#porting it to 5e.

[your-turn-to-role]

in celebration of the ripley fight most likely showing up in tlovm this week, i wanna share my favourite clip from the original fight that i know can't be translated into animation

after a whole fight of taliesin being able to rules lawyer ripley's combat choices because she runs on the same mechanics as percy, matt's amazing evil grin as taliesin realises far too late she runs on the same mechanics as percy

[ncat]

Wait this homebrew im writing fucks really hard actually

[otulnlwnafh]

((So fun fact about E.L.: I originally made him for a One Piece d20 fan game

And I remembered this on the way to work, but the only thing I really remember about this was that the flaw he was supposed to have was literally just that he could see ghosts. And the ghost I decided hung around him frequently just told shitty jokes))

[maydaymadier]

Doctors baffled, local 27-year-old man feels just, so old

[psychhound]

i do wonder if some of this from the player side is an ouroboros of in game lore with law of the hammer in the mechanics

law of the hammer says, essentially, youre going to use the tools you have to solve the problems you have. if youre given a hammer, you'll treat everything like a nail

its totally possible to represent antagonists in a nuanced, sympathetic, and culturally sensitive way. i know in my own 5e game i really lean on grey antagonists and complex moral situations. this is not always easy to do when the tools my players have are: Attack Thing. Cast (harmful) Spell Against Thing. Grapple Thing.

like, my players are great. they buy into the fiction, they care about the characters, they really chew on the emotional complexity of the situation. (my group is absolutely not playing dnd "right" but this game has been going for years and we're branching into more systems now that were being exposed to more of them. we all met because of dimension 20 and you can tell with how we play.) but if my players actually want to Play The Game and not just do freeform roleplay, their options are very limited, and their actions are almost entirely Do Harm because thats what 95% of the mechanics of dnd center around

the lore as written is absolutely a problem, often revealing insidious real world biases and bigotry, either from the creator themself or the tropes theyre drawing on. but also, its very hard to subvert that in a game where your main tool of interaction is violence, and often violence with the intention of eventual death. in a different game with more peaceful mechanics for resolution, maybe presenting, like your example, cultists as an antagonist could be grappled with in a more nuanced way than "booming blade". you would still be left with how the book itself represents these groups, but theres more you can do easily on a player side

idk i think the ludonarrative dissonance is really interesting with like. the kinds of stories that gaming groups want to tell and then the systems theyre trying to use to tell those stories. which is a much bigger conversation that people love have their head in the sand about but. yeah!! law of the hammer!!

Anyway ultimately justifications based on "well that's how it is in the setting" about stuff in any media will ring hollow if the criticism is approaching it not from the point of view of interrogating it through in-setting logic but from the point of view of an actual human being making a conscious decision to make it like that.

Like yeah we can sit and jerk off all day about how killing cultists is justified through in-game logic because they're literally trying to make Hell real, but when viewed with even a modicum of media criticism you can maybe start to wonder why cultists are such a common villain in medieval fantasy gaming.

Similarly, yeah, sure, in-universe orcs may have been created by an evil god and that's why they're predisposed to evil, but given the already racialized portrayal of orcs in the source material they come from plus the game further adding the reading that they're actually tribal savages, it suddenly puts into context some of the Fucked Up stuff that the author of the game said later in his life.

Anyway, none of this is to say that if you're not constantly thinking about this or flagellating yourself while engaging with the game you're somehow a bad human being, but like the stuff in fiction didn't just emerge out of The Void but came to as a result of someone's decision to dedicate it into the writing. Some people just enjoy thinking about this stuff in our free time, like I certainly do, and speaking for myself interrogating media like this rarely affects my ability to enjoy or engage with said media.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Simpler Monsters = Faster Combat

Been thinking a lot about different ways to tune 5e the way I want it, and I was inspired by a recent chat about how bullshit CR is as a mechanic to ponder over how d&d does its monsters in comparison to other games.

What fundamentally slows combat down (both at the table and during prep) is the mechanical assumption that the monsters/baddies/npcs controlled by the DM have to function on the same mechanical framework as player characters: standard/move/bonus/reaction action economy, HP, AC, Damage numbers etc. While some of this is in the name of game balance, we can all admit that it's clunky as hell and could stand to be overhauled.

In a lot of ways d&d monsters are the way they are (huge stat blocks, a pain to modify/homebrew) because of the old wargaming/competitive/adversarial days of play, specifically in that every monster had to have a canon range of stats so that the DM coudn't "cheat" in the party's favour or against it. I think the pursuit of good gameplay has largely evolved past this obsessive need for objectivity over the past 50 years.

Once you run enough d&d you realize that monster stats don't actually matter. The baddies need enough offence to threaten the party and enough defence to hang on long enough to make the combat interesting, with the actual spice of the combat being tactics, goals, and special abilities. For several levels during an ongoing campaign (lvls 6-9) I swapped out traditional monster HP for gnomestew's "10 good hits" system. None of my players noticed the change, and suddenly my prep/running the session became 1000% easier because there were way less numbers to take care of.

Over the past couple years I've branched out into games using the PbtA and FitD systems, which run the combat encounters through the same gameplay framework as they do skill resolution. Fighting a demon to the death is mechanically the same as escaping away from an avalanche, and while this game design is quite elegant, I want to preserve d&d combat as the tactical miniature skirmish minigame that it is.

I think I'm going to start work on a combat hack, something that will let you port in any vanilla or 3rd party monster you'd like for theoretically any CR range. I'm going to wrap in some of the developments made by the 5e successors (daggerheart, mcdmrpg etc) along with my own ideas about how to make the system run smoother.

[y-rhywbeth2]

Porting the 5e lore that young elves experience memories of past lives more often than from the current life, since there are more memories to be had from the former; I figured elven and some half-elven Bhaalspawn would just experience a blank void or have a limited amount of memories to replay in their infancy and childhood, maybe their mortal parent's memories instead. Their soul is shaped of Bhaal's essence, it likely they're not reincarnated elven spirits.

