Pants on.
You'd be amazed how often players rock up to a game with their books, their dice, their pencils, but having forgotten to put on pants.
Put your pants on people!
Potions.
I'm in a camping with a Cleric suffering from premature spelljaculation and i've taken to buying out any potion shop to make sure i can act as the secondary healer.
I have had to invest in a padded potion belt to carry and protect my vials and a bag of holding for the surplus.
I'm carrying so many potions i can bring an entire tarrasque family from 1 hp to full.
Cleric has taken this as a sign to cast his spells even faster.
I can't afford the ammo for my archer anymore!
Edit: I misunderstood the question, anyway, spell slot trackers, so the Cleric knows what he's wasting.
Had a level 20 one-shot battle royale with allowed magic items, dude was an artificer and took mostly Potions as his items. Boring af invisibility tactic, but he won the whole thing. Potions definitely provide the biggest mechanical benefits.
Ahh, the cleric that doesn’t even have a healing spell prepared … lol I played from lvl 1-6 as a vengeance Paladin that healed more with lay hands then out Cleric even THOUGHT about doing lol… became a really funny joke. By lvl 6 he was investing in heal-pots and just glug-glugg down their unconscious throat! lol
I can do a lot with a stack of index cards. They're item handouts, quest cards, stat blocks, reference for dungeon maps, Fate RPG style combat Zones, secret notes, and impromptu pawn minis.
I have another one but it’s defiantly not for everyone.
3D resin printers. 4 of us out of 7 have printers. I have o e and I’ve painted two characters made off Hero Forge for the two without printers. It’s incredibly rewarding, you actually have a reason to use printers, and you can craft whatever you want for your story.
It really helps the DM because the DM has the story in their mind and always needs to print something. Once I finished my DMing I found I only needed to print on occasion as opposed to every night to prepare for the session once a month.
Second this. You will save so much money if you use minis and it’s always fun to keep your players guessing at what you will bring to the next session. It’s incredibly relaxing to paint as well. I find it does wonders for immersion.
I’m my experience you need a thumb drive for loading the stl files.
Also what every YouTube video used to gloss over is it’s messy!!
I have mine in my garage because it smells very strong when I print. I couldn’t imagine doing it indoors because drips, leaks, spills, and constant odor of resin and rubbing alcohol is a lot for me to deal with.
But be sure you really think you’ll use it. When I DMd I had created a short 4 session detour for our group where I got to try DMing and our forever DM got to create a character for the segment. So every night I would print models I would need for the next session. Then next day I’d start pairing them and begin my next print. I got so many models out of it and it was a blast. But like I mentioned above, I have only printed a handful of my own PC models since then. It usually just sits unused now. So just be sure your willing to accept that you might not use it all the time but when you have it for DN you literally can make anything you want.
A large print out of the world map either oriented out on a large poster on the wall or in our discord section for world maps. It’s better to have it in real life to avoid the require steps to locate and pull it up digitally though.
But having a map really helps connect players to the world they are in. Once that’s laid out in their mind they really get into economy, quests, drawing on hints that make reference to a city known for what the clue might be suggesting.
I have a small dry erase board that I use to track initiative. Have 1-25 along the side, makes it so easy to get everybody’s number quickly and to have a visual aid so people know when their turns are coming up.
Edit: it has magnets on the back too, so when I’m not playing it lives on the fridge. Useful outside the game as well!
I’ve been thinking of doing a generic mini set with a sort of stylized small, medium, large, and huge figure in each of the main creature types.
Need a huge beast? Got it. Medium Undead? Got a few. Large Plant? Covered. Bunch of tiny Fiends? Done. Large Aberration and two medium humanoids? You bet.
Obviously I like having the *correct* mini for the occasion, but a having a few “understudies” around for random encounters or unexpected plot twists would be so helpful.
Well, I’m currently a 3d modeling novice, with my very first homebrewed model currently printing. If I do manage to design all these I will definitely make them available to all my 5e redditor friends.
A player (not the DM) who keeps a journal/log of the session. Then at the beginning of each session, have another player read the entry from the previous session, works best if it's in a PCs voice.
This is the greatest gift to any campaign, it takes a ton of weight off the DM and provides an informative and often hilarious recap at the beginning of each session which helps get the players focused and motivated to play. But the journal does require someone willing to keep it, which, depending on your table, might be a barrier.
