Search results

Time to retire that one character. Not time to sink the whole campaign. Instead, you'd roll up something else and keep going, or take your original character's hench on as your main PC, or pull another one out of the stable and run it for a while; meanwhile the greater campaign just keeps...

That's completely counter to my experience - I started playing in university, and still play with some of those same people today; and the campaign I started in ran straight through for seven years after I joined and a few more years in fits and starts after that. It helps, of course, if...

I'll have level-drainers show up now and then, but certainly not in every adventure.

Errr... Huh? Wha...? A definition of "campaign" could somehow be taken as insulting? Yikes.

Here, we have a few DMs and a crew of forever or near-forever players. If someone wants to run a game that doesn't usually mean someone else has to stop; instead the new game just has to find a different night of the week to run if there's to be any overlap in personnel involved.

Oh, it does now, for sure; largely because most of the community today (as in, most of those who came in during about the last 20 years) hasn't ever played in any other way. They started with PF adventure paths or 4e-5e hardcover adventure paths and simply assume that's how the game is played...

I think it comes down to linear = voluntary and railroad = involuntary. I've both played and DMed some one-McGuffin-leads-to-the-next adventure series and they've worked out great: the players got engaged in the situation both in and out of character, after which the whole thing almost runs...

To me, a campaign (despite the way WotC wants us to see it) consists of more than one single closed-ended adventure path. For me, one of the very foundational things that defines "campaign" is that it's open-ended. From what you've said here, you're playing 5e exactly the way WotC wants you to...

Yes, that's a big concern. Except there are always ongoing win (or, more correctly, advantageous) conditions. Greater wealth, greater power, more knowledge, more abilities, greater survivability, etc. etc., in comparison with the other PCs. Allowing players to author anything major without...

This tangentially brings up another big difference between 1e-era play and today: party size. In 1e, parties of 8 or 10 characters were common; and a lower-level character could kinda hide among the numbers until it got its feet under it. In 5e, the party is expected to be only 4 or 5 strong...

Yeah, I'm to the point where I almost just throw stuff at 'em and see how they handle it. And it's completely unpredictable. Two recent combats in my game: 5 Hill Giants in an open-field outdoor ambush situation. On paper, no more than a good workout for the warrior types. In reality, one...

If there's player turnover within a campaign, some long-standing players might be put out of joint if a new player can bring in a PC at the same level without having "earned it". That said, I'm used to the stable-of-characters approach and multiple parties within a campaign, rather than just...

Thing is, if you remove those other "loss conditions" you get 5e, where the only remaining loss condition is PC death. Now if you also said PC stats and xp should be untouchable going the other way as well - i.e. that they could never get permanently raised or boosted, and no ASIs - then I'd be...

In theory the 5e concept of bounded accuracy should work to significantly flatten the overall power curve, thus making mixed-level parties much more viable than they were in 3e (or, from what I gather, 4e). I'll leave it to others to tell us whether the theory matches the reality. :)

The magic weapons selection in the 1e DMG is woefully incomplete, given the vast variety of weapons the game has otherwise and the fact that in many settings there would reasonably be a call to enchant much more of that variety than the DMG indicates. Even UA only scratches the surface.

Indeed it can, but then arises the question of what does improvement look like that would even satisfy just the both of us, never mind the considerably larger overall audience the D&D designers have to consider.

Sounds good. For me as player, my own answer would be "Let it be a mix - there'll be times we want to hunt on our own and other times when we're at a loose end and need some hooks or direction. That work for you?" "Trail of breadcrumbs" is a very good way of putting it. Probably the great...

It's a matter of intent and good faith vs bad, I think. Linear implies good faith and reasonable intention, railroad not so much. Sure, and for the short term - one adventure, or a short series - this is fine. If it's forever, though, that just becomes too constraining on the players; or at...

Seeing this I think the next halfway-important NPC my party meets has to be named Megacorp, just on principle.

Clearly that was the intent, but the mechanical design doesn't make a shred of sense. Had either (or both) of the Gauntlets or the Girdle added to the character's strength rather than set it to a fixed value, then stacking is no problem. But when you have two items each trying to set the same...