The D&D 2014 DM's Toolbox: NPCs, Sidekicks, Patrons, and House Rules

Introduction

Chapters 4, 5, and 9 of the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide don't tell one continuous story the way the campaign and adventure-design chapters do. They're the book's on-the-fly reference material: build an NPC, stock a dungeon, run a stretch of wilderness, drop a trap, or bend a rule to fit your table. This guide pulls all three chapters into one page, organized the way you'd actually reach for it mid-prep rather than in strict book order, and adds the two Tasha's Cauldron of Everything systems that extend the same NPC material: sidekicks, for an NPC who joins the party permanently, and group patrons, for the organization standing behind it.

Two things this guide deliberately leaves for other guides in this hub: the DCs, encounter-difficulty math, and lookup tables you need mid-session live in the DM Quick Reference, and turning any of this raw material into a structured adventure is the Creating Adventures guide's job. Think of this page as the parts bin - NPCs, locations, traps, house rules, and homebrew processes - that those other guides assume you already have on hand.

Designing NPCs

Most nonplayer characters in your game are bit players, not co-stars, and the DMG is explicit that they rarely need the complexity of a novel's cast. Scale the effort to how much the character actually matters.

Quick NPCs. A no-nonsense blacksmith with a tattoo of a black rose, a badly dressed bard with a broken nose - one or two memorable qualities are enough for most NPCs, and none of them need combat statistics unless they pose an actual threat.

Detailed NPCs. For NPCs who'll play a bigger role, the DMG suggests ten one-sentence answers: occupation and history (a hint of the character's past - served in an army, was imprisoned, adventured years ago), appearance (one distinctive physical feature), abilities (any ability notably above or below average), talent (something the NPC is unusually good at), mannerism (a speech quirk or physical tic that makes the NPC memorable), interactions with others (how their behavior shifts depending on who they're talking to), useful knowledge (one thing they know that could help the party), ideal, bond, and flaw or secret - the same three concepts used for character backgrounds in the Player's Handbook, useful here because a player who uncovers an NPC's ideal, bond, or flaw has something concrete to work with in a social scene.

Monsters as NPCs. A named monster who matters to the plot deserves the same treatment as a humanoid NPC. The DMG's own example is the Xanathar, a beholder crime boss in Waterdeep: giving it a distinctive appearance (cobblestone-textured flesh, jointed eyestalks with rings on them), an ideal (greed - it hoards gold and gems), a bond (its elaborate sewer lair), and a flaw (a weakness for rare foods and scented oils) turns a stat block into a character your players actually remember, rather than just another "beholder."

NPC Statistics, Party Members, and Loyalty

Giving an NPC game statistics comes down to three options: a handful of relevant numbers and nothing else, a full monster stat block (borrowed or built - see Creating a Monster below), or a class and levels built the same way you'd build a player character. Classed NPCs can even use the Death Domain or Oathbreaker options the DMG reserves for evil clerics and paladins who've broken their oaths, though those specific subclasses are stat-block content this guide doesn't reproduce.

NPCs who travel with the party as full members earn a full share of experience and count toward encounter difficulty like any other combatant. A campaign that lets characters take on lower-level followers - a paladin's squire, a wizard's apprentice - gets a built-in backup-character option at the cost of the party having more people to protect and account for; because followers still draw an equal XP share, they tend to catch up in level faster than you'd expect.

Loyalty is an optional rule for tracking how far an NPC party member will go for the group. A loyalty score runs 0 to 20, starting at half the highest Charisma score among the adventurers and rising or falling as the party treats the NPC well or poorly - rescuing them or helping with a personal goal raises it, abusing or endangering them for selfish reasons drops it hard. An NPC at 10 or higher risks life and limb for the party; one who drops to 0 stops acting in the party's interest and may leave outright or work against them in secret. Track it privately so players can't be sure exactly where they stand with an NPC under their nominal control.

Contacts, Villains, Patrons, Hirelings, and Extras

Contacts have close ties to the party without joining the adventuring life themselves - a name and a few details cover most of them, with more development reserved for a contact likely to become a recurring ally or enemy. A contact who ends up travelling with the party full time is a different case entirely, and the Sidekicks section below covers it. Patrons are a specific kind of contact: someone with a vested interest in the party's success who hands out quests, rewards, and help, from a retired adventurer recruiting successors to a sheriff posting a bounty. Scale that idea up to a whole organization and it becomes the Group Patrons framework below. Hirelings rarely matter beyond the service they provide - a coach driver, a ship captain - though a hireling can grow into something more as an adventure unfolds; long-term hirelings add to the party's lifestyle expenses. Extras are background characters the party wasn't meant to interact with until a player singles one out; keep a mental list of quick names and mannerisms ready so an extra can become a real scene on short notice.

Villains get their own design layer once Chapter 3 has already flagged them as the adventure's threat: what they want (immortality, influence, power, revenge, wealth, and similar broad drives), the methods they're willing to use to get it, and a secret weakness a clever party can uncover and exploit - a lich's hidden phylactery is the DMG's own example. None of that requires stat-block work up front; it's characterization the party can discover through play, the same ideal/bond/flaw structure used for any other NPC.

Parleying with Monsters

Meeting a hostile monster doesn't have to end in a fight. Sapient creatures often prefer talking to drawing weapons, and even an animalistic one can be calmed with the right offering - food, most often. When the party tries to parley instead of fight, improvise the exchange or fall back on the social interaction rules - starting attitude, a conversation that can shift it, then a Charisma check. Consider granting advantage on that check if the party offers something the creature actually wants.

Researching a monster's desires. A party willing to spend time on legwork can research what a creature is likely to want before ever meeting it. The DC for the relevant ability check is 10 plus the creature's challenge rating, and the right skill tracks its type - Arcana for aberrations, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, and undead; Animal Handling, Nature, or Survival for beasts; Arcana or Religion for celestials and fiends; History for giants and humanoids; Nature or Survival for monstrosities and plants; Arcana or Survival for oozes.

What creatures tend to want. Desires scale to a creature's type rather than being random noise: aberrations want rare organs, flattery, secrets, or an unsettling bodily graft; beasts want fresh meat, a soothing melody, or a bright trinket; celestials want a heroic tale, a sworn charitable deed, or a holy relic; constructs want oil, a magic item to burn as fuel, or rare metal components; dragons want gold, a rival's stolen hoard-piece, or flattering art of themselves; fey want a treasured memory or a sentimental object; fiends want blood, a desecrated holy object, or a broken sacred promise; giants want an admission of their craft's superiority or barrels of ale; humanoids want a lost item recovered or a friendly contest; undead want a memento from their past or the completion of unfinished business. Use the CR-scaled research DC and a creature's type-appropriate desire together, and a fight the party would rather avoid can become a negotiation instead.

