After nearly a year of work, today we are moving to the new version of RPGBOT.net. If you’re reading this, you’re already here.
I’ve spoken about the transition in previous blog posts, but rather than send you chasing through those, I’ll summarize the key points.
Why?
To be brief: Adding content to the old site was a pain. I wrote everything in raw HTML, and while I’m pretty good at HTML that made it difficult to bring in other authors. Random Powell has written several excellent 5e subclass handbooks for the site, and I want that to happen more often. Converting his work into HTML presents a huge time cost, and moving to the new site removes that barrier. That means more of the content that you’re here for, written and published faster, and at higher quality because now I have spell checking.
What’s New on the New Site?
- A blog (You’re reading it!)
- Comments on blog posts (scroll down)
- Built-in site search (It’s over there on the right side)
- Quality-of-life improvements like a table of contents on long pages
- A spellchecker
Any More Big Plans?
Yes, absolutely. But those are secret for the moment. Stick around.
I Found Something Weird
I’ve tried really hard to get everything working just as well as on the old site, but there will inevitably be some stuff that broke or which looks weird for some reason.
If you run into issues like broken links, pages that look weird, or anything in general that seems to be broken, please let me know so I can fix it. Feel free to leave a comment below if you’d like, but as usual I’m always available via email.
So glad to see the redirect, and I’m loving the new look! (And have been loving it, I just sometimes forgot to go to the new one!)
Thank you for all that you do and all this excellent advice and free content. I use your handbooks all the time.
Thank you! The transition was pretty rocky, but I’m really excited to have the new site live.
i got so scared for a second when i saw the site go down for a second, considering what’s happened with 5etools and other similar DnD sites recently. so glad to hear (and see!) that it was good news! everything looks beautiful so far, keep up your amazing work 🙂
I work super hard to stay clean from a legal perspective. If I ever got forcibly taken down, it would be a huge surprise.
The link used by the search button is using a http url instead of https. Super easy to fix, but I wanted to call it out so that you were aware.
Thanks! I’ll see if I can figure out what’s going on there.
I’ve been trying to use the site for some time, and got concerened. Good to see you’re still online, and conrgrats on the transition!
Yeah, just some technical issues switching to the new site. I’ve been posting updates on social media, but it’s hard to post updates directly on the site when the site is down.
Cleric spells and subclasses guides, seem to be broken links. Grats on the upgrades!
Oh no! Thanks for spotting that. I’ll get that fixed as soon as I can.
Congrats on the transition! I often come here just to read your thoughts on subclasses and their uses.
I don’t know if my browser is just being silly, but on the Monk Subclass page, there are no colors of “good, bad” etc like the old site. All text is black.
Is that as intended?
That should be fixed now, but you may need to clear your browser’s cached files. If that doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll take another look.
Hey there, I’m visiting this site on Safari on IOS 15, and the menu offers no options at all, just this big black slate with no writing on it. It makes navigation on this site extremely difficult, at least for me, so I thought you might want to know.
Also, a couple times I clicked on a page here, it took me to this weird green version of the site with no color ratings, I can email you screenshots if that’s helpful.
Never mind the menu, it seems to be working now LOL
Sorry about that. You caught me in the middle of debugging some issues on the back end. Hopefully that won’t happen again.
Also nevermind. BEFORE I commented, this site loaded in a kind of….pale green-ish color and all the text was in black. After I commented, the site went to black as normal and everything works and looks as it should.
I guess my browser caught the site mid-update lol
I had that exact same thing happen to me today as well. I emailed him screenshots and such.
I’m still working out some bugs. I think people were looking at the site while I was poking things and the site got weird for a few minutes.
This is awesome! I look forward to your Pathfinder 2e guides!
Cleric Domain guide for PF1 is missing a bunch of section headers (Domain titles). I am on Firefox, if that might be an issue.
What URL are you looking at? I’m looking at the 2e Domains Breakdown and things seem to be fine for me across multiple browsers and devices. Would you please also try checking the page in an incognito tab? If that fixes it, you may just need to clear your browser’s cached files.
The link from Eldritch Knight (https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/fighter/subclasses/#eldritch-knight) to the Fighter Spell List is broken. It leads to https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/fighter/subclasses/spells ,which just shows a 404 instead of https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/fighter/spells/ where the spell list is.
Thanks for spotting that! It should be fixed now.
This might be a stupid question since it’s your site after all, but is there a way to request topics for Random’s subclass handbooks? And does he plan to do a handbook for all subclasses, or just certain ones?
I’ve currently been doing ones that I had a personal stake in. I don’t expect I’ll be able to make it through all of them for a number of reasons including the fact that there are many that aren’t particularly worth optimizing for when there’s a clear choice for something else that can optimize for the same thing better. One option I had talked with Tyler (RPGBOT) about was doing a Patreon or Twitter poll for the next one. With that said, I think my next article is going to be the Practical Guide to Spell Secrets, then I’ll get back to subclasses. Did you have a particular question about one or just a suggestion about which to do next?
I was thinking a handbook based around the D$D 5E Bladesinging subclass for wizards, because they look very different from normal wizard play and I felt that it would be very nice to have its very own article for those who might play one, such as myself. Thanks for listening, I didn’t know you could reply sir.
Also, the link for the D&D 5E Artificer Armorer handbook seems to be broken.
Thanks for spotting that! It should be fixed now.
Thank you for fixing that. But yeah, I enjoy your writing but I also find Random Powell’s articles interesting and entertaining as well, so I was wondering if there was a way to make some sort of informal request for the subclass handbooks. Sorry if it’s a bother!
https://rpgbot.net/general-tabletop/beg-borrow-steal/ which leads to https://rpgbot.net/general-tabletop/begborrowsteal/end-of-session currently brings up a 404
Thanks for spotting that! It should be fixed now.
Bleh, I preferred the old front page by a country mile. Much clearer at a glance about content updates, and I didn’t have to click on a blog entry to get to the link to a newly added or updated article. Character optimization and your other writeups are the meat of the site. I don’t care about your blog.
And that floating search field is a waste of horizontal space to me.
On the classes page for Pathfinder 2e https://rpgbot.net/p2/characters/classes/ the cleric class is missing
Thanks for spotting that! It should be fixed now.
Does anybody know how to access the To-Do List page on this site? I would always navigate to the older version just to see it but I could not locate a way to visit the page ever since the transition. Any help would be appreciated!
https://RPGBOT.net/TODO
Thank you so much for the dark theme. I can now stay up into the early hours of the morning pouring over articles without completely cauterizing my eyes. (Tell wikidot to do the same thing please.) Great changes, great site, great work, keep it up.
When will you be updating info for the new books?
I’m working on it. If you check recent blog posts, I’m actively updating my 5e content to handle the updates introduced in Tasha’s while also keeping pace with the new book releases. For PF2 I’m pretty far behind, but I am working on more content. Previews of upcoming articles are available for Patreon subscribers.
Hey RPGBOT, would you be interested or able to write a Practical Guide to Underwater Combat sometime? I’m going to be playing a Sea Elf or Triton Blood Hunter (2020) in a nautical campaign, but I’m completely unfamiliar with the concept of how to make a martial character function effectively underwater. If you have any sort of advice you can give me, I would greatly appreciate it!
I’ll add to the my to-do list. That would be a fun article to write.
For now, the best advice I can give is to have a swim speed. That alone makes underwater combat massively easier for you. Avoid anything that deals fire damage and don’t use bows. Beyond that, it’s basically the same as fighting while flying, except that falling isn’t a problem.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#UnderwaterCombat