Category: Rules

Discussion of official and variant rules for games

Hiding and awareness in D&D 5e

This is an area of the D&D 5e rules that I personally have found tricky as I started using the edition, and I see a lot of other people having trouble with. In online chat, I hear of different GMs running it different ways, and I even see knowledgeable rules experts disagreeing to some extent… Continue reading Hiding and awareness in D&D 5e

Chivalry & Sorcery—generating a character

This outlines the generation of my first ever Chivalry & Sorcery character, putting into practice the learning I set out in my last post. The steps in the process The steps listed in the Character Generation chapter are: Select method Birth Horoscope Birth Omens Race and sex Background, class, status and intragroup status Sibling rank… Continue reading Chivalry & Sorcery—generating a character

Chivalry & Sorcery—understanding skills and vocations

This is a follow-up to my previous post, which gave an overview of what you get with the Chivalry & Sorcery 5th edition core rulebook. I’m shifting out of the review mode I was kind of in for that post, because I’ve been figuring out exactly how the skill selection and vocation rules work in… Continue reading Chivalry & Sorcery—understanding skills and vocations

Armor rarity in D&D 5e

While writing an earlier post I noticed some oddities in the distribution of magic armor types in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) magic item tables. To summarise, the cheapest armor types in each weight category (padded, hide and ring mail armor) are never enchanted. The next cheapest types (leather, chain shirt, scale, chainmail) appear at… Continue reading Armor rarity in D&D 5e

Weapons in D&D 5e

I have seen a few discussion threads about homebrew weapons, often with a homebrewer asking whether their new weapon is balanced or appropriate. I also saw yesterday a thread where a GM was asking for inspiration to make a wider selection of weapons than a narrow range that their group seemed to have settled into.… Continue reading Weapons in D&D 5e

Magic items by character level in D&D 5e

Last month I posted one piece about magic item distribution and another about level advancement. Here, I’m going to bring them together and see what they mean for magic items by level. I confess that this feels a bit redundant because since the earlier posts I’ve acquired the official 5e book Xanathar’s Guide to Everything,… Continue reading Magic items by character level in D&D 5e

Experience and character advancement in D&D 5e

If you look at the table for level advancement by experience points, in the DnD 5e Player’s Handbook (PHB) p15, you can see that not only do you need more experience points for each level, but that the additional number needed to progress from one level to the next increases as your level gets higher.… Continue reading Experience and character advancement in D&D 5e

Magic items in the D&D 5e DMG

I’ve seen some people in my various DnD Facebook groups confused about magic item distribution in 5e. And I realized that, although there is information in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) such as item rarity and function, and tables for randomly generating items found in loot hoards, the thinking behind item design and distribution isn’t… Continue reading Magic items in the D&D 5e DMG

Dragons in D&D 5e

I’ve looked over the information in the core 5e Monster Manual about dragons and analysed it to bring out some universals, some patterns of variation, and some less-patterned specifics. These might be of interest if you’re a GM running 5e dragons (or especially if you’re considering homebrewing dragon stat blocks), or a crunch-oriented player in… Continue reading Dragons in D&D 5e