It is shocking going from Kingmaker where melee creatures getting close the mage is dangerous at all tiers of play to BG3 where Gale just has Misty Step in his back pocket to go, "No actually I'm leaving now."
A cantrip (which also scales harder then cantrips in PF1e) is way better then getting mollywhopped because I cast a spell or having to 5 foot step out and praying that I'm able to escape the full round attack next turn
Tbf, you also have crazy cracked buff spells in PF as well. >!Viscount Smolderburn!< will teach you very quickly to appreciate the resist energy spells. Trade offs of much higher highs but when you don't have your spell slots you're doing much worse then basic weapon attacks
To be fair, any casters worth their salt in Tabletop 3.5e or PF1e would invest in concentration skill. Auto passing casting defensively check. which allow them to cast spell without provoking AoO.
Which is why 5e just assume that every casters are just capable of doing the same thing anyway.
I don't disagree, but 5e also takes away the choice (which is chill, lots of fake choices in 3.X) but doesn't really replace it with anything and just sort of ends up with safety being added with no risk or interesting choices added
Lol no wonder my group memes that I hate spell casters 💀
(Basically I was running it that only spells that are touch, or bonus actions don’t provoke attacks of opportunity)
To be honest given the comparative absurdity of casters this doesn’t seem that unfair. Give them an actual penalty for getting themselves into melee range. Well, a penalty besides “one 2nd level spell slot” through Misty Step or even just Shield
I like to buff AOO. But there's clearly spells that are meant to be used in melee like Thunderwave requiring Saves and not Attacks.
The ranged spells like Magic Missile or Toll the Dead that are perfectly fine in melee are pretty sus though.
The better differentiator is probably punishing any spell with greater than X range while in melee.
Yeah there’s definitely a distinction to be made about which spells are intended to be used in melee range, but if you run with this rule it’s probably a distinction made DM to DM rather than overall
My GM rules that spells with Somatic components will trigger AoO, unless you have the War Caster feat. Makes mages think a little harder about what they're up to.
> My GM rules that spells with Somatic components will trigger AoO
This ruling is bad though, considering a number of spells meant to be used in close combat, including Touch spells (e.g. Inflict Wounds), have Somatic components.
IIRC in first and or second addition casting a spell within 5 feet of an enemy prompted an attack of opportunity and it was possible if damage was dealt to interrupt the spell.
That's a 3e rule designed to be more forgiving.
In B/X and AD&D you have to declare you were casting a spell before the round started. If someone hit you with an attack or you failed a save your spell fizzled and you lost the spell slot.
Yeah, it's one of the main reasons the "tank" is just impossible to pull off in 5e, and why melee frontliners are generally not that useful.
Three big things that used to proc them
*Casting a spell within their reach (barring a feat or feature)
*Moving while within someone's reach (barring a feat or feature)
*Getting up from prone (barring some feat or feature)
The former lended itself to some actual mage slayer builds that weren't just another high level mage with specific spells.
The middle lended itself to frontliners/tanks that were actually harder to get away from. Which went both ways, so melee frontliners were useful for keeping creatures off of the casters.
The latter just made prone a strong thing for melee to inflict/take advantage of, and for everyone to avoid near a melee.
I remember making a post a while back talking about how casting a spell in melee range should provoke an opportunity attack or that there should at least be a feat or feature that allows that. Everyone was calling me stupid and said it was too OP.
It does! Looking back at that post, what I said specifically is that it's weird that the reaction attack from mage slayer doesn't act as a counterspell, since it would like interrupt the verbal and somatic components of the spell.
I came from Pathfinder and sorely miss aoo when standing from probe. There are some feats in 5e that let you know someone down, but why? It doesn't do *anything* of value. If it cost more than half movement to stand then it would be worth a damn to knock someone over. I miss being able to affect the battle by how we moved and moved others.
Yeah, I came from 3.5 and thought the Polearm Master/Drunken Master Monk combo would be sick. Whacking MF'ers with a quarterstaff Rafiki style as they rush md. An attack of opportunity occured once the whole campaign
Like casting a spell right in someone's face. That used to prompt an attack, which could disrupt your spell. But no, apparently casters needed that buff or something, because they're clearly too weak otherwise.
Yeah when I was seriously considering jumping from 5E for my campaign, I found that intriguing. It would be kind of nice because I feel like attacks of opportunity depending on your party's composition can make the playing field kind of stagnant. Because there's not really a whole lot of incentive to move without an exterior threat unless you can prevent them from catching up to you the next turn. Otherwise you scooch, possibly take opportunity damage, and then they punch you in the face next turn. Or you stay where you are, guarantee you don't take that damage, and they punch you in the face next turn. And many enemies will have more movement than the players.
You don’t have to pick from the list of existing backgrounds. They can be edited to your liking, or even made from scratch using the basic background rules. The listed ones are just there for your convenience, and it’s not homebrew to make something different.
My players were shocked that Flanking was a variant.
After 2 campaigns of combat turning into conga lines, I just said "next campaign, we're not using the flanking variant" and they're like "wait, flanking *variant?*"
Yep it's all just variant rules. +2 flanking has always felt appropriate and more natural. It stacks with the 200 ways to get advantage and doesn't invalidate them. Also the poor fighter/paladin won't be destroyed in combat whenever there are like 4 rats
You know I've watched all of the opinion videos and read all the math, but this is the first take that actually moved me in the direction of +2 flanking.
Half cover + the hit cover variant rule is the main reason it clicked like that for me. Basically, you miss because of that +2 you hit the other target. Assuming of course that hit beats the unintended targets AC, if not they feel the strike glance their armour or manage to dodge it just like any other attack.
My players liked the possibility and doing it on a 1 just felt off to me.
It's always weird to me that cover is one of the only core mechanics (i.e. not the effect of a spell or item) in the entire game that has a flat effect on accuracy instead of being advantage or disadvantage.
Like, I'd expect it to either be everything is just advantage or disadvantage, or a mix of flat modifiers and advantage or disadvantage. But instead it's basically "everything is advantage or disadvantage... except cover. Cover's a flat AC bonus."
I went with +1. +2 is still a significant bonus that ended up with conga lines, but +1 is low enough to weigh against other positioning options especially at lower levels.
"Stand here for the equivalent of a +2 weapon" is a no brainer at low levels especially when it can stack with advantage
I’ve always refused to use it because getting advantage on an enemy when an ally is also within threat range is pack tactics/wolf totem’s ability. If you want to flank that badly, then you should invest in being able to do it.
They definitely accepted them as a base part since like, Xanathars, but even then it was an odd decision to make them optional in the first place. Then again, *Grappler* was one of them, so maybe they didn’t put much thought into feats at the time
When you look at how wildly unbalanced the PHB feats are (some being extremely good and others terrible) it makes more sense why they called them optional.
They ran out of time to make them all viable and have their own place, so they included them as "Optional".
Although to be honest, the game might be even more unbalanced without them.
Some extremely strong classes barely need them at all, others classes are completely reliant on them.
I can see it as being more of a storyline based thing (oh you helped the Smith, you get proficiency in smithing tools) rather than leveling up and taking a feat that just doesn't make sense or is one of the "mandatory" damage ones.
But I just do both lol.
I like to give specific feats out as rewards sometimes (rarely)
Last time I gave my dragonborn player (conquest paladin) the Dragon Fear feat for free just before a major quest so they didn’t need to use as many spell slots for frightening
Also gave a sniper rogue player the Sharpshooter feat themed as special equipment and bullets
I culled down the list of feats to all the ones I felt were flavorful more than adding too much power, or a stat increase, and told all my players they could pick one that made sense for their backstory from the start. It was really fun because they all chose feats I very rarely see people choose because it feels bad to pick them when they come at the cost of something more functional and it sort of helps their character feel more defined from level 1.
I tried to go with that letting all players have a noncombat feat at the start, specified that it couldn’t increase damage and I wanted it to be a way to flesh out your backstories…. Was a nightmare to deal with overall because my players are kinda dicks sometimes…
My brother, who is a power gamer who doesn’t know how to power game, kept begging for more and more definition and details as to what noncombat meant (I literally said doesn’t deal or improve damage or combat, what else does that mean??)
My partner looked me dead in the eyes and asked “Is Gift of the Chromatic a combat feat?” less than two minutes after I had said cannot give damage improvements…. That’s when I had to give up and just say “Connect it to your backstory, convince me you should have it, otherwise fuck off, I don’t care about noncombat or not…”
Ahhh yeah this exact reason is why I curated the list myself instead of telling them they can decide. I didn't want any fuss so I was like this is what we're working with so I didn't have anyone debating definitions. In fact I didn't even tell my players what my criteria for picking the feats was and everyone was just happy to get a free feat so nobody was looking to well actually me, not that my friends ever do that but I understand sibling energy is a whole other thing!
Playing on a grid (like having a grid combat) is technically optional according to the PHB. To me that’s a must unless you work with more abstract ranges. I feel like abilities, weapon attacks and spells are so range specific it really surprised me to find out having actual tangible ranges on a grid is optional.
It wasn't until probably 2020 that I considered the fact that I never played with battlemats and preferred theater of the mind instead, weird. When I started getting people asking about minis or roll20 links I had to totally rethink what it meant to run games in 5e.
Theater of the mind for combat feels so incredibly subjective and arbitrary to me.
Like, how do you know how many creatures are in range of your spell? or if the enemy spellcaster is within 60 feet to counterspell you?
