Recent content by JEB

My 5e group found them super useful as a prompt (something to use, modify, or ignore if you already had ideas). So YMMV indeed. It would be nice if they threw folks like us a bone in the DMG!

I just went back to look at the preview pages. I'd forgotten that they also moved ability score adjustments there. That was presumably another thing that kept them around. So I amend my earlier comment - it's specifically the 2014 incarnation's role-playing aspects (BIFT and background...

If you consider a level-1 feat more essential to character design than stuff like BIFT or the story-based features, sure. Based on many pages of discussion in this thread and elsewhere, there doesn't seem to be universal agreement on that...

I honestly suspect the current design team just doesn't think much of Backgrounds, and the only reason they weren't dropped entirely from 2024 edition was a) backwards compatibility and b) the new version provides a convenient avenue for level-1 feats.

American, according to the back cover of my 2014-purchased core rulebooks. (Canadian price was $58.)

Well, they did and they didn't. Some version of Urik von Kharkov absolutely existed at one point in 5e Valachan, he was just overthrown by Chakuna as part of her backstory. Considering the designer is on record as saying they wrote up 5e Valachan as a continuation (not a retcon) of the original...

So for context, we were using the non-Chainmail "alternative combat system" (the ancestor of every other edition's combat rules). Which means until level 4, all three classes have the same hit probability. To hit an orc (AC 6), everyone had to roll 13+ on d20. Strength has no effect on melee...

Not in the small section they went through! Thieves might have come in handy later, but not yet. That said, the player with a dwarf character was aware that dwarves automatically note traps. So he was thinking ahead on that front!

Rules: Strictly only what was in the original boxed set. No Chainmail or Outdoor Survival, no supplements, no magazine articles, no internet histories or commentary. This left me having to fill in some gaps on things like combat, but it seemed pretty functional. I tried to think like someone in...

Never fear, 5e brought back the xvarts way back in Volo's Guide to Monsters (and they carried over into the current zeitgeist through Monsters of the Multiverse).

What I find interesting is that some of the designers did hint at the actual existence of the previous iterations of the setting (Dominic d'Honaire's cameo in Dementlieu, the domain remnants in Klorr), and at least one domain (Valachan) was written with the idea that it had explicitly been the...

Thanks! With some difficulty, found the actual article: Lore You Should Know: Tabaxi vs. tabaxi (Sure is a damn shame Wizards decided to wipe it all in favor of redirecting to DDB. Hate seeing history vanish.)

Heck if I know. I was speaking generally.

I'd rather they didn't "mess up" anyone's old favorite setting, myself...

Did they? I did that in my homebrew campaign's lore (I also lumped 3e's catfolk in there), but I didn't think Wizards had officially made the connection.