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mild spoilers We had an odd game today. There were all kinds of interruptions that had nothing to do with the game itself, but the funny thing was the way the players got spooked having made 5th level. We've been exploring the original Caves of Chaos, adapting to the play test updates as...

Anyone else been getting email invites to respond to the playtest with unclickable links? I'd think it was my virus protection software, but it is it, WotC survey email is the only thing that sets it off. Everything clickable gets blocked, and I can't seem to get it unblocked. Other emails...

Mulling over the various objections to tinkering or not tinkering with advantage, I've come up with an idea that might be a compromise. The basic concept is that advantage/disadvantage comes in five stages (instead of the normal playtest three) but continues to not stack. No doubt someone...

This comes up from time to time, due to needing to follow a conversation, wanting an aluded to link, or simply checking to see if it is time to rethink the ignore because of some quoted portion in another message. What's the best way to do this? Obviously, you can edit the list, but that's...

The purpose of this topic is to explore the assumptions that people have for how healing coud work. (Feel free to express as many as appeal, if you like more than one.) Normally, examples are quite useful, but we want to avoid them in this topic, at least with mechanical underpinnings. Feel...

Riffing off recent discussion in My HP Fix - Page 8 - EN World: Your Daily RPG Magazine, I'm going to assert a few things and see if they spark any interest: D&D has always been a mix of process-sim, result-sim, gamist, and narrative mechanics. By that, I mean something vaguely analogous to...

Seven players ranged from those with experience with all versions of D&D to rank beginners. We used all characters and rules straight. Cast: Hiccup – male dwarf fighter Hemlock – female dwarf fighter Eclipse – female elf wizard Elve – female elf wizard Espresso “Sir Esp” – male dwarf cleric...

Go with your gut here, based on all the rules you have read. It's understood that there will be vast exceptions based on particular games, and ease of such reading. Probably some problems with this poll. Let's try it this way, see what people say, and then maybe try it again later with...

I've seen a lot of talk about getting combat pacing "right"--much of it as a tangent to some other discussion, but not much talk about making combat pacing flexible and adaptable to each group. My idea I'll put in a subsequent post, but free free to chip in on the topic anyway you want. The...

Here's a free idea that I haven't done much with, that I thought I'd throw out and see if others have better applications for it. Mechanical change: Ability mods do not add directly to skill rolls, attack rolls, saving throws, and other such checks. (Or if you prefer, they do add but in a...

Assuming a game where attack bonus and defenses do not automatically scale, sharply, is it possible to get more usage out of a class power progression built on accumulating minor but new abilities that gradually get better? How much "power" customization do you need to make this work? For an...

This idea attempts to invert assumptions about "being engaged/distracted" so that the default is that you often are during combat. However, if you aren't, you get extra opportunities, as opposed to penalties/limits when so engaged/distracted. Help me determine if something like this could...

Assuming we have things like +1 swords and 20 character levels, where would you cap the equipment, in regards to chance to hit for weapons, and AC for armor?

Premise: Starting a mechanic too close to zero is a design trap that often causes more trouble than it is worth. I've seen this crop up several times lately, most recently with the rogue sneak attack column. There is all kinds of talk about how much sneak attack/backstab the rogue should...

What for you is the optimum mix of classes, roughly divided up as follows: Not magical in any way (examples Fighter, Rogue) Definitely magical (examples Wizard, Cleric) Partially magical or pseudo magical (examples Paladin, Monk) Also, does your answer change based on the nature and frequency...

Warning: Extremely ivory tower musing herein. Various versions of D&D have discouraged various powergaming combos via stacking limits. One of the more obvious ones is the explicit bonus types that don't stack in 3E. Another is the similar but scaled down "item" or "feat" bonuses not...

The latest rounds of ranger discussion sparked this thought, but it is more broadly applicable and has been perculating under several different discussion for some time now. The game would benefit from having a wider range of "mundane" lore that affected characters. This more accurately models...

No matter where you draw the line on balance--between classes, over an adventure, spotlight, "don't care as long as the class is interesting," etc.--practically speaking, there will be mistakes. There will also be spots where because of your playstyles, players, campaign world, etc. that even if...

Dear WotC: If you save back "some of the good stuff" for later books, I'll understand that this is a necessary part of sales and marketing. If I need to get MM2 to get some of the iconic monsters, but MM2 is full of quality material, I'll probably still buy it. Plus, I understand that...

As a tangent to a 5E discussion, I promised to post this house rule here after this weekend, when I'm formally trying it out. We had been using something similar, earlier, but not formally--i.e. the players didn't know any of the adjustments. However, might as well put it out here for comments...