Book of Shadows: The Shadow Dancer

This is the first archetype I decided to do for the upcoming Book of Shadows-Shadow Themed Archetypes series. The original shadow themed class, now a roguish archetype, Shadowdancer.




Tell me what you think down in the comments below!

In other news, the summer blogging schedule will be Mondays and Thursdays as I am spending the other days of the week working as fast as I can to get a playtest packet out for you guys to try Chronicle and Tale.

Til Thursday, happy shadowdancing, Arcanists!

Homebrew Reward Promotion: College of Medicine

Today's Hombrew Reward goes out to Inaq a.k.a. @Radibaghdadi. I was asked to create a healing Bard, and hopefully I succeeded. Thus I present to you the Bard College: The College of Medicine. Now all of you can finally impress your family and friends by telling people you're a doctor and it will only partially be a lie!




Throughout this week, the Mage College makes up for lost time as we continue our look into death in rpgs, binary/pass fail, and Gestalt as a concept.

Don't think I've forgotten about the Summoner, as time goes on I will take steps to further its production. Also, if opportunity presents itself, I may be able to do a playtest report for Chronicle & Tale in the coming months.

Til then, do no harm, Arcanists!

Promotion Reward Program- Sorcerous Origin: Langour

This sorcerous origin was made for @NanbanJim on twitter. He's an awesome guy who like my other "victims" has been very welcoming to me, and has helped the Mage College get a little more attention as of late!

Without further ado, the sleep/hypnotist archetype: The Langour Sorcerer!




 We pick back up Wednesday talking about the worst status condition....

Til then, sweet dreams, Arcanists!

Promotion Reward Archetype: Circle of the Mist

This archetype was created for the awesome Maxine Baughman. She's a multi-talented multimedia presence who has been an awesome help welcoming me to the Twitterverse and has already helped a bunch by sharing and supporting the blog! Definitely check out Maxine's twitter: @Maxine_Baughman. Follow her, retweet, etc.

Without any further ado, by request I present the trickster-esque Druid Circle: Circle of the Mist!

 

Ranger Conclave: Crimson Seeker

Today's homebrew is the result of a poll I posted on twitter. Thank you to the voters in the Twitterverse. You voted, and I delivered. Here's rehash of 4e's Crimson Hunter, remade into a Ranger Conclave.

Feedback is always very welcome. For those of you on twitter, there will be more polls to come for what you want to see. If anyone has any requests of what you want to see in the future let me know in the comments, in an email, or on Twitter.

But for now, happy hunting!

The Archmage’s Alternate Rules: Part 1

The Archmage’s Alternate Rules: Part 1

One of the most fun aspects of any tabletop roleplaying game is being able to tinker with the rules and create an experience that you and the rest of your group is interested in having. Over my course of GMing in Dungeons & Dragons there have been several rules we have expanded on and revised over time for the sake of our game. Some of these you may have seen me mention or explain before, but I wanted to give an idea of all rules currently used or considered for any 5e game that I run.

“Spider-Sense Initiative” or Awareness Initiative

A lot of us are familiar with Spiderman. If Spiderman was a D&D character, his initiative would be ridiculously high, but any of us who know anything about Spiderman know that it is arguable as to whether his initiative is based on his Dexterity, i.e. his superhuman reflexes, or his famous and extra-quotable “Spider-Senses”. Essentially, Spiderman’s reaction time are always augmented by this 6^th sense that gives him omnidirectional awareness of the world around him. We could argue one of three things, Spiderman has a super high Dexterity, he has the Alert feat, he combines his Dex & Wisdom on his initiative rolls, OR he can use his Wisdom modifier on his initiative checks… plus having Alert.

In many turn based video games, there is often a speed factor in combat. Pokemon is a prime example. I have Pikachu, have Blastoise. I use Thunder, you had a Blastoise. Speed factors, like Initiative assume it is only based on reflexes. Though Spiderman, and real life beg to differ. Awareness plays a tremendous part in response time. 3.5 highlighted this well their rules for the “surprise round.” In lieu of this, there is a “surprised” state in 5e. Surprise and awareness are not two halves of the same coin. Surprised creatures still roll initiative, they just can’t move or act. However, awareness and perception play no greater part in initiative. It is you’re surprised or you’re not. In this contest everyone but Dexterity based characters loses. Fast characters, yet again have the upper hand.

