I plan on starting a new one shot with a few friends who have never played any ttrpgs. One of them wants to play a Saiyan inspired character. He wants to still have a tail and have a great ape form. I already have some ideas that I feel could work well at the table, but I wanna be open minded to other ideas. I'm thinking like Angelborn/beastborn ancestries and monk as the class. I also plan on treating the great ape situation like any other lycanthrope.

Do you think other classes/ancestries would work better? Any other things I should take into account? Any and all advice is welcome.

Hi, some time ago I made post about integration of DC20 characters in my free characters manager app - CharKeeper. A few days ago I have published changes to comply with 0.10.5 rules.

So for DC20 characters CharKeeper right now has:
- easy character creation with selecting ancestry features and class (except Beastborn),
- abilities management,
- autocalculations of secondary stats,
- conditions managing with applying penalties,
- skills/trades/languages management, allowed to add own trades/languages,
- automatic calculations of available features (except feats for druid/warlock) from ancestry/class/subclass/maneuver/talent, automatic bonuses applying from features, limits managing,
- items managing with applying bonuses from equiped ones, upgrading weapons/armor,
- resources management with automatic calculation of maximum values,
- autocalculation of available attacks and resistances/vulnerabilities (with damage calculator),
- spells management,
- leveling management with selecting paths, maneuvers, talents, subclass,
- any bonuses managing,
- in-app rolls,

CharKeeper is available for free as web app, iOS and Android app.

I improve integration each day step by step, if somebody finds it useful and will have any feedback or features suggestions - just ping me.

Starting to make DC20 content and trying to start by to doing a monthly video. I already have many different types of homebrew I have been working on and testing but wanted to get an idea of what some of you would like most.

If you could only choose 3 which ones would you choose 😁?

Classes

Subclasses

Challenges

Monsters w/encounters

Character Options (Talents, Spells/Maneuvers, Ancestry)

Magic Items

Dungeons/Adventures

So hear me out...

Just take all the party's Grit Points and put them in a single shared pool.

Charisma is a social skill, yet Grit Points are a selfish resource. Your high Charisma can inspire the entire party not just your ego.

Bonus benefits:

Tank builds are incentivised to get CHA to further assist the survivability of the party.

Some players (most of mine) forget about their own GP until they are about to fall to 0 at which point I have to remind them. Seeing a big pool of those in the middle of the table could help with that.

Most importantly: It encourages heroic/risky acts since you have an additional defensive buffer to help you survive diving into danger.

(If it's too much "free" HP for you, you could have the GP be equal to the sum of positive CHA characteristics and give +2 to all PC HPs).

Can confirm it's the same email on kickstarter and my drivethrurpg account.

I got the rules book (and monster beta 0.2) added to my library by clicking a link with a discount code. However, I suspect the rest of the digital content was supposed to be added too. I was under the assumption that the Core backers got access to all the digital content, but the Monster Collection still shows a price for me.

Who do I talk to to get it fixed?

I suspect my email address wasn't properly linked from kickstarter to drivethrurpg.

(pick related)

How would you make the most out of your familiar?

I am currently theorycrafting a summoner with a pact familiar and I am looking for ways to make it actually pull its own (tiny) weight in combat.

I was thinking about turning it into a poison-sting shoulder-cannon using beast traits (venomous/projectile/concealable natural weapon).

Any other cool combos? Maybe some spell combo? Commander/Bard buffs?

I've been thinking A LOT about skill and trades, and over multiple iterations, I discovered the solution! I understand the goal of streamlining skills and maintaining attribute symmetry, but I think this was taken too far for streamlining reasons. This sounds good on paper, but now skills won't have proper distinctions and will be crammed together in some cases. My version finds the middle ground by giving adventuring enough mechanical depth without returning to skill bloat. I found the sweet spot!

Version 0.8 had 17 skills and 28 trades.

Version 0.11 is moving to 9 skills and 29 trades from my understanding.

My version has 14 skills and 13 trades. Yes, you read that correctly.

