Part One Part Two Over the last three weeks, I have written a couple of posts examining some of the most easily overlooked rules of the Player’s Handbook. Today I am looking at Chapter 9: Combat. Spellcasting will need an article on its own. Again, if I’ve made any howlers, let me know in the comments. … Continue reading Combat rules you never knew
The next official 5e adventure, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, is set for release in two months’ time. It has been promoted as a ‘wickedly whimsical’ trip to the Feywild aimed at characters of levels 1–8. As part of this year’s D&D Live, Mica Burton chatted about the adventure with Chris Perkins, who said this: … Continue reading How to run D&D with no combat
What type of DM are you? Find out in this article!
Don’t get me wrong: I love fantasy roleplaying games. After all, I do write a blog about Dungeons & Dragons. But I also believe that fantasy, and D&D in particular, is not without its problems, some of which can be fixed, or at least mitigated. In this article, I plan to run through four issues … Continue reading Four Problems with Fantasy
Of the three pillars of D&D, combat is the one most defined in the rules, and, for most groups, it’s going to take up a significant part of each session. D&D is a complex game, though, and, handled badly, combat has the chance to become repetitive, frustrating, or tedious. How, then, can we make combat as exciting and evocative as it should be?
It’s easy to forget about the battlefield environment when playing a game of D&D. When we come up with adventures, we tend to focus on cool monster encounters and colourful NPCs: the setting is often a bit of an afterthought But no combat takes place in a vacuum, and even one or two terrain features can make a fight memorable and unique.