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We at /r/DnD are excited to host Mike Shea of SlyFlourish.com! He'll be discussing his upcoming Kickstarter, his vast history as a freelancer in the TTRPG space, and anything else! Save all your questions and join us on Tuesday, July 7!

From Mike:

Hello!

I'm Mike Shea, writer for SlyFlourish.com and author of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and other books. A few years back I also released the Lazy GM's Resource Document into the Creative Commons to share what I've learned and gathered from other GMs into the world.

I've been playing RPGs since the mid-80s and writing about RPGs since 2008. I've been freelancing for various RPG companies for the past 15 years or so including Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, MCDM, Arcane Library, Pelgrane Press, and many others.

The Kickstarter for my latest book, Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster, is going on now! This is the latest of the Lazy GM books, expanding each of the eight steps of Lazy GM prep and taking a new focus on campaign planning, adventure types, and an expansive lazy GM toolkit. I hope you'll check it out.

I'm excited to be here to talk to you all about RPGs!

(Preface: your DM may hate you for doing this.)

Spell description:
Mold Earth - Cantrip, 1 Action, Range 30ft (affects a 5ft cube), Somatic, Transmutation. Druid, Wizard, Sorcerer.

You choose a portion of dirt or stone that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube. You manipulate it in one of the following ways:

• If you target an area of loose earth, you can instantaneously excavate it, move it along the ground, and deposit it up to 5 feet away. This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage.
• You cause shapes, colors, or both to appear on the dirt or stone, spelling out words, creating images, or shaping patterns. The changes last for 1 hour.
• If the dirt or stone you target is on the ground, you cause it to become difficult terrain. Alternatively, you can cause the ground to become normal terrain if it is already difficult terrain. This change lasts for 1 hour.

If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have no more than two of its non-instantaneous effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an effect as an action.

The Tactic:

this uses the first option for the effect which is the only instantaneous effect you can spam. For all Examples I highly suggest securing a Rope or Ladder on the back wall for easy access for the Defenders. using Rope or ladder wont cost you extra movement. Just be sure to pull it up behind you, so your enemy cant use it.

See. Example A of the Diagram; Move a piece of Earth (S1-Green) to one side of your trench, this will be YOUR defensive wall. The resulting wall will be 5ft high, allowing for either 3/4 or Half cover (+5 or +2 bonus to AC respectively) at your DM's discretion to anyone behind it. Like wise anyone in the trench will receive the same benefit. The enemy (Red) will be fully exposed to melee/ranged attacks from Defenders in the trench, and ranged attacks from Defenders manning the defensive wall (S1-Green). Any creature Without a Climbing Speed attempting to Scale the 10ft back wall of the trench will need to expend Twice the Amount of Movement (20ft) to climb up. Meaning Red will use 30ft of movement to travel laterally 15ft, ending up on top of the Green block. (DM discretion: Add a Athletics check to climb the Back Wall)

Example B: Same idea as A. but just wider for whatever reason you might need a 10ft wide trench (for example Ball Bearings). For this, You move S1-Green as an Ex. A, then move S2-Blue to the front of your trench. This gives defenders inside the trench Full Cover, but also gives Attackers cover in the form of S2-Blue. However, Attacker Red Cannot reach the other side of the trench in one turn, without using the DASH action. If they Dash they cannot attack that turn, only use a bonus action.

Example C: Verdun. Follow the steps to make Examples A and B, then take a cube from the bottom of the trench (S3-Yellow) and place it where S2-Blue used to be. The Defender in the trench now has Full Cover, if you have a rope or ladder, the Defender can climb up to the Firing Stand on top of S3-Yellow to defend against any attackers, Use a Reach weapon to target Attackers attempting to hide behind S2-Blue. Get overwhelmed, jump down into the deepest area of trench, Since its 10ft deep only weapons with Reach or ranged weapons will be able target creatures at different heights inside the trench. At this point there is now way Attacker Red will be able to scale the back wall without a climb speed, or the use of a rope or ladder.