Sidekicks

Everything above treats an NPC as scenery the party interacts with. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything covers the case where one of them stops being scenery and starts travelling with the group permanently. The sidekick rules take any stat block with a challenge rating of 1/2 or lower and layer one of three classes on top of it - Expert, Spellcaster, or Warrior - each with its own leveling table, class features, and Ability Score Improvement track. Not a full player character, not a static hireling, but something in between that grows alongside the party.

Creating a Sidekick

A sidekick can be any creature with a stat block from the Monster Manual or another official D&D book, provided its challenge rating is 1/2 or lower. Take that stat block and build on it using the sidekick class rules below - nothing about the creature's original statistics gets thrown out, the class layers on top of them.

The creature needs a real connection to the party before it joins: a childhood friend, a rescued captive, a loyal pet, or any bond that grew out of play or backstory. Whether that trust exists is a DM call, not an automatic result of proximity.

Who actually controls a sidekick at the table is flexible. A player running only one or two characters can take a sidekick as a second character; a player who wants something simpler than a full class can play a sidekick as their only character; the group can share control jointly; or the DM can run it directly. None of these options are mutually exclusive across a single table - different sidekicks in the same campaign can be handled differently.

There's no hard cap on how many sidekicks a party can have, but stacking more than one per player character tends to slow the game down noticeably, and every sidekick in play counts as a full participant when judging an encounter's difficulty - the DM Quick Reference has the XP-threshold tables a sidekick plugs straight into. DMs can also repurpose the same rules to build a customized NPC or monster outside the sidekick context entirely.

Gaining a Sidekick Class

When a creature becomes a sidekick, it picks up one of three classes for the rest of its career: Expert, Spellcaster, or Warrior. If a class feature includes a choice, the DM can make that choice directly or hand it to the players.

Starting level. A sidekick begins at the same level as the party's current average. A group that starts a campaign at 1st level gets a 1st-level sidekick; a group that invites a sidekick to join at 10th level gets one that starts at 10th.

Leveling up. A sidekick gains a level whenever the party's average level increases, regardless of how much of the recent story it was actually present for. The level reflects a mix of shared adventures and the sidekick's own training between sessions, not strict attendance.

Hit points. Each level grants one Hit Die. Roll it, add the sidekick's Constitution modifier, and apply the total to its hit point maximum, with a minimum gain of 1 hit point per level regardless of the roll. A sidekick reduced to 0 hit points falls unconscious and makes death saving throws exactly like a player character, rather than simply dying outright.

Proficiency bonus. The sidekick's proficiency bonus tracks its class level on the relevant table below. Every time it increases by 1, add 1 to the to-hit modifier on every attack already in the stat block and increase every DC in that stat block by 1 to match.

Ability Score Improvements. Whenever a sidekick gains an Ability Score Improvement, any part of its stat block that depends on the improved score needs a matching update - an attack that uses Strength, for instance, gets its to-hit and damage modifiers bumped once Strength goes up. If it's unclear whether a melee attack in the original stat block used Strength or Dexterity, treat it as using whichever one benefits the sidekick more.

The Expert

The Expert favors cunning over brawn - a scout, a musician, a librarian, a streetwise kid, a wily merchant, or a burglar all fit the archetype. Gaining this class requires the creature to already speak at least one language listed in its stat block.

Bonus Proficiencies (1st level). The sidekick gains proficiency in one saving throw (Dexterity, Intelligence, or Charisma), proficiency in five skills of the DM's choice, and proficiency with light armor. A humanoid sidekick, or one already carrying a simple or martial weapon in its stat block, also picks up proficiency with all simple weapons and two tools.

Helpful (1st level). The sidekick can take the Help action as a bonus action instead of a full action.

Cunning Action (2nd level). On its turn, the sidekick can take the Dash, Disengage, or Hide action as a bonus action.

Expertise (3rd level). Choose two of the sidekick's existing skill proficiencies; its proficiency bonus doubles for any check made with either one. A second pair of skills gets the same treatment at 15th level.

Ability Score Improvement (4th level, and again at 8th, 10th, 12th, 16th, and 19th). Increase one ability score by 2, or two scores by 1 each, to a maximum of 20.

Coordinated Strike (6th level). When the sidekick uses Helpful to assist an ally attacking a creature, the target can be up to 30 feet away instead of adjacent, and the sidekick deals an extra 2d6 damage the next time it hits that same target before the turn ends.

Evasion (7th level). On a Dexterity save that would normally halve damage, the sidekick takes no damage on a success and half damage on a failure - unless it's incapacitated, which removes the benefit entirely.

Inspiring Help (11th level, improving at 20th). A creature that receives the sidekick's Help gains a 1d6 bonus (2d6 at 20th level) to the roll. If that roll was an attack that hits, the creature can skip adding the bonus to the roll and add it to the damage instead.

Reliable Talent (14th level). On any ability check using the sidekick's full proficiency bonus, treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10.

Sharp Mind (18th level). The sidekick gains proficiency in one more saving throw: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma.

The Spellcaster

The Spellcaster walks a magical path - a hedge wizard, a priest, a soothsayer, a traveling performer, or simply someone with an innate magical streak. Like the Expert, it requires at least one spoken language already in the creature's stat block.

Bonus Proficiencies (1st level). One saving throw (Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma), two skills chosen from Arcana, History, Insight, Investigation, Medicine, Performance, Persuasion, or Religion, and proficiency with light armor. A humanoid sidekick, or one already carrying a simple or martial weapon, also gains proficiency with all simple weapons.

Spellcasting (1st level). The sidekick picks one of three roles, which sets its spell list and spellcasting ability:

If the creature already had a Spellcasting trait in its original stat block, this feature replaces it outright. It knows two cantrips and one 1st-level spell to start; solid opening picks are mage hand, ray of frost, and thunderwave for a Mage, cure wounds, guidance, and sacred flame for a Healer, and eldritch blast, healing word, and light for a Prodigy. Spell slots, additional cantrips, and additional spells known all scale up with level on the class table, and one known spell can be swapped for a different one from the same list each time the sidekick gains a level. Spell save DC and spell attack modifier both use the sidekick's proficiency bonus plus its spellcasting ability modifier, the same formula every other spellcaster in the game uses. Its spellcasting focus follows its role too: an arcane focus for a Mage, a holy symbol for a Healer, and either an arcane focus or a musical instrument for a Prodigy.

