En5ider Reactions Issue 17

Image is property of En5ider magazine

Issue 16 of EN5IDER merits its own post due to longer length and it being a pretty cool stand alone adventure. This is your spoiler warning.

Titled Don't Wake Dretchlor, this adventure is by Kiel Chenier, designed for characters of 5-7 level. It's a unique and creative scenario which employs a couple different spins on the typical dungeon crawl, while maintaining the ease of use of that structure. The transitioning into a defensive "cat and mouse" game as it describes itself, as players work to defeat and slow down the advance of a bound demon they unleashed from its wards during their exploration.

The adventure features a forgotten mansion as the dungeon, and provides just enough detail about a nearby settlement and the history of the site that you can run with it and flesh it out further, and easily modify it to fit into whatever setting you are playing in. The description of the village of Sacred Bend is particularly good, detailing the basic services of the settlement, a named tavern, and the healing services of the local priest in a brief paragraph!

The structure also adds relics, or small sites/objects within the house that can be destroyed to weaken the demon. These make great secondary objectives to break up the simple combat loop of D&D, yet containing the action to the bounded space of the dungeon. 

The adventure synopsis is another impressively organized, concise, and well written portion, effectively providing a roadmap of all the relevant high level details of the scenario to the GM. Many adventures miss this, burying critical plot info deep in a room's descriptive text.

Overall, I think this is a great adventure to insert into a campaign or even use as a contained one-shot.

Arcadia 5 Reactions

Image is copyright MCDM Productions

Another beautiful piece of cover art from Sean Andrew Murray depicting some sort of great siege engine. I love it.

Introcaso’s editor’s note focuses on asking logical questions about the fantastic details of our D&D worlds and carrying them to their conclusions. Certainly good advice for world building and reflected in this issue.

The first article is Long-Term Curses by Leon Barillaro. This provides six curses immune to the Remove Curse spell. These all seem to be less mechanical than narrative elements. The Curse of the Betrayed is interesting narratively, but seems like it would be difficult to do in practice. The Curse of Cassandra, paying homage to the Iliad, seems like it would be easier to roleplay. It’s harder to keep control of a group that is actively undermining one another and lying because it creates greater opportunities for problematic player behavior. While the prophecy curse provides an interesting narrative component that is easier to implement (the other characters simply need to act as though they don’t believe the prophecy, which is the curse, exactly as portrayed in the source material). 

The Curse of the Living Dead is distinct in not really being character focused. Instead it provides the idea of a town infected by necromatic energy that causes the dead to rise at midnight, meaning that their corpses are destroyed and removed from the immediate area before they arise as zombies. Instead this is an interesting narrative element that you can insert as a quest line in almost any campaign. I may use it to describe a town in Krakovar in my Midgard campaign, defiled by the magic of the ghouls and Blood Kingdom. The characters would need to break the curse as part of their work as rebels.

The last three curses are similarly interesting narrative devices, but my favorite is the Curse of the Watchers, which slowly adds to a folk of ravens who follow an adventurer who stole a seemingly mundane item of the GM’s choice from a dungeon until the swarm attacks. This would also be a great tie in to the Grove of Crows in the Path of the Planebreaker. The Grove is essentially a horror themed demiplane with similar vibes and esthetic. Just reskin the ravens as crows.

The next article is the Goldmonger Subclasses, by Carlos Cisco. I love these subclasses, like the unique and nuanced take on avarice as a divine domain. You don’t have to be evil to be greedy or a voracious collector of valuable magic items. The article is also very well written in my opinion. 

There’s a flavorful but brief description of Pta’u as a god of deals before launching into the cleric subclass. It has some powerful features, like the ability to duplicate a domain spell effect on yourself or an object you are touching after casting it on another creature or object. That means you can cast haste on your martial friend and yourself, or a number of other decent spells. Additionally there are other interesting abilities that add up to having a degree of battlefield control. Overall probably a middling subclass in terms of power, so it shouldn’t break your game.

The next is the Circle of the Gilded Druid, focusing on guarding natural resources of gold and gems from those who would take them. So I imagine they hate miners (not a subclass for Lost Mines of Phandelver perhaps). I’d need to test out the subclass to see how it performs, but largely it tries to boost the melee capabilities of the Druid with a ranged attack boost late at level ten. You’d still have the core controller and support spells of the Druid, but this certainly seems geared towards your character primarily relying on primal savagery for most of your attacks. A small boost to AC and resistance occurs at sixth level, meaning like most druids it would be advantageous to pick an ancestry that provides earlier buffs to AC if you plan to spells any significant amount of time in melee. So some cool abilities, but limited utility as far as their use. Probably another subclass that won’t break the game.

Next is the Paladin Oath of Acquisitions. The flavor on this one immediately makes me think about running an Acquisitions Incorporated game. It would definitely be a good addition thematically. It seems a little overtuned, with several abilities allowing you to impose disadvantage on enemy attacks. The aura allows this on any enemy within 10 feet, which seems like it could do a number on a boss encounter. 

The final article is Alabaster’s Almanac, by Sam Mannell. This article details nine new spells for arcane casters. They are all generally balanced, if sometimes a little too specific in their use cases. There is an odd ninth level spell that lets you turn illusions into real objects or creatures (but not magic items). Much like the other spell offerings, potentially useful to inject on a case-by-case basis, or give to an NPC or villain in your campaign.

That’s it for Arcadia 5!

Arcadia Reactions Page

Arcadia Reactions 6

Swashbuckler Reactions (Class by somanyrobots)

Perhaps my favorite homebrewer of additional character options is creator KibblesTasty. When Kibbles includes a creator on his list of compiled Homebrew options I take notice. This was the case for somanyrobots, whose recent kickstarter Kibbles promoted in his Discord community. After reviewing somanyrobots’ content I added the Troubadour to my approved class list for my games. I’ll write an article on that class at a later date, but I wanted to document my thoughts as I examine somanyrobots’ Swashbuckler class and consider it for potential inclusion on my default approved list, or perhaps add it to a separate list of classes that may be allowed for certain campaigns.

The Swashbuckler 

First impressions, the pdf is laid out well, in a similar style to Kibble’s work, probably done with GM binder. It has an astounding ten subclasses, each appearing to have a fairly distinct niche and flavor at first glance. Looking over the class progression table the swashbuckler seems to live up to the archetype and expectation of being a martial expert class that contains skirmished elements similar to the rogue, and combat abilities similar to the fighter.

Quick build

This section calls for Dexterity as the highest stat, followed by Charisma or Constitution, so the same profile as the rogue. We will be reliant on finesse weapons, needing Constitution to survive in combat, and Charisma probably impacts some class abilities depending on the build.

