The issues that need to be fixed with WOTC’s proposed OGL replacements

January 20th, 2023

WOTC offered a proposed draft of their Open Gaming License replacement. They’re supposedly listening to our feedback, so it’s worth talking about what still needs to be fixed to make it usable for third party partners. Read this post and then take the survey.

Short version: a lot needs to be fixed.

They offer basically two options: use a Creative Commons license of a limited set of game mechanics, or else OGL 1.2, which is less permissive and offers more stuff. Let’s examine both options and see if you can use them as a D&D third party creator.

1: The Creative Commons option.

WOTC is proposing putting a chunk of rules material under a Creative Commons license, which means it can’t be revoked. If you chose to use this approach, what could you do?

The CC rules material would be the game’s core mechanics – roll a die and add a modifier – the levelling process, nonmagical equipment, backgrounds, stuff like that. None of D&D’s meat is in this list. No classes, or the class structure needed to create 3pp subclasses. No monsters, so the license doesn’t let you write an adventure and say, with confidence, “this area contains two archmages” or whatever. No magic items, so the license doesnt let you give out a +1 sword. No spells, so you can’t say what spells a mage can cast.

Sure, you might be able to use all the things above through fair use and copyright, and so on. But you could just do that without the license. The license gives you almost nothing you can use to create a 3pp product, except for d&d game rules or mechanisms – and game rules and mechanisms can’t be copyrighted anyway, so they’re giving us stuff we already have! Arguably maybe they’re giving us Inspiration and Alignment, which, quite frankly, I don’t even want. Really CC makes it very difficult to make D&D content. I might be able to use it to make a space game or a superhero game using a d20 system. MCDM or Kobold Press might be able to use it to make a D&D competitor. But as a good-faith would-be WOTC partner, it doesn’t let me do what I need to do.

2. OK, then why can’t I just use the OGL 1.2?

OGL 1.2 (presumably) will have all the monsters, magic items, and so on we’d need. But it has some dealbreakers in it.

Number one with a bullet: it’s not irrevocable. Irrevocability was the poison pill that killed 4th Edition’s GSL license and sent Paizo on to make Pathfinder, and it’s the #1 poison pill in all the proposed 6e replacements to OGL1. If WOTC can revoke the license at any time and leave you with lost investments in an upcoming product, you can’t really run a serious business (or even a hobby business).

Sure, WOTC claims it’s irrevocable! In the accompanying article, it says “OGL 1.2 will provide you a perpetual, irrevocable license” but that’s not what the language of the license says.

As I understand it, an irrevocable license is, simply, a license that can’t be revoked. Now let’s look at the proposed 1.2 license. The language of the license says that it is “irrevocable (meaning that content licensed under this license can never be withdrawn from the license).” They redefine irrevocable here to a lesser meaning. All it means is, if you manage to get the license on your product, they can’t remove the license after the fact. But they’re perfectly capable of revoking the license at any time, preventing it from applying to any FUTURE products. In other words, exactly what they’re trying to do to 1.0 right now. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Besides that, 1.2 has a clause where if they deem your product, or your behavior, are hateful or harmful, they can revoke the license. That’s solely their decision and you waive any recourse. Now I only plan to do squeaky-clean products so I shouldn’t be worried right? Well, if there’s no recourse they could really abuse this. For instance, what does harmful mean? It’s not defined in the contract. Is Paizo harmful because it harms WOTC? It’s fine to have some protections against hate speech, but if so, a third party should do it, not WOTC which may have a vested interest in eliminating certain competition (and has a long, bad history itself with hateful content).

Then finally there’s some anti-competitive language targeted at virtual table-tops, potential D&D Beyond competitors, and stuff, that is not good either, but I can’t speak to with much expertise. Check out what others say on that. I’d say that the license should be able to cover web apps.

Also there was kerfuffle in the previous leaked license about really high royalties. In 1.2, WOTC claims they’ve removed royalties. But the language of the license doesn’t confirm that! For comparison, 1.0 gives you “a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license”. The new one says “This license is perpetual (meaning that it has no set end date), non-exclusive (meaning that we may offer others a license to Our Licensed Content or Our Unlicensed Content under any conditions we choose), and irrevocable (meaning that content licensed under this license can never be withdrawn from the license).” They specifically removed the words “royalty-free”, so technically they could probably claim that they could add royalties at any time without modifying the license. (and even if they couldn’t, who cares – since it’s revocable, they could just end the license at any time, with no notice, and institute a version 1.3).

In other words, OGL 1.2 still has the poison pills that made 1.1 unpalatable. The pills are better hidden, that’s all, and in the accompanying article, WOTC is wrong (or lying) about what the license says.

So here’s your homework:

Give feedback on the proposed 1.2 license, both online and in the survey they eventually put up. Say:

1) In CC, there needs to be, at the least, lists of D&D classes, species, magic items, and spells that third parties can use safely, otherwise good-faith third party D&D creation is nearly impossible
2) The 1.2 license has to be truly irrevocable (remove that parenthetical statement that redefines irrevocable)
3) The 1.2 license should specify that it is royalty-free
4) In 1.2, any hate speech clause should be defined better or administered by an outside group
5) The licenses should be allowed to cover VTTs and web apps, otherwise it’s anticompetitive and monopolistic
and finally
6) the effort to revoke the OGL 1.0 is in bad faith, on shaky legal ground, and also monopolistic. Just don’t do it at all.

Here’s the WOTC survey! Take it right now!

unforced error

January 13th, 2023

I am a D&D fan, as you have probably figured out, so I’m horrified to see WOTC fail so spectacularly in its stewardship of D&D.

In 2000 and 2016, WOTC put out open versions of D&D rules under the Open Gaming license, meaning that there were free, good D&D rulesets available for publishers and players to use. This led to a golden age for D&D and RPGs, both financially and creatively, with WOTC raking in money while smaller creators got to share a kind of roleplaying commons. This year, it looks like WOTC is trying to use legally questionable rules-lawyer tricks to kill the OGL, betraying the companies and creators that trusted them to maintain that commons.

I personally believe that D&D, as a mass creative endeavor, transcends intellectual property in a way that other media properties don’t. Star Wars and Marvel movies – and D&D movies! – are stories told to us, and I’m perfectly happy with them in corporate hands. The game of D&D, on the other hand, is a collection of millions of stories told by players. The Open Gaming License may have had flaws, but it acknowledged the right of D&D players to share their stories and creations.

Whether or not WOTC succeeds in destroying the OGL, they’ve done irreparable harm to themselves as trusted stewards of the game. D&D, however, will be fine.

5e’s bounded accuracy is not bounded enough

October 14th, 2022

5e D&D’s bounded accuracy is supposed to keep attack rolls, DCs, and other numbers in check, allowing monsters to stay relevant longer and decreasing the gap between proficient and non-proficient characters. In a 2012 blog post, WOTC’s Rodney Thompson said this:

Nonspecialized characters can more easily participate in many scenes. While it’s true that increases in accuracy are real and tangible, it also means that characters can achieve a basic level of competence just through how players assign their ability bonuses. Although a character who gains a +6 bonus to checks made to hide might do so with incredible ease, the character with only a naked ability bonus still has a chance to participate. We want to use the system to make it so that specialized characters find tasks increasingly trivial, while other characters can still make attempts without feeling they are wasting their time.

