How D&D Ended Up in My Master's Thesis

From 2018-2020, I attended graduate school at Portland State University to get a Master's degree in literature. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I made incredible friends who shared my passions, I got to explore one of my favorite things in the world--literature--and I got to become a true expert in my field, plus being qualified to teach, which was something that brought me to grad school in the first place. Portland State had an interesting program for the thesis. Students who wanted to show their expertise with a traditional thesis could choose that option, but we also had the option to build a college course of our own design and justify it as legitimate and informed material worth considering. As a future educator, I opted for building a class. The requirements largely just required that I choose 16 texts, one for each week of the class. That's when options paralysis set in. 

I had been handed a blank check, and I didn't know what to do with it. I talked to friends, classmates, professors, family, anyone I could think of to find a good idea. I went for a while with "experimental literature," but I ran into too much resistance from defining "experimental" to get started. Eventually, a revelation struck me. I love video games. I love tabletop games. I love weird art, especially stuff that allows you to be a part of it. I love choose your own adventure stories. The common thread was a piece of media in which the audience actually participated in the art. I called these kinds of art "choice-driven texts" to honor the role of audience choice, and I set off running. 

By the time deadlines began to loom, I had meticulously searched and researched for my 16 texts. We were invited to compare work in a class meant to help with the thesis project, and I was mortified. My classmates had collections of Old English poetry and French cinema and nihilist philosophy, and I had a motley collection of weird art. But as I talked about my work, everyone seemed to feel the flip side of the coin--they all had conventional collections of proven art, and I was blazing a trail somewhere else entirely. My "Choice Theory" solidified in my mind, and I knew I was onto something. 

I organized my 16 texts into a spectrum. At one end would be the least interactive (though still interactive), and the other end would represent maximal interactivity. The least interactive was John Cage's 4'3", in which the real performance is the audience making quiet sounds while a pianist doesn't play. The most interactive was the fascinating tabletop game Don't Rest Your Head by Fred Hicks, in which very few rules and highly creative character powers designed by the player allow for massive freedom. Along the way were podcasts, movies, video games, poetry books, graphic novels, performance art pieces, and "experimental" novels--and D&D 5E. I chose the module Lost Mine of Phandelver by Rich Baker and Chris Perkins for several reasons. 

Firstly, Lost Mine was the big push for modules at the beginning of 5E's time. It was described by many as the unofficial starting point for 5E players, a sort of low-level module where you could learn the new rules with a classic D&D story. Even actual play D&D podcasts latched onto the module as a way to ease into the new edition. Lost Mine was something where I could point to different recordings of people playing the module and show how different player choices were and the effect that had. It was a truly vital piece of evidence in my reasoning, and Lost Mine accomplished it perfectly. 

Secondly, Lost Mine was about as straightforward D&D as you can get. There's a captured ally, some nasty foes, a few traps and puzzles, leveled loot at the end--it's incredibly D&D. By using Lost Mine, I could use a module that captured what modern D&D is about and how it references its roots. That meant I could call in all of D&D as a related example, and since D&D is the beginning of tabletop games, I could at a stretch talk about tabletop games. And that meant I could justify Don't Rest Your Head even though I had no documented playthroughs of it (I would get this one later on with my wife). So Lost Mine being very classic D&D allowed me to take some liberties in talking about broader TTRPGs. 

Lastly, Lost Mine established something very important: just because you give the audience the power to make any choice like D&D does does not mean you automatically become the most interactive media ever. Not only did Don't Rest Your Head since the game is radically freer about player abilities (not to mention the manual explicitly states it's an "expert game" meant to facilitate storytelling, not combat), but a performance art piece came in as more interactive than Lost Mine: Rhythm 0, a performance by Marina Abramović in which she laid out over 70 objects (a feather, blue paint, a revolver and bullet, a razor, etc) and invited the audience to use the objects on her--she was the object. Things got out of hand, and Abramović suffered injuries, sexual assault, and an attempt on her life. I reasoned that this was more radically interactive than Lost Mine for reasons I hope are clear. In any case, freedom to choose is complicated, and Lost Mine helped me to illustrate that. 

