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.

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.

Warlock Eldritch Invocations Table

Introducing the Warlock Eldritch Invocations Table including effect summaries, prerequisites, action economy, recharge, and source info.

Artificer Teardown

It happened. On February 28, 2019, The Artificer Revisited was released to much fanfare. What did we get? Let's chew up the crunch. We'll start with the base class mechanics and move into the subclasses next week, when we build a template for how to homebrew an Artificer subclass. Base Class Hit Die (d8). A … Continue reading Artificer Teardown →