And then this morning I went; what if elf Durge experienced Bhaal's mortal memories instead? And by extension, all his elven children. And now that's my canon.

Durge's foster family teaching them about the gods: '...and Bane is god of tyranny-'

Little Durge: 'Bane is an asshole who still owes me five gold for that sword he wanted back in Phlan during the Seven Sigils War is what he is.'

[yeetmeoutthewindowdaddy]

A deep dive into Zevlor's devotion (Part 2) Elturel's history and culture, the Hellriders, and Zevlor's paladin oath:

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BG3.

These series of posts were originally one loooooong post— but apparently Tumblr has a character limit, and I found it; so now it's been split into several parts/posts.

(Part 1) Everybody hates tieflings, and how discrimination impacted a young Zevlor

((Part 2, this post, is for providing historical and sociological information on Elturel, paladins and their oaths, and the Hellriders. The third part is where the meat of my Zevlor analysis is.))

(Part 2.5)

(Part 3) Zevlor's actions during Act 1, an analysis of a man who is barely holding on.

(Part 4) Zevlor's actions during Act 2, an analysis of a broken man.

(Part 5) Zevlor in a romantic relationship.

(Part 6) Zevlor's actions during/ after the epilogue, not all endings are happily ever after— especially not for a tiefling.

(Part 7) Zevlor in a romantic relationship.

I don't think many bg3 players understand just how dedicated and loyal of a person Zevlor is. This ADHD hyper-fixation fueled multipart-thesis is meant to show how Zevlor's past is as tragic as any of the origin characters'/ Durge's. It's meant to show how horrifically broken Zevlor was when he "betrayed" the other tieflings. It's also meant to show that our beloved blorbo would probably be fervently obsessive if he was in a romantic relationship.

Most importantly: It demonstrates how our favorite man Zevlor was most likely a fanatical religious zealot my dudes. He was (probably) a part of the Faerûn equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition lite.

I have kept this as factual as I am able to. Please keep in mind that Baldur's Gate 3 plays it fast and loose with the DND/ Forgotten Realms canon and lore, on top of DND/ the Forgotten Realms itself regularly disregarding and changing it's own lore and canon. DND lore and canon as a whole is a mess. It has multiple universes that sometimes interact and are maybe separate from each other. Full disclosure; I've mixed 1e-5e lore together FUCK 5.5e, because parsing through what is currently considered canon is a nightmare. As far as I'm concerned, as long as a piece of lore was canon at some point in the past 50 years— it's fair game. @y-rhywbeth2 in this post has a more in depth disclaimer. Also please check out their headcanons and lore breakdowns, they're so good.

THIS PROJECT TOOK ME OVER A MONTH TO WRITE. I've tried to find all grammatical and spelling errors. I've tried to ensure that I've cited the correct sources in the correct places.

Before reading this way to long of a post please check out (the much more succinct) @gortashs-skidmark history of Elturel and Zevlor headcanons [alt].

______________________________________________________________

● (Part 1) Elturel's History and Culture:

[A/N: I refer to Elturel as a city, a city-state, and a realm. They don't mean the same thing, but I've used them interchangeably here because Elturel is simultaneously a city, a city-state, and a realm (known as Elturgard). Kind of similar to how the UK, England, and Great Britain are all used to describe the British Isles.]

Elturel was a port city located in the Western Heartlands along the Chionthar River.

"The river linked it... to Baldur's Gate on the Sword Coast... it was a center for agriculture and trade in the region, and was renowned for its elite mounted defenders, the Hellriders."

All Elturians were horse girls loved horses. Just as every child in Waterdeep leaned how to swim, every child in Elturel learned how to ride a horse.

"Elturians were practically raised in the saddle, learning how to ride and growing familiar with how horses behaved in any situation, even those that never became Hellriders. The downside was that, rightly or wrongly, some folk thought Elturians always smelled of horse."— https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Elturel#Culture_&_Society

Elturel claimed ownership over nearby cities and lands by declaring themselves their "protectorates"— thus becoming the realm Elturgard. (In other words they were holier-than-thou and patronizing in their attitude towards the cities they took over.)

"In the late 15th century DR, it was the capital of the realm of Elturgard... through a variety of excuses, Elturel had laid claim to the lands of its neighbors, placing them within "Elturel's Guard" as they called it... with the aim of bringing righteous judgment to all the Realms and "setting Faerûn aright"..."

Elturel was an authoritarian theocracy which was so pious that you could get into trouble for cursing in public.

"Elturel was known as a holy city... and it was ruled by its high priest, the High Observer of Torm… Even bad language and irreverent humor could draw the ire of authorities. Elturgard's laws were rigid, intolerant, and persecuted evil with inquisitorial zeal..."

Saying they had inquisitorial zeal was not a figure of speech, they actually had inquisitions.

"They ensured the city and countryside remained safe and well-policed... [through] rigid laws, intolerant attitudes, and inquisitions circa 1479 DR... Just rumoring about a possible band of thieves was enough to see one interrogated by zealous Hellriders."

Elturel had a 3 strike policy, where upon the 3rd strike a criminal would be sent to the mines— which never had a shortage of prisoners. (By reading between the lines, I'm assuming that the law did not have much nuance or account for the severity of a crime. i.e.: Littering 3x would get one sent to prison along side murderers.)

"Those who broke the law three times were sent to the Dungeon of the Inquisitor... they were punished and set to work mining tunnels. The inmate population was always being replenished."

They were even willing to risk a loss of trade revenue if it meant that outsiders wouldn't bring their immorality into the city.

"After the founding of Elturgard, the port officials who handled trade in the city... were overly righteous and handed exorbitant taxes and penalties to traders who showed even the slightest impiety, even banning them from setting foot inside the city. The caravans and riverboat convoys now feared to pass through..."