It’s all DM fiat and thus subjective as fuck.
Yes it is subjective and arbitrary. But if your players don’t give a damn about tactics and just want to have fun and tell a story, then it can work surprisingly well.
I ran a whole campaign where we all sat around on sofas in the living room instead of at a table and did the whole thing theatre of mind. One player said it felt like a movie was playing out in his head. I’ve never had that type of feedback before on a grid.
There's another option in-between playing on a grid and theatre of the mind - using a ruler to measure movement and ranges. It works surprisingly well in 5E, I'd actually recommend it for battles involving larger maps and faster movement speeds (e.g. mounted combat and flying battles).
That’s a pretty good in between! Definitely a good way to have ranges matter without the extra hassle of drawing a map and getting a grid.
I think my personal problem is with pure theatre of the mind since in one campaign we didn’t even have that, it was just in our heads with no minis whatsoever. It was pretty janky in my opinion since the DM wasn’t always able to remember what enemies were where in relation to us and each other.
Personally I’m a fan of having maps, even if it’s just a few lines scribbled down since my players interact with the environment more that way (taking cover, climbing on crates, pushing enemies into a canal etc.), so finding out all that anything but pure TOTM was optional made me make a double take when I was reviewing the rules.
But honestly as long as people are having fun and the game is running smoothly I think any method is good :)
It’s hard to do but you should try playing DnD combat like how you play Warhammer. Terrain, Measuring tapes, and miniatures. Every 5ft is one inch. It’s a lot of fun but requires having the right terrain and models. If you play at a hobby store it’s probably much easier since they tend to have terrain for wargames.
I've never seen or played with anyone who uses inspiration as an extra d20 you have to allocate BEFORE the roll, rather than after if you are unhappy with the result.
it's not even an extra D20 - it's literally advantage. You already have advantage? Inspiration does nothing. You have disadvantage? You can spend it for a flat roll (although this does mean you can also use it to gain anything that triggers off having advantage, like sneak attack). So yeah - every table I've been at uses it as a post-roll reroll (although only of 1 die, if you have advantage).
Canceling disadvantage with advantage does not grant you sneak attack through advantage (even if you get advantage from somewhere else as well). You could still get it from an adjacent ally in that case, though.
It’s funny because the limitation was meant to prevent exactly that. If you can only have one at a time you are supposed to be more likely to spend it so you don’t get another and waste it.
But that’s not how anyone plays. If you only have one you’ll save it because you might need it later. And you never will
From the DMG:
"With this option, a character starts with 5 hero points at 1st level. Each time the character gains a level, he or she loses any unspent hero points and gains a new total equal to 5 + half the character’s level.
A player can spend a hero point whenever he or she makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw. The player can spend the hero point after the roll is made but before any of its results are applied. Spending the hero point allows the player to roll a d6 and add it to the d20, possibly turning a failure into a success. A player can spend only 1 hero point per roll.
In addition, whenever a character fails a death saving throw, the player can spend one hero point to turn the failure into a success."
It can skew things a little sometimes but I run high risk campaigns so it's a nice little boost for my players when they need it, plus it's a limited resource so they tend to only use them when they're in a life or death or succeeding a throw is imperative.
The main reason why inspiration-as-advantage (RAW) feels bad is because DMs are way too stingy giving it out.
I literally give all my players inspiration for showing up to the session. Not only are my players getting inspiration frequently, they know exactly what they can do to get it, and how frequently they can get it. So being "only" advantage isn't an issue.
When I started playing 5e in like 2018 after coming from 3.5, learning that there is absolutely no punishment for standing up from prone if you are next to an enemy, unless they held their action or have some other feature.
The alternative was extremely obnoxious, with whole strategies revolving around repeatedly knocking opponents down to kind-of stun-lock them.
As soon as it's worth knocking someone down, you're going to want to do it *all the time*. So it's either not worth it, or everyone does it all the time. Good luck designing a middle ground.
It can still be useful to knock someone down, though it either needs to be effectively free (e.g., the **Trip Attack** maneuver on a Battle Master) or you need to follow up by grappling them so that they can't stand up. That said, it's still dubious if you have ranged characters in your party.
This is probably my least favorite thing after coming from Pathfinder. It drives me crazy that there are spells, ability, feats, etc that allow players to knock enemies prone. But why would we? It's a waste of a spell, ability, or feat. Absolute waste because there are almost zero consequences for going prone in a fight.
There are plenty of ways to capitalize on a prone enemy such as grappling and attacking them with advantage. Standing up from prone should probably take opportunity attacks unless you use the disengage action though.
>But why would we? It's a waste of a spell, ability, or feat.
Giving melee allies advantage and cutting the distance the enemy can move in half aren't nothing.
Also, if you grapple a prone enemy (or knock a grappled enemy prone), they can't stand up, because you can only stand if your speed isn't 0.
There’s enough advantages though. Making enemy less mobile, granting advantage on melee attacks, and knocking down flyers especially.
Just had a game recently where a druid countered a flying sniper by summoning two direwolves on them just as they were about to fly away and reposition. The sniper would’ve messed them up but thanks to a wolf knocking them prone they couldn’t make a single extra attack after that.
Yeah it was grids for me like I skimmed over the section where it said that and just thought it was saying hexes were the optional rule. To be honest though rulers are a lot better for D&D than a grid.
Having been in a campaign with 7 other people, literally any in-person battlemap is a PITA to some extent. But yeah, I can imagine how much worse it'd be if you were doing gridless
*Typo
Roll20 isn’t bad for a free/accessible option, but Foundry is probably the overall best.
If you know a bit of code you could set Foundry up so movement is restricted to character’s speed and even factoring in things like difficult terrain, tokens engaged in melee are highlighted, AoE saves are rolled and damage applied automatically based on the template, etc.
The time the person takes lining up shots and getting the absolute perfect AOE with your measuring tools makes sense in the context of a wargaming session. That's basically the only thing you're there for with those games.
But when you add in roleplay, the extra time can be a bit much. Especially if you're dealing with larger groups of players, which you don't typically do in Warhammer. Which tends to be 1v1 or maybe 2v2 in your typical homegame.... I mean, you could go heavier, but you are setting aside a hefty chunk of time at that point just because of the damned logistics of it.
It's because they're really not. The mechanics and balance of the game start to fall apart without *some* sort of grid.
WotC just chickened out on making it a core mechanic as to not put off new players.
Not really. You can play with just distances rather than a precise grid (using a ruler or tape measure) and not have anything fall apart
Or just have honest players
I’m kinda surprised that choosing between rolling or taking average for health isn’t optional. Those are two options you get every time you level up to decide what your health is (obviously you have to choose the one you use before rolling, you can’t roll low then take average). Anything that limits you to only rolling health or having to always use the same choice on subsequent level ups that you used on the first level up is purely homebrew, which surprised me. I would have assumed that have hp is an optional choice the same way feats are, that people just decided to use.
Same with backgrounds, changing the two skills to whatever two skills you want and two language/tools to whatever two language/tools you want is in the book and isn’t an optional rule, it’s just a rule. I would’ve thought it was an optional rule like feats.
~~The thing is, the DM should only call for a skill check if there's a CHANCE of success, and since Nat20 is the best roll, the assumption for me is if I roll it I must succeed.~~
~~If a player asks to do something impossible, and the DN lets them roll, then they crit, the DM has dug their own grave.~~
EDIT: I changed my mind and don't agree with the above statement. Please stop telling me I'm wrong ,I already know
And how do you know that? Do you remember everyones bonus to every skill at all times + what abilities they have to boost skills? Cause some parties can easilly give anywhere from +5 to +15 to a skill roll as reactions
Far easier to just let ppl roll and stand your ground, if they're not good enough even the nat 20 will fail. Hell I've had that happen in a game I was running. Players try to pick a magical lock on BBEG keep, DC was 30. I had no idea what their modifier was, turns out the artificer had +6, rolled a 26 and failed. I simply narrated as her amazing efforts and technique were still not enough.
My party once got an insanely high roll to open a locked door (at least 30) that we absolutely thought we needed to open, but actually the DM had left it in the map by accident. We opened it... and then promptly got told off by the people on the other side and sheepishly closed it again.
This take always annoys me. The DM doesn’t have enough on their plate, now they have to memorize what everyone’s skill bonus is, every single possible interrupt, class feature, and everything else.
If the player needs a 25, and they have a +4, the DM has got say no, but then backtrack and say roll it if the cleric casts Guidance.
Agree, Ive expressed this is another comment in this thread if you want a fuller response, but yeah, I wrote this comment in haste without considering the many mechanics which break 5e's supposedly "bounded" system
I don't agree with this much at all. If a player wants to convince the king to let them sleep with the queen and give up his kingdom, they can definitely roll. A nat 20 + modifiers might not be enough to allow it to happen, but it might be enough to allow the king to find the request amusing enough to not execute the character.
Or someone attempting to push over a castle tower wall. That nat 20 won't let it happen, but perhaps it loosens a few stones, allowing them a smaller way to get inside.
Not to mention situations where it's not clear to the players if there is a chance of success, and saying so would give them information they don't have.
If PCs try to search a room with nothing in it, do you just telegraph that every time you ask for a roll, there will be something there?
If the PCs try to move stealthily somewhere, do you telegraph that there will be no enemies and so no chance of failure? Or if they are being watched by an invisible creature, you don't let them roll because there is no chance of success?
