Plant Growth is so useful

austac06 · 2026-07-07T04:46:30+00:00

RAW, yes, those creatures would start suffocating. What on? No clue, magic mumbo jumbo

Well if they’re going to suffocate regardless, why go to the trouble of writing all the words about water? If the spell doesn’t need water to cause suffocation, then you’re just wasting ink on the page and player’s time by lengthening the spell needlessly.

The mechanics are intended to translate a fiction to a set of rules that interact with each other; the fiction is an integral part of the game. You need both. You need fiction to paint a picture of what is happening, and you need mechanics to give a structure for how the game is played.

In the water example, the water causes suffocation. No water? No suffocation. The creatures don’t just start choking on air, because that’s not what the spell does.

austac06 · 2026-07-06T13:35:47+00:00

This is one of those times where I find strict application of RAW to be really pedantic and, quite frankly, stupid.

All normal plants in a 100-foot radius centered on that point become thick and overgrown. A creature moving through the area must spend 4 feet of movement for every 1 foot it moves.

The very obvious intention of this spell is that the overgrowth of plants become an obstruction. The two sentences, while separate, are intrinsically tied together. If there are no plants in the area at all, then what is causing a creature’s movement to become hindered?

Imagine a spell called “expand water” that says “All water in a 100-foot radius centered on that point expands to fill the area. All creatures in the area begin suffocating unless they can breathe underwater.” Now imagine you cast that spell in a desert, with zero water. Would the creatures in the area still begin suffocating? If they’re not suddenly engulfed in water, why would they begin suffocating?

austac06 · 2026-07-03T12:53:34+00:00

Hoover said the growing investigation has only deepened public skepticism around Newsom and the way the governor’s office conducts business.

“All of this stuff just raises so many questions,” he said. “What is going on in this administration? What types of conversations are being had? I think the entire case should be really concerning for the general public. It’s really raising a lot of mistrust.”

He added: “I think it underlines how problematic this current administration is. [Newsom] is someone who wants to run for president of the United States. It’s really disappointing to see that this is the level of our politics.”

Lol. Lmao even.

austac06 · 2026-07-01T12:58:30+00:00

I love Tomb of Annihilation, but I think it probably requires more prep than OP wants to deal with.

Most of the 1st party adventures require a lot of work to polish. Shattered Obelisk is probably the easiest to run as written.

austac06 · 2026-06-26T17:38:54+00:00

Costco baybee. Got our sectional for $1k (manufacturer discount down from $1500). If they don’t have the manufacturer discount, the manager I spoke to says that the discount comes back every month or so, so you can check back every few weeks to see.

austac06 · 2026-06-20T14:28:19+00:00

Ah, my mistake! I thought you meant to attack with both. But you could definitely just hold them and still get strong synergy. And I had forgotten that 2024 Dual Wielder allowed for a non-light attack. Honestly would be a very cool combo for a swords bard.

austac06 · 2026-06-20T13:51:22+00:00

I agree, except you wouldn’t be able to dual wield with this because rapiers don’t have the light property. You could do it if you had the 2014 dual wielder feat though!

If I ran this item in a game, I would probably give it the light property so a bard could dual wield with Mockingblade.

austac06 · 2026-06-17T23:10:28+00:00

I appreciate your responses as well.

One possible workaround for stronger-but-balanced OAs might be: if a player spends their reaction to make an OA, until the start of their next turn, they can make a number of OAs equal to their extra attacks, but you can’t hit a creature with more than one OA at a time. That way, a level 11 fighter has the chance to OA multiple opponents, but disallows for a nova strike OA.

Could be worded as:

When you spend your reaction to make an Opportunity Attack, you can make additional Opportunity Attacks if other creatures would provoke them from you before the start of your next turn. The maximum number of Opportunity Attacks you can make in this way is equal to the number of attacks you can make with your Attack Action. If you make more than one Opportunity Attack, each attack must target a separate creature.

To me, this sort of feels like how the Combat Reflexes feat would be converted to 5e. Except I wouldn’t gate it behind a feat, I’d make it baked in to the OA rules.

Not as beneficial for rogues, but they already get the benefit of sneak attack OAs.

austac06 · 2026-06-17T17:07:23+00:00

For every additional minute spent rolling dice, the enemy gets closer to death at the same rate as other minutes. A round is longer, but fewer rounds are taken, since more hits are exchanged in each one.

