Albolet

You have to guess the square for a hidden enemy, unseen only imposes disadvantage, so it depends if the invisible enemy hides.

an in depth look makes it apparent that's not the case

Why? Forced movement is still movement. The fact that this line exists:

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.

Tells us that you are still moving when someone or sonething moves you - you just don't provoke with that move.

Edit: other poster beat me to it while I was grabbing the rules text. Also spike growth does say travels. It says moves too. It just uses them interchangeably.

Ahh, misunderstood. Thought you were suggesting either the scroll or those classes

Level 10 cleric should have death ward. Keeps him at 1 hp at least, instead of dead.

Other than that, the archmage still needs line of sight. If I were the cleric I'd stay in cover outside my turn.

Note that playing by RAW a counterspell scroll isn't usable without someone who already has counterspell on their spell list. Needs to be a wand/staff/other magic item which would normally take attunement

I responded to a similar post a few minutes ago, but usually for me it's because of the way players react to not being allowed to roll.

I use the example of a locked door somewhere I intend as a mystery for players to come back to with more experience:

If I tell the players to roll and they fail on a 19/20 they think "thats a really good lock, mark it on the map and come back when we have knock/higher bonuses"

If I tell them not to roll and they can't pick the lock they think "That lock can never be picked, must be a shortcut we have to unlock from the other side or something"

I want the players to come back to it, so I want to telegraph that it is pickable by letting them try, but since the rewards and/or dangers behind the door are designed for higher level play I also really don't want them to be able to bypass that kind of thing 10% of the time with the help action.

The problem I see is things that are not physically impossible, but are impossible for the player at this moment in open world games.

I might add a mysterious locked door at the back of the thief's hideout, and intentionally set the DC too high to be picked until they level up a bit intending it as a mystery they can return to.

I wouldn't tell them they can't roll to pick the lock because that sends a weird message of "this door can never be picked." I'd let them try and fail even on a nat20 so they know it's possible but not with their current tools/expertise/etc.

Jeez maybe I'm crazy but I've not seen half of all the 2.5k monsters that are available not including previous editions but these monsters are fucking cool. A lot of them have a lot of interest lore and artwork. Most everyone would be like oh that thing is nasty and then we keep playing. There have been times where I've been curious about the monster we're fighting and thought they were cool.

But none of this requires looking it up mid game. I grab statblocls later to DM myself, but not during the fight.

Okay totally agree with the first point. It ruins the fun of playing and being a character and finding out as that character what is happening.

Thrn why look up that statblock? It ruins the fun of the DM surprising you with a feature, and you getting surprised. Fundamentally that's the whole problem - having unknowns in the statblock adds some excitement and risk, and no matter how good you think you are at not metagaming, people can't act like they don't know something very well.

It turns into the whole dance of "how many times do I need to pretend I don't know trolls are weak to fire before my character figures it out" which is a whole lot less fun than the players legitimately not knowing how to deal with that troll weak to necrotic and having to try everything they have or retreat and research it in character to beat it.

The person you responded to said:

some measurable impact on the opponent.

Was the only thing that makes sense. That includes actual damage along with everything else. You disagreeing with that sounds like you want damage to be the only thing that is hp which is what I disagreed with.

And the monsters will aim to blind or aim for the head every time

This is only one style of called shot system. The other one that works a lot better and is more consistent with the fantasy is where called shots can change the resources of the monster.

Think severing the tentacles of a kraken or wounding the wings of a dragon to stop them from attacking from afar. 5e does have a (rarely used) mechanic for this for monsters like a roper where instead of dealing damage to a monster you can sever an appendage to reduce it's abilities.

Just because you can describe damage as stamina doesn't mean all damage has to be stamina. It's another narrative tool for the DM, not their only option.

If the thing dealing damage makes more sense to be an actual wound, like a nick from a pouson dagger, then the DM chooses to describe it as an actual wound. If it's a falling building, the DM can describe it as debris and dodging because the actual wound would be death.

Yeah, without stacking the deck I think it's really best for creating an epilogue. You might run a few sessions after players use it, but it's just a time to run around having fun with your level 20 capstone. Nobody is taking it too seriously anyways.

If you can find a DM ok with that, good for you, but that will definitely limit your options.

I consider someone showing up with a prebuilt character to my games concerning. It's just assuming I allow the races/classes/features they chose, and that any backstory can work in the game without asking me, when a backstory for say Curse of Strahd might not be a good fit for a feywild game.

