Tag: Dnd

Done With Dungeons and Dragons

Well, it was finally time.

I’ve been playing 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons since 2016 off and on, first with co-workers, then with friends and family. Later, I branched out into Adventurer’s League, and wrote some modules online for fun.1

But now, I can confidently say that I am thoroughly tired of the game.

My kids and I played weekly during the Pandemic and had some great adventures together, and when the Pandemic finally subsided I was eager to resume Adventurer’s League with the local community.

But then starting in 2024 something happened: the game just wasn’t as fun as it used to be. The 2024 revised rules made things briefly interesting again, but left me with a soulless, corporate aftertaste. But even the fun of revised and updated rules quickly lost its luster. The revised versions feel very polished, and fixed some issues, but also feel homogenized and bland, with no character left.2

Playing D&D started feeling increasingly rote. My kids increasingly lost interest, especially my oldest who had one foot out the door towards college, and I didn’t have the drive to start up another group elsewhere. The final straw was returning to Adventurer’s League after a hiatus of 2-3 years. Adventurer’s League now feels hollowed out and running on fumes after WoTC stopped investing in it in favor of their new organized play setting. My local community is much smaller than before, with most of the old-timers having left, leaving only the die-hard players whom (speaking from experience) are hard to get along with.

Even the local gaming store I used to frequent has become so successful, that it is too crowded, too hard to find parking, and overpriced. Compared to five years ago, it is not fun to go there anymore.

Amazing how much the Pandemic changed everything.

I did briefly look into Pathfinder but quickly got tired of the rules-heavy and math-heavy gameplay. Plus, if you are an occasional player, you are forever chasing after new rules, classes and modules or will simply get left behind. The remaster didn’t help matters, because if you want to keep up you have to buy three new books at $60+ each, just to avoid some legal hassles with naming of spells and rules. In short, I did not find Pathfinder worth further investment.3

In spite of all this nay-saying, my son loves D&D, and reads the 2024 books avidly (I will probably give him the books at some point), and even enjoyed the new Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves (it is a pretty fun movie, tbh). So, I won’t discourage him. I have personally grown sick of D&D and have no desire to play it (or Pathfinder) anytime in the near future. For me, the spark is totally gone.

And yet, I am also realizing that the TTRPG world is a lot more vast than I first thought. I stumbled recently upon an RPG system called The One Ring: a gaming system designed entirely for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. I picked up a couple of the core rule books, including a Dungeons and Dragons-compatible version, and am reading through them now. The community, while not large as Dungeons and Dragons, is large enough that I can find the support I need to questions and people seem to be passionate without being obnoxious. As a lifelong Tolkien fan, the amount of love and attention put into the books is really impressive, and heart-warming. I probably will write a review of the core rules once I finish reading through the book.

There are many other RPG systems as well, by smaller publishers, who are passionate about their craft, and if you look enough, chances are you’ll find a system that’s right for you. My son loves D&D 2024 edition, so I am happy to let him continue reading, exploring, and designing adventures. For someone who enjoys Pathfinder, I hope they continue playing and exploring. I guess the point of all this is that if you are tired of the more corporate gaming systems, try exploring other smaller RPG systems, and see what’s there. You may find a hidden gem you didn’t know about.

For me, I am done with both D&D and Pathfinder systems, and instead enjoy exploring the rules of The One Ring. Whether I can find a local community to play with (the perennial challenge of TTRPG) is another matter entirely….

P.S. Featured photo is my bookshelf of TTRPG books: a mix of D&D 5th edition, 2nd edition (which I fondly remember from my teen years), and some The One Ring books. Most of the newer 5th edition books were sold off already, but I am keeping some older ones that I enjoyed.

1 Writing modules is fun, and I made a bit of money here and there, but nothing even remotely enough to raise a family with. I make enough per month to buy a cup of coffee or two. I gradually stopped as the effort per module exceeded what I felt I got out of it. I still have a few in draft I may finish someday, but in light of this post, I will likely keep them in draft for the foreseeable future. Also, the 50% cut that WoTC takes from my module sales is frankly kind of egregious.

2 The 2024 books have truly fantastic artwork, though.

3 I kept the remastered Player Core book (book 1, since now they’ve printed multiple versions) in case I ever join a group, but I admit it’s pretty unlikely at this point.

Adventurers League for 2024 Ruleset

Adventurer’s League is the community play program for Dungeons and Dragons, and has been around for years, but with the recent publishing of the 2024 updated ruleset, this forces some updates for AL players. In recent months, I have been able to get back into AL after a really long lull,1 and I wanted to share some experiences with the 2024 results.

Per AL regulations, players are expected to field characters using the latest ruleset available, and to rebuild any characters accordingly when required. In the case of 2024 ruleset, that means that all characters built before 2024 ruleset need to be rebuilt to some extent before playing the next session.

In some cases, I’ve found this to be pretty easy, in some cases somewhat challenging. Here’s a couple examples in my case.

note: I wrote this before I learned about the new Legends of Greyhawk community play. While the FAQ states that this is not related to Adventurer’s League, and that “Adventurers League will continue as a community-content program”, this leads me to believe that AL will nonetheless continue to wither and die on the vine for the forseeable future. Given WoTC’s history, I do not fully trust them to support AL going forward as they prioritize the new, shiny program. Still, I am posting this anyway to illustrate how rebuilding my long-term 2014 characters for 2024 rules was sometimes very easy, and sometimes a pain in the neck.

Abjurer Elf Wizard

My original AL character, Qisandoral Arriestanus (DDB link), is a 13th level high-elf wizard (abjuration school) as of writing, was the easiest to rebuild in some ways, and painfully difficult in others. I have written about him here and here. He’s been rebuilt, retired, and revived a number of times.

