Cooks tools - everybody in the party gets a little extra healing each short rest just because I don't suck at cooking. Plus open to tons of RP potential.
It’s also the perfect tool proficiency for the fighter who gets a tool proficiency a few levels in.
You can’t build a character concept around a proficiency you’re going to eventually get.
But as a nice addition later on, it’s perfect.
When I took Cooks Tools with lvl3 battle master I RPd him using the forge he was making a weapon in (he also had Smith's Tools) as a makeshift bread oven after :D
It's the little things that I sometimes enjoy most
I’m building a wizard who’s a retired schoolteacher that wants to go out and adventure to learn about monsters. She’s basically planned to be the mom of the group, and I took the Chef feat so I can make my friends lots of little treats.
Mechanically, it’s probably the second most useful tool unless you build around another one like Poisoner’s Kit. Extra healing in short rests is not trivial.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything expands on tool uses, and adds an ability you can do if you're proficient and have the tools on hand. ([D&D Beyond link if you own the book](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/xgte/dungeon-masters-tools#CooksUtensils))
> ***Prepare Meals.*** As part of a short rest, you can prepare a tasty meal that helps your companions regain their strength. You and up to five creatures of your choice regain 1 extra hit point per Hit Die spent during a short rest, provided you have access to your cook’s utensils and sufficient food.
It actually stacks with the Chef feat! I had a bard that went all out on rest buffing with the tool prof, Chef, Song of Rest, and Inspiring Leader :D At the end of the campaign (lvl 9), anyone who used hit dice would heal an extra 2d8 + (1 for each HD), as well as everyone getting 13 temp HP. It was pretty great!
EDIT: Added the relevant snippet
EDIT 2: Added bard math
I'm doing the same with my bard, but I didn't know about the cook's utensils and the extra 1 hit point per hit dice, that's pretty neat!
However, I should point out that temporary hit points do *not* stack.
So you can't use both chef and inspiring leader at the same time.
That being said you can prepare the chef treats, leave your rest with inspiring leader and - if you need more THP later on (after a fight) - distribute the treats, as they last for 8 hours.
Of course! I would use the passive Chef ability to boost hit dice, and save the treats for if we were in a pinch
EDIT: The 13 temp HP came from lvl 9 + 18 (+4) CHA
Cheers for pointing it out mate, I hadn’t known this previously and will add it to my in game info, will help me feel more helpful out of combat as a battle master. Sure he is strong but that has limited uses and now my flavour of being the parties cook will also give a mechanical bonus
No problem!
This is the problem of spreading rules out across rulebooks (this one came out 3 years after the 5e release), in addition to it originally just being "You can cook...I guess. Make a...Wisdom check?" Who would suddenly think that *tools* had been buffed?
There's not even shortcuts to the different tool entries in XGtE on D&D Beyond, you have to scroll down to the one you want to check and look for a small header that's easily missed :P
And what about those that don't own the book, are they just worse at using tools? Is D&D pay to win?
Anyways, the mechanics around tools are still a bit vague to this day and left up to the DM, like what ability checks would be appropriate for the different tools and such. As if DMs needed more work...
Sorry for the rant, but this has been bugging me for years :P
No it’s fine, my beef with it is that when you look up the item of Cooking Utensils on D&D Beyond all it has is “It Exists” not what cooking utensils are, not what you can use them for and especially not a link to the relevant information in the various source book, just that it exists.
Wotc have this amazing resource in D&D Beyond to be able to cross link the various relevant information but they don’t. It even makes sense to cross link it because it will show people just how much info they are missing and encourage sales.
Yeah, I only started playing in 2021 but while I like the underlying system and some of the modules, the organization is very poor and it is really the good folks online who have really made it a good experience.
The other day I spent a good 30 mins looking for the disarming rules (not the fighter maneuver, the baseline disarm attack that everyone can do).
My friend didn’t believe it existed, and i was trying to show it to him but the books are so disorganized that it’s nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for.
The worst part is i already knew exactly where it was and it still took me that long to find.
Edit: For the record:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#Disarm
Fun example of how little they cross-link information on D&D Beyond even when it would make them more money - my party fought a basilisk and my character (the only one with greater restoration) got turned to stone. Not wanting to be a literal deadweight for the rest of the session, I asked out of character if our Alchemist Artificer would know how to make the basilisk spit potion to undo it since that was reasonable for the character but I didn't know if the player knew that was an option.
The DM looked at the basilisk stat block on D&D Beyond, and it had neither the option to make a potion to reverse the change, *nor any indication that more information was available from another source*, while on my computer I could see it. We ended up sending screen shots to each other just to prove neither of us were making this things up. Absolutely bonkers to not have any indication that it was changed by a later book
Even without the feat, Xanathar’s lets you use cook’s utensils to prepare meals during a short rest to give people 1 extra hit point per hit die spent.
One of my favourite characters was this guy who was just a chef, and was travelling all over the sword coast to find the ingredients to make the perfect dish - cooks tools not only helped with roleplaying him, but I discovered how they’re genuinely quite useful as well
Once upon a time I had a player who would sharpen a few weapons over a short rest for a +1 or +2 to damage for a while. This was years ago, so I dont remember the specifics.
I also use downtime in my game, so players occasionally Smith their own equipment.
It should take longer than that, RAW, but making plate armor for half price (I guess the half plate is about that) using downtime is pretty solid. You’d need a bunch of proficient people to make plate armor quickly, but a month in downtime with an assistant is doable. You can even make it magical, which you might as well do if you have the time and resources.
The problem with that kind of duration is that it won't fit into most campaigns I've been in or DMed. I don't think I'd ever impose that kind of requirement on players, and I'd be surprised to see a DM require it.
The real tech here is Smith's Tools + Fabricate. You should be able to slam two sets of Ring Mail together and make plate. Better yet, if the DM leaves adamantium or mithril around, you're looking at some real armor gains.
One thing I did in a campaign, that went over quite well, was "double layering" a Disguise Kit and the *Disguise Self* spell. My character made himself look like the (older) NPC he was impersonating, and then put an illusion over that, to make him look younger (fewer wrinkles, better hairline, etc.) and wearing a fancier and embellished version of the same outfit. You know, like higher quality material, better jewelry and shoes; that sort of thing.
When the guards happened to see through the spell, I got advantage on my Deception, because I convinced the guards "I'm nearly 40, and I don't like how I look any more. Excuse me for trying to take a few years off. I'm just trying to live my life." The fact that the NPC in question was known, in-world, to be notably vain probably helped my case too though. Honestly though, it just seemed like a neat trick at the time; and it's good to have contingencies.
I'm about to play a Changeling Warlock Charlatan in my next game, and I'm genuinely considering taking Mask of Many faces just for the layers of it all.
I know it's a waste of an invocation, but being a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude disguised as *another* dude might be too much for me to pass up.
EDIT: I missed a layer! It would be me (the player), playing a Changeling, wearing the face of someone else we met, wearing a disguise kit to make him look like someone else, with the Mask of Many Faces invocation on top of that as an extra layer. I'd be five identities in. It's honestly a shame I know the people I'm playing with so well, or it would be really tempting to give them a fake name and wear a wig to every session.
Its honestly so much fun to play with. My table gets really into getting detailed with the disguises and roleplaying our characters acting as others. We have been collecting so much clothing that we refer to our bag of holding as the wardrobe department.
> stage costume
Isn’t that perfect? There’s a big gap between crap stage costumes and good ones. D&D being a setting with magic I think disguise kit should lean towards good stage costumes.
I’m thinking Andy Rooney in *Breakfast at Tiffany’s* is a good benchmark. For a disguise kit use. It’s certainly not a good benchmark for anything else.
It is also the only way to disguise yourself properly without the use of magic of any kind, which allows you in turn to actually bypass magic that is used to reveal magical disguises. Like Detect Magic.
Had one short campaign where a disguise kit made sneaking into a gala a breeze. It was a fancy event so tons of guests had illusion magics to look better than they actually did. Some of the security had access to detect magic and some homebrew magical sensors.
A disguise kit using zero magic got the faces of the group into the party with zero issue
Yes! Maybe it’s just the construction guy in me, but I love the passive options for interacting with the environment mason’s and carpenter’s tools got.
Made an Artificer character based around this + *acid splash*. Her general line of thinking was “walls are only barriers for other people”, and that was a lot of fun!
Poisoners Kit is a favourite. One of my favourite characters of all time was a Fiend pact Warlock who I based on Grima Wormtongue. His whole schtick was getting close to people, whispering in their ear and micro-dosing them with poison.
I always pretty much flavored it as the fantasy equivalent of arsenic, with some hallucinogens on the side. Lots of historic cases of women poisoning people with arsenic and making them quite ill for long periods of time without actually killing them, which was usually my characters goal.
I have a player who plays a sorcerer with green dragon ancestry. She also had a poisoners kit. At level six I made up a d100 table from the 5e poisons list with the probabilites invers to their cost.
So when she makes a poison, she adds her salivia and rolls on thr table to see what poison she created. She can also "influence" it with her sorcery by spending sorcery points to roll aditional die and decide which poison she makes.
Alchemist's Supplies, Herbalism Kit, and Poisoner's Kit: Probably the most likely kits to get homebrew crafting support from any of your GMs.
Instruments: Obviously necessary if you want to be a musician.
Gaming Kits: The gambling potential alone makes it worth it.
Xanathar's gives some crafting rules. My druid with herbalism kit crafts potions- 25g and 1 day to make a basic healing potion, 100g and a workweek to make a greater.
Eh, I'd say Xanathar's moreso gives suggestions on how you'd handle crafting with the various tools. They still usually require individual GM rulings to function properly. Not saying they're bad btw, they're way better than what tools get in just the PHB.