So D&D played an important role in my Master's thesis in several ways, and I don't think that it really could have played out any other way. Readers who have checked the publication dates of the articles here on this site may have noticed that there were a handful of articles before grad school, none during grad school, and then large amounts whenever I wasn't teaching--this is in part because working with my choice-driven texts including two tabletop games really helped me to understand them better, because I had learned to be a better writer, and because I had realized more fully just how much these games meant to me. And it turned out that was a lot, as the four and a half years that followed turned out to contain hundreds of new ideas and interpretations. In a lot of ways, grad school and my Master's thesis turned out to be what made this site what it is. 

My thesis ideas didn't go away after graduation. In a podcast I do with the player of Ell, Ais, and Lethanin, we've spent out second season digging into my thesis for half of our content (while my cohost spends half our time on their own sprawling topic). That has had a terrific advantage in addressing my work--whereas my professors knew either nothing about my texts or knew vaguely of the idea behind the texts (what choose your own adventure means, the general concept of roleplaying games, the gist of what I was arguing), my cohost is a longtime gamer and fan of experimental, weird art. You can see where we would be friends given the shared experience and interest. We've gotten to tease out some interesting and dazzling conclusions and ideas in the podcast, and it's been a blast to really refine what I worked on in grad school. 

And of course, working with TTRPGs in a deep academic capacity made me think differently about the games and how they're played. That helped me grow as a GM--I had had to explain what a tabletop roleplaying game is about five dozen times while working on my thesis, and that meant that I had to understand how to communicate big ideas about the games very clearly, and that helped me to explain game ideas to my players more effectively. Another benefit was learning how to think in greater depth about things I had already formed ideas about--I turned this attitude towards my writing here on the site, and I ended up able to create detailed guides on all manner of subjects that had never occurred to me before. After all, this site came to have articles on tattoo styles among my homebrew groups, a one-shot based on the movie Napoleon Dynamite, and four novels written about my last D&D character. Taking D&D on academically helped me to think new things, and that really unlocked a lot of possible avenues to explore here. 

When I reflect on my thesis, I am often left fairly baffled. I recall the months of trying to convince university professors that choose your own adventure books written for kids and violent video games and a book where all the pages are split into strips so that you can rearrange the lines in the poems was worth academic study on the same level as Shakespeare. It was exhausting work that rarely had a satisfying conclusion. It was really only once the whole thing was assembled that I could explain what I was doing--I needed a sequence of escalating examples to illustrate what my very abstract idea actually was. It helped me communicate better, and ultimately, I think I still went into my thesis defense very nervous. I'd felt confidently on my written exams, which had been tailored to my thesis (at least, kind of--even my advisor didn't know my texts well enough to write questions I could work with, including one question that was unanswerable because it specified text genres that I didn't have represented in my work). But orally describing what I'd spent two years building, with the consequence that I didn't graduate and would have to abandon grad school altogether for financial reasons, was still a lot to contend with. I sat down for my defense and hoped for the best. 

My panel was my advisor, a professor I'd had in my first class in grad school, and a comics studies professor I had never met aside from begging her to be in my panel since she would at least understand the graphic novel I had chosen. Together, the three of them knew two texts and the general thrust of my arguments. I had an hour to convince them that my pop culture smorgasbord mattered. They asked for explanations, expansions, and clarifications of things I had written in my oral exam. They poked at relevant details, probing for content and meaning. They took in explanations of things that were not represented on my written exams, like texts that hadn't come up. (They were especially intrigued by Rhythm 0, which was to them the most convincing evidence of what I had to say.) I answered to my best ability, trying always to both add new ideas that would complete my overall vision and bring things back to the overall point I was trying to make: we need a new field of study, a new language, a new conceptual framework to understand these choice-driven texts. I created that vocabulary for the thesis and proposed that any text that offers choice to the audience be granted a different status, one that recognizes the role of the audience. 

In the end, I was sent out of the room for my panel to deliberate. I waited anxiously, reviewing my words to see if what I had said would be enough. I knew that I had taken a huge risk by compiling an atypical project. For other students, their selections represented a decision making process guided by what was most literarily valuable within a genre, what interesting takes could be gleaned from a particular combination of art. But for me, my selections had to justify a new field of study; they had to define the concept I was describing and give a foundation to my work. I hadn't just built a class--I had built a theoretical framework, and as I waited, I wondered if my panel thought it was a worthwhile effort to have committed to. 

