u/Exact-Challenge9213

A player of mine is building a Gish from a battle master 4 warmage 2. I look at his sheet and he seems severely reaction restricted. He has his Arcane deflection, for spells he has Shield, Absorb Elements, Feather Fall. And he’s taken the War Caster feat despite having no concentration spells so that he can cast booming blade as an opportunity attack. I love his character and I think it’s all very cool, but I worry he might find himself frustrated by having so many abilities all competing for the same reaction. Any advice? Should I just not interfere, or maybe a polite nudge.

edit: I think a lot of people are interpreting this as me asking “is his build well optimized?” Or “How should I get him to change his build to be stronger”. That’s not what I’m getting at. I don’t care if my players have unoptimized characters, I care if my players have frustrating builds. All I want to know is if you think his build has a risk of feeling frustrating since so many abilities are fighting for his 1 reaction per turn. If not, then I won’t even bring it up to him.

When I run my game, I try to consistently state checks DC once I’ve called for it, but only after the player is committed to the roll, or unless it reveals too much information (like perception checks). That means that the moment my player has seed to w result of their roll, they know the result and cannot apply bardic inspiration, so instead they just add it when they roll but before they know the result. One player said that this is a nerf, because you don’t get to only apply bardic inspiration to bad rolls and save it on good rolls, but the bard himself argued that it’s canceled out by knowing whether you’re likely to need inspiration or not based on the DC of the check. Thoughts?

Edit: Oh, okay, response seems pretty unanimous, I’ll switch my ruling to allow after they roll 👍

Please let me know in the comments, did your players experience:

•none

•comparatively little (a handful of rooms)

•at least 1 floor of content

•a few floors

•about half of the content

•more than half of the content

•almost all of it

Also, please tell me, did your players explore, do a dungeon crawl, recieve a tour, explore multiple parts over multiple trips?

The reason I ask is that I love Ravenloft but think it’s hard to utilize. It’s an extremely cool location, but it has not changed much since its original release in the original Ravenloft module, despite philosophies of dungeon design and play evolving. 100 rooms where most are empty, laid out in a confusing way that’s hard to visualize.

I’m considering working on a supplement to turn Ravenloft into a true dungeon crawl more like the tomb of the nine gods, though with less of a puzzle focus and with fewer instant death traps. Let me know if you would be interested in something like that, and what you enjoyed about Ravenloft that you’d prefer not be sacrificed.

Coming from Tomb of Annihilation to Icewind Dale was a rough transition, largely because Chult is just so well laid out. Because of sea travel, rivers, and the specific layout of points of interest, it’s really easy to chart out big loops or lines of travel where you hit multiple locations. There’s also this sense of ever growing map, you often learn of more locations when you go to new locations. Icewind Dale is frankly just “trudge through the snow to [location] then trudge back”. Combine this with there being 4x as many locations in Chult, and Icewind Dale seems really uninteresting to play in.

I know that the desolation is part of the charm, but having more locations would be really charming and add to the storytelling and characterization of Auril.

•A village that was abandoned when they all moved to the ten towns, left frozen in perfect condition.

•An old monastery buried under the snow, only the bell tower sticks out now.

•An ancient gigantic pine tree where reghed Nomads gather to pray.

•the site of battle between nomad tribes, made unholy so no plant will grow nor will any animal set foot.

Just places with an encounter or two, maybe an NPC, and some loot.

And then every major location ought to have SOMETHING that can help the ten towns, like maud chiselbones caldron. Either help them to survive the cold, or help them to thwart the duergar (goggles to see invisible creatures, for instance). The module is written like it’s not intended to be a hex crawl, but the hex map and travel times really make it seem like it should have some hex crawl elements!

Let me know if you all agree, and tell me if you guys have any ideas for locations, maybe I’ll assemble a supplement.