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This is a tough one for me. On the one hand, I love the utility of the B/X and AD&D inline stat-summary. All you need for each creature, on one or two lines. I'm looking at an adventure now that puts these in boldface at the end of each room. Full statblocks in adventure text work well for some...

That example doesn't seem to be a problem with age. It's a problem of the amount of experience you've crammed into that age. Why have your 30-year-old, level 1 character join the military at 16? And see several campaigns, advancing through the ranks and leading many men into battle? Why not have...

Short rests should me much, much easier to get than long rests, making them an option when long rests are not. (And your "long rest" class who went nova for breakfast is just going to have to lump it.) The fact that all classes can spend hit dice during a short rest means that there's usually...

Yeah, Multi-Attack is a little tricky and, personally, I find it a distinction that complicates, rather than simplifies things for the DM. I guess it is supposed to model two-weapon fighting, multi-limbed creatures, etc, in a way that PC rules do not. That being said, I would look at Page 6 of...

I mean, it works like seeing past any other area of darkness. If I look down a dark hallway at a lit area at the other end, and something is in my way, I might not know what that thing is, but I might be able to tell that something is blocking my view. Sort of like an eclipse. It's not really...

I had a plate-mail, defensive style, shield-casting EK in my first D&D campaign. I will not lie, it took some adjusting as a DM, because the kinds of monsters I wanted to run just didn't pose a serious threat to this guy. Ultimately, I sat down with the MM and made a list of "monsters to mess...

I don't do much in the way of pre-calculating or pre-planning adventuring days, so it's entirely up to the players and their circumstances as to what they encounter and whether or not they try to rest and recuperate before continuing. (And whether or not that attempt is successful.) I voted 4-5...

I think blaming this on some sort of "whiny player agency" is unfair. When I DM'ed 4e, I understood the reasoning behind recharge powers. It didn't make sense to give monsters daily and encounter powers, because you weren't likely to be fighting the same monster two times in one day. So...

For a rogue to be reliably getting multiple double sneak attacks through features like Commanding Strike or a putative warlord reaction attack, they need to be in melee range of a (likely powerful) target. They can't do the old "sneak attack and hide" routine if they are making a second attack...

With regards to players, look at basic rules page 25: "you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn." So, when you ready the Attack action, you end up taking it on somebody else's turn, negating the "extra attack" feature. However, with regard to...

As I have used this spell in play, the darkness can be seen past. The darkness just becomes like any other pool of darkness in an unevenly lit room, the catch being that even darkvision can't see into it. So, a darkness spell in a bright hallway would be just like looking down a hallway only lit...

Hey man, if Primeval Thule is awesome and there are things Wizards could take from it to improve their own products, lets hope they are taking notes! No problem with learning from the failures and successes of others. On the other hand, Primeval Thule is a campaign setting, so it's not really a...

I like to think in terms of backGROUND not backSTORY. 5e actually handles this really well — the various rollable tables focus most on what motivates, frightens and compels the player character. They don't get into a long epic saga of "all the stuff that happened to your character before level...

I believe Frodo Baggins was in the human equivalent of his 30's when he started his great adventure, most certainly as a level 1 character. Your standard guard NPC will have fewer hp than your first-level fighter. That's an active duty, trained guard. No matter what age your first-level...

If done well, the new backgrounds could do a good job at tying player characters into the specific Forgotten Realms setting, allowing each player to absorb some fluff/lore about the setting without having to digest a whole gazetteer's worth of information. Anybody can come up with custom...

Judging by the last UA, it seems that any updates to the Ranger are still very much contentious works in progress. I'll admit I'm in the "don't plan to run a campaign in the FR" camp, but I might pick this book up out of curiosity all the same. Most of the people in our group have at least...

Yes, I certainly try to have more potential combats in a day than actual combats, and PCs will sometimes burn resources in order to avoid those combats. There's also traps to consider, which can eat into hit points and spell slots without constituting a "combat."

I don't know that we have quite enough 5e adventures to support separate lists of "best RP-heavy adventure", "best dungeon crawl adventures", etc. I think the field is small enough that I'd just like to know which adventures do a great job at what they set out to do. Before actually running...

Quite a glowing endorsement. :)

Yes, that would be great. We occasionally have people in our group who want to try their hand at DM'ing, and I'd love to be able to have a list of great adventures I can point them to. I send them Merric's "Great List", but it's a little overwhelming. Also, I just love "best" lists. --EDITED...