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See More »During the public playtest of D&D Next, I did some fiddling around with the sorcerer class to keep it current-ish with later packets, because several of my players were so intrigued by the original class concept. My efforts weren’t great, in part because they highlighted what was wrong in the […]
A few days ago, the G+ thread following +Rob Donoghue‘s post on Rangers and Rogues led to an idea that really grabbed me: the Mastermind Rogue. This is a Roguish Archetype that roughly parallels some of the functions of the Bard and the assisting functions of the Battle Master archetype. For […]
In my campaign, the Bounty Hunter background in the playtest documents was one of the more popular options. Since the setting runs more toward late-Renaissance and early-colonial rather than the core medieval setting of most campaigns, players used that background to cover slightly more modern law-enforcement concepts as well. The […]
O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. –W.B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” Okay, I’ll fess up – this isn’t a post about how to use […]
Spells This breakdown of spells is lengthy enough that I’m going to boil down trends first, rather than making readers wade through a discussion of literally every spell in Basic to read a derived change log. You might say it’s a trifle dry. (This blog is justly accused of same; […]
When last we left our intrepid blogger, I discussed Combat and Conditions in D&D Basic, focusing particularly on how the rules had changed between the playtest packet and the final. This time, it’s Part Three, the Rules of Magic. In June of last year, I wrote about the spells of […]
This is my fourth post reviewing the D&D Basic rules, including comparison to the last playtest packet. Previous posts have covered races and classes; personality, backgrounds, and equipment; and general rules and adventuring. Judging by the title of the post, I’m probably writing about combat and conditions this time. Like […]
In this, my third post comparing D&D Basic to the last of the playtest packets, we get into the fundamental rules of D&D. In the Basic PDF, it’s Part Two: Playing the Game, but either part of that would make for a misleading post title, and what kind of barbarian […]
This post continues the detailed comparison between the D&D Basic PDF and the last playtest packet that WotC issued (10-14-2013). Part One of this analysis focused on races and classes; this time, we’re getting into more terra incognita, including one of the most-discussed paragraphs in the whole blesséd thing. Without […]
On Thursday, 3 July, 2014, the tabletop gaming world was… not rocked to its core, perhaps, but the vast majority of conversation was turned to the release of D&D Starter and D&D Basic for the new edition (which, for want of any other term, we distinguish as 5e). The former […]
