The Gaming Den

Now a caveat to all this is of course that you're going to want to have some sort of secondary shtick support that is more open ended than what AD&D offered. Because you want to be able to play things like Frost Giant Shamans without requiring that Dwarven Shamans get 9th level Dwarf powers. So...

Does Weapon Immunity need to be a thing at all? You want something to avoid the 5e 'all problems solvable by peasant militia' problem. D&D has classically handled this with weapon immunity or damage reduction, and if an ability is available to team monster, it's available in some form to team p...

Does Weapon Immunity need to be a thing at all? I've never actually seen any scenario where wizards having weapon immunity is anything more interesting than compensating for the mage's low HP and AC in an incredibly stupid way. I am personally fine with force walls and defensive spells lessening the...

Bonus drow fluff to make you feel the 5e team is out of touch: drow males turn to magic as a last resort for survival, if they aren't skilled and strong enough to be warriors. Literally 'no recourse but to study magic' That's...incredibly stupid. In pretty much every edition up to 4th drow men have...

I literally asked Gygax's son (at a con) what high level fighters were supposed to do and his answer was that they didn't play at high level.

I don't think we need to be bound by tradition here.

Cargo Cult D&D This is probably the most apt description of this edition I've read. I'm picturing Merals wearing coconuts on his head, waving a pair of sticks around, and it all makes sense, now. It is. Say what you want about 4E, but it's an indisputable fact that they were bold . WotC ate Mea...

Something Awful tg is still sworn to 4e, yes. Usually the 5e thread collapses into whining about how much better 4e than is 5e, but how the blind grognards couldn't see it. Amusingly they haven't figured out every single thing in 5e was built in opposition to 4e.

I haven't seen it anywhere else.

The entire point is to be loud and unsubtle so people don't expect it when you're actually subtle.

If you establish a reputation for bluntness you provide a damn good distraction for others, much like honesty can just be a plan to build up to the biggest lie of them all.

Pretty self explanatory. I can't see Mearls and the interns (who all is even left?) producing anything remotely interesting or competent. The fanbase is still splintered with the 4e diehards on Something Awful, the Pathfinder crew, and whoever the hell migrated over to 5e. I'm not sure anything less...

Wasn't that Mordenkainen's actual stupid philosophy, where he had a whole ethical calculus of neutrality?

Really 5e is the desperate nostalgia edition, of course they will cram as many references in as possible.

About the marching troops into the city - that's the endgame, where you scheme to assemble overwhelming force to accomplish goal X. If you want to do this I can lay out some ideas for plans, but you pretty much said that this endgame would piss everyone off so I'll let it slide. What you could ALSO ...

I feel the 4e "redeemed drow" class deserves a mention on the racism front, as its epic feature is literally that you get reborn as a regular elf. As presented in the sourcebooks and some of the novels I'm kinda ashamed to have read, there's no actual reason (as you guys point out) for thi...

There is part of me that's wondering whether having the power to smash face when everyone else is expecting subtlety isn't a bad talent. Sure, you can plot all you want in the shadows, but you can also put all the scheming nobles to the sword and nail proscriptions to the forum when your private arm...

I'm guessing referencing both Climb and Perception is part of the joke.

Weirdly 5e drow are the only race in the PHB the DM is explicitly called out as encouraged to ban, so the drow PC = bad stigma is still there.

So I'm probably gonna get shit on for this, but the last time I can remember innovation being attempted was 4e D&D. I don't think much of it was particularly good innovation, and a lot of it was known to be bad before 4e came out, but that is the last time I remember people actually going "...

It's less like Polymorph any Object and more like an FR book where you have a collection of marginal damage spells and mostly spells you're not going to use. There's some batshit crazy stuff like the spell that makes you immune to damage (9th level), Tenser's Transformation makes a return, but it's ...

Chapter 3: Spells The last chapter of this god damn book. Now I will admit this chapter is not one I'm doing blind, I'm using one of the cantrips in AL and it's fine. There's a lot to sort through here. There's the usual pile of damage spells you don't care about because they're bad. There's a weir...

OK, the holidays took longer than I expected, but the hate-filled review is still here after I foolishly went back to Adventurer's League*. As pointed out earlier I ignored the scout subclass for the rogue, let me do a quick review here. Like half the shit in this book it's a reprint of a 3.X class ...

Honestly power creeping player damage would be amazing for 5e because 5e combat comes down to being a boring, tacticsless slog where you slam bags of HP into each other.

It's not great no, but as far as offensive level 1 spells go it's the best I can find.

I just want my 1/day spike abilities to kill fools. Why is this so hard?

Someone else needs to buy the IP for 6e.

So from what I'm hearing the best first level spell is actually magic missile, because everything else gives a save every round (tasha's), won't work on anything you'll fight in AL (sleep vs The Great HP Bloat), or offers a save for similar damage. Thank god you can auto-level to 5 from 4, just got ...

Is there an actual list of spells that fucking kill people?

Asking because I'm getting real sick of "save every round" spells in the land of no tactics.

In addition to this, it's not a big enough industry to attract quality people and there are enough members of the fanbase who are more interested as identifying as D&D players rather than using critical thinking skills.