Search results

For me it was more than just saying it once before the game. For some, this required ongoing conversations during play. "Okay, I'm hearing by asking to make a check that you want to look around, but can you tell me how you do that and what you might be looking for? I need to know that first..."...

Although there are a couple of pillars that draw on it (combat where surprise or Search action is concerned plus exploration), it's really the way the DM presents the environment and challenges that incentivizes it even further. I recall having this discussion with another poster who is no...

There will definitely be unintended consequences that'll have to be worked out. I don't see that as pushback. But I do see it as more annoying to deal with than just fixing the issue upstream.

It might be worth examining why your players think they need to optimize their Perception. It could very well be with how you are presenting exploration challenges or how often monsters are trying to surprise the PCs. In my games, it's a good choice, but it's not the best one - it depends. And...

I already don't like saving throws in general, and I have a visceral reaction to whenever a DM asks me to make an ability check without me first stating an action, so I wouldn't really care for this sort of thing. There are a lot of DMs where the PCs are doing stuff and, because the DM feels...

I have a fun time looking at old Dungeon Magazine adventures (YIKES) and trying to think through how I'd restructure them to do a better job of what the author may have been trying to accomplish. Get rid of all this crap here, move this part over there, beef up this section, my god was this dude...

I don't think that would change my view of whether this was something they (1) could try to attempt and (2) had a chance of success. The rules of the game suggest it's perfectly legal and, to my mind, throwing a description of fantasy magic surgery on top is sufficient fictional justification to...

I don't recommend buying D&D 5e versions of OSR products as I mention above.

Very easy in my experience. Just sub in monster stat blocks and you're good to go.

There's a bunch, but check out Hot Springs Island, Neverland, or even smaller adventures like Winter's Daughter. If you watch the Questing Beast YouTube channel, he does reviews of a ton of adventures and you can see which ones you prefer.

Personally I suspect it's because if you're selling a product to DMs, it needs to be interesting to read and fill up a certain page count. In general, I would say WotC adventures are more interesting to read than some of the more simplified OSR modules. But to me, the play experience is the...

Often they are written with bullet points, some that are even on the map itself, instead of long paragraphs of prose. This makes it easier to run at the table. Also they tend to be location-based, not plot-based, so it doesn't usually include a lot of assumptions about what the PCs will or must...

I can't run them without significant hacking because of the way they structure things. This is partciularly true of plot-based adventures which I find very weird to DM since you have to hide the plot then hope you can still somehow funnel the PCs down it. It's really not for me. I've found that...

As DM, the lack of preparation of the PCs is nothing I care about. If anything, I encourage it to get my body count up. :sneaky:

I just don't see much of an issue with abuse. It's risky, particularly for non-halflings, as you can just take the L on the time pressure and not put the stable character at risk (presuming the time pressure isn't something like "you all die"). For your halfling diviner, luck is your super power...

For those who don't like this, what if instead of damaging spells, the conscious PCs tied a rope to the unconscious PC's feet, hoisted them up about 10 feet, then dropped them on their head for 1d6 damage? This way there's no chance of crit. Just keep dropping them on their noggin until they...

It's considered a "flourish" in D&D 5e (DMG pg. 242), but it's not called a critical fail or in the PHB.

I'm referring to death saves. There's risk in the approach described in the original post.

The risk is rolling a nat 1 and dying due to accruing two death save fails on top of the one you already have. So it's good to be a halfling in this case since you can reroll the 1. (Or having access to anything that'll let you do some rerolls as needed.)

Do you suppose some particular consequence might change your perception of this approach?