Ability Score Improvement (4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 18th). Same shape as the Expert's version: one score up by 2, or two scores up by 1, capped at 20.

Potent Cantrips (6th level). Add the sidekick's spellcasting ability modifier to the damage of any cantrip it casts.

Empowered Spells (14th level). Pick one school of magic. Casting a spell of that school by expending a slot lets the sidekick add its spellcasting ability modifier to that spell's damage or healing roll.

Focused Casting (20th level). Taking damage can no longer break the sidekick's concentration on a spell.

The Warrior

The Warrior grows into martial competence as it fights alongside the party - a soldier, a town guard, or a battle-trained beast built for combat rather than talk or magic. Unlike the other two classes, Warrior carries no language requirement.

Bonus Proficiencies (1st level). One saving throw (Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution), two skills chosen from Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Athletics, Intimidation, Nature, Perception, or Survival, and proficiency with all armor. A humanoid sidekick, or one already carrying a simple or martial weapon, also gains proficiency with shields plus all simple and martial weapons.

Martial Role (1st level). Choose Attacker (a flat +2 bonus to all attack rolls) or Defender (a reaction that imposes disadvantage on an attack roll targeting an ally within 5 feet of the sidekick, provided the sidekick can see the attacker).

Second Wind (2nd level). As a bonus action, regain 1d10 plus the sidekick's class level in hit points. Usable once between rests, twice starting at 20th level.

Improved Critical (3rd level). The sidekick's attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20.

Ability Score Improvement (4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th, and 19th). One score up by 2, or two scores up by 1, capped at 20 - the Warrior gets one extra improvement compared to the other two classes, landing at 14th level.

Extra Attack (6th level, improving at 15th). The sidekick attacks twice instead of once when it takes the Attack action, rising to three attacks at 15th level. A sidekick with its own Multiattack action chooses between Multiattack and Extra Attack on a given turn, never both at once.

Battle Readiness (7th level). Advantage on initiative rolls.

Improved Defense (10th level). Armor Class increases by 1.

Indomitable (11th level). Reroll a failed saving throw and take the new result. Usable once per long rest, twice starting at 18th level.

Choosing a Class for a Given Sidekick

The three classes solve different problems at the table, and the fiction usually points to one before the mechanics do. A sidekick meant to scout ahead, talk the party's way past a checkpoint, or pick a lock leans Expert - Helpful and Cunning Action make it useful in a fight without making it the party's front line. A sidekick built to patch up the party mid-dungeon or add a ranged option leans Spellcaster, with the Healer role covering the first job and Mage or Prodigy covering the second. A sidekick meant to stand in the doorway and take hits, or to hit back twice as hard once Extra Attack comes online, leans Warrior.

None of the three classes is mechanically weak relative to the others - each is built to support a party rather than headline one, and the choice is closer to picking a role on a team than picking a subclass with a power ceiling to chase. A single low-CR creature can plausibly wear any of the three depending entirely on the story reason it joined.

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen provides six named, ready-made sidekicks with their own level 2-to-11 advancement tables, but explicitly defers the underlying rules to this system rather than introducing a new one. See Six Pre-Built Sidekicks in the Dragonlance guide for those six characters. For the campaign-design side of a permanent companion - XP shares, party size, how a sidekick changes a campaign's shape - see Creating Campaigns.

Group Patrons

The Patrons entry above covers the DMG's version: an individual with a vested interest in the party who hands out quests and rewards. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything scales that same idea up into an organization and gives it a repeatable structure, which answers a question campaigns often leave unasked - why does this group work together, and who's backing them. The framework below is setting-agnostic and drops into any 2014 campaign.

If you're running a campaign in Eberron specifically, that setting has its own, more elaborate eleven-archetype version of this same idea - see the Eberron guide's Group Patron Framework for a system built around Eberron's own factions and politics.

How Patrons Work

Every patron in this framework gets described along the same five axes. Reuse this same structure for any patron you build yourself:

• Example organization. A concrete sketch of the patron's shape - who runs it, what it wants, and how it operates - that you can reskin to fit your own campaign world.
• Character roles. The kinds of jobs a party working for this patron tends to hold, along with the character backgrounds that fit each role naturally.
• Mission shape. The sort of quests this patron sends a party on, and how much say the party gets in choosing them.
• Benefits. The concrete perks a party earns in exchange for service - pay, equipment, training, protection, or access a party wouldn't otherwise have.
• Contacts. The specific person, creature, or force who delivers assignments and manages the party's day-to-day relationship with the patron.

A patron isn't purely a resource, either - it's a responsibility. Some hand out direct orders and expect obedience. Others simply reward a party for pursuing goals that happen to serve the patron's own interests, which lets a party chase its own agenda and still collect a payoff if that agenda lines up with what the patron wants. Either way, having a patron gives the whole party a shared purpose: once per long rest, each character can grant advantage on an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw to another party member they can see or hear, as long as neither of them is incapacitated - a small mechanical nod to the idea that a party working toward a common goal coordinates better than one that isn't.

The benefits listed under each archetype below are a floor, not a ceiling. A party in good standing can usually ask for more - a small loan, specialized equipment, an introduction to someone hard to reach - appropriate to whatever that patron has access to. A patron the party keeps clashing with is a lot less generous about extending that goodwill.

The Eight Patron Archetypes

Presented alphabetically, these eight patrons cover a wide range of default campaign shapes. Use one as written, reskin it to fit your world (the guild archetype below could just as easily represent an adventurers' league, a trade cartel, or a homebrew mercenary company), or borrow pieces from several to build something new.

Academy

Example organization. A network of scholars and truth-seekers united around a shared pursuit of knowledge - anything from a self-contained boarding school to a secretive vault built to protect or destroy one specific piece of forbidden lore. An academy's focus can be as broad as "everything worth knowing" or as narrow as one obsessive research question, and its members split time between passing on what they already know and chasing what they don't.

Character roles. Students, groundskeepers, professors, researchers, financiers, and expert speakers cover most of the roles a party plays inside an academy, drawing on backgrounds from Sage and Guild Artisan to Outlander and Urchin depending on how a given character found their way in.

