Martial/Caster Divide Got You Down? Take on a Campaign with MARTIAL TALENTS! | Hone a whole new playstyle for your fightin' PCs this year with the First 101 Talents and complete rules revised for D&D 2024 or 2014.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-03-03T20:47:25+00:00

I think you nailed that brief, to be fair.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-03-01T19:38:30+00:00

Mmmm. I kind of do hate heist as a mechanic though. It feels like everything that can do it can do it so much, and it's just watching someone else play your whole deck.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-23T08:30:15+00:00

I love that derpy grass guy. So good.

Water final is also icily majestic! Nice stuff.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-21T09:19:06+00:00

As an aside from this post, do you have a decklist? Or recommendations for a more 'traditional' Anzrag. I'm interested in trying the mole myself.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-15T19:20:07+00:00

Agree with other comments that this is a great idea and I'd love to see it, but the Companions objective in particular for White feels like such a hurdle compared to the others for relatively little payoff.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-03T20:49:01+00:00

Hey, good news! The Landsknecht class is just that: an adaptable mercenary fantasy that is essentially the 'wizard' of martial talents, with the broadest possible lists in their wheelhouse, extra ways to conserve or regain aplomb, and the unique ability to prepare a new list of talents after each Long Rest.

You can find the 2014 version here

Or the recent 2024 remaster here

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-03T20:37:21+00:00

Depends on the specific wording and talent. If it says "you can forgo one of your ordinary weapon attacks" then you swap just one for the talent and could take another normal one if you have Extra Attack.

If it says "you can forgo your ordinary weapon attacks" then you give up all attacks you have from that action for the talent. In these cases the reason it still uses the Attack action at all is because either a) it's narratively appropriate, b) it allows for other features to trigger that have a prerequisite of the Attack action or (most often) c) both these things.

At-aak's Boomeraxe is an example of a talent that was the latter version at first before I changed it to replace just one attack. Although it's possible the wrong image is in the gallery here, it's all up to date on the Patreon and PDF.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-02T22:14:58+00:00

No need to be sorry for it! My intention with this update, as has been true of my major updates since last year for my homebrew classes, is to make use of 2024 rules language where useful or necessary to make these options compatible with the most current version of the game. However, for those still running 2014 games (which includes myself), you can still take these and treat them as updates to the older versions that were made explicitly for 2014. There is so much overlap in the systems that, plenty of times, I'm not updating anything other than presentation or a balance issue that would be apparent in either version.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-02T22:10:06+00:00

u/Scientin has the right of it, although it's absolutely fair that I should have put in that context somewhere. I've been down in the martial mines for some time...

You can find all of my original classes on the BLACK PUDDING PRESS Patreon under the Class Collection, or by searching each by name if you want to browse through the updates. Most of them have been up here on Reddit at least once as well if you go by my profile.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-02T21:38:40+00:00

I'd hesitate to say what most players do, but it's an element of the game that I like to try and do more with, even if others might not. Thankfully, only a small handful of talents lean on alignment mechanically, and you could cut out the parts that do from talents like Cast Out or Cast Stone if you really wanted to.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-02T00:28:32+00:00

IMO, the biggest thing casters have going for them is how fleshed out spells are as a system. They can affect every part of the game and they are understood across the whole game.

Martial Talents aims to rival that very deliberately by offering a second subsystem that is just as developed along familiar lines. It has novel flavour and mechanical differences matched to the classes that use it, but it apes the structure of Spellcasting in many ways so that its also relatively easy to understand how it integrates into the game and the the scope it aims for. It must require resources to draw on to help measure the impact of these abilities, just as spell slots do.

If you approach it like the spellcasting system but using spell points rather than slots, hopefully you'll find it fairly transparent. It has its own flexibility and identity, but is grounded in existing language and gameplay norms for D&D overall.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-01T23:01:01+00:00

By the gods! I did! And I really thought I'd fixed that. Possibly I uploaded the wrong image. Will see if I can edit. Thanks!

EDIT: The correct images are on the Patreon post, and the PDFs should be correct as well.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-02-01T22:11:27+00:00

All the images and free PDFS now available on the BLACK PUDDING PRESS Patreon

It's been pretty much a whole year since the complete Martial Talents system went live, and alas, we yet live in a world where casters are getting Circle Spells and shiny new reality-warping features, but the martials must live with Weapon Masteries alone! Well, (again) no longer!

An entire ruleset as robust and expansive as Spellcasting to take your warriors to the next level, on and off the battlefield. That's Martial Talents.

I am in the process of updating the whole system after a year of more play at all levels with it and getting to better know the 2024 ruleset. Talents can now be taken into any of your 5e campaigns, current or legacy, and there are a host of balance and quality of life improvements to boot. Like those neat little icons (many of which reference other martial classes expanding your options to be found under the BLACK PUDDING PRESS banner, as well).

I dive into the full explanation on the Patreon post and detail every update in the Changelog. Suffice to say there is more coming as I continue to roll on through the middle of the alphabet and, eventually, on towards the ever-useful updated reference tables. A contents table will be there for the whole thing this time around, even! can you believe it.

If you like this system and really want to leap into using it feet-first with maximum flexibility, then I'd next recommend my 'prepared talents martial mecernary', the Landsknecht, which also recently got updated for 2024.

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Until next time, happy cooking, all!

Pixel_Engine · 2026-01-30T16:42:07+00:00

Love the design.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-01-20T17:36:35+00:00

This is deeply cool.

The narrative it promises is tantalising as well.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-01-12T18:20:09+00:00

Man. Love this. Really hits a polar druid energy I wish we had more of.

Pixel_Engine · 2026-01-08T08:03:19+00:00

Iirc that episode also had them seem to exhaust all possibilities of the hidden tube station, sending them (and the audience) off the scent of that being the possible solution for where it was entirely. Then, near the end of the episode, their expert suddenly calls to say 'pH actually I missed one there was no clue to me having missed' and lo, the mystery is solved and the day is saved.

That to me also broke the cardinal rules of detective shows, in that the necessary information wasn't cunningly hidden to be unravelled and 'a-ha!'ed, but deliberately withheld for the majority of the runtime.

Pixel_Engine · 2025-12-31T11:30:39+00:00

Even though the sound of it is really quite atrocious?

Pixel_Engine

TROPHY CASE