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Oh, DMs can get attached to NPCs. Especially dead ones. Those are the best. Us Yellowbeards are never more dangerous than when we're dead Dead bosses can get resurrected, turned to ghosts or other undead, get sent back from the Abyss as a half-demon, or might have started as corpses* or...

Alchemical Monk would have been better...

They gave the monsters a giant pile of hit points and yeah, people looked for non-hit point ways to win. They discouraged using damaging spells and then added auto-successes that work not only against control spells but all save-based events. So yeah, people spam the lowest level...

Well, yeah, I'd buy it. You give me the weak 5E casters, stronger 3E melees with great cleave & ToB power levels, 3E DMG NPC & magic item rules, 3E MM monster upgrading rules, and a skill system that's less fiddly than 3E but more fiddly than 5E and I'd be happy as a clam. I'd even say pull...

Fire shield on the barbarian (no concentration and it does more damage the more often they get hit) mirror image on the melees, esp3cially when fighting things with paralysis or attribute drain comprehend languages on the sneaky rogue who can get to where they can hear but not understand see...

It sounds like I was kind of unique in that my 1990 high school gaming group was 2 girls, 4 boys (none dating) and my college games were frequently about the same 1/3rd women. Its probably stayed about that same ratio even now 3 decades later. VtM hit big in my area when the Ad&d 2e was...

5e moved the Positive/Negative farther away to outer-outer planes and sometimes refers to them as Positive Energy and Negative Energy planes. Which is actually more apt, imo, given they are sometimes described as lacking a proper terrain...or terra. So as "material" planes, the feywild seems...

I feel the feywild is the positive material plane, where everything is ramped up to 11. The summers are more full of life. The winters are full of howling storms. The Seelie are that which grows, the Unseelie are that which hungers. The Shadowfell is the negative material, where everything is...

Another variant of attrition is losing Legendaries. So a 200hp baddie is dropped to 150hp and loses 1 Legendary Action & Resistance. Lose another at 100hp and then again at 50hp. This changes the "boring" part of bag o' hitpoints. Normal baddie are unchanged until they pass out. This one...

My thinking is they expect too little from DMs. They constrain the number of foes because they think it makes games unplayable, while they ignore the slog of BagOHitPoint monsters. And when you add lair/legendary actions, its like adding more NPCs as its more DM actions, except you usually...

That is 1e wizards all over, needing days to refresh their spells over a couple of days. If that's your yum, plenty of OSRs and heartbreakers. But the game left that behind in the last century and that genie is never going back in that bottle.

Tell me you've never known a competitive runner, weight lifter, cyclist, fencer, swimmer without telling me you've never known those people. They have logs, regimen, strategies and such following a pattern that goes well back to the middle ages. Heck, tell me you've never read historical texts...

They just have to avoid calling it the DMG2. That didn't go well. I still miss a DMG that was full of GM helper tables. You could whip up the political structure or population demographics of an area in 15 minutes each. That 30 minutes creates a set of creatures and a set of motives...

While I was rather facetious about in-game knowledge, I will say my 5e groups well exceed the "20 rounds per day" and also take rests after retreating to what could be considered a safe distance. From my game logs, most "adventuring days" last about 3-5 hours with us calling it around lunch...

I love throwing Earthdawn into these discussions because it is a point-buy/skill-based system with classes. Matter of fact, the only way to increase your class level is to buy skills in a particular pattern. But nothing prevents you from being a 2,000-XP character who has fewer skills with...

Ooh, I love role-playing characters. "Hey elf, when can you cast spells again?" "Tomorrow after I have got a full night of reverie." "Who told you that? You come with some kind of manual? Just go cast magic!" "A grandparent was a spellcaster who needed a full rest. A parent as well. I found...

So my overall experiences I kind-of-sort-of played BECMI in that we rolled dice and attempted to do things based on what we thought the booklet said but 100% we did not get it. I played in several 1e games in the very early 90s. It was fun but also a lot of "really? This is d20 and that is %?"...

Depends on the make up and level of the party. At tier1 all the buffs are meh so it is more of a defensive boost with a one-fight duration. At tier 2 it isn't super impactful. But Bless is awesome when you have a tier3 warlock, an archer, and a dual-wielder. That's 9 attacks/round, so every...

Funny. The 5e game we wrapped up was 15% multiclass at tier1 (monk/rogue), 50% multiclass at tier 2 (warlock/bard, fighter/wizard) , 65% multiclass at tier3 (cleric/paladin) and 100% multiclass at tier 4 (bard/cleric, paladin/warlock).

Water Breathing lasts 24 hours and is a ritual. It should be cast daily on the whole party. Doesn't even need to be prepared, just in their spellbook. And the wizard should make aggressive eye contact with the GM as they describe the water trap, then say "Calm down you big babies, I cast...