Recent content by vermilion

I've played a pair of Arcane Tricksters and think that a high INT is overrated for the class. You're rarely going to use offensive spells and even the new melee cantrips like Green-flame Blade don't depend on your casting stat to hit, so not much need there. Illusions like Disguise Self and...

This is rather specific as it plays to my particular interests, but I like what SCAG brought to the table for knights and paladins. We get the Purple Dragon Knight and Oath of the Crown archetypes, the Knight of the Order background, a good bit of information on the deity Helm and the Order of...

From reading the PHB, the Great Old One may not want anything from you either; it "might be unaware of your existence or entirely indifferent to you." I don't see how you could actually make a pact with another party that doesn't even know you exist, but those warlocks get powers all the same

"However, if the familiar is granting sneak attack, you can bet that it will be considered a priority target, particularly by ranged attackers (if using flyby)." If the orc I'm stabbing in the face wants to ignore me and burn both his action and reaction to swing at my owl, I'm all for it.

"I don't like the Arcane Trickster because of this very ability. It effectively neutralises any and all traps fitted to locks." That's not even the close to the best thing you can do with this ability. Any time my rogue has initiative, I use my first turn to negate the most dangerous enemy in...

That's certainly easy to do in this edition, the rules seemed to be spliced in a bit haphazardly. Every time I need to refer to something about a spell focus, it feels like a Choose Your Own Adventure book (In chapter 3? Go to chapter 5. In 5? Go to 10. Oops, you were eaten by the Tarrasque.)

While many skill checks aren't too difficult to succeed against, the Help action doesn't work quite as liberally as you've described. PHB p.175 clarifies that a character can only help on a skill that it could perform itself unaided, and specifically notes that a character who lacks proficiency...

In the brief time I've played 5e, I've found one particular situation in which not being able to delay my place in the initiative is incredibly annoying. I'm playing a Rogue|Arcane Trickster with an Owl familiar. The intent is for my familiar to use the Help action to grant me advantage on my...

Kevin Seimbeida would laugh if he read this, but he doesn't use the internet.

Re: the Daggermaster errata: The change did fix those broken combos, but in the way that amputating your arm fixes a splinter in your finger. Since the abuses were by and large arcane- and divine-sourced characters, a more appropriate fix might have been to simply restrict Daggermaster's crit...

While not a big deal for rogues, this interpretation is a big deal for Sneak of Shadows users. Non-rogues who MC into Daggermaster could go from one SA per encounter to roughly one in every seven attack rolls, regardless of whether or not they have surprise or a teammate to flank. That's...

I think this is a flavor issue more than a mechanical one. It's plausible enough to say that a thrown weapon ricochets in flight from one target to another, a la Captain America's shield or Xena and her chakram, etc. Alternately, you could say that the weapon instantly teleports to the...

He's blatantly mistaken that his characters won't auto-pick it? What, are you gonna Jedi mind-trick him into taking it every time he hits level 16?

If it's an actual corpse, and it's a weight the player could actually carry, I allow it. It doesn't really affect combat gameplay the way that teleporting another living creature would, and it's a pretty creative solution to a difficult problem. As others have said, you can't teleport a...

The system is more convoluted than current-gen DND, but it's not particularly difficult to play with. The hardest part is keeping track of all the different ways certain things are governed. As others have mentioned, skills run off a d100 percentile, while hit rolls are d20. Attribute and...