The official religion of Elturel was Torm, but almost any good or neutral aligned god was allowed to be worshiped.

"In the late 1400s, the city's official faith was in Torm the True, the state religion of Elturgard. However, the people commonly worshiped Torm, Helm, Lathander, Amaunator, and Tyr."

Baldur's Gate was a rivaling competing port city and moral antithesis to Elturel, who they were constantly on the verge of war with.

"Its chief rival now was Baldur's Gate... Elturel regarded Baldur's Gate as lawless and corrupt, and disapproved of its religious tolerance... There was much animosity between them… [but] neither was looking forward to an armed conflict."

Along with the city guard (more like a military than a city guard, but I digress) every citizen swore a magically binding oath, the Creed Resolute, to defend the city.

"...He [Thavius Kreeg] eventually made all Elturians swear the Creed Resolute, binding them by oath to defend the city... The Creed Resolute was a set of oaths and maxims sworn by the paladins of the Order of the Companion of Elturgard and the Hellriders of Elturel, and eventually all Elturian citizens... Citizens who were old enough to read were required to put a hand on the Tome of the Creed Resolute and recite the oath. Once done, their name magically appeared in the book, thus recording all those who'd sworn to follow the Creed."

Elturel's primary city guard/ military were known as

● (Part 2) The Hellriders:

Training started as young as 12. (Which is how old Zevlor was when he enlisted.)

"Enlistment and training could begin as young as twelve. People came to Elturel from other lands just to join the Hellriders."

They swore an oath not only to the defend the realm, but also uphold its moral codes of conduct.

"...Hellriders followed the Creed Resolute... This had them swear to serve the High Observer and the greater good, uphold Elturgard's law, and permit no difference in faith to come between them... among other codes of behavior. If a Hellrider overstepped the limits of law or proper behavior, their comrades would admonish them to "recall the Creed"."

Hellriders were revered— and as the protectors of Elturel they were held to an even higher moral standard than the average citizen. Children dreamed of becoming a Hellrider, but it was difficult to actually become one.

"It was said that every [child] of Elturel and the lands around dreamed of being a Hellrider some day. To call such a child a 'hellion' was... a compliment, marking one as having the courage and drive to ride the Hellriders' destriers...the Hellriders and the Companions were held in highest regard. Both inspired the people to be devout in both their faith and the pursuit of justice."

Hellriders were not only revered in Elturel, but in many other places too. They were more powerful than some other nations entire armies.

"...an elite cavalry unit who acted as the primary armed force of the city of Elturel in the Western Heartlands...The Hellriders helped Elturel establish and maintain civilization in these harsh lands. They were one of the most renowned and well-regarded military forces... For a city guard, they outmatched the armies of whole realms."

The Hellriders were named as such because of their loyalty to one another. They were family. **insert Fast and Furious family meme**

"The warriors were close-knit and exceptionally loyal, both to each other and to their commanders... It was said that a company of Riders had once ridden into the Hells themselves— namely Avernus, the first layer... to rescue one of their own, such was their great loyalty to each other... and from this story, the Hellriders were named."

Becoming a Hellrider was for life. They were the literal definition of ride or die.

"To be a Hellrider was a job for life, no matter how short it turned out to be... In the mid-1360s DR, there were no living ex-members of the Hellriders—too many had died in battle."

The only way to resign from the Hellriders was to be sent on a suicide mission. If they somehow survived the mission then they'd be publicly known as a deserter, considered a heretic, and subsequently banished from Elturel without a pot to piss in.

"Those determined to resign were given a final mission involving very difficult tasks, and even if they succeeded, and survived, they were stripped of their gear, exiled from the city, and named a heretic in the eyes of Helm, God of Guardians, for abandoning their post."

These are merely the conditions for an average Hellrider-- we haven't even touched the diehard paladin sect known as

● (Part 3) The Order of the Companion:

Before Zevlor's time in the Hellriders there weren't many paladins in their ranks.

"There were few paladins in the Hellriders. However, in the late 1400s, members of the Hellriders could aspire to join the Order of the Companion, a paladin knighthood..."

But by the time Zevlor joined there was the Order of the Companion. And they were religious fanatics. They didn't just swear an oath to the city. No, they went the extra mile by swearing an oath to Elturel/ Elturgard on their personal patron god.

"...A well-armored mounted knighthood of paladins who defended the city and wider Elturgard, swore oaths to the realm and shared its goals, even if the members did not all share faith in Torm. Courageous, righteous, and zealous, they were proud of their dedication to the cause of good, their clear morals, even their intolerance... Although the state religion of Elturgard was that of Torm, and they all swore oaths to the realm, the Companions themselves followed various different gods...Many of the Hellriders now aspired to join the Companions."

The Order of the Companion, despite being newer and thus having less established prestige than the Hellriders, were revered with an amount of reverence similar to the Helriders.

"In the late 15th century, Elturian citizens still often dreamed of joining Elturgard's paladin knighthood. This time, many succeeded. Inspired by the Hellriders and the Companions, the folk of Elturgard were typically devout in both their faith and the pursuit of justice. Both troops were loved and respected by the people... The Companions were seen as the undoubted champions of the people of Elturgard, with even the lowest-ranking ready to sacrifice their lives to protect them, and in turn the people adored them. Disrespecting the Companions and their Creed would incur the rage of the common folk."

I'm speculating here, but I would imagine that the former head Hellrider being a vampire lead to the Hellriders losing the people's unwavering trust. The Order members did not have this mark against them. Their PR was also probably boosted because joining the Order was easier than joining the Hellriders.

(They were maybe racists? Interestingly, on the wiki for the Order of the companion only humans are listed under the race(s) of those who are members.)

Also they were fascists. [A/N: In Faerûn choosing a patron deity is akin to choosing a political party.]

