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Appreciate reviews like these, I'm sure they're very helpful to a lot of folk here :) Obsidian's been a hurdle I couldn't get over... I couldn't grok it, and I didn't have an "Example DnD Campaign" to load up and reverse-engineer tounderstand what made it tick :( I'm jealous of folk that get...

Wow, thanks for the info and thank you for writing some of my favorite DnD novels! edit: I really pulled from the Black Rose books when I ran Ravenloft- I even adopted Azrael Dak as an NPC that came to Barovia on behalf of his master, he had tasks for the party that would upset Strahd, and my...

I assumed that you get extra movement out of the maneuver, sort of like the Charge maneuver

@dave2008 is the resident dragon-master, have you taken a look at the 2024s and how they stack up? Ofc the 2024 characters are more potent as well so... 🤷‍♂️

Same. I ran RHoD, the party was level 12 near the end and it was supposed to be an Adult blue (in 3.5), I upped it to ancient.. they still rocked its face :'D

Appreciate the thoughtful reply :)

For duet play you'd figure they would inject a little more than More Inspiration and More HP. You can add a little extra, say give the PC a "legendary action" themselves. Simple and relatively clean.. they can choose to take an extra action at the end of another creatures turn. Bam. Or just give...

I think one issue, with dnd5e at least, is that ranged attacks can't (RAW) knock foes unconscious. It's always lethal. It needs to be a melee attack. I kind of wonder what the reasoning for this is. Is it just "realism?" Or is there a design choice behind it?

How does not allowing retreat with "known foes" such as Red Hand hobgoblins, or even outlaws, leading to the party becoming shunned and hunted outlaws?

One can talk about IRL battles being morale-based, etc; that touches on the "combat as war" vs " combat as sport" mindsets. Modern DnD lends itself much more to Combat as Sport, though obviously you can go against type. But anyway, both behaviors can be desirable: You want the party to let...

Yes, to both. But players are risk-averse, they want to succeed- if a bad guy lieutenant escapes, the player is probably thinking that it'll make things more difficult for them later on. That might be correct, or it might not. It doesn't often occur to them that if they killed this lieutenant...

The gods can't enter Sigil, supposedly because of the Lady- but maybe he did some finagling there.

Enemies retreating: the players never want to let them do so, and if it's DnD the mechanics are working against the baddies trying to retreat. A retreating enemy means either 1. they're going to alert other enemies nearby, 2. it's an enemy that might come back for you another day, or 3. they'll...

Ah yes, fair, considerations of word count... but isn't that always the case?

You've been a player at such tables- have you been a DM for such mixed tables? Players can be sensitive to the needs of others at the table, but usually as a DM it's almost required to try to challenge the party as a whole.. that means challenging the optimized characters, without murk'ing the...

"It sucks, but you gotta do you! You're always welcome back of course!" Priorities change. It's like any other circumstance where a friend is gonna be spending less time with you... but yeah, if the main mode of hanging out is DnD, well that's gonna mean goodbye. I guess one thing you can try...

5e adventures could do with a lot more sidebars from the designers talking directly to you, the GM, about why they designed this and that for what reason, what came up during playtesting, and how you might handle different circumstances. Earlier editions' adventures, particularly in 3e, had such...

Is there a transcript floating about?

Yup. My big two issues are 1. challenging said mixed party, where some are "standard effectiveness" and others are Very Optimized.. and 2. breaking the verisimilitude/expectations of the setting when, for example, a single character becomes capable of soloing something they should have no...

2e had race abilities, class abilities.. it even had backgrounds, kits, and there was even movement and action possibilities. ASIs didn't increase by PC choice, though, you're correct. I did note that 5e had more built-in features, but once you choose your kit path, you're set.