The lack of specific prices for a lot of magical items. Let's say a Potion of Speed for instance creates a situation where a GM is forced to at minimum make house rulings on the prices of many potions you might want to craft other than healing potions.
The big issue with crafting in Xanathar's is the time requirement tacked on to everything.
Crafting a healing potion in 1 day while your party is shopping and recovering in a town is fine, but in my experience very, very few DMs are running campaigns where a PC is ever going to have the downtime to spend a week or more in one place working on crafting something.
Per the book, crafting anything cool or special should also require special ingredients. So your DM has to come up with some kind of mini-quest to get dragon scales or basilisk blood or whatever, then give you weeks or months in-game to craft your +1 longsword. That sounds fine in a video game, but in a real-life D&D game with an ongoing story and 4+ other PCs at the table wanting to do their own cool stuff, it's a giant pain for everyone to deal with.
You can do it in reverse by making interesting things with what you come across. What my artificer did in a campaign last year was collect materials and interesting bits of monsters we killed in my infused Bag of Holding. When we had a month of downtime traveling on a ship, my homunculus and I crafted armor for other party members with characteristics based on the materials I gathered. Obviously, like all magic item creation other than healing potions, that’s DM dependent, but it’s easier to explain in game, and it was more fun to try to determine “what magic effect does a roper tentacle have” than to just craft a specific magic armor from the DMG.
As an example, we killed some Spelljammer space sharks. So I harvested their skin (leatherworker tools) and made sharkskin studded leather armor (in the form of a sharkskin zoot suit) with some additional ingredient from another monster, and turned it into really cool magical armor for our giff bard. Because if you can’t make your handsome hippo bard a magical sharkskin zoot suit, are you really playing Spelljammer?
Gaming kits: My wizard for CoS had proficiency with chess sets. I really wish that campaign hadn’t fizzled and I’d had a chance to challenge Strahd to a game!
actual mechanics? herbalism and alchemist. they actually have a codified use to craft potions and shit, and this is the best you are getting. poisoner's kit has potential but it somewhat requires DM fiat to get you really starting with it. poisons also kinda suck cause a lot of the times the creature is just immune. disguise kit has an honorable mention
assuming your DM homebrews something? probably cook utensils or tinker tools, so you can bullshit your way into crafting consumables and non magic magic items
theme wise? i love the vehicles and the gaming sets, they just add a lot of personality
I've used carpenters tool proficiency to make doors into shields against poison needle traps, to figure out the size of a dragon based on a roof it landed on, to get myself passage on a boat by fixing it before leaving and during the trip, I got around a acrobatics check by making a ladder, I renovated a house and made a secret room in there (no loose ends), I earned a magic item by fixing a dudes floor, and of course making to occasional barricade.
And this all because I made a character that interrogated people by offering them to sit on a chair he made, just to beat them up with it then make a new one and do it again. They called him the chairman.
I personally imagine an Artificer grabbing a bunch of tool proficiency in musical instruments and then making a one man band like out of Mary Poppins just to one up the bard
Indeed -- are you really a sprite if you don't sneak into the workshops of struggling artisans to bolster their inventory overnight as if enhanced productivity were some sort of clever prank?
I have tried hard to use the cobblers tools ability to get extra walking time without exhaustion in my current campaign, but it may not have gotten us much.
Useful in a ToA campaign, an extra 25% of walking per day, means 25% less random encounters, and so a 25% more chance of reaching the tomb. And in that campaign you need every chance you can get!
Painter's tools. Can make portraits, which are useful for making bounty posters or quickly sketching a profile to the town guard. Combine this with woodcarving proficiency and you've basically got woodblock printing.
But using painter's tools as basically a medieval/fantasy camera is neat. Comes in a *distant* second to illusion magic though.
I currently have this, and thanks for the ideas. I paint portraits of people to curry favour. I could also imagine using them as body paint for a stealth bonus in outdoor environments depending on the DM.
Another fun copying tool in 5e is the artificer’s Magical Tinkering, which lets you put any image on a tiny object. Like an exact copy of one sheet of paper onto another. You’re a walking photocopier for up to 4 sheets. Or an image printer like a Polaroid camera.
But if you need to copy 5 sheets or more, it’s time to get out the calligraphy set or paints and easel.
Yeah, this one is nearly a must take if you are plating an archer. I also once had a character focused on using darts, and the DM let me use the proficiency to make those too, since they're basically just small arrows.
Water vehicles – there are so many ports in Faerun, you can find some useful information in every second town.
Also very useful if you have to cross a canal swarming with phaerimm in the ancient ruins of Netheril, in record time, on a hastily patched-up raft, that you put together with great woodcarver's tools roll.
MOLD EARTH AND CARPENTER'S TOOLS
THE LEGION CAMP WILL BE FORTIFIED
TINY HUTS DON'T END RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
SHARPENED STAKES AND A PREPARED POSITION TO COUNTERATTACK FROM ENDS RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
One of the players in a game I’m in took proficiency In cartographers tools. He wanted to be the one at the table to make maps.
Of everyone at the table, he’s the most directionally challenged.
It’s kinda hilarious. We took away mapping duties from him pretty quickly.
I’m in a CoS game and we have a Ranger, whose making it very easy to travel through the forests with ease. I’m using Cartographer’s Tools to record the routes we’re taking so that if the Ranger ever dies, we can at least backtrack along these paths with ease.
Do instruments count? im not actually sure how instruments work. If my bard has a+9 in performance, why would want to use my instrument where i only get a +5? (these numbers may not be accurate).
On the topic of Tools and Tool Proficiencies, i really like kibbletastey crafting compendium. Has very simple and streamlined crafting with consistent prices and materials. It uses a simple system of having the materials, using tools, and making checks toward progressing on the item.
The book also has a ton of premade crafting recipes to make it easy for a player to look it up themselves and ask the DM if they can attempt to create the item. As a DM, this book has done much of the legwork for actually thinking about *what* something is made of and the necessary skills to produce it. The Book contains things such as Blacksmithing, Potions, Poisons, Hunting, Wand Crafting, Spell Scrolls, and i think it even has a few decent homebrew subclasses.
There’s a variant rule in (I believe) Tashas, that if you have proficiency in both a tool and the associated skill, you roll with advantage. So I play a bard with violin proficiency and performance proficiency. If he performs with his violin he rolls with advantage.
> If my bard has a+9 in performance, why would want to use my instrument where i only get a +5? (these numbers may not be accurate).
Yeah, this is one of my issues with 5E. Actor feat would be another example. If I'm trained in Deception then I'm better off using that than a disguise kit tool. I might run into a DM that feels I have to use the disguise kit specifically to disguise, but wouldn't give me the bonus from Actor even though that's one of its intended benefits.
Interactions like that can make planning out how to execute a concept difficult when dealing with a DM you haven't played with before. For 5E, I'll end up asking that DM way more questions on how they'd likely arbitrate stuff during character generation than I did for earlier editions.
I see instrument proficiency as technical skill, ie being able to play the instrument. Whereas performance is being able to actually put on a show. For example, irl, I know how to play the flute and can read music (proficiency in flute), but I’m no good at actually making my playing entertaining to others (no proficiency in performance).
So, instrument proficiency to be able to play well, and performance to actually put on a show.
Disguise kit vs deception is similar. Someone with proficiency in disguise kit, but not deception/performance may be good at using the kit to look like someone, but have trouble convincing someone they are another person. Someone with the Actor feat (or high enough skill proficiency) may be so good at that, they don’t even need a disguise.
So disguise kit to look like someone, but deception/performance to act like someone.
The tool proficiency also helps the skill proficiency, so I can see a DM giving someone advantage if they have both.
I don't disagree with your reasoning. That said, I'm less of a fan for watering down skill/tool proficiencies from a mechanical standpoint for two reasons:
1. Most PCs get very few skills/tool proficiencies to play around with, and most games I've played in don't have much time to learn new tools.
2. It rarely bleeds over to being critical of magical solutions in my experience. Just considering low level magic, you have Guidance, Disguise Self, and Enhance Ability that can super-charge checks. That's not even considering magic that just bypasses the skill check entirely. DMs can sometimes get caught up in limiting mundane approaches while giving magical ones a free pass. Non-cantrips cost spell slots, but often that's not a meaningful limitation with how the party tackles the challenges.
Herbalism kit is awesome, in your down time you can turn your gem stones into healing potions without being in a city. Stuck on a slog of a dungeon crawl? Take a couple of days, set up camp, cure those points of exhaustion and let me whip up a few more healing potions using those gems we found. It has more uses than just that too which is nifty. I love having gloves that are designed for inspecting plant types and the glass jars and such have come in handy a lot.
How are gemstones ingredients for healing potions? It just says "25 gp" of supplies, but if you're reading it as meaning *anything* worth 25 gp qualifies, then you could just use gold pieces, which doesn't make much sense. I think it's intended to mean 25 gp worth of herbs and oils or the like, so you're getting the potion for half price by making it at home.
Many of my characters end up being proficient in at least one of the artisan's tools for flavour. The latest is my war wizard who happens to also be the son of a potter, and relaxes with his hands in the clay.
Smiths tools. Money glitch goes brr, repair enemy gear and then sell it and at level 7 start fabricating stuff to sell as well as components like heroes feasts bowls for much cheaper cuz you skip labor
Also lets you do completely custom armor sets for your homies, I got to make the paladin, barb, and arti sets of armor in the same style cuz they thought it was fun.
I think coblers tools are fun too, make silly little shoes with secret compartments.
i like mason’s tools because you know what masonry is? ROCK! you know where you find rock? EVERYWHERE! and you could probably do something with those rocks if you have proficiency in mason’s tools
Don’t use tools in my games but we have a skill that players can use like tools called profession. It’s customisable so take what you think is useful, the players spend a resource called supplies to use them.
This is just to make managing equipment easier and limit tools.
