Search results

People wonder why software developers and the like refuse to talk about the product early on. One major reason is design goals change throughout the course of development, but people who got enthusiastic about earlier stated goals that later proved unworkable will see them as broken promises...

4e, despite being a rather good, fun game on a fundamental level, had no path to success because it changed too much. Customers have expectations, often completely unspoken, and when you fail to meet them, they get upset. It's not always about whether your product refresh is "good" or "bad."...

You have to wait 5 levels to get Extra Attack from anyone else. I'd either make EB an Attack action or a straight class feature.

Thanks, that's why I share my code. Also, note that the Fighter has two magic items, while the Warlock has one. I don't actually think that's an unfair comparison, since Fighters tend to get more magic items than casters in any adventure I've seen. Forget about the Sorlock for a second. The...

Sounds like the best use of a spell slot here is to cast Greater Invisibility on the Fighter. Next round, Etherealness on self and wish Casper the Friendly Ghost the best of luck.

How many monsters that resist fire, but not nonmagical slashing even are there? Hellhounds and...? It seems like a purely academic exercise, since Magic Missile does force damage. I guess if a player wanted to use his class ability to do nonmagical slashing against a Helmed Horror, the sheer...

Not necessarily. If you can end things now, such as by casting Banishment on an extraplanar enemy, you save however many party resources would have been otherwise expended.

Note that if you failed on round 1, you might want to switch up tactics on round 2, what with independent probabilities and all. In case of a barbarian, once Brutal Critical comes online, we also know that granting him advantage (or, even better, paralyzing an enemy for him) is that much more...

5e's flexibility is around things that are intentionally open-ended, like when to call for an ability check, or how enemies respond to Suggestion. It's not open-ended around what type of damage a spell does. In this case, imprecision in the wording is accidental, and while I tend to think...

Generally speaking, yes, it's more important to think about chance of ending a threat than average damage, but in this specific case, a creature at 19 hp is about 1% more likely to die from a 3d8 hit than a 3d6 hit. It's not a meaningful enough difference to plan actions around. That said, even...

All of this talk is why I pretty much ignore averages and look at distributions. Means are fine, but tails matter. How fat are the tails? Events with a 25% chance of happening matter. What's the chance a given thing does at least 35 damage? Incidentally, this is the problem with the Wild Magic...

The concept of rolling damage after ascertaining a hit or saving throw was inserted into D&D before I was born. Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not the ghost of Gary Gygax. I have admitted you were correct several times now. You just simply refuse to accept my admission and move on. I...

Right, so there are even more factors to consider. (Also the fact that Disintegrate can be cast twice, rather than once, if your highest spell slot is 7th).

Unspoken assumptions are still assumptions. If you are calculating your damage against a monster, you are assuming you hit it, regardless of whether you say, out loud, "I assume a hit." No, it really doesn't. People make mistakes. I made a mistake, admitted it when you pointed it out, and you...

The underlying problem is a common one. The unspoken assumption is that if something is impossible to measure or compute, it isn't relevant. To compute something analytically, you have to ignore so many important factors just to make the computation tractable that the final result isn't...

Not only is that mean damage, but chance to hit on a goblin isn't all that high at 2nd level. A typical caster will have +4 or +5 to attack, and a goblin has 15 AC. If you take the higher of the two values, your chance to kill the goblin with single ray is 34%. With the lower, it's 31%...

Story of D&D. "Why yes, I still have my 9th level slot. Two of them, in fact!"

Yeah, without putting too fine a gloss on it, the point I've been trying to make is that, despite the complexity of the setup, the party doesn't have to use teamwork or be clever. They can completely ignore the Black Puddings, who at that level are more dangerous when you hit them than when they...