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AlphaDog posted:"Skills with Different Abilities" even appears in the index and points there! If people did even the most cursory check, they'd find this. To be fair, nobody in my playgroup checks the PHB index any more because it's frequently frustrating to try to deal with.
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Dec 22, 2018 16:28
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Toshimo posted:Am I missing something about Summon Lesser Demons or did they just forget to put demons in the sourcebooks? MM has Quasit (CR1), Dretch(CR1/4), and Mane(CR1/8), MToF has Abyssal Wretch(CR1/4) and Volo has Maw Demon (CR1), but there are no CR 1/2 which means a roll on that table is just straight worse than the others? Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica has Cackler at CR 1/2, finally. They probably didn't care, because most people see "the demons are hostile to all creatures, including you" and go "nah, gently caress it, I'll pick a spell with less chance of backfiring on me."
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Jan 22, 2019 16:34
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My party is hitting level 10 next session and wrapping up a long-running arc as part of that. I want to give them each a cool magic item that they'll want to use for the rest of the campaign, so I'd appreciate help giving them cool effects. My ideas so far, based on what they're looking for from magic items: Ranger: weapon: sentient +2 longbow, deals extra 1d8 thunder damage if the wielder is below 50% HP (maybe add a 1/day spell or charges for various spells?) Moon druid: beneficial in both forms: headband that gives resistance to psychic damage and advantage on charm saves in and out of Wild Shape, 1/rest cast Wrathful Smite? Warlock: shield: nerfed Shield of the Uven Rune: 1/day cast Bane, react to melee hits with 2d8 necrotic damage Paladin: plot tool: necklace that can, once, replace a third failed death save with a 1d8 heal and reducing another target to 0 HP on failed save, half remaining HP on success. It should probably have charges for other spells otherwise, but I don't have great ideas yet. Light cleric: weapon: Mace of Disruption plus a 1/day effect? Divine sorcerer: ?: I'm really stuck on this one. Maybe Cape of the Mountebank plus a minor effect? These are all up for changing and tweaking.
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Feb 12, 2019 17:29
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Natural 20 posted:I have and unfortunately the party and him agree that it discourages dumping con. Who the gently caress dumps Con? Who the gently caress cares if somebody else dumps Con? They get hit, it's their problem, and at least the problem's based on a choice they made instead of on someone getting unlucky with rolls. 
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Feb 13, 2019 01:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:Tooting my own horn here, but my Improved Monster Stats table is intended to make encounter creation piss-easy, and is further validated by how closely the stats on it matches that thing that koreban posted. The PDF for giffyglyph actually explicitly credits your site for the stats it's using.
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Feb 21, 2019 16:08
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Any unofficial (or even official) adventures with a more heavy RP aspect, besides Curse of Strahd? My players want to do more out-of-combat stuff, and I don't mind because now that they're level 11 it's increasingly hard to come up with interesting combat that isn't a pain to run, but I know that non-combat RP and encounters are my weak point as a DM, and 5e is... not really helpful, either. I'd definitely look at adventures for other systems if people have some in mind, too.
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Mar 18, 2019 16:28
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Kaysette posted:You can talk your way through most of Dragon Heist and I enjoyed sinking into the different gangs and factions in Waterdeep. I was a Bregan D'aerthe lackey, another player worked for Xanathar, and another was a member of the city guard! We had fun figuring out how we all got involved in the plot, balancing our different motivations, and deciding what to do with the score at the end. The combat side was a bit lacking and you'd obviously need to scale up encounters when they happened but the city setting made for some fun non-combat hours. It's not a perfect adventure as many will attest but it's a good tableau for what you're interested in. Thanks! I'll take a look through and see how it feels to me before I buy it. After working on some plotting yesterday, I think I'm generally bad at improvising social encounters (I'm fine improvising inside the encounter but slow to come up with one) so I feel like I should be spending more time just preparing plot-point NPCs I can throw at the party depending on how they're progressing.
