My setting has technology more-or-less equivalent to Earth’s 17th century, and a big chunk of my inspiration is Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. The books detail the steps that led to the industrial revolution so my setting also has similar early tech, aided by magic of course.

(Airships, for example, use magic derived from Resilient Sphere to make their balloons supernaturally rigid and impermeable, then instead of filling it with a lifting gas they just evacuate all air from it. Their hulls look like solid wood but they are instead a honeycomb structure made of giant spider silk sandwiched between thin wooden veneers to keep the cold air out, and reinforced with the occasional mithral spar. The propulsion is purely magic though, the props are powered by aetherosiphon engines. There are some secret military projects aimed at creating a fully-pressurized heavier-than-air skyship that can actually fly over the taller mountain ranges; since their passenger compartment is not pressurized, a standard skyship’s maximal cruising altitude is 3-3.5 kilometers while a trained military crew can maybe get up to 4.5 km.)

The Forgotten Realms setting is the “default” D&D setting. Most published adventures take place in it, specifically a small part of it (planet: Toril, continent: Faerun, region: Sword Coast, the west coast of Faerun; this region has a number of famous cities like Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, Candlekeep, Neverwinter, etc…). The vast majority of lore that you can find in books like the Monster Manual specifically relate to this setting (Volo, Mordenkainen, Tasha, Xanathar, etc… all live there anyway). It also has many famous characters and deities (e.g. Corellon, Gruumsh, Moradin…), countries, cultures, even some languages. And it also includes things like the Kenku curse.

But of course if you’re running a homebrew setting like I do, you can feel free to cherry-pick it or just straight-up ignore it.

That was pre-MotM, and also Forgotten Realms lore which holds no water in a homebrew setting.

Because I don’t speak Quenya. (I wrote the signature of an Elvish character in Tengwar, but that’s about it.)

I have my own language mappings in my homebrew. Most of them only appear as names since most people speak Common, but I did include some people in my game who don’t. (I make sure that they are some who speak a language that I speak too.) So the mappings are:

1. Common - English. We’re playing in English, duh. (Before contact with Elves, humans spoke “proto-Common” which would be mapped to German if I had to use it. Many humans still have German names.)
2. (High) Elvish - French. Yes, in-universe the Common language has plenty of Elvish influence. (Classical Elvish is Latin.)
3. (Wood) Elvish - Greek. Most Wood Elves speak High Elvish, but their names are Greek and many of them still speak their own language as well. The continents and seas are often named in Ancient Wood-Elvish (i.e., classical Greek) because they used to be the primary explorers before the rise of the High Elves.
4. Dwarvish - modern Dwarvish is Norwegian, old Dwarvish is Icelandic.
5. Halfling - Frisian. (Fortunately I haven’t had to say anything in Halfling so far.)
6. Gnomish - Welsh. (Again, fortunately I haven’t had to say anything in Gnomish yet.)
7. Orc - Russian.
8. Goblin - Mongolian.
9. Tellurian (not a species, but an influential country) - Spanish. Many people alongside the Bay of Luria speak Tellurian as their native language instead of Common or their racial language.
10. Sylvan - Finnish. (My go-to for weirder names as well. Many Fey-related creatures have Finnish names, as well as those who live near Fey portals.)
11. Giant - Hungarian. (They feature a lot in Hungarian folk tales.)
12. Draconic - Hindi.
13. Hashiman (not a species, but a group of eight islands - though they are also the Kenku homeland so most Kenku speak this as their native language) - Japanese-ish. The language comes in two dialects, Hanego which is used primarily by Kenku but also Aaracokra, Owlin, Tortles, and other creatures with hard beaks that have difficulty pronouncing M and N, and Hadago which is used by the rest. They are identical in writing, differ mostly in pronouncing those sounds.

Magic missile can become a lot more potent than that (on average):

1. Make a Scribes wizard
2. Take the Elemental Adept feat and pick something that very few creatures are immune to, e.g. thunder.
3. Change the MM’s damage to thunder.

Now you can pew-pew to your heart’s content with each pew doing a guaranteed 3 damage instead of 2, and puming the average damage of the pews from 3.5 to 3.75. Not a huge jump, but if you upcast it to level 5 with 7 pews, that’s 26.25 on average instead of 24.5 with a minimum of 21 instead of 14.

