Undercommon Taste

This week, we invite Reddit creator Elliot (u/MothProphet) on to discuss the topic addressed in the bulk of his Reddit post An Exploration into 5e's Damage Types, in a little under 6000 words . We talk about the differences between devils and demons, why beasts don't like loud noises, and returning to a time when Cold Iron meant something to the fey. Topping it all off, we have the return of the W...

This week, we dive back into our planar travels with a journey to the Shadowfell, discussing what you might find there and how you can get your players through into the Material Plane's dark echo without resorting to 7th-level spells. A content warning for this week's episode: the Shadowfell is a gloomy and depressing place. As such, any discussion going in depth in the Shadowfell will inevitably...

This week, we are joined by Rob, Chris, and Daniel from the Worldbuild With Us podcast to build a scenario in the world we helped design on their podcast last week. Will you side with the Archdruid of the Kudzu, avatar of the goddess of nature, and its Bloodthorn Basilisk, or will you defend the Springstrider with Captain Marut and the Inevitables? We highly recommend listening to part 1 on the Wo...

This week, we start our in-depth tour of the planes by visiting the Feywild, talking about prominent locations within, and how to get there. We also spend no small amount of time discussing how to utilize the Feywild in your home game, and which classes we feel would benefit most from having a jaunt into the Feywild. This episode ran a bit longer than normal, and we apologize for the audio quality...

We return to the drawing board this week as we bring another monster from D&D 3.5e into 5th edition. Join us as we bring the Spell Weaver into its next 600 year life cycle. Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste Check out our homebrew content  here.     Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, a...

This week, we explore the guidelines in the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide for creating your own monsters and calculating an appropriate Challenge Rating (CR) for them. For our example, we are using the 3.5e Raggamoffyn monster, bringing it into 5e for your gaming pleasure.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  U...

We conclude our current deep dive into the Dungeon Master's Guide for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons this week, discussing Chases, Traps, and Poisons and Diseases.  Here is a link to the playlist of trap videos by Master the Dungeon mentioned in the show, including a video released after we recorded this episode, with (appropriately) covers poison and disease traps. https://youtube.com/playlist?...

In our third deep dive episode into the Dungeon Master's Guide for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, we discuss planar travel, supernatural gifts, epic boons, and alien tech.    Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste Check out our homebrew content  here.     Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowe...

This week's episode is part two of our deep dive into the rules tucked away in the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D. In this episode, we discuss sentient magic items, spell crafting, and using a spell point system in lieu of spell slots. The Reddit post we reference in the spell crafting segment of the episode was written by u/MothProphet, and can be found here.   Find us on Facebook:  U...

This week, we begin our multi-part series where we dive into the 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide to find lesser known rules to highlight and discuss. This first episode covers the rules for social encounters, honor and sanity, and madness.    Content Warning: We spend most of the last 20 minutes of the episode covering the madness rules, wherein we discuss topics of mental...

We shift gears this week to talk about two of Ian's homebrewed Monastic Traditions for the monk in 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons:  The Way of the Swallow, a fighting style which focuses on utilizing thrown weapons, and The Way of the Obsidian Fist, a tradition which draws upon the power of elemental earth to fortify the monk.    Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UC...

Today, we are spending some time discussing downtime activities, as laid out in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, as well as some personal variants.  NOTE: no gnomes were harmed, or covered in chocolate, during the making of this podcast.    Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste Check out our homebrew content  here.     O...

Today we discuss noncombat encounters, and why they're an important part of a campaign. We also talk at length about the D&D 4e mechanic of skill challenges, and how to utilize them with the bounded accuracy system of D&D 5e.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste Check out our homebrew content here.     Our theme is M...

In this week's episode, we discuss the magic item economy, and how you might be able to create a realistic system for your players to buy magic items. We also discuss at length our work-in-progress magic item crafting system.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by...

This week, we revisit a concept from "Ashes, Ashes", and build out the small frontier mining town of Verdigris, to give you some ideas on how to build your own settlements in your games.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission....

The second part of a two-part series, where we go into detail on how to create more immersive and dynamic nonplayer characters (NPCs). We give you some guidelines for making very basic NPCs on the fly, and how to get maximum return for minimal investment in NPC details. Like last week, we end the episode by creating a character from scratch, using the guidelines we lay out.   Find us on Facebook: ...

The first part of a two-part series, where we go into detail on how to create more immersive and dynamic player characters. We discuss aspects to focus on, archetypes to avoid, and finish the whole thing off by creating a character from scratch.    Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, writ...

Wherein we conclude our Homebrew Showcase content episodes, crafting a set of holy relics for our hobgoblin war cleric to carry into battle.    Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission. Find Mary on  Bandcamp  or  Patreon.

Wherein we discuss the war cleric, and how to diversify it with regards to the manifold gods of war.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission. Find Mary on  Bandcamp  or  Patreon.

Wherein we return to our Homebrew Showcase, discussing our fourth and final character's race: the most cunning and ferocious of goblinoids, the Hobgoblin.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission. Find Mary on  Bandcamp  or  Pat...

This week, we bring on our good friend Emily to discuss cultural appropriation - what it is, why it's bad, and how to avoid it when creating characters or cultures at your gaming table.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission....

Wherein we design a custom robe and wizard hat for our Yuan-ti Enchanter, along with some other fancy accoutrements.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission. Find Mary on  Bandcamp  or  Patreon.

Wherein we get longwinded about the wizard, and discuss using the School of Enchantment for our Yuan-ti Pureblood.   Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission. Find Mary on  Bandcamp  or  Patreon.

Wherein we discuss the Yuan-Ti, and give you the options to make your very own snake-man. Join us as we break down the published race to give the options for either the Pureblood or the Malison as a player character. Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowel...

Wherein we create an adventure, with hags and ghosts and frog monsters, oh my! Happy Halloween, join us as we walk through our process for creating a one-shot adventure. Find us on Facebook:  Undercommon Taste Follow us on Twitter:  @UCThomebrew Join us on Instagram:  Undercommon Taste   Our theme is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission. Find Mary on  Band...