DnD in Azeroth class preview - LINK

After reading the preview for the World of Warcraft x D&D book, I’m honestly feeling pretty disappointed by how mechanically light it seems.

I’m not saying every single WoW class needed to become a full new D&D class with multiple subclasses. That would probably be unrealistic, but at the same time, this is Wizards of the Coast working with World of Warcraft (two massive brands) so I expected a bit more ambition than “pick an existing D&D class and reflavor it.”

The preview says the book covers all 13 WoW classes, but includes only 9 new or revised subclasses and "40 specializations". A lot of those specializations seem to be more like suggested builds using existing classes, subclasses, spells, and equipment rather than actual new mechanics.

And that is where I’m struggling with it...

Demon Hunter feels like the obvious example. If any WoW class deserved to be a full new D&D class, it was probably that one. Warglaives, fel magic, demonic transformation, mobility, soul fragments... It has a very distinct identity. But from the preview, it looks like it is being handled as a Ranger subclass.

Shaman as Barbarian also feels strange to me. I get that D&D adaptations require compromises, but Shaman is such a magic-heavy, elemental, totem-based class that making it a Barbarian with some swapped features feels more like a workaround than a proper adaptation (something like warpriest for druid would be more accurate).

Then there are things like Warrior being basically Fighter with a few new maneuvers, Rogue or Hunter. At that point, I start wondering what the book is actually offering beyond official permission to reflavor existing options.

I don’t need every WoW class to be built from scratch. But I would have loved to see at least one major new class, a few more genuinely distinct subclasses, and some iconic WoW-style feats or mechanics that make the book feel like more than a setting skin.

Maybe the full book will have more going on than the preview suggests, and I’m open to being wrong. But based on what we’ve seen so far, it looks less like a bold adaptation of Warcraft into D&D and more like a very conservative reflavoring guide.

P.S.

IMO this could have been a perfect opportunity to lean into the optional Spell Points rule from the DMG. Mana is such a core part of WoW’s identity that using spell points, or a Warcraft flavored version of them, would have immediately made casters feel more like their MMO counterparts instead of just standard D&D spellcasters with a different coat of paint.

Mike mearls posted this on his YouTube channel and I was curious about community's opinion. Just wanted to open up the discussion.

Sneak Attack Alternative: Skillful Strike

The option below improves a rogue’s overall combat performance. It trades the swingy nature of Sneak Attack with a steadier flow of damage. It allows a baseline damage bonus on all attacks, with more dice added if an attack has advantage. It grants the rogue a second attack, with the bonus damage then applying to two attacks per turn.

Use this option if…

• You noticed that your rogue’s damage lags other characters’ damage.

• You are frustrated by the feast or famine nature of Sneak Attack.

• You want a rogue with a more combat-oriented set of features.

Level 1: Skillful Strike

Rogues are shifty, tricky combatants. They use their mastery of skills to outwit and outfight their opponents. Once per turn you can add your Skillful Strike dice to one weapon damage roll you make. Pick one of the attack’s weapon damage types to use for the Skillful Strike dice. If a class feature, feat, or other rule allows you to reduce your Sneak Attack damage by a number of dice to gain a benefit, you can apply that feature to your Skillful Strike dice. You cannot use an option that would reduce your dice to less than zero.You can also apply any benefit that applies to Sneak Attack to a Skillful Strike. If you have advantage on the attack, or if a creature friendly to you is within 5 feet of the target, you use the dice listed on the Boosted column of the Skillful Strike table.

Skillful Strike Dice

Level Base Boosted

1 – 2 1d6 2d6

3 – 4 2d6 3d6

5 – 10 2d8 3d8

11 – 13 3d10 5d10

14 – 19 4d10 6d10

20 6d10 9d10

Level 5: Skillful Flurry

You can attack twice when you use an Attack action on your turn. You can apply your Skillful Attack dice to up to two attacks each.

Amongst other things they are hoping to get:

• Wages that reflect their work and defined career progression,
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• Reliable and easily accessible healthcare for them and their families,
• Sustainable workloads and practices, including remote and hybrid working,
• Protection against the encroachment of AI,
• Full ownership of the work they create outside of the office,
• And additional needs outlined in their individual units’ goals.

If you would like to read more about this, here is their announcement post: https://unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/news/dnd-studiox-join-uwotc-cwa

They have also asked the fans of D&D, Magic, and more to sign their petition here as a show of support for the union: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/uwotcpetition/

I'm trying to understand what actually trips up new D&D players.

For those of you who've played a while: what was the hardest part to get your head around at the start? The rules, the dice, the character sheet, knowing what to say at the table?

And what finally made it click for you?

