Back in this post, I suggested quest shrines as active locations on game sites, where players could go to gain a minor quest with a reward. In this post, I’m getting a little deeper into the nuts and bolts of how it might work, including a collection of sample repeatable quests. If you’re running a LARP and you think this is a neat idea, all you owe me is letting me k...
2022-02-28 17:44:00 +0000 UTC View PostOver the past several years of 5e design, we’ve seen per-short-rest timing go away completely as a matter of new, official subclass design. This becomes much clearer in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, in which many non-core races have been updated to operate on more uses, but per-long-rest instead. There are reasons that the design team is moving this direction, and I don’t believe I have any power to command that tide. That said, I think it’s the wrong move ...
2022-02-18 20:40:22 +0000 UTC View PostAnatomists come from a relatively recent branch within the School of Necromancy. They are dedicated to anatomy and all that they can do with superior knowledge of the body. Like other necromancers, they face intense suspicion from society if their practice becomes known. In the most enlightened kingdoms or republics, they might find official patronage and acceptance. At the other extreme, would-be tyrants seek them out as torturers who can pass as court wizards.
Necromancy Savan...
2022-01-31 17:54:12 +0000 UTC View PostWith some brainstorming help from friends yesterday, I have a new idea for the Ruby Talon Deeps. The core credit for this idea goes to Geoffrey Fortier. A new treasure type, called remembrances, are consumable items that grant both an effect and a memory relating to the history of the Ruby Talon Deeps. They look like small pieces of amber that encase motes of light; the color of the light suggests something about the mood of the memory or the nature of the creature who first ...
2022-01-24 17:31:33 +0000 UTC View PostSince DMSamuel and I just finished our conversation on 2e’s Complete Book of Necromancers in Edition Wars, I felt inspired to write some high-level necromancy spells. CBoN has several, though more than a few of them are so niche in effect that I’m not trying for direct translation. Might f*ck around and break out Libris Mortis, Book of Vile Darkness, and the Epic Level Handbook as well.
One of the curious things about them is that it’s hard to f...
2021-12-31 06:24:38 +0000 UTC View PostIn a recent post, I drew a side-view map of the Ruby Talon Deeps dungeon, with essentially no other description. At the time it was just about enjoying drawing and getting something out of my head so that I could get to my paying work. Today I’m revisiting it to take a break between larger pieces of work on my plate. I’m definitely not covering all of the locations on the map; also I’m not currently trying to make this a ready-to-play dungeon, just exploring the ideas a bit more.
...
2021-12-22 17:22:45 +0000 UTC View PostThis yearly update is the closest this blog gets to personal rather than game content or commentary. Eleven years, and this is the blog's 496th published post. Not too bad - though I'm vain enough to be sad that my daily pageviews have dropped off by about 30%. Maybe someday I'll try posting some videos of gaming advice, to see if that helps.
Anyway. It has been a very busy year and I've been productive on a lot of projects that aren't available yet, including but not limited t...
2021-11-19 13:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostI’m finally getting around to writing in detail about an idea I proposed over in Tribality, in my Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything breakdown. This is a mechanical framework for processes that don’t end when you reduce one or more targets to 0 hit points – maybe there’s also combat going on during this, maybe not. I’ve field-tested this in our Birthr...
2021-11-12 18:00:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Freelance adventure writing requires map-drawing, even when a real cartographer is going to come along and draw a much better map for the final release. (Thank God for real gaming cartographers.) Anyway, I drew this map for practice, to help me make cooler crappy first draft maps.
I've always loved side-view maps for dungeons, not least of which is because I love Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight, Salt & Sanctuary, and Ori and the Blind Forest. I'll probabl...
2021-10-30 19:53:04 +0000 UTC View PostIn conversation with Mystech, he suggested that mage hand was simply the only surviving spell among many mage [body part] cantrips. I went straight from there to “mage hand is an echo of the power of Vecna on Oerth,” so that implies the existence of a mage eye cantrip, a very scaled-down version of arcane eye and clairvoyance. (Mage eye has been changed to use the possessive form, because it feels less like a pun and more like...
