I think characters should keep their weapons for longer. One part of that is that I think it's cool when an adventurer of some stripe keeps their weapon, I like the idea of someone recognizing that a Warhammer is a specific character's Warhammer that they've had since level 1 and has followed them through double-digit adventures. If you're swapping out Warhammers for various upgrades every level or handful of adventures, you don't have any ties to your weapons, they're just statblocks waiting to be used.
The other part of it is that I don't wanna design a billion weapons. I've looked through the 4e players guides, and I've seen the nonsense you can add to a character in the 4e Windows character builder, and I don't wanna do that! I'm just one guy!
There's gotta be a way to split the difference. Every character has their weapon, something iconic and tied to a class that you can describe as visually unique for your character but has the same mechanics at every table no matter what, but there's also some type of treasure or item you could acquire to make changes to your weapon to make it feel mechanically different.
Introducing the "Keychain" idea.
Keychains are things you can add to your weapon. I envision them as Keyblade Keychains, something that will physically attach to your weapon and bestow some type of arbitrary property to the weapon that can be activated. But you can imagine them as a rune you put on a hilt, or some sort of gem you socket, or any number of visual cues.
Mechanically, they are IF/THEN statements that can be triggered as long as you have a Keychain equipped to a weapon. As you can see in Metronome above, the idea is that IF something happens (rolling a natural 20 on a specific type of attack), THEN you do something else (roll on a table to do something interesting). They can be complex, they can be simple, but most of all they can be easy to make.
In 10 minutes I was able to create the above Metronome Keychain, as well as the Cube of Repetition you can see below.
I'm already thinking of new ones as I'm writing this post! What about a Keychain that cares about tags, something like:
IF you attack with a POWER with the Fire keyword, THEN add +1 to your ATTACK and +2 to your damage.
And that's a scalable design! I could make that be a +1 version, and then make up to +5, where you multiply by +N. So here's what a +5 version could look like:
IF you attack with a POWER with the Fire keyword, THEN add +5 to your ATTACK and +10 to your damage.
By the end of this blog post, something that maybe took me 20-30 minutes to write out on a work break, I've gone from 2 Keychains to 7 Keychains, with a handful of other scalable ideas (we have Keywords for Slime, Ice, Poison, and Lightning in the current Player's Guidebook!) that could get me up to 27 keychains in the next 15-30 minutes. For a solo dev, working alone on a project trying to mimic the ridiculous tomes that are the D&D PHB, DMG, and MM, this is a really fun and awesome way to approximate that absurd heft that those games accumulate.
In addition, I think it's pretty easy to understand! One of the things I loved about learning game systems like Fellowship, Worlds in Peril, Interstitial, and other games in the Powered by the Apocalypse styling is that a lot of the way you interact with the world mechanically is through modified If/Then statements. If you try to attack someone, then rolld 2d6 and consult a table. That's wayyy easier to wrap your head around than a lot of D&D mechanics, so being able to pull ideas from those games will make for mechanically interesting treasure for players to acquire that are easy to understand at a glance.
Having this mechanic be simple to create and easy to understand makes for a really fun treasure mechanic. If I can make 20+ Keychains on a break from work, I could easily make 50-100 (hopefully lol) for a Game Master's Guide, which gives GM's a wealth of treasure options for their players. Again, going through a "dungeon" and getting loot while on a quest or adventure is part of the core gameplay loop of a game like this, just as important as having a range of Powers to use in combat or finding various coinages and gems to sell back in town. This allow your rewards for players to not just be accounting, only getting 143 gold pieces and 5 gems worth approximately 350 gold pieces. This is something tangible (I made these index card sized for a reason!) and mechanical that you could, in theory, us right away. Find a keychain in a dungeon, put it on your weapon between rooms, and BAM you are already rewarded for having gone on just one part of the adventure.
Because there's a mesh of simplicity in creating Keychains, and their deign is easy to understand on a player level, and they're a fun reward for dungeon crawling, it'll also be easy and rewarding for Game Masters to come up with their own Keychains! Let's say you have a player at your table who likes to make "combos" of some sort, or maybe they like deferring to other players in initiative order. If you notice something happening at the table that the Keychains I've made don't reward or account for, you can make your own. It's all If/Then statements, so IF you see someone at your table doing something cool, THEN reward them with a custom-made Keychain!