Accuracy, saving throw bonuses, and skill checks are certainly more bounded than previous editions, which generally handed a fighter up to a +20 bonus to attack rolls over 20 levels, plus whatever they got from raised ability scores. Similarly, in previous editions, a character’s best saving throw/defense bonus increases by about 10 or more between levels 1 and 20.

In contrast, 5e’s proficiency bonus only increases by 4 points over 20 levels (or 10 points with expertise) plus a few points from increased ability scores. That seems like a lot less, right? But in my opinion, it’s still not bounded enough, and that’s a major reason that the game falters at high levels.

attack bonuses

In 5e, attack accuracy is not the main problem with increasing proficiency bonus. Every character gets their proficiency bonus added to their attacks. It’s a given. Therefore, a character’s proficiency bonus could really be anything and it can work fine against appropriately-leveled monsters, as long as the monster’s AC is raised to compensate (generally through some arbitrary amount of “natural armor”). When added to attack bonus, proficiency bonus is nothing more than a lever you can use to determine how to treat mismatched opponents. The higher the proficiency bonus scale, the more you’re nerfing low-level monsters. If you want tenth-level characters to be threatened by groups of CR 1/2 goblins, you want the game to use a low proficiency bonus; if you want heroes to cinematically hack their way through dozens of goblins, you want a high bonus. That’s a stylistic choice for your game and it’s not broken either way; it just tells a different story.

Increasing attack bonuses, then, are fine, because they’re across the board. The problem with 5e’s proficiency bonus is that it also increases skills and saving throws. At high levels, these increases make it hard to keep tension in the game.

skills

Skills are generally not as important for character survival as attack rolls, but inasmuch as skills are important, you want them to work. At high level, the gap between a skilled and unskilled character becomes unmanageable. A 17th-level rogue might have a +11 in Stealth without having any particular stealth-based feats, class features, or magic items, and a cleric of the same level might still have a +0 in Stealth. And that’s before Expertise, which brings the rogue to +17! You can’t meaningfully challenge these two characters with the same obstacle.

The issue also causes problems with monster design. Do we want a +17 stealth rogue (with a minumum stealth roll of 27 due to Reliable Talent) to auto-succeed on stealth checks versus nearly every monster? If not, we’re forced to give a high Wisdom plus proficiency (or double proficiency) in Perception to many high-level monsters. Without those hacks, stealth scenes (or rinse-and-repeat rogue sniper tactics) are auto-successes devoid of drama. With boosted Perception scores, sneaking becomes nearly impossible for the group. This is not what we want as DMs. Perhaps more so than nearly any other type of scene, stealth scenes should be tense and suspenseful, with the chance of catastrophic failure in the offing.

How do 5e’s skill increases compare to earlier editions? In 3e, without trying very hard, a level 20 rogue’s Stealth bonus could be 30 points higher than a cleric’s: a 3e rogue’s fumble is far better than a cleric’s crit. In 4e, the a level 30 rogue’s Stealth bonus might be 15 points higher than the cleric’s. Is 5e more bounded than that? For the most part it is, with most skill bonuses topping off around +11 or so. However, a rogue with expertise in Stealth can have a bonus that rivals a 4e rogue’s bonus; with Reliable Talent, they can even approach a 3rd level character’s total. More than anything, Expertise is the problem here, sending skill bonuses out of bounds.

saving throws

Saving throws are similarly harmed by an increasing gap between proficient and nonproficient scores. While you can easily raise monster AC to stay competitive with climbing attack bonuses, you can’t do the same with every saving throw to keep up with PCs’ spell DCs. The Wisdom saving throw is particularly vital. There are so many “I-win” spells with Wisdom saving throws that every high-level monster, in order to be able to stand on its own, needs one or more of the following: a high Wisdom score, a Wisdom saving throw proficiency, spell resistance, or legendary resistance – no matter what the monster’s story is – just to deal with the wizard’s DC 19 polymorph or similar spell. (Such save-or-lose spells are pretty inexpensive for a high-level wizard. A level 17 wizard can toss off a polymorph every turn for 9 turns!)

There are scattered “I-win” spells with non-wisdom saving throws, too, so most high-level monsters are built with tons of save proficiencies, which is kind of a hack. (What do I consider a hack? Any monster stat block feature that is not tied to a story feature. What’s the story behind a purple worm, with 8 Wisdom and no Perception proficiency, having a Wisdom saving throw proficiency? It’s just there to wallpaper over a crack in the math.)

Saving throws are just as unsatisfying when employed by monsters against high-level characters. What’s a fair DC for a devastating monster attack that causes petrification or a similarly significant effect, considering the high-level cleric has a +11 Wisdom save and the rogue has a +0? Any DC that offers the rogue a decent survival chance is nearly an auto-success for the cleric, and a challenge for the cleric is a near-certain failure for the rogue. It really would work better if, as a monster designer or DM, you could set a DC that caused tension for both characters (despite the cleric’s better chance of success).

How does 5e compare to earlier editions in different characters’ gap between saving throw bonuses?

Despite 5e’s bounded accuracy, it’s really no better in this regard than most previous editions. Consider TSR D&D up to 2e. While some classes were better at some saving throws than other, they all improved as they leveled. For instance, in 2nd edition, a 20th level cleric was really good against Death Magic… but the most vulnerable character, the thief, was only 6 points worse. In 3e, this gap went up: a 20th level cleric’s Will save might be 15 to 20 points better than a rogue’s. 4e tightened this up: a cleric’s Will defense might be 10 or so points better than a rogue’s, just as in 5e. In other words, 5e’s bounded accuracy hasn’t tightened up the saving throw , and in fact it’s pretty much on par for most editions.

a high level problem

If you mostly play the game at low and mid-levels (level 10 and below), bounded accuracy problems rarely come up. At level 5, the difference between a rogue and cleric’s Wisdom save, or a wisdom-based skill bonus, might be +0 versus +7. A medium DC of 15 is a non-foregone challenge for both characters.

It’s no coincidence that D&D’s “sweet spot” is up to around level 10. After that, with increasing primary ability bonuses and proficiency bonuses, plus performance-enhancing class features, the gap between the proficiency haves and the have-nots becomes an increasing obstacle to exciting play.

flattening proficiency bonus

What if we kept the game in the sweet spot? Let’s set the proficiency bonus at a good value – say +3 – and never change it. (Am I crazy, or was this the case at some point during the D&D Next playtest?)

Changing proficiency bonus to +3 gives skilled characters a tiny bit of extra power at low level, when they’d normally only have a +2 proficiency bonus. Fine! A +2 bonus is a bit of a small, fiddly bonus anyway for 5e. And a fixed +3 bonus across all levels allows for more focused designs for monsters, traps, and other challenges. A trained, high-level rogue’s Stealth check is reduced to +8 (or +11 if we still let expertise double the proficiency bonus to +6), and a cleric’s spell DC is reduced to 16, which means that even a lowly purple worm can have a small but non-trivial chance to spot the assassin or shrug off the polymorph. In turn, the DC of the purple worm’s Tail Stinger attack can be set so that it threatens both the level 17 fighter (Con DC +8) and the rogue (Con DC +2. No one dumps Constitution, right?)

Of course, monster design would need to be rebalanced around these lower proficiency numbers. High-level monsters could lose about 2 points of natural armor, for instance, and CR 15+ monsters wouldn’t all need four or more save proficiencies. Overall, high-level combat would work better, with fewer design kludges and guaranteed-success or guaranteed-failure rolls.

would this break the game?

