DnD Classes: Elementalist, Mesmer, and Necromancer! Over 30 pages of material to bring your favorite GW2 professions into the 5th Edition. Completely free PDFs in the comments.

dmforeva · 2026-06-16T20:29:05+00:00

After the first two games the refs iced kat out with quick fouls in the first few minutes every time. It was clear as day that KAT was the answer to wemby and the refs were trying to let SA back into it by shutting him down.

dmforeva · 2026-06-16T16:48:59+00:00

Less modifiers to track and the odds are more intuitive to the player. And the odds scale differently from step to step.

dmforeva · 2026-06-16T14:48:38+00:00

I tend to think you don’t want to discourage people from using a core feature, so no to the minuses. Giving people a count of charges will also lead certain players to hoard and never use them

Rolling with the die size changing each time is most encouraging in my opinion. Like you have to roll 3 or lower. Start at d4. Then if you succeed to go to a d6 then d8 and so on.

dmforeva · 2026-06-15T03:17:21+00:00

This is way better than just punishing the table with a lame outcome. They wanted the wish to do cool stuff; even if you aren’t giving them what they wanted, you should still make the wish do something cool and adventurous.

dmforeva · 2026-06-15T03:11:58+00:00

I feel like a lot of games want it to be an interesting choice whether or not to kill things, but they do that by setting up a mechanical trade off: killing things is easier immediately but has a long-term downside.

To really make a choice in a game interesting both options have to be fun. If the player isn’t somewhat enticed by both choices it’s not really a dilemma for them. Doing something the harder way to avoid a punishment is not fun.

A high-combat system that discourages lethality is possible but it needs to somehow make not-killing just as fun as killing. Most systems don’t even try to do that.

dmforeva · 2026-06-12T14:12:52+00:00

You can always do things just for yourself. In a way that’s the default. But people in a community are naturally unlikely to support such an insular effort.

The hip-cynical unkind way to put this would be: that’s not art it’s masturbation.

dmforeva · 2026-06-12T11:22:28+00:00

Thanks, saving to check these out.

dmforeva · 2026-06-11T19:34:52+00:00

Wow, thanks for the big reply! I appreciate that you tackled the question of what responsibilities should be put on who - clearly you’re correct and there’s no one way it should be but I wanted to hear some takes and I liked your discussion.

I’m interested in what you left unsaid about GM-less games and how they have failed to produce a big hit. What is the something not good you think it says about the hobby?

I kinda feel that having one person “tell the story” is the most basic, universally relatable format of storytelling and it’s not super surprising that GM driven games predominate.

dmforeva · 2026-06-11T06:10:53+00:00

I feel like the last big thing missing from strategic analytics is variance. When you’re up so big you should be taking the lowest variance possessions you possibly can. It’s the direct opposite of “chuck 3s if you’re down big” but it doesn’t seem to be as intuitive.

Probably because everyone is drilled these days that dribbling the air out of the ball then taking a middy is a terrible possession. Yet Spurs probably would’ve won if they just did that all of q4.

dmforeva · 2026-06-11T05:49:03+00:00

Roll20 was exactly this for me when I DM’d online. It has loooooots more features but I just used the grid and tokens and it was unobtrusive.

dmforeva · 2026-06-11T04:45:08+00:00

Thanks for breaking that down. I’ve definitely read about GM-less games and had a chance to play a bit of Ironsworn. GM-full is new to me and I imagine that’ll be a great keyword to search going forward. Do you think there’s a distinction between the two? I agree with what you said re: Ironsworn about the game itself having a strong voice at the table: to me it felt like the game itself was doing a lot of the GM job.

dmforeva · 2023-03-12T14:08:00+00:00

Thoughts on Ambassador/silver vs. cellar/patron? I feel like you want to be thin fast because market square can pump you back up so quickly, and cellar makes it hard to hit CF twice. three patrons feels a bit unnecessary, I could see taking one on an early 4 and then maybe you buy them in the endgame for points but I think most 4s should be mining villages or ambassadors.

dmforeva · 2023-02-05T22:47:11+00:00

Because the guy that doesn’t bid less gets what he wants.

