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Not overly fond of APs, since they overall remove a lot of player and DM agency for sake of the story. Oh, and Queen of Spiders was not a particularly well written AP, as I ran it for 5E. I modified quite a bit to make it all work, substituting The Forgotten Temple of Tharzidun and The Lost...

It's actually a common trope for a party to be given a stronghold, but it's currently occupied. In a 2E game we needed to drive out drow from an abandoned dwarven outpost because one of the PCs won the title to the property. What's funny is when we found the wine cellar, one of the players said...

Expertise is the only thing that breaks BA though, and even then it's not usually a problem until level 11+ (where most people complain about other issues). A level 10 Expert has a +13 modifier, which allows an untrained character with no modifier to still win occasionally. Even against a DC...

Bounded accuracy should keep the DC creep out of the equation. If the DC keeps pushing up, this is because the DM is being antagonistic, forcing a treadmill where only the best person can succeed. This was exceptionally common in 3E, but this is not the way 5E is meant to be ran.

It gave a wide margin of no modifier, but not as much as AD&D. IIRC, BECMI had the following 3...............-3 4-5...........-2 6-8...........-1 9-12..........0 13-15.....+1 16-17.....+2 18............+3

No moreso than attacks and saving throws are. This mentality (along with #3 below) leads to skills being gated, as what happened in 3E. This was done in the playtest, but apparently too many people complained. DMs asked for an ability check, and players offered skills they felt appropriate to...

I actually called it stupidity at the time, but I argued for the Wizard to owe the group the difference. He wouldn't get any treasure until he paid the party back the difference, but 2 other players argued against. IMO it's always better to keep items whenever they're useful, since you sell for...

I found it much easier to break things down into obvious vs. non-obvious hazards, both being different travel activities. You use perception to find hidden things that are obviously hazards, such as tripwires and hidden creatures. You use investigation to realize that some obvious thing is...

While it had some issues, the monster manual for Rokguan back in 3E was pretty good.

Played: Curse of Strahd Ran: Ghosts of Saltmarsh w/ Tales of the Yawning Portal adventures

Correct by strict use of RAW, which is why I generally consider RAW rather stupid. Expect your DM to rule nothing happens, since by RAI the Demoralizing Strike obviously cannot affect someone immune to fear.

I'm old school, but I've been part of several different styles. My preferred method is based on "shares." Players draft magic items until there's none left. Players who didn't get a permanent magic item get 2 additional shares of treasure, while those who only got 1 consumable item get 1...

Having played the Spirit Guardian Cleric before, you are maximum aggro. The DM should target you for just about everything, especially ranged attacks/AoE effect. Given this particular setup, your vulnerability is to disabling effects that target non-Wisdom (reminder: you can't Dodge with speed...

I find it funny that so many people complain about spellcasters being powerful and there being no use for money, yet ignore component costs. When we ran Avernus, I carefully considered what spells I expected to take as I leveled so that I could get them whenever I could. I was extremely stingy...

It should be part of charisma, but it won't be. It's unpopular to acknowledge how much physical appearance impacts our reaction to others. Even if it were, it would only be one aspect of it, because appearance only goes so far (not to mention with different creatures having different versions of...

I have little interest in running a D&D game based on Planeswalkers, but back in the 90s some friends and I made a Magic RPG using a collection of cards. You were a novice Planeswalk, with a handful of spells. You had access to a number of lands and a library of spells you'd randomly draw. If...

While I fully oppose this move by WotC, it really has very little impact for me. I'm already not their target audience, buying at most 1 book a year (usually none). I will almost certainly buy the Revised PHB, and depending on the content, I might buy the DMG. The MM isn't going to significantly...

Warlock can work the same way as the cleric, but will require some significant redesign. At level 1 you still need to get your patron, which will provide some small bonus, then at level 3 your patron will give you some specialization. This is harder the more detailed they have the patrons (as...

It comes down to how you want to look at Subclasses. If it's an archetype, then it's something you might want to have at level 1, making all characters fully functional from level 1. If it's a customization option, then it's best at level 3 to allow for in game events to set you down a certain...

I'm currently running a 1D&D playtest campaign based in Greyhawk. The party is part of an adventuring company on Lendore Isle, currently staying in the town of Restinford (based on the Lendor Isle trilogy of adventures) This allows PCs to switch out with ease to try out new things, and provides...