Note: Fireball will still hit you anywhere in this trench.

The Madness:

To Make Example A. requires 1 use of the Mold Earth Cantrip, so 1 round or 6 seconds.

Example B: 2 rounds, 12 secs

Example C: 3 rounds, 18 secs

Obviously, you probably dont want to make a trench mid combat, the most sensible option to use mid combat would be Ex. A. You'd make this during any downtime you may have as a quick defensive trench line to protect your camp for the night, protect a village your staying at, reinforce an area your defending long term.

How quick is it to make a trench line using Example A? (FOR 1 PERSON USING THE CANTRIP)

(remember there are 60 secs in 1 min, 3600 secs in 1 hour)

Example: 50ft trench line: 50ft/5ft= 10 rounds or 1 minute.

100ft trench Line: 100/5 = 20 rounds or 2 minutes

1000ft trench line: 1000/5 = 200rounds (1,200secs) or 20 minutes

1 mile: 5,280ft: 5,280/5 = 1,056 rounds (6,336secs) or 105.6 minutes/ 1hr 45mins and 36secs

to make Either Example B or C trenches just double or Triple the time respectively.

1 mile of B trench = 3:31:12 hrs (3hr 31min 12sec)

1 mile of C trench = 5:16:48 hrs (5hr 16min 48 sec)

I have no idea WHY in the world anyone would need to make 1 mile of 15ft deep 20ft wide trench line in a DnD campaign, but 1 Madlad of a Wizard can do it in under 5.5 hrs.

Design the top down layout of that trench however you want to impede sightlines, or allow easier access for you and your allies. Oil, caltrops, ball bearings, bear traps, or any spell capable of causing difficult terrain are all added benefits to increasing the trenches defensive and impeding capabilities. If your character has proficiency with carpenter's tools look into setting up Abatis using felled and sharpened trees, or Cheval de Frise all along the trench line.

Lifeless skin reverberates dead tales.
Formidable rites quake the earth anew,
Landscapes of flesh and pale veins.
The Giants are forever dormant in azure rest.
Their revival is in the hands of desperate knives.
The harvest is rich in forgotten magic,
Pulsing into the hands of endangered minds.
Awakening the mountain’s rage one more time.

The beckoning eye sees beyond the veils of life.
It sees the layers of maggots and silk
And the spells of death put to rest
The bones of a past engulfed in burning rites
Whose flame reached their minds
Into the profound rays of sunlight,
While the purity of snow and ice
Dismembers fingers into the fight
For the conviction to eradicate the dark
And purify with ember blight.

Like just characters with no major tragic backstories or had much motives before the campaign. Like I'm doing a Hill Dwarf character that happens to be a druid named John Deere Acorn. He really likes mowing lawns and nature. He started a lawn care service and kinda adventured with the party, probably as an extra way to earn money and mows lawns along the way. Other than that, he's pretty normal. How do DMs feel when it comes to really normal characters?

For context they killed the second richest person in the world. They also tricked him into putting them into his last will and testament. So ummm yeah

A dragon art I made for a client a while ago.
Character's backstory :
Xovox is a young red dragon who was born from an egg left in the abandoned lair of a dragon who was chased off by adventurers. The egg was found by kobolds who discovered the abandoned lair and moved in to make it their own. Xovox believes he is a kobold of abnormal size and is fiercely protective of the "smaller kobolds" of his tribe. One day the kobold may tell Xovox what he truly is, but they appreciate his protectiveness and do not wish to confuse him or alienate him from his siblings.

feel free to reach me out if you're interested in my works :)

I’ve been running a D&D campaign for my wife and my 2 friends for a few months now. My wife plays a drow shadow sorcerer. Her rolls are really bad and its become the joke of the table. She’s rolled every other players dice and its always bad. I’m talking like 75% of the time its less than 12, and 50% of the time less than 5. Average roll is like a 3 or 4. It sucks cause she really likes playing my campaign but her turn is usually done in 10 seconds cause she moves somewhere, rolls for attack, fails, turn over. Or were doing roleplay or exploration, tries to roll persuasion, perception, arcana, and rolls a 6+3. Shes a good sport but she definately gets discouraged easily and has a short attention span. So DnD is hard enough for her as it is without the terrible rolls.

