The Misbegotten Identity of ‘Ki’
The origin system in 4th edition D&D was one of the subtler bits of design tech they had. The basic idea was that if you made an overarching term to explain how a bunch of mechanics ‘felt’ you could then reference that term. If something worked one way because of how divine spellcasters worked, by […]
Harmonising Mount Rules
When you ask people about the tropes of the fantasy adventure narrative, there’s a genre of those tropes that 4th edition D&D — which is the best D&D, by the way — handles badly. Well, not badly. Well, badly. Well, some of it is bad. Well, some of it is unreliable. Well, look, it’s complicated. […]
Dwarfeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a game system built around giving players a useful, handleable group of tools to build a character. You have the simplest two lego pieces to snap together; what you do (your class), and how you were born (your heritage/race). A elf fighter is not the same as a half-elf fighter is […]
Building a Better Blackguard
How Heroes of Shadow made me angry enough to sand back and repaint an entire variant class.
The Problem with Poison
Fixing the logical accident(?) that makes poison profoundly less useful than other damage types.
Firs & Furries: 4e’s Most Disappointing Fumble
Let’s talk about that one time 4e ignored its own design philosophy and made a really stupid decision about party goats.
Half-Elves (But really Elves)
My earlier treatment of Orcs in Cobrin’Seil was intended, at first, to be a comprehensive examination of the half races. Elves and orcs and humans, the big three that show up in most of the editions of D&D’s player handbooks and most of the settings for them. As I did this though I realised that […]
Half-Orcs (but really Orcs)
I have these in my D&D setting, and I have them because, removed from any ontological questions, they are cool things. An orc is like a human, but bigger and usually more physically brawny, and green, and being able to play a half-orc means you have a bunch of outcaster cred, you get to play […]
4th Edition’s Space Problem
There are flaws with 4th Edition D&D, which shouldn’t be any kind of surprise and yet here we are. Let’s talk about one of them. Heck, let’s talk about a big problem, and it’s a problem that’s structural. It’s so structural it doesn’t even relate to a specific class, as much as it relates to the way that classes get made. Classes take up too much space.
4ed Problems: Splintering, Part 2
Yesterday, we talked about how long the lifespan of 4ed D&D was, and we talked about how, it was good, actually. Our framework was, basically, that players had expectations of classes, and we named the problem of splintering. When you built a character in 4ed D&D, you might be startled by how many feats you […]