Mission shape. Expeditions to document strange phenomena, investigate how magic works, dig up deliberately buried history, chase rumors of a hidden land, track down and return plundered artifacts, or push into dangerous territory - the deep questions about divinity itself, if the academy is bold (or reckless) enough to fund that kind of research.

Benefits. A day wage or a bounty for each significant discovery donated back to the academy, credentials that carry weight in scholarly circles, delegated research assistance from faculty and colleagues, access to restricted archives and equipment, and a discount on downtime training - including the option to pick up proficiency in Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion.

Contacts. Everything from an overworked secretary relaying a senior professor's instructions, to a celebrity researcher who's decided the party is their star pupils, to something stranger - a haunted piece of the collection that compels its own research agenda, or an anonymous sponsor steering the party from a distance to avoid a rival faction inside the academy's own bureaucracy.

Ancient Being

Example organization. A creature of tremendous age and power - an elder dragon still expanding its hoard and its ambitions, an undead spellcaster whose interests turn out to be stranger and more varied than "conventional adventuring wisdom" assumes, or a fiend bound to a single location and forced to work through mortal agents to act on its will beyond it. The relationship can be a clearly defined bargain or something far more uncertain, even coercive.

Character roles. Ancient-being patrons rarely dictate a fixed roster of jobs - a party is typically eyes and ears in the wider world, or direct agents carrying out specific, often cryptic instructions.

Mission shape. Errands that only make sense in service of a goal far older and stranger than anything a mortal institution would pursue - retrieving a specific relic, watching a specific person, or simply reporting back on events the being finds significant for reasons it doesn't explain.

Benefits. Access to a network capable of sourcing common magic items, advantage on research checks touching the being's own interests, safe houses spread across a wide region that a party can use at no cost in exchange for defending them, and - at higher levels - a small measure of supernatural power granted directly by the patron.

Contacts. An ordinary-seeming local (a bartender, a shopkeeper, a minor official) fronting as legitimate cover, or something considerably less ordinary depending on how openly the being chooses to operate.

Aristocrat

Example organization. A wealthy noble, merchant prince, or similarly well-connected figure who hires a party the way they'd hire any other skilled specialist - discreetly, and usually through an intermediary rather than in person.

Character roles. Aristocratic patronage rarely assigns a fixed job title; a party mostly operates as trusted problem-solvers handling whatever a wealthy patron would rather not be seen handling personally.

Mission shape. Errands that benefit from discretion and a patron's willingness to look the other way about method, as long as the results serve their interests and their name stays out of it.

Benefits. Reimbursement for extraordinary expenses, practical immunity from prosecution within the aristocrat's sphere of influence (so long as the party doesn't abuse it), the occasional stay at a luxurious property as a reward for a job well done, and a standing salary sufficient for a modest lifestyle.

Contacts. A servant angling for a title of their own, a level-headed manager keeping their reckless employer out of trouble, or a well-meaning relative appointed to smooth over the aristocrat's more chaotic decisions.

Criminal Syndicate

Example organization. An organized-crime network ranging from a small local outfit to a sprawling multinational operation with fingers in smuggling, extortion, gambling, and anything else profitable enough to be worth the risk. A syndicate's own leadership sits well above street-level muscle, and a party working for one is trusted with bigger jobs than typical hired thugs precisely because they bring more capability to the table.

Character roles. Enforcers, fences, lookouts, and specialists in acquisition and retrieval cover most of the work; a party's specific standing in the hierarchy shapes how much autonomy they're given.

Mission shape. Heists, assassinations, protection rackets, smuggling runs, and elaborate cons - jobs commissioned by outside clients (with the syndicate taking a cut of the fee) or jobs that directly enrich the syndicate itself (with the party keeping a cut of what they steal).

Benefits. A share of the take from both client-commissioned and self-directed jobs, access to the syndicate's own contraband trade, fences who can offload stolen goods (including expensive art or magic items) for a finder's fee rather than the risk of finding a buyer yourself, hidden safe houses usable at no cost, and a standing discount at businesses the syndicate uses as fronts.

Contacts. A longtime member who took the party in as a parental figure, or an unassuming go-between - a beggar, a menial laborer - who turns out to know exactly the right people.

Guild

Example organization. A professional association of artisans, adventurers, or specialists in a shared trade, bound together by shared standards, shared resources, and (usually) annual dues. A guild's scope can be as narrow as one city's blacksmiths or as broad as a continent-spanning adventurers' league - this is the archetype to reskin for an existing setting's own famous organization, whether that's a real-world published faction or a homebrew league of your own design.

Character roles. Members, apprentices, and representatives handling the guild's day-to-day business alongside their own adventuring work.

Mission shape. Contract work sourced through the guild's own connections, ranging from mundane commissions to serious jobs that need a guild's reputation and resources behind them to land in the first place.

Benefits. Discounted lodging at a guildhall, use of specialized crafting equipment and workspace (with a meaningful bonus to relevant artisan's tools checks), favorable rates when buying or selling through the guild's trade contacts, and reduced-cost training in subjects the guild specializes in.

Contacts. An obsessive perfectionist chasing their own magnum opus at the expense of everything else, or an attentive overseer who takes a very personal interest in how the party's work reflects on the guild.

Military Force

Example organization. A standing army, mercenary company, or paramilitary unit that assigns a party missions the way it would any other unit under its command - along a clear chain of order and rank, whether the party enlisted as green recruits or joined as established veterans.

Character roles. Soldiers, officers, and specialists operating within a defined hierarchy, with rank shaping both authority and pay.

Mission shape. Missions with clear, precise objectives handed down by a commanding officer - occasionally open-ended enough to require judgment, but rarely ambiguous about what success looks like.

Benefits. A discount on nonmagical weapons and armor, protection from local law enforcement in favor of answering to the chain of command instead, access to restricted military installations and intelligence with a commanding officer's sign-off, and a salary that scales with rank - starting modest, growing comfortable as the party earns promotion.

Contacts. A battle-scarred veteran dulling old wounds with whatever vice or distraction works, or a taskmaster who yells every order regardless of how routine the assignment is.

Religious Order

Example organization. An organized faith's institutional arm - a cloister of priestly scholars, a militant order of paladins, or any similarly structured body acting in a deity's or philosophy's name, with the party serving as its adventuring wing.

Character roles. Acolytes, defenders, ascetics, inquisitors, and emissaries, drawing on backgrounds that range from Acolyte and Hermit to Noble and Soldier depending on how the character came to serve.