What about creatures that are just aware, and ready to act? In a real fight, the guy who is more ready, is usually the winner, not the guy who is faster. The guy who is faster has a physical advantage, but it is not the only factor.

So we have two versions of the Awareness Initiative:

A creature may use its Dexterity or Wisdom modifier to determine its initiative bonus.

OR

A creature adds its Dexterity + its Wisdom modifier to determine its initiative bonus.

In this style of initiative, the first rule allows characters with high Wisdom scores to compete with characters with high Dexterity scores. If your healer closer to first, he has less work to do early on, but if he is always going last, he has the hardest job.

The second version allows the two concepts of Speed and Awareness to play a direct roll with each other as they do in more realistic situations. With a lower attribute with either, the character will be, naturally, less ready to fight, but that is more of a reason to be careful choosing your ability scores, however, this doesn’t doom characters to always go first or last still, it gives a better chance to characters of more mediocre stats. If you have +3 in Dex, and a +1 in Wisdom, congrats! You now have a much higher chance of going before say, an adult red dragon who would only get a +1 to initiative rather than a flat +0. Solars, the Fabio-esque celestials, would get an other worldly +13 to their initiative which is more befitting than just a +6 because (sarcasm warning) a level 1 halfling rogue is, of course, almost as likely to be as fast as an archangel in combat readiness. If you look at the Monk, you may notice that the Monk’s Unarmored Defense bonus is based off of this same formula. Monks, would of course, have amazing initiatives. Have you seen a Jet Li movie? If you can move like that, there is no way you aren’t ready for a fight.

Of the two, I am more likely, with my player’s permission, to use the second of the two. It will create a more interesting dynamic for players, and alter how battle tends to go. Keep in mind, should a character get a bonus to initiative from a class feature, it will propel them ahead, but no more than it already does. Should you use this rule, be careful with your dump stats.

Ready and Waiting rule

I have encountered another problem regarding initiative: How does it feel when you roll a natural 20 on initiative, and the guy who rolled a 15 goes before you? Same team or not, it doesn’t feel great. Your character was ready and waiting to act. There is no reward for it. Traditionally, we like to be rewarded for natural 20’s and punished for natural 1’s. Like may be a strong word, but it is tradition. To right this, I employ what I call the Ready and Waiting rule: 

When a creature rolls a 20 on an initiative check, the creature has advantage on the first attack roll or ability check it makes in that encounter. If a creature rolls a 1 on an initiative check, it has disadvantage on its first attack roll or ability check it makes in that encounter.

In essence, it is a pretty simple rule for a simple concept, if you are at your most ready, you should have the highest chance of success, at your most unprepared… well, the opposite.

Morale Advantage/Disadvantage

Aside from being shaken, as we once called it, or frightened, there is very little that is representative of the emotional effect that the events of the game have on the characters. DM_Starhelm, aka Andy told me about a method used in one of the many podcasts he listens to, in which on a natural 1, when the character fails at whatever they are trained at, the GM asks the player, what went wrong in the fiction of the game. If that isn’t enough and you want some backup to your natural 1’s and 20’s I recommend the following:

When you roll a 20 on an ability check, you gain advantage on the next ability check you make within the next minute. When you roll a 1 on an ability check, you gain disadvantage on the next ability check you make within the next minute.

This rule is reflective of a character’s confidence, and hitting a “streak” of sorts. People have off days, and on days, people perform better when they are confident and less so when they are shaken by something. I would rather see this system used than the cockamamie idea that a natural 1 or natural 20 cause the impossible to happen. You can’t intimidate doors, you can’t seduce mindless undead, if you fall a distance of 2 feet, you don’t explode on impact! A natural 20 meant you did your utmost, not that reality now bends for you. A natural 20 is not always an automatic success, because I can try to jump into a different dimension by using a human slingshot, a radio antenna, and a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide. I promise you it will not work 5% of the time. If we want to reward/punish these numbers to make more interesting gaming, use these play forward rewards/penalties. If you think advantage or disadvantage is too much, add or subtract an extra half of your proficiency modifier to the next roll instead.

