Recent content by Ath-kethin

The 2nd Edition AD&D psionics system was based originally on the proficiency system; each time a character used a power they had to make a check. Each power also included two variant effect: one for perfect success and one for catastrophic failure. We ran many games back in the day that used...

The 5e approach to wizards (and really the entire WotC-era approach to wizards) attempts to downplay the advantage of a high Intelligence in favor of more general utility. In post editions, a properly prepared wizard (that is, one willing and able to research a situation ahead of time and...

Combat has been just about the least interesting part of D&D to me for going on 30 years now. Rolling dice is exciting, but long drawn out battles are not. And the ejection of morale rules from the main rules set makes combat more likely to be lethal in nature, which I find ridiculous. Most...

I can run a D&D game with only a single player too; I've been doing it here and there for almost 30 years. And requiring silver as a focus/component of casting magic (which is a conceit of the series if you aren't familiar with it) isn't a difficult change to make either. It would be nice to...

My start as a DM was with Dragonlance, and I could never quite make it work to my satulisfaction. The Weis & Hickman novels and metaplot are so ingrained in that setting (at least in my mind) that any campaign seems either blasphemous or insignificant next to them. Taladas has some real...

I'm not a fan of racial ability score modifiers or mins/maxes in any event. I have no problem keeping the max mortal ability score as 20, removing the racial adjustments, and just providing guidelines (i.e., 'most halflings have Strength scores below 16 due to their small stature'). This...

I'm another Theater of the Mind GM. If I want to play a board game I have my old HeroQuest set from the 90s ready to go. In my experience the game board makes players think very two-dimensionally, unless you have the cash to include terrain features, walls, etc. Giving the players something to...

Fiend is in the SRD too. These numbers are always interesting, but I hesitate to draw too many conclusions from then. They only reflect D&D Beyond users, after all, and many of us have still never even used it.

This is such an obvious solution it blows my mind that people don't think of it first. I've been running 1 on 1 games (often with a DMPC but often without) for over 25 years and the answer is ALWAYS "adjust to the group."

Healing in 5e is easy to but I don't find it to be a huge issue. In fact, I like designing tough encounters, and easy healing helps make those work. Also, it allows me to focus on encounters that can't be overcome just by having a lot of HP. FWIW, I give PCs max HP at every level too, and all...

I don't care about metaplots, but I think there's something often overlooked in the big metaplot changes: they are most often the result of edition changes, and an in-game means of explaining the resulting changes. Forgotten Realms had a big RSE going from 1e to 2e. Dragonlance didn't but...

Everybody in our group gets a point of Inspiration every session. I expect a high level of engagement and roleplaying from my groups anyway, and just having it be a regular thing both helps us remember it. This method also effectively always allows a player to take narrative control on a...

I made a whole chain of feats that provided increased access to spells, higher level spells, and spell slots for my Primeval Thule campaign. Each had the previous as a prerequisite and it topped off at 6th level spells. Playtests went well enough, but I should stress that I didn't allow any...

A great suggestion I read once was that room descriptions should be no longer than two sentences. I think that's a good rule of thumb. I'm inclined to break that rule only if the description is meant to convey more than just the surroundings. For example, flowery language can be appropriate to...

My introduction to D&D was Dragonlance; in fact, the first I ever heard of D&D was when a friend's mother wouldn't let him read my Chronicles omnibus because of its association with the game. Thanks to those books, and other works by Weis & Hickman, alignment has always made sense to me and I...