The 2024 ruleset in the Player’s Handbook fully supports both High Elves and the Wizard class. The eight wizard schools have been changed into four subclasses at 3rd level2 and collapsed into , and for the Abjuration subclass it is covered in the PHB. So, just using the new PHB, I can fully rebuild the wizard without any extra rules or books. Easy.

The challenge of rebuilding a high-level wizard is picking spells for the spellbook. Using standard rules, I can calculate how many spells I should have in my spellbook at level 13, but I also had copied some spells into my spellbook from purchased spell scrolls. Plus, 2024 background choices give you additional spells through feats on top of that. And then there’s spells you get as a high elf innately.

In the end, I had to abandon any spells I had copied from spell scrolls as they are not considered part of the rebuild. As consumables not tied to any adventure rewards, they are treated as a sunk cost when rebuilding.

For everything else, I had to carefully calculate my starting 6 spells at level one, 24 spells for every level after one (2 per level, 12 levels total), plus 3 from elf lineage, and finally spells from my Magic Initiate background feat. This took hours to sort out, and I had to double-check with fellow AL players on Discord, but in the end I was able to rebuild my spellbook. I also leveraged DnD Beyond to validate that the configuration made sense.

Drow Nature Cleric

My other favorite character from earlier AL seaons was a Drow nature domain cleric named Shava Do’Mindrun (DDB link), who worshipped Eilistraee as an alternate to the dread Spider Queen Lloth. Nature clerics are not a particularly popular choice for character builds, but I had surprising fun with it, and it fit Eilistraee’s domains so it was an easy choice at the time.

However, Nature Domain is not a part of the 2024 ruleset, but Eilistree’s other cleric domains, Light and Life, are. So, if I wanted to make a vanilla 2024 character, I would have to rebuild Shava as a Light Domain cleric.

Alternatively, I can still use the Nature Domain, since both 2024 ruleset and AL rules allow it (the 2014 Player’s Handbook is still the newest rules for a Nature Domain cleric). The 2024 Player’s Handbook in particular clarifies that older domains not listed in the handbook are still legal choices, so long as their abilities are granted at 3rd level, not earlier. This is to keep things internally consistent with other new Cleric subclasses.

As of writing, I ultimately decided to reset entirely, and Shava as a light domain cleric at 1st level. Eilistraee’s imagery of the moon dovetails nicely with the Light cleric domain, and it seems that the Nature cleric domain feels a bit more anemic in the 2024 ruleset, while the Light domain is fully supported by comparison. This may change though, as AL allows character rebuilds. Time will tell. As for resetting to first level as an essentially a new character, I did this mainly for personal reasons as I had made some choices with the original character I regretted, and frankly I just wanted to play her over again from the beginning, rather than let her languish in higher tiers were game options are fewer.

High Elf Forge Cleric

Similar to the Nature Cleric above, my High Elf forge domain cleric named Fenmaer Wasanthi (DDB link) was faced with a cleric domain that isn’t fully supported in the 2024 ruleset, but still allowed.

To make a long story short, in this character’s case, I decided to keep the Forge domain and rebuilt him accordingly. The deity in question, Darahl Firecloak, does have the domains of Forge and Light, so I could play another Light domain cleric, but as of writing I felt that the Forge domain was still compelling enough that it was worth keep this build even under 2024 rules.

Simply put, I rebuilt as-is with little or no change.

Wood Elf Samurai

My last character that I regularly play is a Wood Elf samurai fighter named Heian Amakiiro (DDB link), whom I’ve written about here.

1 Pandemic + parenting meant that I played once a year, maybe twice if lucky. I required quite a few characters at the time. Nowadays I play somewhat more often, but still not at pre-pandemic levels. I hope to change that in the coming year once my oldest leaves the nest.

2 To be more consistent with other character classes, presumably. Much of the 2024 updates to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons seems intended to make character creation process more consistent regardless of choice, and to homogenize some aspects.

P.S. Double-post today. Cleaning out the “draft” folder. 😉

A Nerd Dad’s Review of Dungeons and Dragons 2024 Player’s Handbook

Most players of Dungeons and Dragons within the last couple of years are probably aware that an updated ruleset was on the horizon, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the game. This new ruleset has included names such as “One D&D”, or jokingly “5.5 edition” and so on. Nonetheless, the new Player’s Handbook came out, and I got a limited edition copy at my local game store a couple weeks ago. My kids and I hadn’t really played any TTRPG in many months, both due to demanding schoolwork for the oldest, busy schedule for the family, malaise with Pathfinder Second Edition1 and just unhappiness with Hasbro shenanigans.

But we all agreed that we missed our old family D&D sessions during the early Pandemic, and my oldest child’s school schedule this year is much lighter now. So, we agreed to block out a time on weekends and start playing again.

We bought the alt-cover 2024 Player’s Handbook early, since FLGS’s were allowed to sell it a week before online release.

Further, my kids wanted to try the new rules, so I went to the local FLGS (friendly local gaming store), skimmed over the new 2024 Player’s Handbook, felt it was intuitive enough that I could adapt, and within a couple weeks, we were running a basic Forgotten Realms campaign, borrowing elements from R.A. Salvatore’s original Icewind Dale trilogy.2

I have my old copy of the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide to help with the world-building. old resource books for the Sword Coast. Also, before the game, I tested the new rules by creating a couple characters using 2024 rules to help provide sidekicks to our small party.

Our “session zero” with the new 2024 campaign.

The kids, having experience with 2014 5th Edition D&D quickly picked up the new rules and were able to get a couple fun characters created in an hour:

  • a dragonborn paladin (my son)
  • a tiefling cleric (daughter)
  • plus sidekicks I made: dwarf druid of the sea, and drow eldritch knight.

From there we’re back on familiar turf, having a good time, enjoying a classic bar fight opening and subsequently getting thrown out. Wulfgar and Regis from the Icewind Dale trilogy made a cameo too.

