I found that to be particularly funny, if only because public figures are rarely that blunt in the defense of their products....

Patricia Pulling was a negligent parent, and her son's death, while tragic, was not the fault of D&D, but rather her own for not addressing his mental health problems.

@@schemage2210 I mean it isn't really wrong lol

400th like

That one got a laugh outta me

Same!!!

Same here^^"

agreed

Same!

I mean isn't that why people say something that's obvious you to doesn't mean it's obvious to someone else or visa versa?

well it sounds really fun until there are two players who play Druid

@@dormrifle6174 I have never actually seen two druids at the one table, though I can appreciate how that might be decisive to table cohesion.

@@schemage2210 I've only seen 2 people play druid, ever. Both 5e, Both within the last 2 years. One was a gnome.

@@jeremyszpicki491 idk I really like how you mentioned that one was a gnome. just tickles my neurons

The concept is historical, and was likely plucked out of "The Golden Bough" by Sir Frazer first published in 1890.

Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. Dragonlance was what got me into D&D.

@@Ravell52 The books did their job very well I've heard (well enough for the setting to get a 3.5 and 5e book).

When Abishai number wasn’t enough so you just replace Orc with Dragon-Man

If there are no dungeons, or dragons, you're not playing D&D. I created my own universe, my own system, and have both dungeons and dragons, since day 1. Clearly I D&D better than WotC does 😂

I don’t care how bad monks are- I will cherish that class until the day I die. (Honestly though they aren’t TERRIBLE once you get it hammered into you that they aren’t front liners. Took my monk almost dying for me to learn that. Beware rabbitfolk with multi-attack, people. xD)

If you hate a monk you're probably playing it wrong. Imp. Unarmed strike fears with the flurry of blows. Take anything that adds/stacks unarmed dmg or makes your hands be treated as magical etc... They get real hard to handle really fast.

@@joeydurant6267 I mean mathematically it's not the best option option to unarmed attack and flurry of blows(even with the best option for spells spirit shroud), the best monk for damage is a Gunk (a gun using monk) that doesn't use unarmed attacks 99% of the time, the only other slightly viable build being a Mercy monk who uses weapon attacks and flurry of blows with Hands of Harm with the spirit shroud combo, the Monk isn't bad, it's just worse than every other class mathematically cause it can never take advantage of Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter and it has little to no spell usage, with a really limited resource at early levels and also a MAD(Multiple Ability Score Dependent) factor to it

@@thatonepossum5766 even then, as a class they do the least amount of damage out of basically every class and don't even have a utility/support function that's really powerful

@@prostatus7190 wait... What version are we talking? I switched to pathfinder after 3.5. also played a dwarvish monk which I think the con bonus helped for the self heal feature of monks class... I'd have to get my sheets out cuz I haven't played in a decade but I remember meticulously going through all the math etc and by the time I hit level 5 my damage was like rolling a high level fireball (which was very satisfying btw)

No matter how I look ate the peasent rail gun. It's just doasnt make sense. It's not fully raw and not fully Rai or full reality. It's a mash of all 3 of them taking rules and idea that's halp it works and throwing ideas that will hurt it.

@@yuvalgabay1023 Yeah, the peasant railgun is a meme that applies real-world physics to D&D mechanics. While, yes, a line of 5,000 people could move an object 25,000 feet in 6 seconds according to D&D 5e rules, which is much faster than the average bullet in real life, it would only be "launched" if you both apply real-world physics to the item at the end of the line, while also not applying it to the line of 5,000 people who need to move their arms at a speed of almost 5,000 feet per second. If the peasant railgun obeyed its own rules then you wouldn't even need the peasant railgun, since all 5,000 people in the line need to seperately be able to throw a rock hard enough to break the sound barrier.

