Crit Academy Interviews DMsguild.com Adebt M.T Black on his amazing best selling Dungeons and Dragons supplement "The Art of War". Over two thousand years ago, a philosopher-general named Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War, the seminal work on military strategy. Discover how you can use these ancient secrets to master the game of Dungeons & Dragons!
Crit Academy Interviews DMsguild.com Adebt M.T Black on his amazing best selling Dungeons and Dragons supplement "The Art of War". Over two thousand years ago, a philosopher-general named Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War, the seminal work on military strategy. Discover how you can use these ancient secrets to master the game of Dungeons & Dragons!
Over two thousand years ago, a philosopher-general named Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War, the seminal work on military strategy. Discover how you can use these ancient secrets to master the game of Dungeons & Dragons!
This book has the following chapters, each one packed with information:
Campaigning - seeking quick victories, taking short and long rests, setting up a base camp, managing equipment
Strategic Combat - knowing when to fight, handling superior forces, having a common spirit, using surprise, assessing combat capacity
Tactical Roles - defenders, strikers, controllers, boosters
Use of Energy - understanding the action economy, using the action economy, class-specific examples, feats examples
Weak Points and Strong - defense profiles, general damage strategies
Combat Maneuvers - defending a flank, attacking a flank, hit-and-run attacking, stonewalling, retreating
Various Tactics - combat advantage, fire focus, target priority, ranged attacks, reach weapons, buffing, grappling, tactical healing
Movement and Development - force development, concentration and dispersal, movement in combat
Cover and Terrain - types of cover, attacking from cover, utilizing terrain
Situations and Combinations - optimization vs narration, multiclassing essentials, class specific combinations
Attacking with Magic - damage spells, buff spells, debuff spells, control spells, utility spells, recommended spells by class
Gathering Information - research, espionage
Belly! From Patron Oliver aka Spire of Tree of Dice! Visit him to get the entire backstory here!
Abandoned at a young age, Belly (formerly Kewan Benson) lived rough on the streets of a densely populated city, staying in gangs to survive. Quickly gaining a reputation for both toughness and ruthlessness, he took over his gang and led them to prosperity. Seeking greater wealth, he left his once familiar home city to develop a new operation outside its walls; one of freedom and banditry. Now he leads the region’s largest bandit organisation – the Iron Bandits – and waylays caravans traveling between towns and cities, even striking at some smaller settlements directly.
This is a great background for a barbarian, monk or fighter who wants to take the criminal background. The criminal contact feature could be Belly’s second in command currently running the gang while he is away.
Monster Variant:
Fey Knight
Origin: Wight
Loses Immunities, and resistance to necrotic, silvered weapons weakness. Sunlight Sensitivity.
Life drain is changed to Harvest’s Sorrow, losing the ability to raise slain humanoids as zombies. But otherwise stays the same.
Innate Spellcasting. The Fey Knight spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 13). The Fey knight can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components.
At will: Minor Illusion
3/day each: Ensnaring Strike, Misty Step
Feywild Challenge: The fey knight uses its action to issue a mystical challenge to a creature who can see or hear it. If they dare ignore your challenge of combat they psychically punished for their audacity. Whenever a creature that you have challenged hits a creature other than you with an attack, that creature takes psychic 4(1d6) psychic damage. This effect ends after 1 minute or if the fey knight is incapacitated. This feature can only effect on creature at a time. When a new challenge is issued, the effect on the current creature ends.
Encounter:
@thekindgm on twitter
The hidden meal!
All party goers in a banquet hall have been found dead. All the doors were locked from the inside and no traces of poison have been discovered in the food or drink, no obvious signs of violence.
A Mass illusion is hiding the truth, a hungry spirit naga has cast Hallucinatory Terrain and as this very moment is coiled around someone of importance(likely someone who may have wronged them) and is devouring them.
The party must see through the disguise to discover the truth hidden in plain sight.
Magic Item:
Sun disk of Pelor
Holy Symbol, very rare (requires attunement by a Cleric of Pelor)
This disk-like holy symbol with a sun emblazoned on it, flashes with the light of pelor as your faith unleashes a radiant sun that sears your enemies.
This symbol has 5 charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 or more of its charges to cast the flame sphere spell (save DC15) from it as radiant damage. For 1 charge, you cast the 2nd-level version of the spell. You can increase the spell slot level by one for each additional charge you expend. Choose a number of creatures up to your Wisdom modifier, while within 20 feet of the spell, they deal an extra 1d4 radiant damage when it hits with a weapon attack.
The holy symbol regains 1d4+1 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the holy symbol’s last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the holy symbol crumbles into ashes and is destroyed.
Dungeon Master Tip:
Degrees of Failure
Sometimes a failed ability check has different consequences depending on the degree of failure. For example, a character who fails to disarm a trapped chest might accidentally spring the trap if the check fails by 5 or more, whereas a lesser failure means that the trap wasn't triggered during the botched disarm attempt.
Consider adding similar distinctions to other checks. Perhaps a failed Charisma (Persuasion) check means a queen won't help, whereas a failure of 5 or more means she throws you in the dungeon for your impudence.
Player Tip: Don’t be a Dick
Seeking Quick Victories - “The Art of War for D&D Players”
“The key to combat success in Dungeons & Dragons usually lies in delivering as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible, while minimizing the damage you receive(…)The general rule is that, once combat starts, you want to get as many weapons and offensive features active as you can. Be aware that the average fight takes just 3 to 4 rounds to complete. Fights that drag on longer than this are likely to deplete your resources dangerously.
Think of it this way. In any fight, you are probably only going to execute 4 actions at most. If you waste a single action, you are potentially reducing your combat effectiveness by 25% or more. Actions are precious! And so you should ask this question of every decision you make in battle: will it help inflict more damage on the enemy, and/or reduce the amount of damage you receive? If the answer is no, you may need to reconsider your plans.”
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