Recent content by Lazybones

There was an old AD&D module in Dragon Magazine (#78) called "Citadel by the Sea" that has orc antagonists and a theme related to orcish lore. I recall it being one of the better adventures published in Dragon. I have seen a 5e conversion online somewhere.

I also disagree that certain classes in 5.5e are weak enough to justify needing specific boosts from items. In my experience, player skill has a far more significant impact on effectiveness. And of course, combat effectiveness isn't the only factor for determining character effectiveness (if...

That's really useful, I kept making mistakes even with the order written down in front of me, so I switched to color-coded tabs (each player has a different color, and the character names are printed on them) that I put on top of the DM screen and it's really helped keep things straight. I've...

One of my groups made the same decision (sticking with 5.0). As long as your group is having fun, it doesn't really matter all that much. It has been a bit challenging for me as DM, as my other two groups switched, and sometimes I have to check myself when adjudicating rules. But despite the...

The party consists of a dwarf shadow monk/ranger, human diviner wizard, elf trickster rogue, tiefling old one warlock, human stars druid, and an elf cleric/rogue. The more I play 5.5e, the more impressed I am with the balance between the classes. I had concerns that such a group would be at a...

One of my 5.5e groups (six players) does not have a single-classed barbarian, fighter, paladin, or ranger in the party; the closest they have to a martial character is a monk (though he did take a level of ranger to get weapon masteries and hunter's mark). They do just fine.

Heck, in 2024 even the lower-CR monsters can kill a first level character outright without breaking a sweat. A CR 1/2 hobgoblin does on average 12 points of damage, enough to take a level 1 character down, and with a crit it will almost certainly kill just about any 1st level PC outright. If...

RE the 2024 ruleset, I've switched for two of my three groups and it's going fairly well. We're still learning the changes, but I haven't encountered anything game-breaking. It's still D&D, either way. I find it amusing that people are critiquing the new rules for being both more and less...

So back to Basic/Expert and AD&D? No thanks. And in a sense it already exists in the form of the Starter Set/Basic Rules, as AlViking noted.

I have been using the book for a while in both my 5e2024 campaign and in one of my 5e2014 campaigns. I like the extra challenge provided by the new monsters. I had similar initial reactions to others here in terms of the organizational changes and the absence of custom NPC statblocks for various...

In my game, if there was a cliff as an option, I'd allow the player character to flee alongside it even if technically dropping off it would increase the distance between them and the caster. If there was no other option, I'd allow them to try climbing down the cliff (with an appropriate chance...

The Command spell doesn't require concentration; it's instantaneous. I think permitting alternative command words works fine, as long as the results are more or less the same as the examples provided; i.e., the target loses one turn of actions. I have a warlock character in my 5e 2024 game who...

I have a house rule that if you drag someone through a hazard, like spike growth, you take the damage as well. That, combined with carrying capacity limits (the 2024 monks I've seen so far have been Dex builds rather than Strength), tends to limit the shenanigans you can get up to with...

I still haven't read all of the books in the Salvatore bundle I picked up in 2020, but I'll probably get this; I'm a sucker for the book bundles. There was a really good one that had a bunch of Adrian Tchaikovsky's works in December, and a Glen Cook one in October that had all of the Black...

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. You don't see the downside of a F9/W1 being able to cast shield 15 times a day? Or to be able to give themselves 30+ temp HP with false life multiple times each day? In that case you would strongly disincentivizing single class builds. I think the...