Exploding Dice

In a previous article, I wrote about exploding dice. Essentially when you roll damage from an effect, if you roll the maximum number on a damage die, roll another of the same type and add it to the roll. If you roll the maximum number again, do it again. Continue this process until no dice have rolled the maximum number. As a personal rule, I tend not to use this with things like persistent damage like poisons and the like, because no one wants to die from a bad cut from a Sword of Wounding, but that’s just me.

However, I did not expand upon two important rules I learned to add later on: Healing, and how to handle critical hits. To keep healing from being disproportionate, because miracles do happen, actual healing die (not temporary hit points) do explode. If damage explodes only, that makes healing far less effective, especially if someone only has a 1^st level Cure Wounds waiting.  This also, makes healing potions far more effective. Rolling 2d4 + 2 can be a disastrous waste of an action/bonus action. It may save a life, but on a result of 4 (1+1+2), that grants you one more hit, which may turn the tide of battle, but that isn’t really healing. It’s practically only triage, at that point.

Exploding dice are to add a new element of danger into the combat to emphasize lethality. Critical hits as they have existed in table top gaming can be pretty weak. No one likes rolling a 1 on a critical hit and doubling it, or as 5e has, rolling snake eyes on a critical hit. Critical hits can feel seldom critical. All of that design space went to people like rogues, paladins, and even my own duelist and slayer. Exploding damage however, explores this pretty well. However, when you introduce exploding damage dice, what happens to critical hits? A “critical” hit can be weaker than an exploding die. To fix this, I introduced the following rule on top of exploding damage:

When you score a critical hit, rather than rolling twice the damage dice, maximize the damage from each die, and roll the damage dice once adding it to the maximum result. When you roll the damage dice, any exploding dice still apply.

For example, if you have 1d8 damage with a Strength +3 from a longsword, and you score a critical hit your damage will become 1d8 + 11 (3 +8). Having a starting point assures that critical hits will be at least as good as a normal exploding dice, with the potential of being better. However, I would also recommend an alternative. Damage as good, but as my wizarding friend Nick, would remind me, damage is a stupid use of a spell. Extra damage alone, may not be as good. So thus why critical hits on a natural 20 could, and probably should have a little bit more oomph to them. Fighters, Hexblades, and Magus (Mage College Homebrew) have an expanded critical hit range. If critical hits alone are rewarded then these three classes, (two if you don’t want to use Magus), will be even further augmented to be more dangerous than they already are. Setting an extra effect on a natural 20 levels that playing field in doing damage and adding an effect. This brings us to a rule I call Effective Critical. Effective Critical is partially based in Monte Cook’s Cypher system, Dungeon World, and real world combat application.

In Cypher System, on a critical hit, the player gets to add a minor or major effect to the attack, depending on a roll of 19 or 20, and this is, in part, discussed by the player and GM. Dungeon World is very based in narration and the method of deciding how things occur play out more like a discussion between player and GM. In a real world fight a critical hit is reflective of placing a strike exactly where you want it. Combining these aspects, it encourages narration and creativity. Effective Critical works as following when applied by itself to the normal game:

When you score a critical hit with a roll of 20 on the die, in addition to dealing extra damage, with the help of your DM you may determine an additional effect to try to apply as part of the critical hit. The DM should specify a duration for the effect, and any conditions that apply at their discretion.

Should you fear that the granting something through this kind of dialogue may be a bit much, you can instead add the following stipulation:

The creature must roll a saving throw as determined by the DM to resist the effect after damage is rolled, receiving the full effect on a failed save, and a lesser adverse effect on a successful save. The saving throw DC is 8 + the attacker’s proficiency bonus + their attack modifier.

