DDB Drops is a growing library of adventures, player options, and DM tools available to D&D Beyond subscribers—with new content releasing every month! Every Drop is yours to keep as long as you're subscribed, and they'll appear in your library automatically.
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We're exploring the Para-elemental Planes! In case you need a quick primer on the Para-elemental Planes: they're where the Elemental Planes (of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water) collide and their elements mingle. You can read more about the Para-elemental Planes in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Plane of Ash: Where the Plane of Air and Plane of Fire collide.
Plane of Ice: Where the Plane of Air and Plane of Water collide.
Plane of Magma: Where the Plane of Earth and Plane of Fire collide.
Plane of Ooze: Where the Plane of Earth and Plane of Water collide.
Naturally, if we're taking time to talk about and explore the Para-elemental Planes, we'll also want to give you some Elementals to go along with them!
Ice Elemental (CR 6). These frigid Elementals can fire their icicles at enemies or use them to pierce foes. Artist Credit: Michele Giorgi
Magma Elemental (CR 6). These roiling Elementals are every bit as destructive as volcanoes — and capable of throwing globs of magma and lava at their foes. Artist Credit: Michele Giorgi
Mud Elemental (CR 6). These oozing Elementals are made up of dripping blobs of muck. Take special care to avoid getting engulfed by them! Artist Credit: Michele Giorgi
Smoke Elemental (CR 6). These incendiary Elementals burn and suffocate their foes with ash and smoke. Artist Credit: Michele Giorgi
4 Para-elemental Maps. We've also commissioned brand new maps to depict each of the Para-elemental Planes to mirror and compliment their Elemental counterpart! You can find them in Maps VTT by following these locations:
Gerralt Landman
This floating island in the Plane of Ash is staying aloft with the help of the turbulent air and smoke. Be sure not to fall through any of the cracks – it may be the last thing you do! In Maps VTT, it can be found under Wilderness > Floating Island > Floating Island on the Plane of Ash.
Despite the raging blizzards that take place on the Plane of Ice, this cave appears untouched. What secrets might this hidden cavern contain? In Maps VTT, it can be found under Wilderness> Caves > Cavern on the Plane of Ice.
Constant eruptions and a seemingly never-ending flow of lava are commonplace in the Plane of Magma. Will you survive its treacherous terrain without getting burnt? In Maps VTT, it can be found under Wilderness > Mountain > Mountainside on the Plane of Magma.
This horrid and mucky swamp on the Plane of Ooze is teeming with objects and treasures lost across the ages. Take special care not to step in the muck, lest you become lost as well! In Maps VTT, it can be found under Wilderness > Swamp > Swamp on the Plane of Ooze.
12 Para-elemental Stickers. And finally, we wanted to make sure you had the elements at your disposal! We've included 12 stickers themed around these elements so that you can give your maps an elemental flair! You can find them in the Sticker Browser under D&D Beyond Drops: Para-elemental Sticker Pack.
Detect Thoughts: DM Options
One of the things that fascinates me the most about D&D is the incredible amount of lore and the endless storytelling opportunities that can be found across its rich history. As a fan, I especially adore D&D's planar cosmology, and I wanted to explore the lesser-known corners of the multiverse with this month's Drop.
That's when we landed on re-visiting the Para-elemental Planes and the monsters within — these poor Elementals haven't been featured in an official D&D product since 3.5e (20+ years ago!).
Each of the maps included today helps provide a small taste of that plane (for example — a swamp in the Plane of Ooze) that's flexible for you to use in non-planar campaigns (for example — the Mountainside on the Plane of Magma map can just as readily serve as the side of an erupting volcano).
Gerralt Landman did a phenomenal job of bringing these maps (and the stickers) to life.
For Players
We have some fun stuff for martial characters to play with! We're including 3 new magic items and 4 new feats.
Magic Items
Climber's Ammunition. This is Uncommon Ammunition. When this magic ammunition hits a solid surface, it attaches to the surface, and a rope trails out from behind it.
Goggles of Foe-Finding. This is a Rare Wondrous Item. With these goggles, your ranged weapon attacks ignore Half Cover and Three-Quarters Cover.
Stormwalker's Cloak. This is a Rare Wondrous Item. This cloak gives you Resistance to Lightning and Thunder damage and lets you cast Hellish Rebuke using Lightning or Thunder damage instead of Fire damage.
