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Making the Sorcerer Spontaneous

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Today, I am going to evaluate the sorcerer, show why I think it needs to be altered, and propose a few alterations that I believe will make things run much more smoothly. Sorcerer's get the same amount of spell slots as other full casters but compared to its closest counterpart, the wizard, it is inferior. The spell list for the sorcerer and the wizard are slightly different. The lack of Find Familiar, for example, can really make a difference if you want a free aid or not and it is also useful for scouting. However, largely the spell lists are the same. Like the wizard, the sorcerer has an ability to recover spell slots. The advantage of the sorcerer is that they can use their sorcery points to restore spell slots on the fly. Normally, this would give the advantage entirely to the Sorcerer as, when you do the math, they both are able to obtain the same amount of spell slots using their opposing features. The advantage of the wizard is that their resource renewal does not req
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Banishing the Gheist of 4e: Modifying 5th edition DnD's Warlock

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As some of you may already know from my previous posts, I did not dislike 4th edition. I believe it had problems such as the combat taking forever and there being minimal options for those who wanted a less complicated character but I actively enjoyed it. If you liked tactical combat I am not sure I could recommend a system more than 4th edition D&D. When I look back though, there is one thing that haunts me; yes even more than the time that me and my group fought a single elite undead for 2 hours... that sucked and was boring but that wasn't what haunts me. I remember these conversations with my group. About the idea of obtaining "social" utility abilities and how we all wanted them but it was never the "smart" thing to do. The problem with 4e is that while it was super tight in terms of combat it expected you to focus on said combat. You had to ignore the fact that 4e was full of fun utility abilities that let you do stuff like fire arrows at a wall and th
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The Problems of Absentee Villains

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I ran the entirety of Wizard of the Coast's Storm King's Thunder and there was one aspect that really stood out to me. Ok, not entirely true; there were a lot of aspects that stood out to me but this isn't a review. Oh and in case this is not obvious, spoilers. Like, most of them. Doing all of them would take too long. (p.s. If any members of my new DnD group read this please note this includes concepts and ideas for the game I will be running for you all. So please... stop now. Looking at you Beckett) The villain and climax of the Storm King's Thunder campaign is the fight against the vile Blue Dragon Lymrith; a creature who spends the whole campaign manipulating various events in the storm giant court while in the guise of one such creature. The result of her manipulations? Well... stuff whose effects are only felt overtly if you are a storm giant. Which you aren't because you're a player character. Please note, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, from a
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5e Campaign Design Discussion #1: Mages as Enemies-The Curse of the Paperwork Problem

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Over the past several years I have been adapting a campaign by the Thursday Knights (dnd twitch streaming/podcasting group) that I have called the Mad Mage (I am honestly not sure what the creator called it. I should probably just ask... ... ... and done). I am going to avoid story spoilers here but a huge part of it is the main villain starts to amass this army of mages and the party encounter them as they go on in their adventures. I can still remember their first big battle with them. Fighting atop a mountain in the midst of a snowstorm and something like 15 mages come charging down into the valley and... oh no. What is this? SPELL SLOTS. For 15 mages. Having to keep track of each and every mage on the battlefield in regards to their expendable resources was overwhelming and I basically stopped paying attention. I had them all cast magic missile and started recording for basically one mage because they all did the same thing. It was lazy and that poor dwarven ranger in the
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Oh... oh hey This is a thing now. It's made and stuff. Well then, best way to start is an introduction. My name is Maia Cross (hence "the Cross DM. Yes I like my dual meanings. Yes ATypical Fantasy is another one. No I don't have a problem yet). Art by Jimi Bonogofsky That is a good approximation of the me you would probably meet in the near future (hair dye is expensive... and while I do have a table shirt that shirt is not real and it makes me sad). Beyond that, I am really tall and I have a love for tabletop games and game design. I started DnD sometime around 2010 when some friends got together for a 4th edition game which went for many years though is now stopped because schedules are hard and the 4th edition character creator is defunct. Since then, I have DMed in a multi-year long 5th edition campaign where I been adapting a dnd 4e campaign to the latest edition. Said campaign was made by the illustrious Thursday Knights  and the podcast they have of this
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