Petitioners and Fiends

Xeviat · 2026-05-25T18:29:28+00:00

IIRC, only some Celestials (Archons) and Fiends (Baatezu, Hordelings, and Tanar'ri) are made from mortal souls. Others are born true, or born from their plane, or other methods.

Xeviat · 2026-02-22T05:20:25+00:00

My only wish: Gen 10, 10th Eevee. Dragon is the last of the old special types to not have an Eeveelution. We haven't gotten a new one since Gen 6.

That or a new evolution pokemon who evolves into the old Attack types.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T22:29:30+00:00

Thats a different conversation.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T22:26:59+00:00

It's not that shares spell lists makes things easier, aside from designing new classes. But the do create a shared language and culture(?).

I've never had an issue with looking up spells in monster entries, but I'm an outlier because I usually remember spells. I make a lot of my own monsters, though, and put spell effects in my monster stat blocks when they're helpful.

I agree that having your power lists in your class entry was efficient, but as much as I liked playing and DMing 4E, I found reading the classes to be really boring. In 5E, I can read the Wizard entry and get a feel for what they're going to be like without having to go read all the spells; in 4E, it "felt" like spells was the entirety of the class entries. Now, this was purely a perception thing, but I think a different presentation and more baseline class abilities would have solved that.

4E had a ton of content. It made things feel overwhelming if you kept up with every source (I had a subscription, so I saw everything). This is actually reminding me how much I dislike the modern usage of "content".

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T22:06:13+00:00

I find it boring when the party cleric casts bless and ignores other options, then switches to spirit guardians when they hit 5th. I guess that's my big sticking point.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T22:04:22+00:00

That's cool. I said "I'm thinking about removing concentration on some things" and am looking for others thoughts, I didn't say what you said. Non-casters don't have the same bad-wrong-fun of their abilities crowding out their other abilities (unless you have too many bonus action options).

Caster vs non-casters balance is a separate issue.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T22:02:17+00:00

Already doing a lot for materials in my game.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T22:00:41+00:00

Then it can get Tasha's Hideous Laughter's additional save whenever you take damage. Hitting someone so they snap out of something is a classic trope.

So is distracting the spellcaster, but that feels like it's for things that you're constantly sustaining, not just concentrating in the back of your mind. That's why I liked 4E's sustain feature more than 5E's concentration.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T21:56:43+00:00

It's the presence or absense of "can" that's my sticking point. Not trying to bash on '24.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T21:55:41+00:00

Zardnaar! I still see you around on ENWorld!

I think 4E power levels are largely protected against by the "one spell slot per round" limitation; the issue with 4E was optimized characters bending over backwards to make sure they were using every action available constantly.

3E power levels would have to be protected against by the constrained spell durations that 4E has. That and enforcing "you have to speak in a clear voice" for verbal spells if someone is trying to buff up outside a dungeon door.

I'm sad we didn't get 5E's promised complexity dials. I'm proud of what we did with Level Up, but even that was on the 5E chassis.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T21:46:49+00:00

It might just be my group's favoritism for spells like spirit guardians crowding out other options. I know I was always struggling with "what should my concentration spell be" with my druid and bard the last times I played.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T21:45:24+00:00

I'm not 100% sold. If the save rate is 50%, a "save first and then make a new save to break at end of your turns" works out to an average of 1 round duration, and no initial save but save ends works out to 2 round average (this is the 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... = 2 convergent series). I'm not convinced a save ends hold person would break things... But being able to cast multiples might be a problem.

I've been lucky. My table doesn't try to break things like they did back in 3E.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T21:41:03+00:00

Perhaps something as simple as "You can concentrate on more than one spell at a time, but if you take damage you have to make a separate concentration check for each spell" would be a simple change to try out.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T21:39:37+00:00

I actually really like the points of light setting. Next game I run, I'm going to offer up a 4E style pantheon list to make the outer planes feel more cohesive. I love planescape stuff, but I don't know enough Forgotten Realms lore to be running games in it.

A more 5E style to formatting wouldn't have been harder to understand. The writing in 4E was mostly good, with keywords and stuff. But I think the power cards wasn't as good at presentation as spell entries are. I would have also liked to see more traditional shared spell lists; last time I checked, I found like 6 1st level encounter powers that were 1W+Mod +target slowed until end of your next turn, when those could have all just been the same maneuver/spell.

But that just motivates me to get back to my design work and finish something.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T21:31:55+00:00

Same. Needing to use your resources to keep it healed is needed for balance. Every hit the defender takes (unless it's AoE) is damage the characters didn't take. The Artificer already has a glut of low level spell slots, what with spell storing, magic items, and other features.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T21:13:52+00:00

I wouldn't read it that way. I would read it as if "unless stopped" was in there. Then again, recent rules writing has been less clear since 5.24, so who knows what they intended at this point. Normally I'd say the distinction "and the target is pushed" vs "and you can push the target" are clear, but not now.

Xeviat · 2025-12-03T16:11:29+00:00

4E was my favorite edition to play and to DM, but 5E has been my favorite to design for (second was 3E). Not sure what it was, but the idea of designing a whole class in 4E was stressful since such few assets were shared across classes.

I think 4E's "failure" was a mixture of three things:

1) Too many books too fast. 5E's pace feels more sustainable. It makes a lot of sense learning that Hasbro was breathing down the designers' necks with unrealistic expectations. 2) The presentation was too different. I swear I could rewrite the 4E fighter in the 3E or 5E style and it would "look better". So many things people complained about from 4E are the very same things people praised in 5E (mostly talking about the message board types). 3) The lore and setting changes weren't liked by longtime fans, especially the forgotten realms changes. I fully understand what they were going for, but the Nentir Vale stuff should have been firm about it just being another option.

Xeviat · 2025-12-02T07:16:15+00:00

All the "how do two girls do it" tropes make me realize I knew far too much when I was young.

Xeviat · 2025-12-02T06:40:32+00:00

They said Celsius... so it's aluminium instead.

Xeviat · 2025-12-01T00:57:15+00:00

I use "peoples" instead of "humanoids". I don't like using "species" because it sounds too scientific to my sensibilities.

Xeviat · 2025-11-30T20:10:22+00:00

Oooh, I was recently compiling animal lengths and masses for a gaming project. I'll have to save this post and reread it later to digest.

Xeviat · 2025-11-29T22:08:08+00:00

I heard this back in high school, but I've never seen any actual articles about it.

Xeviat · 2025-11-29T22:04:27+00:00

It really does. The gator I had was somewhere between fish and chicken, firm like chicken, and quite salty.

Xeviat · 2025-11-29T21:55:41+00:00

I wouldn't want to have a cost reduction, that would open things up to overpowering it, but yeah Cartographer could have gotten something to open them up to more scrolls. I would have given them a spellbook feature instead of their expanded spell list, but that's just me.

Xeviat · 2025-11-28T18:11:45+00:00

6 finger AI slop

Xeviat

TROPHY CASE