Unofficial D&D 2024 Style Guide (Your Capitalization Questions Answered!)

January 7th, 2025

When I’m writing rules for D&D 2024, it annoys me not to have an official style guide. In its absence, I made my own style guide so I can quickly answer my own questions:

  • Is it “action” and “bonus action,” or “Action” and “Bonus Action?” (neither, it’s “action” and “Bonus Action”)
  • Am I “knocked Prone”, or do I “gain the Prone condition” or “have the Prone condition”? (All three)
  • “d20 test”, “d20 Test”, or “D20 Test”? (The latter)

    (There are undoubtedly really good fan-made style guides out there, better than this! But this is what I have for now.)

    Here is a google doc of v1 of my current unofficial D&D 2024 style guide. It’s set so you can make suggestions! Feel free to add corrections so we can keep this correct.

    In case you don’t like clicking links, here’s my first draft of the style guide. (In the future I will probably keep the doc up to date but maybe not this blog post!)

    Capitalization

    Capitalized: abilities (“Strength”), action type (“Attack action”), “Advantage/Disadvantage”, alignment (“Lawful Good”), area (“Emanation”), armor (“Scale Mail”), armor type (“Heavy armor”), “Armor Class”, attack (“Rend attack”), attitude (“Friendly”), “Attunement”, “Bloodied”, “Bonus Action”, “Challenge Rating”, class (“Barbarian”), class feature (“Cunning Action”), coins (“Gold Piece”), components (“Material”), condition (“Grappled”), cover (“Half Cover”), “Concentration”, creature type (“Beast”), “Critical Hit”, “D20 Test”, damage type (“Piercing”), “Death Saving Throw”, “Difficult Terrain”, “Difficulty Class”, “Dungeon Master”, equipment (“Ladder”), “Exhaustion”, “Experience Points”, “Expertise”, “Heroic Inspiration”, “High Jump”, “Hit Points”, “Hit Point Dice/Hit Dice”, “Immunity”, “Initiative”, lifestyle (“Wretched”), light (“Darkness”, “Dim Light”), “Long Jump”, magic item (“Spell Scroll”), obscured (“Lightly Obscured”), “Opportunity Attack”, “Origin feat”, “Passive Perception”, “Proficiency Bonus”, “Reaction”, “Resistance”, rest (“Short Rest”), “Ritual”, senses (“Tremorsense”) size (“Tiny”), skill (“Investigation”), species (“Human”), “Speed” (“Swim Speed”), spell (“Fireball”), “Spellcasting Focus”, “Stable”, subclass (“Path of the Berserker”), “Unarmed Strike”, “Temporary Hit Points”, “Vulnerability”, weapon (“Dagger”), weapon property or type (“Finesse”, “Melee”)

    Not Capitalized: ”ability”, “ability modifier”, “action”, “alignment”, “ally”, “armor training”, “attack roll”, “attack bonus”, attack type (“melee attack”), “attuned”, “aura”, “background”, “burning”, “cantrip”, “character”, “class”, “damage”, “damage roll”, “feat”, “hazard”, “hide”, “hit”, “improvised weapon”, “level”, monster name (“skeleton”) (or perhaps its “Skeleton”, it’s inconsistent), “object”, “player”, “proficiency”, “round”, “save”, “saving throw”, “size”, “skill”, “species”, “spell”, “spell slot”, “stabilize”, “surprise”, “teleport” as a verb, “turn”

    Usage Examples

    Abilities: “Dexterity modifier”

    Ability checks and skills: “Whenever you make an ability check using one of the following skills, you can make it as a Strength check even if it normally uses a different ability” “make a Strength (Athletics) check” “you gain proficiency with three skills”

    Actions: “take an action to” “take a Bonus Action” “As a Bonus Action, you can” “you can Influence a creature” “take the Search action” “after you x, you can y as a bonus action” “As a Magic action, you” Actions: Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, Hide, Influence, Magic, Ready, Search, Study, Utilize

    Advantage/Disadvantage: “You have Advantage on Strength checks” “doing so gives you Advantage” “attack rolls against you have Advantage” “You have Advantage on any saving throw you make to end the Grappled condition” “being within 5 feet of an enemy doesn’t impose Disadvantage on your attack rolls”

    Areas: “energy in a 30-foot Line that is 5 feet wide” “radiates from you in a 30-foot Emanation” “Each creature in a 15-foot Cone makes a Dexterity saving throw, taking 3d6 Fire damage on a failed save or half as much damage on a successful one.”

    Armor Class/Armor: “Your base Armor Class is 10 plus your Dexterity modifier” “You gain training with Heavy armor”

    Attacks: “make a melee spell attack” “make a melee attack with a Melee weapon”, “make an attack roll (I think the “attack roll bonus” on PHB 41 is incorrect)” “when a creature is hit by an attack roll” “when you hit a target with a weapon” “if you make an attack roll and the roll misses” “the lion makes two Rend attacks”

    Bonus: “(minimum bonus of +1)”

    Conditions: “gain the Grappled condition” “gain the Prone condition” “you’re knocked Prone” “causes them to have the Blinded condition” “fall unconscious” “have the Unconscious condition” “on a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition for 1 minute. At the end of each of the Frightened creature’s turns, the creature repeats the save, ending the condition on itself on a success.” “You can cause a Large or smaller creature to have the prone condition when you hit it with a melee attack” “you can’t use this feature if you have the Incapacitated condition” “until you have the Incapacitated condition” “doesn’t give you levels of Exhaustion”

    Concentration: When you damage a creature that is concentrating, it has Disadvantage on the saving throw it makes to maintain Concentration”

    Creatures: “creature who can see or hear you” “Your enemies in the area have Disadvantage”

    Critical Hit: “When you score a Critical Hit”

    Equipment: “When you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield”

    Hit Points: “Hit Point maximum” “if you have 0 Hit Points” “you gain a number of Temporary Hit points equal to your barbarian level” “you can regain a number of hit points equal to” “you restore x Hit Points to the creature”

    Initiative: “when you roll Initiative”

    Levels: “When you gain a Bard level” “when you reach level 3”

    Mastery: “You can activate the Topple mastery property”

    Movement: “You can transport the creature up to 10 feet horizontally” “you can move a creature to an unoccupied space within 5 feet” “you push the target 5 feet from you”

    Opportunity Attacks:     “without provoking opportunity attacks”

    Proficiency/Expertise: “You gain proficiency in Wisdom saving throws” “you gain Expertise in two of your skill proficiencies of your choice” “you have proficiency in improvised weapons”

    Rests: “After you xx in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a Short or Long Rest unless you expend a xx (no action required) to restore your use of it” “you regain all expended uses when you finish a Short or Long Rest”

    Resistance/Immunity/Vulnerability: You are immune to the Poisoned condition” “you have Resistance to Poison damage”

    Saving Throws: “saving throw” but “Death Saving Throw” “The target must succeed on a Strength saving throw (DC 8 plus your Strength modifier and Proficiency Bonus or be teleported” “if you fail a saving throw” “fails a saving throw against an effect that applies the Charmed condition”

    Senses: “You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.” “You gain Tremorsense with a range of 60 feet”

    Speed: “your size and Speed” “You can move up to half your Speed” “the target’s Speed is reduced by 15 feet” “the target’s Speed is halved” “you have a Fly Speed equal to your Speed and can hover” “your Speed increases by 10 feet” “your Speed is 0”

    Spells: “how many spell slots you have available, how many cantrips you know, and how many spells you can prepare” “Choose your cantrips and prepared spells” “Charisma is your spellcasting ability for your Bard spells” “you can expend a spell slot to” “you learn two spells of your choice” “cast the spell without Material components” “You always have the Telekinesis spell prepared. With this feature, you can cast it without a spell slot or components, and your spellcasting ability for it is Intelligence. Once you cast the spell with this feature, you can’t do so in this way again until you finish a Long Rest.” “You always have that spell prepared. You can cast it once without a spell slot, and you regain the ability to cast it in that way when you finish a Long Rest. You can also cast the spell using any spell slots you have.”

    view as google doc

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    a quick peek at 2024 Monster Manual math

    December 2nd, 2024

    As a monster designer, I’m interested in seeing where the 2024 Monster Manual takes monster design. How compatible are 2014 and 2024 monsters? What are the benchmarks for a monster of a given Challenge Rating, and has it changed?