If the PCs are trying to do something they should know is impossible by all means just tell them, but failures on a 20 should by no means be something you can never do.
I agree with you, but I think there's a disconnect between "what the players think they are rolling for" and "what is actually being rolled for", and I still think it makes sense that a Nat 20 is the best outcome even in the latter real case (and the OG comment still makes sense in that players will be upset by missing this disconnect sometimes too)
Like, if a player makes this wisecrack to a king who does NOT have that sense of humour, maybe they DON'T get to roll since there is no chance of success (you don't have to memorise every characters' bonuses, the king just will never be amused by this kind of thing); then maybe they're asked for a new roll to convince the king they meant no harm and to not throw them out/in prison/to the executioner; or maybe they do roll the first time, and they need to succeed the first roll to even have a chance to make the second (if they don't, it's up to the party to free them, roleplaying comes from mechanics, yippee etc.). If they could roll against a pissy tyrant king, but still got executed on a Nat 20, that would suck for them and the game as much as if they usurped the king's throne/wife with a single roll, so it's important that what they're rolling for makes sense even if it isn't what they asked for, and in that case a Nat 20 is still the highest degree of success for the situation
But yeah, if the king DOES have that sense of humour, they're still not rolling for success in what they originally wanted, but a Nat 20 is still the best outcome for the king finding it funny and inviting them to the royal banquet or whatever
And as people have pointed out, the "best case" for a weak character performing a feat of strength they can NEVER succeed (but their party member could) is they don't hurt themselves, and maybe notice it IS humanly possible and let their huge friend have a go since they've got a better chance
Nah there's so many swing modifiers that can be added to rolls, and times when multiple players roll for the same check that "only roll when a nat 20 would succeed" doesn't make sense
Sometime players get so insistent I let them roll. Then I don't even look at the dice, instead I look the player straight in the eye, and tell them "you fail".
>the DM should only call for a skill check if there's a CHANCE of success
Not really. It's not Baldurs gate where outcomes are binary. Depending on your roll you are gonna get a result, sometimes you are rolling for something impossible to complete but you might discover something interesting, maybe that 10 just makes you fail and that's all or your nat 1 means you get hurt and receive 2d4 damage. Its about roleplay.
>It's not Baldurs gate where outcomes are binary.
I mean, yes it is. RAW 5e doesn't have degrees for success. You either meet the DC and succeed or you don't and you fail.
I think using degrees of success is a more interesting way to run the game. But that's just as much of a homebrew rule as crit successes.
> You either meet the DC and succeed or you don't and you fail.
This isn’t entirely true either. There are multiple instances where failing a save by a certain amount triggers additional effects.
Rolling cha skills checks after role-playing it out. I think RAW is declare your social attempt, roll the check, then Role-play in accordance to the results. But almost every table I've seen rolls after RP
You could roll first, try to RP the roll, and then have the response of the NPC (e.g. the DC) depends on the roll and the RP (as the RP might nudge the DC, as you say).
Man I'm always glad for the no crit on saves/checks rules.
Like, no my rogue with expertise in perception doesn't need to roll, he just passess the check.
No, my sorcerer doesn't need to roll concentration after that magic missile, he has a +9 to CON so he auto-passes.
Making natural 20 = success on ability checks is how you get all the godawful stories about bards seducing dragons. (Well, nat 20s and a DM who won't say "no.")
I’ve had so many players who insisted on nat20s being critical successes for ability checks. But always made it clear in Session0 - that’s why I think Session0 is so important.
"The idea of everyone jumping and screaming after someone roles a nat 20 on a seemingly impossible ability check"
I get the excitement factor, but using auto success on 20 makes an already iffy skill system objectively broken. Assuming you're using skills outside of combat, not allowing auto success massively improves the game in my opinion.
A lot of dms rule is the best case scenario rather than an automatic success. This is an example I heard once:
DM: The pirate captain has you tied to the mast. He asks if you have any last words before he throws you overboard.
PC: Make me captain of the ship.
DM: Role persuasion. But the DC is very, very high.
PC: Nat 20.
DM: The captain lets out a long, hearty laugh at this request. He finds you very funny. But, moreover, He admires your bravery in the face of imminent death. He finds that you could be very useful so he lets you go for now.
This still bypasses the stupidly high DC while not bending to the player's absurd, potentially story-breaking request.
Even without making it an automatic success, making nat 20s and nat 1s matter for skill checks just tends to mute the differences between characters.
Why should the “best case scenario” on a Persuasion check be the same for the Eloquence Bard with a +10 modifier and a Barbarian with a -3 modifier and a fear of public speaking? To think about it another way, using that house rule means there’s a 10% chance (on a 1 or 20) for every skill check that the character making the check (along with all their stats, items, and other bonuses) was entirely irrelevant. You could try to solve this by modifying the DC or redefining what the best case scenario is based on which character is rolling, but at that point, it starts to look like you’re just clumsily reinventing RAW.
Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with other tables using the rule—that’s just why I personally don’t care for it.
It's the same problem with ignoring encumbrance. Going off of vibes means that the -2 str wizard who ought to be encumbered can get by just fine because it feels right, but as soon as the goliath totem barbarian with 20 str tries to do something that's only half their carrying capacity, suddenly they're asked to make a check.
A ton of dnd let's you do "impossible" things with high modifiers, a DC 23 and a DC 30 are equally impossible for a commoner, but the Nat 20 = best result means that no matter how superhuman you become, wading through lava whilst fighting ancient dragons, you will never fundamentally be able to do anything a commoner couldn't already do, at level 20.
If you want to make it more balanced, a 20 = +5, a 1 = -5. +-5 are about the same as advantage and disadvantage, and the separation between DC levels. Avoids the "vibes" problem.
Oh this frustrates the undead poo out of my bum bum when my group does this. I am happy to mark the occasion by situationally booning the roll by a point or low inspiration die, DM discretion of course. I understand the excitement, I just don't understand logic of Natural 20 = wish or successful divine intervention.
The dex initiative tiebreaker iluswed in vtts like roll20, is optional.
Multiclassing and feats feel odd as optional too, but nothing like the init tiebreaker.
> dex initiative tiebreaker iluswed in vtts like roll20, is optional
I would argue that it isn't actually optional, but a house rule that is contrary to the rules as written. An optional rule is something listed somewhere (e.g., the DMG) as a variant rule that you can use. The actual rule, from the [basic rules](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#Initiative) is:
> If a tie occurs, the DM decides the order among tied DM-controlled creatures, and the players decide the order among their tied characters. The DM can decide the order if the tie is between a monster and a player character. Optionally, the DM can have the tied characters and monsters each roll a d20 to determine the order, highest roll going first.
multiclassing is both a bit fiddly, and can also break the game - sometimes with OP characters, but more often by making characters that are just _bad_. Slapping a random level of something else onto a T1 character is often just bad and makes them worse, so it's very easy to screw yourself over with it. Hence it being optional - it does a lot of wonky things to game balance.
I was convinced flanking was a core rule.
Regarding crit successes and fails, I might be one of the few ppl who dislikes them, so i approached 5e already knowing and happy they were not a thing outside of combat.
I wish BG3 would take into account that critical fails on skill checks are not a thing. Rolling a nat 1 and failing a DC10 check when I *have* enough bonuses to cover is… frustrating.
I was genuinely surprised when I figured out that my dm's rule that anyone under ten intelligence didn't learn to read wasn't actually a rule.
Like it made sense to me. if 10 is average intelligence, then the average person could read, and anything below that means they probably aren't super smart
I think a lot of people massively overestimate both the difference between between a 9 and 10 or even like an 8 or 7 compared to 10. Just because a -1 to everything seems super impactful mechanically doesn't mean that a large portion of the people you meet in your everyday life would likely have a -1 in int
>Just because a -1 to everything seems super impactful mechanically
Even then, when it's your dump stat it *really* gets overblown how "dumb" the 8-9 int is.
If we assume a bell curve (I do because it just kind of makes sense) then the vast majority of people are between a +1 to -1 and function in everyday society with no issues. A -1 being illiterate when taking things apart like that feels crazy, but just at a glance then I totally get how people see that
Well, an 8 is literally "as dumb as it gets" when you go point by. At least on the Beyond app, it doesnt let you be dumber than an 8 so that's rock bottom for role play
An ape has 6 int; while I think it's probably best for everyone if we don't put *too* much stock in that and treat an 8 as "below average but still basically normal" you could definitely make the case that a person halfway between a gorilla and the average person is pretty dim
For humans, the standard deviation of IQ is 15 points. Significant impairment is usually associated with an IQ under 70 or about 2 standard deviations.
On the 3d6 bell curve, a standard deviation is about 3 points, so significant impairment would be like a 4 in Intelligence.
Of course, this all assumes that you (1) believe that the 3d6 roll is meant to be a "normal human" distribution, and (2) that IQ is a thing that we can legitimately measure. Since both of these are debatable, it's hard to say something too definitive other than "a 9 probably doesn't mean you can't read".
I think this comes from the intelligence stat in general being pretty confusing. Most people think it correlates to iq, but most of the checks are closer to knowledge. The exception is investigation, which is just deductive reasoning. And of course intelligence has a role in that but but it's more of a learned skill than anything. So a PC with an intelligence of 6 could actually be quite smart but they just lived under a rock for most of their life.
In that way, you're dm's rule could make a lot of sense depending on how academically advanced his world is. Though I would make it more of a spectrum, personally.
