Character Building and the Three Pillars

Following on from my previous post, one other big change I would make to character creation in D&D (that they definitely won't be making, worse luck) would be to have the character's class determine how they interface with the Combat pillar of the game and everything else about the character (ancestry, feats, proficiencies, even sub-class) determine how the character interface with the Exploration and Social pillars.

The key consequences here are that every character will be useful in combat (which is, frankly, the core experience of D&D) and every character will also be useful outside of combat. Furthermore, this means that you don't ever have to choose between eking out every possible combat bonus or being useful in the social or exploration arenas.

But, as I said, that's definitely not the way they'll be going. Having cleverly identified the three pillars of the game (albeit not actually knowing what one of those is), they've made sure to focus just about everything on one of them.

No More Half-elves?

Apparently, with the move to One D&D, WotC have decided to remove half-elves and half-orcs as 'species' options in their own right - players will be advised to choose whichever of human and elf/orc makes for the closer match for their character, and go with that. (This does have the advantage that it makes half-dwarves, half-halflings, elf-dwarves, or whatever trivially easy to handle.)

On the one hand, I'm not keen on this approach - for all that it's probably driven by their drive to remove problematic material, it feels like they're doing it by erasure of mixed-race folk, which seems rather counter-productive. Plus, of course, every edition of the game that has removed half-orcs has failed abysmally. (And I would prefer not to have orcs as a PC race. But that ship has long since sailed.)

On the other hand, I'm inclined to think that a better approach to mixed species in general would be to introduce "elf heritage" traits alongside each species description, allowing people to mix and match species as they go (and even allow those to be selected later to handle "discovered heritages" during play).

But, actually, I'm now coming to the view that the thing to do with species is to remove it from the mechanical expression of a character entirely. Instead, transfer all the various racial traits (darkvision and the like) into feats/advantages/traits/whatever, and then allow the player to choose from the wider list as they want. The character can then be described as belonging to any of the species (or a mix of any of the species) that exist in the setting.

(Ultimately, I don't think it matters if Gimli has darkvision because of his dwarven heritage, Geralt has darkvision because of his mutations, or Arya has darkvision because of her mystical training - it's the same trait, and all justifications work. And, likewise, one could easily argue that a dwarf who has lived his whole life on the surface may lack darkvision entirely, as it has atrophied with time.)

How Can It End Like This?

I'm finding myself increasingly dissatisfied with my current campaign - I'm convinced that the concept is good, I'm happy with the preparation I've done, and it's actually playing out in an entirely sensible manner given the material. And yet... meh. Something about it just isn't working for me.

I suspect that part of the issue is that the starting phases of D&D 5e are just naturally slow, because the characters are so squishy. And while those stages are also short, that's only true with something approaching a normal play cadence. As it is, we're grinding through week after week of the PCs at level 2, and they're constantly out of their depth. Which is a shame.

(Plus, all my best material is in the third part of the campaign, which kicks off soon. Maybe things will get better?)

But that's all an issue - I'm pretty certain that this is my final D&D campaign, possibly ever and certainly for a very long time. I'd really hoped to go out on a high, but this is really starting to feel like a damp squib. It's just a real shame.

(Indeed, had I known, I would have been better ending after the previous campaign - that one ended very well, and would have made for an ideal capstone. Oh well.)

Paranormal Power

One last review for a while...

I've always been a fan of psionics, at least in principle. And given that two of my favourite settings, Dark Sun and Eberron, were built assuming that psionics are present, I've always found those somewhat lacking in editions that don't have that support - notably including 5e.

So when a Kickstarter for a small psionics book was launched, I decided to jump on it. "Paranormal Power" is the result, which I received in PDF form.

I should note that due to a computer freeze I don't currently have access to the book, so I'm writing this from memory.

This was a short book of ~65 pages, with a decent amount of art. That art was AI-generated in the initial version, though my understanding is that it is in the process of being replaced with human-generated works instead. But lacking a critical eye, my view was that the art was fine - like all RPG art, it does the job, and then my interest ends.

The game material contains all the things you might expect: a new heritage (race), a new class, new subclasses for all the existing classes, some new spells and magic items, and some new monsters. And, crucially, a psionics system and the accompanying powers.

And it's all fine - good, solid material that I would have absolutely no qualms about allowing into any "Level Up" game I was ever to run. It's a really good work.

But...

My one concern with the book is that it very definitely is a "Level Up" book. And while "Level Up" claims to be 5e-compatible, and consequently so too should be "Paranormal Power", I find myself very hesitant to cross the streams. And where books like the "Dungeon Delver's Guide" include conversion notes for vanilla 5e, this book does not.

That's a very small quibble, but it does affect my recommendation somewhat. Which is as follows: if you like psionics and you're running "Level Up", I highly recommend this book. If you like psionics and you're running 5e, I'd consider it only if you're happy with blending material from LU into your games - this probably isn't the first book with which to do that. And, of course, if you don't like psionics then skip this one - there's nothing for you here.

And having said all that, I will be looking out for the author's name (Rachel Williamson) on future products, either under her own imprint or for other publishers, because this is a solid product that suggests other good things may be yet to come.

