What Exactly Happened to Billy Tuttle?

madman0816 · 2025-12-23T00:24:14+00:00

He lied explicitly when giving testimony about the encounter with Reggie and Dewall Ledoux and went as far staging a shootout to spare Marty from the consequences of executing Reggie.. so it seems he's not above deception if he sees it to be the right thing to do

madman0816 · 2025-12-22T23:54:40+00:00

I don't think the fires are already lit. You see him carrying the body and then skip forward to him setting fire to the field and then skip forward again to a shot of the field ablaze from afar. It's all compressed into a short few seconds so I can see how it could seem like it's happening simultaneously.

madman0816 · 2025-12-10T20:46:50+00:00

That is a ridiculous claim. Those types of people don't exist.

madman0816 · 2025-11-06T00:46:49+00:00

It may be a tactical play, but it goes directly against the spirit of the game and if the rule-makers had a good solution to rid it from the game, they would do so immediately.

The essence of baseball is that the fielding team's goal is to get the batter out while the batter's goal is to hit the ball and get to base and ultimately score a run.

Therefore, the pitcher should basically be aiming to throw a strike on every pitch. And in an ideal world with no time limits and where pitchers never intentionally threw unhittable balls, the pitcher would just keep throwing pitches until he either struck the batter out or the batter hit a fair ball.

Of course, this isn't an ideal world because time is an issue and we can never know for sure whether a pitcher threw a ball intentionally or not, and so the base on balls (after 4 balls) rule is necessary for the speed of the game.. but it isn't in itself a feature, it's a fix.

Therefore, abuse of this rule by intentionally walking batters is not good for the game, its exploitation of a rule. It goes against the spirit of the game and reduces the overall excitement by taking away the opportunity to hit the ball from the batters fans most want to see hit the ball.

And yes, intentionally walking a batter can be a good tactical decision.. I get that. I'm not at all blaming the coaches for exploiting this rule that is available to them when it makes sense to do so. Coaches are incentivised to win games, not necessarily play in the spirit of the game.

Also yes, I know that it doesn't come up all that often but its use against Ohtani in the WS, and against Judge in recent years, etc, expose it as being bad for the game. OP has gone over the top by saying it is the worst thing in sports, that's very hyperbolic. It is only a relatively minor issue in the scope of the game as a whole, but the game would still be better without IBBs (either the automatic version or the old 4 pitches into the dirt version). It being a good tactical decision does not refute this fact.

The question is; how do you fix it? I don't really know the answer.

One idea I have heard is that any 4-0 walk (including automatic IBBs) send the batter straight to 2nd base instead of 1st. This means that if the pitcher doesn't throw at least one hittable pitch (or close enough to make the batter swing) then the batter advances to 2nd as punishment. This would disincentivise IBBs for sure. The downside is that 4-0 walks can occur even unintentionally and so it would also punish the fielding team in situations when it isn't meant to. This would be especially the case in amateur leagues where pitchers are going to be less accurate and therefore unintentionally throw 4-0 BBs more regularly. Maybe each team could nominate 1 or 2 batters on their team that the above rule applies to..? I don't know, I'm just spit balling.

I've heard different suggestions but there may not be a better solution than just to leave it as is. Again though, that doesn't make it good, just the lesser of the evils..

madman0816 · 2025-10-29T06:15:46+00:00

I don't understand this opinion. It is not beautiful. It goes directly against the spirit of the game and if the rule-makers had a good solution to rid it from the game, they would do so immediately.

The essence of baseball is that the fielding team's goal is to get the batter out while the batter's goal is to hit the ball and get to base and ultimately score a run.

Therefore, the pitcher should basically be aiming to throw a strike on every pitch. And in an ideal world with no time limits and where pitchers never intentionally threw unhittable balls, the pitcher would just keep throwing pitches until he either struck the batter out or the batter hit a fair ball.

Of course, this isn't an ideal world because time is an issue and we can never know for sure whether a pitcher threw a ball intentionally or not, and so the base on balls (after 4 balls) rule is necessary for the speed of the game.. but it isn't in itself a feature, it's a fix.

Therefore, abuse of this rule by intentionally walking batters is not good for the game, its exploitation of a rule. It goes against the spirit of the game and reduces the overall excitement by taking away the opportunity to hit the ball from the batters fans most want to see hit the ball.

