It’s been an incredibly busy month here, with several writing commitments and the fundraiser event for Citadel LARP. I look forward to telling you more about those writing projects – an adventure! boss monsters! and more! – but this isn’t that post. Today I’m doing new magic items, half from a recent session of Aurikesh and half made new for this post.
Bounty Hunter's Bracer
Let’s get the first thing out of the way: I am not an authority, and I am not the Subclass Design Cops. If you have a design that makes you happy, go with God. This is just a collection of things I’ve either figured out or been taught by people smarter and more interesting than me.
The fundamentals: each class is very clear about the levels that its subclasses grant something, but it’s 100% okay to grant more than one something. Every class grants its first subclass ...
2024-07-01 20:03:58 +0000 UTC View PostMy Aurikesh campaign has its own player species – I wrote new mechanics for humans and goblins, and wrote several new species. Only the githyanki PC uses D&D’s official mechanics. One of these new species is kagandi, who are lightly reptilian humanoids. In the narrative they’re as common and “default” as humans. The nobility of the setting are exclusively humans and kagandi.
While one doesn’t expect players to reflect setting demographics, I think the story and mechanics...
2024-06-24 15:39:41 +0000 UTC View PostMy Aurikesh campaign has 149 sessions under its belt at this point. Fourteen of those sessions are in 2024, which is more than we’ve had in some whole years. The highest-level characters are 11th to 13th level. Because my personal “old-school” is AD&D 2e, as the players reached 9th level (“name level”), I started introducing a few more rewards that were estates and similar holdings.
It would be great to have some coherent rules for these extraordinary assets. It’s just t...
2024-06-21 01:22:08 +0000 UTC View PostIn the misty past of… almost exactly nine years ago… I wrote a Divine Trickster roguish archetype for a friend of mine to play in the Reborn campaign. That version is highly specialized toward that setting’s pantheon, but also – my grasp of subclass design has changed over the years. For the better, I think.
This, then, is a new version of th...
2024-05-15 15:59:40 +0000 UTC View PostI haven’t created a new collection of magic items in a bit, so what if I just share with you a bunch of things I’ve created for my Aurikesh and Dragon Heist (now long post-Heist – we just continued the campaign with them doing their own thing) campaigns?
Cloak of the Winter Wolf
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)
This cloak is made from the pelt of a winter wolf. While you wear it, you have resistance to cold damage, and if you have the...
2024-05-01 01:48:32 +0000 UTC View PostThanks to some great questions from a reader, I have a whole series of new LARP design posts to write, which brings me great joy. In this one, I’ll be talking about specific puzzle types and applications of puzzles in campaign-length boffer LARPs – the only LARP style I’m really qualified to talk about.
Just to get this out of the way: puzzles aren’t for everyone, and many hardcore puzzle junkies only cover a specific span of puzzle t...
2024-04-09 15:30:42 +0000 UTC View PostIn a conversation over on a social media site that shall remain nameless, Hannah Rose suggested giving even fairly low-level PCs limited access to teleportation, just as a way to get them to the adventure site and back to town. I don’t want to assume that I know all of the points she’d make in support of this, and Hannah, if you read this, I’d love for you to give your perspective in the comments.
Teleportation circle and teleport<...
2024-04-02 18:41:15 +0000 UTC View PostIn circling back to a long-dormant project, I’m creating a swath of new stat blocks for were-creatures. The general goal is to keep were-creatures in active use at higher tiers of gameplay. The MM lycanthropes are woefully ineffective, unless you can’t hurt them at all, in which case the fight is not fun for the other reason – but I’m taking it for granted that the revised MM will be considerably different.
Though werewolves are p...
2024-03-27 02:47:29 +0000 UTC View PostNot too long ago, I finally had a reason to pay closer attention to the spell Alter Self. I’m talking about the 2014 version; I have no foreknowledge of whether it’ll see meaningful change in this year's revised Player’s Handbook. Anyway, this spell is pretty underwhelming, along a bunch of vectors. A spell that gives you a partial bodily transformation is a definitive transmutation effect and iconic in fantasy and comics, so I’d like to see if I can salvage...
2024-03-05 16:51:11 +0000 UTC View PostFor another project, I’m working on research mechanics, and I thought it might be interesting and fun to create a stable of researchers and scholars that you can drop into the narrative on short notice. Maybe the PCs need someone to interact with while they’re hitting the books at an academy of magic, or maybe the nerds have gotten in over their heads while exploring ruins again, and it’s up to a reasonably balanced party to rescue them. For each character I’ll include a name, usually...
2024-02-27 14:04:49 +0000 UTC View PostBlog friends! I’ve missed you, and I’ve missed creating collections of magic items to entertain and delight you. Today I bring you rings of power, none of them to be used lightly.
Ring, very rare (requires attunement)
The setting of this gold ring looks like tiny feathers holding a pearl. While you wear the ring, you gain the following:
It’s been one week under a year since my last post in this series, and a big freelance project means I’ve been awfully quietly lately. It’s almost done, though, and I promise a return to form in February and March. This time, I’m talking about how a Mayhem villain scheme maps across the four tiers of play in D&D.
Now that Under the Seas of Vodari is in the hands of (what I hope is) an adoring public, we’re putting together a Patreon for ongoing setting support. Think of this blog post as me doing some writing warm-ups, getting back into the mindset of the surface regions of the setting.
In the Arushi city of Meri, the characters notice a doo...
