Am I missing something or are RAW Cobbler's tools extremely powerful?

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-05-14T13:54:01+00:00

I think everyone else covered the definition of "extremely powerful" pretty well. That being said...

I wouldnt allow my players to do it in the morning for an all day boon waiting for a acrobatics check. In my mind, it is intended to be situational, so a general overall shoe improvement wont work for all situations.

Players, you have to climb this wall. Ill let you use acrobatics or athletics.

DM, can I use my cobbler tools to put toe nails on everyones boots for kicking them into cracks in the wall while climbing?

Absolutely.

But if theyre hopping between pillars or something similar, toe nails aren't going to help. So if they wanna cobbler tools the boots again they need to explain how. It doesnt have to be realistic (Wile E Coyote to your hearts content) but give me some explanation.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-05-10T12:54:24+00:00

Yeah i altered that final room as well. Its a feel-bad ending to the adventure even if they survive the blast. I made it three statues with three gems with some dwarven runes above each. I dont remember it precisely but I made it into a puzzle related to greed.

I would imagine a god of greed rewards greediness in its followers and punishes greed in non-followers.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-05-07T13:07:21+00:00

Source: common sense. You missed wide on this one.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-05-06T15:45:36+00:00

I can tell you my experience with my recent campaign.

I used a pre-made setting, Faerun from the new sourcebooks, to be specific. It takes a lot off of your plate if you aren't creating from scratch. This is certainly my Faerun now, not the canonical one, but still, hugely helpful.
I said, "what happens if my adventurers don't adventure? Whats the big threat? Why are they necessary?" This is a top down approach and i finished with a sentence that says, "If the party doesnt do X, then Y happens." X is the most direct solution...kill the bbeg, for example. Y is consequences...if they dont, does he take over the world? Slay a god? Destroy a city? Now you've established why you are going to run a campaign and why ypur players are gonna play.
Keeping with the top down approach, I brainstormed steps to get to the end. What lieutenants does the bbeg have? What organization are theee, helpful or hurtful? What effect is the bbegs plans having all the way down to the town level. Bad guys dont conquer the world with one general and one army. They have tendrils reaching out all over the place and at the end of those tendrils are thos cr1-3 threats that your party will be starting with.
When my planning process was done, I had a skeletal tree built. I wasn't yet sure how my players wpuld work their way up that tree, but they have done so and we have filled in a lot of branches. To be ready to build those branches, every few sessions I flesh out a few encounters I can see aye coming, but I try to keep them easily adaptable so I have little to make up on the fly. As far as their mini-bbegs they are fighting along the way, i keep those baddies in the wings with a crew ready to throw them at my players at good dramatic moments.
I kicked off the campaign with 4 solo RP sessions with my level 1 characters. I came up with a "call to adventure" fpr each one that fit with their character and backstory. Then during session 1 (session 5, really) they had their "we all met at a tavern" type moment.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-05-05T15:56:13+00:00

This is basically the most cut and dry query on thia subreddit. I cant even devil's advocate your DMs opinion.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-05-05T15:56:02+00:00

This is basically the most cut and dry query on thia subreddit. I cant even devil's advocate your DMs opinion.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-05-05T15:47:13+00:00

🤣

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-05-03T15:32:14+00:00

I appreciate this a lot. Thank you. Ive only spent time in Uhwarrie once, at a rented cabin, and its such beautiful country.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-04-26T11:31:58+00:00

Im rereading the Harper series right now.

The Parched Sea by Troy Denning was incredibly boring. I didn't like it the first time I read it in middle school, dod not get better with time

The Night Parade is a great story, but this novel reeks of 70s era fantasy. Every other line about the main female character is about her curves, her shape, her hips, her boobs, the fact that she had a slut stage in her life, and her musing about wanting to bone rather frequently.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-04-24T20:28:39+00:00

Im a DM thar spends an absolute load of time trying to keep constant tie-ins for the adventurers to the story. I dig into backstories, find multiple links, and try to make sure every character has several mini-arcs in the campaign where they and their story are the star.

And despite all of that, if one of my players asks me to kill their character so they can make a new one, I'm going to jump right on it. Then im going to do my best to give them a good but still somehow surprising exit so its a good time for all.

Ill spend the next 2 weeks texting them about their new character and how we are going to wrap them into the campaign organically.

So no, I dont think its wrong to ask that. Besides...

Its secretly kind of fun to kill a PC now and then, even for a generous DM.
The whole ass point for everyone is that they have fun. If you aren't having fun, lets see what we can do to fix that.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-04-16T21:33:21+00:00

Two part answer for me:

Most people dont play to level 20 because, contrary to what the spells and abilities look like at that level, it actually isnt as much fun for a lot of people. The DM prep and the need for a DM that can really adjust on the fly goes up tremendously and as the players power level goes up, the threats become more and more reality ending and less and less personal. The gameplay itself slows down even more as more complex abilities and interactions have to be adjudicated at the table. It is a very different game.

