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Nah. The 5e marking is fiddly as hell. It's a perfect example of a half-baked variant rule that clearly wasn't thoroughly playtested. I've used it and discarded it after a few sessions. Everyone marks with every attack. It's a nightmare to track. One of the worst variant rules I've tried!

My issue with Paizo's APs is that because they write the books individually, by different authors, the overall adventure path lacks connective tissue. The path is often more like several disjointed roads, created by the same company but by different teams. Also, the structure of publishing...

For 5e? Yeah, I have, and I dislike the process more than I like it. It’s pretty time consuming because if you follow the (until now) default way of doing things, you comb through the spell lists trying to find the right spells that are suitably threatening without possibly making some players’...

Don't wizards already do magic that's not spells? They can get a bunch of magical abilities that don't use spellcasting. I'm thinking of stuff like wizard subclass powers that are magic but not spells.

Earlier you mentioned that you didn’t understand why people would use the PWL variant—this is one of the main reasons. A comfortable band of -1 to +1 creatures is very narrow for the GM to work with. PWL opens up that band to accommodate a larger variety of enemies. A level 1 guard NPC in...

Both Archives of Nethys and PF2 Easy Tools have a toggle for proficiency without level when looking up creatures, so you don’t need a VTT to have the automated experience with the variant. If you want to just create groups of enemies/creatures without having to worry about encounter balance...

It’s definitely the eye of a beast in D&D. It says “eye of a newt”, and not “eye of newt”, and hex is a nasty warlock spell of death, so a nasty component makes perfect sense. Also, it’s not consumed, so it could be an heirloom that you’re carrying around. Now, the real question is how on earth...

I do like the relative simplicity of how 5e and PF2 handle minions or mooks, in that you use creatures of a much lower CR/level, no need to find or create minions. In practice though this seems to only work from lowish to mid levels. Goblins and wolves and cultists are simple enemies in 5e and...

You don’t have to change the 4e ogre’s stats if the group faces them later. There’s actually no official rules in 4e telling you to do that. Minionizing a creature is essentially a house rule. The level 6 ogre doesn’t contribute as a meaningful threat when the PCs are level 12 however, but the...

About 4e vs PF2 movement: I’d lean towards arguing that 4e has more movement overall. There’s way more forced movement in 4e, and more triggered movement from immediate powers. Yes, PF2 doesn’t give everyone opportunity attacks, but the opportunity cost of moving is a bit higher in PF2. Many 4e...

I’d say that it’s typically easier and faster to create an engaging fight in 4e than in 5e, mainly due to monster roles and more interesting monster abilities. However, I will also say that there’s kind of a reduced expectation of a tactically interesting fight in 5e. Like, looking at encounters...

Marking in 4e isn’t a mental thing. It can be that, but it doesn’t have the charm keyword or anything like that. Like most conditions (and hit points) it’s context-specific, and in the fighter’s case marking is part of their physical attacks briefly interfering with the target’s ability to...

Compared to all other editions I’ve played, and to other similar games like Pathfinder, I’d say the one main thing that makes 4e the tactical edition is the amount of off-turn movement. Many abilities will move enemies and allies on the battlefield, much more so than in the other editions or games.

Do you really think that the existing Dragonlance fanbase is big enough to matter in comparison to the possible new fanbase that a modernized relaunch could create? Dragonlance is old and niche these days.

You could do a modern take on Dragonlance with all the new races and classes. To me the draw of Dragonlance has always been the sense of discovery that’s at the forefront of the War of the Lance. It’s almost like a setting somewhere in between Dark Sun (full on post-apocalyptic) and Forgotten...

The history of Dragonlance (soft) reboots is pretty wild if you think about it. The original stuff came out in the mid 80s, but then just a decade later the whole setting is basically uprooted and drastically altered by the Fifth Age stuff. That’s just around ten years of publication history...

Just cap the number of fully functioning heads at triple the starting heads or something. Maybe after a point the new heads that grow are smaller and smaller and eventually just simple nubs that don’t contribute mechanically.

Ever since they had to discontinue the DDI services I’ve missed a 4e stat block template. Can you share the base template you’re using here? Is it easy to just fill in the names and numbers, without having to add in the general features like the action type headings or the ability score names?

Soul canister? Soul bucket? Can?

It's a good improvement on what we have right now. I also did something very similar for a 3.5 game I ran a while back, just to make the creatures faster and easier to reference during play. That said, the lich is a little ridiculous. It's true that an epic enemy like that can be complex, but...