If you'd try a peasant railgun in game RAW, it would just result in the item traveling N*5 feet and then the last peasant in line throws it at the monster as a standard thrown weapon. No bonuses at all. So not very useful for dealing damage. But thinking outside the box... Anything that requires resource management would be greatly affected; imagine a fire breaks out in a city, peasants are drafted to form a line to the nearest well, and within the span of 6 seconds a bucket of water will reach the burning building, every turn no matter how far from the water source. I guess a logical falacy here is that outside of combat, the world doesn't move in turns, but in real time. Maybe you could cheese it by starting a fist fight with your party members while standing near the peasants, forcing the DM to go into turn-by-turn combat, but they will absolutely hate you for it. So instead, we need a combat situation in which supply management is necessary. For example, in the siege of a castle. Especially for the defenders, getting stuff like arrows to the archers and kettles of burning oil on the ramparts is crucial for a succesful defense. So be creative with it! Tho I must admit that the Peasant Instant Transportation Line, doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Pun Pun

It's a 3rd edition/3.5 RaW interaction. Pun Pun would boost the stats of a specific creature, and a certain mechanic (I think it's in Savage Species) would make a temporary stat boost permanent. You could then transfer the stat boost onto Pun Pun. I believe the original build had him at 6th level, but with innovations it got down to 1st level. Kobold was picked because in 3rd edition they were pretty weak compared to anything else. Also I could easily look up specifics, but I kinda don't want to.

That's basically the last chapter of Icewind Dale

They developed the historical setting of Netheril with a boxed set and a few splatbooks and modules in 2e. And then of course the Ruins of Myth Drannor is the archetypal mythal ruin. The great strength of 2e was its campaign settings.

surprisingly enough. due to the amount of dms avoiding that trope over time it became, no longer, an actual trope.

One of the few campaigns I have played, I actually did meet in a tavern. My character was kind of surly and her main goal was to be left alone. Well, she was forcibly pulled into the plot hook, where she pretended to only speak Draconic to avoid conversation (since abyssal would probably be the wrong foot to start off on). In response Mr Plot Hook continued the conversation in draconic and it worked fine until my character was surprised (I think by the existence of pancakes? She couldn’t fathom why you’d eat something that wasn’t meat) and exclaimed in common. The party was shocked that she actually spoke it.

Still enough to kill a Wizard.

@@thealientree3821 so is a housecat

@@liquidweird6055true

I believe Mordenkainen was one of Gary's own PCs, but I think Tasha was originally made up just for the Hideous Laughter spell.

@@richardrizon1733 Actually from what I’ve read both were characters created by Gygax himself, with Mordenkainen being his PC, and I believe Tasha being an NPC he played that became a rival to Mordenkainen. Could have both been PC’s though, I’m not sure.

Funnily enough Bigby is one of the few who *weren't* originally a PC, instead he was a low level villain who ended up being reformed (with some minor mind control involved but shh) and working for Mordenkainen. Some of the was names were come up with were great though ("Melf" being named "Melf the Elf", and "Rary" being 'cause a lvl1 wizard was known as a medium and thus he was "medium Rary". This isn't even getting into the things like "Drawmij" being the character of "Jim Draw" & other dumb names like that.)

yup - this iceberg needs to go FAR DEEPER

Some of the ancient npcs are that. Mordakian also sorta had the best epic build too lol

Yeah I heard it in the video and I was like “Isn’t it the other way around?”

Yep, which followed the mythos of the Elric of Melnibone series.

@@williethenerfherder2193 Michael Moorcock in general, Elric, and Corum Jaelen Irsei in particular. The Greyhawk supplement to the White Box edition did note that beholders were evil despite being lawful, so there was that.

That's cool

Your friends have too much money 👍

That's a 3.5e thing iirc? Ooh the centower also was a fun thing before it got errata'd

Pun-Pun just sounds like the DND version of old man henderson

If I remember Pun-Pun is not really a viable character and it was only possible because the DM left the player cheese a rule

@@jvbrod Pun-Pun had gone through several iterations and is a legal as written but not in spirit sort of thing. Technically if your DM said anything goes it would be playable but due to the infinite stats and experience it could be said that Pun-Pun already existed since Pun-Pun exists across all time. This means that Pun-Pun could kill any bring who tried to take a similar path. I just realized this might come across in an um actually style if so sorry I just like talking about 3.5.

Omnicifier was up there as well.

@@jvbrod No, it was straight rules as written, despite what the goons at "The Gaming Den" want to claim.

Read this in college. This is a great call out!

