Reconceptualizing D&D 5e as Supers

I’ve been thinking about this since watching Unsleeping City (which is more modern occult than supers, but a lot of the concepts carry over). The idea is basically to just use D&D 5e with as little conversion as possible to run a modern-day supers game. D&D characters are already fairly superheroic, especially at high level.

My initial inclination was to do a ton of work with custom classes and abilities to fully turn it into a supers game, but, honestly, I think you can get most of the way there changing very little. You just have to reimagine a lot of the mechanics from medieval fantasy to modern pulp. And, this way, it’s probably a lot easier of a sell to your players who are familiar with D&D.

Note that this isn’t really meant to model existing supers franchises, though the examples indicate that it can get closer than you’d think. You probably can’t use it to model any given hero’s powers closely enough to replicate them as a PC (though you can get a lot closer as the DM making an arbitrary NPC stat block).

Ability Scores

• 10 is the true human level of basic competence. Most individuals have all of their scores at 10 or lower.
• 12 is well above average. Many people that excel at their careers and pursuits have no scores higher than a 12.
• 14 is exceptional competence. Few people have a 14, and extremely few have more than one ability score at a 14 or higher. Assume that IQ/10 basically equals Intelligence, so Int 14 is a genius IQ, and other scores are similar outliers.
• 16 is the practical maximum for most humans. Paragons of various disciplines might have a 16. These are olympic athletes (Str, Dex, or Con), top-of-field geniuses (Int or Wis), or enduring global celebrities (Cha).
• 18 is the technical maximum for true outliers. The strongest unaugmented powerlifter in the world has an 18 strength. Stephen Hawking likely had an 18 intelligence.
• 20 is beyond human. Scores this high and above are only available to those that are augmented.

Player characters generate their ability scores normally for D&D, just use these as guidelines for how omnicompetent they are compared to baseline humans. And when creating unaugmented human NPCs, try to keep their ability scores within this frame.

It is up to the DM to decide whether to create a dramatic ramp on the lifting chart for strength to treat 20 as much more superhuman than normal. At the very least, you should allow more dramatic lifting stunts than you otherwise would, even if the practical carrying capacity isn’t increased that much from the normal chart (it’s not like supers tend to carry a ton of gear like fantasy characters anyway). At the very least, as noted in the Equipment and Improvised Weapons section, I think Str 18 can probably throw a motorcycle and Str 20 can hit an enemy with a car (though they might not be able to carry them around indefinitely).

Races

In general, most players should use the Custom Lineage rules (from Tasha’s), or just play Variant Humans. If you want some minor superpowers that don’t make sense with your class, work with the DM to make a custom race that seems balanced.

For example, rather than build Superman as a high-level Eldritch Knight to get flight, heat vision, and cold breath, Kryptonians may simply be built as a race with a fly speed, the fire bolt cantrip, and a 1/day burning hands (which does cold instead of fire). See Classes and Spells, below.

Equipment and Improvised Weapons

The armor from your starting equipment and either one weapon or one weapon and shield from this package become “phantom gear.” Unless you are suffering some kind of power suppression, you are always considered to be wielding them. Unless it makes sense for your power set, these don’t actually manifest as spectral arms and armor, but simply represent your basic enhanced toughess (armor), punching ability (melee weapon), or reusable energy blast (ranged weapon). Feats and abilities affect the phantom weapon as they would a normal weapon of the type (e.g., great weapon master works if you’re wielding a phantom greatsword).

For example, a fighter with the basic gear might have AC 18 and a 1d8 punch (as if using a longsword and shield) or AC 16 and a 2d6 punch (as if using a greatsword).

Phantom gear may improve at story moments where your powers are enhanced (at roughly the same schedule the DM would dole out better gear in a regular campaign). For example, the fighter’s AC may improve by +2 when they go from phantom chain to phantom plate in some event that increases their durability.

