Brandes Stoddard, Author at Tribality https://www.tribality.com/author/brandes/ D&D / Role Playing Fri, 05 May 2023 02:20:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://www.tribality.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/cropped-logo-2020-icon@2x-32x32.jpg Brandes Stoddard, Author at Tribality https://www.tribality.com/author/brandes/ 32 32 Unearthed Arcana 2023: Player’s Handbook Playtest 5 Breakdown, Part Two https://www.tribality.com/2023/05/04/unearthed-arcana-2023-players-handbook-playtest-5-breakdown-part-two/ https://www.tribality.com/2023/05/04/unearthed-arcana-2023-players-handbook-playtest-5-breakdown-part-two/#respond Fri, 05 May 2023 02:20:14 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=34329 Okay, I took the weekend off from writing about this packet so that I could go to the Georgia Renaissance Festival and my house could flood. So, you know, life. Anyway, last time I covered everything up to the Fighter class and Champion subclass, and that brings us to the Sorcerer. It will be absolutely necessary to examine the new Sorcerer-only spells in the first part to get a sense of what this class even means; likewise for the Warlock […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2023/05/04/unearthed-arcana-2023-players-handbook-playtest-5-breakdown-part-two/feed/ 0 UA 2023: Player’s Handbook Playtest 5 Breakdown https://www.tribality.com/2023/04/28/ua-2023-players-handbook-playtest-5-breakdown/ https://www.tribality.com/2023/04/28/ua-2023-players-handbook-playtest-5-breakdown/#respond Fri, 28 Apr 2023 17:02:04 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=34327 There’s a staggeringly huge new Unearthed Arcana playtest document from WotC, with the new weapons table, five classes (barbarian, fighter, sorcerer, warlock, and wizard), a bunch of new spells, a reversion to 2014 spell prep/spell knowledge (but with the meaning of those terms inverted for some reason), a few new feats, and a few changes to the Rules Glossary. I’m going to say right now that finishing this in one article is not bloody likely, not even with the ridiculous […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2023/04/28/ua-2023-players-handbook-playtest-5-breakdown/feed/ 0 UA 2023: Player’s Handbook – Druid and Paladin Breakdown https://www.tribality.com/2023/02/25/ua-2023-players-handbook-druid-and-paladin-breakdown/ https://www.tribality.com/2023/02/25/ua-2023-players-handbook-druid-and-paladin-breakdown/#respond Sat, 25 Feb 2023 20:55:50 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=34275 January was a hell of a year, but we’re back with a new Unearthed Arcana for One D&D in the tail end of February. This time we’re looking at the other two Priest-group classes, the Druid and the Paladin, as well as more revised spells and some significant changes to the Rules Glossary. Character Origins | Expert Classes | Cleric & 3 Revised Species | Druid & Paladin No obvious changes in the opening boilerplate, but there’s a document-wide easing off of capitalizing like […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2023/02/25/ua-2023-players-handbook-druid-and-paladin-breakdown/feed/ 0 The Barbarian Class, Part Three https://www.tribality.com/2022/12/15/the-barbarian-class-part-three/ https://www.tribality.com/2022/12/15/the-barbarian-class-part-three/#respond Thu, 15 Dec 2022 20:54:31 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=34141 Welcome back to the History of the Barbarian, this time getting into the barbarian of D&D 3.0 and 3.5. Why did they drop the A? Because they finally admitted that the Accidental Death & Dismemberment wasn’t so Accidental – especially for the Improbably Large Axe class! Do you like d12s? I hope you like d12s, because this class is very much about that die size, in particular. Part One | Part Two | Part Three After writing Part Two, Friend of the […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2022/12/15/the-barbarian-class-part-three/feed/ 0 Unearthed Arcana 2022: Cleric and Revised Species Breakdown https://www.tribality.com/2022/12/05/unearthed-arcana-2022-cleric-and-revised-species-breakdown/ https://www.tribality.com/2022/12/05/unearthed-arcana-2022-cleric-and-revised-species-breakdown/#respond Mon, 05 Dec 2022 21:31:34 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=34097 Welcome to the third packet of OneD&D public playtesting! In this article – as usual – I’ll be digging into the content of the packet: what it means now and what it might mean in the development of OneD&D. This packet brings us the Cleric class, the Ardling, Dragonborn, and Goliath Species, and new