Category: Brewer’s Tools

Dungeon Designs – The Living Vault, part 2

On By AnathemysIn Brewer's Tools, D&D Homebrew, Dungeons, MonsterLeave a comment

Welcome back to Dungeon Designs and our discussion of “The Living Vault” – a dungeon which aims to feel more alive than any other in existence. Last time, we went over the basic stats for the Living Vault as a creature and an active participant in players’ dungeon crawl. This time, though, we’re going to be focusing more on the actual “dungeon” aspects of this concept.

And don’t worry – anatomical expertise is not required because I sure don’t have any.

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Advancing Editions – Dr. System Shock, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Save-or-Die

On By AnathemysIn Brewer's Tools, D&D HomebrewLeave a comment

While “save-or-die” isn’t really what we’re talking about here, it sure makes for a catchy buzzword. But instead of that, we’ll be looking more generally at the evolution of the saving throw in general – from its humble and confusing beginnings to the modern day.

Also get the d20’s ready. When I say the old system is confusing, I mean like in the confusion spell. Hope you’ve got a good Wisdom save bonus.

Just as a note, it may take a year but by god do I follow up on my stupid title jokes.

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Postmortem: Shadow Magic

On By AnathemysIn Brewer's Tools, D&D Homebrew, UpdatesLeave a comment

In the past, I created a shadow magic wizard that focused on using quasi-real shadow illusions to fake evocation and conjuration spells. I did a couple revisions and planned on coming back to it, but ultimately I think its dead.

But the question remains… why? So today I’ll be taking a look at why shadow magic didn’t work, why it exists in the first place, and why it inherently doesn’t fit in modern Dungeons and Dragons.

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Advanced Editions – There Can Be Only One (Druid)

On By AnathemysIn Brewer's Tools, D&D HomebrewLeave a comment

Back in ye olden days, when clerics were clerics, wizards were magic-users, and fighters were fighting-men, there were plenty of weird things in the game. However, where you can normally brush aside such bizarre ideas as mere twisted memories of fever dreams of days gone by, these are things that I, unfortunately, have physical evidence for.

Today we’re going to talk about druids and how you had to literally kill (or at least defeat) a druid of a level higher than you in order to advance in level past 11th level.

Yes, it was weird. Very weird.

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Advanced Editions – A Draining Discussion

On By AnathemysIn Brewer's Tools, D&D HomebrewLeave a comment

In this series of posts, my goal is to look at all the little things from earlier editions that just didn’t quite make the cut for 5th Edition. Some were excluded for good reason, while others just didn’t quite fit in – but besides just talking about them, I’ll also be doing what I can to port them over.

For our first topic, we have the ever-terrifying Level Drain (also called Energy Drain). This is what made undead scary back in the day, alright? This made them so horribly scary.

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Pal Around with the Paladin

On By AnathemysIn Brewer's Tools, D&D HomebrewLeave a comment

Truth, righteousness, honor… all are most definitely words. If you’re a paladin, they may or may not be the only words you actually know.

Is it a good idea to have a self-avowed rogue write a post about paladins? Sure! I promise I’ll be (mostly) fair and even-handed. After all, who better to hang out with than the Paladin?

Pretty much anyone, actually.

Remember, if it doesn’t have the words “justice” or “glory” it’s probably a fighter feature!

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Fighting to Win and Winning the Fight

On By AnathemysIn Brewer's Tools, D&D HomebrewLeave a comment

Hoo boy, here it is. The day I’ve been dreading since I started this series – and the day that comes as a result of way too much time compared to the others in the series. Today, it’s time to talk about the Fighter.

 

Grab your swords, axes, maces, longbows, shortbows, crossbows, lances, pikes, halberds, glaives, whips…

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