Recent content by Amphytrion

There are multiple dragonborn and tieflings in that adventure. Here are some off the top of my head: A tiefling judge; A tiefling orphan, pictured multiple times in the book; A dragonborn bookseller; A dragonborn priestess of Gond. There are probably others.

I've always wanted to do a Phandbox! I imagine you've combined Lost Mines and Icespire Peak, but what else have you put in? Stormwreck Isle? The 4e Neverwinter book? (Sorry, I know this is a bit-off topic. Maybe the Phandbox can be our 5.5 setting?)

I thought this was a blast. The animation is an improvement from Vox Machina, the voice acting is top notch, and every character is captivating on its own. There are some points in which the script is very heavy handed, and that seems to clash with the evidently adult audience this is meant to...

I always assume a Tolkien-leaning pronunciation, which can be approximated by the letter sounds in romance languages and makes them usually very straightforward. English has a very particular extreme case of vowel drift that makes words such as these confusing, but that ambiguity goes away on...

What part? I don’t imagine a lot of it being difficult to replicate. Example: there is a werewolf shaman with some lightning-themed powers. I’d make her a Loup Garou and give her some druid spells that tie to that. The Spelllplague was indeed put to good use in multiple tie-in projects...

The SCAG has a better Races of the Realms chapter for player-facing information on races/species, including blurbs on racial pantheons. It also has a valuable comparable chapter on classes tying them closely to the Sword Coast; and some interesting background ideas. I think that makes the SCAG...

Wanted to say that I read this today and you are very much correct: great adventure with a good mixture of roleplay, mystery, and combat! Thank you for the recommendation; I’ll likely run it next weekend.

Oh, that’s just a change in trigger for a set DC, similar to what they did with hiding. The three attitudes system already existed wholecloth in 2014 and I don’t think anyone reading Dragon Delves without knowledge of the new rules would be confused about it. I thought I had missed a whole...

What new rules be these?

I agree that the books are somewhat sloppy, but I’m not sure I agree that lack of public playtesting was the issue. You can’t really playtest narrative or research, even if the team was just strapped for time. I’m making my way through Adventures of Faerûn, and there’s still quite a lot to...

The authors clearly think that the god’s residence in the plane tell the player something, otherwise they wouldn’t have included it. I checked the 2024 DMG, which has the following to say about it, after stating that gods aren’t bound by mortal concepts of alignment: “That said, gods tend to...

One thing I forgot in my previous post: why does the player-facing book have Home Plane in the gods table? That’s just alignment with extra steps. Interesting that they stuck very closely to the 2e planar allotment for these deities, which in some cases has ceased to make much sense in the...

I finally had a chance to give Heroes of Faerûn a good look yesterday. I haven’t read it cover to cover, but I spent a good time with it. The following is from a DM perspective: Part of me likes the idea of a player-focused book. If this were truly 100% player focused, I would just skip it and...

Bahamut is unmentioned but got an easter egg, I think. His seven gold canaries are eminently noticeable in one of the early pictures, followed by a pegasus. A spirit dragon is nearby. The species section is mostly based on the SCAG text, which hits all the same notes, sometimes using the exact...

5e has tons of quality artwork. I liked the art direction more in its earlier years (2015-2020) because it was more evocative, whereas most material now evokes a very specific tone that doesn’t do anything for me. This is more of a change in art direction than in quality of art, which remains...