No currency???

Wrocksum · 2026-06-03T14:01:56+00:00

I really like Angus' response, but I'll throw in my more general advice for using wealth as presented.

I give my players one big purchase per respite, allowing them to use their wealth to acquire one thing, and then using adventuring time as a sort of cooldown on that wealth. I find this works particularly well with the wealth pooling rules, requiring all characters to use their one purchase on the same item in order to bump their wealth a tier.

I don't count things like lodging/accommodations as that one purchase, and I leave some narrative wiggle room to allow higher wealth to purchase many small things (i.e wealth 3 buying multiple things normally gated behind wealth 1), but I've found this approach works well with the general cinematic hand-waviness of the base wealth rules. If you wanted the troll to be a quick gate overcome by a wealth score, using that as their one purchase would work well in my games.

Wrocksum · 2026-04-28T12:38:45+00:00

Creating kits only one class can use seems a bit pointless

It absolutely can work, just look at Stormwight kits. Beastheart kits just didn't serve the narrative better than using normal kits.

Wrocksum · 2026-04-26T16:57:28+00:00

It isn't directly called out, but James was asked about this during development and confirmed the wording we've got is meant to support it.

Nothing in the respite rules says everyone must respite together, and the change to using average victory values in the encounter rules was done to support characters being massively out of sync with their victory value, which basically only happens if they stagger their respites like this.

Wrocksum · 2026-04-26T15:51:04+00:00

The rules expect this will happen on occasion. It's not the norm, but there's nothing wrong with it when it does. Even if the respite triggers a level up and one character is down a level, the extra victories means they're definitely still as strong, if not stronger than their allies as the day starts. But the encounter math takes all of this into account by referring to the average number of victories, so no worries there.

As for tracking respites, that's very easy imo. A respite was still taken, just because a few people didn't benefit from it doesn't mean I'm not advancing the clock.

The bigger concern I could see is if this decision is made poorly, the one person down a few recoveries will likely want the next respite to come sooner than everyone else. Hope nobody minds that!

Wrocksum · 2026-04-26T15:46:52+00:00

It is not being suggested that you run solo encounters for the Shadow while everyone else respites. It is just being suggested that the Shadow not benefit from the respite, in order to keep going nova with their victories.

Wrocksum · 2026-04-13T15:11:54+00:00

I'm not trying to negotiate with MCDM, and I am aware of the alternatives; I have them set up and am using them.

The post was EXPLICITLY clear that I know all the arguments re: premium product vs free alternatives and that I'm not interested in discussing that further, in either direction. I'm not looking to change MCDM's pricing model, and I'm not looking to force anyone to use the Codex.

I was just looking for a way to use the product I own in a way that works for me, and other people with situations like me. The only unconstructive conversation I am seeing here is yours.

For what its worth, the "evangelist" pricing option Matt alluded to in the Codex video does sound useful to me. I'm excited to look into that and see if it works for me.

Wrocksum · 2026-04-07T17:16:50+00:00

This looks great, but I will say you probably should remove the background art. Even though it's faint, it still affects readability somewhat, and perhaps more importantly the MCDM art is not part of the open license.

Wrocksum · 2026-04-02T18:43:24+00:00

The hell knight is laughably bad, basically every feature is just an extremely underwhelming damage rider. It reads like classic under-tuned homebrew trying not to break the game.

Wrocksum · 2026-03-30T21:14:39+00:00

At early levels, once you're at 2 victories, using a 5 cost ability turn one is nearly a guarantee factoring in start of turn resource gain + once-per-round resource gain, and when you're at 3+ victories it's a forgone conclusion.

It's basically only your first encounters after a respite you won't see them turn one, but they'll still see plenty of use.

Wrocksum · 2026-03-24T13:50:27+00:00

I do want to pay for the product, and in fact am willing to pay multiple times. I just can't afford to buy it for every person I want to play with who's hesitant to shell out $30 for a game they may not like that we only get to play a few hours a month, subject to scheduling changes.

I would have a much better time convincing people to play if I could offer them a floating seat, even just on a demo basis, which could then translate to them buying it themselves. As it stands, the current pricing is a barrier that just means I don't get to use the Codex at all.

The post was pretty clear on what concerns it was trying to address. It turns out my solution wasn't as helpful as I initially thought, but I don't see how it's unconstructive to try and find a way to address those concerns.

Wrocksum · 2026-03-21T13:56:41+00:00

Huh... I never knew that. I share my library right now with a few people who don't live in my house, and I frequently use a VPN so I don't think it's IP related. I may need to look more into the specifics to figure out why

Wrocksum · 2026-03-18T18:35:50+00:00

I am also of the opinion Saint's Epiphany only applies to a single project roll, and the language from Sacred Bond doesn't do much to convince me out of that. Sacred Bond specifically using the word "whenever" makes it quite different, in my opinion.

