A heads up for everyone:  D&D Beyond Phase 1 is now live and open to everybody!

It's a digital tool for referencing basic rules that you can access online, on your mobile phone or tablet.  At the top left side of the page, you can see icons for "Compendium", "Spells", "Items", and "Monsters"!

In the future, Phase 2 will have a character builder and character sheet tool, and Phase 3 will have a Campaign Management tool!!

Definitely worth checking out for PbP or live!!

Update:

All three phases have gone live and are now open! 

More stuff!

DonJon Random Generators

Inkwell Ideas' Random Generators

Welp, that was quick. . .just caught wind that both orcpub.com and orcpub2.com are being shut down! If you have character sheets there, now would be a good time to look to other options.

Quick heads-up...if you're not following https://www.humblebundle.com/ you really should be. Right now they've got an amazing resource pack up for grabs - if you're not familiar with the site, it's tier-based, and you can usually pay as little as a buck for a bundle, and I think the highest tiers are $15, although you can donate more.

The current DnD related bundle (https://www.humblebundle.com/books/5e-dungeons-hordes-horrors?hmb_source=humble_home&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_1_layout_type_threes_tile_index_3) boasts 40 titles at the $15 tier, including the jaw-dropping 890 page campaign book 'The Blight' - which includes new races, sub-races, and creatures galore.

The current bundle is mostly 5E compatible, with most/all of the content coming from Kobold Press and Frog God Games. Some of it looks like it is system agnostic, and there is a 300+ page 'Tome of Adventure Design' in the current pack, which looks like a great resource for creating and planning your own campaign.

If you've got a few extra bucks, there's probably something in here for you! Check it out!

If you're like me, you want to use NPC's with class levels in your campaign. But 5e balances PC's and Monsters differently to allow the player to feel awesome (monsters have a bunch of health, but lower damage, to allow players to get to use their special skills). If you just make a character sheet for, say, a wizard and put them into a battle with the players the results are more of a coin-flip.

For this reason I recommend the NPC Statblock Compendium(recently updated). This guide lists all the NPC statblocks from the Monster Manual, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and more, as well ass making at least one NPC statblock for the remaining PC sublcasses which are not covered by official releases. These NPC's are balanced more in line with the 5e designer's intent to allow players a fight that should last a few rounds, and not devolve into a save-or die battle, while slimming down the number of class features for a more manageable battle for the DM.

@Friedman Do you mean making your own monster (or making one in the book harder), by changing the stats?

There are guidelines for making your own 5e monsters, and calculating their Challenge Rating. If you decide to change the HP or damage of a monster, just be sure you recalculate the fight's difficulty based on the monster's new challenge rating.

I always figure if I need things to be a little harder I can change the HP value to the maximum a monster would be able to do if I rolled for it (rather than the average that is listed in the Monster Manual). This way the challenge should be within the realm of possibilities intended when it was made. I usually roll damage dice anyway, rather than using the average value, so I leave that alone.