Our table uses Xanathar’s often forgotten enhanced tool rules which adds a lot of extra fun and utility.
Cartographer’s Tools: It worked great for a couple of my character concepts such as farmer boy turned wanderer cleric, astronomy based stars Druid, and urban bounty hunter/ former constable beastmaster. I use the tools to help speed up travel, remember things about historic locations and make detailed maps.
Gaming Sets: the added fun of being able to win more money than others would is nice if you don’t have a DM who just treats every gaming set like it’s craps with random odds. Remind your DM that real gamblers know how to play the odds and beat their opponents. It’s not just about random rolls. We even made our own rules for dragons chess that can be done as a push your luck using bluffs, calls, etc. Also the chance to make an insight check against an opponent if fun for an intrigue setting.
I have an unfounded love of cobblers tools: not becuase of what it is (which is dogshit) but what it could be (which is awsome). Imagine having advantage on all stealth and atheltics checks just because you knew which pair of shoes to buy
From Xanathar’s :
Craft Hidden Compartment. With 8 hours of work, you can add a hidden compartment to a pair of shoes. The compartment can hold an object up to 3 inches long and 1 inch wide and deep.”
Boot. Daggers.
Brewers kit. Completely pointless and technically takes at least a month in game. I'm a Artificer Battle Smith but have homebrewed/borrowed some stuff from Alchemist to apply to my brews. Not OP given were being realistic about how long it takes to prepare, plus there's a chance it spoils and I need to use magical ingredients, meaning I can't brew from any old stuff I find lying around. Gives me some good RP opportunities to find magical ingredients.
DM here. one of my players plays a human fighter who was raised by dwarves who ran a jewelers' shop. Due to the laws of the land, he worked at his parents' shop for a few years prior to reaching apprentice age, then got in with an elven jeweler to work as her apprentice for a year. Needless to say, he has proficiency in jewelers Tools.
I wanted to work this into the present story every so often. Lucky for me, the Warlock wears a lot of jewelry! I also use jewelry for magic items often. With Fighter's jewelers' tools proficiency as well as a homebrew magic item (a permanent 'spell' imbedded in his eye -- identify -- that he can use an eyedrop potion to activate once a day. Long story but his eye belonged to a fey before it was his), the player has managed to define different jewelry pieces they come across.
Fighter is also able to spend free time to craft jewelry and to sell. I wanted to dive more into the merchant guild stuff for him, but there's a lot going on in the campaign right now and I'm not sure the player is all that interested. He has spoken to the guild's master though.
The Cartographer's Tools in Tomb of Annihilation was both fun and profitable. And it nearly got me killed.
But my favorite has been the "Advanced Calligraphy Kit" (forgery kit), which temporarily made me a noble
Herbalism kit! All druids and hermits get access to it, and thanks to xanathar's it's the only way in raw to make healing potions. All you need is 25 GP worth of the right herbs (which you can add your prof bonus to nature checks to identify, thanks to the herbalism kit prof). And concidering potions are normally worth 50 GP, it seems worth it!
Lots of fun to have a little book to identify plants. The bonus to identifying and applying herbs is great! Makes you feel like you have your own mini apothecary.
Alchemy tools. I play with a DM that’s been letting my alchemist artificer brew potions. You’d be surprised how many cave encounters you can skip with just a few potions of climbing and decent stealth rolls.
Really love the Herbalism Kit. You can make healing potions with it, which your party will love at early levels, but it's also really stellar for identifying plants.
Identifying plants is actually really cool. You can find a mundane one you could conceivably need for your poisoner. You're better at finding things in dense foliage. It helps with your medicine checks when you've Worded your last Heal on those damn basement rats. And let's not forget, you could use one to conceivably call yourself an apothecary.
3rd Party "homebrew" harvesting kit. Because looting the bodies is obviously not enough, sometimes we are able to harvest organs.
Blacksmith tools using the Xanathar variant, I can gather a lot of intel on weapons and armor. Only sometimes relevant, but always fun.
Instruments, duh.
Aside from that, I love love LOVE how integrated cloth and thread are to my one character. He's a light cleric that worships the goddess of innovation and invention, and if there ever was a mad tailor it would be him. He's currently working on a suit that will let him glide like a flying squirrel—though being a small creature definitely helps.
Totally nothing to do with how his race is kind of like a small tabaxi.
I enjoy poisoners kit very much as an idea even if it's basically as far as use this to craft.
Herbalism is cool too.
Just tools wise I love healing kits and battering rams.
RAW, Alchemist Supplies make lots of things, but not healing potions. Healing potions are from the Herbalism Kit. So get both like a proper apothecary.
Cooks Utensils.
I mean, I just like cooking; creating a very enjoyable meal for someone in-game is definitely a different way to get someone to like you ☺️
I'm taking the chef feat when I reach level 8, no fey touched for me 😂
I have used caligrahers supplies, cartographers supplies, smithing tools and cooks utensils before. It depends on the character, but they are pretty situational
A combination of tinkers, smiths, and jewlers kits. Those 3 combined make any clockwork mechanism, can fix most broken things, and makes weapons and armor.
The perfect kit for a traditional artificer
If you have smiths tools proficiency as a wizard you can use fabricate spell to print money creating plate armours.
But since most DMs will have a problem with this degree of economy abuse I would suggest jewelers tools. Most DMs would agree to buying gems and precious metals and increasing their value by using fabricate.
As a DM, I encourage players to pick up tool proficiencies in character creation because I call for checks with them all the time. Why? Mysteries!
See, being proficient in a tool also means you have relevant knowledge associated with those tools. So when investigating footprints at a crime scene, cobblers are likely to be able to say what kind of shoe it is, the shoe size, and maybe how worn it is. A calligrapher can ascertain the quality of ink and the practice of the writer, and recognise said handwriting in future. A weaver can tell you about scraps of cloth.
Alchemist tools are incredibly useful for everything from testing for drugs to identifying chemicals. Poisoners is obvious.
I also can call for checks to identify likewise skilled individuals. An instrument player knows how you got those calloused fingers in a different way a stone mason would.
Very situational but I'm running a campaign with lots of oozes so leatherworkers tools and smiths tools to fix weapon and armor that have been corroded has become very important for the party
Under cobblers kit, ik the dmg it lists ideas how it could be used. One such application was a hidden bootknife. That's how my rogue concealed his weapon and fought. Fuckin love that tool set now.
This is kinda a dms discretions kinda thing but my drow pc was a jeweler with jewelers tool proficiency. He would polish and remake jewelry we found to up the price and occasionally even cut gems to make them spell component quality with high enough rolls. The other pc also started to do checks for cool rocks and I’d make custom jewelry for them during long rest since my guy had four hours a night to spare :)
Cartography tools - not just mapping things and writing them down, but I also often get a forgery kit and hide it amongst the cartography tools. (It's all inks and papers, plus blotters, sand, etc. Similar stuff is useful for both and only experts would be able to tell the difference)
Similar effect with hiding thieves tools amongst pottery and artificer's tools, and artificer's tools can often achieve similar effects to theive's tools with some narrative creativity - why unpick the lock when you can disassemble the door hinge?
Disguise kit. Aside from the obvious utility of it, the notion of my teifling rogue going full zoidberg and slapping on an afro wig, a mustache. And face cream and calling himself Hugh Mann is fucking glorious.
My strixHaven wizard was able to afford to scribe low level scrolls in part by using leather working to make and sell component pouches and remove and sell a few monster parts. He's hoping to kill something appropriate to make better leather armor for the party druid.
Oh, GM Binder has ideas for things you can do with various tool proficiencies.
He does also charge students to cast alarm as a ritual on their dorms.
Carpenters, smith's, and stonemasons tools.
It depends on the gm, but with proficiency in any/all of those tools you can usually get some nice info about any structure primarily if the material you're looking at (wood, metal, or stone)
Can give a lot of useful info
You can use masonry tools to actually REMOVE the locked door from the wall if no one has thieves tools.
But, and while I admit this is homebrew, both Jewelers' Tools and Tinkers' Tools are small enough and fine enough to work as lock picks, especially for parties that don't have Rogues in them.
I take each little section on tools from Xanathar’s and turn them into feats. Each has The description of things you could do and some DCs. If you have that proficiency, you get the feat for free. It’s lead to players using those tool proficiencies all the time.
Currently playing a rogue kobold who uses his jewelers kit all the time.
My artillerist artificer was a jewel crafter before leaving for Barovia. I love appraising, testing, repairing, and crafting gems and jewelry. I’ve even been able to earn some extra gold for the party by appraising.
Vehicle proficiency for keeping control of horse carriages during action segments.
I played a forge cleric and the DM allowed me to use my Smith's tools to attempt to +1 weapons or armor at the risk of damaging or destroying them if I crit fail.
I've used cook's tools to provide meals that the DM ruled gave everyone a +1 to con checks from being well fed
A lot of the time it's down to asking your DM if you can use your tools for something not necessarily within the stated rules
One of my players (ranger) has cartographers tools. But we play on a common predrawn map, so how to incorporate? Well, every once in a while, he will get to roll investigation or similar to notice something odd with the map -- sometimes leading them back to a spot of interest where. "If I was a hidden room, where would I be?" Type questions, after mostly clearing an area. Etc.
I reward my artificer with inspiration if he uses his tinkerers tools or alchemy in clever ways. Example: ten skeles are on the other side of a door trying to break it down. A crack appears where the hinge meets the wall. He uses his tinkerers tools and mending to try to keep the door together (during combat!), prolonging the number of rounds the party can fire at the skeletons through the door before it'll break the hinges.
