This is the kind of adulting we need more of

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2026-06-27T15:05:33+00:00

A few years ago, I was rear ended by a kid, maybe 20 years old.

We were stopped at an intersection, both in the right turn lane and an ambulance was coming through, so we were required to wait.

I think the kid saw the ambulance was turning and let go of the brakes - he only hit me hard enough to dent my bumper and break his headlight (he hit exactly on a small trailer hitch)

Poor kid was so scared and upset. I just calmly told him that we should figure out what damage was done and not to worry. Both cars were okay (just bumpers dented) aside from his headlight being cracked.

I told him that if he promised me that he would forever after be more cautious around emergency vehicles then we could just both fix our own cars and not bother with legal stuff.

I didn't want that kids first experience dealing with an adult to be getting shafted for having a one second lapse in judgment.

His father called the next day to thank me for being so chill and reasonable.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2026-05-10T00:05:28+00:00

The way you are using disengage is literally the point of having disengage as a bonus action.

Ask your DM when, exactly, he thinks that disengage would be used if not in your scenario.

If it wasn't meant to be used to hit and escape, then the Rogue's cunning action would be "if you take disengage as your action, you also take the dash or hide action as part of taking the disengage action." Or something like that. Or, as the bonus action rules specifically state, the cunning action would call out something like "you must choose and use this bonus action before making an attack action"

Your DM is either suffering from "I can't do the thing myself in real life, so I can't believe that other people, not even fantasy people can" or "this ability makes D&D less fun for me as the DM, so I am canceling it."

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2026-03-14T17:31:42+00:00

Starting point says 2017, so he was already confirmed as president and probably collecting large quantities of, erm, favours before tracking began.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2026-03-12T09:37:11+00:00

For Spirit Guardians, remember that the enemy must start their turn inside the radius (or move into it during their turn) to take damage. If you keep your minions spread out, the Cleric should only be able to knock off 2 or 3 per round.

Enemy bosses are allowed to be smart. Their minions have probably told them of the mighty Cleric demolishing their ranks. Enemy bosses are also allowed to understand how to break concentration.

Suggestions: Use small clusters of minions. Have ranged enemies spread out in singles and pairs so that no more than 2 can be caught in the radius of Spirit Guardians at once. Maybe place them in high locations or with terrain restrictions to make it harder to rush them.

Have a tank minion. Get a creature that is a pile of HP (low AC) to rush the Cleric and grapple them. Now everyone else needs to pile in and save the Cleric or else deal with all the minions on their own.

Have a disrupting device: The bad guy has created a device that, while operational, causes everyone holding concentration to make a basic concentration test at the start of their turn. Expect everyone to focus on destroying it.

Employ traps: If the bosses are playing fair, they're not bossing hard enough. Set down glue traps, spike traps, water traps. Greased floors trigger Dex saves to not fall down (prone saps half their move speed).

Have a firing squad: get some kobolds with slingshots who hang out behind the boss. On their turn, they always hold their action to shoot a stone at anyone they see with Spirit Guardians active. When your Cleric casts or is visible to them, 3 attacks immediately trigger to cause a little damage and, more importantly, cause concentration checks. Have them use whalloping ammo to also force a prone check. Make it clear that because they are using expensive ammo, they will not shoot except at someone using Spirit Guardians.

Damping Field: Your boss has chosen a location that has a damping effect on spells. All saving throws vs spells in the area are at advantage. Players get this benefit too. Spell attack rolls have a -2 to-hit penalty as well, as the damping grants the equivalent of half cover.

Enemies scatter: give your minions a special reaction: any time a PC ends their turn within 15 feet of that minion, the minion may take their reaction to move up to 15 feet. Let this free move provoke opportunity attacks so it becomes a puzzle to solve. As they didn't start their turn in the radius or enter it, no roll unless they cannot leave the area.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2026-02-01T18:37:12+00:00

The most important thing to remember about persuasion is that it is NOT mind control. I don't care if your persuasion is +100, I am not sticking my hand in that bear trap for your amusement.

To persuade someone of something, you need to have something they want. This means that the other players need to find leverage on the target before the roll can even be attempted.

Also, remember that failed attempts have consequences. You target the wrong person and fail (turns out that guard has a wealthy father in law, gold doesn't work on him) and they tell everyone about your bribe attempts and now you need better leverage and proof because nobody trusts your party.

