• Critical-Hits Studios
    • Criminals Card Game
    • Sentinel Comics: the Roleplaying Game
  • Downloads & Tools
    • Critical Hits Fantasy Name Generator
    • Drinking D&D 2010
    • Drinking D&D 2011
    • Fiasco Playset: “Alma Monster”
    • MODOK’s 11 for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
    • Refuge In Audacity RPG
    • Strange New Worlds RPG
  • Guides
    • Gamma World
    • Guide to 4e Accessories
    • Guide to Gaming DVDs
    • Skill Challenges
  • RSS Feed
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Critical Hits

Everything tabletop gaming since 2005

  • News
  • Reviews
  • Columns
    • Dire Flailings
    • Dungeonomics
    • Musings of the Chatty DM
    • Pain of Publication
    • The Architect DM
  • Podcasts
    • Critical Hits Podcast
    • Dungeon Master Guys Podcast
  • Roleplaying Games
  • Tabletop Games
  • Game Hacks & Content
  • Video Games
You are here: Home / Archives for Newest Critical Hits / Featured

Inq. of the Week: Summer Movies ’09

April 7, 2009 by Bartoneus

Last week The Main Event posted an Inquisition on a topic that I love to discuss, power creep in 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.  With people voting on which parts of the PHB2 they thought most displayed power creep, 42% of you actually don’t think there’s much power creep in the book at all!  In […]

Filed Under: Featured, Inquisition of the Week, Movies Tagged With: GI Joe, harry potter, Inquisition of the Week, star trek, summer movies, terminator, Transformers, wolverine, x-men

Pain of Campaigning: XIX Getting My Hands Dirty

April 3, 2009 by The Main Event

Last week I dealt with brainstorming for my military-based high fatality huge party epic campaign. This week, I’m going to elaborate on a few of the underlying concepts for the campaign. What follows are my preliminary rules/fluff for the game, subject to further consideration and reader feedback.

Filed Under: Featured, Pain of Publication, Roleplaying Games

Sex, Love, and the Races of the PHB2

April 1, 2009 by guest

In honor of the release of the totally awesome PHB2 and Spring, I decided to write about sex, love, and the races of the PHB2.

Ever wonder what a gnome finds sexy? Or how goliaths deal with friction from rubbing lithoderms? Maybe I’m the only one who thinks about these things…

Filed Under: Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: april fools, geek love, love, PHB2, races, sex

Inq. of the Week: PHB2 Power Creep

March 31, 2009 by The Main Event

In the heyday of 3.5 I’d browse every new splat book, not for intriguing new play options (many, many sucked), but for the overpowered Prestige Class de jour. After all, who didn’t want to dip into a single level of six prestige classes for awesome abilities? With a few exceptions, the poor original DMG prestige classes were forgotten, unless of course something new came out that made a dog suddenly viable. Now, with the PHB2 out I was curious to see if this newer, more-balanced D&D suffered the same fate as its predecessors: Power Creep.

Filed Under: Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: balance, PHB2, power creep

Preview: Ranged Warlord

March 27, 2009 by Bartoneus

When preview material for the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons first started to come out, what excited me the most was probably the addition of the Warlord class. The Races & Monsters preview book described the class alongside pictures of armored warriors covered in weapons (both melee and ranged). When 4e was finally released the Warlord class was extremely interesting but it completely lacked that “Weapons Master” feel…

Filed Under: Board, Card, and Miniature Games, Comics, Featured, Roleplaying Games, Science Fiction & Fantasy Genre Tagged With: 4th Edition, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, martial power, ranged warlord, roleplaying, Roleplaying Games

Pain of Campaigning: Actually Planning

March 25, 2009 by The Main Event

After a long hiatus of actively DMing, I was roused from my gaming slumber. The results are a bit unusual and probably not going to be to everyone’s liking, but after droves and droves of articles detailing how to run games, I figure I’d do an article of my current work in progress: XIX.

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, Pain of Publication, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: campaign

Inq. of the Week: Worldwide D&D Game Day

March 23, 2009 by Dave

Last Saturday was Worldwide D&D Game Day, showcasing four of the classes of PHB2 (but only one of the races for some reason) as Paragon PCs sliced their way through One Dark Night in Weeping Briar. I was there, how about you?

Filed Under: Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, dndgd, PHB2, wwdndgd

War in Low Level Campaigns

March 19, 2009 by The Main Event

Most gamers tend to think of fantasy warfare as a clash that centers on heroes of outlandish skill, immense power, and blistering charisma. Wading through common soldiers to find other champions is equally pervasive in literature and cinema (Lord of the Rings, Troy, etc.). To that extent, DMs reserve massive warfare for characters of mid to high level. This article intends to look at a few ways of showcasing low level PCs in large scale warfare and the inherent advantages to taking your game in a warfare based direction.

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, Roleplaying Games, Science Fiction & Fantasy Genre

PHB2 Roundtable: Races and Other Topics

March 17, 2009 by Dave

As with yesterday, I’ve (virtually) assembled a roundtable of bloggers who have delved into the Player’s Handbook 2 (released today). This time, we’ve taken a look at the Races of the PHB2 (like we did with the PHB), along with two of the other topics therein.

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, PHB2, races

PHB2 Roundtable: Classes

March 16, 2009 by Dave

When the 4e PHB launched, we held a roundtable discussion of the different classes in the book. Well, now that PHB2 is about to be released tomorrow, we wanted to take a look at those races in a similar format. To accomplish this, I contacted several of my fellow bloggers who had received early preview copies (and have had plenty of chance to pour over it) in order to see how they felt about the classes.

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, classes, PHB2

« Previous Page
Next Page »

About the Author

  • Bartoneus

    Danny works professionally as an architectural designer and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).

    Email: bartoneus@critical-hits.comWeb: https://critical-hits.com//author/Bartoneus/

    Follow me:

Subscribe

RSS Feed

Archives

CC License

All articles and comments posted posted on the site (but not the products for sale) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. References to trademarks and copywritten material are included for review and commentary use only and are not intended as any kind of challenge.

Recent Comments

  • fogus: The best things and stuff of 2024 on Remembering the Master: An Inelegant Eulogy for Kory Heath
  • Routinely Itemised: RPGs #145 on Review: The Magus
  • The Chatty DM on Review: The Magus
  • Linnaeus on Review: The Magus
  • 13th Age: Indexing Truths — Critical Hits on The Horizon Conspiracy

Contact The Staff

Critical Hits staff can be reached via the contact information on their individual staff pages and in their articles. If you want to reach our senior staff, email staff @ critical-hits.com. We get sent a lot of email, so we can't promise we'll be able to respond to everything.

Recent Posts

  • Remembering the Master: An Inelegant Eulogy for Kory Heath
  • Review: The Magus
  • Hope in the Dark Heart of Evil is Not a Plan
  • Chatty on Games #1: Dorf Romantik
  • The Infinity Current: Adventure 0

Top Posts & Pages

  • Home
  • The 5x5 Method Compendium
  • Dungeons & Dragons "Monster Manual" Preview: The Bulette!
  • Critical Hits Fantasy Name Generator
  • On Mid-Medieval Economics, Murder Hoboing and 100gp
  • "The Eversink Post Office" - An Unofficial Supplement for Swords of the Serpentine
  • Finally a manual for the rest of them!
  • Dave Chalker AKA Dave The Game
  • How to Compare Birds to Fish
  • The Incense War: a Story of Price Discovery, Mayhem, and Lust

Copyright © 2026 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in