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They may not in your campaign. They don't in the MM because there's no reason to have the same flexibility and corresponding complexity as PCs. As the 2024 DMG states, the rules are not physics. They don't describe every NPC in every campaign either. How skills work is irrelevant.

A lot of NPCs have class levels. That doesn't mean every NPC has class levels. Of course it's all campaign dependent, you can't make any assumptions about what applies to anyone else's campaign. Heck in FR you can't throw a stone without hitting a high level NPC depending on where you are...

So if a player says they want to use a feature when it's nonsensical, they're bad players. But with the exact same situation arises and the DM says that it's nonsensical and that it doesn't work, they're bad DMs.

If previous editions were more flexible it was because there were so many gaps in the rules. I have no idea how you define "gritty" though. Starvation? Exhaustion? Running out of resources because you can't take a rest? Those are all easy things to do in 5E. Just saying "other games do it"...

I would also say that even if I don't use the background feature it's because I'm replacing it with features that will actually be useful on a regular basis. It's never about saying "no", it's about trying to find more ways to say "yes".

Same. It's generally more useful in the long run and doesn't require bending the world logic. Something like the sailor's feature of getting free passage on a ship will almost never come up. On the other hand, if you're trying to get free passage to cross the Sea of Fire to get to the City of...

Yes, there are rules for combat. But there are many cases where you can't do something you could normally achieve. I'm not going to argue about infinite strawmen any more. The background features did not work for me and I didn't use them as written when I DMed. For that matter I never saw any...

And the strawman award of the morning goes to PEMERTON!!! You can set up specific strawmen encounters that will have predetermined results and it doesn't change anything. The specifics of the outcome of any real combat encounter is not predetermined. The outcome of some background features...

The results of combat are never predetermined. The results of using a background feature are. You can add all the fluff you want, all the creative explanations in the world or none at all and as written the background feature still works.

I assume virtually every D&D DM has to do some level of prep before running a game. What difference does it make what form that preparation takes? I really, really do not understand what the issue is other than some weird classification to label some people's style of play and declare that it's...

Kind of seems like the pitfalls would depend on what kind of prep you do and what style of campaign you're running. I have no problem playing in a linear game if I know it's what I'm signing up for, even if it's not the style of game I run. So in a more linear campaign, just following the...

So you're saying you softball DM on a regular basis. :P

And that's where I don't understand what "heavy prep" really means. I have a homebrew world. I don't spend a lot of time on prep for games yet I was told that it was heavy prep. On the other hand I know people who spend a ton of time running modules that spend far more time on prep than I do...

I'm not sure that homebrew worlds are that uncommon. Most estimates I've seen are that 30-50% of all campaigns are set in homebrew worlds.

Sounds like one of @Lanefan's games. ;)

You've implied it repeatedly. Maybe not on purpose. But when you state that a specific style of play is due to atavism (e.g. old and outdated preferences), that a person that creates a homebrew world feels like they consider of "deserving of being appreciated", then yes your comments have a...

Is it really a laborious affair if it's a labor of love? In all seriousness, my work doesn't "deserve" anything. This has the same old same old derogatory implication. That because I want to make an interesting world that is more than paper thin I'm somehow lording it over my poor players and...

My prep for my next adventure? Mostly thinking about alternatives and if it will be fun while I'm doing other stuff or lying in bed waiting to fall asleep. I did write up a journal entry and now that I've got the basics down I'll spend another half hour to an hour building encounters and...

There's burning bridges and then there's nuking the bridge while ranting like a lunatic. Makes me ever more grateful for the moderation on this forum.

First, I disagree with this idea the prep heavy games (whatever that means) are going away. Plenty of modules are still being sold that wouldn't have been out of place decades ago. While I've never run prep heavy games if I understand what the term is supposed to mean, I also don't see why it...