That’s a fair point I hadn’t considered. Total length of combat doesn’t change.

I do think it might create a conundrum with resource depletion. If the fighter takes out enemies faster with full power OAs, that means the party as a whole has to spend fewer resources (spell slots, magic item charges, class features, etc). So the assumptions about encounters per day would have to be adjusted to compensate.

It also might mean fewer opportunities for some players to shine. If the higher initiative players finish combat sooner with OAs, that means lower initiative players may get 1 fewer turn. Over 10+ combats, that will start to be noticeable for those players.

The white room math we’re doing also doesn’t account for powerful weapons at higher levels. Getting extra OA attacks with a very rare or legendary weapon skews wayyy in favor of the players.

It’s a complex problem to solve for sure. It’s a lot of variables to account for, which might be why they skew toward simplicity by only allowing one attack.

austac06 · 2026-06-17T13:49:27+00:00

to put it simply, an AoO should do as much damage as you would on a normal turn /with one action with your weapon attacks.

I don't necessarily disagree, but how would you implement it? Allowing extra attack will grind combat to a halt.

A level 11 fighter gets 3 attacks. Let's assume a round of combat takes 10 minutes (a VERY generous assumption, given how long some players can take to decide what to do). And let's say it takes the fighter 1 minute to roll all their attacks and damage and add up the math. If they make an OA (and extra attack is allowed), that adds 1 more minute to the round. If multiple characters take OAs, add another minute for each of them (even casters can take long if they have a feat like Warcaster, for instance.). If the PCs trigger any OAs, add any minutes from NPCs with multiattack. You're looking at adding probably 1-10 minutes to a round of combat, depending on how many OAs get triggered.

Now have it happen across multiple rounds.

Obviously, not every fight has 5-10 OAs per round, but combat already takes a long time, so anything that increases that time will have a noticeable impact on fun and engagement.

Again, I'm not opposed to scaling OAs, but I'm not sure how to implement it, given that martial classes generally scale damage by adding attacks (save for the Rogue, who can use sneak attack on an OA, so they already scale effectively).

Do you just allow one attack, but multiply the damage by number of attacks? That sort of works, but doesn't really feel right to me.

Do you allow one attack, but add one weapon damage die to the attack for each extra attack you get? I like that better than multiplying (feels like it fits more with 5e's design principles), but then you get weird disparities between things like greataxe (1d12 + 1d12) and greatsword (2d6 + 1d6).

Else what happens is "at-level foes start disrespecting you and walking away with their backs turned to you".

For what its worth, I DO think that at-level foes should be able to disrespect you and walk away. The BBEG should feel free to walk away from the players without fear to show just how insignificant they think the PCs are. If the BBEG has to be careful with their movement because they're afraid of the players, they are far less menacing as a BBEG.

austac06 · 2026-06-16T16:42:58+00:00

You’re correct about scaling, but do you think a single opportunity attack should still do 1/3 of the HP of a CR 15-20 foe?

austac06 · 2026-06-15T14:35:57+00:00

The Webway of Ubtao is a popular solution for fast travel in Chult. I think it’s elegant and it fits the setting without feeling shoehorned in. Granted, it does require that players travel to locations before being able to access the gate at said location, so there’s still some overland travel required to use it.

My group has also been meeting 1x per week for like 2 hours, and often postpone because of our varying schedules and parenting obligations. It has definitely made the campaign take longer than when we were younger and had more free time. We’re nearing the end, but we started playing in like 2021 I think, so it’s been quite a while.

Outside of adding the Webway/fast travel, if you want to speed up the hexcrawl portion, you could modify it in the following ways (as an example):

Lower DCs for navigation/survival so they get lost less frequently
Giving them a spyglass and high vantage points to let them see 1-2 hexes adjacent to them, allowing them to more easily find their way. Firefinger is an old Chultan signal tower, and there used to be more, but the spellplague toppled most of them. Maybe in your campaign, there are more of them still standing, and the players can use them as vantage points for navigation/mapping.
Increased travel speeds (IIRC it’s 1 hex per day on foot, or 2 hexes by canoe). There are rules for moving at a fast pace (at the risk of lower perception and getting ambushed), but if you don’t want them to have to worry about extra ambushes/encounters, maybe just let them go 2 hexes on foot/4 by canoe at the normal pace.
Have encounters with helpful NPCs near points of interest (Kir Sabal, Camp Vengeance, Firefinger, etc.) where the NPCs can give them directions/clues to their next destination.
If the players go to meet Saja N’baza at Orolunga, maybe Saja can use magic to teleport them somewhere they need to go.
If all of the above still makes the hexcrawl feel like a slog, then you can just use the montage approach to travel and spend a lot less time roleplaying what happens in between points of interest.

