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A little thing I like that I don't think I've seen anyone mention much is that, although the flavour text has been pared back in almost all cases, what is there is very often presented as a set of possible origins rather than a definite backstory. Sometimes it's quite explicit (the medusa has a...

Okay, I was assuming the assassin didn't know the downed PC was still alive, I guess. So it takes one down, moves onto the next. As I say, if the plan is just "do a lot of damage to one PC then run", it barely even needs to be a combat encounter. My broader point is that, yes, the assassin acted...

Balance issues aside (a single PC downed in one turn by an ambush is fine), what did you want out of the encounter, and what did you want them to get out of it? Because, at the moment, the situation is that the assassin surprises everyone, takes down whoever's closest (let's say), keeps...

The theoretical group check for breaking down a door doesn't mean everyone has to be able to shoulder the door down simultaneously. It means the Fighter who fluked a failure on their roll softened it up for the others who tried afterwards. Everyone contributed, and that's abstracted by a group...

Add me to the (short, apparently) list of people already doing this. If someone tries and fails a check and someone wants a go too, I say, "Okay, it's now a group check then." In general, if they succeed where the first character failed, you can treat it as either a successful group check...

I think one advantage of the premise here is it combines the idea of having a consistent home base (the Town) with the party going on a long journey and getting into scrapes in different environments. While changing up the caravan now and then is probably a good idea, I'd also have a core of...

This is explcitly the stance taken in Eberron: Forge of the Artificer. The Dragonmark feats aren't gated by species or anything else. That's obviously what makes them interesting as ideas for something equivalent in other settings. In my homebrew games I've had Aberrant Dragonmarks show up...

It's really tricky to talk about conceptions of antiquity when you have characters that live for 750 years. We just don't have any kind of real-world basis for comparison. Do elves think of history differently to humans in D&D? Presumably if they don't live exclusively with their own kind, it...

Earth Tremor is a spell from Xanathar's Guide to Everything, of course, from quite near the beginning of 5th Edition's development cycle. I imagine it will be worded differently if and when it's updated to the 2024 ruleset (it will probably be an Emanation with a range of Self, for example). At...

Same as if you gave them all spell scrolls of Haste. Which would be costly, of course! But is still within the framework of the game's standard resources. And, honestly, I feel like if everyone has to sacrifice a level in their primary class to pull this off, that's fair enough, isn't it? That...

I didn't say they weren't significant - I said they don't break anything. There are lots of ways casters can get hold of spells they normally don't have access to (like a spell scroll), or replenish spell slots via magic items or class features, and it doesn't cause the underlying balance of an...

What? Those are the rules I've been talking about. Either 1) You have Concentration on one spell maintained by multiple casters, in which case the cost of doing that is it prevents those casters from using other Concentration spells or 2) You have your primary caster break Concentration to cast...

I read what you said the first time. I just don't agree with you. The Concentration mechanic is balanced by the fact that you can only maintain it on one thing at a time. The fact that you can lose it is neither here nor there, because you can easily optimise a caster for maintaining...

Thinking about it, I really like the idea of having a Wizard and their Eldritch Knight protector who also takes on the burden of concentrating on their big spells. That seems like a cool character dynamic within the party. Thanks, circle casting!

Depends who's firing it. You're the one who said a few posts back that it's trivial for a whole party to be casters. If it's game-breaking to allow one caster to cast a Concentration spell and then offload Concentration onto another caster so they can cast a second Concentration spell, why...

A longbow's range is more than half that already. I just don't see it ever mattering enough to alter the balance of an encounter significantly. And with Earth Tremor specifically, it hits everyone within range except the caster - I wouldn't rule that the secondary caster is also unaffected, and...

Yeah, an extra 1,000 feet per caster, maxing out at 1 mile. I'm not totally sure that's going to break anything - in 10 years of DMing this game, I don't think anyone's ever been out of range of anything else in an encounter. And Distribute requires everyone to maintain Concentration...so no...

Yes, but the game-breaking versions of the spells being discussed (not just boosting Fireball's radius to 40 feet or something) require a larger group than the average party can muster, even if everyone is a spellcaster.

Some of these situations being described...man, it's like you're allergic to fun. Let's say the party wants to solve their problems using circle casting to pull off One Big Spell (1BS). They don't have enough casters in the party itself, but any kind of caster counts, right? So they can just...

I can't even get my players to agree which direction to take in a dungeon, but apparently all your groups are happy to jointly sacrifice their precious actions and spell slots to help unleash a nuke that trivialises one encounter. Like, in practical terms, if the whole party is willing to...