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Yeah, you make a personal spellbook. No PHB spellbook. That way you only have 4 or 5 pages to thumb through. If you can't devote that much personal time to the campaign, you can't devote that much time to the campaign.

I don't give a shit about how large is the room

I cast Fireball, make it go boom!

don't most people start out in level 5?

Ouch, ow. Stop, please

what i love is when the DM hasn't read the rules on how sneak attack works, so when you ask if you can use sneak attack they always say no.

Always seen this meme format posted, no clue what it’s supposed to be from

They aren't familiar with Kilgrave and just make the meme based off the image and their interpretation of it

It only implies that if you've watched the show. Otherwise its a picture that says 10,000 words.

The fact that people see the emotion over the lore just shows the acting was good IMO.

But I'm the caster, I couldn't possibly sympathize for a lowly fighter!

It's ok it's a TV show and he was just acting.

This is why I love barbarians.

I deeply loved playing my delightful himbo. I only had two questions to answer: reckless attack (usually yes, because taking damage usually just makes me a more effective HP tank), and "do I want to hit them, or try to hit them really hard?" (Great weapon master feat — also usually a yes, mostly depending on healer availability).

I relate to your thing about a power fantasy of helping people. My guy had big "dad energy", because he was older, and was deeply committed to putting himself between the squishy kids of the group (even if those "kids" included an elf who was twice his age). His mindset felt very paladin-y

Ok I play paladin because even in my fantasies I just want to be a hero who has the power to help people

I hate being the person that quietly judges people who clearly chose paladin type classes for the power rather than for the class fantasy, but I just can't help it sometimes

I did but then the sorcerer changed the whole situation with his bullshit!

This almost never works out because by my next turn, the battlefield is completely different than what it was when I ended my previous turn.

I know this may be a joke, but I have used timers to great effect in the past. One instance comes to mind:

My players were looking for a missing child. They suspected a kidnapping. The Druid had transformed into a wolf, and was using scent to track the suspected kidnapper. The trail led them to the edge of a lake. In the middle of the lake, they could see a man in a rowboat. He had rowed out to the middle of a lake, and was in the process of dumping a squirming sack overboard. The players heard my description of how the sack hit the water, floated for a few seconds while it thrashed around, then sank below the surface.

The players fell into analysis paralysis. Would it be best to row out and stop the kidnapper? Focus on retrieving the sack that obviously had the kidnapped child in it? Risk splitting the party to do both simultaneously? While they were bickering about what to do, I quietly started a timer and set it in front of my DM screen. It was a not-so-subtle “you’re all wasting time arguing while a child is literally drowning” reminder.

The party saw me set the timer down, a silent beat passed as the realization hit, and then the entire party immediately sprang into action. Everyone piled into the rowboat on shore, while the paladin was asking to make a strength check to shove off and get the boat into the water. He rolled a natural 20, so the boat skipped a few times across the surface before the warrior took over rowing with a constitution check. He rolled a natural 19. They made it to the middle of the lake very quickly. The Druid wildshaped into something aquatic (I think a dolphin?) to go diving for the child, while the warrior and sorcerer piled into the kidnapper’s boat to prevent his escape. While all of that was going on, the paladin was making constitution saving throws to swim out to the middle of the lake (in heavy armor, I might add) to be on standby in case the child needed healing.

I didn’t actually intend on using the timer for anything. But the simple fact that I had it running pushed them into action. It was a powerful reminder that their characters wouldn’t have the time to fully analyze the situation and arrive at a plan of action by committee.

Depends on the players. Some want to play pretend. Some want to play XCOM with dice.

I think you can have combat focused stories as long as your combat mechanics are lightweight and fast.

When I switched out my Shadowrun game to The Sprawl, and then eventually a homebrew, I actually got less afraid of letting combat happen because I knew it wouldn't eat up ninety percent of the session. By volume of time spent, combat became much less of each session, and yet conversely combat could happen at any time and every scene could feel like a fight might break out because there was no sigh "Roll for initiative..."

With fast, lightweight combat mechanics (especially ones that do not have an initiative system) you get to weave violence into the substance of your story constantly, without the system taking place of the storytelling.

That's not to say that less combat focused games are a bad thing. The other big change I found was that it was also much easier to run sessions where no fighting occurred, because I didn't have to figure out how to fill the several hours that should have been taken up by a fight, and the players never felt like there was a difference between fighting and talking and everything else. It all just became part of the broader texture of the story, so a session with no fighting didn't feel weird or out of place.

A d20. 🤷‍♂️

by level 10 you should already know what spells you took and what they do at minimum

As often as not, the control wizard is trying to figure out if they can drop the AoE template to just hit the bad guys. Blaster Casters tend to have less of a problem because every turn is "Does it have fire resistance? Yes: Magic Missile / No: Scorching Ray"

The really annoying wizards are the Summoners, because "it's my turn so let me add another 1d4+1 turdlings to the battle field and take 6 attacks with the gumbas currently out here".