In short, getting up to speed with the 2024 rules was easier than expected. The character creation processed has definitely changed in a couple essential ways :

  1. Character race no longer determines stats, it’s based on chosen background now. The result doesn’t really change the process all that much, but it is a philosophical shift.
  2. The racial subclasses get net abilities to help with “flavor” more: elves for example are still divided by wood, high, and drow elves, but each one gets different innate spells at certain levels. Same with Tieflings, and so on. I found this change more fun than expected.
  3. Many character class paths are homogenized to match other class paths. This means that clerics now choose their domain at level three, not level one for example. Wizards similarly choose school on wizardly later than before. However, even at level one there are choices you can make with character creation, so this isn’t as limiting as one might expect. However, clerics and wizards as of writing only have 4 subclasses only versus 8 previously.

Because classes and backgrounds are so strongly emphasized, these sections comprise most of the book by a long shot. The book covers species (character races), spells and equipment toward the end which is different from the classes 2014 PHB. The intro includes a nice, updated walkthrough of how a typical D&D session looks like so if you’re new to D&D, this is a good read.

Most of the other rules have not drastically changed, so in most cases they will feel familiar. There is a comprehensive list here as well.

Spells have often changed and take some careful reading to get re-acquainted. Many of these updates provide much-needed fixes and balance updates. For example the 3rd level Daylight spell now actually counts as sunlight for mechanics purposes (handy for vampires). The classic Cure Wounds spell heals 2d8 damage, not 1d8.

In short, some spells are weaker or more limited now than before. Spells that were seldom used such as Barkskin now have a new life. Again, if you played fifth edition before, you should definitely reread your spell list and familiarize yourself with the new spells.

All in all, despite my personal misgivings toward Hasbro, I must admit that the 2024 Player’s Handbook is a welcome update. It fixes a number of oddities, balance issues and deficiencies of the original while keeping its essence more than I expected. I can still use my old resource books without much effort to convert, which is greatly appreciated. Meanwhile, new players will have enough to get started with the PHB without needing to refer to older material.

I am eager to see what the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide brings as well.

Edit: I “butt-published” this too early. I had to write the last third of the post in a hurry. Apologies for the rushed effort. 🤦🏼‍♂️

P.S. another reason for investing in the 2024 PHB is that Adventurer’s League requires rebuilding characters to conform to 2024 rules anyway. I don’t play AL too often these days but I don’t want to get left behind.

1 While we did have a good time initially, especially with character creation, the biggest challenges with maintaining the Pathfinder campaign was a lack of coherent fantasy settings. Most of the research and prep I did as a DM was to pore over Wiki fan pages, which inevitably referred to modules I never bought (and weren’t interested in purchasing). There just wasn’t enough compelling lore, characters or story modules to get immersed in to replace classic D&D lore, plus they are scattered across so many books anyway that it was impossible to find anything. Plus the fatigue in keeping up with the constant stream of new classes, new ancestries, and so on. A TTRPG hobbyist has the time to keep up with this, but not a working parent who just wants to spend a weekend with the kids. Pathfinder 2e Remaster has good rules, and good design, but outside of this and the Beginner Box there is not enough support for more casual players especially those who have some nostalgia about classic TTRPG lore.

2 I’ve been reading the Icewind Dale trilogy shard to my son at night, after we finished the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Hobbit, and the original Dragonlance chronicles. LOtR was great, the Hobbit was great, Dragonlance wasn’t as good as I remember, but the Crystal Shard has been a solid read, though I have to skim over certain scenes that are inappropriate for younger audiences. He loves the main cast, even more so in teh second book Streams of Silver. It does feel like a D&D adventure for him, and he enjoys listening to the story, and (in his opinion), my voice acting.

A Nerd Dad’s Review of Remastered Pathfinder 2e

Edit: I wrote this post almost a year ago and my thoughts have changed somewhat in that time. While we did have a good time initially, especially with character creation, the biggest challenges with maintaining the Pathfinder campaign was a lack of coherent fantasy settings. Most of the research and prep I did as a DM was to pore over Wiki fan pages, which inevitably referred to modules I never bought (and weren’t interested in purchasing). There just wasn’t enough compelling lore, characters or story modules to get immersed in to replace classic D&D lore, plus they are scattered across so many books anyway that it was impossible to find anything. Plus the fatigue in keeping up with the constant stream of new classes, new ancestries, and so on. A TTRPG hobbyist has the time to keep up with this, but not a working parent who just wants to spend a weekend with the kids. Pathfinder 2e Remaster has good rules, and good design, but outside of this and the Beginner Box there is not enough support for more casual players especially those who have some nostalgia about classic TTRPG lore.

The debacle in January 2023 with the OGL license and Wizards of the Coast pushed a lot of people away from Dungeons and Dragons, towards other role-playing games, particularly Pathfinder 2nd edition. I reviewed PF2e here and here. Recently, I also picked up the new Remastered edition:

The Remastered edition is Paizo’s clean break from the OGL license and anything related to Dungeons and Dragons mechanics. Classic staples such as alignment, and ability scores, are simply gone, and with it some aspects of Pathfinder 2e have been streamlined. The old ability scores (0-18) are simply replaced with ability bonuses, starting at 0. This actually makes a lot of sense. The only thing we care about are the bonuses anyway, and the old numerical ability scores were more relevant in older versions of D&D where the number didn’t just dictate a bonus, but also dictated other factors (ability to be resurrected, chance of failure to cast a spell, avoid traps, etc).

Removing alignment also makes sense, since it’s been 40+ years, and still no one can agree on how to interpret alignment anyway. 😁 But it also removes some of the artificial guardrails placed on characters and allows greater diversity in motivations and personalities.

With the removal of alignment, this also affects religiously-inclined character classes such as clerics, and focuses on the particular anathemas and religious edicts of each deity. As with character motivation, this does breathe more life into each deity and religious characters path, but it’s also a bit of an adjustment for old-school players like myself.

