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I'm planning ahead a little in my campaign, and am probably about to have a few villains who use living NPCs as catspaws and spies. They pick a living innocuous humanoid (a washerwoman, an orphan, a traveler, a beggar), put a loyal ghost in their head, and then the ghost comes back later with...

My players, stay out! I'm writing a fifthcore adventure (do a google search for fourthcore, but in brief: METAL!!! in aesthetic, difficult in challenge, tournament-style in sensibility) for my players. I'm targeting 6 players at 13th level, and putting together a "beyond deadly" boss monster...

I'm about to use my first dragon(s) in my home campaign, and I thought I'd talk a little about how I'm tricking them out to increase their solo threat. I've seen the new Hobbit movie. I want them to be unabashed city smashers, eventually, but more than that: I want them to be, well, dragony...

5e doesn't have great support for substandard equipment, nor for gear that is not ruggedized for the Adventuring Lifestyle. Let's fix that as unobtrusively as possible :-) We'll hook into the rules on "breaking an item" from the DMG and on the rules about "PC lifestyle" from the PHB. Every...

(Maybe this belongs in Homebrew? Not sure!) One of the characters in my 5e campaign is a drow wild sorceror. The party has been doing a lot of (daytime) wilderness adventuring. The player and I are both getting a bit bored of him always rolling everything with disadvantage. So: here are some...

As everyone has learned by now (it's in 5Basic!), charm person received a few nerfs in 5e in order to limit its combat usefulness. However, the 5e PHB includes a new-to-me spell, crown of madness. As far as I can tell, this is the in-combat substitute: It's slightly, but not exaggeratedly...

Based on Sztany's post here: As suggested, read "use every trained skill" should be "use 4 trained skills"; use every maneuver/class ability should be "use more than half of your maneuvers/class abilities". I'd been kicking around a similar idea; some additional ideas include: - Trigger a...

Not the biggest problem, but still. I don't like having an XP budget to fill from various monsters, who are each also listed with a level. It's mostly because I can't easily do the math in my head -- there's no quick "5 players of level 7 means 350 points worth of monster" equivalence I can do...

Sorry to fork threads, kerleth! I was reading the Stealth, Spot, and Listen thread and realized that it's a bit echo-chambery, because everyone has a strongly held opinion of how this should work, but it's kind of hard to keep all the different designs straight. At least for me. So: poll! No...

Dungeons and Dragons has always had a character building -- maybe even character optimization -- minigame. I hate it, and always have. So there's my agenda: I will gladly sacrifice free choice at chargen time for fast, meaningful and simple choices. What Next has done to simplify chargen is...

Full, flame-retardant disclosure: I'm a complete and utter f4nboy, but a little disappointed in the actual books-as-products, as opposed to the design of the game. I've heard the complaints before; lo, I've made them myself. 4e is too combat-heavy. It's killing roleplaying (forego, I beg of...

Inspired by all the other "Here's my new campaign idea", here's my slice of Clive-Barker-Knockoff. Comment, throw rocks, steal for yourself (all I ask is attribution if you make money!), edit my wiki. Hook: Starfall. Three hundred years ago, the world of Man was shaken when the heavens opened...

I'm great with minions: a class of portable scenery makes a lot of sense to me. But there are some monsters which are relatively craven as I imagine them -- your bog-standard goblin or kobold, for instance, shouldn't be much of a menace against a stalwart human armed with a torch or a pitchfork...

I was going to threadjack someone else with a thought that I had, but then realized that, even as rare an event as 'having a thought' is, I should be polite ;) How to make D&D 4th Edition a Grittier Game: What is grit? I think it's a game where lives are cheap, combat brutal, and death common...

I don't (think) I have any information you guys don't, so this is pure conjecture. Please, join in and conject with me! What's going to happen for status effects? We 'know' that level drain, stat drain, and so on are gone, and that there doesn't seem to be a condition track to replace them...

I know that playtesters can't identify themselves without breaking NDAs. I'm not asking them to. Have your friends become more furtive? Do they obsessively watch the mail, waiting for a package which they never show you? Do they say things, minor slips of the tongue, that later show up in a...

Hi! This is the story of the men and women and other of Crystalwatch, Sharn's Very Special Crimes unit (I hadn't read City of Towers yet :lol: ). This is a story of valor and humility, and of dreadful ends and humble beginnings. It's about the human condition, and the inhuman condition, and the...

I think the cleric and druid are both overpowered, and besides which, they don't do exactly what I want them to. The obvious fix, of course, is to smack them over & over again until they're shaped right. I also have no qualms about rewriting d20-- but I'd like to run this by you guys, since...

Hi everyone. I took a brief look around, and didn't see anything that matched this topic, and it's been brewing around in my head for a little while, so: Why are creature statistics determined by their type? By this I mean to ask, why do all humanoids get a d8 hit die, 3/4 BAB, and so forth...

For busy people: Please change my login to "lackhand", which is already taken! [ulp!] For everyone else: Hi, everyone! I'm a long time lurker, first time poster-- and I mean *long* time; I've been reading enworld since before 3rd ed came out, but something finally made me register: the...