With the Exploding Dice mechanic attached to the DC variation add the following line:

For every damage die that explodes as part of this critical hit, increase the DC to resist the adverse effect by 1.

Example effects:
On a failed Constitution saving throw the target is stunned until the start of your next turn, on a successful save, it has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks, and can’t use reactions.

On a failed Constitution saving throw the target is blinded for 1 minute. At the each of the end of its turns, it may repeat its saving throw at the end of each of its turns to end this effect. On a successful save, it has disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks, attack rolls, and Dexterity saving throws.

By opening the discussion for these effects to take place, critical hits will feel more “critical”. One of D&D’s weakness is that called shots tend to be a mess. With this modification it puts a little bit more control in player’s hands with DMs help, and will make fights more interesting. Do not hesitate to use this rule against players as well, the same goes for any combat rule, unless you want to give your players a definite example, but we don't need kid gloves on do we?

Wrapping Up

I will work on a compendium of these extra rules for D&D 5e that I have come up with or developed, and that will be a separate page. You may notice I have changed a few things in the lay out, there is now a link to the "Laboratory" which is a link to the google drive folder that houses all the available homebrew at the top of the page. You can now search the blog, and more easily look through previous articles by month.

Coming this week:
New Ranger Conclave: The Crimson Arrow
The third and final draft of Slayer

Next week:
We take a look at how to create the perfect Summoner.
The Worst Status Condition: Death
Magus: Version 2

The Magus Class

Today, after much work, sweat and delay, is the first draft of the magus. The magus is based on the 3.5 duskblade, the 4e sword mage, and the pathfinder magus. The main idea here was to have a character skilled both in combat and magic. Let me know what you guys think! This probably was the most extensive first draft I've done. The others will be released over time like with duelist.

As a forewarning, the formatting may have been a little strange and will be improved as I update it.

Happy Warmaging, Arcanists!

Content Update and Preview: Magus

Magus is coming along, it is pretty big project, but I wanted to let you guys know it will be, at the latest, up Monday. I will give you a brief overview of what to expect:

Magus is half casting, martial focus class based on the Duskblade from 3.5, the Swordmage from 4e and the Magus from Pathfinder. Each Magus, like Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers, receive a fighting style from the choices of Dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, Archery, or Two Weapon Fighting. The pillars of the class are Arcane Strike, which works like a magically charged sneak attack, essentially, for every spell slot level you have available, you get to deal an extra 1d6 force damage. So racking up a 5d6 at level 17. Other abilities are made available, all with incentive to hold onto your spell slots,. but with a spell list that makes it worth it to cast spells. Mitigating your casting will be a task, but you are rewarded for both holding onto your spells, and casting them.

The Magus uses a prepared spell casting, and pre-known spell list like the Paladin. However, they are an Intelligence based casters as their spell lists are derived from a study in imbued spells and ingenuity. Each archetype known as a Magus Paradigm grants themed bonus spells. The magus will becoming with a good number of archetypes, like the duelist is. They being added in pairs as they are tested and reviewed. The first two coming out will be the  Sword Mage and Pyreblade, the first focusing on the core of magical manipulation with weapon mastery, the second being a blade(weapon) wielding pyromancer. For those of you keeping track, Arrador from the Duel in the Clock Tower story is a Pyreblade.

Finally, the last pillar of the class takes the form of Arcane Imbuements. The Magus bonds a nonmagical weapon to themselves, turning it into a magical weapon, and adds a number of abilities and properties to the weapon over time. Many of these abilities emulate properties of existing magical items, and some are new to 5e and are rehashes of old item properties. Design wise, I am tweaking 3.5's item enhancement system. They may also be helpful for GMs to create some non-magus magical items as well. The most important part is that the magical item created this way only functions for the magus, but doesn't require attunement. A Magus can very well attune to and use a magic weapon, but it won't provide the same benefit as using his bonded weapon.

I look forward to releasing the first draft of this content to you guys. After this base class is finished, I will take a small break from new base classes, square up the duelist and slayer, and focus on archetypes. Let me know what classes you want to see archetypes, and themes you're interested in seeing.