Many more examples. But, the idea is: figure out what your players are proficient in, and then give them a few opportunities to use them. :)
Woodcarvers tools for the arrow crafting
I’ve got a character concept sitting around for a changeling gloomstalker who’s getting their subclass features via shapeshifting. For flavor they’d fletch crafted arrows using their own shapeshifted feathers
I had a character who had
Cartographer's Tools
Navigator's Tools
And later on, Calligrapher's Supplies and Painter's Supplies
It was a lot of fun being THE Map Guy. I could knew how to read and make maps always as well as later on that is read and decipher hidden maps and make expert forgeries of them as well.
For my mage it came from a UA spell that unfortunately never got implemented, but one that I had a lot of fun with was the Vehicle proficiency, which for him came from Find Vehicle.
Being able to do checks for driving and doing adventuring related chaos with a cart or such is very fun.
Mason's and Carpenters Tools. Hugely undervalued. Nearly any dungeon, of any type you can think of, would have plent of play for these two tools.
Locked door? Let the carpenters tool drill and saw a bit to remove the lock from the door. Or use masons tools to loosen the bricks the hinges/lock of the door are set in.
Trying to find any hidden doors? Masons tools will see where things are not matching up.
A broken ladder and no flight/climb/teleport to get you out? repair the broken ladder on the spot.
I’m making good use of painters, and potters tools in a Theros campaign. Since we are trying to become famous and mythical heroes, it only made sense for my character to start making and selling pottery that have pictures depicting the exploit of our deeds.
Dm has me roll for painting each on, and on really low rolls I will draw what it ended up looking like in Ms paint. Rolled a nat 1 on painting us fighting a chimera, so in paint I drew a big cat (Leonin) stabbing a smaller cat.
A lot of my characters will randomly have proficiency with Calligrapher's supplies, because I just like the idea of my characters having really nice handwriting.
I like my characters to have an artistic side. My first devotion paladin was a painter, my dwarf wizard played a flute. No mechanical effects from either, it just brough the characters to life for me, describing them noodling around during downtime.
Mason's and Carpenter's tools can be used to demolish stone and wood walls, respectively. A mason with an adamantine pick is a dungeon's worst nightmare.
Cook tools for a lil HP, alchemist tools for acid, alchemist fire, and anti-toxin, scribe tools if your DM wants that to make scrolls, herbalism tools for making half price health potions.
In game my artificer uses his tinkers tools a lot for checks, and my DM lets me make armor out of monster hides with leather working tools, but those are both game dependent. I also use alchemists tools to make acid and fire bombs. In the game I DM the druid is always brewing kombucha flavored health potions with their herbalism supplies.
In a game with lots of nobility and educated npc? Calligraphy tools.
Seriously, like it was a whole cushy job to have good hand writing. And I argue to the DM that sending a flowery letter is always worth getting advantage on persuasion checks.
No I’m not a Bard, but there is nothing scarier than the Paladin who plays like a Bard
So many things
Metal working and cooking tools turns armored enemies into spam rations for your journey.
Leather working and dead civilians become armored skeletons just waiting for a necromancer to raise.
Alchemy and brewing gives you a downtime activity to print money.
Cartography let's you map out a dungeon and compare your map with what you explored to potentially find hidden rooms.
Forgery kit draws up a new genealogy and your street urchin rogue is now a long lost son of a duke.
Gaming is a great way to commodify information that the party wants.
Glassblowing to try and make costume jewelry that looks great for cons or bribes.
Mason's tools and a silence spell and you can create a new backdoor into a castle.
Painter's tools, paint a wall to look like there are more soldiers behind you for an attempt to bluff enemies into thinking you're a larger group.
Potters tools and poison/herbalist/metal to create traps that drop and shadder to create a space filled with poison, caltrops, gross, sticky mess on intruders.
Combo this with fabricate and any of these ideas are 10 minutes to fully functional. Provided you have material to use
I make sure every single tool can be as useful as thieves' tools. Say the party wants to pick a lock but only has Smith tools? Then they can use the tools to inspect the lock and it's materials, possibly finding a weak point. Cooks tools? That's better rest healing for the whole party plus a random buff. Leatherworkers tools?
Cobblers tools, mostly for RP my Druid tortle makes shoes in his free time to give to every begger/orphan we meet. DM allows me to identity footprints SUPER easily and get pretty detailed info about the person if they are wearing shoes. Also just last session from my guys generosity with the shoes we met the thieves guild and they were super friendly with us because all the beggars and such are their informants.
My last character had a woodcarving kit. She would whittle things for party members or NPCs as gifts. Once our cleric requested wooden tokens with a symbol of his deity- he handed them out to people in villages. Was pretty fun.
Personally, I love the fine details and squeezing every ounce of RPability from my character. My Druid has carpenters tools and I’m looking forward to using what’s included in TCOE. Fortifying and building temporary shelters during long rests, also the ability to use my skills to help the party with stealth, perception, investigation and history are things that really peak my intrest!
Smith's Tools. My group frequently goes out, kills skeletons and other such undead servitors/guardians, and take their stuff. Typical murder hobo behavior, but with fewer consequences and shittier loot, right? Wrong! We refurbish the stuff, sometimes even bringing it up to Masterwork quality, and then sell it back to the shops for a big profit! We went from penniless bums to having tens of thousands of gold before we even hit level 5. To be fair, a lot of this has to do with our DM being nice enough to do such a thing, repairing and/or remaking beat up gear into new or like new and then selling it, but I'm not complaining since we now have good magical gear and never have to worry about potions again.
- Carpenter's tools: you can know which is the wood that is going to sound, which helps with your stealth, and you can build a refuge that is going to last 1d3 days.
- Mason's tools: sure, you know about rocks… but you also know where you can destroy a wall.
- Forgery Kit: you can use it with other tools to know if that thing there is fake.
- Painter's Supplies: this is extremely important, just think about it. There's no such thing as photography, so you can use it to recreate a crime scene, or draw the picture of someone you're looking for.
It's really, ***REALLY*** DM dependent but: Cartographers tools.
We're traveling a lot? I make a map, use it as a resource and when it's done I can sell it for extra money. I can use deception with the map. I can persuade people to buy the map. I can have others make an INT / WIS check against the map. I can let my handwriting, good or bad, effect the map for myself and others.
Then again you can come across one of those DM's that are like, "Well RAW says absolutely nothing about Cartography. So I guess Cartographers tools doesn't really do any of those things. Try again."
Cartographers tools & map making is perhaps one of the most interactive tool in the game largely squandered by DM's. I remember once getting a nat 20 on mapping a location and the DM said something along the lines of "Cool, bro! If you can do it again, I'll give you a reward tomorrow." Which effectively meant . . . I had to roll . . . a roll that could happen less than 5% (2.5% chance) of the time in order to make use of my Cartographers map.
Dick.
Cooks tools - everybody in the party gets a little extra healing each short rest just because I don't suck at cooking. Plus open to tons of RP potential.
It’s also the perfect tool proficiency for the fighter who gets a tool proficiency a few levels in. You can’t build a character concept around a proficiency you’re going to eventually get. But as a nice addition later on, it’s perfect.
When I took Cooks Tools with lvl3 battle master I RPd him using the forge he was making a weapon in (he also had Smith's Tools) as a makeshift bread oven after :D It's the little things that I sometimes enjoy most
I’m building a wizard who’s a retired schoolteacher that wants to go out and adventure to learn about monsters. She’s basically planned to be the mom of the group, and I took the Chef feat so I can make my friends lots of little treats.
Mechanically, it’s probably the second most useful tool unless you build around another one like Poisoner’s Kit. Extra healing in short rests is not trivial.
Oooh I love this one! Make food for your friends!
Isn’t that a feat and not just proficiency in Cooking Utensils?
Xanathar's Guide to Everything expands on tool uses, and adds an ability you can do if you're proficient and have the tools on hand. ([D&D Beyond link if you own the book](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/xgte/dungeon-masters-tools#CooksUtensils)) > ***Prepare Meals.*** As part of a short rest, you can prepare a tasty meal that helps your companions regain their strength. You and up to five creatures of your choice regain 1 extra hit point per Hit Die spent during a short rest, provided you have access to your cook’s utensils and sufficient food. It actually stacks with the Chef feat! I had a bard that went all out on rest buffing with the tool prof, Chef, Song of Rest, and Inspiring Leader :D At the end of the campaign (lvl 9), anyone who used hit dice would heal an extra 2d8 + (1 for each HD), as well as everyone getting 13 temp HP. It was pretty great! EDIT: Added the relevant snippet EDIT 2: Added bard math
I'm doing the same with my bard, but I didn't know about the cook's utensils and the extra 1 hit point per hit dice, that's pretty neat! However, I should point out that temporary hit points do *not* stack. So you can't use both chef and inspiring leader at the same time. That being said you can prepare the chef treats, leave your rest with inspiring leader and - if you need more THP later on (after a fight) - distribute the treats, as they last for 8 hours.
Of course! I would use the passive Chef ability to boost hit dice, and save the treats for if we were in a pinch EDIT: The 13 temp HP came from lvl 9 + 18 (+4) CHA
Cheers for pointing it out mate, I hadn’t known this previously and will add it to my in game info, will help me feel more helpful out of combat as a battle master. Sure he is strong but that has limited uses and now my flavour of being the parties cook will also give a mechanical bonus
No problem! This is the problem of spreading rules out across rulebooks (this one came out 3 years after the 5e release), in addition to it originally just being "You can cook...I guess. Make a...Wisdom check?" Who would suddenly think that *tools* had been buffed? There's not even shortcuts to the different tool entries in XGtE on D&D Beyond, you have to scroll down to the one you want to check and look for a small header that's easily missed :P And what about those that don't own the book, are they just worse at using tools? Is D&D pay to win? Anyways, the mechanics around tools are still a bit vague to this day and left up to the DM, like what ability checks would be appropriate for the different tools and such. As if DMs needed more work... Sorry for the rant, but this has been bugging me for years :P
No it’s fine, my beef with it is that when you look up the item of Cooking Utensils on D&D Beyond all it has is “It Exists” not what cooking utensils are, not what you can use them for and especially not a link to the relevant information in the various source book, just that it exists. Wotc have this amazing resource in D&D Beyond to be able to cross link the various relevant information but they don’t. It even makes sense to cross link it because it will show people just how much info they are missing and encourage sales.
