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This is all totally legit. Every DM has to find their balance of how much they require rolls for actions. I tend to err on the side of calling for too few rolls, and I have had a player before say, "I would like to roll more than we rolled tonight." I think you can do all of the above and still...

This would be a merciful way for that Wizard to die. Seeing as they'll have, at absolute best, 10 hp if they make it to level 5. Every hit is going to run the risk of insta-killing them. If they manage to avoid that, they are definitely turning to stone somewhere.

I'm going to give this a shot with my beginner's group next month. In my mind, anything I can do to help keep the focus of the players on their own character and the world they inhabit, the better.

This works, but now you are just creating an un-named category of spells that allow you to cast them while taking another action. A sort of, "bonus spell." At which point, just having a thing called a bonus action seems way more attractive. :)

We do this all the time. I think of it as a "stupid check," where I, the player, think something is a bad idea, but roll to see if my character wants to bring things down as much as I do.

For myself, an evil glowing altar in an evil temple is not meant to be a puzzle to be solved by the players. My goal would be to make sure that everybody at the table understood, as a player, that touching the altar is going to carry a lot of risks. I would then put the burden on the players to...

I don't see how any of the examples, at least as summarized above, describe a "catch the player" or "magic word" situation. In fact, I think the approach described by iserith is the opposite to a "magic word" gotcha, because he is trying to clarify character actions in the description of what...

Removing bonus actions could have a big knock-on for the current Cleric design. Healing Word becomes very different in flavor if it is tied to making an attack. As it exists now, it is a spell that can be cast verbally while the Cleric is doing anything else. Turning a crank on a drawbridge...

Agreed. If there is information that players need, it shouldn't be gated behind a knowledge check. Litter clues per Bawylie, or just give it to them through an NPC or a journal or whatever. If there is information to be gained by a knowledge check, that should be a way to showcase particular...

I like the idea, with knowledge checks, of encouraging players to say, "I try to remember if I've seen that symbol before. My character is proficient in Nature and Religion." Instead of, "I'm going to roll a Religion check to see if I know what that symbol means." (Especially because, as far as...

I think what Iserith is describing is not about using the players words against them to ambush them with "gotcha" consequences. At least when I play, I try not to have anything bad happen to players simply because they were vague in stating their actions. I'll ask them what they are doing and...

Ha, for real. If your D&D character has a Constitution of less than 6, all sorts of non-standard things are going to happen. And I would hope that a player is only playing a character with a Con that low because they want to engage with that. Rolling for hp every level would be a way of seeing...

That's correct. This might be one of the more legalistic and less clearly stated rules in 5e. I'm leaving aside rules like Stealth which leave room for interpretation and controversy. The interpretation of "once per turn" to mean "once per any combatant's turn" is clearly the only correct...

I question the assertion that, with regards to hp, D&D was built like a casino. The casino option is there, but the assumed option, and the only option for organized play, is not to roll for hit points. If rolling for hit points were statistically better than average, more players would want to...

I usually forget that one even can roll for hit points on leveling up. I doubt it's something the designers give much thought to as well. Agree with MarkB, incentivizing rolling for hp would be counterproductive — average hp should be the preferred option. Easier to keep track of, doesn't lead...

No, I don't think anybody has confused us with AL, and there are other places in Brooklyn that do that, though they can be a little intense and charge a cover fee. Maybe that's something that will happen in this store eventually — but not for now. Well, my thought for doing Forgotten Realms is...

I just looked up the 4e rules, and, yes, drawing a weapon or interacting with an object is a Minor Action. However, there are also hundreds of powers that can use a Minor Action. I think this is an important distinction from 5e. In 5e, most of the "powers" (or features) that would use a Minor...

I could be wrong — I only played a little bit of 4e and it was a while ago, though I actually quite enjoyed it. As I remember, an improvised action could be determined to be a "Minor Action", and all characters were told they had 1 Major Action, 1 Minor Action and 1 Move Action per turn. This is...

Yeah, this seems like the major Con of the Realms, other than that, personally, I've never really engaged with them. I don't feel like getting into it with somebody about Realms canon and I'm sure there are plenty of people who could come through knowing more about the Realms than I do, since my...

I remember thinking a lot about action economy a lot when I first picked up 5e. Maybe that was because I had played 4e before that and I had trained myself to think in that action economy. Maybe not. Did 3e not have rules about non-combat actions in combat? I skipped that one. These days, it...