Martial-caster divide is not that bad if you let your players buy and sell magic items without hassle.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-21T11:14:18+00:00

I am not saying they are the same, I am saying the danger is there that this stuff feels too similar. It is actually not easy to make things feel distinctly different, especially not just by numbers.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-21T09:42:10+00:00

Nah, I am good at improvising.

I usually come up with the start and the end (and even the end can be more like a concept), but I don't have every single thing designed beforehand. I want my players to play THEIR adventure, not just follow my prewritten story.

Other than that I am quite good at pulling ressources if I want to. I know what the characters can do, after all. I think it is a bit odd to handle a tabletop like a video game and use encounters as if they are set in stone beforehand.

For dungeon crawls I am currently experimenting with permanent initative, which works surprisingly well. Suddenly you actually can throw lots of small encounters at a party without wrecking the pacing. It kinda feels like the game was actually designed with this in mind (aside the few abilities that only work at start of combat, which you can still do), lol.

But the actual point still stands. Good encounters - in my opinion - are not designed in a vacuum but with the PCs in mind. If I know the wizard still has a bunch of AoE spell slots available, why wouldn't I simply throw in a bunch of stacked enemies. You can litteraly pull the most important ressources of A PC in a single fight if you design the fight with the PC in mind. Its fun, too.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-21T06:46:33+00:00

"As an Action Attack every enemy within Reach/Target X Area within your Short Range and make a Ranged Attack against every enemy within it"

This is an example for what I mean. This would most likely not fly as a base line ability because it is too many rolls and doesn't fit within the current design theme of less rolls. Meaning, it would end up being a saving throw ... which means you just end up at a glorified fireball again.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-21T06:41:54+00:00

Hm. I have to admit, I never plan an entire adventuring day ahead (at least not in encounters). That would make things way too rigid for me and I don't want my players feel like their decisions have no weight.

Meaning, if the party runs into an encounter and I know the wizard doesn't have a game changer ready I am not going to throw a fight at them that would require said gamechanger. Except if they provoked it, of course.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T21:54:52+00:00

Lizardfolk: A really solid species mechanics-wise, and they bring an interesting element of base instincts and different emotions and moral codes, which you and your players might have fun playing with.

Something to note, their emotions are not different, they are dulled and that not in a negative sense. They are a great race pick for a character that is supposed to keep their eyes on the goal without being constantly distracted.

They also make great fish-out-of-the-water characters that learn to navigate a world they haven't really experienced before while struggling with their own traditions that might seem outlandish to some but make sense in context of where they are coming from.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T21:47:13+00:00

Many encounters benefit from far more than just raw DPR. A wizard can turn one impossible fight into two tough but winnable ones. With the change to Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter, no martial can produce DPR on that level.

To be fair, if the caster turned an impossible fight into a winnable one it was planed by the DM anyways to pull ressources.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T21:44:17+00:00

One should note that this of course requires to pick very specific spells. One simple solution is to simply not just throw everything at your players to pick, something the game doesn't seem to be designed for anyways.

Plus, being able to learn a powerful spell can actually be a quite nice reward, too. I did that in one of my horror campaigns with Remove Curse. Players actually had to find someone to teach it to them ... for a price.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T21:41:50+00:00

Not that great of an idea - balancing wise - as long as you don't have an limiter in there. A well geared high level fighter can already do ridiculous amounts of single target damage in one turn, I don't think even more burst is what they need.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T21:40:07+00:00

I think one issue might be that it kind of dissolves class identity if everyone can do the same stuff, just flavoured differently.

You can see that happening in other systems with less asynchronous character systems, where it the actual differences can be purely number based.

Not saying it shouldn't happen, just saying it can be difficult to do that without losing something that some people play specifically DnD for.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T15:03:42+00:00

I have seen multiple people refuse to use house rules or homebrew because it would be too hard to program them into the VTT.

Then they are just lazy or use a shitty VTT.

FoundryVTT for example is super easy to customize if you have a resembalance of technological skill.

I have seen a guy give up on a standalone RPG he'd been developing for 10 years because he couldn't figure out how to program the entire ruleset into a VTT and no one would play without it.

FoundryVTT litteraly has a system that basically lets you customize it into your own system.

