Although I’ve written a lot about the various initiative systems in D&D, I could quite easily fill a lot of space talking about how healing has changed through the editions. For players moving from AD&D to 5E, the way healing works is likely to be quite strange. Yes, you still have spells that allow you to heal, but why are Hit Dice being used for … Continue reading A Primer on Hit Points and Healing in the new Dungeons & Dragons
While a lot of the rest of the world was sitting down to play their first games of the new D&D using the Starter Set, my regular crew of players were playing AD&D with me. Mainly because the Starter Set isn’t out here yet in Australia, which does make it just a little difficult to play The Lost Mine of Phandelver! Our regular numbers were … Continue reading The Castle of the Mad Archmage
The new Basic Dungeons & Dragons PDF is now available, as you probably know. It contains the new procedures for spell casting in D&D, which have a few differences from earlier forms of the game. What hasn’t changed is who can cast spells: Fighters and Thieves can’t, Clerics and Wizards can. The Basics: Prepared Spells and Slots Each caster prepares a number of spells at … Continue reading A Primer on Spell Casting in the new Dungeons & Dragons
For those players who haven’t been involved in the D&D playtest and are coming to the new rules with knowledge of earlier systems, it’s probably worth discussing how the system works. As with 3E and 4E, the new combat system uses Cyclical Initiative. At the beginning of the combat, each combatant makes a Dexterity check and then everyone acts in that order, from highest check to … Continue reading A Primer on Combat in the new Dungeons & Dragons
The new edition of Dungeons & Dragons continues the trend of having a list of Conditions that can befall characters and monsters. Conditions provide a useful shorthand for the game, allowing the designers to create spells, powers and rules that share a common language. The list of conditions in 3E and Pathfinder is quite long, but the list was pared back in 4E, and the … Continue reading Basic D&D: Changes to Conditions
If, like me, you’ve been happily playing with the interim Dungeons & Dragons rules included in the recent Scourge of the Sword Coast, Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle and Dead in Thay adventures – or with the public playtest that those rules are drawn from – you are probably wondering what has changed. What do I need to know as I adapt to the new version … Continue reading Basic Dungeons & Dragons: Combat changes
We had our largest numbers ever in D&D Encounters for this session: 1 Co-ordinator, 3 DMs and 20 players for a total of 24 participants! We debated whether we wanted to split into four tables or not – I would have DMed if necessary – but we decided to just have a couple of tables where there were seven players. It seemed to go fine, … Continue reading D&D Encounters: Dead in Thay, session 8
A few pages from the Starter Set have been posted online by people who have been sent the set early, and there are a few notable changes. I’m not planning to analyse every little thing that has changed since the Interim Rules Document, but there are a few highlights that are worth noting. In particular, the Cure Wounds spell has changed from 2d8 healing per … Continue reading Changes from the D&D Playtest: Starter Set Spells
My AD&D players came up against an Adult White Dragon on the weekend. They went looking for it, as Rich’s Thief had been aged 40 years by a ghost, and a sage had told them that a remove curse spell cast while eating the heart of an adult dragon would reverse the aging. It sounded good to me at the time! For my gentle readers … Continue reading Death by Dragon
It is probably fair to say that the main line of D&D development never had a coherent initiative system until AD&D 2nd Edition came along in 1989. Gary Gygax was many things, but a writer of clear, unambiguous combat rules was not one of them. The systems in the various versions of Basic D&D were used by many as the basis of how to run … Continue reading Initiative in AD&D 2nd Edition
