Search results

Advanced Squad Leader? :) Go and try to understand the morale systems in the original Chainmail rules! Cheers!

The fact that the monster stats were massively changed for 5E from the D&D Next playtest led to quite a few weird monster choices in Hoard of the Dragon Queen (which was based on the playtest rules).

The one time it sort of does it is two-weapon fighting. I wonder how many people used that option? Cheers!

People whose muscles twitch faster get rid of paralysation faster, obviously! :) (Yeah, they cared more about the simplification of the template rather than whether the ongoing save made sense).

I'm really tempted to give the standard answer of "They had something that worked, and they changed it to something that didn't work!" But then I had to analyse that first statement. Did the original version work? In the case when you have the effect being Damage + Paralysis, then attack then...

This one irritates me, but it's an invisible error. You're not going to spot it easily. (I pointed this stat block to one of my rules lawyers, and he didn't spot it, despite normally being all over this sort of stuff). It's the stomping obvious ones that really get me going. (Like the...

Not quite sure how this helps. :) The rule is any Dex save fails (regardless of the source) when you are paralysed. Get hit by a fireball spell, fail your save. (And I so need to do that more in my D&D games). So, even when you're saving against poison and not paralysis, because it's a Dex...

Yeah, but you need specific wording to do the overruling. There's nothing here that makes the general rule invalid except that it doesn't make sense. It's pretty clear what has happened. The 2025 MM has been changed so every attack only has one roll (save or attack) to see if it succeeds. So...

And having said that... I then look at Eberron and Strixhaven and go "oh wait, D&D is already doing modern-themed settings". :) Cheers!

More an answer to "What kind of stories?", not medieval specifically. Mistborn and Stormlight feel more like D&D adjacent to me than (say) Alloy of Law. They're more of a late medieval/early modern feel, while Alloy of Law feels more Industrial era. Cheers!

Elden Ring. Brandon Sanderson Cosmere books. (The RPG for which made $15 million on Kickstarter). Baldur's Gate 3. Cyberpunk 2077 But there are wider trends in science fiction and fantasy as well. It's not just based on the top products.

Chaotically, the slaadi DO have it! :) Cheers!

Do you want a horror story? Go look up the Blue Slaad in the new Monster Manual (2025). Where do you look? If you're like me - an old school D&D player - you look under Slaad. (Or Salad, because we still make that joke and it's still funny!) And that's where it is. Great. Now you look up the...

The Githyanki Warrior only has one spell of that type, so it's "2/day". If it had two spells, it'd be "2/day each".

Combine a killer DM with old-school Traveller character generation... "George, are you ready yet?" "No - I'm on my sixth character and I still haven't survived to get to the table!"

No, it really doesn't! But it's bringing it back from the levels of 3E (especially) and 4E. Ditto monster creation. It's a lot more based on DM feel rather than applying complicated formulae. (Consider this review of Monster Manual 3 for 3.5e) It's not 2e, but it's still a bit closer to that...

It's a difficult thing for him to answer since he can't talk about anything they're working on!

Chris Perkins was just on Stan!'s 50 years in the Dungeon YouTube interview series. As part of the interview, Chris was asked about some of the distinguishing feature of previous editions. Here are my paraphrases of his answer: 5E: Designed with the view of what was great about previous...

The biggest trouble it has is just the broader business climate/thinking of the modern era where execs can't handle "not growing" at all. It seems that so much of the thinking leads companies to take huge risks rather than having a stable business.

Forge of Foes and ToV would be my primary sources. Cheers!