The Tome Show’s long-running deep dive into each monster of the 5.5 Monster Manual has made me realize how much I miss the higher-CR stat variants that are such a big part of the 4e MMs. I’m also aware of a recent release on the DM’s Guild, “More Monsters,” that […]
This species idea comes out of something I probably misheard on Critical Role Season 4. The essential idea is “what if warforged but more elfy… because something in the very involved elven reincarnation lore went awry?” Is this strongly influenced by reading a lot of Murderbot Diaries recently? Who can […]
I’m not sure why this is the case, but 5.0 and 5.5 D&D have really struggled with designing lycanthropes that have anything to do with the supporting fiction or an interesting, exciting fight. In this post, I’m going to dig into what’s wrong and what might work better. I’ll go […]
I’ve never been happy with the Warlock’s Pact of the Chain, as I’ve written about before. My premise has always been that people come to the Pact of the Chain because they want to emphasize the warlock-and-pet duo, like they’re a Demonology spec Warlock from World of Warcraft. Your familiar […]
For Under the Seas of Vodari, we’re creating several kaiju-like ultra-powerful monsters. They’re commonly known to exist, but to be bound in slumber by the bards of the College of Deep Dreamers. Their awakening is an ever-present threat in the setting. In this post, I’m creating lore and stats for […]
I don’t know if this is going to be one of my Unpopular Opinions, but I think it’s easy to look at the warlock Pacts (not Patrons, just Pacts) and expect them to deliver more than the designers seem to have intended. Today I want to talk about the Pact […]
This past weekend, I ran the follow-up session of a modest dungeon exploration in my Aurikesh campaign. It was the conclusion of an adventure that led a team of five PCs into the midst of two regiments clashing, and it ended in the PCs recruiting a powerful new asset to […]
I like creepy monsters with unsettling concepts or visuals as much as anyone, so I was thrilled when I was asked to stat out and expand upon the Alchemist Testing Apparatus, the Ledgerman, and the Red Leech Tide. These monsters were designed for J.M. Perkins’s Salt in Wounds Setting; click here to learn […]
The idea of henchmen NPCs in a D&D party goes all the way back to the earliest games, and was most recently part of official release in D&D 4e. Now, 5e characters are not all that complicated at low levels, but there are still a few more moving parts than one […]
When I first saw monster stat blocks in the D&D Next playtest, and again upon the release of the Monster Manual, I was surprised at how much of a return to 2e-and-earlier form they resembled. They have some of the formal action presentation of 4e’s creature blocks, but they’re much […]
