Thought I'd be Done By Now...

The "Mists of Lamordia" campaign is now very clearly into its final quarter - the PCs have to complete their investigations into the Amber Temple, which should both open the doors to the prison and resolve the Curse of the Neverborn, and then they can proceed to deal with the exorcism of Katya Rose, and finally deal with the Darklord and conclude the campaign.

All of which is good, except that I initially thought we'd be wrapping up in 2020, then I thought we'd be done by the time Surprise! made his appearance, and now it looks like we won't be done within this calendar year. It's not that I mind any of this, but I'm very much ready both for a break and then for a change!

Suggestion: Common and Uncommon Classes

One of the things introduced in the 5e PHB is the notion of common races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling) that are assumed to be present in 'every' campaign and uncommon races that may or may not be.

My suggestion for 5e Essentials would be to do much the same for classes - assume that the Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard are found in 'every' campaign, but that other classes may or may not be. This then provides scope for other campaigns to introduce new classes of more specific utility, and indeed to replace some of the existing classes with local classes that fit better. And by encoding the split into the books, they also make it easier for the DM to sell the absences.

Addendum: Minor Spellcasting House Rule

Back in March I posted a house rule concerning "Minor Spellcasting" - where a character gains a small number of spells from their race, a feat, or other source, and where they also gain spellcasting from their class, the spellcasting ability from the minor ability is overridden by that from their class.

The addendum to that rule simply takes things a little further: the spells gained from Minor Spellcasting are simply added to the character's spells known (and considered "always prepared" in the case of prepared spellcasters such as Wizards), and slots added as appropriate.

For example, a 5th level Tiefling Sorcerer knows 5 cantrips and 6 spells. They also have 4/3/2 slots of each level. As a Tiefling, they also gain the thaumaturgy cantrip, hellish rebuke (as a 2nd level spell), and darkness (another 2nd level spell).

As a consequence of the house rule, they now know 6 cantrips and 8 spells, and have 4/5/2 spell slots of each level.

Finally, at various times the character has the ability to switch out some spells for others. This includes those spells and cantrips granted by the Minor Spellcasting trait.

It's worth noting that this does mean a small increase in flexibility, and consequently power, for such characters. But it's such a minor boost that the reduction in bookkeeping makes it worth it, at least for me.

Inspiration Still Doesn't Work For Me

I don't like Inspiration in 5e - while the rules as written seem to be broadly fine, the major issue I have is they I have to keep track of five "roleplaying" elements for each PC and remember to actually give Inspiration.

In that regard my revised Inspiration rule works better for me - each PC gets a reroll that can be used once per level. Except that that also falls short, because the rerolls become less and less valuable as time goes on and the gaps between levels increase, and because the players just don't use them.

All of which leads me to my latest 5e house-rule: just ignore Inspiration. It isn't replaced by anything; you just don't get it. Other means of gaining Advantage do, of course, apply.

Hopes for 5e Essentials

Shortly after my previous post, WotC announced that they're going to release new versions of the core rulebooks in 2024. These don't represent a new edition, as such, but are far closer in scope to a .5 edition. Or, indeed, describing them as "5e Essentials" would make much more sense, as they're intended to be fully compatible with the existing books, in a way that 3.5e wasn't quite with 3.0e.

In truth, it's quite unlikely that I'll be buying these books. I'm very strongly leaning towards my view that I'm just done with D&D as a whole, and as such this would represent a poor investment of £100 or so.

Still, there are some things I would hope for in a new version of the game, and if all of these were met I might just be tempted:

• Firstly, no actual rules changes. The game should indeed remain compatible, which means that the core set of main rules should remain intact.
• Secondly, and the big one, is that I'd like to see the various changes that WotC feel the need to make to excise 'problematic' material done and dusted - lance the boil so we can move on. I'm not actually sure whether that's possible, as I fear it's most likely a moving target, but I can hope.
• As a consequence of that, it seems likely that the new rule that you can assign a +2 and a +1 as you see fit, regardless of 'lineage' (still hate that term, but it seems to be the one they've chosen), will be standard. In which case, we'll need new versions of the mountain dwarf and human.
• Some of the classes and subclasses could use work, notably the Ranger. In particular, I'd ideally like to see every class have at least 3 subclass options, and would definitely like to see those be more playable options - in particular the Assassin, Battle Master, and Wild Magic all cause problems for one reason or another, making their parent classes very limiting.
• It's time to drop alignment. Yes, that's a wrench for traditionalists, but frankly it's something that should have been done as soon as 4e divorced it from the last of its mechanical effects. And with the issues with problematic material they have, it really is time for it to go.
• There is a lot of small-scale errata that should be made.
• The DMG could do with an almost complete rewrite. The material is mostly fine (though of shockingly limited actual utility), but badly organised, confusing, and generally in need of a really good polish.
• Conversely, the MM needs almost all of the rules material redone, with the rest of it being fine. One of the great weaknesses here is that the MM needs to include all the most iconic monsters of the game, but is also developed early in the edition cycle. This inevitably means that it can't benefit from the years of lessons the designers pick up afterward. These new versions represent an ideal time to fix the stat blocks, so let's see it done.
• Better bindings, as the originals were unacceptably poor.
• Likewise, a proper index is a must.

And that that. If all of that were done, such that we got a significantly better version (or, indeed, if only the final four were done, such that we got a significantly better version), I'd probably be inclined to invest the money.

Review: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft

Oh dear. This one is a horror, but not in the way that was intended.

This book is partly a guide to running horror adventures, and partly a guide to a reimagined version of the Ravenloft setting. Unfortunately, though, the whole is holed beneath the waterline by a key decision, and so ends up totally defanged.