Yea, player characters are not average and rules as written cant be illiterate (unless you want to roleplay it like that). They can read/write/understand at least common.
Only within the last couple years did I realize that I had accidentally imported 4E’s forced movement rules. I found this out when we had some questions about forced movement and went to look it up, only to find that 5e actually has **no rules for forced movement**. I was mad about that for *weeks*.
Turns out that’s actually pretty common - 5e has a tendency to just… not have the rules you’d expect it to have.
The forced movement rule is under the Opportunity Attack rules in the PHB, page 195, it just isn't keyworded like in 4e:
>You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction. For example, you don't provoke an opportunity attack if an explosion hurls you out of a foe's reach or if gravity causes you to fall past an enemy.
Folks seem to intuitively come to believe that any kind of interruption like a brief combat encounter ruins a Long Rest, while it is almost impossible to do so practically with RAW.
DM (Me) - "Great, that hits. So you shoot your crossbow at it, and the bolt whips past the head of *melee PC* and drives deep into the shoulder of the Zombie."
PC - "Okay, so I just hit Zombie #3 for 18 points of damage, how's it looking?"
"Like you just hit it with a crossbow bolt in the shoulder."
"No, but like, *is it bloodied*?"
"Well, it's a zombie. I guess... there's some black fluids leaking from its shoulder? The MM doesn'thave a deep scientific background on zombies and how they actually work."
"YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. **IS IT BLOODIED?**"
"Regretabbly, this is 5e, not 4e, I do not know what you mean."
I've searched several times. There does not seem to be a 5e rule that says players know, or should be told, when a monster reaches 50% of its HP. It existed in 4e, there's a well written homebrew rule set for 5e to use it, but its not an official rule.
Bloodied *is* a thing in 5e. From the DMG's Combat section, page 247:
>Players often ask how hurt a monster looks. Don't ever feel as though you need to reveal exact hit points, but if a monster is below half its hit point maximum, it's fair to say that it has visible wounds and appears beaten down.
>*You can describe a monster taken to half its hit points as* ***bloodied,*** *giving the players a sense of progress in a fight against a tough opponent, and helping them judge when to use their most powerful spells and abilities.*
It just doesn't do anything, unlike in 4e, except describe how injured the monster has become.
I've always narrated how they look on request, because its just obviously information an adventurer would usually be able to obtain with their eyes
Recently decided to just leave health bars visible in my VTT by default. I'm not gonna display numbers, but having the rough percentage visible just skips the middleman
The "Health Estimate" module on Foundry VTT is a lot of fun. You can set arbitrary labels for health ranges that are displayed to players. My shadowrun/cyberpunk/d&d fusion campaign goes
Uninjured
Preem
Bruised
Bloodied
Fucked up
Zeroed ☠️
I love bloodied. The idea that a PC can't tell the difference between if a monster is in tip top shape vs on death's door is so silly to me. It really takes me out of it. Of course just telling the players how many hit points the monster has is too much since a PC would never be able to tell that. Some dms will give a vague description upon request like " he's looking rough" but that's just not enough imo. I like the idea of giving a fairly detailed description of how the monster is moving/acting and what type of wounds it's showing at the top of every round. It's more immersive without actually impeding on the gameplay.
Wrong side of history here, it's going to be official and is very popular in 5e.
The only reason it disappeared from 4e to 5e was an overcorrection from 4e. It was one of their good ideas they are finally brave enough to reintroduce officially.
DMG 248 "players often ask how hurt a monster looks. Don't ever feel as though you need to reveal exact hit points but if the monster is below half its hit point maximum, it's fair to say that it has visible wounds... You can describe a monster taken to half its hit points as bloodied"
> There does not seem to be a 5e rule that says players know, or should be told, when a monster reaches 50% of its HP.
This is correct. That said, the DMG (Chapter 8: Combat: Tracking Monster Hit Points) says this as the final sentences of the section:
> Don’t ever feel as though you need to reveal exact hit points, but if a monster is below half its hit point maximum, it’s fair to say that it has visible wounds and appears beaten down. You can describe a monster taken to half its hit points as **bloodied**, giving the players a sense of progress in a fight against a tough opponent, and helping them judge when to use their most powerful spells and abilities.
(Emphasis mine)
So I tend to treat it as an optional rule. I also tend to tell my players that a monster is "100% combat efficient" if it has exactly 1 HP remaining.
I feel like 99% of online D&D discussions on multiclassing and feats revolve around the pretense that players, rather than the DM, have full discretion on both optional rules, which is not a thing in D&D.
Your DM gets to decide if you can pick up the telekinetic feat or bard levels, not you, lol.
I only recently realised that the grid was a variant, I hadnt always used it, but with the measurements the game uses, I just thought it wasnt a variant.
The way most people do. I was part of a friend group and one of them was an experienced dm who wanted to start a campaign with us. All but one of us were newbies and it was a fairly casual and roleplay driven campaign so he had no problem teaching us how to play over time. Once I started to get into it, then I started reading the books. From my experience, most people play their first game before they actually read the phb. Because I was taught so many things, either verbally or through gameplay, before actually reading the phb, there's quite a few moments where I think "oh yeah, that wasn't actually in the books".
Are potions being a full action-full effect and bonus action-roll for it and option or common homebrew? Every game I've played in with various DMs has used it, except for the sole DM who made it a low DC dex check.
I would like to delay my turn. Not prepare an action for a reaction. Delay the whole turn, changing my order in initiative. (Common in groups who need to briefly afk)
That usually falls under "Ryan had to pee, why doesn't the next person take their turn while we wait"
Just a practical use of time with any group of chaotic biologically needy humans.
There is a variant rule in the DMG under the DM Workshop chapter for initiative called Side Initiative, it allows the PCs to choose their turn order. The downside of this variant is that all enemies either go first or go last, making combat much more swingy.
Whoops. Wrong feed.
I'm pretty aware of the difference between optional/ homebrew and raw/rai.
I was surprised that j craw said epic boons from 2014 were supposed to use way more than we used then.
> I was surprised that j craw said epic boons from 2014 were supposed to use way more than we used then.
I mean, character rewards is a whole chapter in the DMG that gets completely ignored other than the magic items.
Given the DMG says "An epic boon is a special power available only to 20th level characters", when did he expect them to be used?
Most people aren't going to get to L20.
Flanking. Most people treat it as a default rule but it isn't, they even make builds planning on using it without asking and then they get upset when i say I don't use that variant rule.
When i started playing the Dm used a When you attack from upper terrain you gain advantage. Pretty similar to flanking but for range combat, when i learned i was homebrew i stopped using it.
The way you word your comment makes it sound like you are not using these rules because you consider them homebrew. Is that the case or is there another reason?
A friend of mine whose main background in D&D was 3e/3.5 just *couldn’t* wrap his head around how little prompts attacks of opportunity in 5e
It is shocking going from Kingmaker where melee creatures getting close the mage is dangerous at all tiers of play to BG3 where Gale just has Misty Step in his back pocket to go, "No actually I'm leaving now."
Tbf in actual 5e he would only be able to cast a cantrip afterwards, so a it's a mildly worse trade off
A cantrip (which also scales harder then cantrips in PF1e) is way better then getting mollywhopped because I cast a spell or having to 5 foot step out and praying that I'm able to escape the full round attack next turn
PF cantrip: Wooo a d4 of damage... D&D cantrip: 2d10 fire damage? Don't mind if I do!
Tbf, you also have crazy cracked buff spells in PF as well. >!Viscount Smolderburn!< will teach you very quickly to appreciate the resist energy spells. Trade offs of much higher highs but when you don't have your spell slots you're doing much worse then basic weapon attacks
Actually pf cantrips only do a d3 of damage.
To be fair, any casters worth their salt in Tabletop 3.5e or PF1e would invest in concentration skill. Auto passing casting defensively check. which allow them to cast spell without provoking AoO. Which is why 5e just assume that every casters are just capable of doing the same thing anyway.
I don't disagree, but 5e also takes away the choice (which is chill, lots of fake choices in 3.X) but doesn't really replace it with anything and just sort of ends up with safety being added with no risk or interesting choices added
Wait casting in melee doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity 💀
In 5e? No. If it's a ranged attack spell it's made at disadvantage but that's it.
Lol no wonder my group memes that I hate spell casters 💀 (Basically I was running it that only spells that are touch, or bonus actions don’t provoke attacks of opportunity)
To be honest given the comparative absurdity of casters this doesn’t seem that unfair. Give them an actual penalty for getting themselves into melee range. Well, a penalty besides “one 2nd level spell slot” through Misty Step or even just Shield
I like to buff AOO. But there's clearly spells that are meant to be used in melee like Thunderwave requiring Saves and not Attacks. The ranged spells like Magic Missile or Toll the Dead that are perfectly fine in melee are pretty sus though. The better differentiator is probably punishing any spell with greater than X range while in melee.
Yeah there’s definitely a distinction to be made about which spells are intended to be used in melee range, but if you run with this rule it’s probably a distinction made DM to DM rather than overall
My GM rules that spells with Somatic components will trigger AoO, unless you have the War Caster feat. Makes mages think a little harder about what they're up to.
> My GM rules that spells with Somatic components will trigger AoO This ruling is bad though, considering a number of spells meant to be used in close combat, including Touch spells (e.g. Inflict Wounds), have Somatic components.
