It is by the same people who did spheres, yes. I actually haven't read the book, just the summaries and some of the mechanics on the wiki.
I have almost always seen actual play in RL or the webforums I participate in be in homebrew settings. There were a few Eberron games but that was basically it for established settings.
Had my second session recently. As it turns out a Human Fighter goes through enemies like a hot knife through butter. I was having a good time killing one kobold per swing until I failed to spot a trap and took most of my hp in damage, before being downed from a kobold rolling a natural 20.
This caused me to drop my pick and shield in the room with the murderous trap, but I came prepared with a Greatpick, so after the party managed to recover from our injuries with a combination of medicine and our Champion remembering they have lay on hands, we continued onwards.
Our next fight was against troglodytes, though Pathfinder calls them xulgath. I walked up and demolished one in one swing in spite of their aura making me sickened, but then others flanked me and bit me until I was down again, in spite of our champion remembering they had their champion reaction. Then the champion restored me to 6 HP while I was still surrounded by enemies, and one of them tried to get to a more fragile party member, so I killed that one with an unarmed attack of opportunity while his buddy crit my poor prone fella back unconscious. I then rolled a 2 on my first recovery check, dying immediately.
This session went way better than last time, with only one character death total. I look forward to seeing how my new Giant Instinct Barbarian will do.
Fighters in general are widely considered to be very strong in combat in PF2E. Starting with expert weapon proficiency means that they hit and crit 10% more often than everyone else, which lets them dish out a lot of damage.
Coming in late, but I'm a big fan of the Scarred Lands setting. It was made by White Wolf and definitely has some Exalted-esque vibes to it, but there's also an interesting sense of them using ideas from Greek mythology while avoiding invocations of any specific deities or other personages.
One of the big draws for me is the way that it gives the reader a view of the setting that's pretty much concordant with what the average PC is going to know, while leaving bread crumbs and little notes here and there to help clue players in on the potential complexities as they foray deeper into the lore.
The titans were, overall, a bad thing for the mortal races, but the gods are more like their parents than they admit - they're absolutely dreadful at acknowledging their own shortcomings and atoning for their mistakes, which can sometimes produce the same kind of excesses and destructive whims that they condemn the titans for.
One of the examples I remember best is the titaness Gulaben. She quite compassionate, creating all sorts of creatures intended to provide aid to mortalkind - for example, she made the cloudstings, flying jellyfish-like creatures the size of elephants that guide mortals to gold deposits.
In fact, she was so well liked that the gods had no real way to sell their subjects on sealing her away like they had the other titans - so they resorted to burning the memory of her existence from the minds of all living things, allowing them to then imprison her at the eastern end of the world without anyone coming to her defense. (The sound of her weeping from the depths of her prison-citadel is the source of the Eastern wind.)
Gulaben certainly wasn't perfect - she was still a titan, with a less-than-perfect understanding of the comparative ants she was trying to do nice things for, which could cause problems (for example, warlords capturing cloudstings, then sending them out accompanied by warbands to seize the gold deposits they pointed out, which the cloudsting didn't catch on to because they're just animals with carefully-tailored instincts) - but she was head and shoulders above her siblings, with her only real peer being the crippled titan Golthain, who sided with the gods and whose worship is still permitted.
Ultimately, the gods just wanted to punish her for not siding with them, but didn't want to deal with the possible PR consequences, so they resorted to mass mind control instead.
The game line also plays around a good bit with some of the D&D trappings. For example, its dark elves are styled somewhat after Venice and the Renaissance-era Italian city-states; artisans and merchants are the lifesblood of their society, and they have a trade network that spans the whole of Scarn. What makes them evil-coded is how the Byzantine bureaucracies of its guilds, the trade wars they often wage, and their internal dynastic rivalries tend to spill over into other peoples' affairs via their economic prominence.
Also, they live in a mobile underground metropolis made from tens of thousands of golems. Many of its buildings are simply a collection of animated walls, floors, and other architectural components ordered to cling together in the desired pattern, so their owners can redesign their homes as the mood takes them - and entire districts periodically detach from the rest to visit specific points in their near-global trade network, or stop off to collect ore and other resources from satellite colonies.
