Recent content by Benjamin Olson

I only sullied my hands with a character with unrolled stats once, in order to try out Adventurers League. I did not return. Otherwise all my characters were born of fate.

Only if the player has no honor. I mean, I'm sure some players cheat at it, because some players do cheat at D&D for whatever reasons, but you present it as though everyone is looking to cheat the moment other people aren't watching them, and, no I'm pretty sure that's still a minority.

Wow, this case is so frivolous it makes me side with Disney's use of CGI Tarkin. These jokers thought happening to have an unfulfilled contract for acting with Cushing before his death gave them some sort of exclusive likeness rights forever.

Cool. I think the resurrection-specific 9th level True Resurrection should be better at resurrecting than Wish. I also feel like Avoid Your Fate would be a choice I'd be much more likely to take if I could choose it after making a few death saves, not just because I know I've failed them at...

In a full campaign I appreciate that it I got something distinctive and can narrow down which character concept I'm pursuing, but am probably a little disappointed my character won't be more well-rounded. In a one-shot I think up a silly novelty character to have 3 intelligence or whatever...

Well per lore the US Second Civil War, which evolves into World War III, starts in 2026, so we'll have lots of info soon. The Memory Alpha entry for 21st Century points at what episodes make offhand reference to facts about the era: 21st century No episodes spend any substantial time in the...

Half-Elf and Half-Orc. And I think that's going to be my answer for the life of this lame edition.

Very well. We strongly disagree. Overcoming limitations through hard work, clever roleplay, etc. in a world where everything you want is not handed to you and the conditions you face make sense is more fun than playing Mary Sue in a world full of contrived problems that should have been solved...

So I was just reading this module the other day. The abbess or whatever of this monastery is Runara, an Adult Bronze Dragon who, while she uses that stat block, the module specifically says has vague powers not limited to that stat block. If the party can scrounge up a scroll of regeneration in...

The main draws to me are 1) a setting people care about and 2) shared baseline expectations of how things work. I do think those are both double-edged swords, that if anyone is not sufficiently familiar with the franchise you are playing a licensed game for they're in for a world of frustration...

On the most abstract level I like it well enough for deciding how a background battle is playing out, but if the players are getting involved in strategic planning for this battle it's going to be pretty disappointing when none of the strategy matters. Also if I'm a high level caster I'm going...

Definitely. That's the most interesting thing about the movie by far. Somehow a twenty-something guy got his own D&D campaign turned into a theatrical movie, and I want to know more about that story.

I've definitely read articles or seen YouTube videos with all this information before, and my real question remains unanswered, namely how did someone with no apparent experience get handed the D&D movie (and seemingly on the strength of a vision for the movie which, judging by the end result...

Both the recent starter sets from WotC, and the Cosemere one someone in my group is running, have made me realize how incredibly nice it is to just have a simple adventure packaged with the battlemaps and monster tokens you need to play it. I'd probably find it too constrictive for a big...

Well I'll just say that having the party come up with shared backstories or relationships is great if that is something they are actually into or that plays into the campaign scenario in some meaningful way, but the time I had a DM absolutely insist that we use a game's official tools to...