Since you can only choose one weapon, you will need to use improvised weapons for whichever of melee or ranged your phantom weapon doesn’t cover. In general, at Str up to 14, you can lift things that count as d6 damage weapons (and might have finesse), at Str 16 you can lift 2d6 weapons (objects up to a couple hundred pounds), at Str 18 you can lift 3d6 weapons (objects up to half a ton), and at Str 20 you can lift 4d6 weapons (objects up to a ton or more). It’s up to the DM whether cars to throw at people are readily available and/or reusable, so even high-strength characters may be limited to lesser improvised weapons depending on the environment. And picking up such a weapon uses up your bonus action in most cases (possibly also your move to get to it). Finally, improvised weapons don’t count for feats and abilities that affect specific weapons.

Tech-based characters (or your modern fantasy characters that actually wear armor and wield swords) may choose to forego phantom equipment, and represent their capabilities with physical gear. In this case, they should probably treat all their equipment as +1 enhancement higher than it would otherwise be, as a bonus for being able to disarm them without power suppression.

In general, replace physical weapons with their closest modern equivalent. This mostly means that guns just swap in for bows without any practical changes. Yes, a modern firearm should be way more deadly than a shortbow in a true simulation, but for pulp games, it doesn’t really matter that much.

Classes and Spells

Think of classes as your main powerset, and do your best to make the concept for your powers fit. A speedster might be a barbarian or monk (or rogue that just uses cunning action to dash). Most strength-based characters represent various types of brick, dexterity-based characters are your ninjas and acrobats, and casters are blasters.

If the character concept really doesn’t support a particular class ability, the DM should allow the player to swap to something equivalently powerful that makes more sense. But try to do this as little as possible, since the whole draw of this is to avoid having to make a ton of houseruled classes.

While prepared casters usually represent your true Dr. Strange types, and warlocks may be witches, spontaneous casters and most half-casters use spells to represent various energy projection powers and miscellaneous utility powers. At minimum, allow spells that represent powers to switch to the character’s primary energy type (e.g., for a sorcerer that’s a fire blaster, all of their damage spells should be switched to do fire damage). Most “spells” also don’t really have components, though you can still impose a monetary cost on the ones with expensive material components as part of their balance. In general, try to limit your character to spells that make sense, and the DM should be generous in allowing you to describe the effects of a spell in a way that makes more sense for your concept (e.g., the charm and suggestion spells as mind-control or super-Charisma).

For some characters, the wide raft of spells don’t make a lot of sense, because they’re really just trying to pick up a particular power (e.g., flight). As noted above, this might work better as a custom race. But if you really just want to have one trick, the DM can experiment with giving you more spell slots but fewer known spells (though try this gradually and be careful of balance; there are probably certain spells that could make this too good).

Also think heavily about spells per day as having some level of narrative implication. Maybe your Cypher-esque omniglot can’t technically run tongues all day for 100% linguistic comprehension as you conceived, but should be able to get it running most of the time when it matters. If there are still aliens to interpret for after running out of spell slots, maybe you just have a stress headache or need to do something else for a while.

Skills, Tools, and Languages

Not all of the standard skills make sense for a modern supers campaign. However, standard sheets don’t make it easy to remove and add skills, so I’ve endeavored to make the transfer below as simple as possible. You may just have to make a note somewhere to remember that Arcana is actually Science.

• Science replaces Arcana, and represents most hard sciences (biology is still Medicine and Nature).
• Academics replaces History, expanding it to a broad knowledge of liberal arts education topics.
• Nature remains the same, but takes on more of Survival’s ability to forage in the wilderness.
• Occult replaces Religion, and covers Religion, Arcana, and other esoteric, mystical concepts.
• Streetwise replaces Survival, and focuses more on navigation and tracking in an urban environment (allowing Nature to carry more of the rare out-of-city adventure tropes).

Computers are a new tool proficiency. You may also want to create separate tool proficiencies for things like Electronics. Driving a car is Land Vehicles. You might also add Air Vehicles for planes. PCs should have a broad ability to swap out existing tool proficiencies for the modern technology ones.

