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[Harry Baldman]

One of them has proficiency in alchemy, so...

Then you don't need an alchemist at all - if they want to upgrade their spider, have the alchemist start experimenting with it and come up with suitably amusing ingredients for them to hunt down along the course of their murdertravel. Require a live dragon wyrmling, for example, or some kind of spider god's blessing, or some manner of druidic mad science that a convenient antagonist may deploy using spiders of their own! Maybe the party could even open dialogue with said mad druid and share hot spiderfarming tips. Lean into the madness.

[Grim Portent]

If the spider is capable of any web based attacks I'd assume it's already strong enough webbing to support someones weight, normal spider webs can hold things much heavier than the spider that spun the web, and they can produce a lot of the stuff in a day.

The main obstacle I'd give them is that it's an animal and crippled. It needs fed by hand, it needs trained to release webs of a specific kind on command and it's going to be stressed and suffering. You can't just bonk it on the head and get dragline quality silk, you need to keep it healthy and treat it well to maintain it's loyalty and obediance.

[LordPorkins]

Hey guys.

So, Im playing 5th edition D&D in a campaign. We meet once a week and have 8 people in our party, all at level 7. It’s pretty chill. The DM has created the whole campaign from scratch, and it's pretty baller.

So, one time we got a call that our resident barbarian, Dench, couldn’t make it to a session. His car had broken down, and he couldn’t make it for a few weeks since he didn’t trust the rental (it was a pretty shit rental)

Funnily enough, the session we missed was the one where we killed an ice dragon at the top of a mountain. Turns out the mountain was a volcano, and now a group of salamanders have come out of hibernation and basically blew up the mountain. We got the whole party out just in time, but we had forgotten something: none of us remembered to say “I grab Dench and GTFO.”

SO, basically, Dench has been blown off the top of the mountain into the woods. We’re several sessions past that, and Dench’s player is going to show up soon.The DM has assigned me to make a short, solo adventure about him finding his way back to the town/the party. If you’ve ever seen “The Revenant”, that’s basically what I’m planning out: Dench waking up in the woods, with 1 HP, no items,no weapons, Etc.

The reason Im posting is I need help with a particular detail: I'm planning on Dench’s left hand to be crushed and cut off by some rubble. During his journey, he's going to find a way to get a new hand, preferably one with some sort of magic in it.


Im wondering what balanced bonuses I can give this new hand? He’s a Totem barbarian, so Im planning on him finding some sort of old druidic ruin and having to prove himself to some spirits. Maybe it regrows outta life energy or some such?

Lemme know if yalls got ideas.

[SOLDIER First]

Regrowing out of life energy could be cool. Maybe since it’s totemy magic, it could get stronger as he uses his powers, so anything he wields with that hand gets +1 damage?

[LordPorkins]

MMm. I was thinking a little more... advanced. +1 Damage seems to simple if you have a glowing, green, life-energy hand.

[SOLDIER First]

+3 damage, it has 5-foot reach, an extra range increment for thrown weapons, weapons in that hand can’t be disarmed...

[Harry Baldman]

Regrowing out of life energy could be cool. Maybe since it’s totemy magic, it could get stronger as he uses his powers, so anything he wields with that hand gets +1 damage?

Let him regrow a hand that's the head of whichever animal he has as his totem. It may or may not give him advice that only he understands. Might also give him scent powers (if bear or wolf) or extreme sight (if eagle).

[Whisperling]

I'm not exactly experienced at homebrewery, but here are a few general ideas:

For a life energy hand:

-Regeneration comes to mind. Perhaps a 1/day ability to drain some amount of HP from an enemy, or something that adds temporary HP while raging?

-The ability to use an appropriate cantrip (or very minor spell, not sure how systems other than 5e handle this stuff). Maybe something druid, cleric, or ranger-y?

-Occasionally being able to call up a nature spirit or some appropriate magical wildlife to aid them in battle. Could be for a round or two or the duration of a fight, depending on how you want to work it.


Other assorted thoughts:

-A hand that matches his totem animal, albeit with alterations so that he can actually hold things. Gives a related ability- possibly brief bursts of supernatural strength, dexterity, etc.

-A stone hand covered in fey or primordial runes. Might say something if read by someone with knowledge of an appropriate language, could carry magic that has less to do with nature or life.

-A spirit-hand that looks like glowing mist. Might have the power to interact with spirits, souls, the ethereal realm, etc, could nullify or resist magic, might allow them to call up supernatural mists or point and gensture of its own accord to divine information.

[smjjames]

-A spirit-hand that looks like glowing mist. Might have the power to interact with spirits, souls, the ethereal realm, etc, could nullify or resist magic, might allow them to call up supernatural mists or point and gensture of its own accord to divine information.

At the cost of not being able to interact with anything physical with that hand? Gotta balance it somehow.

