Search results

Modern torches made of fabrics and kerosine-type fuels are vastly less hazardous and than the medieval standard or random cloth dipped in pine tar / resin. That stuff is nasty. Burning tallow is gross too. It's like carrying your own personal grease-fire everywhere you go - best for use in very...

Make a Charisma (Intimidation or Animal Handling) check to scare off the beast. You have Advantage for wielding fire. :D

Back in my day the Magic-User cast "Light" on a rock and we liked it, son. If we survived the first couple of encounters with some kobolds we might even save up enough for a lantern. You kids today with your alchemists fire and your sunrods and your VHS cassette tapes. :P The original "large...

Large natural caverns with plenty of ventilation? Sure. Medieval crypts, castles, and dungeons? Not so much. Viking helmets with horns come to mind. ;) True, but they are also plastic, just saying. Sure, you just can't carry all that many of them. They'd also cause the stereotypical...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQZqbGME5HY (skip to 4:00 if you want the breakdown on torches in dungeon chambers) It's pretty cool to learn about the difference between what Hollywood tells you (string mail, studded leather armor, dungeon torches) and how not to kill yourself. It's just a...

I disagree. I still remember the old days of the Greyhawk supplements and whatnot where you had to deal with actual money-changers charging adventurers a vig for the privilege of turning their ancient coins etc. for "legal" currency you could use in the realm. The system's concerned itself with...

Oh, goodness no! Modern governments were cutting down / getting rid of the precious metals in coins even before they started eliminating the Precious Metal Standards for backing said currency. What you're talking about with coins made of mundane metals with worth set by the government is Fiat...

Let's face it, the "Dragon Horde" motif of giant shiny coins is artistic license that's been taken to an extreme that's become a trope cliche unto itself - like pirate chests the size of footlockers filled with gold coins the size of which would have to weight 1-2 pounds each, long swords...

You just replace all the GP values with SP. Everything starts to make much more sense. I also prefer realistic GP coins - thin, dime-sized coins like the Solidus. D&D just has no grip on the scarcity of gold or how much it actually weighs. If you made a golf ball out of solid gold it would weigh...

One of the best things 13th Age did was their treatment of Dimension Door and Teleport. Dimension Door is a 5th level spell. Teleport is a 9th level spell and affects the whole party. No other economy-and-tactics destroying sacred-cow conjuration nonsense is baked into the system by default...

And that's the lie at the heart of the matter. Folks paid for exactly what was delivered. The seller simply charged too much. - Marty Lund

Implementing a Knight class is more trouble than it is worth. There's never been an implementation as a stand-alone class the really satisfied more than a particular niche of people. If you build the knight as a mounted combat specialist you've created a niche class. You run into the "can't...

Joe Dever isn't so much "out of touch" as he's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized age," to steal a phrase from Star Wars. He's a fantasy author from 1970s and 1980s Britain. He was a D&D tournament champion in the early 80s. His adventure books were my gateway into the world of RPGs...

There's little sense in retaliating against the PCs for not taking a plot device / hook / cookie. The artifact was proven dangerous and they didn't take it for themselves. They destroyed it so it can't tear holes in the fabric of reality and breach the cosmic barriers between the Material and...

If you're on a Kindle so you have access to free compilations of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Your homework assignment for the next week is to read "the Call of Cthulu," "The Shadow over Innsmouth," and "the Dunwich Horror." They are all short stories, so it isn't going to kill* you. If you...

I just treat it as if wood elves have (super)natural camouflage that allows them to blend in with foliage in a way that other faces couldn't. Grog the Half-Orc isn't fooling anyone behind that lamp post, but it doesn't matter anymore because Legolandir just sniped you from the ficus in the...

I hand out exhaustion to people when they'd logically have incurred some sort of lingering injury I don't have an otherwise clear mechanic for. Usually being dragged from death's door (one bad die roll away from death) after a critical hit or contracting some particularly nasty disease that's...

Tempting ... very tempting ... at a 50% flash sale you'd have me at "Hello." At $250 - $75 = $175 ... I'm talking it over with my players to see if we want to take up a collection to help defray some of the costs. - Marty Lund

I took up the idea of using exhaustion to reflect lingering infirmity from things like near-death experiences, torture, etc. We had a player go down from a bugbear critical hit and miss two death saves before the encounter ended. He got a level of exhaustion described as a painful back injury...

i always insist on my players making open rolls and make sure we don't use any of those those silly "spin down" dice with all the high numbers on one half of the d20. Dice with improper sides can be manipulated for favorable trends by putting backspin on them when you roll like most players do...