Oh, I haven’t purchased any of the revised 2024 material but I still follow it and am playing in a campaign being run by a friend.

I don’t feel like it’s worth giving up regularly seeing friends I’ve had for decades just to avoid WotC materials on principle.

They changed True Strike significantly in the 2024 rules making it no longer a waste of an action for regular attacks.

New Strike lets you attack as part of the casting using your spellcasting stat in place of str/dex for the weapon, optionally changes the weapons damage type to radiant, and adds cantrip scaling to your weapon damage.

The one use case for original True Strike to give advantage on leveled spell attack rolls and reduce the chance of wasting a spell slot (or other consumable) on a miss is gone though.

They have fairly reasonable guides on their site on how to host for others.

https://foundryvtt.com/kb/

Depends on what part of “set up” you’re referring to. Getting the software itself up and running is extremely easy. They have versions available for the full swathe of experience levels from “here is a packaged Electron based Windows application” to “here are the node.js source files”. All prior versions are also available if you have specific needs for an earlier version.

Now, if you mean how difficult is it to set up and run a game, that’s going to vary wildly depending on the system the game uses and how complex of a scenario whoever is running the game wants to deal with. There are lots of off-the-shelf one shots or campaigns you can run where that setup is already done for you though.

Couple of things I have running on my phone server no one has mentioned yet.

FoundryVTT is a self-hostable platform for playing tabletop RPGs online. It supports a vast selection of game systems and user/community developed mods making it extremely versatile.

Pihole is probably something you’ve heard of before and despite the name is hostable on a wide variety of systems. In case you haven’t it’s a network level ad blocker that works by taking over the role of DNS server on your LAN and blocking queries to domains used to serve ads or track telemetry.

Hide behind the mountain of dead bards!

Yeah, absolutely. There are plenty of RAW ways to allow a bbeg to monologue, at least to some degree.

Of course it’s also entirely within the GM’s power to just tell the players to let it happen, but it definitely feels better when there’s some kind of in game reason why.

By the rules of the game you can’t surprise someone who is aware of your presence, so you’re correct.

That also means you don’t automatically get to interrupt a monologue by blasting the bbeg in the face mid-sentence. You need to roll initiative to see if you are able to act before they can respond.

Now, this I like.

I have also never played Rimworld but curiosity got the better of me and against my better judgment I checked to see if you were correct.

You were.

Since you asked:

• Rolling damage against the floor on a miss
• The intimidate check granting a +2 to hit as a free action
• Using Mage Hand to manipulate items that are worn/held by a creature

The damage against the floor is a minor thing, and smashing up the place as a consequence of fighting there is a reasonable bit of extra flavour. I’m not against it.

A free action that grants a skill check to get +2 to hit on your next attack as a reward for missing is wildly disproportionate. There are feats worse than that. If this is a thing people can do why would literally everyone playing not be constantly chewing up the floor in every encounter?

Broadly speaking objects that are worn or held are exempted from automatic manipulation by spells and effects, though this is usually called out in the description of the effect. Telekinesis, which is much stronger than Mage Hand, is one such spell which grants the wearer a save. Then you have things like Catapult, Daylight, or Fireball’s ignition effect, from which held or carried items are flatly immune. Personally I’d consider that grounds to extend that same restriction to Mage Hand.

I’d go so far as to say it’s not just the DM’s prerogative to set DCs for actions the players want to take but literally part of their job as specifically outlined in the core rules on ability checks.

The fact that the DM presumably set a DC for the intimidate check is also not the part here that’s in question.

Yes, completely agreed.

There are also systems much better at this than D&D, which makes calling it out as being the “great” thing here even more out of place.

If you want crunchier rules that have these kind of flavourful interactions you could play PF2e, which literally lets you roll intimidate to debuff your opponent and you have to actions available to do so after swinging your weapon. If you want something looser and more freeform that encourages improvisation maybe take a look at Legend in the Mist or something.

No. These people are welcome to play however they want. They’re having a good time and that’s great for them.

Pitching this as “d&d is great” when the entire story hinges on multiple table specific rulings makes this both less relatable for players of d&d used to a different tone of play and can set unrealistic expectations for new players who might join a game that plays very differently.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t play like this, or that this isn’t d&d. It’s just a very specific scenario that is quite likely to be non-representative of many games.

I’m glad these people are having fun, but I always feel a bit put off when some random group’s homebrew and table rulings are pitched as being typical d&d.

You’re right, it’s not. But in this case it was specifically the “lucky” feature that came into play. Getting the better result through sheer dumb luck is exactly what was supposed to happen.

Also, I strongly disagree with your barbarian hitting a machine example. Rolling a nat 20 attack roll against a machine damages or outright destroys it. I’m not rewarding players for choosing literally the opposite course of action from one that might resolve the problem, no matter what they roll.

If the barbarian wants to try a hail Mary tool proficiency check with their lack of proficiency and -1 intelligence penalty and lucks into a nat 20 for a result of 19 on a DC 17 check then I’ll happily flavour it as “percussive maintenance”, but an attack roll just destroys the machine because that’s what attacks do.

There are groups that actually play FATAL? Terrifying.

Was about to say this looks like ahdok’s work, then I noticed who posted it. :D

Oh, true. It had slipped my mind that see invisibility allowed you to see things that were innately invisible and not just things magically made invisible.

Well now I just look foolish!

In order for the specific circumstance called out by the disintegrate spell description to be possible it requires a violation of the general case, yes. That is literally the point of the “specific overrides general” rule.

One of two things must be true for disintegrate to be able to destroy a wall of force:

1: The Wall is targetable by disintegrate.

2: Objects on the far side of the wall are targetable by disintegrate and the wall gets in the way.

For “specific overrides general” to hold a DM must rule that one of these is the case, otherwise the extremely specific interaction called out in the disintegrate spell description is impossible.

Of course as DM you can rule that this is not the case and disintegrate does not destroy a wall of force, such is the prerogative of a DM, but I am firmly of the opinion that such a ruling is not RAW.