Rogues and the Short Rest 8

As the Unearthed Arcana development of 5e.24 continues, the design team’s apparent campaign against the Short Rest has pivoted hard toward everyone getting back something but almost no one getting back everything on a Short Rest. Long-time readers may recall that I called for this exact thing more than a […]


More Spells from Vecna’s Grimoire 3

Since Glen Terry asked for them in a recent comment, I’m doing more spells themed around Vecna, the Whispered One. I love spell design, and designing weird things you can do with high-level spells is an especially interesting space. Vecna’s Spellbook | More Spells Anoint Death Knight 8th-level necromancy (cleric, […]


The “Pious” Warlock, Part Six

It’s been right on a year since the last time I touched this series and covered Yugoloth patrons. I feel like I’m right at the edge of having enough material to do gehreleths/demodands, but… today I’m doing the considerably more popular Great Old Ones, and specifically the malevolent stars. For […]


New Monster: Bone Harvester 4

For one of my freelance projects, I submitted a hefty list of new monsters, and the project lead picked a goodly number of them. In this post I’m writing about one that didn’t make the cut, just because I thought it was an interesting idea. It’s a re-imagining of one […]


One D&D: New Primal Orders 6

Back in December, I created a collection of new Divine (Holy) Orders for the Cleric class, and pointed out that Holy Orders really needed to show up at 1st level rather than 2nd level. In the new Player’s Handbook 6 playtest document, WotC renames Holy Orders to Divine Orders (presumably […]


Hammer of Thunderbolts Redesign 2

The hammer of thunderbolts is an unusual magic item in 5e, in that it doesn’t do much at all until you have and attune two other magic items: gauntlets of ogre power and a belt of giant strength. (The traditionalist in me insists on girdle.) This is a thorny situation, […]


D&D 5e: New Metamagic Options 2

I like it when sorcerer subclasses support theme and a gameplay loop with a new metamagic option. The core metamagic options are usable for a large number of expected spells, though they don’t need to work for allof them to be valid. For this post I’m working on narrower options […]

alchemist, alchemy

LARP Design: A Further Five Field Battles

It has been more than two years since my last post in this series, in part because we spent two years not LARPing. We’re back at it now, and that makes it easier to write. In the first two posts, I talked about ten field battle models I’ve seen. Today’s […]


Ruby Talon Deeps: Locations 3 4

I’m working on a number of different adventure-writing projects for publication right now, so maybe it’s weird that working on yet another one feels like my easy go-to here. I’ve been struggling with a few different ideas lately. Brains are weird. Map | Locations 1 | Treasures | Locations 2 | Locations 3 Hall of Masques […]


Treasure as Arcane Focus 1

In the new UA packet, the Create Spell spell requires expensive material components that are consumed on use: an arcane focus worth 1000 gp per level of the spell you’re creating. In my breakdown article on it, I pondered what a 9,000-gp arcane focus even looks like, if you’re not […]