Erik – Co-Geeking

Temple Services Homebrew for Dungeons & Dragons

February 2, 2026January 25, 2026ErikLeave a comment

When you’re designing a settlement for your player characters to visit, one thing you might want to include is local religious establishments like temples and shrines. In a world where divine beings actively grant powers to their followers, adventurers can visit these establishments looking for magical services, just like they might head to a tavern to listen for rumors or go to the local blacksmith to get their armor repaired. Here’s a homebrewed guide to temple services, suitable for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (2024), that you can use or adapt for your own games.

Temples in town

The first step is to determine what kind of holy places exist in the town you’re creating. Not all gods are worshiped everywhere, and not every settlement can support a large religious sector.

Holy places come in three sizes: shrine, temple, and grand temple.

A shrine is a small, humble place where the faithful can make offerings and present prayers to the gods that matter in their daily lives. A shrine typically does not have a full-time staff performing rituals, but one or two dedicated caretakers who make sure that it stays tidy and welcoming. Local people will know who to go to if some special services are needed. A shrine and its custodians can offer only services of rank 1.

A temple is a larger structure with a dedicated full-time staff of priests and acolytes. Regular religious rituals are carried out here, and there is usually someone on hand who can see to the needs of worshipers and visitors in between their duties to the god. A temple can offer services up to rank 2.

A grand temple is a community unto itself, containing a sanctuary for the god, treasuries for storing valuable offerings, and residences for a full-time staff of priests, along with the kitchens, workshops, storage sheds, and other mundane necessities for keeping the community going. A full hierarchy attends the grand temple, from the high priest and hierophants down to the acolytes learning their first prayers and the workers supplying the priests’ daily needs. Receiving visitors and attending to their religious needs is part of the routine work of the grand temple, and some of its staff are dedicated to doling out the god’s favors to adventurers and other folk in need. A grand temple offers all services.

Each religious institution in a town also serves one particular god and belongs to that god’s divine domain. This homebrew system includes options for gods in the domains of Death, Knowledge, Life, Light, Nature, Tempest, Trickery, and War, but you can use these examples as a basis for adding other domains as your setting requires.

When you are designing a settlement, it shouldn’t be too hard to decide what sort of holy places can be found there: a small village in the woods may not have much more than shrines for Life and Nature deities, while a huge port city probably has temples for every domain and a grand temple for a Tempest god.

If you want to randomly generate your settlement’s places of worship (either to save yourself a little thinking effort, or just because math rocks going clicky-clack is fun) here’s a couple of tables you can use.

First, roll 1d6 and adjust the roll depending on the size of the settlement, from -4 for a tiny village to +4 for a huge metropolis.

Adjusted roll	Religious institutions in town
-3	None
-2	1 shrine
-1	1 shrine
0	2 shrines
1	3 shrines
2	4 shrines
3	4 shrines, 1 temple
4	3 shrines, 2 temples
5	2 shrines, 3 temples
6	1 shrine, 4 temples
7	5 temples
8	5 temples, 1 grand temple
9	6 temples, 1 grand temple
10	6 temples, 2 grand temples

For each religious institution in your settlement, roll 1d8 to determine which domain it belongs to, rerolling any rolls that give the same result as one already rolled.

1d8	Domain
1	Death
2	Knowledge
3	Life
4	Light
5	Nature
6	Tempest
7	Trickery
8	War

Services available

The tables below list the services available in each domain, the rank of each service, and its cost. A description of all services is given after the tables.

The cost given in the tables below is for characters who wish to pay for services in cash, and includes the cost of any necessary material components, which the priest performing the service provides. As an alternative, some other means of payment are suggested in the next section.

Services are granted to the character requesting and paying for them, or to another creature or object that character designates. The recipient of a service knows what effect they are receiving, and a service fails if the recipient is unwilling to receive it. Only one service can be active on a given creature or object at a time, but one creature can carry multiple objects with different services active on them.

Services marked with an asterisk (*) are spells found in the Player’s Handbook or the System Reference Document 5.2.1. A brief description is given below for convenience, but see one of those sources for fuller information if needed. If a character receives one of these spells as a service, apply the following conditions:

The spell is cast at its lowest level.
The spellcaster’s ability is Wisdom, and their ability modifier is +4.
A spell provided as a service does not require concentration from either the priest providing it or the creature receiving it.
A spell cast as a service can only affect the creature who received the service or an object they carry, even if the spell normally allows its caster to choose another or multiple targets.
Any spell whose duration is either Instantaneous or 12 hours or longer takes effect exactly as listed in the spell description as soon as the service is provided.
Any spell that has a duration more than Instantaneous but less than 12 hours does not take effect immediately. The service instead creates an aura of magical potential around the receiving creature which lasts for 24 hours. At any time during that 24 hours, the creature may take a Magic action to activate the spell. The spell immediately becomes active and lasts for its full duration.

Death

The following services are available from a shrine, temple, or grand temple of a deity of Death.