Common is replaced by the dominant language of the country in which you’re setting your game. Allow players to swap other fantasy languages for Earth languages. If you want to play a true polyglot, consider getting the tongues spell, as mentioned above, rather than chasing down adding every possible language to your sheet.

Knockback

This is an optional rule to have more cinematic fights like in the comics.

Whenever you take damage from a kinetic or explosive source that could presumably send you flying, you may reduce the damage to half and move away a number of feet equal to the damage ultimately taken (e.g., if you take 20 damage and halve it for knockback, you suffer 10 damage and fly back 10 feet). This is a free action that stacks with reactions such as Uncanny Dodge; it’s fair for characters in supers fights to be twice as durable if they’re willing to get smashed through walls.

If this knocks you off a ledge, you suffer falling damage normally. If you would hit a wall, you go through the wall if the damage you took would also be enough to break it. This does not generally do additional damage to you, but is just cinematic.

If the damage you took is higher than your Dexterity score, you fall prone at the end of the knockback. If it is equal or lower, you can keep your feet (unless you are also knocked off a ledge).

Enemies

In general, it’s pretty easy to convert standard monsters to supers threats. Swapping their type to Construct for robots or Monstrosity for science mutants goes a long way. Tweak resistances and immunities to make sense, and change how you describe the creature and you can get away with reusing stats.

For human threats, keep the rules about ability scores in mind, if only for verisimilitude. In general, unaugmented humans should probably be limited to CR 1 or less. Anything higher, and you’re looking at standard-issue power armor and laser weapons, or explaining why they have low-level powers.

In general, you have the same problem as in regular D&D justifying why high-CR intelligent NPCs are working as mooks for an even bigger villain rather than setting up their own enterprise in another town where they’re less likely to get punched.

DMing 101: Your First One-Shot

A friend was telling me her teenager recently ran her first D&D one-shot for friends, and stressed herself out mightily trying to figure out what to prep. That got me thinking about my advice for an introductory session of D&D, particularly for others that have never really played before that you’re trying to convince that the hobby is an entertaining one.

Best Practice: Don’t beat yourself up. You are your own worst critic. The session didn’t go as badly as you think it did, and, even if it did, you’ll get a chance to try again. People willing to DM are few, so just being willing to try gives you an audience. It’s a skill that takes a long time to get good at, but any DM is better than no DM. Give yourself room to fail, and use those failures to improve. You’ll get better, and as long as you’re honest about improving, everyone is going to be pulling for you to do so.

Character Generation

If this is a true one-shot, I’d advise you to pregenerate characters. And I’d advise starting them at third level for D&D 5e. The pregeneration allows you to skip a lot of confusion at the table, particularly if you have players that are new. Starting at third level makes the PCs a lot tougher (so you don’t accidentally kill them with a few lucky monster rolls) and gives them access to more of their fun class abilities (particularly, that’s the level where everyone has gotten access to their subclass features).

When pregenerating, definitely get input from everyone as to what they want to play. Some people might be very specific (and veteran players might want to make the character themselves, and feel free to let them within the same guidelines as everyone else). Some might be very vague, and you’ll have to prompt them with suggestions for races, classes, and backgrounds they might find fun. The goal here is to get enough buy-in that the players feel they have ownership of the characters without forcing those with no experience to go through character generation.

If this is a “one-shot” only in the sense that you definitely want to run a whole campaign with these same characters, and you’re just trying to get buy-in, then you’re more limited. In this case, you’ll probably want to start at first level (so everyone feels like the levels past that are “earned”). And you’ll likely want to sit people down to make their characters themselves (with a lot of input from you for those that haven’t played before). Ideally, get everyone together for a Session 0 (character generation and planning session) to have time to work through the process and bounce character ideas off of each other. This process always takes more time than you’ve budgeted, so you don’t want to try to do it and then run a whole adventure in the same time block.

