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Clearly, it works best when switching to another target won't work. Maybe they lack ranged weapons and don't want to get backstabbed. Or they were trying to force concentration saves. Or the person with sanctuary blocks a hallway or cliff edge or somesuch. Not long ago my group was charged...

Hit points only increase if you gain levels. If you start everyone at 5th level. and keep them there forever, it's not a problem. Let the adventures be done to save the world, to gather magic items, and to gain feats and epic boons, without ever gaining a level, without ever learning any new...

Don't do character creation and the first session at the same time. Either have characters made ahead of time, or use the first meeting to create them and hold off the adventure until the second meeting. If you can't do that, use pregenerated characters instead.

I find the discussion of Ring Mail for a druid rather dubious, since druids don't get proficiency in heavy armor. The very first sentence of the Heat Metal spell rules out casting it on studded leather. That's as close as you'll get to RAW saying it isn't metal armor. The second closest thing...

Xanathar's Guide has the rituals Ceremony and Skywrite. Remember to consider not just which rituals are best, but which rituals are rarest. Find Familiar is terrific, but it's also very common among wizards, and it's easy to identify which wizards have it (by the animal on their shoulder). So...

All the best high level items have been noted (correctly). But some of my favorites are Cloak of Protection and Luckstone (Stone of Good Luck). For a very specific reason: these plus proficiency in Con saves can quickly get you to a point where you maintain concentration even if you roll a 1...

There's such a thing as over-simplification. 5e goes one step too far in a number of places. For instance, perception used to be divided into spot and listen, for seeing and hearing. These were consolidated into a single number on the grounds that all we really care about is whether we see...

Languages and Tools have always been interchangeable, both before and after Xanathar's. Both in backgrounds and in training. 'Training' is actually a single rule about training in a 'language or tool'. Why do you want to treat them as different? Do you really think it makes sense for...

A few of the numbers surprised me. But the biggest surprise isn't even about feats: Only 4% of characters are variant human! Since we know from a previous reveal that over 25% of characters are humans, that makes variant-human much less popular than I expected.

I was kinda shocked today to see that Tough is the second most popular feat. I've been wondering about something for awhile now: would a half-feat verson of Tough be good or bad for the game? I don't mean replacing Tough, I mean keeping Tough but also adding a new feat. Something exactly...

Almost all the charts show big jumps at the subclass levels. Except paladins and monks -- with them the subclass isn't much of a draw. I'm not sure what to make of monks. The levels with movement increase (6,10,14) are very popular, but for some reason the movement increase at level 2 isn't...

The abundance of level 3 multiclasses seems like an index to how many of these characters are real. Theorycrafters love level 20 characters with level 9 spells, so they aren't tempted to bump that up to level 4 for a feat. Many of those 'level 20' characters were likely never played.

My old book matches the version at dnd-spells.com. Various wikis paraphrase it, and I suspect it's because they have to. Some clearly label their descriptions as unofficial, others aren't so clear about it.

There are a few games specifically designed for that. For instance, EverQuest introduced a d20-compatible RPG set in its world, dungeons included. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest_Role-Playing_Game

They all seem like high AC, low charisma types with relatively little stealth. A wizard for utility makes sense, but being the only character with low AC might be... dangerous. So how about a paladin instead, with high charisma and the Inspiring Leader and Ritual Caster feats? Between the...

Other systems do initiative a bit different, partly to deal with this. Hackmaster, for instance, is mostly a D&D clone. But it allows for some actions to take longer, and incrimental movement throughout a round. Everything takes a certain amount of time, from attacks to movement to skills and...

First of all, if you think many of the 5e rules are poorly thought out, you aren't jaded, you just have learned the rules well enough to see the flaws. Second, the chart showing all 0s is incomplete. You only look at Paladin/Ranger and EK/AT multiclasses. Rounding up is fine for those...

Javelins and daggers are the standard solution because they can be thrown with strength bonuses rather than dexterity. The only real problem was running out of ammo... just make sure you have enough. However, attacking with them more than once per turn is still a problem because you only get...

Healing and ranged attacks are easy to combine. Almost all healing classes are better off at range than in melee to begin with. You may not need to multiclass at all. Also, Rangers and Celestial Warlocks are both specifically designed as ranged-attacker-with-a-bit-of-healing.

If prohibiting pets and Polearm Master seem like good ideas, I recommend banning shields. They lead to more missing and less DPS (using both hands is more DPS, whether it's dual wield or bigger weapons). Also ban armor feats, both proficiency and mastery, for slowing the game down -- let them...