Mission shape. Furthering the order's reach - proselytizing, performing religious services, meting out divine punishment, or recovering relics important to the faith - handed down through an established chain of authority or, in rarer cases, communicated directly from the divine.

Benefits. Free casting of any spell up to 5th level from a sufficiently senior NPC priest of the faith (material components included, as long as the party is in good standing), a holy symbol or druidic focus and a book of the faith's rites for every member, and proficiency in the Religion skill for anyone who doesn't already have it.

Contacts. A mysterious speaker who fears discovery by a rival faith, a severe inquisitor demanding the party root out wickedness wherever it hides, or messages that arrive as prophetic dreams rather than through any earthly intermediary at all.

Sovereign

Example organization. A ruling monarch, regent, or head of state - or a claimant fighting to become one - who employs the party at a level well above typical government work, whether openly, in a deniable "shadow" capacity, or as a double agent whose true loyalty stays hidden.

Character roles. Advisors, ambassadors, secret agents, champions, and court confidants, spanning nearly every background depending on how the character earned the sovereign's trust.

Mission shape. International espionage, undermining a rival's claim to power, rooting out institutional corruption, quietly making an embarrassing scandal disappear, preparing an heir for the responsibilities of rule, or negotiating peace with a threat capable of ending the nation outright.

Benefits. Access to the highest levels of society and, with permission, the perks of the crown itself (diplomatic receptions, the use of royal guards), reimbursement for extraordinary expenses, practical immunity from prosecution within the sovereign's sphere of influence, and a standing salary.

Contacts. A trusted confidant devoted to the sovereign's wellbeing, a spymaster handling the nation's dirtier work so the ruler's own hands stay clean, or - in stranger campaigns - a spectral council of the nation's previous rulers manifesting to steer events away from disaster.

Choosing a Patron for Your Table

Work this out as a table decision, not a unilateral DM assignment - the patron shapes what kind of adventures show up by default, who the party's allies and rivals are from session one, and how much of the campaign's direction the DM steers versus hands to the players. A more directive patron (Criminal Syndicate, Military Force, Sovereign) suits a table that wants a steady stream of concrete assignments and doesn't mind following orders. A more autonomous patron (Academy, Ancient Being, Religious Order) suits a table that wants resources and reputation without a chain of command dictating every session's premise. None of these lines are fixed - a party's standing with its own patron can shift across a campaign, souring after a mistake or strengthening after a job well done, and a patron relationship that starts as low-level service can end with the party running the organization itself.

Being Your Own Patron

For some tables, running a criminal syndicate, a mercenary company, or an arcane scholars' collective is a lot more exciting than working for one. Founding an organization instead of joining an existing one trades away a patron's built-in support for a much greater degree of autonomy - and when the party is the one in charge, benefits that would otherwise come free (an armory stocked and ready, a guildhall already built) become expenses the party has to cover out of pocket instead.

Running your own organization uses the Running a Business downtime activity from the Dungeon Master's Guide. More than one character can contribute days toward the same roll, and a successful roll's profit multiplies by 4 plus the number of characters who took part - a meaningful incentive for the whole party to pitch in on their own organization's upkeep rather than leaving it to one character alone. Adopt an NPC as your own in-house contact, too - a secretary, a majordomo, an apprentice - to keep up with the bureaucracy while the party is out on a job and to feed them leads toward the next one.

If your campaign is set in Eberron specifically, that setting's own Group Patron Framework covers this same player-run option for several of its eleven archetypes - see the Eberron guide's Group Patron Framework for the setting-specific version. For a giant-themed campaign, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants reskins six of the eight archetypes above with giant-specific names and flavor (Boss, Financier, Seer, Sovereign, Tutor, Warleader) - see Running a Giant-Themed Campaign in the Glory of the Giants guide for the giant-flavored version.

Building a Dungeon

A dungeon comes together faster once you know its location, who built it, why, what happened since, and who lives there now - five questions the DMG turns into a repeatable process rather than a blank page.

Location and creator. Dungeons show up almost anywhere - beneath a city, carved into a cliff face, sunk in a swamp, floating on a cloud - and who built it shapes its architecture: a dwarven stronghold gets straight halls and carved faces, a beholder's lair gets unnaturally smooth walls from its disintegration eye, a drow vault gets spiderweb motifs and slave pens.

Purpose. A dungeon built and inhabited for a reason reads very differently from a lucky natural cavern a monster wandered into. The DMG's purpose options include a death trap built to kill intruders, a lair where monsters simply live, a maze meant to confuse or contain, a mine that broke through into something worse, a planar gate transformed by the energy leaking through it, a stronghold serving as a powerful individual's secure base, a temple or shrine consecrated to a deity, a tomb, or a treasure vault built and guarded specifically to protect what's inside.

History and inhabitants. Something usually happened to the original builders - abandonment, plague, conquest, internal conflict, a magical catastrophe - and that history shapes what's left behind for the party to find. Whoever or whatever moved in afterward isn't just a random monster list: a dungeon works better as a small ecology, with factions competing for territory, predators tracking prey to a known water source, and intelligent inhabitants pursuing their own goals rather than standing around waiting to be killed. A dungeon shared by ogres, mind flayers, and a hidden drow cell all plotting against each other gives the party room to ally with one faction, incite a revolt, or play multiple groups off each other instead of just clearing rooms in sequence.

Mapping. Sketch on a 10-foot grid (or 5-foot if you play with miniatures), and lean toward asymmetrical rooms, changes in elevation, some wear and tear or collapsed passages, natural features bleeding into constructed spaces, and more than one way in or out - all of it in service of giving players decisions that matter rather than a single predetermined path.

Dungeon features and hazards. Walls, doors, and secret passages each carry their own detection and interaction rules (a stuck door calls for a Strength check, a locked one for Dexterity with thieves' tools, a secret door for passive or active Wisdom (Perception)), all keyed to DCs set using the guidance in Running the Game. A handful of recurring environmental hazards round out a dungeon's danger beyond its inhabitants: brown mold that drains heat from anything nearby, green slime that eats through flesh and metal on contact, giant webs that restrain anyone who blunders in, and yellow mold that bursts into a cloud of poisonous spores when disturbed. Treat any of these as a trap for the purpose of judging how dangerous they are relative to the party's level.

Once a dungeon exists, stocking it with the right encounters at the right density is exactly the kind of location work the Creating Adventures guide's location-based structure builds on top of.

