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QFT. As a GM, part of your job is to be a champion of the characters. Give them moments to shine. Let the player feel badass. Most of the time. For a few encounters, hit them where it hurts. Show them the downside of their badassness. Let other players shine (like the cleric with bless...

I became a lot happier with the 5E stealth rules when I split them into two different concepts - unseen and hidden. If you are unseen then I know you are there and I know vaguely where you are and I can attack you (but with disadvantage). If you are hidden then I don't know where you are...

That quote answers my question. Hopefully that phrasing will be added to Sage Advice and/or the PHB.

The rules do not use the word "belong" - they use the word "involves" which means something different.

I would really like to see a definitive answer on this. I answered one of the Rpg.stackexchange questions but my answer got voted off the bottom, slightly unfairly, I thought. I feel that if the damage has a necessary condition of "this attack hits you" then it is "involved in the attack" and...

You cannot make an attack of opportunity against a target unless you can see them, so a fog cloud dropped on a melee allows people to escape safely without having to take the Disengage action. Casting fog cloud on your own location and then stepping a few feet sideways means that enemy archers...

I don't like the issues raised by treating something as armour and a weapon at the same time (disarming, for example). In my games, I rule that things you wear (armor, shields, jewellery, etc) are not weapons. Weapons are things you carry, not wear. You can pick them up using an object...

I would make the player aware of the in-game social repercussions of playing generally-considered-evil races. The drow PC might not be evil, but every one they meet will assume they are. I'd also make sure the game follows through on this promise. Surface guards will attack drow on sight...

My go-to starting adventure is The Mystery of Malvern Manor by Dan Head. It has a nice mix of roleplaying (shaking down a merchant on behalf of a local crime boss) and combat. It has a horror vibe (a mad scientist performing unspeakable operations) as well as some tragedy (the victims of the...

Apart from screwing you in combat, it is going to screw you in the other pillars. Forget about making any Perception Checks. You find traps by walking into them. Also forget about Survival. If you can't see, you can't navigate, you can't find food and water, you can't avoid dangers. Probably...

It is a 150ft cone. Since it can move it each round, you effectively can't move out of its range. Given the antimagic nature, the beholder doesn't just neutralise "high level non-flexible casters", it takes out everyone! Beholders are scary in a way demons and dragons will never be. Which is as...

I think you are completely wrong there. If a Conan game is not binding players into the tropes of the Conan genre then it's not actually a Conan game - it's a generic game where the PCs happen to be called Conan, Juma and Bêlit. If you are going to stick "Conan" (or "Star Trek" or "Sherlock...

World building creates reasonable and predictable consequences for my actions, which increases my agency. If I know about the land and its culture and politics, then I can predict that actions ("attack the innkeeper") will lead to consequences ("pursued by the town guard"), which gives me...

I hear that at the table as well. I think there are a few issues going on. First, people think they are always entitled to both an action and a bonus action. This is wrong. We should be thinking, "You are entitled to one Action. That's it. No more. You might get something you can do as well...

I dislike Bonus Actions as well. I'd prefer a system where on your turn you just have one action and some movement. I don't like the "act or move" idea that other systems use, because it generally means people never move their characters.

The word "race" has a lot of emotional baggage in our recent history. I think it would be great to remove it from the game. I'm just not sure what to replace it with. The word "species" seems to be correct (at least for D&D where elves and orcs and dwarves can all interbreed) but it sounds too...

The thing is, there are already features that do this, like battlemaster dice. If you allow anyone to do this on a critical then it removes the utility of those classes. Hit Points are really abstract already. They don't really model wounds or fatigue or injury; just a number. If number > 0...

It means no-one will ever roll open locks or disable traps or bend bars again. :-) Warlock: Stand back, I got this!

Stealth is *always* better than invisibility. All invisibility does is make you unseen. Stealth makes you unseen and unheard and unsmelt and unfelt and untracked and ... In any case, pass without trace is is not there for the expertise rogues; it is there for the heavily armoured warriors so...

These abilities encourage the trope of barbarians using axes. A sword is dependable. Low change of really good swings but also a low chance of really bad swings. An axe is more random. You might get a 12 but you have an equal chance of a 6 or a 1.