Further, these changes also mean that some aspects of the Pathfinder character sheets have been streamlined. Previously, my kids character sheets were up to 6 pages long, but the newly designed sheets are 4 pages at most. This is on par with D&D 5th edition.

Finally, let’s talk about the book formats.

The old Core Rulebook, Advanced Player’s Guide, and GameMastery Guide have been all sliced up and recombined into different books. For example, the new Player Core book (special edition cover shown above), combines elements of the old Core Rulebook and Advanced Player’s Guide. By default, one can play a Witch for example, but remastered Champions (paladins) aren’t available yet, pending further remastered publications. The GM aspects of the old Core Rulebook have been combined with the GameMaster Guide to form the new GM Core book.

What you get is a more logical division between the two books: a player-centric handbook and a GM-centric one. The old tome, the Core Rulebook, thus has been broken up into two logical divisions with newer content added into them.

Further, the format of the books themselves is way more readable than before. Much of the content will look familiar, but is significantly easier to find thanks to book structure, and also due to the handy sidebar on each page. Some rules have been slightly modified to address inconsistencies that have arisen. Other rules have been simply rewritten for better clarity. I can’t tell you how much easier it is to find things on the fly as a GM now rather than stopping the game to flip through a book for 10 minutes then give up and search online. The GM Core in particular does provide more helpful content for planning and designing campaigns, and I found this part particular fun to read. It was previously scattered elsewhere (and similar tough to find), but now I know exactly where to turn to.

No joke, I struggled a lot with the old Core Rulebook to find things so I had to buy some tabs at a game store to mark the chapter out:

The updated books make this task a lot easier.

Finally, the spell list. In order to make a clean break from the OGL, many classic D&D spells have been renamed to non-OGL ones. For example, the iconic Magic Missile is now Force Barrage. Magic Weapon is given a cooler name of Runic Weapon, and some spells are given names that are more intuitive such as Gentle Repose becoming Peaceful Rest. Mechanically, very little if anything changes, but having to remember a new set of names is probably the biggest challenge for both GMs and magic-using players.

In any case, part of me misses the Pathfinder tie-back to old D&D, so it’s bittersweet that this connection is finally severed at last, but on the other hand, the remastered Pathfinder 2e is a significant improvement over the original 2e in terms of streamlined mechanics and streamlined publications.

On the other hand, it does feel like Pathfinder is finally getting out of the shadow of D&D and maturing as a role-playing game in its own right, and I salute these updates, and will be looking forward to more games with the kids (or maybe finally getting off my seat to check out the local Pathfinder Society).

A Nerd Dad’s Review: Empires Triology

This post started with a surprise find at my local Half Price Books store. I often peruse the old fantasy paperback section, looking for Roger Zelazny novels that I haven’t picked up yet (see Spring Cleaning post), when I stumbled upon this old novel:

I suddenly remembered reading Horselords way back in the 1990’s in college, and although I didn’t remember the story much, I felt like re-reading it. It turned out to be a surprisingly good book. The story had surprisingly little to do with any Dungeons and Dragons lore apart from an odd mention here and there of magic, but instead was essentially a re-telling of the Mongol invasions of China, through a fantasy, fictional tribe called the Tuigan, headed by one Yamun Kahan. The book hints at some lore regarding the great Shou Empire, while the store is largely seen through the eyes of a foreign monk named Koja who is gradually brought into the inner-circle of Yamun Kahan. The story includes a lot of elements of the “noble savage” and “fish out of water” tropes, but overall it was a solid story as Koja gradually becomes more and more Tuigan in spite of himself. Even as his homeland is invaded by the Tuigan, Koja is a semi-willing participant in the invasion.

Having enjoyed the book, I decided to get the next two. I had never read them back in the day, not even sure if I knew they existed, but now, 30 years later, it was time to finish the series.

The second book, Dragonwall, was written by a different author, and was in many ways a different story entirely. The main character is a minor general named Batu Min Ho, who has Tuigan ancestry of his own, but was raised in Shou Lung. Through his tactical skill, he gradually rises through the ranks, earning the jealousy of some of the mandarins above him, culminating in a power struggle, and plenty of treachery that leaves his wife and children killed by the end.

Dragonwall overwhelmingly paints the Shou (fantasy Chinese) people of the Forgotten Realms in a negative light, as treacherous, back-biting, and decadent, which isn’t too surprising where court politics would be concerned but there’s little else to balance this contrast with the rest of Shou culture. This was probably meant to contrast the more brutal, yet honorable Tuigan culture, yet all the characters come off as one-dimensional and cartoonishly evil, especially the female antagonist. It plays into a lot of old, tired stereotypes about Chinese people.

Further, Batu Min Ho, having been discriminated and betrayed by the Shou, loses everything, goes rogue, literally using the Japanese term ronin (🤦🏻‍♂️)1 to describe himself, and joins Yamun Kahan’s horde.

The book ends with a lengthy divergence when the Tuigan under command of Batu Min Ho invade the fantasy realm of Thay briefly, which probably would’ve been interesting as a third story, rather than the end of this one.

In any case, this is where the third novel, Crusade, picks up, but once again, this book is written from the perspective of someone who is not Tuigan. This time the book is written through the perspective of the kingdom of Cormyr, a staple of the Forgotten Realms setting. This book, out of all three, has the most familiar fantasy setting since it is in a “Western” culture, so the author probably was on steadier ground and was able to afford fleshing out the characters more.

For me, Crusade, was a “slow burn” story: very slow start introducing an entirely new cast of characters with no interaction with the Tuigan. However, by the time of the climactic battle at the end, the book did an effective job of bringing everything together, including Batu Min Ho from the second book.

In spite of the rocky transition between settings across the series, shifting perspectives, and new characters each time, the final book did a rather admirable job wrapping up all the loose ends. The first book begins with a character named Koja and the third book essentially ends with him again. Coming full-circle was a nice conclusion.