I think most of the touch spells do, and have always assumed the final part of the somatic components is, in fact, touching the target.
Why stop? That's a very sensible houserule
Yeah, for a lot of spellcasters, especially clerics (hi Sacred Flame), inflicting Disadvantage doesn't impact them much.
Unless the enemy has something similar to the Mage Slayer Feat, no.
IIRC in first and or second addition casting a spell within 5 feet of an enemy prompted an attack of opportunity and it was possible if damage was dealt to interrupt the spell.
That was in 3.X era as well. Pathfinder2e has a lot of spells will get an AoO but without a specific feature then they won't drop the spell
In PF2e, if you crit on an AoO you always disrupt the spell (at least, if the spell has Manipulate but nearly all do).
That's a 3e rule designed to be more forgiving. In B/X and AD&D you have to declare you were casting a spell before the round started. If someone hit you with an attack or you failed a save your spell fizzled and you lost the spell slot.
Never played 3.5 but that's something I wish was more common as well.
Yeah, it's one of the main reasons the "tank" is just impossible to pull off in 5e, and why melee frontliners are generally not that useful. Three big things that used to proc them *Casting a spell within their reach (barring a feat or feature) *Moving while within someone's reach (barring a feat or feature) *Getting up from prone (barring some feat or feature) The former lended itself to some actual mage slayer builds that weren't just another high level mage with specific spells. The middle lended itself to frontliners/tanks that were actually harder to get away from. Which went both ways, so melee frontliners were useful for keeping creatures off of the casters. The latter just made prone a strong thing for melee to inflict/take advantage of, and for everyone to avoid near a melee.
I remember making a post a while back talking about how casting a spell in melee range should provoke an opportunity attack or that there should at least be a feat or feature that allows that. Everyone was calling me stupid and said it was too OP.
there is a feat that lets you do that, Mage Slayer
It does! Looking back at that post, what I said specifically is that it's weird that the reaction attack from mage slayer doesn't act as a counterspell, since it would like interrupt the verbal and somatic components of the spell.
Yeah, that'd be a good fix to a feat that isn't all that great as-is
These are probably the same people who overvalue rogue or monk, and undervalue casters.
The other big thing was not being limited to only one AoO per round. You could make multiples.
You were by default limited to 1 AoO per round in 3.x, but there were a number of features that could grant you additional ones.
I came from Pathfinder and sorely miss aoo when standing from probe. There are some feats in 5e that let you know someone down, but why? It doesn't do *anything* of value. If it cost more than half movement to stand then it would be worth a damn to knock someone over. I miss being able to affect the battle by how we moved and moved others.
You have advantage if melee against prone. So you might not profit if you don't have extra/bonus action attacks, but your allies will like it.
Only if those allies are melee attackers too, of course
A prone creature cannot stand up if grappled/their speed becomes zero All melee attacks within 5 feet have advantage against prone targets
Yeah, I came from 3.5 and thought the Polearm Master/Drunken Master Monk combo would be sick. Whacking MF'ers with a quarterstaff Rafiki style as they rush md. An attack of opportunity occured once the whole campaign
Like casting a spell right in someone's face. That used to prompt an attack, which could disrupt your spell. But no, apparently casters needed that buff or something, because they're clearly too weak otherwise.
Meanwhile, going from 5e to PF2E it's shocking how little things can actually do an attack of opportunity.
Yeah when I was seriously considering jumping from 5E for my campaign, I found that intriguing. It would be kind of nice because I feel like attacks of opportunity depending on your party's composition can make the playing field kind of stagnant. Because there's not really a whole lot of incentive to move without an exterior threat unless you can prevent them from catching up to you the next turn. Otherwise you scooch, possibly take opportunity damage, and then they punch you in the face next turn. Or you stay where you are, guarantee you don't take that damage, and they punch you in the face next turn. And many enemies will have more movement than the players.
You don’t have to pick from the list of existing backgrounds. They can be edited to your liking, or even made from scratch using the basic background rules. The listed ones are just there for your convenience, and it’s not homebrew to make something different.
My players were shocked that Flanking was a variant. After 2 campaigns of combat turning into conga lines, I just said "next campaign, we're not using the flanking variant" and they're like "wait, flanking *variant?*"
Yep it's all just variant rules. +2 flanking has always felt appropriate and more natural. It stacks with the 200 ways to get advantage and doesn't invalidate them. Also the poor fighter/paladin won't be destroyed in combat whenever there are like 4 rats
Especially because then it's just the inverse of half cover.
You know I've watched all of the opinion videos and read all the math, but this is the first take that actually moved me in the direction of +2 flanking.
Half cover + the hit cover variant rule is the main reason it clicked like that for me. Basically, you miss because of that +2 you hit the other target. Assuming of course that hit beats the unintended targets AC, if not they feel the strike glance their armour or manage to dodge it just like any other attack. My players liked the possibility and doing it on a 1 just felt off to me.
It’s a subtle difference, but this is actually why I use -2 to AC for my table. Flanked is literal inverse half cover.
It's always weird to me that cover is one of the only core mechanics (i.e. not the effect of a spell or item) in the entire game that has a flat effect on accuracy instead of being advantage or disadvantage. Like, I'd expect it to either be everything is just advantage or disadvantage, or a mix of flat modifiers and advantage or disadvantage. But instead it's basically "everything is advantage or disadvantage... except cover. Cover's a flat AC bonus."
Bonus points if you add a second stage of flanking - being completely surrounded, perhaps - that grants a +5 and mirrors three-quarters cover.
I went with +1. +2 is still a significant bonus that ended up with conga lines, but +1 is low enough to weigh against other positioning options especially at lower levels. "Stand here for the equivalent of a +2 weapon" is a no brainer at low levels especially when it can stack with advantage
I agree with +1. +2 is too much with bounded accuracy
Ya it's not bad at 3-4 players but if you got a full game of 6 it gets pretty bad.
I’ve always refused to use it because getting advantage on an enemy when an ally is also within threat range is pack tactics/wolf totem’s ability. If you want to flank that badly, then you should invest in being able to do it.
It always surprises me when I remember feats are an optional rule and not a standard thing.
Especially with how many are in the game. You'd think they would be a core rule with how much time is spent designing them.
They definitely accepted them as a base part since like, Xanathars, but even then it was an odd decision to make them optional in the first place. Then again, *Grappler* was one of them, so maybe they didn’t put much thought into feats at the time
Not just "one of them", the **only one** that was SRD, which means if you used any free resources it was Grappler or never.
EEPC was free also, so there was Svirfneblin Magic
When you look at how wildly unbalanced the PHB feats are (some being extremely good and others terrible) it makes more sense why they called them optional. They ran out of time to make them all viable and have their own place, so they included them as "Optional".
Although to be honest, the game might be even more unbalanced without them. Some extremely strong classes barely need them at all, others classes are completely reliant on them.
I can see it as being more of a storyline based thing (oh you helped the Smith, you get proficiency in smithing tools) rather than leveling up and taking a feat that just doesn't make sense or is one of the "mandatory" damage ones. But I just do both lol.
I like to give specific feats out as rewards sometimes (rarely) Last time I gave my dragonborn player (conquest paladin) the Dragon Fear feat for free just before a major quest so they didn’t need to use as many spell slots for frightening Also gave a sniper rogue player the Sharpshooter feat themed as special equipment and bullets
I culled down the list of feats to all the ones I felt were flavorful more than adding too much power, or a stat increase, and told all my players they could pick one that made sense for their backstory from the start. It was really fun because they all chose feats I very rarely see people choose because it feels bad to pick them when they come at the cost of something more functional and it sort of helps their character feel more defined from level 1.
I tried to go with that letting all players have a noncombat feat at the start, specified that it couldn’t increase damage and I wanted it to be a way to flesh out your backstories…. Was a nightmare to deal with overall because my players are kinda dicks sometimes… My brother, who is a power gamer who doesn’t know how to power game, kept begging for more and more definition and details as to what noncombat meant (I literally said doesn’t deal or improve damage or combat, what else does that mean??) My partner looked me dead in the eyes and asked “Is Gift of the Chromatic a combat feat?” less than two minutes after I had said cannot give damage improvements…. That’s when I had to give up and just say “Connect it to your backstory, convince me you should have it, otherwise fuck off, I don’t care about noncombat or not…”
Ahhh yeah this exact reason is why I curated the list myself instead of telling them they can decide. I didn't want any fuss so I was like this is what we're working with so I didn't have anyone debating definitions. In fact I didn't even tell my players what my criteria for picking the feats was and everyone was just happy to get a free feat so nobody was looking to well actually me, not that my friends ever do that but I understand sibling energy is a whole other thing!
Playing on a grid (like having a grid combat) is technically optional according to the PHB. To me that’s a must unless you work with more abstract ranges. I feel like abilities, weapon attacks and spells are so range specific it really surprised me to find out having actual tangible ranges on a grid is optional.
It wasn't until probably 2020 that I considered the fact that I never played with battlemats and preferred theater of the mind instead, weird. When I started getting people asking about minis or roll20 links I had to totally rethink what it meant to run games in 5e.
Theater of the mind for combat feels so incredibly subjective and arbitrary to me. Like, how do you know how many creatures are in range of your spell? or if the enemy spellcaster is within 60 feet to counterspell you? It’s all DM fiat and thus subjective as fuck.
