Action Points for All

Action points in CORE20 (written up in chapter 5, “Playing the Game” of the CORE20 Player’s Guide) are a mechanic that grants a heroic edge to player characters. Action points are built on a foundation of the action points that appeared in 3rd edition D&D’s Unearthed Arcana supplement, and the variation of those rules that were a core part of the Eberron campaign setting. Anyone who played Pathfinder 1st edition using that game’s Advanced Player’s Guide will also recognize the evolution of the original action point concept in the hero points mechanic.

Player characters gain action points in CORE20 by taking the Heroic Action feat, which every starting character gains as a bonus feat, and which grants 1 action point at the start of each game session. (A player who wants their character’s heroic edge to be even more sharply honed can take the Heroic Action feat up to three times, granting up to 3 action points at the start of each session.)

By spending an action point, a player can provide their character with a wide range of benefits:

• Gain advantage on a d20 roll before making it
• Gain a reroll on a d20 roll already made
• Gain an extra move action or minor action
• Make an extra attack
• Cast a 0-level spell
• Turn a critical hit or grievous hit into a regular hit
• Automatically recover while dying to return to life with 1 critical point

Characters can also share action points, allowing a player to grant their character’s action point to another player’s character who needs to pull off a clutch move. Sharing action points in game might play out as one character shouting encouragement that grants an ally a reroll on an important attack or defense roll, or having a dying character share an action point to represent the fury an ally feels at seeing their comrade fall.

Whither GM?

In talking about player characters, the breakdown above establishes that action points are for players only. The full “Action Points” section in chapter 5 of the Player’s Guide underlines that idea, which was an intentional part of the action point design. 

For me, mechanics like action points are intended to give the players an intentional edge. They’re meant to let the heroes pull off wild moments of unexpected success while facing impossible odds. Action points are about turning bad moments in the game into triumphs — and as such, giving action points to the GM felt as though it would have undercut that by letting the GM potentially turn player triumphs and high points into unexpected negative beats within the story.

For this same reason, I’ve never liked 5e D&D’s legendary resistance for monsters, which is why you don’t see that mechanic in CORE20. For me, as a lifetime forever GM, I don’t like bringing abilities into play that make the players feel as if their coolest attacks, their most potent spells, and the fortune represented by their best die rolls have been wasted. 

The Cost of Success

About a year ago, though, I was inspired to think about GM action points in a new way as a result of noticing a typical pattern in the way action points were used during games. Because the player characters start each session with their action points reset and ready to be used, most players weigh the benefit of using an action point early in the game against waiting to use it later when it might do even more good. The classic example of this thought process comes in a combat-heavy session when a player decides against using an action point to gain an offensive advantage, expecting that they might have more of a need to use it later for defense, especially negating a critical hit or automatically recovering while dying.

Looking at how players were using action points this way created a clear sense that action points already had a variable cost. The longer a player waits to use an action point, the more it’s potentially worth to them. And from that observation came the idea of building on that cost model to give GMs access to action points — but in way that gives the players a measure of control over how much GM action points are worth.

Spend and Receive

In a test of a GM action points system that I and a number of other CORE20 GMs have been running for a number of months now, each time a player uses an action point in a session, the GM gains an action point. GMs have no baseline pool of action points they can draw from before the first player action point is spent in a session, and just like with players, GM action points reset (to 0 in the GM’s case) at the start of each game session.

Each time a player considers whether to use an action point or not, that decision now comes with an extra layer of potential cost. “Is the benefit I gain from using this action point right now worth the potential benefit I give to the GM?”

GM action points are usable in all the same ways that players can use action points, but also have additional guidelines:

• Just as a player can use only one action point on their turn, the GM can use only one action point per turn of any creature they control.
• A GM can’t use an action point to counter any roll for which a player uses an action point.

With the system having been initially playtested, GM action points will be part of the next revision of the CORE20 Player’s Guide for the public playtest. But GMs can make use of the revised rules right now by downloading the revised “Action Points” section from chapter 5 of the Player’s Guide.

Art by Dean Spencer

Ye Olde Magic

As it is in most fantasy RPGs, magic and spellcasting is a central pillar of the game and the world of CORE20. “Magic Among the Worldborn” in the introduction to the CORE20 Magic Grimoire sets out the broad history of magic and its evolution in Isheridar — the fantasy world that establishes a baseline for the rules of the game. Your CORE20 campaign absolutely doesn’t need to be set in Isheridar (with a number of GMs I’ve talked to running CORE20 campaigns set in the Forgotten Realms and other classic settings). But talking about the relationship between that world and the game’s rules is an effective way of letting GMs and players understand how to adjust that relationship for their own worlds.

Primordial Power

Primordial arcane power was the first magic wielded by the worldborn, arising among the kobolds in their migrations out of the forbidden dragon heartland of Taliyad more than ten thousand years ago. The origins of primordial magic’s chaotic and destructive power are long lost to time, and are occluded by folk history that almost certainly misstates how the kobolds were granted the mastery of magic by their dragon kin. (Among other things, such lore is contradicted by the fact that dragons have never used primordial magic as far as any histories note.) Still, the magical and elemental fury of the dragons was almost certainly the model that the kobolds sought to mimic when they channeled eldritch power for the first time.

In the lands closest to Taliyad, the oldest tales of kobold witness history record that the first mystics to channel arcane power did so in a legendarily destructive and uncontrolled manner, driven by endless curiosity and a profound lack of self-preservation. Unlike spellcasting’s ordered flow of magic, primordial magic was a personal shaping of magical potential, catalyzing magical effects along the boundary between an invoker’s intent and the raw fury of arcane power. 

Over millennia, the kobolds honed this new art of personal arcane craft, recording it through narrative traditions and stone inscriptions in shrines dedicated to magic. In its earliest forms, primordial magic was an even more chaotic art then the longstanding primordial forms known and learned in the world today. Only a select few were able to fully shape and master the art in the days of the early kobold clans. But over time, the goal of taming the capriciousness of arcane power passed beyond the heroes and warlords who had first mastered its destructive potential, becoming the subject of critical research by kobold scholars and sages. Those who studied primordial magic were the first to understand the broader potential of arcane power — and it was through them that the channeling of magic spread to the folk of other lineages.

The Old Arcana

As it’s presented in the game, primordial magic is the oldest form of arcane magic, predating the spellcasting traditions that have long since supplanted it. Primordial magic is a personal magic, shaped and honed by intent and necessity in ways beyond the rigid forms that spellcasting allows. But within the game, primordial magic is defined in terms of spellcasting, with the rules effectively reversing the relationship between primordial magic and spellcasting to make primordial magic as easy to play as possible.

Primordial magic is modeled very much after the first presentation of the warlock in D&D, from 3rd edition’s Complete Arcane — the first D&D book I ever worked on as an editor (though the warlock class wasn’t one of my sections). Primordial magic is manifested as invocations — magical features that resemble the spells they evolved into, but whose casting is more fluid and more flexible.

Altering Invocations

Invocations respond to your will as a caster, and are channeled as unique representations of your magic. Historically, spells are the fixed representation of primordial magic that was once more freeform and personalized. As such, you alter your invocations by changing the mechanics of the spells you use as a baseline for those invocations, in ways that a spellcaster can’t. 

