The number one rule in Dungeons & Dragons is that there are no hard-and-fast rules. The Dungeon Master has the ability and right to change or add any rule to the game that would make the game more fun. Players often call this the Rule of Cool because, even though the rules as written make DnD what it is, no one wants to play a game that isn’t fun and cool.
The official 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide and other 5e rulebooks have a lot of optional rules players can utilize if their DMs allow. The primary problems with including optional rules in official RPG books are time for designers and writers to work and money to pay them with, not desire or passion. Thankfully, third-party publishers, designers, and fans have both of those in spades, and they have used them to create some amazing supplements that follow the Rule of Cool to the letter.
7 Strongholds & Followers From MCDM
Spend Downtime Building Castles & Armies
Raise armies! Research spells! Spy on your enemies!
More than just a set of rules and charts, this book also describes a style of play that assumes your character becomes more interested in influencing the world around them. You’ll still adventure and fight monsters, but this supplement gives you tons of fun things to do during your downtime.
Strongholds & Followers is an incredible supplement by MCDM, the third-party publisher founded by veteran RPG designer Matt Coville. This unofficial supplement is so popular and well-loved that Wizards of the Coast has released an Unearthed Arcana playtest for bastions. It would take a similar approach to S&F in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for the 2024 update to Dungeons & Dragons.
6 Ancestral Weapons
Find Or Create Epic Heirloom Weapons To Pass Down
Ancestral Weapons is one of the bestselling supplements on DMs Guild. Not only do DnD players love magic items, DnD players love named magic items. Like Sting from The Hobbit or Raistlin Majere’s Staff of Magius, there’s something that feels better about items with a history. This supplement provides rules to enhance weapons players already have and are attached to as well as rules to generate brand-new ones.
Spirit points are a new system that allows players to craft their own magic items. Random tables help dungeon masters always keep chests and hoards filled with loot, and a list of over 130 upgrades ensure that no matter what kind of named weapons the adventurers come across, its abilities add history will be epic.
5 Technomancer’s Textbook
A Complete Guide To Running D&D With Technology
There are some truly fantastic, non-DnD cyberpunk TTRPG systems out there, such as Cyberpunk Red and Shadowrun. However, many players were introduced to the hobby with 5e’s rules and are comfortable with them. Reddit user u/Newtond created a 275-page cyberpunk supplement called Technomancer’s Texbook and released it for free to the community.
This book is a complete supplemental that provides everything the DM and players need to run a campaign in a cyberpunk setting. If you’ve been itching to play a game with neon-stained streets, big guns, fast cars, and low life scum, but prefer the D&D playstyle, then look no further.
While it’s based on 5e, all players need is the Player’s Handbook or the free Basic Rules (or the 5e SRD) to get started. This cyberpunk DnD has both systems and rules for dungeon masters, such as for creating sentient vehicles and AI as well as player-focused options like 13 appropriate subclasses, 15 backgrounds to fit the setting, cybernetic implants, hacking, and over 85 creatures and NPCs for the players to interact with. The creator has even set up a Discord community to bring players together and find groups to play using the rules.
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4 Eldritch Sands
Replace Classes With Mech Suits
Eldritch Sands was a major Kickstarter success that brought players both a new post-apocalyptic magitech setting and new rulesets for how player classes work in the form of mechsuits called Eldtrichtech. They are upgradeable mech suits that replace traditional player classes like barbarian, rogue, or cleric. Players get access to new abilities that only work when wearing the exosuit, and there are even new rules for having a player character outside of the suit since the suits are where the unique and powerful abilities come from.
3 Wildjammer: More Adventures in Space
It’s Like The Official 5e Spelljammer But Better
The beloved AD&D setting Spelljammer was adapted to 5e and released to mixed reviews. Not only was it light on rules and lore, there was controversy around the hadozee race’s inclusion and subsequent depiction. The rules (such as those for ships) that were there did not impress most players, and they instead turned to the free Wildjammer rulebook by Redditor u/SurrealSage that more faithfully adapted the original content to the modern 5e ruleset and even adapted it to the much-lauded Foundry Virtual Tabletop (VTT).
The fully fleshed-out book is over 100 pages long, comes with spaceships, weapon upgrades, extensive crew roles for in and out of combat, spells, and fun maps and art on top of everything else. The most important thing that Wildjammer brings to 5e that Spelljammer doesn’t is tactical ship combat. The official WotC release has been criticized for being too abstract with its ship-to-ship combat, so Wildjammer does the exact opposite. Ship-to-ship and space combat rules are extensive and fun, making this an exceptional supplement to (or replacement for) what could have been one of 5e’s coolest releases.
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2 Flee, Mortals!
The Big Book Of Better Monsters
The official Monster Manual is not only one of the core 5e books, but also one of the most well-known and beloved books in DnD itself. The primary concern with the book, however, is that the monsters can get boring after a while. They’re abilities and stats are not very dynamic, and players complain often that 5e combat becomes rote hack-and-slash when the DM uses them
Flee, Mortals! is the MCDM monster book, and Matt Coville and his team have taken that complaint to heart and basically made it a non-issue. With rules for running encounters with the monsters based on player actions and tactics, new monster types such as minions and retainers, and fully fleshed out named creatures called villains that take 5e’s lair and legendary actions a few steps further, Flee, Morals! is one of the coolest unofficial rulebooks that should be on every DM’s shelf.
1 An Elf And An Orc Had A Little Baby
Half-Races No Longer Have To Be Only Half-Human
A long-time complaint of the inclusion of half-races in RPGs has been that human is, by default, one of the halves. Half-elves are from a human and an elf pairing, as are half-orcs and even half-dragons. An Elf and an Orc Had a Little Baby set out to fix that, and across three volumes, provides over a hundred different parentage options for DnD 5e player characters.
Additionally, the book includes what it calls upbringings, which are like backgrounds but help shape a character’s culture. Maybe they were raised by a frightened mage enclave or a tribe of wary nomads. There are options for parents on both sides, so it’s easy to make an orc-elf, for example. There are also more exotic options, such as having unicorn for a parent or even a mind flayer or flumph.
Dungeons & Dragons has needed this book for a long time. The game needs more ancestries for players to choose from, especially when creating half-races. The custom lineage in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything went a long way toward it, and this book and its sequels went all the way.
Dungeons and Dragons
- Franchise
- Dungeons & Dragons
- Original Release Date
- 1974-00-00
- Publisher
- TSR Inc. , Wizards of the Coast
- Designer
- E. Gary Gygax , Dave Arneson
