Recent content by Xenolith234

This is a very weird, niche situation you’re proposing. Pretty sure this is all discussed at session zero/campaign setup and proposal. No one is somehow surprised all of a sudden at Dragonborn being erased off their character sheet. No DM is sneaking things in in regards to racial choices...

I mean…not allowing the Strixhaven book outside of a Strixhaven campaign would be seen as banning, but…if I’m not running a Strixhaven campaign, players should be under no illusion that those options are available (and even if I were, there’s no way in the nine hells I’d allow Silvery Barbs).

I saw recently a houserule that if you would have stacking advantage/disadvantage, you instead get a +/-1 for every additional source. So you’d get your normal reroll, then add or subtract the hard modifier for every additional source.

I can see that - although I have a ban/restriction/modification list for up upcoming campaign, I’m adding so much 3rd party content that far skews in the opposite direction.

DMing now is an act of creativity, collaboration, and although some do it for pay, most don’t. I don’t give up hours and hours of my time, preparing a game for 4-6 players, to be bludgeoned by the same amount of entitled players telling me how I need to cater to their each and every whim. It’d...

Unfortunately the opposite has become true, going off of one of the previous comments in this thread. Players bludgeon DMs into submission. “It’s MY character, not YOUR world.” And this is supposed to be a collaborative game. That just reeks of the player entitlement that’s become an issue in...

Jerk DMs are jerk DMs regardless of the era or edition. It doesn’t mean any DM wanting to make the game more challenging for the players or modifying the rules/options to fit a setting is a jerk, antagonistic, etc.

Power scaling isn’t broken either.

That sounds amazing! Restriction breeds creativity. I’m not opposed to low-magic, medium-magic, high-magic, what have you; I just want WotC to show D&D as the toolbox it is, provide variant rules for settings/restrictions if one wants them, and show us the levers that we can push and pull to...

We played a Halloween oneshot a couple months ago of The Count the Castle and the Curse and it went great, and everybody seemed to enjoy it (except one player, but he’s always contrarian). My wife said that she liked the adventure but that system doesn’t matter so we should just play 5e (and...

I’m on the verge of starting up a Ptolus campaign and some of the group are ambivalent towards system, and some are wanting me to “just run 5e.” One of those is my wife. How can I make Shadowdark happen instead?

I hope so too. Seeing Sam Reich get punked by Brennan was just 👌 I’m glad that it’s making the D&D culture more aware of different playstyles as well and bringing West Marches style into the zeitgeist.

That is pretty cool. I think Brennan may have used something similar in their Worlds Beyond Number podcast. I’ve been entertaining the idea of training during downtime - I wonder how I could blend the two ideas.

“Punish” = Restrict. It’s totally reasonable that each setting comes with its own set of restrictions to fit the fantasy. That just happens to be way more difficult with 2024 (and 5e as a whole, but moreso 2024 now due to player empowerment). Each PC’s abilities are designed to punish DMs...

Oh, I can see that. I see the game as intended to be challenging and don’t love the player-side optimization arms race, so I’m disinclined to like the power increase (again, players outnumber DMs so they tend to see more power increase aside from the DM tool “rocks fall everyone dies”). I...