A primordial caster in CORE20 has the freedom to shape their invocations in many ways. They can alter the presentation of their magic, deciding whether an obscuring mist effect takes the form of swirling fog, clinging shadow, or a swarm of intangible insects. Casters can alter the range of their invocations at the expense of strength, creating a fireball at twice the distance by imposing disadvantage on the challenge throw that sets the save DC. They can increase the duration of their magic by dampening its effect, or can heighten effects by shortening duration. They can expand the number of creatures targeted by their magic by spreading out a slightly weakened effect over more targets.

You can check out the full scope of the rules for primordial magic in chapter 10 of the CORE20 Player’s Guide, or in a four-page PDF sample.

Building an Invoker

For simplicity’s sake, chapter 1 (“Building Your Character”) of the CORE20 Players’ Guide focuses on traditional spellcasting. The “Spellcasting Options” in the “Feat Packages” section don’t present an option for primordial magic — but you can use the following custom feat package and fast-start suggestions if you want to get your invocations on.

Primordial Caster

6 Feat Slots

You are a practitioner of a form of arcane magic older than spells and magic items alike. As a channeler of primordial magic, you harness raw arcane power, shaping it to your will and intent. Take this feat package if you wish to make use of arcane spells with your own distinct flourishes. You’ll benefit the most from this feat package if Intelligence (the spellcasting ability for a primordial caster) is one of your best ability scores.

Eldritch Spirit (arcane) ×1: You channel the power of arcane magic.

Primordial Caster ×1: You can channel arcane magic in its primordial form. You gain a number cantrip invocations equal to your Intelligence modifier, based on any arcane cantrip.

Invocation Mastery ×3: You are caster level 3, granting you three invocations based on any arcane spells of 3rd level or lower. You can manifest those invocations up to three times per day (or a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier if it’s higher than 3).

Arcane Blood ×1: You negate the penalty to your critical points imposed by Invocation Mastery.

Fast-Start: Invocations

To quickly build a primordial caster character, you can select starting invocations and cantrip invocations reflecting common and useful spells. The CORE20 Magic Grimoire has full information on these spells.

The cost is broken out for each level of invocation, which comes out of your 150 gp starting wealth. You know a number of cantrip invocations equal to your Intelligence modifier. You know a number of higher-level invocations equal to your caster level, which can reflect any spells of your caster level or lower.

Primordial Invocation Package

This package contains the following invocations and cantrip invocations, reflecting the spells of the same name:

0 level (5 gp each): Detect magic, eldritch blast, mage touch, touch of fatigue

1st level (7 gp each): Mage armor, mesmerism, shadow shroud

2nd level (12 gp each): Blighted claws, harrowing retreat

3rd level (25 gp each): Blade storm, energy resistance

Art by Vagelio Kaliva

Torment Temple

Torment Temple is a new adventure for the CORE20 public playtest, designed for tier 1 characters (including starting characters)!

An ancient relic. An even more ancient curse. An undead-haunted ruin to which that relic must be returned before it’s too late.

(It’s funnier than it sounds.)

Standing in the midst of idyllic farmlands, the ruins known as Torment Temple have been shunned by locals for nearly two decades. Known as Torman’s Temple before that time, the site was home to a monastic order named for a holy warrior of the pre-Imperial age. Legends tell how the temple was raised over a site marked by an evil curse that had long despoiled nearby lands, and how the presence of Torman’s order caused that curse to fade away. But when an earthquake leveled the temple 18 years ago, the curse transformed the ruins into a place of undead risen from the temple’s faithful, and who dwell there still in a corrupted mockery of cloistered life.

Mercenary adventurers exploring the site in the early years declared it infested with zombies and sparse on loot. Locals now give the ruins a wide berth, marking the forest around the site with warning signs. But a month ago, a necromancer seeking treasure of a different kind arrived at the site, laid claim to it — and dispensed with the minor artifact that had quietly been keeping the worst effects of the ancient curse at bay.

• • •

Torment Temple is available for free download in the “Starter Adventures” folder in the CORE20 playtest folder on Google Drive. Or click on the “CORE20 Playtest” page link above for more information on the CORE20 RPG.

A Life Well-Lived: Backgrounds in CORE20

Character backgrounds have been around in d20 fantasy games since before the phrase “d20 fantasy games” existed — but not always under that name. The concept of a background was known as “player character non-professional skills” way back in AD&D. These were a list of semi-medieval vocations your character might have picked up before their adventuring career took off, and which encouraged a DM to “adjudicate situations in which these skills are used or useful.”

D&D 3rd edition talked about background in a narrative sense, class by class, but focused on its newly minted skills system to cover any and all ideas of what your character might have been good at before taking up the call to adventure. For 5e D&D, backgrounds became a distinct mechanic focusing primarily on narrative, splitting the focus between a character’s former vocation (with backgrounds such as acolyte, sage, and sailor) and life experience (charlatan, hermit, and outlander, among others). 

As a system built around the idea of rules modularity and flexibility, CORE20 takes a slightly different approach. Backgrounds in CORE20 are all about life experience, and are intentionally broad in flavor and limited in scope so as to make them easy to fit to and personalize for any character concept.

Where Do You Come From?

As the CORE20 Player’s Guide puts it:

Your character’s background helps to define their life up to the point when they took up the path of adventure. Just as all characters have unique perspectives and traits defined by their lineage, all characters have a particular upbringing that shaped them in important ways. But where your character’s lineage helps to define their broader relationship to the world and its history, your background has a more direct connection to childhood, home, and family — whether your character carries the memories of those things dearly, or has walked away from the past with no desire to turn back.

Background Versus Vocation

The idea of past professions and vocations that can tie into a character’s adventuring lifestyle are also front-and-center in CORE20 — but are handled through the use of customized personal skill groups. Just as your character might invest feat slots in the Athletics, Magic, or Thievery skill groups to represent focus and training useful for an adventuring lifestyle, you can also take feat slots in a personal skill group, covering anything from Scout to Goat Rancher to Standup Comedian (all personal skill groups that have made an appearance in my CORE20 campaigns).

As part of their background, all CORE20 characters gain a +3 bonus that can be spread across one or more personal skill groups of a player’s choice, so that you don’t need to worry about downplaying skill groups useful for adventuring just for the sake of a more flavorful personal skill group. But you can likewise use feat slots earned during the campaign to improve your character’s prowess with personal skill groups, building a character whose past vocations continue to serve them.

A Range of Backgrounds

From the Player’s Guide again:

Nine different backgrounds cover the broad strokes of the experiences that have shaped your character — criminal, exile, gentry, magical, military, outlander, rural, wanderer, and urban. Your character’s background might be a strong match to their chosen path in life, with the benefits of a chosen background providing a foundation of knowledge and training. For example, many martial-focused characters choose the military background, and the magical background is a good fit for any spellcaster. 

Alternatively, part of the richness of your character’s story might come from the juxtaposition between the life they once lived and the life they choose now. A character with the outlander or rural background brings a unique perspective to a city campaign, just as a character who grew up in the city or among the gentry does in a dungeon. And backgrounds such as exile and wanderer can provide any character with an intrinsic sense of seeking something, which the campaign can ultimately provide.

Criminal

Take this background for any character with a shady past — or who plans to have a shady future.

Exile

This background suits any character who has turned away from their homeland or past, whether by choice or by necessity.