2021-10-21 15:56:32 +0000 UTC View Post
With that rather… quotidian title, I’m launching into what promises to be the biggest midstream change in all of 5e. (We’re not really looking for something else to top this.) During the Future of D&D panel, they discussed the fact that NPC stat blocks are losing the big beefy spell lists that you see in, for example, the war priest, the mage, the archmage, and the lich. In place of lots of spells, they’r...
2021-10-15 21:45:34 +0000 UTC View PostTo be honest, this post is a palate cleanse in the midst of a longer writing project. A friend of mine who suffers from polymorphous light eruption thought it sounded like a D&D spell and agreed that I should turn it into one, and since I’m not going to write a post with just one spell… well, here we are.
The post from a few weeks ago about new healing spells for D&D sparked a conversation about new healing approaches for LARPing. In this case, I’m mostly interested in the hit-location based LARPs that I’m playing – hit point games are fine if that’s your thing, but I’m not the best person to ask about those mechanics. I’m also not particularly trying to speak to Accelerant games, which I’ve never played because I live in the South.
A little while back, I wrote about villainous schemes for immortality, working from the Villain’s Scheme table in Chapter 4 of the DMG. The point of this exercise is to think about the different tiers of play and how the higher tiers expand the scope and stakes. Especially if you don’t plan to continue into tiers 3 or 4, though, it seems to me that by tier 2 you can go as big as you want and it’s basically okay. For the purposes of this conversation, let’s ignore that last sentence fo...
2021-08-27 16:45:07 +0000 UTC View PostStands-in-the-Fire started a conversation over in Twitter about healing gameplay styles. Now, he’s talking about a lot more than D&D 5e there, but there are enough great ideas floating around in the thread that I wanted to write a bunch of new healing spells. A lot of the thread focused on how healers would like to deliver healing while doing something else, and how healing is most fun...
2021-08-13 04:11:43 +0000 UTC View PostOh hey, it’s been a really long time since I’ve touched this series. I’ve done a ton of Planescape reading, between Hellbound and Faces of Evil. There’s enough there that I haven’t really scratched that surface yet, but I’m plowing ahead. That’s the power of CHAOS, baby! Because today, I’m covering the demon and tanar’ri side of Fiend pacts.
At the request from Tim Baker, and for the general convenience of my players, this is an update to the Aurikesh house rules. It’s been five years, and I’ve had time to see the effects of things in play.
4d6 drop lowest for one column. Roll 2d6 for a safety-net column. Pick either one, and arrange stats to taste.
Safety Net Stats (2d6)
2: 15, 14, 13, 12, 12, 11
3: 15, 15, 13, 12, 11, 10
4: 16, 15, 12, 11, 11, 10
5: 16...
In a recent episode of Edition Wars, I got to talk to DM Samuel, Kainenchen, and Stands in the Fire about Chapter 4 of the 5e DMG. It’s a wide-ranging conversation about a very short chapter, which is about what you’d expect from Edition Wars. It left me with a lot of desire to dig way into the Villain’s Scheme and Villain’s Method tables. There’s a pretty good ...
2021-06-29 16:34:57 +0000 UTC View PostAs you know if you’ve been following my work for long enough, I’ve spent a lot of time working on how to handle kaiju battles in D&D 5e. To spell that out a bit: I want something that uses the PCs’ combat abilities and mostly feels like a fight, but the enemy is beyond their ability to kill – their goal is to evade it, drive it back momentarily, or accomplish other goals. My first effort here was converting Rite Publishing’s 2021-06-06 04:10:30 +0000 UTC View Post
I’ve got significant problems with the existing Archfey patron that I haven’t been shy about. This isn’t even my first effort at overhauling the Archfey! The short version of the issue is that Fey Presence as a one-round charm/fear just… isn’t much. Misty Escape is a great per-short-rest get-out-of-jail-free card. Beguiling Defenses is a super-immunity, which y’all know I hate, and Dark Delirium is another per-short-rest charm/fear power… just as everything is getting c...