Wilderness

Wilderness travel splits into two approaches, and picking one deliberately beats defaulting into it. The travel-montage approach compresses a journey into a few evocative sentences when the destination matters more than the trip - useful for skipping ahead without losing the sense that time and distance passed. The hour-by-hour approach tracks marching order, planned and random encounters, and terrain in close detail when the journey itself is the point of the session.

Mapping a wilderness works best when you think of even open terrain as having clear pathways - roads that curve around obstacles, valleys and ridges that channel travel, mountain passes that funnel movement through predictable points - rather than treating the outdoors as a featureless expanse the party can wander in any direction with no consequence.

Wilderness features to scatter across roughly every 50 miles of map include settlements, monster lairs (a region that size supports about a half-dozen lairs but rarely more than one apex predator), monuments, ruins, strongholds, and weird locales - a dead magic zone, a permanent portal, a canyon that is a dragons' graveyard - that mark the fantastic as a standing feature of your world rather than an occasional import.

Wilderness survival, weather, and getting lost cover the practical dangers of travel: extreme heat and cold risking exhaustion, strong wind imposing disadvantage on ranged attacks and hearing-based checks, heavy precipitation obscuring vision, and a party's navigator rolling Wisdom (Survival) against a terrain-based DC to avoid wandering off course. Foraging for food and water along the way uses the same Wisdom (Survival) check against a DC set by how abundant the region's resources are.

The DM Quick Reference guide already covers the exact Foraging DCs and a table of common environmental hazard DCs pulled from across the book, so this guide won't re-derive those numbers - check that page when you need the actual DC instead of the concept behind it.

Settlements

A village, town, or city works best as an adventure backdrop when you focus on the locations that matter to the story rather than trying to map every street and name every inhabitant. The DMG offers quick-generation tables for race relations, a ruler's status, notable civic traits, what the settlement is known for, and any current calamity troubling it, plus a building-generation chain (roll a building type, then roll again on that type's specific table - residence, religious building, tavern, warehouse, or shop) for when a chase or a search sends the party into a structure you hadn't planned.

Law and order varies by settlement: an orderly city might field a trained watch and militia, while a frontier town leans on its own citizens or passing adventurers to handle trouble. Trials range from argued cases before a magistrate to trial by ordeal or combat, and sentencing usually means a fine, forced labor, exile, or execution rather than long-term imprisonment, since few settlements maintain actual prisons.

Urban encounters work like a random encounter table scaled to city life instead of wilderness - a brawl, a pickpocket, a runaway cart, guard harassment, a public spectacle - checked for about as often as a wilderness encounter and rerolled if the result doesn't make sense for the time of day. They're a fast way to make a settlement feel alive between the scenes you actually planned.

Unusual Environments

Not every wilderness trek stays on foot. Underwater, expect random undersea encounters (sunken wrecks, merfolk patrols, an undersea cave to explore) at the same rate as land encounters, unaided swimming capped at 8 hours a day before exhaustion risk sets in, and visibility that drops sharply in murky water or darkness. At sea, ships have their own cost, speed, crew, and cargo statistics, navigation depends on staying in sight of land or relying on dead reckoning and the stars, and a shipwreck is a plot device you reach for when you want or need one rather than something with fixed mechanical triggers. Airborne travel lets characters ignore ground terrain and non-flying monsters entirely (unless they're low enough for ranged attacks to reach), with flying mounts needing rest breaks worked into how far they can carry the party in a day.

For terrain with a supernatural edge - a region soaked in a preternatural force, a one-off magical phenomenon, or an expanded natural hazard like an avalanche - see Supernatural Regions and Hazards in the Cosmology guide.

Traps

A trap can be mechanical (pits, blades, pressure plates) or magical (a triggered spell effect or a spell like glyph of warding functioning as a trap), and running one at the table comes down to three questions: how it's triggered, whether the characters can detect it, and what happens if they don't.

Triggering and detecting. Most traps go off from a pressure plate, a trip wire, or the wrong action on a locked mechanism, while magic traps often trigger on proximity, touch, or a specific unmet condition like a missing password. Careful inspection usually reveals something - an uneven flagstone, a gleam of light off a wire - and a trap's own description sets the DC to spot or disable it, whether through an active Wisdom (Perception) check or by comparing the DC to each character's passive score.

Effects and severity. Trap danger breaks into setback, dangerous, and deadly tiers, each with its own save DC and attack bonus range, scaled further by the target's level - the same Damage Severity by Level framework this hub's DM Quick Reference guide already houses for quick lookup. Complex traps go further, rolling initiative and acting on their own turns - a room that floods over several rounds is the DMG's own example of a trap better run like a mini combat than a single triggered effect.

Sample traps. The book walks through several fully worked examples by name - a collapsing roof rigged to a trip wire, a falling net hidden in cobwebs, a statue that breathes fire when a hidden plate is stepped on, four variations on pit traps (simple, hidden, locking, and spiked), poisoned darts fired from wall-mounted tubes, a poisoned needle hidden in a lock, a rolling stone sphere released by a pressure plate, and - at the deadliest end - a sphere of annihilation concealed behind an illusion of ordinary darkness. Building your own trap in that same style means picking a believable trigger, a detection method that rewards careful play without being un-findable, and an effect scaled to how dangerous you actually want the encounter to be.

Hot Take: The DMG's four pit-trap variants (simple, hidden, locking, spiked) look like padding until you run one back to back with its siblings - the design lesson buried in there is that the interesting part of a trap is never the damage die, it's the mismatch between what a character expects to happen and what actually does. A hidden pit that just deals fall damage is a tax. A locking pit that traps its victim while a second threat closes in, or a spiked pit whose spikes are also poisoned, turns the same basic hole in the ground into a complication instead of a speed bump. If a trap in your game only costs hit points, it's not pulling its weight next to one that costs time, position, or a resource.

Terrain hazardous enough to need its own initiative order isn't limited to traps - an avalanche or a bad fall works the same way mechanically. See Supernatural Regions and Hazards in the Cosmology guide for those.

Puzzles

A puzzle earns its place in an adventure for a specific reason: it makes the party discover information through teamwork, gives characters a chance to use their skills in uncommon ways, deepens a whimsical or mysterious setting, explains why something hidden close at hand has never been found, or reveals a secret that magic itself can't uncover. A puzzle without one of those reasons behind it is usually just friction.