Don’t Meet in a Tavern

It’s a sacred D&D trope and it usually sucks. I may be an outlier on this advice, but I think this trope should die in a fire. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a D&D game where we met in a tavern that didn’t take forever to get going and lead to character problems for many sessions on. The core problem is just, why would you trust your life to a handful of strangers you just met at a bar? It’s hard to bend your roleplaying around the idea that you’re adventuring with these people, but your character doesn’t trust or even like most of them.

My advice is to have the PCs all be companions before the game starts. There are a number of ways to do this:

• Big City Adventurers: The PCs are from an adventuring guild in the big city (or some equivalent that makes sense for your world, like deputies of some adventuring government agency). They already know each other from the guildhall, and chose to band together to go out looking for problems to solve. This is a great option if you foresee your campaign going back to the big city if it continues.
• Local Heroes: The PCs are the few classed adventurers in this town. For whatever reason, they’re not actually on the sheriff’s payroll, but everyone knows that they’re the plucky heroes the town can call on when something weird happens. They’ve known each other for years, and are probably all friends that hang out (depending on ages). This is a great option if you foresee the campaign being focused on this region of the world, using this town as a home base.
• Far-Flung Connections: The PCs are all relatives or all have the same patron. While they have been adventuring in other places, they’ve probably met one another at least in passing and have their mutual contacts to say they’re trustworthy. Their relative/patron in the town has called them in for this mission (or maybe their patron has recently died and they’re all here investigating the suspicious circumstances). The trick with this one is to make it clear that the patron/relative is/was really nice, so they’ll all feel good about adventuring together under the NPC’s banner.
• Already Met in a Tavern: Particularly if you’re starting at higher level, you can say that the PCs have already had a meet cute, gone on an adventurer or two, and gotten over any initial distrust they might have had. Have the players give you some vague ideas for the adventure where they met, and workshop it into something that makes sense for your campaign world until everyone’s happy with the summary of their “first adventure together.” This can give you an immediate hook for the next one-shot (“Remember that town you saved from zombies in your first adventure? Now they have a new problem and are calling you back…”).

Best Practice: Don’t have high-level NPCs around unless it’s very clear why they can’t help. Particularly in the patron scenario, the players are going to be like, “If they’re so interested in this, why don’t they come along and help?” This is a special problem with the classic high-level wizard distributing quests: in the time they waited around for adventurers to provide the quest to, they could have just popped over and handled the crisis. It’s easier if the patron is wealthy, but low-level (e.g., the mayor or a local landowner), so needs the combat skills the PCs possess.

Corollary: Don’t have a bunch of high-level guards in town. If the players are having to handle all of the town’s serious problems themselves, but then have a tough fight if they ever run afoul of the guards, they’re going to immediately want to know why the guards haven’t been handling the town’s weird problems, if they’re so competent. This means that the PCs are going to get away with crimes. I’ll discuss that a little bit down below.

The Town Scene

At this point, you know why the players are adventuring together and why they’re in this town looking for adventure. You could skip straight to the adventure. But you should run a town scene first.

The difference between tabletop RPGs and video games is the unscripted freedom to interact with whatever and whoever you want. You’re going to build some of that into the first dungeon as well, but it’s really apparent in town. The players can interact with whatever they want. They can talk to whoever they want. They can say and do whatever inane things they want, and the NPCs will respond.

Your first-time players in particular are going to want to pick a fight. They’re going to want to steal stuff. They’re going to push things in the environment just to see that they fall over. Some of this is that they’re seeing how much freedom they have. Some of it is that we don’t really get to act out in our lives in the real world, and D&D provides a no-consequence way to get it our of our systems.

You obviously don’t want your players to murder the town guard, scoop up all the money, and run off into the sunset, dungeon unplumbed. If nothing else, it’s not actually as much fun as it seems, even for the players doing it. But you don’t want to clamp down on bad behavior like an angry assistant principal either. What do you do?

