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I don't think we have much of a disagreement here. All I'm saying is that thieves' cant primarily exists to differentiate rogues from others, though at the margins people may learn it for a variety of reasons. And I'm saying the existence of thieves' cant is a good reason to think that there is...

Classes and races Think I'll be bad and blow this thread up a little bit: :devil: So for some, classes are concrete entities in the game, for some they aren't, and for some it depends. It makes for an interesting discussion. But the reason we're even having it is that people either...

I don't know if it's true, but even if it is, isn't that true of most classes? Clerics wearing armor and turning undead? Check. A wizard that specializes in illusion? Check. These traditions are what makes classes recognizable - arguably, to characters in the game, too. Regarding rogues in...

Yeah - a jargon specifically learned so that no one else understands you as a distinct group that's involved in criminal activity. Yes, these are all possibilities - as exceptions to the rule that people learn it when they become members of a criminal subculture (represented here as a...

So if a rogue is not a rogue, how would he or she explain the fact that all rogues (and they only, more or less) speak thieves' cant? Obviously this doesn't mean that they share something that makes them irreducibly different from everyone else, but they do share something, something that they...

It's more interesting to me when they are, precisely because then metagame concepts are transformed into more tangible categories. Specialties in a class are called "archetypes" - they are modeled after particular heroic characters, which means they are really narratives that people in a game...

That would work only if the spiders were chained, and incapable of turning their heads in another direction. And woe to the spider who broke out to look at the sun of truth, and returned to convince its arachnid comrades that their life in the Underdark was a mere illusion...

I think that applies specifically to characters stepping on webs, though they made so much noise the spiders knew they were coming anyway. Unfortunately, the ettercap shepherding the spiders rolled a "1' during his surprise action, and it was all downhill for the monsters from there. He and I...

This, incidentally, is the expanded ruling from the d20 SRD (which I had not seen up to now): http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/invisibility.htm Granted, this is not for 5e, but the spell has not fundamentally changed from one edition to another.

That's a good compromise solution - though it would largely negate the benefits of the invisibility spell as per the ruling.

Here is a situation that came up in a game over the weekend: An adventuring party is in a cave complex. One of the PCs is a human sorcerer, and he is the only one in the party who does not have Darkvision, and relies on his torch to be able to see. The party is trying to sneak by some giant...

Not sure what's wrong with the format as such. The writing in some of the sections leaves a lot to be desired. Namely, the history and the general overview of the realms had the feeling of catalog entries written by people who don't have a good sense of how fantasy-type realms are likely to be...

Here are a few good resources on the availability of various professions (including magical ones), and the population it takes to support them: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/A_Magical_Medieval_City_Guide_%28DnD_Other%29/Generating http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm A good rule of...

As is now clarified by the PHB errata, if the BM is absent or incapacitated, the beast will act to defend itself without requiring your command to do so.

Here is a mechanic for dealing with shared actions I proposed on another thread :

The main thing I'm proposing requires one Animal Handling roll - the rest are all variant rules for people who like to have more crunch. The purpose of the roll would be to create a chance of failure, which would act as a limit on the BM feature (just like a Rogue's Cunning Action requires a...

I'll probably regret wading into this, since the topic is largely beaten to death, and elicits strong reactions on all sides, but here goes: I know people have proposed a spell mechanic to allow the BM to situationally circumvent the stringent action economy, but how about a skill-based...

Mechanically, it's an empirical question whether the "bad luck" (aka madness) would hamstring the fool character too much or not. I figure with all of the spell abilities and other whistles and bells, it's probably got a decent enough chance to survive. Losing your mind every so seems less...

No, but chaos mage sorcerers might. The idea of compensation (or cost) for using magical powers is a pretty standard view regarding how magic "works", and it's been incorporated into a lot of RPGs that use magic (e.g. WW's Mage, the French Nephilim game, and many others). Now, I'm not...

Yeah, it was designed for a culturally-specific game in mind, but I think the animal companion variant would work in a variety of settings, and the holy fool should also be feasible in a W. European or Near Eastern setting. As far as the overlap with spellcasters - I guess if you make a...