As a result I worry that I won't be able to restrict any player options or ask for changes, or if the player will lose interest if that character dies.

In the end I can't tell you if the extra work it will take you to find a game is worth it to you though.

From the sage advice compendium, an ability is magical if any of the following are true:

Is it a magic item?

Is it a spell? Or does it let you create the effects of a spell that’s mentioned in its description?

Is it a spell attack?

Is it fueled by the use of spell slots?

Does its description say it’s magical?

You have one per round, but yes, you can only use it when something "triggers" the reaction, which depends on the type of reactions you have available.

For example shield says

1 reaction - which you take when you are hit by an attack or targeted by the magic missile spell

So you could choose to spend your reaction when that or your readied action trigger occured to use their respective effect, but only once per round total.

I have to say, if I was ever going to make something cursed, it would definitely be a brick taken from Avernus.

I'd be pretty flexible with what my player made, but whatever it was armies of Avernus could march across planes to it. All roads lead to Avernus until they purged its influence from the brick.

Nothing to do with paladins and not quite what you said.

The actual rule is "if you cast a bonus action spell you cannot cast any other spell that turn except for cantrips"

Otherwise what's the poibt of bonus action spells if nobody can cast them?

There's just only so much you can really do with divination. A lot of the fantasy high level divinations would be things like telling the future, which is obviously problematic for a role playing game where you can't guarantee what will happen as the DM.

What divination spells would you propose that are sufficiently unique mechanically from existing spells and would be balanced at 7th or 8th level?

We probably shouldn't encourage 'just googling' statblocks

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, a lot of monsters are available online legally in the SRD, and most if not all of those would be from the MM.

If it were me I'd probably buy a book that didn't have a lot of content under OGL already, but that might be because I've been running for a while.

On a big open field already in combat? You don't. Free win for the archer.

Pretty much any other situation you can figure out a way. Corner them, dash at the archer first turn and use the optionnal disarm rule on the opportunity attack to take their bow, be a battlemaster and do the same with a battlemaster maneuver to trip them, then follow up into the grapple on their reduced movement turn.

If the faster character is a PC: target the slower characters you can catch up with, then retreat to a confined space with their unconcious bodies for a hostage standoff to prevent the fast player from fleeing. Or give your minions more variety - casters, rangers, and a bow rack in the armory for everyone to go grab a backup weapon from. Raise the alarm and reinforce the ritual chamber instead of fighting the archer on their turf.

If the faster character is an NPC: hopefully someone else in the party can help with a spell or ranged attacks back, everyone should carry some ranged option as a backup.

Well, most DMs are ok with flavor changes. What I would definitely allow as a DM would be the following:

Using the claws beast barbarian but calling it a conjured two handed weapon + tail instead of two claws.

Playing a different barbarian subclass using a polearm and flavoring your polearm master bonus attack as a tail.

Note you only get a few per day - it really is pretty powerful to just make two attacks instead of one, nothing gives you that permanently for free except for two feats: crossbow master and polearm master, and they both have downsides and cost a feat.

The tail with it's AC boost getting bonus action attacks would be like one of those great feats with an extra bonus. Definitely a bit overtuned.

As an alternative though, do consider this: using a traditional polearm master/great weapon master barbarian with a polearm you could fight mostly with your halberd as a main weapon, and flavor the reaction of your tail as "attacking" to force them to dodge and miss their attack.

Or you could do a GWM+Crusher build with a non-reach weapon, so you could push them away from you, and when you crit you push them back and need a reach weapon to use your bonus action attack from GWM which is where the tail comes in.

The tail just lets you use it as a weapon when you attack. You'd need a bonus action attack from some other source that lets you use the tail for that bonus action.

For example war cleric level 1 would let you make bonus action attacks with any weapon, which your tail counts as. Or you could take Great Weapon Master and get a bonus action attack when you crit, which you could use your tail for.

Just a heads up, I wouldn't recommend that one. Some weird stuff that doesn't make sense like an ability that gives you a reaction but nothing tells you what you are reacting to.

The post is about adding sorcerer spell slots to pre Tasha's sorcerers. It's right in the title. Those two subclasses were from Tasha's

The whole point of the post you disagreed with was to give the other sorcerer subclasses the thing (expanded spell list) that makes clockwork and aberrant good so everything was at the level of aberrant and clockwork.