This is an idea I've had rattling around in my brain for awhile, and seeing it all on paper and rolling some dice and playing small combat encounters by myself... I think this is a really fun mechanic! I think this rules! One of the things I loved about 4e was that that it was, largely, pretty easy to make new things for the game. For example, monster stat blocks are easy to understand for a Dungeon Master, and you can just make a new one up as needed or modify one you already have on hand to give the players something interesting and different in a combat encounter, and it's all pretty simple. I think trying to extend that philosophy out more, to try and make most (if not all!) aspects of the game easy to expand and meet the needs of Players and Game Masters, makes for a better game experience on both sides of the table. And it's awesome to see this idea realized and see it fit in with those philosophies about this game. Hopefully you enjoy it, too.
It's been a little quiet, so I wanted to provide a small update on ELIXIRS PLUS ELEMENTALS.
Cover not final. Art is “Mountainous Riverscape with Figures” by Georg Eisenmann from nga.gov. Edited by Josh Average.
What if we made a PWYW digital magazine?
Inspired by zines, blog updates, and the old Dungeon and Dragon magazines, I'm gonna put together a bi-monthly (every other month) e-zine on itch. Volume 0 will focus fully on development of E PLUS E. Expect the blog posts from here to get "reprinted", peeks at new mechanics and ideas I'm tossing around, fully stat'd character sheets, and other developmental ideas.
Each issue will have one big feature on things that make E PLUS E unique, with our first issue focusing on "Meat Mountain", the default setting of E PLUS E. We'll talk about the idea of the setting, the inspiration, the vibes we hope it brings, and what mechanical ideas E PLUS E has that are centered around "Meat Mountain" as the default setting.
Posts from the blog won't stop! This is just a fun way to package everything together that I'm using to work on E PLUS E. I would be writing about and thinking about "Meat Mountain", or weapon mechanics, or leveling systems to help me work through my thoughts and put (digital) pen to (digital) paper for the game. This just helps me gauge interest and make a cool thing in-between bigger milestones for the game.
As always, if you have any thoughts, you know where to find us. We'll keep up updated with the first issue goes out, and when any other fun developments happen.
One of my favorite aspects of Fourth Edition was the variations on Monsters, best exemplified by Minions. Minions could be taken down with any amount of damage dealt to them, as they had 1 HP, and they provided less XP to players.
You could, in theory, make any Monster in the Monster Manual into a Minion by lowering the XP you give your players and by making it so they die to any damage dealt to them. One of the Windows desktop tools actually let you design any creature like this, thereby allowing you make anything (even dragons!) into Minions. It allows for lots of flexibility DMs while not needing a ton of encounter prep behind the screen.
I think this is core to any dungeon-crawly, fourth-edition, pen-and-paper-diablo-like game. If you want to run an encounter on the fly, you should have simple tools to be able to make sure the Players don't feel like they've been beating up the same Skeletons this whole time, even if they are basically just the same skeletons this whole time.
The way I do this with E+E is Creature Variations. Using the Jobber, Archer, Boss, and Plus X Variations, any Creature in the book can be changed for your encounter. Use the Mind Goblin as a Boss, giving it another Creature's attack as an Encounter power, and Skeleton Jobbers pour into the room for as long as the Mind Goblin is alive. If you need to scale up the encounter on the fly because your Players are just so cool and powerful, you can do that by making Creatures into a Plus X variation easily as long as you know the calculations.
And this is just the first pass! I might come up with more Variations for the Creature Fieldguide (name still not final), but for now I think this covers everything I want as a foundation for dealing with Creatures in the game.
I'm hoping to have the Creature Fieldguide ready to be seen publicly sometime in January 2026, hopefully to go along with a Player's Fieldguide (name ALSO still not final yet) update that allows you to make any Level 1 or 2 character and level up your character once. We'll see how feasible that is, but right now it feels pretty feasible!
"Gosh, wouldn't it be soooo cool to get every Josh Average published game for $3…"
We're all constantly thinking this, and do I have news for you!