Gentry

This background is appropriate for any character who grew up in relative luxury, whether they’ve turned their back on that lifestyle or continue to flaunt it.

Magical

This background suits any character with a backstory tied to spellcasting, magical crafting, or magic-related lore.

Military

Take this background for any character who has spent time in proximity to organized battle.

Outlander

This background fits any character with an affinity for the wilderness.

Rural

Take this background for any character at home in villages and remote settlements.

Urban

Take this background for any character at home in the city.

Wanderer

This background reflects a life spent on the move, whether as a part of nomadic life or from a simple case of wanderlust.

The Way of the Wanderer

The wanderer background covers a lot of territory (pun intended) as far as the many types of adventuring characters who might make use of it — a former mercenary sellsword, a mage who spent years investigating sites of magical power, a con artist keeping one step ahead of the law, and more.

Each background comes with a range of unique benefits, and you can choose whichever one of those benefits feels like the best fit for your character. Working with the GM, you can also develop an alternative benefit that fits your character concept, and whose value is in line with the benefits presented here.

Universal Benefits

In addition to the unique benefits broken out for each background, taking a background provides a number of universal benefits at character creation.

Ability Score Increase

The life your character has lived (especially the early formative years) helps to shape their physical and mental prowess. When you choose your background, you can raise one of your ability scores by 2, or raise two of your ability scores by 1 each. Each background comes with suggestions for which ability scores to raise, but you can choose whatever ability scores reflect your character’s chosen path and training.

Skill Affinity

A character’s background provides an aptitude for particular skills. At character creation, a character gains a +3 bonus that can be applied to a number of favored skill groups for that background. A character can take a +3 bonus to one skill group, take a +2 bonus to one skill group and a +1 to a second group, or take a +1 bonus to three skill groups, as the player decides.

All backgrounds also grant a character a +3 bonus to checks with any personal skill groups. These personal skill groups reflect the vocations, hobbies, and interests that are a part of every character’s life, and will often connect to the character’s backstory or environment.

Default Languages

By default, all characters can read, write, and speak or sign a regional language (typically tied to the area in which they have lived the longest or the most recently). Characters can also learn the spoken Imperial language or Imperial Sign — the twinned trade languages that became the universal lexicon of the Empire, and which are still used in most areas of the world. Characters of all lineages except human also know a spoken or signed lineage language tied to their lineage’s history.

As part of their background, your character gains three bonus feat slots to take the Learn Language feat three times — for a regional language, Imperial, and a lineage language.

Art by Vagelio Kaliva.

More Playtest Monsters

As of right now, the v1.1 update to the CORE20 Playtest Creature Package is live for your gaming pleasure! As always, you can find the new document and all the other v1.1 playtest docs in the CORE Playtest Files folder on Google Drive: 

http://tinyurl.com/CORE20Playtest

(If the short URL doesn’t work for you, you can click or copy the full link here.)

The initial v1.0 Playtest Package featured a solid array of over 180 creature stat blocks from d20 fantasy, covering potential foes, foils, enemies, and allies for your CORE20 games. The v1.1 package ups the monstrous ante to over 240 stat blocks with the addition of 54 new creatures, including:

• Bulette
• Grick
• Hippogriff
• Ilvalaak — a new name for the naga
• Kraal — inspired by the grell
• Krenshar
• Werebear
• Mesmeroth — a renamed and reworked gibbering mouther
• Oni
• Peryton
• Praetyrian and venenatus — two new drakes
• Remorhaz
• Revenant
• Satyr
• The skulker — a revisiting and combining of the classic AD&D monsters the trapper and the lurker below
• Specter
• Transfixer — the piercer, but really cool
• Vampire spawn
• Vargouille
• Vermacarn — a reworked carrion crawler
• Vocoeur — CORE20’s version of the displacer beast
• Wurfrur — the renamed blink dog
• Xorn
• Lineage traits for the gnoll and the mergyyr (a new name for the merfolk), allowing the easy creation of a broad range of NPCs

And many more!

In addition to new threats and allies, the Playtest Creature Package has seen all manner of updates, tweaks, corrections, and rules and language fixes. Huge thanks as always to all the folks in the playtest who have pointed out typos and asked the questions that have let us make the game even better. (The Playtest v1.1 Changelog doc in the playtest folder notes changes to existing stat blocks and lists the playtest package’s new creatures.)  

Once again, the CORE20 Playtest Creature Package is available in two variations. The regular version features the stat block color-coding throughout all sections of the stat block, while the “(Low Color)” version features the color coding only on stat block section heads. (A post back toward the beginning of the public playtest talks about the evolution and design of the stat block format, including using color to make it easier to navigate stat blocks during play.)

I’ve been playtesting and fine-tuning all these new creatures in my own campaigns for a while now, and I’m happy to finally turn them loose. Good gaming!

Art by Xavier Beaudlet

Creature Preview: Mesmeroth

A gibbering mouther by any other name would… well, still be pretty horrible. But the renaming of this classic weird fantasy aberration was a relatively late addition to CORE20, in the course of my learning that ableist language is something that too easily hides within familiar usage.

The gibbering mouther was so-named for the endless maws that would appear across their amoeboid form, and for the confusion-inducing gibbering of the voices that would issue forth from those many mouths. Terrifying heroes since the early days of AD&D, the mouther had always seemed a classic aberrant creature to me, possessed of an alien intelligence whose very language would tear at the minds of those who heard it.

Except then during a round of sensitivity consulting for the CORE20 public playtest, I was asked, “You do know that ‘gibber’ and ‘gibbering’ likely originated as a description of the speech of the mentally ill, right?” And I said, “Uh… no…” — even as I realized I probably should have. I definitely wish it was something I’d known when I was the editor of the 5e D&D Monster Manual in 2014, so that there might have been a conversation on the topic at the time. Not that it likely would have made any difference, as D&D is a large ship that changes course very slowly when it comes to dealing with making little fixes. Thankfully, though, CORE20 is a bit more nimble in its desire to improve the language and context of the game.

Before the release of the public playtest of CORE20, the gibbering mouther became the mesmeric mouther for a time. It’s now become the more subtly named mesmeroth in the upcoming public playtest CORE20 Playtest Creature Package v1.1. The mesmeroth for our game is built on the chassis of the SRD mouther, but monster developer Aaron Gray has swapped out the traditional confusion effect of their many voices for a luring drone that draws adventurers ever-closer to their doom.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Gnoll

The gnoll has always been one of my favorite humanoids, back from the days when “humanoid” was a dirty word in D&D, used exclusively to describe the evil, monstrous folk designed to antagonize the humans and demi-humans (elves, dwarves, and the like) who were the heroes of the game. D&D has always had a consistently one-note version of who gnolls are and how they live, building on the evil pack hunters of AD&D and 3e, to 5e’s fiend-spawned humanoids/actual fiends. But in keeping with the central tenet of CORE20, it felt like gnolls in our game would be most interesting if they can be anything they — and you — want.

It’s easy to focus on the gnoll as a feral hunter, and to create a stat block that builds them out around that single theme. But as with the worldborn lineages in CORE20 (the game’s name for D&D’s humanoids), the cultures of the more unusual — and often magically evolved — wondrous worldborn are meant to cover the broadest possible range of characters and types. As such, the upcoming update to the CORE20 Playtest Creature Package sets up the gnoll as a lineage trait stat block, giving them the same treatment as humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and the rest of the worldborn lines. 