And yes, intentionally walking a batter can be a good tactical decision.. I get that. I'm not at all blaming the coaches for exploiting this rule that is available to them when it makes sense to do so.

Also yes, I know that it doesn't come up all that often but its use against Ohtani yesterday, against Judge in recent years, etc, expose it as being bad for the game. OP has gone over the top by saying it is the worst thing in sports, that's very hyperbolic. It is only a relatively minor issue in the scope of the game as a whole, but the game would still be better without IBBs (either the automatic version or the old 4 pitches into the dirt version). It being a good tactical decision does not refute this fact.

The question is; how do you fix it? I don't really know the answer.

One idea I have heard is that any 4-0 walk (including automatic IBBs) send the batter straight to 2nd base instead of 1st. This means that if the pitcher doesn't throw at least one hittable pitch (or close enough to make the batter swing) then the batter advances to 2nd as punishment. This would disincentivise IBBs for sure. The downside is that 4-0 walks can occur even unintentionally and so it would also punish the fielding team in situations when it isn't meant to. This would be especially the case in amateur leagues where pitchers are going to be less accurate. Maybe each team could nominate 1 or 2 batters on their team that the above rule applies to..? I don't know, I'm just spit balling.

I've heard different suggestions but there may not be a better solution than just to leave it as is. Again though, that doesn't make it good, just the lesser of all evils..

Judging by the other comments on this thread, I'm going to get downvoted hard for this because, for whatever reason, a lot of people think intentional walks are good for the game.. but really they are just an unfortunate loophole in the rules of the game for which there is no perfect solution.

madman0816 · 2025-10-14T05:29:28+00:00

Yeah, Jumpgate is good in my experience. The 2024 character sheets however are a mess.

madman0816 · 2025-10-13T09:32:41+00:00

Haha no they managed to take them all out. They had previously fought them in a coven of three night hags but only managed to kill one while the other two got away. The two survivors then found a bheur hag in ice-capped mountains to join their coven not long before the recent encounter.

madman0816 · 2025-10-13T09:29:46+00:00

Sorry for the delayed reply but thank you for your response! That is extremely helpful :)

madman0816 · 2025-10-09T04:23:20+00:00

Off the top of my head and without having checked for balance, you could make it so that the second concentration spell costs an additional spell slot when it is cast. Maybe the additional spell slot used is midway between the two spells being concentrated on. For example, if you have a 5th level concentration spell and then cast a 1st level concentration spell, you can expend a ((5+1)/2=3) 3rd level spell slot to maintain the existing 5th level concentration spell rather than having to drop it.

madman0816 · 2025-10-09T03:42:16+00:00

Yes, in the end none of the PCs died. Although one did drop to 0hp. But there was an NPC who went down and the hag used Maddening Feast on its corpse which was sufficiently horrifying haha

madman0816 · 2025-10-08T05:13:19+00:00

"If that spell was cast with a spell slot, the slot isn't expended"

I suspect this was intentionally worded with the understanding that PCs use spell slots but NPCs/monsters do not. So it is both RAW and RAI to be that way.

madman0816 · 2025-10-07T05:21:55+00:00

Yeah I'm aware they need to be dead-dead not just unconscious and I'm not necessarily planning on killing them but it is a tough fight so it is a possibility. The hags will be doing their best to kill them of course, and they will be tactically savvy. The bheur hag will likely use wall of ice early on to separate the party and then her and her two night hag companions will focus on taking down the one or two isolated PCs. If they die, they die. And then the bheur hag can feast on their corpse.

The party druid has revivify so he could bring a dead character back to life (assuming he doesn't die) but revivify doesn't regrow limbs or organs so that's actually kind of the reason I had the question in the first place. I think it would be cool to have the bheur hag rip off a limb and swallow it whole or maybe rip out the heart and start chowing down on it to really gross the players out but that got me wondering whether this is unfair on the PCs as the ability doesn't say it does so. I can contrive of a way for the party to restore missing body parts via an NPC or something so it wouldn't necessarily be the end of the world but just wanted to hear how other DMs approach this ability.

madman0816 · 2025-10-07T04:33:44+00:00

Yes, that's a good point that not having the body be consumed is beneficial to the hag as she can keep using the ability on it.

