Recent content by Dausuul

My group has been doing potions as a bonus action for a while (well before 2024), and it has been a significant improvement. Potions get used a lot more and it's fun to pull them out. Now, I should emphasize that we routinely ramp up encounter difficulty way beyond the official guidelines...

(Caveat: Psychological research is devilishly hard to interpret correctly, often does not generalize, and also often can't be reproduced.) https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/are-consumers-turned-too-many-choices-not-yet The gist of it is this: If someone's approach is "First I'll decide...

I don't think it makes sense to hire hundreds of new people to work on the tabletop game. Maybe a dozen or so, even twenty, but there's only so much you can profitably invest in any given product; after that you're just lighting money on fire. TSR illustrated that vividly. (Mind you, that era...

As far as I'm concerned, a hit is a hit. It may only leave a scratch, but it connects. First, it's incredibly asinine to use the words "hit" and "miss" to describe mechanics and then say that, well, actually, a hit is usually a miss. Second, there's the issue of rider effects like poison and...

And this:

Warlocks are on the weaker side as classes go. If they're going to have extra RP restrictions, they should come with corresponding RP benefits; "you get to keep using your class abilities like classes stronger than you can do without any hassle" does not count. Only two other classes face such...

My ideal, though implementation is challenging, is "roll for circumstances." In other words: Action resolution is handled through a mix of roleplay and deterministic rules. You either have the skill to open a given lock, or you don't. The dice then tell you what complications you have to deal...

Pretty sure that's not true for any modern military. Human soldiers are expensive. You have to train them, equip them, feed and house them, care for them when they get blown up or shot. Meanwhile, drones can be built cheaply and quickly and in enormous numbers, as Ukraine is demonstrating, and...

WotC didn't make Beyond. They bought it. And games in development count for absolutely nothing. Arena is their one and only big success, set against a backdrop of failure after failure after failure.

Sam Altman is head of a company engaged in a race with half a dozen rivals, where the cost of competing is measured in the hundreds of billions. I assume that every single word out of his mouth is aimed at maximizing the amount of money he can get investors to pump into his company. Some of...

Oh, absolutely. The market responds to the incentives it's given by us, the viewing public*, and all the incentives right now point to "get a franchise, milk it dry, look for another." That's why I sorta-kinda want to embrace the notion of getting up in arms when roles are recast (including...

Part of me agrees with this sentiment. But another part of me is like... I'm tired of how everything is franchises and remakes and reboots and dragging out every beloved old IP until the last drop of blood has been wrung from its mutilated carcass. And recasting roles is overwhelmingly in...

Another executive hire from the tech industry. Sigh.

This is the "horde" spell I designed for a homebrew Necromancer subclass, using Summon Undead as a starting point and modifying heavily. (Not yet high enough level to cast it, but I look forward to testing it when the campaign gets there. I expect there will be a lot of balance tweaking with the...