Recent content by Distracted DM

Regarding "artificers would fit into most settings," is there a magic item creation conflict of identity? A setting may be: magic is everywhere, artificers fit in, magic item creation is common enough to justify it. Forgotten realms and eberron are big callouts for this, they have very common...

We can figure out plenty of workarounds to make control spells not "ruin" it, so we know what that looks like, but they're just band-aids on the core system, not fixes. Cuz a proper fix would require a lot more work.

One player that I had did Warlock 16/Paladin 2, for a super-smite build. It was pretty gross with how much damage it could do, especially with expanded crits, and he had a lot of get-out-of-jails, but he was also using some 5e14 source materials for stuff like cloud giant not-misty step. He also...

I couldn't tell you what they're doing to nail the Traveller vibe, but leaving proficiency bonus+feats+levels is scary enough to keep some folk with dnd5e-based systems. As long as there's some familiarity, there's the feeling that you can learn whatever else even if, realistically, there's just...

You don't have to learn new rules. That's a big deal to some people, particularly folk that joined ttrpgs with DnD5e and haven't played anything else. I have some of them at my tables 😅

That's a fair point, I think of 5e as high-powered because of the player characters' ability to punch well above their weight class... but while this uses 5e's engine, that doesn't mean it'll be "5e-compatible" where everything will be the same power level/backwards-compatible with 5e.

Wow, good find! Here's its Steam page, there's a demo on there. Release date... some time in 2026 :)

Having less magic in the setting always seemed to lead to certain classes enjoying a lot more power, because there're fewer common counters to them. If fewer folk know about magic, there's less reason for enemies to know the counters to said magic. I wonder what could be done about that 🤔

I get it, everyone wants a piece of the 5e pie. There are plenty of people that say "I already know how 5e works, why would I want to learn another ruleset when I can just play different stuff in 5e?"

Yeah, mods are super important to curating community.

Sure! You can play a game in a sword and sorcery setting where the players run a tavern. But I don't think it's harmful to define a genre, name inspirations for it, and suggest the kind of adventures that that genre lends itself to. Is that what you're responding to?

Wow, I did not know that! I just looked it up! Player options: Spells & Magic. I'm pretty sure I have that book, but never made the connection.

What would y'all call the aesthetic style that they're going for with artificer? I imagine if I said "steampunk" that would cause some fits, 'cuz it's not using steam n' such, but the brassy color in both provided images really lends itself towards that vibe in my mind.

Tales of the Valiant's Game Masters Guide gives definitions for a bunch under the Adventures & Campaigns section (I like that they took the time and page count to detail such).. but not those 😅 But man, the ToV GMG is so good!