Game design is like putting a fitted sheet on a bed. Every time you tug on one corner, another corner is in danger of popping off. If we flatten out proficiency, what are the unintended consequences going to be? Will we break the game?

Well, obviously, at levels 5-8, there will be no consequences (proficiency bonus is already +3). In fact, from levels 1 through 12, there will be minimal consequences (we’re only talking about a +-1 change at most). The change becomes meaningful at around level 13, where we’re dropping proficiency bonus from +5 to +3.

The likely consequence is that groups of low-level monsters become slightly more dangerous to high-level characters. Their attack bonuses and saving throw DCs will be relatively closer to those of their higher-level opponents. Conversely, solo monsters are nerfed, since they don’t get the same boost as hordes of weak monsters.

I think the way to go here is to institute a change D&D badly needs anyway: increase the hit points and damage of high-level monsters. To scale D&D monsters, you have two knobs you can turn: you can increase attack roll/AC, and you can increase damage/hit points. Let’s do more of #2. (This is something I suggested for 4e as well.) In 5e, low-level monsters, like goblins, do too much damage relative to their supposed challenge rating, and high-level monsters deal too little. Instead of increasing linearly, monster damage and hit points can be a tad exponential. High-level characters have so many game-breaking powers that there’s no challenge otherwise. This is a change D&D monsters badly need – let’s just go ahead and make it.

If we boost high-level monster hit points and damage, will there be unanticipated consequences to that change as well? Sure. But given the many problems of high-level play, the risks inherent in making big changes are minimal. High-level play is broken anyway and only works if the DM carefully massages it. My proposed changes won’t fix every problem, but I think they’ll help a lot.

Now is there any chance that proficiency bonus will be flattened in 6e/One D&D, as I advocate for?

No.

6e is clearly tying its wagon to the proficiency-bonus star. Character abilities are becoming more dependent on this number, with nearly every character power being usable a number of times per day equal to the character’s proficiency bonus. The designers clearly envision this number rising as characters gain in level: it’s how nearly every playtest power scales. I’m sure proficiency bonus will remain, as it is now, +2 to +6.

Oh well. Maybe in 7e.

Dungeon Delver’s Guide finale

October 7th, 2022

With the Dungeon Delver’s Guide kickstarter finished at over $200K, I want to talk about the authors’ contributions. I tweeted all this but I want to have it all together on a less hard-to-search platform.

William Fischer designed some of our most devious high-level traps, including the sinister Hourglass Room. He also did the Palace of the Amber Prince dungeon, which was featured in this article: https://www.enworld.org/threads/dungeon-delvers-guide-three-page-dungeons.691141/ William is also the book’s lead editor and spot writer. Every passage in the book is the better for having William on duty.

Will Gawned did a bunch of monsters for us, but what I want to highlight is not his excellent monster work but his mycelial heritage, one of the most charming in the book. A small, cautious people, they speak in reedy whispers and sing quiet, beautiful songs. I love these little folks and want to protect them! The mycelial is featured here: https://www.levelup5e.com/news/dungeon-delvers-guide-the-mycelial-and-the-ratling

Cassandra Macdonald has her fingerprints all over the Dungeon Delver’s Guide. She contributed traps, class archetypes, magic items, and monsters, but most of all she designed dungeons. Three of our three-page dungeons–the Rotten Underbelly, the Serpent’s Maw, and the Orden Barrow Mound – are hers. But her grossest–and therefore best–contribution has to be the decomposer druid, an archetype that is all about spreading disease, harvesting energy from corpses, and turning into a swarm of rats or bugs. This archetype will slither, fly, and/or bite its way into your heart.

Rory Madden contributed our fighter archetype, the dungeoneer, and our rogue archetype, the shadow stalker. More than that, as our resident char-op expert, he reviewed all of the player-facing material–classes, spells, equipment, and so on–for balance. Sure, he caught all the game-breaking stuff before it went out in the world to plague Narrators, but he also provided an underrated function that every player should appreciate: he told us when we were being too cautious in our design. Why include a game element unless it’s big and fun? If you play some really wild DDG characters, thank Rory.

Sarah Madsen designed some new-standard dungeon monsters, like the slime mold. One slime mold can become two, and four, and eight when it wants to lay down serious damage to multiple opponents, and merge back to one when it wants to engulf and dissolve its prey. It combines the worst features of a gelatinous cube, black pudding, and mimic into one slimy nightmare. What’s more, it’s smarter than most oozes, and each shares a psychic connection with its siblings.

Peter N Martin is an all-positions player in the DDG–someone I turn to whenever I need some creativity spilled out onto the page. He wrote two high-level dungeons, including one in which the players can get a subterranean submarine! He also contributed a ton of archetypes, traps, magic items, random dungeons, cultures, and monsters. If I had to feature one of his contributions, through, it would have to be the great job he did with the equipment section. So much of the DDG’s amazing equipment – including most of the cultural equipment – came from Peter’s pen. Check out this preview (https://www.levelup5e.com/news/dungeon-delvers-guide-lets-go-shopping) to see his living, squirming abolethic equipment, including the sleepless mask and the parasite launcher.

Mike Myler is a Level Up rock star and I knew I couldn’t do an A5E book without drawing on his design chops and system knowledge. Mike anchored the heritages section, designing the motley, oozefolk, and rockborn heritages, as well doing a bunch of work on cultures and archetypes. If you like customizing your character, you’ll love the motley. Identified by their disparate collection of beastly body parts, motleys have a ton of heritage features to choose from, each with real mechanical weight. Want a prehensile tail? Simian arms? A cheetah’s legs? Claws? Gills? You can (and should) run an all-motley adventuring party in which each character looks, and plays, unlike any other.

Morrigan Robbins is one of the deepest thinkers on DDG – literally. She designed Underland, the creepy, dreamlike cave world deep under the earth. I love how steeped in classic literary fantasy and horror it is and how it differs from other approaches to underground ecosystems. You can read all about Underland here: https://www.levelup5e.com/news/dungeon-delvers-guide-welcome-to-underland

Brandes Stoddard is an excellent and prolific designer I’ve long admired and I jumped at the chance to work with him. He contributed “The Old Number Ten Mine”, a claustrophobic underground adventure that exemplifies the DDG ethos. It’s a survival puzzle set in a collapsing mine. Rather than being a combat meat grinder, the adventure is cleverly designed to allow just as much, or as little, combat as the players desire, and the final challenge isn’t a wicked monster boss but the earth itself.

Lydia Van Hoy had the steep challenge of designing an archetype for a new class, A5E’s Marshal. The Expedition Leader is designed to support and guide a teams of underworld adventurers into the subterranean unknown. As Lydia says, “the best expedition leaders also have experience leading them _out_” (a much rarer skill). The Expedition Leader’s Commanding Presence feature helps allies communicate in code, travel quickly as a team, perform synchronized attack combos, and spot and survive traps (a must-have skill considering the other contents of this book!)

I said I would just mention the designers, but there are a ton of other people who made this book! We used EN writing by Walt Ciechanowski, C. Richard Davies, Mike Myler, and Anthony Pryor. We are deeply grateful for Phil Glotfelty’s tireless consultation on accessibility issues. I also leaned on Peter Coffey, writer and TRPG Talk podcast cohost extraordinaire, as an editor and consultant.

Frank Michienzi, the graphic designer, had to solve a lot of layout challenges to pack this book with all the stuff we wanted to fit on every page. Thanks for consistently coming up with great layout ideas!