"The paladins swore to follow and uphold the Creed Resolute... {A/N: the same creed the the Hellriders later adopted and (along with citizens) swore to.} If one of the Companions... even questioned the policies of the realm (such as exactly why there was a temple to Bane in Soubar), their comrades would admonish them to "recall the Creed" and the matter was resolved."

The Hellriders and the Order of the Companion were not one and the same-- but they often overlapped (so much so that I have simply given up in trying to parse which is which), in a similar vein as the army and the marines. This reddit user described it best:

"Order of the Companion are Paladins. Hellriders is a general name for the Elturel cavalry. The Knights of the Companion are all Hellriders, but not all Hellriders are Knights of the Companion. It's a club within the club. Previously, Elturel was ruled by a "High Rider" who was the highest military leader of the Hellriders. After the Companion arrived, rulership changed to a "High Observer" who was the leader of the Church of the Companion..."

You may be wondering; what in the sweet hells is

● (Part 4) The Companion:

~50 years before the game Elturel was being swarmed by vampires after it was found that the (now former) leader of the Hellriders and the city itself, the aforementioned High Rider, was a vampire.

"...the High Rider himself was discovered to be a vampire, with a vast network of vampire spawn, charmed minions, undead allies, and sycophantic collaborators that surprised even the Hellriders. Now exposed, the undead infested Elturel..."

The Hellriders could do little to tide the flow of the undead.

"...and whatever victories the Hellriders won during the days, they lost sorely in the nights."

A priest of Torm (and later the ruler of Elturel) would perform a "miracle" and summon an entity known as the Companion.

"...Thavius Kreeg, then a priest of Torm, pleaded to any power to save his city, and... his reckless prayer was answered—by the archdevil Zariel with a deal to which he hastily agreed. Though the city would receive its much-needed aid, it would last but fifty years, after which Zariel would take the whole city and its people. Thavius also swore to serve her in all ways for all time..."

And so Zariel created the Companion— which was actually the Solar Insidiator that would cause the city to fall into Avernus (Hell).

"The Companion, also known as Amaunator's Gift, was a magical second sun that hovered over the city of Elturel in Elturgard… It was the symbol of the realm and of its defenders, the Order of the Companion. However, it was in fact the Solar Insidiator, a device created by Zariel, archdevil of Avernus, as part of a plot to trap and steal the city away to the Nine Hells."

The Companion was basically a 2nd sun that always shone in Elturel.

"The light of this second sun illuminated the land day and night, and suffused all of Elturel... it produced no heat. Creatures and things vulnerable to daylight in some way, or... destroyed by it, were... vulnerable to the Companion's light. Thus it prevented darkling races and monsters from assailing the city. Undead of all kinds found it painful or were even burned by it, while creatures of darkness could not even bear to look at the city."

Don't feel too bad for Kreeg here, he's not like Wyll who made a selfless deal with a devil to save his beloved city and people. Kreeg was corrupt. He was why the people of Elturel unknowingly swore their souls to Zariel by having all citizens swear to the oath of the Creed Resolute.

"Taking the credit, Thavius was acclaimed as the savior of Elturel, and few would doubt his goodness or his intent. Only he knew the true origin of the mysterious second sun... [From this] Kreeg was raised to the position of High Observer himself some years later, following a crisis of leadership in Elturel and the unexplained but convenient disappearance of the likely successor, and his rival..."

Go read the wiki page on Zariel for her backstory and connection to Elturel and the Hellriders themselves, it's very fascinating.(LINK) Long story short: Fallen angel turned archdevil is salty about the Hellriders. She needs more souls for more power, and wouldn't you know it— there's a whole city that she already has some beef with she can claim from a desperate priest who's all to willing to sign it, and its people's souls, away to her.

That's it for part 2, I made (Part 2.5) Zevlor's Paladin Oath (link): because this post got too long.

Link to the other parts:

A deep dive into Zevlor's devotion series (master list)

[probablygoodrpgideas]

I think the existence of Maleghast reaffirms my long-held belief that there's just no good way to do PC Necromancers in TTRPGs.

In Maleghast, you're a cool necromancer with a bunch of powerful abilities and in addition to that control a horde of varied undead that also all have cool abilities. It's pretty much exactly what I would want from playing a necromancer.

This works because Maleghast is a wargame about necromancers fighting each other. Everyone has powerful abilities and controls a horde of undead.

If you tried to port a Maleghast black horde (the name for a necromancer with its minions) to an RPG (let's say ICON since the games are similar) where there's non-necromancer character options, you'd run into several issues.

Firstly, time. In Maleghast, you take a turn for each unit you control. This would lead to a necromancer player taking up significantly more time than everyone else at the table. This issue is further exacerbated in TTRPGs where martial characters are kept simple. No one wants to wait through a 20 minute necromancer turn to then go "I attack twice. 24 damage. Next."

ICON is very much aware of the issue that summons lead to long turns and keeps them simple because of that. The closesest thing ICON has to a necromancer, the Harvester, can summon Thralls that take like a minute or two to resolve each turn. They're useful but they don't really hit the same power fantasy.

The second issue is balance. I want my undead to feel powerful, but I still want to feel powerful myself.

If I and my 5 undead each deal about a 6th of the damage a regular PC deals, that would be balanced, but it would be incredibly boring. If we deal any more damage than that, it would be overpowered.

Some games (like D&D 5e) deal with this issue by putting basically all of the damage potential on the necromancer while having the undead be very low on damage dealt, to the point where they're basically just additional hit points you can summon into the fight, but I don't want that, I want my undead to be cool not just meat (or bone) shields.

Do you know of any RPGs where you can play a really fun necromancer? I'd love to be proven wrong

[roserysttrpggarden]

Hi there~! It's been a long time coming, but here it is, my attempt at reworking the 5e warlock, due to my dissatisfaction with the version presented in One DND (5.5??) feature a whole host of reworked and altered options so you may be the best devil worshiper you can be, the rest of this post shall go over some of the changes made along with my intention behind the changes.