Class Features

We get d8 hit dice, like the rogue, which fits more of a skirmisher role. We only get light armor proficiency, but we get both simple and martial weapons (and firearms, but I’m not sure I’d allow firearms in my games as a personal preference—we’ll see how integral they are to making this class effective). We can also have ranged builds because of the inclusion of all the weapon types—we’ll see how that plays with the class features. We also get the unique buckler shield proficiency (a shield that can be removed or donned using only a free item interaction instead of an action or bonus action).

We also get a musical instrument proficiency (guess this archetype does include characters we might build as bards ordinarily too) and water vehicles (because we’re leaning into the pirate archetype). Our skill list to choose from is essentially the same as the rogue with the addition of history. 

Rakish Expertise

Expertise in one skill or an additional skill proficiency (again, a diminished rogue feature).

Panache 

Now we get to the unique core resource of the swashbuckler. Panache is gained by completing various actions. You get some each time you roll initiative, which seems fair. You also get it for making critical hits (which interacts with the next feature), and for dealing damage to creatures of CR 1/4 or higher (this seems specifically to prevent abuse through the bag of rats trick). Finally, swashbucklers get a special way to waste an action and gain one panache (this seems as though it would only be useful in edge cases where you know you won’t be able to hit, but gaining one more panache will enable you to do so on a later turn or with the additional action you get at later levels). 

Debonair Deeds

Now we get the base abilities to spend panache on. These are a martial characters version of the shield spell, where you can expend a panache point to add your Charisma modifier to your AC when a melee attack hits you. Additionally if the attack still hits you get to roll your melee weapon damage and subtract the result from the damage that would have been dealt to you. There’s also a taunt ability requiring a Wisdom save from the target. On a failure the target has disadvantage on their next attack roll. Finally, Nimble Step allows you to use a bonus action to move half your movement without provoking attacks of opportunity, so similar to Cunning Action on the rogue, but explicitly designed to facilitate darting in and out of melee combat.

Deft Strike

This ability concerns me a bit with balance. It increases the range of results that give you a critical hit, something usually reserved for higher level features in other classes. You do have to wait, as the range only increases by one for each round you end in combat. You can also spend panache points to lower the crit range by however many you spend. You must spend this before you make the attack action. The feature starts with crits on 19-20, but advances to a larger range as you level up, eventually reaching 16-20 at fourteenth level. 

My concern with this class is the degree to which it alters the math on hitting. It may not make much difference at lower levels, but as you increase the amount of panache you can have to spend at higher levels it drastically increases the chances of crits against high level monsters you might not normally be able to hit. It is controlled a bit by the slower progression require a round or a panache point expenditure to increase the crit range. Additionally, the damage remains constant for crits based on your base weapon damage and not scaling like the rogue’s sneak attack. This feature still seems like it may be problematic, although I wouldn’t doubt that it’s fun. I’d have to see it in action to evaluate the concerns further.

Tricks of the Trade 

This feature provides access to a menu of options similar to eldritch invocations on the warlock, but much less powerful and geared toward providing the swashbuckler character various support and utility options, including various tool proficiencies, the find familiar spell so you can summon a parrot to keep on your shoulder, and swimming or climbing speeds. Most of these are fun and interesting and don’t seem game breaking.

Fighting Style 

Several fighting styles that encourage both one and two handed skirmishes, and ranged or mixed (ranged & melee) builds are presented. These all make sense and seem to incentivize “swashbuckling” behavior.

Swashbuckler Code

You get your swashbuckler subclass at third level. We’ll discuss these options later on.

Ability Score Increase

This occurs at fourth level. Notably, the Swashbuckler actually gets fewer ASIs that both the fighter and the rogue, perhaps due to the powerful options provided by Deft Strike.

Extra Attack 

This feature distinguishes the swashbuckler from the rogue, but it doesn’t get any more actions like the fighter at higher levels.

Instant Action

Allows you to use a bonus action to gain panache equal to your Charisma modifier. Recharges on a short rest. Now we’re still limited to only having up to four panache at this level, but this feature means that in three round fight I could have the possibility of critting in my improved crit range of 18-20 in one attack all three rounds, or 15% each time. Now the slow build of the increased crit range, along with the limited ways to gain panache help, but there are pretty significant spikes in damage whenever I do crit. 

You can see that somanyrobots was very deliberate in following the math to require either a slow build to increase the full crit range or a large expenditure of panache to increase the range temporarily. I think the thing that does mitigate some of the potential abuse is that the crit range resets each time you hit a critical, diminishing the chances. 

This means swashbucklers can be successful in going nova and expending their abilities, or be rewarded for patiently waiting for their crit chances to improve over a couple rounds. 

Suave Evasion 

Allows you to use your Charisma mod instead of Strength or Dexterity for saving throw effects.

Surprising Strike

Allows another attack immediately after you crit or if you expend two panache after a normal melee hit. This provides a pretty significant boost in power now that you can have up to five panache points at a time. 

I do appreciate that this feature prohibits automatic critical hits (like when a creature is unconscious) from working with this feature.

Last Stand

Coming online at level seventeen, this one is cool thematically, allowing you to use a reaction for falling to zero hit points but not killed outright to move up to your speed and spend as many panache points as you want. Then you can make one melee attack for each panache point spent. This one seems very powerful, but actually seems quite satisfying for a player who is either going to lose the character or be unconscious for a round or two until they are healed. The long rest requirement for this ability also limits most potential abuse. However, in the context of the lowered crit range and other abilities, this is still extremely strong.

Lightning Reflexes

Lets you take two reactions per round, but not for the same triggering event. Very powerful, but at the same time very simple for a capstone feature. I wouldn’t worry about it being an issue at this point because your spellcasters already have wish.

Summing Up

I pulled in two of my players best at optimization for their options. They both agreed that the Swashbuckler generally seemed like a fun class to play, with interesting abilities. We did not review all of the subclasses because there are so many. We did note that some of the flavor of the subclasses, like many for homebrew classes, overlaps with other classes’ niche. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but for some might be a narrative and mechanical concern.

Overall, we like the class, and think it would be great for a nautical themed campaign, or anyone with swashbuckling, thriller action.

Addendum to EN5ider Issue 3 Reactions

Several months ago I examined the first four issues of EN5ider, ENWorld’s long running Patreon magazine for 5e D&D. In my Empire of the Ghouls campaign, I finally had a chance to use issue three, which provided a framework to run an archery contest. I reskinned it as an axe-throwing contest during a beer fest for the goddess Ninkash in the Ironcrag dwarven canton of Gunnacks. It went phenomenally.