Rank	Service	Cost
1	Detect Poison and Disease*	50 GP
1	Lesser Blessing of the Grave	5 GP
2	Gentle Repose*	50 GP
2	Grace of the Departed	125 GP
3	Raise Dead*	700 GP
3	Speak with Dead*	100 GP

Knowledge

The following services are available from a shrine, temple, or grand temple of a deity of Knowledge.

Rank	Service	Cost
1	Detect Magic*	50 GP
1	Detect Poison and Disease*	50 GP
1	Identify*	60 GP
1	Lesser Blessing of Sagacity	10 GP
2	Augury*	80 GP
2	Grace of the Wise	50 GP
3	Sending*	100 GP
3	Speak with Dead*	200 GP
3	Tongues*	200 GP

Life

The following services are available from a shrine, temple, or grand temple of a deity of Life.

Rank	Service	Cost
1	Bless*	25 GP
1	Cure Wounds*	1 GP
1	Lesser Blessing of Healing	5 GP
2	Grace of the Protector	50 GP
2	Lesser Restoration*	75 GP
2	Protection from Poison*	125 GP
3	Protection from Energy*	200 GP
3	Raise Dead*	700 GP
3	Remove Curse*	100 GP

Light

The following services are available from a shrine, temple, or grand temple of a deity of Light.

Rank	Service	Cost
1	Bless*	25 GP
1	Cure Wounds*	1 GP
1	Lesser Blessing of Flame	5 GP
1	Shield of Faith*	50 GP
2	Augury*	80 GP
2	Grace of the Illuminated	50 GP
2	Magic Weapon*	125 GP
3	Dispel Magic*	100 GP

Nature

The following services are available from a shrine, temple, or grand temple of a deity of Nature.

Rank	Service	Cost
1	Cure Wounds*	1 GP
1	Detect Poison and Disease*	50 GP
1	Goodberry*	25 GP
1	Lesser Blessing of the Serpent	5 GP
1	Longstrider*	50 GP
2	Gentle Repose*	50 GP
2	Grace of the Wild	50 GP
2	Protection from Poison*	125 GP
3	Water Breathing*	100 GP

Tempest

The following services are available from a shrine, temple, or grand temple of a deity of Tempest.

Rank	Service	Cost
1	Cure Wounds*	1 GP
1	Lesser Blessing of the Storm	5 GP
1	Longstrider*	50 GP
2	Grace of the Winds	25 GP
2	Magic Weapon*	125 GP
3	Water Breathing*	100 GP

Trickery

The following services are available from a shrine, temple, or grand temple of a deity of Trickery.

Rank	Service	Cost
1	Detect Poison and Disease*	50 GP
1	Lesser Blessing of Cunning	10 GP
1	Protection from Evil and Good*	75 GP
2	Grace of the Dissembler	50 GP
2	Lesser Restoration*	75 GP
3	Dispel Magic*	100 GP
3	Remove Curse*	100 GP
3	Tongues*	200 GP

War

The following services are available from a shrine, temple, or grand temple of a deity of War.

Rank	Service	Cost
1	Bless*	25 GP
1	Cure Wounds*	1 GP
1	Lesser Blessing of Wrath	5 GP
1	Shield of Faith*	50 GP
2	Grace of the Marauder	100 GP
2	Magic Weapon*	125 GP
3	Protection from Energy*	200 GP

Descriptions of Services

The ranks of services and the domains which can offer them are given in parentheses after the name for reference. Services marked with an asterisk (*) are spells found in the Player’s Handbook or the System Reference Document 5.2.1. A brief description is given below for convenience, but see one of those sources for fuller information if needed.

Augury* (2 – Knowledge, Light)

School: Divination
Duration: Instantaneous
Consult a divine force about a specific course of action and receive a positive or negative omen.

Bless* (1 – Life, Light, War)

School: Enchantment
Duration: 1 minute
Add 1d4 whenever you make an attack or save roll. (Note: when received as a service, this spell targets only the creature that received the service.)

Cure Wounds* (1 – Life, Light, Nature, Tempest, War)

School: Abjuration
Duration: Instantaneous
Heal 2d8+4 Hit Points.

Detect Magic* (1 – Knowledge)

School: Divination
Duration: 10 minutes
Become aware of magical effects within 30 feet.

Detect Poison and Disease* (1 – Death, Knowledge, Nature, Trickery)

School: Divination
Duration: 10 minutes
Become aware of any source of poison or disease within 30 feet.

Dispel Magic* (3 – Light, Trickery)

School: Abjuration
Duration: Instantaneous
Ends one magical effect of level 3 or lower.

Gentle Repose* (2 – Death, Nature)

School: Necromancy
Duration: 10 days
A recently deceased creature is protected from decay and becoming Undead.

Goodberry* (1 – Nature)

School: Conjuration
Duration: 24 hours
Create 10 berries, each of which heals 1 Hit Point and provides nourishment for one day.

Grace of the Departed (2 – Death)

School: Necromancy
Duration: 24 hours
Whenever a spell you cast causes a creature to make a Constitution saving throw, it does so at Disadvantage.

Grace of the Dissembler (2 – Trickery)

School: Enchantment
Duration: 24 hours
You have Advantage on Charisma (Deception) and Dexterity (Stealth) checks.