The base class.

For starters, eldritch blast is now a class feature. Simply put, every warlock takes eldritch blast, doesn't matter if you're focused on support, damage, or you're a weapon wielding hexblade, eldritch blast is such a good option, so I might as well give it as a base class feature. Similarly the agonizing blasts ability to add your charisma modifier to its damage rolls was added for similar reasons, skipping over the spellcasting, pact boon and invocation changes, the contact patron feature from the One DND UA was added for thematic purposes, and eldritch master was reworked to instead allow your patron to concentrate on a spell, which yes, does allow you to concentrate on two spells at one (At disadvantage)

Spellcasting.

The One DND warlock features the rather unique ability to choose between intelligence, wisdom or charisma as its casting stat, while I enjoyed the concept I decided to take it a step further by tying your spellcasting ability to the otherworldly patrons themselves, essentially using their spellcasting stat in a way.

Additional changes include you getting your 3rd-level slot at 6th-level as opposed to 11th, cause the highest most dnd campaigns reach are around 10-11th level, and it feels bad having to wait all the way until then just to cast three spells a day, some other changes of note include the warlock being able to ritually cast, and the spells gained from their otherworldly patron are now automatically prepared, rather than added to the warlock spell list. Which i'm not sure why they did that? Unless they though it'd break warlock somehow.

The Pact boons.

Basically every pact boon got upped in power, such as pact of the blade and pact of the chain, alongside them growing in strength when you reach 5th-level, in addition, two new pact boons were added. The first being the Pact of The Gunpowder, based on the Pact of The Trigger by MonkeyDM, its an eldritch blast/cantrip focused pact for those who want to truly commit themselves to the eldritch blast lifestyle, alongside the Pact of The Idol, allowing you to sacrifice your hit dice to perform various features.

Eldritch Invocations.

A selection of (Mostly new) invocations were made for this document, my favorite would have to be the ones given to the pact of the blade. Admittedly in the rush to get this out by the deadline I chose to cut back on the invocations in particular, but who knows, maybe when I get to revising this someday I can add even more invocations to the list.

Subclasses

All of the subclasses were revised in one way or another, but for the sake of time i'll go other three in particular: The Hexblade, The Horror and The Undying. The hexblade is a rather infamous subclass within the DND community in no small part cause of how strong a 1st-level dip is for many characters (Cough, paladin) but the more I looked at it, the more I found myself bored of it. Don't get me wrong the 5e hexblade is rather powerful, but it just doesn't scratch the itch of the cursed item patron, and with hex warriors main drawing being ported over to pact of the blade, reworking was a must. The horror (Originally called the undead) I generally don't have to many issues mechanics wise, in fact it's one of my favorite warlock subclass, my only gripe is cause of how much if steps on the undying toes flavor-wise, speaking of which, the undying is possibly the subclass I had the most fun reworking, transforming it into a tanky summon focused as opposed to....Whatever the original was trying to accomplish.

Along with the revision of old subclasses, three new subclasses are included: The Arcanist, The Dragon and The Evergreen. The arcanist is a pact with a powerful being of magic (Such as an archmage) it allows you to learn wizard spells from your pact magic feature, manipulate your spellcasting and eventually imbue spells into trinkets, the dragon are for those that simply want blast their foes away, you can create bursts of draconic energy, absorb elemental energy and even assume the form of a dragon, lastly the evergreen is for those that couldn't decide if they wanted to be a druid or a warlock, allowing you to create a garden around yourself that damages enemies, alongside implanting magic seeds within your foes and protecting allies within your garden against spells, similar to an ancients paladin.

New spells

Because I like making more work for myself, a handful of new spells are available at the end of the document, so I apologize if they're a bit on the lower end quality wise, but I hope they'll be at least somewhat interesting.

That's about all I wanted to talk about in relation to this rework, keep in mind everything in here is untested, and I encourage anyone reading this to leave any thoughts or constructive criticism they may have. With that in mind, thank you for reading, go out and make something cool.

[sunbeargames]

I wasn't a huge fan of some of the 5e content that MCDM put out, but what I've seen of the RPG they just started crowdfunding has me really excited.

The main thing I like is that they essentially flipped the resource economy that we typically see in tactical games.

In each encounter, your character builds up a heroic resource that you spend to do cool things. That means your powerful abilities are the tools you use to finish encounters, not the things you blow at the start. 5e fights can devolve into a slog once the party uses all their big guns, this fixes that.

Over the course of each adventure, you build up Victories from each challenge you overcome. Victories make some of your abilities stronger and give you more of that heroic resource. They reset when you rest (as in returning to town for some downtime, not just resting overnight) and turn into XP. This means the party has an incentive to keep going when they are on a roll, rather than trying to rest between each fight. Health is the main resource that will run down between rests, so you can't go forever.

As someone who has been bothered by these issues regarding resource economies in RPGs for a while, these feel like really interesting solutions that I'm excited to see in play. Strongly considering porting the Shapechanger over once I get access to playtest material.

[honourablejester]

Watching that North Sea/Hoist the Colours post again, a couple of the lines of that song caught me again: “The bell has been raised from its watery grave; can you hear its sepulchral tone?” And I just …

I really love bells? As an image. A symbol. Toll the Dead is my favourite 5e cantrip. In Pathfinder, my two favourite thaumaturge implements, just for theme, are lantern and bell. I have a homebrew forge god who has the bell as his main symbol. I just. I really love the imagery of bells.

