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Swords have a key advantage over other items: you're much more likely to find a magic sword BtB than any other kind of magic weapon. Of course, your DM can toss a Frost Brand (mace) in a treasure hoard, but it looks like this edition is trying to emphasize the iconic weight of the the magic sword.

I understand it as any three cantrips, period. You can have a bard cantrip, a cleric cantrip and a druid cantrip in your book if you want.

Good point, Pemerton. If a DM doesn't want the Far Realm in their cosmology, Limbo and the Slaad Lords make a good substitute for it. Warlocks and mind flayers might be drawing on that power in different ways. Ben

I think the key to understanding slaad is that they act 99% chaotic, but there is still a method to their madness. They were spawned from an artifact of order amidst limbo, and their biology and hierarchy are somewhat orderly; I think they embody chaos with purpose, whereas before the spawning...

Maybe he spent 45 minutes writing up the sheet, but probably hours and hours thinking about the mood he wanted to create, how to structure the encounters, the plot, the NPC personalities, and so forth. I also often only have a page or two of notes, but they're there to reference the bits in my...

Have a few legendary musicians providing entertainment. Sure they're damned, but at the moment they look sleek and well taken care of. If you really want the players to consider taking the bargain, then let them negotiate an escape clause. E.g. if they win, then they can reclaim their souls by...

I never collected miniatures but always wanted nice monsters to put on the battlemap. These seem like a bargain for the price. I look forward to receiving my armies!

I mean the total chance of hitting is about 1/10 (39/400) if you need a 20 but have advantage. Which is like having to roll a 19+ on a single d20, so at that difficulty it only brings you an extra +1.

It's a funny weapon for sure. If you need a 20 to hit, then advantage improves your chance of hitting from 1/20 only to ~1/10 (+1), not +5, so the oathbow acts more like a bane weapon (i.e., dragon slayer). If your chance to hit is already good, on the other hand, then the oathbow is serious...

I love this kind of discussion. Another possible benchmark is the cost of monopolistic services, i.e. spellcasting, compared to the amount of liquid cash in the economy and what people will actually pay. What would be a comparable service in the real world? A spellcaster can: * open a...

Hey, don't dis my mystic flumphurge! He was awesome, getting +1 caster level and +1 manifester level each level. And the mind flayers couldn't touch me while I was wearing my flumph hat.

It's an interesting take on things, and I like the idea of people paying for just the articles they want. Sort of a clearinghouse for peer reviewed adventures? Count me as interested in the 5th edition editor role. I think you might get more mileage out of this by having multiple editors...

It's hard to quantify, but I know it when I see it. If I were asking people to roll, then I would let them reroll if the sum of modifiers is not positive. But my floor is really higher than that. I think a viable character should have as many exceptional scores as weak scores, and that the...

I think there are a few places where the DM and players can tweak magic item creation to their satisfaction: 1. The DMG says that to craft an item you pay the maximum of its price range, but also says that the market value of an item is anywhere in the range. So a rare item is 5,001-50,000 gp...

Every time someone quotes this rule, I get a warm tingly feeling inside. :-) The DMs solution is to overrun, of course--you only get one reaction a round so the spearholder can't fend off 2 orcs.

You only have three choices as I see it: 1. Magic items are cool, exciting, and powerful so that PCs are thrilled to get them -- but require a judicious DM 2. Magic items are perfectly balanced within the system and PCs are assumed to have a certain amount (3E) 3. Magic items are perfectly...

Just like the AD&D DMG! :-) Doesn't everyone have a story about randomly rolling up the Wand of Orcus in a treasure hoard? Frankly, I think the 3E magic item creation system, while robust, ultimately did more harm than good by making certain items both easily attainable and inordinately...

Spykes, I'm not seeing the difference between your proposal and spell slots. For me, the most satisfying version of the psionic class was the one from 2nd edition's Complete Psionics. What made it feel different from magic? 1. Psionic points ran out quickly. Over the course of your 10-level...

I've been toying with this idea too. It doesn't make sense for all maneuvers, but some like disarm and trip provide a success mechanic that anyone could use. The superiority die just adds bonus damage on top of the effect. I've heard the DMG has some rules for resolving this sort of thing in...

Yes, well, exceptional strength was one of the most massively broken aspects of 1st and 2nd edition. The benefit of 18/00 was so disproportionate that players manage to roll the double-zero at least 10% of the time... But at the same time, if you don't have an 18 then it's not even an issue. But...