Grace of the Illuminated (2 – Light)

School: Evocation
Duration: 24 hours
You may use a Magic action to cast the spell Light, requiring no material components. You may cast this spell any number of times while this service lasts. When you cast Light using this service, Wisdom is your spellcasting attribute, and if your Wisdom modifier is less than +4, it is considered +4 for purposes of this spell.

Grace of the Marauder (2 – War)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 24 hours
You gain a +1 bonus to your attack rolls and AC.

Grace of the Protector (2 – Life)

School: Abjuration
Duration: 24 hours
Whenever you roll dice to restore Hit Points to any creature, that creature also receives Temporary Hit Points equal to the highest number on any one of the dice you rolled.

Grace of the Wild (2 – Nature)

School: Enchantment
Duration: 24 hours
You have Advantage on Intelligence (Nature) and Wisdom (Survival) checks.

Grace of the Winds (2 – Tempest)

School: Evocation
Duration: 24 hours
Once per turn, when you deal damage to another creature, you may move your target up to 10 feet away from you or move yourself up to 10 feet away from your target. (This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.)

Grace of the Wise (2 – Knowledge)

School: Enchantment
Duration: 24 hours
You have advantage on Intelligence (Arcana) and Intelligence (History) checks.

Identify* (1 – Knowledge)

School: Divination
Duration: Instantaneous
Learn the properties of one magical object.

Lesser Blessing of Flame (1 – Light)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 24 hours
An enchantment is placed on one weapon of your choice. That weapon deals either Fire or Radiant damage in addition to any other types of damage it deals (you choose the type of damage when receiving the service).

Lesser Blessing of Cunning (1 – Trickery)

School: Enchantment
Duration: 24 hours
Choose 1 skill based on Dexterity or Charisma. An enchantment is placed on an item you carry. Any creature carrying that item gains a bonus equal to their proficiency bonus to d20 checks made with that skill.

Lesser Blessing of Healing (1 – Life)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 24 hours
An enchantment is placed on an item you carry. Whenever a creature carrying that item casts a spell with a spell slot that restores Hit Points to any creature, that spell restores a number of additional Hit Points equal to the caster’s proficiency bonus.

Lesser Blessing of Sagacity (1 – Knowledge)

School: Enchantment
Duration: 24 hours
Choose 1 skill based on Intelligence or Wisdom. An enchantment is placed on an item you carry. Any creature carrying that item gains a bonus equal to their proficiency bonus to d20 checks made with that skill.

Lesser Blessing of the Grave (1 – Death)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 24 hours
An enchantment is placed on one weapon of your choice. That weapon deals either Necrotic or Psychic damage in addition to any other types of damage it deals (you choose the type of damage when receiving the service).

Lesser Blessing of the Serpent (1 – Nature)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 24 hours
An enchantment is placed on one weapon of your choice. That weapon deals either Acid or Poison damage in addition to any other types of damage it deals (you choose the type of damage when receiving the service).

Lesser Blessing of the Storm (1 – Tempest)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 24 hours
An enchantment is placed on one weapon of your choice. That weapon deals either Lightning or Thunder damage in addition to any other types of damage it deals (you choose the type of damage when receiving the service).

Lesser Blessing of Wrath (1 – War)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 24 hours
An enchantment is placed on one weapon of your choice. That weapon deals either Force or Radiant damage in addition to any other types of damage it deals (you choose the type of damage when receiving the service).

Lesser Restoration* (2 – Life, Trickery)

School: Abjuration
Duration: Instantaneous
Remove Blinded, Deafened, Paralyzed, or Poisoned conditions.

Longstrider* (1 – Nature, Tempest)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 1 hour
Your Speed increases by 10 feet.

Magic Weapon* (2 – Light, Tempest, War)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 1 hour
A weapon you touch becomes a magic weapon with +1 to attack and damage rolls.

Protection from Energy* (3 – Life, War)

School: Abjuration
Duration: 1 hour
Gain Resistance to one damage type: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder.

Protection from Evil and Good* (1 – Trickery)

School: Abjuration
Duration: 10 minutes
You are protected against Aberrations, Celestials, Elementals, Fey, Fiends, and Undead. ( Note: when received as a service, this spell targets only the creature that received the service.)

Protection from Poison* (2 – Life, Nature)

School: Abjuration
Duration: 1 hour
Gain Resistance to Poison damage and Advantage on saving throws against the Poisoned condition. ( Note: when received as a service, this spell targets only the creature that received the service.)

Raise Dead* (3 – Death, Life)

School: Necromancy
Duration: Instantaneous
Revive a creature that has been dead less than 10 days.

Remove Curse* (3 – Life, Trickery)

School: Abjuration
Duration: Instantaneous
Remove all curses affecting an object or creature.

Sending* (3 – Knowledge)

School: Divination
Duration: Instantaneous
Send a message of 25 words or less to another creature.

Shield of Faith* (1 – Light, War)

School: Abjuration
Duration: 10 minutes
Gain +2 AC. (Note: when received as a service, this spell targets only the creature that received the service.)

