Mad Gaming Madness

Many moons ago, in Dragon magazine #39 (July 1980), the article "Good Got You Down? Try This For Evil: The Anti-Paladin NPC," by George Laking and Tim Mesford. It introduced an NPC foil to goodie two-shows PC paladins in the form of their diametrical opposite: a foe who received power by following vices and eschewed virtue. Since it was presented as a class, there were tables that allowed player character anti-paladins, but it was presented as purely an NPC class. Adding to inversions of the paladin's abilities they also added the thief's backstab and the assassin's use of poisons, so they weren't exactly balanced for play. Later, in issue #106 (February 1986), there was an article called "A Plethora of Paladins," by Christopher Wood. To the lawful good Paladin and the chaotic evil Anti-Paladin were introduced 7 more paladin-alikes:  the neutral good Myrikhan, a lightly-armored questing knight of good with a bit of a focus on fire. the chaotic good G...

In the previous parts of this series, I examined the development of the witch class in major editions of D&D, supported by big publishers. However, as the game has developed over decades, a number of D&D retroclones have sprung up. The Old School Renaissance (OSR) is a movement of gamers attempting to resurrect and revivify older versions of D&D to suit their gaming tastes. Many OSR games incorporate more narrative elements; other support specific styles and modes of play. A large number put a great emphasis on weird settings, where none of the standard tropes and archetypes have a place. Still, there are witches. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3  |  Addendum Castles & Crusades (Troll Lord Games; 2004) Castles & Crusades is a fusion of 1st edition AD&D and 3rd edition D&D rules. A free download compilation of third-party material on the publisher's site, the Crusader's Companion  (2014), provides two witch classes. Both versions have a 4-sided hit d...

Part 2 in this series brought the overview through the d20 revolution to the Pathfinder end of the D&D spectrum. But the d20 "fork" is only one direction of contemporary D&D. In 2008, Wizards of the Coast went in a new direction with the 4th edition, which streamlined some aspects of the game while complicating others. Products moved to the digital realm, with the intention that the game would have a large amount of digital support and a subscription model. While the edition still has fans, Wizards appeared to lose market share to Pathfinder. Thus, in 2012, Wizards published the 5th edition, which simplified many aspects the game, and provided a framework that people could use to style the game closer to a version that they liked. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4  |  Addendum D&D 4th Edition In the 4th edition  Player's Handbook  (2008), the warlock class became one of the core classes of the game. The 4th edition redefined how character classes worked, and pla...

Last post looked at witches in D&D up to about 1999, the first 23 years of fantasy RPGs. In this post, I continue the overview with 3nd edition Dungeons & Dragons  and its developments. Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4  |  Addendum D&D 3rd/3.5th Edition In both the 3rd edition  Dungeon Master's Guide  (September 2001, page 26) and 3.5th edition  Dungeon Master's Guide  (July 2003, page 175), the witch is the example given to the DM as a guide for creating their own class by just modifying an existing class' spell list. Using the sorcerer class as a basis and with Charisma as her spellcasting stat, this witch was a pure caster class with no special powers but a spell list drawn from the cleric, druid, and wizard lists. The spell list was strong in charms and form-changing spells, and weak in anything overtly damaging or flashy. Mystic Eye games released  The Hunt: Rise of Evil  in 2001, the world book for their world of Gothos setting. A...

My home game setting is heavily influenced by fairy tales, so I've long thought of including a Witch class for players of the game. Why should NPCs and monsters have all the fun? I'm not the only one who's thought of this, as the Witch class has been homebrewed for D&D of various flavors for decades. In tracking the origins of witches in D&D, I find there's a lot of previous incarnations. So many, that I need to split this post into parts. Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4  | Addendum

One of the mainstays of the Eberron setting is the idea of communities, both inclusive/organic (settlements, cities, organized religions) and exclusive/artificial (secret societies, cults, criminal gangs). In the 3.5E rules, the Eberron Campaign Setting book introduced the Community domain for clerics, designed for a cleric to encourage group effort. The one saint in the canonical material that characters can actually meet is devoted to this domain. This is my attempt to convert the essence of the 3.5 domain to 5E. There's not much too the 3.5E domain: just a list of spells, a diplomacy bonus, and calm emotions once per day. 5E domains are far more defining and grant far more power than that. I worked this one from the ground up, with some help from a few ENWorld commenters.

So, I've been doing a bit of work with D&D Next lately, since I run D&D Encounters at the FLGS and the new module can be converted to work in either D&D 4e or the new D&D Next playtest. Every single player at my store opted for D&D Next, so I need to get up to speed on my familiarity and comfort with the system. With that in mind, I present a few options for cleric PCs. I'd love to get them playtested.