Bells sound for funerals. Bells count the passing of hours. Bells warn of approaching danger. In a nautical setting, bells mean port and/or buoys declaring safe water. The ghostly bell ringing through the mist means death or home. Bells toll out your life. Bells toll out your death. Bells mark territory: the bells of the church mark the parish, the bells of the night watchman mark out the protected area. Fog buoys mark home channels. Given the history tangled up in the Catholic Church, bells also symbolised power and wealth (church/town bells and especially full carillons were not cheap, and the biggest, heaviest, most expensive bells were parish and municipal status symbols) while at the same time, because of the association with death and funerals, also symbolised ultimate equality. Bells symbolise victory and celebration, sounding for weddings as well as funerals. Bells mean a call, often a call to school or to church, or an alarm bell, but also a general summons.

The bell tolls. Sound the death knell. Ring out your great bells in victory. Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements. One o’clock and all’s well!

Bells have such a lovely tangle of images attached. Death. The inevitable passage of time. Alarm. Warning. The delineation of safe places. Celebration. Wealth. Equality. Summons. There’s a lot to play with.

And just. At the base of it all, and calling back to Hoist the Colours above … there’s nothing quite like the ghostly, sepulchral toll of bell to mark the call, and the end. Heh.

I just. I really enjoy the symbolism of bells a lot.

[chronotsr]

No. 7 - S1, Tomb of Horrors (October 1978)

Author(s): Gary Gygax Artist(s): David C. Sutherland III (Cover), David Trampier Level range: 10-14 Theme: Meatgrinder Dungeoncrawl Major re-releases: So, so many. S1-4 Realms of Horror, Return to the Tomb of Horrors, Tomb of Horrors (2005), Tomb of Horrors (2010), S1-4 Dungeons of Dread, Dungeon #213, Tales from the Yawning Portal, Tomb of Annihilation (sort-of)

I said earlier that S1 is probably the only adventure more ported than G1, and I was right. You have so many options for S1. The original monochrome, the green cover, the compilation version, the silver anniversary version re-erlease-and-sequel, a 3.5e port, a 4e port, a DND Next port w/ 4e porting instructions, and then finally the 5e port in Tales from the Yawning Portal. The only people being left out here are the 2e people, and making 1e adventures go into 2e is as natural as breathing.

As the cover points out, this was originally run at Origins I, and there is so much community lore surrounding this module that I will spare you the rigamarole. If you know where I stand on the "meatgrinder vs fair challenge" argument, go read the Theme header again.

These illustrations are iconic. In basically every re-release they are kept as is, one of the few things that makes the 5e release stand out is not including the original 31 illustrations. And while the new art is OK, I, it can't hold a candle to the sheer charisma of the originals. And -- why no green devil head? That's the single most memorable thing from the scenario? We get one, actually, but it's on the map and I think it's an image from the archives because it looks an awful lot like an old cover of Dragon. If you do run this in 5e, you really owe it to your players to hunt down and use the original illustrations.

I am now morally obliged to tell you that, when I went through Tomb of Horrors (5e version, that's what I can find GMs for), I died to the Juggernaut. Which is actually extremely funny, because earlier when I was in Tomb of Annihilation I died the exact same way! So I guess Juggernauts are my personal arch nemesis. I personally didn't like my time there, but there is value in a module that everyone has played. I wouldn't've picked S1 for the task but I'm glad we have one at least. In general, this will be a a sparse entry in the series. The Tomb of Horrors is Tomb of Horrors. It is both extremely notable and also weirdly bland -- there's just not much to say about a lot of these trollish traps. They're highly specific and only really work in the moment, for very specific tables, at a very specific cultural moment. It's actually kind of boring to read in 2024? How much can one really say about a 20-colored mural with a variety of "it does nothing" effects?

Alright, enough stalling. The module starts with now-traditional Gary intro of "hey, your players are going to try and get extra information in [obvious way], defeat that." Today's edition is that Legend Lore is rendered useless by a combination of obscurity and….too much information? Ok… And then the also very Gary "If your players are dumb stupid idiots they will hate this module", which he also did in G1-3.

Eventually, your party finds this stupid looking thing, which is (I know this is repetitive) iconicly so-bad-its-good. And everything about this intro is trolling. So There are three routes into the tomb, two of which are trapped and fake. 2024 DND players would never think to try any of these things, but I do get the sense that in 1978 it would've occurred to most veteran players to try things like "poking the wall with sticks" and "extensive excavations". Anyone who tries to be clever and bypass shit by phasing into a parallel plane gets got by Demons, and I like the theory that Seth Skorkowsky aired a while ago that the Demons are the ones maintaining the Tomb so you should steal that.

You know what? Let's just go into keyed mode.

I do not respect this "only these express options work" mindset. It's very anti-ttrpg to have pre-programmed solutions Naturally, the second door cannot be removed by strength, only by one of 5 spells and thinking to wedge the door with iron in a specific day works. IDK bro I know the idea is Acererak is an asshole and has bewitched this complex to high hell but cmon, even the fake doors are borderline invulnerable?

There's a riddle-poem that hints at the solutions to the dungeon's puzzles. I actually really like this poem, and for all this module's sins I disagree with commenters who think the poem is too vague. At least when I was playing, it was just right.

That is the most off brand Ancient Egyptian tomb hallway I ever did see, and I do kind of love it. As for how confusing the wall-door-chest trap is, it's trollish but it makes sense to me. The chest is a red herring to distract you from the actual secret door, which is a literal door, and honestly that's a hint I consider fairly on the nose.

The misty arch sucks. The short version is that if you press the glowing stones in the right order, you progress, otherwise you get teleported to one of three random rooms. The solution is inscrutable to me (why that order? you could brute force it but that'd be suicide) and I really wish that the book spelled out what the puzzle logic was -- a lot of newer adventures will explain the operating logic in parentheticals next to the solution. If the answer is "you're supposed to brute force it", I have no respect for that mindset.