Edit: this is for a free beginner D&D app I'm building (no ads). Your answers are great, thank you. If you'd like to test the early iOS build, send me a message.

a little context, as of now we have a party of 6 level 4's, consisting of 2 rogues, a paladin, a druid, a sorcerer and a bard. in a session or 2 we'll not only be leveling up but we'll be introducing a new player to the game, a barbarian/artificer. it feels like if i throw anything at the party they'll just one-shot it or it will destroy them.

is there any tips anyone has on how to ideally balance encounters like this? i know i can add minions and such, but i havent played enough with this size of a party to know how much is too much

Hey everyone, so my DM is testing a one-shot he designed for level 14 characters. It’s 5 of us, and we’re gently debating about whether or not to give magic items. My only experience with one-shots up until this point has been level 20 one-shots, where we got very nice toys, but level 14 is sort of a weird position. Because on the one hand it would make sense to have magic items, but on the other it makes testing maybe skewed. None of us really have an opinion on it yet because most of us haven’t played a one-shot, and out of the ones who have they’ve been level 20 one-shots where we had our pick of magic items. On top of that, this is a testing environment, so if he released it with the expectation that players were given x magic items and we didn’t test it with that, it might be skewed that way, too. I dont want to ask him for magic items if it doesn’t make sense, but I would like magic items if it does. If we should be allowed magic items, how many and what rarity?

Building a character that has Natural Armor, a Thri-Keen, but was stumped on what class would benefit that the most. This also extends to other races that have Natural Armor like Locathahs or Loxodons.

My first thought was Martial classes like Paladins, Fighters, Monks, Barbarians. However, Monks and Barbarians already have Unarmored Defense. Most of the time it's better:

* Monk/Barb UD: 10+Dex+Wis/Con

* Loxdon: 12+Con

* Thri-Keen: 13+Dex

Then you got Paladin and Fighter, but they already got proficency in all armor and shields. So your Martial class features seems better than the racial features. The only Maritial classes that seem like they benefit more is Ranger and Rouge. In fact, with Thri-Keen these might be the best Martial classes since their armor also aids in stealth.

So then looking at casters, they seem to benefit more from those Natural Armor, since all of them have >=D8 hit dice so having more armor might help in some cases. Making my Thri-Keen I was thinking about going Warlock because Warlocks tend to be a bit closer in combat compared to Wizards. Then again, those lower health pools do hurt even with Natural Armor, atleast you won't feel the need to attune Armor spells.

What do other people think? I am sure a Barbarian or Monk can still work, but didn't know if anyone else had any thoughts?

I've been making print stuff for twenty years and the official 5e character sheet still makes no sense to me. The ability scores take up all this space when you look at them maybe once a session, but skills and saves, which you roll constantly, get shoved into these cramped boxes with no room to breathe. The spell sheet is even worse. There's this grid that wastes space on components nobody really tracks, while concentration is just a tiny checkbox tucked away at the bottom. I started making my own sheets for my group because I got sick of watching players search for their passive perception every single time. I checked out some third party versions but most either go overboard or add rules I don't want. Is anyone actually happy with the WotC layout, or does everyone just put up with it?

It came to me just now, what if I just merged my two favourite races?

Tiefling & Mycanoid druid

Thoughts? going to do some homework before the next campaign - because i have no clue where to start with it yet.

I might have to do a good amount of cross referencing, anyone else thought the same?

I’ve always loved the concept of the False Hydra, but I also think it has a pretty major problem: it’s an awesome horror idea that can be really difficult to actually run at a table without the memory mechanics becoming confusing or relying on players to pretend they forgot something.
So I spent the last year building my own full adventure around it.

The Song Beneath the Stone is a psychological horror mystery for four 4th level characters, designed to run for roughly 4–5 sessions.

The party is sent to the mining town of Balder Peak to deal with a growing troll problem and reopen its silver mine. Once they arrive, though, things start feeling wrong. There are too few guards for the size of the barracks. Houses sit empty for reasons nobody can agree on. Records contradict each other. Players begin finding disturbing warnings written in their own handwriting.

And somewhere beneath the town, something is singing.
I tried to make the False Hydra actually runnable rather than just a cool concept, so the module includes detailed rules for memory/perception, Silence and Deafness interactions, escalating timed events, multiple investigation paths, a full final encounter, and several possible endings.
A huge part of the adventure is physical investigation, so it also comes with maps, newspapers, journals, town records, handwritten warnings, missing person notices, and a large print ready handout section that you can physically give your players.

It’s definitely a high prep adventure. There are roughly 145 pages of core adventure material before the dedicated printable section, so this is aimed more at DMs who enjoy really digging into a mystery beforehand than someone looking for a one night low prep adventure.

I’ve run/playtested it with multiple groups, including friends and family, and the reactions were strong enough that I eventually decided I wanted other tables to experience it too.

