Flanking Damage

What if flanking did extra damage instead of causing advantage? Methods, pitfalls, and an exercise in implementation.

Steady Aim

How strong is the Rogue's new Steady Aim optional class feature?

Psionic Energy Dice

Psionic Power scaling for the Psi Warrior/Soulknife multiclass. Can you double your dice?

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.

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!

That Broken GWM/SS “Fix”

The most notorious feats in 5th Edition D&D are Sharpshooter (SS) and Great Weapon Master (GWM). These feats are considered the most powerful because of a mechanic they share in common. Yet, a common "fix" to nerf them does not have the intended result! Let's run the numbers.

Starting Gold Dice

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

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.

Oath of Secret Knowledge (Paladin)

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 Dumathoin, he knelt and prayed. So his character changed forever. I worked with the player to create a Paladin subclass devoted to the … Continue reading Oath of Secret Knowledge (Paladin) →

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.