The art director Michael McCarthy did a great job zooming in on the look we wanted and marshaling our terrific artists: Erik Davis-Heim who did the amazing cover, Rafael Bejnamin our lead artist, and all the other amazing internal artists: Jacob Blackmon, Dana Braga, Marcel Budde, Mark Bulahao, Mathew Burger, Meshon Cantrill, Jeremy Corff, Ellis Goodson, Scott Harshbarger, Rick Hershey, Jori Hollander, Herman Lau, Yihyoung Li, Rita Marfoldi, Indi Martin, Savage Mojo, Dan Nokes, Alba Palacio, Fabian Parente, Claudio Pozas, Deanna Roberds, Gui Sommer, Julio Rocha, Phil Stone, Egil Thompson, Melissa Tillery, Jen Tracy, Kim Van Deun, Vinicius Werneck, Peter Woods, and Xanditz

We couldn’t make this book without all the work done by Jessica Hancock, the business manager, and Xin Lewis, the publishing administrator–and of course Russ Morrissey the publisher and the mastermind behind A5E!

And finally, my heartfelt thanks to the thousands of kickstarter backers who turned this book into a real, physical thing that will grace gaming tables all over the world. May you delve deep and return to tell the tale!

The gates are open! Kickstart Dungeon Delver’s Guide now!

August 30th, 2022

Screen Shot 2022-08-30 at 10.44.44 AM

It’s happening!

Dungeon Delver’s Guide is now available to Kickstart! If you back it today, you’ll have the PDF in your hands in a month.

I’ve been working and testing Dungeon Delver’s Guide for years and I think it advances the state of the art of D&D dungeons. It lets you prepare a dungeon fast, or even run it on the fly, and still have it feel like you worked on it all week. Plus it’s stuffed with DM/GM goodies like traps, magic items, and monsters, and player goodies like new equipment and stats to play as my beloved ratlings.

Go forth and delve!

grappling (and push) in 6e

August 19th, 2022

D&D 6th edition (or One D&D) (or 5.5?) is a go! You can get the first playtest packet here.

hercules-nemean-lion-300x300Although the packet ranges over races and feats and more, while reading the packet, I laser focused on one thing: the new grappling rules. Partly because I’m not that interested in dnd races and partly because, as a frequent DM and monster designer, grappling is one of the rulesets that I’ll actually need to know. Plus grappling is one of the areas in the playtest packet with lots of sneaky changes from 5e.

For old-school players, grappling is a bit of a joke, synonymous with “needless complexity.” If a 1st edition or 3rd edition fighter player announces he is grappling a monster, everyone at the table groans. Every D&D edition reinvents grappling, trying to fix the broken or inadequate design of the last. 6e continues that trend.

Designing grapple rules is tough! For one thing, most people have a good visceral idea of how unarmed combat works, so you need to stay somewhat true to reality. For another thing, grappling is something you can do any time you want – in 4e parlance, it’s an at-will power. You can’t declare that people can grapple only x times per long rest. That means it needs to be perfectly balanced with melee attacks. You can’t make it weak or it will never get used (or only get used as part of an annoying specialized character build using special feats). You can’t make it too strong or all the melee classes will use it every turn, which changes D&D combat in a bonkers way.

In my opinion, grapple is a bit on the weak side in 5e, without the addition of special character abilities to back it up. In 6e, have they hit the mark? I’m not sure without more playtesting, but I’m leaning towards “this looks pretty fun.”

The 5e Rules

In 5e, you initiate a grapple by making a Str (Athlethics) check contested by the target’s Str (Athletics) or Dex (Acrobatics) check. Then, to escape, a creature must use its action to repeat this contest. That means that, especially at high levels where proficiency bonuses get high, a grappler who is trained in Athletics is at a huge advantage against someone who is untrained. Most monster are never going to escape from a creature with proficiency (or god forbid expertise) in athletics. They’d be dumb to even try, since it uses up their action to do so. HOWEVER, being grappled doesn’t really do much on its own, except stop a creature from moving away from their grappler.

The 6e Rules

In 6e, everything about grappling has changed! It’s now an attack roll just like any other: an unarmed melee attack, with proficiency bonus, against a monster’s AC. On a hit, the monster is grappled.

The effect of grappling has changed too. It used to just restrict movement. Now a grappled creature makes all attacks with disadvantage, EXCEPT those against their grappler. Grappling now has a huge effect compared to 5e, where being grappled was really not a big deal. It’s very reminiscent of the 4th Edition fighter’s Mark ability, which incentivized monsters to attack the fighter.

At first blush, this seems too powerful. A fighter or monk with a super high Armor Class can grapple a creature and then tank very effectively, putting a serious debuff on the enemy while using their high AC to avoid the monster’s attacks. Imagine locking down a legendary monster or other boss this way! Since you can grapple a creature one size larger, a Medium fighter can grapple some pretty big adversaries.

However, this big boost to grapple comes with a big nerf. Whereas in 5e you had to use up your action to try to escape, in 6e it’s now something that you can do automatically at the end of your turn, after taking your normal actions. And it’s a Str or Dex saving throw instead of an opposed check. That’s a big advantage to the grappled creature. They don’t need to waste their turn to escape a grapple, AND more creatures (and characters?) have a Str or Dex saving throw proficiency than are trained in Athletics or Acrobatics. AND, since it’s a saving throw, legendary creatures can succeed automatically using legendary resistance (assuming legendary resistance is unchanged in 6e.)

Taken all in all, it’s an interesting change. Grapple is faster and easier to use (just an attack roll instead of a fairly complicated opposed roll that’s unlike the rest of D&D’s combat rules). Its bite is worse: at the least, it probably means a turn of attacks with disadvantage. And it’s harder to lock someone into a permanent grapple, so it seems less abusable.

Of course, the devil is in the details. Will other abilities built on top of it – like monk abilities – make it too powerful? We’ll see.

Of interest to fans of grappling: the playtest packet also includes the Tavern Brawler feat, which we should check for grappling synergy. Nope, nothing there that breaks grappling wide open. Tavern Brawler has two features about punching, one about shoving, and one about using furniture as weapons. We’ll have to wait to see if there’s an updated Grappler feat.

When should I grapple?

Assuming I’m a tanky character with high HP and/or AC, when should I grapple? Always? Sometimes? Never?

It seems to depend on your level and number of opponents. At level one, you’re giving up your only attack, so the reward (shutting down one enemy’s movement and nerfing their attacks for at least one turn) better be worth it. You only want to do this if you’re fighting a single opponent, or a boss monster that makes up most of the combat’s threat. You’re not going to want to give up your turn to grapple one of three identical goblins.

At high level, grappling looks more and more attractive. If you’re a fighter or monk with three or more per turn, you’re only giving up 1/3 or less of your damage output in exchange for shutting down an enemy. (And grappling is specifically written as part of the Unarmed Strike rules, making me think you’ll be able to do it as part of a Flurry of Blows.) As long as you can find a boss foe that’s small enough to grapple, it becomes a better and better deal. It might even be worth doing against a non-boss foe: it’s probably worth a single one of your attacks to basically remove an enemy from the fight, especially if you have driven your AC to astronomical heights (pretty easy at high level). Added to that, your grapple might become more and more effective as you gain levels. Your proficiency bonus keeps climbing as you gain levels, and monsters that aren’t proficient in Dex or Str saves are going to have a difficult time escaping you.

So that’s a worry. Grapple looks fun and fairly balanced at low level, but will it become a no-brainer at high level?

