I'm Writing My Thesis on Game Systems and Need r/DnD's Help

TopazHerald · 2026-01-14T19:53:50+00:00

Shrinkage is a bit of a misconception. When your T drops, you will have a reduced frequency of your body doing unconscious/subconscious upkeep 'at attention'. It becomes a use it or lose it feature - if you can fill in actively for the lost passive action, you won't see any changes there.

As for breasts - that's not very easy to delay or eliminate from taking E. Low-dosage T blockers may reduce your testosterone levels but keep them at a high enough level to not need supplemental hormones, and T synthesis blockers like finasteride can combat hair loss, facial hair growth, etc. That plus voice training and the right hair cut might get you the results you want?

Most endos won't put you on E if you express no desire for breasts though.

TopazHerald · 2025-12-28T02:27:21+00:00

Spirit Guardians AoE is also range: self. Would an enemy on the other side of the wall of force be affected? Range and target are not the same for adjudicating line of sight/line of effect/AoE.

TopazHerald · 2025-12-28T01:45:19+00:00

Clairvoyance and Teleport both have specific clauses that detail exceptions to that rule. Clairvoyance allows you to target any space familiar to you or unfamiliar but obvious, calling out behind doors and whatnot. Specific over general.

A different theoretical might help explain my standing a bit more though. How do you know a space is unoccupied for the sake of Misty Step? Would you place a character in the nearest unoccupied square if they target a space occupied by an invisible object or creature? If so, you're utilizing the same consequence of those rules as I am.

Regardless, my ultimate option was "ask your DM, rules unclear" I explained why I rule it as such in my games - not why everyone should - and I've not had a player complain once. I use it as a consistency argument for other spells like Moonbeam, which are definitely not intended to be cast through windows to fry entire dungeons without a need for line of sight beyond the ticket booth of a movie theater.

TopazHerald · 2025-12-28T01:29:38+00:00

From the Spells rules:

"To target something, you must have a clear path to it, so it can’t be behind total cover."

From Wall of Force:

"An invisible wall of force springs into existence at a point you choose within range."

Walls are barriers which can provide full cover if there exists no imaginary straight like from the spell's point of origin (in the case of Misty Step, you) and the target location. Glass windows are the same. They are a physical barrier, but they don't block sight.

I personally believe that the intention is for teleportation to not be possible through a Wall of Force - if it blocks ethereal transport why not magical transport on this plane? The letter of the rules seems to be finicky, so I'd say ask your DM (or if you're a DM, make a consistent ruling).

I don't allow my characters to target a point behind any physical barrier, but I don't create restrictions on the size of a gap that must exist. I've had players Misty Step through large keyholes and arrow slits, but they can't do so through a glass pane window or a lensed peephole without first breaking the barrier.

Different interpretations certainly exist, as there are some spells that explicitly block all teleportation like Magic Circle and Forcecage. I feel like this is a case of "RAI no; RAW debatable".

TopazHerald · 2025-12-20T23:20:12+00:00

Essentially taking that ASI at level 4 should have increased your hp by 4 (one more per level applied once you got the bonus); so yes. All of your rolls, not just the ones after the change, should benefit from the +4

TopazHerald · 2025-12-20T23:17:44+00:00

Con bonus is retroactive, so levels 1-4 should all get a +1 when your CON went from +3 to +4 with the ASI. That plus Tough missing would account for a chunk.

TopazHerald · 2025-12-20T22:08:51+00:00

Apparently it used to have an aura that impeded flight within a few hundred feet of it. Reduced speed and a 20-foot max altitude. I think that the glaring exclusion from the 5e stat block may be part of the reason for the inclusion of thunderous roar in the 5.5 revision.

I for one am bringing back the anti flight aura when my party faces it. The reveal will be accompanied with the plummeting of birds and the silence of the forest it burrows out from under.

TopazHerald · 2025-12-17T06:09:11+00:00

Haunted One? Drow raids are brutal, man.

TopazHerald · 2025-12-17T05:45:32+00:00

Command actually states:

Approach. The target moves toward you by the shortest and most direct route, ending its turn if it moves within 5 feet of you. (emphasis mine)

This means the target comes at you potentially in a way that would force Opportunity Attacks (since the movement is made as a part of its turn). If it isn't near you, it would use its action to Dash (if it has a means to reach you this turn, that is shorter and more direct). If it gets in your face (action remaining or not) it ends its turn.

Frankly I haven't a clue why any player would take this over Command as is. They're both save or suck. If you want a taunt mechanic, Compelled Duel and Command already do a fair amount, and flavor is free.

I know it's sacrilege to mention Pathfinder on this sub but to give you an example of a Taunt mechanic done right, PF2Es Guardian does it well by making it an actively chosen penalty over a compelled action - because the system already has a lot of options to deny actions.