Speak with Dead* (3 – Death, Knowledge)

School: Necromancy
Duration: 10 minutes
Ask 5 questions of a corpse.

Tongues* (3 – Knowledge, Trickery)

School: Divination
Duration: 1 hour
Understand any spoken or signed language. ( Note: when received as a service, this spell targets only the creature that received the service.)

Water Breathing* (3 – Nature, Tempest)

School: Transmutation
Duration: 24 hours
Gain the ability to breathe under water. (Note: when received as a service, this spell targets only the creature that received the service.)

Alternative payment

Instead of a donation in coin, you might offer your player characters a chance to pay for their services with services of their own. This can be a good option for a cash-strapped party, and can also provide opportunities for side quests or for downtime activities to let your players practice some of their lesser-used skills. Here are some suggestions to consider:

Rank 1 services

Entertain the children at the local orphanage for an afternoon (Life, Trickery)
Fix a leaky roof, patch gaps in the walls, replace some broken floor tiles, or perform other simple maintenance in the temple (Nature, Tempest)
Gather firewood for the temple from nearby woods (Light, Nature)
Gather wild plants to restock the temple’s store of spell reagents (Knowledge, Life, Nature, Tempest)
Participate in a solemn funeral procession for a recently deceased local hero (Death, Light)
Play a small, harmless prank on the priests of a rival temple (Trickery)
Recount tales of your party’s adventures to be recorded for posterity (Knowledge, Light, Trickery, War)
Spar with some paladin trainees (Light, War)
Tidy up the local graveyard (Death, Nature)

Rank 2 services

Clean out a local village’s irrigation channels (Life, Tempest)
Convince some mischievous wood sprites to move out of a sacred grove (Light, Nature, Trickery)
Deliver needed medicines and potions to an outlying village (Life, Nature)
Fight a demonstration duel against a band of chosen champions for paladin initiates to observe and learn from (Light, War)
Find a ghost that has been haunting a local crypt and find out what it needs to be able to move on into the afterlife (Death, Knowledge, Light)
Fish, hunt, and gather foods from the local wilderness for a communal feast (Life, Nature, Tempest)
Join in the funeral games for a fallen local hero and win at least one victory in the god’s name (Death, Life, War)
Spy on a local criminal syndicate to find out where their meeting spot is so the authorities can deal with them (Knowledge, Light, Trickery)

Rank 3 services

Compose and stage a play about the party’s adventures for the entertainment and education of local townsfolk (Knowledge, Life, War)
Hunt a wild beast that has been terrorizing villages the hinterlands (Light, Nature, Tempest)
Investigate the local noble houses to determine which of them has been skimming off the temple tithes (Knowledge, Light, Trickery)
Keep an overnight vigil in a local graveyard on a night when minor evil spirits are known to wander. Keep the spirits distracted to stop them from causing trouble. (Death, Trickery)
Recover a lost relic last known to have been in the possession of a fallen hero, who may have since become undead (Death, Light, War)
Seek out and defeat a minor local bandit or other troublemaker (Life, War)
Spend a stormy night standing watch at a dangerous headland and rescue the survivors from ships that founder in the waves (Life, Light, Tempest)
Track a noble beast that was gravely wounded but not killed in an upstart noble’s botched hunt and put the creature out of its pain (Death, Nature)

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 (“SRD 5.2.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Images: Algorithmically generated images made with Night Cafe: Shrine, Temple, and Grand Temple

Of Dice and Dragons talks about games and gaming.

Nan Madol: A Megalithic Palace in the Pacific

January 19, 2026September 28, 2025ErikLeave a comment

On the eastern coast of the island of Pohnpei, part of the Federated States of Micronesia, are the remains of a gigantic complex of megalithic structures. These structures stand along the coast of the island and on nearly a hundred artificial islands just offshore. This site is called Nan Madol.

Platform and enclosure wall, photograph by Uhooep via Wikimedia (Nan Madol; c. 1100-1200 CE; stone)

The structures of Nan Madol were first built in the 1100s CE and served as an administrative and ceremonial center for the Saudeleur ruling dynasty that held power over Pohnpei from approximately 1100 CE to the early 1600s. They were constructed using columns of volcanic rock that formed natural geometric shapes. By carefully jointing these stones together, the people of Pohnpei created large structures stable enough that many walls still stand today.

Wall with opening, photograph by Patrick Nunn via Wikimedia (Nan Madol; c. 1100-1200 CE; stone)

Nan Madol is one of many sites around the world that remind us that cultures capable of coordinated labor, careful planning, and social complexity are not the product of only one environment or part of the world.

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Swimmers of the Sahara

January 5, 2026December 28, 2025Erik1 Comment

Thousands of years ago, the Sahara desert was not the dry, sandy place it is now. There was a time when northern Africa was wet and green. Most of what we know about climate changes in the past comes from the study of geology and paleontology, but one small indicator of a wetter ancient Sahara comes from the people of the time themselves.