As with worldborn NPCs, the gnoll’s lineage traits can be added to any of the game’s twelve nonplayer character stat blocks, creating gnoll-themed scouts, warriors, and wildlings who’ll feel at home alongside any previous versions of the gnoll. But you can also use the flavor and culture of the gnoll to lend a distinct shape to spellcasters, protectors, scoundrels, and more. 

Additionally, it’s easy to see how the stat block lineage traits for the twelve worldborn lineages in the Playtest Creature Package have been adapted straight from the player character traits in chapter 4 of the CORE20 Player’s Guide. So it’s an easy guess that these gnoll lineage traits have been created with an eye to a future project — setting up character traits that will allow players to create wondrous worldborn characters in addition to the baseline worldborn options. More info on that as it comes together.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Bulette

The bulette is a delightful monster whose name I definitely pronounce as “bull-EHT,” not “boo-LAY” as some do. (I have been known to joke that the creature is only pronounced “boolay” if it comes from the Boolay region of Greyhawk. Otherwise, it’s just sparkling landshark.)

The bulette for CORE20 maintains much of the feel of the D&D original. As a tier 3 creature, it makes an excellent solo threat against a tier 1 or tier 2 party, built for power and jumping, and with a prodigious ability to flatten foes. In a recent encounter, I was able to happily confirm that this design had its intended effect when, after watching a bulette break the ground with a surging leap, then drop onto a pack of miniature mammoths they were hunting, the player characters elected to all flee the scene at high speed.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Cheetah and Hippopotamus

A half-dozen or so new creatures will be making their way into the already-well-populated “Animals” section of the CORE20 Creature Playtest Package, including the cheetah and the hippopotamus.

The cheetah was a creature I’ve wanted to set up for CORE20 for a while now, just because translating the speed of their 70-mile-per-hour sprint into game terms gets really weird. I also liked the idea that cheetahs in our world are known for almost never attacking humans, which makes them a bit novel for carnivores.

The hippopotamus was another animal I wanted to have a CORE20 version of, because it’s well known that the hippo is one of the most dangerous large animals in our world in terms of the number of people they kill annually. And because that’s a well-known fact, many players are aware of it, which means it’s great fun to see their reactions when an adventuring party runs into a hippo in a fantasy world.

(Click on the stat block headers below to download the full stat blocks in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Warrener and Xorn

Two of the coolest monsters adventurers are likely to meet underground are the warrener — built from D&D’s umber hulk — and the xorn. Both are weird looking, not necessarily a threat unless you end up annoying them (intentionally or otherwise), and far more sapient than their appearance suggests.

The umber hulk was considered product identity in the original days of the Open Game license (as with the displacer beast). But with the movement of the Dungeons & Dragons SRD into Creative Commons, there are no prohibitions on a game built around the chassis of D&D (as CORE20 proudly is) from getting their umber hulk on. That said, that name always seemed a little meh to me, so “warrener” takes its place — from the way the relentless digging of these creatures creates warrens that wary underground adventurers learn to watch for and avoid.

One big update made to the warrener involves replacing the umber hulk’s confusion gaze with a slowing gaze. It was CORE20 developer Aaron Gray who pointed out to me that confusion effect of the umber hulk feels strange as an evolutionary defensive or offensive strategy, given that a creature under its effect is just as likely to attack the umber hulk as to flee them or stand fast. By slowing other creatures, the warrener is in a better position to catch up to prey, or to evade threats or creatures they just want to ignore.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat blocks in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Cyclops

When D&D was in its earliest days, giants were the well-known core of the so-called “true giants” — hill giants, fire giants, frost giants, stone giants, cloud giants, and storm giants — alongside lesser “giant-like” creatures such as ettins and ogres. As the game expanded, it made “giant” into a formal creature type and added other folk to that type. But in so doing, it created a kind of schism in the giants, whereby folk such as cyclopses and fomorians couldn’t be a part of the core identity because they were effectively an afterthought to it.

For both the fomorians (still awaiting final development) and the cyclops, I wanted to work with the idea that they were effectively peers of the core six giant peoples (renamed in CORE20 as the hallaek, the wiirdhar, the fiirmar, the rohkhad, the clohmad, and the istruhmad, because having sapient creatures with advanced and ancient cultures named in the languages of other cultures is part of that colonialism thing that D&D has long struggled with). But even as peers, cyclopses and fomorians (as athachs, ettins, and ogres) needed to be set up as outcasts from the core giant culture in some way. 

The specific angle for the cyclops and fomorians that appealed to me is that they have a connection to druidas magic, which traditionally isn’t part of the whole giant magical oeuvre. As such, the idea is that the giants have an overall ancient arcane tradition, but those two subgroups started messing around with nature magic and ended up splitting off from the giants’ central culture as a result.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Praetyrian and Venenatus

Two new drakes — lesser dragons related to the true dragons — are set to appear in the upcoming CORE20 Playtest Creature Package update. The praetyrian is built around the guard drake of D&D 5e, but felt like they needed a less mundane name. The venenatus is a brand-new creature created for CORE20 — a drake who feeds on magic, often of the sort carried by characters. 

When I wrote the first version of the venenatus (colloquially known as the dweomer drake) for a campaign, it was an original-to-me concept. The Forgotten Realms dweomervore (a similar theme, but very different execution) came to my attention only afterward, with the venenatus mostly inspired by the magic-eating disenchanter (another creature I use a lot, much to my players’ dismay).

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat blocks in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Wurfrur and Vocoeur

The blink dog and the displacer beast are two of the creatures I most remember falling in love with when I started playing D&D. Good-aligned extradimensional dogs ? Predatory phasing cats? An ancient enmity between them? Sign me up!

An interesting thing about blink dogs is that they’re sapient, meaning they’re not only intelligent but they have their own language. In AD&D, displacer beasts didn’t speak, but they gained that ability and an evil alignment in the 3e days, both of which they retain in CORE20. When I shared the ohoomwi, I mentioned that CORE20 is making a point of having all sapient creatures named according to what they call themselves, so that CORE20 names the blink dog as the wurfrur and the displacer beast as the vocoeur. But the naming of the vocoeur actually has an interesting side story to it.

Back in the early 2000s when Wizards of the Coast opened up D&D to third-party development by way of the Open Gaming License, that license called out elements of so-called “Product Identity” that were declared absolutely off-limits for third-party products. If you wanted to make material compatible with D&D using the Open Gaming License, you couldn’t use the name of the game or the titles of the core rulebooks, or the names of a bunch of planes, or a dozen specific monsters — including the displacer beast. 

Thankfully, with CORE20 built around the Creative Commons version of the Dungeons & Dragons SRD rather than the OGL version, the limitation on using the displacer beast no longer holds.  But what I and a lot of other people found hilarious about the displacer beast being in WotC’s list of “we own this and are protecting it so you can’t use it” monsters in the first place is that the displacer beast was stolen by Gary Gygax when he created it for the AD&D Monster Manual. As Gygax himself talked about openly, the creature’s appearance and abilities were lifted from a short story by science fiction author A.E. van Vogt, in which the creature’s name was Coeurl — with both those names giving the vocoeur their CORE20 identity.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Peryton

You know you’ve done a good job at bringing a horrifying monster to life when your developer tells you, “Please don’t ever use this in a game I’m playing in.”

