Chapter 2: Dungeon Master's Tools
As the Dungeon Master, you oversee the game and weave together the story experienced by your
players. You’re the one who keeps it all going, and this chapter is for you. It gives you new rules
options, as well as some refined tools for creating and running adventures and campaigns. It is a
supplement to the tools and advice offered in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
The chapter opens with optional rules meant to help you run certain parts of the game more
smoothly. The chapter then goes into greater depth on several topics — encounter building,
random encounters, traps, magic items, and downtime — which largely relate to how you create
and stage your adventures.
The material in this chapter is meant to make your life easier. Ignore anything you find here that
doesn’t help you, and don’t hesitate to customize the things that you do use. The game’s rules
exist to serve you and the games you run. As always, make them your own.
Simultaneous Effects
Most effects in the game happen in succession, following an order set by the rules or the DM. In
rare cases, effects can happen at the same time, especially at the start or end of a creature’s turn.
If two or more things happen at the same time on a character or monster’s turn, the person at the
game table — whether player or DM — who controls that creature decides the order in which
those things happen. For example, if two effects occur at the end of a player character’s turn, the
player decides which of the two effects happens first.
Falling
Falling from a great height is a significant risk for adventurers and their foes. The rule given in
the Player’s Handbook is simple: at the end of a fall, you take 1d6 bludgeoning damage for every
10 feet you fell, to a maximum of 20d6. You also land prone, unless you somehow avoid taking
damage from the fall. Here are two optional rules that expand on that simple rule.
Rate of Falling
The rule for falling assumes that a creature immediately drops the entire distance when it falls.
But what if a creature is at a high altitude when it falls, perhaps on the back of a griffon or on
board an airship? Realistically, a fall from such a height can take more than a few seconds,
extending past the end of the turn when the fall occurred. If you’d like high-altitude falls to be
properly time-consuming, use the following optional rule.
When you fall from a great height, you instantly descend up to 500 feet. If you’re still falling on
your next turn, you descend up to 500 feet at the end of that turn. This process continues until the
fall ends, either because you hit the ground or the fall is otherwise halted.