A single casting of true polymorph is probably worth half a kingdom, if not more. With the addition of the mighty Zodar to 5e, it is the strongest spell in the entire game. This article is dedicated to its solid but overrated younger brother, polymorph. It’s called the best healing spell in the game and showered with praise all around. In this article, I will talk about the effectiveness of polymorph. What does the spell do? 4th-level transmutation, available to wizards, bards, sorcerers, druids and Trickery clerics. You can get it on a warlock if you take the Sculptor of Flesh invocation(don ..read more

When creating a D&D character, your background is one of the selections you make. It defines who you are apart from being an adventurer and provides you with tool/language proficiencies, skill proficiencies and some gear, as well as a feature that only does stuff out of combat(mostly). In this game, some backgrounds stand out as significantly more useful than others for various reasons. Whether it’s because the background feature is far more useful than most or simply because it gives you a lot of money, its value puts it in a higher class than all those mundane options. In this article, I ..read more

The new D&D 5e book, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, adds quite a few new monsters to the game. In addition to diversifying the pool of enemies you can face in the game, this also means you have more things to summon. Today’s article is dedicated to one specific monster – the Echo of Demogorgon, a CR 6 demon and thus eligible for summoning via the summon greater demon spell. I will analyze its abilities and take a look at how it compares to other demons of CR 5 and 6. Defenses The echo has 85 hit points, making it the second biggest sack of meat after the vrock’s 104. The chasme comes ..read more

WARNING: SPOILERS I purchased Baldur’s Gate 3 just one day after the release and finished it yesterday. The game is really good and surprisingly cool for something built on 5th Edition rules. The run took me a total of 52 hours 5 minutes(based on the time of my last save, which I made during the ending dialogue). This article is going to be a commentary on various BG3-related things, just because why not. Party Composition I generally didn’t recruit that many companions, and at the end of the game I still only had four. Not that I cared much, you can only have four characters active at a time ..read more

The sixth UA in the OneD&D playtest series is out, and it looks like they’ve finally done something significant. In this article, I’ll go over the spells in the document. In addition to trashing on them, I shall attempt to provide fixes to the spells they failed to fix. Hopefully this rant will be a bit more constructive than usual. Banishing Smite[1/6] 5th-level Paladin spell, used as a bonus action after hitting a creature with a melee weapon or unarmed strike. The target takes 5d10 damage and, if you reduced it to 50 HP or less, is forced to make a Charisma save or get banished for a mi ..read more

Yesterday was a funny day called New Year’s Eve, which just so happens to be the birthday of an even funnier fictional character. So I figured I might as well write an article about what an absolute chad he was in the context of 5e optimization strategies. I am, of course, talking about Tom Marvolo Riddle aka Lord Voldemort, the great dark wizard who had the potential to be the most powerful caster in the Harry Potter universe but unfortunately reached the age of 18 and got his “be good at your main job” license revoked. In this article, I will explain why more 5e players should be like Voldem ..read more

Thanks to Domains of Delight, we have rules for contracts with the Fey too. This means we can dig for even more tech! The rules here are not as comprehensive as the ones for devils, but there’s enough wording to analyze. How do we enter a contract? Several ways exist to accidentally enter a contract with a fey. We don’t want this – we should only enter contracts on our own terms. When dealing with a fey, keep one hand ready to switch to aggressive negotiations. Tie up any loose ends with an antimatter rifle afterwards. Accepting a gift. Don’t accept – shoot the damn thing and take the item of ..read more

There’s a rather interesting set of rules provided in the module Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus. The book provides mechanics for making deals with devils. In this article, I will discuss tech pertaining to this ruleset. This article is a collaboration with Sil, whom you may know from Boot Brew Blogs. Checks Devils want to swindle you – this is normal. Having a high Investigation bonus is helpful at low levels. At higher levels, you’re generally powerful enough to beat the devil you’re dealing with into submission so legal skill is significantly less of a necessity. If you’re a dhampir, cr ..read more

Barbarians have always been a pretty lame class in 5e. They’re the only class restricted to melee to such an extent – casters are casters, paladins have Warlock dips, Fighters use crossbows, Rangers use crossbows, Monks use crossbows or guns, Rogues use crossbows. Barbarians’ features(with the exception of Extra Attack) require melee or Strength, and their multiclassing prerequisites include 13 Str. They also don’t get the Archery fighting style so making a crossbow barbarian will require you to put points in Str to multiclass into Fighter. The following homebrew was made to make being in mele ..read more

One D&D released a few hours ago, and with it came a UA PDF that is nothing short of an atrocity of war committed against the underdogs of the game. It also provided a valuable insight into how the perpetrators of this update approach game balance, which was – for some people I know – the straw that broke the camel’s back, driving them away from 5e. I already gave up on this system a while ago and refuse to use it as anything but a sandbox to mess around in using horribly designed features no well-written system would dare to include. Without further ado, let’s take a look and see what hor ..read more