Wow, Gen Con was a terrifying amount of people; I am pleased to have returned to a human-scale environment. I've finally had the chance to crack into the 2024 PHB and I've got some feelings about it, but it's nevertheless been a lot of fun getting started on updates to my adventurer stat blocks; those were one of the first things I made and it's interesting to see how my design preferences and the game itself has changed since then.
Collaborations:
I worked ...
2024-09-01 18:00:07 +0000 UTC
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2024-09-01 07:32:57 +0000 UTC
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2024-09-01 07:16:28 +0000 UTC
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All right, here we are at the big guns; greater devils have a lot more opportunity for scheming, but also have more to lose; they're gonna avoid exposure where they can, but fight viciously to avoid losing and having to claw their way back up when they do end up in a bad corner.
I'm delighted to have had another chance to collaborate with The Fluffy Folio, this time on this Brambrawl Berrybush; fighty little fruits that bash their berries into you to help them ripen and germinate.
The Fluffy Folio has done a million adorable monsters like this; I've been using them in my own game for years and my players have loved every si...
2024-08-22 19:55:28 +0000 UTC
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On to some devils a little further up the ladder, these are still lesser devils but the cool kind of lesser; they get the fun jobs, but still don't really have many shots at advancement.
Moving up to the Lesser caste, these are the shitkickers high enough on the totem pole to have to follow the rules, but low enough that they don't get anything for doing so.
All right, we're digging hard into devils here, and starting with the lowest caste: these fellas are barely devils (or not devils at all, in the case of the nupperibos), and barely act like them. Nice to have some variety in the lower tiers:
I'm at GenCon on Thursday and Friday! Say hi if you're around!
Collaborations:
I'm getting started on expanding the adventurer stat blocks to include 3rd party classes; starting with the Conduit from Beyond the Screen and the Inventor from KibblesTasty, but I've got a long list of plann...
2024-07-31 01:47:03 +0000 UTC
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2024-07-31 01:44:38 +0000 UTC
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2024-07-31 01:26:49 +0000 UTC
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These Netherese shadow mages may have whiffed their attempt at world domination in 3.5e, but they're still, like, around. They're also just the most insufferable sorts of wizards, which makes them great to use as allies that adventuring parties can betray without feeling bad about it. Also got a mess of hellwasps and dino-folk here, along with some minor tweaks made to the harpies to clean up their mechanics a bit.
Got a revamp and expansion to our ratfolk here, some more rats, and some generic archer npcs. Love a nasty little guy, and there's not much nastier than these little guys; got a slate of rat magic spells in there too for any rat-themed characters.
Premodern cops/guards/security were so much weirder and more gameable than they get presented as in most fantasy media, if they're present at all. I've gone and written a lot of words here on how to use town and city guards in ways that fit better into the structure of a typically adventure than simply transposing modern police and putting them in fantasy costumes, plus ways to make doing the transposition thing more fun if you feel like doing it anyways.
Got us a ton of guard spells an...
2024-07-15 18:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Also got some awful little demonic goblin ninjas, a dragon that can turn you to gold, and a lady who rides it in here. Trying to take the most basic sort of wizard and do something interesting with them was a challenge, but I think I ended up with something I'm happy with.
Tons of new spells coming along with them and the diviners, so those who are into that are eating good this month.
Hey all, hope you had a festive Free RPG Day last month. The big news this month is that I got all the spells (there's like 300 of them now!) loaded into a foundry module, then discovered the importer had done a terrible job and had to go back and do it all manually. I am now filled with a creeping certainty that I need to do the same for the monsters, but that's a problem for future-Isaac to deal with.
Also, I got nominated for the Best Homebrew category in the CRIT Awards this year; i...
2024-07-01 18:00:08 +0000 UTC
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After ages struggling with diviners, I finally cracked them while brainstorming for Cobramode's Geometer's Guild mages; essentially the core identity I landed on was the idea of examining in-combat events with a random element to determine which actions will be most auspicious for them on their following turn, which I think conveys the right sort of energy without running into a lot of the pitfalls I associate with divination abilities (removing the role of the dice, hard-countering player ch...
2024-07-01 18:00:01 +0000 UTC
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2024-07-01 07:22:31 +0000 UTC
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2024-06-29 21:57:18 +0000 UTC
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Dark sun bugs. Regular bugs. I like 'em all. Maybe one day I'll do a real bug.
2024-06-24 18:00:01 +0000 UTC
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All the patreon content's free until Sunday, get it while it's hot:
Got the tsuchinoko, a fat little beer bottle of a snake that tumbles end-over-end and thwacks you in the head, and the bakegumo, a shapeshifting spider that sculpts its web into a baby shape so it can surprise you by throwing it. Also some real slapdash hanzaki combat-surgeons, a handful of ninjas, a big squeaky frog, and a big-but-slightly-smaller frog samurai bounty hunter to ride it.
We got us a pair of iron golems here, sure, but also a sentient (possibly god-killing) alien black hole, and some haunted magic hard drives created by a knowledge-dragon. Also somewhat randomly, some horny toad ogre boys, an owlfolk snipers, a big sandy turtle, and a dried up salamander sand-mage.
2024-06-04 16:54:05 +0000 UTC
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Big ups to Hellripper, who's song about the nuckelavee on their album Warlocks Grim and Withered Hags really helped get through the creative block I've had with them and make something truly awful.
Hippos are horrifying, too. I love every sort of animal, but nothing's ever getting me to take one step toward a body of water I suspect might have a hippo in it. I do like how ...
2024-06-03 18:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Rolling up on the mid-point of the year and I feel like I'm firing on all cylinders; I've been working a bit slower (not least because Noita has been sucking up a good chunk of time), but everything I'm working on has been turning out cool as hell and I'm excited to get it in the post queue for the next couple months after this. I'm especially excited to have finally broken the seal on revisiting my devils; they've been some of my worst designs for a long time and it feels great to swap them ...
2024-06-01 18:00:07 +0000 UTC
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2024-05-30 00:54:33 +0000 UTC
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2024-05-30 00:05:35 +0000 UTC
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...
....SPAAAACE!!!
Reasonably spacey at least. They got meteors and stuff there. Anyways, these'll help if your players are trying to assemble the Key to Chaos to release Tharizdun from his eternal stasis.
Got a bunch of winged bois here with Herons, Wasps, and Wyverns, plus Neifon, Lord of Bats, an archfey that cosplays as a vampire and has been weirdly prominent in D&D lore since 2e despite there being virtually no details shared about him.