The Empires Trilogy seems to have suffered from the same challenges that plagued the Star Wars sequels: No over-arching structure, and too many different “hands in the pot”, plus the stereotypical Asian characters, especially female characters, did not age well.

However, even with all the complaints, I still am glad to have finally finished the series. It was a bold attempt to make a semi-historical re-enactment of the Mongol invasions but through the lens of the Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms setting. In spite of my complaints, I enjoyed the series and proudly keep it on my shelf now.

1 Western fascination of the lone warrior ronin is understandable, especially thanks to Kurosawa films, but it makes no sense for a Chinese character to use such a term, especially since it was not used for centuries later in the Edo period (17th century) when the story takes place in 12th century China.

A Nerd Dad’s Review of Pathfinder 2e Beginner Box

The recent fiasco by Wizards of the Coast (who owns Dungeons and Dragons) has left me pretty bitter toward 5th edition1 and the company that owns it. If Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes wasn’t frustrating enough (“buy your $50 book again!”), this was the final straw.

I decided it was time to try Pathfinder again.

Again, you say? Allow me to explain.

Aeons ago, circa 2016, my coworkers and I played an after-work campaign of Pathfinder, 1st edition. The campaign lasted about 2-3 months but it was a miserable, stressful experience for me. The DM pushed us to optimize (e.g. “min-max”) our characters for awesome battles, using lots of custom 3rd party content, feats and builds that made really confused even as I was still to wrap my head around the basic rules. The DM knew the rules and feats like the back of his hand, but frankly wasn’t very empathetic to new players, and just wanted to host cool battles. Looking back, I believe the issue was more with the DM than with the game.2

I gave up, but I always felt someday that I should give it another try … someday.

Enter Pathfinder, 2nd edition (Pf2e): a major update to Pathfinder that came out in 2019. It streamlined and updated a lot of challenges with 1st edition, and includes a lot of good introductory material to help new players ease into this. A prime example is the Beginner Box which I ordered direct from Paizo.com after my local game store already sold out (believe me, I am not the only one locally who is mad at WotC).

My goal was to learn Pathfinder 2e properly, and at my own pace, so I could avoid the unnecessary stress of learning a new system, and actually keep things fun.

A week later, my box came in the mail:3 🎉

Yay, new package in the mail! Sadly, the little Starfinder figurine that was included was already smashed upon delivery.

The Beginner Box contains everything you could possibly need for both a DM and a group of players to start from scratch:

  • a self-contained adventure (more on that later): Troubles in Otari.
  • a full set of dice, color-coded to match the symbols on the character sheets
  • pre-made character sheets with very easy to read stats, plus blank sheets if you still want to make your own. These look really nice by the way.
  • Two step by step guide adventure guide for Troubles in Otari, one for the DM and one for the players. These two books also function as a very slimmed down core Rulebook for Pathfinder 2e, including character building options, combat rules, etc.
  • fold-out adventure map for Troubles in Otari.
  • monster stand-up cardboard “tokens” for map, both a variety of player characters and all the monsters necessary for the adventure.
  • laminated “action cards” to help players decide what they can do during their turn
(please pardon the messy table…)

My kids, both experienced 5e players, were a bit hesitant to try Pathfinder since the only game system they knew and grew up with was D&D 5th edition, and as a busy parent I didn’t have much time to prepare Troubles in Otari either. So, both the kids and I essentially went into this first adventure blind.

I let my kids each pick from the pre-made character sheets for now, and I ran any character not chosen (Valeros the Fighter in my case) to ensure the party was rounded out. I read over the adventure guide for a couple minutes to get my bearings and off we went.

As a stand-alone adventure Troubles in Otari is a good, classic dungeon crawl. What makes it genius though is how each encounter teaches you another aspect of gameplay, each one slightly more advanced than the previous. So it is also a tutorial to the game.

The adventure guide for Troubles in Otari walks you through each step of the way: what happens if players do X, what happens if they hit a skeleton with Y, etc. Experienced DMs can gloss over if they want, but it helped me a ton in making the mental transition from 5th edition to Pf2e and keep things running along. I hand-waved a few spots for pacing, but what DM hasn’t?

Also, the DM and Players Guide both can standalone as introductions to Pathfinder 2e without having to invest in the Core Rulebook. Since it is a minimal introduction, a lot of character build options and combat details are missing, but this does ease new players up into the game, without having to read all the rules upfront.

My kids loved the “3-action” combat system, the change to perception rules, and the pre-made character sheets. Pathfinder 2e, as a whole, was familiar enough for kids who’ve played 5e to quickly adapt, but also fresh enough to keep their attention. The cardboard tokens were also popular as they made the combat fun, without investing a ton in figurines that I may or may not have.

We completed most of the 1st floor of Otari in about 2.5 hours before we got tired and took a break (my teenager also had homework to do). We will try to finish next weekend, and the kids are already looking forward to generating their own characters using the Core Rulebook (which I purchased at the same time, and will review separately).

As an introduction to Pathfinder, this was a pleasant experience and a useful teaching mechanism to myself and my kids. It was a far cry from the stress-inducing experience I had ages ago, and a fresh start to Pathfinder, as well as a great alternative to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.

Even if you are a pretty experienced TTRPG player, it really helps to have a nice hand-holding tool like the Beginner’s Box, to help with the mental transition in rules. Also, the materials included are re-usable in other contexts as well, so it’s not a one-and-done investment either.

P.S. Basic Liches did a really nice review of the Beginner Box here too, and it pretty much lines up with my experiences as well:

1 My kids had to talk me down from selling most of my D&D 5e books to the local used bookstore. It was a sunk cost, and doesn’t do much good to sell now, as we might still play in the future. Instead, we agreed that we’d buy no more D&D products for the foreseeable future. In any case, One D&D doesn’t interest me anyway, so I see little point in that either. My D&D Beyond subscription has already been cancelled too.

