You don't even need to homebrew. Spell scrolls exist. It's not unreasonable to think a spell scroll of mighty fortress would be stored away for safekeeping somewhere for a long time before the PCs find it. 👍🏻

Still better than the 50,000 gp construction cost and 400 days for a "Keep or small castle" using Building a Stronghold. Actual time spent on labor amounts to a minute per week for a high enough level wizard.

Well, technically it doesn't say your connecting walls have to be straight, just 80 feet long. Not exactly sure how you're going to make them connect up into a hexagon or star out of "four turrets with square bases, each one 20 feet on a side and 30 feet tall, with one turret on each corner", but if you've got a diagram I'd love to see it. 😆

Well, at least they promised that rumors of a planned $30 subscription fee weren't true.

Don’t worry. It sounds like WotC is planning to fix the issue with not enough people wanting to DM their jank by implementing AI DMs in their new VTT.

They did say before that no one at Wizards was working on AI DMs, but it’s all but officially confirmed Hasbro had a 3rd party working on it for them. That’s why you gotta keep your eye out for those little loopholes. 😲

Well, true polymorph and mass polymorph at least aren't overpowered for their levels. Comparatively polymorph as commonly interpreted to be a "caster decides" effect, is routinely considered the best 4th level spell overall. It has better single-target save-or-suck disabling ability than banishment, it rival arcane eye in terms of scouting utility, and as emergency temporary healing or a combat buff it outperforms the 6th level Tenser's transformation.

The only other 4th level spell that even comes close is the "caster decides" interpretation of conjure woodland beings, mostly because you get eight polymorphs for the price of one.

Powder does the same thing, unless you have a ring or artifact that grants you polymorph control.

But, as an aside, a CR 𝓝 creature is intended to be an appropriate challenge for a party of 𝓝 level characters, not the equivalent in power to one of them. If you were to actually calculate the CR of an 𝓝 level character it's closer to ½𝓝 like in mass polymorph.

It should fit pretty well. 😁 The audio matches the subtitles for all but one word.

Lorewise maruts are damn near incorruptable, but even just a rogue modron could be cool if done right. A marut is also unlikely to misinterpret the contract, but the signatories might have.

“[…] A marut enforces what is written, not what was meant by or supposed to be understood from the writing. The Kolyarut rejects contracts that contain vague, contradictory, or unenforceable terms. Beyond that, it doesn’t care whether both parties understand what they’re agreeing to.” There’s also a reason they’re called “nigh-unstoppable inevitables”.

I guess now that I think about it, a simulacrum is a construct as well, but I’d have a hard time counting one of them. Most powerful constructs tend to be golems or a colossus like the Walking Statues of Waterdeep, not independent thinkers, just powerful brute force minions.

The characters in the top panel are from a New Yorker cartoon. I think it’s supposed to be blushing?

I may have posted the original meme in a discord server somewhere, but I put it on imgur now so it’s available publicly. ~You~ ~may~ ~be~ ~able~ ~to~ ~see~ ~why~ ~the~ ~idea~ ~of~ ~a~ ~BBEG~ ~bard~ ~brought~ ~this~ ~to~ ~mind.~

Edit: Found where I originally put it on imgur. Huzzah, the history is preserved.

Yeah. This is the 4e version of the 1st floor map. The 5e version is only a small corner of this, but I exaggerated a bit for the meme.

The battlecry of the BBEG bard.