Meanwhile, the 'normal' elves were once a powerful nation spread across various islands, which dominated sea trade in a rough counterpart to their cousins' underground mercantile empire. Then, during the Titanomachy, a plan to have their navies provide offshore artillery support for the dwarven armies in a hammer-and-anvil ploy went horribly wrong, because the titan they were fighting decided to forfeit the horde it had gathered against the dwarves, switch targets, and wade the sea to attack the elves' capital.
The gathered elven host was able to defeat Chern, but it cost them everything. Their homeland was, and still is, consumed by the unnatural ecosystem which Chern propagated. Their god, and the demigod-like council of elven princes who fought alongside him, died in the fighting, along with almost half of their adult population. The combined effects of the countless parasites, symbiotes, contagions, and other horrors spawned from the titan's flesh robbed the elves of their immortality and left them sickly, with many of their future children being born deformed or disabled by the lingering effects.
With their empire laid waste and their leaders all dead, most of the remaining elves ultimately fled to the mainland, and have festered there ever since. Their secluded communities are swathed in illusions that recreate the grandeur of their lost home - and hide how decrepit and dilapidated they and their homes really are.
Some of them have taken to abducting human babies from nearby towns, replacing them with their own "unclean" young and trying to raise the stolen children as they would have their own - but the inherent desperation and near-insanity of the practice, as well as the unimaginable cultural trauma that prompted it, means that the stolen children are rarely happy. Much of elven life is now dominated by the struggle to cope with what they've been reduced to, and the emotional burden placed upon humans and half-elves being raised to inherit a culture that functionally died over a century ago.
Honestly, the amount of elf hate on the internet, and in gaming in general leads me to believe that we need a 50 year ban on settings where the elves get shafted.
Honestly, the amount of elf hate on the internet, and in gaming in general leads me to believe that we need a 50 year ban on settings where the elves get shafted.
For me, the Scarred Lands take on elves was interesting because of how it remixes the mythology around Numenor in Tolkien's works, and the attempt to adapt the folkloric idea of changelings into a more structured context. There's something I find quite compelling about the idea of a dying culture trying to keep itself on life support, but the massive contradictions and morally indefensible nature of what they're doing mean that they're less reproducing their previous culture and more creating a new culture forged out of the unavoidable trauma suffered by the stolen children, the existing trauma of their abductors, the lingering scraps of the old elven culture which they're clinging to, and the various ways everyone involved is trying to find some kind of peace and solace within this awful situation.
Admittedly, I also have the context of knowing that one of the official Scarred Lands novels centers around the resurrection of the elven god, and a resultant death-and-rebirth of elven society into a form that isn't hopelessly poisonous.
I feel like one of the biggest issues with 6th Edition [other than the albatross around its neck that is being published by WotC and the rolling series of gaffes / scandals in both their wakes] is that you. Cannot really do playtesting for major - comprehensive - changes to the system by introducing things piecemeal in small little packets that don't even comprehensively cover any one thing being touched upon.
For example: We were told Critical Hits no longer apply to magic attack rolls or bonus dice from features such as Rogue Sneak Attacks. This sounds rather big... but we're also told that NPC's and Monsters cannot Crit anymore. But at the same time as this, there's been an extreme shortage of actual statlines for Monsters.
This is a noticeable change to how damage is conducted both towards and against PC's as well as how several features had been balanced... and we're missing the vital part of the equation of "Well what does enemy health and attack profiles look like in this new system?" Is making unchanged enemies beefier a purposeful design choice, and if so towards what end? Are enemies going to have HP bloat addressed in return, hinting at potentially major overhauls to the Manual and how certain abilities / powers are balanced? Will they hit more consistently harder in return for that lack of Crit potential, or are damage dice remaining the same?
While we're several PDFs into playtesting at this point these sorts of problems have either been consistently added or worsened or both with each publication and while we're getting vaguely more solid understandings of how magic and classes will work there's still too many pieces they just aren't sharing to give actually useful Playtest feedback. "Enemies have less damage burst potential but are also beefier" is something people could write-in but there's no indication or feedback on if this is good and the system working as intended or if this is oversights and they require feedback on how to mitigate as much.
It's the capitalism that's the problem. They can't reveal the real ruleset in the free playtest because that's what they sell. They can't reveal too much about the monsters because that's what they sell. And they can't make it too similar to last editions ruleset because that what they've already sold.
