Mage Armour🛡️ 1st level abjuration

Whether transformed by the chaotic energies of wild magic, or created in the laboratory of a mad wizard, a mutant dragon is a frightening and unpredictable beast. Their bodies being in constant flux, only one thing about these dragons is constant: their insatiable appetite for destruction.

I loveee fantasy settings doing magical exhaustion:

Druid, low on magic: I'm [coughs up flowers] fine.

Whenever someone responds to one of those posts pointing out that D&D only players will almost undeniably end up with a very narrow understanding of the RPG medium with accusations of elitism or "let people enjoy things" or "well yes but it's still okay to enjoy D&D and if you only enjoy D&D that's fine and a lot of people enjoy just D&D and are okay with it" there's a bit of sleight of hand going on I feel. Like, trying to turn a discussion about the monolithic stature of D&D and how D&D only players will be inevitably poorly equipped for discussions about RPGs as a medium into a moral argument, and since they have positioned themselves on the side of "it's actually morally okay to just enjoy D&D" then of course the other side of the argument must be making a moral judgement about people who play D&D.

It's very tiring and as someone who enjoys D&D among other games I wish D&D players would stop instinctively treating these discussions as if they are casting moral judgements on them and not simply observations of the material realities of the hobby. It has the markings of sore loser syndrome: the game you play is already the most popular to the point where many people are frankly sick of the way it sucks up all the oxygen from discussions, you don't get to pretend like the game is the poor underdog bullied by mean indie RPG fans online.

And like if you still feel self-conscious about the observation that playing only D&D will invariably lead to a very narrow understanding of RPGs as a medium, there is a very easy way to fix that!

I'm someone who actually likes D&D and is begging other people who love D&D, on hands and knees, to try another game because there are so many good ones out there.

D&D is really great if you want to go "ah ha! but I used my action to cast Spirit Guardians last turn so when the enemy gets within 15 feet of me their speed is halved and they have to roll a Wisdom Saving Throw and take 3d8 Radiant Damage if they fail and they still talk half if they succeed!"

If that's what you love about D&D, power to you. But if you like literally anything else about tabletop role playing I promise you there is 100% a better suited game out there for whatever it is you want to get out of this hobby.

So there is a pretty clear shift in playstyle between TSR D&D and WotC D&D: for better and for worse, D&D 3e introduced the idea of encounter balance, de-emphasized mechanics that had previously encouraged the GM to think of the monsters as real living creatures (reaction rolls, morale, etc.), and it had the effect of making D&D a much more combat-focused game. D&D has always been a game that's opinionated about combat, it's basically the most expressive and detailed form of play regardless of edition, but combat in the TSR editions was not exactly zoomed in and tactical. The WotC editions purposefully made combat zoomed in, granular, and tactical.

And this has had an effect on playstyle: since combat is now the main form of player expression what players actually want is for their characters to get into combat. Because combat is the most fun part of the game. But the game has also changed from the largely amoral dungeon-crawling game into a game of fantasy heroics (even though a lot of the trappings of the amoral dungeon-crawling still remain, which contributes to the dissonance), so you can't just have the player characters going into combat for the sake of it. That would frame the player characters as kind of Fucked Up, and we can't have that in our supposedly heroic fantasy.

What you end up with is a variety of contrivances like "they're bandits," "they're cultists," or, my all-time favorite, "they attacked first" to make the action seem morally justifiable, even though gameplay is still motivated by a desire to fight. The monsters fight to the death and, importantly, can often not be reasoned and negotiated with, partly because combat is supposed to be the fun, engaging part everyone is here to do, but also because if they actually acted like reasonable people it could cause dissonance with the whole "the player characters are the goodest heroes."

As my friend @tenleaguesbeneath once called it: what is actually going on is that the player characters are hunting people and monsters who have been programmed to fight to the death and never negotiate for sport, while justifying it as self-defence.

It's a simple power fantasy, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Sometimes you want to play a morally uncomplicated game about killing guys with cool magic swords. But I think it's also fun to think about what the specific types of monsters players end up fighting reveals about Society the invisible, unexamined ideology lying under the surface that the designers of even modern D&D have failed to examine. And to me it often reads like a frontier justice fantasy. None of that is to detract from anyone's joy of the game, and for me it's just fun to think about and post about this stuff while Still Enjoying the Game, but if someone expressing that opinion makes you feel uncomfortable, why? That's pretty silly imo.

this is very much just a tangent springing off of your first paragraph - absolutely no disagreement with the actual points you're making here - but i gotta step in to give my obligatory defense of "3e D&D actually did monsters the best out of any TTRPG ever (30% joking)" because while yes it does drop things like reactions and morale that results in making it easier for the GM and players to view monsters as mere challenges to overcome for loot and XP, at the same time, it is one of the only (at least crunchy) systems i have ever come across that builds monsters with the exact same underlying rules as PCs.

while i'm not discounting that critical discussions of the treatment of "savage races" are pretty much as old as the hobby itself (if not older, when one digs into its origins in pulp fantasy novels), i do certainly get the impression that these discussions started to get mainstream during 3e, and i can't help but think that a contributing factor might have been the fact that the way the rules handle and interact with monsters (including hit dice, ability scores, skills and feats, and even class levels) are absolutely indistinguishable from how those things interact with PCs to the extent that, setting aside relative power level, a player is - as far as the mechanics, if not strictly speaking the rules, are concerned - just as capable of making a human character as they are an orc, ettercap, stone giant, dragon, or literal bear.

