D&D: The SADdening

Examining D&D's added ability score flexibility and how the SAD/MAD balance affects characters.

D&D’s Social Pillar Is Driven By Characters, Not Rules

D&D's robust character creation supports the social pillar without gamifying the experience.

What Am I Counterspelling?

Counterspell is a spell you cast as a reaction to stop another spell: Xanathar's Guide to Everything (XGE) introduced an optional rule for identifying a spell. It also costs a reaction: This creates a tension between identifying a spell and deciding to counter it. You can only spend your reaction on one. The grand implication … Continue reading What Am I Counterspelling? →

There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Class

Examining reasons why creators might tread over an explored design space.

Prosthetic Attunement

Wizards of the Coast is bringing accessibility improvements to D&D by removing attunement from prosthetic items.

Poisoner’s Kit DCs

Fleshing out the missing rules for the Poisoner's Kit in 5th Edition D&D.

Sunchaser (Ranger)

Sunchaser Rangers dart around the battlefield without incurring attacks, channel the fire and radiance of the sun into their strikes, escape harrowing situations, illuminate targets for attack advantages, and leave fire in their wake across the battlefield.

Check out our build notes for the Sunchaser (Ranger) subclass.

AoE Spells vs. Hordes

Casting big area effect damage spells is great fun. Taking forever to resolve them is not. Let's reverse engineer the saving throw math so we can get to the narrative resolution quicker.

Exploration Dice

5th Edition D&D players often lament the exploration pillar as the most underdeveloped tier of play, behind the combat and social pillars. While there are great tools for fleshing out your world in the core materials, they lack mechanical bite. We're here to give those narrative elements some mechanical teeth with Exploration Dice.

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!