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Mar 19, 2019 14:35
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Sticking my party in a town they're basically going to be Red Harvest-ing their way through unless they get bored of it. Gimme some of your favorite one-off or minor townspeople NPCs to throw at them!
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Mar 24, 2019 21:36
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Honest John bSC sSC! Proprietor, chief trainer, founder, and still sole owner of Honest John's School Of Valiant Heroes And Friday to Sunday Discount Rug Market! You remind him of him of his favorite cousin! For you only, today only, everything is half price! yesssssssssssss
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Mar 25, 2019 02:58
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Infinite Karma posted:Maybe go for "loudly complains and tries to talk his way out of work, but his actions don't match his words and he's a solid dude who doesn't hesitate to do his part." Even more fun: make him loudly complain and try to talk his way out of things because he knows he can't help himself, and he knows everyone knows he can't help himself, and when those things happen, he's going to be in the thick of things no matter how much he disagreed with them happening, and gently caress, guys, Mage Armor only goes so far, do you see what I'm wearing?
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May 8, 2019 15:47
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Need help not disappointing my players. Backstory: a while ago, they learned there was aberrant magic called scouring in the world that, when it kills somebody, also makes everybody else permanently forget about them. They learned this when they killed a scouring priest and returned to the inn to find that there was more equipment there than they expected, including a journal none of them had written. (I'd laid the groundwork before that by, once or twice a session, telling them that something happened and their characters knew why and didn't find it suspicious; this won't work for every group, but thankfully, they trusted me.) It was even more affecting than I'd hoped, and they continue to be emotionally invested in their dead companion. But the campaign can only go so long, and True Resurrection will be available before it ends, and I don't want it to be that simple but I also don't want to be like "sorry, guys, this spell that I definitely mentioned could work actually doesn't." I'm torn between explicitly putting them on a path to bringing her back or putting things in front of them that are building to something but not making it obvious what that is and thus making her return just as surprising to them as her existence at all had been. Anyone have any suggestions, both for which way to do it and what to do?
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May 8, 2019 17:58
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Josef bugman posted:I do not understand the whole "there needs to be a balance" thing that exists in some parts of the lore. I kinda feel like the one good thing Dragonlance did as a setting was have its take on the "need for balance" be "when good gets too strong it attracts zealots and they do evil in the name of being extra-good, so, no, it isn't for the best if the priests of the good gods just get to run everything." Not that their execution was always ideal, but it at least stayed away from the "MORE PUPPIES TO THE FIRE" aspect.
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May 13, 2019 15:02
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Taciturn Tactician posted:Does anyone have any good homebrew for fighting with one weapon and no shield? Flavourwise, using a rapier one handed with an empty hand makes sense, but mechanically not using a shield is just pointlessly shooting yourself in the foot. I would just mechanically hold a shield, and say flavor-wise that my character isn't using a shield but is actually phenomenal at dodging.
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Aug 15, 2019 01:40
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A Bad King posted:For example, we're in this attic, facing down 4 CR5 baddies (plus an additional 2 later on A Bad King posted:It was a lvl 5 human Fighter, two lvl 1 Celestial Warlock, L2 Half-Elf Barbarian ("dandy muscles"), and me, a L5 Lore Bard with no blasters. 
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Sep 5, 2019 19:38
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Sometime soonish we'll be running Death House and Curse of Strahd. Someone remind me how many levels of Warlock is the most useful before running full tilt into Sorcerer. Most people do two Warlock levels just to get Agonizing Blast. Three is fine if you want a pact boon and second-level spell slots.
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Sep 13, 2019 14:30
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Kaysette posted:Balance your wizard by constantly loving up their spellbook, it’s INSANE that DMs are too scared to do this. "Great, you saved against Burning Hands! *rolls* And so did your spellbook! Half damage means only erasing your level three spells!"
