There is always a need for more magic weapons in D&D. Simply having a +1 just doesn’t feel that satisfying a lot of the time. I like items that are little more varied than simply doing more damage.
This time I am going for bows. There is something compelling about the archer character and there a lot of ways to build them in 5E. Any of these would be great for a ranger, a fighter, a rogue, even some monks. Hopefully, some of these will prove useful for additions to your games.
Making an Encounter table is an interesting exercise. In some ways it is a statement of the tone of your game. Do you have a half dozen silly encounters? Do you have 8 generic wilderness encounters with beasts? Do you have combat encounters? Role playing? Chilling atmospheric encounters? Each says something about the style of game you are running.
Whatever the case, you are generating a list of events you wouldn’t mind showing in your game. You are generating a list of things that fit enough that you don’t care which one shows up. Even having an enormous table says something.
But some folks don’t know where to start. So here is a quick guide on how to make one.
Note: I used this technique to design an encounter table for my adventure, The Lost Library of Meldorin.
I think the Terminator series would make a brilliant D&D adventure idea for a D&D Plot.
There is an artifact in D&D far more insidious than any part of Vecna or Blackrazor. 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.
My intent here is to create a wizard healer school that is viable and has a flavor that works. I know there are some who will object to the whole idea. I can’t really convince you if you are strictly against the idea altogether. I can only say that this proscription against wizards who heal is strictly a D&D thing. Plenty of games, and folklore traditions, show less of a separation on this point.
I did try to make the thematics of this work for me. The Vitomancer is a close cousin of the Necromancer but inverts that connection to give us the healing wizard.
Okay, this is my part two of my lists of elemental beasts.
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…
Now that I have described humans on Ballad, I think I will tackle the other races. The people of Ballad are pretty diverse. The longer lived races tend to have a large on the 1000 kingdoms. Monarchs who rule for a thousand years with no succession wars just tend to be more of a stabilizing influence.
That said, the shorter lived races tend to be more numerous and their societies tend to be more dynamic. When you don’t personally remember when the traditions and rules were made, it is sometimes easier to see why you should change them.
Let’s dig in.
I have done intermittent segments for The Tome Show, a long-running D&D podcast. The segments are called the Monsterous Ecologist. I took on the persona of the titled ecologist and I would give a history of the monsters from D&D. I would explore the history of the real world legendary monsters and fiction that inspired the monsters in D&D. I also would track the changes the monsters went through in D&D through the editions.
I had a computer failure which has complicated my further recordings, but I do intend to return to this. If you want to help that project I won’t turn down any contributions.
That said, I did have a friend (C. J. Hunter aka Commander Pulsar) make a suggestion that made a lot of sense. Turn the research I did for these podcasts into blog content as well. I will do that. It gives me a chance to revisit these creatures I like so much.
With that in mind, I present..
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.
