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Apocalypse World was deliberately written to be a narrative game with Vincent Baker explicitly stating "The entire game design follows from “Narrativism: Story Now” by Ron Edwards." And among those who enjoy narrativist games it is incredibly influential and generally a favourite of those who do...

I just thought I'd go through the 5e classes to see what were the best representations of the archetype and power fantasy of the class any edition had had. Barbarian. This one goes to 5e in a comfortable walk. Honestly no one likes the 1e thing, the 3.0 and 3.5 ones were just angy fighters. And...

Recently, largely I think thanks to the normally reliable Shannon Applecline, the idea that 4e Essentials should be counted as a separate edition has started to gain traction. I thought I'd have a look into the subsequent published books to see what happened if we treat 4e and Essentials as...

Just thought I'd do a bit of work breaking the Playtest 7 Warlock's Invocations down into groups to see what could be built. And there seem to be some pretty clear groups and themes. Ignoring the starting two pacts and Witch Sight (because of the level 15 prerequisite) there seem to be half a...

This is the complex one. They're having another bite at Wild Shape. Uses statblocks not templates You know 2+ Druid level/2 (rounding up) forms - so no dumpster diving through the MM in play. A decent compromise Gain THP equal to your druid level when you wildshape (I see this pleasing no one -...

I can't say I'm unhappy to see the monk lose Weapon Mastery as it was already tangled - and what it gets is mostly good. And using Dex for trip and push is just a nice QOL improvement. The big thing is the improved bonus actions. Now a level 2 monk can unarmed attack, dash, or disengage as a...

New video. Barbarians drop brutal critical and go larger than life with multiple reckless options. Circle of the Moon gets their wildshape spells listed because no one can remember what an Abjuration spell was.

The cleric has three fundamental problems as a class. The first is that there are basically no fictional clerics outside near-explicit D&D fiction that match D&D clerics. The second is that their holy spellcaster schtick is pressed on from all sides by people who do it better. And the third is...

I've just realised by looking at Blade Ward that the restriction to cast Shield (like Blade Ward) is much more effective than I thought. It's V, S - but crucially not M. So a paladin can't cast it using their holy symbol; the only way to cast it with a shield if you normally have either a weapon...

They're trying to give it an identity! Innate sorcery as well as metamagic, so the sorcerer is the one who overpowers themselves. And a class-cantrip that now has explosive d8s is fun (the d6 in the previous iteration wasn't enough). They also know a few extra spells - but the two left in have...

That's a massive improvement! There's a little cool stuff that got dropped. Mostly flexible stat casting. There's also some stuff that wasn't fixed that should have been (here come the single level dips). Also Armour of Shadows remains awful for a class that can already wear light armour. And...

And with that the two genuinely bad ideas of OneD&D have been eliminated. Homogenisation was not a good thing. And I'm looking forward to the more invocations promised.

So I've been complaining for a while, but decided to run some numbers on the warlock combat experience and it was even worse than I thought. Essentially my calculations showed that from levels 1-10 (i.e. where statistics show 90% of the game is played): It is almost never worth casting a spell...

Edit: I've made a more detailed and interesting proposal later in the thread - short version: Recharge and even casting are subclass dependent and only kick in at level 3 at all. If recent discussions of the Warlock have made one thing clear, it's that a lot of people have a lot of very...

Just realised the barbarian doesn't have a dedicated thread. Weapon mastery is a straight buff for the barbarian (and two weapons are enough). Barbarians with push, topple, or cleave are going to be fun. And only slightly nerfed with the GWM nerf. Primal knowledge in exchange for pushing back...

The warlock lost their pact magic to become a half-caster like the paladin and the ranger. This of course makes the game less interesting and the warlock a lot blander. It also means that the warlock's role as the newbie spellcaster (or indeed any sort of primary spellcaster alternative) has...

The core problem with the fighter and the barbarian is that they do not scale. A level 1 melee fighter moves at 30' per round and swings a sharpened piece of metal hard and fast at an enemy within reach. A level 20 fighter by contrast moves at 30' per round and swings a sharpened piece of metal...

Well this one is the controversial part. Changes include: Wildshape uses your personal hit points rather than being ablative armour It's no longer a near mandatory ability; there are two other Channel Nature options. One of which is Find Familiar and the other healing. You get one statblock (or...

In another thread @Reynard talked about Generic vs Bespoke systems, and I thought I'd spin that off onto what makes a system "bespoke" and ensures that you can only play a game in that style and can't drift it. Now clearly most games can be drifted and some games have a design that works against...

WotC have hired literally hundreds of developers for D&D beyond and boasted of a 3d virtual tabletop. I'm unclear that a 3d VTT would be my first choice for D&D - but I can see why it's the first choice for Hasbro. If WotC make one with a decent library of 3d art assets it's going to make every...