Tag Archives: Podcasts

Analyzing D&D 5E’s Unearthed Arcana Revised Ranger

Ranger

This week, Wizards of the Coast released the much-awaited The Ranger, Revised Unearthed Arcana, in which they took the first pass at a truly redesigned Ranger class. In previous Unearthed Arcana editions, they proposed new archetypes to mixed reception, but this one is actually a rebuild from level 1 to 20, with three subclasses: the Hunter Conclave, the Beast Conclave, and the Deep Stalker Conclave.

Full disclosure: I’m a Ranger critic. As we discussed on Total Party Thrill #18, I love the concept of the Ranger class in Dungeons & Dragons, but I’ve been disappointed with its implementation in 5th Edition. As printed in the Player’s Handbook, the Ranger is a total mess; it’s the weakest of the martial classes in combat, it lacks a niche, and its class-defining abilities are either useless, overshadowed by other classes, or simply less fun in practice than they should be. The Fighter has both trickiness and brute force in combat, the Paladin has better burst damage and party buffs, the Barbarian tanks, the Rogue dominates the Exploration pillar with its Expertise, and the Druid has identical-or-better wilderness and animal handling capabilities. The last hope for the Ranger, his last One Cool Thing, is the animal companion. It’s only available to one subclass, and it happens to be the single worst class in the game by a longshot.

In short, this revision is overdue. Let’s break it down, ability by ability.

Continue reading

Total Party Thrill Podcast is Now Live on iTunes (with a Big Thanks!)

TotalPartyThrill_CoverArt_400px

I want to take a moment and thank everyone who listened to our preview episode and sent in their feedback. It was immensely helpful, and I-Hsien and I truly appreciate it as we try to make Total Party Thrill the best RPG discussion podcast we possibly can.

All of that effort and kindness has finally borne fruit, as yesterday we officially launched on iTunes, and only a couple days later than we anticipated! Our third full episode (Player-Centric Campaigns & Combat Medic) went up today, and we’ll continue a weekly Thursday release schedule.

Get_it_on_iTunes_Badge_US_1114 feed-icon-28x28

Total Party Thrill is a podcast for GMs and players where we discuss our campaigns in order to inspire yours. We draw heavily from a 3-year, level 1-20 D&D 5th Edition Eberron campaign. Each episode covers a particular aspect of game planning and playing, and we share tips and advice drawn from our own experience. Then follow us into the Character Creation Forge, where we build iconic character archetypes from outside traditional D&D using the D&D 5E rules.

 

Podcast Preview: Total Party Thrill Episode 1: Heists and Swashbucklers

You may have noticed a dearth of updates around these parts recently, and that’s because I’ve been hard at work on a new project: a podcast, titled Total Party Thrill.

We’re officially launching our first few episodes on iTunes on August 17th, but I wanted to give a preview of what we have planned. You can listen to a preview of our first episode, “Heists and Swashbucklers,” below:

Download Total Party Thrill Episode 1 Preview: Heists and Swashbucklers

On Total Party Thrill, my co-host I-Hsien and I will share lessons learned from our recent three-year, levels 1-20 D&D 5th Edition Eberron campaign, pulling out story ideas and inspiration for use in your own campaign, as well as providing more tactile advice to ensure your sessions run smoothly. We also include our Character Creation Forge segment, in which we take a character archetype from popular fiction that doesn’t fit into D&D’s traditional classes and build a character using only the options available for D&D Adventurer’s League. In this preview episode, we discuss Heist encounters and build the Errol Flynn-style Swashbuckler (spoiler: neither of us used the Rogue class.)

I’ve been heads-down recording, editing, and otherwise prepping everything we need in order to launch this project, and I would love to hear your honest feedback. Please feel free to tweet your thoughts to me at @Mundangerous, or drop us an email at totalpartythrill@gmail.com.

Thanks!

Shane

I Read Some Things: Week of February 9th, 2015

Reading List

I read some things this week. After the jump, you can read them, too.

Continue reading