The devilhead is obviously iconic as hell and we love it. As many commenters have noted, the often-cited "our whole party climbed in and died" story is incompatible with a RAW or RAI interpretation -- your GM was just an asshole, your character died as soon as their head got annihilated and the party would see their body go limp suddenly. There is no way all 5 of you piled in without removing a body and discovering they're Very Dead.

The lever room also sucks. You could only guess the solution, and the act of testing will get you killed. And don't give me "well your hirelings" your hirelings are not going to test any traps after they see the 2rd guy get turned into meatpaste, and while ADND lacks the hard cap on people hireable that Basic had, you're still going to run out of guys who are willing to commit suicide in here in short order.

"Yet there are also depicted various religious symbols of goad alignment, and a faint aura of good can be magically detected. What a puzzle! Could the demi-lich actually have been of good alignment" This will fool no-one Gary. It's the Tomb of Horrors, not the Tomb of Hope. He clearly bewitched the chapel to appear as good, which literally anyone would think of. Heartbreaking: worst lich you know has access to revolutionary SRS magic.

It's at about this point where I realized how little there really is to comment on in this dungeon. It really is just a sequence of obtuse murder traps that are faintly hinted at. The things that are iconic about it (the devilhead, the acerack fakeout) are actually exceptions to the rule -- both of those are super clear traps that are designed to tease particularly foolish players. The majority of the dungeon is, tap random objects and get gassed by poison or dropped into spikes. In a lot of ways ToH feels like the bad timeline version of White Plume Mountain, which is trollish in a more memorable way? What I mean here is, when people complain that ToH is unfair they're burying the lede. A hard dungeon can be fun. An unfair dungeon can be fun! The issue is that Tomb of Horrors is boring. Every room being a puzzle tied to a deathtrap with almost no combat or negotiation is tedious.

Basically every tomb of horrors room has this setup:

You walk into a room with an illustration that looks cool, and there is some vague image, object, or feature in the room that is conspicuous

There is either no obvious exit (strongly implying a secret), or an extremely obvious exit that is currently impassable

You have to try fiddling with any object in the room that can be fiddled with, or grope around for an illusion

There is a roughly 25% chance there is a vague hint from 3 gameplay hours ago that will help you if you interpret it correctly, and a 75% chance that this is intended as attrition

You fuck around for a while, and maybe you work out the puzzle and maybe you don't. Almost certainly, someone takes 50% damage or has some vital asset removed or changed about them.

You eventually pass into the next room

Really the variety of traps in this dungeon is surprisingly narrow -- something like half of these traps are "activate these objects in a specific order or orientation". The other half are some variety of mist or gas or cloud or other fluid that kills you if you do not avoid or interact with it in the specific way. Occasionally when you're lucky, you simply turn a lever and get skewered -- what a treat!

The final encounter with Acereak, you will be unsurprised to learn, also sucks. If you touch his jeweled skull, he instantly steals your soul and ruins your body (no save, no appeal). If you guess one of the, again, explicit list of options to destroy the skull (which you have already established will instantly kill one ally per touch) which is of course very specific (essentially, holy attacks, the most powerful magical swords, and inexplicably gem-slinging), you can kill him in 50 hp. Weirdly, the soul gems that you get trapped into do offer some escape from death, but it's a terrible one -- IF you pass your save, IF they crush the gem, IF there is an eligible body for their soul to go into (yours was ruined), then you may come back to life in a very different form. Completing the Tomb gives you, of course, 100k exp. And in ADND that'ssss…. actually not very much. At level 10, 100k exp is not even a full level for most classes to get a level (thieves are the exception) and your actual treasure haul I think is going to be fairly meager -- I think the average character will get maybe one level of experience after distributing the loot. For going through one of the most dangerous dungeons ever.

I remain a bit of a ToH hater.

In blog news, we are looking at post 7.5 coming up, in which I will do another retrospective on the year's developments, and as a special treat we will be briefly discussing the first Dragon Magazine dungeon!

[thydungeongal]

Heya! Your blog has been super eye opening and helped me actually voice a lot of my frustrations with 5e and dnd in general. Over the last 7 years I've been workshopping an original fantasy setting (originally for dnd) which I was trying to port to Pathfinder 2e since they share a lot of cosmology and general flavor text, which I'd borrowed from liberally. Are there any games you'd recommend that better lend themselves to themes of espionage, courtly intrigue, and/or bounty hunter style combat? I'd love to introduce my friends to a new game rather than keep trudging over the ones we keep trying to beat into the desired shape. I'm just not sure how much of my setting I'll have to rewrite if we finally do broaden our horizons.

Burning Wheel is a game that lends itself well to social intrigue and meaningful combat that doesn't drag, but it's also a lot to take in. It's an extremely crunchy game and takes a lot of time investment to really click, but it has a lot of support for playing characters informed by strong beliefs getting involved in political struggles. Its implied setting is heavily Tolkienistic though, so it would probably necessitate and a setting overhaul.

Mythras is a bit more trad in structure (it has a lot of mechanical parts that should be familiar from D&D/Pathfinder) but has a lot of broad support for playing fantasy games that are a bit more grounded than D&D. It's effectively one of the later versions of RuneQuest but without the RuneQuest name and the ties to Glorantha as a setting. What Mythras lends to the above: better support for characters growing through social skill use and not just power-scaling in combat ability (like, in D&D and its clones even when you're playing a social intrigue campaign characters will still mainly grow in combat power), and it also codifies organizational attachments, character beliefs, and passions. There's also a social conflict system in the Mythras Companion.

I think of those two I would recommend the latter: Mythras is a solid base to build on and is more easily adaptable to various settings. It's also a lot easier to wrap one's head around than Burning Wheel.