A feral magical predator, the peryton is known for their predilection for feeding on hearts — and for the fear that instills in characters who fight them, even before the fight begins. They are a creature both old (in game terms) and new (in real-world terms), having been around since the AD&D Monster Manual. But they were sourced not from ancient mythology (as many of the creatures of early D&D were) but from Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings, written in 1957. 

The peryton’s hunger for hearts has traditionally been mostly flavor, with versions of the creature from AD&D through 5e detailing how a peryton will bite out the heart of a hero only once that hero is dead. But for CORE20, I thought it would fun (for the GM; players’ opinions may vary) to tie the peryton’s heart harvesting to the mechanics for death and dying — allowing the peryton to take a fallen character from dying to dead with unforgiving speed.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Ohoomwi

I am digging into a final pass through a bunch of new creatures, getting ready to add those creatures to the CORE20 Playtest Creature Package v1.1 update. While that’s happening, I thought I’d post a few choice creatures here, giving folks a playable preview of a few favorite monsters of mine, and offering a smattering of thoughts about what goes into a CORE20 monster, design-wise.

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The giant owl has been a mainstay of campaigns since the AD&D days, where they were noted both for their ability to surprise prey 83 percent of the time, and for being intelligent creatures who spoke their own language. But that second part has always raised the question for me of: Why does a creature with their own language not get to use that language for the name others use to refer to them?

For me, the answer in a very broad sense is a) lazy writing, but also b) colonialism. Because the colonialist mindset lurking at the heart of D&D via its evolution from tabletop wargames works very much around the idea that the fantasy realm is human-centric, and that humans decide what place all other creatures have in “their” world. And though the names of classic D&D monsters are absolutely the least of colonialism’s evils, they’ve always nagged at me, so CORE20 has taken a shot at fixing them.

As with the eapachni (from the giant eagle) in the first version of the CORE20 Playtest Creature Package, the ohoomwi is understood to be named from their own language, as is true of all other sapient creatures. When coming up with the name (because I don’t speak Ohoomwi, unfortunately), I wanted something that not only had an owl-like echo to it but felt intrinsically non-European. At some point, I tripped across a reference to “hohomisiw” as meaning “owl” in one of the Cree languages, and from my childhood, I remember “ukpik” (which I learned as “ookpik”) as the Inuktitut word for the snowy owl, and “ohoomwi” fell out from that.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Divination With a Kick

A thing that’s been pretty common over the ten-plus years that CORE20 has been slouching its way from house rules to alpha playtest to proper playtest is that things get added to the rules that are pretty cool. And then a year or two later, I notice something else in the rules that I hadn’t thought about at the time of creating the New Cool Thing that suggests all kinds of potential for a Newer Cool Thing.

That was the situation I noted earlier this year when fine-tuning the “Lineages”chapter of the CORE20 Players’ Guide, and checking the setup of the eldritch affinity trait:

Eldritch Affinity

Choose a school of magic. You have a +1 bonus to the challenge throw for magic you channel of that school, including from spells and magic items. The most common schools for dwarf eldritch affinity are abjuration, evocation, and transmutation, but you can select any school of magic that fits your character’s backstory.

Eldritch affinity provides a nice mechanical benefit for spellcasting characters to boost the saving throws against certain of their spells. But it also provides a bit of suggested story by having each lineage’s version of eldritch affinity talk about the most common schools of magic tying to the spellcasting traditions of that lineage. (As with all such suggestions in CORE20, however, you’re always free to choose a different option that makes sense for your character.) 

Over a few iterations of the trait, I divided up the schools of magic between the twelve worldborn lineages in ways that touched on some of the broad themes underlying how characters of a particular lineage connect to the traditions of their past, and it all eventually felt pretty good. Except much later, I then took another look at human, lizardfolk, and orc eldritch affinity, all of which suggested divination as one of their schools of magic — and thought to myself, “Wait… how many divination spells have saving throws?”

The answer, traditionally, is “Not many.” Detect thoughts and scrying have always been the big two (and scrying in CORE20 loses the saving throw in favor of the caster making a Magic check to connect to their target). So I thought I’d fix that.

Glimpse of the Future

The following divination spells are brand-new to CORE20, and are set to appear in the version 1.1 playtest rules update, coming soon!

Blood Tell

Divination

Level and Sphere: 2 — druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Targets: Each living creature in the area
Duration: 1 minute per caster level

Saving Throw: Will negates

Magic taps into the prophetic power of blood for each living creature in a 15-foot-radius sphere within 60 feet, forcing them to succeed on a Will save or reveal their weaknesses when gravely wounded. When an affected target is bloodied, you learn their lowest saving throw modifier and any immunities, resistances, or vulnerabilities they have. While the target remains bloodied, you know how many critical points they have, and they have disadvantage on defense rolls, saving throws, and opposed skill checks against you.

Broken Will

Divination

Level and Sphere: 2 — animys, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Target: One creature
Duration: 1 round per caster level
Saving Throw: Will negates

Visions of inescapable fate sap the willpower of the target creature, which must succeed on a Will save or have a d12 bane on Will saves for 1 round per caster level.

Harrowing Fate

Divination

Level and Sphere: 3 — animys, arcane, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Target: One creature
Duration: 1 round per caster level
Saving Throw: Will negates (refocus at end of turn)

One creature within 60 feet is harrowed with visions of their own misfortune. The target must succeed on a Will saving throw or have disadvantage on all d20 rolls for 1 round per caster level, refocusing the save at the end of each turn. 

Arcane Material Component: A pinch of black sand.

Malicious Tell

Divination

Level and Sphere: 6 — animys, arcane, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic, material
Range: 120 feet
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Targets: Each creature in the area
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates (refocus on taking damage or having another condition imposed)

The power of grim fate permeates each creature in a 15-foot-radius sphere within 120 feet, forcing them to succeed on a Fortitude save or grant other creatures prophetic warnings of their intended physical actions. While the spell is in effect, each target has disadvantage on attack rolls, defense rolls, challenge throws, and skill checks using Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution. A target can refocus the save on taking damage or having a condition imposed on them.

Arcane Material Component: The torn corner of a playing card.

Mind Dart

Divination

Level and Sphere: 3 — animys, arcane, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Target: One creature
Duration: 10 minutes per caster level
Saving Throw: Will negates

A tendril of divinatory power lashes out at one creature within 60 feet, who must succeed on a Will saving throw or have their presence bound to you. On a failed save, the target takes 1d6 psychic damage per caster level (maximum 5d6) and gains no benefit against you from concealment or total concealment for 10 minutes per caster level. 

Open Mind

Divination

Level and Sphere: 4 — animys, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic
Range: 60 feet
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Targets: Each creature in the area
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: Will negates

Magic assails the thoughts of each creature in a 15-foot-radius sphere within 60 feet, which must succeed on a Will save or reveal themself to you. You immediately learn each affected target’s attitude toward you and your allies — friendly, indifferent, unfriendly, or hostile — and you have advantage on Persuasion checks involving them.

