"Check for Traps"

Back in the day, the Thief class had an ability to Find/Remove Traps. As the name implies, this gave them a percentage chance to detect a trap, and then a similar chance to disable a trap once found. In 3e, this was generalised to a skill check, which by the time of 5e has become Perception.

Unfortunately, this approach has made the handling of traps, on both sides of the screen, really lazy - before opening a door, walking down a corridor, or whatever the PCs declare that the Rogue "checks for traps", the DM calls for the inevitable skill roll (and then another to remove the trap), and we're done.

And it's deadly boring, just slows the game down to deal with traps that are usually not there anyway, and then we move on.

As far as I can see, the answer to this was provided in "Xanathar's Guide to Everything". Unfortunately, after providing that answer the book largely shrugged its shoulders, left the implementation of that solution to the DM... and nothing much changed. Busy DM's, or at least I, just didn't have time to do things much differently, and the tools probably aren't going to be taken forward in 5.5e, which will probably tweak the PHB material but leave the DMG mostly alone. Which is annoying, but there it is.

The solution that they outlined was that 'simple' traps should basically look like spells - a short stat-block at the outset followed by a description of the effect. What they don't mention, although it is present in their sample traps, is that each trap should indicate what signs are available that show the presence of the trap - a tripwire, pressure plates, broken walls, etc etc.

The second part of the fix is that it should not be possible to "check for traps" - traps are too many and varied for that action to make sense anyway. Instead, the PC should simply be checking the door, corridor, or whatever. This then leads to the same Wisdom (Perception) roll as is currently the case.

However...

A successful roll should also not reveal that the character has found a trap. Instead, a successful roll reveals the appropriate signs that indicate the trap is there - it is down to the player to then deduce the presence of a trap from those (or, possibly, use an Investigation roll for more information).

(This also solves one of the big problems with Passive Perception - it will no longer defang many or all traps due to them being automatically detected, but will instead allow the character to merely spot those signs automically. Much more satisfying.)

The big problem, though, is that very few DMs really have the time (or, often, the expertise) to work through the details of building the telltale signs of the trap, work out how these connect to the larger mechanism, and integrating them into the adventure. It would be really great if there were a book, some sort of guide for Dungeon Masters, that ran through the process and then provided not just a handful, but actually dozens if not hundreds of examples of all levels...

Bloodied

One of my favourite rules from 4e, and one of the ones I was most sad to see go in 5e, was the Bloodied condition. This was basically a shorthand that indicated that the character or monster had been reduced to half hit points - it was also the point at which the creature was visibly weakened by the punishment that it had taken.

This is still a term I make extensive use of in my D&D games, as it remains useful.

But one of the things I particularly liked about the Bloodied condition, and something that is harder to build in on an ad hoc basis, was those few cases where Bloodied had an actual effect - perhaps a monster would lose access to some particular weapon when Bloodied (as an arm is severed)... or perhaps they become more powerful as they become more desperate. And, conversely, perhaps a monster enters a berserk rage when fighting an opponent that has become Bloodied.

I do like those effects, and I do try to build them into 'significant' monsters that I build. Anything to make combats, and especially longer combats, more than just a slog of hit point attrition!

Time to Split the DMG?

Back in 2015 I wrote a fairly glowing review of the 5e DMG. Since then my opinion has shifted fairly significantly - while it probably does remain the best out of the "main" DMGs of the various editions, I no longer consider it to be particularly good.

There are four major problems, IMO:

• There's too much wasted paper here. Only a couple of sections have ever seen actual use by me in nearly seven years, and I really can't see that changing.
• The section with the treasure tables and the magic items (one of the two I mentioned above) is fine, but really should be at the back of the book, not a random place in the middle.
• The other section to see significant use is that on creating monsters. Unfortunately, while it is useful, the actual method here is backwards - rather than building the monster and then working out CR it's much better to start with the CR and derive the stats from that, so that those stats are actually useable.
• The binding of the book is unacceptably crap.

Given that we're about to see a new edition with, presumably, a new DMG, I'm inclined to suggest a new approach:

Firstly, split the DMG into two separate works, one being an evergreen "how to be a Dungeon Master" title. This has the advantage of being system-agnostic and so doesn't need changed with each new edition - just discuss things like how to manage a table of players, how to run basic things like a turn structure, and so forth. (Of course, there are many places where this can be found online, and some of those resources are miles better than anything WotC is likely to produce. But D&D does need this material somewhere, so it does need to exist.)

