Technomagic

One thing that has always fascinated me is technology in D&D. Introducing technology to a D&D game can come in many shapes and sizes and there are many sources, including the 5e Dungeonmaster's guide, which has one or two pages on laser weapons.

Unlucky dice? SkipBo as a die

Most players at some point will swear at their die and start to doubt the laws of physics. Having a random output is half the fun of it, as is clear when NPCs deal damage by the set output or when the encounter is in the plane of Mechanus (the latter is fun due to madness of the plane, but that's a different point). One way to stop complaints about accursed dice is to not use dice and use cards.

Blank tokens

I have uploaded my blank token sheets here:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/269498383/Blank-character-tokens
They are a modification of Paizo's to make them blank.

I (not the artists) kept them all in a box and they even get used in games they were not drawn for, each one tells a story. I really recommend any GM who has a printer to buy 200 gsm cardstock and make the players use them. Some are well drawn, while others are not, but they are all reminders of awesome games played.

And are a good hook for people to ask questions like "Why is there a picture of a horse walking on the ceiling?" or "Why are there two tokens, one of an old man in a dressing gown and harp, while the second all begadgeted?"... Which is your cue to tell the amazing tale of that game.


Other files you might find useful are:

• An item tracking sheet with details of locations on one's body (overkill RAW, but fun for gameplay).  https://www.scribd.com/doc/269479389/D-D-item-sheet
• A kill tally sheet to be able to assess the effectiveness of a various players. https://www.scribd.com/doc/269478981/Kill-Tally-sheet-for-D-D
• Sindarin character sheets https://www.scribd.com/doc/269477627/D-D-chr-sheet-in-Sindarin-Elvish (see another post for more)
• Other stuff that may be posted here.

D&D battle simulator, part 2

UPDATE: I have made a website of the simulator (dnd.matteoferla.com).
SEEN ALSO: Description of battle simulator and some analysis, the GitHub code for the encounter simulator, analysis of dice equivalence

Dice equivalency

I have had several conversations about "dice equivalency" in terms of damage:
y = average value
n = number of dice
x = maximum value of dice
k = damage bonus
y = n (x+1)/2 + k
Hypothesis: all creatures with identical stats except for (n,x,k), but that do y damage have the same victory probability. The average damage is the same, the distribution of the damage is different, so under some conditions one could argue that it would differ. The simulations show there is no difference regardless of whether the fight is easy or challenging or whether there are multiple team-members.
In other words, a special weapon variant of 2d6 can be d7+d5 —assuming if you can get over the d5's ugly shape—, 2d8 –2, 3d3+1, 4d2+1 or 7, yet it will not affect the game in the very long run.

D&D Battle simulator (part 1)

UPDATE: I have made a website of the simulator (dnd.matteoferla.com).

SEEN ALSO: Description of battle simulator and some analysis, the GitHub code for the encounter simulator, analysis of dice equivalence

Who would win in a battle of 15 peasants against a hill giant? In Dungeons and Dragons it is quite hard to predict the difficulty of an encounter. Unlike previous editions, in fifth edition the challenge is based on XP, while the challenge rating (CR) limits how nasty the monster can get. However, it isn't quite right.

In order to find out what the victory probabilities are as various parameters are changed I wrote a Python script to simulate D&D battles. The script can be found in my GitHub repository: https://github.com/matteoferla/tangents/blob/master/DnD_Battler.py

An armory of musical instruments

In a previous post (picturing bardic spellcasting) I considered conceptually how is it that bards spellcast, here I look into what musical instruments can be used.

Picturing bardic spellcasting

The bard is a rather unusual class in D&D both in concept and in gameplay as it is a sorcerer that casts spells using a musical instrument, but isn't as good. I say sorcerer due to the charism, but bards used to be a proficiency class for druids —hence the leather. So it's nice that that got cleaned up, but I am nevertheless confuddled by the logistics of bardic spellcasting...

Symbols of the D&D planes

In Dungeons and Dragons most normal adventures happen in the same plane of existence—the eclectic þe olde Ængland meets Middle Earth meets Greek mythology meets ninjas. However, there are many planes of existence, each a caricature of a theme —Celestia, Hell, Elemental planes etc.
They were introduced in AD&D 2 Planescape as a collection of various books, 3.5 as two books (guide and player's handbook), 4e (one book) and 5e (a chapter so far in the DMG).
The nonsense of the spacial geometries apart, the are kind of cool.

D&D character sheet in Sindarin (Elvish)

In Tolkien's universe, Elves speak a variety of elvish languages. As JRR Tolkien was a professor of Old English at Oxford, he knew his stuff when it comes to linguistics, so like Klingon and Valyrian, Elvish is not a crackpot's attempt at a language (unlike too many made-up sentences in movies with jarring mistakes). Tolkein Elvish is a family of languages, which include Quenya, nicknamed Latin-Elvish, and Sindarin, common Elvish. The script is called Tengwar. The character sheet is written in Sindarin using the Tengwar script.