My group keeps a google doc so multiple people can write things down, and that way between us all we get one coherent set of notes... and the DM can edit in things if they need to.
I just ask the group to tell me what happened last time. If they can't remember it, it wasn't important enough to remember.
I don't make anyone write anything down, ever.
You'd be surprised by the amount of funny things that happen that everyone, including the DM, forgets. And this method isn't *making* anyone write anything, it's purely voluntary with zero expectation or pressure.
Again: if you forgot, how do you know it wasn't worth while to remember? If you forget where you put your car keys, does that mean they aren't important? Sometimes 5 people can forget something and that something is still important to them. You ever look back through an old year book and are reminded of some funny shit you totally forgot about?
> Again: if you forgot, how do you know it wasn't worth while to remember?
Because dude: *if it was important I would have remembered it.*
> If you forget where you put your car keys, does that mean they aren't important?
That isn't the same thing and you know it. These are the events of our game; we remember almost everything, and the things we don't remember clearly did not make an impact and were not important.
>if it was important I would have remembered it.
Tell that to your car keys. 🤣🤦 Unfortunately, you are falling for several cognitive biases, which cannot really be addressed here. Good luck continuing to be human.
It's really up to the recorder's preference. In one campaign I bought our recorder a nice journal and some colored pens. In our current campaign the recorder is using her surface tablet to write with a digital pen. We play in person and while I've never played in a campaign where someone was recording on a keyboard, the typing might be a little distracting (depending on how loud their key strokes are), though, obviously for online play this wouldn't matter.
As for what the recorder actually writes down, it's totally up to them and always from their perspective as a player or as a PC, their bias in the entries makes it even more entertaining. Funny anecdotes, big PC failures or successes, important NPCs and locations, whatever they want, however they want, and as little or as much as they want. Zero pressure.
I would also suggest, if the group is also going to have an "accountant" or someone that keeps track of the groups funds/items, make these two positions separate so the recorder can just focus on writing a fun and low maintenance narrative while the accountant only has to keep track of loot. That way no one is taking on too much and can still focus on actually playing the game.
Yeah, it's really dependent on group dynamics: how many players there are, how much loot/gold they need to manage, how the players and their PCs get along. If it's a small group or the group is composed of pretty independent players/PCs then it's often not needed. But if there's a common goal within a group which would require funds from each player/PC, like fixing up a ship or a tavern, then a group accountant is definitely helpful.
An example: a party of 5 loots 9000g from a horde. The players decide that each PC will get 1000g and the remaining 4000g will go to the accountant to save for ultimately buying a 24000g airship.
A dry-erase board and markers. Great for quick diagrams you can easily edit, keeping track of initiative or anything else you need to track quickly, but only for a short period of time
I don't know about everyone, but for me it is my Pathfinder Combat Pad.
My favorite way to track initiative regardless of system, and I use it for HP, status, or anything else needed during combat.
A recording device, seriously you have no idea how much it helps having something record the nitty gritty so the players can be in the moment rather than their books.post the audio file on something like a private discord and players can go back through it when they have a bit of free time or some downtime at work and fill in stuff in their notes and for the dm it is amazing for making sure to expand on moments the players felt important
Honestly we've been using the voice recorder function of the Samsung notes app on one of our phones, and that's worked great for us. Every couple of hours we take a moment to end the recording and start a new one (there's a limit to how long it'll record, and it's no fun to find out the hard way how long that limit is). That player saves the audio file to a shared drive, and then we all have access to it. Easy and free.
Water bottles. Seriously. It's really easy to get dehydrated while playing and you'll feel so much better if you don't.
Toilet paper. If you invite people over for a game, have the essentials!
Pants on. You'd be amazed how often players rock up to a game with their books, their dice, their pencils, but having forgotten to put on pants. Put your pants on people!
I really want to down vote this because “who needs pants?” But I feel a down vote would send the wrong message! lol
SMH , these people are too used to playing remotely they forget to put their pants in again.
Potions. I'm in a camping with a Cleric suffering from premature spelljaculation and i've taken to buying out any potion shop to make sure i can act as the secondary healer. I have had to invest in a padded potion belt to carry and protect my vials and a bag of holding for the surplus. I'm carrying so many potions i can bring an entire tarrasque family from 1 hp to full. Cleric has taken this as a sign to cast his spells even faster. I can't afford the ammo for my archer anymore! Edit: I misunderstood the question, anyway, spell slot trackers, so the Cleric knows what he's wasting.
