Topics regarding design and game theory.
I’m feeling a lot like not wanting to write today, but have generally been good about writing regularly (a post every day for more than five weeks). Instead I thought I’d do something different, practice a bit of map drawing. It’s been a while, I’m relearning techniques I haven’t practiced …
For some time I’ve seen comments that the separation between good saving throws and poor saving throws is too big, and that it is difficult to find challenges appropriate to higher-level characters with different saving throw progressions. Mathematically, I can see the argument for this. A high-level spell from a …
Something I’m considering for my next campaign is largely divorcing gods and the like from alignments altogether. Basically, the more powerful the god, the less the god is aligned. The idea here is that to gain full power over something, the god must encompass all aspects of it. This would …
One of the things I like about my Revised Character Advancement rules is that they allow (require, in a sense) that a character grow in a way that suits his racial archetype. Orcs are usually tough and violent, elves are quick and graceful, and so on. It also allows me …
Lots of feats are available to improve how you use your weapons, including increasing the chance of landing a critical hit. Until I presented Armor Focus Feats) there weren’t many ways to improve how well you use your armor. Here I present some more feats that allow you to make …
This is the first post I wrote on the topic of Polyhedral Pantheons, but the Polyhedral Pantheons Hall of Fame page is a better starting point. It has links to pretty much everything on my site regarding Polyhedral Pantheons, and even some on other sites. I am shamelessly stealing the …
Another idea inspired by fiction, this one is based on the Dance of the Rings series by Jane S. Fancher (I’ve only ever found three books; there’s a fourth book in the works). In this series there are ‘leythium nodes’, places of power. Leythium seems to be a form of …
A few months ago I read Justin’s article, “D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations“. I agree with a fair amount of what it says about how character level expectations are often unreasonable (‘Einstein need only have been fifth level’… Justin shows how this could be so, and it makes sense). That in …
I’ve been writing up about the Arcane Academy of Ter Liatri. This is a big wizard guild in my campaign — Ter Liatri used to be the capital of the Empire before it collapsed, and the guild survived it. More or less. I have in mind a couple of prestige …
Items that draw their power from their user, rather than their creator.