We can make some guesses based on what they've been advertising and what's in the playtest documentation, but WotC cannot move from strength to strength here because they cannot admit that they are trying to move people on from 5e, a game that pretty much everyone has the three hardbacks for because it's been out for almost 10 years, to the next game that they'll sell three hardbacks for, only this time with a subscription service tied in there too.
Critical Hits not multiplying damage from bonus dice like Sneak Attack or flaming weapons was how it worked in 3E, so we already have some idea what the effect there will be: removing the risk of potential synergy between such abilities and crit-fishing builds causing huge bursts of damage. (Although I don't know how you would crit-fish in 5E. It's not like you can get a keen scimitar and take the Improved Critical feat and threaten a critical on rolls of 12-20.)
Although you're right that you can't really do any playtesting on fragments of a ruleset, so clearly they don't intend us to. Whether or not they're bothering to do any internal playtesting worth a damn, or if they'd notice or care if those tests revealed huge problems instead of just going "Perfect! It's just like the AD&D I played in the '80s!" is another question.
Didn't stop Paizo from releasing what was a mostly-complete and functional (if still desperately in need of work) ruleset to the general public for the playtest of PF2E. Or putting the entire rules text online for free. I'm pretty sure that releasing playtest rules wouldn't keep them from selling books. Now, whether or not the morons who run the place realize that is another matter....
Didn't stop Paizo from releasing what was a mostly-complete and functional (if still desperately in need of work) ruleset to the general public for the playtest of PF2E. Or putting the entire rules text online for free. I'm pretty sure that releasing playtest rules wouldn't keep them from selling books. Now, whether or not the morons who run the place realize that is another matter....
Remember that this is the same WotC that, just this year, tried to take back the OGL, despite the OGL and the ease of making stuff for D&D being a major reason why the game is still selling.
WotC doesn't understand their business model. Paizo, for whatever faults they have as a company, do. The goal is to keep players on your system as long as possible, so that they drag new players to it. 3rd Party Content is not stealing, it's the same mod support which is why Skyrim and GTA still end up on top selling game lists this many years into their life cycle.
Remember that this is the same WotC that, just this year, tried to take back the OGL, despite the OGL and the ease of making stuff for D&D being a major reason why the game is still selling.
WotC doesn't understand their business model. Paizo, for whatever faults they have as a company, do. The goal is to keep players on your system as long as possible, so that they drag new players to it. 3rd Party Content is not stealing, it's the same mod support which is why Skyrim and GTA still end up on top selling game lists this many years into their life cycle.
That's why Paizo kept all the actual rules free, even the stuff FROM their adventure mods like unique items and artifacts were added to the officially recognized archives. Only the adventure content and NPCs were "pay only"
Well apparently it's been confirmed the latest 5E book has multiple examples of AI art used within. So: Congratulations Paizo! You are no longer the worst d20 company for artists to work for!
Well apparently it's been confirmed the latest 5E book has multiple examples of AI art used within. So: Congratulations Paizo! You are no longer the worst d20 company for artists to work for!
The Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game franchise says it won’t allow artists to use artificial intelligence technology to draw its cast of sorcerers, druids and other characters and scenery.
apnews.com
Hasbro-owned D&D Beyond, which makes online tools and other companion content for the franchise, said it didn't know until Saturday that an illustrator it has worked with for nearly a decade used AI to create commissioned artwork for an upcoming book. The franchise, run by the Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, said in a statement that it has talked to that artist and is clarifying its rules.
"He will not use AI for Wizards' work moving forward," said a post from D&D Beyond's account on X. "We are revising our process and updating our artist guidelines to make clear that artists must refrain from using AI art generation as part of their art creation process for developing D&D."
Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast didn't respond to requests for further comment Sunday.
Yea I expect alot more of that, at least until an international standard for AI related copyright laws is reached.
None of the megacorps want to be sued to hell and back for copyright infrigment OR have their copyrights considered fair game by AI *art* and *artists*
AI is an efreeti that can't be put back in its bottle at this point. I think such stuff should come with a note in the future: "This adventure has art or ideas generated by AI." in it. People are going to use it now that it's out there. I used Claude 2 AI the other day randomly designing encounters based off a massive macro I have in Roll20.