The Restart

After a fairly long hiatus for Christmas (and other things), the campaign resumed yesterday. It's fair to say that the first session did not go entirely to plan - there was a little investigation, and then the party was engaged in a combat in which they found themselves badly overmatched, followed by a retreat and another fight where the party was... less overmatched, but with the problem that three members of the party were surprised (and then there was a flurry of terrible dice rolls).

The upshot is that by rights the session should have been a TPK. And, in all honesty, that may have been for the best. But since I'm not quite ready to walk away yet, we contrived a way out for the party, and we'll see if we can pick up the pieces.

One of the problems, the lesser of the two, I think, is that the two encounters were deliberately right at the top end of what the party 'should' be able to handle. That probably wants adjusted down, slightly, for the future.

Another problem is party composition - I wrote the adventure assuming a standard mix of characters, but we've actually ended up with two barbarians, a monk, and a druid - three strikers and a controller. That lack of a dedicated healer and anyone to soak up damage makes this interesting.

But even that would be fine if the party were able to bring their damage-dealing characters to bear, and to focus their fire. But in the case of the first encounter the party was already somewhat split and then some characters hung back, while in the latter case the surprise meant that some characters were disabled even before they were able to act.

So there's certainly some food for thought going forward.

And since I'd prefer not to be entirely negative, I should note that the exploration part of the session did go pretty well, revealing some of the background of the underlying adventure and teasing threats to come.

Tome of Beasts III Lairs

As part of the Kickstarter for "Tome of Beasts", I signed up for the PDF of the accompanying Lairs book - a collection of short adventures showcasing monsters from the book. There are Lairs books for both "Tome of Beasts" and "Tome of Beasts II", and indeed for the "Creature Codex", but I haven't looked at any of these books previously.

The adventures themselves range from levels 1 to 12. They're all short, intended for a session or two of play, with a 5-room dungeon (or a little more) at the centre of each. Each features a small handful of monsters from "Tome of Beasts III", with some also drawing monsters from the SRD (or Monster Manual).

As might be expected, the adventures are something of a mixed bag. They're all functional, if rather basic, adventures. None of them are terrible, none of them are really spectacular, though some few do seem rather dull. That said, if needing a quick adventure at short notice, or if particularly looking for something to use monsters from ToB3, these are decent.

Ultimately, though, this book hasn't inspired me to go looking for the other Lairs books, and I'm not particularly inclined to recommend this book. Certainly, it's a companion volume for ToB3, so this is one to avoid if you don't have that book. If you do have that book, this one is worthwhile if you're looking for a set of short adventures (which, to be fair, is a useful thing to have - provided you don't already have a ready supply of such things). And, of course, if you are offered a good package deal then this may well be worth looking at.

So that's a somewhat ambivalent review for that one. Make of it what you will.

(Note, though, that "Tome of Beasts III" itself is something I regard much more highly - whether you go for this one as well or not.)

Tome of Beasts III

Seven years ago, in my review of "Tome of Beasts", I said I probably wasn't interested in any more generic monster books. I then repeated this four years ago in my review of "Creature Codex", and then again in my review of "Tome of Beasts II".

And here we are. In my defense, this time Kobold Press have declared that this is the final volume in their ToB 'trilogy'. We'll see. Perhaps also of note, I picked this one up from their Kickstarter, and only in PDF - I find I'm very much moving away from physical RPG books now.

There's actually very little to say about this book - it's a 400ish page book, in glorious full colour, containing a lovely assortment of new monsters. If you enjoyed previous volumes in the series, you'll probably enjoy this; if you didn't, you almost certainly won't; and if you haven't checked out those volumes you should get them first. This book doesn't require the earlier volumes, but as they publish the monsters have become increasingly niche in nature, so the earlier volumes are probably more useful.

If making recommendations for 'monster' books for 5e, my order of recommendation is as follows: "Monster Manual", "Tome of Beasts", "Monster Manual Expanded", "Creature Codex", "Monster Manual Expanded II", "Tome of Beasts II", "Monster Manual Expanded III", "Tome of Beasts III", "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes", "Volo's Guide to Monsters", and finally "5th Edition Foes". Indeed, at this point I would stop well before the end of that list - I don't regret any of the purchases, but I just don't need all these monsters.

(Note that "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes" and "Volo's Guide to Monsters" have now been replaced with "Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse". Based on what I've heard, I would certainly recommend the combined volume over the two separate ones, and it would probably appear a good bit higher on the list. However, as I don't own that book, I cannot make a solid recommendation.)

My recommendation here is necessarily conditional. If you're looking for even more monsters, this book is an excellent buy. If you're looking for specific WotC-owned monsters, then of course this won't do the job for you. Likewise, if you're looking for monsters that will appear in WotC products, or on the DM's Guild, this book isn't going to help. And if you're looking for anything other than monsters, this isn't the book for you. It does one thing, but does that one thing extremely well.

And that's that.

I'm pretty sure I'm now done with buying books for D&D 5e (even if the OGL thing does get reversed, with the new version coming next year, it doesn't make sense to buy much), I'm even more sure I don't need more monsters, and Kobold Press claim they're finished. But maybe I'll be reviewing "Creature Codex II" in a couple of years...