Running the game – Oak of Honor Games

Hiding and awareness in D&D 5e

This is an area of the D&D 5e rules that I personally have found tricky as I started using the edition, and I see a lot of other people having trouble with. In online chat, I hear of different GMs running it different ways, and I even see knowledgeable rules experts disagreeing to some extent… Continue reading Hiding and awareness in D&D 5e

Upgrading a monster in DnD 5e

Here’s a worked example of how I’ve used the Creating a Monster guidelines in the 5e DMG to adjust a monster stat block to fit what I wanted for an encounter. The base monster I’m using is the Ankheg (Monster Manual, page 21). It is rated Challenge 2. For my 5-character, 5th-level beginner-ish party I… Continue reading Upgrading a monster in DnD 5e

Monster menus (School of Adventure Year Five part 2)

I’ve started prepping encounters by outlining menus of things that the antagonist/s might do in that encounter. I suppose this may be a beginner-to-intermediate point for many GMs these days, but if that’s where you’re at in your gaming journey or if, like me, you started GMing with a game/edition that didn’t explain this technique,… Continue reading Monster menus (School of Adventure Year Five part 2)

Magic items by character level in D&D 5e

Last month I posted one piece about magic item distribution and another about level advancement. Here, I’m going to bring them together and see what they mean for magic items by level. I confess that this feels a bit redundant because since the earlier posts I’ve acquired the official 5e book Xanathar’s Guide to Everything,… Continue reading Magic items by character level in D&D 5e

Experience and character advancement in D&D 5e

If you look at the table for level advancement by experience points, in the DnD 5e Player’s Handbook (PHB) p15, you can see that not only do you need more experience points for each level, but that the additional number needed to progress from one level to the next increases as your level gets higher.… Continue reading Experience and character advancement in D&D 5e

Dragons in D&D 5e

I’ve looked over the information in the core 5e Monster Manual about dragons and analysed it to bring out some universals, some patterns of variation, and some less-patterned specifics. These might be of interest if you’re a GM running 5e dragons (or especially if you’re considering homebrewing dragon stat blocks), or a crunch-oriented player in… Continue reading Dragons in D&D 5e

Portable encounters

This post examines encounter types and proposes one that you might not have come across: the portable encounter. Encounter types: fixed-location and random Most encounters in published adventures are fixed-location. Enter room 3 and meet the troll that lairs there. Or don’t, and don’t. But if you, as GM, stick entirely to fixed-location encounters, that… Continue reading Portable encounters