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Ha, yes, I think most monsters are not heavily armored until much higher CRs where they have the strength to back it up. It could come up for NPCs. Of course, most PCs are carrying gear, which is what puts them over the line. 10 days of rations is 20 pounds, which is the equivalent of 4 points...

Yeah, this totally makes sense. A heavily armored character still runs the risk of hitting Strength x 10 once loot comes into play. (Especially if playing an adventure with large sums of small-denomination coins. Who doesn't love a chest of 2000 cp!? (We're doing treasure for xp, and dirt-farmer...

I wouldn't worry about this, honestly. The Action cost for doffing a shield discourages characters from insta-switching between sword-board and two-handed weapons. I don't think the rule had a barely encumbered monster dropping a shield so as to escape penalties under variant encumbrance in...

I'm starting up a little mini-campaign (2-3 short adventures for 5-8 sessions or so.) I've decided to really push the "low-adventure" aspect, and we're running the Variant Encumbrances rules. These rules are heavy, and I'm fine with that. I wouldn't want to worry about tracking encumbrance if it...

The restrictions on the caster are stricter. If your concentration is broken, you lose the spell, meaning the chance to act, and you lose the spell slot. If the fighter gets hit before his trigger goes off, he can still take his readied action, up until the point at which he's knocked...

Ha, well, to jump on this agreeing/disagreeing chain, I'll extoll the virtues of CRs for how I use them in my game. I don't plan "level-appropriate" encounters, but I do scan lists of monsters and CRs while populating a dungeon. I'll throw in a few monsters of higher CR, several of equivalent...

Ha, sorry, may have gotten a bit pre-emptively defensive. I like the standard array. We've created dozens of characters with it in my current group, and none of them feel cookie cutter. On the other hand, everybody always plays a new class when they roll up a new character, which helps. I also...

But that's the point! The fighter chose not to act on his own initiative, for tactical reasons. Hopefully that tactical advantage is worth more than being able to charge into the middle of the orcs and use all his extra attacks. At least he got to make that choice. Sometimes, an advantage is...

It really depends on the kind of game. In a lot of games, party success is (mostly) a given. The players always win unless they do something really stupid, and the DM's job is seen, in part, as tweaking the goalposts to keep it that way. So anything that makes a group stronger is, ultimately...

Fortunately, the encounter building guidelines in the DMG are so complicated that most DM's I know give up on them very quickly. Two sets of multipliers? Not something I'm going to worry about doing by hand very often. New DM's make all sorts of mistakes. Running a few underwhelming combats is...

The good thing is that, since the CR's are meant to be fairly broad brush, even when working as intended, there's not a whole lot lost if they are a bit off. I also think the designers are on the record as saying that, when there was a doubt, they rounded up on the CR. So, if your players are...

If you know who has played the adventure already, it should be pretty easy to see them "cheating" and call them out on it. I'm not sure that that's a position you want to be in as a DM, though it helps if your players are mature enough to not put you in that situation in the first place...

Yeah, I hear you. The fighter gets 1/2 to 1/3 of his action when readied (I guess 1/4 at super high levels), while the Wizard gets all his action when readied. On the other hand, if the Wizard readies a spell and it doesn't trigger, he loses that spell slot entirely. And if somebody attacks the...

I wouldn't call it a symptom, I would say it's a (likely intended) consequence of a deliberate design decision. D&D had the delay initiative action, and you could reintroduce it into 5e without a whole lot of problems. The designers chose to get rid of it, because it added an additional layer of...

The wording of that sentence alone really makes you tease the intent out of it, which is unfortunate, but looking at the rules on readied actions as whole, I am absolutely certain that that is the intent. I mean, a creature that can make multiple attacks on its turn could make multiple attacks...

I don't really know what use this is to this discussion, but I thought I'd look at where "heroic" stats might put heroes with regards to the general populace of a D&D universe. Assumption: The standard human D&D population has a distribution of 3d6 in each ability. (This is slightly more...

I've never played at double digit levels, but even playing in the high singles, my general experience was that "solo" encounters were usually not that exciting. If PCs have managed to hold onto high level spell slots and action surge, they can chew through an amazing amount of hitpoints in one...

I think the cost to leveled spells is good enough to match the restriction to weapon attacks, since there's a good chance to lose the spell slot entirely. The wrinkle seems to favor cantrips most of all, as those are single attacks that scale with caster level. On the other hand, you still need...

We used to roll for abilities, but now we just use point-buy, standard array, and I honestly much prefer it. The standard array kind of hits the sweet spot for a starting PC power level. One weakness, one strength, some space in between. Room to improve. No level 1 super-heroes and no lemons. We...

Have the players actually read the adventure, or do they just have access to read it? And, ask them honestly, how well do they remember it? If you can trust the maturity of your players (which hopefully you can), they won't go out of their way to crib up on the adventure before they start...