The players enjoyed the flavor I added through describing the contest, and of course got a laugh out of the constant rounds of beer the dwarves served (“We get to day drink and throw axes?”) I also threw in a churlish rival—the cousin of an ally NPC they’d met upon arriving in town. There was never any threat of violence, but it added dramatic tension as they advanced through the contest. I will note that I chose the region column on the table and it did seem like a lot of rounds to get to the finals, particularly when they get three shots a round to attempt to score three points and advance. They both were eliminated in the sweet sixteen round, but made a good lucky run of it. It did seem like if I hadn’t added the fun descriptive elements and if my players weren’t as engaged that it could have fallen flat though.

On the broader topic of festivals in games, I really enjoyed this first foray. I think it’s a cool idea to have some interesting mini games that riff on core mechanics which the players can choose to engage with or note. Describing the event can add flavor and world building (for instance, I had them attend a banquet in the temple of Ninkash the night prior. As a goddess of hospitality, they were given free room and board there. Lumbering keg golems moved around the tables, providing beer to them and their dwarven hosts).

Hammer & Anvil Reactions

Hammer & Anvil, along with the not yet completed sister work Mortar & Pestle, are the latest 5e vault products from Cubicle7. I’ve looked at Uncharted Journeys and A Life Well Lived previously, and I’m slowly going through Broken Weave while working on other projects. 

This book offers a crafting system for players which builds on the downtime and camp craft activities in A Life Well Lived. I like this consistency, which lets me just roll these systems together. Additional camp craft activities are great for giving your players interesting and flavorful things to do during these resting periods.

The main mechanic, which is featured in previous titles, is extended tests. These require three skill or tool checks which are compared against both a difficulty class, as normal, and a goal number. In addition to succeeding at the DC, the total over the DC on the check is tallied up and results determined based on how much or by how little the goal number provided.

This core mechanic really is why I think will make this system easier to implement in your own game. Bespoke, often complex resolution mechanics for crafting systems can make them difficult to implement. I think the system here is simple enough to implement, and modular enough to alter yourself should you choose to do so. The other piece of crafting systems that can be complex is crafting components because it creates more complexity as simple components are used to create more complex components, which in turn allow something else to be made with enough diverse components (i.e. Monster Hunter). This system largely abstracts this, but does provide some example attributes for equipment and items that you can create with potential components that enable a given attribute. It is similar with the enchantments system. The great thing about this is that you can then create your own traits for equipment, or you own enchantments, based on the examples in the book, and assign components. You can do this when your player comes to you with a zany idea that should work, but lacks a template. Then you go through the crafting or enchanting process to see if it is actually possible for them to produce it.

The enchantment system also introduces the idea that you can only learn a certain number of enchantments as a character, balancing against the mundane crafting rules for equipment quite well. The lists of enchanted items available also provide a good sample of how to set your own costs, requirements, and components for existing magic items. They’re also additional items that you can hand out in your games, some of which are quite cool. Even better, they have provided a table with the information for every item in the 5.1 SRD, which was literally the one thing I would have asked if it wasn’t here. 

The majority of the book them is made up off artifact level magic items. These are all really cool, with developed backstories and adventure hooks for you to throw into your own game. Nothing to complain about here.

So this system checks pretty much all the boxes as far as my asks and expectations. I really need to see it in play to make any true or final judgments, but having used downtime activities from A Life Well Lived with the same resolution mechanic previously, I think this book will be very valuable as a resource going forward, especially to help players using artificers or wanting to engage the fantasy of producing their own items and equipment. I might even use it in Planegea to encourage hunting and gathering behavior appropriate to the setting. Resources in that case would be a great motivator to go adventuring. So as an initial reaction, I would definitely recommend Hammer & Anvil.

Strongholds & Followers Reaction

The product that started it all for MCDM in 2018. This product spawned as a personal project by popular D&D YouTuber Matt Colville. The project blew up on Kickstarter bigger than even he could imagine, amassing over one million in funding from 28,918 backers (according to Colville’s videos and the dedication in the book).

The book’s titular content makes up the first 90-odd pages of its 272 page count (I'm referencing the pdf as I write. The hardcover may be a few pages shorter). Pages eight to 67 detail a system of strongholds that is tantalizingly teased by some opaque references and cost tables in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide, but not fully fleshed out.

Thoughts

You can certainly see the differences between S&F and later MCDM products, but I don't mean that as a criticism, merely an observation. The design and writing styles changed as Colville brought on more outsider writers and designers for later projects. It still had some significant play testing (by 3,114 testers, again according to the dedication). 

This book also seems more grounded in the legacy and content of earlier editions of D&D. The influence of Matt’s studying the rules of prior editions, along with his own play experiences, particularly in AD&D and 2e are pretty evident. In a video that I don't recall the title of, he makes reference to the 2e Birthright setting, which you can see as a conceptual influence in both this and the sequel book Kingdoms & Warfare. Certainly, the idea of roleplaying a character from being a dirt-under-the-nails, torch-gripped-with-white-knuckles adventure all the way through their career which accrues them riches, titles, and land with strongholds (which might eventually become dungeons that future adventurers will pick through) seems deeply rooted in the history of a game whose initially premise was to zoom in on an individual soldier in a wargame and allow the player to experience that person's journey. 

It's certainly interesting to see this take on the subject matter. In the future I'd like to do an in depth comparison of S&F style of managing strongholds and compare it to the Bastion system that WOTC plans to include in the 2024 edition of D&D. There may be elements of each that a GM can cherry-pick and combine to create more simple or more complex systems for abstracting or managing strongholds. 

The stronghold mechanics in this title helpfully focus on providing cool new limited use abilities to player characters. Some of these are quite powerful. But I think if the GM is doing their job and drawing the players out of their strongholds in order to continue adventuring then these abilities will not be game breaking (they mostly only function within the geographic area of their stronghold, and their class-tied abilities require an extended rest (one week at their stronghold).

In addition to the core stronghold mechanics, the book contains 28 pages of followers, including NPCs that can be attracted to grow your stronghold and provide income, and retainers to act as lieutenants for your domain. While the MCDM design for retainers has changed (I think for the better), overall it’s not hard to covert these early stats for the later rules, and they still function well as simple stat blocks for followers. The sidekick rules from WOTC came out a couple years after this rule set, which are much more complex and similar to an actual character class. I think those are perhaps better for a one-on-one game where you want a more powerful partner for your player to keep them alive. The retainers are actually the most transferable rules from this book into the entirely new domain system created in Kingdoms & Warfare.

Next is the Siege of Castle Rend adventure, which provides the opportunity to implement the stronghold mechanics for a group of fifth level characters. I think it works as a good drop in adventure that features a village, and a ruined castle filled with a tribe of orcs. The artwork and maps for this adventure are beautiful.

