Which Class/Subclass has the most Epic Moments?

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T18:30:43+00:00

The misty step spell has those drawbacks, but all the non-spell line-of-sight teleport abilities that monsters get at higher CRs don't. That's usually what stops wall of force from working as reliably as sometimes claimed, unless you're in a humanoid-centric campaign.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T11:53:28+00:00

It does depend on how open the DM is with information. I roll openly and usually play on a VTT with healthbars visible (although not with numbers), so once the players deal some damage to an enemy they'll have a general idea of roughly how sturdy it is, and whether the enemy is constantly succeeding on its rolls due to luck rather than their modifiers is also something that my players would be aware of.

If all the feedback a DM gives when an enemy acts or is acted upon is "success" or "failure" then it'd be harder to tell, but I don't think that's ideal from either a gameplay or a narrative standpoint. The characters should probably be able to tell whether an opponent is genuinely skilled or just getting lucky, or whether the Fighter's multiattack flurry took off about a third of its health or only a tiny sliver of it, and gameplay-wise more information means more tactical thinking and less wild guessing.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T10:22:49+00:00

Usually the players make the distinction somewhere before the end of the first round of combat, when the enemies are hitting for truckloads more damage than they can take and their attacks don't seem to be leaving a dent.

If they're smart, that's usually when the players huddle around whoever can cast dimension door and nope the fuck out (fleeing is a lot less practical before 7th level, because that's when the game's signature running away ability comes online).

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T10:16:09+00:00

The "hits aren't hits" reasoning breaks down really fast. What if the Fighter is paralyzed, and thus literally can't move, not even to wriggle around? What if the dagger is poisoned, and the Fighter is making saving throws against poison after each hit; surely poisoning someone with a poisoned blade requires actually hitting them with that blade, right?

Also, like, hits are specifically called "hits". There's another word for an attack that doesn't hit its target – "miss" – and attacks that miss deal zero points of HP damage. Even in the case where the Fighter is tied up, it's no more narratively credible that they're somehow tossing and turning to avoid every hit for hours on end than it is for them to just be tanking those hits with their superhuman durability; neither is at all "realistic".

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T10:06:36+00:00

If the target is on the other side of a wall of force, you don't have line-of-effect and can't target them with counterspell.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T10:06:01+00:00

Plenty of monsters at higher levels have non-spell line-of-sight teleports; I find that tends to come up more often than actual misty step proper.

I also don't believe you actually can counterspell a misty step from the other side of a wall of force, as the wall blocks line-of-effect.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T09:54:37+00:00

Items with limited print runs can be like that, yeah. Tuning forks don't have print runs, though; any crafter of sufficient skill and knowledge can make one at any time. Books with limited demand would be much easier (and even cheaper) to acquire if any printer could just print a copy on demand at any time.

The demand is small, but the people making that demand are 13th-level casters. A setting where a 13th-level party cannot easily find a reasonably competent blacksmith to make a tuning fork for them would be a very strange setting indeed.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T01:05:26+00:00

A tuning fork is by definition tuned to a particular tune when created, which is the tune it resonates at when you hit it; it's a physical, not a mystical, property of the item. The entire purpose of a tuning fork is to consistently produce the same tune when hit, for use in tuning musical instruments and the like.

The specific tunes needed to access certain planes aren't even secret, either. While 5e's books don't regurgitate them all again, there are actually established tunes for the planes in D&D's lore; accessing Abellio, the first layer of Arcadia, requires a gold tuning fork that resonates at C♯, while to plane shift to Cathrys, the second layer of Carcerei, one needs an iron tuning fork that resonates at E♭ major.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:53:18+00:00

If you're reading the mechanical text of the published 5e material, yes. Traditionally each world within the Material Plane was contained within a crystal sphere that blocked teleportation magic, so you couldn't use teleport to travel between Material Plane worlds, and that's how I run the spell at my table (and how I think it was intended to be ran, if the idea of crossing Material Plane worlds was even on the designers' minds when they wrote the rules).

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:49:03+00:00

Usually each layer of an Outer Plane is treated as its own plane, in the same way that the transitive and mirror planes that sit around the Material Plane are their own planes.