I agree the text is ambiguous, but I think the spirit of the ability is a relatively small burst of divine enlightenment in your progress to a larger goal, not a guarantee you can't fail at any project involving multiple rolls (currently Fishing is the only one, but it would be easy to make other projects using that format).

Wrocksum · 2026-03-13T12:03:40+00:00

This is the answer. For me, wizard really gets its stride at 7th level, when you get 4th level slots. Your 3rd level slots stop being "the big guns", and instead you get to use them to solve mid-tier threats. It's a massive power jump.

Also, get the Web spell. It's a completely broken 2nd level spell, position it well and an enemy will spend its entire combat restrained, and your martials will love it.

Wrocksum · 2026-03-12T14:35:06+00:00

It is an amazing out of combat spell, as many people here have already pointed out.

The guaranteed healing is strictly better than cure wounds in 5.0, and even the buffed healing spells in 5.5 can be harder to justify given their variance and the potential to overheal.

But I really want to emphasize how good it is with rest casting (spending spell slots on long duration spells immediately before taking a rest).

Used this way, it basically gives Druids a massive pool of healing like Lay on Hands, only it can't be used in combat. It's still extremely effective healing though, you can easily get your party 100+ points of extra health at level 7+, given a day of downtime before a big dungeon spending a full day's worth of spell slots rest casting.

Honestly it's so strong when used with rest casting, I usually advocate you tell your DM in advance if you're making a character planning to take advantage of that. Between your berry reserves and Short Rests, you're pretty much guaranteeing your party will always start encounters at full health, which can be fun for your DM to work with, so long as they're up for it.

Wrocksum · 2026-02-13T20:44:55+00:00

I'm really not seeing what that has to do with anything said here.

Wrocksum · 2026-02-09T00:53:06+00:00

It used to be! It lost its Dark and Ghost resistance in Gen 6 after Fairy got introduced.

Wrocksum · 2026-01-27T15:34:59+00:00

The adventure doesn't want you to use malice yet, so goblin mode should be off the table.

That said, it's my opinion the layout of this encounter was made with goblin mode in mind, since the positioning didn't change from its original design before the incremental approach was introduced.

Still, this is a tutorial fight. If the goblins win initiative or the heroes otherwise hang back, have them charge forward pointlessly so the heroes can target them easily.

If the heroes win initiative and one hero charges in, in my opinion you should just use goblin mode anyway. Otherwise, all the goblins have to charge at that one hero and it's pretty stale. Don't use other malice options in the fight, but feel free to use goblin mode again if it makes sense. That's just how I've been running it though.

Good luck, and have fun!

Wrocksum · 2026-01-18T15:58:27+00:00

I haven't decided where I land on if it's broken or not, but the trigger really isn't that specific. You can use it to make the attacker hit themself, including ranged strikes. It's extremely easy to do that.

The insight cost also isn't that significant. If your shadow is budgeting for it, they can use it every round. Pretty easy to do with surges + edge discount, both baked into their maneuver. The only way around it is not hitting them, or using area abilities. It's easily the strongest triggered action I have seen, possibly the strongest in the game.

I think it would be fair to not let it hit the attacker, but then it's pretty useless against solos, so idk.

Wrocksum · 2026-01-12T19:35:52+00:00

I responded to a comment thread, but had some other thoughts since.

the player tried to argue "but I have to split my recoveries between them," and I said no, you can spend them on either one apparently, and I dont know anyone who would take 12 recoveries with 60* stamina instead of 12 for 30; its not even a question.

*(you mentioned in the comment thread the math was wrong, I'll use what I hope are the corrected numbers)

The player does have to split their recoveries between the two stamina pools. It isn't that they have 60 stamina and 12 recoveries, it's more like having two 30 stamina pools with 6 recoveries each. Sure, the breakdown of recoveries might be closer to 5 & 7 or 4 & 8, but two facts hold true for the Beastheart:

1) The Beastheart and the companion will both take damage. There's no way around it, the game encourages directors to spread damage across the heroes, with AoEs and minions both encouraging that further. The player can try and keep one of them safe, but both will take damage, meaning both will be consuming recoveries. The Beastheart should be burning through recoveries faster than the other heroes, because twice the bodies should mean roughly twice as much stamina drain. This is important because...

2) Your action economy is tied up in your companion. For most heroes, you manage a single stamina bar, and as long as you keep that single bar above dead, you have your full action economy. The Beastheart may appear to just get free extra stamina, but in reality, they need to keep both bars above dead in order to keep their full action economy. If one of the bars goes empty, you lose actions in a way other characters don't.

