Recent content by fearsomepirate

It would be entirely reasonable for a magic glaive that gave the wielder Extra Attack, didn't require martial proficiency, and used your spell ability mod instead of STR to require attunement. Using spells isn't something that is unique to one or two classes, either, yet items that allow...

Yes, that would be cheating. The following two statements are not equivalent: 1. The only way to positively know that Giants is a bad choice is to cheat. 2. If a player chooses any Favored Enemy other than Giants, he must be cheating. I said (1), not (2) nor does (2) logically follow. The...

The DM who never allows sneaking or hiding because the rules don't explicitly say every context he has to is the Bigfoot of DMs. I know a couple posters here severely nerfed hiding, to the point of disallowing attacking with advantage from a hiding spot, but I think they're very much outliers.

Of course, it's worth nothing that the ability itself is crap. You rarely need to track anything, and there aren't really any rules for monster knowledge checks. So it amounts to you sometimes getting advantage on a check to know something the DM probably wasn't going to hide from you if you'd...

Don't put words in my mouth. Fiends are actually a bad choice for Out of the Abyss. You run into them surprisingly infrequently...thus illustrating you really can't know what the best choice is without detailed knowledge of the campaign book. The best choice is probably drow; the next best...

Because shield proficiency is a class feature of fighters. It's not a class feature of wizards or monks. On the flip side, it would be perfectly reasonable for, say, an amulet that allows any wearer to cast Detect Magic and Identify as rituals, an extremely mundane task for wizards, to require...

A player feature that requires me to take an inventory of all the potential encounters in a published adventure so I can communicate to him which favored enemies are good choices is bad game design. I don't have to police anybody else's character sheet this way. Choose whatever Warlock pact you...

The only way to know the Stone Giants aren't there to be fought and that there's only one Fomorian is to read the adventure ahead of time, something most DMs frown upon. It's just bad design to make the player have to correctly predict an adventure's direction when choosing a class feature, and...

It is extremely difficult to hold a CEO personally liable for anything, even criminal actions. A lot of securities & antitrust law is basically dead letter, as American jurisprudence tends to favor the most relaxed possible reading. The reasons for this aren't all bad, as we want companies to be...

Yeah, sorry for not finding a way to make your "Favored Terrain: Desert" and "Favored Enemy: Giants" work in Out of the Abyss, which I think has exactly two giants to fight and zero desert.

Obviously, a wizard isn't a superhero. At 8th level, they become warlocks, not superheroes.

A little player vs DM is fun. My players seem to enjoy it when I cackle after a Hill Giant scores a critical hit, or hang my head in defeat when the lich bites the dust.

Favored enemy should be some mild bonus, and you should be able to change the enemy type after a long rest.

Interesting, as it comes up frequently in my games. I often have ranged attackers at elevated positions, flying enemies who stay out of melee reach, and so on. Seems every other session, I have a player forgetting that doffing a shield is an action. The power of Bracers of Defense is that they...

The basic flaw in the Ranger's design is analogous to the flaw in the CR system. They came up with a numerical scoring system and a formula that gives the appearance of rigor, but is actually a joke. In the case of the Ranger, IIRC they had a way of scoring combat vs ribbon abilities. So, in...