You can take your one true way and sho...umm ... play the game any way you like. Meanwhile my style of gaming works just fine for me and the multiple groups I DM for.
To be fair to @Oofta, I think he's been pretty clear that if you were his player, you'd know exactly what to expect from his game. With all respect to him, I don't think he can be characterized as "subtle"!
Well, I asked him to give me an example of how he would change the criminal background, and he refused to. So I feel that no, I wouldn't know what to expect from his game.
Almost all of the people arguing about this have no intention of changing their minds and are going to keep playing the way they see fit. So even if the participants stick with 5E14... the opposing side's views are not going to have any impact. The only people who might be impacted by the arguments are people who haven't yet made a decision on the matter, or the exceedingly miniscule number of people who will actually be able to have their minds changed.
Based on the pages of back and forth though... it doesn't look like either one of those types of people are showing up to the conversation, LOL.
Today I learned...
When I would play a PC, I've been playing wrong. I always just though Backgrounds were optional. I could rarely ever find one that matched my character's "backstory".
Almost all of the people arguing about this have no intention of changing their minds and are going to keep playing the way they see fit. So even if the participants stick with 5E14... the opposing side's views are not going to have any impact. The only people who might be impacted by the arguments are people who haven't yet made a decision on the matter, or the exceedingly miniscule number of people who will actually be able to have their minds changed.
Based on the pages of back and forth though... it doesn't look like either one of those types of people are showing up to the conversation, LOL.
Once again, I will put forward: Faolyn isn't trying to tell you how to play any more than you are trying to tell her how to play. She's defending the reasons she does things differently than you, just like you're doing. In other words, you both equally "appear" to be saying that your way is right, correct and perfect and that all other ways are wrong, foolish, and mistaken.
Obviously neither of you mean that, while both of you appear to. It's the way of the internet.
I've been told today that I force my players to play "DM may I". All the places where I and others have explained why reputation or knowing someone is required for features to work are ignored or dismissed out of hand.
What I do instead of background features has also been ignored as if it didn't exist. Been told that my games would be better if I gave players more narrative control. It just goes on and on.
I've explained my position, reasoning and opinion. I will never tell anyone that they are "incorrect" because they disagree with my understanding of clear wording because I don't happen to like a specific rule or view the game the way they do.
So no, I don't agree that it's the same.
What's so funny about this is how rarely any of this comes up in any game I've played and how little it would matter if it did. Virtually everyone I've played with pick background for a proficiency and forget about it.
One of the other current threads ( D&D 5E - Wind Walk and Grappled ) has a question about interpreting Wind Walk. Wind Walk does not give immunity to grapple in the description, and clarification in sage advice says spells don't give other spells effects unless they say they do (so it doesn't convey what a spell like Gaseous Form would unless it explicitly says so Does the spell wind walk give you the benefits of gaseous form? ).
You and up to ten willing creatures you can see within range assume a gaseous form for the duration, appearing as wisps of cloud. While in this cloud form, a creature has a flying speed of 300 feet and has resistance to damage from nonmagical weapons. The only actions a creature can take in this form are the Dash action or to revert to its normal form. Reverting takes 1 minute, during which time a creature is incapacitated and can’t move. Until the spell ends, a creature can revert to cloud form, which also requires the 1-minute transformation.
If a creature is in cloud form and flying when the effect ends, the creature descends 60 feet per round for 1 minute until it lands, which it does safely. If it can’t land after 1 minute, the creature falls the remaining distance.
There are certainly a huge variety of questions that could be made asked about this. Here are four:
* As a DM would you let a normal corporeal solid person A grapple a wind walking person B?
* As a DM would you let an air elemental A grapple a wind walking person B?
* As a DM would you let a person A with a bellows try and suck back the wind walking person B in something like a grapple?
* And the one I am most curious about - As a DM, do any of those change if it is player A vs NPC B as opposed to NPC A vs player B who tries it first?
Emphatically no to the regular person, probably yes to the air elemental, probably yes to the bellows, and I would probably be a bit more likely to say yes on the last two if it was a player suggesting it than me thwarting a PC escape.
they exist, they are just smart enough to not get involved… as Calvin (from & Hobbes) said “Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us”
One of the other current threads ( D&D 5E - Wind Walk and Grappled ) has a question about interpreting Wind Walk. Wind Walk does not give immunity to grapple in the description, and clarification in sage advice (or whatever they call it now) says spells don't give other spells effects unless they say they do (so it doesn't convey what a spell like gaseous form would unless it says so).
You and up to ten willing creatures you can see within range assume a gaseous form for the duration, appearing as wisps of cloud. While in this cloud form, a creature has a flying speed of 300 feet and has resistance to damage from nonmagical weapons. The only actions a creature can take in this form are the Dash action or to revert to its normal form. Reverting takes 1 minute, during which time a creature is incapacitated and can’t move. Until the spell ends, a creature can revert to cloud form, which also requires the 1-minute transformation.
If a creature is in cloud form and flying when the effect ends, the creature descends 60 feet per round for 1 minute until it lands, which it does safely. If it can’t land after 1 minute, the creature falls the remaining distance.
There are certainly a huge variety of questions that could be made asked about this. Here are four:
As a DM would you let a normal corporeal solid person A grapple a wind walking person B?
As a DM would you let an air elemental A grapple a wind walking person B?
As a DM would you let a person A with a bellows try and suck back the wind walking person B in something like a bellows?
As a DM, do any of those change if it is player A vs NPC B as opposed to NPC A vs player B?
Emphatically no to the regular person, probably to the air elemental, probably to the bellows, and I would probably be a bit more likely to say yes on the last two if it was a player suggesting it than me thwarting a PC escape.
You can't grapple something that's in gaseous form, they no longer have a physical form to grab. You could potentially use a giant vacuum cleaner, but that would really suck.