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I'm guessing most DMs will tweak their game to take account of the quirks of their particular players. Saying you will give the PCs one chance to escape when they are over their heads doesn't necessarily work as intended when there is one player who never retreats. Granting players the...

Obviously, the warbot would end up bemusedly inspecting the bouquet which ended up lodged in it's plasma cannon when it was thrown.

I've seen and been in groups where a band of carefully optimised PCs took apart adventure module after adventure module like a finely oiled machine, and everyone including the DM had fun because that's what that group was about. I've also seen and been in groups where a disparate rabble of...

The thesis that min maxing is based on is that a player should be avoiding tasks that his PC is bad at in the first place, so tanking a skill or ability further doesn't really matter. Many RPGs reward specialisation a lot, and all things being equal, mining stuff you don't want to max stuff you...

There are no guarantees, no magical formula that will always yield results. For me it's important to stay open enough to notice any player enthusiasm for particular game elements (NPCs, plots, locations, activities, etc) and try and emphasise those elements providing I think I can also enjoy...

I often find comedic foil PCs and NPCs annoying. Whether they're tolerable or not is a chancy thing indeed. And as regards attitudes to them, referees who don't make allowances for comedic sidekicks do exist, and players who value success are understandably annoyed by other players (in their...

agreed Well, 1st and 2nd level were the most dangerous levels, and in Basic D&D, 1e and 2e I remember a bunch of low level characters dying, many from hit point damage, and players pretty much shrugging and moving on as that's what was expected. Generating new low level PCs was easy. How...

I don't have a lot of experience with 4e pvp teams but 4e is the D&D I use. IMO 4e PvP teams tend to be very striker heavy as strikers specialise in targetable high damage. Leader roles do less damage personally and are weaker the less characters they support. It does depend on the...

I find spotlight hogging to be bad form regardless of whether it manifests as excessive powergaming or excessive incompetence, no roleplaying or entirely selfish roleplaying. RPGs for me are about coperation and collaboration more than competition and adversarial play. Everyone in a group...

Not everyone values immersion and those that do can value it in many very different ways. I've seen people who could immerse while tolerating many sort of distractions, but were upset but the most niggling little details. Verisimilitude is very much subjective and what works for one person or...

People disagree strenuously about everything in the real word all the time, just look at the internet! There is no standard for "Naturalistic Logic" and I've seen many versions muted by different sources with huge variations. The failure modes of naturalistic logic in a game is particularly...

Often, but not always, high level D&D play involves a change in focus, maybe more than one shift as levels rise. High level D&D can be very different to low level D&D in more ways than just bigger numbers. Epic quests, seeking immortality or demigodhood, destroying a cursed artifact can suggest...

But from the very start of D&D people have been mutating it to suit their personal needs. My 4e D&D game tends to move from the first question to the second as it moves through the tiers of play. (I realise this is a 5e thread, but seeing as 5e was supposed to be the compromise D&D it should be...

I think the problem may be conflating "Fairy tale logic" with "placing the players in a particular fairy tale". If a situation is presented where PCs are placed in the roles of famous fairy tale characters, at least some players will feel constrained to recreate the familiar story "correctly"...

I don't quite agree as the DM is the one who places (or doesn't place) player accessible handles in their game, and frames the initial situation and exposition. A naturalistic presentation can presented in a way that suggests lots of viable options for the players, making immediate action...

In the depiction of the Feywild in my 4e campaign, I evolved the idea that the Feywild was inherently dramatic rather than naturalistic, bright colours were brighter, and dark colours were darker. Denizens of the Feywild tend to create and inhabit drama, and boring mundane naturalistic solutions...

I've generally allowed players to refuse resurrection in game, though more often than not when the player says they want a new PC then the group just buries the PC as appropriate. Sometimes a "Speak with Dead" spell was used to check if the PC wanted to be raised. Also i consider strong player...

I'm interpreting it as intending to allow the caster to avoid attacks, and in this specific case working before the resolution of the attack. If it makes you feel better assume I'm using the named exception in that paragraph for my game. YMMV.

The text suggests the power is triggered by the target making an attack, any attack. It doesn't specify "an attack on the caster" for instance. My interpretation would be that the caster can teleport in response to any attack by the target before it resolves, and would suffer the 5 psychic...

I don't allow evil characters in my regular campaign, because I don't want to explore that game territory and evil PCs tend to be a bad choice for long campaigns. I want my regular PCs to care about some of the places and NPCs in the setting, and that's more believable for good and neutral PCs...