the fact that it is, again, 3e's focus on encounter balance that is the only meaningful thing that stands in the way of this at least makes it so that the players are more able to see NPCs and (at least intelligent) monsters as not being fundamentally different from their own characters. and by extension, it's possible that this made it easier to relate to those characters within the fiction, as well.

if i were to let myself get too absorbed in this theory, i'd also think this could be related to why, after going back to handling monsters fundamentally differently from PCs and doubling down on treating them as loot piñatas, 5e continued to treat gnolls and the like as demonic monsters, while Pathfinder was simply an extension of 3e and after putting out a variety of books over the course of its first edition that expanded on the cultures, ecology, and other mechanic-independent elements of various monsters and "savage races", its next edition wound up putting goblins among the core playable races, and they've worked diligently since release to double-down on fleshing out those races as actual inhabitants of the world with their own cultures and customs just as real and vibrant as those of elves and dwarves.

Counterpoint: running monsters in 3e, especially 3.5, is actual torture because they have too many fiddly bits like feats to keep track of.

yeah, this is entirely where the "30% joking" comes from in my opening sentence. personally, i guess my particular flavour of autism or something makes it so that i only see all the fiddly bits as an enjoyable positive, but i definitely get the appeal of simpler stat blocks like in 4e, and why most people hate 3e's page-long blocks.

but if there's one thing i'd like to see iterated on from 3e, it's monsters-PC mechanical symmetry, but seeing if there's a way to do it without such massive stat blocks or resorting to a simpler significantly more rules-lite system overall.

while there are definitely many game systems that are better in just about every other way, no other TTRPG has felt as "real" to me as a GM entirely due to how monsters/NPCs are handled, and that's a damned shame.

Is the weapon damage from green-flame blade considered magical?

@curbstompt13 Only if the weapon itself is magical — Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) August 6, 2016

Swashbuckler By Chelobek4

Creating a MegaDungeon pt 3 Monsters

Air Cult Elemental, MTG by Kari Christensen

A MegaDungeon without monsters is just a somewhat unusual National Park.

For The Eye, I've been spending a while thinking what kind of creatures could not only survive, but thrive in the unique dungeon environment.

Ally: The Wrathful Squire

Setup: Scrawny, stubborn, and prickly as an urchin, Cait Callahan resembles a feral cat more than she does a warrior, dressed as she is in third-hand traveling clothes so caked in mud and road dust that they’ve forogtten their original colors.  Starting off by ineptly stalking the party’s warrior, Cait will shadow them until confronted, at which point she’ll admit that she heard about their reputation for kicking ass and wants to apprentice under them. She’ll likely be cussing too much for this to count as “asking politely”, but her appeal is heartfelt, and she genuinely wants to learn. 

Despite being fifteen, undersized, and obviously hardworn from months of travel before meeting the party, Cait knows how to fight, and can hold her own in a brawl against opponents twice her side relying on nimbleness and sheer survivalist brutality.  She brings this ferocity to bare when acompanying the party through the wilderness or defending their camp, in between performing the small hearth-duties (gear maintenance, hearth tending, minor food prep) that shows she’s had at least some training as a warrior’s squire. 

Cait does NOT like to be questioned about her past, and obviously has some trauma associated with it, to the point where forcing the issue can drive a deep wedge between her and her prospective mentor. With time, patience, and trust however, the wrathful squire will open up to the party, becoming a dedicated and stalwart ally for the remainder of their years together. 

Adventure Hooks: 

Clyde Caldwell

Here's a project I started a while back and only finished recently. This is most likely the last class I'll ever make for dnd, but 14 classes isn't a bad number to end on. I wanted to lean into the concept of a fighting game but a martial class, taking some inspiration from dragon ball in the process! I hope you enjoy!

[DRIVE]

[HOMEBREWERY]

Wizards of the Coast's exploitation of artists. WOTC. My experience with being an artist and the game world and art world in general.

New abilities for the Warlock bbyyyyyy, i always thought there should be more boons, like really ? just the 3 and talisman ? please, there are so many things you can get in exchange for eternal service

Planescape Creature Idea: Referearch

These wispy and striped spirits hail from the Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia. There, they preside over polished courts or neatly mowed and painted fields, allowing creatures to visit for a wholesome competition - as long as they can follow the rules. Sometimes they visit other planes as well, to learn new games and update their knowledge. From the gory contests of battle on Acheron to the psychic art duels of Limbo, there is not much that can harm the incorporeal Referearch. They do clash with the Valkyries of Ysgard, who love competition but are more concerned with style than with regulations.

If a Referearch witnesses someone cheating, fighting unfairly, or using unsportsmanlike language, they usually give them a Yellow Token of Dishonor, which is a cursed item preventing them from taking hostile actions or moving more than half their speed for one minute. A repeated offense or serious infraction invokes the Red Token of Banishment, which sends the creature to its home plane (or a random location about 100 miles away, if it is on its home plane.)

Some mortals have seen a vision of a Referearch and decided to follow their example, wearing a striped shirt and blowing a whistle to imitate their trademark screech.

dorfs

Equipment suitable for England's Second Barons' War in the 1260s, from The Palladium Book of Weapons & Armour by Matthew Balent, illustrations credited to Mary Walsh and Kevin Siembieda, Palladium Books, 1981

The Skull Knight, from Berserk, by Vincenzo Riccardi