Oh, and hi. I'm new here. Saw there was a games forum, and since I like doing evolution games, went and made one (link in my signature). Go vote in it. It's actually a lot of fun.
Is this the forum for comparing homebrew? I've gone and rewritten all of the base 3.5 classes for my own world, and need someplace that can do a reasonable balance pass for me.
You can post homebrew in here - I and others have done so before - though when it comes to more contentious editions you may need to clarify what you mean by "balance". 4E tends to be straightforward, but 3.5, PF, 5E, and even - to degrees - 2E can vary wildly in the context of "balanced compared to pre-existing classes", "keeping classes in approximate sight of one-another", etc. Including Tome of Battle stuff in 3.5 or including Class Kits in 2E is entirely different from looking at just the PHB.
This is a homebrew class I made. Let me know what you think. It's built around a medium-magic world that was originally based in 3.5, but has taken things like Advantage and the like from 5E. Most people think my world should be its own separate system given how much I've edited the classes (as all of them share this layout and are very changed from base 3.5).
The Runebound Glyphwarden
Homebrew Class
Runebound Glyphwardens are treated as Clerics for purposes of skills, saves, hit rolls and HP.
Special: Truenaming
A Runebound Glyphwarden can Truename a creature, speaking in the language of the Feral Primordial.
Truenaming is done by rolling (Level)d6 and adding the Runebound Glyphwarden's Charisma score.
Control is total and absolute, including self destructive actions, and can only be done once against the target.
Animals get 3d6 to resist, humanoids 5d6+5, outsiders/magical beasts/constructs 8d6+9, dragons/demons/devils 15d6+10.
Undead/slimes cannot be Truenamed. Constructs roll with Disadvantage.
Higher roll wins; if the Runebound Glyphwarden wins the opposing being can't act until all the command words (6s) are used up. Treated as helpless, so can be one-shot.
For every 6 rolled, if the Truenaming is successful, the Runebound Glyphwarden may make a one word command (multiple words require multiple 6s). If he rolled no 6s, roll again next round. If no 6s are rolled, the effect fails.
For animals, this control lasts 24 hours instead, with up to five five-word commands (and no decay) available. This WILL affect Beastials (anthropomorphic animals of my world)!
Number of words decays by two per round after the first, or by one per round after level 8, so think fast!
If the Truenaming is unsuccessful, and the target has some form of inherent magic (outsider, magic beast, dragon, etc... basically anything but an animal or non-fighter / magical null), the target can turn this back on them (full round action) with a successful Knowledge Arcana DC 25; this forces the Runebound Glyphwarden to make a Will Save DC 20 + (number of 6s the target rolled) to avoid the same fate.
Speaking abstract concepts instead to modify the being's very body and soul ("Strength increase!" for example) last for 24 hours and give a +6 to the score in question.
Starting Gear
70% normal starting money (training is expensive)
A suit of chain mail (and shield, if they want).
Nine flasks of Exotic Ink with which to make Warding Glyphs. Flasks cost 70 gold apiece and the Runebound Glyphwarden can hold up to 20.
Three random potions.
A 20% chance for one random magic item, defensively themed.
Special Ability: Glyph of Abstraction
Once per encounter, as a full round action, the Runebound Glyphwarden can draw a runic symbol on the ground that represents a word. Each full round spent drawing it adds one word. When the effect is complete, the "spell" goes off using the words. Effects left to the DM, but will almost always be beneficial.
An Abstract Glyph such as "Blinding Shield" (taking two turn cycles) might produce a shield of light around one ally, while an "Open Wounds And Apply Heavy Poison" (taking a full six cycles) might cast a heavy AoE and add poison damage.
Dragons have a 15% chance to dispel an Abstract Glyph (by proximity) per turn. If they actively attempt it (move action), the chance rises to 40%.
Glyphs of Abstraction can have a maximum of (Experience Level +1) words, capping at 12.
Passives
Identify Curses/Familiars
Runebound Glyphwardens can see Curses and identify Familiars on sight.
Immunity to Nullification
Runebound Glyphwardens are uniquely attuned to magic in such a way that they cannot be Magical Nulls (people cursed not to sense or use magic).
