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Yeah. And I find that another thing the rule does is it makes everyone have to pay attention to it and abide by it, or miss out. It becomes too big and too important of a rule, in that regard. If you have a flanking rule, you almost force yourself to use grids instead of theater of the mind, and...

I just make those items very rare, and players don't come across +3 items until they are about level 16 or higher. Those are epic, special, super powerful weapons that only the highest-level characters will discover. And by that time they should be fighting epic and really powerful monsters...

No, I don't use it, and I find that 5e offers plenty enough rules to make combat interesting and dynamic, even though the rules are quite simple. You can duck and cover behind something, stand up, shoot an arrow, and take cover again. You can move toward the enemy using a dodge action, making it...

I'm very excited for this! Now, of you guys just make a 5th Ed. version, you'll get more of my money.

Then in that case, give me a smaller book with 200 new monsters and leave out the 100 stinkers, and charge me a little less for the smaller book. Or, what I'd really love to see, is introduce another campaign setting into 5th edition, like Eberron or Dark Sun, and make the new monster manual...

To be clear, I like fluff when it comes to the introduction of monsters before the stat blocks are given. I want to see fluff the the new monsters in this book that were not in the first Monster Manual. But what I don't like is the random rolls to create personalities and backgrounds of...

Everything. I'm pretty sure I'll like the section where they actually give stats for new monsters that were not in the first monster manual, so at least there's that.

Oh lordy. Can't we just get a normal Monster Manual 2 without all this nonsense hold-me-by-the-hand fluff? The WOTC team did such a great job initially with 5th edition, but the last four products they've put out (with the exception of The Curse of Strahd, which was excellent) have been more...

I'm not sure anyone is trying to justify it as being lawful (I haven't read every response, though). I think people are just trying to see where it fits on the scale of Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil. Since he was defending himself, it might not be a completely evil act. The most we can say for...

I am a fan of using Murder in Baldur's Gate as an intro for the first 5 levels for characters as an intro to Storm King's Thunder. I think that'd work out really nicely.

I think it's a good idea in certain circumstances. I don't think the designers of the adventure thought much about the possibility that all of the player characters might hail from the underdark themselves and might not have any personal motivation for going to the surface.

72 hours for 40+?! You're not 40+, are you. :P BTW, I'm about to be 40, and I've never had a single hangover (other than very mild headache) despite some nights of heavy drinking (alcohol is not my drug of choice, though). Sometimes it's just genetics. I'd say let them do a con check, and if...

Yeah, your DM is wrong. This is often the problem with playing with DMs who don't know the rules well or (more importantly) aren't humble enough to consider that they may be wrong and take some time to research that rule. There have been multiple occasions where I thought for sure I knew a...

I would rule it as tough the person getting punched was still surprised at the beginning of the round. So if he wins initiative he is no longer surprised after his turn and he can take a reaction if he is able to, but he still could not take an action on his turn that round.

I draw a division between meta knowledge and character knowledge when I have my players play. In this case though I can see an argument for allowing the assassin to be aware of which guards might be more aware of their surroundings vs. guards who are not paying attention at all (i.e., those that...

It also dawns on me that this (correct) view of the assassination rogue ability introduces a little bit of meta-gaming if the DM has different NPCs acting at individual initiative orders. The player can just pick an NPC to assassinate who has a lower initiative order than he does. Although this...

Oh yeah? I was under the impression that in the first printing of the 5th ed. books they referred to the "surprise round," and they only changed this with the errata and the second printing. My group also started playing with the D&D Next playtest, so maybe that's what I'm remembering? In any...

Sure, I get that. But I don't see why they felt the need to do it. I don't think the assassination ability was too powerful if they hit at any point in the first round while sneaking. I'll have to think about it, but I just don't think it's worthy the trouble of explaining the nuance of this...

You're right about the way they clarified that rule. That seems silly to me ant completely not what the intent seemed to be to me in the player's handbook. So I'm going to just have to house-rule in my games that surprise ends at the end of the round, not the end of the turn. I'm not sweating it.

That's not my interpretation of it. The guard didn't go first; he lost his turn in the first round because he was surprised. He only had a chance to use a reaction because his initiative was high enough, but using a reaction isn't going first. It's a reaction to an event at some point in the...