Colorful Characters: The Brothers Grimm (part 2)

As promised in our first Colorful Characters posting, I have returned with updated 5e stat blocks for the brothers themselves.

It should be noted, that the brothers originally hale from the central hills region of the Chimeran Empire and both claim to have served several tours of duty with the empire's legions. As such, both still possess weapons and armor in the style of the Chimeran Legionnaires. Each brother's most prized possession is his imperial gladius, a gift of the empire for their time served. Each also wears a Legionnaire's Ring.

The brothers and their travelling band are quite a site to see as they roam the world performing as a travelling circus and side show. They are however, highly competent and could be if so inclined, quite dangerious. They present a gruff, often off-putting demeanor to the world at large and have a reputation for brawdy shows and petty thievery. This public face is meant to keep the general public at and arms length and to keep the local authorities guessing.

This exterior facade provides a cover for the brothers more secretive endeavors. Their primary motivations being to seek out and neutralize any evils that might prey on the weak and helpless. They have been known to hunt witches and hags preying on local children, fight off maurauders or roaming undead or even finding and destroying artifacts of evil which can sometimes corrupt a community.

The stats for the two brothers include their imperial gladius (shortsword) and legionnaire's ring (ring of protection).

The brothers and the members of their travelling circus are smart, connected and resourceful. Feel free to equip them in whatever manner you feel is most appropriate. Given a need and some time, they brothers are able to get their hands on just about anything that they might need to deal with their current situation, whatever that might be.

May I present The Brothers Grimm...

5e Homebrew Rules: Classes - The Ranger (part 2)

Here is the long awaited follow-up to my first post on the 5e Ranger class. Funny how weeks can fly by between posts when the real world intrudes on fantasy.

So, where was I?

That's right, my thoughts on the Ranger are that for the most part, the class is a workable, playable, jack-of-all-trades. It is competent in a few things, but lacks any truely defining abilites and just doesn't standout or really define the niche role that is an archetypal Ranger.

Many of the attempts to fix the class that I have researched and reviewed attempt to fix the class with whole-cloth rewrites. Many of those I feel fail spectacularly by attempting to make up for the perceived lack of abilities by wildly overpowering their versions.

I took a different approach. My own opinion on the class is that it's fuctional yet boring and that it lacks any defining abilities. So my own approach is to simply make several minor alterations.

• Give the Ranger expertise in the survival skill at 1st level. Similar to a Rogue's skill expertise. Rangers should be the absolute best at wilderness survival and tracking.
• Give them a small boost to the Favored Enemy ability. In this case, we grant a small combat bonus to damage based upon the Ranger's WIS modifier.
• Give the base Ranger a larger more defined combat boost by adding the ambush ability as described under the "Deep Stalker" Ranger archtype in the Unearthed Arcana Underdark article, at 2nd level.
• I also rewrote the Foe Slayer capstone ability to apply to all foes, all the time.
• Because ambush now allows the Ranger to hide as a bonus action, we removethe Hide in Plain Site and Vanish abilities.
• We also slightly modify Primeval Awareness & Feral Senses. They are now lumped together under a new header Primal Instincts and no longer cost a spell slot to activate.

Here are the detailed write-ups as they would appear written into a class document:

Survival Expert
Beginning at 1st level, you are an expert outdoorsman, knowledgeable in the skills needed to survive and thrive in the wilderness. You double your proficiency bonus for any ability check you make that uses the Survival (Wisdom) skill.

Favored Enemy
Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even talking to a certain type of enemy.
Choose a type of favored enemy: aberrations beasts, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, giants, monstrosities,oozes, plants, or undead. Alternately, you can select two races of humanoid (such as gnolls and orcs) as favored enemies.
You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track your favored enemies, as well as on Intelligence checks to recall information about them.
You gain a bonus to damage on each attack against your favorite enemies. This bonus is equal to your Wisdom modifier.
When you gain this feature, you also learn one language of your choice that is spoken by your favored enemies, if they speak one at all.
You choose one additional favored enemy, as well as an associated language, at 6th and 14th level. As you gain levels, your choices should reflect the types of monsters you have encountered on your adventures.

Ambush
At 2nd level, you master the art of the ambush. On your first turn during combat, you gain a +10 bonus to your speed. If you use the attack action on that turn, you can make one additional attack.
You gain an additional benefit on all turns after your first turn. At the end of each such turn, you can attempt to hide as a bonus action if you meet the normal requirements for hiding.

Primal Instincts
At 3rd level your survival training has honed your senses to an uncanny level. You can spend an action, and 1 ranger spell slot to use this feature to heighten your senses and gain one of the following benefits.
Primeval Awareness. 
At the 3rd level you can use Primal Instincts to focus your awareness on the region around you. For 1 minute per level of the spell slot you expend, you can sense whether the following types of creatures are present within 1 mile of you (or within 6 miles if you are in your favored terrain): aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. This feature doesn't reveal the creatures' location or number.
Feral Sense. 
At 18th level, you gain preternatural senses that help you fight creatures you cannot see. When you attack a creature you can't see, your inability to see it doen't impose disadvantage on your attack rolls against it. You are also aware of the location of any invisible creature within 30 feet of you, provided that the creature isn't hidden from you and you aren't blinded or deafened.

Foe Slayer
At 20th level, you become an unparalleled hunter of your enemies. On each of your turns, you can now add your Wisdom modifier to both your attack and damage rolls when you make an attack against any foe you face. They no longer need to be one of your favored enemies.

5e Homebrew Rules: Classes - The Ranger (part 1)

Much has been made since the release of 5e that the Ranger class was somehow missing something. I've come across hundreds of blog posts, forum entries and twitter rants on the subject, not to mention a couple of Unearthed Arcana columns partially addressing the topic.