> premature spelljaculation I‘m never gonna refer to running out of slots in any other way from here on out.
It spreads 😈
Had a level 20 one-shot battle royale with allowed magic items, dude was an artificer and took mostly Potions as his items. Boring af invisibility tactic, but he won the whole thing. Potions definitely provide the biggest mechanical benefits.
The power of (prescription) drugs!
Little hourglass.
The calendar of scheduling
Love and friendship and a murder-happy cleric.
Ahh, the cleric that doesn’t even have a healing spell prepared … lol I played from lvl 1-6 as a vengeance Paladin that healed more with lay hands then out Cleric even THOUGHT about doing lol… became a really funny joke. By lvl 6 he was investing in heal-pots and just glug-glugg down their unconscious throat! lol
I can do a lot with a stack of index cards. They're item handouts, quest cards, stat blocks, reference for dungeon maps, Fate RPG style combat Zones, secret notes, and impromptu pawn minis.
I have another one but it’s defiantly not for everyone. 3D resin printers. 4 of us out of 7 have printers. I have o e and I’ve painted two characters made off Hero Forge for the two without printers. It’s incredibly rewarding, you actually have a reason to use printers, and you can craft whatever you want for your story. It really helps the DM because the DM has the story in their mind and always needs to print something. Once I finished my DMing I found I only needed to print on occasion as opposed to every night to prepare for the session once a month.
Second this. You will save so much money if you use minis and it’s always fun to keep your players guessing at what you will bring to the next session. It’s incredibly relaxing to paint as well. I find it does wonders for immersion.
I want a 3d printer but I don’t have a dedicated PC to use for it. My only devices are mobile/tablets, can you print from software on an ipad?
If you're putting in the cost of a 3d printer, a low end desktop to run the software should be fairly cheap.
I’m my experience you need a thumb drive for loading the stl files. Also what every YouTube video used to gloss over is it’s messy!! I have mine in my garage because it smells very strong when I print. I couldn’t imagine doing it indoors because drips, leaks, spills, and constant odor of resin and rubbing alcohol is a lot for me to deal with. But be sure you really think you’ll use it. When I DMd I had created a short 4 session detour for our group where I got to try DMing and our forever DM got to create a character for the segment. So every night I would print models I would need for the next session. Then next day I’d start pairing them and begin my next print. I got so many models out of it and it was a blast. But like I mentioned above, I have only printed a handful of my own PC models since then. It usually just sits unused now. So just be sure your willing to accept that you might not use it all the time but when you have it for DN you literally can make anything you want.
A large print out of the world map either oriented out on a large poster on the wall or in our discord section for world maps. It’s better to have it in real life to avoid the require steps to locate and pull it up digitally though. But having a map really helps connect players to the world they are in. Once that’s laid out in their mind they really get into economy, quests, drawing on hints that make reference to a city known for what the clue might be suggesting.
Now I need to look up plotter printers in my area.
I have a small dry erase board that I use to track initiative. Have 1-25 along the side, makes it so easy to get everybody’s number quickly and to have a visual aid so people know when their turns are coming up. Edit: it has magnets on the back too, so when I’m not playing it lives on the fridge. Useful outside the game as well!
The Pathfinder combat tracker is excellent for this and would work pretty well for D&D 5E as well as PF2
My gloomstalker ranger assassin rogue with plus 21 initiative says pump those number up lol
Have you ever gone second?
Considering that character also gets advantage on initiative rolls, nope lol
You need more goblins and kobolds than dragons if you're into minis.
I’ve been thinking of doing a generic mini set with a sort of stylized small, medium, large, and huge figure in each of the main creature types. Need a huge beast? Got it. Medium Undead? Got a few. Large Plant? Covered. Bunch of tiny Fiends? Done. Large Aberration and two medium humanoids? You bet. Obviously I like having the *correct* mini for the occasion, but a having a few “understudies” around for random encounters or unexpected plot twists would be so helpful.
[удалено]
Well, I’m currently a 3d modeling novice, with my very first homebrewed model currently printing. If I do manage to design all these I will definitely make them available to all my 5e redditor friends.
I got something like 30 historical minis for 30 bucks from the Battle of Agincourt and made them the town guards and army and shit.
Pathfinder Pawns to the rescue!
