For the last five weeks (or so) we’ve been playing the D&D Next playtest (as have much of the rest of the D&D fraternity). I’ve already posted my early thoughts on what they’re doing with the system, but these weeks as a player have given me plenty of thinking time. My thinking has been prompted by […]
Of all of the decisions I’ve made during the development of Heroes Against Darkness, the page limitation on spells per class is – at first glance – amongst the most arbitrary. However, my hope is that this limitation actually reinforces the game’s goal of balancing the magi and martial classes. Over the course of the 10 […]
Yet another of my self-imposed ‘rules’ for Heroes Against Darkness is to avoid the sorts of absolute effects of earlier (and future!) versions of D&D. The history of D&D is littered with absolute effects, here are a few of the more egregious that come to mind: • Immunities (such as the Dwarven immunity to poison that has […]
Much to the consternation of some of my more seasoned D&D players, Heroes Against Darkness doesn’t have some of the staples of magic that feature in D&D. When looking for solutions to some problems their characters faced, they’d ask about spells that they’d used in D&D to solve similar situations. I made a conscious decision in […]
There’s already been a lot of discussion about the advantage/disadvantage mechanics in D&D Next, but here are a few more quick thoughts about this mechanic and the general trend in D&D for each edition to become easier than the last, and easier than any other version of the game (apologies in advance). First, a quick […]
The other day I posted my early thoughts and opinions of the playtest rules for D&D Next and tonight we finally got a chance to play the rules. First some background. Those of you who are close followers of my adventures will know that a just a year ago I GMed a Basic D&D campaign […]
I’ve been looking forward to the D&D Next open playtest for quite a while. I previously blogged about some of the expectations that I had of this new edition and ways to approach making a modular edition of D&D: • Mechanics of Attack Bonus Progression• D&D 5th Edition DDXP Play Report• Making D&D 5th Edition Modular – Part I […]
First, a quick confession. I’m generally such an isolated throwback that I hadn’t even heard of ‘niche protection’ until just a few weeks ago. In spite of not having heard the damned term, the idea that each class in a RPG should have its own thing was apparent during the development of Heroes Against Darkness. One […]
Heroes Against Darkness employs a number of techniques to keep magi relatively balanced against the martial classes. First, the combination of the total pool of anima that magi have (5 + Magic Bonus) plus the speed with which they can spend their anima (Level + 1 anima per turn) limits the speed with which they […]
Let’s get this out of the way: I strongly dislike Vancian magic. When I started work on Heroes Against Darkness we’d just finished playing a long 4th Edition campaign followed by a shorter Basic D&D campaign. The switch from 4th Edition to Basic was caused by a general dissatisfaction with 4th Edition (don’t get me wrong, […]