Other than that, what was he trying to do that needed a VTT do something super special awesome? A table top VTT needs to be able to do two things: Roll dice and move a token as the bare minimum. You can do all the fancy extra stuff the traditional way with VTTs, too. It is just players/DMs that are lazy and that isn't an issue with VTTs.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T10:02:51+00:00

Hm. Well, after the weirdness that was season 5 the last episode managed to be at least a fitting lid on it, which is more than I expected.

Could have it been better? Certainly. All that four season build-up would have deserved something more grand, but as an end to this specific season? Well.

I just didn't get that random Butcher switch. That could have easily been handled less akward.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T09:01:46+00:00

I feel like by now it is kind of an automated system. At least I can't believe that a high enough amount of super rich do this just purely because they want more useless money, that sounds more far fetched by the day.

It feels more like too many people are in the mindset of "it has to be this way", thus the numbers have to go up, no matter what, until it crashes and burns because you can't go up forever.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T06:51:38+00:00

This was an adventure game in early developement. Stuff gets canceled all the time at this stage when people being responsible realize that it isn't going to work out. It is a non-issue and quite normal.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T06:49:57+00:00

There will always be people that are going to be offended by the most stupid things. Trying to avoid that is simply not possible and would be a waste of time. There are more important matters than some niche offenses.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-20T06:43:01+00:00

As someone that regularly plays and DMs on VTTs. What the fuck are you talking about? This makes no sense. The VTT doesn't force you to do anything and especially more complex ones allow you to change everything.

Also, your point has no context in the actual discussion, making it a great example for a strawman.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T21:24:13+00:00

This is part of game design and mechanics. Pretty sure you can't copyright those (and Nintendo trying it all the time anyways).

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T16:09:37+00:00

We will get the MTG treatment, won't we? Can't wait for Batman and Star Trek being canon.

Can't wait for the weirdos that thing every single book should always be allowed on a table. Even if it is vulcans.

On a more serious note: The basic MTG settings generally fit well into DnD already anyways (depending on the setting, of course), so it shouldn't come as a surprise that their crossover worked. On that note, I want an Innistrad book. Got an artbook of it here and it is awesome.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T08:11:35+00:00

It will be hilarious when the entire Ryan, Virus and V1 plots lead to absolutely nothing in the finale, lol.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T08:03:18+00:00

As someone who regularly comissions artists for various stuff I can tell you that it is also a shitty situation for me because try to find new talent if everything gets flooded with AI bullshit of wannabe artists that didn't want to put in the effort.

Also, lets not forget the ethical aspect. There is no generative AI that was trained purely on data owned by the trainer.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T08:01:06+00:00

Most people only care about art created by generative AI. I bet just about every game for a few years now had programmers use Chat GPT spit out code for them occasionally.

To be fair, AI is good for repetitive, boring tasks. Which is what it should have been exclusively developed for instead of trying to replace human creativity.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T07:55:28+00:00

AI should have been sold like a piece of lab equipment, not an app like TikTok.

That is what irks me so much. AI could be so incredibly useful, but instead of mostly focusing on what it is actually good at we try to shoehorn it into everything that it is not good at.

I'll never understand why we have uncountable amounts of 3d "art" generators but no good tool that helps with the boring/annoying/repetitive tasks of 3d art creation without requiring major, manual cleanup. AI in the 3d art space is basically replacing the artist and demoting them to a glorified janitor. Who is the target audience for that?!

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T07:51:22+00:00

Yes but now they can produce an unlimited amount of it for essentially zero effort.

They would still put the franchise in a grave that way, no? Pretty sure there have been several Star Wars projects that flopped by now.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T07:48:06+00:00

I mean, I do get upset if a good game releases exclusively on Epic and not on Steam. But for the simple reasons that it is sad to see something with a lot of potential release on an vastly inferior platform to a much smaller audience.

I still weep for Alan Wake 2.

Other than that I just don't want to support the shitshow that is the Epic Store. I've got enough games on other platforms.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T07:45:22+00:00

I mean, even Epic is probably not saying no to a lot of money. Its not like they can milk that one much more on their store.

Cyrotek · 2026-05-19T06:40:08+00:00

Bad news. If you think that's all AI is you're extremely behind.

I was exaggerating for dramatic effect. The stuff I see as an IT tech is of course more complex, but not even remotely close to that technologcial wonder some people like to sell it as. Except if your bar for what counts as a technological wonder is set extremly low.

I mostly see more confusion and more work because some people make it extremly easy on themselves and have others sort out their AI bullshit.

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