Author Archives: Law

Running the Game: Devil May Cry

I like Devil May Cry a lot. I think I like spectacle fighters—the tongue-in-cheek name given to the subgenre by games journalist and developer Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw—in general, but I’ve only played a few of them, and of those I … Continue reading

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Running the Game: Metroidvania

Let me try something here. I have a lot to say about D&D, obviously. I’ve played it a whole bunch. But I, as a well-rounded human approximation with hobbies and favorite foods and the shallow husks of broken dreams, know … Continue reading

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Adding Rules

The history of tabletop gaming includes a constant tension between rules and narrative. The whole hobby takes place somewhere between rules-free narrative (playing make-believe) and narrative-free rules (the instruction manual for your slow cooker). I’d bet money that every TTRPG … Continue reading

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Modular Classes in D&D

It’s Four Job Fiesta week. I’m probably going to participate, and you can pop in on Twitch to see me flail ineffectually. But more relevantly for this blog, it’s reminded me of a class design space I’ve wanted to explore … Continue reading

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It’s Been a Minute

…seven years? Cripes.

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Inflicted (Beta Version)

I’ve compiled the entire inflicted class into one convenient, excellently-formatted document. You can download it here. A few notes from the field: Pounce moved from L14 to L15. When I looked at everything together, L15 was a dead level with … Continue reading

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Creating a Monster: Evolutions

I’ve expressed a lot of love for “here are X options; pick Y of them” features. They weren’t terribly common in 3E and they were absent entirely in 4E, but Pathfinder has a fair number of them, and I used … Continue reading

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Creating a Monster: Monstrous Source

Yet again, feature names are proving to be the bane of my existence. I have no good idea for what to call the inflicted’s subclass options. Every class has its own name for its subclass, from the cleric’s divine domains … Continue reading

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Creating a Monster: Monstrous Form

The features in the last post don’t have a lot of points of divergence. There’s some that matter, like the condition immunities, and some that don’t, like whether an inflicted uses a slam or claws, but it’s still all mostly … Continue reading

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Creating a Monster: Meet the Inflicted

The main problem I’m having in designing a class around monsters is deciding what features the class should have. One nice thing about class design in 5E is that I can give only some features to the class at large … Continue reading

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