All three of my finished TTRPGs, plus the in-development ELIXIRS + ELEMENTALS, is on sale NOW for $3 on itchio! It's the Josh Average Holiday 2025 Sale!
Crisis Corpse is an exquisite corpse game about writing superhero stories for an erratic d6 editor-in-chief. Create a silly superhero universe with your friends, watch it all come apart at the seams through forced tie-ins, and reuse old characters from past games!
Odd Powers is a one-page, JJBA-inspired, TTRPG where you use your odd powers to defeat your Fated Enemy.
You Have 7 Days is a one-page, TWEWY-inspired, diceless TTRPG that was made in one several-hour Twitch stream. You are now in the Reaper's Game. You will be asked questions, and your answers guide your story. Will you survive, or face Erasure?
And finally, ELIXIRS + ELEMENTALS is my current TTRPG project that you may have seen on @elixirspluselementals. E+E is a Fourth Edition Clone-Thing that looks to offer some dungeon-crawly, tactics-y, fourth-edition-y fun. You can build a level 1 wizard with the rules written so far. Exciting!!!
"Gosh, wouldn't it be soooo cool to get every Josh Average published game for $3…"
We're all constantly thinking this, and do I have news for you!
All three of my finished TTRPGs, plus the in-development ELIXIRS + ELEMENTALS, is on sale NOW for $3 on itchio! It's the Josh Average Holiday 2025 Sale!
Crisis Corpse is an exquisite corpse game about writing superhero stories for an erratic d6 editor-in-chief. Create a silly superhero universe with your friends, watch it all come apart at the seams through forced tie-ins, and reuse old characters from past games!
Odd Powers is a one-page, JJBA-inspired, TTRPG where you use your odd powers to defeat your Fated Enemy.
You Have 7 Days is a one-page, TWEWY-inspired, diceless TTRPG that was made in one several-hour Twitch stream. You are now in the Reaper's Game. You will be asked questions, and your answers guide your story. Will you survive, or face Erasure?
And finally, ELIXIRS + ELEMENTALS is my current TTRPG project that you may have seen on @elixirspluselementals. E+E is a Fourth Edition Clone-Thing that looks to offer some dungeon-crawly, tactics-y, fourth-edition-y fun. You can build a level 1 wizard with the rules written so far. Exciting!!!
Did you know you can write whatever the hell you want into a text document?
Anyways, I'm really interested in this design I've come up with.
The idea is that there's a funky little grub that psychically projects an image of something it's prey would rather avoid, which leads the prey into a web trap. The Projection can attack the prey's mind, and the Grub is hidden when the Projection is deployed, but if the Projection dies then it kills the Grub.
This also shows how I want Creatures to be templated. There are no levels, your basic statsheet gets augmented by Creature Variations. This could be the Jobber, it could be a +1 variation that simply boosts stats, it could be both, it could be none.
The thing I remember from my time DMing 4e was that sometimes a Monster was just stat'd weird. The numbers weren't that fun, and combat would become a slog, and it was more difficult than necessary to adjust on the fly. With my Creature Fieldguide, I'm hoping that the baseline statsheet gives a GM a good idea on what's working and what isn't, and they can change things on the fly using the Variations as needed.
Hopefully this all works out and becomes fun to run and fun to play!
Decided to work on the Creature Field Guide (name probably not final) to take a break from all the work the Player's Field Guide (name also probably not final) is taking. Here's a crack at Fourth Edition's Minions: Jobbers.
ELIXIRS + ELEMENTALS, a Fourth Edition Clone Thing, has an Itch page! It is in extremely early stages right now, as you may have guessed by some of the screenshots and dev blogs I've been posting. You can literally only make a level 1 wizard during character creation and that's it, but! I think it shows off the bones of what I'm trying to do here. It is free to own right now, or a suggested $1 tip, so get your hands on it and read it!
No, really, what does a race, heritage, background, "species" or any of that stuff mean? Should it mean anything? I think it shouldn't be too much.