Best Practice: Let the players seem to barely get away with bad behavior. If they try to steal something, don’t tell them the DC. If they rolled well, act like bystanders almost spotted them and might if they try again. If they rolled poorly, play the failure as them giving up on the attempt because there are too many eyes on them (rather than obviously stealing in the open and leading to a big arrest scene). If they start a fight, have the other side give up quickly, with bystanders muttering about “heroes” that pick fights rather than helping the town. What you want is for the players to get that they’re allowed to act out, but they should be getting on to the crisis out of town that they all came here for. What you don’t want is the session to devolve into a brawl with the town guards trying to arrest the PCs (especially since you’ve set the town guard up as not very competent, which is why they need the PCs in the first place).

Assuming things don’t devolve instantly into a crime spree, what you’re trying to get out of the town scene is some freeform roleplay. You’re getting the players used to speaking in character and treating the world as a real thing. You’re dropping some campaign lore, if you’ve developed it. You’re getting the players to make decisions in character, even if they’re minor ones. You’re showing off that D&D is more than just killing goblins in a dungeon.

Ask the players what they’re up to in town before meeting up with their contact for the quest briefing. Try to split them up, if you feel comfortable running separate scenes for different PCs (it helps to have a town map, so you can move their minis around it to make it obvious who can interject into which conversations; “You’re over at the blacksmith, you aren’t part of the conversation with the barkeep.”). If they don’t have anything in particular they want to do, suggest that they can go try to buy gear that didn’t come with their default equipment packages, which should send them to roleplay with a shopkeep.

Best Practice: Don’t overprep, particularly for NPCs. You don’t actually need to have every significant NPC in town fully described and statted. Lean into tropes and stereotypes. The blacksmith is a gruff dwarf. The barkeep is loud and large. Do a funny voice, if you feel up to it. If they for some reason need to roll against the NPC, pull a low-level stat block from the back of the Monster Manual. Or just give the NPC a +0 through a +3, depending on how good it seems like they should be at the skill. If the players revisit the NPC, you can develop them further then. The biggest trick to DMing is that work your players don’t see is wasted: you’re way better off spending your prep cycles on NPCs, locations, and plots the players have already demonstrated they’re interested in.

You might want to throw some foils in. Make most of the NPCs supportive and nice (after all, these are heroes here solving their problems), but throw in one or two that don’t like them. This gives them someone to prove wrong, and get an apology from later. It’s probably best that this is someone they won’t immediately want to throw down with for the insult (someone connected, like the mayor’s kid, or an actual child, rather than a town tough).

Best Practice: It’s easy to get players to hate NPCs. It sometimes seems that your players are primed to hate any NPC that acts like they have a life and opinion of their own that doesn’t revolve around the PCs getting their own way. After all, they’re the protagonists. You don’t have to work very hard to get players to decide an NPCs is their enemy. It’s honestly a lot harder to get players to like NPCs without having them be total pushovers to whatever the PCs are selling. This is trending into advanced GMing tips, so just be aware of it. NPCs you thought your characters would love, they’ll hate because they disagreed at the wrong time. NPCs you thought they’d hate or at least not care about will be adopted as the team mascot. You just have to roll with it.

Eventually, you’re going to corral them into the actual quest hook. If they’re locals, word can just come through during their normal day that the mayor/sheriff/patron needs to talk to them. If they came here looking for adventure, you can just remind them that their meeting with their contact starts soon.

If you’re being fancy, you can make the adventure come to them. Someone screams that their kid has been carried off by goblins. Skeletons are suddenly shambling into town, coming from the old crypt. The old diabolist everyone thought was long-dead shouts down from the local hill that they’ll all rue the day they exiled him (rue!) before running back to his sanctum. You know, action stuff.

Either way, you’re basically trying to provide two things:

• Directions to the dungeon
• A little bit of context about what they’re going to fight there so they can make limited preparations

This is a first-time one-shot. You’re not trying to be tricky this time. You want a clear call to action and a dungeon to be called to. Save the more complicated scenarios for when everyone is more seasoned.