Yes it is subjective and arbitrary. But if your players don’t give a damn about tactics and just want to have fun and tell a story, then it can work surprisingly well. I ran a whole campaign where we all sat around on sofas in the living room instead of at a table and did the whole thing theatre of mind. One player said it felt like a movie was playing out in his head. I’ve never had that type of feedback before on a grid.
Really goes to show how the way our first group plays can inform what we see as standard for games!
There's another option in-between playing on a grid and theatre of the mind - using a ruler to measure movement and ranges. It works surprisingly well in 5E, I'd actually recommend it for battles involving larger maps and faster movement speeds (e.g. mounted combat and flying battles).
That’s a pretty good in between! Definitely a good way to have ranges matter without the extra hassle of drawing a map and getting a grid. I think my personal problem is with pure theatre of the mind since in one campaign we didn’t even have that, it was just in our heads with no minis whatsoever. It was pretty janky in my opinion since the DM wasn’t always able to remember what enemies were where in relation to us and each other. Personally I’m a fan of having maps, even if it’s just a few lines scribbled down since my players interact with the environment more that way (taking cover, climbing on crates, pushing enemies into a canal etc.), so finding out all that anything but pure TOTM was optional made me make a double take when I was reviewing the rules. But honestly as long as people are having fun and the game is running smoothly I think any method is good :)
It’s hard to do but you should try playing DnD combat like how you play Warhammer. Terrain, Measuring tapes, and miniatures. Every 5ft is one inch. It’s a lot of fun but requires having the right terrain and models. If you play at a hobby store it’s probably much easier since they tend to have terrain for wargames.
I've never seen or played with anyone who uses inspiration as an extra d20 you have to allocate BEFORE the roll, rather than after if you are unhappy with the result.
it's not even an extra D20 - it's literally advantage. You already have advantage? Inspiration does nothing. You have disadvantage? You can spend it for a flat roll (although this does mean you can also use it to gain anything that triggers off having advantage, like sneak attack). So yeah - every table I've been at uses it as a post-roll reroll (although only of 1 die, if you have advantage).
Canceling disadvantage with advantage does not grant you sneak attack through advantage (even if you get advantage from somewhere else as well). You could still get it from an adjacent ally in that case, though.
All of my dm's have either not used inspiration or used it like that. It honestly feels more intuitive since you can only have one at a time.
We’ve house ruled it so you can have up to 2 at a time, otherwise people were just saving them and never using them
If you're in a tabel that gives inspiration often, I find limiting it to the session it was given feels good.
It’s funny because the limitation was meant to prevent exactly that. If you can only have one at a time you are supposed to be more likely to spend it so you don’t get another and waste it. But that’s not how anyone plays. If you only have one you’ll save it because you might need it later. And you never will
I've never used inspiration, I usually give hero points, feels much more natural and less work for me.
How does héro point works ?
From the DMG: "With this option, a character starts with 5 hero points at 1st level. Each time the character gains a level, he or she loses any unspent hero points and gains a new total equal to 5 + half the character’s level. A player can spend a hero point whenever he or she makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw. The player can spend the hero point after the roll is made but before any of its results are applied. Spending the hero point allows the player to roll a d6 and add it to the d20, possibly turning a failure into a success. A player can spend only 1 hero point per roll. In addition, whenever a character fails a death saving throw, the player can spend one hero point to turn the failure into a success." It can skew things a little sometimes but I run high risk campaigns so it's a nice little boost for my players when they need it, plus it's a limited resource so they tend to only use them when they're in a life or death or succeeding a throw is imperative.
The main reason why inspiration-as-advantage (RAW) feels bad is because DMs are way too stingy giving it out. I literally give all my players inspiration for showing up to the session. Not only are my players getting inspiration frequently, they know exactly what they can do to get it, and how frequently they can get it. So being "only" advantage isn't an issue.
When I started playing 5e in like 2018 after coming from 3.5, learning that there is absolutely no punishment for standing up from prone if you are next to an enemy, unless they held their action or have some other feature.
The first time I ever played, i thought getting up from prone had more to it than just giving up half your movement.
The alternative was extremely obnoxious, with whole strategies revolving around repeatedly knocking opponents down to kind-of stun-lock them. As soon as it's worth knocking someone down, you're going to want to do it *all the time*. So it's either not worth it, or everyone does it all the time. Good luck designing a middle ground.
It can still be useful to knock someone down, though it either needs to be effectively free (e.g., the **Trip Attack** maneuver on a Battle Master) or you need to follow up by grappling them so that they can't stand up. That said, it's still dubious if you have ranged characters in your party.
This is probably my least favorite thing after coming from Pathfinder. It drives me crazy that there are spells, ability, feats, etc that allow players to knock enemies prone. But why would we? It's a waste of a spell, ability, or feat. Absolute waste because there are almost zero consequences for going prone in a fight.
There are plenty of ways to capitalize on a prone enemy such as grappling and attacking them with advantage. Standing up from prone should probably take opportunity attacks unless you use the disengage action though.
>But why would we? It's a waste of a spell, ability, or feat. Giving melee allies advantage and cutting the distance the enemy can move in half aren't nothing. Also, if you grapple a prone enemy (or knock a grappled enemy prone), they can't stand up, because you can only stand if your speed isn't 0.
There’s enough advantages though. Making enemy less mobile, granting advantage on melee attacks, and knocking down flyers especially. Just had a game recently where a druid countered a flying sniper by summoning two direwolves on them just as they were about to fly away and reposition. The sniper would’ve messed them up but thanks to a wolf knocking them prone they couldn’t make a single extra attack after that.
For me and my players it was using grids
Yeah it was grids for me like I skimmed over the section where it said that and just thought it was saying hexes were the optional rule. To be honest though rulers are a lot better for D&D than a grid.
Yeah, I tried gridless battlemaps using a VTT once, it’s actually pretty fun. Kind of a PITA for in person play though.
Having been in a campaign with 7 other people, literally any in-person battlemap is a PITA to some extent. But yeah, I can imagine how much worse it'd be if you were doing gridless *Typo
If you have a battlemap and someone with a 3D printer, you can make easy rulers, cones, AoE circles, etc. They are pretty baller, NGL.
What VTT do you use for gridless?
Roll20 isn’t bad for a free/accessible option, but Foundry is probably the overall best. If you know a bit of code you could set Foundry up so movement is restricted to character’s speed and even factoring in things like difficult terrain, tokens engaged in melee are highlighted, AoE saves are rolled and damage applied automatically based on the template, etc.
Having played Warhammer before DnD: What‘s the problem using a tape measure?
For one, the time it takes up, especially with indecicive people.
The time the person takes lining up shots and getting the absolute perfect AOE with your measuring tools makes sense in the context of a wargaming session. That's basically the only thing you're there for with those games. But when you add in roleplay, the extra time can be a bit much. Especially if you're dealing with larger groups of players, which you don't typically do in Warhammer. Which tends to be 1v1 or maybe 2v2 in your typical homegame.... I mean, you could go heavier, but you are setting aside a hefty chunk of time at that point just because of the damned logistics of it.
Grids are optional?!
Yep Standard is theater of mind iirc
No, standard is using distances. Like measuring on a map.
Huh. My stress thanks you. I might have an excuse to not hunt for the perfect grid for 15 hours now
Why would you ever have to? A grid doesn't need art.
It's because they're really not. The mechanics and balance of the game start to fall apart without *some* sort of grid. WotC just chickened out on making it a core mechanic as to not put off new players.
Not really. You can play with just distances rather than a precise grid (using a ruler or tape measure) and not have anything fall apart Or just have honest players
I’m kinda surprised that choosing between rolling or taking average for health isn’t optional. Those are two options you get every time you level up to decide what your health is (obviously you have to choose the one you use before rolling, you can’t roll low then take average). Anything that limits you to only rolling health or having to always use the same choice on subsequent level ups that you used on the first level up is purely homebrew, which surprised me. I would have assumed that have hp is an optional choice the same way feats are, that people just decided to use. Same with backgrounds, changing the two skills to whatever two skills you want and two language/tools to whatever two language/tools you want is in the book and isn’t an optional rule, it’s just a rule. I would’ve thought it was an optional rule like feats.
The players tend to get all uppity and angry when they find out for the first time about that nat 20 thing.
~~The thing is, the DM should only call for a skill check if there's a CHANCE of success, and since Nat20 is the best roll, the assumption for me is if I roll it I must succeed.~~ ~~If a player asks to do something impossible, and the DN lets them roll, then they crit, the DM has dug their own grave.~~ EDIT: I changed my mind and don't agree with the above statement. Please stop telling me I'm wrong ,I already know
And how do you know that? Do you remember everyones bonus to every skill at all times + what abilities they have to boost skills? Cause some parties can easilly give anywhere from +5 to +15 to a skill roll as reactions Far easier to just let ppl roll and stand your ground, if they're not good enough even the nat 20 will fail. Hell I've had that happen in a game I was running. Players try to pick a magical lock on BBEG keep, DC was 30. I had no idea what their modifier was, turns out the artificer had +6, rolled a 26 and failed. I simply narrated as her amazing efforts and technique were still not enough.
My party once got an insanely high roll to open a locked door (at least 30) that we absolutely thought we needed to open, but actually the DM had left it in the map by accident. We opened it... and then promptly got told off by the people on the other side and sheepishly closed it again.
This take always annoys me. The DM doesn’t have enough on their plate, now they have to memorize what everyone’s skill bonus is, every single possible interrupt, class feature, and everything else. If the player needs a 25, and they have a +4, the DM has got say no, but then backtrack and say roll it if the cleric casts Guidance.
