What works at your table?
The Oath of Heroism Paladin subclass is D&D's latest Unearthed Arcana playtest release. While the mythological flavor is incredible, the subclass gets some goodies that were historically only available by multiclassing: expanded critical range, Haste as an oath spell, and free attacks. How does this add up to a standard Paladin? We ran the numbers.
Once upon a time, a character came across a shrine deep within an abandoned Dwarven stronghold carved deep into the Iron Mountains. Struck by reverence to the shrine of the lost deity Dunathoin, he knelt and prayed. So his character changed forever. I worked with the player to create a Paladin subclass devoted to the … Continue reading Paladin: Oath of Secret Knowledge
Diving into Wizards of the Coast's latest Unearthed Arcana offering for a look at the Magic Reserves class feature and how you can turn your Barbarian into an infinite mana battery!
Torching the whole party with a dragon's breath weapon is one of the most fun moments as a Dungeon Master. How can we tweak this rule to have greater control over its power and establish ludonarrative harmony?
Shortly after the release of The Artificer Returns, we ran a survey asking D&D fans some more general design questions than you get from the typical Unearthed Arcana survey. Here's the results!
We used to build characters a different way. Back in 3.x, the splat got so numerous that you were practically forced to "work backwards from 20." In other words, you would build your ultimate character concept and work backwards to see what you needed to take at each level. For example, failure to properly plan … Continue reading Design Tips: Trap Features
Examining damage outputs of cantrips vs. crossbows for the new Unearthed Arcana Artificer. It seems crossbows can outscale cantrips, but at what cost?
Buffing the Artificer spell list with spells that fit its casting themes of object manipulation, fabrication, healing, defensive fortifications, and personal buffs. 14 new Artificer spells from Xanathar's Guide to Everything are included on a handy chart to track your prepared spells.
As a follow up to last week's Artificer teardown, we're taking a dive into the Artificer subclasses: Artillerist and Alchemist. We'll analyze the subclasses and develop a template for brewing your own subclasses. Structure The subclass features unlock at 3rd, 6th, and 14th levels. This mirrors the Bard progression, which is notoriously difficult to design … Continue reading Artificer Subclass Template
It happened. On February 28, 2019, The Artificer Revisited was released to much fanfare. What did we get? Let's chew up the crunch. We'll start with the base class mechanics and move into the subclasses next week, when we build a template for how to homebrew an Artificer subclass. Base Class Hit Die (d8). A … Continue reading Artificer Teardown
