D&D Beyond's September Drop: Magic Expanded and Phandalin's Return

Welcome back everyone! Let's delve into this month’s D&D Beyond Drop, which includes a bunch of firsts: a playable Species, the release of Storied Encounters, and a new Fantastic Location!

What is DDB Drops?

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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For Players

Alejandro Pacheco

We wanted to celebrate the Season of Magic (and the launch of Arcana Unleashed) with a bevy of magical options - which includes our first species for Drops – the Duskling, and four brand-new spells!

Species

Duskling: Dusklings are planar travelers that use the magic of the Feywild to suffuse themselves with magical effects. Artist: Alejandro Pacheco

Spells

Conjure Tools: Create a temporary set of Artisan's Tools you're proficient with.

Feign Interest: Trick others into thinking you're fully focused and that you're paying attention.

Pinky Swear: Swear a vow that lights a fire underneath anyone that knowingly breaks that promise.

Quick Clothier: Reshape any unworn clothing into an outfit of your choosing.

Detect Thoughts: Player Options

We finally have our first species in Drops - the Duskling! The Duskling originally appeared in 3.5e's Magic of Incarnum sourcebook, over 20 years ago. It was important to us that we found a species that was inherently magical without having any traits that were dependent on casting a spell. Their Inner Magic trait allows you to decide what abilities to utilize, with the added benefit of being able to switch between them a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus.

Moving onto our spells! I challenged the team to give me spells that were specifically NOT combat-oriented. While I love combat in D&D, I think some of the most fun moments around the table are with creative application of D&D's mechanics (especially spells) to help tell your story or build your world.

Fun fact: Pinky Swear originally had a clause that would specifically apply the Fire damage to your pants (or equivalent thereof). Then we decided: who are we to assume that you wear pants?

For DMs

Alejandro Pacheco

Mirroring the player options for this month, we're celebrating the Season of Magic and the release of Arcana Unleashed with magical monsters and maps, along with a return to Phandalin!

Monsters

Bondbeast: Bond with an animal to transform it into a loyal guardian. Artist: Alejandro Pacheco

Mageguard Sphere: Bond with a small floating sphere that protects its ward from spells or other magical effects. Artist: Alejandro Pacheco

Magiplasm: Bond with an intelligent and eerie ooze, capable of redirecting magic. Artist: Alejandro Pacheco

Maps

Arcane Laboratory: What arcane experiments or research have taken place here? In Maps VTT, it can be found under Interior > Academic > Arcane Laboratory. Cartographer: Mike Schley

Decrepit Wizard's Tower: What secrets lay hidden in this abandoned tower? In Maps VTT, it can be found under Dungeons > Ruins > Decrepit Wizard's Tower. Cartographer: Mike Schley

Failed Ritual Site: What were they trying to summon... and what could've caused this much destruction? In Maps VTT, it can be found under Interior > Municipal > Failed Ritual Site. Cartographer: Mike Schley

Detect Thoughts: Maps and Monsters

With the release of Arcana Unleashed and Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall, I really wanted us to be able to offer DMs options that can really be used to not just enhance those specific products, but to also enhance a wide variety of campaigns! I'm excited to see what tales you weave with these maps and monsters!

Weekly Encounters

One of the most frequent pieces of feedback we've received is that the Drop-in Encounters don't provide enough context as to why the map had those tokens placed, or even a desire for there to be a sort of mini-adventure or one-shot to be included as part of the encounter.

Earlier this week, we announced (and released) a new feature called Scene Prep. You can read more about the feature by visiting the link to that article, but with the release of this feature, we can finally level up our Drop-in Encounters to include guidance and a story. These will be called Storied Encounters – they'll serve as a living library of one-shots and encounters that a DM can pull into their game with minimal fuss, with the ability to customize it to fit their story better. The following 5 Drop-in Encounters have been upgraded to Storied Encounters:

• Grotto Prison Break (Level 1 and Level 20)
• Threshold Guardians (Level 1 and Level 9)
• Bandit Ambush (Level 3 and Level 9)
• Kobold Surprise (Level 3 and Level 9)
• Elemental Incursion (Level 5 and Level 12)

All existing (and future) encounters released as part of Drops will have handcrafted and written adventure content associated with it. We're not quite there yet – but over the next few weeks, we'll be populating our previously released Drop-in Encounters with new, written story text, and we're quickly approaching a point where we'll release a new Storied Encounter each week. For those of you who want to use these encounters without using Maps VTT, sit tight – we're working on making our DM tools available to folks outside the VTT (you can read more about that in our Mid-Year Development Roadmap blog post).

I'm eager to hear your feedback - and please let us know if there's more that we could do to improve this experience for DMs!

Fantastic Location: Phandalin

And finally – we're introducing a new type of content: Fantastic Locations! One of my original pitches was: "What if we could offer DMs a way to drag and drop an entire town into their campaign? Especially for those moments when the players go somewhere unexpected, and the DM needs to populate an entire region on the fly."

Introducing a new type of content for Drops: Fantastic Locations! Using DDB's tools, we give you an entire region to play with, to customize, and to build your own adventures from. We handle all the prep; you just need to add it to your campaign and alter the details as you see fit.

I knew that I wanted to make our first Fantastic Location a location that was potentially familiar and friendly for new DMs. That's why I decided on Phandalin. Many of you are familiar with it from playing through Lost Mine of Phandelver (the original fifth edition starter set) or Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. It contains a lot of fundamental necessities for a starting D&D area: a seemingly peaceful locale surrounded by various degrees of wilderness, a diverse and interesting cast of NPCs with problems that they need help solving, and of course, the ever-classic tavern (in fact, Phandalin has two!)

Now – before you speed off to update places like the Forgotten Realms Wiki with its contents, I want to be clear: this is a unique and distinct take on Phandalin. This means that it shouldn't be considered an "official" replacement for the Phandalin that you see in either of the Phandelver books (for example – this version of Phandalin makes no mention of Gundren Rockseeker or the Redbrand Ruffians). You'll certainly see many familiar elements, but I wanted to intentionally stray (and in several instances, directly change things) to help illustrate that you – as the DM – should feel empowered and comfortable changing D&D content to fit your needs and to help facilitate fun for both you and your players.

I'm excited to see how you all react to this new take on Phandalin, and to hear about how you change it to fit your needs!