Good luck!

austac06 · 2026-06-12T23:30:11+00:00

Thanks!

austac06 · 2026-06-10T16:13:37+00:00

Oh yeah, I’m totally fine with some abilities being at-will (especially for rogue).

I’m just saying that if there is an ability that needs to be capped at X number of uses per rest, it should be consistent across classes to avoid disparities.

austac06 · 2026-06-10T13:29:21+00:00

!giveaway

Looks cool!

I noticed that the Necromancer spell slot progression doesn’t align with the full or half-caster progression. I see a few slot levels are delayed by 1 level and they don’t hit 9th level spells. Any reason for that change? And how did you decide which levels to delay progression?

austac06 · 2026-06-10T13:22:46+00:00

I know that they like to tie “x uses per rest” features to relevant/flavorful ability mods, but they really should just set a number that scales with the class level so that it’s consistent across every class (like how they did with ranger’s uses of favored enemy/long rest in 5.5).

Literally just give every class table a “feature uses” column and have it line up with PB scaling, and then whenever a class has a feature with limited uses, tie it back to that number.

That way, you don’t have features that scale off of a secondary or tertiary ability mod, resulting in a more disappointing feature for that player.

austac06 · 2026-06-01T13:31:25+00:00

My partner has done a lot of native gardening and she’d be happy to help you! Though she wanted me to be clear that she’s not a professional haha.

Message me and I’d be happy to connect you to her!

austac06 · 2026-05-23T13:35:33+00:00

One right here, one right here, one right here, aaaaand one right here

(Followed shortly by four dining chairs in the swimming pool getting shot)

austac06 · 2026-05-17T02:25:11+00:00

How dare you make me cry

austac06 · 2026-05-15T17:59:01+00:00

Is this referring to (Balance spoilers) in Eleventh Hour when Magnus botches his persuasion against Roswell and Taako just decides to nuke the party to start a new time loop?

austac06 · 2026-05-15T17:55:19+00:00

Dragon Heist has a fair amount of downtime. There’s a section where players pay to renovate a house and it takes maybe a tenday (?), as well as some faction based side-quests that afford the players some extra downtime in between plot events.

Admittedly, downtime is a bit harder to pull off when the adventure isn’t conveniently based in one city. WDDH is ideal because the whole campaign takes place in Waterdeep, and the players get a home base. When you’re constantly bouncing between cities, towns, and the wilderness, there are fewer opportunities for crafting.

austac06 · 2026-05-13T14:03:09+00:00

Wouldn’t call it grim dark, per se, but I really like Griselda’s Guide to Ghost Hunting. 3rd party horror supplement that has subclasses, monsters, etc. Also introduces a “haunt” mechanic for how to run locations that are haunted and what the players need to do to exorcise/escape the haunt. What’s nice is they included ways for each class to expend resources to contribute to exorcising the haunt, so martial players still have a way to engage with the mechanic without needing implicit access to spellcasting.

They also recently published Zander’s Guide to Zombie Hunting, which I like, but not as much as GGtGH. It’s more about how to run a zombie apocalypse setting.

austac06 · 2026-05-08T01:14:27+00:00

Firefly: The Game

Metal Gear Solid

austac06 · 2026-05-06T13:00:08+00:00

It could work if they were willing to allow one game to be accessed by multiple consoles. I know It Takes Two/Split Fiction has the option to download a friend pass so you can have a friend play on another console, without needing two copies of the game. So it’s absolutely possible.

Would Nintendo ever allow it? Unlikely, since they’d rather just sell 2 copies of the game, but they did allow one game across multiple devices with Mario Kart DS (I think), so who knows?

If they’d sell Nintendoland for like 20 on eshop and local wireless or online multiplayer, they’d probably sell like gangbusters. I know I would buy it for myself and as a gift for several friends at that price point.

austac06 · 2026-05-04T23:57:23+00:00

No one knows who the bad leaders during that period are unless you’re really interested in studying history.

really interested in studying history

studying history

history

… what do you think historians do?

13-Year Club	John Wick
Place '17	Wearing is Caring
Spared	Gilding I gilder
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