Recent content by NotAYakk

That doesn't match my knowledge. I could be wrong. The era goes from 15th to 20th century. Lets look at 16th century colonial wars. Spains conquest of Aztecs does not match your description. Portugal/Malay wars: 1515 battle had 100 portugese and 500 locals defeat a fleet of 80+ ships, each...

I've got a character lined up for my next game. I'm using the 2014 noble background to have 3 retainers for my cat PC in a greek-based world. One of them is named "forearm" in greek, is a pacifist wrestler-philosopher, and wears a mask as "communication should be through words, as...

What tactically interesting play there is in 5e sort of falls apart with ranged weapons. Moving at half-speed lets you be totally effective with the weapon. Cover is negated by a number of cheap mechanics. Damage is high enough compared to firing rate and movement even without firearms that...

I have replaced subspecies with Phenotypes. Phenotypes isn't region specific. We have Ectomorphs, Mesomorphs, and Endomorph built people. Not following the junk science version, but there are build differences between people. For my lizardfolk, I can break them down into crocadilian and...

I want to go with one of those, but who fights adjacent to another PC as a melee character? You are usually running off to pin someone down, and the people you want to protect are elsewhere in cover.

2d10 is just 1d20 with some scaling. Namely, DCs are ~0.5 lower, modifiers are SD(1d20)/SD(2d10) =~ sqrt(2) larger. (VAR(1d20) is 399/12, VAR(2d10) = 2VAR(1d10) = 192/12, so VAR(1d20)/VAR(2d10) = 399/192 =~ 2. SD is the square root of variance.) https://anydice.com/program/42b2b Select...

I have been playing with a model to give bonds alignments. Along this way I had to make Law and Chaos a bit less flanderized. Lawful elevates abstractions over individuals. Chaos elevates individuals over abstractions. If you are loyal to the Crown and not the current Queen, that is a Lawful...

I dislike 3/4th casting here; I think 1/2 casting would work just as well. The gap between 1/2 and full is too narrow at low levels to fit 3/4. All you really get out of it is 6/7th level spells at high levels and other spells a bit early; and I'm not sure why we want that on a bard. The...

"You can use Holy Symbols as a focus" is that feature that allows you to substitute a Spellcasting Focus for material components. Barring a magical focus, the only thing focus's do is substitute for material components, that is what "using a focus" means. It does mean you can only use the Holy...

Yep: if you have a 50:50 chance of hitting, you'll have fights where you hit 0 times if you fight often enough. With 2 attacks per round and 3 rounds of combat, that happens 1/64 fights. With 5 PCs, it happens to someone on average every 13 fights. Make a foe with a higher AC - a 40% chance...

There are some simple tools to estimate how big a fight will be. The first is simply to add up the HP of the monsters and divide by an estimated DPR of the PCs. This gives you "how many rounds will this take" number. It doesn't say if the fight will be challenging etc. But a fight that takes...

OAs (and being out of reach so you can't be charged) are about the only reasons why position matters in melee combat right now. Getting rid of them is sort of bad. I've played with a flanking rule that is "if you end your turn flanked, melee attacks are at advantage on you until the start of...

Imagine if each time you get the ball, you flip a coin. On heads, you stand around for 5 minutes, then the other team gets possession. That is what rolling 2 times and missing both times while staying still (because moving is clearly worse) is like in 5e D&D. You roll 2d20, both are low...

No, it shouldn't be copy and paste? Meteor Storm is not a copy and paste of Shield. But Meteor Storm has mechanics in common with shield. Mechanics should be introduced in lower tiers and made epic in later tiers, not utterly different in design in later tiers. This means if you add Deeds of...

Seems like a fun game to play. That is sarcasm. Alice rolled to hit and missed. Bob skipped their turn. Same game state change. In 5e D&D, taking a 5 foot step backwards doesn't give you any defensive boosts. It means your foes get extra OAs. Giving ground makes you worse defensively. In...