I was helping one of my other players level up last night while my wife was out and asked if theres anything he wanted me to add to his story or do with the campaign. The only thing he said was “figure out a way to give [my wife] advantage on her rolls”. Were all a very close group and they understand that for whatever reason she cant roll to literally save her characters life.

So I’m looking for ideas to give my wifes character an advantage that won’t break the game or ruin immersion. I like to run fairly realistic games and don’t want to be like “this door would normally be a DC16 to unlock but for my lovely wife its a 9” because thats fudging numbers and feels unfair. I dont think the 2 other players will be upset at all if she got a homebrew item orsomething that gave her advantage on magic checks or attack rolls or something just so she can actually play / enjoy the game. I appreciate the help.

UPDATE: I’ve decided to create a “Ring of the Mediocre Magician” that gives a +1 to Arcana and Firebolt Attacks as those are what she uses the most. I also created a cheat / quick reference sheet for her lucky feat and metamagic abilites so she can get the most out of her rolls.

My DM is starting a long-term D&D campaign and wants everyone to randomly roll for their class instead of choosing.

I’ve played a randomly rolled class before and enjoyed it, so I’m not against randomness in general. The difference this time is that I’m specifically interested in trying a certain class/subclass because I’ve never played that type of character before and really like the trope and playstyle, whereas last time I was more open to any class.

Since this is a long running campaign, I’m unsure about having something that central to my enjoyment decided by a roll. I understand the appeal of randomness, but I’m having a hard time getting behind leaving a big part of my character’s mechanics up to chance.

**I’d especially be interested in hearing both player and DM perspectives on how you’d approach or rule something like this**

Edit: for more context I haven’t played DnD in a long time and the last campaign I did was where we rolled for random class so I haven’t chosen my class in maybe 4-5 years. Also I’ve played with this DM multiple times and he’s a good DM and is the same one where I rolled for class before. Im thinking of suggesting to roll for background and traits as to keep that randomness as I feel that background has a lot less to do with how a character plays than class does. Also we’re probably going to use some version of a standard array for stats.

Well this one is a shameless borrow from the Dungeon Crawler Carl book series. Thanks Matt!

Re-reading the books and I was thinking about this item from DCC. I desperately wanted to make this into an item to give to my players... So I did. It's meant to be an "oh shit" failsafe type thing rather than a super tactical use item.

Thoughts on implementation and balance?

It seems pretty fair to me since it's a pretty clean 50/50 shot at obliteration or mega-healing. I did the temp hit points thing because I wanted to prevent players from using this at the start of a fight when enemies are already at max HP. They CAN attempt to heal themselves with it, but it requires strategic positioning and also healing at least one enemy. That, or they'll blow themselves to smithereens.

FWIW this is for a difficult campaign where deaths are expected, and the players know that. They wanted a gritty campaign with real consequences, so ... Here we are. Can't wait to dangle this shiny carrot in front of them.

Here is Glug, a Bugbear Barbarian one of my patrons requested I make for them. He's a kind hearted barbarian who loves bunnies and I think I did alright making this this week. I modeled this in Blender, then printed it in resin. I used Citadel paints to paint him, used a Citadel shade, and after the highlights I used a Matte Gloss to get rid of the shine.

If you want to 3D print your own the free files are here: https://mz4250.com/posts/new-requests-162708100

Oh and if you're curious about my Patreon I offer my patrons access to all my 7000+ presupported TTRPG models in one place, along with commercial options, a discord, and requests board. The drives have all the same models that are already out there for free in the internet. Its more for convenience rather than exclusivity.

Stay awesome friends and keep on crafting!