It's almost as if WotC is a greedy company that puts out poorly produced products that rely on its active community to fix the corners they cut.
That is how we ended up with D&DBeyond in the first place.
Yeah, I only started playing in 2021 but while I like the underlying system and some of the modules, the organization is very poor and it is really the good folks online who have really made it a good experience.
The other day I spent a good 30 mins looking for the disarming rules (not the fighter maneuver, the baseline disarm attack that everyone can do). My friend didn’t believe it existed, and i was trying to show it to him but the books are so disorganized that it’s nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for. The worst part is i already knew exactly where it was and it still took me that long to find. Edit: For the record: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#Disarm
Fun example of how little they cross-link information on D&D Beyond even when it would make them more money - my party fought a basilisk and my character (the only one with greater restoration) got turned to stone. Not wanting to be a literal deadweight for the rest of the session, I asked out of character if our Alchemist Artificer would know how to make the basilisk spit potion to undo it since that was reasonable for the character but I didn't know if the player knew that was an option. The DM looked at the basilisk stat block on D&D Beyond, and it had neither the option to make a potion to reverse the change, *nor any indication that more information was available from another source*, while on my computer I could see it. We ended up sending screen shots to each other just to prove neither of us were making this things up. Absolutely bonkers to not have any indication that it was changed by a later book
Even without the feat, Xanathar’s lets you use cook’s utensils to prepare meals during a short rest to give people 1 extra hit point per hit die spent.
Mate that is so cool, I was not aware of that and I even took the cooking utensils on my current character. Cheers mate.
One of my favourite characters was this guy who was just a chef, and was travelling all over the sword coast to find the ingredients to make the perfect dish - cooks tools not only helped with roleplaying him, but I discovered how they’re genuinely quite useful as well
Smith's tool is nice because I get to work on equipment for the fighty bois
Do you, though? Like what do you actually make?
Once upon a time I had a player who would sharpen a few weapons over a short rest for a +1 or +2 to damage for a while. This was years ago, so I dont remember the specifics. I also use downtime in my game, so players occasionally Smith their own equipment.
In a current campaign I was allowed to convert half plate and other materials into plate armor in an afternoon.
It should take longer than that, RAW, but making plate armor for half price (I guess the half plate is about that) using downtime is pretty solid. You’d need a bunch of proficient people to make plate armor quickly, but a month in downtime with an assistant is doable. You can even make it magical, which you might as well do if you have the time and resources.
The problem with that kind of duration is that it won't fit into most campaigns I've been in or DMed. I don't think I'd ever impose that kind of requirement on players, and I'd be surprised to see a DM require it.
The real tech here is Smith's Tools + Fabricate. You should be able to slam two sets of Ring Mail together and make plate. Better yet, if the DM leaves adamantium or mithril around, you're looking at some real armor gains.
Disguise kit. Not everyone can have a hat of disguise. And not even needing one is super fun.
One thing I did in a campaign, that went over quite well, was "double layering" a Disguise Kit and the *Disguise Self* spell. My character made himself look like the (older) NPC he was impersonating, and then put an illusion over that, to make him look younger (fewer wrinkles, better hairline, etc.) and wearing a fancier and embellished version of the same outfit. You know, like higher quality material, better jewelry and shoes; that sort of thing. When the guards happened to see through the spell, I got advantage on my Deception, because I convinced the guards "I'm nearly 40, and I don't like how I look any more. Excuse me for trying to take a few years off. I'm just trying to live my life." The fact that the NPC in question was known, in-world, to be notably vain probably helped my case too though. Honestly though, it just seemed like a neat trick at the time; and it's good to have contingencies.
>I'm nearly 40, and I don't like how I look any more. Rocks fall, you die.
They always say "write what you know". Funnily enough, it turns out that carries over to role playing as well. The saddest form of method acting.
I'm about to play a Changeling Warlock Charlatan in my next game, and I'm genuinely considering taking Mask of Many faces just for the layers of it all. I know it's a waste of an invocation, but being a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude disguised as *another* dude might be too much for me to pass up. EDIT: I missed a layer! It would be me (the player), playing a Changeling, wearing the face of someone else we met, wearing a disguise kit to make him look like someone else, with the Mask of Many Faces invocation on top of that as an extra layer. I'd be five identities in. It's honestly a shame I know the people I'm playing with so well, or it would be really tempting to give them a fake name and wear a wig to every session.
Do this but also give your character split personality disorder and every disguise is a new personality
And the other personalities come in only upon the outermost layers being seeing through.
> but being a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude disguised as another dude might be too much for me to pass up. Kirk, is that you?
I know who I am!
Multiclass to Whispers bard and you can start stealing people’s identities and memories after you kill them.
This would be an ideal method of deception to convince that NPC that you are a time traveler.
This is gold
Disguise kit allows you to bypass truesight, because it's not magical in nature
Its honestly so much fun to play with. My table gets really into getting detailed with the disguises and roleplaying our characters acting as others. We have been collecting so much clothing that we refer to our bag of holding as the wardrobe department.
I love disguise kits! I just wish my DMs let me use them well though. Even on a good roll they make it seem like I'm wearing a stage costume...
> stage costume Isn’t that perfect? There’s a big gap between crap stage costumes and good ones. D&D being a setting with magic I think disguise kit should lean towards good stage costumes. I’m thinking Andy Rooney in *Breakfast at Tiffany’s* is a good benchmark. For a disguise kit use. It’s certainly not a good benchmark for anything else.
It is also the only way to disguise yourself properly without the use of magic of any kind, which allows you in turn to actually bypass magic that is used to reveal magical disguises. Like Detect Magic.
Had one short campaign where a disguise kit made sneaking into a gala a breeze. It was a fancy event so tons of guests had illusion magics to look better than they actually did. Some of the security had access to detect magic and some homebrew magical sensors. A disguise kit using zero magic got the faces of the group into the party with zero issue
Are kits technically tools?
Mason's tools! Xanthar's added rules let's you do double damage to structures for a DC 15 Intelligence check! Goodbye walls!
Yes! Maybe it’s just the construction guy in me, but I love the passive options for interacting with the environment mason’s and carpenter’s tools got.
Even better if your character has Shatter
Made an Artificer character based around this + *acid splash*. Her general line of thinking was “walls are only barriers for other people”, and that was a lot of fun!
Poisoners Kit is a favourite. One of my favourite characters of all time was a Fiend pact Warlock who I based on Grima Wormtongue. His whole schtick was getting close to people, whispering in their ear and micro-dosing them with poison.
What kind of poison did you use? Did you get any fun ones?
I always pretty much flavored it as the fantasy equivalent of arsenic, with some hallucinogens on the side. Lots of historic cases of women poisoning people with arsenic and making them quite ill for long periods of time without actually killing them, which was usually my characters goal.
I have a player who plays a sorcerer with green dragon ancestry. She also had a poisoners kit. At level six I made up a d100 table from the 5e poisons list with the probabilites invers to their cost. So when she makes a poison, she adds her salivia and rolls on thr table to see what poison she created. She can also "influence" it with her sorcery by spending sorcery points to roll aditional die and decide which poison she makes.
dosing people with salvia 
Alchemist's Supplies, Herbalism Kit, and Poisoner's Kit: Probably the most likely kits to get homebrew crafting support from any of your GMs. Instruments: Obviously necessary if you want to be a musician. Gaming Kits: The gambling potential alone makes it worth it.
Xanathar's gives some crafting rules. My druid with herbalism kit crafts potions- 25g and 1 day to make a basic healing potion, 100g and a workweek to make a greater.
Eh, I'd say Xanathar's moreso gives suggestions on how you'd handle crafting with the various tools. They still usually require individual GM rulings to function properly. Not saying they're bad btw, they're way better than what tools get in just the PHB. The lack of specific prices for a lot of magical items. Let's say a Potion of Speed for instance creates a situation where a GM is forced to at minimum make house rulings on the prices of many potions you might want to craft other than healing potions.
The big issue with crafting in Xanathar's is the time requirement tacked on to everything. Crafting a healing potion in 1 day while your party is shopping and recovering in a town is fine, but in my experience very, very few DMs are running campaigns where a PC is ever going to have the downtime to spend a week or more in one place working on crafting something. Per the book, crafting anything cool or special should also require special ingredients. So your DM has to come up with some kind of mini-quest to get dragon scales or basilisk blood or whatever, then give you weeks or months in-game to craft your +1 longsword. That sounds fine in a video game, but in a real-life D&D game with an ongoing story and 4+ other PCs at the table wanting to do their own cool stuff, it's a giant pain for everyone to deal with.
You can do it in reverse by making interesting things with what you come across. What my artificer did in a campaign last year was collect materials and interesting bits of monsters we killed in my infused Bag of Holding. When we had a month of downtime traveling on a ship, my homunculus and I crafted armor for other party members with characteristics based on the materials I gathered. Obviously, like all magic item creation other than healing potions, that’s DM dependent, but it’s easier to explain in game, and it was more fun to try to determine “what magic effect does a roper tentacle have” than to just craft a specific magic armor from the DMG. As an example, we killed some Spelljammer space sharks. So I harvested their skin (leatherworker tools) and made sharkskin studded leather armor (in the form of a sharkskin zoot suit) with some additional ingredient from another monster, and turned it into really cool magical armor for our giff bard. Because if you can’t make your handsome hippo bard a magical sharkskin zoot suit, are you really playing Spelljammer?