    I wrote about this before when we had a very small handful of monsters. By now we have a surprisingly large number of 2024-style monster previews – I count about 60 between the PHB, Monster Manual previews, and the free adventures Scions of Elemental Evil and Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn. That’s enough to make some decent educated guesses, especially around Challenge Ratings 1/8 through 6 (I think we only have two monsters that are higher CR than that).

    First of all, how have monster benchmarks changed? It seems like the biggest changes are to hit points and expected damage. Here are scatter plots of the 2024 hit points and damage numbers (blue), along with my 2014 Monster Manual on a Business Card math (red).

    mome24e

    (As I did for earlier analyses, I use the 2014 DMG rubric for calculating damage: the average damage a monster deals over 3 rounds, assuming every attack hits, every area attack targets 2 foes, etc. I’ve tweaked it a bit for this analysis: for instance, I gave a bonus to an attack that’s likely to gain advantage – but I haven’t made big changes. I’m NOT using any updated formulas from the 2024 DMG because the 2024 DMG doesn’t include any real monster building guidelines beyond “you can reskin”.)

    As you can see, hit points and damage have changed. Hit points have gone up a fair amount, and damage has gone up a lot. We’re still dealing with a linear increase by level, though.

    I’m trying out a new formula for monster stats. This is provisional, and will probably change a bit once we get the full Monster Manual. It’s not as nice and clean as the 2014 one – it’s a bit harder for me to do the math in my head – but it seems to be the math they’re using:

    Hit Points: 9 + 18 per CR

    Damage: 3.75 + 7.5 per CR

    In other words, for every CR you get 18 hit points and 7.5 DPR, plus a half-level bump as a bonus.

    For CRs under 1 I just interpolated some linear values, keeping the 40% ratio between damage and hit points.

    CR 1/8: 10 HP, 4 damage
    CR 1/4: 15 HP, 6 damage
    CR 1/2: 20 HP, 8 damage

    How well does this formula match the data? Let’s draw it:

    mome24f

    Pretty close, though it might be skewed by trying to match those two high-CR data points. Let’s just look at CRs 0 through 6.

    mome24g

    It looks pretty good, although the data is incredibly noisy just because we have so little data to go on (60 monsters is not a lot). So these formulas are all quite provisional, and may change a lot once we see the full Monster Manual.

    Based on this hypothesis, though, we can draw some conclusions:

    Different Damage Ratio

    One interesting change is that we have confirmed that monsters no longer use the “1 damage-per-round for every 3 hit points” rubric they used in 2014. Instead of a ratio of .33, the new key ratio is .4: 4 DPR for every 10 hit points. This means that 2014 and 2024 monsters have a fundamental incompatibility at their center. You can’t strictly say, for instance, that a 2024 CR 8 monster is equivalent to a 2014 CR 10 monster; it’s not. Its ratio of attack to defense is different.

    Do I like this change? Yes. As both a player and DM, I like monsters to have more damage capability rather than more hit points. I’d rather have a monster hit hard, and not overstay its welcome, rather than drag out a foregone fight.

    Now 25% Tougher!

    Just as players are tougher in 2024, monsters are too, especially at high CRs. It seems like monsters are roughly compatible up until around CR 3 or 4, and then new monsters pull away.

    Glossing over the incompatible damage ratio of new monsters, if you’re comparing or swapping 2014-style and 2024 monsters – for instance, using Monstrous Menagerie 2 monsters in a 2024 adventure – you’ll need to know how they stack up in order to make the encounter work. Here’s my provisional formula for doing that:

    To convert a 2024 monster’s CR into 2014 and A5E-style CR, multiply by 1.25 and round down.

    That means that monsters up to CR 3 will be unchanged (which matches our findings about their statistics). 2024 monsters of CR 4 to 7 should have their CR increased by +1, which approximately matches what we see in the data. After this, our findings are mostly speculative because of the lack of data. For CR 8 to 11 monsters, add +2 to their CR; CR 12 to 15, +3; CR 16 to 19, +4; CR 20 to 23, +5; and we have no data at all beyond this point. This means that the 2024 CR 22 ancient green dragon is, in 2014 terms, really CR 27 (with the caveat that its hit points will be a little low and its damage will be a little high).

    Going the other way, to convert a 2014/A5E monster into 2024 CR, multiply by 0.8 and round up. So, for instance, if you use a 2014 remorhaz (CR 11) in a 2024 game, treat its CR as 9 for the purposes of encounter building and determining encounter difficulty.

    The downside of this rough-and-ready conversion is that a monster’s CR is not just its damage and hit points. The 2024 green dragon might have the damage output and hit points of an old-style CR 27, but it has the AC, save DCs, and attack bonuses of a CR 22 monster. That’s not a huge deal because for the most point these numbers will only be about 1 or 2 points at the very highest CRs, so I don’t think it’s worthwhile making a big conversion effort to fix this. Still, it’s a bit messy.

    Do I like this change? Not really. If they wanted to challenge players, rather than boosting the power of a monster of a given CR, they could have left the meaning of CR alone and changed the encounter guidelines instead. There are a lot of much-improved 2014-style encounter guidelines out there, including mine and Sly Flourish’s, they could have drawn inspiration from. This would have been a change WOTC could have made on a single page of the DMG rather than on every page of the Monster Manual. I would have been very happy if they had changed monster’s damage-to-hp ratios without also inflating stats in a way that made WOTC’s D&D 5E slightly incompatible with itself. But it’s WOTC’s choice to do whatever they want with their game; it’s our choice whether we want to follow their design decisions or not.

    …but we gotta wait for the full book

    As I said before, all of these numbers will probably get adjusted a little once we see the full book: once I have more data points, my stats for challenge ratings 7 and higher could see big changes. But if, for instance, you’re a monster designer and want to be able to make some provisional 2024 monsters, this might be good enough for now.

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    Monstrous Menagerie 2: Goblin Mode

    November 21st, 2024

    mome2bannerHey, I’m the lead writer on EN Publishing’s new book, Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes and Heroes! It’s on Kickstarter RIGHT NOW (assuming now is Dec 12 2024 or earlier!)

    While Monstrous Menagerie 2 is mostly composed of brand-new monsters, we did take the opportunity to expand on some classic creatures that we think merit some more consideration. One of the monsters we revisited is the humble goblin.

    Over the past few years, goblins have taken a real face turn–so much so that a few years ago, Oxford Dictionary named “goblin mode” its word of the year. To Oxford Dictionary, it means “a behaviour that is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations,” which seems to me like a pretty negative way to describe staying home to wear sweatpants and eat ice cream.

    Here’s the thing: the idea of goblins as adorably antisocial little guys is, I think, fairly new. If we look at the history of goblins in fantasy literature, there are some interesting, unexplored through lines.

    deepgoblinLet’s start with the wellspring of so much of the fantasy genre: Tolkien. Goblins are a major adversary in The Hobbit. Far from being feral little fellows, we find that goblins are high-tech, with what appears to be a well-ordered society. Their leader, the Great Goblin, as he questions the dwarves about their intrusion into his realm, is rather urbane–until a goblin produces Thorin’s sword, Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver, which understandably throws the Great Goblin into a rage.