There is an additional 75ish pages of new monsters, many of which are designed to provide fiends and celestial that fill in the gaps in CR that exist based on those available in vanilla 5e. These are also intended to support concordance rules (essentially an added way to include divine intervention for characters). There's also the interesting inclusion of gemstone dragons long prior to WOTC's own exploration of these monsters in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, and a rudimentary psionics system for them (at some point perhaps I'll take a side-by-side look at this system and compare it to where the psionics system went in the Talent supplement from MCDM). Of the creatures, my personal favorite groups are the Celestial Court, the Court of All Flesh, the Court of the Elements, and the Inexorables. The stat blocks are quite boring in most respects though (ironic considering MCDM's later kickstarter campaign for Flee Mortals! promising to "unboring" 5e monsters--spoiler; they succeeded with that later book, but hadn't quite cracked the code yet in this initial offering).

Finally the warfare system makes up the last portion of the book. Interestingly, I think this section is the only OGL content that I've found in any MCDM product. So if you want to make a Warfare supplement do it with this book, not Kingdoms & Warfare, which is most definitely not open game content. This time through the book marks the very first time I've sat down to focus and really read this section--previously I knew Kingdoms & Warfare was already out, so I've just ignored this earlier warfare system.

I will say, this system is much more replicable and easy to build units yourself than Kingdoms & Warfare, which needed to release the resource document (which still isn't open game content) to provide directions on how to build your own units. The basic system, other than positioning and the additional traits (of which there are many) is very similar to the one created in the later book. This book offers actual upkeep and recruitment costs, which is helpful, and the ability to abstract positioning isn't bad. Finally, the simple resolution capability is a quick way to take care of any warfare scenarios. Having looked at both systems, and considering how my players seem to interact with the additional complexity of intrigue and warfare, I think a blending of the two systems player focused things like organization titles, and simple warfare might be a good way to go for many tables (although I really like the idea of intrigue, it's difficult to explain, and simply resolving organization actions narratively seems more simple than making Operations and Lore tests. I'll need to think more about all of this.

Finally, there is an appendix section on new magic items, including the codices. I love theses books--they are flavorful magic items that provide narrative inspiration. And they're books, which I love personally. They each provide campaign altering powers. At some point I need to drop one of these or one of the additional codices detailed in Kingdoms & Warfare into my campaign.

There's lots of goodness in Strongholds & Followers. My Lost Mine of Phandelver players will complete construction on their establishment soon, so I'll actually get to see some of the stronghold powers, and attempt to implement one of the warfare systems. While the age of this title does show, especially compared to later MCDM products, I would still recommend the book for the creative influence and material it provides, along with the gorgeous artwork.

EN5ider Reaction Issue 5

The Business of Emotion Cover by EN Publishing

Issue 5 of EN5ider is a longer adventure (eleven pages) called The Business of Emotion. It is billed on the cover as an adventure for characters of second to third level, by Paul Oklesh. There will be spoilers.

Personally, I don't love the adventure concept of a town drunk on a love potion that has devolved into debauchery, but that's mostly because I keep my games at a "safe for work" level, and I could see this spiraling quickly. Setting that aside, the adventure generally makes sense. I would have liked a few more locations in town as vignettes of the on-going crisis, and to provide more nodes for the mystery piece of the adventure. The call out boxes on the NPCs are helpful, but the information could be laid out better. In fact overall, the main problem I would have running this adventure is the amount of important information and details buried in block paragraphs, which makes it much more difficult to quickly parse and draw from. 

There's also some inconsistencies in formatting, including not bolding the names of relevant stat blocks with the notable exception of the owlbear at he end of the adventure. This too makes it harder to quickly know which stats to use for a GM. The stat block is unremarkable for the witch who is truly behind the negative effects on the town, but the exposure table to track player character exposure to the love potion through the river isn't bad.

All in all though, not my favorite adventure. Perhaps with some modifications I could run it, but otherwise I'd mostly mine it for parts and pieces.

Slumbering Tsar: The Camp

Spoilers for the adventure Slumbering Tsar...

The Camp is an outstanding adventure location in so many ways. It is the hub and safe haven, but at the same time it's tone so perfectly matches the rest of the adventure by making a not a completely safe place. I love how the decisions of the players can truly take them into deep water early. For example, tangle with the Usurer because the party things the exchange rate for metal bits is unfair and suddenly they're fighting a lich. I can almost imagine the sheer terror and exclamations at such a discovery. It would probably end in a TPK, but then they'll know for the next time.

The hanged man too is so stylistic and appropriate for the ambiance, making the night dangerous and providing a truly scary encounter. I enjoy Father Death and his chapel to Nergal too, with it's macabe imagery and inevitable patience in the belief that the god of death will take everyone in the Desolation, no matter how long it takes.

How should a GM looking to play this section of the adventure in a system other than Pathfinder 1e proceed then? I think it ends up being fairly simple if you follow the adventurers' design philosophy. That is to embrace deadliness. So what if you put a full lich from 5e or Shadowdark? That's scary and thematic. It's a story they'll tell for years. For the NPCs I suggest grabbing existing NPC stat blocks and just going with it. For the hanged man, I'll do some of the work for you (at least for 5e!)

The hanged man is a unique and cool monster (and even better it's available under the OGL!) And we can make use of the handy monster stats available from the Lazy GM's 5e Monster Builder Resource Document.

The one in the adventure is stronger than the one depicted in the Tome of Horrors Complete, so we'll set our 5e version as a CR 5, and then bump up the hit points a bit. The big thing the hanged man does is try to lasso someone then hoist them from the crossbar of his own gallows, which will take a few rounds if we want to try to do it so he needs some hit points padding to stay up the 4-5 rounds to attempt that.

Advanced Hanged Man 

CR 5

Medium Undead

AC: 15

HP: 119

STR 19 (+4)

DEX 18 (+4)

CON 16 (+3)

INT 8 (-1)

WIS 7 (-2)

CHA 6 (-2)

Proficiencies: STR, DEX

Actions:

Multiattack: The Hanged Man makes two claw attacks and a slam attack.

Claw: melee attack, range 5 ft., +7 points to hit, on hit: 12 (3d6 +2) slashing damage 

Slam: melee attack, range 5 ft., +7 points to hit, on hit: 12 (3d6 +2) bludgeoning damage 

Entangle: ranged attack, range 20 ft., on hit: Targeted creature is restrained and begins to choking as they are suffocated. Each round the target is suffocating they take 27 (6d6 +4) bludgeoning damage. To attempt to escape the rope the target must make a DC 17 Strength Saving Throw with disadvantage unless another character assists them. The Hanged Man can move up to its movement dragging an entangled target 20 feet behind it and also use its multiattack.