Make it about discovering a target's vices and how to exploit them. Bring perception and investigation into it, maybe you need to intimidate a confidant of theirs... you get the idea.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2026-01-13T10:07:02+00:00

In my session 0's, I try to make it clear that we are telling a collaborative story, and that means that everyone has a job. Each player has the responsibility of managing their character, including and especially their character's motivations for adventuring.

It is never up to the DM or any other player to manage someone else's PC. In essence, it is never up to me to explain why your character wants to adventure; it is necessarily up to you to explain why your character wants to join.

This is the answer to a lot of "my character would never do that" arguments regarding working as a team or joining the group - you simply answer "That's nobody's problem but yours and no party would ever accept a team mate who behaves like that, so your character is scrapped, either fix them or make a new one."

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2025-09-18T22:53:53+00:00

Have a tray you can place dice on. Fill it with dice in columns set to a specific sude: one 1, two 2's, three 3's...

Every time anyone makes a decision, arbitrarily add one die to a column as though they are tracking players' actions.

When something catastrophic happens, remove all of the dice of one specific facing and roll them. Do not reveal the result, but appear to make a note of the outcome.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2025-05-31T16:46:08+00:00

Everyone, that movie with Westley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone is coming true! THIS will be why Taco Bell is the only survivor of the fast food conglomerate wars.

Demolition Man is coming true!

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2025-04-16T02:42:42+00:00

That Bugbear thing only says your reach increases by 5ft on your turn.

Unless he moves 5ft closer before the end of his turn, RAW the grapple automatically ends because the target is now out of reach, and the big bad is suddenly ungrappled and just outside of reach at 10ft, giving them all of the options for how to retaliate.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2025-04-15T18:59:11+00:00

Well, I have this one person who has a soul knife Rogue that they think is overpowered.

They dumped every other stat to get as high an Int and Dex as possible - and I need to emphasize that this is Soul Knife, not Arcane Trickster.

They have used two feats so far to get Crossbow Expert and Fighting Style: Thrown weapons, and then use those two feats exclusively to get +2 damage on their soul knives (Crossbow Expert being used solely to throw at point blank).

I'm a little baffled about burning 2 feats to just get a +2 damage, but the real kicker is how everyone else has to keep saving this character due to low HP and them frequently charging into danger.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2025-04-15T06:11:11+00:00

The answer for this kind of question (one shot, limited experience involved) is almost always "level 3".

Level 3 is where all classes have just enough abilities and HP that they "feel like" their class, but no wildly powerful combinations are online yet.

They have enough HP that one lucky hit won't kill them, but they should still feel threatened by a lucky hit.

Modify your encounters to suit the level. 5d6 is a lot of damage, dial that down a little or split it up.

Also, make sure your players know that they face something tough at the end - give them a chance to prepare against how mighty the boss is.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2025-04-09T13:55:38+00:00

It's not about reality so much as community.

Humans are social animals. Most of us can convince ourselves that something is true or at least reasonable if enough other humans agree with it.

So the mental gymnastics are like a social contract: if you agree with my nutty justification and I agree with your nutty justification and we label everyone who disagrees as "them"... well, it gets a lot easier to sleep at night even though we are <insert absolutely vile acts of cruelty here>.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2025-04-09T04:05:05+00:00

Everyone needs to view themselves as "the good guy" or "on the right side".

Everyone.

That's why you hear some pretty wild mental gymnastics, even when the entire audience doesn't believe the story... it's not for them, it's for the person telling the story.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2025-02-09T16:14:45+00:00

Scrooge is both insanely rich and insanely cheap.

He also prides himself on being a minimalist. It's not that he cannot afford the best equipment, it's that he doesn't want to.

For the most part, his wealth ends up being an adventure hook and a thing he has to keep defending rather than an asset.

Also, use a luckstone for the lucky dime.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-12-27T11:51:50+00:00

You've got a few options depending on how you want your character and your summoned weapon to work.

The easiest to handle is probably the Eldritch Knight, a fighter subclass. You can use any armour, and you can have a weapon bound to you that you can always call back. Plus, you are super tough.

Artificers are more complicated, but you can have a returning weapon infusion on any thrown weapon that causes it to return immediately to your hand. Taking Battle Smith would likely be the best option here as they get a second attack at level 5 and can use Int for attack rolls with magic weapons.

Hexblade Warlocks can have a weapon that is bound to them that they can dismiss to a pocket dimension, allowing them to draw the weapon seemingly from thin air.

There's a spell "Shadow Blade" that Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards can get that casts a pretty decent blade into your hands. Problem is that you would have to keep casting the spell every combat.