Happy spell slinging, Arcanists!

Slayer: Version 2

After some time having not worked on it, I opened up my Slayer class that I developed earlier this year, and did some editing and adding. Before I introduce the newly updated slayer, I thought I would share what the development plan for my work is. After I post it here, and get feedback from you all on this blog, I'll also put it up on r/UnearthedArcana and r/DnDHomebrew, depending on feedback and discussion, I'll further edited to show you guys, and this stuff does get playtested. Once I feel that it is basically where I and prospective players want it to be, I plan on, with the help of my wife who is a very talented artist get this stuff up on dmsguild in a full art form. However, there will still be these basic versions of the classes here. In the future there will be pages (somewhere) on the blog dedicated to completed titles with links to the full art, full flavor text version downloads from dmsguild. These will be entirely "Pay What You Want" downloads for the full art, full flavor text versions. I'm not going to lie and say, "I'm not hoping to make anything with these," because it would be cool to be able to start making a little bit of pocket change from a hobby that I love, but I won't restrict access to them. I'm not going to start something like a Patreon yet because I don't know that I can be that reliable on a monthly basis to do something big like that every month. Honestly, I don't want to develop too many more base classes. As long as ideas flow, I will create archetypes, races, magic items, but after Magus, Summoner, Duelist, Slayer, and [redacted], I don't really want to push that boundary unless something really unique comes along. I will also continue to create archetypes for these new classes, as long as the ideas are there. I'll continue to release archetypes for these classes as I am inspired to do so, but I do want to focus on the base twelve classes.




In other news, a new Unearthed Arcana from WotC dropped today featuring Drunken Master for Monk, Oath of Redemption, and Monster Slayer (more on that later).

Any feedback is always welcome. Thank you for your continued support, and happy hunting, Arcanists.

New Martial Archetype: Dervish

In contrast with duelist, don't think that I have forgotten about fighter. For those of you questioning how and why do they exist at the same time, consider this: Duelists are the wizards of combat, with a number and variety of tricks that their specialization offers, fighters while having specializations and their own style of combat, use their specializations as just that, the cap of their abilities rather than the base, which they are known for. Fighters are not defined by their specializations but enhanced by them while duelists are defined and enhanced by their schools.

On that note, I give you the Dervish:

Enjoy, you future dervish dancing Arcanists!

Update: I changed the Dervish Dance extra damage to an extra 1d6 per hit.

Duelist Version 3

I'm happy to announce Duelist is in it's third edit. Very minimal changes outside the addition the Dreadnought and the Bastion. This class has gotten really good reviews on r/DnDHomebrew. The only major change is Arcane blades can now change their Deft Strike damage type while under the effects of their Enchanted blade, and if you look closely, the last two archetypes left to release are now listed as Tempest and Flying Blade. Your feedback is eternally welcome and I am very happy for what you guys have helped me accomplish this far. I was admittedly confused by one comment I had about organization of the class, so if you feel like that could be handled better let me know, as I have only received the one comment about it thus far, but it does make me want to know if anyone else has formatting or organization related comments.


 

  In other news, the first draft of Magus comes out this week, along with the first edit/touch up for Slayer and I am really excited to get it out to you guys. Summoner is proving tricky but stay tuned for more articles and a couple archetypes and magic items here and there as we move forward this week. Blog productivity will only increase (I hope) once April is over and then there will be more fun projects I can't wait to work on for you guys.

But for now, happy dueling, Arcanists!

Duelist 2nd Draft, Now with Arcane Blade!

Today I have included the second draft for the duelist, which now has the Arcane Blade duelist archetype which is based on the old 3.5 Arcane Duelist. I have expanded the abilities of the archetypes, as my original design was to be mechanically liken unto a spellcaster's ability to drop effects while still having the ability to actually participate in combat. Let me know what you think!

