As the nights get darker and the days get colder (at least for those of us tuning in from the northern hemisphere!), it’s become a tradition at this time of the year for D&D players to embrace the scarier side of fantasy. Now, given that our favourite tales of horror are often rooted in helplessness […]
The Dungeon Coach is one of the best D&D 5e homebrewers out there, in my opinion, and in this video he talks about the inferior damage output of two weapon fighting (aka dual-wielding) in 5e, vs. two-handed weapon fighters, and why he feels that’s unfair. After all, both these offensive styles require using both hands […]
It took me all of five seconds to pile in on various feats and class abilities I felt were too deadly when I first started this blog in 2016… but it’s taken me five years to tackle 5th edition’s most commonly-occurring damage spike: sneak attack. The reason being, of course, that when it comes to […]
When I wrote Dragonbowl, on top of writing the storyline, I found myself including little bits of advice that DMs might profit from in their bid to extract maximum drama from the adventure. Perhaps the most interesting was a box out about plot armour. And the reason it’s interesting (for me at least) is because […]
A while ago, I proposed six alternatives to the overused trope of starting your D&D adventure in a tavern. When M.T. Black recently asked his Twitter followers what fun variations they had seen to the “you all meet in a tavern” adventure beginning, I shared my article and then condensed my six alternatives (plus the […]
For a vast industry fuelled by folks that love writing, I was shocked by how few decent D&D blogs I was able to find when I first got back into the hobby in 2015/16. Luckily that has changed over time, as via word of mouth, forums or social media I’ve slowly discovered a wealth of […]
Ever since I watched Matt Mercer DM in Force Grey, I’ve been thinking: wouldn’t it be cool to have a list of Mercer-esque descriptions for all of D&D’s most common incantations to hand come game night? The chance of me being able to ad-lib something as evocative as Matt’s description of tongues, when the target’s […]
Back when Dungeons & Dragons was about clearing out dungeons, there were some tasks that players performed in EVERY room they entered, more or less in this order. Search for traps / hidden monsters Loot the corpses of dead monsters (having killed them) Search the room for additional loot and Search for secret doors / […]
I’ve recently been chatting to fellow D&D blogger, Patrick Higingbotham, and he told me about his latest project: a starter adventure designed to make introducing D&D to new and young players (from around 9 years old and above) a smoother, more immersive experience. It sounded really cool, and I thought who better to introduce it […]
Things I like about Sharpshooter feat: It reminds me of my favourite drum’n’bass anthem from the mid 90s. Things I don’t like about Sharpshooter: Everything else. It feels like a while since I’ve had a good old moan about one of 5e’s little foibles, and if nothing else my negative posts on Divine Smite, Lucky […]