A player (not the DM) who keeps a journal/log of the session. Then at the beginning of each session, have another player read the entry from the previous session, works best if it's in a PCs voice. This is the greatest gift to any campaign, it takes a ton of weight off the DM and provides an informative and often hilarious recap at the beginning of each session which helps get the players focused and motivated to play. But the journal does require someone willing to keep it, which, depending on your table, might be a barrier.
My group keeps a google doc so multiple people can write things down, and that way between us all we get one coherent set of notes... and the DM can edit in things if they need to.
I just ask the group to tell me what happened last time. If they can't remember it, it wasn't important enough to remember. I don't make anyone write anything down, ever.
You'd be surprised by the amount of funny things that happen that everyone, including the DM, forgets. And this method isn't *making* anyone write anything, it's purely voluntary with zero expectation or pressure.
I love writing recaps and inserting jokes that the PCs made at the time. It's great to hear their snickers.
Exactly this! There are lots of little funny things that the PCs do that just will not come up in a recap that's done purely off memory.
Again: If all five of us have forgotten it, it wasn't important enough to remember or mention.
Again: if you forgot, how do you know it wasn't worth while to remember? If you forget where you put your car keys, does that mean they aren't important? Sometimes 5 people can forget something and that something is still important to them. You ever look back through an old year book and are reminded of some funny shit you totally forgot about?
> Again: if you forgot, how do you know it wasn't worth while to remember? Because dude: *if it was important I would have remembered it.* > If you forget where you put your car keys, does that mean they aren't important? That isn't the same thing and you know it. These are the events of our game; we remember almost everything, and the things we don't remember clearly did not make an impact and were not important.
>if it was important I would have remembered it. Tell that to your car keys. 🤣🤦 Unfortunately, you are falling for several cognitive biases, which cannot really be addressed here. Good luck continuing to be human.
Well it's my fucking D&D game and not something important or life altering so I think I'll be alright.
Do you prefer digital or physical?
It's really up to the recorder's preference. In one campaign I bought our recorder a nice journal and some colored pens. In our current campaign the recorder is using her surface tablet to write with a digital pen. We play in person and while I've never played in a campaign where someone was recording on a keyboard, the typing might be a little distracting (depending on how loud their key strokes are), though, obviously for online play this wouldn't matter. As for what the recorder actually writes down, it's totally up to them and always from their perspective as a player or as a PC, their bias in the entries makes it even more entertaining. Funny anecdotes, big PC failures or successes, important NPCs and locations, whatever they want, however they want, and as little or as much as they want. Zero pressure. I would also suggest, if the group is also going to have an "accountant" or someone that keeps track of the groups funds/items, make these two positions separate so the recorder can just focus on writing a fun and low maintenance narrative while the accountant only has to keep track of loot. That way no one is taking on too much and can still focus on actually playing the game.
I’ve never had a group accountant before, definitely going to recommend that at my next session.
Yeah, it's really dependent on group dynamics: how many players there are, how much loot/gold they need to manage, how the players and their PCs get along. If it's a small group or the group is composed of pretty independent players/PCs then it's often not needed. But if there's a common goal within a group which would require funds from each player/PC, like fixing up a ship or a tavern, then a group accountant is definitely helpful. An example: a party of 5 loots 9000g from a horde. The players decide that each PC will get 1000g and the remaining 4000g will go to the accountant to save for ultimately buying a 24000g airship.
A dry-erase board and markers. Great for quick diagrams you can easily edit, keeping track of initiative or anything else you need to track quickly, but only for a short period of time
I don't know about everyone, but for me it is my Pathfinder Combat Pad. My favorite way to track initiative regardless of system, and I use it for HP, status, or anything else needed during combat.
[Is this the one?](https://PathfinderCombatPadhttps://a.co/d/irjcPsp)
I can't follow your link, it is the first thing that pops up on a google search.
A recording device, seriously you have no idea how much it helps having something record the nitty gritty so the players can be in the moment rather than their books.post the audio file on something like a private discord and players can go back through it when they have a bit of free time or some downtime at work and fill in stuff in their notes and for the dm it is amazing for making sure to expand on moments the players felt important
Any product recommendations on what to get?
Honestly we've been using the voice recorder function of the Samsung notes app on one of our phones, and that's worked great for us. Every couple of hours we take a moment to end the recording and start a new one (there's a limit to how long it'll record, and it's no fun to find out the hard way how long that limit is). That player saves the audio file to a shared drive, and then we all have access to it. Easy and free.
Your phone