EN5ider Reactions Issues 1-4

Trinket art from EN5ider Issue 1, by EN Publishing

The first issue of EN5ider was published when 5e was still young, on 25 February 2015. This four page issue by Ryan Chaddock outlines how to describe and use mundane, non-magical trinkets more effectively in your campaigns. The article is brief and concise, but I think gets its points across well, emphasizing these items as a way to provide plot hooks and roleplay opportunities to your players without the mechanical baggage of a magic item. I particularly like Chaddock's suggestion to use trinkets as a way to convey the culture of a group of adversaries or allies, like the items carried by a group of raiders or the gifts of a group of elves (not all the gifts in Lothlorien were magic items, right?) Practical advice on creating and describing trinkets is also offered in a nice callout box.

I’m most struck by the lack of mechanical content in the article, but it remains relevant and helpful for a GM. I think this is because of the conversational voice and the specific advice on how to apply trinkets to enhance your game. It’s almost a “bite-size” product, giving the reading something brief to take away and think about. I appreciate the honesty of the conclusion too: "Ultimately the choice to supply your players with these kinds of items is a negotiation. If your players seem uninterested, maybe trinkets are not for your group. Finding ways to keep them interested is the real trick. The payout is a richer game world, which is well worth it."

The next article is titled 5 Campaign Lessons from the Hobbit Films by Eric Pierce. This is the part where I realize that the final Hobbit film was released in 2014 and am amazed at the passage of time. The article is refreshingly critical, with the first advice to avoid GMPCs to not steal your players' thunder. It also brings up the interesting point that at this time in 2015 many tables were probably using actual player characters for NPCs with the party, rather than perhaps an NPC stat block or the simpler sidekick stat blocks introduced in the Essentials Kit or Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. There's some good general GM advice here, but nothing truly groundbreaking or innovative for most folks running a game. I do appreciate the advice on attempting to have your players provide secret desires for their characters that you can use alongside their external desires as plot hooks.

Archery Contests is by Russ Morrissey, the owner and creator of EN World. The article features a chart with scaling values to simulate the advancing AC depending upon both the tier of the archery contest the player finds themself in, along with the venue and level of competition, from a small village to the extraplanar level. This level of detail and design really makes this article interesting and useable. I really like this article, and it provides a great drop in event for any setting or location that you can use if you have a player who has specialized in archery.

The final issue we are looking at in this post is Battlefield Events, also by Russ Morrissey. It provides random events to add complications during your encounters. A similar design is used to simulate the fray of larger battles around the characters in Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. The options are generalized to be used in almost any scenario. I think it's hard to use this type of tool for every encounter, but the article provides a great place to go for inspiration on effects that you could use in a smaller table for a specific boss or crucial fight.

It's clear that the magazine is still finding itself in this stage, as the art and layout are less polished than they become in later issues. A bit of a mixed bag in terms of easily usable content for 5e, but I think there's generally been something of utility. Even if reading one of these articles forces you to reflect on your own GMing style then its probably of some utility.

EN5ider Reactions

EN5ider logo is property of EN Publishing

EN World Publishing's 5e magazine, at time of writing, EN5ider has almost six hundred issues over the past nine years and is still going strong. There's plenty of great material and information that I want to integrate into my 5e games and that I think will remain relevant even as the new edition draws closer. So I'm going to start a similar collection to my Arcadia reaction posts where I can document for my own (and perhaps your) record my annotations and thoughts on the materials in this great resource. 

Each EN5ider issue varies in size. Some, particularly the adventures published in serialized format, are much larger, while many are four to six pages. Because of this I will be looking at them in order of issue, but organizing my own posts into larger articles treating perhaps three to six small issues at a time. The longer issues will receive their own posts.

EN5ider Reactions Issues 1-4

En5ider Reaction Issue 5

En5ider Reaction Issues 6-8

En5ider Reaction Issues 9-11

En5ider Reactions Issues 12-14

En5ider Reactions Issue 15

En5ider Reactions Issue 16 

En5ider Reactions Issue 17

En5ider Reactions Issue 18

Arcadia 4 Reactions

Image is copyright MCDM Productions

Arcadia 4! Another awesome and evocative cover from Grace Cheung. I feel like this guy would make a great campaign villain or faction leader. 

This issue’s editorial letter from James Introcaso confirms that the three issue trial period of Arcadia was successful and that the magazine would continue for the indefinite future (until it ceased production in July 2023 to focus development on the upcoming MCDM RPG). He also confirms, according to polling data from the MCDM patrons, something that rings true to me. That the more basic the content the greater utility for GMs to be able to apply it to their own games. I think that makes sense, and it’s the reason some adventures in anthologies are so good and others just aren’t and can’t be shoehorned into an adventure. 

The first article is Swimming Through Sand to Sea: More Mounted Adventuring by Willy Abeel, in a follow up to his previous article in Arcadia 1. This article provides more mounts, but more significantly provides new magic items that let you take your more exotic animal companions with you even if that makes them a fish out of water, or allows them to shrink to fit into a dungeon. One, the water wagon immediately conjured up an image of an aboleth villain to me, unwilling to give up its swim speed, so now confined to the water wagon to maintain full maneuverability on land. I do feel that omnimounts, large mounts able to cross continents, feel a little underdeveloped. The single page without fleshed out unique mechanics doesn’t seem quite complete to me. Cool concept, but not something I can apply easily to create my own content.

The next article is the Chained Library by Cat Evans. A drop in location that can be added to any campaign, the library is intended to be a location where hidden and dangerous knowledge is secreted away. The artwork of the front door by Faizal Fakri is evocative and stunning. It’s an interesting concept and can be applied as either an ally or adversary to characters. I don’t love the maps at the end, partly because they lack a grid or scale, and partly because I don’t find them very evocative.

The final article is On the Road Encounters, by Derek Ruiz. This article provides five unique encounters that characters can have while traveling. Most of these are brigand-type combat encounters. One is a duel between a knight and a peasant, which I quite like. They all are fleshed out with names and motivations for the NPCs, which makes them nice drop in content. But my favorite of these is a scenario called the Cartographer, who offers several quest hooks. I love this as a diegetic device to give the players a map of the region, or provide quests.

That’s it for Arcadia 4.

Arcadia Reactions Page

Arcadia Five Reactions

Arcadia 2 Reactions

Arcadia 2 arrives. This cover is by Ejiwa “Edge” Ebenebe. There are certainly elements of psychedelic style here that make my mind go to the beauty and distortion of the Feywild.