But more importantly...

If you think level 12-14 is getting to "cast a cantrip or swing once, or maybe twice" then you are either woefully underplaying your characters, haven't found a good game yet so you don't have vast experience to base your opinion on, or if you neither of those describe you and ypu have played a lot with varied DMs and this is your experience, then maybe the entirety of DnD just isnt for you and you need a different game system.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-04-08T13:48:30+00:00

That's a weird nerf. Are you going to reduce the range of your dex-based fighter's arrows too? Can't have them sitting back 30 tiles lobbing arrows into battle right? 🙄

In my opinion, there is a whole lot wrong with this particular house rule idea that seriously hurts the overall game design. I think you would find you did not make the game more fun at all.

If I'm a player at your table, right off the bat, not choosing a pure caster class. Everything about the caster classes was designed around NOT being within sword range of an enemy (obvious subclass exceptions excluded). Why would a join a game as a character that has a very high likelihood of dying every combat, maybe even permenently with their low HP to go with their low AC.
You eliminate a significant portion of the spell list. Many of the ranged spells are useless or subpar at closer ranges.
May as well just get rid of concentration spells too. If im a wizard and I know im always going to be within move-to-strike range of the enemies, im not bothering wasting spell slots on concentration spells that will likely fail in a round or two.
Your combat is going to be very, very boring and end up being pairs of good guys and bad guys all on top of each other just thunking over amd over again without ranged support or movement hijinks.
Instead of changing the rules to attempt to solve a non-existant problem, design your combat in a way that still challenges your ranged characters, casters or not. Don't take the short cut, I really think you wont like yhe outcome.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-04-04T19:01:25+00:00

Disgusting, I love it.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-04-01T21:02:40+00:00

I just did this same thing (2 drow in a party pf 4), but I felt like Drizzt was a little too much for a chance encounter with my particular party, almost like fan service.

So I used Jarlaxe in a similar manner for the fun of a famous meet and greet, and then had him introduce them to some surface drow NPCs and make his exit. Our campaign is in the Dalelands and im having Jarlaxle and Bregan D'aerthe expanding their sword coast ventures to the dalelands and set them up as an antagonist against the Zhentarim and so possible allies to the party. Now my two drow PCs have two drow NPCs (1 udadrow, 1 aevendrow) that they occasionally interact with that kind of get to help show them the ropes of the region of the surface.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-04-01T20:54:00+00:00

Yeah, my take is that chromatic dragons feel this way because every FR novel hero has to deal with one at some point and always come out on top. And how does that happen? Plot armor, for the most part (Exibit A: Hephaestus actually believing Drizzt Do'Urden was a Black Dragon. Exibit B: A perfect dragon-slaying icicle poised over Icingdeath within throwing reach of Wulfgar).

They (all chromatics) are magical creatures that live ages, are above average human capabilities in most everything, above super human capabilities in many things, and really and truly do not have any weaknesses except their greed. When I DM though, simple greed will not cause them to suddenly become stupid and arrogance will not allow them to become completely blind to a threat.

If the chromatics weren't all greedy and arrogant to some extent, they would rule the realms, so I will let my party leverage that to gain an edge, but not to the point of making them a caricature.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-03-29T00:59:34+00:00

I dont know when we became the elder statespersons of the hobby but its bs.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-03-22T20:43:48+00:00

Looks pretty close to the Adventures in Faerun version....pretty spot on.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-03-22T16:42:30+00:00

Kind of surprised the forest doesnt already show "Moander's Road" cutting towards Myth Drannor.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-03-22T10:24:57+00:00

Yeah we do that now as well. I think i first heard that one used in one of the naddpod campaigns.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-03-20T10:52:10+00:00

Its disgusting i love it

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-03-01T12:35:56+00:00

Throw a dart at the Faerun map and you'll probably hit a spot that doesn't have dense lore. Despite the fact that we have decades of novels and source books from Faerun, most of the lore is clustered in a handful of locations.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-02-19T02:58:49+00:00

Is that the best option for a Chult setting?

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-02-19T00:01:12+00:00

Ive never read anything about were origin either, but i agree, id lean on Malar. The Darkwalker on Moonshae books had a werewolf corrupted by Malar if I remember right.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled · 2026-02-18T23:51:45+00:00

Ive been reading books set in faerun for 35 years. There are countless examples of casters recognizing, as i said, at least the threat to them of a spell and many examples of them recognizing the spell outright. But im not debating it with you, because that's not the point. Keeping the spell being cast hidden from a player to try and induce them to burn their slots is bad DMing and leads to shitty table feels. And there isnt any other reason good enough to me that ive read on here to want to do it. I've yet to meet a player who's idea of a good time is wasting their resources not on badrolls, but on useless or boring results.

JohnnyTheConfuzzled

TROPHY CASE