Search results

Wikipedia suggests the total is about triple your estimate, but who cares? As I said before, there are comparable coins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Double_Eagle That would come in at about the size of your typical dragon hoard coin (if there is such a thing) and was 90% pure gold at...

Why's that a problem? If an assassin dropped from the ceiling in front of a group of people *in real life*, then surely each person is surprised roughly independently of the others. A quick assassin could assess the multiple targets and quickly attack one that appears off-guard. I think the...

Thanks, making a believably consistent game world is pretty much my only goal. The rules as written hold very little interest for me beyond being a convenient starting point. :) Simple, if the assassin is somehow prevented from attacking, or chooses not to, then the target was never actually...

Huh? Can anyone explain how cloak of Elvenkind could give advantage on stealth checks for camouflaging you, but a cloak of invisibility wouldn't do the same? Thematically it should be even better.

I agree with shidaku that the 5th edition wish is a bit ...forgive the pun... wishy-washy. I love neobolts' example because it didn't exactly screw the player over. It got him out of his predicament, but gave him a new, and rather interesting, predicament, while being hilariously twisted at the...

I think Arial Black's interpretation is too literal. Simply "not noticing a threat" is a bad definition of surprise. It's OK as a precondition, which is how I read it in the PHB, but not a definition. Forgetting the rules for a moment, what does it mean to be surprised? If an attacker jumps...

The room is a lot more problematic than the corridor. I've been in plenty of caves which make a 10'x10' corridor look like a ballroom, and yet people regularly used torches in them, sometimes even for miles of cave :)

Large, fantastic dungeons, not tiny medieval ones. Reality is boring. :) Certainly true about chests. Actually that's part of the beauty of heavy coins...you might get to the dragon's mountain of treasure, but good luck taking it with you. Your best bet is to grab what you can and get the heck...

I've seen a bunch of his videos. They're pretty entertaining (and educational). He's mostly right, but torches WERE used for navigating natural caverns for a long time. Of course Hollywood does stupid stuff with everything, not just torches. I prefer the idea of big gold coins, like in the...

Torches in dungeons? Hollywood may have characters unrealistically hold torches in their face, but carrying a torch into a dark area is hardly unrealistic. I mean they were invented for a reason, and there's plenty of evidence that ancient native americans used torches to explore large caves...

The more I thhink about that the funnier it gets. Hey, at least he was anonymous...at least in the beginning.

In 1st edition the ridiculous prices were acknowledged in the PHB and said to be caused by high demand for equipment and over-supply of coinage. Essentially it is assumed that adventurers are bringing in hauls of the stuff all the time, sending the local economy into something like that of the...

I don't use miniatures or a grid. It slows things down too much. Plus, where do you put the snacks? :hmm:

I don't care. Sage Advice is wrong. :)

Agreed. I had a new player a while back. He decided he was going to ready a spell *all the time* while the party wandered around. Insisting that it would go off before anything else could happen if an enemy appeared. It caught me off guard and I couldn't find anything written to prevent this...

Arial Black, Saying surprise only ends when you notice a threat can lead to a nonsensical situation if for whatever reason the target does not become aware of a threat in the first round of combat. In that case he is still surprised during the second round, but can now move and act. How would...

Not weird at all. That was one of my problems with Planescape. I love planar adventuring, but the entire Planescape setting irritated the heck out of me. The fonts and pictures were hideous. The obnoxious lingo in every ... single ... piece ... of ... text - berk, cutter, etc. Beyond that...

I started with Greyhawk and always preferred it. The Forgotten Realms always seemed less 'real' to me, but I could never put my finger on why exactly. I'd like to write it off as just an artifact of Greyhawk being my first campaign world, but I think there's more to it. Not sure what it is...

I don't do that. Even assuming the attack was unexpected, the reaction time of the opponent ought to be considered. I like the idea of a contested deception vs insight check in that case to determine surprise in cases like that. A loss for the attacker means he gave away his intention before...

In 1st edition they were 10 per pound. By the time 2nd edition rolled around in 89, Gygax was no longer involved.