I have seen this said over and over again: You can use the darkness + devil's sight combo but it will hinder the rest of your party.

Is that really true?

When you cast darkness, you get to choose where to place it. In many cases, that by itself will have utility. You might be able to cast it over ranged or spell-casting enemies forcing them to leave their position. You might be able to place it so that one of your party members gets a "free" disengage. You might be able to place it so that a rogue can bonus action sneak in the open and then move for a backstab.

In the worst case, the enemy has some non-visual or devil's sight sense ability, but I think that is pretty rare and obvious (devils, dragons, elementals, creatures of pure darkness).

But in the average case, the advantage and disadvantage cancel out. Even that can be an advantage, if the enemy was getting advantage from some other game mechanic.

So yes, darkness is pretty situational if you literally have no way to take advantage of it, but even one character that has devil's sight might be enough to tip the balance. This is particularly true if one of the characters without devil's sight casts darkness (which is better action economy).

The homebrew setting I'm running and developing in my Dungeons & Dragons 5e campaign consists of an endless universe filled with infinite worlds. Since I can't create infinite worlds on demand, I've divided the universe into star sectors, each containing a number of worlds. These worlds, not planets, are any celestial bodies inhabited by humanoids, acting as different planes accessible through chappa'ais (magical portals from an ancient civilization), magic, or spelljammers. Currently, the PCs are in their home sector and can travel between about 10 different worlds (so far, at level 12, they've visited a total of 5).

Separate from these worlds but withing the same sector, is Astra Taldea, a group of asteroids bound and connected to each other by ancient and gargantuan magical chains, forming a kind of archipelago. This group of asteroids travels through space along this star sector, pulled by a herd of colossal and ancient kindoris.

Astra Taldea is formed by asteroids similar to Rock of Bral and is inhabited by five humanoid races: the Astral Elves, the Githyanki, the Tenno humans, the Skittermanders, and the Plasmoids. These humanoids possess technology similar to Treasure Planet and Spelljammer. The Astra Taldeans rarely travel to the other worlds in the sector, and some are unaware of their existence.

No one truly knows who formed Astra Taldea, but it wasn't any of the races that inhabit it today, despite each race's legends claiming it was them.

Astra Taldea won't be accessible during this first campaign, but it will be during the next one. I would like some ideas to elaborate futher more Astra Taldea for this second campaign.

EDIT: I'm looking for location, point of interest or hook ideas.

I'm playing in my first ever campaign and I close a Hexblade Warlock. I like the abilities granted by that patron, but none of the spells from that additional spell list are speaking to me. I'm not saying they're not powerful or useful, just not especially so.

Are there any of them that you think I might be under-evaluating?

I’d love to hear about it. I’m using a fighter/barbarian Zoro from One Piece this weekend and I have a monk Kusuriuri from Mononoke. An interesting element to me to bring in outside characters into this fantasy world

I did some quick googling, and found a lot of classes that used to exist in D&D - I'm just going to go ahead and assume they aren't all unique enough to be their own class. But, I also find it difficult to believe that there isn't a single class in here at least as different from current classes as current classes are from each other.

Not expecting anyone to care about the whole list, but is there anything familiar from it people would say would make sense as a subclass or wouldn't make sense as only a subclass?

• Warlord
• Warden
• Truenamer
• Totemist
• Swordsage
• Swordmage (are these two genuinely different classes?)
• Shaman
• Seeker
• Runepriest
• Psychic Warrior
• Psion
• Ninja
• Invoker
• Incarnate
• Factotum
• Duskblade
• Dread Necromancer
• Dragonfire Adept
• Crusader
• Binder
• Beguiler
• Battlemind
• Avenger
• Ardent
• Archivist

Since Hexblade doesnt exist in 2024...yet...Would Undead be the next best option for a Raven Queen based warlock especially flavor wise. I do know you can still use 2014 classes in 5.5 but I kinda wanna just stick with the updated classes.

So the party is in the forest of mir, trying to enter myth dyraalis, and as a way to enter I had them encounter a green hag who, in exchange for the memory of a loved one, would give them necklaces with a rune that would allow them to pass through the mythal.

Long story short the player who had to give the memory refused, so as an alternative I improvised the hag asking for a black dragon’s tooth (young). The party headed south where they thought there would be spiders to xp farm before going after the black dragon; instead I had the dragon appear in the swamp (He scared away the spiders).

I didn’t want to do a tpk so I played the dragon similar to smaug but slightly more “reasonable”. He asked the party for the head of a hobgoblin warlord who stood in his way of claiming the forest for his own, then he would consider giving them one of his teeth.

Okay sooo the party succeeded in the mission; so now I’m thinking the dragon should order the paladin (black dragon born and squire of the purple dragon) to try and pull it off. Here’s where I get stumped. I don’t know wether to have the black dragon lay a curse on the paladin, given his allegiance to the purple dragon; or have him straight up refuse to give them a tooth and go after myth dyraalis now that there’s no rival conquerors (hobgoblins).

For context I tried to play the dragon as an prideful, deceitful, and cruel dragon, but I don’t wanna catch my players off guard; does anyone hace advice in how to handle this?

Os explico no he jugado a D&D en mi vida, y mis amigos (que tampoco lo han jugado nunca) quieren probar. Quieren que sea el DM voy a imprimirme resúmenes de cada raza y clase para que elijan. Estoy buscando una campaña que hacer, a poder ser que sea de una sesión, porque si sale bien vamos a pillarnos el kit de inicio (primero quieren ver si les gusta para meter pasta). ¿Me pasáis alguna campaña medio sencillita, por favor? Y si me dan algún tip y cosas que debería llevar, se lo agradecería mucho

Forgive me if this is not the subreddit for this. I picked up Arcana Unleashed today and the enchantment adept feat has hold person listed as a third level spell. Is there a clear consensus that this is a misprint? Has there been any kind of statement from Wizards? The book has technically been available for a few weeks now, they must have heard of the issue.

We get a lot of polls asking folks what their favorite level to play at is. And those results are often used to make inferences about what level players would like campaigns to end at, but insofar as I can tell, it has been years since that more specific question was asked.

I know a lot of people are going to look at this and think, “well it depends” or “the campaign should end when it reaches a natural end point.” If you are in that camp, please search your heart of hearts and ask yourself, under ideal circumstances, in the most perfect campaign you can imagine, at what level would that natural end point arrive?