Ain't No Walls

     Balance. What all great multiplayer games strive for. Whatever your tastes, odds are there is at least one game in your catalogue that is constantly being patched and updated by the dev team (looking at you Destiny 2 ) in pursuit of a "fair" experience for all players. Funnily enough, there always seems to be a vocal part of such a game's community that gripes about every update. There also seems to be no end to the updates, as they usually continue until the next game in the franchise is released and support ceases for the previous entry. All this in the name of balance, yet balance seems to always be just out of reach. What does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons you ask? Perfectly balanced. As all things should be. Unless?     The current generation of TTRPGs also has this obsession with balance. WotC's periodical releases of Unearthed Arcana  not only provide new content for 5E, but tweak existing classes and features of the game to be mor...

     With the publication of  my first article , I was quickly reminded by several readers that skill checks, in fact, do  exist in early editions of D&D. I'll clarify right here that my commentary on the increasing reliance on skill checks throughout subsequent editions refers specifically to the list of universal skill checks present in those games, where all characters have access to the same skills regardless of class or ability scores. That being said, now we're gonna dig into the origins of universal skill checks and whether or not you can throw them in the trash with your copy of Unearthed Arcana . "So, let me get this straight: You want to sneak up behind the guard, silently break his neck without alerting his companions, and drag his corpse into the bushes so you can loot it? *sigh* Roll stealth I guess. Oh but with disadvantage since you're wearing plate mail." - art by Jeff Easley -     Skill checks happened in early D&D when players...