Rules Glossary sprockets. This one is mercifully shorter, at a mere 26 pages! Character Origins | Expert Classes | Cleric & 3 Revised Species The first two pages […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2022/12/05/unearthed-arcana-2022-cleric-and-revised-species-breakdown/feed/ 0 The Barbarian Class, Part Two https://www.tribality.com/2022/10/18/the-barbarian-class-part-two/ https://www.tribality.com/2022/10/18/the-barbarian-class-part-two/#respond Tue, 18 Oct 2022 15:51:09 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=33954 In the first article of this series, I left out an important item: the Oriental Adventures barbarian class. My plan for this article is to cover it as briefly as possible, then move on to 2e’s Barbarian kit (from the Complete Fighter’s Handbook) and the Complete Barbarian’s Handbook. Just for completeness, I’ll also touch on the Berserker and Savage kits. I’m also covering the Amazon kit, even though… yikes, in 72-point font. Part One | Part Two Oriental Adventures 1e […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2022/10/18/the-barbarian-class-part-two/feed/ 0 Unearthed Arcana 2022: Expert Classes Breakdown https://www.tribality.com/2022/09/30/unearthed-arcana-2022-expert-classes-breakdown/ https://www.tribality.com/2022/09/30/unearthed-arcana-2022-expert-classes-breakdown/#respond Fri, 30 Sep 2022 23:14:43 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=33912 Following Wednesday’s announcement with Jeremy Crawford and Todd Kenreck, we now have the new Unearthed Arcana packet in our grubby little nubbies. Metaphorically, anyway, unless you also printed a copy? It is a heckin’ chonker of a packet, with three classes (one subclass each), a mess of feats and epic boons, the complete PH spell lists, and a hefty new rules glossary that overwrites the previous one. I know exactly how tempting it is to discuss all of this as […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2022/09/30/unearthed-arcana-2022-expert-classes-breakdown/feed/ 0 The Barbarian Class, Part One https://www.tribality.com/2022/09/26/the-barbarian-class-part-one/ https://www.tribality.com/2022/09/26/the-barbarian-class-part-one/#respond Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:00:31 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=33909 Today I realized that it’s been almost three years since my last History of the Classes article. Today I’m starting in on the Barbarian, a class that goes back to an article by E. Gary Gygax in Dragon Magazine #63, in July 1982. As a disclaimer for the whole series: “barbarian” is a culturally loaded word and is a slur from first principles. I’m not defending it. I would be fine with changing the class name to “berserker” so that […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2022/09/26/the-barbarian-class-part-one/feed/ 0 Unearthed Arcana: Character Origins Breakdown https://www.tribality.com/2022/08/21/unearthed-arcana-character-origins-breakdown/ https://www.tribality.com/2022/08/21/unearthed-arcana-character-origins-breakdown/#respond Sun, 21 Aug 2022 12:00:25 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=33765 It’s finally here, y’all: the public playtest of One D&D, the much-anticipated revision of 5e. We’re going to get one of these packets roughly once a month from now until Judgment Day sometime in 2024. They’re beginning at, you know, the beginning of the Player’s Handbook (not counting the Introduction or Chapter 1: Step by Step), with Character Origins. I’m going to go as deep into this document as I possibly can. Keep in mind that I am going to […]

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]]> https://www.tribality.com/2022/08/21/unearthed-arcana-character-origins-breakdown/feed/ 0 Monsters of the Multiverse Breakdown, Part Five https://www.tribality.com/2022/08/08/monsters-of-the-multiverse-breakdown-part-five/ https://www.tribality.com/2022/08/08/monsters-of-the-multiverse-breakdown-part-five/#respond Mon, 08 Aug 2022 12:00:56 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=33672 In this, the fifth and probably final article on Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, I’m digging into the individual stat blocks of some named monsters. Last time out, which was a few more months ago than any of us would have liked, I went through the stat blocks starting with A to identify major trends in monster redesign. The originals of these stat blocks are in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. Part One: Aarakocra – Genasi | Part Two: Githyanki — Satyr | Part […]

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