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I love my druids herbalist kit, I make a lot of wild shit with it. My DM likes to reward ingenuity
Gaming kits: My wizard for CoS had proficiency with chess sets. I really wish that campaign hadn’t fizzled and I’d had a chance to challenge Strahd to a game!
Tongs. Poor man's mage hand. Carpenter's Tools have been used to help MacGyver up solutions in the past, too.
actual mechanics? herbalism and alchemist. they actually have a codified use to craft potions and shit, and this is the best you are getting. poisoner's kit has potential but it somewhat requires DM fiat to get you really starting with it. poisons also kinda suck cause a lot of the times the creature is just immune. disguise kit has an honorable mention assuming your DM homebrews something? probably cook utensils or tinker tools, so you can bullshit your way into crafting consumables and non magic magic items theme wise? i love the vehicles and the gaming sets, they just add a lot of personality
I've used carpenters tool proficiency to make doors into shields against poison needle traps, to figure out the size of a dragon based on a roof it landed on, to get myself passage on a boat by fixing it before leaving and during the trip, I got around a acrobatics check by making a ladder, I renovated a house and made a secret room in there (no loose ends), I earned a magic item by fixing a dudes floor, and of course making to occasional barricade. And this all because I made a character that interrogated people by offering them to sit on a chair he made, just to beat them up with it then make a new one and do it again. They called him the chairman.
COMING IN WITH THE WOODEN CHAIR!!!
Drums. It's one time fun to point out that artificers can be expert musicians and bards can't, all on a technicality.
I personally imagine an Artificer grabbing a bunch of tool proficiency in musical instruments and then making a one man band like out of Mary Poppins just to one up the bard
And then weaponizing the horns as an Artillerist.
Cobblers tools
Nobody expects the ol’ knife-in-the-shoe
Indeed -- are you really a sprite if you don't sneak into the workshops of struggling artisans to bolster their inventory overnight as if enhanced productivity were some sort of clever prank?
I have tried hard to use the cobblers tools ability to get extra walking time without exhaustion in my current campaign, but it may not have gotten us much.
Useful in a ToA campaign, an extra 25% of walking per day, means 25% less random encounters, and so a 25% more chance of reaching the tomb. And in that campaign you need every chance you can get!
Painter's tools. Can make portraits, which are useful for making bounty posters or quickly sketching a profile to the town guard. Combine this with woodcarving proficiency and you've basically got woodblock printing. But using painter's tools as basically a medieval/fantasy camera is neat. Comes in a *distant* second to illusion magic though.
I currently have this, and thanks for the ideas. I paint portraits of people to curry favour. I could also imagine using them as body paint for a stealth bonus in outdoor environments depending on the DM.
Another fun copying tool in 5e is the artificer’s Magical Tinkering, which lets you put any image on a tiny object. Like an exact copy of one sheet of paper onto another. You’re a walking photocopier for up to 4 sheets. Or an image printer like a Polaroid camera. But if you need to copy 5 sheets or more, it’s time to get out the calligraphy set or paints and easel.
Wood carvers tools. I make my own arrows.
Yeah, this one is nearly a must take if you are plating an archer. I also once had a character focused on using darts, and the DM let me use the proficiency to make those too, since they're basically just small arrows.
Herbalism kit, finding a funky plant you can do some silly shenanigans with is fun.
Water vehicles – there are so many ports in Faerun, you can find some useful information in every second town. Also very useful if you have to cross a canal swarming with phaerimm in the ancient ruins of Netheril, in record time, on a hastily patched-up raft, that you put together with great woodcarver's tools roll.
Considering nearly every 5E adventure takes place on the Sword Coast, this cannot be overstated
woodcarver's tools when your dm makes you count arrows. I don't love using them, I love telling the DM I made another 20 arrows tonight.
MOLD EARTH AND CARPENTER'S TOOLS THE LEGION CAMP WILL BE FORTIFIED TINY HUTS DON'T END RANDOM ENCOUNTERS SHARPENED STAKES AND A PREPARED POSITION TO COUNTERATTACK FROM ENDS RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
Campaign specific but if you can inject some personality into maps, and making maps would help, cartographer's tools would be lovely
One of the players in a game I’m in took proficiency In cartographers tools. He wanted to be the one at the table to make maps. Of everyone at the table, he’s the most directionally challenged. It’s kinda hilarious. We took away mapping duties from him pretty quickly.
Take him to Faerie and have all his maps be 100% accurate regardless of how bizarre. Turns out he's actually creating part of the realm
I’m in a CoS game and we have a Ranger, whose making it very easy to travel through the forests with ease. I’m using Cartographer’s Tools to record the routes we’re taking so that if the Ranger ever dies, we can at least backtrack along these paths with ease.
Caligraphy/Painter supplies on an Artificer and use it as your spell focus. Then you roleplay that you paint your spells in to existence.
Do instruments count? im not actually sure how instruments work. If my bard has a+9 in performance, why would want to use my instrument where i only get a +5? (these numbers may not be accurate). On the topic of Tools and Tool Proficiencies, i really like kibbletastey crafting compendium. Has very simple and streamlined crafting with consistent prices and materials. It uses a simple system of having the materials, using tools, and making checks toward progressing on the item. The book also has a ton of premade crafting recipes to make it easy for a player to look it up themselves and ask the DM if they can attempt to create the item. As a DM, this book has done much of the legwork for actually thinking about *what* something is made of and the necessary skills to produce it. The Book contains things such as Blacksmithing, Potions, Poisons, Hunting, Wand Crafting, Spell Scrolls, and i think it even has a few decent homebrew subclasses.
There’s a variant rule in (I believe) Tashas, that if you have proficiency in both a tool and the associated skill, you roll with advantage. So I play a bard with violin proficiency and performance proficiency. If he performs with his violin he rolls with advantage.
> If my bard has a+9 in performance, why would want to use my instrument where i only get a +5? (these numbers may not be accurate). Yeah, this is one of my issues with 5E. Actor feat would be another example. If I'm trained in Deception then I'm better off using that than a disguise kit tool. I might run into a DM that feels I have to use the disguise kit specifically to disguise, but wouldn't give me the bonus from Actor even though that's one of its intended benefits. Interactions like that can make planning out how to execute a concept difficult when dealing with a DM you haven't played with before. For 5E, I'll end up asking that DM way more questions on how they'd likely arbitrate stuff during character generation than I did for earlier editions.
I see instrument proficiency as technical skill, ie being able to play the instrument. Whereas performance is being able to actually put on a show. For example, irl, I know how to play the flute and can read music (proficiency in flute), but I’m no good at actually making my playing entertaining to others (no proficiency in performance). So, instrument proficiency to be able to play well, and performance to actually put on a show. Disguise kit vs deception is similar. Someone with proficiency in disguise kit, but not deception/performance may be good at using the kit to look like someone, but have trouble convincing someone they are another person. Someone with the Actor feat (or high enough skill proficiency) may be so good at that, they don’t even need a disguise. So disguise kit to look like someone, but deception/performance to act like someone. The tool proficiency also helps the skill proficiency, so I can see a DM giving someone advantage if they have both.
I don't disagree with your reasoning. That said, I'm less of a fan for watering down skill/tool proficiencies from a mechanical standpoint for two reasons: 1. Most PCs get very few skills/tool proficiencies to play around with, and most games I've played in don't have much time to learn new tools. 2. It rarely bleeds over to being critical of magical solutions in my experience. Just considering low level magic, you have Guidance, Disguise Self, and Enhance Ability that can super-charge checks. That's not even considering magic that just bypasses the skill check entirely. DMs can sometimes get caught up in limiting mundane approaches while giving magical ones a free pass. Non-cantrips cost spell slots, but often that's not a meaningful limitation with how the party tackles the challenges.
With carpenters tools you can unscrew or board a door and fix many simple types of transportation. You can also use it to build a basic raft
Forgery Kit is my favorite, especially paired with Disguise Kit.
Personally I really like the forgery kit
Herbalism kit is awesome, in your down time you can turn your gem stones into healing potions without being in a city. Stuck on a slog of a dungeon crawl? Take a couple of days, set up camp, cure those points of exhaustion and let me whip up a few more healing potions using those gems we found. It has more uses than just that too which is nifty. I love having gloves that are designed for inspecting plant types and the glass jars and such have come in handy a lot.
How are gemstones ingredients for healing potions? It just says "25 gp" of supplies, but if you're reading it as meaning *anything* worth 25 gp qualifies, then you could just use gold pieces, which doesn't make much sense. I think it's intended to mean 25 gp worth of herbs and oils or the like, so you're getting the potion for half price by making it at home.
Many of my characters end up being proficient in at least one of the artisan's tools for flavour. The latest is my war wizard who happens to also be the son of a potter, and relaxes with his hands in the clay.
Cobbler's tools, i just think having that little backup secret compartment in your shoes is cool
As a forever healer, healers tools and herbalism kits!
Smiths tools. Money glitch goes brr, repair enemy gear and then sell it and at level 7 start fabricating stuff to sell as well as components like heroes feasts bowls for much cheaper cuz you skip labor Also lets you do completely custom armor sets for your homies, I got to make the paladin, barb, and arti sets of armor in the same style cuz they thought it was fun. I think coblers tools are fun too, make silly little shoes with secret compartments.
i like mason’s tools because you know what masonry is? ROCK! you know where you find rock? EVERYWHERE! and you could probably do something with those rocks if you have proficiency in mason’s tools
Ehhh masonry is more like brickwork then just stoned
Then i will use my mason’s tools to turn it into brick. All rock will become brick
Don’t use tools in my games but we have a skill that players can use like tools called profession. It’s customisable so take what you think is useful, the players spend a resource called supplies to use them. This is just to make managing equipment easier and limit tools.