New Base Class: The Duelist

I am happy to submit to you guys today a new base class that I talked about previously, the Duelist. This new base class takes some ideas from some of the other martial classes and puts them to work in a new harmonious fashion. I think it sits pretty neatly among the other martial classes, especially rogue, fighter, and monk. I used some prior ideas from pathfinder and 3.5. Special shout out to Matt Mercer for having figured out Targeted Strike for me. I have included only two archetypes for this first draft as to not overload you guys and make more balancing work for myself. Please leave feedback, and as always I am happy to use constructive criticism and answer questions. Thank you guys for the influx of support in the past couple weeks, and shout out/credit to DM_Starhelm for the balancing and editing!

New Monastic Tradition: Way of the War Dance/ New Item: Elvish Longblade

Today we have two new features and an update to another.

First, I took a stab at Battle Dancer from 3.5, and converted it to 5e with some changes here and there. You can find the new Way of the War Dance here!

Next I also decided to release my designs for elven longblades. This isn't an uncommon idea, but it is officially a Mage College release so it feels more... official! Included are a few examples of legendary items that any sword would suffice as, but most of these appear in the Tylvein setting as elven longblades. For those of you paying attention, Valamacil is the sword wielded by Daerthalion Dawntracker, and Inferno is the sword wielded by Arrador Lostwind. Though in their duel in a previous article, they didn't wield these weapons, you may be able to quickly identify how weapons like this enhance characters like those two.

Speaking of Daerthalion and Arrador, I do plan on continuing my work for Duelist and Magus (Duskblade), so watch out for test versions of those in the future! Now that I am using my own formatting style, developing classes and archetypes should go faster.

Finally, I updated the Sands of Time Warlock! I changed the major offender in the Relative Time feature, and tinkered with a couple of the invocations.

Coming later this week:

Lore Master of Disaster? (Article)

How to Dervish! (Archetypes)

Making the Most of Good Rolls (Article)

Any more weapons or items you guys want to see designed? I will continue to pepper my articles with more magic items so watch out for more goodies! Keep studying, Arcanists!

 

Wednesday Delivery!

Today, we have two homebrew features for two friends of the blog:

Up first is my take on a magic item orginally created by Levi- Just another gamer! I present to you Shogez's Shoes of Sidestepping!

Second, we have a homebrew requested by DM Starhelm, himself, a remake of the Justiciar from 3.5. You can find the link to the PDF here!

Feedback always welcome. Any ideas for items or homebrew archetypes you want to see? Let me know in the comments down below!

New Warlock Patron: The Sands of Time

Surprise everyone! Enjoy a new Warlock Patron, the Sands of Time! I decided to dip into the chronomancy theme for once, let's see where it takes us! Feedback always welcome!

That's Not a Knife

THIS is a Knife

Today, I introduce you to Falcon, the Flying Blade. In the Tylvein Campaign Setting, Falcon awaits a master with a steady hand and the heart of a gambler as only the bravest put their faith in a thrown weapon. Falcon is the ultimate throwing knife; It may not be sentient but it is blessed with the spirit of a falcon and perches well in the hands of a fighter, ranger, or rogue, but is not picky as it merely seeks to continue to hunt once more.

Archmage Derek's Handy Dandy Resource Guide

So, today I figured I would point you guys in the direction of what I use to enhance my games beyond the core material and the WoTC's Unearthed Arcana.

Forged in Magic

Most notably as of late is Paradigm Concept's Forged in Magic, Reforged. You can find it on drivethrurpg.com. This is over 400 magic items that all work in 5e. There are a few exceptions as the main idea of the book is to supplement their own Arcanis campaign setting. So some changes and DM rulings are necessary but  97% of this book works with no changes. There are tons of great items here with great art that DM Starhelm and I took a fast liking to.

What is most notable and a really fun system to play with, Paradigm Concepts introduces an expanded rune system for augmenting items. It makes more common items more unique and creates the greater likelihood that magic based societies like Eberron can function in 5e. Attunement is a beast for a different day, but 5e sort of destroys the ease of magic items even in established Forgotten Realms canon. (We're looking at you, Jarlaxle Baenre!)