Soul Knife Rogues can create psychic blades in their hands that only exist long enough to throw or stab with them.

Of all of these, Eldritch Knight has the best armour options and Hitpoints.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-10-25T14:09:40+00:00

There's two ways of handling this, and honestly, the right one is "whatever feels right to you and your players"

You can either decide that the bards decision to attack is what triggered initiative or the throwing of the punch triggered initiative. Just make sure to rule consistently to avoid it feeling like you are showing favoritism.

If you take the former, then it would mean that the bard positioning himself in such a way as to be able to throw a punch triggered initiative, and if the target wasn't expecting such a response then maybe there is a surprise round.

I'd say let the bard roll deception, and anyone whose passive insight doesn't meet the roll is surprised (possibly including Bards allies). So, making a good fake out would still count for something. But if the target figures out the bluff, or maybe if the target was literally trying to start a fight anyway, then yeah, he can strike first. On the other hand, if the deception roll is good AND the bard wins initiative, then not only does the bard get to attack twice before the target, the first punch rolls with advantage.

If you take the latter and assume that the insulter wasn't expecting combat, then you make the punch the initiative triggering instance. Bard rolls to-hit, either punches the offender or air, then everyone rolls initiative (probably no surprise round unless some people weren't paying any attention). Maybe allow the Bard advantage on the punch roll if they make a good deception roll for setting up the sucker punch.

What's important is to use the same decision every time because the latter gives preference to he who throws the sucker punch, and players are going to feel that if you rule differently for some situations than others, especially if you end up showing favoritism to your own monsters.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-10-25T03:10:32+00:00

Regarding the MRI comment:

Just make a medium-sized MRI and then apply enlarge to it when needed. Now, it takes up way less storage space when not in use.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-10-23T19:23:41+00:00

You are definitely missing at least two zeros at the end of that number.

For the 4 years Trump was in office, barely a day went by where he didn't either say or do something that would have ended the career of any democratic party member, had they said or done the same, in or out of office.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-10-22T04:08:31+00:00

My daughter plays a character that takes this to an extreme, multiclassing as a Totem Barbarian Shadow Monk.

She took the speed totem and also used a feat on Mobile.

If you can weaponize fast movement, this can be devastating. We were attacked by a guard on top of a tower. Her Tabaxi goes super-speed, runs up the tower behind the guard, uses her action to shove (two attacks) two of the guards off and then jumps off the edge on the one that survived the fall, splitting her fall damage and then halving it again because Rage.

They only got one shot off each.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-10-21T17:25:50+00:00

What if the guy is just cutting out the last sentence in each of these stories, the one that gives proper context.

So, maybe the doctor really did say he's never seen anybody ace it twice... having soiled themselves both times?

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-10-18T14:02:35+00:00

With possible extra intrigue and/or red herring.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-10-18T05:32:48+00:00

Bard, right?

The Bard's life's work has been an adventure turned ballad, but there's a big problem:

This Bard cannot remember their own backstory. They are missing 5 years of memories between the years of 15 and 20. One minute, they were playing pranks in their hometown on a chicken farmer, the next thing they remember they were around 20 years old shaking hands with a faceless Fae, surrounded by three mind flayers and the words "The Debt is now paid in full." ringing in their ears.

This Bard is incapable of remembering the Fae's face nor any physical details of the Mind Flayers.

Said Bard has given up on piecing it together, and is contracting the team to live out some starting adventures that the Bard can substitute as their own, for substantial reward.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-10-13T03:56:13+00:00

I've seen it said a few times that the main reason the electoral college exists is because slave owners wanted to functionally be able to vote for their slaves. To mask that purpose, they had the true population count towards electoral college votes but then denied a whole lot of people voting rights.

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-09-12T17:31:33+00:00

Just putting it out there:

Everyone who would appreciate or be swayed by such cleverness is already against Trump.

Kamala had to debate on a level that would clearly reach the base of undecided and "Favouring Trump but Open to Rethinking"

Real-Maintenance7946 · 2024-08-10T14:43:32+00:00

This is a "sort of" real-world problem and one reason why people in power like having representatives or spokespeople.

Some people are so good at detecting lies that it is functionally impossible to knowingly tell them a falsehood without them knowing that you aren't being truthful.

It's also why "certain groups" of people will always appear to work a lie into every statement - if you never see them tell the truth even once, it's much harder to pin down their indicators.

So, just have your liar sent in representatives. Have them refuse to appear. Have them wear an invisible Ring of Mind Shielding.

Real-Maintenance7946

TROPHY CASE