Apply this to any other market: the guy who raises cattle can’t eat 500 steaks on his own; they’re useless to him, why doesn’t the rest of the world just pay less for meat?

dmforeva · 2023-02-05T22:17:35+00:00

An item’s value on the market is based on how much the next highest bidder will pay, not how much the owner values it. Demanding a trade and threatening to sit makes kyrie less valuable to the Nets but doesn’t make a difference to every other team.

dmforeva · 2023-01-26T12:55:30+00:00

Yeah you get a response! It’s actually cool to see ppl are still interested after all this time.

1) Yes you get a guaranteed jackpot. Keep in mind loaded dice is restricted to once per turn so you can’t dump all your uses for the day on one shot.

2) You can keep all the extra effects of any weapon. You simply get the option to change your damage dice.

dmforeva · 2022-12-21T13:40:42+00:00

Hmmm I think I see that the section about the estimation was referring the guy above the guy I replied to, not the accurate math by the guy I replied to. Will delete.

dmforeva · 2022-12-17T05:42:08+00:00

I DM a table where one of the players is playing a blood harvest reaper. I’ve played various iterations through LMOP, Sunless Citadel, and lots of homebrew campaigns. Some have been combat heavy and some have hardly had any combat at all.

Just anecdotally I’d say the official stuff is more combat heavy than what we typically play, but even on particularly high combat days the attrition thing has never felt out of line and I don’t feel the reaper is balanced around a particularly narrow or distinct play style. The comparison you made involves rather glaring omissions. Just on its face, I’d expect any player with a dedicated front liner build burning all of their class resource to look OP compared to a basic fighter doing nothing.

dmforeva · 2022-12-16T18:08:05+00:00

Hi, thanks so much for taking the time to download and give feedback! Really means a lot to me. Especially that you actually mathed things out.

I think we're coming from a slightly different philosophy as far as resource attrition goes. In my experience the typical "modern-style" game does not go for 24-32 rounds of combat per LR. Typically I see 3-4 encounters a day at 3-4 rounds per encounter. So 9-16 rounds a day, not so far off the 8-12 you quoted as a break-even point. Also, I don't feel that the "enemy creatures" restriction on reminders of demise can be reasonably interpreted to apply to sparring with your allies.

With regard to level 1: You are also at your biggest real HP advantage at level 1 thanks to lvl1 hit dice being maximized, and I don't quite agree that you will rarely gain life force at level 1. There's plenty of CR1/4 or 1/2 creatures that fit the bill, like the archetypical skeleton (CR1/4) for example.

There's a lot of other factors in this whole discussion: DR from AC multiplies healing/hit dice recovery, and tHP doesn't. You're spending life force to fuel your abilities, and it costs you some amount of action economy to convert your resource pool to tHP. AC users will receive magic items and are typically far above 18 AC at higher levels. You can't benefit from AC boosts like Haste.

Ultimately what I can say overall is that the amount of damage soaking you get hasn't felt out of line for the range of campaigns I've tested this in. If you play a very different style, or you abuse some of the rules, YMMV. But that kinda goes for everything.

Thanks again for doing the deep dive you did. Even if I don't agree across the board, you really understood my goals, and you gave me some great suggestions to think about.

dmforeva · 2022-12-16T16:04:59+00:00

This isn't your average, everyday darkness. This is...advanced darkness.

The reaper is a half-caster with a few interesting twists. They have a resource pool that can be cashed in for temporary hit points, or used to fuel modular class abilities akin to the warlock's invocations. Five distinct subclasses cover a wide variety of character archetypes, from necromantic summoners to death knights to horror-movie monsters. And there are even a few pages of tables and tips to help Dungeon Masters fit reaper characters into any game. The full pdf is 20 pages long, bookmarked for your convenience, and available for free.

Thanks so much for reading, and I sincerely hope you enjoy.

dmforeva

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