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The MCDM Kingdoms and Warfare book is a popular resource for this type of content Also might want to clarify your title that this is referring to hostility between the characters' countries and not the players. It reads like you have a real-world conflict going here between your players not...

Casters are far more durable than martials in 5e if they are optimized properly. Lower HP but higher AC and all sorts of reactions to reduce/avoid damage (shield, absorb elements, silvery barbs, counterspell, etc)

It makes sense because being in melee is generally more dangerous than being at range (unless the DM goes out of their way to make this not be true, which can easily be done), and because optimized casters are capable of much higher AC than martials are. Actual results would be highly dependent...

That's not how I have generally heard the word used (I've always heard it just mean an authoritative decree), but I'll take your word for it and clarify that I wasn't claiming a DM would be doing anything wrong by using LR. Just that the DM is choosing for the player's spell to not work, and...

Makes sense, thanks!

Does the term "fiat" imply that the DM decree is not following the rules? I don't believe it does but I could be mistaken. So you would use LR but then tell the players that the monster succeeded on their roll? That feels icky to me personally, but I'm not judging anyone who uses that style...

Has anything been stated about customizing backgrounds? I glanced thru the article but didn't see that confirmed anywhere Obviously it is easy to just allow customized backgrounds (which I would definitely do as a DM), but I'm mostly curious whether it's in the official rules since that...

Failing due to a dice roll is nothing like failing due to DM fiat. Basically every single thing you can do in DnD (besides magic missile?) requires rolling some clickety clacks and depending on the mercy of the fickle dice gods. The difference is that with dice rolls you have a percent chance...

I'll agree with you that players don't NEED to know what abilities work in combat, but I just think it makes the game more fun if they do. When you sit there for what seems like eternity waiting for your turn to finally get to do something, only to have the DM negate your entire turn with a...

This is true to a point, but yo-yo healing is a fairly widely disliked feature of how 5e works, so it's not unreasonable to hope for rule changes to something that many people view is an issue. I handle it with a Lingering Injury table, which is officially available as an Variant Rule (for 2014...

This is always the first question to ask about proposed rule modifications. I agree 100% with the OP and I use this as a homebrew rule modification, because I do think it solves an important problem. For me, the problem that it solves is that players no longer have to guess whether they are...

I said plot points, not an entire campaign plot. Advocating in favor of DMs having some idea about what plot points could be coming up in the next session is about as hot a take as claiming the sky is blue.

I doubt that a single person out there thinks that the entire session is read from a script with them memorizing every line - what people mean by "scripted" is all of the plot points are planned out beforehand (generally always true in any DnD game with a remotely prepared DM) and that all the...

Ok yeah that makes sense and I think the new rules could make things slightly slower with new complexity being added for classes that previously had few/no combat options. Plenty of players can be excruciatingly indecisive now though too, it's really just one of those things that is best...

I always find that min/maxers are the fastest at taking turns in combat. Part of analyzing the math on everything to the Nth degree to put your build together is that you are prepared to take your turns quickly without much analysis paralysis. If you are making any decisions in the moment...

I don't know how to be more careful than redundantly stating multiple times in the same sentence that this was only my personal experience. Also COVID hit me fairly hard as well, I was only saying that Flu is more deadly than people realize

In my experience, Flu was much worse for me than COVID - I definitely vouch that Flu is more dangerous than it gets credit for

Obviously there is no wrong way to enjoy DnD, but for anyone who enjoys optimizing their damage output, GWM / SS were required feats, which was very bad for the game and I'm glad to see them nerfed.

Oh ok maybe I misunderstood that. I thought the point was that damage ceiling (i.e. optimized damage) is going up for martials (per post #122), specifically due to GWM and weapon masteries. I'd totally agree that this change helps non-optimizers by nerfing an overpowered Must Have feat, and...

Well yeah of course the math looks bad if you give the target a huge AC and ignore Advantage. If you built a Level 20 character without guaranteed Advantage on demand then you are doing it very wrong, with or without GWM. Even against 22 AC, that should be 16 damage per attack with GWM and...