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There's tons of things a GM can do to reduce PC power in 5e, but for your purposes I think it's more of an engineering question – Given the constraints with how 5e player-facing rules are implemented in Roll20, what CAN you actually change within the Roll20 environment? I could imagine...

Shouldn't lower level characters be quicker to run away? ;) ;)

I made so many photocopies of that blank monster page, and filled in dozens of homemade monsters when I was 10-11 years old. Hah. I had noooo idea what I was doing, but that didn't stop me!

Salt water taffy (laughy taffy) that acts like both a potion of watchful rest AND a spell scroll of hideous laughter targeting the drinker.

Thanks Dave, that's high praise coming from you with all the monster crafting you've done! My approach is definitely heavy on the "art and intuition" side of things, but hopefully I was able to bridge that to a more analytical approach with my examples.

Treason! ;) I was playing a medley of Basic and AD&D 1e and 2e at 10 years old.

I want to share my "bounded complexity" principles to making monsters for 5th edition / 5e-adjacent games, not because I think it's a perfect 1:1 translation for your gaming, but because there might be bits that you can adopt or that might inspire your own creations. What this is not: I'm...

I've had situations where both of these approaches had their place. A spitting mimic? I can add acid splash or something to a mimic, done! A high CR complex undead that inflicts a petrifying disease, then animates petrified victims to fight for it, and can also teleport into your armor...

Don’t know how DNDBeyond manages their links. Go here https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/free-rules/ Scroll down to the DMG part Select Combat Encounters Et voila

They don’t lay this out in any of their official monster guidelines, but I’ve noticed that if you’re following the defensive CR and offensive CR averaging calculation, that the higher CR the monster gets the more it is for those ratios to be equal or for the offensive CR to be higher. Monsters...

I’ve seen two flaws with Hasbro’s approach: First, “this is how the balance is done” has fundamental mismatches between reality and effect. If I say “ghoul’s parlayzation is worth scorching ray damage”, I’m completely neglecting the play impact (slowing combat, frustrated players) that...

I completely agree with your evaluation. It’s almost hostile design to homebrewing, if I were to wear my conspiracy hat. Anyhow, I linked a video earlier with the time stamp 3:45 and the original source of that tidbit from Jeremy:

Speaking strictly mechanically, that’s my least favorite thing about Hasbro DND. I think it’s at the core of their long-standing attempt to take the magic the gathering business model as a pseudo template for the direction of DND.

I'm just going off the free rules on creating a creature, which is pretty anemic, but I'm noticing – leaving aside the missing maths chart (I assume that'll be somewhere in one of the 3 books) – it's also not representative of the designers' own process of monster creation. We have a point of...

Sounds like they've developed really useful material on adventure preparation, incorporated some aggregated community wisdom (that example about "making death saves a narrative moment" popped out to me), and packaged it all with a bit more organization, more "show not tell", and a lore glossary...

Congrats to Chris! And may he be shielded from the corporate executives at the parent company.

This is abuse. Calling someone ignorant, no matter how much I appreciate the philosophy reference, is abusive. Period. Instead of all but saying “you are ignorant” to me, a little more explanation of your thinking is all that’s needed to change an unnecessarily abusive post to one that’s...

I didn't steal the man's work, your honor. My bot did.

What if my players have impaired my judgment and made me second guess my instincts by plying me with whiskey and subverting my expectations? ;)

My hot take: There is no simple spellcaster class in D&D.