    According to my cursory research, it seems like Orcrist was mostly cleaving goblins around the year 510 in the First Age, while The Hobbit takes place in 2942 in the Third Age. I’m not an expert in Middle Earth chronology but that seems like… a long time. With historical memory like that, these aren’t “Garg Eat Rocks” goblins. Tolkien has lots of bad words to say about goblins—”ugly”, “cruel”, “wicked”, and “lazy”, and with gross flat feet—but he doesn’t deny that they’re historians. (And possessed of a series of national alliances to boot: when Gandalf kills the Great Goblin, in revenge another goblin monarch raises an army of many thousands of goblins.)

    Prior to Tolkien the history of goblins is a bit muddied: in English-language literature the words for all the fey creatures are often used interchangeably. “Goblin”, “dwarf”, “kobold”, “gnome”, and “fairy” are often the same thing. But there are some books that specifically mark out goblins as a specific species. The Worm Ouroboros, by E. R. Eddison, is a 1922 fantasy classic, admired by Tolkien, in which Goblinland is a mighty nation. The lords and kings of Goblinland, like everyone in The Worm Ouroboros, are characters of towering Shakespearian dignity. And I’m not kidding about Shakespearean: here’s some of the goblin Lord Gro’s dialogue:

    “How shall not common opinion account me mad, so rash and presumptuous dangerously to put my life in hazard? Nay, against all sound judgement; and this folly I enact in that very season when by patience and courage and my politic wisdom I had won that in despite of fortune’s teeth which obstinately hitherto she had denied me: when after the brunts of divers tragical fortunes I had marvellously gained the favour and grace of the King, who very honourably placed me in his court, and tendereth me, I well think, so dearly as he doth the balls of his two eyes.”

    (Imagine running a game of D&D and saying that in character as a goblin!)

    Now let’s go further back, to George MacDonald’s 19th century The Princess and the Goblin (also admired by Tolkien, and therefore also part of the DNA of modern fantasy literature and fantasy gaming). Unlike The Worm Ouroboros and like The Hobbit, MacDonald presents his goblins as grotesque, bestial, cruel creatures with gross feet. (Typical human propaganda!) However, once again these goblins are technologically adept miners, and they have all the trappings of a strong and sophisticated monarchy. Here’s the Goblin King and his court addressing his people:

    At the other end of the hall, high above the heads of the multitude, was a terrace-like ledge of considerable height, caused by the receding of the upper part of the cavern-wall. Upon this sat the king and his court: the king on a throne hollowed out of a huge block of green copper ore, and his court upon lower seats around it. The king had been making them a speech, and the applause which followed it was what Curdie had heard. One of the court was now addressing the multitude. What he heard him say was to the following effect: ‘Hence it appears that two plans have been for some time together working in the strong head of His Majesty for the deliverance of his people. Regardless of the fact that we were the first possessors of the regions they now inhabit; regardless equally of the fact that we abandoned that region from the loftiest motives; regardless also of the self-evident fact that we excel them so far in mental ability as they excel us in stature, they look upon us as a degraded race and make a mockery of all our finer feelings. But, the time has almost arrived when–thanks to His Majesty’s inventive genius–i0t will be in our power to take a thorough revenge upon them once for all, in respect of their unfriendly behaviour.’

    When we put these three versions of goblins together, what do we get?

  • Goblins are really into their monarchy.
  • Goblins are insular.
  • Goblins have a grudge against everybody else.
  • Goblins sound vaguely Shakespearean.

    In other words, perhaps accidentally, these three English authors invented a fantasy monster that is extremely English.

    When original D&D came around, it basically stuck to this script. It didn’t do much to describe goblins except that they hate dwarves and “when in their lair the ‘goblin king’ will be found. He will fight as a Hobgoblin in all respects.” In further editions, goblins descend further and further into ineffective, semi-comic barbarity.

    I am here for the “Garg eat rocks” goblin, but I sure like the highfalutin, palace-politics goblin too. Why not have both?

    A first thought might be to use hobgoblins for this type of highbrow goblin. And it’s not a bad thought at all. But hobgoblins have sort of developed their own thing. Whereas the goblins of literature are subterranean miner-monarchists who mostly want to be left alone with their ugly feet, hobgoblins are the expansive and outgoing Roman Empire who covet a surface empire.

    Here’s my pitch: just as gnomes have deep gnomes and dwarves have deep dwarves, goblins have deep goblins. Surface goblins are the familiar gnaw-on-rocks, battling-to-survive bandits with no social institutions to speak of. They are the heirs to fallen goblin kingdoms, and their small clans are prey to every passing warmonger and adventuring party.

    Meanwhile, far underground are the kingdoms of the deep goblins. These kingdoms never fell, and their technology and cultures are just as advanced as anyone else’s, or more so. As Tolkien says of goblins, “wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them.” If anyone in your fantasy campaign manufactures firearms and grenades, it’s likely to be the goblins. Furthermore, deep goblins nurse grudges against most other intelligent creatures. They’re perfectly aware of what happened to the surface goblin kingdoms, and how those goblins have been treated since by the humans and dwarves. (And I bet they don’t much care for grimlocks and dark elves either.) With well-equipped armies in the thousands, there’s no reason why the deep goblins couldn’t conquer a lot of the world, except they don’t particularly care for the sunlit parts of it–but don’t press them too far, because they might change their minds if you get them mad enough (as they’ll happily explain to you, in high Elizabethan diction.)

    This is the route we’re going with goblins in Monstrous Menagerie II. Where Monstrous Menagerie presented the typical hard-luck surface goblins and the “I’ve watched 300 a dozen times” hobgoblins, Monstrous Menagerie II brings us deep goblins. They’re tough opponents, suitable foils for mid-level, deep-delving adventurers. Their rulers are politically astute and trained in war, ever prepared to defend their realms. Like all A5E goblins, they’re at least a little fey-touched and armed with strange magic. And one dark night, the deep goblins might just venture “Upstairs” to give the world a taste of their power, and then we’ll all be in trouble.

    That’s my pitch on deep goblins! If that sounds cool, or you want to take a look at the other 300 odd monsters in the book, you can get it all in Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes and Heroes. The PDFs fulfill the very moment the Kickstarter ends, and the books and PDFs are on sale afterwards, so you can get your hands on the book real soon.

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    Bastions: And How to Make Them Pay – Maximizing Profits for Bastions in the 5e 2024 DMG

    October 31st, 2024
    The late 19th century was all about ducks, but in the early 21st century we know better

    The late 19th century was all about ducks, but in the enlightened age of Generic Fantasy Times we know better

    ANOTHER RORY GUEST POST!

    With the release of the 5e 2025 Dungeon Masters Guide, Bastions are official and can be easily acquired at 5th level for any DM who sees fit to include them! Are they a little half baked? Perhaps! Is it mostly useless to recruit defenders and build walls for your Bastion? Yeah, pretty much! Are some of the facilities you can build almost entirely useless? YES (I’m looking at you Armory)!

    On the other hand… Can Bastions actually make you quite a bit of easy money? Most Certainly! Are there actually quite a few facilities available that provide a host of useful buffs and abilities? Yes… but let’s go back to the easy money thing. Imagine if you will an adventurer motivated by the desire to make fat stacks of gold and platinum. Perhaps this adventurer has a kind heart and wishes to support the local orphanage. Or perhaps they simply want to buy a lot of sweet magic items and throw their money around like it was water, bribing their way to success, wearing the finest clothes, and throwing lavish parties. Either way, money is pretty useful in D&D and it’s no surprise players would want to acquire more of it, especially with the new rules for buying and crafting magic items. I’ve looked through all the special facilities in the new DMG, and below are the most profitable special facilities for each level range:

    TLDR: Start with a Gaming Hall and Garden, pick up a Storehouse and Stable at level 9, and then grab a Guild Hall at level 17 for most impactful gains. Much longer explanation below!