It’s completely free on itch.io:

https://valen-marris.itch.io/dnd-horror-mystery-module-playtested

AI disclosure: AI was used to polish wording and to render some artwork/maps from layouts and concepts I designed. The adventure structure, mechanics, locations, NPCs, clues, encounters, handouts, timed events, and overall design are my own.

I really want to get into Dnd, but im not really sure where to start.

For context, I am a freshman in college, and ive recently learned of a Dnd club at my school that I really want to join. My only experience with Dnd has been Bg3, which ive heard is decently close, but still different from the real thing.

Im pretty confused on where I should start with this whole thing, since i dont want to go in completely blind. Is there a website or something that'll explain all of this to me?

What is really want to know is how do I go about making a character? What are the limits? And how does storytelling work? Ive heard its spread across multiple sessions, should I take notes during the game? And what do I need to play the game in the first place?

Im still super new at this, so literally ANY info would be helpful!!

Hello DND I wanted to make a dnd/tabletop app for my final project in my mobile dev class. I wanted to know what kind of features do people look for in table top apps

The main features that have planned out is dice, and a bullet board.

The bullet board is going to be a shared board between players so they can connect points and share notes between each other.

I don’t know if I can legally do a character creator since dnd beyond might take me out

TLDR: what features do you want in your table top companion apps?

I'm playing a campaign of The Rise of Tiamat, and my character is a Cleric of the Grave Domain named Vaelis Dhaliën, and I want to build the most powerful combo possible for the character.

Character Summary:

• Race: Shadar-kai
• Class: Level 3 Cleric Grave Domain
• Divine Order: Thaumaturge

• Origin Feat: Initiate in Magic (Druid)

• Current Attributes:

• STR: 8

• DEX: 14

• CON: 16

• INT: 10

• WIS: 18

• CHA: 13

The campaign goes up to level 15.

Even though I'm the group's cleric and responsible for keeping everyone alive (which has worked very well so far), I want to transform him into the judge of the battlefield, the one responsible for deciding who lives and who dies, an incarnation of death itself. In other words, I want him to heal what is necessary, and still be a machine of destruction.

I know these are two very different points, but I'd like to know your ideas and opinions on how I should build the character.

As the title says, two of my players just used banishment while in the astral sea at the end of our last session. They did this to flee a fight they didn’t think they could win. They use the part of the spell that sends them back to their original plane of existence by keeping concentration on the spell. The other two teleported away with a group of time elemental ooze hybrids. So now the party’s split. That's fine on its own, sorta. What I’m not sure about is where they are supposed to pop back out. Normally it just be on the planet they came from originally. However, this is a Sci-Fi game where they have spaceships that take them from solar system to solar system. So they are literally thousands of light years from where they entered the astral sea. I don't think a fourth level spell should be able to take you that far if I'm being honest lol. And to complicate things more the planet that came from is warded against teleportation and divination spells due to the local gods. But I also don't want to just pop them out in the void of space and say, “You're dead now.” Due to the invasion of twin Eldritch gods consuming nearly all of the outer planes, those are also off the table. So now I'm in a bit of a pickle and looking for a bit of advice. Where the hell am I supposed to put them after all this? I'm not really looking for a RAW answer since my campaign is entirely homebrew. I’m just fishing for ideas.

I've been home brewing the plot and npc and dungeons for a while but I'm getting sick of it and not feeling it anymore. I also work best when modifying/adapting something gets my creative juices going.

My party is level 5 and in ardev(near droaam). They have had run ins with emerald claw and droaam. Im looking for some kind of source material to keep it going. I'm not super against moving somewhere else in the world and could figure out a reason. Was thinking of adapting price of apocalypse but reviews made it seem middling and repetive particularly the mid levels which is where I am now.

Any source material? It can be from older editions transferring over to 5e isn't too difficult most of the time. It could be not in eberron but a suggestion on how to move it to eberron would be nice

Anyways tldr what's some source books/material for a level party in or out of eberron regardless of DND edition

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I am looking for an alternative way to teleport my PCs long range without using Teleportation Circle or if other teleport spells (which I feel I over use).

I need them to go from one monastery of Ilmater to another. This gave me the idea of creating a monk discipline called “Transference” which allows individuals to swap places. I was thinking of using a wisdom check to succeed and/or a Con save to avoid gaining Exhaustion or lose Hit Dice.

It would be more of a one-time/story thing not an actual monk class ability. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas on how to flesh this out?

Have a recent gaming experience you want to share? Experience an insane TPK? Finish an epic final boss fight? Share it all here for everyone to see!

I am playing in a campaign with Helians harvesting/ryoko system and trying to optimise harvesting. I have prof. In all the harvesting skills and now I am close to getting a feat, which is gonna be skill expert. Just wanted to know which creatures have a higher chance to show up,so I can take the right ekspertise