Quirk, Flaw, Curse: What’s the Difference?

Yesterday I wrote about using flaws and curses when an enchantment check fails, and quirks even when it (barely) succeeds… but what’s the difference? All flaws and curses can be expected to be undesirable and have negative effect on an item or its wielder, and even quirks can be unwanted, or …

New Uses for Unchained Item Qualities

As part of my research for graded items, I reviewed the Dynamic Magic Items material from Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game: Pathfinder Unchained™. The system there is rather more complicated than I am interested in — I generally favor simpler solutions — but I do have use for the Perks and Flaws presented. …

Metamagic Feats in Graded Wands and Staves

A graded wand or staff can include metamagic feats. The metamagic feats apply only to spells activated from the wand or staff, count as qualities of a grade equal to the spell slot adjustment, and increase the number of charges needed to activate the spell. Below I present the wand of miltiary …

Legendary/Spontaneous Graded Items, Made Simpler

Last night I wrote about 2,400 words on legendary/spontaneous graded items. On my way in to work on the bus this morning, I realized I might have overthought things. As much as I like the ‘quest’ aspect of it, the entire thing can probably be simplified. Spontaneous Graded Items, Simplified …

Legendary/Spontaneous Graded Items

During this year’s A-Z Challenge, many of my posts have discussed graded items, items with multiple qualities of different grades. Often these items are enchanted, and many of them are simply very well crafted, with special materials and processes to get around spell prerequisites. I’d overlooked another option: spontaneous enchantment, as …

JRPG-Inspired Encounter Design

Yesterday I wrote about improving encounter economy and design. Today I’m going to explore how to implement encounters as designed in certain Japanese (console) RPGs. There are several elements to encounters in these games that stand out, and that I’ll describe below, that I don’t often see in encounters in most published …

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