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The D&D rules do not attempt to answer this question. The goal of the rules is to make it clear in 95% of cases what a given spell can or cannot do (with the remaining 5% being left to DM adjudication). The rules are not trying to explain how the spell does what it does, nor to formulate a...

There are two key rules in play: Total cover will block a spell unless the spell says otherwise. (PHB Chapter 10, "Casting a Spell," the section on targets.) Many spells specify that you must be able to see the target. The questions then are, first, what counts as total cover? And second, what...

Trade goods were the usual plunder for Golden Age pirates, but there were also hauls of treasure worthy of the gaudiest pirate fiction. The Nossa Senhora do Cabo carried gold, gems, and religious regalia worth a million pounds sterling when it was taken. The capture of the Ganj-i-sawai was a...

Cloning a full spellcaster is the issue you hear about because a) that is the most abusive use of the spell and b) if you have access to simulacrum, then you're guaranteed a full caster available to copy. So, if anyone is inclined to abuse simulacrum, that will be the choice they reach for under...

Either WotC is going to change things or they're not. If they are, then "more martial options" is a perfectly reasonable idea to fill the space. If they're not, then there's nothing more to be said. Personally, I would like to see some of that space used for martial options; some of it used to...

It's a 7th-level spell, so by the time the PCs have access to it, they are 13th level. 1500 gp at that point is not quite trivial, but hardly a serious burden. And once you create the simulacrum, it sticks around until "used up," so you can make one and keep it on ice -- so to speak -- until...

That doesn't make it significantly harder. It just makes it tedious. I've put in my time filling sheets of notepaper with inventories of fluff, string, and tiny stale tarts, thanks. As for 40% of the book being devoted to spells, much of that could be solved by consolidating and deleting...

That judgment call seems more than reasonable to me. Illusions are the trickiest area of D&D magic for DMs to rule on; I find it's helpful to look at the overall mechanical consequence and whether it's reasonable for a spell of the given level. Two turns of inaction for a powerful foe is a very...

If I were going to use XP, I would not hand out XP for beating monsters. Instead, I'd use it as a substitute for incentives that motivate real people more than PCs. My first cut at such a system would be to say, "You get 1 XP for each gold piece that you spend gratifying your character's...

I'm just sad Bernard Cribbins can't reprise Wilf. He's one of my favorite companions, even though he was only a proper companion for a couple episodes. Edit: Apparently he might be in one of these episodes! He was seen on set last May, a couple of months before his passing.

How much more are you, the customer, willing to pay for the extra development time and infrastructure required to harden the system to this level?

You don't have to nuke the campaign, you can just throw a Molotov cocktail or two. The PCs fail their mission, lose the treasure, whatever. If you always put the stakes up to maximum, then you can't afford to ever let the PCs fail. Players who want to take advantage of that can do so in quite a...

Not today, it won't. What it will be is an object lesson in what is required to produce even crappy formulaic TV.

If they produce any shows with AI during the strike, they won't need a boycott to make them crash and burn. Whatever you may think about the prospects of LLMs in the future, they are certainly nowhere near replacing human screenwriters today. Nor is that going to change in the next few months...

As far as I can tell, the only evidence put forward for a denser Mesozoic atmosphere is that the scientists proposing it believed Quetzalcoatlus was too heavy to fly otherwise. Which is a very thin reed on which to rest such a massive claim.

This, all of it. The other day I was getting ready to offer a novel manuscript to an agent, and I needed a title. The working title I'd been using wasn't good enough; I had an idea for a real title, but I wasn't totally happy with that either. "Hold on," thinks I. "I've got a synopsis of the...

Necromancers absolutely need a summon with a "horde" statblock. It doesn't feel like a necromancer unless you have a swarm of disposable minions, but nothing says we have to track them individually. The other thing is that there needs to be a way for the necromancer to use the bodies of fallen...

You know, looking at the Order of the Stick prequels, it occurs to me that there's a decent model there for the sorcerer/wizard divide: Planning doesn't matter. Strategy doesn't matter. Only two things matter: Force in as great a concentration as you can manage, and style. And in a pinch, style...

As a matter of game design, you're not wrong. And the same logic could be applied to other classes. Ranger comes to mind. But the D&D class list is a matter of tradition, not game design. You can inveigh against that, but it ain't going to change. Sorcerer has been around since 3E, it's going...

I will certainly see it -- mainly to give JMS a boost with the reboot. I do feel like the great strength of B5 was its long-form storytelling, though. The movies couldn't capture what made it great.