One more question: Can multiple creatures grapple you at once? I have this question in 5e too actually, but it becomes more important in 6e where grappling has more of a mechanical effect.

A fighter faces a horde of goblins. They try to pin him down with weight of numbers, using multiple grapples. Once a goblin has grappled the fighter, can a second goblin do so? If so, against whom does the fighter have disadvantage: everyone? Everyone but the two grappling goblins?

Not sure of the answers to these questions, but I’m excited for a playtest.

EDIT: For completeness (in case you thought this post wasn’t a complete enough discussion of like five sentences in a playtest packet), someone pointed out that, since grappling (and pushing) are attack rolls, they can be used for opportunity attacks. This is a huge upgrade for tanks and defenders who want to defend their friends, specifically for multiattackers like fighters, rangers, and barbarians. (It’s an upgrade for monks too, though not as big because they could already use Stunning Strike on an opportunity attack.)

For high-level multiattackers who divide their damage among several attacks, getting a single extra hit from opportunity attack really doesn’t change the battle equation much. HOWEVER, stopping a creature’s movement does! It’s really what you want out of an opportunity attack. And now you have two options to stop an escaping monster’s movement (or escaping player if you’re a sadistic DM).

-You can grapple the foe, completely shutting down their movement as well as giving them disadvantage on attacks. However, since this attack probably takes place during the target’s turn, and they make a save vs grapple at the end of their turn, the grapple may only last for a fraction of a turn.

-You can knock them prone. They can then stand up, but it uses up half their movement so they won’t be able to get far. And if they’ve already used up half their movement, then they can’t get up from prone until their next turn, which means that everyone makes attacks on them with advantage and they make attacks with disadvantage for one full round – which is pretty much game over for nearly any monster. If a monster has used up half of its movement already, knocking a creature prone is an incredibly powerful play.

As a side note, I’m on board with the grapple on an attack roll, but I don’t love the rule that you can knock down a monster with just an attack roll. In the 5e Monster Manual, an ogre has an ac 11. An ettin has an ac 12. Both are incredibly easy to hit, which means they’re now incredibly easy to topple over, even though they’re big strong meaty enemies. In the 6e MM, maybe both monsters will have higher AC to account for the knockdown rule, but that means that this rule is distorting monster stats to prevent this kind of exploit. I’m fine with grappling as an attack roll, since you can use a Str save to escape a grapple; but the current push rule doesn’t make any use of the defender’s strength, so the mechanics don’t match the story.

Dungeon Delver’s Guide kickstarter imminent!

August 11th, 2022

I’ve been talking a bit about my book Dungeon Delver’s Guide which is being published by EN Publishing. Well, it’s done and the kickstarter is launching later this month!

Get notified on launch!

Dungeon Delver's Guide

Dungeon Delver’s Guide: The NODES System

July 22nd, 2022

(I’m crossposting this post about my Dungeon Delver’s Guide from enworld, because why not have all my D&D theorycrafting writing together on my D&D blog? The original article is here.)

You’ve baited your story hooks. You’ve got your dungeon map. Now what do you put in all those rooms?

Creating an adventure’s worth of interesting features at once can be challenging. You may encounter writer’s block, or find yourself filling each area with repetitive challenges. (A dungeon where every room contains hostile monsters is one of the most common ruts to get stuck in!) In these cases, it can be helpful to have a checklist to make sure you have varied adventure elements: something for the puzzle solver, something for the story lover, something for the combat fan, and so on.

In Dungeon Delver’s Guide, we introduce a new tool for adventure design: the NODES system. Although we apply it to dungeons in this book, it’s applicable for any type of adventure design. Your scenario comes alive when it’s filled with Novelties, Obstacles, Discoveries, Escalations, and Set-pieces.

Quick-Start Dungeons

You can create a short dungeon delve with a classic structure by using the NODES elements in the order they appear in the mnemonic. Start with your mind-blowing Novelty in room one; show the characters an Obstacle; let them look around and find a Discovery that lets them bypass the obstacle; Escalate the action; and finish it up with a Set Piece. This will give you a complete dungeon that takes about one session to play through. This same pattern can be used to structure adventures outside the dungeon as well!

Novelties

Novelty is the driving force of tabletop RPGs. Every dungeon should offer something that the players haven’t seen before in the campaign, or a twist on a familiar idea. (Don’t worry: your dungeon idea doesn’t have to be totally original—just new to your game table.)

One of the best ways to introduce novelty into your game is with a fantastic vista.

  • Grand scale. Dungeons are usually cramped, and it’s nice to give breathing room to an important area by placing it against a huge backdrop. Give your players a view of vast caverns, endless corridors, subterranean oceans, and towering spires.
  • Dizzying depths. Chasms are great, especially when spanned by narrow bridges. What’s at the bottom? Blackness? Twinkling lights of unknown origin? Glowing lava?
  • Light. Darkness is the default state underground, which makes light an even more effective tool. Bright, colored lights are a great aid to the imagination. Fill rooms with phosphorescent moss, glowing crystals, blazing braziers, dancing motes of fairy light, or stranger light sources like strobing lightning flashes from an underground storm, or the distant, burning skeleton of an immense giant. Large, bright spaces are especially welcome after long journeys through dark, constricted tunnels.
  • Violation of natural laws. Examples include Escher-like altered gravity, with furniture, stairs, and doors on the walls and ceiling; objects slowed or frozen in time, like unmoving torch flames; underground wilderness, such as forests; weather, such as snow or mist; and spell effects, like fly and detect thoughts, applied to all who enter.
  • Art. Memorable, large-scale artwork, such as tapestries, carvings, and statues, are a dungeon classic for a reason (particularly statues, which can also be monsters in their own right or signs of nearby medusas). Magical artwork, like illusions, can be even more spectacular. The most memorable dungeon art is the most unsettling! Why is there a mosaic of a hero being devoured by stirges, or a statue of a creepy clown whose juggling balls are suspended motionless in the air?
  • Strange materials. Dungeons or dungeon sections made of bones, stained glass, flesh, or walls of force.

    We’ve stuffed Dungeon Delver’s Guide with enough novelties and inspirations to keep your players’ minds blown throughout many campaigns.

    Obstacles

    Obstacles are non-combat challenges that block the way forward. They may require characters to think critically, pay a cost, or even retrace their steps and come back later.

    There are several good reasons to include obstacles in your dungeon design:

  • Obstacles help you direct the flow of the adventure. For instance, if the evil lieutenant holds the key to the boss’s room, you can prompt (although not control) the order in which the two enemies are encountered.
  • Obstacles whet the appetite. Players are like cats. They want to go anywhere they’re not supposed to go. By placing an obstacle, you provide direction and a short-term goal.
  • Overcoming obstacles is fun! When players outsmart a puzzle, dodge a trap, or find the elusive key to that mysterious stone door, they feel good. And “it’s fun” is the best reason for including anything in an adventure.

    As a general rule, every obstacle should allow multiple solutions. Consider what happens to the adventure if the players don’t think of a puzzle’s clever solution. They should be able to bypass it or use brute force to solve it, usually at a cost. Perhaps ignoring the puzzle deprives characters of bonus treasure, or forces them to walk through a trap and risk damage. But they shouldn’t run up against a wall that prevents them from proceeding with the adventure.