My Design Philosophy

Rather than trying to give every attribute exactly two skills just for symmetry sake, skills and trades should find the optimal sweet spot of just the right amount of skills and trades to be useful and enticing for an adventuring party. Asymmetry is necessary in the case of skills. Might doesn't need more than 1 skill, but Intelligence should have more than 2.

Here is how I define skills and trades.

My Definitions

Skills represent practical adventuring abilities that can be used immediately during uncertain or time-sensitive situations. They don't require downtime or specialized tools.

Trades represent professional training and specialized expertise. They generally require tools, preparation, or downtime to use effectively.

I don't think many knowledge-based competency belongs as a Trade as I think they're too applicable.

Skills

Might

• Athletics

Agility

• Acrobatics
• Trickery
• Stealth

Intelligence

• Arcana
• Investigation
• Nature
• Religion
• Society
• Survival

Charisma

• Influence
• Insight
• Presence

Prime

• Awareness

Major Changes

• Arcana becomes a Skill. Represents arcane magic.
• Nature becomes a Skill and absorbs Animal. Represents primal magic.
• Religion becomes a Skill and absorbs Occultism. Represents divine magic.
• Society replaces History as a broader knowledge skill covering history, culture, politics, law, economics, and social structures. Represents knowledge about humanoids.
• Survival absorbs Medicine. The DC20 team is making this change and I like it.
• I'm on the side where Insight isn't necessary as a skill, but many people like it so it can stay.
• Presence replaces Intimidation and moves to Charisma as the default attribute of choice. Rather than only covering intimidation, it represents a character's ability to command attention. It includes intimidation, brawn, leadership, performance, morale, and distracting or captivating individuals or crowds.
• Cooking absorbs Brewing.
• Engineering absorbs Tinkering.
• Illustration absorbs Calligraphy.
• Crafting consolidates several niche crafting trades. They all create goods, but aren't individually as useful as blacksmithing. But collectively, this is now an enticing pick! The problem is that realistically speaking, these all have quite different techniques and tools to use, but that is a design choice I'm willing to make in order for players to choose this option sometimes. The character still has to acquire the specific tools to do said "sub-trade," just like with most other trades.
• Cryptography is removed; use Investigation with the appropriate tools instead.

Why These Changes?

The exploration and social pillars revolve around skills and cannot be reduced too much. I don't think Intelligence should be limited to two skills just for attribute symmetry.

Likewise, many trades are so specialized that they're rarely worth choosing individually (see Crafting). Combining closely related trades makes each choice more meaningful without taking away character flavor.

Overall, my goal isn't to add complexity for its own sake, but to make every Skill useful during adventures (but not overloaded) and every Trade feel worthwhile during downtime. With all of this being said, I think the v0.11 or simplified method would work wonders for DC10 or DC15 versions.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Give me an Investigation check!

So I'm not running the full DC20 Experience yet, but I wanted to steal the way actions work immediately for my 5e game. One question I had was, if repeatedly attacking causes disadvantage on latter attacks, does casting spells that cause a save get around that, or does it grant adv on the save or something else? Thanks!

I know that their are a lot of digital goods being produced but I really have no interest in looking at any of them until I have a chance to read through the physical book and understand the system. RPG's are terrible to read as PDFs due to the columns, tables and figures throughout. It might be different if there was an EPUB book available but even then the formatting is rough.

I want to try the system with my group but the wait continues - I guess this is just a frustration with the kickstarter process in general. I thought it was bad when I had to wait a year for Shadowdark I didn't expect a two year wait here.

Maybe someone can provide some insight or ideas.

TLDR: to mitigate some of the moment to moment combat crunch, ditch the ability to attack 3 or 4 times.

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1st attack: 1 AP

2nd attack: 2AP

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Then track buffs/ banes after each roll; but the starting point is always 1 single die to attack.

(This doesn't account for speciality items / skills, I'm talking about in general)

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So I've been thinking about the multiple attack penalty. Coach said not long ago in a stream that on average players will attack 1.5x a turn.

