luck be with thee!

That means that you are assigned to a stereotypical RPG role inside our new fantasy world. Spin this wheel to find out what you are now doing for a living.

Encumbrance is a great example of this. 5e contains granular weights for all the items that you might have in your inventory, and rules for how much you can carry based on your strength score, and they've set these carry capacities high enough that you should never actually need to think about them. And that's deliberate, the designers have explicitly said that they've set carrying capacity high enough that it shouldn't come up in normal play. So for a starting DM, you see all these weights, you see all the rules for how much people can carry or drag, and you've played Fallout, you know how this works. And then if you try to actually enforce that, you find that it's insanely tedious, and it basically never actually matters, so you drop it.

Foraging is the example of this that bothers me most. There's a whole system for this! A table of foraging DCs, and math for how much food you can find, and how long you can go without food, etc. But the math is set up so that a person with no survival proficiency and a +0 to WIS, in a hostile environment, will still forage enough food to be fine, and the starvation rules are so generous that even a run of bad luck is unlikely to matter. So a DM who actually tries to use these rules will quickly find that they add nothing but bookkeeping. You're rolling a bunch of checks every day of travel for something that is purpose built not to matter. And that's before you add in all the ways to trivialize or circumvent this.

These rules don't exist to be used, that is not their purpose. These rules exist because the designers were scared of the backlash to 4e, and wanted to make sure that the game had all the rules that D&D "should" have. But they didn't actually want these mechanics. They didn't want the bookkeeping, they didn't care about that style of play, but they couldn't just say, "this game isn't about that" for fear of angering traditionalists. And unfortunately the way they handled this was by putting in rules that are bad, that actively fight anyone who wants to use that style of play and act as a trap to people who take the rules in good faith.

And this means that knowing what rules are not supposed to be used is an actual skill 5e DMs develop. Part of being a good 5e DM is being able to tell the real rules that will improve your game from the fake rules that are there to placate angry forum posters. And that's just an awful position to put DMs in (especially new DMs), but it's pretty unsurprising that it creates a certain contempt for knowing the rules as written.

This is a story of numbers, but it’s still beautiful.

We were fighting a dragon.

The dragon is hopping around while the Barbarian is just racing around trying to catch up to her

Dragon finally decides, no, really, fuck specifically THAT ranger and goes hog fucking wild on me (I LIVED!) but holds still long enough for the Barbarian to finally rage and LEAP ONTO HER BACK and go STAB

Dragon sees this and goes, “Oh. Sick.” 

and just goes VERT

Pro: I am not tanking anymore

Con: She instantly moves FOUR HUNDRED FEET STRAIGHT UP INTO THE AIR…. with our  raging Barbarian holding on for dear gottdamn life

One round later, she’s another 160 feet up, still getting stabbed by a Barbarian who has somehow held on, now getting attacked by ballistae and we’re all starting to get CONCERNED

Because if they take that dragon down, that is 560 feet our Barbarian is also falling out of the sky, and he is not attuned to the ONLY THING WE HAVE that can save his fucking life from that height

I’m sitting there doing math, trying to determine if 560′ is enough to kill him outright, silently being very grateful we still have exactly ONE diamond to rez his ass

and the dragon just goes VERT again, ANOTHER four hundred feet in the air

The Barbarian, now finally free from any potential collateral, cackles, as he is at long last, unshackled by the restraints of his conscience.

He has a tattoo, you see, which allows him to cast Fireball once per day

centered on himself

with a save which he autofails

But he is a tiefling.

And this fucker still has 160 hit points by the time it’s done exploding. But the explosion sends him backward as he fails the Athletics check to continue holding on and he begins to fall.

He falls for 3 fucking rounds and we can only watch our friend fall to his certain death.

The DM… has to roll ninety six d6s

let that number sink in for you

NINETY. SIX. D6s. They normally roll with real dice, you can hear the clickety clack through the discord, but  they had to get out a fucking app for this because they do not OWN ninety. fucking. six. d6s.