I was called back in. I was told by three smiling professors that I had been granted my Master's degree, and I was commended on my work. My advisor said that seeing the project from start to finish had been an exciting pleasure. The comics studies professor expressed shock, having had little concept of how sprawling my work would be beyond my chosen graphic novel, Batman: A Death in the Family. The professor I had had for my first class was the biggest surprise. He was normally a reserved man, and quiet, but in this moment, he spoke effusively, saying that I really had discovered a new field of study, that it seemed worth exploring, and that he wished me luck making a career of it. The panel agreed that my work was the most interesting and creative they'd ever seen. I felt a wave of relief that lasted for days. I had done it. I hadn't just gotten a Master's degree, but I had gotten it with the respect of my heroes, the people I wanted to be like. 

When I reflect on the fact that I spent two years building a Master's thesis that included a smattering of weird art, I'm not surprised. That's who I am. I'm not going to contest that. But for Lost Mine of Phandelver and Don't Rest Your Head to be included in a project that was uniformly deemed valuable, interesting, and creative--that is really special to me. When I learned to play D&D and was introduced to the world of TTRPGs, D&D was not cool yet. D&D was something people barely understood if they did at all. It was a pasttime exclusively practiced by the nerdy, and it was considered a fairly niche interest. That's all changed now. D&D has a huge, successful movie (and likely a franchise); Stranger Things raised the profile of D&D; 5E has brought many new players into the fold--it's a different world than I started playing in. But that old world still lives in my heart, and to bring the lowly, nerdy, strange D&D representation to a Master's thesis felt rebellious and fun. I hadn't just won my panel's approval--I had put my favorite things on the line, made myself vulnerable, and asked for judgment only to be approved of and lauded. I felt like D&D was vindicated and that it had vindicated me. 

So maybe's it's no surprise that when I graduated my program and had lots of free time before I could start working as a teacher, I turned to D&D. In February of 2021, two months after completing my Master's degree, I turned back to this site. I posted this brief summary of a campaign I had stopped taking notes on long before and a little note that I would be trying to post more often. And before the three other days of February had passed, I had posted four new articles. Regular readers of this era of Over the DM's Shoulder know that my productivity comes in bursts--several weeks or months of frequent updates, and months of few updates. But 2021 was where the foundation for this site came from. I wrote 121 articles that year, nearly half of the total content on this site as of this writing. I really do believe that writing about and working with D&D in my Master's thesis was the thing that enabled all of that output, and I'm proud to have used what I learned in grad school to be able to better write for this site. 

Final thoughts: few things have touched me in this life like TTRPGs have. The hundreds of guides here attest to that, as do the novels I wrote about a D&D character, as does the inclusion of Lost Mine in my Master's thesis. And I'd like to share something about my writing for this site that I've never said elsewhere. I like to think that people can benefit from the advice, worldbuilding, original games, and whatever else they may connect to that I've made here. I see lots of visits on my site, but I don't know how many of them are legitimately interested readers. What keeps me writing, nearly 250 articles and almost 10 years after starting this site, is that it makes me happy. Every guide to my homebrew world helps me know my world better. Every how-to helps me decide what actions I want to try to take. Every session notes recap helps me connect to my own campaigns better. Every original game makes me stretch my creative abilities. I benefit from all of this, which is why I've taken to urging you, the reader, to do the same in your work. So yes, I hope there are gamers out there reading all of this and learning from it. And yes, I like seeing the article count get higher and the visit count spike--it feels nice. But ultimately, D&D just makes me happy, and I write here because it allows me to enjoy that happiness. And since D&D makes me happy, Lost Mine showing up in my Master's thesis was probably inevitable--it's just part of who I am at this point. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: the core values of each group in my homebrew setting and how they pursue them, the flags of each major city in my homebrew setting, and education in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

Profiles on the Warlock Pact Patrons in My Homebrew Setting

Until Of Gods and Dragons, the many campaigns I have run in my homebrew setting have never included a Warlock. This is in part because I ran 3.5, which does not have the class Warlock, for much of my DMing career before switching to 5E. And even then, I worked with small parties, and it just happened that no one ever selected Warlock. At the same time, I've only ever played D&D as a player once in 5E, and I played a rogue-cleric, so I also didn't have experience as a Warlock. As a result, I never thought much about Warlocks and especially not about the elder forces that empower them. But when the character Brokk appeared in my world, a monk-warlock cross-class character, I suddenly was faced with the question of the Warlock patrons. Brokk's player said he wanted Magoth to be Brokk's patron, a king of the underworld who had had a part in creating the war machine that birthed Brokk. I'll admit it: I had reservations about carving out a space for the literal devil in my homebrew setting. It felt tonally off. But Brokk's player was passionate about the idea, an adaptation of something in his own homebrew setting, so I ran with it. At the time of this writing, Brokk is beginning plans to confront Magoth, which will have sweeping consequences regardless of how it plays out, and I've realized that I badly need to explore the Warlock patrons in my world. 

