An exciting “what if” popped up in your head, and you’re compelled to pursue it:.Some DMs would forbid the offending spell/race, but that’s not my style. I also wanted to surprise the players if they ever went to the water, so I homebrewed nasty things that live in it. CoS doesn’t have any underwater threats, which would make the water bodies a safe space-which I refuse to allow in this campaign. A personal example: a Player Character (PC) in my Curse of Strahd (CoS) campaign is a Triton, which means he can breathe underwater, and this, in turn, made me realize how the Water Breathing spell can make Barovia a lot less scary.Something your players do or have that forces you to counter it somewhat.The lore of your world requires that X thing exists, and it doesn’t exist officially in D&D.You want your players to have more stuff to choose from.A character idea you’re in love with doesn’t fit a pre-existing option (this one’s for both DMs and players).There are many reasons why you might decide to get busy making content for the most popular tabletop roleplaying game in the world. 5e: How to Homebrew Archetypes (Subclasses).Narrative: How do you become a member of this class? What powers it?.One of 5e’s core design values is simplicity. With that in mind, let’s explore how you can go about brewing your own home stuff. Putting on a game-designer hat and getting to work on homebrew might sound like a daunting task at first, but 5e’s design makes it quite approachable. Take it from a guy who made a Cat Patron (more on that later) for warlocks with the express purpose of seeing his girlfriend’s eyes light up. A lot of homebrew comes from players’ unmet needs by the official content or creators’ desires to explore the possibilities of D&D as a medium/set of mechanics. Unofficial D&D content produced in a hobbyist or semi-professional fashion is broadly called homebrew by the game’s community.

I also have a couple homebrew class archetypes up on the DM’s Guild. In the D&D campaigns I’m currently playing or DMing, there is a lot of unofficial content going on: I play Matt Mercer’s gunslinger, a friend plays his bloodhunter-two homebrews so ubiquitous a new player might mistake them for official-there’s a Fire Domain cleric and a Death-Touched sorcerer (which I co-designed with a fellow DM), plus heaps of original monsters, items, and more. On the go? Listen to the audio version of the article here:

How to make a 5e character