Pace them deliberately. Puzzles can take real table time to solve, so use them sparingly rather than in every session, and don't assume a puzzle needs to be solved the moment the party finds it - a riddle that lingers unresolved across multiple sessions can be more satisfying than one cracked on the spot.

The standard puzzle shape. A well-built puzzle usually has the same handful of pieces: read-aloud or paraphrased text for when characters first encounter it, a difficulty rating (easy, medium, or hard, which roughly predicts how often the party will need hints), a description of its physical features and how they can be interacted with, a clear solution, a set of hint checks tied to specific skills and DCs, and notes on how to adjust it to fit a different adventure.

Hints. Tie each hint to a skill and a DC. A character proficient in that skill gets the hint for free on request; anyone else can roll the check to earn it. If multiple hints share a skill, reveal the lowest-DC one first and hold higher-DC hints in reserve for a group that's still stuck. Don't be stingy - hints let characters with relevant skills contribute even when the players aren't naturally puzzle-solvers, and a party member whose background or campaign history ties into the puzzle is a good excuse to hand out an extra one.

Running one at the table. Once a puzzle is presented, add and clarify details the same way you would in any other encounter, without giving away the solution outright - though letting a hint slip here or there is fine. It doesn't matter much whether it's the player or the character doing the solving; the goal is the group enjoying the challenge together, not preserving a strict character-knowledge boundary. If a player already knows the answer, ask them to share only what their character would actually have learned. Encourage the whole party to pool hints and talk through their thinking - a puzzle is a win for the table, not for whichever player blurts out the answer first.

Ability Options

A handful of Chapter 9's optional rules change how ability checks work at your table. Proficiency dice replace the flat proficiency bonus with a die roll (a d4 at 1st-4th level, scaling up to a d12 at 17th-20th), trading predictability for randomness. Skill variants let you drop the standard skill list entirely in favor of ability-check proficiency tied to class and background, background-only proficiency judged case by case at the table, or personality-trait proficiency tied to a character's stated positive and negative traits - each one shifts weight away from the skill list and onto roleplaying and background details instead. Hero points give every character a small pool (5 at 1st level, growing with level) that can be spent to add a d6 to a roll after seeing the result, well suited to a mythic or superheroic campaign tone. Honor and Sanity are two optional new ability scores - Honor for campaigns built around a strict code (particularly useful for settings like Kara-Tur or any game centered on knightly orders), Sanity for campaigns confronting alien, Lovecraftian horror - each with its own check and saving-throw triggers, and each raised or lowered by the DM based on a character's actions rather than through normal ability score increases.

Adventuring Options

Fear and horror give you Wisdom saves (fear) and Charisma saves (horror, with a failed save risking short- or long-term madness) for sustaining dread in a darker campaign. Healing variants range from a healer's kit dependency that gates spending Hit Dice on someone treating the character's wounds, to healing surges that let characters spend Hit Dice mid-combat as an action, to slow natural healing that removes the automatic hit-point recovery from a long rest entirely - each one dials survivability up or down to match your table's preferred grit. Rest variants swap the default short/long rest lengths for Epic Heroism (5-minute short rest, 1-hour long rest, for a faster and more heroic pace) or Gritty Realism (8-hour short rest, 7-day long rest, forcing careful judgment about when combat is worth the cost). Firearms and explosives bring Renaissance, modern, or futuristic weapons into a campaign that wants them, each with its own cost, damage, and special properties like burst fire or reload. Alien technology makes characters roll Intelligence checks to figure out an unfamiliar device, with simple items needing two successes and complex ones needing four. Plot points hand players a limited, session-capped resource to add a twist to the story, force a complication onto their own idea, or even take over as DM for a scene - options that work only for a table that's comfortable sharing narrative control.

Combat Options

Initiative variants trade the standard rolled order for a passive initiative score, side-based initiative (the whole party rolls once as a group against the DM), or speed factor initiative that re-rolls every round based on the action each combatant chooses, each trading speed of play against unpredictability. Action options add new combat maneuvers: climbing onto a bigger creature, disarming an opponent, marking a target for advantage on your next opportunity attack against them, overrunning through a hostile space, shoving a target sideways instead of away, tumbling past an opponent, resolving whether cover itself gets struck by a missed ranged attack, and letting excess damage from a killing blow carry over into a second nearby creature. Injuries add lingering consequences beyond hit-point loss - a lost eye, a limp, broken ribs, a festering wound - triggered by a critical hit, dropping to 0 hit points without dying, or failing a death save by 5 or more, with each injury tied to its own recovery condition.

Creating a Monster

The Monster Manual won't have everything you imagine, and the DMG lays out a repeatable process for both quick stats and a full custom stat block.

Modifying an existing monster first. Before building from scratch, ask whether an existing stat block already does most of the work. An intelligent arboreal predator that hunts elves might just be a reskinned quaggoth - same statistics, a changed name, maybe a swapped language. Swapping a manufactured weapon for a different one, or bolting on a special trait borrowed from another creature (giving a goblin a spider's climbing ability, an owlbear a pair of wings), changes flavor without necessarily touching the monster's challenge rating - though changing its offensive or defensive numbers can shift that rating and needs to be recalculated.

Quick monster stats. If you just need workable numbers fast, pick an expected challenge rating, pull baseline Armor Class, hit points, attack bonus, and damage-per-round from the book's CR-keyed statistics table, adjust anything you want to feel different about the monster, then recalculate its final challenge rating by averaging its defensive rating (based on adjusted hit points and AC) against its offensive rating (based on adjusted damage output and attack bonus or save DC).

A full stat block follows the same underlying logic across twenty deliberate steps: name, size, type, alignment, ability scores, expected challenge rating, Armor Class, hit points, damage resistances/immunities/vulnerabilities, attack bonuses, damage output, save DCs, special traits/actions/reactions, speed, saving throw bonuses, a recalculated final challenge rating, skill bonuses, condition immunities, senses, and languages. Several of the book's own supporting tables - the Monster Features table cataloging how specific traits like Pack Tactics, Regeneration, or a breath weapon shift effective AC, damage, or hit points, and the NPC Features table for adapting an NPC stat block to a specific playable race - exist specifically to help you weigh those adjustments without eyeballing them, though this guide won't reproduce those catalogs wholesale.

Monsters with classes let you bolt player-class levels onto a monster - a "Werewolf, 4th-level barbarian" gains that class's features and one Hit Die of its normal type per level, without gaining the class's starting equipment, and its proficiency bonus still tracks its challenge rating rather than its class level. How much this changes a monster's threat varies wildly: a handful of barbarian levels transforms a werewolf, while a few wizard levels barely register on an already-terrifying ancient dragon.

