D&D 5E [Not Suitable For Work] Recommendations for the Next Theme

EP · Jun 18, 2009

Not Suitable For Work (NSFW) is a monthly series of exercises in 4e design sponsored by Emerald Press PDF Publishing. We come up with a theme every month and devise a series of exercises around it for anyone to post here on EN World (and we've also tried on our Facebook page, but no one seems game to post it there). Our current theme for the month is building a tiny race, as you can find on the signature below.

NSFW is open to anyone and is designed for those at work, school, or anywhere else without their books readily available. These are casual exercises made to have fun coming up with crazy, wild ideas - accuracy in content is appreciated, but not required. Once the month is over, we'll take three of the best judged entries and provide them to the gaming public in the next issue of Combat Advantage. All participants receive points towards an Epic Customer status with Emerald Press as well and a chance to have their material published in a free e-zine.

So we're looking for suggestions on upcoming themes. Anything you can think of and they can be very specific or generic but they must be broad enough we can devote a month worth of exercises to them. For example, our first theme in May was darkvision and I'm currently leaning towards using July to build large races. And it must be 4e.

willows · Jun 18, 2009

Urban races? We have two kinds of forest elves and one kind of underground elf, for instance, but no city elves. Two underground dwarves, etc. I think it'd be cool to see races adapted for the densely populated environment of civilization.

Dire Human · Jun 18, 2009

I'd like to see the theme be based around the most underappreciated of 4th Edition's attack modes: nonmagical ranged attacks.

For every dagger-throwing Artful Dodger there's a hundred swordsmen of varying shapes, sizes, and power sources. One out of the three Ranger builds is based around archery, yet there's four flavors of Sorcerer and an ever-growing legion of Warlock pacts to choose from. The Artificer can go his entire career with his crossbow strapped firmly to his hip, and even when he uses it, it's almost always a delivery method for his latest magical contraption.

So here's to the ranged weapons! Light and heavy, martial and superior, from arrow to bolt to simple skipping stone- you may be neglected, but you're not forgotten.

malcolm_n · Jun 18, 2009

nonstandard monsters as PC's. How quickly can you get yours to resemble the actual race and can you do it before level 10?

pdmiller · Jun 20, 2009

Two things of interest to me are not covered too well in 4e: Mounted Combat and firearms. I have worked up my own firearms rules and equipment, and I'm working on a musketeer character class. I realise that this is a niche that most Fantasy gamers don't need to fill... however I would really like to see some good rules, feats, powers etc for mounted combat (and non-combat situations).

EP · Jun 20, 2009

malcolm_n said:
nonstandard monsters as PC's. How quickly can you get yours to resemble the actual race and can you do it before level 10?

I know this one in particular interests me and I've always been disappointed in monster PCs. That was one of the beauties of 3e and one of my players swears up and down by his minotaur. Still, I'm curious to see what they fix when the minotaur becomes an official race next year.

malcolm_n · Jun 20, 2009

Technically, it's a real and playable race now through DDI; although, it's still very heavily weighted as a melee race. If the warforged in the EPG is any evidence, we'll get the same thing in PH3.

In any case, I'd really like to throw in my lot on that topic, as I can see a lot of us here could come up with options that work.

77IM · Jun 23, 2009

I'd like to see some rules for more exotic terrain. Something more interesting than "when you step in this square, make a skill check or something bad happens to you."

E.g. conveyor belts, elevators, teleporter pads, rooms with multi-directional gravity, and of course a swinging rope bridge.

Developing rules for these sounds easy, but making the rules both playable and interesting can be very hard. Coming up with creative exotic terrain is even harder!

-- 77IM

EP · Jun 24, 2009

77IM said:
I'd like to see some rules for more exotic terrain. Something more interesting than "when you step in this square, make a skill check or something bad happens to you."

E.g. conveyor belts, elevators, teleporter pads, rooms with multi-directional gravity, and of course a swinging rope bridge.

Developing rules for these sounds easy, but making the rules both playable and interesting can be very hard. Coming up with creative exotic terrain is even harder!

-- 77IM

Also very cool. We could probably come up with some crazy ones.

Aramax · Jun 30, 2009

77IM said:
I'd like to see some rules for more exotic terrain. Something more interesting than "when you step in this square, make a skill check or something bad happens to you."

E.g. conveyor belts, elevators, teleporter pads, rooms with multi-directional gravity, and of course a swinging rope bridge.

Developing rules for these sounds easy, but making the rules both playable and interesting can be very hard. Coming up with creative exotic terrain is even harder!

-- 77IM

Could not agree with this more.