Recent content by Epic Meepo

After this latest episode, I'm going to be doubly disappointed if this virus isn't the first step of an alien invasion, or at least a precursor to a second, more aggressively-minded virus. If that's not what's going on here, this hive mind makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective. It's...

That bold-faced rule you quoted has nothing to do with NPCs. It says PCs get a set of traits from their species. NPCs aren't PCs. If I learned to play D&D using the 2024 core rulebooks, I would have no reason to believe NPCs get species traits which don't appear in their 2024 stat blocks...

The rule you quoted upthread says the 2014 rules for races don't apply to Bandits. "...versions of things in this book replace versions from older books." The new version of the Bandit replaces the older version of the Bandit. More importantly for the point I was making about Dragonborn NPCs...

The updated NPC stat blocks from the 2024 Monster Manual replace the NPC stat blocks of the same names from the 2014 Monster Manual. The updated stat blocks have no modifiers for species. The previous rules for modifying NPCs stat blocks by species specifically say they apply to the stat blocks...

Dragonborn NPCs without breath weapons are the default according to the 2024 Monster Manual. Dragonborn NPCs use the same stat blocks as human NPCs, without any of the modifications which were mentioned in the 2014 rules. Personally, I don't agree with that design choice, but it remains the...

My apologies. I thought we were talking about grammar. Forget I said anything.

Incidentally, grammatical gender is only related to breeding if one chooses to interpret it that way. A grammatical gender category is just a specific type of noun class. One can choose to think of any such grouping of nouns as a noun class with no (biological or sociological) gender connotations.

It probably isn't your intention, but when you say the entire 2024 5e community is united in supporting your setting assumptions and social contract, you start sounding like a gatekeeper who gets to decide who is and isn't a member of that community. Your statement implies that multiple people...

Point of order. WotC can't be "lagging behind the mentality of the editions." WotC defines the mentality of the current edition of D&D. If WotC publishes a setting intended for use with the current edition of the rules, then by definition, that setting reflects the mentality of the current edition.

If you're playing online (or passing notes at the table), the DM can send direct messages to players with higher passive Perception scores embellishing upon baseline room descriptions. If any "tells" are present, the DM can add them to baseline room descriptions or to embellishments on room...

I'd argue the benefits of not having a baseline setting will never be fully realized in D&D until the PHB is written with modular design in mind. The DMG includes rules modules that can be switched on and off in different campaigns, but the player-facing rules don't really expose new players to...

I'll be spending some time this weekend tweaking the image compression I used when making the Forgotten Reams Travel Guide. Hopefully, that means I'll have an updated pdf with sharper map labels sooner instead of later. In the meantime, as of this post, the Travel Guide has officially broken...

Out of curiosity, has anyone here ever offered extra background benefits to characters grounded in a particular setting? Maybe something like, "Humans from Amadeusburg get Musician as an additional bonus feat," or, "Every genasi raised by a genie starts with a magic item from Column A." If so...

Dragonborn have an extensive history in the Realms, as mentioned nearly twenty years ago in Dragons of Faerun. The problem is that newer Realms products completely ignore Bahamut, the Dragonfall War, Sammaster's Rage, the Sisterhood of Essembra, and the haven of the dragonborn in the town of...

I can't speak for every setting, but in the Forgotten Realms, aasimar, dragonborn, and tieflings have had strong ties to certain deities active throughout Faerun since 3e at the latest. They don't always have monocultural nations, but they do have organic, setting-cannon reasons to congregate at...