Recent content by Barolo

I am not sure I understood what you meant here, but point buy in itself does not give me any chance (it is exempt of chance), whereas rolling does give me a chance (as chance is involved after all) to have better ability scores than point buy does. Just by giving me a chance, any chance, to roll...

If we take 2e into account (also part of this game history), the difference between an 8 and a 14 was similar to a 5e's +6, in regards to skill use. Even in 1e/OD&D, some people would be using (or still are) that "roll under" option (from the magazine, I guess?) for some tasks, so there is...

Actually, for most powers a 1 meant nothing, but for some, an ill effect would backlash the user, or the power would not work quite as planned. A 20 was not only a failure, it could be pretty dangerous. For instance, if you were trying to activate disintegrate and rolled a 20, the power would...

I would rather incentivize paladins to go S&B, just for aesthetic reasons, so I'd be inclined to follow the sage advice on that, but paladins aren't really common enough in my games for me to really bother either way. Different rulings apart, GWS can also be appealing to the crit-fishing...

According to sage advice, the style should only affect the weapon dice, not the extra dice from smiting. http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/rules-answers-april-2016

Is the comparison proposed in this thread strictly about damage dealing? Without feats, I would say archery is still very good, if only because range. But great weapons? In my book they are really lackluster, as the damage boost from d8+2 (dueling) to 2d6/reroll is real weak sauce compared to +2...

I would not go as far as claim any percentage of the gaming community to have or not problems by rolling stats. What I see here where I play is that some folks, like me, were used to need to roll stats just to figure out which classes we could choose, based on those infamous prerequisites. Back...

I really don't get what are you trying to argue over this thread. Like... at all. I mean, there is no such class in D&D that is completely tied to a single elemental attack to contribute in the combat pillar. No elemental-benders, or pyromancers or such. Even if all you want to play is a...

I would say 14th, based on the abjurer wizard's spell resistance and monk's diamond soul. Now, this would be a juicy level dip.

Even though CR and XP are paired in 5e, I feel like they shouldn't. See, CR is just a gross estimation of the amount of direct punishment a monster can dish out and withstand. It does not take into account any special non-damaging abilities, tactics, special movement or anything. CR is useful to...

And yet, against some even lower level creatures, sleep is a die without a save. Edit.: Ninja'd! You could also compare levitate with hold person, both 2nd level spells. Against a legal target, levitate might restrain movement and even impede the enemy from melee-attacking, but hold person...

This is only an anecdote, but following are the rolled stats from my last two tables (5 players each). There were no rerolls, no shenanigans, just straight 4D6k3. The stats are presented at the order rolled, but afterwards the players rearranged as they saw fit. First set: 16 11 17 5 12 8 15...

Let me add one category, which I find even more "fearful": 5. High level games with an all full-caster group. When you have a 14th level group with a diviner, an illusionist a necromancer and a land druid, it can be quite challenging to challenge them, and tailor-made encounters might be the...

When a runaway is still at a plausibly visible (or audible) distance, sure, nice ruling. But what should happen after they moved a thousand kilometers away and then teleported to another dimension? :confused: I wonder if the irony in my original statement got lost at typing. :hmm:

All the above. If it is really your preference to roll stats, as you have stated, you don't really need to give it up. See, having everybody gather together for a session zero to roll stats and create characters is part of the social contract of my gaming table, and always worked out just fine...