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There has been a lot of discussion on this lately. I assayed rules for my homebrew campaign and doing so seemed to bring a few things to light. Those rules are here Archipelago Character Generation - The Homebrewery. I left in notes in square brackets that affected my design thinking...

Given a goal of transferring racial ASIs traits into class (please avoid debating that goal in this thread) is the following text clear in meaning? Is it robust? Or how might it be misinterpreted? Setting aside any misgivings about the intent, is it mechanically sound? Non-stereotyped All racial...

[EDIT] After starting this thread, I realised what my motivations were as a designer. Looking at floating stat bumps, increased arrays, or extra dice rolls: to me they just feel bland. Racial ability score increase traits are flavourful, and I believe the most successful design would replace...

I noticed this is the recent SA. [NEW] Does casting a spell while taking a short rest interrupt the rest? Yes. Spellcasting is more strenuous than the activities listed on page 186 of the Player’s Handbook: “eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.” So, does casting a spell seem more...

Aren't rests just a game balance rather than advanced rules issue? I believe not, for the following reason. Rests create design space for ability diversity. Without rests, we can't have nice things like rich class designs. Rests let designers create strong abilities that cannot be used every...

A strong contributor to game quality is playtesting. It's also a resource that home groups can't easily replicate, so it's an important part of the value professional design teams can bring to the hobby. Ideally, mechanics are prototyped, white-room tested, and then put into play in a large...

Just to test a concept, what do folk think of this? Gone - racial ability modifiers (e.g. no more +2 Dex for elves or +1 Int for high-elves) Added - after choosing background and class, players distribute 3 points as they like across their abilities, putting no more than 2 points into any...

Does this seem like a good feature? Any obvious bugs or power issues?

For tasks that take time, when is the skill check made? Is it made over that whole duration? Or at the end? Or...? One reason I ask is that in another thread, a few posters suggested that a spell like guidance should not work on a task that takes longer than one minute. Implying that the check...

So... the guidance cantrip. Toward the end of my last campaign the group got pretty tired of it. What, if anything are groups doing about guidance spam? I ask because I am thinking of making it a level 1 spell.

I've been thinking of how the rules - which might be regarded as the practical metaphysics - might play out if earnestly incorporated into the game world. The led to the following notes. In short, given that levelling up yields such tremendous power, it seems to me that society must form around...

My previous thread is here with a few rules relating to the PHB, with an open campaign in mind at a higher than usual difficulty setting. Following up here then are my rules relating to the DMG. Again rules are tested and winnowed down from a much larger set, and again sure not to be to...

By "open campaign" I mean one that spans long stretches of time and distance aka "a living world". I don't mean that a living world is better than any other kind of D&D, only that is what I am interested in. These rules were worked out and playtested over a couple of years... and with critical...

This follows up my earlier thread. For my next campaign I want my players (who have high system mastery) to allocate their scores as rolled. I also want a lower range than in the PHB i.e. nearer 3d6 than 4d6k3. People pointed out the undesirable possibility of overshadowing. Where a player...

I'm kind of expecting no responses! However, as it is my intention to use this method for my next campaign, which will likely run two years, I am interested in listening to any experiences you may have.

In play over the last couple of years my group has hit a lot of relatively minor "bugs" in the game mechanics. Examples for me include druid nature skill (intelligence? expertise in nature based on Druid levels could make sense) or warlock repelling blast (either limiting to one repel per foe...

This came up in last night's session, and conclusions from RAW seemed... interesting... A Mage cast Magic Missile - using a 4th level slot - at a character with about 10 HP remaining. Damage from four missiles was enough to knock that character to dying. Our first question was: do the remaining...

I've been experimenting with a new class feature for Monks, looking at their bonus action contention. So far it seems to work mechanically and is fun to use, but I wonder what it has the potential to break or push over reasonable limits? All feedback really welcome. Refocus Starting at 5th...

Something I like about 5e are the fairly clear fighting modes, with feat support for many of them. What I'm thinking about are fairly straightforward character options such as - MELEE Greatsword/axe + Great Weapon Master: all-out committal to melee weapon damage Longsword/battleaxe + Defense...

Updated 30th Nov. 2018! I'm interested in some feedback on these... guidelines, clarifications or homebrew depending how you see it. They come out of two years running OOTA, where vision questions have been common, critical, and sometimes complicated. One helpful thing I've come to realise is...