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Oct 3, 2019 14:28
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Here's one it's possible nobody can help me on, but I'm asking just in case. My over-two-years campaign is in the home stretch, and my players have responded well to the Eyes of the Stone Thief plotline (despite the awkwardness of adjusting it to 5e), so I'm going to use it as the final arc. The last fight involves the living dungeon pulling itself back together into a dragon shape; I really want a mini to represent this somehow, but I can't find anything. It doesn't have to be specifically "dungeon pieces in dragon form;" it could be anything massive and disjointed. I looked at some Warhammer pieces but didn't see anything exciting. Browsing Thingiverse was more productive, but I still didn't find a usable model. If I had any knowledge of how to design models for 3d printing, I could maybe edit one, but I don't; ditto for kitbashing. Any thoughts? Anyone done anything like this and have an idea or something that worked for them?
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Jan 25, 2020 05:15
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Vahtooch posted:Longer short rests aren't terrible if it's planned from the start They are if the other, less experienced players don't understand what it means to have less access to short rests, and find themselves playing way less fun characters.
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Mar 2, 2020 23:57
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Remora posted:Can I ask where "from attacks" is specifically called out? "bludgeoning, piercing, slashing from nonmagical attacks"
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Apr 23, 2020 15:24
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tgacon posted:(optional) Dilemma 7: If no wounded/ill are left by the time they are 1 day from BG, someone is bit by a snake or grievously injured (having someone in the refugee train who critically needs medical attention will be Captain Zodge's leverage to coerce PCs to work for him). How to proof this against a PC Paladin Laying Hands to get rid of poison/disease? Don't say "they were bit by a snake" or "they've been grievously injured." Say "they're ill and we don't know why." If a paladin lays on hands, they're stabilized but still unconscious, and the players can tell they're healthier but not cured. Zodge can tell them "we've seen X people come in with this, I can tell you where they're being treated if you do this for me." If it doesn't go anywhere, great, they're cured. If you need them to be a plot hook later, then you haven't explained anything yet so you can make the cause whatever you need to be then.
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May 15, 2020 18:27
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Nephthys posted:Is becoming a dragon really a curse? Seems like an upside to me. The dragon is also cursed.
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Jun 3, 2020 03:36
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nelson posted:Of course I’m serious. As a player, Dragon Heist is pretty awesome. Perhaps there are some issues for DMs but for players it is a ton of fun. Best one I’ve played and we play a lot of published adventures in my group. My character got to join the Harpers. How is that not cool? Your DM could have made a better adventure where you also get to join the Harpers. Hell, a neural network could probably have made a better adventure where you get to join the Harpers. "Joining the Harpers" is not some magical protected thing you can only do if you use this specific adventure.
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Jul 7, 2020 21:24
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Nitrousoxide posted:I think I might have gotten into the phase of DND where you need to tone back your characters because I just asked my DM if I can play a "a sapient rat operating a flesh golem from inside" 
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Jul 24, 2020 16:38
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Splicer posted:4E TOTM was about as good as 3.x TOTM, but 4E gridded was so good that it was kind of... why would you do that? This is a really good point. You weren't really losing anything playing 3.x TotM. If you try it with 4e, it still works as well as ever, but now you're losing out on a well-designed grid combat system instead of a "yeah, sure, you can use a grid to keep track" system.
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Jul 25, 2020 02:06
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Raenir Salazar posted:Really getting fed up with this group that literally every time I want to do something I just keep being blown off. I'm sorry to hear it, but given how your group sounded like the epitome of catpissy-cliched D&D players, not terribly surprised. Tell them to get hosed and get yourself into a not-miserable group.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:37
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Glagha posted:Oh yeah I'd definitely never say 4e is like, god's gift to roleplaying, but there's so many complaints about that game that are just 100% wrong when there's a ton of actual legitimate problems that could be discussed (some of which 5e actually addressed which is cool!) and it poisons the well on discussions for "how could this game be better" and "what would you like to see in a new D&D". 4e had the benefit of actually genuinely trying to do something a little different and had a real design goal in mind. Complaints about how the game is all combat always ring hollow to me considering how even in 5e every class spends at most a paragraph before getting right into what kinds of weapons and armor that class can use and how they fight. The game is always about fighting, 4e just decided to actually make the fighting crunchy and tactical since you're going to be doing a lot of it anyway. Yeah. At the end of the day, what I dislike most about 5e is that it could have been an edition that built on 4e, but instead, we got an edition that disregarded 4e to such an extent that the things that are improvements (and they do exist!) feel accidental, or even feel irrelevant because the mechanics around the improvement are worse.
