Wednesday 31 July 2013

D&D Next Monsters: Part 1: Getting Started...

D&D Next Monsters: Part 1: Getting Started...

Borne partly out of frustration that the D&D Next playtest packets don't provide practical information on monster construction and partly out of terminal curiosity about how monsters in "Next" fit together Surf has spent far more time than he should tinkering in Excel... 

What did he come up with? 

 

Yes, silly old me has punched raw monster and character data from the last few playtest packets into Excel and then tinkered away. I'm not a statistician or in any way a math specialist... Just a guy who works with databases for a living. But to be perfectly honest it's not that complicated. An eye for patterns in numbers and a bit of determination are all that is really required.

Now I could have just posted some tables of stats for building monsters… After all I have finished the entire analysis and I do have those tables. But it’s nice to go carefully back through my work and check it as part of the process of documenting it.

And besides, I spent all those scores of hours on this thing. I may as well subject the rest of you to it too… I mean, I might as well share the details of my explorations with you all.

The material in this series of articles are based on the data in the June 2013 packet. I may post updates if changes in forthcoming packets suggest a need and if demand is evident.

So what will we be doing in this series of articles? We'll be pulling apart some of the math underpinning D&D Next and working out how monsters math works. We'll use that to make some tables we can use when we build our own monsters.

Here's a quick map of what the series will cover...

Hopefully you'll enjoy reading these articles as much as I enjoyed the analysis...

 

Check back tomorrow for the next post – Part 2: Class Development Profiling...

Tuesday 2 July 2013

D&D Next DMs Screen (June 2013 packet)

I've spent some time looking for a decent D&D Next DM's screen that I could use in my game, with little luck. Most of the screens I found were rather old and out of date.

So I made my own! You might recognize some of the art work from some of the older screens, but I have redone the rest from scratch. And I update it with every new packet released.

The current version is up to date with the June 2013 packet. Download it now!

Download now!

Note that you may only use this work under the conditions stated on the D&D Next playtest website and your use constitutes acceptance of WotC terms and conditions for the playtest.

Check back here for screen updates every packet. You can also get updates and see #Daily #RPG #Demotivationals by following me on Twitter and Google+