I’ve been talking to Kainenchen a lot lately about the Forgotten Realms canon around surface elves and drow, which has changed a whole lot between the time I first learned it (2e) and now. For a better breakdown of that canon – including trouble spots – check out G.A. Barber’s […]
Back in January, I posted the Way of the Wild monastic tradition, drawing on the Five Animals of Southern Style kung fu. There are a lot more than five animals and five styles in kung fu, so I wanted to add more options – Monkey Style because it’s a real […]
A Twitter thread the other day explored a lot of the issues around two-weapon fighting in 5e, so I wanted to write a blog post that covered the whole deal, including potential changes to correct things that I see as issues. Stands-in-the-Fire crunched a lot of the numbers on this […]
As I finished up that collection of druid relics a couple of months ago, I started thinking about relics for rangers and barbarians, especially Beast Master rangers. We talk a lot – like, a lot – about rangers and Beast Masters on these interwebs. Imagining for a moment that you agree […]
Ever since 5e came out, I’ve talked around how medium armor isn’t great. There are a few specific builds that are stuck with it, but its positioning feeds into the problems of Strength vs. Dexterity in 5e. To put that another way, any Strength-focused character that can’t wear heavy armor has […]
I’ve commented on warlocks a lot in this blog, and some of those posts are among my most-viewed. I stand by the problems, but some of the solutions I’ve explored don’t quite suffice. In the past few years I’ve talked to Kainenchen and GFo about their experiences with the class. In […]
Martial arts moves named for animals, especially in the form of a Three! Word! Attack!, are such a common concept in the source fiction and nonfiction that it’s the weirdest thing in the world to me that it’s unrepresented in 5e monk subclasses. For that matter, if it was a significant […]
You should definitely check out the history behind this image, brought to you today by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’m particularly interested in this one because of some work I’ve recently done over in Tribality, as well as how seamlessly this image fits into Aurikesh. (Yes, I know that […]
Over in that Twitter thread, we were talking about the function of totems as 4e magic items. I suggested that they could be intended for druids, especially the Circle of the Moon, and might boost the stats of lower-CR Wild Shapes, so that if shapeshifting to a wolf or panther is […]
Posting over in Twitter about 4e, I happened to recall that 4e genasi had a lot more varieties than 5e genasi do. Their metagame position is also quite different; 4e genasi have unique offensive powers, while 5e genasi have spells that might be offense or utility, and are substantially varied […]