None of this is about the encounter-building math for how many monsters make a fair fight - that's deliberately kept in the DM Quick Reference and Creating Adventures guides. This section is purely about building the monsters you're statting up in the first place, once you already know how many of them you need. For picking and reskinning a published monster instead of building one from scratch, see the Monster Guide.

Creating a Spell

Use existing spells as your yardstick. A spell so good a caster would want it prepared every single day is probably overtuned for its level; a spell so narrow it's only useful in one contrived scenario (something that works only against good dragons, say) will sit unused no matter how flavorful it is. Make sure a new spell fits its class's identity - a wizard or sorcerer with a bespoke healing spell is stepping on the cleric's design space. For damage, the book's Spell Damage table scales from roughly 1d10 at cantrip level up to 15d10 at 9th level for a single target, assuming the spell deals half damage on a successful save; bump the total by about 25% if your spell doesn't allow that reduction. The same table works in reverse as a healing benchmark, with the rule that cantrips shouldn't offer healing at all.

Creating a Magic Item

Modifying an existing item is the easier path: swap one capability for a similar one (a potion of climbing becomes a potion of stealth), change an item's form while keeping its properties (a ring of the ram becomes a wand), swap its damage type (a flame tongue deals lightning instead of fire), or fuse two items' properties into one object - which usually bumps its rarity to reflect the added power.

Building a new item from scratch should let a character do something they couldn't do before, or meaningfully improve something they can already do - and the simpler the activation method, the easier the item is to actually use at the table. The book's Magic Item Power by Rarity table sets a rough ceiling: a common item might grant roughly a 1st-level spell effect, up through a legendary item reaching a 9th-level effect or a +4 bonus. Attunement should apply whenever passing an item around the whole party for its benefit would be disruptive, or when the item grants a bonus that stacks awkwardly with similar items already in circulation.

Creating New Character Options

Beyond monsters, spells, and items, Chapter 9 also covers homebrewing the character-facing options themselves - races, subraces, and classes.

Creating a race or subrace. Start with the story, not the mechanics: why does your campaign need this race playable, what does it look like, what's its culture, and what makes it distinct from the other options already on the table. The DMG walks through two full worked examples - the eladrin as an elf subrace (an Intelligence bump and a limited-use misty step, reflecting their ties to the Feywild) and the aasimar as a wholly new race built as a mirror to the tiefling (Wisdom and Charisma increases, darkvision, resistance to necrotic and radiant damage, and a small set of celestial-themed spells). Simpler changes work too: purely cosmetic alterations (turning halflings into anthropomorphic mice with no mechanical change) or cultural alterations (seafaring, gunpowder-using dwarves who trade an artisan's tool proficiency for waterborne vehicles) can reshape a race's flavor without touching its underlying balance at all.

Modifying a class. Changing proficiencies (letting rogues in a specific guild choose Religion) or spell lists (building paladins who serve sorcerer-patrons instead of swearing oaths to ideals) usually shifts flavor more than power. Restricting which races or cultures can take a class roots it more firmly in your setting, as long as you're generous about letting players cross those lines when it serves a good character concept. Substituting or adding whole class features is the highest-effort option, and it comes with a specific risk: swap in something that leans too hard toward combat and you can quietly make that class stronger than its peers without meaning to. One fully worked variant the book offers directly: a spell points system that replaces a caster's spell slots with a shared point pool (a 1st-level spell costs 2 points, a 9th-level spell costs 13), trading some of the slot system's rigidity for extra flexibility in exchange for more bookkeeping.

Creating a Background

Building a custom background follows five steps, and it earns treatment as its own subsystem separate from modifying a race or class, since a background does more narrative work per rule than almost anything else in character creation. Check the backgrounds guide first; one of the 13 published backgrounds, or that guide's customization rule, covers most concepts without needing a new one built from scratch.

Step 1: Root it in your world. Tie the background to a specific faction, organization, trade, person, event, or location in your campaign rather than a generic archetype. The DMG's own worked example is an acolyte of Candlekeep background - functionally similar to the existing sage background, but tied specifically to the monks who maintain Candlekeep's library, giving the character built-in allies, built-in enemies, and a reputation that follows them.

Step 2: Suggest personal characteristics. Build small tables (two or three entries each is plenty) of personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws that fit the background's concept, or borrow freely from the Player's Handbook's existing tables. Even players who skip rolling on these tables benefit from seeing what the background is supposed to feel like.

Step 3: Assign proficiencies or languages. Two skill proficiencies and two tool proficiencies, with languages allowed to substitute for tool proficiencies on a one-for-one basis - the same shape every Player's Handbook background already uses.

Step 4: Include starting equipment. A small amount of starting gold plus items a character would plausibly have owned before adventuring, including at least one item unique to the background - the acolyte of Candlekeep's engraved scroll case (possibly containing a useful map) is the book's example of an item that does double duty as flavor and as a minor mechanical hook.

Step 5: Settle on a background feature. Reuse an existing feature with a tweak, or design a new one - but keep it away from straightforward mechanical bonuses like a flat check or attack bonus. The strongest background features open up roleplaying and story options instead: the sage's Researcher feature, for instance, doesn't hand out free information on a failed check, it tells the character where to find the answer, which is a hook for a future session rather than a shortcut past one.

This is DM-side homebrewing advice for building an entirely new background from nothing. If you're choosing among the backgrounds that already exist for a new character, the Backgrounds guide covers that selection process instead.

Bottom Line

This guide is a parts bin, not a narrative - reach for the section you need and skip the rest. Quick NPCs cover most of a session's cast; sidekicks turn one of them into a companion that levels with the party, and a group patron gives the whole party an organization behind it; detailed NPC treatment, dungeon-building, wilderness and settlement structure, and traps are the physical and social scenery an adventure gets built around; the house rules in Ability, Adventuring, and Combat Options are optional dials to try one at a time; and the homebrew processes for monsters, spells, magic items, races, classes, and backgrounds are there for whenever the published material doesn't quite fit what your campaign needs. None of it requires touching the planes your NPCs and locations might touch, or the encounter-difficulty math that turns the monsters you're statting up into a fair fight - those live in their own corners of this hub. Return to the Dungeon Master Guides hub for the full 2014 DM chapter map.