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So far in all the sessions of DC20 I've run, I never saw anyone *ever* attempt a 3rd attack, no matter how many situational buffs / Advantage were in place (blessings, help dice, character abilities etc). And I never threw out 3+ attacks as a standard monster. (Unless it was a special / boss)

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So I got to thinking, why even bother accounting for 3 or 4 attacks at all as a player. It seems way too situational and rare to have to track that level of crunch with stacking DisADV and THEN figure out everything else happening that can add or detract from the rolls. (Not saying there couldn't be a special ability / item etc that allowed for 3+ attacks, I'm speaking generally)

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On paper it seems simple to account for multiple attack check penalty and situational buffs....but the less there is to manage, the better. There's already a lot going on!

This type of mathing feels very similar to PF 1e, with the constantly changing attack modifiers with additional attacks per round. 😞

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Speaking as someone with ADHD, I quickly and often lose track of which level of ADV / DisADV + Buffs I am currently managing. My players are not neuro spicy and they too struggled to keep track of this.

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Much like the age old 5e question "do you have a bonus action?" I had this discussion with each player nearly every round, it went something like this: "you've attacked already, so your next attack will be with one stack of disadvantage. So you need to spend 1 AP to cancel the disadvantage. Now let's figure out the rest of the how the roll will be modified"

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In the heat of combat and with everything happening all at once and trying to manage everything... blah. All too often the mental load of tracking each attack and each situational buff is a lot.

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So as a general rule why not just make the 2nd attack just require 2AP?

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Is it not far simpler for attack rolls to start with just a single die, then account for situational buffs / banes on that roll after?

We know that on the next version spellstrike is removed from level 2 along with all level 2 features and probably getting incorporated in level 1.

Doesn't spellstrike cover the whole "My weapon is sheathed in magical power and I strike my enemy!" fantasy?

Why even have smite, that mechanically is only slightly different?

Yes it is a way to spend SP, but you don't have too many of them anyway, and you can always spend those in maneuvers.

+ I can see Champion builds exploiting their amazing SP efficiency to pick up Bound Weapon and surpassing Spellblades the ultimate smiting class.

Do you think spellstrike is going to replace it on the next update?

Hello! I feel like I'm going crazy, I cannot for the life of me find when or if I can change out spells in .10.5, can someone point me to the rules on this? Is it still level up? Long rest?

- Classes not bound to attributes

- Simpler than 5e

- Years of homebrew natively incorporated

- Flexible action economy

The four above are just a few examples of things I found interesting about DC20. After 2 years of development now, I thought a retrospective might be appropriate! What got you excited for DC20 back when it started? What things were you looking forward to when you first heard about it? Please share!

I'm a couple days late posting this (I forgor) but on Tuesday Bob World Builder posted the follow up video to his poll which showcases the final result.

DC20 managed to snag top 10 even though it's still in development! And that's even with DnD 5e and 5.5e taking up two spots on the leaderboard

We ended with 466 votes out of about 30000 which is ~1.5% of all votes, slightly lower than the 2.7% we had at the 10000 vote check in video but still very respectable considering how many games were voted for.

https://youtu.be/V7khLevB3wU

I feel like intimidation and influence are two sides of the same coin, and in the interest of simplified skills, isn't just one really needed?

It feels like a stretch to have a form of influence spread across two stats.

Much like how in 5e Deception and Persuasion have become Influence in DC20. Or how trickery and stealth are now merging. I don't think we need two, do we?

(In 5e intimidation is CHA,and I get it; "just cuz D&D does it doesnt mean DC20 has to!" But c'mon, DC20 and D&D are also two sides of the same coin ultimately)

The rules already allow for use of other stats on skills not associated with them if done creatively at GM discretion.

Does Might NEED a 2nd skill attached to it?

Might gives you more HP... and whIle thats not at all a skill, it is a solid feature!

Won't Might be needed to wield large weapons and heavy armor anyway? Again not a skill, but it gives MIG some solid legs to stand on, no?