There are numerous rock paintings and carvings in the Sahara, showing that people once lived in places that are now inhospitable desert. Several pieces of rock art show animals that could not survive in the Sahara in its modern desert state. One interesting painting, from a cave in southwestern Egypt, shows people floating or swimming in water.

Swimmers from the Cave of Swimmers, photograph by Ronald Unger via Wikimedia (Wadi Sura, Egypt; c. 8000-5000 BCE; rock painting)

Anthropologists have speculated that the swimmers represent souls of the dead floating in the primordial waters of the afterlife, in an early version of what would become the mythology of ancient Egypt. Whether this speculation is true or not, however, it must be the case that floating in water was something the people of the ancient Sahara could imagine, an experience that is hardly possible in the region today.

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Winter is Coming, and He’s Got a Hare to Share

December 8, 2025November 30, 2025Erik1 Comment

Winter is upon us here in the northern hemisphere. We’re settling in for cold days and long, dark nights. Here’s how the winter season was imagined in late Roman Britain.

This figure comes from a floor mosaic at Chedworth Villa in western Britain. Each corner of the mosaic had a little allegorical figure representing one of the seasons. Winter appears bundled up in warm layers with a hooded cloak, carrying a hare in one hand (the reward of a hunt), and a symbolic leafless branch in the other.

Wishing you a warm, cozy, and cheerful winter season!

Image: Winter from Chedworth dining room floor, photograph by Pasicles via Wikimedia (Chedworth Roman Villa; 4th c. CE; mosaic)

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Narrative Combat for Dungeons & Dragons

November 24, 2025November 23, 2025ErikLeave a comment

Part of the appeal of Dungeons & Dragons as a tabletop role-playing game is that it provides a robust and detailed set of rules for paying out fantasy fights, from smashing your way through pesky goblins to assaulting the lair of an evil dragon. You can see the tabletop war games in D&D‘s roots when you have a table full of figurines maneuvering and trading blows. Unfortunately, that same detailed set of rules for combat also means that fights tend to drag. Everyone who’s played the game knows how one large combat can eat up an entire gaming session, leaving little room for character development or story progression. That’s where narrative combat comes in.

Narrative combat is an alternative to the full combat rules that lets you as a DM challenge your players and put them in danger while also speeding up the action so you can move on with the game and make room for other activities. You might not want to use it all the time, but it is a useful technique for getting your party through an encounter that is meant to build the story more than to present a tactical challenge.

Narrative combat is a battle-focused version of an old D&D standby: the skills challenge. Instead of making attacks or casting spells by the usual combat rules, players declare what their characters are attempting to do in order to win the fight. The DM (or the DM and players working together) decide on an appropriate skill check or other d20 roll for the action. When the players have scored enough victories on the skill checks, they win the battle. Failed skill checks bring consequences.

Preparing the encounter

As a DM, you need to prepare for a narrative combat, just like you need to prepare for a traditional combat, but in a different way.

First of all, make sure that the encounter you’re planning is appropriate for narrative combat. This method isn’t well suited to encounters that could potentially be deadly for the adventuring party. It serves to speed up combat, but that comes at the expense of characters not getting to use their full suite of abilities, and most gaming groups won’t be happy about seeing a character die just because they didn’t have the chance to use an ability that could have saved them. If an encounter is meant to push your players’ character to their limits, it’s better to opt for traditional combat.

Once you’ve decided to make a fight narrative rather than traditional, describe the encounter in narrative terms, laying out what role it plays in your story. How would you describe this event in a novel or a screenplay? Think about not just the monsters your characters will face but their motivations, goals, and personalities. Instead of “One Vampire Spawn (CR5) and five Skeletons (CR 1/4),” try describing your scene something like: “A recently-turned vampire spawn, drunk with her newfound powers, gathers her own minions from the ancient dead of a nearby graveyard, and ambushes the party as they journey toward their next destination, hoping for an easy kill to add to her subservient throng.”

Next, you need to make three mechanical decisions which will determine the difficulty of the encounter:

Number of successes needed to complete the encounter
DC for the encounter’s skill checks
Consequences of failure

The number of successes required to complete the encounter determines how long the encounter will take to play out. The more successes required, the more opportunities for failure and consequences. I recommend making the number of required successes a multiple of the number of player characters involved.

Encounter difficulty	Multiplier
Trivial	1x
Easy	2x
Average	3x
Challenging	4x
Hard	5x

I don’t recommend going above 5x; at that point, you may not be saving much time over just running a regular encounter. If you are planning for a longer encounter, it’s also a good idea to plan for a few changes in the fight after a certain number of successes to give your players new problems to think about—the monsters change tactics, reinforcements show up, a sudden snowstorm hits, parts of the floor give way, etc.

Our example encounter with a Vampire Spawn and Skeletons could be a significant challenge to a novice adventuring group, warranting a multiplier of 4x or 5x, but to an experienced group this encounter would be more of a speed bump, a way of alerting the players to the presence of a larger threat lurking in the shadows without putting their characters in much danger. For such an encounter, I would choose a multiplier of 1x or 2x.

