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I haven't used Roll20 since the updated OGL allowed it to bring in more D&D elements via the SRD, but it still seems like Roll20's features aren't very useful for tabletop play unless you plan to have Roll20 running on laptops or tablets at the table. You couldn't print out a character sheet...

I've seen the same thing in the groups I've played with. When leveling up their character, I've never seen anybody choose to multiclass, but when bringing a new character to the table at anything over level 1, I've seen quite a lot of multiclassed characters. Strictly anecdotal evidence, of course.

Requiring more powerful healing spells to cure the increasingly severe injuries from the injury table seems totally reasonable. When I used the lingering injury table in my game, I just adjusted it to read "a healing spell cast at level n or higher," depending on how serious the given condition...

No, the only thing that draws an attack of opportunity is moving out of the melee weapon reach of an opponent.

5e is pretty loose with the "free action" economy. By raw, you get one free "object interaction" per turn. This could be drawing a weapon, opening a door, putting something away, etc. So you could draw a sword for free, but you couldn't draw one sword and sheath another sword in the same turn...

I wouldn't read too much into comments overheard from a player on the phone. Some very memorable moments for me are when player characters managed to find the "easy win" button in a supposedly hard combat and easily steamroll the opposition. By playing up how thoroughly the PCs have managed to...

If you are playing a system like 5e, you can tell players upfront that you will reward inspiration in each session the first time a player succeeds at describing an action, with the intent and approach, without referencing the actual skill or mechanical feature. This doesn't have to be that hard...

The Monster Builder for the 4e tools was worth the subscription alone. Being able to quickly hop onto my computer and print out an index card for each monster (pulling straight from the complete set of official monsters) I planned to have on deck for an adventure saved thumbing through books at...

The DC also makes it more natural to adjust difficulty based on circumstances and what exactly the PC is trying to do. Trying to intimidate a goblin whose already lost half his hipoints, or seen some of his friends die? Sounds pretty easy. Trying to persuade a hobgoblin to change sides in a...

We had a whole-session combat that was a blast a couple of months ago. The session before, the characters had picked a fight on the second story of a warehouse full of human-supremacists. (Our half-elf's ear covering hat had fallen off.) That prior session had ended when the warlock jumped out...

I voted 20. Personally, I prefer to have character advancement be something that happens infrequently. It puts a little more focus on the narrative ways in which your characters are evolving, instead of just fighting bigger, badder monsters every week. Also, from a strictly mechanical sense...

aramis erak, out of curiosity, how long does this end up taking you? Do you bang up the whole adventure this way (which then lasts you several sessions of gaming, but possibly becomes moot once your players take things offroad), or do you try to estimate what will be relevant for each session...

Recently, I've been looking for ways to improve the physical session notes I use at the table while gaming. I would be curious if other folks might be interested in posting some examples of the session notes they use in play? I'm particularly interested in notes for published adventures, as I...

Having to declare reckless attack before using the shield bash would be lame. Odds are, the shield bash will go through (because you're a barbarian and if the fight has any consequence, you're probably raging and so you have advantage and most things have a lower average athletics score than...

Ha, yeah, I would think that the DM and the player could riff together to come up with how to handle the role-play aspects. A character with charisma of 1 wouldn't just be unattractive or inarticulate. They would be, as pdzoch puts it, absolutely repulsive. Is that a symptom of something else...

I think there's two ways to approach this kind of rule which could have very different outcomes. One is to make the game harder for the players by reducing the information they have to make good decisions, and leading them to make more bad decisions. (Getting into fights they shouldn't, wasting...

I think having a shared notebook is a great idea. As a player, I often struggle to take notes, because the table is crowded and the scraps of paper I'm writing on end up getting separated from my book or my character sheet. Recently, I taped my character sheet to the inside of a composition...

Yes, that's a fair comparison. A potion is usually worth an encounter. Since your average combat is 3 rounds, I'd see giving out 1d6 pieces of ammunition to be very reasonable. 10-20 feels too extravagant to me, compared with the other items on the table. That's 3-6 combats worth of arrows. On...

+1 Ammunition appears on treasure table B, where you have a 5% chance of rolling it. Like most of what is on treasure table B, it is a single use item. (Looking quickly, it appears that you have about an 80% chance of rolling a one-use item from that table.) A +1 weapon doesn't show up until...

I'm confused as to where you get "a minute's time." Even if a character is retrying something, it is up to the DM to determine how much time that action takes. Most out-of-combat actions in my campaign are assumed to take 5-10 minutes. Beyond that, yeah, it's up to the DM to decide where checks...