2 The same DM also took us through a D&D 5th edition play-through of the Mines of Phandelver, which started out well enough but eventually spiralled out of control too. So, there might have been a pattern.

3 Given that I live about 45 minutes by car from the Paizo headquarters, it’s quite amusing to watch my package go through an elaborate, Byzantine series of handoffs with one carrier to another before it finally arrived. In theory, I could have driven down to pick it up myself, and saved a week of waiting. I don’t blame Paizo for this, but I do blame the amazingly inefficient shipping process. Also, to be fair, I did pick the cheapest shipping option, and well, you get what you pay for…

When It’s Over…

I loved this song back in the day, but the music video sure hasn’t aged well…

Last night I finally got to play Adventurer’s League at the local gaming store for the first time in maybe a year, patiently waiting since for my kids’ school activities to end for the school term, and getting my character dusted off and ready to go.

But it was a terrible night. The adventure module we played, something from Season 7 Tomb of Annihilation, was poorly designed, and our DM was just an inexperienced kid who tried his best but hadn’t prepared enough.

The worst part though were some of the other players. I sat in the farthest back, surrounded by a number of “power players” (including one dad who brought his teenage daughter), who kept talking over me and one another. They kept pushing the rules envelope, and the DM didn’t really have the confidence or experience to make decisive choices about allowing this, or saying no to that, so the power players ran roughshod over the game. Within the first hour, I checked out, and spent the evening on the phone, venting on Twitter (rant since deleted) and hardly said anything for the rest of the night. I was all too glad to leave when it was over. The module had been scheduled for 2 hours, but we stayed almost for 5.

And yet it was more than that. The gaming store, which thankfully weathered the pandemic, still felt very different. Overly-complicated food menu, unfamiliar staff, flashier “gamer” vibe, etc. The large community of AL players I used to know back before the pandemic has almost entirely disappeared, or play their own table exclusively leaving occasional players like me at the “little kids table”. Where before we usually had 4-5 tables a night, and I knew all the senior DMs, I recognize almost no one now. That goes double for the other players.

In short, the local AL community really sucks now, and the gaming store isn’t what it used to be. When I last played during the pandemic, it had also been a bad experience, though not quite as bad. So, I just chalked it up to the occasional bad night. They happen, and you move on.

However, it’s clearly become a pattern and I finally had to face the fact that the local gaming community that I once knew is over. The pandemic and WotC’s tinkering with AL rules drove off a lot of committed players, and in a sense gutted my local community. Further, I’ve lost interest in newer D&D rule books,1 and our local regional Discord channel is very quiet now.

As I wrote back in the day, sometimes it’s better to just not play D&D than subject yourself to a frustrating and disappointing experience, but I kept trying through the pandemic hoping things would eventually recover. They haven’t. And as with Magic, I have to face that sunk-cost of investing any further in it, and give it up.

Never say never, of course. Even if I don’t like the community now, who know how things will look say five years from now. Maybe I’ll find another, healthier AL community someday. But for now, I’m putting that hobby on a shelf for the foreseeable future.

Contrarily, playing at home with my kids has been a lot of fun, and my daughter’s friends want to play with us too, so while my local gaming community has faded away, I suppose a new one is being formed right under my nose.

1 The new Mordenkainen’s book somehow just feels flat, homogenized, and takes a lot of fun out of playing certain character builds. I did get Witchlight and Candlekeep Mysteries, but have hardly cracked open either book since.

Playing a Warforged in D&D

Front cover art for Eberron: Rising from the Last War, adapted from free wallpaper art (see link), all rights reserved

My kids and I have been playing a longer D&D campaign in the world of Eberron, a noir steam-punk magic setting for almost a year now, and the kids consistently seem to enjoy this setting more than other D&D campaigns we’ve run. Since we have only two players (my daughter and my son), the party consists of:

  • Daughter: Swiftstride shifter fighter / ranger, Latisse
  • Son: Halfling bard, Kirby1
  • Sidekick: Hobgoblin cleric (knowledge) / wizard, Borsheg
  • Sidekick: Warforged fighter (samurai), Malbus 414
  • Sidekick: Valenar (wood) elf fighter, Tantalus

I run the sidekick characters myself, and some have come in and others rotated out.2 The hobgoblin and warforged sidekicks have been with the party since the beginning and have been a pretty integral part of the story.

Our hobgoblin cleric’s backstory is that he secretly wanted to be a wizard instead and only did the cleric role out of familial obligation. However, since Borsheg was rejected by the wizards guild, he has since gotten private tutorship on the side with a shady teacher named “Dak” who, currently unknown to the party, is a Rakshasa.

Our Warforged has become the most central character to the party though. Originally, Malbus 414’s backstory was that he had, like all Warforged, fought in the Last War, particularly as part of the 523rd Battalion in East Breland. However, it became clear that his entire platoon had been secretly conditioned by their gnomish creator, Dr Vilnius Volrani Vishkik, to attack any gnomes from a certain rival house on sight. Eventually, the kids were able to find an artificer who could remove Malbus’s conditioning, and scrape up enough money to pay for it, but at the cost of partial memory loss. The kids really got choked up when they realized that Malbus wasn’t going to be quite the same.

Out of all the stories that I’ve teased in front of kids, including demonic cults, Borsheg’s evil tutor, smuggling jobs, etc, the kids have really attached themselves to Malbus’s and have since pursued Dr Vishkik (who unknown to the kids, is now a glorified brain-in-a-jar) across continent only to discover that he has reconstituted most of the old 523rd platoon, and means to take on the Lord of Blades in Cyre in order to become a new ruler there, assert dominance over all Warforged at large. Malbus is torn between his loyalties to his old platoon, but also his new purpose in stopping Dr Vishkik, especially where violence is required.