The DC for the skill checks is the most direct way of setting the difficulty of the encounter. If you have a specific set of monsters for your encounter, you can use the average of their ACs. For our example above, Vampire Spawn has an AC of 16 and Skeleton has 14. Five Skeletons and one Vampire Spawn have an average AC of 14.3, which you can round down to 14. Feel free to tweak the DC if it doesn’t feel right for your encounter; you might decide that the Vampire Spawn’s control makes the Skeletons more coordinated than mindless undead usually are and bump the DC up to 15.

If you don’t have a specific set of monsters in mind to check the AC of, here’s a guide for choosing an appropriate DC.

Party level	Trivial	Easy	Average	Challenging	Hard
1 to 4	10	12	14	16	18
5 to 8	11	13	15	17	19
9 to 12	12	14	16	18	20
13 to 16	13	15	17	19	21
17 to 20	14	16	18	20	22

Finally, you need to decide the consequences of a failed roll. The easiest and most obvious one is to do damage to the character whose attempt failed, but the circumstances of your story might suggest other possibilities, such as losing vital resources or reputation with the local community.

To determine the amount of damage a failure should cost, if you have a specific set of monsters in mind, you can again use an average of one round’s damage from their standard attacks. A Vampire Spawn’s Claw attack does 8 damage on average (2d4+3), and it can use the attack twice, making a total of 16. A Skeleton’s Shortsword attack does 6 average damage (1d6+3). Our example monsters therefore have an overall average damage of 7.6, rounded up to 8. You can just use the average damage, or to keep some of the fun of rolling, you can make it 2d4+3, 1d6+4, 1d8+3, or something else that gives the same average.

Instead of doing damage as a consequence in the example encounter, you might instead decide that characters who fail fall victim to the Vampire Spawn’s bite and must make a Charisma save (same DC as the encounter overall) or temporarily fall under the villain’s sway, telepathically revealing information that the spawn’s Vampire Lord will later use against the party. Play into the story of the encounter; if a good alternative to damage for a consequence presents itself, use it!

If you don’t have a specific set of monsters in mind for your encounter, just look for one at the appropriate CR and use its basic attack damage. The whole point of narrative combat is to reduce the amount of time it takes to play out an encounter, so don’t make things more difficult for yourself than you need to.

Playing the encounter

As the encounter begins, give the players a narrative description of how the combat begins. Again, imagine you are narrating a novel or setting the scene in a screenplay.

“As you walk through the heavily-shadowed avenues of the decrepit graveyard, slow, shambling movements in the undergrowth on your left catch your eye. Everyone make a Perception check… Those of you who failed the check are distracted by the movements of five skeletons lumbering out of the thicket on the left, but those who succeeded realize that the skeletons are a diversion and prepare yourselves to face the sudden attack of a red-eyed, sharp-fanged shape that lunges out of the sepulcher on your right, reaching for you with her sharp, talon-like hands!”

Once you’ve given your players the set-up, it’s now time for them to act. Your players narrate how their characters engage with the challenge in front of them. There are no rounds or turns in narrative combat, just contributions to the story. If your players are good at making room for each other, you can just invite everyone to contribute a story moment whenever they feel moved to. If you think it’s better to impose some order on who talks when, you can go around the table one at a time, or have them roll for initiative. The monsters do not get a turn of their own; they only get a chance to hurt the player characters when characters fail a check.

Players describe their character’s acts not in terms of game mechanics but as if narrating a story. Their options are limited only by their imagination and the constraints of what you as DM are willing to accept. Instead of “I use my bonus action to rage and my action to attack with my axe,” a player might say, “I yell my warcry and charge into the thick of the enemy, hacking furiously away,” or “I slip into the shadows waiting for a chance to strike at an enemy when their back is turned,” or “I open my senses to the currents of magic in this area and try to disrupt the monsters’ sources of power.” A character’s act might be something closely tied to their abilities, but they can also be more creative, such as “I create a distraction on one edge of the fight to set up my allies for a better shot,” or “I help the innocent townsfolk caught in the middle of the fight get to safety.”

Players have a lot of leeway in describing how their characters engage in the battle, as long as they play fair. No one gets to just say “I kill all the monsters and save the day single-handedly.” As DM you can always say no to a poorly-thought-out or bad-faith act, but it’s also good to let the players have agency to shape the story of the fight themselves. If someone wants to push the monsters onto uneven ground, impersonate an enemy leader and confuse them with conflicting orders, or start an avalanche, as long as it’s something their character could reasonably pull off in the circumstances, go with it and let the fight evolve accordingly.

Once a player has described their character’s contribution to the story, pick an appropriate skill for them to roll. You can do this yourself as DM, or collaborate with the player on picking something that plays to their strengths. In place of a skill roll, you might also use an attack roll, or even a saving throw if it seems appropriate (“I raise my shield hurl myself into the line of fire to take the brunt of the attack so it doesn’t hit any innocent bystanders” could merit a Constitution save, for example).