Feats
Pack Fighting. This Fighting Style feat gives you a slight boost in extra damage when you and an ally surround an enemy. That damage increases if another ally within range also has this feat!
Prone Fighting. This Fighting Style feat lets you fight without any drawbacks when you have the Prone condition.
Shifting Combatant. With this General feat, you'll be able to jump into the fray without concern and force enemies to collide and fall Prone.
Tactical Combatant. With this General feat, you'll be able to turn your weapon strike into some extra protection and potentially turn a failed Ability Check into a success.
Backdrops
We've also included 4 elemental backdrops so that you can get in on the elemental fun!
Detect Thoughts: July Player Options
An ongoing theme in community feedback — including Drops-specific responses — has been a desire to see more love for martial characters. While the Pact feats are available to both martial and spellcasting classes, we wanted to make sure non-magical characters had equally exciting options to explore. With that in mind, we're adding two new Fighting Style feats and two martial-focused General feats designed to open up new combat strategies for those who prefer steel over sorcery. I'm excited to hear your thoughts! The magic items we've included this month lean into that same spirit as well.
Other Updates
Here are some other updates surrounding Drops that you may have missed:
DDB Drops is now available in the mobile app! Thank you so much for your patience while the team worked to make it available.
Brian Perry (the Executive Producer for DDB) recently announced that DDB Drops will also be available as a standalone SKU! We're currently planning to release an annual bundle each May that would contain the previous year's content and be purchasable for all players (and wouldn't need a subscription to use).
Brian also announced that Master-tier subscribers can share DDB Drops content with their groups!
That's all, folks! I'm excited to see what you all think of what we've released today and what you'd like to see in future drops!
So these new fighting styles are meant specifically to give multiclass builds a significant leg-up, because neither of them are options you'd want to take as any character who only gets access to one fighting style.
Pack Fighting gives a lesser and less consistent damage increase than existing fighting styles, so the only reason to take it would be to stack extra damage on top of Dueling/GWF/TWF.
Prone Fighting provides no actual benefit to being prone, aside from disadvantage against ranged attacks. Therefore, the only builds that actually want this is ranged attackers who take Archery first and Prone Fighting second, being able to make highly-accurate attacks at range while imposing disadvantage on all ranged attacks against themselves.
As for the general feats, they're terrible as well.
Shifting Combatant lets you force a Constitution save when you use the Push mastery to push a creature into a space occupied by another creature, knocking the creatures who fail prone. Except there's already an existing rule in the 2024 revision that if two creatures end a turn in the same space, they automatically fall prone unless they're bigger than the other creatures in that space. So this effect does almost nothing. In contrast, if you long-jump before you move into a space within 5 feet of two or more enemies, all attacks against you have disadvantage until the start of your next turn. Setting aside the fact that this means most times when you move into melee you can gain free disadvantage on all attacks against you—why does this work if there's only two or more enemies? Why is it written that you have to move 10 feet before you make the long jump? (It's because there are player options that let you long-jump with less movement, in which case maybe don't make a feat that's busted if you can do so?)
Tactical Combatant lets you once per initiative/rest a.) gain temporary hit points equal to an attack's weapon damage dice and b.) roll and add 1d6 when you fail an ability check. The former is a totally insignificant amount at higher levels, especially for any build that doesn't use a d12/2d6 weapon, while the latter is completely nonsensical to be something that refreshes on initiative. (It's clearly trying to be two-bit Tactical Mind, given how that feature completely breaks the balance of ability checks, so clearly it's less busted if other classes can get a worse version of it, right?)
So these new fighting styles are meant specifically to give multiclass builds a significant leg-up, because neither of them are options you'd want to take as any character who only gets access to one fighting style.
Pack Fighting gives a lesser and less consistent damage increase than existing fighting styles, so the only reason to take it would be to stack extra damage on top of Dueling/GWF/TWF.
Prone Fighting provides no actual benefit to being prone, aside from disadvantage against ranged attacks. Therefore, the only builds that actually want this is ranged attackers who take Archery first and Prone Fighting second, being able to make highly-accurate attacks at range while imposing disadvantage on all ranged attacks against themselves.
Damn, that second point is specially true. Really big oversight from them on that front.
