dedicated to old school gaming . . .

Weapon Specialization for Fighters

March 2020 Weapon specialization for fighters as described in Unearthed Arcana (UA) immediately struck me as unbalanced. We play tested the rule and vetoed it. As excited as my group was to get UA, a lot of the rules proved to be disappointing, especially the new classes. It was years later I learned that Gary […]

Character Generation

May 2007 First, let’s review the character generation rules in the Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG) on page 11. These four methods are paraphrased here, along with a fifth one from Unearthed Arcana (UA, page 74): Roll 4d6, discarding the lowest, for each ability score. Arrange in the order desired. Roll 3d6 twelve times, keeping the […]

Spell Memorization Time

September 2006 This page provides revised rules for spell memorization. If I recall correctly, I based this upon an article inDragon Magazine. Spell Memorization By the book, spells require 15 minutes per spell level to memorize, following a rest period. This is for all classes and sounds reasonable, as it typically takes a 1st level […]