Thrown Weapon Master

Today we're building a feat to alleviate action economy woes with thrown weapons and give them a nice damage boost to bring it in line with other weapon loadouts.

Magic Reserves

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!

Bag of Holding Fish Tank

How long can a sahuagin live in a water-filled Bag of Holding?

Egg Moves

I often draw tabletop RPG inspiration from playing totally unrelated games. In the Pokemon game series, you can breed your Pokemon together for a variety of reasons, including learning new moves. How can we adapt this concept to make more creative monsters?

Breath Weapon Overcharge

In last week's post on Breath Weapon Dice Pools, I suggested that you could power up the breath weapon by allowing the dragon (or other monster) to charge their breath weapon beyond its normal limits. This week, I've developed an overcharge system to drive more dynamic combat. We'll be using the Breath Weapon Dice Pools … Continue reading Breath Weapon Overcharge →

Breath Weapon Dice Pools

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?

Artificer Survey Results

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!

Design Tips: Trap Features

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 →

How Often Do Critical Hits Underperform?

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?