Recent content by Jeff Carlsen

I don't think my method is an accurate reflection of reality. Arrows are fairly sturdy. But it's simple and generally believable, which is enough. I've even considered reversing the rule, allowing you to recover all arrows that miss, but you lose all that hit. While I find it less believable...

This is how I do it as well. If you miss, your arrow flies off into the forest and is lost, or breaks against the dungeon wall. Otherwise, you can collect it. It keeps the bookkeeping to the same moment as the attack.

I wouldn't assume that they'll keep releasing settings at the recent rate. Demand for settings might be fairly sated by the recent releases, though I still think a Planescape book would be a good idea, and there's still no quality book on the Forgotten Realms. Instead, the release schedule will...

I suspect monsters don't get save proficiency very often to ensure that monsters fail saves more often than players. Exceptions are made only when that extra high defense is a significant part of the monster. Personally, I'm content with that, as it's one fewer thing to check when running monsters.

With streaming and podcasts being an ever-growing part of the community, I think we'll see a trend toward games designed to play well to an audience. Streamlined rules, easy adjudication, flavorful key abilities, etc. Basically, rules that only show themselves on stream when they're doing...

I do not favor boxed text in the form of a verbose description intended to be read to the players verbatim, set apart from the room description through typography. I tend to skip over it when I run a publish adventure, then find trouble when important details are in the boxed text and not...

Spell components are important to me, and I would like to have material components revisited to be a more tangible resource again, but one that isn't too laborious to track. But I'd be happy to be rid of the schools of magic as they currently exist. Instead of 8 broad and vague schools, I'd...

I think answering this question effectively requires defining what high level D&D is supposed to look like, something I don't think has ever been done effectively. Each group is left to kind of define it for themselves, but the one thing that's consistant is that none of it's mundane. Whether...

I think the Paragon Path and Epic Destiny of 4e was a broadly good idea. When you enter a new major tier of play, you make a choice that defines your character for that tier. For 5e, having such a decision to make around 10th or 11th level would be good. At that point the game becomes much...

Agreed. I would likely only do "all rolls" if it were intended for me alone. Though, to be fair, advantage is only ever applied to attacks, saves, and ability checks. But your core point stands. Taken too far can harm clarity or end up omitting valuable details. It's a difficult skill to...

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this sort of thing myself, especially after spending some time with the Mothership RPG and The Hole in the Oak which focus a lot of terse, evoctive writing and thoughtful formatting. In the example below, in which I've taken some liberties, I focused on a...

I'd like to see a PHB as a minor, backward compatible revision that pulls in some of the better ideas from Xanathar's and the like. For the Monster Manual and DMG, I'm open to more substantial revision, as these are toolkits for adventure building and can always be improved.

For spells, we use Order when referring to levels in character. But I agree with the premise of reducing the number of levels, since the difference between levels is pretty arbitrary except when it comes to damage output. I'd go with four spell levels, one for each tier of play. That seems like...

Yes, and I like them very much. I'm imagining something similar, but with a larger scope, more adventures, and over a larger range of levels.

I'd love to see a collection of well-written small adventures centered around and branching from a single town. Something that lays a solid foundation for sandbox play without too much of an overarching plot (though a little is welcome).