Sage Advice: Sneak Attacks, Breath Weapons, and Magic Weapons

The month's Sage Advice column by WotC's Jeremy Crawford covers the rogue's sneak attacks, ability modifiers to use with attack roles, and answers the questions "does anti-magic field work on a dragon's breath weapon?" (no), and "do magic weapons automatically give you bonus to both attack and damage rolls?" (only if it says so in the description).

The Sage Advice Compendium PDF has been updated to include this information. You can read the current column here.

 

[Azurewraith]

The "fast and loose" 5e system frustrates one of my players as he began his D&D experience with 4e; he NEEDS specific rules to make sense of his world. Shame, really... I'm an old-school D&D vet who grew up running "fast and loose".

Also, my gaming style was like 5e's.

Rules are great and all until they get in the way of the fun, I mean pf has 3pages in the phb dedicated to breathing rules!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The "fast and loose" 5e system frustrates one of my players as he began his D&D experience with 4e; he NEEDS specific rules to make sense of his world. Shame, really... I'm an old-school D&D vet who grew up running "fast and loose".

Also, my gaming style was like 5e's.

Maybe he just need to have some way of knowing that the future will resemble the past. I'll go with pretty much any rulings the DM decides on, but I *do* like to have some idea how he might rule things. For instance, I need to know if I'm going to be rewarded for trying awesome things (like with 5e's simple philosophy for improvised combat actions = they're normally just an opposed ability check), or punished (like attempting to grapple, push, or otherwise do anything but make a standard attack in 3e). Some of that he might pick up just as the game progresses and he gets a feel.

Then again, it might just be part of his personality. I'd suggest telling him your general philosophy with some specific examples of how you would rule things, and a brief Q&A for him to ask about other examples.