Uncertain Fate

Divination

Level and Sphere: 6 — animys, arcane, druidas
Components: Lexis, somatic, material
Range: 60 feet
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Targets: Each creature in the area
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: Reflex negates

Shadowy visions of the future attempt to bind themselves to each creature in a 15-foot-radius sphere within 60 feet, forcing them to succeed on a Reflex save or have their fate temporarily unbalanced. Whenever an affected creature obtains a clear success on a skill check or saving throw, or a clear hit on an attack roll, they become overwhelmed by uncertainty over their next actions and are dazed until the end of their next turn.

Arcane Material Component: A copper piece.

The Old Magic

The spellcasting and magic system in CORE20 will be familiar to anyone who’s ever unleashed a fireball in a d20 fantasy game. But with the baseline rules of the game built on a mythic foundation in which gods and deities aren’t real, extant figures constantly messing around with the mortal realm, I knew that I wanted to do something different with the idea of animyst domains (the cleric domains of D&D, with clerics rebranded for a “no gods, all monsters” kind of milieu).

Bonus Spells! Huzzah!

The first iteration of domains in the CORE20 alpha playtest (version 3.0, back when the game was still called d20 CORE) detached them from the portfolios of deities to make them more about the philosophy or focus of a particular animyst or animyst order. They used the model of domains in D&D 3.5e (which look a fair bit like domains in 5e), granting a special power and a number of bonus spells at different levels. They also inspired the creation of an analogous setup for druidas casters called dominions at the time (now druidas creeds). 

However, this setup had a problem right from the get-go, insofar as bonus spells are cool and all, but the utility of bonus spells falls off unless your character is a dedicated caster focused on hitting as high a caster level as possible. And although that kind of singular focus works fine in a class-based game, it really works against the “be whatever you want to be” ethos of CORE20 character building.

What Came Before

For version 7 of the CORE20 alpha playtest — which is the same exact ruleset as version 1 of the open beta playtest — I rebuilt domains and creeds from the ground up by looking to have them fill a space in the magic rules that I hadn’t yet filled. One of the things that’s always bothered me about D&D spellcasting is a lack of any sense of what the history of magic and spellcasting looks like in the game world. The D&D baseline of “Gods! More gods!” is part of this problem, with any number of standard campaign settings talking about how magic and spellcasting were gifts of one or more deities, who dropped that knowledge and art into the world ready-made.

I love the idea of history underpinning an RPG and its worlds. I love the idea of magic being a part of the world that evolved over time, starting small then improving and expanding in the same way that language and science and culture and politics evolve throughout history. So I asked myself the question: If spellcasting as we know it in the game is the current end point of the evolution of magic, what came before it? And I realized that domains and creeds could answer that question.

In CORE20, animys domains and druidas creeds represent an older magic, predating spellcasting by more than a millennium. A kind of personal and limited magic, the features granted by domains and creeds were the basis on which spellcasting was later developed. The spellcasting arts came to be because of the limited power and personal nature of domain and creed magic, and a desire to create a codified system of magic that would increase in power. (“Magic Among the Worldborn” in the “Introduction” section of the CORE20 Playtest Magic Grimoire talks at length about the history and evolution of magic in the game.)

Excerpt

The following excerpt from chapter 10 of the CORE20 Playtest Player’s Guide introduces animys domains and shows off a few common domain powers to set up the look and feel and domain and creed magic. The Player’s Guide features a whopping forty-six domain feats, each of them a unique magical power. Druidas creeds feature the same number of feats, with a bit of crossover to underline how animys magic evolved from druidas magic way back. And because domains and creeds are meant to represent a personal approach to magic, they make great fodder for players and GMs who want to expand the range of domain and creed feats in their games.

• • •

Animys Domains

An animys domain is a magical and philosophical doctrine that provides a focus for an animyst’s magic and spellcasting. A domain might represent the training of an animyst order or temple, a certain aspect of one of the old gods or the tenets of a new cult, or an entirely personal devotion to specific principles of magic and life.

A character takes the Domain of Faith feat to select a domain, then can take additional feats to gain unique magical features or specialized spells related to their domain.

The Old Magic

In the oldest records of druidas and animys traditions, formally recorded millennia ago but older by far, druidas creeds and animys domains were the earliest means of manipulating life magic. The magical abilities bestowed by creed feats and domain feats predated the development of spell magic, and the relatively limited power of creed and domain magic is thought to have inspired the initial development of life magic spellcasting.

In their earliest forms, creeds and domains were often part of complex cultural and faith traditions that limited their use, restricting domains to the followers of deities thought to control the power of those domains. However, such strictures are all but unknown today. Characters who are part of an organized faith or magical association might be directed by custom to take up only certain domains — for example, a member of an order of animyst healers who exclusively take the good, healing, or protection domains. There are otherwise no restrictions on what creeds or domains a character can select.

Animal Domain

The animal domain embodies the power and spirit of all beasts of forest and tundra, plain and sea. Animysts who choose this domain are drawn to the tenaciousness and dignity of animals, whether they demonstrate that as noble strength or feral fury. 

Chaos Domain

The chaos domain embodies the chaotic and unpredictable nature of existence and the inexorable march of time and decay. Those who follow this domain are agents of change and upheaval, creation or destruction, whether they tear order down to see what new order forms in its place, or revel in the sheer joy of disorder.

Death Domain

Those animysts who follow the death domain are fascinated by the mysteries of mortality, seeking always to understand the balance between death and life. Some see themselves as agents of death, protecting the sanctity of life until such time as creatures who meet their end can do so on their own terms. Others are agents of death, bringing an end to those they judge as deserving it.

Fire Domain

The fire domain embodies the fierce power of flame, and those who follow it are often driven by emotions whose energy fuels their actions and beliefs. They seek to control and direct fire in all its mundane and magical forms, and understand that the cleansing power of flame must sometimes be allowed to scour the world clean.

The philosophy and magic of the clerical fire domain are identical to that of the druidas fire creed.

Trickery Domain

The trickery domain embraces deception and cunning. Those who follow this domain use their magic to outwit adversaries and weave protective artifice around those they defend, and often support that magic with natural gifts of diplomacy and duplicity.

War Domain

Combat and martial prowess are the province of animysts who follow the war domain. Their study of magic focuses on force of will and skill at arms, whether they strive to protect allies in battle, to vanquish foes, or to stand up for those whose lives war would destroy.

The philosophy and magic of the animys war domain are identical to that of the druidas war creed.

• • •

Animal Aggression

Your magic controls the temperament of animals around you in combat.

Prerequisites: Domain of Faith (animal) ×1.

Benefit: As a minor action, you incite a shift in the belligerence of each animal within 30 feet of you. You choose whether to grant a target animal a d6 boon on attack rolls and combat maneuver skill checks, or to impose a d6 bane on attack rolls and combat maneuver skill checks, with either effect lasting for 1 minute.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Chaos Burst

A chaotic surge of energy courses through nearby foes.

Prerequisites: Domain of Faith (chaos) ×1.

Benefit: One creature you can observe within 15 feet takes 1d4 damage of a random type, rolled for on the following table:

d10    Damage Type 

 1       Acid

 2       Cold

 3       Fire

 4       Force

 5       Lightning

 6       Necrotic

 7   Psychic

 8       Radiant

 9      Thunder

10     Choose

If the target takes less than 4 damage, another creature you can observe within 15 feet of the previous target takes 1d4 damage of the same type. You repeat this process until a target takes 4 damage or you run out of targets. A creature can take damage only once from each use of Chaos Burst.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Death Touch

You drain the last dregs of life from a dying creature.

