the goddess Ezra with seemingly miracle-granting powers. The investigation takes the heroes on a pilgrimage to a forgotten chapel, where they encounter a terrible plague, a wererat police force, death, resurrection, mist horrors, and the miracles of the statue itself.
Ever needed to spice up a stay in a city? Or, ever needed something to fill the gap between sessions when you are missing a player? Add a little flavor to the adventurers’ city visits with a rampaging mummy, a circus gone wild, a haunted inn, and much, much, more. This 80-page supplement contains 26 encounters written by best-selling Dungeon Masters Guild writers and new writers! Encounters in the Savage Cities includes: •26 unique encounters / mini-adventures ◦A mix of combat, roleplay, and investigation •Scaling Suggestions for CR 1-10 •New creatures •Custom Art •Downloadable Custom Maps (as a separate file) These encounters are location generic and are designed to be easily added to any campaign. Use them to introduce new players, as inspiration for a new campaign, as a one-shot, or whatever else you can think of.
A tenday ago, the human settlers of Olostin’s Hold started hearing strange noises coming from the distant White Stag Hills. Noises of battle. Incessant sounds of thundering hooves, clashing steel, flying arrows, and screams of agony heard from miles away. Could those be the awakened spirits of the past? And if so, what could be done to lay them to rest? The answers are found in Cairn of the Centaur Conqueror, a Feywild dungeon that only appears once every 777 years...
We get it. Factions are an integral part of D&D, but it's not always clear how to use them in your campaigns. Luckily, Factions of Sigil has you covered for each of the twelve main factions found across Sigil and the Outlands! This supplement goes over the various rules and lore around the primary factions found in Sigil and the Outlands, making it easy for any new or veteran DMs to integrate the factions more into the core stories being told, and making them feel more useful for the players that choose to join. Rumors of a means to access the Plane of Mirrors has spurred the Society of Sensations to request the characters enter the demi-plane and record the sensations and experiences within.
From time out of mind, the standing stones known as the Circle of Cahervaniel have stood lonely vigil on a grassy hilltop. Sheepherders once moved their flocks over the hill and through the circle, sometimes resting in the cool shadows cast by the ancient stones. Everything changed when a stone finger fell, revealing a fissure in the earth. Now, dark shadows caress the circle after the sun sets. Creatures out of nightmare dance upon the hillside at night. Many swear that a unicorn of deepest ebony now hunts all upon two legs who draw near, while stunted creatures scurry in the shadows, abducting sheep from their sheds and drawing them down below ground for food. After the disappearance of a sheperd, fear grows stronger in neighboring villages. Who will brave the black hollow of the ancient Circle of Cahervaniel? Heroes of stern mettle must descend into the cavity and explore the ancient spaces existing there. Product History "The Shattered Circle" (1999), by Bruce R. Cordell, is a generic adventure for AD&D 2e. It was published in January 1999. Origins: Another Generic. After Wizards of the Coast began publishing D&D, their first year and a half of generic adventures were all classic revivals: returns to RPGA tournaments, to classic adventures, and to Dungeon scenarios. Even "A Paladin in Hell" (1998) was a return in its own way, to the demons and devils that TSR had become afraid of. Wizards was staking out new ground by reclaiming the past. "The Shattered Circle" (1999) was the first generic Wizards adventure that was simply a generic adventure, with no deeper origins and no hidden motives. Artifacts of Note. the foundingstone and the harp Euphonious are both one-off named magic items. However, it's sword Icerazor that's the most interesting. It's said to have grown from a shard of Frostrazor — a sword that would only appear ten months later in Return to White Plume Mountain (1999). There, it's listed as one of Keraptis' four implements of power, alongside Wave, Blackrazor, and Whelm — meaning that Icerazor (and this adventure) are just one step removed from White Plume Mountain itself. Monsters of Note: Chitine. It's somewhat curious, given the Greyhawk and Neverness connections, to note that the chitine debuted in MC11: "Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix" (1991). The spider-humanoids have generally been a Realms creature, featuring in bestiaries and histories for that setting. However, they also received a more generic "Ecology of the Chitine" in Dragon #223 (November 1995), which introduced the choldrith, or chitine priestess. This is their major adventure appearance. When asked about pronouncing their name Cordell says that he "can't be 100% sure of the original designer's pronunciation", but he prefers "KI-TEEN". About the Creators. By 1999, Cordell was one of D&D's most prolific writers. He'd previously authored many slightly related adventures, such as The Gates of Firestorm Peak(1996) and the sahuagin (1997) and illithid (1998) Monstrous Arcana adventure trilogies. This conversion guide allows DMs to run the original module with 5th Edition rules. To use this conversion guide you will need a copy of The Shattered Circle, originally available in hard-copy and now for sale in Digital format at the DMs Guild. This adventure is a generic adventure, not specifically based in any existing setting. Suggestions are given in the conversion guide to place the adventure in the Forgotten Realms.
A mystery scenario involving exploration of a drow archmage's tower while trying to solve the mystery of his involvement to the latest rumors of kidnapings in the nearby town. Benevolent academic or vile predator? The good people of Fern do not seem to agree these days about the nature of the owner of the iconic Dusk Tower. With a supporting cast that includes an innkeeping druid, a scorned sculptor, a belittled apprentice, an invisible butler, and a mysterious tower basement the heroes are sure to have their hands full. Can they uncover the secrets of Dusk Tower before it is too late?
Expand your game with this collection of 56 NPCs of various Challenge Ratings, thirteen of which include maps and details of their lairs. Add these NPCs as a side-quest, a main villain, a one-shot, a bounty for easy money, or however else you wish. Written by some of the best-selling authors on the Dungeon Masters Guild and outstanding podcasters, each NPC includes an image, a backstory, motives, flaws, and a stat block. Some even include new magic items!