For a character fighting in the front lines, a weapon attack may be the best roll, but look for opportunities to call for other skills like Athletics (like tackling and grappling with an opponent), Acrobatics (nimbly jumping from tree branch to tree branch to stay ahead of a pursuing enemy), Perception (watching enemy movements and calling out their maneuvers to one’s allies), or Insight (analyzing the enemy’s tactical plan and devising an effective counter-strategy). Characters relying on magic can always roll a skill relevant to their particular variety of magic such as Arcana (wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks), Religion (paladins, and clerics), Nature (druids), or Performance (bards), but consider also using magic as a bluff to distract the enemy (Deception or Intimidation) or to create hazards in the field of battle (Survival). If a player uses a spell or other special ability of their character’s, or if they come up with a particularly original or interesting twist in the story, let them roll with advantage.

If the roll succeeds, mark down a success for the party; if it fails, the character in question suffers the consequences. A player who takes damage has the opportunity to mitigate that damage in any way they could in regular combat, like the resistance granted by a barbarian’s Rage or a ranger casting Absorb Elements.

When the party has scored enough successes to complete the encounter, narrate how the remaining monsters flee or are destroyed. Then the characters can lick their wounds, and the adventuring day continues.

Employing narrative combat effectively

There are advantages to using narrative combat in place of full combat. There are also times when it’s not a good choice.

Pros of narrative combat

It’s quicker than traditional combat. It can be a good way of dealing with encounters that are of little mechanical threat to the party but contribute to the ongoing story.
It makes much less work for the DM—no tracking monster abilities or hit points, just the party’s successes.
It keeps the action with the players. There are no separate monster turns.
It encourages creativity and storytelling, which can be rewarding for a group that likes those aspects of play more than the hard tactical thinking of traditional combat.

Cons of narrative combat

It takes time to explain to a group of players who haven’t tried it before, and may be confusing to players used to the routines of regular combat.
It sacrifices detail for speed, sometimes leading to results that could feel unsatisfying—will a wizard player casting Fireball feel good about having the same effect on the outcome of the battle that a fighter using Action Surge does?
When confronting a particularly dangerous or important enemy, players may be unhappy about not having their full range of combat options open. Narrative combat is not a good choice for such fights.

Narrative combat is a useful tool to have at your disposal as a DM, but make sure your players understand how it works, and know when to use it and when not to. It’s a good thing to introduce to new players in a short, trivial encounter that poses no real risk so that they can learn how to play it without the pressure of a dangerous fight. Once your players know how to do it, though, it can save time for more exploration, role-playing, social encounters, plot advancement, and other fun things.

Images: Algorithmically generated images made with Night Cafe: A winter battle, Temple ambush, The untouched armory

Of Dice and Dragons talks about games and gaming.

Mapping Middle-Earth

November 10, 2025October 26, 2025Erik1 Comment

Want to see something amazing? Check out this project to create a detailed map of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth using modern geographical software.

The level of detail is incredible. There are both 2D and 3D versions of the map that you can zoom in on and fly around like a modern digital map. Here’s a view of Rivendell and the nearby Misty Mountains from the 3D version.

The Middle-Earth Map is a project Micah Vander Lugt, a geographic information sciences analyst. It’s great to see people put their professional skills to work on hobbies that they’re passionate about!

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

The Dead Walk Among the Living, Roman Style

October 27, 2025October 19, 2025ErikLeave a comment

Some modern holidays, including Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, are rooted in the idea that on certain special occasions the spirits of the dead can return and walk among the living. The living can join the celebrations by disguising themselves to mingle with the spirits.

The ancient Romans did not celebrate a holiday quite like our modern ones, but the idea that the dead could still be present in the living world, and that living people can use masks and costumes to blur the line between living and dead, is one that they would have recognized. Here is a detail of Roman funeral customs reported by the Greek historian Polybius:

After burying the body with the customary rites, they place an image of the deceased in the most prominent part of the house with a wooden shrine around it. This image is a mask of the deceased’s face, shaped and painted to be an extraordinary likeness of the dead person. They display these masks with great reverence on public occasions, and whenever some prominent member of the household dies, they are worn by participants in the funeral procession, whoever seems to best match the original’s appearance in shape and size. They also don appropriate clothing: if the ancestor was a consul or praetor, a toga with purple edges; if a censor, a wholly purple toga; if he had celebrated a triumph, a toga worked through with gold.

Polybius, History of Rome 6.53

(My own translation)

Our modern traditions are different (these Roman worthies weren’t going trick-or-treating), but there is something ancient about the feeling that, on certain special occasions, the line between living and dead may not be quite as clear as we think.

History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.

Tell, Don’t Show

October 13, 2025March 16, 2025Erik1 Comment

“Show, don’t tell” is one of the old chestnuts of writing advice. Like most such nuggets of wisdom, it has value, but there are also good cases for ignoring it, even sometimes doing the exact opposite.

Telling, as a writer, means giving the reader a direct and straightforward description of a character’s thoughts, emotions, or personality. Showing means providing the reader with tangible evidence of the same things without stating them outright. “She was nervous” is telling. “She fidgeted and took hesitant, aimless steps while her eyes darted about, refusing to focus on anything in the room” is showing.