I want to note that the Player's Handbook offers a few options here. I'm going to keep those and adapt them slightly to fit what's canon in my world, and I'm also going to create a few from scratch that would exist in my world. Specifically, the Player's Handbook names three "otherworldly patrons," namely The Archfey, The Fiend, and The Great Old One. I'll tackle these adaptations of what's in the Player's Handbook first, and then get into the patrons that I've created. These descriptions are for lore and worldbuilding purposes, but I am also going to include class abilities for each patron in case any of these get used in the future. So let's get started--here are the Warlock patrons of my homebrew setting.

The Archfae

In my world, the Faewyld is a confusing and haunting space where multiple dimensions exist at once. It takes mortals months or even years of time in the Faewyld to adjust to the disorientation. The Fae and other creatures who live in the Faewyld are typically extremely chaotic, but they generally tend toward good actions in the end. Extremely powerful Fae have a strong enough grasp of magic that they are able to grant power to those who are willing to serve them. Fae of this sort are typically elevated in some way in Fae society, be it through political leadership or achievement in magic, but sheer power is enough to grant a Fae access to being a patron. 

To become a Warlock with the Archfae, one must strike a deal. Fae are famous for negotiating and striking bargains, the conditions of which are not always clear upon making the deal. In Of Gods and Dragons, Aurora gained her access to her custom class by striking a deal with a Fae (perhaps an Archfae in secret?), and Aurora would not know until session twelve that the price of her powers was destroying the city she came from. It is not uncommon for an Archfae to select a humanoid to accomplish one large task and then leave them alone, seeking a new and specially qualified humanoid for their next big goal, but still supporting the old humanoid so long as they serve the Archfae's interests. 

Class Abilities:

Fae Bearing

Starting at 1st level, your character is inherently more charming like the Fae. All Persuasion checks made with a +2 modifier and can roll one Persuasion check with advantage per long rest. 

Dimension Step

Starting at 6th level, your character is able to step across dimensions as though in the Faewyld. You are able to disappear and then reappear within 100 feet as a free action, used once per long rest.

Defense Against Influence

Starting at 10th level, when someone is using a Persuasion or Diplomacy check against you, you can use a successful Wisdom saving throw (DC 14) to see past their words given your experience with Fae communication. You get advantage on saving throws against mind-affecting magic. 

Faewyld Tour

Starting at 14th level, you can send a creature to the Faewyld, where the unsettling shape of the world will terrorize them. Once per long rest, you can invoke this power against a creature, which must roll a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. A failure means spending up to 10 minutes in the Faewyld or until the Warlock recalls the creature, whichever comes first; a success means being stunned for 1d6 rounds. 

Magoth, King of the Underworld

Far below the other dimensions lies a primordial area that defies imagination. Mortals on Izar talk about lakes of lava and endless fires, pain that cannot be escaped, psychological torment that goes forever. But Magoth's realm is more akin to deprivation. All is black. There is a feeling of constriction, of paralysis, of not quite getting enough air on each breath. But no other sensation is experienced by any in this lowest dimension--even Magoth himself is subject to the constant agony of his realm, prodding him to continue inflicting pain on those he has claimed--all former champions who disappointed Magoth. None in Magoth's realm have power except for him, and his power is enough to be a patron, but inadequate for him to escape his own punishment. 

To strike a deal with Magoth, one must forsake all that they have in the world and will ever have, promising to always wreak pain and suffering on the living. Magoth has made allowances for champions who have a single-minded hate of one group of people, but his favorite champions are those who have a blind hatred of all people. Because Magoth is considered an obscure and occult interest, fewer people are aware of him than other Warlock patrons, but Magoth has counteracted this by communicating directly with cultists, who have been able to spread word of the lowest dimension and its ruler. 