[pikachu17]

If you want the spirit-hand to give benefits, first, it can either be ethereal or material, changing with a bonus action, which means he can punch ghosts, and fight people kind of like D.L from Heroes, but only his hand.
Once per long rest he can declare an attack to be a Spirit Punch before the attack roll, with 1d10 damage, and it does automatic Critical Hit, if it hits, a miss wastes it, with the flavor text noting it as putting his hand inside the enemies flesh and rematerializing it, unless your people would laugh at that, in which case it is just a partucarly glory punch.

It could also halve the time needed for the totem rituals. So five minutes instead of ten.

[Whisperling]

-A spirit-hand that looks like glowing mist. Might have the power to interact with spirits, souls, the ethereal realm, etc, could nullify or resist magic, might allow them to call up supernatural mists or point and gensture of its own accord to divine information.

At the cost of not being able to interact with anything physical with that hand? Gotta balance it somehow.

I meant to throw out a bunch of ideas and see what stuck, but yeah, I guess you could give it multiple powers and add drawbacks if you wanted to.

[smjjames]

I know you were just throwing out a bunch of ideas, just thought it'd be a good drawback to add since it sounds like it'd be pretty powerful.

I don't know how you generally balance things in DnD and obviously you can get away with a hell of a lot of stuff.

[Draignean]

There was actually a prestige class in one of my earlier campaigns that evolved around a similar concept, you could spec into it after you deciphered the antagonists notes. Soul Surgeons were basically phenomenally talented people who had one (or more) of their limbs (or an eye) and then went through some pretty heavy training to manifest the missing member as a ghost appendage. Short version of the prestige class was that at low levels you got a couple shots per day of purifying/corrupting touch (touch attack to either heal [CL/2]d6 or deal that much damage) and/or draining/bolstering touch (touch attack to drain or buff a an attribute by 1d4+CL/2)- basically slight revisions of the Ghost abilities of the same name.

Innate ghost touch the affected member was kind of a given, and the higher level abilities let Soul Surgeons break off parts of their soul to possess objects and things (enabling them to stabilize bleedouts at distance or puppet the recently dead), and eventually fully walk out of their flesh as a ghost while still barely alive.

Not sure how much of that is relevant to you, but the basic theme of 'GHOST LIMBS ARE AWESOME' applies.

[Mesa]

Shit, didn't realize this is a thing.

So I got into "proper" RPing earlier this year, when my online friend group invited me to their ongoing D&D campaign - before that I had only the vaguest understanding of tabletop RPGs, and never really had a chance to play one.

But man, have they sucked me in full time. Both as a player in D&D, and a GM in Open Legend.

In D&D, we currently have two ongoing campaigns (well, technically they're part of the same setting/storyline but one takes place centuries before the other and on a remote continent so they might as well be considered separate).

In the first one, which was essentially meant to introduce me into D&D, we have multiple ongoing parties (though mostly play 1 at a time), we started out in Ravenloft (oh boy!), where the goal was to bring up my character up to at least level 5 so they could join the de facto main party, the aptly-named Party A. (Other, mostly thematic, parties exist in said campaign - Party E is all evil and villainous, Party M is basically Little Witch Academia, and this was Party R.)

However now said character (a celestial dwelf warlock) is basically on her deathbed (which just had to happen when I was had to leave the session early, though I did talk it out with my GM that I basically wanted to switch out of that character for a while), and this week (or whenever we actually get to have another D&D session) her sister is going to take over - who's mostly going to be an evoker kinda wizard, with lots of damaging spells (mostly fire and lightning), but also some transmutation and abjuration on the side.

On the other side of things lies the campaign our GM calls "Fall of Greycloud" - located on the faraway island nation of Greycloud, which (unlike the rest of tihs particular world) is in support of magic which is otherwise seemingly restricted across the world due to some nasty past events.
It's meant to be a bit of a "old-school RPG nostalgia" campaign/party, and for that one I made a dragonborn eldritch knight - a sword and shield is cool and all, but have you considered adding both magical and natural fire to the mix? Oh, and she's...very gluttonous.
We have not started this campaign yet, but I love the setting my friend has been setting up for that one!

[IcyTea31]

So I'm rejoining a 5e campaign I had to leave for a dozen sessions or so. I've made a new character, an amnesiac kenku bard who has lost his memory so far that he doesn't even remember why he became an adventurer, though he has a faint idea it was a very good reason. The party is in the middle of a dungeon, so the planned meeting involves him suddenly appearing and angrily chasing a non-hostile skeleton while disguised as a beautiful elf maiden. I've told the other players that my character is an elf, but the illusion spell is supposed to break within the first 30 minutes for a dramatic "what the fuck just happened" moment. What else could I do to make things an even bigger surprise, keeping in mind that I probably have to run eveyrthing through the GM?