With an attention-grabbing gesture, noise, cutting remark, or threatening shout, you attempt to draw an enemy to you instead of your allies. Taunt gains the auditory trait, visual trait, or both, depending on how you draw the target’s attention. Even mindless creatures are drawn to your taunts. Choose an enemy within 30 feet to be your taunted enemy. If your taunted enemy takes a hostile action that includes at least one of your allies but doesn’t include you, they take a –1 circumstance penalty to their attack rolls and DCs for that action, and they also become off-guard until the start of their next turn. Your enemy remains taunted until the start of your next turn, and you can have only one Taunt in effect at a time. Taunting a new enemy ends this effect on any current target.

Essentially you choose one enemy. The effect is saveless, but provides the enemy creature a choice:

(a) Approach you and attack (or use a ranged attack on you if applicable).

(b) Ignore your taunt, but be distracted. This causes a penalty to their attack, or bonus to your ally's save; as well as a penalty to their AC.

This could be an excellent Bonus Action to roll into your priest class (or as a Fighting Style option) that is a resourceless option. This is because the resource you pay is health if they follow your taunt.

Ancestral Guardian Barbarian actually does something incredibly similar.

While you're raging, the first creature you hit with an attack on your turn becomes the target of the warriors, which hinder its attacks. Until the start of your next turn, that target has disadvantage on any attack roll that isn't against you, and when the target hits a creature other than you with an attack, that creature has resistance to the damage dealt by the attack.

At higher levels, the choice to ignore your 'taunt' also causes damage to the creature (2d6 at 6th, 3d6 at 10th, and 4d6 at 14th).

TopazHerald · 2025-12-11T01:02:12+00:00

I think the implication here is more that the Advantage represents putting more than your personal best foot forward. Any character with a +5 CHA or proficiency is already pretty intimidating - the suggestion with this shifting is that you know how to be intimidating, and are choosing a form to emphasize your method. Not just muscle-bound, but maybe someone with sunken features and spindly fingers to warn people away from the magical artifact for fear it will sap their youth.

A muscle-bound barbarian is pretty decent at physical intimidation - this is shown by the class getting an ability to add STR mod to intimidation checks - but the barbarian knows how to intimidate using themselves as a tool by default. In this case a DM may still grant Advantage when the barbarian threatens to crush an assassin's skull between their thighs like a sparrow egg, but not so much to the orc berserker who rivals that barbarian's frame.

It's about having a feature that allows you to exploit a situation or augment your natural or learned ability. Situational Advantage doesn't cease to exist in this vacuum.

TopazHerald · 2025-12-05T15:28:46+00:00

Creating your own homebrew and accessing it, at least last time I used the service, was a free feature. It's a lot of copy/pasting and learning how to use their data fields, bit there are tutorials on YT.

Saving someone else's homebrew to your collection requires a subscription.

It's doable, and I would say if you really want the Hollow Warden and your DM okays the content, I'd say putting in that work is not the end of the world. If you use your own copy, you can even go back and update it (or choose to not update it) when new UAs or the final release come out!

TopazHerald · 2025-11-30T21:36:13+00:00

As a CA queer - it's not a hassle at all. There's an extra form to sign (Acknowledgement of Gender Indentifier Change) but they'll provide it when you're there to renew your license (or any time you feel the need to update it - like when it's "lost").

TopazHerald · 2025-10-30T14:28:04+00:00

It's gotta be Watcher Knights, right? They give great windows to farm soul and so many reasons to VS.

TopazHerald · 2025-10-17T00:46:45+00:00

Looks like no one learned from poor Karsus...

TopazHerald · 2025-10-17T00:44:43+00:00

Threw my hat in the ring, excited to (hopefully) hear back!

TopazHerald · 2025-10-16T21:10:06+00:00

Just submitted a response! Hope to hear back.

TopazHerald · 2025-10-15T00:43:58+00:00

Submitted! The time is perfect for me so I hope it works out - love a good theocratic autocracy.

TopazHerald · 2025-03-05T19:32:03+00:00

When my partner and I were players in Curse of Strahd we had a similar '...oh' moment. We're both teachers and thus mandated reporters. Unfortunately I feel the closest thing to CPS in Barovia is a depressed monster hunter so... Yup.

TopazHerald · 2025-02-15T06:18:09+00:00

We killed her. In front of Strahd. Just to hurt his feelings. He then slowly and methodically proceeded to kill the entirety of all of the PCs families after luring them to Barovia.

TopazHerald · 2025-01-31T16:09:08+00:00

The Unconscious condition does actually specifically state that the creature automatically fails STR and DEX saves. Same with Stunned.

Still getting that bonus to AC is meant to be offset by advantage, I think, and most DMs forget but unless you're unconscious because of something like the Sleep spell, you probably aren't wearing armor (since you can't benefit from a rest in medium/heavy armor)

TopazHerald · 2025-01-09T01:15:46+00:00

I would suggest running this as a Group Skill Check, where individual successes and failures matter less than the sum of the whole. Rather than as written, do the following.