And that’s why you as the DM can do passive skill checks (neé “taking a 10”) for non-stressful situations. A routine landing is just 10 + ability mod (probably INT on a big plane with full FBW) + PB. It’s only with 3 of the 4 engines down, the 4th on fire, the computers are fucked, you’re trying to land the 747 on a dirt strip, and oh, there’s a hurricane when you need to actually roll for it.

Though I’m also down with Esper’s idea of every class having a limited reliable talent. So every character could pick one class skill at level 7 and one at level 14 in which they couldn’t roll under a 10. The “expert” classes (rangers, rogues, bards, and artificers) would have additional picks at levels 3, 10, and 17 with full reliable talent being their capstone feature.

That being said, I straight-up stole Dr. T’Ana from Lower Decks as a ship surgeon.

Evil DM: the bookcase is also a mimic.

A recurring villain was introduced on the first session. She was a human pirate captain with very pale skin. One of my players immediately thought that she was a vampire.

…

So she is a dhamphir now. (Couldn’t make her a full vampire, they met her in daylight.) Not like it gave her much of a boost except for a climbing speed and spider climb anyway.

Greek is also Indo-European though.

If 1-2 players are missing then their characters receive the Talisman of Protection from DM Stupidity and I take them over in combat.

This was my motivation behind allowing more players in the first place. My previous group basically fell apart because I had 3 players and when one of them canceled last minute - which was basically all sessions - there weren’t enough players for a session. When one of those players dropped out permanently, I went online to look for more players, and I figured: “Hey, if I have 6 players with the same flake ratio then I’ll have a 4-person party most of the time. Let’s do this!”

But then the fuckers started showing up consistently for every session!

And even though I’m a noob (well, not so much since I’ve been DMing for a year now, 7 months of this for this large weekly group… but I still have no idea what I’m doing) I still have to make some new applicants take a number. Which just underlines how much of a DM/player imbalance there is.

(I’m planning to split the group based on player experience level into two biweekly campaigns of 5 players, that way I might be able to allow a couple of newer players to join and still preserve what was left of my sanity.)

Just put your foot down and refuse to add more than 5 players until you’re experienced enough. (*sigh* I wish I had followed my own advice.) Sure, CR started with 7 regular players and sometimes they have even bigger parties with guest players… but that’s Matt Mercer, he knows what he’s doing, and the players are also good enough to avoid making it a nightmare for him and each other. You as a noob DM will have your hands full with herding 4-5 overly excitable cats and managing the rest of the game.

Yeah, there’s a ridiculous imbalance.

And then you start DMing, even as a beginner who has no idea what he’s doing you get 6-8 players at the table, that party size is unsupported by the balancing tools given by WotC so you wrack your brain trying to come up with challenging encounters for the whole group, burn out, stop DMing, and the imbalance worsens even further.

Oh hey, that’s my dice. In game and in life.

That final element has this amazing interplay where you feel that you’re burning your humanity (or species neutral equivalent term) as you use magic, and your innate or monsterous side comes through, it was a really cool design and I’d love to see it taken even further with a subclass that also incorporated hitpoints into the flow somehow, meaning that you are a tank before you cast your spells, but literally burn out your life force as you do so, revealing the monster underneath. It could be really cool for a vampire or something else that has an interesting interplay with harm, healing and magic.

The Order of the Lycan blood hunter has a similar mechanic. Every blood hunter has abilities with a HP cost, but the lycan might also go berserk if they start the turn with less than half HP.

Whenever I have a problem, I chuck a fireball at it, and BOOM! I have a different problem.

You’re forgetting Toll the dead. Long range, WIS save, d12 if the target is missing even a single HP. (Sacred flame is crap though.)

(Minor correction, wizards have no access to heat metal. It’s only available to druids, rangers, and bards. But at level 7 wizards have access to Conjure Minor Elementals, which can summon 4 magma mephits and they each have one daily casting of heat metal.)

Yep. While the bard-sorcerer maintains that level 4 heat metal, they can also do 2d10/turn with fire bolts if they don’t want to expend additional spell slots. Also assuming that all of those hit, that’s 110 additional damage beyond the 180 from the heat metal.