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I would like to make a ruling like the following. Scent: Yes, if an invisible person is not moving and trying to be extremely silent, no check is needed, he is invisible. Only his scent may give him away to beasts and animals. So in that case, I prefer to have the PC succeed a stealth check...

Recently, I created a style of rolling, just for experimentation and fun. Instead of rolling 6 times for your character, roll 4 times instead, and then roll twice for both his father and mother, and find the average of each pair of scores from parents. That will be your remaining 2 roll results...

What about getting rid of short rest entirely and treating power recovery just like ammunition instead? After an encounter, you can recover half of your spent short rest powers. You don't need to rest. They just replenish automatically when you have a 5 minute downtime. You recover all your...

I have 7 players but combat seems to be incredibly fast, because battle places seem to be small and crowded, giving very few chances for movement. So the group puts 2 fighters ahead and chop their way through rooms. If the PCs get the initiative, 7 early actions more or less means a first round...

Also, if you can corner an opponent (like blocking the single exit to the room) you can easily deal automatic damage averaging 6.5 until your concentration ends. Witch Bolt is a kind of spell you want to cast on opponents that have very few mobility chances. At worst case, you force your...

This is slow? Oh my! We have played about 28 hours (7 sessions) and all my players did was clearing the hideout and half of Cragmaw Castle. We are moving by inches!! :))

This is really good and makes a lot of common sense. I also like to add the moster rarity to the equation. If you are proficient with a certain skill, you have the basic knowledge about common or famous monsters of the related type. You don't really need any check for them. You just have the...

The player needs to be specific about the related task. She shouldn't just say "I am checking the runes", she has to say how she checks them. "I'm checking the runes using my arcana to understand if it is a glyph or a magical keyword for a ward of some sort." DM: "Ok. You can roll your wisdom...

Why do you think every party will go on their high-level monster hunting business even if one of them just died? Maybe players of a certain table doesn't want that. Maybe the owner of the dead character just wants to start a new one from 1st level and his group rearranges their adventuring plans...

Just like the PCs, monsters and villains can also manage their AoE spells to give the best possible damage. More often they will want to get the tougher characters instead of the weaker ones into their spell area. If as a low level character, you manage to avoid potential areas of effect by...

Starting a 1st level character won't be much issue if you award more xp to the character than his higher level party members. For example I would treat the character as two members when dividing xp to the party if there is at least 3 level difference. If there is at least 6 level difference then...

I record all xp gained during a session and give it to the players at the end of the session if they finish it with a long rest. If there is a cliffhanger at the end of the session, like closing the scene just at the beginning of a discovery or a battle, I keep the earned xp for the next session...

Why? Doesn't a fight against say giants and a chromatic dragon be an awesome and memorable encounter if you have a gold dragon by your side as an ally?

My players killed the goblins that ambushed them but didn't take the risk to follow the tracks to the hideout. They instead continued to Phandalin to bring the wagon to the provisioner. They immediately returned to the ambush spot next morning to follow the goblin trail on the way to the hideout.

Tormyr Of course there should be encounters in varying difficulties in a campaign. I just wanted to tell how to tune up and down to find the right medium setting for a given party. Starting from that base point, it will very easy to build easy or hard or even deadly encounters.

Don't discourage your players to read those books. If your player is interested in every aspect of the game, that's very fine. He can be a good DM someday, you never know. If he is interested in the books only to metagame, you can always alter some stats while building encounters, demand...

Cormyr and Dalelands are the Heartlands of Faerun. These two regions are inhabited since the pact with elves and the erection of the standing stone more than a millenium ago. On the edges of these counties goblinoids will be aplenty, eager to attack and plunder but hesitant enough because of...

I also have 7 players in my campaign. Using encounter building guidelines in the dmg do really help a lot. Record the party's easy, medium and hard encounter thresholds in terms of xp value. Then try to build medium encounters. Note the party performance. If it is mediocre challenge, then your...

Edited double post....

The key word is immersion. Just ask yourself "what happens if the players decide to take a 1-hour break right here? " If they are in a dungeon environment, that will risk encountering wandering monsters or better preparation of enemies that are aware PCs are around. Players simply may gamble...