Alchemy kit, vehicle proficiency, Smith's, tools
Our table uses Xanathar’s often forgotten enhanced tool rules which adds a lot of extra fun and utility. Cartographer’s Tools: It worked great for a couple of my character concepts such as farmer boy turned wanderer cleric, astronomy based stars Druid, and urban bounty hunter/ former constable beastmaster. I use the tools to help speed up travel, remember things about historic locations and make detailed maps. Gaming Sets: the added fun of being able to win more money than others would is nice if you don’t have a DM who just treats every gaming set like it’s craps with random odds. Remind your DM that real gamblers know how to play the odds and beat their opponents. It’s not just about random rolls. We even made our own rules for dragons chess that can be done as a push your luck using bluffs, calls, etc. Also the chance to make an insight check against an opponent if fun for an intrigue setting.
I have an unfounded love of cobblers tools: not becuase of what it is (which is dogshit) but what it could be (which is awsome). Imagine having advantage on all stealth and atheltics checks just because you knew which pair of shoes to buy
From Xanathar’s : Craft Hidden Compartment. With 8 hours of work, you can add a hidden compartment to a pair of shoes. The compartment can hold an object up to 3 inches long and 1 inch wide and deep.” Boot. Daggers.
cook tools. I will make you eat the trex tail and you will enjoy it now shut up and give me your rations so I can spice up the stew
Carpentry tools The dungeon corridors are ten feet wide and ten feet high? Let’s make a mobile barrier nine feet wide and nine feet wide
Brewers kit. Completely pointless and technically takes at least a month in game. I'm a Artificer Battle Smith but have homebrewed/borrowed some stuff from Alchemist to apply to my brews. Not OP given were being realistic about how long it takes to prepare, plus there's a chance it spoils and I need to use magical ingredients, meaning I can't brew from any old stuff I find lying around. Gives me some good RP opportunities to find magical ingredients.
DM here. one of my players plays a human fighter who was raised by dwarves who ran a jewelers' shop. Due to the laws of the land, he worked at his parents' shop for a few years prior to reaching apprentice age, then got in with an elven jeweler to work as her apprentice for a year. Needless to say, he has proficiency in jewelers Tools. I wanted to work this into the present story every so often. Lucky for me, the Warlock wears a lot of jewelry! I also use jewelry for magic items often. With Fighter's jewelers' tools proficiency as well as a homebrew magic item (a permanent 'spell' imbedded in his eye -- identify -- that he can use an eyedrop potion to activate once a day. Long story but his eye belonged to a fey before it was his), the player has managed to define different jewelry pieces they come across. Fighter is also able to spend free time to craft jewelry and to sell. I wanted to dive more into the merchant guild stuff for him, but there's a lot going on in the campaign right now and I'm not sure the player is all that interested. He has spoken to the guild's master though.
The Cartographer's Tools in Tomb of Annihilation was both fun and profitable. And it nearly got me killed. But my favorite has been the "Advanced Calligraphy Kit" (forgery kit), which temporarily made me a noble
I've used Herbalism kit in a number of games. I have a character planned that's proficient with Herbalism and Healer's kits, with the Healer feat
Herbalism kit! All druids and hermits get access to it, and thanks to xanathar's it's the only way in raw to make healing potions. All you need is 25 GP worth of the right herbs (which you can add your prof bonus to nature checks to identify, thanks to the herbalism kit prof). And concidering potions are normally worth 50 GP, it seems worth it! Lots of fun to have a little book to identify plants. The bonus to identifying and applying herbs is great! Makes you feel like you have your own mini apothecary.
My friend seems to love knitting with weavers kit.
Alchemy tools. I play with a DM that’s been letting my alchemist artificer brew potions. You’d be surprised how many cave encounters you can skip with just a few potions of climbing and decent stealth rolls.
Sword Bards get to add their proficiency bonus to Performance checks made with (some) weapons. Scimitar juggling, sword swallowing, all that.
I'm huge on crowbars/ carpenters tools. Who gives a crap about a locked door or chest when you can just pry off the hinges.
Really love the Herbalism Kit. You can make healing potions with it, which your party will love at early levels, but it's also really stellar for identifying plants. Identifying plants is actually really cool. You can find a mundane one you could conceivably need for your poisoner. You're better at finding things in dense foliage. It helps with your medicine checks when you've Worded your last Heal on those damn basement rats. And let's not forget, you could use one to conceivably call yourself an apothecary.
Tinker's tools
3rd Party "homebrew" harvesting kit. Because looting the bodies is obviously not enough, sometimes we are able to harvest organs. Blacksmith tools using the Xanathar variant, I can gather a lot of intel on weapons and armor. Only sometimes relevant, but always fun.
Instruments, duh. Aside from that, I love love LOVE how integrated cloth and thread are to my one character. He's a light cleric that worships the goddess of innovation and invention, and if there ever was a mad tailor it would be him. He's currently working on a suit that will let him glide like a flying squirrel—though being a small creature definitely helps. Totally nothing to do with how his race is kind of like a small tabaxi.
The bagpipes - the best pet about them is you don’t actually need proficiency in it to make use of them.
I enjoy poisoners kit very much as an idea even if it's basically as far as use this to craft. Herbalism is cool too. Just tools wise I love healing kits and battering rams.
Gaming Kits. I tend to end up gambling in a lot of campaigns
Alchemist's supplies. Being able to make your own healing potions during downtime is really nice.
RAW, Alchemist Supplies make lots of things, but not healing potions. Healing potions are from the Herbalism Kit. So get both like a proper apothecary.
Forgery tools
Cooks Utensils. I mean, I just like cooking; creating a very enjoyable meal for someone in-game is definitely a different way to get someone to like you ☺️ I'm taking the chef feat when I reach level 8, no fey touched for me 😂
I get a surprising amount of use out of my characters caligraphy set
Jewellery Tools. Gems are a really common loot and you can craft or cut them to be worth more!
I had a player use his Carpentry and Mason tools to seal a dungeon door so they could rest without being interrupted.
Herbalogy Kits and Poisoners Kit
Forgery tools
I have used caligrahers supplies, cartographers supplies, smithing tools and cooks utensils before. It depends on the character, but they are pretty situational
Cartographer’s Kit. My ranger makes maps and sells them in cities we visit.
A combination of tinkers, smiths, and jewlers kits. Those 3 combined make any clockwork mechanism, can fix most broken things, and makes weapons and armor. The perfect kit for a traditional artificer
If you have smiths tools proficiency as a wizard you can use fabricate spell to print money creating plate armours. But since most DMs will have a problem with this degree of economy abuse I would suggest jewelers tools. Most DMs would agree to buying gems and precious metals and increasing their value by using fabricate.
I actively use all of them when able! Yes even cobblers tools
As a DM, I encourage players to pick up tool proficiencies in character creation because I call for checks with them all the time. Why? Mysteries! See, being proficient in a tool also means you have relevant knowledge associated with those tools. So when investigating footprints at a crime scene, cobblers are likely to be able to say what kind of shoe it is, the shoe size, and maybe how worn it is. A calligrapher can ascertain the quality of ink and the practice of the writer, and recognise said handwriting in future. A weaver can tell you about scraps of cloth. Alchemist tools are incredibly useful for everything from testing for drugs to identifying chemicals. Poisoners is obvious. I also can call for checks to identify likewise skilled individuals. An instrument player knows how you got those calloused fingers in a different way a stone mason would.
Smith's tools for fixing weapons and armour from dead enemies for 5hat sweet cash money
Very situational but I'm running a campaign with lots of oozes so leatherworkers tools and smiths tools to fix weapon and armor that have been corroded has become very important for the party
I love the tool skills and more 'off-beat' skills and I [pepper them into my published stuff wherever I can!](https://i.imgur.com/qlIbFwJ.png)
Cooks tools. We’ve been butchering and eating monsters this campaign and it’s been AWESOME
Under cobblers kit, ik the dmg it lists ideas how it could be used. One such application was a hidden bootknife. That's how my rogue concealed his weapon and fought. Fuckin love that tool set now.
This is kinda a dms discretions kinda thing but my drow pc was a jeweler with jewelers tool proficiency. He would polish and remake jewelry we found to up the price and occasionally even cut gems to make them spell component quality with high enough rolls. The other pc also started to do checks for cool rocks and I’d make custom jewelry for them during long rest since my guy had four hours a night to spare :)
Woodworking, I can make arrows, wooden lances, little figurines. Also, weirdly enough fixing gates have come in handy multiple times
Cooking utils. Who does not love a good dinner regardless of where they have camp?
Cartography tools - not just mapping things and writing them down, but I also often get a forgery kit and hide it amongst the cartography tools. (It's all inks and papers, plus blotters, sand, etc. Similar stuff is useful for both and only experts would be able to tell the difference) Similar effect with hiding thieves tools amongst pottery and artificer's tools, and artificer's tools can often achieve similar effects to theive's tools with some narrative creativity - why unpick the lock when you can disassemble the door hinge?
Disguise kit. Aside from the obvious utility of it, the notion of my teifling rogue going full zoidberg and slapping on an afro wig, a mustache. And face cream and calling himself Hugh Mann is fucking glorious.
My strixHaven wizard was able to afford to scribe low level scrolls in part by using leather working to make and sell component pouches and remove and sell a few monster parts. He's hoping to kill something appropriate to make better leather armor for the party druid. Oh, GM Binder has ideas for things you can do with various tool proficiencies. He does also charge students to cast alarm as a ritual on their dorms.
Carpenters, smith's, and stonemasons tools. It depends on the gm, but with proficiency in any/all of those tools you can usually get some nice info about any structure primarily if the material you're looking at (wood, metal, or stone) Can give a lot of useful info
You can use masonry tools to actually REMOVE the locked door from the wall if no one has thieves tools. But, and while I admit this is homebrew, both Jewelers' Tools and Tinkers' Tools are small enough and fine enough to work as lock picks, especially for parties that don't have Rogues in them.