In a quick breakdown of this system, any mundane item has three rune "slots", uncommon runes take one, rare take two, and very rare, three. The two dozen or so runes that have varying levels of power. There are even an advanced way to combine runes together in a couple different fashions. The only oddity is that the rules acknowledge legendary runes but don't include examples of any. I tweeted at Paradigm Concepts they said left it open for DMs to craft their own legendary runes at their discretion. I really like that model for gaming. Were I to create my own game, I would be inclined to leave a majority of rulings open like that for the DMs and players to hash out together. So, kudos to them.

I have made my own adjustments to these rules as, to my knowledge, only mundane items are accounted for, so I rule in my game, based on the Dungeon Master's Guide's Moonblade, that legendary items have seven rune slots. Working backwards, I have established that uncommon magic items have four slots, rare have five, and very rare have 6. This opens up the variety of weapons/items you can have and is a fun time experimenting.

Matthew Mercer

I'm going to try to be as neutral about this as possible because I am a huge fan of the multifaceted talent that is Matthew Mercer. Matthew Mercer is a voice actor (most famous for Overwatch's McCree), nerd, and the DM/host of Geek and Sundry's popular livestream, Critical Role. Mercer has released several supplements onto dmsguild as pay as you want pdfs. These include the Maestro Bardic College, Gunslinger, and Blood Hunter. I've allowed players to use the Gunslinger fighter archetype once or twice, and one of our tech powered recurring big baddies, Imry, has been a gunslinger in a few incarnations. It isn't especially difficult to include it as it is basically a conversion of Pathfinder's Gunslinger. Ironically, he wrote Gunslinger before "High Noon" was even a thing. Blood hunter is a little more complex and not for any new player. It is well balanced as Mercer is an experienced gamer and has collaborated with the D&D design team before, thus I trust his work and judgement as a DM and designer. I haven't had the opportunity to play or DM for a Maestro bard. I'd like to see it in action, but no one has brought it up. Ultimately, use Mercer's materials at your own discretion with respect to your campaign setting and players. Guns in a D&D campaign is a touchy subject as is. 

The Not Really Complete Series

The very talented Faolyn on reddit came up with The Not Really Complete Tome of Sells, and The Not Really Complete Encyclopedia Magica. These are conversions of a plethora of spells and magic items respectively from other editions of the game. I use the magic items more than the spells because my players tend to want a greater variety of items (or at least seem to appreciate it), and the introduction of new spells to classes beyond wizard can get a little messy. That is also a topic for another day. Since these are conversions from previous editions and pathfinder, they are easy to use and they very rarely will create that sort of weirdness that occurs when a homebrewed rule/item/class doesn't entirely fit the setting or tone of a game. I highly recommend them, there are some very fun items in the Encyclopedia Magica. I need to review the Tome of Spells more, but that may be a good topic for another day.

Incarnate: Last of The Lacers

I saw this supplement on r/Unearthed Arana some time ago, and was immediately intrigued by it. As I have expressed before, I feel like homebrew can be a hit or miss, but I am a huge fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the creator of this supplement, Alex Tanner really does bring the feel of Avatar to life with this pdf. To be clear, I haven't used this yet, but I have taken a great amount of time to inspect this work, and it seems to be pretty solid, as long as you are not playing the "Incarnate" you should find yourself about on par with any other player. I would highly encourage the use of the lacers (Don't say bender, don't say bender) when anyone expresses interest in playing a Way of Four Elements Monk. I am not against the WoFE Monk, but it is probably the most hated on Monastic Tradition. There is even a lacer tradition for monks in the supplement. It is definitely worth checking out, especially if you are a fan of The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra. The lore is pretty well defined, so as long as monks are in your game, lacers shouldn't be too invasive. 

Tribality

Tribality Publishing's work is good. Mind you they have a number of writers on board, so content will vary, but currently I am using Tribality's Rich Howard's Alchemist in place of the Unearthed Arcana Artificer and added the Superior Attunement feature at 5th level, and again at 15th level. In a game of DM Starhelm's last night I used the class as is to create a poisoner forensic investigator, it may very well be one of the best characters and sessions I have ever played. Tribality's articles often include other interesting little additions here and there, like the Chrono Rogue archetype inspired by Overwatch's Tracer. Overall, they do good and interesting work.