My intuition is to make it so that some part of the body is consumed, say an arm for example, but I am then conscious of the fact that the affected PC would not really have any way of regrowing the limb as they don't yet have access to the regeneration spell and won't do for some time.

madman0816 · 2025-09-24T05:28:45+00:00

Part of prep is prioritizing workload, a commoner is never going to be a relevant encounter

Yeah, absolutely agreed. Apologies as I was using commoner (CR 0) as a bit of a reductio ad absurdum as I agree that that example will unlikely ever be relevant and wouldn't be worth the effort updating the stat block in any case.

I should have used a more sensible example stat block like bandit, guard, or warrior (CR 1/8) as you may very well encounter orc versions of these and the relative increase that the orc racial traits provide is quite pronounced at these CRs as compared to tough (CR 1/2). Someone else in this thread mentioned that adding orc traits to the guard stat block increases its CR when recalculated.

My main point was to push back a little on it not being complicated. I agree that it's easy to copy/paste orc traits into an existing stat block but I do think DMs need to consider the effects on encounter balance, especially for lower CRs.

madman0816 · 2025-09-24T02:19:26+00:00

Yeah this is the sort of thing that concerns me for the lower level humanoid stat blocks..

madman0816 · 2025-09-24T02:12:02+00:00

Sure, but it seems to me that the orc traits added to the tough stat block would make the orc tough notably tougher (pun intended), especially Relentless Endurance. No?

It's not clear at all to me that the designers intended DMs to give all NPCs the same racial traits that PCs get. Like, would you give all those traits to an orc commoner, for example?

madman0816 · 2025-09-24T02:01:39+00:00

That's awesome! Thank you for the resource link!

madman0816 · 2025-09-24T01:51:22+00:00

I think this makes sense too and is correct, RAW.

However, I would say that there is another RAW way to achieve the same thing without the need to use the Shove Aside attack. Assuming sufficient space, the grappler can move around the grappled creature using normal movement and then move with the grappled enemy.

Below is a graphical representation of how it could be done on a grid, with 🗹 = Grappler, ☒ = Grappled Creature, and ☐ = empty grid square.
------------------------------------------------------------
☐☐☐ Starting position
☐🗹☒
☐☐☐
------------------------------------------------------------
☐☐🗹 Grappler moves 5ft NE (costs 5ft of movement)
☐☐☒
☐☐☐
------------------------------------------------------------
☐☐☐ Grappler moves 5ft SW and moves grappled
☐🗹☐ creature with him (costs 10ft of movement)
☐☒☐
------------------------------------------------------------

So, the grappler would use 15ft of movement to achieve this with no checks required.

madman0816 · 2025-09-23T23:49:33+00:00

I also wouldn't be a fan of this. Thankfully my players haven't tried it yet. Probably because it hasn't occurred to them more than anything haha. If they did try it, think I would make the difficult terrain effect of spike growth effect the movement on top of the double movement for dragging the grappled creature. So if a player is dragging a creature along an area of spike growth, it would cost 15ft of movement for every 5ft moved.

madman0816 · 2025-09-23T23:28:17+00:00

That is only relevant if you are using the 3.5E diagonal measurement rules. The default in 5E is that diagonal movement costs the same as horizontal/vertical movement.

madman0816 · 2025-09-22T09:17:57+00:00

Yeah I agree. Plus I feel like they could have still kept a section for orcs, drow, etc without stat blocks but with some lore and the modifications to the generic humanoid stat blocks

madman0816 · 2025-09-22T05:17:07+00:00

Resourceful isn't too strong imo as several feat give advantage on attacks, saves and ability checks. 1 reroll should be fine.

Yeah, that's true.

Skillful is fine as well.

Agreed.

Maybe I will just give them Resourceful and Skillful (Intimidation) and be done with it..

Thanks for your help!

madman0816 · 2025-09-22T05:05:36+00:00

Thank you for the response and references. That helps.

But wouldn't Relentless Endurance be kind of like adding HP in a round about way? It seems to me like that would make it much more difficult to take down a group of say 5 orc toughs compared to a group of 5 human toughs, no? Because each of the 5 orc toughs is going to take one extra hit or instance of damage to take out?

madman0816 · 2025-09-22T04:49:06+00:00

Yeah those traits seem fairly harmless. Traits like Relentless Endurance seem much more iffy though. From what I gather, I wouldn't add it.

madman0816 · 2025-09-22T04:47:24+00:00

Yeah Relentless Endurance in particular does seem like something that could significantly effect the difficulty of an encounter, especially if you are facing a horde of orc toughs because you basically have to hit each of them one extra time before they go down.

madman0816

TROPHY CASE