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Plots are 90% homebrew, with 10% being adventures I've found I can use with minimal effort. Rules...closer to 95% by the book, with a few setting-specific changes that are usually very easy to express on a single sheet of paper but also impactful. (I.E. Dragonlance(ish) in the period without...

Do players kill downed enemies? Yes? Then not adversarial. Do tigers kill downed foes, then drag the corpses into the brush to eat? Yes. Is the adversarial? No, it's the Ciiiiiiiiiiircle of Liiiiiiiiiiife. Meat is meat and dead things are meat. Now....did the GM have 14 dire tigers...

Yeah...sometimes stuff happens. I was running a Mage game and had a "wildlife" encounter in suburbia of semi-feral dogs. The player attempted to use mind magic to make the dogs go away with a fear aura. One lone pomeranian resisted, went psycho and proceeded to put a Mage in the hospital...

I had one GM who was out to get us. Cyberpunk 2020 is high lethality, so we weren't mad about getting blown up. What bothered us is that his NPCs were psychic and always had the perfect defense to our plans. We a acquire an oddball weapon (the "lightning gun"), the next BBEG had the specific...

Anything is possible. But those situations are memorable for their rarity. Here's the two times I can remember experiencing it over 30+ years of gaming: E.g. A VtM campaign, the GM had an npc intended to be helpful. They had a rich backstory deeply woven into the plot, so it couldn't readily...

That's not my experience. Plenty of days in tier3 & 4 where all I have left are cantrips, 1st, 4th and 7th slots. And in addition to cantrips, a lot of the time I am using an action to animate a non-concentration 6th level Major Image of an "Eversmoking Bottle" to blind enemies. I am sure...

Warlocks are designed to spam cantrips. Its their reason d'etre. They get a handful of spell slots per rest. If they arent a hexblade, spamming cantrips is all they get. Might as well be mad about fighters spamming "swing sword" or rogues spamming "sneak attack". 5e design was ethos was...

The simplest definition of compacted soil vs loose soil is "a shovel doesn't work". Do you need a metal implement to break the soil before you can move it with a shovel? Spell fails. Does a shovel actually dig into the ground in when you step on the shovel? Spell works. If Mold Earth...

I think cantrips would be impactful on battles, just not damaging ones. Low level casters do essentially the same damage using a crossbow as a cantrip. Thats not materially impactful. Now...what if they could interfere with enemy formations? Mold Earth can make a 5ft cubic hole with a 5ft...

Another winning strategy is shooting the enemy when they can't shoot back. Given the short range of the spells, an archer-based army would stay back and focus on killing all the pack animals. Much easier targets at range and can kill an army even more efficiently from an ammunition stand...

That is a very situation-dependent comparison. How often does an archer run out of arrows? If never, unlimited is irrelevant. How often is a caster unable to use spells because the target is greater than 120ft away? If never, range is irrelevant. The answer to both is almost certainly...

I feel it failed twice. #1 Most books shouldn't need a "how to use this book" guide #2 it needs a "how to use" section but doesn't have it.

If you have a 5th level caster, why not think a bit outside the box. You could set a pursuing enemy's sails on fire....or leave troops submerged beneath the waves with hand drills. Waterbreathing is a 3rd level ritual that affects 10 people and lasts 24 hours. And Mending doesn't work if...

While no person was on guard, I bet you have construct servants. Smoke alarms to warn you if the house catches fire. A thermostat to make sure you don't freeze to death. Possibly even a security system. It's good having Artificers around.

Shape Water cantrip can be very effective in winter campaigns, clearing snow & ice from roads, building igloos and ice houses, removing ice from firewood, creating ice-bridges over streams, etc Mold Earth cantrip can dig ditches, make berms, and repair roads. Create Bonfire cantrip produces a...

Always post a guard. If everyone sleeps, everyone dies.

Fiest you need to define the kind of winter the territory experiences. The war you can wage will vary. Is this kind of winter where the mountain passes are closed because it snows every day, until the snow is 15ft deep. cold wind freezes every river solid but rarely brings precipitation...

the mending cantrip can repair a lot of broken arrows.

The magical weapons that supply their own ammo tend to make it fall by the wayside. That or the storage item. Or a mule. 10lbs gives you 100 arrows+quivers. Skip the individual quivers to buy a large leather drum and it's closer to 150. If you have horses, every saddle carrying a quiver of...

In the 1990s we rarely did did, unless it was explicitly the pitch (Let's play the old Desert of Desolation series), something highly atypical (who wants to go to Athas or Ravenloft?) Or if you had other GMs in the game who might have it/buy it. These days you need to so players can avoid...