    Levels 5-8: At level 5 you can choose 2 specialized facilities at no cost. Every week that you spend with some kind of access to your bastion (generally being able to stop by in person at the beginning of the week is enough), you can give special commands to these facilities to make you that sweet sweet lucre. The most profitable at this level are:

    Gaming Hall (73.5 gold/week): The payout is random each week, but if you do the math, this facility makes you 73.5 gold a week on average, which isn’t bad!

    Garden (50 gold/week): You can make a lot of stuff with a garden, but from a pure profit standpoint selecting Poison is your best bet. You can create two vials of Antitoxin or one vial of Basic Potion a week. If you actually need those items, awesome, you’ve just netted 100 gold of value. If not, the standard rules let you sell those items for half price and net a pretty decent 50 gold.

    Should you enlarge your garden? For a mere (lol) 2,000 gold you can expand the size of your garden to Vast size and effectively maintain two gardens instead of one, which would double your weekly profit to 100 gold. Probably this isn’t worth it unless you expect to stay in the 5-8 level range for quite some time, as it would take literally 40 weeks to recoup you expenses and turn this into a profitable endeavor. Probably don’t bother.

    Total Profit per Week: 123.5 Gold!

    Levels 9-12: At level 9, you unlock 2 more special facilities, increasing your total to 4! More importantly, you unlock some nice options for making substantially more money. Here are the top 4 most profitable facilities at this level:

    Read the rest of this entry »

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    Do the 2024 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide XP Tables Work?

    October 29th, 2024

    Rory Guest Post!

    Arguably one of the most impactful changes in the 2024 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide is the new XP Budget table for Combat Encounters. It has three notable changes from the original 5e DMG:

    • The old table had 4 categories of difficulty for encounters (Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly). The new table drops the old Easy encounters and has only 3 categories (Low, Moderate, High). So effectively, the old Medium is the new Low, the old Hard is the new Moderate, and the old Deadly is the new High. Considering how laughably trivial Easy encounters were, this is a pretty reasonable change.
    • The notorious Encounter Multipliers table for multiple enemies has been removed. This table was designed under the premise that multiple weaker enemies are more difficult than a single high level enemy. While single enemies are uniquely vulnerable to spells like Hold Person and Polymorph, it was a fundamentally flawed premise considering the prevalence of AE spells and abilities such as Thunderwave and Fireball, and it’s removal ensures less burdensome encounter calculations and more realistic difficulties overall.
    • The XP budgets start out the same (once you shift from 4 categories to the new 3), but increase at higher levels. Considering how powerful PCs become at higher levels, this is probably a good thing. For the hardest difficulties, the XP budget increases relative to the original DMG starting at level 9 and is almost double at level 20 (12,700 vs the new 22,000).

    All things considered, I would say it’s pretty obvious these are all good changes. My question though, is does it go far enough?! With that in mind, let’s explore some scenarios at various tiers of play using the High difficulty, which is meant to provide a meaningful chance of death for one of more characters. We’ll have to work with the old Monster Manual, so perhaps we can revisit these numbers when the new MM is out:

    Read the rest of this entry »

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    What level is the leprechaun from Lucky Charms?

    October 8th, 2024

    I was reading the back of a Lucky Charms cereal box today (as you do) and I learned some things that were SHOCKING. SHOCKING.

    Here’s the cereal box in question.

    lucky

    It gives a breakdown of all 8 of Lucky the leprechaun’s marshmallows, and what magical power they give him. I was expecting some wishy washy baloney – this marshmallow gives Lucky the power of friendship! stuff like that – but in fact, nearly all of them are legit magic abilities. In fact, they map onto D&D spells to an astonishing degree, with only a few questions to be cleared up.

    And not only that, the cereal box ended with a sinister revelation that nearly made me do a spit take. In my opinion, this box strongly implies, if not states outright, that Lucky is a horrific villain that steals mortal children. I mean, that’s par for course for leprechauns – why does Rumplestiltskin want that baby in the Grimm’s story? – but pretty surprising content on the back of a cereal box. We’ll talk more about Lucky’s secret later on, when we get to the final marshmallow.

    Dark revelations aside, the real importance of the box is this: finally, we can stat up Lucky as a D&D character. Mankind’s age-old quest is finally complete!

    Lucky’s Level

    According to the cereal box, Lucky uses the MAGIC OF THE CHARMS to make his world a more enchanted place! Charms = marshmallows, I guess. There are eight marshmallows: hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, blue moons, unicorns, rainbows, and red balloons, each with their own powers.

    For the most part, each of Lucky’s powers seem to be arcane spells. Lucky could be a wizard or sorcerer, but you can make a strong case for a warlock – fey pact, obviously. And in fact, I have a guess at his level! Lucky knows 8 spells (or more, if the list on the back of the box isn’t exhaustive). According to the Spells Known column of the Warlock table, that would make him at least a 7th level warlock (with access to 4th level spells).

    OK, now let’s get to the crux of the issue: what exactly are Lucky’s powers? Let’s take a closer look at that cereal box.

    “Hearts let Lucky bring objects to LIFE.” OK, this is obviously animate object. And, right off the bat we learn something new. That’s a fifth level spell – just out of reach for a 7th level caster. Is Lucky level 9, not level 7? That would mean he had at least 10 known spells, two of which weren’t listed on the box. What powers does Lucky have that General Mills doesn’t want you to know about? *

    “Stars give Lucky the power to FLY.” That’s obviously the 3rd level spell fly, no questions there.

    “Horseshoes help lucky SPEED things up.” That’s haste, another 3rd level spell.

    “Clovers bring Lucky GOOD LUCK.” This was maybe the toughest call. What spell brings good luck? It can’t be Lucky (a feat) Luck (a halfling trait) or Stone of Good Luck (an item). After racking my brains, I realized that the luck provided by Clovers doesn’t refer to a spell at all: they’re the Leprechaun 1/day magical ability Gift of Luck. After all, Lucky is not just a warlock, he’s a leprechaun too!

    “Blue Moons make Lucky invisible.” Invisibility, next.

    “Unicorns bring COLOR to Lucky’s world.” At first glance, this seems like the kind of vague faux-magic I was expecting from Lucky before I realized he was the real deal. Brings color to Lucky’s world? What kind of nonsense is that? But then I thought, maybe this is a euphemistic reference to a combat spell. After all, General Mills can’t say something like “Bone-white fingers allow Lucky to kill you and raise you as an undead!” Even if Lucky had finger of death they’d have to wrap it up in a bow. With that in mind, I think that unicorns either bestow prismatic spray, prismatic wall, or, most likely, Hypnotic Pattern, which uses a “twisting pattern of colors” to incapacitate foes who are trying to steal your Lucky Charms. That’s another 3rd level spell.

    “Rainbows give Lucky the power of TELEPORTATION.” Ok, hold on. Teleport is super high level – a 7th-level spell – and it’s not even on the warlock spell list? So Lucky’s teleportation is probably some more limited spell. Dimension door is a warlock spell, and it’s 4th level, easily within Lucky’s grasp even if he’s only level 7. The box COULD go on to say that it gives Lucky “the power of TELEPORTATION to a space within 500 feet” and go on to describe the force damage Lucky takes if he teleports into a solid object. But maybe some misguided editor cut that part out.