Warden of Magic
Runebound Glyphwardens are immune to Curses and the effects of Wild Surges.
Regular Abilities
Defensive Ward
As a full round action the Runebound Glyphwarden can put up a Ward that prevents movement into the affected area without a Will Save DC 13+Experience Level.
Forcefully powering through such a ward deals 3d8 damage, -5 to all saving throws for the duration of the encounter, and dispels it.
Undead will be held completely at bay; they cannot pass a Ward by any means.
The Ward's radius is 5 feet at 1st level, 10 feet at 5th level and 20 feet at 9th level.
Only one Ward may be down at a time, and lasts for one round per experience level.
Anything one size larger than the Runebound Glyphwarden ignores the Defensive Ward entirely; anything two sizes or greater will shatter the Ward with no effect.
Runic Disjunction
A Runebound Glyphwarden can take a scroll and dispel its runes, taking its power for themselves.
Each level of the spell is enough power for one Runebound Strike, Glyph of Infusion, or Defensive Ward as free actions. They may hold up to (Intelligence Bonus +4) spell levels of this power.
Glyph of Infusion
The Glyphwarden can infuse bodies, weapons or armor with runic energies, temporarily enhancing their properties.
It takes three rounds to charge up an item in this way (Knowledge Arcana DC 20). Bodies and Weapons require one flask of exotic ink; armor and shields require two.
Glyphs can be used to add an elemental affinity which deals an additional 50% of damage rolled as an elemental effect, or to make something with the "-proof" suffix (such as acidproof, fireproof, etc).
If used defensively instead, Infusions can absorb up to 10 points of one element, including physical damage.
Infusions last 10 minutes with a 2 minute cooldown between applications on the same target.
Infusion Glyphs cannot be Counterspelled but they can be Dispelled.
Runeforged Strike
A Runebound Glyphwarden can inscribe their own weapon with runes that, when the swing is made, detonate. Treated as a Paladin's smite attack.
It takes two full round actions to "customize" their weapon and a DC 18 Knowledge Arcana.
It cannot be done outside of battle as the runes have to be customized to the target (it must be done on the fly) but preparation can be made if an ambush is being planned against a specific target.
If the blow misses, the runic energy either flash-detonates in a random space around the Runebound Guardian (and it might target him) dealing twice normal weapon damage, or backlashes against the Runebound Guardian, dealing half the Smite damage and stunning them (my smite is 6d8 but very limited in uses).
Runic Channeling
By channeling their power, they can attempt to Counterspell up to one spell per 2 levels.
As long as they're channeling, any hostile spell that is cast within 20 feet of them has a chance to be Counterspelled.
If a spell is countered, the Runebound Glyphwarden can use it as power for their own abilities (charging a Runeforged Strike or putting up a Defensive Ward instantly for example) which will hold until the power is expended.
The Runebound Glyphwarden can move while channeling, but if they act then there's a 40% chance to lose the channel. If the channel is lost the power cannot be reestablished for 24 hours.
Drawbacks
Sacrificial Soul
To be a Runebound Glyphwarden is to forsake the afterlife.
When a Runebound Glyphwarden dies their soul is converted into a bright white crystal worth 150 Sylterium (my world's magic resource) per experience level and an additional 25 per maximum hit point. They are considered dead for good.
This can be used as a very strong power source by those who know how to do it (Knowledge Planes and Arcana, both 10 ranks).
Opposing Forces
A Runebound Glyphwarden's wards and runes can be freely dispelled by any other Runebound Glyphwarden, Cleric or Sorcerer.
This is a test of wills, DC 15, full round action.
If the dispeller is a Sorcerer, the Sorcerer gets Advantage.
Cleric can specifically dispel a Runebound Glyphwarden's effects with a two-round charge-up time, during which they must be in the Runebound Glyphwarden's line of sight at all times, but no saving throw is allowed and the dispel is automatically successful.
Runic Exhaustion
Once they've used their powers a total of (Experience Level +5) times, they must rest for 48 hours.
Fateblocked
Runebound Glyphwardens are unable to modify their saving throws in any way.
Electricity Weakness
Runebound Glyphwardens take double effect from harmful electrical effects.
apnews.com