Mechanically speaking, a Warforged is an interesting character race since it’s fully artificial, yet is also a living being. According to the 5e guide, if you play a Warforged, you (among other things):

  • Gain a +1 bonus to Armor Class.
  • Have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned, and you have resistance to poison damage, and are immune to disease
  • Do not require sleep, but when you take a long rest, you must spend at least six hours in an inactive, motionless state, rather than sleeping. In this state, you appear inert, but it doesn’t render you unconscious, and you can see and hear as normal. Further, you don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep.

These things all come from the Warforged’s artificial nature. However, as a living sentient being, you can still benefit from things like healing magic, potions, etc., so you are not a construct either. It’s not entirely clear to what degree a Warforged is a machine vs. a living being, but I’ve mostly leaned toward the artificial, and focused on the “power core” as a source of their sentience and humanity.

The mechanics of a Warforged are fun, but the role-playing side of the Warforged is what I find most compelling. Because the Last War is over, Warforged are kind of superfluous now. Society doesn’t need them anymore, and they are no longer manufactured (at least in mass-production), so they have been tossed out on the street with no clear picture of what to do with themselves. This leaves plenty of room to decide how you would want to play a Warforged. Malbus 414 initially took mercenary jobs because war was the only thing he knew, but once he met the party during the initial session, he gradually took his life in a new direction with them.

The official interview with creator Keith Baker helps clarify this and is worth a watch:

I tend to roleplay Malbus 414 similar to Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, in that he is searching for his humanity, and trying to forge a new identity for himself bit by bit as something more than just a war machine. One could conceivably do the opposite and play a Warforged who never really left the Last War. The noir, brooding atmosphere of Eberron really lends itself to this, because of the heavier emphasis on character backstory, personal challenges, etc, but if you play a Warforged within the larger universe, such as Planescape or even the Forgotten Realms somehow, the brooding war backstory can still come into play and create a good starting point for the character.

Or you could just make a character like this one:

Comment posted in linked video above

I wish Warforged were more available in other settings, not just for its useful mechanical reasons, especially in Adventurer’s League, but I am happy to play one when the opportunity comes up. Its nature lends itself to good role-playing, and its mechanics allow for all kinds of interesting character / class options.

1 My son is a huge Kirby fan.

2 Our half-orc rouge-scout sidekick died a few weeks back in a random encounter, and the elf fighter replaced him since the party was near Valenar anyway. I keep a pool of sidekicks in the backlog in case I need to replace one. Still, the half-orc scout was a good character in his own right, and the kid and I kind of miss him already, even as we enjoy the new character.

Meet Darahl Firecloak: the Elven Forge Deity

Photo by thevibrantmachine on Pexels.com

For some time now, I’ve been actively playing a high-elf cleric of the forge domain named Fenmaer Wasanthi in a small play-by-post community for Dungeons and Dragons’s Adventurer’s League. It’s been great fun, and one of the few consistent bright spots in the last two years for me. Fenmaer had initially been something of a throw-away character that I had intended to use for the new season 10 rules of Adventurer’s League (and never did), but when the season 11 rules came out, fixing a lot of issues, I decided to bring back Fenmaer and try things out.

My characters home is Elventree, near the city of Mulmaster, where a small, dwindling community of high-elf forge masters still maintains an obscure cult to Darahl Firecloak. Fenmaer being (comparatively) the youngest has been tasked to rekindle the community through acquired knowledge and experience. When our PbP group started doing adventure season 7 modules (“Tomb of Annihilation”) in Chult, I also had a small side-story where Fenamer got in touch with a scattering of Darahl worshippers in Port Nyanzaru as well.

Darahl’s sketchy history makes him an interesting “anti-hero” elven deity, who is not affiliated with evil, but also sundered from the rest of Elven pantheon too and forced to “go it alone”. That said, when trying to flesh out Fenmaer’s backstory and role-playing, I realized that there is not a lot of information about his deity, Darahl Firecloak.

The main source of information comes from one issue of Dragon Magazine, issue 251, which can be found online in PDF form. Fifth Edition material on Darahl (i.e. Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes) largely preserves this without adding much too it. Below, I’ve included basic information both canonical (Dragon Magazine + Mordenkainen’s) followed by additions that I’ve added for Fenmaer specifically. If you like, feel free to use it, adapt, etc. Spread the faith of Darahl to player characters far and wide. He’s not a picky deity, as you’ll see. 😋

Canonical Information

Starting with the basic stats:

  • Name: Darahl Firecloak, originally Tilvenar
  • Nicknames: The Even-Tempered, Lord of the Green Flame
  • Alignment: Lawful Neutral, leaning toward good
  • Follower Alignments (optional): typically LN, LG or NG
  • Symbol: A greenflame between two outstretched hands
  • Domain: Forge (5th edition), Earth and Fire (3rd edition?)
  • Symbolic Weapon: longsword

Darahl Firecloak was originally part of the elven panthan, the Seldarine, and served under Rillifane Rallathil, but after being offered a cursed artifact by Lloth and the Unseelie Queen of Air, his avatars went beserk and caused a great deal of destruction before being pacified again. However, the damage had been done and Darahl lost many followers, while also being shunned by the other elven deities. Darahl left the plane of Arvandor and made his home in the 1st layer of Arcadia where he first took the name “Darahl Firecloak” and began to reinvent himself. Darahl is now much more open to non-elvish followers, and alliances with non-elven deities such as Dumathoin of the Dwarves, Urogalan of the Halflings, and Flandal Steelskin of the Gnomes for example.

Because Darahl is so open to other followers, he has even some followers from the Underdark, particularly Duergar. For this reason, both Lloth and Laduguer oppose him. Darahl, according to Dragon magazine, is often invoked by followers at the start of a new undertaking such as digging a new mine, or crafting a magical artifact, or to help avert disasters such as earthquakes and forest fires. Offerings by the faithful include precious minerals or minor magical items. Priests are also called firecloaks and often dress in motifs of yellow, red and brown with a green flame somewhere.

