Leveling: Points vs Milestones, Part 1

I believe this is the first installment of a three part series on leveling.  The parts are expected to be:

1. Experience per RAW
2. Issues and Benefits
3. How I Want to Handle Leveling

The follow on posts may change, or never exist, but that is my thought as of today.

Action Oriented Monsters

Matt Colville put up a video this past October that presented what seems like a nifty and simple method to make certain encounters more interesting.  Specifically to make "boss" encounters and experience.

He called his idea Action Oriented Monsters and that seems like a solid name for this.  It is something that I want to dive deeper into and likely use in my games.

Cutting Words vs Attack Rolls

 The College of Lore Bard's ability Cutting Words allows a Bard to reduce an attack roll with one inspiration die roll.  That's a d6 to d12 reduction in an attack roll that can easily be the difference between a hit and a miss.  The rules on it are rather clear and it has been clairfied with a Sage Advice but it seems to lead to an undesirable in play result.

Index: What is on the Bear It Blog?

As on early 2020 there are a bunch of assorted tidbits on this blog.  Enough of them that I am sometimes challenged finding what I know must be here somewhere.  This post will be my ongoing attempt at maintaining a navigation post for the content.  It isn't properly a table of contents or an index, but something in between.

Before getting into creating groupings of internal links, I want to point out to the reader that there are two search blocks on this blog (both do the same thing).  One is at the top left of page, the other is in the right side bar.  Either can be used to search for a topic/word within teh scope of the BearItD&D blog.

This post is also linked from the page header: INDEX.

Counterspell and Knowing What is Cast

Counterspell is one of the potentially messiest spells in the game.  Enemy caster begins casting something, player wonders what that spell is (doesn't want to blow a 3+ level spell stopping a cantrip), player opts to counterspell, enemy decides to counterspell the counterspell, another player decides to counterspell the counterspell of the counter spell, then one or more heads explode around the table.

There are clear RAW answers to most of teh relevant questions.  I'm not much satisfied with them.  This post will summarize relevant RAW as I understand it and then offer the rule that I intend to use.

Encumbrance: Weight and Size

The rules in D&D 5E for encumbrance, weight, and size are very generalized.  I've seen the rule generalized as:  "It is absolutely 100% true that almost no character will ever, in their class' native gear, need to worry about carrying too much. And the heaviest armors have STR prereqs anyway, which makes basic gear even less of an issue." (Deliverator) That's a fundamental feature of the most basic encumbrance rule:

Carrying Capacity. Your carrying capacity is your Strength score multiplied by 15. This is the weight (in pounds) that you can carry, which is high enough that most characters don't usually have to worry about it.

Push, Drag, or Lift. You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Strength score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet.

Size and Strength. Larger creatures can bear more weight, whereas Tiny creatures can carry less. For each size category above Medium, double the creature's carrying capacity and the amount it can push, drag, or lift. For a Tiny creature, halve these weights.

D&D 5E Aerial Combat

Aerial combat is defined, sort of, in RAW.  The relevant rules are as badly fragment as the Aquatic rules and they are rarely used, so they are a bit of a challenge to smoothly get right during play.  I will attempt to produce an updated summary and add just a bit in this article.

Before getting into the nitty gritty, I want to give credit to Michael Long published a good summary of the Aerial Combat rules on his Tribality blog back on 2014. His article is an easy read, though it lacks XGE information.

House Rules -- Some Minor Tweaks and Things

In speaking with my group last night, we identified several more things that we have found unclear or that can stand to be better documented for our use.  I'll  role them into my house rules document, for now, I am putting the items and some dicussion into this article.  The topics include:

• Feat: Shield Master 
• Feat: Great Weapon Master
• Feat: Sharpshooter
• Feat: Tough and Durable
• Class: Druid Shape Change Healing
• Rules: Knot Tying
• Rules: Resting in Armor
• Rules: Cost of Creating Scrolls

PDF Busting Links

Some of my documents include a reference to an internal portion of a page.  Something like this:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/between-adventures#TrainingtoGainLevels

In teh original document will link to the file specified before the pound sign (hashtag for you young'ns) and then jump to the internal is that follows the pound sign. A problem occurs when converting to PDF format.  The above ends up like this:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/between-adventures%23TrainingtoGainLevels

It's kind of the same, in that %23 is the code for our friend the pound sign, but it will get a 404 error when followed.

A quick workaround is to shorten the link with bitly.  Just pop the URL into the page at bitly.com and use the short form, which for this case will be:

  https://bit.ly/2UUq1VC

 That's it.

Changeling

I have been playing a changeling bard in our Shadows of the Apocalypse campaign for some months now, and I have to say playing a character with a handful of personalities is fun. I do bump into some questions about the effects of changing and the detect-ability of it at times. I've also been interested in the rule changes that have been made that affect the class.

The race was added to 5E via Unearthed Arcane (UA) at least twice (Races of Eberron 7/2018 and Unearthed Arcana: Eberron 2/2015) and now in the official Eberron supplement.  Keith Baker, creator of Eberron, has written more about changelings outside the official Wizards publications, but given his relationship to the subject, his thoughts are nearly cannon and I will generally accept them as supplements to RAW.  In particular he has published FAQ: Changelings on his blog.

Notes on Arcane Lock and Tiny Hut

In recent sessions groups I have been playing with had questions on the details of two spells.  I want to share the resolutions we came up with for them in this post.

1. Arcane Lock
2. Tiny Hut

Swapping Weapons & Interacting With Objects

Characters sometimes want to swap in hand items in combat.  Some games just allow whatever to happen (I have been known to do that) but it seems wrong for a character to sheath a sword, grab a ranged weapon from his back and put away his shield and then have a normal turn.  This post is aimed at defining where the line exists between free action to swap and spending an action. 

I found this topic discussed on Stack Exchange if you want to see other thoughts on the subject. 

The PHB p. 190 has a paragraph that addresses this in the Other Activity on Your Turn section.

You can also interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move as you stride toward a foe, or you could draw your weapon as part of the same action you use to attack.

Druid Wild Shape -- Form Availability

Druid wild shape is a fantastically useful and flexible ability.  An element that I was not properly enforcing is embedded in the first line of that capability:

Wild Shape
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your action to magically assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before. You can use this feature twice. You regain expended uses when you finish a short or long rest. (Emphasis added)

Exactly what those beasts are requires a bit of thought.  Typical druids have seen many animals before they start their adventuring career.  Does seeing require 'in person" encounters or would drawings and descriptions suffice?  What animals are likely to have been seen by any particular druid.