William Brandes Stoddard

Six New Magic Items for July

It’s been an incredibly busy month here, with several writing commitments and the fundraiser event for Citadel LARP. I...

So You Want To Write a Subclass

Let’s get the first thing out of the way: I am not an authority, and I am not the Subclass Design Cops. If you have a design that makes you happy, go with God. This is just a collection of things...

Revised Kagandi Species

My Aurikesh campaign has its own player species – I wrote new mechanics for humans and goblins, and wrote several new species. Only the githyanki PC uses D&D’s official mechanics. One of th...

Player Holdings in Aurikesh

My Aurikesh campaign has 149 sessions under its belt at this point. Fourteen of those sessions are in 2024, which is more than we’ve had in some whole years. The highest-level characters are 11th...

Revised Divine Trickster Roguish Archetype

In the misty past of… almost exactly nine years ago… I wrote a Divine Trickst...

Eight New Magic Items from My Campaigns

I haven’t created a new collection of magic items in a bit, so what if I just share with you a bunch of things I’ve created for my Aurikesh and Dragon Heist (now long post-Heist – we just con...

LARP Design: Puzzles and Their Uses

Thanks to some great questions from a reader, I have a whole series of new LARP design posts to write, which brings me great joy. In this one, I’ll be talking about specific puzzle types and appl...

Setting Design and Teleportation

In a conversation over on a social media site that shall remain nameless, Hannah Rose suggested giving even fairly low-level PCs limited access to teleportation, just as a way to get them to the ad...

Four New Were-creature Stat Blocks

In circling back to a long-dormant project, I’m creating a swath of new stat blocks for were-creatures. The general goal is to keep were-creatures in active use at higher tiers of gameplay. The M...

Alter Self Reworked

Not too long ago, I finally had a reason to pay closer attention to the spell Alter Self. I’m talking about the 2014 version; I have no foreknowledge of whether it’ll see meaningful ch...

Twenty Researchers and Scholars

For another project, I’m working on research mechanics, and I thought it might be interesting and fun to create a stable of researchers and scholars that you can drop into the narrative on short ...

Six New Magic Rings

Blog friends! I’ve missed you, and I’ve missed creating collections of magic items to entertain and delight you. Today I bring you rings of power, none of them to be used lightly.

2024-02-02 16:33:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Villain’s Schemes: Mayhem

It’s been one week under a year since my last post in this series, and a big freelance project means I’ve been awfully quietly lately. It’s almost done, though, and I promise a return to form...

Four Story Hooks for Seas of Vodari

Now that Under the Seas of Vodari is in the hands of (what I hope is) an adoring p...

Summons and the Pact of the Chain

I’ve never been happy with the Warlock’s Pact of the Chain, as I’ve writ...

A Thirteenth Year of Blogging

It’s been a busy year, and right now at the end of it is the very most busy, on a copy-editing project for Exalted Funeral. I love and appreciate everyone who reads, comments, and suppor...

Bastions in the Narrative

I haven’t had a chance to write my UA breakdown article on the Bastions and Cantrips packet for Tribality yet, but today I’m makin’ gravy without the lumps! This is content that should be fun...

LARP Design: The In-Town Game

Thanks to a long list of complicating factors, I had to miss almost every LARP event of 2023 before September. Since the start of September, I’ve played an Eclipse event, an Altera Awake...

I Am the Very Model of a Modron Major-General

I am the very model of a modron major general
I’ve legend lore on plants, beasts, and every elementical
I know the Queens of Gith-land, and I quote the flights draconical
From Tiamat to ...

Rogues and the Short Rest

As the Unearthed Arcana development of 5e.24 continues, the design team’s apparent campaign against the Short Rest has pivoted hard toward everyone getting back something but almost no o...

More Spells from Vecna’s Grimoire

Since Glen Terry asked for them in a recent comment, I’m doing more spells themed around Vecna, the Whispered One. I love spell design, and designing weird things you can do with high-level spell...

The “Pious” Warlock, Part Six

It’s been right on a year since the last time I touched this series and covered Yugoloth patrons. I feel like I’m right at the edge of having enough material to do gehreleths/demodands, but… ...

New Monster: Bone Harvester

For one of my freelance projects, I submitted a hefty list of new monsters, and the project lead picked a goodly number of them. In this post I’m writing about one that didn’t make the cut, jus...

One D&D: New Primal Orders

Back in December, I created a collection of new Divine (Holy) Orders for the Cleric class, an...

Hammer of Thunderbolts Redesign

The hammer of thunderbolts is an unusual magic item in 5e, in that it doesn’t do much at all until you acquire and attune two other magic items: gauntlets of ogre power and a 2023-07-17 04:56:07 +0000 UTC View Post

D&D 5e: New Metamagic Options

I like it when sorcerer subclasses support theme and a gameplay loop with a new metamagic option. The core metamagic options are usable for a large number of expected spells, though they don’t ne...

LARP Design: A Further Five Field Battles

It has been more than two years since my last post in this series, in part because we spent two years not LARPing. We’re back at it now, and that makes it easier to write. In the first t...

Ruby Talon Deeps: Locations 3

I’m working on a number of different adventure-writing projects for publication right now, so maybe it’s weird that working on yet another one feels like my easy go-to here. I’ve bee...

Treasure as Arcane Focus

In the new UA packet, the Create Spell spell requires expensive material components that are consumed on use: an arcane focus worth 1000 gp per level of the spell you’re creating.

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Six Spells from the 4e Files

My last set of 4e spells converted to 5e was in October of last year, so I figured it was time to get back to that project. Even with the progress I’ve made, there are tons of cool ideas...