    The last spell: “Red balloons give Lucky the power to FLOAT.” I think this is levitation – a little redundant when you have fly, but what are you gonna do. The real story here is not that Lucky has a non-optimal spell choice. The real story is that Lucky

         is

              Pennywise

    Or at least extremely closely related to Pennywise. The same species? “We all float down here!” says Lucky, as he clutches his red balloon, and leads kids on a fruitless treasure hunt that leads right to his lair. Where do these kids go? I think we all know the answer. All these child-abducting fey – Lucky, Pennywise, Peter Pan, the Pied Piper – are the same. Dressed in a cartoonishly cheerful guise, they lure victims into their neverland marshmallow sewers, never to return – or, like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and IT‘s Losers Club, to return different.

    So maybe I’m on the wrong track here statting up Lucky as a character. I should be making him as a villain – a Legendary stat block. Kill him and free the children in his clutches. Your reward will be a pot o’ gold filled with all the marshmallows you can eat.

    * To figure out Lucky’s secret spells, we should probably start by looking at a list of retired Lucky Charms marshmallows. There used to be a crystal ball marshmallow (scrying?) and a pot o’ gold marshmallow (Leomund’s Secret Chest perhaps?) Those are very plausible 9th and 10th spells. Interestingly, there also used to be an hourglass marshmallow, which, according to Wikipedia, let Lucky STOP TIME. That can be no other spell than time stop – a 9th level spell. What gives? Why did Lucky have a spell so much more powerful than the ones he has today? Can a fey warlock patron give a spell – and then take it away? Perhaps what Lucky did with time stop went beyond the pale even for an amoral archfey patron. Once possessing powers rivaling or exceeding those of the mightiest mortal archfey, Lucky is now stripped of most of his powers, haunting the Feywild as a grim reminder of the fate of those whose ambition exceeds their grasp.

    Posted in RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

    D&D PHB 2024 – Ranking of all Origin Feats

    September 6th, 2024

    Guest Post by Rory!

    The D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook is out, and now everyone gets an Origin Feat at level 1 (plus a bonus feat if you go Human!). There are a lot of them and they vary wildly in power level, so here are my current rankings:

    EDITS: I’m shifting around my valuations of Alert (to A-Tier), Lucky (to B-Tier), Musician (to S-Tier), and Tavern Brawler (to C-Tier) due to some early feedback. I will probably continue to modify this list based on feedback and my own experience during play.

    • S-Tier: Top of the line option, arguably “must take” ability.
      • Musician (Edit to boost to S-Tier): I originally rated this a lower because it’s probably not a feat everyone needs to take, but Heroic Inspiration got such a boost in this edition (turning from Advantage into a reroll) that this belongs in S-Tier. This is the kind of feat that at least one member of the party really needs to take, and at low to mid-levels (or large parties), you wouldn’t go wrong having two people with this feat. Arguably, if you have mostly Humans and/or your DM is really free giving out Heroic Inspiration, this goes down in value, but in my experience almost no DM regularly remembers to give out Inspiration, and players usually forget to remind them so this is quite strong. And hey, you get some instrument proficiencies too.
      • Tough: This feat is so boring and so good it legitimately makes me upset; it’s the closest thing to a “forced choice” on the list, and a strong draw to playing a Human. It’s just really hard to say no to such a huge boost of hit points. Even a beefy Barbarian with 16 Constitution sees a 20% boost to hit points every time they level, never mind a Wizard with a 14 Con who sees a massive 33% boost to overall survivability. I mean, this is a feat most builds eventually took at higher levels before you could get it for free at 1st level. It’s honestly a little dumb that it’s an option, and I won’t fault folks who take something more interesting. I got some pushback from folks saying they think this is overrated, but I have trouble agreeing. Hit Points are just so foundational to the game, and this is such a significant boost to survivability AND it is so useful for literally every character, I have trouble rating this any lower. This is the kind of feat that keeps low HP characters alive AND that has excellent synergy with defensive abilities such as Barbarian Rage and Heavy Armor Mastery that reduce damage and wring out extra value out of each point of HP.
    • A-Tier: Excellent option, worth strong consideration.
      • Alert (Edit to boost to A-Tier): This is a very strong feat, and it’s nice the Initiative bonus scales with level. The ability to swap is a nice bonus that allows much needed coordination that has been lacking with the removal of the delay option in 5e. It’s just a fact that so many combats are decided by who goes first as the ability to lock down enemies, move to a safe distance, or just plain eliminate opponents before they can act is massive, not to mention class specific perks like the Assassin’s Surprising Strikes. And in an environment where the majority of combats are decided in about 3 rounds of combat, going early can literally be a 33% boost to overall effectiveness. This is always going to be a decent option, either giving you a fighting chance or helping ensure you act early in every round. I got some feedback that many consider this S-Tier. I am not sure I agree considering how high variance Initiative rolls can be, but the boost combined with the option to swap Initiative to position a timely Fireball or let the Assassin sneak in a Surprising Strike makes this really attractive.
      • Magic Initiate (Edit to list extra options suggested by Reddit): There are a lot of possibilities with this feat, and getting it for “free” opens up a lot of attractive build options. The most obvious choice for your level 1 spell is just grab Find Familiar. You can cast it as a ritual so you can neatly bypass the once per long rest limitation, and you can do the usual cheese of giving yourself or an ally Advantage on an attack roll each round in combat (until the DM murders it anyway, in which case you can recast when you have an hour to kill). Plus, you can use it for scouting and fetching far away objects. Other strong options include Shield, Shield of Faith, Healing Word, Goodberry, or Charm Person. For Cantrips, I had it pointed out to me that Shillelagh opens up the ability to use Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma for your attack rolls, which can unlock all sorts of fun gish builds or just leaning into using non-standard attributes in melee. Otherwise, if you go Wizard I would tend to prioritize Minor Illusion and Mage Hand for utility and fun times. And for Cleric or Druid make sure to pick up Guidance for that sweet bonus to skill checks, especially if no one else has taken it.
    • B-Tier: Solid option.
      • Lucky (Edit to bring down to B-Tier): This version of Lucky is massively nerfed compared to the original Lucky Feat, but the original Lucky Feat was arguably pretty broken, so that’s not saying much. Dice manipulation goes a long way even if you have to do it ahead of the roll. Securing advantage on a key attack roll (such as a spell attack with a high level spell) or a crucial skill check is still really valuable. And of course you’ll remember when you use this to keep your PC alive when they are being attacked and low on health. This is an option that probably feels pretty strong by level 5 when you can use it 3 times, and you’ll be spending it like candy at higher levels.
    • C-Tier: Some utility but mediocre compared to other options or very niche/campaign specific.
      • Crafter: This is a cute feat, and I could imagine someone having fun with fast crafting even if it’s actual utility is somewhat limited in most campaigns. The 20% discount to non-magical items definitely catches the eye. The most obvious use case is saving 300 gold on a set of Full Plate, which could be handy at lower levels, especially if two or more PCs need a set. Now, this would be really powerful if Vehicles or Structures counted as an item, but considering the definition of “Object” in the DMG, I am thinking it does not apply, which limits its value at higher levels. Now, there may be certain “nation building” campaigns where going into the logistics of, say, outfitting an army with weapons, armor, food, gear, etc. is a big focus on the campaign; if you’re trying to squeeze value out of every gold piece, then a 20% discount on all mundane gear might go a long way, but I don’t expect that to be a very common campaign theme.
      • Healer: This feels like it should be a feat for parties light on healing, though rerolling 1s does have some utility for characters looking to maximize their healing powers (note, the benefits are fairly minor, representing less than 0.5 HP per die of healing). In combat, however, this is pretty clunky, requiring a normal action to use for fairly modest healing, really only useful for bringing someone back from unconsciousness (which sure, you’ll do in a pinch, but you aren’t exactly excited about it). Out of combat, it still expends hit dice, which really only makes it useful when you don’t have time to do a short rest between combats. Don’t get me wrong, extra healing is always appreciated, but as an option this feels a little underpowered. Now, there is one obvious use case I can think of here that might push this up in power; a Rogue with the Thief subclass can take Utilize as a Bonus Action, which makes this pretty attractive for some classic whack a mole style healing in combat. With the limit being literally a target’s hit dice, that’s a lot of unconscious teammates potentially brought back into action.
      • Tavern Brawler (Edit to boost to C-Tier): Thematically, this is a fun feat, and I guess I won’t fault someone who just loves the ideas of getting into bar fights, but none of the benefits are all that impactful. Annoyingly, this might be best for a Monk to pick up for a small increase to damage and the ability to push 5 feet a turn, which has some situational positional uses and frees you up to move away from enemies without using disengage. The Bard College of Dance might also pick this up for kicks (since they get an unarmed strike whenever they use Bardic Inspiration), and I might be missing one or two other uses. But again unless your DM likes positioning all their enemies right at the edge of high cliffs, there are probably better options.
    • D-Tier: Overall weak and a bit of a trap compared to other options.
      • Savage Attacker: So the best case scenario here is using it with a Greataxe or other 1d12 weapon, which equates to just under a 2 point damage bonus. At lower levels, when a fighter might be doing 10 damage on average, a 20% boost is pretty attractive, and I’d definitely rate this way higher for one shots or campaigns unlikely to hit 5th level. At higher levels as you do more damage on average and make multiple attacks, the utility goes down since you can only use this once per turn. By 5th level, a Fighter with Great Weapon Master is doing at least 2 Attacks a round (potentially more with Hew and Cleave) for an average of 14 damage per hit (potentially higher with a magic weapon or other buffs) before applying this feat and likely has multiple ways to secure Advantage on attack rolls, which makes Savage Attacker a lot less attractive. It’s really night and day compared to other static damage bonuses that scale with multiple attacks and ability score increases, such as Fighting Style: Dueling and Two-Weapon Fighting (now much improved due to the somewhat confusing Nick + Dual Wielder ruling), which always feels strong even at high levels.
      • Skilled: Skill and Tool proficiencies are the kind of thing where the first four or so (which everyone gets access to) are really useful towards building to your strengths, and pretty soon you are filling in gaps that will likely be tackled by other characters anyway. And there are other ways of snagging an extra Skill or Tool proficiency or two through subclass and species selection that you don’t really need to resort to burning an Origin Feat for this. In short, there are much better and more impactful options.