[lutethebodies]

LTB Tav Tuesdays: Cannor Coth, the Lost Singer (Part 2)

A very loose version of @kelandrin's Tav Backstory Bash to follow-up this post about Cannor, my first and favorite 5e/BG3 character. Since he had an established bio long before I'd heard of BG3, I'm using my own homebrew setting names and can switch them out for BG3/Faerun stuff at the end. Is it tropey and clichéd? Probably. Do I care? I do not. Here goes:

Vitals: 37-year-old human male Bard (College of Swords), with a background of Spy (Artisan in BG3).

Childhood. Cannor is the accidental result of a tryst between two Kalen exiles: stoic field surgeon Macanso of Cutheleann and unruly Lady Corda of House Baethu, who met in the stratified yet chaotic confines of the Kalen rebel outpost at Sevánhra in rural Narán. Cannor's childhood was already stunted by limited contact with his mother—a connection cut permanently at age seven, when Corda joined the Exiles' Army in their doomed crusade to retake the Kalen homeland from usurpers and invaders. Dishonorably discharged and increasingly alcoholic, Macanso tried to train Cannor as a healer, but the boy longed for escape to the wider world, enraptured by stories and songs of travellers, traders, and sailors passing through Sevánhra's tiny port. When Mac finally drank himself to death, Cannor got his chance, and at age ten stowed away on a Caranacian ship bound for the City of Fortune.

Adolescence. Discovered and mentored by the lenient boatswain Maramad the Tramontine, Cannor worked for his bunk until the ship was ambushed in the Narrow Sound by bloodthirsty pirates. With his protector among the dead, Cannor was thrown off the ship in Caranacia and sought Maramad's sister Cabella at the Wandering Star Inn. Once there, Cannor awkwardly and soon expertly charmed his way into found family, friendships, and flings—finagling his way through the City of Fortune's taverns, markets, shrines, and academies until he could handle himself in a fight, in the sheets, on stage, or in negotiations. This was also when he experienced a catalyzing event: witnessing the famed traveling bard Ruqirt Al-Zeem (aka "Raz the Rambler") perform at the Wandering Star.

Adulthood. Gripped by ambition, at 18 Cannor left Caranacia on a multi-year voyage, singing and strumming through the ancient cities and storied nations further west, from theocratic Emberhaven to cosmopolitan Great Zeyira, from the archaic Hundred Islands to austere Sanduzca, City of Balance. His shortest version of that story is that "it was a great plan until it wasn't." He fell in love with wayward Yedalari acolyte (and eventual semi-divine "Queen of Revels") Apertumina of Labri, and the trip soon soured into disaster, throwing him in with traders, fanatics, smugglers, acolytes, slaves, pirates, caravans, and troupes before ending in a Sanduzcan dungeon thousands of miles south and worlds away from home. After rotting there for a year, Cannor escaped with a fellow prisoner, the Schismastic apostate and Ovalansi warrior Suvarro Egir, eventually returning to Caranacia by his late 20s and re-establishing himself as "The Lost Singer."

Recent Events. Recruited by the Equiposium (Caranacia's academy of diplomacy and espionage), at 32 he continued performing as a cover for intrigue high and low among the city's movers, shakers, guilds, and gangs. The power and privilege went to his head, and after too many conflicting clients and tangled affairs—most explosively with the ambitious noble scion Esadora de Errocamesi, niece of his Equiposian spymaster Regina de Atraveisa—Cannor caused several simultaneous diplomatic crises, and was banished from Caranacia. With Esa's help he eluded capture, landing in the distant backwater of Saithaaven, and at 37 is getting ever more desperate to repay that debt and regain his independence, and someday return to his adopted home city.

Nua-to-Faerun Parallels: The Naransi city of Caranacia, Cannor's adopted hometown, is a sort-of medieval Iberian/Al-Andalus-esque civilization in my homebrew world. It's sort of the Barcelona to its two sister cities Narancia (faux-Cordoba) and Enancia (faux-Gibraltar). In Faerun it most easily becomes Baldur's Gate—and its Equiposium is a handy stand-in for the Harpers. Cannor's current location, Saithaaven (Seven Harbors), is much more of a Celtic-Teutonic mashup a bit like medieval London or, in Faerun, probably the chaotic frontier settlement of Luskan. Regardless, he was unhappily stuck in the dangerous sticks.

BG3 Notes: Before being captured by the Nautiloid, Cannor was scheming ways to get back into Baldur's Gate. He plays original songs, so he doesn't get many gigs and had despaired of gaining enough fame to return home. He was chased by Karlach, seduced by Lae'zel, and kissed by Shadowheart, but fell hard for Minthara—both physically and emotionally, and was obsessed with helping her escape the cult (to the bewilderment of his companions). Her value of loyalty above all else, even power, was ultimately what hooked him—but her contemptuous disdain for the Harpers didn't hurt. Neither did her beauty, of course.

As for the other companions and followers, Cannor respected Aylin like an elder sister for umpteen reasons, and related to Jaheira's resigned ambivalence about the Harpers. He empathized with Gale and Astarion. He tolerated Minsc and Wyll and steered well clear of Mizora. Oh, and he fucking loathes Volo. After the events of BG3, Cannor found himself involved with yet another strikingly compelling noble (Minthara), and yet another overly-ambitious scheme (taking over the city with her, from the inside out). It would require some artful tact and deft dealing, but he wouldn't have it any other way.

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

Just throwing all the 5e books up here, and the other editions, since that was like 90% of requests last time. The further into PF2e we go the weirder we get, and you start getting things like the wereboar and more original dragons.

Now that I've found confirmation that Kobold Press is fine with people reading/showing the contents of thier books on streams and videos and such, I feel comfortable using them here. Speaking of which, I'm combining thier books because I ran out of options and like...come on. They're going to need all the help they can get in this vote.

Bright side for those into things other than D&D, all the 5e ones are short and there should be room for more off the wall options afterward

EDIT: I know it probably doesn't seem fair that D&D has its vote split between 80% of the options. But D&D consistently gets 70-80% of the votes when we run polls, so it's a lot more fair than you'd think.