Recent content by Shiroiken

As someone about to DM a campaign with an illusionist PC, I've been thinking a lot about how to manage illusions. My general view has always been that in a world of magic, most creatures aren't going to assume anything is an illusion without cause. This makes illusions strong, since this...

I technically didn't start with D&D... because my brother wouldn't let me play. So I made up my own game based on what I'd remembered from the 1E PHB. It didn't have the rules of how to play in it, so the game wasn't very good. My friends didn't mind, and we had fun for a few weeks until my...

RAI becomes tricky, because even the official rules guru for 2014 was wrong about how Passive Perception worked. He made the mistake of carrying over the way it worked in 4E, when the rules were written completely differently. One could argue that as the rules guru his interpretation was correct...

Passive Scores are used when you don't want to reveal information by calling for a check. You still have to take the Search Action to use Perception, per the PHB. I've deiced to edit to go into more detail and show my work. In the PHB, under actions, it talks about doing anything outside of...

Cool. As someone who runs old adventure's, I love this idea. Quick clarification: the characters that don't use the Search Action and succeed on the check would be surprised and have disadvantage on initiative. If no one succeeds at this, then the frogs have advantage as well (per the...

This is where people forget the DMG. In Chapter 1, under Players Exploiting the Rules, it specifically calls out that the rules rely on Good Faith Interpretation. I'd say at least 90% of people's issues can be resolved by recalling that simple principle. In this particular case, if the fear...

Pregen characters are for tournament style environments: i.e.one shots/single adventures. This allows the DM to customize them to fit the needs of the adventure, such as making sure they have a specific spell or ability available, and story reasons to be involved/invested. However, anything that...

This is exactly why I won't allow players to just pick their items. When I started Vecna: Eve of Ruin at 10th level, I rolled up the treasure the characters would have gained over those levels, with a few alternatives for class specific items. The players felt that is was actually more enjoyable...

Our group used Skype for years, but then switched over to Discord. I wasn't thrilled with the change, but eventually got used to it. If you use Roll20, I know there's a voice feature option, but we've never used it.

Having just finished Vecna: Eve of Ruin, I think this is an intentional design decision to keep the story moving. While I personally prefer 3-5 sessions per level, APs generally don't have that much space per chapter. If you run using XP, no APs provide anywhere near enough to level. I think...

I think something that people who theorycraft don't care about is how a build actually plays before being "online." Most of them seem to assume the build based on starting level. A lot of builds I've seen are really, really terrible before they get online. I've saw one in 3E that came online at...

Lots of factors here, but in general the higher level spell slot is going to be better. However, 4th level spells generally feel like they punch below their weight, and 3rd level spells feel like they punch above their weight. Because of this, I'd probably go with a 3rd and a 1st. If a 5th level...

You kinda proved my point. Every example I've seen that's game breaking involves using the same bonus action twice in a turn. To use your example, would it be game breaking to banish a demon and cast Healing Word or Spiritual Weapon? Not really. If you limit it to different actions, it only...

In 2014, we changed it to "creatures that can see you gain advantage to attack you." In reality, swinging weapons in darkness is just going to be a flurry of misses by both sides. We'll probably keep the same houserule in 2024.

You misunderstand. The original reference was using your Action to take an additional Bonus Action. In general, Bonus Actions are less useful than Actions, so giving up an Action to take a second Bonus Action is not particularly game breaking. Every example I've seen where it breaks the game...