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In a session I was DMing, a player wanted to forgo using her action to instead use two bonus actions (one to command a beast from a Bag of Tricks, the other to cast Healing Word). I ruled that this wasn't possible as it's not permitted per RAW, but I immediately caught a lot of flak for the...

Hmm, alright. It'll be an ugly fight, but I think they might be able to pull through. They've killed two out of three spawn and his hired thugs aren't much of a threat. They also disarmed him of his nasty +2 greatsword of wounding, which the hexblade character will likely take, so even...

Thanks for reading! Yeah, I've definitely considered that. Our campaign isn't necessarily low magic, but the Ambroxian society that most of the settler folk and most of the PCs themselves come from is generally much less familiar with magic and monstrous creatures than might be standard in...

Sorry for the longwinded post, but I want to spell out the full situation to avoid having to explain likely questions in the replies. Thanks in advance for reading! I'm a new DM currently sitting in the chair in our homebrewed D&D 5E campaign. Most of the rules are RAW but the lore is...

Sorry, I'm not super in-the-know about job titles and descriptions for tabletop RPGs (or other games, really). If that's the case, then fresh perspectives are certainly welcome - lots of recent additions to the game seem to be either mined from old D&D content or incredibly boring (see: the...

Funny thing is I actually had the opposite reaction to her hiring. A quick glance over her previous projects seemed to be totally lacking in D&D-related things, but instead experience working with other game systems. While fresh ideas are welcome, my only worry was that bringing in someone with...

Our homebrew campaign world doesn't have common. The closest analogue is Old Ambroxian, which is the common language of the collapsed eastern empire from which all the players hail. They're playing in The Cauldron, a sort of frontier area to the west, inhabited by a mix of Ambroxian settlers who...

Sure. The first group I joined had a pretty decent variety of player types and a DM who was supposedly very experienced and a longtime D&D dork. Things seemed dandy at first, but what I chalked up to being issues between the players not really being experienced enough to dive into the...

Right, I meant "competing" with Cutting Words (and Counterspell) in terms of just eating up your reaction for the round. So a little bit of competition. I'm personally playing a game right now with my Lore Bard supporting a melee/hand crossbow crossbow expert spell-less Ranger, a sword and board...

Yeah, so in that case use a rapier and a shield and probably go Swashbuckler instead of Scout. Similar build, but you'd trade the skirmisher thing for Fancy Footwork (which, even with only one weapon, would allow you to back away from two different melee targets without taking an OA and let you...

Does it have to be melee? Rogue Scout 3/Hexblade (Blade Pact) X. All those rogue skills, expertise, cunning action, 2d6 sneak attack, skirmisher to get out of melee, auto prof + expertise in nature and survival on top of regular proficiencies and expertise. Skills out the ears. Hexblade plus...

Crawford said they're looking into how the spell functions for out-of-combat healing so it will probably get nerfed by some some errata. As for feats, I think Bountiful Luck feels really good for a halfling. Very bard-like. Competes with Counterspell and Cutting Words for reaction use, but...

I think the issue here is that you need to take a step back from the situation and potentially rethink what is actually happening. Hitpoints are an abstraction - someone down to low HP is not necessarily suffering from broken bones and swords through their guts or whatever. Low HP could very...

I'd go with the second. No -1 on Int checks, another +1 on Wis checks and saves. You don't really need Dex for attacks or damage since you likely will be using Vicious Mockery to impose disadvantage more than you'll be attacking with weapons for a little bit more damage, and with a cleric splash...

Just FYI - the new Improved Pact Weapon invocation in Xanathar's allows your Pact of the Blade warlock pact weapon to count as your spell focus.

People mixing up terms in the action economy. Basically "bonus action" as a term causing all sorts of problems, either players thinking they can just make a second action as a bonus action, not knowing what sorts of things they have that actually qualify as bonus actions, or thinking simple free...

What Vance have you read? The Dying Earth stuff is honestly pretty darn light/comical. My favorite Vance is probably Demon Princes. Vance was never a master of characterization but boy could he ever come up with fascinating cultures and worlds.

Obviously this is the big one, but I really feel like lots of DM's would be well-served by trying to be as descriptive of environments as Tolkien was. At least on the same level is Mervyn Peake, a criminally underrated fantasy writer. I plan on trying a mix of the latter with Cormac McCarthy's...

Probably not many. Better off with two levels in Warlock and The Devil's Sight, plus another super strong invocation.

Meh. I tend to take all of the flavor/fluff aspects of classes and subclasses with a grain of salt and adapt or completely rewrite them as needed, using the actual mechanics as inspiration for things. Classic example is the barbarian, which WotC seems to think is necessarily a primitive, tribal...