It comes out to 402 fucking bludgeoning damage he takes on impact as he leaves a Barbarian shaped crater in the center of the forum, 10 feet wide, 5 feet deep, a cloud of dust and broken brick shooting out as he lands.

And do you know what happens next?

Do you know what the fuck we see as the dust settles?

We hear a cough, and a see a thumbs up come out of the crater. 1 hit point left.

402 damage. Raging as he landed, halved to 201. He had 160HP left, it only brought him down to -41, not enough to kill him outright (you have to get equal to negative your max HP), AND HE’S LEVEL 12, which means he has access to Relentless Rage: the first time you’d drop below 0 HP, if it doesn’t outright kill you, you have to roll a Con save of 10 or higher to instead drop to 1 HP. He rolled an 11.

He fell almost a THOUSAND feet from the air off the back of a fucking dragon, took NINETY SIX D6 FALL DAMAGE, AND LIVED.

But the city was starving, the siege had gone on too long, and the king's troops were still a week's march away. The scorched earth would be fertile again in time, but right now it was barren. Right now there were mouths to feed. So they changed their crossbows for butcher knives and got to work.

None of the royal commanders asked any questions that could not be answered. After all, their aid had come shamefully late. The dragon's horned skull made a noble gift, a fitting tribute from a triumphant city to its humbled king. Who would have thought to question them?

And none of the townsfolk spoke up, when the first golden-eyed babes were born. Children who grew up barefoot and fearless, clambering over the city's patched and rebuilt roofs like they had no notion of falling, with a strange glitter to their skin when the sunlight hit it just so. No one breathed a word about dragons.

Because soon enough there were deft, young hands taking loaves straight out of the oven, heedlessly lifting iron from the forge, plunging into boiling laundry water. And some of them more wondrous still, wild, warm-skinned youths, with inexplicable knowledge and peculiar remedies.

"jesus christ" "who's that"

"this is just like (tv show/movie)" "that's my favorite play"

referring to famous musicians or actors from the real world as "bards"

adding the word "fantasy" in front of modern things (i pull out my Fantasy iPhone and open Fantasy Tinder)

"how hurt are you" "on a scale of one to twenty-eight i'd say i'm at about a nine."

A paladin subclass for 5e

Liberty. Reason. Justice. Civility. Edification. Perfection.

MAIL.

Tenets of the Courier

The Tenets of the Courier embody a paladin's commitment to delivering the mail with utmost integrity and professionalism.

Handle with Care: Treat anything entrusted to you as preciously as you would your own possessions.

Discrete Delivery: When others confide in you, do not betray their trust. Let none but the intended recipient pry upon what you carry.

Swift Postage: Do your best to fulfill your promises as promptly as possible. Punctuality is a virtue.

To the Letter: Strive to fulfill your oaths exactly as you pledged them. Your word is your promise.

Oath Spells

You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed.

3rd Level: Expeditious Retreat, Illusory Script 5th Level: Animal Messenger, Arcane Lock 9th Level: Sending, Tongues 13th Level: Legally Distinct Secret Chest, Freedom of Movement 17th Level: Dream, Teleportation Circle

Here’s HSTHETE, the 24 hour comic I drew this year!  Thanks to everybody who followed along on twitter this weekend as I posted these pages <3

Agape 🤍 for the hurt

Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:

Plot hole 1: If the vampires can't stand daylight, why couldn't they just move around underground?

Solution 1: They can't go underground, the sewer system of the city is full of giant alligators who would eat them.

Well, that's a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.

Plot hole 2: How and why the fuck are there alligators in the sewers? How do they survive, what do they eat down there when there's no vampires?

Solution 2: The nuns of the Underground Monastery feed and take care of them as a part of their sacred duties.

It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it's just turtles all the way down. And if you're lucky, you might even find that the second question's answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:

Plot hole 3: Who the fuck are the sewer nuns and what's their point and purpose?

Solution 3: The sewer nuns live underground in order to feed the alligators, in order to make sure that the vampires don't try to move around via the sewer system.

And also.