76
votes
How did towns mundanely protect themselves against Dragons or bring them to the ground?
Hope the dragon doesn't come
I'm being a little facetious obviously, but in the fiction of Forgotten Realms for most towns (as opposed to a large city) without nearby adventurers the plan for a dragon ...
- 30.5k
58
votes
How common is homosexuality in the Forgotten Realms?
What the Player's Handbook says
In Chapter 4, "Personality and Background", the Subsection "Character Details" has a header titled "Sex" that makes the following remarks (emphasis mine):
Sex
...
- 50.9k
57
votes
Is there a guide/reference for possible character hairstyles in D&D Forgotten Realms universe?
You should be more assertive
Can my character have this hairstyle
It is your character, so ultimately it's up to you. If you say she has a ponytail, she does.
female characters usually do not ...
- 61.7k
54
votes
How common is homosexuality in the Forgotten Realms?
It certainly exists in the Realms, but the sources don't give a reliable sense of how commonplace it is.
In a quote in this article, Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood says that there are gay ...
- 72.2k
52
votes
Accepted
What makes the Forgotten Realms "forgotten"?
I wondered this before myself, I found that Wikipedia had most of my answers.
The Forgotten Realms is a fantasy world setting, described as a world
of strange lands, dangerous creatures, and ...
- 1,916
51
votes
Can my character collect royalties from being an author?
... a stereotypical medieval world.
Assuming that the world has a publication system and royalties ...
Stop right there
On Earth, the medieval period broadly runs from the fall of the Western Roman ...
- 189k
49
votes
Accepted
Can my character collect royalties from being an author?
Simplify it as a downtime activity
There are no official rules for being an author, and while I can tell you, for example, that Volo (you know, the one who writes monster guides) will sell players a ...
- 35.4k
47
votes
Accepted
What would +1/+2/+3 items be called in game?
They Would Be Called "Magic"
A +1/+2/+3 weapon, shield, armor, ammunition, etc. have historically been referred to as a "magic" version of that item: magic weapon, magic shield, magic arrow, etc. (...
- 12.1k
46
votes
Accepted
Why did Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvatore dislike the Spellplague arc?
The main reason was described by R.A. Salvatore in interviews. He describes how the complete overhaul and moving the setting by 100 years would ruin his characters; a 100-year old human is no longer a ...
- 21.1k
46
votes
Does Forgotten Realms setting count as “High magic”?
The primary question here, to me, is, what exactly constitutes “high magic”? D&D itself supplies a definition—but I don’t think it’s a good one, it doesn’t capture, to me, what people mean when ...
- 322k
45
votes
In the Forgotten Realms, what happens when a god dies?
Oh, Very Very Yes
If you want some dead gods, come on down to the Avatar Trilogy, where Bane got Banedead, Bhaal rolled over, Myrkul went from being God of the Dead to dead of the god, and other such ...
- 7,232
44
votes
Accepted
Why do most dwarven city names in the Forgotten Realms have a suffix of -bar?
There is good support that it probably means "shield" or "barrier" or "gate" or the like
I agree with Miles Bedinger's answer noting that dwarven words relating to "shield" start with "bar", and that ...
- 6,355
44
votes
Accepted
How is the Blood War a balanced conflict?
This is addressed directly in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes
The first chapter is all about the Blood War. A very simplified and brief synopsis of the reasons the Blood War is a stalemate:
Demons have ...
- 32.2k
42
votes
Is there a guide/reference for possible character hairstyles in D&D Forgotten Realms universe?
Your DM is making things up to inhibit you as a player because "reasons".
Nowhere in any edition of D&D is "hairstyle" a part of character creation or something you need to track for any ...
- 40.6k
41
votes
Accepted
Why are the Faithless condemned to the Wall of the Faithless after death?
Alright, this is going to delve into both canon and conjecture, as it must for such a nebulous topic. I'll break them down so we know which is which.
