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That's some very risky logic. It opens the door for all kinds of ploys to get around restrictions against using spells in combat. I think it's much better to just change Friends so there's no save at all against an invalid target. Or simply leave it be.

I had not considered the "chaining" of Beguiling Twist. But that would be an issue with BT being able to trigger from itself. I mean, what happens if the party wizard opens combat with Fear? That's a strong opener anyway, and a Fey Wanderer could really amplify it. Anyway, like I said, I'd love...

By RAW, this does indeed work. Whether a fix is required, and -- if so -- what that fix should be, is an interesting question. Beguiling Twist is a 7th-level ranger subclass ability, so you're already heavily invested in a class with solid at-will attacks; this trick is competing with just...

I've spent the last couple weeks working on a project that uses an LLM to extract and classify data. It's been a fascinating process. "Prompt engineering" sounds pretentious as hell, but it's a real skill -- particularly when you need the bot to provide output in a form that can be parsed by a...

A smart dragon has a lot of advantages it can exploit against a city, without needing any bespoke protection. An attack on a cloudy night, for instance -- the dragon soars high and unseen, picks a target, strafes it, and is gone before the archers can get in range. Panic and confusion would also...

I disagree -- the rules should be able to handle that situation, because it's a tactic many parties will try. If you're tasked with saving a town from a monster, it's quite reasonable to ask the townsfolk for help. And while the townsfolk can't be expected to charge suicidally into melee, a...

6 hours plus 16 hours is 22, not 24. If you went to sleep at midnight last night, you can go to sleep at 10 PM tonight. It makes a fair amount of sense to me. The system will always have weird edge cases because it's trying to bucket the immense complexity of fatigue, sleep, and recovery into...

To clarify, for anyone not familiar with this: "Coup de grace" is French for "blow of mercy," and is used in English to mean a killing or finishing blow (with an implication that the fight was already pretty much over). In 3E it was an action you could take to insta-kill an unconscious enemy...

I used to track things like arrows and spell components (in days of yore, before spell focuses existed) very carefully. Never once did I come close to running out of anything. Eventually I realized it wasn't worth the bother. D&D doesn't want the hassle of a realistic encumbrance system --...

You might look at Zerg assets from StarCraft. The Zerg are basically a mash-up of Tyranids with "Alien" xenomorphs.

Sure, but those decisions are usually in the form of "X is allowed, Y is not." The DM chooses what tools the player can use; what the player does with those tools is "player territory" and outside the DM's purview in all but exceptional cases. Similarly, a DM might veto certain bastion...

My complaint about the old bastion system was that the system seemed like an insane amount of bookkeeping and was clearly designed as a "mini-game" with very little relevance to the in-game fiction of establishing a stronghold. Speaking as a DM, I don't much care either way. Speaking as a...

So Power Word Fortify does nothing, then?

Rend would be fine if they got rid of the distinction between slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage. I mean, how often does it even come up*? If you're going to streamline a system (which I generally favor), don't stop halfway. *Unless you're playing BG3, in which bludgeoning damage is...

The two remaining Silmarils were removed from the Iron Crown after the War of Wrath. The Valar intended to take them back to Valinor, but Feanor's two surviving sons, Maedhros and Maglor -- bound by their oath to reclaim the Silmarils no matter who held them -- killed the guards and seized the...

I mean, sure, it has its limitations, but you can do it at 7th level* if you've got a wizard in the party. The Shapechange stuff doesn't come online until a level where you can make yourself totally immune to damage for 10 minutes, or lay down four gigantic blasts dealing 140 points of damage at...

I think it was a deliberate choice to remove the need to keep track of where your temp hp came from. Not sure they considered all the implications...

Polymorph. Wizard X/warlock 1 if you insist on doing it all yourself; but it'll be more effective if you go pure warlock and get Polymorphed by an ally. Then you don't have to hold concentration while getting beat on in melee, and you can use a fast-refreshing warlock slot to upcast AoA. Plus it...

Low-level combo: Get the Fiendish Vigor invocation. This allows you to top up your temp HP at will. So you have 12 temp hp, renewable with an action whenever you want; and as long as you don't let them get taken to zero, you deal 5 cold damage to anyone who hits you in melee. At level 2, this is...

You got that vibe from them? They seemed like long-term friends and colleagues to me. Unless you think everyone you meet is just automatically lusting after everyone else you meet. Which seems like a pretty absurd, uh... um... * looks at the rest of BG3 * ...Okay, yeah, you're probably right.