Prerequisites: Domain of Faith (death) ×1.

Benefit: As a standard action, you touch a dying creature to automatically impose three failed death saves on them. If the dying creature is not immobilized or unconscious, you must hit them with an unarmed strike to touch them.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Fiery Rebuke

Adversaries who challenge you feel the heat of your wrath.

Prerequisites: Creed of Nature (fire) ×1 or Domain of Faith (fire) ×1.

Benefit: When you are hit by an attack, you can use a reaction to deal 1d6 fire damage to one adversary you can observe within 30 feet of you. 

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Trickster’s Spirit

Your natural proclivity for trickery is temporarily honed by your magic.

Prerequisites: Domain of Faith (trickery) ×1.

Benefit: As a minor action, you gain a d6 boon on skill checks made using Charisma for 1 minute.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Warrior’s Aid

Your magic lets an ally evade the most potent attacks.

Prerequisites: Creed of Nature (war) ×1 or Domain of Faith (war) ×1.

Benefit: When an ally you can observe within 30 feet is subject to critical hit, you can use a reaction to turn the attack into a regular hit.

You can use this feat a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum three times). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

This is a magical feature.

Mastery: You can take this feat once, at a cost of 1 feat slot.

Illustration by Eric Pommer

Death by Healing

Though you can play CORE20 any way you like, as should be the case with any RPG, the game is written from a baseline perspective of the world as a place where magic is everywhere. As would be expected in a such a milieu, magical healing is everywhere. Restorative potions and spellmarks are available for purchase in the public markets of any town or city, and restorative spellcasting services can be found in healing houses, temples, and spas across the land. Even in villages and hamlets too small for healing magic to be ubiquitous, mills and communal barns might keep a potion of cure light wounds on hand in case of an injury mundane healing can’t deal with quickly enough, and experienced adventurers know that it’s not uncommon to find a healer or midwife in the smallest thorp who can cast lesser restoration in exchange for a favor.

But as players and GMs of every fantasy game with ready access to healing magic understand, too much healing magic can quickly undermine the sense of peril that comes from a life spent fighting evil and monsters. For such characters, the threat of injury and even death needs to feel real. But if healing magic is too easily accessible, that threat can quickly become hollow. As CORE20 underwent its evolution from D&D 3.5 house rules into something bigger, I wrestled with this dilemma for a long while, and eventually hit upon what seemed like a cool idea: 

If one wants easy access to healing magic but easy access to healing magic reduces the threat that’s important to the narrative of the game, what happens if you replace that threat with a different threat? And so it is that in CORE20, every character understands that making use of healing magic can eventually kill you.

Life and Magic

Focusing first on the narrative angle — because for me, that’s always the best way to approach game design — magical healing in CORE20 revolves around that idea that magic is… well, supernatural. Which is to say, magic is unnatural. And even though magical healing has the incredible power to reverse injuries in moments that might otherwise take days or weeks to heal, it does so in a way that ever-so-slightly corrupts the natural health and healing ability of the body.

In CORE20, hit points are divided into two different pools of protection — critical points and defense points. I’ve talked about the narrative and design ideas underlying critical points and defense points (and how that system is actually the oldest part of the CORE20 rules). But to precis from the “Hit Points” section of “Chapter 9: Combat” in the CORE20 Playtest Player’s Guide, critical points measure your capacity to withstand physical injury, while defense points represent your ability to turn potentially lethal damage into minor damage through defensive prowess, innate hardiness, or raw instinct.

Defense points are a buffer that protects your more important critical points from getting knocked down, with damage-dealing attacks wearing down defense points first. Critical hits are a potentially nasty exception to this, so named in CORE20 because they deal damage directly to a creature’s critical points regardless of how many defense points the creature has remaining.

When an injured character takes magical healing, that healing restores critical points first, then defense points, rebuilding your body’s physical vigor and integrity before bringing your defensive acumen back up. But whenever magical healing restores critical points, the creature receiving that healing takes a −1 penalty to their critical point maximum. The unnatural process of magical healing leaves a kind of physical deficit that can add up over time, effectively lowering critical points each time magic is used to bring an injured character back from the brink.

Critical Thinking

In most cases, the downside to magical healing feels minor compared to the benefit. For a character down to their last 3 critical points, restoring 3d8 + 5 hit points from an ally’s cure serious wounds spell is more than worth the −1 critical point penalty that spell imposes. But over time, the regular use of magical healing plays into the campaign story as a thing that characters and players need to think about. 

In the short term, the differences between the different healing spells in the game and the potions and spellmarks that channel those spells’ magic take on an unexpected importance. A potion of cure light wounds restores 1d8 + 1 hit points. A potion of cure moderate wounds restores 2d8 + 3 hit points, bestowing about the same amount of healing as taking two potions of cure light wounds. But for a character with a severe critical point deficit, taking two of the cheaper potions of cure light wounds imposes a −2 penalty to critical points, where the more expensive potion of cure moderate wounds incurs only a −1 penalty. (If a character has lost only defense points, they can chug potions or crack spellmarks indiscriminately. Only healing magic that restores critical points imposes a critical point penalty.)

Critical point damage and a critical point penalty can both be restored during a downtime rest — and only during a downtime rest. CORE20 breaks from the increasingly laissez-faire attitude that D&D has taken toward healing up during long rests over successive editions, and the long rest that heals up one hundred percent of a character’s injuries is nowhere to be found in the game. (This is a big part of the reason why magical healing needs to be commonplace in a CORE20 campaign.) As such, anytime a character is badly injured (as represented by taking critical point damage), they get an automatic invitation to take downtime at some point in the near future. The character’s player gets to think about whether it’s best to take magical healing and later restore a critical point penalty during downtime (a relatively slow process, but usually a relatively low number) or push on injured and plan to later let natural healing restore those lost critical points during downtime (a faster process, but often a high number).

Injury in CORE20 is thus something a character is always thinking about, with each bout of critical point damage setting up the question of how best to deal with it. Short-term gain in the form of magical healing is easily had. But it comes with the long-term pain of a critical point penalty and the reduction of overall physical hardiness that represents. Critical injuries also allow characters and players to naturally embrace the idea of letting downtime play an important part in every CORE20 campaign, as an alternative to the movement toward breakneck speed-adventuring that’s become the norm in D&D over the last couple of decades. I know it’s tricky to talk about “realism” in a game about dragons and wizards casting fireball, but part of the narrative goal that inspired CORE20’s approach to magical healing was to bring back a degree of verisimilitude around the idea of injury. Characters having been beaten to within an inch of their lives is a big part of the narrative cycle of fantasy games, and having injury be something that isn’t just forgotten about after 8 hours of sleep serves that narrative well.

Art by Dean Spencer.

Battle Magic

CORE20 originally started as a set of homebrew rules for D&D 3.5, and even though the current playtest version of the game draws a lot of inspiration for 5e D&D (and even 4e D&D) in its approach to play and its language, the mechanical guts of much of the ruleset is set on a firm foundation of third edition — the first “modern” version of the game’s venerable ruleset.

