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I've recently run across Cortex Prime and find it a very interesting system. Basically, it strikes me as a crunchier, more granular version of Fate, and since my group loves Fate, it seems like a good match. I've read the Prime handbook a couple times and I've also read Tales of Xadia and...

In the "Why oh why" thread, I commented that while ChatGPT doesn't currently seem able to run a game, it could really shine as a GM aid. I decided to give it a try by asking it to give me an adventure seed, and ended up creating the premise of an entire bizarre campaign world! I'll grant that...

Inspired by the What Licensed RPG Do You Wish Existed But Doesn't? thread. I think this setting has tons of potential, in multiple different eras, but adapting it could be a challenge. One headache is that the actual abilities of Lords, Gravelingases, Hirebrands and so on are kind of murky...

Is there any way to see the exact number of views on a thread once it gets more than a thousand? It becomes "1K" at that point on the main forum page, which isn't very informative.

Hello out there! Some of you may remember me as the writer of The Shadow Knows! and Life and Light, as well as a couple shorter things. I've long wanted to continue Life and Light in a solo format, but I've been worried about bollixing it up. So this current game is a bit of an experiment...

Heard during our latest game: One of our characters, Timios, is a master of disguise. It would not be fair to say he lives a double life; he lives five or six lives at a time, at least. In his original identity, he's a minor noble named Neos married to his NPC childhood sweetheart. She has...

Inspired by the What do players spend their treasure on? thread, and by myriads of sword & sorcery stories. Carousing is a new form of Downtime activity. Unlike most such activities, the days spent Carousing must be consecutive, and it must be the first activity you pursue after entering town...

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to which spells get the ritual tag. For example, the cleric spell Forbiddance gets it, yet the rather similar wizard spell Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum does not. Ritual spells are heavily clustered toward the lower levels, too. No...

The base 5e rules assume that all characters can read and write every language they know. For a variety reasons, I would like to change that. There are three levels of literacy: Literate, Semi-Literate, and Illiterate. Literate people can read and write the script of any language they can...

I've long thought the cleric should cast like a sorcerer rather than like a pseudo-wizard - their god granting them specific abilities as 'gifts'. It seems really easy to do in 5e, too: Give the cleric a Spells Known column just like that for the sorcerer. Remove the Channel Divinity uses...

I'm really liking the domains, but I'm dissatisfied with Turn Undead as a class feature for all clerics. I see no reason why every deity in the universe would or should care about the undead... It makes perfect sense for the Life and Light domains, much less so for the others. I'd just rip it...

I haven't wanted to comment much on 5e until my Player's Handbook finally arrives (it's due Thursday), but I did want to ask this: Do people think the Blingdenstone adventure from the playtest would be viable just by replacing the monsters with their current versions? Or would much more...

So my group and I have been playing a FATE game in a sword & sorcery setting, a decadent Byzantine Empire-like analogue. Magic involves working with spirits, who are at best alien and uncanny, at worst... let's not go there, and none of whom are nice. There are two forms of it: Sorcery, in...

Crazy idea that probably has no chance at all time! Here is what I take 'Vancian spellcasting' to be, in essence. A mage carefully prepares spells in whatever manner you please; memorization of formulae seems like a common choice. Then, once cast, the spells disappear from his memory and...

Of all the monsters in the playtest Bestiary, the most disappointing is the wight. First off, because it can only last a round against a party of 5e characters, two if it gets lucky. But much more importantly, its Energy Drain power is pathetically unscary. 1d8+2 damage, and the wight heals...

I had a thought about how this might be done. First, what we know: 1) Multiclassing will follow the same basic idea as 3e. 2) They will try to spread out a class' benefits over the first 3 levels, so as to avoid front-loading and single-level dipping. I am further assuming that magic bonus...

EDIT: This thread has expanded into new fighting styles generally. This was the original post: I just had a thought of how to build a barbarian. Supposing there's a Berserker fighting style like so: Level 1: Rage: You can fly into a berserk rage for the remainder of a combat by spending...

I'm pleased to announce that I just got to playtest D&D Next! (I didn't get the chance with the first playtest packet, as getting a group together is dicey these days.) Please note that there will be some spoilers for the Blingdenstone adventure in here; you have been warned. The characters...

I've read the adventure twice, and I still can't figure out what the maps on p. 44 are referring to. (The second to last page, right before the picture of the gnome.) They do not seem to be referenced by the text, unless I'm just failing my Wis check to see them in plain sight. Someone help...

As yet there doesn't seem to be any way to learn other languages. It seems to me that the logical way to do it is via skill training. In 3e, a language was equivalent to +1 in a single skill. Keeping that idea, one instance of skill training is worth 3 languages. (You can trade in one of...