Arcadia 2 cover.

While the inaugural issue featured four articles, this issue settles down into the more normal three article composition for Arcadia. Due to this, it comes in about six pages shorter. James Introcaso writes the introduction and notes the effort placed upon the art in this issue that serves to enhance an article providing season-themed subclasses, new elemental monsters, and an adventure.

Subclasses of the Seasons, by Joshua Mendenhall serves up four subclasses (one for each season). These are the Order of Hibernation mage, College of Springtide Bard, Child of the Sun Bloodline Sorcerer, and the Horned One Warlock. The art by Marlowe Lune is reminiscent of very nice playing or collectable cards to me. My personal favorite of the four pieces is the image of the Horned One Warlock. I'll admit I was a bit confused initially that with the theming these were all subclasses for different base classes. Perhaps that's some unconscious bias caused by the season changing abilities of the eladrin ancestry option. I haven't had the opportunity to playtest them myself, but they seem to lean quite heavily on supplying additional spells as part of subclass features. Part of the reason I particularly enjoy the Horned One Warlock is that it dovetails nicely with a deity of the same name in Kobold Press’ Midgard setting. 

The Periodic Table of the Elementals, is by MaKenzie De Armas, another well-known 5e designer currently working for Wizards of the Coast. While I've noticed De Armas author and design credits several times now, I hadn't looked into her bio until finding the link to her website. Her work is impressive, and the first time she played D&D was in 2018. It's encouraging to see such success from someone who's essentially a contemporary of mine in both age and adoption of TTRPGs. There is room for the new generation. But enough soapboxing, how are the new elemental monsters in this section?

The Conducere by Grace Cheung.

The Comburo is a volatile burning elemental, with some interesting traits that can allow it to do damage to enemies that hit it within a certain range, among other things. It has both a slam attack typical of elementals, but also a unique recharging ranged attack. If I were to do my best Keith Amman impression, I’d note that this thing has the profile of a brute, and as a force of nature isn’t very smart. If we follow the fantasy, it’s a ferociously reacting elemental, likely to use its first volatile burst attack once it recognizes a threat, then probably uses slam attacks. As its reaction continues to burn, it doesn’t retreat or withdraw, instead fighting until it is extinguished. Next are Conducere, which are basically composed of conductive metals. The art for this one is by the talented Grace Cheung, MCDM’s on-staff artist (and I feel bad saying this, but the Conducere is probably my least favorite piece from her. The other elementals are alright, but something about the contrasts in the Conducere art just doesn’t do it for me). The ability scores reflect a strong, resilient brute, but there’s less interesting here than the Comburo. The most interesting thing is the Conducere’s reaction that will allow it to redirect a spell or magical effect at another creature once a round as a reaction (they “conduct” it through themselves, get it?) 

The next elemental is the Elektron, essentially electricity themed. Once again, essentially a brute with high DEX to model a highly maneuverable creature composed of pure energy. The real unique thing for this CR 4 monster is its lightning charge trait, which allows it to increase its size by one category each time it is hit with a metal weapon. There is some clever design here, as it gains multi attacks and a passive effect to demonstrate the increasing energy as it grows in size. This is balanced essentially by its lower hit points. This isn’t a smart or very wise creature, so it’s likely to focus on those adversaries attacking it, perhaps with its average WIS, it is capable of recognizing that being attacked with metal weapons increases its size and power.

The Noxa by Grace Cheung.

Finally the Noxa, made of the “toxic, odorless gases,” according to the flavor text. Because of this, the elemental is invisible. Once again, this creature is not very intelligent, meaning that based on it nature it may not even intend to engage with the party and simply wanders into the same space, beginning to suffocate them. In any case, I’d probably have the Noxa get a surprise round to use it Asphyxiation feature against one party member in its space, then calling for initiative. This elemental is particularly difficult because of the invisibility, and I wouldn’t use it unless your party has access to fire or lightning damage that causes it to glow, otherwise I see this very easily being a TPK. The Noxa also has my favorite art of the four.

Finally the article provides some unique additional rules on reactivities, basically giving Legendary Action-type powers to elementals working in combination. This is a really unique design and I quite like it as a way to turn an encounter with creatures relying upon their slam attacks into something more special. These don’t just use the new elementals, instead also enhancing the SRD versions of the four normal elementals too. Great theming for an Elemental Evil campaign, or dipping into the Inner Planes, or even exploring the reactions when bound elementals in a setting like Eberron get loose.

The final article is an adventure for eighth level characters, Well of the Lost Gods, by Rich Lescouflair, the lead creator and designer behind Esper Genesis. Art is from three different creators, Nick De Spain, Faizal Fakri, and Jason Hasenauer, with cartography by Diana Muñoz. Anomalies like green smoke and crystal is appearing and strange objects are falling out of the sky. Some other adventurers found a strange portal they’re calling a well in the mountains. The characters are contracted by leadership of the town to investigate. One thing I dislike about this adventure is the first puzzle included in it. My issue with the puzzle is that it amounts to "push all the buttons on this handout." Is there a specific order or pattern? Nope. The adventure just says "When the buttons are pushed along the linear pattern [it opens]." Did the author intend for something more robust? If so then it's unclear to me. Helpfully, the adventure also provides directions of your players decide to simply smash it open, triggering a battle with what is essentially a CR 10 robot. 

I don't know that the adventure overview outlines the adventure structure very well either. The beginning feels a bit disjointed to me. Although I do appreciate that two nodes were included in the initial investigation of the strange anomalies occuring in the town, allowing for a bit of player choice, even if it's ultimately circular in structure, looping the players between only two situations to ultimately direct them to a dungeoncrawl. However, the two dungeon maps are linked by a portal, taking the party to the second dungeon portion that in the tradition of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks seems to be a genre-bending lab from an ancient civilization or from an ancient spacefaring people of high technology or magic. 

Once again, we also have a puzzle--this one is better, involving exploring the dungeon and activating various panels (more like a Legend of Zelda dungeon design). However, it still has some clunky prose description on the feedback mechanism to tell that you're unlocking a door: "A 10-foot-diameter metal plate is set into the north wall.Three crystal orbs are embedded into its surface in a diamond-shaped pattern." Don't three points make a triangle, Dave? There are four rooms to explore, activating panels to light up these orbs, but the adventure notes that "only three need to be activated in order to open the door..." But perhaps this confusion is just personal. Once again too, if your characters fail their intelligence checks to activate the panels then the room seals and they get to fight more robots and what are essentially small lightning (electrical) Elementals, which then causes the light to come on instead of completely halting progress. Opening the door brings on a final boss fight with another robot and then a skill challenge or slugfest to break the labs generator and make all the weird anomalies that were the adventure hook to stop.

