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Intimidating presence is only useless if you don't use it. Otherwise it's "pin a melee foe in a corner while my buddies kill it at zero cost". If it was a spell, people would scream about it being ridiculously OP.

I think you'll find that if you want a contest between them on equal footing, you'll need to build the NPC as a PC from scratch, because as an NPC, they don't have any of the AEDU powers that the PC has. So they gain in places and lose in places, and you end up with something that doesn't really...

Right - it was intact because the target DCs (from monsters to hazards) all escalated, so the only reasonable way to spend skill points was to max out a small number of skills, which is what you originally complained about. I just did a quick run through, and I happened upon the thug's pack...

It does if there's nothing notable about the monster that should make it more perceptive. If the monster is literally a floating mass of eyes, I think people might understand when it gets a big bonus to visual perception checks. Similarly high stealth checks can be expected from monsters who are...

Well, truesight specifically says you succeed at any save against an illusion, so you still suffer the initial 5d10 damage, you just don't suffer the secondary effects. Sure, and in that circumstance they get a spell that does 6 damage more than disintegrate on average, in exchange for their...

They shouldn't, but they should get summon monster, a spell that they've had forever. Saying "wizard's just don't summon monsters any more" is like saying "wizards just don't fire magic missiles any more". It's removing the ability for no real reason. Now if the argument is that summoning bogs...

My read is that the spell does an amount of damage that is still less than that of disintegrate even if the full measure is dealt. At the same time, it * consumes your concentration * will only cause minimal damage if your foe is one of the 11% of monsters immune to charm * will only cause...

Yeah, but then you're left wondering why you bothered sneaking past a monster that isn't actually a threat to you, or why the bad guys bother using weak monsters as watchdogs when they can't see or hear for doughnuts. Sure, if you want to go to that sort of length. That's a whole other level of...

This is still just to do with how common those higher numbers are, and how you never see a lower DC. If you're facing one DC 40 lock in an entire dungeon, but the rest of the dungeon is filled with DC 20 locks, then there's value in having +10 to lockpicking. If there's nothing but DC 40 locks...

"you make the area immediately around the target's space appear dangerous to it in some way" That, along with the examples (fire, floating razors, maws with dripping teeth), the rule text about making melee attacks and reaching body parts through the illusion makes it pretty clear to me that...

This isn't "only the specialist has a chance". This is "people with no skill at a task and no natural aptitude do not have a chance". And the answer to your question is - yes. I do prefer it. The actual problem was that challenge DCs automatically increased. A monster didn't have to do anything...

Since the flavour of the spell is that you're trapped within something dangerous and interacting with it hurts you, it makes perfect sense that no longer being trapped without interacting with the dangerous thing frees you with no damage, just like teleporting out of any real situation would...

5e has the problem that success on skills is both way too easy AND way too hard. Experts with aptitude fail often at tasks that untrained, inept peasants can perform 50% of the time. Simply put, the d20 roll drowns out all the modifiers simply because the modifiers are too small.

Why? Do you not want your players to use interesting tactics?

And yet they still can't pull off moderate skill checks in their bailiwicks with reasonable reliability.

The problem is that you end up in this weird place where a master thief can trigger a pit trap, flub the save, fall 50 feet and survive every time, and the solution to that is to make the pit deeper because you are dealing with a higher level character. To continue on with your mobster/fbi...

I'd be ok with this - readying an action means you've given up your entire attack routine for a chance to interfere with the target's action. That could be screwing up his material components, temporarily blinding him (a la sand in the eyes) or whatever. Overall it's going to be a net loss most...

The effect would be that people couldn't use some magic weapons straight away. Since most people serious about weapons are funneled into choosing a specific style and sticking with it via feats and specialization, most magic weapons that aren't already targeted at a particular character go to...

That only applies if your traps are targeting humans. Individual low level humans are simply not a threat to anything but the lowest level creatures, and those low level creatures have more dangerous things that they want trapped, like bears and other nasty animals. Even in a city, where humans...

I disagree. Some traps, sure! But it's not a hard and fast rule. Sometimes it's just too late by the time you triggered the trap. But regardless of how you handle this particular thing, losing an amount of hit points less than your maximum will always be a boring outcome for a trap.