Refresh Hitting

Lets make combat exciting and memorable again (Art: Chris Rahn) D&D 5th Edition has existed for nearly a decade and a half and tabletop RPGs even longer. We love playing these games over and over again, for the different stories, the new dungeons, and the unique and exciting villains. But despite all of this we …

Alternatives to Initiative

What's the best way to find the first to fight? (Art: KateMaxPaint) Initiative is a mandatory part of D&D combat, and it provides a nice line of delineation between the roleplaying element and the combat elements of the game we love. However, it's existed in its current format for a long time now, and maybe …

Alternative Critical Hits

Last month's One D&D release caused plenty of controversy about critical hits, previously discussed in our summary of the UA here, mainly that crits had been significantly reduced in impact (especially for Rogues and Paladins). It got me thinking about a concept I'd been toying with for a while, alternative options on critical hits. Open …

Using Inspiration

When fifth edition was released, Wizards of the Coast introduced the concept of "Inspiration", a tool for DM's to encourage positive play. When a player did something cool, committed to roleplay, or for any other reason that seemed appropriate the DM could reward them with Inspiration, which could then be used to gain advantage on …

Alternative Attunement

This week, I want to talk about attunement in D&D fifth edition. I think when it was originally designed it was a system that was both simple and elegant. It is enough slots for you to feel "tooled up" but not so many that magic items start to truly unbalance the game like they used …