Where it falls down a bit is with player knowledge, and things like secret doors and other exploration components get a bit tricker. ExplorationĪs I mentioned, I had read through the adventures before playing them, which I think works great. Their 1–10 stat blocks are in D&D Beyond under their archetypes: Warrior, Expert, and Spellcaster, so they should show up in the Encounter Builder, which we’ll dive into more when we talk about running Combat solo. I mainly just used the stat blocks, but I did try building one of them as a full PC with the Character Builder but found that a stat block felt more appropriate.Īnd my next playthrough I think I’ll use one of the Sidekicks from the Essentials Kit. I thought this worked well and was really fun trying to figure out who might make a good buddy and what their motivation was. ![]() In my playthrough of Descent Into Avernus, I picked up various NPCs, each lasting a few levels before they faded out of the story. Really any class should work, you might just need to pick up a sidekick or NPC. I also imagine Monks, Fighters, Rogues, and Bards could be great. My next solo adventure is with a Paladin, which I’ve read works well. One advantage of Warlocks is that their spell slots recharge on a short rest, which I had to do every 3 encounters or so, and made more sense story-wise than finding the rare opportunity for long rests in Descent Into Avernus. I did min-max a bit so it wasn’t too underpowered (and who’s really going to complain). You can find recommendations for solo PC builds online and I went with a Warlock since I thought it would be a fun match with the adventure’s theme. I built out a Half-Elf Hexblade (Pact of the Blade) Warlock with the Character Builder, and that was another open tab. Character CreationĪnother place D&D Beyond helps a ton is character management. So, I had one tab open with the adventure itself. Having all of the resources available on all my devices, and having everything linked together, meant that I could play for as little as 15 minutes and squeeze in a little D&D. While I own a few hardcovers, I highly recommend using D&D Beyond for solo play. I approached solo play like being half-DM and half-player, so knowing where the story wanted to go was worth the tradeoff of surprise to me. I think reading through an adventure completely before playing it solo is preferable to “discovering” the story as you play. To Hell and Back Again takes a single character from level 1 through 3 which (after levelling to 4th at the end) makes the solo PC roughly the equivalent of a 1st-level party and ready to take on the first chapter of Descent Into Avernus. It also ties well into the Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus adventure, which I had read through earlier as a kind of “lonely fun.” It has just the right amount of choose-your-own-adventure elements without becoming mechanical. This time around I tried using published adventures, and it made a big difference, especially starting with an adventure that was designed from the ground up for solo play (either with a DM or self-DM): the excellent To Hell and Back Again by Kienna Shaw and Donathin Frye. Maybe it was because I’m not that great at world building, but it felt more like being a DM and less like being a player than I was looking for, so I didn’t stick with it. I first tried playing solo about a year ago - using the DMG random campaign tables and MUNE - and, while it was interesting, it didn’t stick past the first world-building session. the Encounter Builder/Combat Tracker Adventure Selection My typical setup while playing on a laptop with open tabs for: 1. ![]() We then divee into each of the three pillars of Dungeons & Dragons: exploration, combat, and social interaction, with a special emphasis on tools to make solo play more fun & efficient. In this guide we’ll first talk about adventure and character creation for solo play. I’m sure there are plenty of resources I’ve overlooked if you know any others that aren’t represented, please let me know and I’ll try and add them to the resources section at the end. ![]() There are a lot of other great guides for playing solo, and I borrowed a lot from other folks (I especially found the one-on-one guide from DnD Duet invaluable). Also, this isn’t a definitive guide, just what worked for me. We’ll just assume you’ve decided to give it a shot. I’m not going to get into why you might want to play D&D solo - maybe we can get into that in a future post. ![]() I had so much fun playing D&D solo that I thought I’d share how I approached it, and what worked well for me.Ī couple of disclaimers before I start. A lot of play time happened nights and weekend during the shelter-in-place in March & April of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last weekend, I completed a solo Dungeons & Dragons level 1-20 campaign that I played over the last eight weeks or so - averaging about an hour a day - on my laptop, tablet and/or phone.
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