Why DMs Are Banning Silvery Barbs

Find out why DMs are banning Silvery Barbs before its even released in D&D's new Strixhaven book.

Cutting Words

Trimming a bad mechanic from 5e to improve the flow of combat and eliminate adversarial DMing posture.

Avoid the Zone of Truth Torture Chamber

Fixing up an social spell so it does what it says without pushing the player characters to torturing the subject.

Gender Bias in D&D Character Creation

I ran a poll asking folks about their gender identity, what races/classes they've played, and what races/classes are their favorites. Here's the results of 1150 responses.

Animate Objects Fix

Animate Objects is a 5th level spell in D&D 5e that turns objects in your environment into living weapons. Come along as we tackle balance and action economy issues, and deliver a precise rework.

Proficiency Scaling

D&D's latest tech is proficiency scaling for class features. Let's dive into this new tech, see what the designers are saying about it, and figure out what we need to look out for in playtesting.

Expertise Skill Hack

5th Edition D&D has a skill problem. It lies in a feature called expertise, which allows you to add your proficiency bonus twice when using a skill. Let's see what problems this causes and I'll give you a simple hack to fix them!

Starting Gold Dice

Recalculating starting gold dice based on the standard equipment options for each class.

College of the Unheard (Bard)

The College of the Unheard is a bardic tradition that caters to characters who do not have their full capacity for hearing. Whether hard of hearing or deaf, members of this college are unfazed. Rather, they harness their capabilities to communicate and cast spells in unique fashion.

Bards of this college call themselves The Unheard because their invisible disability often goes unconsidered by others. Yet, anyone who underestimates The Unheard will quickly learn the folly of their ways, as these bards are equally capable as their peers and boast incredible talent.

Speak Your Secrets

Metagaming is one issue we encounter in tabletop RPGs. Players have their characters act on player knowledge that their character does not possess. A DM's defense against this is to gently remind the player to act within the confines of character knowledge.

This can lead to an overcorrection where every time a single PC finds out information, the other players ask "do you tell us that?" Any time a strange routine like this becomes habitual, we should streamline the process.