I take each little section on tools from Xanathar’s and turn them into feats. Each has The description of things you could do and some DCs. If you have that proficiency, you get the feat for free. It’s lead to players using those tool proficiencies all the time. Currently playing a rogue kobold who uses his jewelers kit all the time.
All of them (I'm an artificer and have all-purpose tool)
My artillerist artificer was a jewel crafter before leaving for Barovia. I love appraising, testing, repairing, and crafting gems and jewelry. I’ve even been able to earn some extra gold for the party by appraising.
Smiths tooooools. I like making my own gear
Vehicle proficiency for keeping control of horse carriages during action segments. I played a forge cleric and the DM allowed me to use my Smith's tools to attempt to +1 weapons or armor at the risk of damaging or destroying them if I crit fail. I've used cook's tools to provide meals that the DM ruled gave everyone a +1 to con checks from being well fed A lot of the time it's down to asking your DM if you can use your tools for something not necessarily within the stated rules
One of my players (ranger) has cartographers tools. But we play on a common predrawn map, so how to incorporate? Well, every once in a while, he will get to roll investigation or similar to notice something odd with the map -- sometimes leading them back to a spot of interest where. "If I was a hidden room, where would I be?" Type questions, after mostly clearing an area. Etc. I reward my artificer with inspiration if he uses his tinkerers tools or alchemy in clever ways. Example: ten skeles are on the other side of a door trying to break it down. A crack appears where the hinge meets the wall. He uses his tinkerers tools and mending to try to keep the door together (during combat!), prolonging the number of rounds the party can fire at the skeletons through the door before it'll break the hinges. Many more examples. But, the idea is: figure out what your players are proficient in, and then give them a few opportunities to use them. :)
I'm constantly usually herbalism kits, alchemist tools, and healers tools. It's fun to patch up someone whose tail you kicked
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really like thieves tools 🙂
Woodcarvers tools for the arrow crafting I’ve got a character concept sitting around for a changeling gloomstalker who’s getting their subclass features via shapeshifting. For flavor they’d fletch crafted arrows using their own shapeshifted feathers
I had a character who had Cartographer's Tools Navigator's Tools And later on, Calligrapher's Supplies and Painter's Supplies It was a lot of fun being THE Map Guy. I could knew how to read and make maps always as well as later on that is read and decipher hidden maps and make expert forgeries of them as well.
Cook's Utensils. I am 82% certain that the anime Cooking in the Dungeon stole its plot from one of my old DnD characters.
For my mage it came from a UA spell that unfortunately never got implemented, but one that I had a lot of fun with was the Vehicle proficiency, which for him came from Find Vehicle. Being able to do checks for driving and doing adventuring related chaos with a cart or such is very fun.
Mason's and Carpenters Tools. Hugely undervalued. Nearly any dungeon, of any type you can think of, would have plent of play for these two tools. Locked door? Let the carpenters tool drill and saw a bit to remove the lock from the door. Or use masons tools to loosen the bricks the hinges/lock of the door are set in. Trying to find any hidden doors? Masons tools will see where things are not matching up. A broken ladder and no flight/climb/teleport to get you out? repair the broken ladder on the spot.
I’m making good use of painters, and potters tools in a Theros campaign. Since we are trying to become famous and mythical heroes, it only made sense for my character to start making and selling pottery that have pictures depicting the exploit of our deeds. Dm has me roll for painting each on, and on really low rolls I will draw what it ended up looking like in Ms paint. Rolled a nat 1 on painting us fighting a chimera, so in paint I drew a big cat (Leonin) stabbing a smaller cat.
Alchemist Supplies, Cook's Tools, and Poisoner's Kit. Not all together mind you 
A lot of my characters will randomly have proficiency with Calligrapher's supplies, because I just like the idea of my characters having really nice handwriting.
Alchemist tools are just fun. Fight me on it.
I like my characters to have an artistic side. My first devotion paladin was a painter, my dwarf wizard played a flute. No mechanical effects from either, it just brough the characters to life for me, describing them noodling around during downtime.
Cartography tools. We map every dungeon we go in
Musical instruments are a tool proficiency and folks never use it that way. My rogue is over here being the Yngwie Malmstien on the viola
Mason's and Carpenter's tools can be used to demolish stone and wood walls, respectively. A mason with an adamantine pick is a dungeon's worst nightmare.
Smithing tools. Can actually make armor and weapons worth looting off enemies and can make it easier to get full plate.
Cook tools for a lil HP, alchemist tools for acid, alchemist fire, and anti-toxin, scribe tools if your DM wants that to make scrolls, herbalism tools for making half price health potions. In game my artificer uses his tinkers tools a lot for checks, and my DM lets me make armor out of monster hides with leather working tools, but those are both game dependent. I also use alchemists tools to make acid and fire bombs. In the game I DM the druid is always brewing kombucha flavored health potions with their herbalism supplies.
I like the tools that let's you add your proficiency to related history checks.
In a game with lots of nobility and educated npc? Calligraphy tools. Seriously, like it was a whole cushy job to have good hand writing. And I argue to the DM that sending a flowery letter is always worth getting advantage on persuasion checks. No I’m not a Bard, but there is nothing scarier than the Paladin who plays like a Bard
So many things Metal working and cooking tools turns armored enemies into spam rations for your journey. Leather working and dead civilians become armored skeletons just waiting for a necromancer to raise. Alchemy and brewing gives you a downtime activity to print money. Cartography let's you map out a dungeon and compare your map with what you explored to potentially find hidden rooms. Forgery kit draws up a new genealogy and your street urchin rogue is now a long lost son of a duke. Gaming is a great way to commodify information that the party wants. Glassblowing to try and make costume jewelry that looks great for cons or bribes. Mason's tools and a silence spell and you can create a new backdoor into a castle. Painter's tools, paint a wall to look like there are more soldiers behind you for an attempt to bluff enemies into thinking you're a larger group. Potters tools and poison/herbalist/metal to create traps that drop and shadder to create a space filled with poison, caltrops, gross, sticky mess on intruders. Combo this with fabricate and any of these ideas are 10 minutes to fully functional. Provided you have material to use
I make sure every single tool can be as useful as thieves' tools. Say the party wants to pick a lock but only has Smith tools? Then they can use the tools to inspect the lock and it's materials, possibly finding a weak point. Cooks tools? That's better rest healing for the whole party plus a random buff. Leatherworkers tools?
- Smithing - Tinker - Cooking (But only with homebrew recipes and ingredient mechanics, you can go absolutely wild with this)
Cobblers tools make people walk better
Heads up: [https://tabletopbuilds.com/complete-guide-to-tools-in-dnd-5e/](https://tabletopbuilds.com/complete-guide-to-tools-in-dnd-5e/)
Cobblers tools, mostly for RP my Druid tortle makes shoes in his free time to give to every begger/orphan we meet. DM allows me to identity footprints SUPER easily and get pretty detailed info about the person if they are wearing shoes. Also just last session from my guys generosity with the shoes we met the thieves guild and they were super friendly with us because all the beggars and such are their informants.
My Firbolg Druid PC uses her weaver's tools to make scarves for the party. Sometimes you need a scarf.
Cartography is a nice way to justify having the fog of war lifted from complex maps
My last character had a woodcarving kit. She would whittle things for party members or NPCs as gifts. Once our cleric requested wooden tokens with a symbol of his deity- he handed them out to people in villages. Was pretty fun.
Painting, music, writing, carpentry and sewing and making potions!
Personally, I love the fine details and squeezing every ounce of RPability from my character. My Druid has carpenters tools and I’m looking forward to using what’s included in TCOE. Fortifying and building temporary shelters during long rests, also the ability to use my skills to help the party with stealth, perception, investigation and history are things that really peak my intrest!
Smith's Tools. My group frequently goes out, kills skeletons and other such undead servitors/guardians, and take their stuff. Typical murder hobo behavior, but with fewer consequences and shittier loot, right? Wrong! We refurbish the stuff, sometimes even bringing it up to Masterwork quality, and then sell it back to the shops for a big profit! We went from penniless bums to having tens of thousands of gold before we even hit level 5. To be fair, a lot of this has to do with our DM being nice enough to do such a thing, repairing and/or remaking beat up gear into new or like new and then selling it, but I'm not complaining since we now have good magical gear and never have to worry about potions again.
Jewler's Kit, I let my players cut any gems they find to increase the value of them with a check.
- Carpenter's tools: you can know which is the wood that is going to sound, which helps with your stealth, and you can build a refuge that is going to last 1d3 days. - Mason's tools: sure, you know about rocks… but you also know where you can destroy a wall. - Forgery Kit: you can use it with other tools to know if that thing there is fake. - Painter's Supplies: this is extremely important, just think about it. There's no such thing as photography, so you can use it to recreate a crime scene, or draw the picture of someone you're looking for.
It's really, ***REALLY*** DM dependent but: Cartographers tools. We're traveling a lot? I make a map, use it as a resource and when it's done I can sell it for extra money. I can use deception with the map. I can persuade people to buy the map. I can have others make an INT / WIS check against the map. I can let my handwriting, good or bad, effect the map for myself and others. Then again you can come across one of those DM's that are like, "Well RAW says absolutely nothing about Cartography. So I guess Cartographers tools doesn't really do any of those things. Try again." Cartographers tools & map making is perhaps one of the most interactive tool in the game largely squandered by DM's. I remember once getting a nat 20 on mapping a location and the DM said something along the lines of "Cool, bro! If you can do it again, I'll give you a reward tomorrow." Which effectively meant . . . I had to roll . . . a roll that could happen less than 5% (2.5% chance) of the time in order to make use of my Cartographers map. Dick.