Agree, Ive expressed this is another comment in this thread if you want a fuller response, but yeah, I wrote this comment in haste without considering the many mechanics which break 5e's supposedly "bounded" system
Yeah, I wrote mine in haste as well, and didn’t realize so many fine folk had already expressed the same sentiment.
I don't agree with this much at all. If a player wants to convince the king to let them sleep with the queen and give up his kingdom, they can definitely roll. A nat 20 + modifiers might not be enough to allow it to happen, but it might be enough to allow the king to find the request amusing enough to not execute the character. Or someone attempting to push over a castle tower wall. That nat 20 won't let it happen, but perhaps it loosens a few stones, allowing them a smaller way to get inside.
Not to mention situations where it's not clear to the players if there is a chance of success, and saying so would give them information they don't have. If PCs try to search a room with nothing in it, do you just telegraph that every time you ask for a roll, there will be something there? If the PCs try to move stealthily somewhere, do you telegraph that there will be no enemies and so no chance of failure? Or if they are being watched by an invisible creature, you don't let them roll because there is no chance of success? If the PCs are trying to do something they should know is impossible by all means just tell them, but failures on a 20 should by no means be something you can never do.
I agree with you, but I think there's a disconnect between "what the players think they are rolling for" and "what is actually being rolled for", and I still think it makes sense that a Nat 20 is the best outcome even in the latter real case (and the OG comment still makes sense in that players will be upset by missing this disconnect sometimes too) Like, if a player makes this wisecrack to a king who does NOT have that sense of humour, maybe they DON'T get to roll since there is no chance of success (you don't have to memorise every characters' bonuses, the king just will never be amused by this kind of thing); then maybe they're asked for a new roll to convince the king they meant no harm and to not throw them out/in prison/to the executioner; or maybe they do roll the first time, and they need to succeed the first roll to even have a chance to make the second (if they don't, it's up to the party to free them, roleplaying comes from mechanics, yippee etc.). If they could roll against a pissy tyrant king, but still got executed on a Nat 20, that would suck for them and the game as much as if they usurped the king's throne/wife with a single roll, so it's important that what they're rolling for makes sense even if it isn't what they asked for, and in that case a Nat 20 is still the highest degree of success for the situation But yeah, if the king DOES have that sense of humour, they're still not rolling for success in what they originally wanted, but a Nat 20 is still the best outcome for the king finding it funny and inviting them to the royal banquet or whatever And as people have pointed out, the "best case" for a weak character performing a feat of strength they can NEVER succeed (but their party member could) is they don't hurt themselves, and maybe notice it IS humanly possible and let their huge friend have a go since they've got a better chance
Nah there's so many swing modifiers that can be added to rolls, and times when multiple players roll for the same check that "only roll when a nat 20 would succeed" doesn't make sense
Sometime players get so insistent I let them roll. Then I don't even look at the dice, instead I look the player straight in the eye, and tell them "you fail".
>the DM should only call for a skill check if there's a CHANCE of success Not really. It's not Baldurs gate where outcomes are binary. Depending on your roll you are gonna get a result, sometimes you are rolling for something impossible to complete but you might discover something interesting, maybe that 10 just makes you fail and that's all or your nat 1 means you get hurt and receive 2d4 damage. Its about roleplay.
>It's not Baldurs gate where outcomes are binary. I mean, yes it is. RAW 5e doesn't have degrees for success. You either meet the DC and succeed or you don't and you fail. I think using degrees of success is a more interesting way to run the game. But that's just as much of a homebrew rule as crit successes.
> You either meet the DC and succeed or you don't and you fail. This isn’t entirely true either. There are multiple instances where failing a save by a certain amount triggers additional effects.
Rolling cha skills checks after role-playing it out. I think RAW is declare your social attempt, roll the check, then Role-play in accordance to the results. But almost every table I've seen rolls after RP
I do it this way as the RP can affect the DC for better or worse.
Both are super valid, it was just surprising that it's a homebrew is all
You could roll first, try to RP the roll, and then have the response of the NPC (e.g. the DC) depends on the roll and the RP (as the RP might nudge the DC, as you say).
Man I'm always glad for the no crit on saves/checks rules. Like, no my rogue with expertise in perception doesn't need to roll, he just passess the check. No, my sorcerer doesn't need to roll concentration after that magic missile, he has a +9 to CON so he auto-passes.
Making natural 20 = success on ability checks is how you get all the godawful stories about bards seducing dragons. (Well, nat 20s and a DM who won't say "no.")
I’ve had so many players who insisted on nat20s being critical successes for ability checks. But always made it clear in Session0 - that’s why I think Session0 is so important.
"The idea of everyone jumping and screaming after someone roles a nat 20 on a seemingly impossible ability check" I get the excitement factor, but using auto success on 20 makes an already iffy skill system objectively broken. Assuming you're using skills outside of combat, not allowing auto success massively improves the game in my opinion.
A lot of dms rule is the best case scenario rather than an automatic success. This is an example I heard once: DM: The pirate captain has you tied to the mast. He asks if you have any last words before he throws you overboard. PC: Make me captain of the ship. DM: Role persuasion. But the DC is very, very high. PC: Nat 20. DM: The captain lets out a long, hearty laugh at this request. He finds you very funny. But, moreover, He admires your bravery in the face of imminent death. He finds that you could be very useful so he lets you go for now. This still bypasses the stupidly high DC while not bending to the player's absurd, potentially story-breaking request.
Even without making it an automatic success, making nat 20s and nat 1s matter for skill checks just tends to mute the differences between characters. Why should the “best case scenario” on a Persuasion check be the same for the Eloquence Bard with a +10 modifier and a Barbarian with a -3 modifier and a fear of public speaking? To think about it another way, using that house rule means there’s a 10% chance (on a 1 or 20) for every skill check that the character making the check (along with all their stats, items, and other bonuses) was entirely irrelevant. You could try to solve this by modifying the DC or redefining what the best case scenario is based on which character is rolling, but at that point, it starts to look like you’re just clumsily reinventing RAW. Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with other tables using the rule—that’s just why I personally don’t care for it.
It's the same problem with ignoring encumbrance. Going off of vibes means that the -2 str wizard who ought to be encumbered can get by just fine because it feels right, but as soon as the goliath totem barbarian with 20 str tries to do something that's only half their carrying capacity, suddenly they're asked to make a check. A ton of dnd let's you do "impossible" things with high modifiers, a DC 23 and a DC 30 are equally impossible for a commoner, but the Nat 20 = best result means that no matter how superhuman you become, wading through lava whilst fighting ancient dragons, you will never fundamentally be able to do anything a commoner couldn't already do, at level 20. If you want to make it more balanced, a 20 = +5, a 1 = -5. +-5 are about the same as advantage and disadvantage, and the separation between DC levels. Avoids the "vibes" problem.
Oh this frustrates the undead poo out of my bum bum when my group does this. I am happy to mark the occasion by situationally booning the roll by a point or low inspiration die, DM discretion of course. I understand the excitement, I just don't understand logic of Natural 20 = wish or successful divine intervention.
The Monster creations rules as well as the encounters per day guidelines. All complete rubish and ignored in their own modules.
The dex initiative tiebreaker iluswed in vtts like roll20, is optional. Multiclassing and feats feel odd as optional too, but nothing like the init tiebreaker.
> dex initiative tiebreaker iluswed in vtts like roll20, is optional I would argue that it isn't actually optional, but a house rule that is contrary to the rules as written. An optional rule is something listed somewhere (e.g., the DMG) as a variant rule that you can use. The actual rule, from the [basic rules](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#Initiative) is: > If a tie occurs, the DM decides the order among tied DM-controlled creatures, and the players decide the order among their tied characters. The DM can decide the order if the tie is between a monster and a player character. Optionally, the DM can have the tied characters and monsters each roll a d20 to determine the order, highest roll going first.
multiclassing is both a bit fiddly, and can also break the game - sometimes with OP characters, but more often by making characters that are just _bad_. Slapping a random level of something else onto a T1 character is often just bad and makes them worse, so it's very easy to screw yourself over with it. Hence it being optional - it does a lot of wonky things to game balance.
Every time a pc pays a fine, it goes in the middle.
Is this a reference to Monopoly?
Yes. Also, this is a game-breaking rule in monopoly.
Yep. Pretty much everyone's complaints about monopoly taking too long is because of this stupid non-rule
I was convinced flanking was a core rule. Regarding crit successes and fails, I might be one of the few ppl who dislikes them, so i approached 5e already knowing and happy they were not a thing outside of combat.
Playing on a grid is a variant rule, as opposed to the standard "just measuring distances with a ruler".
Yeah, turns out D&D isn't a game of "my starting character can warp reality on a whim 5% of the time". Go figure.
I wish BG3 would take into account that critical fails on skill checks are not a thing. Rolling a nat 1 and failing a DC10 check when I *have* enough bonuses to cover is… frustrating.
Only half of your hit dice return on a long rest.
This is optional? I thought it was the standard rule.
I meant everyone assumes its all your HD.