Class Abilities:

Consumption of Life

Starting at 1st level, can leech life directly from an enemy; your character can regain up to your Charisma modifier + your Warlock level when you reduce a creature to 0 hit points. 

Magoth's Hatred

Starting at 6th level, you can focus Magoth's hatred--on any attack, skill check, or saving throw, you can roll with advantage thanks to your channeled rage. You must declare the advantaged roll before rolling. Works once per long rest. 

Demonic Resistance

Starting at 10th level, you become inured to the pain of Magoth. Every long rest, you may choose a new damage type; you are resistant to this damage type until your next long rest. Magical weapons and silver weapons ignore this resistance. 

Time In Hell

Starting at 14th level, you can send a creature to Magoth's realm when you strike it and deal at least half of the roll's possible damage. The creature spends what seems like years in the constrictive nothingness, then reappears where it was at the end of its next turn. The creature must perform a Wisdom saving throw (your Warlock spell save DC) or take 12d10 psychic damage. 

The Ancient

Relatively little is known of what space looks like beyond Izar, but somewhere out there beyond the reach of telescopes and imagination are ancient beings suited for life in the unnourishing void of nothingness. Those who have made contact have described a wide variety of beings, ranging from incorporeal glowing entities to massive, lumbering, shapeless things to imperceptible combinations of senses that overwhelm the onlooker. The entities lack names or traditional communication as known by humanoids, but when contacted, some have been willing to lend some of their unknowable power to those who strike them as interesting. 

To enter a pact with an Ancient, one must first learn how to contact one, a feat requiring a great deal of arcane study; then, one must contact Ancient after Ancient until one strikes the Ancient's fancy; then they must discuss the powers to be shared and the conditions of one's power. This can take years or even decades. One of the greatest challenges is in learning to communicate with the Ancient, a task that can require considerable trial and error before introductions can even be made. 

Class Abilities:

Language of the Stars

Starting at 1st level, you can communicate telepathically with any creature within 30 feet of you after the ordeal of learning to communicate with an eldritch being. This power works with any creature who can speak at least one language. 

Turn the Tides

Starting at 6th level, you can see through the world as it is. When you are attacked, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on their attack. If they miss, you can attack on your next turn with advantage. 

Celestial Armor

Starting at 10th level, you are immune to any means of reading your mind after being fortified by your patron. You are also immune to psychic damage, reflecting any psychic damage back to the creature attacking you. 

Eldritch Bond

Starting at 14th level, you gain the ability to charm one humanoid which is incapacitated as your patron does. Your patron takes partial control of that humanoid, keeping them charmed until remove curse is cast or the ability is used again. You can telepathically communicate with the charmed humanoid as long as you are on the same plane of existence. 

Zxete, the Force of Change

While scientists and philosophers struggle to define the causes and effects of changes in all variety of contexts, what invariably must be agreed to exist is the change itself. But while changes have effects, the change itself is not the effect. This force--the change itself--is a living, sentient energy which brings more changes with it. The Force of Change, called by some Zxete, has an everchanging personality which is at turns spiteful or benevolent, subdued or manic, refined or base, all in constantly shifting ways both gradual and sudden. The Force of Change favors those most touched by its effects, those who have known great upheaval or growth in life. 

To enter a pact with Zxete, one must endure or cause tremendous change. Once one has survived the great change and mastered it, Zxete becomes willing to grant an audience to the potential champion. Zxete is only interested in champions who will both have a claim to Its power and further Its agenda. That agenda is not revealed to the champion, who Zxete will reveal the full agenda only as it comes to be. Zxete communicates in a manner that is equivalent to telepathy, but which uses change itself to form words that can be understood by humanoids. 

Class Abilities:

Altered Perception

Starting at 1st level, you can see the world for the changing processes that it is. You gain +2 to all Perception checks and can roll one Perception check with advantage per long rest. 

Cascading Effects

Starting at 6th level, once per day, you can see the effects of changes; roll a Charisma check (DC 14) to ascertain the major consequences of any action, identical to casting the spell Augury, with the exception that the timeframe affected is one day rather than thirty minutes. 

Zxete's Force

Starting at 10th level, you can redirect energy that is focused on changing you. If a creature makes an attack against you, you can negate the damage and focus it instead on another creature within 100 feet. Reroll the damage, adding 2d6. 