One of the things 3e did that I loved unreservedly when I first dug into that edition in the heady days of the early millennium was a rethinking and drastic expansion of the place of magic items in the game, and specifically magic armor and weapons. AD&D (both 1st and 2nd editions) worked with a limited slate of armor and weapons imbued with specific types of magic. Elven chain mail, plate mail of etherealness, a sword +2 (dragon slayer), or a sword +1 (flame tongue) were all treasures that a player might expect their character to seize as a reward at some point. And if you’ve never looked at AD&D but those magic items still sound familiar to you, it’s because 5e’s setup for magic items looked back to AD&D for inspiration, with a relatively small number of types of armor and weapons with fixed properties.

I don’t find that approach as much fun as I found 3e’s approach, though. And thus was CORE20’s approach to magic weapons and armor born.

Armor and Weapon Features

Magic armor and weapons are a mainstay of the game for most CORE20 campaigns built around the fun of seeking out and fighting evil that must be vanquished through combat. In a world filled with monsters and suffused with magic, it makes sense that the breadth of magic available to heroes willing to stand up to evil should be pretty vast. As such, CORE20 borrows from D&D 3e the idea of weapons and armor being bestowed with magical properties that cover the widest possible range of utility. The baseline property for armor and weapons is the magical bonus that improves your character’s defense rolls and attack rolls, respectively — and which runs from the common +1 to the extremely rare +5 in CORE20. But that bonus-based boost is almost always the least interesting thing of all the things your hero’s armor or weapon can do.

Part of the reason I loved 3rd edition D&D’s approach to magic armor and weapons is the way it lends itself to customization. And given that fully customized characters is the foundation of CORE20, being able to customize armor and weapons is a powerful tool for players building characters and GMs building out the magical world through which those characters move. Sometimes armor or a weapon has a single specific function. Etherealness armor or a greatsword of defending both do what you’d expect. But armor and weapon features can be combined in any number of ways, with the increased cost of multiple features boosting the item’s rarity (and thus determining both how likely the GM is to give it out as treasure and how difficult it is for a character to create or commission it). 

This approach to magic armor and weapons creates a fertile foundation for a mainstay of fantasy — the hero known for unique weapons or armor wielded only by them, as opposed to every tenth adventurer having elven chain and a stock flame tongue longsword. So if your master thief has a hankering to build part of their reputation around the sanguine imprecation energy lash rapier they flourish in battle, you’ve come to the right place.

The table above and the table below detail the features available for armor and for melee weapons. (Similar tables in the CORE20 Magic Grimoire break out the features for shields, thrown weapons, ranged weapons, and ammunition.) Write-ups for a number of my own favorite features (including a few features new to CORE20) follow.

Selected Armor Features

Charging

This utilitarian armor is solidly made but features a dull finish. While you wear charging armor, any successful charge attack you make deals an extra 2d6 bludgeoning damage.

Transmutation; unusual; cost +750 gp

Feral

The face of this shield is scribed or engraved with the image of talons or claws. As a minor action, you can perform a command signal to have the shield make a melee attack against a creature within 5 feet of you. The shield has an attack bonus of 10 + your Strength modifier and deals 2d6 slashing damage. You can use this feature three times per day, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest. 

Conjuration; common; cost +400 gp

Ghost Guard

Armor or a shield with the ghost guard feature shimmers ethereally under bright light. While you wear it, this armor or shield protects you against incorporeal creatures, negating the advantage an incorporeal creature has on attack rolls against you.

Unlike most physical objects, armor or a shield with the ghost guard feature can be picked up, moved, and even worn or wielded by an incorporeal creature. While using the armor or shield, an incorporeal creature gains its full defensive bonus, and can still pass freely through solid objects.

Transmutation; unusual; cost +800 gp

Morphic

A suit of armor with the morphic feature appears to have the texture of cloth when first touched. When you perform the armor’s command signal as a standard action, it changes shape and form to assume the appearance and feel of a set of clothing of the same scope and coverage as the armor (so that a hauberk or breastplate becomes a shirt, armored leg pieces become leggings, a helm becomes a hat, and so forth). 

The armor transforms into the same set of clothing each time, whose appearance is set when the armor is created. The armor retains all its usual properties (including defense bonuses, weight, armor hindrance, and so on) and any magic bonuses and features while transformed. 

If you remove any piece of the morphic armor, that piece reverts back to its true form until it is donned again. The truesense special feature reveals the true nature of the armor while it is transformed.

Transmutation; unusual; cost +2,300 gp

Warding

This armor gleams with a faint glow each time you are struck in combat, hinting at the protective power it holds. When you are hit by an attack, you can use a reaction to give yourself advantage on subsequent defense rolls until the end of your next turn. You can use this feature three times per day, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Abjuration; common; +750 gp

Selected Weapon Features

Brilliant Energy

This weapon appears to be composed mostly of light, appearing translucent even though its heft is solid. When you use a brilliant energy weapon to attack a living creature wearing armor or bearing a shield, that attack bypasses those protections to focus its power on the corporeal essence of your target, imposing disadvantage on the target’s defense roll.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons, thrown weapons, and ammunition.

A brilliant energy weapon can’t harm undead or constructs, and can’t be used to damage any object. The weapon always has the glowing feature, but its light can’t be deactivated.

Transmutation; unusual; cost +800 gp 

Defending

This weapon feels especially sturdy in the hand. While you wield a defending weapon, you can use a free action at the start of your turn to focus its magic on defense at the expense of offense. Until the start of your next turn, you have a d4 bane on attack rolls with this weapon and a d4 boon on defense rolls.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons.

Abjuration; common; cost +200 gp

Energy Lash

Traces of energy of a specific type — acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder — appear to flow out of this weapon each time it hits in battle. While you wield an energy lash weapon, you can use a standard action to perform a command signal and choose a creature within 30 feet of you. A bright tendril of magical energy erupts from the weapon to reach out for the target. Make an attack roll as if you were making a melee or thrown attack with the weapon. If the attack hits, the target takes 4d6 damage of the weapon’s energy type. You can use this feature once per day, regaining its use when you finish a long rest.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons and thrown weapons.

Evocation; common; cost +300 gp

Imprecation

This weapon feels strangely cold when first handled. Whenever you score a critical hit with this weapon, you can impose a curse of your choice on the target, as if they had failed a saving throw against the bestow curse spell.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons, thrown weapons, and ranged weapons.

Necromancy; common; cost +700 gp

Nimble

This weapon feels unnaturally well balanced when first handled. A nimble weapon can be wielded more easily when making multiple attacks, with a two-handed weapon treated as a one-handed weapon and a one-handed weapon treated as a light weapon for the purpose of determining that weapon’s bane on attack rolls. A nimble weapon isn’t considered a different weapon for any other purpose, and none of its other statistics or features change.This effect can be applied to one-handed and two-handed melee weapons.

Transmutation; common; cost +200 gp

Sanguine

This weapon’s tip gleams faintly even in the absence of light. When you hit with an attack using a sanguine weapon, you can use a free action to have the attack drain the vitality of the target, who takes a −1d4 penalty to their critical points. You can use this feature three times per day, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons that deal piercing damage.

Necromancy; unusual; cost +500 gp

Subtle

This weapon is dull gray in color, and seems to disappear when not directly observed. Whenever you use a subtle weapon to attack with advantage, the attack has favored damage.

This feature can be applied to melee weapons.

Illusion; common; cost +50 gp