Can we stop posting this headline? Again and again and again?

It’s not news.

If a sizable portion of the population did want to do something stupid, that’d be news.

This is… It’s not even propaganda. It’s just a waste of our limited time and emotional capacity for idiocy.

Spelljammer campaign at level 11. We were hired to get a MacGuffin necklace off of a pirate, by his rival. We waltz into his stronghold, get an audience, and then Nat 20 a Persuasion check to convince him for a 1on1 with my bard, b/c for a pirate so tough, what threat could my bard pose? His guards and my party members leave the room.

Land a Suggestion to have him hand me the necklace, and then land a Modify Memory to have him think it was his idea: we would claim he was dead, use the necklace to get an audience with his rival to show her “proof,” and then double cross her and kill her. Then he’d swoop in, reclaim the necklace, and pay us handsomely.

Poor dummy. Hoodwinked!

Level 3 feels significantly more punchy for most classes, which is nice.

Most d&d podcasts and shows get a bunch of free stuff that they feature (dice, minis, dice towers, stuffed animals, drawings of their characters, etc).

I doubt they buy things that someone wants to sell them.

You probably have to choose: do you want to sell it, or do you want to see it featured?

If the latter, then probably send a letter with some pictures, asking if they would feature it if you had it shipped, to whoever you want (most shows and podcasts advertise a PO Box or some such). If they answer such things on their show, chances are they’ll give you a shout out and let you know on an episode. If they say yes, then you ship it to them, and that’s… It.

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In my utopia, Google would be forced to continue to pay out the current annual contract sum, at a decreasing percentage every year, for some number of years, to all affected companies, giving them the opportunity to divest and pivot.

The root problem doesn’t get fixed if the company with enough money to be a monopolist still has the money when this is “resolved.”

In 5e: Simon the Devious and the Leather Skins (from What We Do In The Shadows) as a Dhampir Hexblade Warlock with Pact of the Chain.

Between the chain familiar (Count Rapula), a zombie from Undying Servitude (Ken the Accountant), Summon Undead (Blagvlad the Exsanguinator, or Desdemona the Shrieker, or Impussa) and an Accursed Specter (Carol), you have a 4-person posse by level 6. It grows situationally or permanently when you gain access to Danse Macabre, Create Undead, and Finger of Death.

Mechanically, you're done by 13, and can either finish off with Bard (probably Whispers) or Paladin (Oathbreaker). Either way, take Inspiring Leader once you've maxed Cha, and then go get yourself that cursed witch's hat!

Give https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html a read. Might sway you, might not.

It is totally fine to kick or knee or headbutt someone for your unarmed strikes when your hands are busy–this is true with or without Tavern Brawler

I think some of WotC’s design philosophy with 5.5 is about encouraging faster progression so that more groups do get to 20.

However, their focus on revamping the PHB, rather than the DMG, leaves the onus for balance on the DM, which has IMO always been the limiting factor. Designing encounters for level 17 players is wildly different from level 16 players. If capstones come at 18 and represent anything close to the power jump that 9th level spells provide, that’s two back-to-back power jumps in very close succession. IMO that would actually drive more DMs to end at 17, rather than 18, or even sooner to avoid reaching those T4 power jumps at all. If they delay their BBEG encounter until those powerups, they have little to no experience with their group’s new abilities to accurately balance on the knife’s edge of very deadly, and risk either a TPK or a floppy conclusion if they miscalculate. “Easier to balance in T3, and end there” is, I believe, still the status quo.

Now, if after the PHB rewrite they make it easier for DMs to balance T4 encounters in a DMG rewrite, thst might change things. In that case, spreading the power jumps out still makes sense to me.

RE Battlemaps: strongly opposed to allowing them. Lemmy.world already has a battlemaps community. Ttrpg.network is welcome to make such a community too, I suppose. That content works for many more ttrpgs than dnd, so putting it in its own space makes more sense than allowing it in here.

RE artwork, if someone wants to post a hand-drawn scene of their group’s epic win/loss against the bbeg, that’s cool. I think we like seeing dnd success stories from folks, and a picture can be worth a thousand words. But, if that person is open for commissions, I would strongly prefer not to know about it.

IMO advertising needs to be segregated to opt-in communities kept exclusively for that purpose, much like LFG posts get their own space to mot pollute the general discussion.

(Similarly, links out to other sites that have comment sections, like youtube, should IMO be required to have actual supporting text content worthy of discussion, as without it they are just more advertising. That’s outside the scope of the original discussion tho.)

Edit: RE homebrew–IMO it too should be sequestered, as it represents a divergence from everyone else’s frame of reference.