Plunging deeper and deeper and deeper into a D&D SaaS model, I see, where we’re renting features from WotC instead of owning access to the content in perpetuity.
I'm seeing a pattern with some of the naming in Drops where the names feel disconnected from the mechanics. "Shifting Combatant" sounds like it would involve evasive movement, intangibility, teleportation, or possibly Shifters from Eberron. However, the feat itself is about being a wrecking ball: leaping into the middle of a fight, smashing enemies into each other, and knocking them prone. A feat’s name should evoke some quality of what the ability actually does. "Impact Combatant," "Battering Combatant," "Crash Combatant," or "Collision Combatant" would feel much more aligned with the mechanics, and clearer naming would make the design easier to understand at a glance.
One of these days we might get feat/spell support for celestial warlocks. Maybe. With 40 strings attached. And a letter to not ask for more because clerics do not like other people doing their job.
Evolving Martial Gear: Introduce signature weapons and armor that gain power, unlock new properties, or increase in bonus as the character levels up, ensuring martial progression keeps pace with high-level magical utility.
Expanded Utility Traits: Enhance Species and Background options to include more meaningful features for Exploration and Social interaction. This would provide martial characters with consistent, non-combat ways to influence the narrative and solve problems.
On another note: stop making things that are just "you can do this spell, but of a different element!" It's an incredibly lazy, shallow, and awkward way to handle such mechanics, especially if you aren't using DDB and don't have everything hyperlinked to each other. Players don't want to have to cross-reference a spell every time they use an item simply because 2024 design philosophy thinks that spells are the only thing that matters in the game, even for martial characters.
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Posted Jul 2, 2026Pretty sweet stuff!
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Posted Jul 2, 2026Nice martial love
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Posted Jul 2, 2026I like!
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Posted Jul 2, 2026So these new fighting styles are meant specifically to give multiclass builds a significant leg-up, because neither of them are options you'd want to take as any character who only gets access to one fighting style.
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Posted Jul 2, 2026As for the general feats, they're terrible as well.
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Posted Jul 2, 2026Damn, that second point is specially true. Really big oversight from them on that front.
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Posted Jul 2, 2026Plunging deeper and deeper and deeper into a D&D SaaS model, I see, where we’re renting features from WotC instead of owning access to the content in perpetuity.
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Posted Jul 2, 2026I'm seeing a pattern with some of the naming in Drops where the names feel disconnected from the mechanics. "Shifting Combatant" sounds like it would involve evasive movement, intangibility, teleportation, or possibly Shifters from Eberron. However, the feat itself is about being a wrecking ball: leaping into the middle of a fight, smashing enemies into each other, and knocking them prone. A feat’s name should evoke some quality of what the ability actually does. "Impact Combatant," "Battering Combatant," "Crash Combatant," or "Collision Combatant" would feel much more aligned with the mechanics, and clearer naming would make the design easier to understand at a glance.
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Posted Jul 2, 2026Cool creatures, maps and a nice focus on martials! This is a pretty great drop
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Posted Jul 2, 2026This drop makes me think that someone on the staff is subscribed to Dungeon Dad and saw his para elemental video a couple weeks back
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Posted Jul 2, 2026Who are the artists for the Elementals? edit- nevermind, it's written above them. really neat designs!
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Posted Jul 2, 2026One of these days we might get feat/spell support for celestial warlocks. Maybe. With 40 strings attached. And a letter to not ask for more because clerics do not like other people doing their job.
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Posted Jul 2, 2026More LOVE for martials please.
Suggestions for Martial Expansion
Evolving Martial Gear: Introduce signature weapons and armor that gain power, unlock new properties, or increase in bonus as the character levels up, ensuring martial progression keeps pace with high-level magical utility.
Expanded Utility Traits: Enhance Species and Background options to include more meaningful features for Exploration and Social interaction. This would provide martial characters with consistent, non-combat ways to influence the narrative and solve problems.
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Posted Jul 2, 2026On another note: stop making things that are just "you can do this spell, but of a different element!" It's an incredibly lazy, shallow, and awkward way to handle such mechanics, especially if you aren't using DDB and don't have everything hyperlinked to each other. Players don't want to have to cross-reference a spell every time they use an item simply because 2024 design philosophy thinks that spells are the only thing that matters in the game, even for martial characters.