The Many Gods of the Dead
As has been noted (...
- 7,232
41
votes
Accepted
How is it possible for this NPC to be alive during the Curse of Strahd adventure?
He's a wizard
I mean, he's one of the most powerful wizards the multiverse has ever seen. It's not really surprising he hasn't died of old age-- Clone, for example, is only an 8th level spell and ...
- 65.9k
40
votes
Accepted
How can I explain a race from Eberron showing up in Faerûn?
Eberron and Faerûn might be connected, possibly
It is the default of D&D campaign settings that they are connected to one another through the “multiverse,” which refers to all the other planes ...
- 322k
39
votes
How can I move a one-ton gem out of Undermountain?
Break it up.
A gem that large is literally priceless. As in, it's worth so much that no one will be willing to buy it for more than a tiny fraction of its value. Imagine that happened on earth. Its ...
- 27.2k
39
votes
What makes the Forgotten Realms "forgotten"?
Forgotten Realms was originally the place that Earth's fantasy legends came from.
From a profile on Ed Greenwood in Dragon magazine #244 (p. 112):
The "Forgotten Realms" name originally came from ...
- 32.2k
38
votes
Accepted
Are elves native to Faerun/Toril, or are they immigrants from elsewhere (like the Feywild)
5E Realms lore does not specifically address this. 4E Realms lore, on the other hand, does. Their exact origin is subject to some debate, even among the elves.
Collectively, the elves are known as ...
- 60.9k
37
votes
Whose portrait is printed on the Waterdhavian gold coin?
I contacted the artist who designed the coin pictured. Her name is Olga Drebas, and she is listed as one of the Interior Illustrators on page 2 of W:DH. In a public tumblr post she answered:
The ...
- 9,807
37
votes
Is the offspring of an elf and a half-elf an elf or a half-elf?
XGtE suggests the result is a Half-Elf
This book includes a table (p. 62) for determining parent races when your character is a half elf. It includes the possibility of:
One parent was an elf and ...
- 35.9k
37
votes
Why are ball bearings so common in the Forgotten Realms?
Gnomes are pretty famous throughout various editions and worlds of D&D for creating clockwork devices of greater or lesser complexity, which probably would involve developing various forms of ...
- 62k
35
votes
Accepted
How deep is the Underdark? What is its max and median depth?
At least 26 miles deep, with rumoured unexplored caverns 40 miles deep, though most of the known Underdark is within 10 miles of the surface.
According to the D&D 3e sourcebook Underdark, p.120, ...
- 72.2k
35
votes
Accepted
Why are ball bearings so common in the Forgotten Realms?
I believe crude ball bearings would be made the same way as shot - by dropping rapidly cooling lead down a tower, so it solidifies mid-air as tiny spheres. Well within the tech range for D&D.
They ...
- 1,979
34
votes
Accepted
Is Forgotten Realms the default setting in 5e?
Not exclusively.
Does the #dnd tabletop RPG have one official setting? The answer is
yes. That setting is the multiverse, which includes all #dnd worlds.
– a tweet by @JeremyECrawford
(Emphasis ...
- 38.7k
34
votes
Accepted
Which is the common name of Mind Flayers?
The average person living on the surface almost certainly knows them as Mind Flayers, if they know them at all
Dragon #281 includes the article "By Any Other Name: Races of the Underdark", ...
- 62.5k
34
votes
Accepted
Does Forgotten Realms setting count as “High magic”?
The Forgotten Realms is not "high magic"; it represents D&D's standard level of magic (DMG p.9, p23).
While magic is somewhat commonplace in the Forgotten Realms, this is really the ...
- 72.2k
33
votes
Is Forgotten Realms the default setting in 5e?
Yes.
Mike Mearls and others on the WOTC RPG team, have said on several occasions that Realms is the default setting for 5e.
When I was working on third and fourth there was this dialogue of "...
- 102k
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