    Posted in 5e D&D, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

    Monster math in the 2024 Players Handbook

    August 30th, 2024

    I finally got my hands on a 2024 Players Handbook and, right after checking whether they nerfed fireball (nope), I flipped to the back to Appendix B: Creature Stat Blocks to give the monsters a quick look. Which way is monster design going? Will I need to make a new monster manual on a business card?

    elephantThe 2024 Players Handbook includes a few dozen monsters, mostly low-level beasts. In fact, every monster, except the CR 4 elephant, is between CR 0 and 1. So there’s really insufficient data to make any extrapolations at all outside that very limited scope. But that shouldn’t stop us from jumping to wild conclusions!

    low-level monsters

    First of all, let me talk about the previous 2014 Monster Manual monsters. Based on my previous arithmetic I’ve described in other posts, monsters are designed so that (given the monster-design parameters described in the 2014 Dungeon Masters Guide: assume all attacks hit, area attacks hit 2 creatures, etc) an average monster’s damage per round is roughly 1/3 its hit points, and damage per round rises about 5 points per point of Challenge Rating.

    Given that 2024 5e characters look more powerful than ever, and given that there was already a perception that 2014 monsters were a bit too feeble, we’d expect to see monsters get stronger to keep up. In fact, the developers have indicated that they’d be buffing monsters. Does the new 2024 PH monster data bear this out?

    Well, there is one problem with the data that prevents really meaningful analysis. Two, actually. One is that, as mentioned, the new data really only covers up to Challenge Rating 1: monsters suitable for level 1 and 2 characters. At that level, 2014 monsters are NOT too feeble. In fact, level 1 is usually considered the most swingy and dangerous level: it’s really higher-level monsters that need the buff.

    The other problem is that the 2024 data mostly consists of beasts (bears, alligators, apes, wolves, etc). In 2014 D&D, low-level beasts are even more overpowered than other low-level monsters. Consider, for example, the 2014 war horse: at CR 1/2 and 19 hit points, it can deal 11 damage with its hoof, and then hit you with another 11 damage as a bonus action if it knocks you prone. A CR 1/4 elk with 13 hit points can charge you for 13 damage. These guys are not even CR 1, and can deal damage equal to their hit points, and can one-shot most level 1 characters or kill them outright on a crit. That’s a far cry from higher-level non-beast monsters, which generally settle down to do damage equal to 1/3 their hit points maximum each round.

    So how does the 2024 PH handle low-level monsters, especially beasts?

    It leaves AC and hit point totals pretty much alone, fiddling with them here and there but not making big changes. When it comes to damage, it actually reduces low-level beast damage by a few points on average. For instance, the warhorse’s damage is reduced to 14 damage on a charge, and the elk’s to 9. The rough edges have been filed off. Overall, low-level beasts now deal DPR equal to about half their hit points. In my opinion, this is a much-needed nerf, even in a world where every player gets free feats. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell us much about life outside level 1.

    high-level monsters

    For higher-level monsters, the only data points we have are the elephant (CR 4) and the green dragon preview on enworld (CR 22). For monster benchmarking purposes, this data is almost worthless, because a) it’s just 2 data points! and b) dragons, like beasts, are among the most overpowered monsters in the game, regularly clocking in with much higher statistics than their Challenge Rating cohorts. 

    Nevertheless, we can glean a bit from comparing these two monsters against their 2014 versions. The elephant, while keeping the same AC (12) and HP (76), now deals more damage. If we assume an elephant gets in one trample in 3 rounds of combat, the 2014 version can deal about 25 damage while the 2024 version does 36. Anything interesting about those numbers? Its DPR used to be almost exactly 1/3 its hit point total, and now it’s been raised to exactly half of its hit point total.

    green dragonTurning to the 2024 ancient green dragon (CR 22), we see that its AC is the same as the 2014 version and its HP is boosted a tad, from 385 to 402. (That’s about the same hit point total as the CR 26 demon prince Orcus.) The dragon’s damage routine has been completely redesigned, and for a complex monster like this there are a million ways to play it, but for apples-to-apples we’ll just try to maximize straight damage here. The two dragons have the exact same breath weapon, but on a non-breath weapon round the 2014 green dragon can drop 124 damage (a bite, two claws, and three tails), and the 2024 version can deal 162 damage (six Rends). Factoring in the breath weapon once every 3 turns, those DPRs rise to 150 and 186  respectively (again, assuming the breath weapons hit 2 targets who fail their saves).

    For what it’s worth, the green dragon’s damage output remains very high, at closer to 1/2 its hit points than 1/3 its hit points.

    crystal ball time

    So what’s my prediction for 2024 D&D monster power? Will monsters get a boost or not?

    With the tiny amount of data we have, it would be irresponsible to speculate. So here’s my speculation: 

    Monsters will be designed with approximately the same formulae. However, their damage will get a boost. My prediction is that, on average, a monster’s damage per round will be about 1/2 its hit points, maybe a touch less. 