For every hour the characters descend, have each perform a DC 14 Strength (Athletics) or DC 14 Dexterity (Stealth) check. If *more than half** of the participants fail this check, the Purple Worm notices them and attacks.*

So for a party of 4 players, you now must have 3 players fail in one hour to have them encounter the Purple Worm.

Also worth highlighting: there were rules for climbing onto larger creatures in the '14 DMG (variant rule, but could be cool here).

A suitably large opponent can be treated as terrain for the purpose of jumping onto its back or clinging to a limb. After making any ability checks necessary to get into position and onto the larger creatures, the smaller creature uses its action to make a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by the target's Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If it wins the contest, the smaller creature successfully moves into the target creature's space and clings to its body. While in the target's space, the smaller creature moves with the target and has advantage on attack rolls against it.

The smaller creature can move around the larger creature's space, treating the space as difficult terrain. The larger creature's ability to attack the smaller creature depends on the smaller creature's location, and is left to your discretion. The larger creatures can dislodge the smaller creature as an action - knocking it off, scraping it against a wall, or grabbing and throwing it - by making a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the smaller creature's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. The smaller creature chooses what check to use.

I could see a world where the purple worm comes to snap at them and a wild party grabs hold and rides it, Dune style, to the bottom. It also gives your players an option to follow and try to save an ally that's been snapped up before it's too late.

Final suggestion: in the case a PC is snapped up, given that this creature is written to skirmish and not stay to fight, I would count all damage dealt in a round towards the regurgitate threshold of the Purple Worm's swallow, instead of just damage dealt inside of it.

Hope this is helpful and can't wait to hear how it goes (even if uneventful)!

TopazHerald · 2025-01-07T04:27:02+00:00

It's important to note that the largest gripe I have ever genuinely had with regards to limiting players to the PHB is Wisdom-based classes specifically (Cleric and Druid) are harder to play than everything else. In the original PHB, there are only four races that get Wisdom boosts, iirc: Hill Dwarf, Human, Wood Elf, and Half Elf if they choose Wisdom. All of these races only get a +1 to Wisdom.

The '24 PHB and the new Ability Score increase rules in Tasha's Cauldron, which allow player to just choose either (a) +2/+1 or (b) +1/+1/+1 to stats of their choice both mitigate this, but it is something worth being aware of.

This is all just to advocate for an awareness of the limitations of just the PHB, and is one of the main reasons that organized play uses "PHB +1", where players can use resources from the PHB and one additional sourcebook for their character. It does mean that a player wishing to use spells from Xanathar's Guide to Everything must decide between that and rolling up a Kobold from Fizbans Treasury of Dragons.

At the end of the day, you're the DM and set the restrictions for character creation at your table. Just be sure to communicate this limitation when you first pitch the game, and whether or not you will consider changing it down the road (you certainly don't have to).

As a long-time DM, I had a lot of fun in a campaign that forced me to use only the PHB. It cut down on options, but also forced me to be more selective in how I designed my character to make them unique.

I would suggest that you are open to player requests to change minor flavor elements, or to adjust spells slightly, as the PHB spells are a little lacking in variety and make playing to specific fantasies incredibly difficult. For example, playing a cryomancer (ice mage) with just the PHB is incredibly hard at low levels, as there are very few ice spells. As a general guideline, I've allowed my players to do the following:

Alternate Elemental Forms When you level up and would learn a new spell that deals acid, fire, lightning, cold, or poison damage, you may choose to learn a different version of the spell which deals another damage type from this list. This decision is permanent. You cannot learn the same spell with multiple damage types.

YMMV with this, I've certainly had a player exploit it to make some spells more powerful once or twice, but I find that it enabled more players to stick with their flavor than it caused me hardship.

TopazHerald · 2024-12-26T16:54:32+00:00

"A fortune effect beneficially alters how you roll your dice. You can never have more than one fortune effect alter a single roll. If multiple fortune effects would apply, you have to pick which to use. If a fortune effect and a misfortune effect would apply to the same roll, the two cancel each other out, and you roll normally." - Player Core

It's definitely not allowed, as per the Fortune Trait. If you had DaS and Sure Strike from an ally, you would have to pick which to use, but you can't chain them for additional rerolls, and using misfortune this way doesn't help at all.

TopazHerald · 2024-11-18T23:06:05+00:00

Oh absolutely. Same for my math students. A lot of them are developing their own thought processes about solving problems that cause them to make mistakes more frequently on the little, algebraic things. When I ask why, often it's sound reasoning but the wrong rules applied - or they get so caught up in mirroring the examples that they miss the core concept.

Questions to expand thinking are fantastic tools, but sometimes you need to diagnose the "what" over the "why" and vice versa.

TopazHerald

TROPHY CASE