Showing is valuable in writing because it engages the reader’s imagination. It makes the characters’ experiences more relatable, but also requires the reader to pay attention and figure things out for themselves. When we read about a character fidgeting and taking hesitant steps, we discover her nervousness for ourselves rather than have it served to us. Making little discoveries like this is part of the joy of reading, and that joy is diminished if we have nothing to figure out.

While it’s useful to show your readers things, there is also a good case for telling things sometimes. You don’t want your readers to have to figure out everything for themselves. For one thing, that’s exhausting. For another, it divides your readers’ attention and keeps them from focusing on the elements of the story that you want them to pay attention to. It’s perfectly fine to write “She was nervous,” if the character’s nervousness isn’t the point of the scene.

Jane Austen uses telling rather than showing to excellent effect in her novel Emma. The very first line of the novel tells us exactly who Emma is:

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

As the novel goes on, we get plenty of chances to observe these qualities in Emma for ourselves, but Austen starts by telling us straight out who her heroine is. By giving us this portrait of Emma up front, Austen frees us from having to figure her out for ourselves and allows us to focus our attention on the world around her, discovering the characters who make up her life bit by bit through their own interactions with handsome, clever, rich Emma.

At the same time, the straightforward way Austen introduces Emma may trip us up. As the novel unfolds, Emma discovers that she has misunderstood who her friends and neighbors in Highbury really are. By telling us about Emma instead of showing her to us, Austen lulls us as readers into expecting similarly straightforward introductions to the other characters, and so we get to go along with Emma’s own discoveries rather than getting ahead of her.

Showing is a skill you need as a fiction writer, but knowing when to tell is a valuable skill, too.

How It Happens looks at the inner workings of various creative efforts.

Homemade Bagels

September 29, 2025March 16, 2025Erik1 Comment

A lot of international foods are available now in Finland that may have been hard to find decades ago, but one food that is still elusive is bagels. While there are some bakeries making good bagels here, they are few and far between, and certainly not as convenient as our neighborhood bagel shop was back when we lived in Massachusetts. So I have decided to try my hand at making bagels myself.

I started by looking through my cookbooks. Astonishingly, there’s not a single bagel recipe in any of the cookbooks on my shelf. Even my trusty old Joy of Cooking let me down here, so to the Internet it was! Fortunately, there’s no end of bagel recipes online. After looking at a number of recipes, I settled on one that seemed straightforward and clear, this New York-style bagel recipe from the Sophisticated Gourmet. (One thing I particularly appreciated about this recipe is that it gives both American and metric units. I’ve gotten used to doing conversions, but it’s nice when you don’t have to.) With that recipe as a base and a few tweaks to suit my own kitchen, I made my first test batch of bagels.

And they were good!

So, here’s my process, in case you want to try the same. This recipe is for a plain white wheat bagel without inclusions or toppings. Adjust as you like to make your own preferred type of bagel.

Continue reading →

Quotes: Mistakes in Lesser Matters

September 15, 2025February 23, 2025ErikLeave a comment

The Roman writer Vitruvius had some opinions about public art, expressed here in a critique of the city of Alabanda in western Anatolia, modern-day Turkey:

The people of Alabanda are sharp enough when it comes to affairs of state, but they have been found foolish for their mistakes in lesser matters, since the statues in their gymnasium are all arguing lawsuits, but the ones in their forum are holding the discus, running, or playing ball.

Vitruvius, On Architecture 7.5.6

(My own translation)

Vitruvius’ gripe about the statues in Alabanda may seem odd at first. Why is it foolish to have statues of people playing ball in the forum? Why shouldn’t there be statues of people pleading cases in the gymnasium? Vitruvius’ point is that the statues the Alabandans chose for their important public spaces didn’t match the functions of those spaces.

The gymnasium was a place for the men of the city to socialize and spend their leisure time, but above all to exercise and improve their bodies. The forum was a public space that served many functions, but importantly among them it served as a courtroom for trying legal cases. Vitruvius was clearly of the opinion that art in public spaces should mirror the functions of those spaces: statues of lawyers belong in the forum, and statues of people playing sports go in the gymnasium. In his opinion, the Alabandans made the foolish mistake of setting up the right statues in the wrong places.

Vitruvius’ text is a useful indicator that people in antiquity thought about the visual culture around them and had opinions about the appropriateness of particular subjects, themes, or styles for particular spaces. You couldn’t just slap any old statue anywhere you liked; there were rules to be followed, and the Alabandans had failed to follow them.

At the same time, Vitruvius’ remark is also useful evidence that not everyone shared the same opinions. Vitruvius may not have appreciated the Alabandans’ choices for public statuary, but the Alabandans clearly saw no problem with them. Maybe they thought that lawyers arguing in court should be inspired by the vigor of athletes or that people exercising in the gymnasium should be reminded to also improve their minds like the great orators of the past. We don’t know for sure, but it’s good to be reminded not only that people in the past had opinions about the world they lived in, but that those opinions could and did differ. What one person considered an artistic mistake was for someone else a sensible decorating plan.

When we read ancient sources, it is important to remember that they represent one person’s perspective, not necessarily a universal ideal.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.