One of the best “features” to ever come out of D&D 4th Edition was this blog post by Blog of Holding that distilled the “monster math” of that game down to a short formula that a DM could draw upon at a moment’s notice. In the interest of trying to recapture some of that convenience,… Read More D&D 5th Edition Monster Stats on a Business Card

An issue that I’ve read about quite a number of times are GMs who take issue with players who stack high amounts of AC, usually a Fighter or a Paladin in plate. Specifically for 5th Edition D&D, between the Defense Fighting Style, Splint armor, and a Shield, a character can get 20 AC, which is… Read More Encounter Design: Have ways of attacking different player defenses

In every other wargame I’ve played that uses a Combat Results Table, the table is always oriented in such a way that the roll parameters are on one axis, and then the die roll result is on the other, and then the intersections of the rows and columns have the corresponding result. Example: Here we… Read More A Results-Oriented Format for Old-school D&D Attack Tables

[Standard boilerplate that the following is merely a suggestion and is in no way intended to be an assertion that this is how you should run a game] The concept is simple: in order to give your players incentive to do something besides “I hit him again”, tell the players what the monster is about to… Read More Telegraph your monsters’ attacks

Something that always bugged me with the skill check DC guidelines for this edition is that there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to them beyond just going up by 5 because it’s a nice round number. In an effort to address this, I decided to try and see what kind of DCs… Read More Rationalized Skill Check DCs for 5th Edition D&D

In D&D 3rd Edition, the basic assumed party size was four characters, and a fight of “Average” difficulty worked out to four monsters of CR [characterLevel – 4]. That is, four level 5 PCs versus four level 1 monsters, or four level 14 PCs versus four level 10 monsters, or four level 1 PCs versus… Read More Building an “Average” Encounter in 5th Edition D&D

Last year, I ran a short campaign of D&D 3rd edition to experiment with various mechanics I could use to get the players to avoid the “15-minute working day”, or the impulse to bail out of a dungeon to rest and regain limited resources (primarily caster spell slots, but also health) as soon as just a… Read More Thoughts on risk-and-reward mechanics in dungeon crawlers

One of the innovations of D&D 5th edition was the removal of the “gear treadmill” and “feat taxes”, or having to take certain feats and having to earn certain quality of loot at certain levels in order to keep pace with steadily increasing monster stats. It’s also possible to do this in 4th Edition, since… Read More Simplified modifiers for D&D 4e

In 3rd Edition D&D, when you attack a target, you roll a d20, add your Strength modifier, and also your Base Attack Bonus (and any and all other modifiers). If the result is equal to or higher than your target’s Armor Class, you hit. In 5th Edition D&D, when you attack a target, you roll a… Read More THAC0: Origins and Context

In page 25 of the AD&D 1e Players Handbook, beneath the “FIGHTERS’, PALADINS’, & RANGERS’ ATTACKS PER MELEE ROUND TABLE”, you have this special note for a Fighter: The origin of this particular rule comes from The Strategic Review, Volume 1, No 2, Page 3, in a section called “QUESTIONS MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED ABOUT DUNGEONS… Read More A History of the Fighter’s Extra Attacks versus Low-Level Monsters