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Aug 11, 2020 16:12
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RC Cola posted:I 100% don't know why the clone didn't just teleport away, but on the big bad clone's turn, he said "So this would be his stunned round and it will be but he is going to action surge to get an action and if you don't like it you can suck it" Yeah, I'd have left the game here. What's the point of playing when what you do doesn't matter if it doesn't stick to the DM's perfect plan?
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Aug 11, 2020 17:23
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ZZT the Fifth posted:The only NPC in the area is a druid who is accompanying them to the fight. This sounds like Lost Mines of Phandelver? If so, if it helps at all, my group unexpectedly annihilated that dragon; it didn't even get a chance to flee.
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Oct 11, 2020 04:35
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ZZT the Fifth posted:Did you have a full group of 5? My group is 4 players, and they're not running hyper-optimized characters. Five, yes, but also not hyper-optimized characters. I'm not saying the dragon can't waste them, it can. But if they're spread out enough that they don't all eat the poison breath, or they find an advantage after that, the action economy is going to work in their favor and they're probably going to snowball.
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Oct 11, 2020 05:14
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Here's a weird-rear end story. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the Dragonlance authors, are suing Wizards of the Coast for breach of contract and tortious interference. Apparently there was a contract for them to write a new trilogy, and earlier this year, WotC put Nic Kelman on oversight for the trilogy, then went behind Weis and Hickman's backs to try to subvert them with the publisher, leading to WotC breaking the contract while claiming they're not breaking the contract. Weis and Hickman allege that the reason is that WotC is getting so much poo poo for racism, sexism, etc. that I guess they're calling off anything that isn't perfectly corporate-bland? They don't do a great job of drawing a straight line there. If this part is true, though, they've probably got a pretty good case: quote:On or about August 13, 2020, acting with the knowledge and consent and possibly at the direction of Hasbro, Defendant held a telephonic meeting with Plaintiff-Creators and their representatives. Among those present at the meeting were Messrs. Kelman and Morrissey, Defendant’s in-house lawyers, Nick Mitchell and Ben Hellerstein, and various PRH representatives, including executives and counsel. At that telephonic meeting, without any forewarning, Defendant’s attorney (Mr. Mitchell) stated Defendant refused to perform under the License Agreement, effectively terminating the agreement unilaterally. When challenged about the grounds for such termination, Mr. Mitchell responded with the nonsensical statement, “We are not moving toward breach, but we will not approve any further drafts.”
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Oct 19, 2020 19:44
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I'm still only partway through my copy of Shadow, but I can say that so far, it's one of the better-written 5e adventures, and it does a reasonably good job of getting people into the world without loredumping them. There are three prelude encounters to run; martial characters learn about "recent attacks by strange creatures" and fight some wounded draconians, arcane characters have a quick trial that confirms they're good enough mages to be eligible for the Test later, and divine characters have a "Goldmoon in the temple of Mishakal" moment that teaches them about the gods and lets them have divine magic. All nice and quick, you could conceivably run all three in session 0, and it grounds the players in the setting but doesn't add a ton of baggage.
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Nov 22, 2022 19:38
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MillennialVulcan posted:So is this a complete restart back to just before Chronicles? I'm not sure in which terms you mean, but yes, in general, it's set in 351 AC, so the events of the module coincide with, but don't cross over with, the events of the beginning of Chronicles. Raenir Salazar posted:Do they have suggestions if you wanna play like an Escaped Draconian who rejects the Evil of Conquest? Not in so many words, but in the character creation section, there's a sidebar that explicitly says "play characters of any race you please" and encourages you to invent a reason such a character is possible, though it's more focused toward the non-native races like dragonborn and tieflings.
