Zia Workshop

Category: TTRPG Advice

  • Make players attached to their characters

    As a player, I’ve always had a give and take relationship with my characters – I’ve never had my character die, despite everything and all my dumb tactics that rely too heavily on luck. I haven’t felt a connection to most of my characters, despite their backgrounds and in depth stories, that is, until I…

  • Turn your character concepts into monster stat blocks

    If you’re like me, you have way more character ideas than opportunities to play them, especially since I’m the forever DM. I’ve now begun to take some of my favorites and turn them into monster stat blocks. There are a couple reasons this is good – firstly, these characters you made can be used more…

  • Homebrew magic item with your players

    I made the mistake of building homebrew items for specific characters but not telling the players who they were for. For example, I made gauntlets that provide a mini-smite for my fighter since they always talk about not dealing enough damage, and filled with flavor that player would like. When they received it, the party…

  • The case for Signature Items

    I think one of the coolest things about DnD and RPGs as a whole is how you can really make an item feel like it’s yours. You’re 5th level and you’ve been using this greataxe since you were saving your town from giant rats? That’s awesome! But now comes along a greatsword that’s got better…

  • Making more rich and dynamic combats – a checklist

    I was inspired by a recent podcast of Sly Flourish’s, and have made a kind of checklist of ways to make combats interesting. Most combats don’t need many, if any, of these at all. In general, it’s better to keep these to the larger or more important battles. Edit: Interesting Monsters + Fantastic Location paired…

  • Quick and dirty guide to building a new monster stat block

    Let’s face it, we all have a dozen monster and character ideas we will never get to use. When making a monster stat block, it’s best to take a stat block that already exists and tweak it, rather than build one from scratch. Sometimes reflavoring and adjusting doesn’t work out well, and it actually is…

  • Pursuit (Chase) Alternate Rules

    Ok, here are my Pursuit (Chase) rules. These rules are versatile and can be used for different kinds of chases, races, or any other kind of thing where the party is moving at a more or less constant speed. These rules do not necessarily follow the standard DnD rules, and are designed to be a…

  • Alternate Armor – Avoidance DCs

    I know MCDM was prototyping it for a little bit, and the feedback was that it really felt like the GM was playing by a different set of rules than the PCs. I’m interested to see how it would play out – I made a rudimentary version of 5e where monster attack rolls were replaced…

  • Making compelling villain stat blocks: A Guide

    Ok, to compress what makes a villain compelling on its stat block:Strong Theme. I think a strong theme is vital. A statblock should reinforce the theme as much as possible. A gunslinger boss should have a different way to parry an attack than the spiky armor boss or the illusionist boss.Omnipresent in battle. There isn’t…

  • Lessons I learned from the best DnD session I’ve ever run

    Context: the level 14 party of 3 is fighting an Elder Brain Dragon (whose dragon part was once their friend) as it teleports to a city to join in destroying it entirely. The boss wasn’t the elder brain dragon itself, but rather a named NPC who uses the Elder Brain’s power. The fight was about defeating…

  • What even are levels in 5e?

    A wizard academy… shouldn’t let a wizards be a level 20 adventurer. Nor should an adventurer get all these powers in a month. I think that levels are Adventuring levels. A wizard at an academy should be able to do ~4th-5th level spells, but not quickly, and maybe not many times per day. An adventurer…

  • A Deep Dive into different 5e travel and exploration styles

    As I’m writing this, I am realizing I can probably write a proper full paper on what exploration is in 5e. But it boils down to: Exploration Deep Dive Travel and exploration often get conflated with one another, but I would argue that travel is but one aspect of exploration What even is exploration? (in…

  • Dirty Guide to keeping dungeons and boss fights interesting and introducing mechanics to your DnD game

    I’ve found a few things that make mechanics in boss fights fun, rather than frustrating. But first, let’s talk about how DnD differs from a videogame. The biggest two differences I can tell are visually seeing mechanics and replayability. In a game, it’s easy to see the glowing enemy, or see the debuff that is…