[Jubael]

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Starting off, you’ll want to head to the Blighted Village. Stand in front of the village gate, take a glance at your map’s compass and start marching north. Just follow the road for a bit until you spot a split with two big trees. Hang a right here and stroll down this path all the way to the river. When you hit the river, turn 180 degrees and you’ll spot a cave entrance right next to the path you came down on.

Inside the cave, keep going straight until you stumble upon a corpse. Loot it (because why not?) and keep on trekking past the corpse. Before you move ahead, hit that quick save because there’s an ability check coming up that you don’t want to lose.

Now, when you bump into the mommy owlbear, choose the animal handling option to make it clear you’re not here for trouble. Acknowledge the owlbear cub, and then just backtrack out of the cave, leaving the owlbear family be.

Now head over to the Goblin camp. You’d be coming across this place as part of the main quest anyway. Over to the left of the entrance, there’s this lady named Krolla, who’s running some chicken chasing game, but what you want to focus on is the baby owlbear hanging around. If the cub’s isn’t there the first time, just take a long rest at camp and check back later.

Now, Krolla will tempt you to join in the chicken chasing shenanigans, but give it a hard pass since it’s a cruel game and we’re not about that life.

Alright, now it’s time to befriend the owlbear cub. Interact with the cub, pass the animal handling check and offer your hands to the little fella so it can get a whiff of your scent to follow you back to camp.

But before it follows you, there’s some goblin butt that needs kicking. Post-chat with Krolla, she’ll wander off to another corner. Separate one person from your group, have them follow her while the rest wait at the entrance.

You’ll want to have some poison on hand (any basic poison will do). Find the booze tub at Krolla’s new spot, try to sneak in and drop the poison in. If you get caught, no sweat, just keep trying because the ability check is a measly DC 5. Once you’ve spiked their drink, a cinematic will roll showing the goblins toasting with their poisoned brew.

Now, play it cool in the dialogue, make sure the goblins down their poison while you pretend to join in. You can use either a Deception (charisma) or sleight of hand (dexterity) check to fake sip the booze. After the poison does its magic, mop up the remaining goblins. The battle’s a breeze now with most of them dead or barely standing.

Now for the rewarding part – after dealing with the goblins, and once you’ve had a long rest, you’ll find the owlbear cub has tracked you down to your camp.

From here, there are a couple more checks, always go for animal handling, and hit that quick save to play it safe. The first time the cub shows up at camp, it might come back the next day with a few bumps and bruises.

I went with the medicine option to patch him up. And voila, you’ve got yourself a loyal owlbear cub pet that’ll come hang out at your camp.

[Jubael]

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These are the based methods we use in our campaigns:

Standard Array:

The Standard Array method provides a preset array of scores: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8. You can assign these scores to any of your character’s ability categories.

Example: Imagine you’re creating a Paladin. You might decide to assign the highest score (15) to Strength, followed by 14 in Constitution, 13 in Charisma, 12 in Wisdom, 10 in Dexterity, and 8 in Intelligence. This distribution reflects a strong, durable character with a charismatic presence, a wise outlook, but perhaps a bit lacking in intellectual pursuits and agility.

Point Buy:

The Point Buy system starts with a pool of 27 points. You can spend these points to buy scores, with each score costing a different amount based on a predetermined scale as follows:

• Score of 8: 0 points

• Score of 9: 1 point

• Score of 10: 2 points

• Score of 11: 3 points

• Score of 12: 4 points

• Score of 13: 5 points

• Score of 14: 7 points

• Score of 15: 9 points

As you can see each Ability Score value is worth 1 point from 8 to 13. Then from 14 to 15, they cost 2 points per Ability Score.

Example: For a Rogue, Dexterity is crucial. You might decide to spend 9 points to buy a Dexterity score of 15, 7 points for a Constitution score of 14, 5 points for a Wisdom score of 13, 4 points for an Intelligence score of 12, and the remaining 2 points to get a score of 10 in Charisma and 0 points in Strength for a score of 8.

Rolling the Dice:

AS you mentioned, the traditional method as per the PHB, you roll four six-sided dice (4d6) and drop the lowest roll, adding the remaining three dice together to determine each ability score. This process is repeated for all six abilities.

Example: If you’re crafting a Wizard, and you roll a 6, 5, 3, and 2 for Intelligence, you’d drop the 2, resulting in a total score of 14 (6+5+3) for Intelligence. This process is repeated for each ability, providing a unique set of scores each time.

• As this method is crafted around luck and gambling, you can yield higher values than the above two methods as you can possibly (with a lot of luck) roll a perfect 18 (6 on 3 of the 4 dice), netting you a +4 modifier.

• It can also go the opposite direction resulting in you rolling 1 on all 3 dice, giving you an Ability Score of only 3, resulting in a -4 ability modifier.

While both outcomes are very unlikely, they are still possible. In most cases you land somewhere in the middle due to probability, making it pretty similar to the other two methods.

[Jubael]

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Another easy way to tell which Auntie Ethel illusion is real is by her clothes.

• Real = Red clothes
• Fake = Blue clothes

[Jubael]

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Haha! Never thought of that, I must definitely try that sometime.