    Of course, this prediction could be totally wrong! With only two high-level monsters to look at, it could be that the elephant and the dragon (a beast and a dragon type – OP types in 2014) are OP in 2024 and we won’t really see a different monster design at all. Time will tell. Can we skip the boring ol’ players handbook and DMG and get right to the monster manual please?

    Posted in RPG Hub | No Comments »

    Dungeon Delver’s Guide is one of Polygon’s “best TTRPG books of 2023”

    December 14th, 2023

    You love to hear when people like your work, so I was thrilled to see my Dungeon Delver’s Guide on Polygon’s best-of-the-year list for TTRPG books. I’m particularly proud of DDG because it’s such a personal project: I pitched the idea, assembled the team, and did a heck of a lot of writing for it. In fact, I’ve been developing it and testing it – on this very blog, even – for years.

    While we’re talking DDG, let’s mention DDG’s contributors: Brandes Stoddard, Cassandra Macdonald, Mike Myler, Morrigan Robbins, Peter N Martin, Rory Madden, Sarah Madsen, William Fischer, Will Gawned, Anthony Pryor, C. Richard Davies, Jane Hughes, Mike Myler, and Walt Ciechanowski, with additional consulting/editing from Phil Glotfelty and Peter Coffey, and the incomparable William Fischer as lead editor.

    If you want to pick up a copy, head over to the enworld store!

    We’re in the process of putting most of DDG into Creative Commons, like we have with the rest of the Level Up line. In the coming days I’ll be sharing some pieces from DDG here on my blog as they go up. I’m particularly proud of some of my work in this book and I hope you’ll like it.

    Oh, and I should mention – another of Polygon’s Best Books is the excellent Flee, Mortals from MCDM. I’ve got quite a few monsters in that book too! If, during your adventurers, you run into a headless giant that’s intent on replacing its missing head with yours, blame me for that one.

    Posted in RPG Hub | 1 Comment »

    chatGPT vs. D&D game design

    October 2nd, 2023

    ff04Can ChatGPT generate D&D rules? As D&D freelancer, that question is top of mind these days.

    Not “can ChatGPT generate better rules than a good game designer?” I think the answer to that is quite obviously no. But “can ChatGPT generate content good enough that a publisher might think, hmm, paying 0/word is better than paying 5, 10, 15 cents per word?”

    Let’s see where we stand. I’ve just made a ChatGPT account and I’m going to give it a few prompts to see whether it’s good enough to take my job – or work for me, if I’m inclined to hire it! Fair warning, I’m rooting against ChatGPT, but I will try to be fair here.

    Task 1: Translation. I’ll start off with an easy one just to calibrate my expectations. I’ll assign a simple, right-or-wrong task that anyone could do with a little research.

    In the 2014 Players Handbook, one of the images has some runic letters on it, and the the letters spell out a supremely disappointing message: in something akin to Elder Futhark the runes spell something like “This is the Photoshop Lorem Ipsum Text.” A huge wasted opportunity for a hidden Easter egg. This could have been a hint about an upcoming product or a little “no x were harmed” joke! Could we use ChatGPT to come up with some more plausible text to jam into this image?

    To see if ChatGPT can do this, let’s give it a nice easy question. My prompt:

    Transliterate the first sentence of pride and prejudice into elder futhark

    Elder Futhark is a runic alphabet with a wikipedia page and lots of information about it on the web, and Pride and Prejudice is a public domain book with a supremely famous first sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” This should be an easy one.

    chatgpt

    ChatGPT’s response:

    ᛁᛏ ᛁᛋ ᚫ ᛏᚱᚢᚠᛋᚫᚫ ᚢᚾᛁᚱᛡᛋᛚ᛫ ᚫᚦ ᚫ ᛋᛁᚾᚷᛚᛖ ᛗᚢᛋᛏ ᛒᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚹᚫᚾᛏ ᚩᚠ ᚫ ᚷᚢᛏ ᚠᛟᚱᚢᚾᛏ, ᛗᚢᛋᛏ ᛒᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚹᚫᚾᛏ ᛟᚠ ᚫ ᚷᚮᛞ ᚠᚮᚱᚢᚾᛏᛖ, ᛗᚢᛋᛏ ᛒᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚹᚫᚾᛏ ᚢᚾᛁᚱᛡᛋᛚᛖ.

    This translates to

    it is a trufsaa unirhsl ath a single must be in want of a gut forunt, must be in want of a g?d f?runte, must be in want unirhsle.

    Arrant nonsense! The response is not all Elder Futhark runes, and it’s certainly not all Jane Austen. While it has stretches of being plausible, it gets into a sad loop at the end. Simple transliteration should be an easy task for a computer, so I’m astonished that ChatGPT failed so hard right out of the gate.

    Task 2: Monster Creation. I write a lot of D&D monsters, so let’s see how ChatGPT copes with that task.

    Prompt: write a D&D stat block for a CR 20 monster suitable for a campaign villain.

    Here’s what ChatGPT came up with:

    Eldrith the Malevolent
    Large Fiend (Demon), Chaotic Evil

    Armor Class: 19 (Natural Armor)
    Hit Points: 270 (20d12 + 140)
    Speed: 40 ft., Fly 60 ft.

    STR 24 (+7)
    DEX 18 (+4)
    CON 24 (+7)
    INT 20 (+5)
    WIS 20 (+5)
    CHA 22 (+6)

    Saving Throws: Str +14, Dex +11, Con +14, Int +12, Wis +12, Cha +13
    Skills: Arcana +12, Deception +13, Insight +12, Perception +12
    Damage Resistances: Cold, Fire, Lightning
    Damage Immunities: Poison; Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Weapons
    Condition Immunities: Charmed, Frightened, Poisoned
    Senses: Truesight 120 ft., Darkvision 120 ft., Passive Perception 22
    Languages: Abyssal, Common, Infernal, telepathy 120 ft.
    Challenge: 20 (25,000 XP)

    Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If Eldrith fails a saving throw, she can choose to succeed instead.

    Magic Resistance. Eldrith has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

    Innate Spellcasting. Eldrith’s spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 21). She can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

    At will: detect magic, dispel magic, telekinesis, plane shift
    3/day each: feeblemind, imprisonment, teleport

    Spellcasting. Eldrith is a 20th-level spellcaster. Her spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 20, +12 to hit with spell attacks). She can cast spells from the sorcerer and warlock spell lists. Eldrith has the following sorcerer and warlock spells prepared:

    Cantrips (at will): eldritch blast, mage hand, prestidigitation, minor illusion
    1st level (4 slots): eldritch blast, mage armor
    2nd level (3 slots): misty step, suggestion
    3rd level (3 slots): counterspell, dispel magic, fireball
    4th level (3 slots): dimension door, greater invisibility
    5th level (3 slots): teleport, wall of force
    6th level (2 slots): chain lightning, globe of invulnerability
    7th level (2 slots): finger of death, plane shift
    8th level (1 slot): dominate monster, feeblemind
    9th level (1 slot): time stop

    Actions

    Multiattack. Eldrith can use her Frightful Presence. She then makes three attacks: one with her bite and two with her claws.

    Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +14 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 19 (3d8 + 7) piercing damage plus 14 (4d6) poison damage.

    Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +14 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (2d6 + 7) slashing damage.

    Frightful Presence. Each creature of Eldrith’s choice within 120 feet of her and aware of her must succeed on a DC 21 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature’s saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to Eldrith’s Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours.

    Legendary Actions

    Eldrith can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. Eldrith regains spent legendary actions at the start of her turn.

    Attack. Eldrith makes one claw attack.

    Spellcasting (Costs 2 Actions). Eldrith casts a spell from her list of prepared spells, using a spell slot as normal.