Forced Change

Starting at 14th level, you can impose massive change on a humanoid once per long rest. The humanoid gets a Wisdom saving throw at the Warlock's spell save DC. A success means nothing happens. A failure means the target will experience a massive change determined by rolling a d6:

1 - Race changes at random

2 - Age changes at random

3 - Appearance changes at random

4 - Equipment changes at random

5 - Personality changes at random

6 - Two of the above change at random; roll twice, ignore doubles of the same option, if 6 is rolled again then add another roll

Existence

Everything that exists--every star and planet and moon and sun in the cosmos; every living thing that ever has been, is, or will be; every idea, feeling, or spiritual sensation; simply everything that could be and is, real or imagined--has a trace of natural energy in it. Individually, the natural energy of say, a blade of grass or a story once told by a halfling 6,000 years ago, is not much, though it is undeniable. But all of that natural energy is connected, and together, it forms the strongest force in all of existence--existence itself. Existence, as a powerful conscious form of life, tends towards the good and ordered in things, and only chooses champions who will meaningfully advance the wellbeing of the universe. Existence, a term only chosen because the entity resists a name, is more interested in action than knowledge, though it is partially formed of all information. 

To enter a pact with the entity of all existence, one must be learn to recognize the natural energy in oneself and in all things, forming relationships with those energies until the combined energy of existence trusts them. The champion-to-be must propose a meeting, which existence accepts or denies based on whether it believes the champion-to-be will advance good and order. Existence then speaks to the champion-to-be, relating some of the truth of the universe, revealing information and experiences valuable to achieving shared goals. Once the champion has recovered from the unveiling of universal truths, existence grants its champion powers and returns them to life with a new understanding of the universe. 

Class Abilities:

Universal Connection

Starting at 1st level, you contain the wisdom of the things around you; all Wisdom-based skills get a +1 bonus. 

The Ebb and Flow of Life

Starting at 6th level, your connection to the world around you means that you an share life force with them. By focusing for one round, you can draw life force from the world around you; roll 2d8 hit points to harmlessly absorb life from the universe. Can be used once per long rest. 

The Whole Universe

Starting at 10th level, you can target the foes of existence's agenda more effectively. Existence itself bends reality to grant you +2 AC against chaotic or evil enemies, and advantage on attack rolls against chaotic evil enemies. 

The Fabric of Reality

Starting at 14th level, you can guide the forces of existence yourself. Once per long rest, you may grant advantage to any roll (including other creatures' rolls) and impose disadvantage on any roll (including other creatures' rolls). 

Dyzyq

Witches on Izar have a variety of routes to honing their craft: one can study and master the arcane arts, others are born into powers they refine, and still others strike a bargain to become Warlocks. Those who take the Warlock route usually choose Dyzyq as their patron. Unlike other Warlock patrons, Dyzyq accepts all who come to her for power; the catch is that she only empowers those who agree with her ideals, which tend to be neutral good with an occasional flair for the chaotic. Dyzyq draws her power from nature, and she teaches her champions to draw their power from nature too--alchemy is highly popular among Warlocks of Dyzyq. Dyzyq also demands that her champions practice a craft--after all, it is witchcraft, and most Warlocks of Dyzyq practice one practical skill like weaving or carving as well as one magical skill like divination or enchantment. Legend says that Dyzyq is herself an ascended witch, or perhaps the first witch, but no one is sure.

To enter a pact with Dyzyq, one must learn of her through study or by chance. Contacting her requires what amounts to a prayer asking for her guidance, at which point Dyzyq speaks to the champion-to-be, helping to reveal things about them that they did not know. Dyzyq bestows her power slowly; while other patrons give their power in steps, Dyzyq requires that her champions seek out and learn new secrets of magic and craft with her help, which she tends to bestow graciously. A champion's relationship with Dyzyq is more akin to a religious one than a traditional pact.

Class Abilities:

Skilled in the Craft

Starting at 1st level, you become more skilled in the crafts of witchcraft. Of the skills Arcana, Nature, and Medicine, choose one to get a +2 bonus and another one to get a +1 bonus. 

Cloak Against Magic

Starting at 6th level, you gain protection from natural magic. You gain a +2 bonus on all rolls against magic directed at you (spell saves, rolls to take partial damage, etc.), and an Arcana check of DC 14 allows you to redirect the spell if the first roll is successful.

