"Soft stats" affecting bonds and drive are important for combat. They provide levers that test characters. As a GM you can pull at those threads - set up a combat designed to test their loyalty. One that asks them to maybe go against their philosophy
Tie combat to interesting consequence. PCs have 3 rounds to push through before enemies build a barricade, closing off a route. Enemies try to steal certain items from PCs, but will flee if hit a couple of times. Both of these situations don't require a fight at all - up to the players
Yeah I really like this, though less familiar with V5. It's similar in a way to Gumshoe Quickshock which also has everyone decide on an objective and is over in one round
Much more impactful than "kill the things". The "meta-wounds" from these combats can linger on for many sessions, or full campaigns
"Shit, we have so few books we have to pad out our official releases with partner content"
Scott M 🍄
Scott M 🍄
Scott M 🍄
Scott M 🍄
Simply must recommend the latest Frozen Soul. Bolt Thrower worship. Bloody Gerard Way's on the first track doing incredible shrieks
Much of trad game combat falls down at success or fail states. It's worth GMs asking why have a fight right now? What are the enemies trying to achieve?
HP loss/wounds are often the most uninteresting consequence of combat. 🧵
I find the WotC D&D release strategy strange. They're clearly attempting to echo M:tG, but since it's an imagination game it doesn't really work. There's little weight to it.
"And in the fall we're letting you imagine a new axe"
Scott M 🍄
The articles on D&D Beyond are purely ROI-driven, tied to a future or current release, giving you the call-to-action at the end. You can literally give people free stuff and write some lore or stories, but all of it has to be in the marketing funnel
(And we know full well this came out of the "D&D is undermonetised" discussion, despite D&D barely getting a mention in shareholder calls)
