What works at your table?
Managing character death in Dungeons & Dragons presents different challenges at low and high levels. Success lies in balancing narrative ambitions with mechanical costs. Low Levels The Problem: at low levels, death feels mundane. A low-level character can easily fall to a critical hit or even just a strong roll by the DM. Scores of … Continue reading Dealing with Death
Dungeons & Dragons players are choosing Humans to realize their character concept, when they really want to be playing other races. A study by FiveThirtyEight showed that Humans are by far the most common racial selection, based a sample of online characters made on the online platform D&D Beyond during its first month. This phenomenon can be … Continue reading Should Everyone Get a Feat at Level 1?
What have D&D designers said about the Mystic? In his recent Reddit AMA, Dungeons and Dragon's Creative Director Mike Mearls indicated (4x) that the Mystic needs a conceptual rebuild: "...mystic depends on a deeper revision to give it a clearer identity, driven by settings like Dark Sun and what it would need." "Moving the mystic … Continue reading The Dark Sun Mystic
Homebrew Spellcaster Template Click the link for a spellcaster template prefilled with spell progression, spell known ranges, cantrip known ranges, ability score improvements, "dead levels" for new spell level access, and the full Class Features and Spellcasting text in fillable format. Click "Source" in the top-right to add your own info, then copy it to … Continue reading Building a Homebrew Spellcaster
Players love rolling dice. A DM who inspires their players to take advantage of the environment to have more fun is doing a good job. The simplest implementation is using the "high ground" to gain advantage. Here are some different guidelines for granting "high ground" advantage in combat.
I recently ran a poll asking players what races they thought should have Darkvision. With over 2500 responses in the first 24 hours, players expressed strong sentiment that many of the races should have their Darkvision removed or modified from the rules as written ("RAW"). Here are my observations, as well as a chart identifying what races have Darkvision by popular demand.
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