The enemies included with the adventure are interesting, but nothing crazy to write home about. They're use abilities similar to many monsters and are primarily brute-types. The maps are again a bit monochromatic and don’t have any dead space or looping in anyway, but understandable with space constraints.

That sums up Arcadia 2. Some interesting topics and monsters here, but overall not quite as heavy hitting for me as the first issue. Onwards to Arcadia 3!

Arcadia Reactions Homepage 

Arcadia 3 Reactions

Cubicle 7's Uncharted Journeys Reactions

Uncharted Journeys might be the best book other than the core rules you could buy for 5e. That’s my opinion, but there, I said it. It provides an actual system to make journeys narratively interesting and providing your players meaningful choices. Its encounters and advice go beyond anything available in the Dungeon Master's Guide or the Monster Manual, or any other 5e book that I've found. The journey system could even be grafted onto other skill-based systems with some modification and provides a robust framework for making travel and exploration the truly meaningful pillar of RPG play that many have long sought.

With that as my thesis, I'd like to showcase perhaps my favorite find so far of 2024 (although it was released in January 2023), Uncharted Journeys from Cubicle 7. 

Most of the 5e books I have (and I imagine you too) provide adventures or monsters, or perhaps setting material. This is awesome stuff that we all love. Then there are the core rules, detailing how to build a character and conduct combat, or providing additional rules and options. There still fewer that provide a wholly new structure, something that adds a new dimension and option of play to the game. Uncharted Journeys does exactly that for travel, refining the system Cubicle 7 created for Adventures in Middle-Earth for all of 5e.

The first step in the system is to set the journey, determining start and endpoints with the players. It cuts down on the bookkeeping and need to attempt to calculate exact distances by dividing journeys into short, medium, long, and very long. Example distances are provided, but it’s also noted that the system thus allows for abstraction of distance. You can apply the same categories to a continent spanning trek or to a long hike across Sharn, Ptolus, or Orden’s massive city of Capital (there’s even a great cities biome that has relevant encounters for that environment). I think it tends to work better for the former than the latter, but with some adaptation, I think it would definitely enrich a city-based campaign. You also determine the terrain and weather for the region to figure out a Journey Difficulty that will serve as your DC for a group check and the skill checks in the encounters later generated. This system is also great for facilitating a point crawl. 

Map of Faerun

Imagine throwing the 5e large map of Faerun in front of your players. They’ll see a number of cities connected by roads, as well as far flung locations not connected in this way. They may also want to go to a location that you place in one of the empty spaces on the map. With this system, you can determine journey lengths between each node of the pointcrawl, and offer meaningful differences in choice for your players. To get to Waterdeep from Phandalin you can go several ways, either up the trail to Triboar and down through the Dessarin Valley, out West to the Coast and down the High Road through the Mere of Dead Men, or you could try trekking through the Sword Mountains and brave the Kryptgarden Forest into the Southern portion of the Dessarin Valley, shortening the distance taken up towards Triboar. In the journeys system, each of these routes has a different Journey Difficulty. You might not outright tell your characters, but you can signal to them which route might be faster, or slower, or most dangerous based on rumors and discussion by travelers at an inn or tavern. Whatever the characters choose, their choice has real consequences in terms of the number of encounters and how likely they are to fail their checks along the way.

The journeys system, like other attempts at travel systems before it, provides party member roles. Where these succeed are their relative simplicity. They provide simple opportunities for players to make meaningful contributions to the party on the journey. It is easy enough to put these descriptions on an index card or pass the text to each player in a VTT so they can fulfill their party role. Each class or character build can fill roles in unique ways, incentivizing the use of certain skills and tool proficiencies that otherwise are rarely used. I think about the artificer in my previous Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign who had tons of cool tool proficiencies that also served as character flavor, but that I didn’t really engage with from the GM side. That character would have made an outstanding Quartermaster in the journeys system. There are ways that each class can contribute on a journey, but depending on party makeup there can be gaps in capability, which in my opinion simply serves to reinforce the power of player choice by providing real consequences for those decisions.

The preparations that players can take prior to the journey also provide similar opportunities to reward creative play ideas while resolving them within the familiar skill check structure. These are varied to allow many different types of characters to contribute and include doing research, hiring help, prepping a hearty meal for the party, and more. I really enjoy the flavor of these choices, and some of them like carousing offer both benefits and negatives for a failed check that really add to the storytelling.

Perhaps the largest departure from regular play is the restriction of resting while on a journey. I very much like this choice, as it imposes clear and real risks and forces the players to be strategic in when and if they choose to take their one short rest on the journey, incurring another encounter. Luckily except on an extremely difficult journey with very poor rolls the vast majority of encounters that will be generated are non-combat, and the hazards should largely be setbacks that increase the dramatic tension. This also breaks up and varies your encounters, meaning that you can have more than just combat encounters, but still have dynamic and interesting combat encounters. The book also suggests to insert scripted or set piece encounters that enhance your story as you will. So just roll for an encounter like normal in the journey system and insert an encounter that you think is necessary or relevant to your narrative.

Of less precedence, but still very interesting are the chapter about generating NPC encounters along the way, along with ancient ruins. Both are much less groundbreaker, but still provide utility for a GM looking to generate additional content. Between the two my personal favorite is the chapter on ancient ruins, which I think can both help create adventure locations or just for points of interest on a journey. Some other discussion of this section has suggested that it’s too bad that it doesn’t allow for dynamic dungeon generation, but I think this misses the intent. The ruins generated by a few rolls in the chapter don’t necessarily need to be dungeons. They can simply be described locations that provide narrative information or lore. If you are inspired by what is generated and draw up a map, all the better. I will agree though, that this chapter is best used to prompt inspiration during prep time, not dynamically create content during the game.

The encounters section provides many interesting and varied encounters to employ on journeys. Additionally, though it hasn’t been much focused on in examinations of Uncharted Journeys, taking encounters from adventure modules and using them when the appropriate category comes up isn’t hard and is a great way to reinforce your narratives and integrate existing content into the journey system. There are also encounters and journey rules for sea journeys. I prefer the simplicity of these rules to those of Ghosts of Saltmarsh for instance, but they can be combined with the combat rules from Ghosts or even Spelljammer. There are plenty of varied biomes or environments for encounters too (you’ll probably need to build your own for Wildspace or the Astral Sea—which I may do on the site if I feel inspired one day).

I plan on using the journey rules in my upcoming Storm King’s Thunder campaign, and to a lesser degree in my Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign too. If anything new stands out to me I’ll definitely write a follow-up. This system is well suited to any adventure that features significant travel, particularly optimized for overland travel, and I look forward to seeing how my players engage with it.

