What works at your table?
Critical Hits are often the subject of homebrew rules. Driven by the perception that critical hits frequently underperform, these homebrew rules juice up the damage of critical hits to a more impressive level. They're often implemented after a player waits 20 rolls (on average) to score a critical hit that lands with a thud. But, is this underperformance a reflection of perception or reality?
Why to take the Polearm Master feat before the Great Weapon Master feat.
Examining damage outputs of cantrips vs. crossbows for the new Unearthed Arcana Artificer. It seems crossbows can outscale cantrips, but at what cost?
After last's week post calculating the success odds for the Lucky feat, some folks who run the Lucky feat a little differently asked me to run the odds on that iteration. Since this homerule is popularly employed, including by D&D Lead Rules Designer Jeremy Crawford, we're running the odds and evaluating the comparison.
Analyzing the benefits of the various luck-driven abilities in 5th Edition D&D: Lucky feat, Diviner's Portent dice, and the Halfling Lucky racial feature. How do they stack up?
Over the past couple weeks, we've looking into issues with Two-Weapon Fighting and solutions to fix Two-Weapon Fighting. While discussing potential solutions is a good starting place, theorycrafting can often fall flat at the table. In order to identify which systems are the most balanced and deserve testing, you've got to run the numbers. The … Continue reading Two-Weapon Fighting Calcs
Last week we explored the mechanics and design goals of two-weapon fighting. This week, we're going to examine some hacks to make it more competitive with other fighting styles. Feel free to borrow pieces of these to spruce up two-weapon fighting in your game. While the goal is to achieve a system that fits into … Continue reading Two-Weapon Fighting Hacks
Skill Challenge Odds If the interactive sheet appears broken, check here for a read-only copy. You can find great tools by looking to older editions of Dungeons & Dragons. 4th Edition introduced skill challenges, which are an interesting way to run a narrative event (such as a chase or an escape from a collapsing building). … Continue reading Skill Challenge Odds Calculator
Exploring Champion (Fighter) dips for Barbarians looking to increase their damage capacity with large weapons.
Conventional wisdom holds that a Barbarian is better wielding a Greataxe (1d12 damage) over a Greatsword (2d6 damage), due to the extra damage that results on a critical hit. Maybe we’re just used to it: the d12 is the die of the Barbarian. However conventional it may be, this idea is frequently wrong and may lead to using an inferior weapon, depending on your character’s loadout. Let’s dive into the numbers and see what kind of weapon your Barbarian should be using.
ThinkDM 