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The thing is, you have no idea what the DM has planned. For all you know the city is going to explode during day 1. For all you know, a gate will open up and transport you to a different world. That's the nature of D&D. No idea what will happen. I'm really not sure why it would drive you...

As a side note, if this put the guy to sleep...I'd most likely have it work. The guy would never smash the artifact and the adventure would end. It might suck for the players. The entire adventure would consist of "Welcome to the adventure, introduce yourselves...ok...you cast sleep...you...

I see that each rule that you let the player use is, once again, the DM lending SOME of his authorial control to the players in certain ways. The players DO have authorial control over certain parts of the story. That's why they are players and not readers or watchers. Their characters can...

It's been a while since I've been back, but I wanted to respond to this in particular. In this case, I say that the DM clearly put the boxes in the alley. They were suggested by the player, but the DM decided to put them there. It's not a matter of veto power by the DM. To me player...

Bounded accuracy just means putting an upper and lower limit on bonuses that are within parameters that make sense. In this case it is impossible to get an AC so high that the best monster in the book needs a 20+ to hit you. That means that accuracy is bounded. This is in contrast to...

Here's the problem with this entire thing. Bounded numbers mean that a 1st level party generally has PP somewhere between 9 and 16. This is only a 7 point difference. Also, the spread is normally less than that. So far, it's been my experience that the "practical" spread is between 10 and...

They added passive perception back into the game very late. In one of the last playtests. People went online to say "PP is back? But static DCs and PP don't make sense...it means you either auto fail or auto succeed." Mike Mearls tweeted that he was solving that by making all traps and...

I guess this doesn't normally apply in any games I've run. The first thing I do is send the PCs to some location they've never been before. They have no connection or knowledge of the people in town unless they have a class feature, feat, background trait or something declared in their written...

I haven't heard anything about this changing. Mike Mearls said that it was the final version about a month or two before the DMG was completed. It's always possible they changed their mind after that. But I doubt it. The problem is that the rules for how to adjudicate Perception checks vs...

Yeah, and magic items will have rarities in the DMG. I suspect what we see is advice in the DMG on how to handle magic items based on rarity. I suspect the advice will be that common items will be able to be purchased for enough money in major cities. That uncommon items might be able to be...

It may effect you that way, but I don't see it the same way at all. When I pick up a dice and roll it I'm imagining in my mind my character swinging and fighting the enemies. I may be picking up a die and rolling, but that's not actually breaking me out of character at all. When I attack, it...

The reason I don't like to do this during play is that I find it causes people to drop out of character too much and continually think in the meta-game. I really like players to be thinking "Alright, I'm on a street, I'm a badass rogue who owes money to everyone in the city. I see people in...

I agree. I try to let them figure stuff out on their own. But if they NEED to solve something to continue, I'll eventually beat them over the head with bigger and bigger clues. However, if them missing a clue doesn't matter to the end result of the adventure, they will just continue clueless...

Perhaps I could have done it as opposed Intimidation rolls. Though, I don't know what the Intimidation modifier for an entire guild filled with deadly assassins actually IS. Instead, I just considered it a raise in the DC to what I felt was the new, appropriate, much harder DC. Around DC 20...

I don't think the default assumption is a high magic setting. Especially with the change in the way magic items work in 5e. Whether magic item shops make any sense depends on precisely how rare items are, I agree. The implication is that the default position in 5e is that magic items require...

He really wanted another Invocation and didn't want to give that one up to take Devil's Sight. When I pointed this issue out to him his exact response was "Now I'm going to have to change what kind of Warlock I am just to get around this. That's stupid." Which, given his later discussion of...

Yeah, I factored the holidays into my plan. I assumed a 3 week gap in running at the store. I just didn't expect no new adventures for January and February. The thing is we are trying to run D&D Expeditions weekly at a store to help build a community. I'd like the players in the city to be...

I suppose. But the level of detail can stay about this same during the entire game. I tend to use combat in a game as the baseline of the "amount of detail" needed. In the case of D&D, you need to declare where/if you are moving, which abilities you are activating, which weapon you are...

Yeah, this player has been known to search for loopholes in the rules and abuse them whenever possible. In this case, I heard him mention that being able to do part of your move, attack, then take the rest of your move was stupid and would cause problems. That's what his character was...

I don't know what you mean by common. But it came up at least 5 times in the past couple of months. Plus, I think that mind control/charm/brainwashing is a fairly common theme in fantasy and sci-fi. Succubus charm men and drain their will, mind flayers permanently change people's...