Dungeon Crawling

Most of what I’d want to say about how to build an early dungeon, Matt Colville has already covered in great detail. You basically want:

• A short enough dungeon that they’ll get through it in your available time
• More than one type of encounter: different kinds of fights, traps, chances for social interaction, etc.
• Some opportunities to make real choices
• A satisfying final room where the players feel like they won a victory

If you’re trying to sell people on an extended campaign in a world of your devising, this is a great place to build in subtle connections to your lore. You’re not trying to hit them over the head with it, but interesting decorations in your room or character descriptions can go a long way. Text props unrelated to the current problem can hint at issues going on elsewhere. Maybe the little big bad they defeat in the dungeon was clearly working for—or at least incited by—some greater and more mysterious force.

Best Practice: Leave room in your encounters for clever solutions or roleplaying. Not every room has to be a combat. The players might scare off the bad guys. They might convince them to help. In particular, it’s useful to have an optional room that contains an NPC that isn’t directly in league with the main enemies, that the players can fight or befriend. It could be a mistreated guardian. It could be a creature the main enemies are afraid of but leave alone as long as it stays in its area. It could be a spirit the PCs might convince to fight with them or even possess one of their weapons to turn it into a temporary magic item. The players are going to remember the time they did something clever and unexpected to change an encounter for much longer than the time they won a combat.

And that’s it. The PCs run the dungeon. They return to town triumphant. NPCs that told them they wouldn’t do it apologize. NPCs that believed in them all along give a hearty thanks and a modest quest reward.

All that’s left is to ask the players whether they had a good time and might want to try it again.

Serial Numbers Filed Off: The Parasol Culmination

Four decades ago, the sky fell. That’s the poetic way of putting it. The factual way to describe it is that rocky space debris totaling a significant fraction of Earth’s mass cascaded across the planet over the course of two days. Hardly a square mile of the world was spared from some kind of meteor strike, from rocks the size of bullets up to ones the size of airplanes.

Approximately half a billion people died from the impacts and their immediate collateral damage. The same number died in the next few days from the massively destroyed infrastructure, fires, and tidal waves. Even more would die over the next few years, from the famine caused by the green haze diminishing the light of the sun and from cancer caused by the massive influx of radioactive particles. By the mid-1980s, humanity had been reduced by nearly half what it was before the catastrophe.

Much of the debris was a strange, green crystalline rock, which came to be called Viridian. Safe to hold briefly, it became apparent that it was nonetheless highly radioactive. The large shards were quickly collected from craters by local governments, but the small fragments and dust were what led to the steep rise in cancer throughout the world’s population. The years of haze also created immense static across the radio waves, and new age nuts swore that it had similarly silenced the world’s magic.

But, humanity will overcome. Far less destructive than global thermonuclear war (and fortunate neither superpower had viewed the impacts as an attack), Viridian proved far safer and more useful than plutonium. Within a few years, the worst of the haze had been denatured by weather and sunlight, diminishing to a slightly-elevated background radiation. The vast stores of crystals could be harnessed for much-safer nuclear power to try to bootstrap global technology back from its nadir. And the massive crisis, shared tragedy, and loss of competing mouths to feed had united the world in a way that nothing else could. Scientists worked across national lines to solve the problems of rebuilding infrastructure, curing cancer, harnessing the new material, and looking to the skies to prevent such a disaster from ever happening again.

It did not take long for the world’s astronomers to realize that this was not some random strike. The trail had followed the path of a small, recovered spacecraft that crashed ahead of the tide of rock, somehow guided through space. If not for the fortunate timing of an alignment with Mars, scraping off the bulk of the debris cloud to impact the red planet, Humanity might have gone extinct. Earth had been saved by a matter of hours in celestial alignment.

But if there was some great enemy on the other side of the galaxy that had tried to remotely bombard Earth into an apocalypse, they would find humanity ready. In addition to great strides in technology, the planet had an unexpected resource: individuals with inexplicable powers. Shocking numbers of children born after the skyfall began to demonstrate these abilities, believed to be mutation from the Viridian’s radiation. The vast majority could do little more than parlor tricks, but there were others that could do more. Some few turned their abilities to crime and war, but the greatest of them became protectors.

