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    D&D General WotC Founder Peter Adkison On Hasbro's Layoffs

    And this is a transfer of wealth from stock holders to the options vester. If a company is worth 1 million dollars and has 100,000 shares outstanding, those shares are worth 10$, and you give someone 10,000 options at 1$ and they exercise them, the company gets 10,000$ and now has 110,000...
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    D&D General WotC Founder Peter Adkison On Hasbro's Layoffs

    Stock Options are transfers of wealth from the stock holders to the CEO at the instructions of the company. You can definitely choose to transfer wealth from the stock holders to the employees instead of to the CEO in a way that has the same impact on Stock Holders that giving the CEO options...
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    D&D 5E (2014) A Power Dial Separate From Level

    Yes, I'm aware of standard tippyverse mechanics and assumptions. Here is a long post on doing so using D&D 3.5e mechanics: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?222007-The-Definitive-Guide-to-the-Tippyverse-By-Emperor-Tippy
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    D&D 5E (2014) A Power Dial Separate From Level

    Sure. Then either play a gonzo world with ridiculous results, or don't play D&D. Not even E6 makes a sensible world. I've seen attempts to take PC rules and apply it to a fantasy world. It is just gonzo. I mean, you can just lie about it I guess. "NPCs and PCs use the same rules" and just...
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    D&D 5E (2014) A Power Dial Separate From Level

    Yes, otherwise getting to L20 is implausible. It does require a narrative excuse, and different adventures as the game progresses. But it does not require auto-leveling NPCs - the problems they face should change qualitatively. Note that PC classes sometimes come with built in cheata. I...
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    D&D 5E (2014) A Power Dial Separate From Level

    First you don't have to use XP. Second, if you do level up ever 5 or so sessions, and use gritty rests with about 1 month per level, then the game stretches over about 2 years of both real life and in-world time. You can tell different stories over those 2 years. L1-4 is Local Heroic. 4...
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    D&D 5E (2014) A Power Dial Separate From Level

    The power level of NPCs in your world determine the power level of PCs in the fiction. If the typical professional soldier is a "Guard" (CR 1/8), the world feels different than if he typical professional soldier is the "Veteran" or "Knight" (CR 2), or even Champion (CR 9). Similarly, if every...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Minions with Damage Thresholds?

    It must be perfect if nobody complained.
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    D&D 5E (2014) Minions with Damage Thresholds?

    No, in your model foes are defeated based on your whims. The deadliness of the foes auto-scales with PC numbers. A goblin doesn't die or live based on a PC's individual choices, but on DM's whims. Monster threat doesn't scale with the number of goblins, goblin numbers are pure set-dressing...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Minions with Damage Thresholds?

    ... and a PC's abilities become disconnected from the fictional reality the DM portrays. I mean, improv is a fun game. But part of the fun of D&D is that the players have mechanical and narrative control, not just the DM.
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    D&D 5E (2014) Minions with Damage Thresholds?

    Use a HP pool for all minions of a type. The HP per minion becomes a death threshold. HP is encouraged to be 5, 10, 20, or some other easy number to do math with. Damage to any minion damages the pool. If it is over the death threshold, it instead just kills a minion. If it is under the...
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    D&D General D&D without Resource Management

    I mean, why track resources in combat. When you hit, do a save: on failure, target dies. No HP. All damage is an attempt at killing. Defender rolls HD, treating odd numbers as 0, then adds Con bonus. Attacker rolls damage, with even die rolls exploding. If damage roll exceeds HP roll...
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    D&D 5E (2014) House rule for in combat healing and yoyo at 0 HP

    So it is boring. That is all. When sustained healing surpassing incoming damage, a lot of drama is removed from combat. It doesn't have to be all. We get this neat situation where if damage is below sustained healing, the damage is effectively zero - it just reduces the damage the healers do...
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    D&D 5E (2014) House rule for in combat healing and yoyo at 0 HP

    Sure, like I said, you as a DM can make 0 HP have next to no consequences. Which makes yo-yo healing optimal. This is your choice, as a DM, to not use the already existing in black and white mechanics in the game to make 0 HP a really, really bad idea for PCs to hit. It remains amusing that a...
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    D&D 5E (2014) House rule for in combat healing and yoyo at 0 HP

    One suggestion was doubling healing via Temp HP. That is enough that a party of clerics would be able to stop almost all incoming damage against a level appropriate encounter until they ran out of spell slots. The ratio between "doesn't help against damage" and "overwhelms damage" is very...
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    D&D 5E (2014) House rule for in combat healing and yoyo at 0 HP

    The problem is that a game where healing is good universally ends up with either rocket-tag, or non-threatening combat. Rocket tag is when the only way to kill a PC is to take them out before healing can land. You can see this in a pile of games. Non-threatening combat is when damage does...
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    D&D 5E (2014) House rule for in combat healing and yoyo at 0 HP

    Sure. If you do the old non-5MWD balance, you get attrition over a day. Hitting 0 HP then happens because you went into a hard fight with far less than max HP. In 5e, the daily HP contribution (2 short rests) of a L 5 fighter with 16 con is (6+3)*5+4 + 3d10+15 + 5d10+15 = 123 HP, with a...
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    D&D 5E (2014) House rule for in combat healing and yoyo at 0 HP

    A huge amount of the "0 HP yoyo" is because DMs aren't vicious at 0 HP. In a typical encounter, someone at 0 HP can be dead before anyone else gets to heal them. Instead, we have DMs that build super-deadly 5 minute encounter day fights to be "exciting", and then treat PCs with kid gloves once...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Blatantly and Directly Stealing from BG3 (Spoilers)

    I find that is an example of subclass features that work better outside of that subclass than they do within the subclass. I tend to make houserules that go the other direction. I don't mind some synergy, but if you get an 2nd BA feature in your subclass, you should also get awesome BA uses...
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    D&D 5E (2014) Blatantly and Directly Stealing from BG3 (Spoilers)

    Good DMs create, great DMs steal. So what can I steal from BG3? Weapons: Unseen Menance has a nice mechanic. You get advantage on attacks ... until you miss. It is 2 rounds by the game; I might make it take an action to regain the feature, just to get rid of bookkeeping. Club of Hill Giant...
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