Recent content by Kurotowa

In art, rules are made to be broken. You see it in all the great works. The key is to break them in intentional and calculated ways, rather than clumsy and ignorant ones. That difference is the difference between blazing a new trail and wandering off a cliff.

Here's your first major decision gate for a surface drow: Are you there by choice or by necessity? A drow on the surface by choice might be philosophically opposed to the dominant drow culture and seeking alternatives. They might have left seeking something that can't be found at home, such as...

The bugbear sounds like overkill. What will 15ft reach do that 10ft reach won't? I'd only do it if I had a really solid idea for a bugbear PC. Between Fighter and Paladin, it's a toss up. Given how short my recent campaigns have been I might lean towards the Fighter just to have a hope of...

Thematically there's a niche for Sorcerers. They form a trinity with Wizard and Warlock of learned power, borrowed power, and inborn power. The big question is if there's a mechanical niche for Sorcerer that's both distinct from the other two and still robust enough to support an entire class...

Your attempts to delegitimize people you disapprove of are becoming unsightly. They're not honestly held opinions shaped by cultural events, they're "ravings". It's not an opinion shared by a large number of players and expressed across multiple platforms, it's a "twitter mob". If you have a...

Well, it really begs the question what a Love domain should be about, doesn't it? At least traditionally, marriage rites are paired with a deity of family, home, and hearth. Love is more often associated with passion, fertility, and art. The two barely overlap. So on the one hand, I'd really...

It was never officially released. Someone on reddit was guessing URLs based on the previous article and found the PDF link. They weren't ready to push this one public yet, possibly because they weren't happy themselves with the current draft of some of these. So it's no surprise that they've...

An interesting suggestion from Reddit for the Beast Barbarian is a slight reskin with more vampire flavor. You've got claws, a life draining bite, the ability to skitter across the walls and ceiling, and can spread your blood rage to enemy and ally alike. It's a great mechanical foundation for...

I draw a distinction between "Exists as a player option" and "Exists as a common and well known part of the setting that helps shape events and NPC attitudes". This distinctions exists because I consider PCs to be inherently exceptional. They're rare talents, people marked by destiny...

I think it's inherent to the fan-ish mindset. It makes you feel like you belong, but it's easy to fall into thinking that means it belongs to you. I've seen the same thing happen with comic book fans, TV and movie fans, sports team fans, wargaming fans... you name a fandom, I'm sure you can find...

Quite probably true, for certain values of "we". People who read and post to D&D forums? Maybe not. But it's good to eat a slice of humble pie and remember that not only are forum goers not a majority of players, we're not even a representative sample. Some voices are louder than others and...

My preferred replacement metaphor is a tossed salad. Everything gets mixed together in new and interesting ways, but while retaining more of their individual nature than a melting pot implies.

While I'm hungry for those too, I think March is too soon. A March book needs to be in final editing and layout by now. I think the UA subclasses are due a secret draft release first, and almost certainly won't all be in a setting branded book.

I'm not particularly hung up on identifying it as specifically the "Be the Nameless One" subclass. Fiction is full of heroes back from death, or the verge of it. The Crow, Ghost Rider, the Bride from Kill Bill, the recent fad for reincarnation stories in anime, the list goes on. But I make it a...

In concept, I like the idea of making it a subclass. It gives you room to put mechanical weight and game abilities behind it, and that makes it more real. More earned. If it's just a plot point in your background it's just chuuni posturing about how amazingly awesome you are even though you're...