In the LARP that I work on, one of the races available to players is the Homunculus. It’s less like D&D homunculi and more like Frankenstein’s Monster; as with Shelley’s original, they are fully sentient. Within the setting, they are widely abused and mistreated by their wizardly creators, though some […]
I create a lot of subclasses in this blog, because subclasses are fun and interesting to design. In this case, as with the Lantern-bearer Ranger Archetype, I’m looking for thematically appealing ways to address some of the ranger’s shortcomings on the damage-output side. I’d also like for high-level rangers to […]
Far over the Misty Mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away ere break of day, To seek the pale enchanted gold. —The Hobbit On one hand, talking about the Ranger class in this blog has had me reading the Exploration rules. On the other, I’ve been […]
This month’s Unearthed Arcana is on the small side, but it punches well above its weight in the Rule of Cool. Technically, all that is here is a new subrace and five new spells. On the other hand, it’s breaking tieflings down into subraces – a welcome change – and […]
A friend of mine suggested the other day that he would really like to see a class similar to 4e’s shaman, with a strong focus on interacting with spirits in one way or another. You can make just about any caster class feel like a shaman with a very thin coat […]
I’ve been doing a thing for awhile now with personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws for each race, and this time around I’m taking on the half-orc. It’s a race I’ve never had any great amount of interest in, but I think a lot of that is the result of […]
As anyone playing Dust to Dust or Fallen Earth knows, I think it’s cool for characters to perform research to unlock new content, such as spells or crafting formulas. Games have a lot of ways for combat or social power to leave a mark on a setting; research is a […]
We just finished a pretty important side-quest in my D&D campaign and the session went really well, so I want to talk about some of the things that I did to prepare for it and how it all worked out. Special thanks go to Stands-in-Fire, who normally plays in this […]
I’m a little late to the party on this, but at the beginning of this month, WotC released a new Unearthed Arcana, with subclasses and fighting styles particularly targeted at Underdark campaigns. The good news is, nothing in them requires the Underdark – their conditions just come up more often there. […]
It’s five years now that I’ve been writing this blog. Each year has had slightly fewer posts than the year before it, though if you add in all of the articles I’ve written for Tribality, I’m well above the writing output of my first year. It’s been a busy year; […]