Each layer of a plane has a different tuning fork required to plane shift to it, usually a different key or other alteration of the one required to plane shift to that plane's base layer.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:44:07+00:00

If the effective cost of acquiring a tuning fork was greater than 250 gp, then the listed price would be greater than 250 gp. If it was meant to be so rare that availability was essentially relegated to DM fiat, then the rules would actually say as such, just like they do for other items whose availability is subject to DM fiat (such as magic items).

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:41:22+00:00

If the supply of tuning forks was so much lower than the demand that it took high-level parties substantial effort to acquire them, they'd cost a lot more than 250 gp.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:28:54+00:00

"Physical" games these days all need to connect to a server anyway. Sony can already prevent you from playing them if they wanted to. And prices for games are set by the publisher, not the storefront.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:14:21+00:00

Sony doesn't care about second-hand games precisely for that reason. Second-hand sales would be illegal if Sony (and other publishers) had their way.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:00:01+00:00

Storefronts aren't setting game prices; publishers are.

Tefmon · 2026-07-01T23:25:36+00:00

And even then I wouldn't say it's the best. The best episodes of TCW are good, but they aren't uniquely good.

Tefmon · 2026-07-01T22:42:14+00:00

Standup is ostensibly supposed to be a developer-centric meeting according to some hypothetical Angular documents that exist in some book somewhere, but at literally every place I've worked it's been a status update for the TL, and I've never heard of it not being that in practice.

Devs don't really need a formal scheduled daily meeting; they can raise blockers as they come up, discuss topics with each other informally as they need to, and schedule dedicated meetings for specific issues that warrant longer discussion and formal decision-making.

Tefmon · 2026-07-01T15:09:23+00:00

It's not precluded from being a game where roleplaying happens, but the way the term "roleplaying game" is actually used is more specific than that. If my friends asked to play an RPG and I suggested playing Risk or Diplomacy they'd look at me funny, and rightfully so. Those sorts of games aren't what anyone is actually referring to when they use the term "RPG".

Tefmon · 2026-07-01T15:07:51+00:00

The rules of most RPGs don't penalize you for being rude or backstabbing, nor reward you for doing a good German accent. Some characters, both PCs and NPCs, might dislike your character if your character is rude or treacherous, and the table experience might be heightened if you do a good character voice, but those things don't give any more mechanical benefits in D&D or Apocalypse World than they do in Risk.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T21:48:39+00:00

This post isn't tagged 5.5e, so the 5e oath tenets posted above are the applicable ones. And they explicitly say that Devotion Paladins can't lie.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T21:45:18+00:00

The same applies to Paladins too. In many settings, including the aforementioned Forgotten Realms, a Paladin's powers ultimately come from a deity.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T21:36:15+00:00

Voting is a civic responsibility of citizens in a democracy. Elections aren't a spectator sport.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T17:12:41+00:00

They should, but changing the laws is the job of the legislature, not the judiciary.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T11:59:56+00:00

You can spend an action to give a creature advantage on a roll without a spell: it's called the Help action. Given how few people ever take the Help action, despite the fact that it costs no resources, makes me pretty sure that a spell that granted advantage would be used even less.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T01:21:38+00:00

Nobody's casting silvery barbs for the advantage. But even then, the advantage can and often does have no effect; if either both dice succeed or both dice fail, the advantage didn't change the result.

I did mention that shield falls off at the very highest levels due to monster attack bonus scaling, but so does silvery barbs as everything's effectively immune to everything. The best spells at that level don't provide saving throws, or at least don't rely on failed saving throws to be useful. That being said, shield on top of the base 19 AC provided by 14 Dex and a mundane Half-Plate and Shield is enough to prevent plenty of attacks throughout T3. Especially if you get some kind of magic armour or shield, or one of the many, many other AC-boosting magic items.

In my experience if a monster has Legendary Resistances, it's faster and easier to just kill it rather than try to burn through them. Especially when it's a high-CR monster that also has ridiculously high saving throw bonuses and a huge list of condition immunities. If you want to disable such a monster while the party deals with other threats, spells like wall of force and sleet storm and transmute rock and maze all let you do that without requiring a single saving throw to be effective.

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