Best of DMs Guild – October

The Night of The Rise – Jeff C. Stevens

Full disclosure: the author of this adventure sent me a review copy for free. That said, I wouldn’t be including it here if I didn’t think it was worth your time.

Simply put, this is one of the most unique adventures I’ve ever read. I haven’t had a chance to run it yet, but I already know my group will love it (and I’ve also already figured out exactly how they’re going to mess the whole thing up for me).

Without giving away too much, this takes your standard “go and kill the bandit leader” adventure and turns it on its head, morphing into an adventue that will have your group using skills they never knew they had (or knew they had but never had a chance to use). There’s a lot of great opportunites for roleplaying here – and if they don’t want to go the roleplaying route, there’s plenty of fun to be had killing things, too. And the best part? It’s only $1. You owe it to yourself to check this out.

Map-Based 5e Character Sheet – Patrick McNabb

I saw this posted on Reddit before it was on DM’s Guild and absolutely loved it. It’s a character sheet designed to look like an old-school dungeon map, and it’s gorgeous.

I don’t have much more to say about it. It’s Pay What You Want, and you should get it.

Animalian Golems – Toby Lowther

Golems are some of my favourite monsters in D&D, and I’m honestly kicking myself for never having thought of creating golems in animal form. It’s a great idea, and Lowther has nailed it.

This contains stat blocks for 5 new golem types, with costs for creating them and a little bit of lore to go with them. The rules for using animal golems as companions are great and seem like they’ll work really well. It’s fun, it’s definitely going in to my games, and it’s only $1.

Revenant: The Vengeful Dead – Mark A. Hart

Hart has taken a character option that’s been around in D&D for a while (I first saw it in the 4e book Heroes of Shadow, and WoTC published a version as a subrace in Unearthed Arcana earlier this year) and updated it as a full race for 5e.

Much like the Stitched, which I reviewed last month, this is a wonderfully put together product. The flavour is fantastic throughout, it’s well-written and well-balanced, and it’s a really interesting take on the concept of a sentient undead creature. There are some excellent background options here (some of which I toyed with making for myself when I was writing Dark Deeds), and there’s a great section with tips for roleplaying a character who knows what it’s like to die and be reborn. Another Pay What You Want title that’s well worth your time.

Signature Cantrips – Sean Korzeniewski

A nice little alternative ruleset that gives players the option to design their own cantrips, allowing them to tailor their spellcasting a little to suit their character. It’s an incredibly straight-forward system that gives you points to spend on different elements of your cantrips, building up to the effect you want. They aren’t overpowered – which is great, because cantrips aren’t meant to be powerful – and my only criticism is that this is only useful if you want to build damage-dealing cantrips. Still, building a system like this for creating utility spells rather than combat spells would be incredibly complicated, and this achieves exactly what it sets out to do without overcomplicating things. Pay What You Want, and definitely recommended.