Expert Casting

Starting at 10th level, you become more in tune with the natural magic of Dyzyq. Once per long rest, you can roll any spell-related roll (spell attacks, spell damage, dice-determined effects) with advantage; an Arcana check of DC 15 allows you to roll with double advantage. 

Crafted Spell

Starting at 14th level, your grasp of witchcraft allows you to empower your magic. Once per day, with a skill check of DC 15, either Arcana, Nature, or Medicine, you can cast any spell at one power level higher as though it were cast with a higher spell slot. You can cast your highest level spell with this ability and receive an effect outside of your ability. You cannot choose spells from a level you have not reached. This heightened spell gets any spellcasting roll (spell attacks, spell damage, dice-determined effects) to automatically achieve maximum score. 

Why I Use a Combination of 3.5 and 5E Rules

It's commonly considered pretty standard to play the current edition of a game. Most current D&D players play 5E and are abuzz about the upcoming new edition. I think that has a lot to do with the current generation of gamers being relatively new to tabletop games, which is in no way a criticism--you have to start somewhere. But as a more long-time gamer, my perspective is different. I was introduced to the tabletop world with D&D 3.5, a revision of the game's third edition. And I became very familiar with the rules of 3.5--so familiar, in fact, that I would entertain friends by referring to exact page numbers and page positions of specific information they were asking for. I had genuinely memorized the players handbook. Learning 5E was a long process; I had many things to unlearn and relearn. But ultimately, they are relatively similar systems, and each has its strengths. That's part of why I use a combination of 3.5 and 5E rules when I run D&D. 

Let's start with some information on 3.5 for those who are unfamiliar. Generally, in its time, it was a beloved system, but many complained that it was overly clunky. This idea is what led to the creation of Pathfinder, a game that set out to "fix" 3.5's flaws. (I haven't played Pathfinder personally, but I own the manual, and I agree that it looks a bit more elegant--you can also see where 5E was inspired by some decisions.) Nevertheless, 3.5 has some strengths that it's hard to ignore. My favorite thing about 3.5 was the way skills were structured. Where in 5E, you choose a few skills (depending on your class) to be boosted by your proficiency bonus, in 3.5, you would be given a bank of skill points at every level, which you would then invest in the skills you saw fit. There was a limit on how many skill points you could put in a skill, linked to your class levels, to prevent entirely broken numbers, but it still got out of control quickly. So what was great about this structure if it already sounds broken? 

It helped players in a number of ways. Firstly, it gave more control over what a character is good at to the player. Instead of a mere proficiency bonus, I could decide that my character had really focused on a few skills. This is incredibly useful for rogues, who need sizable bonus to skills like stealth and deception to be reliably helpful. (Of course, those skills were different things in 3.5--more on that later.) Players could also more easily choose to become fairly talented in multiple things, becoming jacks-of-all-trades in a way that 5E doesn't really allow for. (3.5 also had a system for making skills easier to access for certain classes where it cost double points to invest skill points in a skill that wasn't in the domain of your class. It was something I enjoyed for the added strategy of choosing a class and skills, but I know many people disliked it. I have abandoned it in my homebrew.) This skill system allowed for greater control and creativity with skills. 

Another advantage is the ability to redirect a character in the middle of a campaign. In 5E, when you want to change your character's path, you can change classes, but a lot of your character is set in stone. Your skills remain as they are, and you don't get to add new skill proficiencies. But in 3.5, you had the ability to totally control your skill points. You could then entirely change where your new skill points go, shifting all of your character's focus in the new direction. By way of example, I am currently playing a character who has six levels of rogue as a con artist, but has recanted her dishonest ways and become a healer with four levels of life domain cleric. I lived and died by my skill checks before as a rogue, but now, my skills as healer are very low. I'm playing a healer with a +13 to Deception and only a +4 to Medicine, and I can't really do much about that. If we were using the 3.5 skills system, I could have spent all my level-ups as a cleric putting points into Medicine so that I'd be more suited for my new role. It's worth noting that my situation is driven by role-playing, so this suggests that 3.5's skill system is more attuned to role-playing than 5E's. 