    The most common types of obstacles are locks, puzzles, and traps. In a previous post, we’ve shared our traps with you. We also cover puzzles in great detail in the book, and you’ll find plenty of example puzzles in Dungeon Delver’s Guide, as well as discussion about what makes a good puzzle—and what types of puzzles don’t work as well as you’d expect. But today I want to focus on the use of the most mundane form of obstacle: the locked door.

    A locked door is a perfect example of an obstacle with many solutions. While there may be only one key to a lock, there are countless ways to get past a door! Characters can pick the lock if they are willing to risk traps, bash it down if they don’t mind attracting attention, and use spells like knock and dimension door if they’re willing to spend spell slots. That said, it’s good form to include at least one key for nearly every lock in the adventure.

    Whenever you place a locked door in the dungeon, add an item to your mental to-do list: “I need to place the key.” The next time you add a patrol or treasure, or the next time you’re adding a Discovery from the NODES checklist, think, “Maybe this is where I should put that key.” For instance, in the Traps section of Dungeon Delver’s Guide, many trap descriptions say that they guard a minor treasure. If you know the players are looking for a key, you can put it on the body of the thief at the bottom of the pit trap.

    When possible, a key should visually refer to its lock. Even if players encountered the lock a long time ago, the key should remind them of it—and vice versa. Here are some possibilities:

  • Lock: A bronze door engraved with a stag’s head. Key: A key carved of horn.
  • Lock: A mithral door enameled with green vines. Key: A mithral key with a head shaped like a leaf.
  • Lock: A black door set in the mouth of a giant skull. Key: A bone key set with literal teeth.
  • Lock: A door shaped like a shield. Key: A key that resembles a sword.
  • Lock: A keyhole shaped like an hourglass. Key: A sandstone key with the same peculiar shape.

    In the Random Dungeon Delves section of DDG, we include many dozens of unique locks and keys, each specific to the type of dungeon it appears in.

    Discoveries

    In the NODES dungeon framework, “obstacles” and “discoveries”—-problems and solutions—-often go hand in hand. A discovery is something that makes traversing the dungeon easier or is a reward for its own sake, like treasure. The most common types of discoveries are keys, treasure, social interaction, and secrets. While we cover each of these in more detail in DDG, let’s focus today on one of my favorites: social interaction.

    Many dungeons are lonely places without many opportunities to develop relationships or chat with locals. In my opinion, that’s often a missed opportunity. Of all the potential discoveries found within a dungeon, creatures willing to talk are perhaps the most compelling. For many players, navigating a web of social interactions and relationships is the essence of an RPG experience. Even players that prefer fighting and puzzle-solving might find non-combat encounters breathe life into a dungeon. An adventure’s stakes are always heightened if it includes NPCs that the party cares about. Furthermore, social interactions often have material benefits: creatures in the dungeon can provide information about enemies and treasure, places to hide, and new goals and quests.

    Social interactions are rewarding in and of themselves, and they turn what can be an empty-feeling dungeon environment into a living place. A potential ally, an enemy willing to talk, or an untrustworthy entity proposing a deal can provide narrative juice, motivation, and meaning that enhances the rest of the dungeon.

    Each of our dungeon generators provides specific prompts for social interactions. For instance, in a temple, you might run into a splinter group with beliefs considered heretical by the temple’s other inhabitants. Depending on the nature of those beliefs, the heretics might be potential allies or even more dangerous adversaries.

    Escalation

    Escalation demonstrates and heightens the danger of the dungeon. In an escalation scene, players discover that defeat is closer than they realized.

    Dungeons, even more than most adventures, benefit from a steady increase in tension and perceived danger over the course of the delve. The first room or two of the dungeon whets the party’s appetite and entices them in: as they travel further from the entrance—and possibly descend to deeper dungeon levels—they should face increasing dangers that demonstrate new and shocking ways that the dungeon can kill or endanger them. These threats often culminate in an epic action set piece (which we’ll discuss more later).

    Escalation scenes are the advancing clock that drives this tension.

    The most common type of escalation is an encounter with hostile creatures. A combat encounter drains hit points, spell slots, and other resources; can signal entry into a more dangerous area; and, if enemies escape or sound the alarm, can lead to a raised alert level throughout the dungeon. Furthermore, each combat has its own self-contained time limit: you must kill or defeat your enemies before they do the same to you!

    Using noncombat events to escalate tension enriches an adventure. Noncombat escalations can include failing a Stealth roll and setting off an alarm (for instance, coming within sight of sentries, or accidentally knocking over a pile of pots and pans), becoming aware of a time limit (for instance, overhearing that prisoners are to be executed at nightfall), entering a more dangerous area (such as the well-patrolled inner sanctum of the dungeon’s main adversary), or spending resources (having to use up a high-level spell slot to bypass an obstacle). It might also involve a social encounter (for instance, sweet-talking your way past guards, but arousing their suspicions).

    You can manage the pacing of a dungeon adventure by feel, having things generally get harder as the adventure goes on. If you place greater challenges and harder combats further from the dungeon entrance, the characters naturally encounter heightened dangers as they move forward.

    Alternatively, you can have the dungeon respond directly to the character’s explorations—growing more dangerous as the characters set off traps and alarms. Dungeon Delver’s Guide uses an escalation clock mechanic (based on the countdown dice pool from Level Up’s Adventurers’ Guide) to measure a bastion’s alert level or the time left until the evil cultists’ ritual is complete. As the countdown advances, each combat encounter includes extra monsters, or a monster is replaced with a tougher one. When the countdown reaches zero, the dungeon’s toughest monsters come looking for the adventurers!

    Here’s what an escalation table might look like:

    Example Escalation Table

    4 All’s Well. Guards make Perception checks with disadvantage (they’re sleeping, playing poker, etc). No checks for random encounters.

    3 Suspicions Aroused. Guards make Perception checks normally. Adventurers make disguise and Deception checks with disadvantage. Check for sentry patrols when the players spend more than 10 minutes in an area.

    2 This is Not a Drill. Guards peer into the shadows with weapons drawn. Doors are locked. Check for sentry patrols when players enter an empty room or corridor.

    1 Red Alert. Caltrops and other booby traps have been deployed. Guards make Perception checks with advantage. Sentry patrols contain double the number of creatures.

    0 All-Out War. Large sentry groups, headed by the dungeon leader’s strongest lieutenants, roam the halls. Doors are locked and barricaded. Sentries yell or bang gongs to summon reinforcements.

    Set Pieces

    While an escalation scene offers a glimpse of danger, a set piece is a battle, chase, or other action scene with a real chance of failure. It’s often the climactic scene in a dungeon or dungeon level, and success often means the characters have reached their goal. For instance, triumphing in a set piece battle might allow characters to descend to the next level of the dungeon (or escape it), defeat the evil creatures menacing the area, or free the prisoners they are searching for.

    If you’re rushing to prepare a dungeon for an upcoming game session, the most valuable way you can spend your time is to plan the set pieces. They are likely to be the most interesting and memorable scenes in the dungeon. In fact, a good low-preparation dungeon creation strategy is to plan out one or two set piece battles and improvise or randomly generate the rest using Dungeon Delver’s Guide random dungeon delve system.

    Set piece design is a big topic, one that we spend a lot of time on! Besides advice, we have about fifty set piece frameworks, each with varied levels of difficulty based on the dungeon level.

    In many dungeons, the most elaborate scenes are big combat set-pieces featuring the dungeon’s boss or miniboss. And in fact, most of our set pieces are combat-based. But Dungeon Delver’s Guide also includes templates and examples for a number of types of non-combat set pieces: chases, tense social scenes, and puzzles or skill-based challenges that offer unique mechanics. The one I’ll highlight here is the elite trap.

