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With reach weapons, I was trying to come up with a mechanic that reconciled the advantage of longer weapons when you're trying to close ranks. It's just insanely difficult to safely close ranks with a short weapon vs. long weapon. Flanking, tried the 5E "advantage" optional rule for flanking...

SPELLS [big review here, Emanations worried me, but upon closer reading, pretty much all clarify the foe only saves 1x per round against the spell, meaning they can only be impacted by it once. I adopted Treatmonk's math on Minor Elementals, the most worrisome of all, appreciate...

EQUIPMENT / WEAPONS / SURVIVAL Food requirement (common sense). Medium creatures and higher double food required (e.g. 2 pounds for Medium, 8 for Large). Shields (errata). Require Utilize action to don/doff. Special Materials (separate handout, crafting or purchase). Some...

Resting, “Safe Havens.” (A5E inspired). Exhaustion, Ability Score loss, and Undead drain are not removed unless the Long Rest is at a “Safe Haven,” which is a place to get a meal and full night’s sleep without reasonable risk of attack, or harm from the elements, such as an Inn, but not an...

COMBAT / EXPLORING [Grapple needs a major rules clarification or overhaul...I really like how Treatmonk resolved dragging things through Spike Growth, etc. I totally disagree with Crawford's old Twitter interpretation that you can Grapple and move stuff in excess of your Strength. Makes...

I went over the wisdom of some other DMs, reread my rules, and revised a 2024 House/Errata Ruleset from the previous post, updating rather than starting new posts. PDF, not edits, includes the April 16, 2025 errata release. CHARACTER CREATION [this largely stays the same, errata added for...

Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm helping out on the project. That said... I lean to Bryce Lynch's "Ten Foot Pole" criteria for adventures and MEGO ("my eyes glazed over") flavor text. There's a 2005 WOTC article (archived in criteria comments, Dave Noonan & Jesse Decker) that discusses going...

I can't really give any logical answer because 1000 gaming groups might have 1000 different reasons to do stuff. But OD&D might have encouraged folks to seek out all the rumors and kill every last monster in them: OD&D: As characters meet monsters in mortal combat and defeat them, and when they...

Going with the "downfall of someone who could have been better" because of hamartia (a fatal flaw that leads to the hero's eventual downfall), then I think I've got a player masterfully roleplaying it out in the Dragon Age setting (a morally ambiguous, gritty world) in the most complex of ways...

Whatever this guy is reading....

So 5E (and the battlemap) seem to solve range issues if using ships with guns or siege engines. You can't afford to try and maneuver your caster into range as you'll likely suffer too much damage in the process. I do like the cultural idea. Open flames, especially below decks, are taboo on...

All good stuff, and if using a product like Fire as She Bears (Pathfinder/3.5 but easily compatible), one area of basic rigging has 75 hp (it's going to take a lot of fireballs to destroy one mast's worth), and cannons (or ballistae or highly inaccurate catapults) outdistance casters by a...

My advice: don't script out how your players will react. What if they say "no" to the quest wizard? And why would a demigod need a band of low-level nobodies to do anything for them, other than to giggle in glee when they figure out he's secretly the bad guy? He has an entire religious cult of...

Hehe, Leomund's Many Life Preservers spell...

In setting reason. It's a relatively new item to the region, and while it's catching on, very few have any training or skill to handle black powder, much less afford it. However, I want this to be a campaign impetus: the pirate nation faces an outside threat from [insert big nation that has...

Next campaign is sea-faring, pirates, swinging from the yardarm, wenches and swains and all that good stuff. I'm looking at verisimilitude - spellcasters vs. ships. It feels...anticlimactic....if every battle is simply "wizard fireballs the sails" or something like that. I want to explain why...

Here's all the stuff I worked up for 5E on Savage Tide. We played it halfway.

Yep, thx!

Savage Tide (Dungeon Magazine). I consider it Pathfinder given the writers and nature (a 6-part mega adventure with different writers for each book). My first 5E conversion attempt. Made it halfway with some modified content, and found the village defense satisfying enough of an ending that I...