Finally, 3.5's skill system allowed players to become more powerful with specific skills than 5E allows, and I would argue that this does not break the game, but instead allows for more faithful role-playing. As I noted above, it was possible to get pretty crazy numbers for your skills in 3.5 if you were strategic. I played a cross-class Cleric of Boccob (the god of magic)/Wizard when I was first learning to play, and he managed to get a +18 in Bluff (3.5's version of Deception) despite being lower level than my 5E rogue/cleric. In practical game terms, this meant that sometimes, a character was almost guaranteed success on a roll. This happens in D&D, sometimes with the attack rolls of mighty warriors and other times on the Performance checks of talented bards. With this skill system, a sufficiently skilled character could reasonably have +18 to a skill, which would indicate that they're so good at the skill, they would almost never fail at it. I don't see it as a broken game so much as a way to acknowledge that a character is so good at something that they reliably succeed at it. This is especially rewarding as a player--feeling as though you can consistently do well at something is rewarding even when experienced narratively. It empowers your players. 

Another feature of 3.5 worth considering was its handling of feats. In 5E, you get the choice of a feat or something else (an ability score improvement when leveling, for instance). In 3.5, you get a feat independently of the ability score improvement every three levels. These feats are, as they are in 5E, exciting ways to boost your character. But in my experience with 5E, no one really takes the feats. Ability score improvements are generally more helpful, and the feats come off as optional. In 3.5, the feats were a regular and enjoyable part of the game. Every three levels, you would get to build on your character with powerful abilities, some which unlocked more powerful abilities down the line. These feats, made a proper part of the game, were very rewarding and helped make characters feel more heroic and exciting. 

I have one last thing that I borrow from 3.5 in my games, but it's not exactly a rules consideration. I really like that 5E includes multiple very distinct pantheons of deities in the appendices--I think that it allows DMs and players a wide range of possible experiences. However, in my experience, that list of pantheons is misunderstood. Many of the players I have run games for use the entire list as a roster of deities instead of using each individual list of deities as the group. It's the kind of small detail I'm loath to correct, but it ends up kind of breaking the game for me. On the other hand, I've written quite a bit about the 3.5 deities in my homebrew setting, so I choose to keep this more limited range of gods. Part of the reason, too, is that some players appeal to gods randomly and strike them from the list when the interaction goes sour. A smaller group means that strategy runs out of gas more quickly. Remember that your comfort zone as a DM is important too!

Beyond those things, 5E is either an updated, smoothed out version of 3.5 or an expansion on it, and I don't make many further distinctions. I do need to add, though, that although I prefer the 3.5 skill system, I do not prefer the 3.5 list of skills. As many people decried back in the day, making "Move Silently" and "Hide" different skills only meant that sneaking characters were twice as likely to fail. "Spot" and "Listen" were similarly frustrating distinctions, as was "Spot" and "Search" to many players. It wasn't that the list was bad--it was just too broad to be able to be strategic in-game, and it was hard to spread your skill points when some skills had a required balanced skill. So I use the much cleaner, more refined list from 5E, but with the 3.5 system of skill points. 

What is that system? I've reproduced it below for your use in your own homebrew games:

Class	1st-Level Skill Points	Higher-Level Skill Points
Barbarian	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Bard	(6 + INT modifier) x 4	6 + INT modifier
Cleric	(2 + INT modifier) x4	2 + INT modifier
Druid	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Fighter	(2 + INT modifier) x4	2 + INT modifier
Monk	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Paladin	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Ranger	(6 + INT modifier) x 4	6 + INT modifier
Rogue	(8 + INT modifier) x 4	8 + INT modifier
Sorcerer	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Warlock	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Wizard	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier

I've added Warlock to this table with the same skills as the other main spellcasters, but feel free to adjust any of these numbers to suit your needs best. Every time a character levels up, have them spend their earned points to increase it. If you're using a digital character sheet maker, you may need to override the settings to get this to work--I've employed magical items with the same effect to get it to show up right on a character sheet in similar situations. 

So, I recommend that you give this skill system, the old feats rules, and whatever worldbuilding details suit you best a try. You may find that your players enjoy the increased sense of empowerment and improvement as characters. And remember--gaming inspiration can come from anywhere: the past, present, or future, inside or outside the gaming world. Whatever it is for you, find it. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why most first-time D&D players are more Neutral than Chaotic-Neutral, a list of interesting cities to use in your game, and an expanded list of thieves cant. Until next time, happy gaming!