2023-12-29 16:06:53 +0000 UTC View PostI’ve never been happy with the Warlock’s Pact of the Chain, as I’ve written about before. My premise has always been that people come to the Pact of the Chain because they want to emphasize the warlock-and-pet duo, like they’re a Demonology spec Warlock from World of Warcraft. Your familiar is what sets you apart from other Pacts, but it’s so hard for i...
2023-11-26 20:28:32 +0000 UTC View PostIt’s been a busy year, and right now at the end of it is the very most busy, on a copy-editing project for Exalted Funeral. I love and appreciate everyone who reads, comments, and supports my writing.
Games I’m Running
I haven’t had a chance to write my UA breakdown article on the Bastions and Cantrips packet for Tribality yet, but today I’m makin’ gravy without the lumps! This is content that should be fun even if you’re not using whatever comes from the Bastion rules in the end. I want to help you tighten the narrative connections to the PCs’ bastions with history and NPC neighbors. I’ll be handling this in the form of tables.
Where is your Basti...
2023-11-10 00:20:13 +0000 UTC View PostThanks to a long list of complicating factors, I had to miss almost every LARP event of 2023 before September. Since the start of September, I’ve played an Eclipse event, an Altera Awakens event, and two Alliance events (one Atlanta chapter event, one National event run by Crossroads TN), I’ve NPCed one Calamity event, and I’ve been part of two staff-only playtest events for the upcoming Citadel LARP. I’ve had a lot of fodder for LARP-running thoughts.
I’m not calling...
2023-10-18 15:24:28 +0000 UTC View PostI am the very model of a modron major general
I’ve legend lore on plants, beasts, and every elementical
I know the Queens of Gith-land, and I quote the flights draconical
From Tiamat to Tu’narath, in order lore-canonical
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters Mordenkainical
I understand the elements, simple, para, and quasi…tical,
About demonic lord Juiblex I’m spewing forth a lot of news
The Faceless Lord—the Nothing Lord—corrosive through the means...
As the Unearthed Arcana development of 5e.24 continues, the design team’s apparent campaign against the Short Rest has pivoted hard toward everyone getting back something but almost no one getting back everything on a Short Rest. Long-time readers may recall that I called for this exact thing more than a year and a half ago. Now there’s just one problem: Rogue...
2023-09-18 20:35:37 +0000 UTC View PostSince Glen Terry asked for them in a recent comment, I’m doing more spells themed around Vecna, the Whispered One. I love spell design, and designing weird things you can do with high-level spells is an especially interesting space.
Vecna’s Spellbook | More Spells
8th-level necromancy (cleric, warlock, wizard)<...
2023-09-07 20:03:26 +0000 UTC View PostIt’s been right on a year since the last time I touched this series and covered Yugoloth patrons. I feel like I’m right at the edge of having enough material to do gehreleths/demodands, but… today I’m doing the considerably more popular Great Old Ones, and specifically the malevolent stars. For this series I’m dividing the Great Old Ones into two groups, the stars and the chthonics.
For one of my freelance projects, I submitted a hefty list of new monsters, and the project lead picked a goodly number of them. In this post I’m writing about one that didn’t make the cut, just because I thought it was an interesting idea. It’s a re-imagining of one of the enemies I most hate fighting in Slay the Spire: the Nemesis. I’m constructing my own story for it here.
Back in December, I created a collection of new Divine (Holy) Orders for the Cleric class, and pointed out that Holy Orders reallyneeded to show up at 1st level rather than 2nd level. In the new Player’s Handbook 6 playtest document, WotC renames Holy Orders to Divine Orders (presumably to avoid implying an absence of holiness in the Primal Orders), and moves them from 2nd level ...
2023-07-20 04:49:10 +0000 UTC View PostThe hammer of thunderbolts is an unusual magic item in 5e, in that it doesn’t do much at all until you acquire and attune two other magic items: gauntlets of ogre power and a belt of giant strength. (The traditionalist in me insists on girdle.) This is a thorny situation, for some reasons I’m going to lay out. I care about this in the first place because one of the players in my Aurikesh campaign has wanted, across multiple campaigns and editions of D&a...
2023-07-17 04:56:07 +0000 UTC View PostI like it when sorcerer subclasses support theme and a gameplay loop with a new metamagic option. The core metamagic options are usable for a large number of expected spells, though they don’t need to work for allof them to be valid. For this post I’m working on narrower options that might still create memorable signature gameplay. I’m also stretching the concept of what you can affect with metamagic.
When you cast a spell that targ...
2023-06-27 15:24:18 +0000 UTC View PostIt has been more than two years since my last post in this series, in part because we spent two years not LARPing. We’re back at it now, and that makes it easier to write. In the first two posts, I talked about ten field battle models I’ve seen. Today’s challenge: five more, without just repeating myself.
I’m working on a number of different adventure-writing projects for publication right now, so maybe it’s weird that working on yet another one feels like my easy go-to here. I’ve been struggling with a few different ideas lately. Brains are weird.
In the new UA packet, the Create Spell spell requires expensive material components that are consumed on use: an arcane focus worth 1000 gp per level of the spell you’re creating.
In my breakdown article on it, I pondered what a 9,000-gp arcane focus even looks like, if you’re not just gluing on more diamonds or whatever. (See also the general question...
2023-05-15 15:14:09 +0000 UTC View PostMy last set of 4e spells converted to 5e was in October of last year, so I figured it was time to get back to that project. Even with the progress I’ve made, there are tons of cool ideas left to play with.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three 2023-04-19 23:23:28 +0000 UTC View Post