Then, for the 'main' DMG, fill it up with loads of useful (and, crucially, gameable) material - in-depth discussions of different adventure types; templated structures for small, medium, and large adventures; campaign structures; worksheets for building monsters, treasure hoards, and the like; lots and lots of sample traps, hazards, and similar; treasures and magic items. Basically, forget most if not all of the wishy-washy "well, you could do this, or that, or the next thing" material that clogs up too many of these books, and pack it instead with material that is going to be used.

And if you can't find 300 pages worth of such material... well, maybe that's something to consider, too?

Streams and Rivers: The Peoples of Terafa

I've been gradually writing up my "Ultimates Version" of Terafa. It hasn't been going terribly well. However, I have managed to lock down the set of playable peoples in Terafa:

• Humans: Obviously.
• Dragonkin: The self-styled Last People, Dragonkin consider themselves the survivors of an ancient empire born from seven Progenitor dragons. Fleeing from an uncoming disaster, they chose the brightest and the best of their kind for the Return to the Egg, placing them in suspension for generations. Alas, they slept too long, and woke much reduced in numbers, pride, and power.
• Dwarves: Born in ancient times, dwarves have no memory of their oldest days. They were once an enslaved people, who woke in the depths of the Underdark with memories of skills but not of names. They then journeyed the bowels of the world to the surface. There are seven strata of dwarves, of which four are suitable for use as PCs: Hill, Mountain, Deep, and Sundered.
• Elves: An ancient but much-reduced people, elves are born of Queens and their consorts. They dwell in insular hives dotted around the world, constantly on the edge of extinction. There is effectively a single elven people.
• Gnomes and Goblins: Tricksters who once came from the Feywild, gnomes and goblins both deny it, but they are one people.
• Godborn: The aasimar and tielfings of Terafa are collectively known as Godborn. The youngest of all the peoples of Terafa, they first appeared in the Upheaval three centuries ago. Since then, each generation has been less numerous than the last, and so they are already a vanishing people.
• Halflings: There are four families of halflings wandering the roadways of Terafa. Though, as noted, these are indeed families rather than subraces.
• Half-elves: The children of parents of mixed elven and human heritage, half-elves can be found in both elven and human societies. They benefit from the traits of both their peoples, but never quite fit in with either.
• Half-orcs: In areas where human and orcish communities border one another half-orcs are sometimes spontaneously born to parents in either place. They may have mixed parentage, but more commonly have two human or two orcish parents. Half-orcs are prized in both communities, as they blend the strengths of both.

There are effectively two non-PHB races available in Terafa: Goblins (which can be found in "Eberron: Rising from the Last War") and Aasimar ("Volo's Guide to Monsters"). Ideally, I would also like to add some subraces - Deep and Sundered Dwarves, and one or two more suitable subraces for Elves. That said, given the upcoming changes in the new version of the rules, I'm disinclined to spend much time on that for now.

Can She Be Trusted?

One of the most interesting features of my "Mists of Lamordia" campaign is that the PCs have a patron, Rebecca Van Richten, of distinctly uncertain motives. She has been nothing but helpful to the PCs, but they also know that she's been lying to them, and fairly extensively at that. So there have been several discussions about just how far they should trust her.

She has now fallen out of the campaign permanently (we're getting to the endgame), so I'm now free to elaborate...

One of the conceits I've taken for 'my' version of Ravenloft is that the realm exists in a strange time loop - every hundred years of so the setting resets back to where it was. But it's an imperfect reset, in that some things remain from where they were, some characters remember what has gone before with varying levels of accuracy, and some things are moved around.

And so it is with Rebecca Van Richten - in this iteration she was born Rebecca Van Buren, fell into the orbit of Rudolph, he was warned away by her family, and then following a great trauma she became convinced that she was in fact the niece of the famous monster hunter. In previous iterations she has always been in his orbit, filling many roles: rival, lover, student, wife...

The consequence of this is that Rebecca could have been trusted about everything except the details of her own identity and family. She could have been a great help to the PCs. But because her story just didn't add up, they didn't avail themselves of that aid, and have to face the endgame blind.

And that is probably the single thing that I am best pleased with in the whole campaign - the players spent a fair amount of time teasing out that thread, genuinely did uncover almost all of the key details, and then made the interesting choice of how far to trust her. The fact that they made the 'wrong' choice is a feature, not a bug.