Recent content by Laurefindel

  1. Laurefindel

    D&D General What house-rules or techniques do you use to make 5e grittier?

    Also, an easy non-rule to make D&D gritty is simply to keep it at levels 1-7 (ish) without pulling punches from the opposition (in terms of CR). PCs don't always have to be the biggest captains in the sky...
  2. Laurefindel

    D&D General What house-rules or techniques do you use to make 5e grittier?

    That certainly is a technique to bring grit to the table... and to ensure the DM makes life more difficult for players thereafter!
  3. Laurefindel

    D&D General What house-rules or techniques do you use to make 5e grittier?

    ... or don't do it for monsters... Personally I'm partial to regular HP up to level 5, then each level contributes to half up to 11 (inclusively), then each level contributes to a quarter up to level 17, then no hit points are given when gaining levels.
  4. Laurefindel

    DM Tools for Mapping

    generic random maps are of no interest to me. An AI-style, prompt-based interface for quick battlemaps could be interesting, but battlemaps are not something I use. For world-maps, region maps, city maps? Prettiness is definitely important. For battlemaps, legibility and clarity trumps...
  5. Laurefindel

    Bow Down To His Majesty The Worm

    Of course the tarot deck isn’t found, you got a page 404…
  6. Laurefindel

    D&D (2024) Sword Coast population data from 2024 D&D Pocket Expert

    Interesting, I wonder if Waterdeep is part of the Baldur's Gate microcosm and if not, why they are avoiding a city ten times it's size. Moonshea is a nice surprise; i didn't see that coming. Dalelands takes some distance from the Sword Coast, and Calmishan visits the said coast further south. Nice
  7. Laurefindel

    D&D General Making a Pizza in a Fantasy world.

    As far as (medieval) anachronisms go, bread and cheese were among the main components of medieval cuisine across all social classes. Now, it will take a few centuries and voyages to America before we get tomatoes introduced in cooking (for people at any case), but variations of re-baked bread...
  8. Laurefindel

    D&D (2024) Sword Coast population data from 2024 D&D Pocket Expert

    Interesting, do we know which ones?
  9. Laurefindel

    D&D (2024) D&D 2024 Player's Handbook Reviews

    [edit] Yikes, @Imaro , I grossly misunderstood your post. I'm not gonna remove it because you probably read it already, but take it with a huge grain of salt. My apologies Casual gamers don't get very invested in a game, or else they aren't casual. They don't spend much resources on it (be it...
  10. Laurefindel

    D&D (2024) D&D 2024 Player's Handbook Reviews

    I think it's a big mistake to equal "wanting less complex rules" with "casual gaming". You can be a hard-core gamer and want simpler rules. As a matter a fact, the more experienced the gamer, the more they know what they like, and "liking simpler rules" is a legitimate preference. D&D has a...
  11. Laurefindel

    D&D General wait what is arcane magic anyway?

    Arcane Magic: a magic that is not divine in nature. We barely escape circular logic by being able to define Divine Magic as "a magic originating from the realms of the gods", but even that is getting more and more wishy-washy as time goes...
  12. Laurefindel

    D&D (2024) Sword Coast population data from 2024 D&D Pocket Expert

    Yes, 200,000 sounds way too low; less than half the population i remember from older editions, so it’s probably not a typo. Still, the contrast between Waterdeep and the other cities surprises me.
  13. Laurefindel

    D&D (2024) Sword Coast population data from 2024 D&D Pocket Expert

    I understand but still, according to the maps we had in 3e-4e-5e, Waterdeep is about 5-6 times larger in footprint. Even imagining Neverwinter at half capacity (which sounds about right given the numbers we have), with half the population density of Waterdeep due to lower/roomier buildings...
  14. Laurefindel

    D&D (2024) Sword Coast population data from 2024 D&D Pocket Expert

    Yeah, Waterdeep’s population sounds off. It’s not so much that it’s population is 2 million that bugs me, it’s that its population is 16 times the largest metropolis of the (northern) Sword Coast. A city that has 4,5, or 6 times the population of its commercial rivals is already huge. This...
  15. Laurefindel

    D&D (2024) D&D 2024 Player's Handbook Reviews

    With D&D accommodating more and more playstyles, giving legitimate options to represent more and more aspects of fantasy, I believe it is natural for a DM to restrict content toward a proposed vision of a campaign. Call that content «focus» or «banning», to me it doesn’t sound unreasonable for...
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