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Nov 22, 2022 21:58
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Yusin posted:This takes place too early for that. The Draconians have only just now emerged and are fanatics that have never been encountered before and nothing is known about them. Yeah, having read further, there are a bunch of things you'd have to change if the party is aware of draconians at the start and knows real details about them later.
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Nov 23, 2022 00:21
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I finished my first read of the book last night and overall, I think it's pretty good. It's definitely focused on newcomers, but if you come in with knowledge, there's nothing contradicting existing lore or shutting you out of adding it back in (other than dumb stuff like "Knights of Solamnia are human men basically without exception"). There are a couple of cameos but they didn't make me cringe. I would have liked a little more; there were places where it would have made sense to have a sidebar with relevant lore you could use but that just didn't have it, and it ends with an unsigned note from Kitiara and "Use this message to foreshadow future conflicts in the War of the Lance or to continue your adventures in Krynn," but gives no suggestions about those future conflicts or other options for adventures, and the book doesn't provide any setting detail that isn't relevant to the adventure. But I don't really feel the need to complain about what's there.
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Nov 23, 2022 16:33
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean, a surprise I suppose if you're running the campaign for people who've never read the books before or generally aren't familiar with the setting, but my question I think contextually was clearly meant as someone and for players who already are familiar, who are going to ask "dragonlance!? hey can I play a draconian?" . My question wasnt thinking about that adventure but more generally. Not that I think anyways that the adventure need be played straight. Seems like every wotc adventure module should be modified basically at will. Raenir Salazar posted:That makes sense, for that specific adventure you could rework it a bit to introduce a draconian pc, like a spy whose joining the party with the idea that they eventually defect for reals as a result of getting to know the PCs. Like Garrak from deep space 9. Going to be honest here: if your group has this much lore knowledge and you're expecting them to want to play draconians, I don't think this adventure is for you. It's an intro to northern Ansalon and 11 levels of content for that area, there's no addendum where they have rules for making draconian PCs or expanding a Dragonlance campaign beyond the confines of this adventure.
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Nov 25, 2022 18:23
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If you're doing rolls, I've enjoyed the "everyone rolls a set, then everyone agrees on which set is best and uses that one" method, which I'm pretty sure I learned in a previous version of this thread. You'll probably get a somewhat overpowered party (my last group was like 17-16-16-13-12-7) but there won't be any drastic differences in power within the party.
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Nov 27, 2022 05:10
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Libertad! posted:It's December 6th, so both Shadow of the Dragon Queen as well as DM's Guild sourcebooks are out to the public. I'd also be interested. I've historically found fanmade Dragonlance stuff to be, uh, well below "subpar," so if there's worthwhile material in these that'd be really cool.
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Dec 6, 2022 14:53
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Alan Smithee posted:can anyone explain how Pathfinder fits into all this as if I'm an alien? Short, oversimplified version: Pathfinder 1e was a D&D 3.5e clone released under the OGL. Paizo has continued releasing things under the OGL because it was pretty decent for creators and players. Now WotC is saying "you're huge, we want money for you using the OGL from now on" and Paizo just replied "we're going to use this new license instead, good job cheating yourselves out of the small say you had in our work, gently caress yourself with a cactus."
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Jan 13, 2023 17:12
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brap posted:You manage to cast the Light cantrip on an object worn by an invisible creature. Let’s say, some overalls which cover pretty much their entire body. Is the light visible? Is the creature still functionally invisible? The light is visible. Assuming invisibility is functioning the way the spell Invisibility does, though, the overalls themselves are still invisible. If the rest of the area isn't bright light, you'll have a pretty good idea of what square the creature is in but you still won't be able to see it or its overalls.
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Jan 20, 2023 18:01
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15 combat encounters to get from level 1 to level 2?! I'm glad your group is having fun, but wow, is that not for me.
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Feb 6, 2023 01:22
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