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BG3 enforces this. My tomelock lost concentration on Hex several times this way, and it prevents combining Guidance with Enhance Ability from the same caster.

In that case, I think you would have to constrain PCs to 1st- and 2nd-level spells until very high level. At-will Fireball, dealing full damage in its full AoE, is just way too strong. At-will Disintegrate would be OP as hell at any level.

For noncombat spells, it depends a lot on where you want to draw the lines of "Level X characters can do Y." Speak With Dead, for example, could be made available -- at-will or otherwise -- at 1st level, or 9th, or 17th. From a mechanical balance perspective, it doesn't much matter. It's more a...

I'm the only person in my group currently playing BG3. I'm also the DM. I had already planned a mind flayer story arc before BG3 came out, and there are a lot of common elements since we're drawing on the same lore (githyanki and their dragons, cranium rats, etc.). It has forced me to put a lot...

To some extent we already have an answer in the form of warlock invocations: There are quite a few leveled spells, such as disguise self and levitate, that can be made at-will without trouble as long as you keep a tight rein on how many a character can have. This is obviously not something that...

The nice thing about BG3-style magic items is that, even if they miss the window to be included in the 2024 update, they can be put in later. With the runaway success of BG3, I don't think it's going to be forgotten in a year. Personally, I would love to see BG3's elixirs brought into D&D...

As far as Arthurian royalty goes, I'll take Morgan le Fay over Guinevere any day. In a related vein, Medb (or Maeve) of Connacht.

It's polite to actually quote the rules in question rather than making people go dig them up. Having gone and dug them up, here they are: If a minion takes damage from an attack or as the result of a failed saving throw, it dies. If it takes damage from any other source, it dies if the damage...

Yeah, that's where I'm at, too. Likewise "Gremlins."

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. Bounded accuracy was designed for combat, not skills. Expertise exists because bounded accuracy, using the same scale as combat, would ruin the skill system. In combat, power scales along multiple axes: Attack bonus, AC, hit points, number of attacks, damage...

None of that is a reason to leave "Does the target know its mind was affected by magic?" ambiguous. That's an essential detail for mind-affecting magic, without which the DM cannot reasonably assess how any given target would respond. It should IMO be stated clearly in every single enchantment...

I was going to point out that being a lich requires annihilating souls on a regular basis, and it's pretty hard to do that and be non-evil. Then it occurred to me that in the Great Wheel cosmology, the souls of evildoers endure horrific torment in the Lower Planes, in the process strengthening...

In a dice-based system, you can't represent probabilities smaller than the grain of the dice. In a d20 system, for instance, there is no way to model a failure chance lower than 5%. You have to round up to 5% or down to 0%. In a percentile system, you can get down to 1%. Anything below that...

What I want most out of a skill system is less use of dice and more "just do it." If you are an accomplished thief, there should be no question about whether you can pick an ordinary lock. You just do it. If you're a healer, you shouldn't ever fail to splint a simple clean fracture. The dice...

How do the monsters know the PCs have magical healing on hand, before they see it used? After they see an opponent get back up, the first question should be, "Can we quickly focus down the healer?" If not, then double-tapping is the fallback. But until that first healing spell goes off, having...

Double-tapping is grossly inefficient. Remember that you need three failed death saves to kill, and a single attack can't inflict more than two. So double-tapping everything is costing you two extra attacks per opponent, or three at range. That's a great way to lose a battle you could have won...

Because they are attempting to play in character, and almost any rational PC would prefer to just conjure up the MacGuffin rather than go through a lot of needless pain and risk. Whether or not this constitutes "circumventing the adventure" depends on the DM. When planning adventures, I assume...

I played wizards back then as well. They weren't glass, they were tissue paper. Once I had the idea to buy a couple of war dogs, and my role in a typical fight was to say to "Sic 'em, boys!" and then run the dogs while my actual character hid and occasionally threw daggers. As far as learning...

I believe that starting at levels above 1 should be normal and encouraged -- I can't remember the last time I kicked off a game at 1st. As a DM, I hate dealing with PCs who are practically made of glass, and I'm not much happier playing one. That said, when you get to really high levels, I...

High-level play is rare, partly because it is much more difficult to DM, and partly because most campaigns wrap up or fizzle out long before they get that far. In 30+ years, the highest I have ever gotten in a normal campaign is mid-teens. I have played a few ultra-high-level games, but they...