    An elite trap is an active threat that attacks over several rounds: it functions more like a combat than a puzzle. When players get locked in a room that slowly fills with water, or are forced to flee from a pursuing sphere of annihilation, they discover that the dungeon is more dangerous than they had realized.

    An elite trap can be a satisfying climax to an adventure. The garbage disposal scene was the climax of the Death Star dungeon delve in Star Wars: A New Hope, and most of the dungeons in the Indiana Jones movies conclude with an elite trap set piece. In Dungeon Delver’s Guide, the Collapsing Dungeon trap is designed to be a dramatic set piece trap that contains a chase element. We’ll share several of our elite traps in another preview.

    Hopefully we’ve given you a taste of what the Dungeon Delver’s Guide’s NODES system has to offer. There’s lots more in the book, including lots of dungeon-building advice; fifty pages or so of story-driven, NODES-based dungeon generation tables; and eight mini-adventures built around the same principles.

    Thanks for coming along with us on a look through this book. Let us know what you’d like to see next!

  • Dungeon Delver’s Guide: It’s a Trap!

    June 17th, 2022

    I want to share a post I wrote for enworld: “It’s a Trap”, an adapted excerpt from Dungeon Delver’s Guide, which I’m writing for EN Publishing. It’s a continuation of my thoughts I’ve posted on my blog here.

    Check out “It’s a Trap” here, or, if you don’t feel like clicking, just read it below.

    It’s a Trap!

    In EN Publishing’s upcoming Dungeon Delver’s Guide, we’re giving you every tool you need to build story-driven, atmospheric dungeons. And that means we have got to get traps right. Today I want to share the book’s trap-building philosophy, along with a few of the more than a hundred traps you’ll get when you Kickstart the book later this year.

    Traps are a defining characteristic of dungeons. But too often, they feel like an arbitrary tax on the characters’ hit points. Done poorly, traps cause play to bog down as paranoid players poke and prod every door and passageway for unseen dangers. For these reasons, GMs and Narrators are often advised to use traps sparingly, or even steer clear of them entirely.

    Throw that advice out the window!

    Making choices and exploring the unknown are what make a dungeon fun. Telling players that their passive Perception has caused them to trigger, or avoid, a trap offers them neither choice nor the opportunity to explore. Traps are most fun after they’re discovered but before they’ve been neutralized. Should the rogue disarm the device? Should the wizard cast a spell? What does that inviting-looking lever do? With uncertain but probably dire outcomes on the line, every success and failure feels earned.

    Just as combat tests both a character’s abilities and their player’s tactical skill, good traps allow for multiple solutions. A character invested in high Perception and Investigation, trap-specific abilities, and a set of thieves’ tools should be able to disarm any trap they encounter. At the same time, a clever player should be able to bypass the same trap simply by paying attention to their surroundings and playing a hunch.

    Making a Dungeon Delver’s Guide-style trap is pretty simple to do. You can make traps fair and fun if you remember to telegraph every trap.

    Telegraphing Traps

    Players can’t see through their characters’ eyes or hear through their ears. As the Narrator, it falls on you to supply them with the information they need to make choices for their characters.

    Besides the sensory information your descriptions provide, the level of detail you offer gives your players valuable information. The more details you lavish on a given location, the more important that location seems. This can work against you, such as when the players read too much into an offhand detail and as a result waste time investigating a random piece of furniture. But you can make it work to your advantage, as well. An area containing a trap or other hidden feature should be described with specificity, so that your players know it’s intended as a location they should explore, and not just an empty space that needs to be traversed on their way from A to B.

    If possible, a location’s details should relate to the trap that it conceals. You don’t need to give so much information that you completely reveal the trap, but you should offer enough that the players can make the connection after the fact. If a trap has claimed the lives of previous explorers, there may be bones or other remains nearby—possibly charred if the trap creates a fiery explosion. If the dungeon’s denizens know how to avoid a trap, or need to visit it frequently to reset it, they may leave footprints. A trail of footprints that ends abruptly tells another story entirely! A good clue instills caution and increases tension, but doesn’t necessarily tell the players how to proceed. Instead, it asks a question: what do you do next?

    What happens if you don’t telegraph danger in any way? Players learn that every location, no matter how seemingly insignificant, might harbor another such trap. Thus, their only sensible course of action is to examine every door, room feature, and length of hallway. The game can become a slow-paced grind.

    Solving a Trap

    Once a trap has been discovered, the real fun begins. How can the adventurers bypass the trap without triggering it?

    Nearly every trap can be disabled with an appropriate ability check or two: characters with thieves’ tools proficiency, high Perception scores, and trap-sensing class features will get their chances to shine. Many traps can also be bypassed or disabled without a check. For example, pressing a hidden button might automatically disable a deadly device. Similarly, a character might use mage hand or a 10-foot pole to trigger a trap from a distance, staying clear of the trap’s range.

    Our traps’ descriptions specify actions and spells that let a creature automatically avoid a trap’s dangers. Players might also think of other ways to bypass a trap. Based on how appropriate the solution is, you can decide that it doesn’t work, requires a check, or automatically succeeds. For instance, the description for a hidden pit trap lists avoiding or bridging the pit among its possible solutions. Casting fly and floating over the trap isn’t mentioned, but such a solution should automatically succeed. Walking over the pit on a tightrope, on the other hand, might require an Acrobatics check.

    Want to try out some Dungeon Delver’s Guide traps? Here are some examples. These use Level Up’s Exploration Challenge format. To run them, you need to know the following:

    Every ability check made while investigating or disarming a trap uses the DCs listed at the top of the trap description. The number before the slash is for solo checks, while the number after the slash is for group checks.

    Attempting to disarm a trap can result in a critical success or a critical failure. A roll of 1, or a group check in which everyone fails, is a critical failure, while a roll of 20, or a group check in which everyone succeeds, is a critical success.

    The italicized text, the description of the room, is the “telegraph”—the hint that something might not be quite right. You can read this text aloud or paraphrase it.

    Reverse Gravity Trap

    1st tier (constructed trap)

    Challenge 4 (1,100 XP); DC 15/14

    The walls are covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. On the ceiling, metal spikes hang down like icicles.

    Gravity is reversed in this room. An unsecured creature or object that enters the room triggers a Failure. (Note: If this room contains creatures, they stand on the ceiling.)

    Exploration. A Perception check or an examination of the bookshelves reveals that the books are shelved upside down against the tops of their shelves. The ceiling is 30 feet high. The bookshelves look easy to climb.

    Books. As an action, a creature can make an Arcana or Investigation check to scan the bookshelves. On a success, the creature notices a spellbook (containing levitate or another 2nd-level spell) on a shelf across the room.

    Spell Effect. This is a transmutation effect created by a 7th-level spell. A successful dispel magic disables the trap.

    Possible Solutions

    A creature can make an Athletics or Acrobatics check to climb along the bookcases. The check is made with advantage if the creature is upside down (i.e. right side up relative to the room’s gravity).

    Critical Failure or Failure.
    The creature or object falls to the ceiling. Creatures that can levitate or fly don’t fall. The room’s ceiling is 30 feet high, so a creature that falls from the floor takes 10 (3d6) bludgeoning damage from the fall. A creature that takes falling damage also takes 10 (3d6) piercing damage from the spikes on the ceiling.