The Ranger has always been a personal favorite of mine, I cut my teeth in 1e many years ago by running Orion the Ranger thru many harrowing adventures in my friend Chris's campaign. Orion eventually reached 15th level and was retired to live out the rest of his days as a Ranger Lord from a keep somewhere on the borderlands.

While I have yet to run a 5e ranger myself, I admit to having a lackluster feeling regarding the class as written. To this end, I've spent countless hours searching the internet for every manner of homebrewed solution I could find. My countless hours of research in other's homebrewed efforts have lead me to the conclusion that if we consider the PHB version of the class to be broken or at least missing something then the host of various internet fixes nearly all error on the side of over-powering the class.

The ranger as written is a fairly solid class, a jack-of-all-trades. Able to hold their own in combat, backed up with utility spellcasting and better than most in the exploration phase of the game, they still lacked a signature power or unique defining characteristic. The Hunter archetype tries to compensate by granting a bevy of options to choose from, some more useful than others but none particularly evocative of what a ranger is. The Beast Master has potential, but the economy of actions seems to put the archetype at a disadvantage.

Of course this leads me to try my own hand at "fixing" the class. My own approach is to simply make a minor alteration or two.

• Give the Ranger expertise in the SURVIVAL skill at 1st level. Similar to a Rogue's skill expertise. Rangers should be the absolute best at wilderness survival and tracking.
• Give a small boost to the Favored Enemy ability. In this case, we grant a small combat bonus to damage based upon the Ranger's WIS modifier.
• Give the Ranger a combat boost by increasing their first strike abilities. We add the AMBUSH ability as described in Unearthed Arcana.
• We modify Feral Senses and lump into the Primeval Awareness ability.
• Do away with the Hide in Plain Site and Vanish abilities as they become redundent with the addition of AMBUSH.

I'm in the process of writing this class up in a pretty PDF file, however I'm finding it's harder than expected... and I'm not so good at it. Stay tuned.

5e Homebrew Rules: Races - The Warforged

Ever since the introduction of the Eberron campaign setting, the Warforged race has been one of my personal favorites.

While WofC has not officially updated them for 5e as of yet, Mike Mearles did take a pass at them in the first of the Unearthed Arcana columns. His draft didn't quite hit the spot for me, so I have taken  a turn at trying to adopt them to 5e in my first Homebrew Rules posting.

Colorful Characters: The Brothers Grimm (part 1)

The Brothers Grimm

A traveling band of misfits, malcontents, grifters, charlatans and monster hunters.

I created these colorful NPC’s years ago after I had first seen the movie “the Brothers Grimm” staring Matt Damon and the late Heath Ledger. I was looking to add some colorful characters to my homebrew world that we were playing in at the time.

Initially, they consisted of a band of traveling misfits akin to a small traveling circus or gypsy band. They provided minor entertainment as well as bringing some petty crime to town. Then I wanted to add a secret element to the group and thought that witch or monster hunters really worked.

In all of their incarnations, the band has always been run by two dwarves, twin brothers known as the Brothers Grimm. Besides the brothers, none of the other members had been named or stated out as I wanted to keep my in-game flexibility. Their roster always included whatever I needed at the time.

Their merry band almost always numbers a lucky 13 members. This includes a core of permanent named members and is then supplemented with added muscle, replacements, temporary members and specialists.

I had come up with the name “Felonius” for a dwarven rogue character that I played in the D&D Stormreach MMO and I liked him so much that I decided he would be the model for the twin brothers leading the Brothers Grimm. Shortly thereafter it lead to the creation of his brother “Larcenius”.

In the time since their original incarnation, I have played one or both of the brothers in a few one off adventures, including an epic castle seige during an Extra-Life charity game last year.

The current roster of the Brothers Grimm for my 5e game is as follows:

Core Members:

Felonius Grimm - (Male Hill Dwarf Figher/Rogue)

Larcenius Grimm - (Male Hill Dwarf Fighter/Rogue)

Ziljinn Popos Zilwinn Grimm - (Male Tinker Gnome Cleric)

Bulwark - (Warforged Fighter)

Farnum Grimm - (Male Human Bard)

Supplemental Members:

3 Goblin Acrobats (Rogue)

2 Human Swashbucklers (Rogue)

2 Dwarf Savages (Barbarians)

1 Dwarf Mystic (Druid)

Stay tuned for detailed character write-ups on the named members.

Epic First Post!

Well, this is it. I've finally gotten motivated enough to fire up a blog and start cataloging all of the nonsense floating around in my head.

I've been a gamer and an avid Dungeons & Dragons lover since I was introduced to the game almost 40 long years go. I was only 8 or 9 at the time. My best friend and I used to follow around a few of the older boys in our neighborhood and one day they decided it would be fun to teach us how to play D&D. We didn't really grasp the rules and we didn't have any of our own rulebooks, but it was sure fun to spend the summer afternoons pretending to be knights, wizards and dwarves off on a quest to defeat the evil dragon and save the princess (and treasure!).

While we've often taken separate roads, Chris and I are still the best of friends and game together as often as we can. Our tastes in games has expanded greatly to include video games, board games, card games and minature war games, but we still play Dungeons & Dragons together when we can.

 Other games and hobbies have come and gone over the years, but I keep coming back to Dungeons & Dragons as my life-long favorite. I've been playing since the advent of the game and played just about every edition and flavor that's seen publication. I'm currently loving the new 5e rules and will be mostly publishing content for that edition of the game.

Thanks for checking out the site, hopefully you'll find something here that you find interesting or useful.