Search results

Insightful analysis, but I don't really want that result. I know it used to be that as characters and monsters got stronger they just better at resisting magic, and the source (caster, spell, etc) of the magic rarely mattered at all (other than the occasional spell that said you saved with a -4...

Honestly, I don't tend to blame anything when one of my characters dies. If they died in an interesting or funny way, I'll laugh and smile about. If course, resurrection magic has always been an option in every D&D game I've been involved in, though not without hassle or cost (we don't run it...

It is actually Waterdeep you were going to, lol! When my party was in Sigil the portal they ended up locating to Waterdeep actually required them to first take a portal to a forest in Elysium, then travel to a little village on the Oceanus, where they could swim down the bank dozens of feet...

Unfortunately the Planescape lore is really lacking on this sort of thing. It really took more of a DM railroad (or heavily bounded sandbox) attitude towards planar travel. So despite the apparent promise of being able to go anywhere, it's really more you can go anywhere your DM wants you to go...

There was one subclass in XGtE that stood out to me as a harbinger of change, as well as the book having presentation changes I didn't care for from previous works, but I think I really started seeing the changes of philosophy with MToF (so way before MMotM). It was a continuous slide into a new...

There is an impression out there that the monster creation rules in the 2014 DMG don’t work. I disagree. I haven’t had any problem making monsters with them, and there are others that can say the same thing. I’ll try to keep my rambling thoughts and theories in the footnotes(1) and focus on the...

Well, they have made 5.0e unavailable for new purchases, when you can currently buy all other editions in digital format, so there's that excuse to not like them if you liked 5.0e and don't want it to vanish into history. And that's not even counting gutting some of the material (like alignment...

That's not a bad point. But I have an idea. Most of the complaints that I see about the monster creation rules in the 2014 DMG sure look to me like people didn't read them (or didn't remember what they read). Things like thinking the hit point values for the defensive CR are way too high, for...

I very much look forward to your reverse engineered rules.

The thing is, if you make a monster from scratch with nothing like the 2014 DMG you have absolutely no idea what its CR is. The guess and check issue with the proficiency bonus you mention (a real irritation) aside, the primary function of the monster building rules was to tell you the CR of...

I still can't see how goblins can be fey but elves are humanoids. I mean, I'm okay with the goblin-fey connection, I really am. I just think they shouldn't be more fey than elves. So if you want them to be fey, make elves fey too. I think everyone should agree with me or you're just wrong. I...

Since people are currently talking about skills over on the Intimidate thread, I thought this would be a good time to share my home-brew skill revision. Use it for inspiration, adopt as-is, ignore, or use as fuel for arguments. :) This is based on 2014, but should more or less work with 2024...

It should help if you don't tell the players you want to run a D&D 5e game...and then manhandle the rules so they aren't getting what the book says they are. Instead tell them you have a homebrew D&D-like game you want to run that [fill in the blank with what you are going for]. Then if they...

I will literally have my character commission and pay for clothing and armor with no mechanical benefit to fit his style. I dropped a lot of coin to have the hide of a black dragon turned into some cool scale armor by a dwarven smith, and I commissioned a satchel customized to fit his bag of...

If green-flame blade and booming blade are allowed with 2024 Eldritch Knight, you are straight up adding to at-will damage. 1d8 at 7th-10th level, 2d8 at 11th-16th, and 3d8 at 17th+. That's reliable damage to your primary target, not even counting the extra potential damage/control from booming...

What do you see as the benefit of adding these sorts of dramatic changes to D&D rather than just playing Sword World?

The phrasing in 2014 was open to interpretation. I always interpreted it the generous way because it made the feat more attractive.

The funny thing is that using group checks to help with party Stealth was the example the designers gave when they were talking about group checks way back in the 2014 play test. So 2024 is completely altering the intent. But that isn't the only place. Sometime someone should make a list of all...

I would probably allow this if it came up. No one has ever expressed a desire to do so, probably because standard actions are typically superior to bonus actions. It would probably be kind of like a house rule I do have that prepared casters can prepare additional cantrips in place of other...