2021-05-15 02:41:25 +0000 UTC View PostI’m hip deep in editing and development work, which means that occasionally my brain needs a break to create some new stuff. Even after XGTE, TCOE, and Seas of Vodari, the higher spell levels are fairly slim pickings for clerics, so that’s what I’m hoping to deal with a bit today – spells for clerics of 5th level and higher, and maybe some 5th-level spells for paladins. If they’re flavored particularly toward Under the Seas of Vodari, so much the better.
Blood Penance<...
2021-05-05 05:09:38 +0000 UTC View PostLike a lot of what I'm posting these days, this is content for Under the Seas of Vodari, written by me with a lot of development support from Shawn Ellsworth. It deals heavily in the setting lore, a little more of which you can see in this previous post.
Long ago the Ancients were torn apart by the gods, split into the Dakri and the Varu. Civil war erupted and both spen...
2021-04-21 16:22:33 +0000 UTC View PostAquatic magic items? Still a stretch goal from the Under the Seas of Vodari Kickstarter that I need to knock out, and this is the blog where I do that. Check out all of the Seas of Vodari content here on Harbinger of Doom.
Weapon (longspike), rare (requires attunement)
This magic weapon is made from attaching a hilt to a narwha...
2021-04-10 03:13:34 +0000 UTC View PostShawn Ellsworth and I have polished up some of the spells and magic items I've written over the years into this new PDF, themed around hunters and explorers. Enjoy, and please do let us know what you'd like to see more of in the future!
PS. Not an April Fool's prank.
2021-04-01 17:40:56 +0000 UTC View PostI have a new product available on the DM's Guild! It is a 10-page PDF titled Level Up Your Background. Your free copy for being a Patreon backer is attached below, with my deep thanks for your continuing support.
Please remember that word-of-mouth is an incredibly powerful tool for promoting this work, and resharing my tweets and posts announcing it can put it in front of tons of new potential customers. I need your help!
YOUR BACKGROUND IS MORE...
2021-03-26 20:16:57 +0000 UTC View PostBack in January, I wrote about five common field battle designs, and it sparked an interesting couple of days of conversation among my LARPing community. This time out, I’m talking about five much less common (but still highly reusable) models.
If you also play video games, and especially MMOs, I probab...
2021-03-23 18:53:59 +0000 UTC View PostThanks to the backers of Under the Seas of Vodari’s Kickstarter knocking out a ton of stretch goals (yes you can still preorder! Click the link!), I get to write more magic items for the book. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I love writing magic items, so getting paid for it is a nice bo...
2021-03-14 05:54:34 +0000 UTC View PostFor Under the Seas of Vodari, it might seem a little strange to offer a fiery warlock patron. In Vodari, the thermal vents on the seafloor are sources of magical transformation – some beneficial, some malevolent – and that sparked this idea. Maybe the dwarves and others have encountered something that both is and is not the destroyer-god Volkan when they work their deep-sea forges. I’m going to suggest a bunch of canon for Volkan that isn’t remotelyofficial until Michelle Hou...
2021-02-28 06:19:17 +0000 UTC View PostWith deepest apologies to all involved...
And now it’s time for “Silly Songs with Dalamar,” the part of the show where Dalamar comes out and sings a silly song.
Joining Dalamar are Mordenkainen and Elminster, who together make up
The infamous gang of scholarly wags, the Wizards Who Don’t Do Anything.
We are the Wizards Who Don’t Do Anything!
We just stay home and read a lot
And if you ask us to do wizarding, we’ll just tell you
We don’t do anything!
2021-02-23 20:55:18 +0000 UTC
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Probably everyone here has seen a mention of this elsewhere, but just in case -
Tribality's new Kickstarter is in progress! We're making an underwater setting expansion for the Seas of Vodari, which in our infinite creativity we're calling Under the Seas of Vodari. (It's good for things to do what they say on the tin, right?)
The project funded in the first six hours, and we've been steadily knocking down stretch goals since then. I hope you'll check it ...
2021-02-17 03:01:38 +0000 UTC View Post