Take how I've outlined an Elf. This is a paragraph of descriptions of what I think Elves are like aesthetically and culturally, and then 4 lines of rules-relevant things that set them apart from Dwarves and Humans. I think this is, basically, as much info as you need for any type of "species" (I really need to find a new name for this) background. It also means it's suuuuper easy to make new "species"! Here's an Elf variation that's in this current form of the document:
You can see how it's really easily make new people for your players to create with this setup! Twilight Elves have some distinct differences from Elves, while also having similarities in skills they can pick from. By only having to change a paragraph and 4 lines of rules, I could make a billion more "species" for the Player's Guidebook (name not final). In fact, this easy setup allowed me to make a specific "species" for a friend.
In the previous Dev Blog I made a passing mention of "Meat Mountain", a setting I've talked about with a friend and want to create to play E+E in. In discussions with the friend, they came up with a character idea based around the Warforged. Since I want them to be able to play that character, or as close to it as possible, we now have Construct, a people that are a sentient merger of magic and machine. It also allowed me to play with the rules, in usual 4th Edition you'd only ever put +2 into an Attribute, but this isn't 4th Edition. We can do whatever I want, and I want a "species" that can put +4 into one Attribute and nothing else.
You'll also notice that the experiences of other tabletop games is seeping into how I envision E+E with "Exposing The Circuits", "Twilight Connection", and "Elvish Plantsense". There's something a little Powered by the Apocalypse in them, in that I want something that is basically an if-then statement that is pretty broad that will hopefully come up naturally while playing a character. A person made of circuits, with deep connection to their own mechanical history, might want to draw upon that so do a Skill Check. They should be encouraged and rewarded for doing so.
ELIXIRS + ELEMENTALS (E+E) has been in my brain for awhile. I'd been talking it up with a friend in terms of "what if I made 4e, wouldn't that be something" for years, and I'd been thinking of a dungeon-crawly setting called "Meat Mountain" with them as well. In my mind, I wanted a game that was a bit more Diablo than 4th Edition was, but also had wayyy more options. And not just options, but buckets for options.
Take Powers. In 4th Edition you have Wizards and Warlocks, two Arcane Classes that have Wizard Powers and Warlock Powers, but there aren't really Arcane Powers that both groups can draw on. You'd think there wouldd be some shared Arcane things that both could do, even if they were generic options. Hell, a regular-ass Wizard has more Power options at 1st level than a Star Pact Warlock at 1st level!
What do you MEAN that Infernal Warlocks have one extra choice for Encounter Power at Level 1 than Star or Fey Warlocks???
I think you should have more choice. I mean, you paid like $50 for the Handbook, you should be given a plethora of weird options right off the bat!
And that's really what it comes down to with most thoughts about 4th Edition. "Imagine paying $50 to get a book that feels like it wasn't fleshed out from the beginning." So, what if things were fleshed out from the beginning? Sure, I'm just one guy, but bit-by-bit I can flesh out a foundation, right?
I think I can. So I've started.
Humble Beginnings
Going back to those "buckets" of options, we can start to see how I want there to be "Generic Powers" as well as Class-specific Powers. Wizards should be able to cast "The Missile", but also maybe they should be able to do something else from a more generic Arcane bucket.
It's similar, but different. There were good ideas in 4th that I think could use some more massaging. At the very least, there is an "ideal" version of 4th Edition that lives in my brain. By starting from scratch and making my own foundation for this, I'm hoping to make something that pours my fondness for this game into a mixture of my sensibilities: other TTRPG systems I like, experiences playing and making games, as well as just about anything and everything I've loved and absorbed. I am slowly working to get all of it out into these documents, and form it into an actual, working tabletop game that I can play with friends. The plan is that you, reader, will be able to play it, too.
What if someone took another crack at 4th Edition. That would be cool, right? It's an edition of That Dragon Game that doesn't have a lot of fans, but it's got some good bones to it. I mean, Pen & Paper Diablo 3 is a pretty interesting concept, and I think it could lend itself to something fun.
Since no one else is doing it, I'm gonna be the change I wanna see in the world. I'll post updates as things move along, and as I come up with silly ideas. Eventually this will be a game that you, dear reader, could play! As that's coming together, you can watch as the game is shaped, on weird screenshot of LibreOffice at a time.
This is ELIXIRS + ELEMENTALS, a funny little dungeon-crawly, d20, tabletop RPG. Thanks for checking us out!
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