Movement Effect Size Caps

Should effects which manipulate the movement of a target be limited by size? We examine the narrative issues and give you a simple rule that fixes them by employing size caps.

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.

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 →

Shield Master Unleashed

Can we rewrite the Shield Master feat to fix its fiddly action economy?

Artificer: Cantrips vs. Crossbows

Examining damage outputs of cantrips vs. crossbows for the new Unearthed Arcana Artificer. It seems crossbows can outscale cantrips, but at what cost?

Martial Adept vs. Magic Initiate

We're comparing the Martial Adept feat and the Magic Initiate feat. While the effect of linear fighters vs. quadratic wizards most often manifests in class design (mostly due to spell access), there’s an interesting reflection of this design in the 5e feats, which we expect to be balanced against each other.

Passive Skills vs. Reliable Talent

Reliable Talent makes all your skills passive. In order to see what you're really getting from this class feature, you need to find out what skills already function passively, and what skills only function actively. We'll examine passive skill treatment in the rules and analyze where each skill should fall.

Lucky Feat: RAW vs. RAI

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.

Feeling Lucky?

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?

Two-Weapon Fighting

D&D Creative Director Mike Mearls recently tweeted about revised Two-Weapon Fighting rules, including a poll about where its damage output should lie: Mechanics Any discussion regarding two-weapon fighting involves these mechanics: Two-Weapon Fighting bonus action Dual Wielder feat Two-Weapon Fighting style Let's explore these mechanics first to identify where we have wiggle room to improve … Continue reading Two-Weapon Fighting →