Recent content by I'm A Banana

Okay, let's dig in. Arcana Cleric My estimation of the SCAG subclass was that it was fine, but a little underwhelming. The revision is overall good, with one fairly glaring exception. An interesting choice here in the revision is to focus the subclass less around "otherworldly creatures" -...

Usually about 3 rounds. My PC's in this group aren't really optimizers, and don't play D&D to make number go up big, so "challenge" can be defined as "one PC dropped to 0 hp!" and it's fine. They're there for narrative, and fights here are like musical numbers - moments of feelings so dramatic...

It's kind of my default setup. Moment-to-moment, it's mostly just reacting to the players' actions. I'll usually have some sense of a big threat I want them to face, and three-act-structure it into place from wherever the PC's are. One big monster (CR = PC level, +1 or 2) works best. Works...

Heck. Yes.

Not exactly. At least, not within one combat. Combat before 4e was a very fast thing. 3e had its infamous rocket tag, but even 2e and 1e had fragile characters and big, swingy effects (often spells) that could make or break a fight in a single round. And healing happened between fights, not...

Like Flesh to Stone. One of the things I'm fond of in 5e's sabateur design is that they do use a diversity of approaches. But, really, the trouble here is that you want your encounters to have a certain kind of narrative punch that D&D is OK with encounters NOT having. Fundamentally, that is a...

There's an interesting design methodology worth exploring here. D&D is a game that blends narrative and gameplay. You can roll a 1 on a death save, you can get hit with a bunch of crits, you can whiff for a whole night, you can fall off a cliff and die, you can get mind controlled or...

I think there's a difference in design philosophy that can lead to different results here. Is the method to look at a spell, imagine if it makes sense for a psion, and if so, add it? Or is the method to curate a specific list of evocative spells that might be a bit more narrow, but that...

It'll be interesting to see where they put this. Dark Sun is a possibility, but also not a requirement. I don't imagine it'll be part of FR or Eberron, but it could just be an independent product (here's a book with the psion and a bunch of psionics). Could also be something a little fresh...

I could see it being an alternate species trait. Maybe swapping out Luck or Brave, though you might need a bit more oomph than just telepathy... (psychic resistance? maybe the 'telepathic' wilder feat from the new psion?). Maybe you just say "ghostwise halflings can select telepathy in place of...

Kill the Fighter. Distribute its remains to the classes that are left.

It's definitely a cool aesthetic. The subclass features revolve around illumination, natch. Your lantern reveals invisible creatures. You get free castings of Spiritual Weapon and Clairvoyance. You can make your lantern flare to deal some radiant damage & blind. Pact spells revolve around...

One way to thread this particular needle is to give all warlords medium or light armor and make heavy armor something that particular subclasses get. I think the overall warlord class has a bit of an issue with identity (in that fighters and bards are both very good narrative substitutes), but...

One of the things to understand about this setting is that it's not trying to recreate a Ghibli movie exactly. It has little interest in presenting deep crunch to dramatically change D&D's core loop. It wants to be Ghibli-flavored D&D, and it leans into that. This is not a disappointing...

I think the biggest obstacle to this is less the superiority dice design and more the fundamental friction with non-magical healing. If you add magic to a warlord, you get a bard. If you keep it non-magical, healing wounds is going to be a problem. We'll hit another "Hit Points are purely...