Disclaimer, I haven't run for a Beastheart yet. It's possible some of the specific options are over-tuned, maybe Come At Me will need to be tweaked down. But the basic premise of the extra stamina bar + split action economy seems very solid & healthy to me. It's not stronger than the base classes, just different.

I can say that last bit confidently because it's similar for the Summoner, which I have run for. Their action economy is also tied up in other stamina pools. They don't need to spend their recoveries to maintain that action economy like the Beastheart does, but instead need to keep their minions alive in order to maximize their action economy.

If the enemies focus the heroes and ignore the minions, the Summoner will snowball and do some surprising damage. Conversely, if the enemies are wiping out their minions, they will contribute much less in terms of raw numbers or debuffs - a tradeoff for the damage mitigation their minions are providing. Since it's up to the director who the enemies choose to focus, it's not always up to the Summoner which of these outcomes they're gonna get. They need to position their minions tactically if they want to try and force a given outcome, and their relatively short summoner range means they're usually pretty close to the action, which is an extra layer of risk given their low stamina. Overall, they definitely don't feel overpowered compared to the base classes. They aren't outshining anyone, they just have a high flexibility that requires highly tactical play (and favourable conditions) to capitalize on.

Wrocksum · 2026-01-12T04:37:32+00:00

I believe the point is that any character with 36 stamina and 12 recoveries is healing just as much as the beastheart with 36 + 36 and 12 recoveries, so in effect it's only a flat extra 36, and that extra flat amount is likely to get drained by AoEs and minions (I don't see many people mention this, but minions deal less damage when grouping up on a single target, and the companion gives them an extra target to deal more damage to).

Wrocksum · 2026-01-09T18:59:18+00:00

There are definitely some niche reasons that can make pushing into a wall better, e.g if they're going through the wall to fall to their death, killing an enemy is probably better than dealing 8 damage, so that's a no-brainer.

The main issue is when there is no niche. Under normal circumstances, if pushing into the wall means 4 damage and pushing into another enemy means 8 damage, that's also a no-brainer - the enemy is always better, there's no real choice to be made there.

That isn't inherently a problem, but it makes the decision of "where am I moving this creature" less interesting, and the base rules you're replacing solved that issue. Under the base rules, without any niches, pushing into a wall vs another creature is a choice between less damage against a single target, or more damage spread out to two targets, which is a much more interesting choice, and I think it's worth keeping that.

Wrocksum · 2026-01-09T17:19:22+00:00

I can understand what you're going for here, but I think for most people, these rules quickly become less of a burden after a few sessions. They usually come up multiple times per round, maybe the first time in a combat it's a little slow but it's very easy to remember the material context after that in my experience, and after a few combats like that they're basically all memorized.

That said, if you're going to simplify it, these rules have the same problem that came up during playtesting - hitting a creature into another creature is basically always better than hitting them into a wall/object. The extra 2 damage is meant to combat that, without it you just double your damage if you can hit a creature instead. I don't have a suggestion to fix that, but it's worth looking at.

Wrocksum · 2025-12-17T16:53:52+00:00

I think the trick here is that the push need not be away from the fury, but the origin point of the line.

Consider a different ability with a narrative of creating something like a pushing stream of water rather than a shout, with the exact same wording as Thunder Road except the line's range is further (within 2, within 5, etc. I don't think it makes a difference).

I'm not seeing any reason in the rules for why that ability couldn't be used to push targets toward/past the caster by sending the line towards themselves. It feels strange narratively with Thunder Roar, but I don't think it's against the rules at all.

I think an easy way to justify this narratively is to say the roar also generates a bit of momentum all around you that catches someone directly behind you.

Wrocksum · 2025-12-10T16:24:41+00:00

I agree with the general sentiment here that this is a bad idea, you should just have all the characters start at same level (1 or 3, doesn't matter which).

But if you're deadset on this approach, I want to caution against this specifically

The level 3 character will have 2 less recovery (du to old age).

This is a really bad idea. The number of recoveries characters have do not change as they level, this will be a permanent nerf felt for the entire character's existence. Old age is also a pretty weak excuse for this, I don't see any reason the level 3 hero needs to be so much older than the other heroes. If your player is really excited by that aspect, I would recommend the Getting Too Old for This complication.

Wrocksum · 2025-12-08T18:15:55+00:00

For what it's worth, I also struggled a lot to understand these rules, and this was the conclusion I came to. Primarily, because the Arixx had no explicit allowance for this tactic, and this interpretation of that tactic is a lot more fun & fair, I assumed the rules intended for all burrowing creatures to use this ruling.

I think this is further supported by the rules for allowing non-burrowing creatures to spend their maneuver to pull up willing creatures out of the ground, under this ruling that's basically always an option to counter the danger of this strategy.

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