    Teleport. Eldrith magically teleports, along with any equipment she is wearing or carrying, up to 120 feet to an unoccupied space she can see.

    Lair Actions

    On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), Eldrith takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects; Eldrith can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:

    Eldrith casts teleport to switch places with another creature within her lair.
    Eldrith casts wall of force to create a barrier, dividing the battlefield.

    Regional Effects

    The region containing Eldrith’s lair is warped by her magic, creating one or more of the following effects:

    Eldrith’s presence causes plants to wither and die within 1 mile of her lair.
    Creatures within 1 mile of the lair are subject to unsettling dreams and fitful sleep, causing them to suffer from exhaustion.
    Non-magical fires within 1 mile of the lair burn with an eerie, green flame.

    These effects fade if Eldrith is slain.

    Description: Eldrith the Malevolent is a fiendish being of immense power, with command over both sorcery and warlock magic. Her lair is a dark and twisted realm, corrupted by her malevolent presence. Eldrith is a cunning and manipulative adversary, using her vast array of spells and abilities to outsmart and overpower her foes. She is known for her ability to strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest heroes, and her cruel and sadistic nature makes her a formidable foe in any battle.

    Roleplaying Notes: Eldrith is a master of deception and manipulation, and she delights in toying with the emotions and minds of those who oppose her. She is relentless in her pursuit of power and is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve her goals. Eldrith is fiercely intelligent and strategic, always thinking several steps ahead of her enemies. She revels in chaos and revels in the suffering of others. Eldrith is a truly malevolent force to be reckoned with, and facing her in battle will be a challenge that only the most skilled and determined adventurers can hope to overcome.

    OK, there’s a lot here, both good and bad. On the good side, ChatGPT got the format approximately correct. It realized that a campaign villain should be a legendary monster (on the other hand, since nearly all CR 20+ monsters are legendary, maybe that’s a coincidence based on the way the dataset is weighted?) Hit points and other stats are plausible for CR 20. It seems to have correctly calculated skills and saving throws, which is amazing for a bot that mangled a single line of Pride and Prejudice beyond all recognition. It made a few errors, of course. D12 is the wrong die type for a Large monster, though it got the hit point caculation right otherwise. It has eldritch blast listed as both a cantrip and 1st-level spell; I guess someone named Eldrith really has to lean into eldritch blast. But this is just nitpicking. The real problem with Eldrith is that she’s boring and her mechanics don’t support her story.

    Mechanically, Eldrith is a reskin of every 5e dragon ever, which is unfortunate since we’re all sick of stock 5e dragons at this point. Frightful Presence followed by a claw/claw/bite is marginally plausible for a fiend, I guess, but we all know what we’re looking at here, and that’s a dragon without a breath weapon. The spellcasting tucked in the legendary actions is interesting: I don’t mind it, to tell the truth. But I’m not sure it will salvage the boring gameplay of this dragon sans breath weapon. Let’s take a closer look.

    What spells will Eldrith cast? Time stop is good but she doesn’t have a lot of buff spells to back it up (mage armor is useless given her natural armor; greater invisibility, wall of force, and globe of invulnerability all use concentration). Dominate monster and suggestion are not great in combat. Plane shift, misty step, dimension door, teleport, her bizarre extra innate teleport, and the teleport legendary action are amazingly redundant (maybe not so amazing considering the results of the Jane Austen task). So what spells will this campaign boss cast? After using feeblemind, chain lightning, and finger of death, Eldreth is maybe best off using her high-level slots to upcast fireball in order to make up for the breath weapon she’s missing. Overall, she’s got a somewhat random assortment of spells, best suited to running away (not a bad skillset for a campaign villain tbh).

    How well does Eldreth fare lorewise? Her description is cliche-ridden (cunning and manipulative adversary, cruel and sadistic, master of deception and manipulation, strikes fear, delights in toying with the emotions and minds of those who oppose her, relentless in her pursuit of power, got it, yup, yup.) And the description doesn’t particularly match her mechanics. She has no unique stat block mechanics that let her be cunning and manipulative — or unique stat block mechanics of any other kind. Spell-wise, suggestion and dominate monster are the best matches for her flavor. I’d really like to see more charm, fear, phantasmal force, and modify memory on her spell list. And she desperately needs a signature ability — something, anything, unique, preferably something that matches her manipulative-mastermind lore.

    What strikes me about Eldreth is that she is unfinished. She’s a half-baked cake with no icing. ChatGPT did the easy part for us, but left the hardest part – “make it interesting” – undone.

    Task 3: Magic Item Enchantment. OK, maybe a 20th level monster was a bit of a stiff challenge. Let’s try something significantly easier: a magic item.

    My prompt:

    Write a magic item description in the style of the Fifth Edition D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. The magic item should be named “The Rose of Estes” and should provide specific benefits that interact with D&D game rules. Word count: 100-150 words

    ChatGPT’s response:

    The Rose of Estes

    Wondrous Item (Amulet), Legendary (Requires Attunement)

    This exquisite amulet holds a crimson rose within a crystalline pendant. Crafted by the enchanter Estes, it embodies the eternal cycle of nature. While attuned, you gain the following:

    Blossom’s Vigor: As a reaction when hit, the rose blooms, granting you temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus.

    Photosynthesis Affinity: When exposed to sunlight, you regain hit points equal to half your level at the start of your turn.

    Verdant Resilience: You have advantage on saving throws against poisons, diseases, and effects that cause exhaustion.

    Curse: You are compelled to protect plant life. If a plant is harmed within 30 feet, you must make a Wisdom saving throw (DC 15) or take 1d6 psychic damage.

    Roleplaying Note: The Rose pulses with the rhythm of nature. Its petals shimmer when danger nears, a testament to Estes’ love for the wild. When worn, it’s as if the amulet breathes in time with the natural world.

    Shoot, that’s … not bad. The lore is maybe a bit bland, but I like the curse. It is, however, somewhat OP. Too OP? Temporary hit points AND regeneration every turn is pretty strong. Let’s compare other items. Ring of Regeneration (very rare) grants regeneration of 3 hp per 10 minutes, and the Ioun stone of regeneration (legendary) grants 15 hp per hour. Even the Eye and Hand of Vecna combined — two artifacts — only grant a regeneration factor of 1d10 hp per turn. Meanwhile, the Rose of Estes grants your level HP per turn (probably 15 or more hp considering the item’s rarity), though it’s limited to sunlight situations, which is a significant limitation. I wonder, though, is this a case of the Rose of Estes being OP or of the DMG items being too conservative? When characters are high-level enough to use legendary items, between-battle healing is not exactly hard to come by.

    Balance aside, the Rose of Estes description misses on the most important qualification for freelance writing. It’s 160 words — higher than my very clearly-spelled-out word count. Making it… just like every freelance writer turnover ever.

    My conclusion: ChatGPT is sometimes astonishing in what it can do. It’s amazing that a bot can intuit and regurgitate game rules! But despite that, it’s just not there yet as a RPG-writing tool. Half the time, it gives you solid but uninspired work. That might be useful in a certain niche, but you can’t trust it because the other half of the time, it spouts nonsense with the appearance of utter confidence. Just as AI art prompts so often produce conventionally attractive folks festooned with extra fingers and other tendrils, ChatGPT’s D&D rules prompts generate a mixture of the banal and the broken.

    Right now, ChatGPT is not a finished product but a promise — a promise to democratize art by separating creative workers from their means of production. Inasmuch as I just want to watch the world burn, I’m curious to see where it will go next. As AI improves, we’ll have to figure out a way to live alongside it. After all, you can’t get the genie back in the bottle. All you can do is find a way to survive the genie’s Frightful Presence and claw/claw/bite.

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