That’s the canonical stuff. Let’s move on to Fenmaer’s religion in particular.

The Molten Path

Fenmaer’s high-elf community in Elventree were more prosperous in the past and their craft earned the respect of their neighbors as well as other traders from afar. I was heavily inspired by the Noldor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion who also had unparalleled crafting skills in comparison to other elves and races. The Elventree high elves remained somewhat apart from their more numerous wood elf neighbors and fellow residents in Elventree, yet as the human community of Mulmaster later flourished, the elves diminished. Thus, the high elf community did what elves do best: retreat further in isolation, only to their detriment.

The elders of Fenmaer’s community teach an offshoot of Darahl’s religion called the Molten Path. Contemplatives, priests and some mages as well, seek to burn away their own “impurities” (just as metal is purified by fire) through a hard work ethic, devotion to their craft, and community. Through this they believe they see the handiwork of Darahl in all things, and in themselves.

According to the high elves of Elventree, Darahl dwells in Arcadia at a place called Maldinnon, the Peerless Forge, where he guards the Eternal Flame,1 and uses it to mold and craft the many things of the world. In Platonic philosophical style, that which He crafts is said to be the peerless example of that object to which all others seek to emulate in their craft. By contrast the elemental evil represents attempts to corrupt the peerless works of Darahl and profane his craft, and must therefore be opposed by all followers.

Through the PbP adventures, I’ve had Fenmaer recite a few prayers and liturgy, sometimes more serious, sometimes more joking:

“Hail Tilvenar full of fiery grace…deliver us from elemental evil… and lead us not down the path of rust and ruin…”

and a benediction like so:

I call upon Darahl Tilvenar, the blessed Firecloak, who keeps the Sacred Flame free from impurities, and molds metal as he molds souls into fine vessels for the good of others. Be ye most kindly disposed to us, let your warmth and radiance fill the hearts of this family and guide them through the darkness with your light. Let not the elemental evil obstruct their path. May their coffers be bountiful and their worries few. (then in Elvish…) Vardo nu luini yassen Tilvenárii eleni ómaryo airetári-lírinen.

or:

Tilvinarë na-molonen! (Tilvenar don’t fail me)

Fake elvish

or:

Tilvenar, may your fiery Cloak descend upon us!

and:

In the Name of the Firecloak

When Fenmaer reached 7th level, he acquired the Divination spell, and used it to contact Darahl for some questions concerning their next adventure. I described the ritual like so:

Using the ground iron, copper, silver, gold and copious coal dust, Fenmaer draws a large, intricate “sand mandala” on the ground between him and a small lit brazier. The different ground materials form different colors in the mandala. Once that’s done, his chanting continues on in Old Elvish for a while until observers notice that the filings have somehow heated up and are glowing red hot. Not melting, just red hot. Finally, he poses his question…

So, those are some non-canonical examples of how I applied Darahl’s religion in role-playing Fenmaer. Like any religion, one can imagine many regional differences, or even liturgical differences among communities, so in role-playing a follower of Darahl, feel free to adapt, adjust or innovate your own liturgy or community teachings. Or feel free to use what’s here and help spread the Word.

P.S. a big thanks to my DM and my fellow players who put up with Fenmaer’s religious antics. 😄

1 I had envisioned it as a white-hot flame until I saw the Dragon Magazine article later. You are welcome to decide what the actual color is, dear readers.

Yo Mando! The D&D Version

Lately, I’ve been re-watching The Mandalorian and while I enjoyed it the first time through, I enjoy it a lot more the second time around. I’ve been thinking about how I might make a Dungeons and Dragons character for Adventurer’s League that mirrors the Mandalorian, Din Djarin.

I wrote recently about hobgoblins in D&D and how they mirrored Klingons in some way, and at that time I made a character named Kargoth toward that end. I played a couple tier-1 sessions, and it was fun, but the character wasn’t as interesting as I would have liked.

Then, after re-watching The Mandalorian, I got an idea. Since the new, season 11 rules allow for much easier rebuilding of characters, I decided to use the opportunity to rebuild Kargoth as a Mandalorian-style hobgoblin fighter, eldritch knight:

Kargoth’s backstory is that he was adopted after being a child on the losing side of a war by a fanatical cult of warriors (e.g. Children of the Watch), but hides his hobgoblin identity in public using a helmet, as well as following the religious ethos he was raised with. Helmet is cosmetic only and provides no additional armor class. Kargoth also has the hermit character background unsurprisingly.

Eldritch Knight as a subclass made surprising sense because first and foremost he would have to be a warrior anyway, but as an Eldritch Knight he would have many additional tricks up his sleeves that can be approximated as magic spells:

It’s fun to be a little creative here since every Mandalorian will be a little different anyway.

The real challenge is the hobgoblin racial character stats. A bonus to Intelligence helps with playing an Eldritch Knight, but the bonus to Constitution doesn’t have an overt benefit beyond more hit points.

I debated back and forth and opted to make Kargoth mostly a ranged fighter, to match the Mandalorian as a crack-shot. I gave him the Archery fighting style, equipped him with both a hand-crossbow (for later Crossbow feat) and a heavy crossbow. But, I also gave Kargoth enough Strength to handle melee combat too.

For armor I settled on Medium armor with the goal of getting good half-plate someday. The Mandalorian seems to wear half-plate rather than full-body armor and this allows me to continue focusing on Kargoth’s Dexterity based build.

Lastly, the kid. I debated using my “free spell choice” as an Eldritch Knight to cast _Find Familiar_ but a pet raven is a lousy substitute for Grogu (a.k.a. baby Yoda). So, for now Kargoth doesn’t have a sidekick … yet. Then again if I want to rebuild I can certainly do that too.

Enjoy!

This is the Way.