You are the world’s premier super group: some of the strongest of the Viridian Children, coupled with some of the brightest engineers to harness the crystal for powered gear. When the world is threatened from within, you leap into action. But everyone knows that you are really preparing for what might happen if the aliens that launched the attack try again.

At least you were.

Years of research has finally been verified. The “attack” may have been a cosmic accident. The “missile” could have been an intergalactic escape pod for a single refugee, accidentally sweeping part of an exploding planet in its wake. All the astrophysics backs it up, tracing the path of the Viridian to a distant solar system where a shattered planet orbits a red giant sun in its habitable zone. If this doomed planet had exploded mere hours later, Earth would have received the full blast. But the real tragedy is, a day earlier, and a passing sweep of Jupiter might have collected the majority of the debris safely, leaving both Earth and Mars barely scathed. A sad and immutable fact of history, certainly.

Except that the particle physicists at Star Laboratories have begun to talk of some kind of “speed force” that might make faster-than-light travel possible… developed with the idea of space travel and defense, some are murmuring that it could be used for time travel.

And there would be many people interested in going back forty years to try to give the Earth a second chance…

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This idea is largely inspired by Umbrella Academy and Avengers: Endgame. What if the greatest heroes from a recovering post-apocalyptic timeline washed up in a version of history where they’d be inevitably viewed as villains? In the recovering world they came from, the PCs are basically the Justice League. But in the prime DC timeline, they’re a bunch of meteor mutants or using Kryptonite-powered tech, and Superman takes a keen interest in those. Even should they convince this world’s heroes they’re not villains, they still have every incentive to try to restore the timeline that contains everyone they’ve ever loved, and the new powers that be can’t have that.

Incidentally, for the scenario above, I think the inciting incident is a few surviving White Martians infiltrating Star Labs and trying to change the timing of Krypton exploding enough that Earth takes the full brunt rather than Mars. But the heroes intervene, somehow speed up the process (possibly because Braniac notes their presence), and wind up leaving both Earth and Mars intact, giving rise to the standard DC timeline of your choice.

D&D 5e: Additional Chain Pact Warlock Options

It’s weird that only Fiendlocks get Pact of the Chain familiar options that are decent, right? Imp and Quasit are significantly better familiar options than Sprite, and while Pseudodragon at least gets Magic Resistance, it’s only CR 1/4 vs. the CR 1 of the fiendish options. This post offers some options for comparable CR 1 familiars that better fit some of the other patrons, and also a new invocation.

I feel like you should offer the youngest version of the Faerie Dragon as a familiar for Archfey warlocks, so that creates a better option than Sprite for them. Argonine is meant for Great Old One, Lantern Archon is meant for Celestial, and Psychopomp is meant for Hexblade (does anyone make a Hexblade patron warlock that isn’t a bladelock?). For Fathomless and Genie, I feel like a reskin of the Imp or Quasit as a stronger Mephit is probably fine: just make it an elemental and reskin the resistances and powers for the appropriate element.

New Invocation: Empowering Chains

Prerequisite: 5th level, Pact of the Chain feature

Your investment in your familiar improves its capabilities. Whenever you summon your familiar using the find familiar spell, it gains the following benefits:

• The to hit for its attacks, its trained skills, and any saving throws DCs for its actions increase by +1 for every point your proficiency bonus is higher than 2 (essentially replacing its proficiency bonus with your own).
• Its AC increases by half your proficiency bonus.
• It gains additional HP equal to twice your Warlock level.
• It gains the Multiattack action, allowing it to make two attacks with its main attack.
• It gains the Evasion ability, as per the Rogue feature of the same name.

New Monsters

Argonine

A strange “cat” from beyond the known planes, the Argonine is a shadowy mass of eyes and sharp tentacles that can disguise itself as a mortal feline to those that don’t look too closely.