Spelljammer 5e Reactions

The big bearded holiday fellow with the tiny fey and sleigh pulled by animal familiars left me a copy of Spelljammer under my artificial tree this year. Let’s take a look. There will be spoilers about the adventure Light of Xaryxis and the monsters, so jump off the train now if that’ll put a pin in your future fun.

So what do I think of Spelljammer? First off, I’ll agree with one of the big critiques which others have already voiced of the slipcase set (which is beautifully produced with fantastic art). It’s a bit thin, and the material would’ve probably been better presented to the user as one larger hardback. Much as I love the cover art on each of these books, they are about as thick as my kiddo’s picture books, and that’s basically what they feel like when you read them with the heavy, almost card stock paper that’s obviously been chosen to fill out the books volume. It is much easier to sit and read one of these picture—I mean game books. 

The brevity meant that Boo’s Astral Menagerie is the only bestiary on my shelf that I’ve been able to read in an evening and only the second one I’ve read through completely, cover-to-cover (I went on a Monster Manual binge read early during my time in the hobby). Maybe at some point I revisit how the monsters play, but not having used them yet, I can’t necessarily speak to that. The random encounter tables are quite good though, and I would definitely use them. They aren’t organized into separate tables by CR though, only by environment, so they may not necessarily be balanced for your group (and the GM is forced to do their own encounter math if they want to balance it). The tables are however weighted to try to minimize encounters with the high CR monsters. The attitude roll to determine potential hostility or friendliness is a helpful tool though that I think can spur some interesting improvisation. I know it’s a bit low rent to include monsters from another source in addition to the Monster Manual or SRD, but wouldn’t have minded seeing some suggestions using Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse either (it has plenty of monsters that are native or work in the Spelljammer setting—I mean, an Astral Dreadnaught is on the cover!). The ship encounters table is very flavorful and offers some great inspiration for how to flesh out your own NPC Spelljammer ships. Captains’ names and full crews included.

As for the monsters included, I very much enjoyed their descriptions and saw some interesting abilities from some of the stat blocks I read. Most are concentrated in the 0-10 CR range, which is where most of your play happens. There tend to be a lot of low CR, NPC-type stat blocks for various ancestries of spacefaring creatures, which seems designed to allow you to populate a ship with a number of lower CR creatures. As we’ll get to, there’s not a ton of setting details presented in the set, but the monster descriptions do a lot of heavy lifting and might even redeem the product as far as usability. I like the Psurlons as a nasty group of aberrations that work with Mindflayers when convenient. There’s plenty of interesting creatures to populate adventures with as far as I’m concerned. If you need more, grab some wacky monsters from Kobold Press. Some of their weirder creations will gel better with the Spelljammer setting than they do in Kobold Press’ default Midgard setting (and I say that with affection for Midgard).

The adventure, Light of Xaryxis, takes the Astral Elves included in the monster book and as player characters and makes them morally ambiguous bad guys harvesting the light force from other worlds to continue powering their own dying sun that gives them great magic and power. Pretty dope. Even cooler because they give you that summary at the beginning instead of forcing the GM to read the end to actually figure out who the bad guys are. The adventure module is for characters of fifth to eighth level, and this brings up some advice in the book that I quite appreciate; how to set up higher level characters to start a campaign. The advice is to build up to fifth level as written in the Player’s Handbook and then to give them 625 gp to spend on additional non magical gear, and give each character an uncommon magic item of your choice (they suggest the latter if you are “running a high magic campaign,” but I don’t really think Spelljammer is for you at all if you’re into low magic. The magical flying ships and space whales have sailed on that—pun intended and no apologies). It also makes me wonder why no advice on starting at higher levels is provided in the core rules. Might have been helpful…

The adventure is episodic in the style of Flash Gordon (which the writers recommend you go watch to really capture the adventure style). It’s a fairly linear jaunt across Wildspace and the Astral Plane to multiple systems. The adventure’s descriptions of Xaryxis Space and the Doomspace systems does double duty, as according to the Astral Adventurer’s Guide they are intended to be examples for you to create your own Wildspace systems and locales. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed them as examples, but the taste made me wish that this product included greater GM support in the form of more examples, or blank star maps that could be labeled with your own systems. That leads into my thoughts on the Astral Adventure’s Guide.

The Astral Adventure’s Guide again clocks in at 64 pages. It features sections on the unique rules of Wildspace and the Astral Sea. However, it omits rules on color pools, instead referring the reader to the DMG. The book also includes almost no setting information, instead acting mainly as a catalog of various deck plans and short descriptions of Spelljammer vessels. There’s also the character rules, but no additional subclasses, which feels like a missed opportunity. I also noticed that my set is one of the original printings without the corrected errata and changes to the problematic sections about the Hadozee (I’ll probably print a copy of the errata to stick in the book as a reference at some point). Finally it concludes with a very short section of the Rock of Bral that largely seems to be a rehash of the original Spelljammer accessory product of the same name (which is far more detailed). I do like the Rock of Bral as an adventure or almost extraplanar hub (it sits in Wildspace in whatever system you find most convenient), but the level of detail almost makes this a players guide, not a more detailed GM-focused product as it purports to be. This book could have been much more useful with random adventure seed tables and setting information included with random tables for non-combat encounters, like a Fizban’s or Bigby’s. As is, there is just not much support for the GM to create their own content or inspire creativity beyond the static examples provided by the adventure.

For those interested, the GM screen isn’t terrible in my opinion, at least for my style of play, but it does leave some important Spelljammer rules off. A lot of space is devoted to reprinting the random encounter tables from the monster book, which can be helpful for improv. Relevant rules like suffocating and weightlessness are also included, along with illustrations of the Astral plane and the way gravity works in Wildspace (I don’t know that I think the illustrations are necessary). What is missing is any sort of ship crew roles on the screen and the rules about how long air bubbles last (so basically most of the included new rules that you probably need to run aren’t there).

All in all, I don’t regret getting the set (I have it on good authority that bearded fellow found them for 38 bucks), but I wouldn’t grab them at full price. All that aside, while there’s some interesting details in the set, overall it really is lacking in detail, nor does it tie in will or include additional lore about the creatures to be found in the Astral Sea and Wildspace (you’ll have to find old copies of Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes and Volo’s Guide to Monsters if you want lore about some like Githyanki, Elves, and Beholders beyond their basic monster descriptions). You’ll need to do a lot of your own work to come up with adventure locations in the Spelljammer setting, but if you’re interested in gaining a little bit more information about the setting then picking it up with some of the older Spelljammer titles up from DriveThruRPG is probably worth it.