Recent content by Benjamin Olson

Whether AI slop, human made slop, or something in between, it is intrinsically infuriating to see someone speak this authoritatively at length based on such an elementary misunderstanding.

So on the one hand 5e D&D is pretty explicit when things like this don't stack. On the other hand it is consistent enough in not letting things like this stack that having it stack feels out of keeping with the design philosophy, so this feels like an oversight and generally a counterintuitive...

Well on the theory that the original post might be some sort of meme-parody I googled "This is not a threat; this is the truth" as the distinctive phrase that seems least likely to have been changed. The results all seem to involve Uganda or vampire media. In any case I don't care enough to...

The class progression of 5e D&D is often very linear without a lot of choice. Yes you get to choose a subclass, yes you get to choose spells if you're the right type of spellcaster, yes you get to choose feats and for certain subclasses additional features like a Battlemaster's maneuvers, but...

No, it starts with him robbing a dying person who thought he was being saved by him, which establishes that he's edgy and morally neutral more than well enough. Actually, outside of the implications of a couple joke bits, I don't recall the movie having any sexual content at all, which I...

Well many times a player would want to spend their action attempting to end a battle with intimidation it's because their side is not doing (or not likely to do) so hot, and that obviously is going to be a very difficult DC for obvious narrative reasons. Other times its because the individual...

Just saw the new Deathstalker, and I was pleasantly surprised. It is definitely a B movie made on a small budget with limited ambitions, but within those limitations they basically knocked it out of the park. Strong action comedy script, serviceable acting (which for a cheap action movie is...

It's lore and stat block doesn't really have much to support this so far as I know, but I always felt a Nightwalker that freely slipped between the shadowfell and the prime material plane, or that visited people's dreams, or that only certain people could see, or that could just appear and...

It seems like you're doing plenty on the money and religion front. Really politics is the other front to attend to. Traditionally old school D&D characters of a certain level often made themselves lords, and I had one in 5e who carved out a little barony for himself and got it populated by...

It's not really 5e. They've created their own different game that's better for them. If they keep applying comparable creative energy to abilities and spells as they gain them they will probably keep having a game that works better for them. If they try to mix some stricter adherence to 5e rules...

I mean, it really depends what your DM tends to call for. I don’t really know how anyone who plays with more than a group or two can meaningfully rank them. Some things are campaign dependent as well. I can only group them based on experience. Basically universally important: Perception: Many...

Well I don't really think the issues with combat feeling "unengaging" lie all that much with initiative. My main tweak to initiative is just that if the DM is going to have multiple enemies with separate initiatives in a planned battle they should roll intiatives for them in advance, or at least...

I've basically always played them as a bonus action, including having a DM who's singular house rule was bonus action potions. I find it hard enough to use a hard to find and non-regenerating resource when it doesn't also have a prohibitively expensive action economy cost. As a bonus action...

It's not just "noise" if you are keen to be able to find lots of different people to play with. A vast number of people joined the hobby with 5e and its a familiar system to far more. You can virtually always get a group together. The question is what value published materials hold. For me...

An effort was made to give more creatures a distinctive ability of some sort, and (more importantly) to make distinctive abilities bonus actions they take in addition to their normal attacks, to better highlight these features. In 2014 distinctive features often just never came up in the three...