Back when "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes" was released, WotC introduced the ability for some elves to swap sex at will. This was a fairly innocuous piece of world-building... but it was also pretty much the only thing that was ever discussed about the book online. That is a pretty strong indicator of just how interesting MToF really is.

With "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft", the key topic of discussion is the introduction of "safety tools" for horror campaigns. Now, I should note that these tools are actually a good thing - in fact, the only problem with them, per se, is that the groups that really really need them are also the ones least likely ever to use them. But that's not WotC's fault - they can't legislate for bad behaviour, but can only do what they can do.

But the problem is that those safety tools totally overshadow everything in the book - they're discussed in the introduction, they're discussed in chapter one, and they're discussed in chapter four. That's way too much - basically, they should have had chapter one to themselves, what needed said should have been said, and the job would have been done.

The other major problem, though, is that the "safety tools" make it very clear that groups have to be aware of sensitive material that may trigger various members. Which is fine - it's an important consideration. But the rest of the book then slavishly applies that same logic. Absolutely everything that could be even remotely controversial has been excised from the setting. It's not even a Disney-fication of the setting - Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dame" wouldn't pass the censors here.

The big problem with that is the horror is by its nature inherently problematic. If it doesn't make people uncomfortable than it is failed horror. And that is the case with this book.

Anyway...

The book is split as follows:

• The introduction is 8 pages. It's fine, giving the aforementioned discussion of the safety tools, some trappings of horror, and a brief precis of the setting.
• Chapter one runs 26 pages, and deals with character creation: new lineages (also handled badly - WotC have obviously decided to replace the word 'race' with 'lineage', which is also fine, but rather than just assuming people will understand that that's what they meant all along, the language becomes awflly convoluted as they go), dark gifts, subclass options, backgrounds, and trinkets. It's all okay, but bland.
• Chapter two runs 22 pages and deals with creating a domain of dread. This is also fine, with the discussion of horror subgenres being the most interesting part. Except for the oddly puritanical repeated refrain that the group must avoid various things.
• Chapter three is the discussion of the actual Ravenloft setting, and fills the bulk of the book at 124 pages. This gives a detailed description of 17 domains and then a very brief summary of 22 more. This is fine, but far too many of those domains are one trick descriptions - here's the darklord, here's their unique activity, so here's the adventure to be had here. Very few of these feel like they could support an entire campaign. Additionally, because this is a reimagined version of Ravenloft, all the pre-existing lore is now void... and there's no real prospect of WotC ever filling in any of the gaps, so the setting suddenly feels very empty.

The original version of Ravenloft had most of the domains connected in "the Core", and then a number of disconnected islands. This new version gets rid of the concept of the Core, and makes everything an island. This is really unfortunate - while many of the linkages in the Core didn't make much sense, it's also true that some of the domains work much better if they do have neighbours to contrast again. Additionally, splitting everything up means that characters of domain-spanning fame now just doesn't make sense.

On the plus side, this book does provide loads of adventure opportunities, and introduces a very large number of unique antagonists suitable for PCs of a wide range of levels. Or it would, if they'd provided stats for any of those Darklords. Instead, they've taken the view that the Darklords should each provide a suggestion of a standard Monster Manual statblock to use. The argument here is that this allows the DM to tailor these opponents to their own PCs, and that that's more flexible. Well, yes... except that exactly that same logic applies to absolutely every other antagonist in every book ever. I found this decision extremely poor - if they can provide lengthy statblocks for the demon lords, and then repeat them in a second book (where those demon lords are such high CR that almost no groups will ever actually use them), then they should provide them for the Darklords here.

Finally, this chapter reintroduces the Vistani. Now, these were one of the most problematic elements in all of D&D lore. In truth, they should probably have been removed entirely - and indeed, they should probably have been retconned so they never existed. Well, I'm glad to say that this version does not make use of any problematic stereotypes. The downside is that these haven't been replaced by anything - the pages on the Vistani basically use a lot of words to say nothing.

• Chapter four runs 38 pages, and covers horror adventures. This is okay, though given how defanged it is it's not really worth bothering with - this material has been handled much better in other books. The only thing of real value is the adventure, "The House of Lament", which runs 20 pages and is actually okay.
• Finally, chapter five rounds out the book at 34 pages, and deals with monsters. The first bit of this talks about reskinning existing monsters for a horror game, and the rest describes some new monsters. It's fine.

And that's that. I really can't recommend this book to anyone. I don't consider it a good guide to horror adventures, I don't particularly care for this version of Ravenloft (I do have to concede that there are a number of really good ideas here, but as a whole it just doesn't grab me), and I found the whole thing unforgivably tame.

As a consequence of this, I'm now no longer interested in WotC's take on existing settings, and as a consequence of that I'm done with 5e books. And since that's two consecutive editions I've checked out of, I can't imagine 6e will be of any great interest when it comes.

It seems my love for D&D has ended with a whimper.

Impossible Tests

As we near the endgame of my "The Mists of Lamordia" campaign, I'm reusing a section of "Curse of Strahd" - the "Amber Temple" segment of the book. This is going well, but I've hit on something that doesn't quite work.

All through the temple, there are a load of doors and other tests that can only be opened or passed using a password. And there's no way within the context of the dungeon for the PCs to learn those passwords - none of the inhabitants of the dungeon know the passwords (or are inclined to share), there seems to be no documentation... nothing.

Which is, frankly, a pain. That's exactly the sort of thing that a pre-published adventure should be making available for the DM.

Oh well, that's just one more frustration to add to my list of issues with WotC's published adventures!