“Yes, I worship the majestic mother, bringer of life, she who brings all colours into the world. No, I don’t feel inclined to tell you her name.”

And we played the first thing that came to our heads
Just so happened to be
The best song in the world
It was the best song in the world

I wasn’t a good DM either. But then I learned. I threw encounters at the players I thought might be fun, and I missed the mark almost every single time. But my players had fun, so I don’t see the problem in getting those encounters wrong. And every failure taught me so much more than every success.

If you fail, but you keep it fun and learn for the future, what have you lost? Only your pride.

But some monsters are strong against certain builds and weak against others. Some monsters are stronger in certain environment and entirely nullified by others. Some monsters are stronger given certain allies and weaker when alone.

If you could devise a system to assign monster complexity based on every scenario you can imagine that monster being part of, then either that’s an astonishingly small number of scenarios or an absurdly complex calculation to force on anyone.

I think it’s mostly cowardice, personally. People don’t want to risk putting their own choices into a game based entirely on choices, just in case they aren’t as good. It’s better to use someone else’s decisions than risk your own pride.

Then you have ignorance. A lot of people don’t know how to fill the gaps, and WotC has never bothered teaching them how. Any rules they did get are rules of thumb and aren’t something to use without thought (like CR), so people complain for reason 1 again.

I believe it was Running who stated “If I have seen further, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Referring, of course, to the works of noted giant Thrynn Walk.

Is Jerry Seinfeld alive? According to google, yes.

I’m confused by the college of eloquence being in a system that is clearly not D&D, since an int of 2 would make you non-sentient and a con of 1 would be dead.

Sidenote: Jesus christ, I blocked one guy and 43 comments vanished.

In a single round of combat, a wizard can use a spell to rain fire and bring a max health fighter down to 1 hp.

In comparison, in a single round of combat, a fighter can swing their sword four times and bring a max health wizard down to 1 hp.

So they’re both as good as each other in a hypothetical 1v1 combat scenario which is unlikely to ever come up during an actual game. Bravo. Can we stop having this argument? It’s been 4 months since this exact meme was posted.

Ironically for a post complaining about reading comprehension, but you misrepresented the original post you’re talking about. Even have the classic “quotation marks around a thing that was never said” in the title.

First, and perhaps most obvious, this wasn’t “everyone”. This was one person, and they didn’t get many upvotes. When I recommend a TTRPG, for example, I’m recommending Genesys (like someone else did).

Second, they weren’t saying to homebrew old editions of D&D. They were saying you don’t need to homebrew at all. At most, they said you could reflavour something in 4th edition. Their entire point was that you don’t need to homebrew when you can just find a system that already has what you would have homebrewed in.

Third, they were suggesting this as an alternative to homebrewing specific material into D&D 5e. Pathfinder can provide the experience of “5e with time travel” that you wanted without any modifications. BitD is so different from 5e that it can’t.

You are, however, correct that they did backtrack. I’ll put this down to poorly explaining their argument to start with, as they downplayed the “5e but better” games in their first comment while that was really their entire point.

Personally, I like homebrewing. It’s fun to tinker with the rules and materials. But there’s also an argument to not repeat work someone else has already done.

I guess it depends on how Konsi feels about garlic bread.

Just off the top of my head, you could give them a flaw that, while it doesn’t make them any less cunning, it does let the players see what’s happening.

Method 1: Gloating. What is the point in being a genius if nobody ever notices? When the villain has the party on the ropes, have them point out moments of the plan that the party could have noticed but didn’t. Maybe they wait to give the shopkeep the bounty until the party can see it happen, just so they know.

Method 2: Worse minions. The plan is amazing, but the people carrying it out aren’t quite as discrete as the villain. Maybe the security make a little noise as they stalk the party, and there are moments where the players could spot them.

Either way, the players will know something is up, and might have an opportunity to use this new information to turn the tables on the villain (“might” and “opportunity” being the key words there).

There are dice goblins who get as many as possible and dice elves who have a few good dice they treasure.

I have a slight feeling you’re making it more complicated than it needs to be… Like, how are you in a building with security cameras AND illusions? Surely the illusions make it harder for the cameras to do their job. And surely, since you’re in a building, the giant worms can’t get close enough to affect anything. Plus, the number of banshees would be unchanged since 10 feet ago, as would the scry spell.

It’s actually kind of astonishing that what villains try to do for an entire campaign is done as collateral damage by you using a first level spell slot, and it only heals 6 hitpoints. Meanwhile, Sad Frank drinks two potions and does the same, but without billions of deaths. Score one for Sad Frank.

I don’t think I’d call D&D a consistently great base to start from, honestly. For certain settings and genres, yeah, but others are seriously harmed by trying to make it fit a fantasy adventure system. Mysteries and heists are forced to include a lot more gratuitous fight scenes just to balance all playstyles, for example.

Similarly, I worry that using d20 as a one-size-fits-all will reinforce comfort zones than expand them. Why would a person play the Star Wars FFG system (which I prefer) when they can play the Star Wars d20 system instead and not have to learn new rules? And if you’re making a new system, then you clearly need to include six core stats, because RPGs have six core stats in them, right?

D&D isn’t bad, nor is homebrewing D&D for a new setting. D&D as an assumed foundation of all RPGs can be a serious issue.

I disagree with that interpretation. Evil shouldn’t be going out of your way to cause harm, it should be willingly causing harm to get your way. The harm is the method, not the goal.

Like, a good person driving down the road will swerve and crash their car to avoid hitting a dog. A neutral person would stop the car and see if they can move the dog, or at least drive around it. An evil person wouldn’t even slow down. Why should they have to be a minute late because some idiot dog decided to stand in the wrong place?

Meanwhile, if the evil person swerved and crashed their car to hit a dog who wasn’t even on the road, their car would be wrecked and their journey would be totally ruined. They’d be just as foolish as the good person. If you’re going to have your actions bound by the same restrictive moral guidelines as good people in a new coat of paint, you might as well be good.

I prefer to think of good vs evil as altrusim vs egoism. LG is “the laws should protect everyone” and LE is “the laws should protect me”. CG is “everyone should be free to live as they please” and CE is “I should be free to live as I please”. Acting in pure self-interest with no regard for ideals would be CE, or maybe NE depending on how it’s done.

Sure, but I’m part of the minority that likes to remove the rest of the sheep first.

This honestly sounds like an amazing quest giver.

Evil Quest Giver: Yes, go and fight the dragon in this remote mountain and get treasure! I hope you survive, hehehe…
Party: (One week later) Wow, that dragon was kidnapping the locals and planning a conquest of the valley! Good thing we put a stop to that, huh?
EQG: Uh… Holy heck… W- Well, you’re just the people to deliver this letter to this outpost in the middle of nowhere! Go now, take your time with the trip!
Party: (One week later) Turns out the guy you sent that letter to was researching occult rituals and accidentally unearthed a swarm of demons. We saved him and found this sword of sacred might.
EQG: Okay, plan C. Join me, and we shall overthrow the crown!
Party: The one terrorising the common folk? We were hoping there was a resistance group we could join!