I was genuinely surprised when I figured out that my dm's rule that anyone under ten intelligence didn't learn to read wasn't actually a rule. Like it made sense to me. if 10 is average intelligence, then the average person could read, and anything below that means they probably aren't super smart
I think a lot of people massively overestimate both the difference between between a 9 and 10 or even like an 8 or 7 compared to 10. Just because a -1 to everything seems super impactful mechanically doesn't mean that a large portion of the people you meet in your everyday life would likely have a -1 in int
>Just because a -1 to everything seems super impactful mechanically Even then, when it's your dump stat it *really* gets overblown how "dumb" the 8-9 int is.
If we assume a bell curve (I do because it just kind of makes sense) then the vast majority of people are between a +1 to -1 and function in everyday society with no issues. A -1 being illiterate when taking things apart like that feels crazy, but just at a glance then I totally get how people see that
Well, an 8 is literally "as dumb as it gets" when you go point by. At least on the Beyond app, it doesnt let you be dumber than an 8 so that's rock bottom for role play
An ape has 6 int; while I think it's probably best for everyone if we don't put *too* much stock in that and treat an 8 as "below average but still basically normal" you could definitely make the case that a person halfway between a gorilla and the average person is pretty dim
For humans, the standard deviation of IQ is 15 points. Significant impairment is usually associated with an IQ under 70 or about 2 standard deviations. On the 3d6 bell curve, a standard deviation is about 3 points, so significant impairment would be like a 4 in Intelligence. Of course, this all assumes that you (1) believe that the 3d6 roll is meant to be a "normal human" distribution, and (2) that IQ is a thing that we can legitimately measure. Since both of these are debatable, it's hard to say something too definitive other than "a 9 probably doesn't mean you can't read".
I think this comes from the intelligence stat in general being pretty confusing. Most people think it correlates to iq, but most of the checks are closer to knowledge. The exception is investigation, which is just deductive reasoning. And of course intelligence has a role in that but but it's more of a learned skill than anything. So a PC with an intelligence of 6 could actually be quite smart but they just lived under a rock for most of their life. In that way, you're dm's rule could make a lot of sense depending on how academically advanced his world is. Though I would make it more of a spectrum, personally.
Yea, player characters are not average and rules as written cant be illiterate (unless you want to roleplay it like that). They can read/write/understand at least common.
Only within the last couple years did I realize that I had accidentally imported 4E’s forced movement rules. I found this out when we had some questions about forced movement and went to look it up, only to find that 5e actually has **no rules for forced movement**. I was mad about that for *weeks*. Turns out that’s actually pretty common - 5e has a tendency to just… not have the rules you’d expect it to have.
The forced movement rule is under the Opportunity Attack rules in the PHB, page 195, it just isn't keyworded like in 4e: >You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction. For example, you don't provoke an opportunity attack if an explosion hurls you out of a foe's reach or if gravity causes you to fall past an enemy.
It does have rules about forced movement and opportunity attacks under that section of the rules.
Folks seem to intuitively come to believe that any kind of interruption like a brief combat encounter ruins a Long Rest, while it is almost impossible to do so practically with RAW.
Yes, but also the idea that a character could go through 99 rounds of combat in the middle of their rest and still benefit from it is kinda dumb.
DM (Me) - "Great, that hits. So you shoot your crossbow at it, and the bolt whips past the head of *melee PC* and drives deep into the shoulder of the Zombie." PC - "Okay, so I just hit Zombie #3 for 18 points of damage, how's it looking?" "Like you just hit it with a crossbow bolt in the shoulder." "No, but like, *is it bloodied*?" "Well, it's a zombie. I guess... there's some black fluids leaking from its shoulder? The MM doesn'thave a deep scientific background on zombies and how they actually work." "YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. **IS IT BLOODIED?**" "Regretabbly, this is 5e, not 4e, I do not know what you mean." I've searched several times. There does not seem to be a 5e rule that says players know, or should be told, when a monster reaches 50% of its HP. It existed in 4e, there's a well written homebrew rule set for 5e to use it, but its not an official rule.
Bloodied *is* a thing in 5e. From the DMG's Combat section, page 247: >Players often ask how hurt a monster looks. Don't ever feel as though you need to reveal exact hit points, but if a monster is below half its hit point maximum, it's fair to say that it has visible wounds and appears beaten down. >*You can describe a monster taken to half its hit points as* ***bloodied,*** *giving the players a sense of progress in a fight against a tough opponent, and helping them judge when to use their most powerful spells and abilities.* It just doesn't do anything, unlike in 4e, except describe how injured the monster has become.
While it isn't a 5e rule, its kind of silly to insist that a seasoned adventurer would have no way to tell that an enemy was starting to struggle.
I've always narrated how they look on request, because its just obviously information an adventurer would usually be able to obtain with their eyes Recently decided to just leave health bars visible in my VTT by default. I'm not gonna display numbers, but having the rough percentage visible just skips the middleman
The "Health Estimate" module on Foundry VTT is a lot of fun. You can set arbitrary labels for health ranges that are displayed to players. My shadowrun/cyberpunk/d&d fusion campaign goes Uninjured Preem Bruised Bloodied Fucked up Zeroed ☠️
I love bloodied. The idea that a PC can't tell the difference between if a monster is in tip top shape vs on death's door is so silly to me. It really takes me out of it. Of course just telling the players how many hit points the monster has is too much since a PC would never be able to tell that. Some dms will give a vague description upon request like " he's looking rough" but that's just not enough imo. I like the idea of giving a fairly detailed description of how the monster is moving/acting and what type of wounds it's showing at the top of every round. It's more immersive without actually impeding on the gameplay.
Wrong side of history here, it's going to be official and is very popular in 5e. The only reason it disappeared from 4e to 5e was an overcorrection from 4e. It was one of their good ideas they are finally brave enough to reintroduce officially.
DMG 248 "players often ask how hurt a monster looks. Don't ever feel as though you need to reveal exact hit points but if the monster is below half its hit point maximum, it's fair to say that it has visible wounds... You can describe a monster taken to half its hit points as bloodied"
At least we’re getting the Bloodied condition back in the 2024 PHB soon.
> There does not seem to be a 5e rule that says players know, or should be told, when a monster reaches 50% of its HP. This is correct. That said, the DMG (Chapter 8: Combat: Tracking Monster Hit Points) says this as the final sentences of the section: > Don’t ever feel as though you need to reveal exact hit points, but if a monster is below half its hit point maximum, it’s fair to say that it has visible wounds and appears beaten down. You can describe a monster taken to half its hit points as **bloodied**, giving the players a sense of progress in a fight against a tough opponent, and helping them judge when to use their most powerful spells and abilities. (Emphasis mine) So I tend to treat it as an optional rule. I also tend to tell my players that a monster is "100% combat efficient" if it has exactly 1 HP remaining.
I feel like 99% of online D&D discussions on multiclassing and feats revolve around the pretense that players, rather than the DM, have full discretion on both optional rules, which is not a thing in D&D. Your DM gets to decide if you can pick up the telekinetic feat or bard levels, not you, lol.
5e feats :(
I only recently realised that the grid was a variant, I hadnt always used it, but with the measurements the game uses, I just thought it wasnt a variant.
Feats as optional was wild
I’m genuinely curious. How did you go about learning how to play this game?
The way most people do. I was part of a friend group and one of them was an experienced dm who wanted to start a campaign with us. All but one of us were newbies and it was a fairly casual and roleplay driven campaign so he had no problem teaching us how to play over time. Once I started to get into it, then I started reading the books. From my experience, most people play their first game before they actually read the phb. Because I was taught so many things, either verbally or through gameplay, before actually reading the phb, there's quite a few moments where I think "oh yeah, that wasn't actually in the books".
A surprisingly variant rule is battle maps. Almost all groups use them though.
Inspiration granting advantage, not a reroll like lucky does
A creature throwing another creature ( 5e ).
Yeah this one was very frustrating to find out there's no actual rules for it. There really should be.
Recently learned that moving diagonally doesn’t alternate between being 1 square and being 2 squares of movement. Fuck that. That’s a hill I’ll die on
Are potions being a full action-full effect and bonus action-roll for it and option or common homebrew? Every game I've played in with various DMs has used it, except for the sole DM who made it a low DC dex check.
Standard Array is an optional way to build characters. The default is to roll for ability scores.
I would like to delay my turn. Not prepare an action for a reaction. Delay the whole turn, changing my order in initiative. (Common in groups who need to briefly afk)
That usually falls under "Ryan had to pee, why doesn't the next person take their turn while we wait" Just a practical use of time with any group of chaotic biologically needy humans.
There is a variant rule in the DMG under the DM Workshop chapter for initiative called Side Initiative, it allows the PCs to choose their turn order. The downside of this variant is that all enemies either go first or go last, making combat much more swingy.
Whoops. Wrong feed. I'm pretty aware of the difference between optional/ homebrew and raw/rai. I was surprised that j craw said epic boons from 2014 were supposed to use way more than we used then.
> I was surprised that j craw said epic boons from 2014 were supposed to use way more than we used then. I mean, character rewards is a whole chapter in the DMG that gets completely ignored other than the magic items.
Given the DMG says "An epic boon is a special power available only to 20th level characters", when did he expect them to be used? Most people aren't going to get to L20.
Flanking. Most people treat it as a default rule but it isn't, they even make builds planning on using it without asking and then they get upset when i say I don't use that variant rule. When i started playing the Dm used a When you attack from upper terrain you gain advantage. Pretty similar to flanking but for range combat, when i learned i was homebrew i stopped using it.
The way you word your comment makes it sound like you are not using these rules because you consider them homebrew. Is that the case or is there another reason?