    Once on the ceiling, a creature can move around the spikes safely but treats the area as difficult terrain.

    Success or Critical Success. The creature moves through the room safely until the end of its turn.

    Reverse Gravity Trap Variant: Random Gravity Trap

    This room is identical in appearance to the Reverse Gravity Trap except that it has an upside-down door on the wall adjoining the ceiling.

    Roll initiative. Each round on initiative count 20, gravity reverses direction. Each unsecured creature and object in the room when gravity changes falls up or down, as appropriate. Creatures take falling damage and spike damage when falling up, and falling damage only when falling down. A creature holding onto the bookshelves when gravity reverses must make a Dexterity saving throw or lose its grip.

    Once a creature has noticed the location of the spellbook, the next two successful Arcana or Investigation checks reveal the locations of other valuable books, each containing a spell, information, or a Boon or Discovery.

    Sword Guardian Trap

    2nd tier (constructed trap)

    Challenge 6 (2,300 XP); DC 16/14

    A black metal statue stands in the middle of a hallway. The statue depicts a woman with four arms and the lower body of a snake. The statue holds swords in three of her hands; the fourth holds out a basket in your direction.

    Pressure plates cover the floor within 5 feet of the side and rear of the statue. Stepping on a pressure plate or jostling the statue triggers a Failure. The pressure plates are disabled while the basket holds at least 10 pounds of weight.

    Floor. An Engineering or Investigation check, or an examination of the floor, reveals that the floor next to and behind the statue is composed of pressure plates. The statue can be approached safely from the front.

    Statue. Any investigation of the statue reveals that the words “Pay Your Respects” are engraved at the bottom of the basket. A character that makes an Arcana or Religion check recognizes the statue as a marilith, a type of demon. An Investigation check, or an examination of the statue, reveals that the marilith has articulated arms.

    The statue is an object with AC 19, 75 hit points, and immunity to cold, lightning, fire, piercing, poison, and psychic damage. Damaging the statue without destroying it outright triggers a Critical Failure.

    Possible Solutions

    A creature can make a thieves’ tools check to disable one pressure plate or one of the statue’s arms.

    A creature can make a Strength check to break one pressure plate or one of the statue’s arms.

    Critical Failure. The statue makes three melee attacks, each with a different arm. Each arm attacks with a +7 bonus, has a reach of 10 feet, and deals 9 (2d8) slashing damage on a hit.

    Failure. As a Critical Failure, but only one arm attacks.

    Success. One pressure plate or one arm is disabled. Disabling three pressure plates or arms triggers a Critical Success.

    Critical Success. The trap is disabled.

    Sword Guardian Variant: Sword Guardian Riddler

    The message at the bottom of the sword guardian’s bowl is a riddle. An appropriate item placed in the bowl disables the trap; other items do not.

    “Golden head bearing a crown, golden tail up or down.” The trap is disabled if one or more gold coins is placed in the bowl.

    “Born in fire, formed in water, polished silver, end in slaughter.” The trap is disabled if a weapon made of iron or steel is placed in the bowl.

    unusual natures call for unusual solutions

    June 1st, 2022

    The Unusual Nature trait in Monsters of the Multiverse is a replacement for the old Undead Nature, Celestial Nature, etc, traits in previous monster books: these are all of the traits that allow a creature to not need some combination of food, drink, rest, and air. This trait used to be tucked away at the end of a monster essay; now it’s been moved to the stat block.

    Talking with alphastream about the new trait has got me thinking about more problems I have with it. These are all minor quibbles, but minorly quibbling is a proud D&D tradition.Screen Shot 2022-06-01 at 9.50.34 AM

    Its placement – in the essay or in the stat block – is not actually an easy call. As a piece of monster information, it’s neither fish nor fowl. It doesn’t really belong as a subhead in the essay because it’s technical rules text, not expository text. And it doesn’t really belong in the stat block because it’s not about combat – at least most of it isn’t. In the heat of combat, you might need to know whether a creature breathes, but you’ll never need to know if they need to eat. It makes a bit more sense to me to put the trait in the essay rather than the stat block, just because a lot of monster entries contain one essay and several stat blocks so you’d avoid repetition. But I can’t really fault WotC much for the placement of this trait as the trait is written now: it’s a proud nail either way.

    Here are my two bigger objections to Unusual Nature.

    It’s inconsistent. If it’s important enough to put into stat blocks, it should actually be in more stat blocks. Just going through the Monster Manual, does a dao need to breathe, or does it asphyxiate while phasing through the earth? does a modron eat (and if so what)? does a salamander or magmin need to drink even though mephits don’t? does a blight, death knight, fungus, or gibbering mouther need sleep? Demons and devils don’t have any such feature for some reason – do they really need all of these things? The pattern continues in Monsters of the Multiverse. An alhoon is an undead mind flayer lich and doesn’t eat brains: why doesn’t it have Unusual Nature? Elementals don’t need to eat or drink, but phoenix, elder tempest, and air elemental myrmidon do? Not only does a water elemental myrmidon need to breathe air, it doesn’t even have the Amphibious trait – it drowns in water! Same with the leviathan. The retriever, a robot spider construct, needs to eat, drink, sleep, and breathe.

    My guess is the lack of these traits is not actually causing anyone problems – no one, except a theorycrafter or a nitpicker like me, has ever been troubled about whether a death knight or gibbering mouther is thirsty or tired. In that case – if their lack causes no problems – maybe we don’t need these traits at all. If a creature doesn’t need air or can breathe water, that seems worthy of going in the stat block. A creature’s need for sleep, food, and drink seems like an interesting aside that can be mentioned in passing in the essay if you need to fill up column inches, or else ignored.

    My other problem with Unusual Nature is maybe more subjective: it’s not poetic. “Unusual Nature” is just an unlovely name for a trait. As a label, it is content-free. Every D&D monster has an “unusual nature” of some kind, and so do a lot of animals, especially ones from Australia. Wombats poop cubes. A trait’s name should say what it does, and “unusual nature” doesn’t say anything about what this trait actually does.

    I think if I wanted to come up with a catch-all name for the old “undead nature”, “construct nature”, “elemental nature”, “ooze nature”, and so on, I’d use this:

    Immortal. The creature doesn’t die of old age. Additionally, it doesn’t need to [any one of sleep, eat, drink, or breathe, depending on the monster]

    That’s really what all of the Unusual Nature creatures have in common, and what the trait is grasping for I think. Undead, oozes, constructs, and celestials don’t really age. The fact that they don’t need various forms of mortal sustenance are side-effects of their immortality.

    I’d extend this Immortality trait to fiends too. Sure, Graz’zt might like a gobbet of mortal flesh and a nice glass of Chianti, but I don’t know that he needs it to live. I don’t think that bearded devils travel with bedrolls so that they can sleep when they’re away from their beds, and I just bet that Juiblex doesn’t drown. Hell, I might give Immortality to some or all fey creatures too.

    Besides, Immortality is a word to conjure with. It says something about the monster’s story in a way that “Unusual Nature” does not. And it could be used as a keyword. Spells and monster could key off immortality. Maybe a ghost’s horrifying visage can only age mortal creatures, and all the spells that list “celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead” can just say “immortal creatures”.

    Heck, while we’re adding this new trait to a million monsters, let’s add “and its attacks are considered magical.” Then we can get rid of all that force damage. Two for one sale on Monsters of the Multiverse fixes!