Angry GM

The Angry GM may be one of the saltiest, most cantankerous writers in the tabletop community, but he knows what he's talking about. He has dozens upon dozens of articles there are all based on running a better game. He offers variant rules, and even just changes to the gaming mindset that are very insightful. If you're a DM, you should at least try to be familiar with some of his articles, and form your own opinions about the topics. 

Wrapping Up

It isn't my job or purpose to tell you guys what to do, how to play your game, but these are, as a player and DM my strong recommendations of good 3rd party places to add more to your game. If you want more from me as a 3rd party source, in my article above this I will introduce you to one hell of a knife.

Find the resources here: 

Paradigm Concepts on drivethrurpg 

Matthew Mercer on dmsguild

Faolyn's Not Really Complete Tome of Magic
Faolyn's Not Really Complete Encyclopedia Magic

Incarnate: Last of the Lacers

Tribality

The Angry GM
DM_Starhelm

Your Father's Lightsaber

Not As Clumsy or Random as a Base Class

I consider the thaumaturge officially dead at this point. This may come as a shock, but once again, in the simplest implementation, Wizards of the Coast, have defeated Thaumaturge with a single archetype. I'm not upset by this, but in fact, I'm amazed. 

When I was working on my associate's degree, I had a programming teacher named Tom. Tom was always pressing that we program in a more elegant fashion. He would often criticize long drawn out programs consisting of long lines of computer code when in reality, the same effect could be accomplished in considerably less. Whenever Tom revealed this "secret" to us, I was never upset or frustrated but inspired to be as proficient in design. By the end of the class, I had learned this supposed elegance and rose to the top of my programming class.

A More Elegant Weapon

The thaumaturge was a fun idea. It combined the ideas of all of the arcane classes and added it to the spectrum with one major flaw. It was such a pain to balance! Then a week ago, the Lore Master archetype for the wizard class is released. I read it and immediately realized they had achieved everything I wanted to with one major difference: It took up all of four class features. For those of you who haven't read the lore master, you can find it here. It comes along side some really cool content for warlock. The ability to modify your spells on the fly were what I wanted from an Intelligence spellcasting class. It was not school specific either! What I spent weeks on, I could have done in no time. 

A More Civilized Age

For those of us that play 5e, we live in a very comfortable lap of constant updates from the creators and designers, a comfortable and understandable system to tinker with, and  large homebrew communities. Now I'm not saying I won't homebrew anything again, but what I do definitely encourage you to do is to compare the two; Lore Master to Thaumaturge. When you see the similarities/differences, you will understand what I mean. Homebrew content is great as long as the official material does not out do it. The work will become obsolete, and that is a constant fear of any creator such as myself. I have a hard time using my own work though, I do use Tribality's Alchemist rather than the WoTC Artificer, because of the time that was put into it, and how well made it was. My problem is, if I use a homebrew class, I am always thinking too critically about how something will turn out, or how something compares to a similar class.

Don't think that I have forgotten about Summoner though. I hope to work on it more as my schedule begins to relax, I do have an abstract concept though.



This week's homebrew is an item made for the Tylvein campaign, Tide&Tempest, Twins of Storm and Sea:

Introducing the Slayer

Hey everyone, this Friday, I bring to you The Slayer.

Mind you this is the first draft, so it is lacking the full description as far as flavor and back story, but what you need to know is that this class is essentially my take on assassins and beast slayers. These guys are concerned with one thing, and that is bringing an end to their target. To save you guys from being overloaded I have included only two of the five archetypes. In the next draft I will add more to it.

I hope you enjoy this class, and I look forward to your feedback.

You can find the Slayer class here.

See you on Wednesday, as we discuss the Unearthed Arcana series and how to use it in next week's article: Buried in Novelty.

Friday, I hope to get the first draft of the Duelist out to you guys.

Til then, happy gaming!