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First off... throw the pseudo-medieval crap right out the window. Heck... with the tens of thousands of years that Faerun has been in existence and has had access to 9th level / 10th level magic... the fact that they are still pseudo-medieval is completely stupid. Technology through magic...

Are you going to be playing 5E24 any time soon? If the answer is 'No', then you don't need to spend your money because you aren't going to use them. And it won't matter what any of your feelings towards WotC may or may not be. No reason to buy something you aren't going to use. If the answer...

Characters with darkvision can see in the dark out to perhaps 120 feet. Fine. What does that mean? It means GMs can't use "jump scares" of monster leaping into the radius of a lantern or torch and attacking the party in melee. Okay. Well... if "jump scares" are really that important to a GM...

Yep. Maybe others played differently... but for me the focuses of dungeon crawling were about exploring areas, fighting monsters, and working your way around traps. That was what dungeon crawling was about. The whole resource-management thing was there, sure... but we weren't playing for...

Disagree. My comments apply to all versions of D&D and D&D-affiliated games (for which the ability and term "darkvision" would apply and be available). The terminology for the bonuses and penalties might be different (so "advantage" becomes some other bonus in a different D&D game), but the...

No, it does not, because it just results in the party using light sources... and at a base mechanical level using light sources does not impact anything much more than looking out in the "dim light" of darkness with darkvision. Characters without darkvision and a torch will see things out in...

I voted Renaissance. One, because that was the highlighted period of art--painting, sculpture and the like... where the human form took on extreme artistic importance. And superheroes (with body types and costuming) are very much about the peak human form and colorful design, so I could see...

I'm going with what I'm trying to see as the most quintessential spells (IMHO) for each class and the game as a whole... with a focus on versatility (so when available, one offensive, one defensive/protective, one utilitarian.) My list will look similar to others with just slight tweaks. Bard...

That is definitely the case that can come out of it. Combat has a built-in "movie scene" framework as a part of it that creates dramatic scenes, whereas the rest of the game can be sped past if one chooses to (or even unintentionally.) So it does require a little more work on the part of all...

True enough... but I'd also say the use of the word "risk" to me is a little unnecessarily harsh in this context. I don't think it has to be as hardline as "risk : reward", but rather simply "desire : achievement". Every character has wants and needs... and they all take actions to try and get...

It probably doesn't help (because your player wants to be an artificer)... but when I ran Eberron and had a player that wanted an aberrant dragonmark, we just went all in on the theming by having him play a sorcerer (and whose entire swathe of sorcerer spells and metamagic were all from the...

I don't disagree with you at all... to me the real reason to play an RPG rather than a board game is to actually have a narration (either in-character first person or top-down third-person) of what the characters are doing. I do think staying within the "ambience" of a scene makes it more...

The thing that I'd say in regards to this statement of yours is that to me this is perfectly acceptable-- because the "decision" you put it isn't choosing to make the check rather than not making the check (as you quite rightly put it-- why wouldn't anyone not make the check if they could?)...

I usually average around 5 sessions per level or so when each session is one evening's entertainment. So 56 sessions would be around level 11 give or take.

Bonus actions / Minor actions / Swift actions etc. all have been in the game because of one simple fact-- D&D players cannot be trusted. The ultimate design choice would be there are things that are Actions... and then everything else. And everything else wouldn't need to have some sort of...

Really for me... ability checks and skills are there for only one true purpose-- roadblocks to the story. To slow down how quickly the party gains knowledge or advancement towards their goals. Which means I guess if I was to think about it, every check I throw up does in fact have a...

At my tables most communication between players is in-character, and thus I never need to worry about the "Can I try?" "Oh, can I try?" scenario. If the group is talking and someone comes up with an idea, then obviously it is now information that the entire group that is physically present has...

Making every other facet of the game as intricate as combat would basically grind the game to a halt... plus take away that which makes D&D combat different. The tactical combat loses its luster when its used to represent every single other thing in the game as well. As far as abstracting...

I decoupled skills from ability scores back in 4E and have continued that policy into 5E. So not all social rolls will be made with Charisma, and several other types of rolls will sometimes use Charisma. Whenever I think a check needs to be made I don't go straight towards deciding on a skill...

I also handwave it... because almost always the players are travelling to locations that they already have plot points they are following to go to, so purposefully throwing down extra stuff to do in the interim is just slowing down their progress. Now I will of course describe a couple things...