Argonine
Tiny aberration, unaligned

Armor Class 13
Hit Points 10 (3d4 + 3)
Speed 30 ft., climb 30 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
6 (-2)	17 (+3)	13 (+1)	7 (-2)	12 (+1)	12 (+1)

Skills Acrobatics +5, Insight +5, Perception +5, Stealth +5
Damage Resistances bludgeoning, necrotic
Damage Immunities psychic
Condition Immunities charmed, grappled
Senses blindsight 60 ft., truesight 20 ft. passive Perception 11
Languages Deep Speech
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Death Sense. The argonine can sense the exact location of any humanoid or beast within 120 feet with current hit points less than half its maximum hit points.

False Appearance. Unless it is using its Claw Barrage ability, the argonine is indistiguishable from a normal housecat to those without truesight, blindsense, or a link to a Great Old One.

Keen Senses. The argonine has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight or smell.

Light Sensitivity. While in sunlight or equivalent bright light, the argonine has disadvantage on attack rolls. The argonine has disadvantage on saving throws against effects that would cause the blinded condition.

Magic Resistance. The argonine has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Actions

Claw Barrage. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., all creatures within reach. Hit: 5 (1d4+3) slashing damage.

Shadowmeld. The argonine magically turns invisible until it attacks or until its concentration ends (as if concentrating on a spell). Any items carried by the argonine become invisible with it. It may only use this power when in dim light or darkness, and it becomes visible again if it enters an area of normal or bright light.

Lantern Archon

The least of the celestial host, lantern archons are little more than ephemeral balls of light, assigned to lead mortals on the path of virtue by giving good advice and faint aid.

Lantern Archon
Small celestial, neutral good

Armor Class 17
Hit Points 11 (2d6 + 4)
Speed fly 60 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
1 (-5)	18 (+4)	14 (+2)	6 (-2)	12 (+1)	12 (+1)

Skills Perception +3, Religion +0
Damage Resistances radiant; bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, prone, restrained
Senses darkvision 120 ft. passive Perception 13
Languages all, telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Innate Spellcasting. The lantern archon’s spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 11). The lantern archon can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
        At will: light, detect evil and good
        1/day: aid

Magic Resistance. The lantern archon has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Actions

Healing Touch (1/Day). The lantern archon touches another creature. The target magically regains 9 (2d8) hit points and is freed from any curse, disease, poison, blindness, or deafness.

Light Ray. Ranged Spell Attack: +6 to hit, range 30/60 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d4+4) radiant damage.

Psychopomp

Easy to mistake for a particularly large and clever raven, psychopomps are minions of the Raven Queen that can be sent to aid her followers or to force the dead to move on.

Psychopomp
Tiny beast, unaligned

Armor Class 14
Hit Points 10 (3d4 + 3)
Speed 10 ft., fly 60 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
2 (-4)	18 (+4)	12 (+1)	6 (-2)	12 (+1)	14 (+2)

Skills Perception +3, Stealth +6
Damage Resistances necrotic, psychic; bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons
Condition Immunities frightened, life drained
Senses darkvision 60 ft. passive Perception 13
Languages all (can’t speak except Raven Speech and Mimicry)
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Death Sense. The psychopomp can sense the exact location of any humanoid or beast within 120 feet with current hit points less than half its maximum hit points.

Magic Resistance. The psychopomp has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Mimicry. The psychopomp can mimic simple sounds it has heard, such a person whispering, a baby crying, or an animal chittering. A creature that hears the sounds can tell they are imitations with a DC 10 Wisdom (Insights) check.

Raven Speech. The psychopomp can learn to croak a number of words equal to its Intelligence score.

Actions

Beak. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit:6 (1d4+4) piercing damage. This attack counts as radiant damage if it targets an Undead creature.

Blink. The psychopomp vanishes from its current plane of existence and appears in the Ethereal Plane, or, if already on the Ethereal Plane, appears in the nearest corresponding unoccupied space on the Material Plane (or the plane adjacent to the Ethereal that it most recently exited from). The psychopomp cannot carry any other living creatures or items with it, but may carry incorporeal undead or other souls. For unwilling incorporeal undead, the psychopomp must be adjacent before using this action, and the undead target receives a Charisma saving throw (DC 12) to avoid being brought along.