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Specific feats and character abilities are poorly designed and written such that they take some perfectly ordinary thing and make it sound like it's something that cannot be attempted without that particular mechanical thing being a part of your character. They are bad, and generally can be...

Put it on the wizard and ranger lists, based on the logic that rangers used to cast wizard spells, and it makes thematic sense. Don't make it concentration. The spell is tanking your damage with the initial arrow in exchange for a tiny amount of ongoing damage. As a concentration spell it would...

The solution is to make stealth easier in a way that doesn't increase the number of assassinates, but does improve the party's time. If the assassin can stealth around near the party and communicate in whispers, then your problem goes away. Either adjudicate surprise differently (make surprise...

I'm not asking to be informed of every character capability, and your example is specious. I'm asking to be informed of merely the capabilities that the game already purports to cover, and to have those behave in some way as to reflect common tropes. What I get is "the worst possible starting...

Which is partly where my issue lies. The game is supposed to inform me as to character capabilities, but when it matters, I'm expected to completely ignore the game's mechanisms to make things work. Like I said - it's a flaw. The reason that a poor workman blames his tools is that a good...

Sorry, missed that one, since I was writing my own post! Thanks for the reference. However, I'm not so sure that an entry under the sub heading "Magic in your world" in the Chapter marked "A world of your own" qualifies as rules. At best it's one example of how to work it... which was my point...

No. You posted something and didn't back it up with any sources at all. In previous editions, the information about the caster was known, but the only limitations on willingness were from the raise dead and resurrection spells themselves. There was not some universal "you cannot compel a soul to...

It's a flaw of 5e. It has no room in the skill system for "things that are easy if you know what you are doing, but hard if you do not". The difference at 1-5th level between "best of the best (+5)" and "guy who literally knows nothing about this topic and is bad at this(-1)" is 6 sides of a...

Show me any kind of official stance for this. Otherwise it's just how it works in a world that you run. Like I said - I choose to believe that revivify's limits are specifically different from those of raise dead and resurrection. Also - a minute passes when the DM says it passes. If you're...

I choose to believe that revivify specifically and deliberately leaves out all of the failure cases of raise dead. Most interestingly: 1. Revivify can restore an undead to life. 2. Revivify does not neutralize poisons or cure diseases. 3. Revivify brings things to life even if their soul is...

Survival checks for heading north when there is no overriding reason that prevents the characters from knowing which direction is north are just stupid. For starters, asking for an easy survival check means that your proficient, racially suited, individually adept character will get lost 20%...

I don't know why his DM was so fixated on intelligence as a stat. If the wand required an easy roll, going from the biggest first level intelligence bonus to the smallest (ie - you have no proficiency and an intelligence penalty) only halves your chance of success. You're better off having some...

Just convert it over and run it as is (probably with goblin or kobold stats). Play fast and loose with movement (ie - each round fill the 100 closest squares to the PCs with gibberlings, decrementing as appropriate for dead gibberlings). If squares would obviously require an opportunity attack...

Yeah, I suppose I've never had players actively not engage with a hazard. But I have had them (all) do things which aren't interacting with the actual hazard because they're distracted by set dressing. I've definitely had players sit out of things because they see an obvious path to success...

I find the problem here is that you discourage players from taking long shots, or contributing to anything outside their bailiwick, and if nobody is willing to attempt anything, then the hazard... does nothing? Personally I do this sort of thing much closer to a combat, wherein the PCs advance...

Observant: "You gain a +5 bonus to check types that your DM won't use once he realises they are auto-successes for you You gain the ability to do something that a reasonable DM would allow without this feat".

It doesn't take long. Fundamentally it's a choice between 2 or 3 things, and most of the time it's pretty obvious which one to take based on current circumstances and your character. Plotting it out ahead of time just seems like another thing to keep track of.

I personally think that requiring people to select class features that will haunt them for the rest of their career at 1st level when they don't actually know anything about their class is a poor mechanic. Hence why most classes don't have specialization at 1st level. And yes, I think the 5e...

I would hasten to point out that I wasn't levelling a finger at gods in general for stagnation of technology. I was specifically levelling it at the FR gods and Gond in particular, who makes it his business to involve his followers and church in any technology, and in prior editions granted...

Who says they don't/can't have the periodic table of elements? Just because the elemental planes exist doesn't stop the table of elements from existing. There's substantial chunks of science and technology that work just fine in D&D land. Except... it's not actually vancian any more. You don't...