-
The Role of Alignment
The concept of Alignment is an artifact of the early game and it is filled with problems. It is time to either radically change it or get rid of it altogether.
-
The School of Vitomancy
My intent here is to create a wizard healer school that is viable and has a flavor that works.
-
Elemental Beasts part 2
Okay, this is my part two of my lists of elemental beasts.
-
Elemental Beasts: New Companions for Rangers
I originally intended this for a published product. That may still happen, but I can’t afford a a lot of art, and each beast would likely need new art. When I pitched it a couple of times the people I pitched it to also mentioned the art issue. That said, I may still eventually put this in a product, or they will revise the Beast Master ranger making it irrelevant. Either way, I would like some feedback on these so I am putting them out there for people to see. Beasts are part of the natural world. This is one of the things which helps distinguish them from other creatures…
-
Setting Project: The People of Ballad
More world building for the world of Ballad. This time I look at the native (not human) races of Ballad.
-
Monsterous Ecologist: The History of the Tarrasque.
Here is an article revisiting the history of a famous D&D monster, the Tarrasque.
-
Setting Project: Redefining Humanity for Ballad.
This is my second article exploring the world Ballad. I am going to dig into the thing that started me thinking about the setting in the first place. I started with the notion of a setting where humans were rare and treated with distrust. This would not be unlike how Drow or Tieflings were treated in other settings. What would that kind of setting look like? A thread started by my friend Rabbit over on Twitter certainly contributed to that line of thought. Before I dig too far in, let me address the history here.
-
Setting Project: The world of Ballad
So, I have had a stressful life of late. I distracted myself by coming up with a new campaign world. Some people drink, I apparently come up with fictional worlds. Ballad is a high fantasy setting. It is leaning into a lot of mysterious magic rather than the notion of magic like technology that you find in Eberron or Ravnica for instance. I also started with the premise that humans were rare. The assumption in most settings is that humans are the “us” stand-in and not innately magical. They are the neutral default and all other races are alterations on the human base. This is problematic and should be discussed,…
-
Talking about high level play and reasons why it isn’t happening.
I have thoughts on the discussion about why people are not playing high level characters in D&D.
-
Removing Monks 2 The Paladin option
So, I am trying this again. Another part of my series of blog posts explaining how you might remove the Monk from D&D and keep some of the playstyle intact. The last post caused a good deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who objected to even the suggestion that there might be a problem with Monks, on a cultural level. I will leave that aside for the moment. I can recognize there are issues with Monks and still love them. I have played them and I have written subclasses for them. I will do so again. I will instead focus on the purpose of these blog posts.…