@@mulvicoder I did lighting design for a production of it in college and then also helped high school students who were doing it have some sense of familiarity with DnD

This. Such an obscure and weird thing the older editions had. I'd also like to add on "Taking levels in elf/dwarf" and class ability score requirements to the list of AD&D rules not included here. The latter he touched on a bit with the Human Fighter section, but some of the ability requirements (Ranger, Paladin, Bard) were hilariously restrictive especially when rolling 3d6 in order for stats.

@@Mrryn The elf class didn't exist by AD&D time.

@@jackiecove My mistake in lumping it in with AD&D but it actually was, just in the D&D Basic set which was introduced at the same time as AD&D and meant to be, as the name implies, the basic version (for early levels) compared to the advanced of AD&D and meant to be the lead in version of the rules for newer players. So demi-human races like Elf and Dwarf as classes did exist that far back.

oka

this guy was like 'cool dnd' and then just focused on the gameplay in the background. relatable though

Especially given the fact that I teach children

I looked at it, realized it was over 700 hours, and decided just not to touch it.

i joined D&D because my brother played D&D and i watched necrohunt, and a few other D&D youtubers, i had no idea what critical role was and still haven't seen a single thing about it, i just know that a little guy in one of their campaigns shot an ally with an arrow

It's really good, yeah. But it's hard to get into due to the sheer size of it, and some people treat it like "real DND". When that happens, even me, a big fan of it, cringe at the "thIS iS rEAl DND" people

Yeah, it's gargantuan, like, sometimes I feel overwhelmed by Dimension20's 15~ episodes of barely two hours self-contained seasons (I'm still in the 8 episode or so of Fantasy High, so I'm a pretty slow watcher), meanwhile Critical Role got 23 episodes of three to five hours.

Some D&D stuff I’d recommend to people: Rolling With Difficulty, Belkinus Necrohunt, and The Unsleeping City.

I just started running my first hexcrawl campaign this week! I’m super looking forward to seeing how it goes. So far just doing a few jobs/dungeons in the close hexes around town at the moment, but once they get some camels and resources the world will be their oyster!

2e had battle for level for druids too. It's right there in the PHB.

Most of the tracking of things was probably its relation to war gaming. Very early sources mentioned city adventures and campaigns run completely in an urban setting of desired. The early game was also more tailored to large groups because that’s what gygax ran. I think even current editions of DnD are better suited to dungeon crawling than other endeavors. Older editions of DnD just used roleplaying to figure out social situations but, newer editions with social skills still don’t have the depth of systems and support as dungeon exploration and combat. On a personal note, it wasn’t till I read 2e and 1e DnD that I understood the point of certain rules that I found in pathfinder. There’s a lot of baggage and the game designers don’t often know what’s important to leave out or add. The example that stuck out to me was wondering monsters. For my video game playing brain monsters=exp and can be used to make you stronger. It worked exactly like this in pathfinder. In older editions the majority of exp is from finding treasure and wandering monsters don’t have any making them a hindrance. Even though the reason for wandering monsters no longer applied to pathfinder, they still published wandering monsters lists in all their modules because of tradition. Even rules like taking 10 and taking 20 in pathfinder (which weren’t in older editions of DnD I don’t think. Maybe 3rd though) reference the fact that wandering monsters are bad. Since the only reason to not take a 20 is because you would get an automatic wandering monster check. I don’t think pathfinder even detailed the process but it’s been a while since I read that rule book.

And, at the same time, with enough planning a level 1 party could kill it using it's statblock RAW. Becomes much more difficult to cheese if you let it start throwing buildings around or something, of course.

I'd argue that a tarrasque is hardly scary. It can die to a flying level 2 arcane Archer fighter or a clay golem

are you talking about a phb ranger with gloomstalker subclass or phb ranger with phb subclasses? cause i'm fairly certain with just PHB options an assassin rogue has better burst and better sustained dpr. but if you're talking about phb ranger with gloomstalker then yea it's pretty hard to out dpr it. i think you could do it if you can ensure a shadowblade through a ring of spell storing

yooo i love rouge the bat from sonic the hedgehog

@@Azarthes Hunter exists. Have you played a SS + CE + Hand Crossbow build? That stuff can get wild. Rouges kinda stink in DPR unless they get help from their caster friends to get reaction attacks but otherwise their damage is bad. Also I think it's funny that that rouges are considered the go-to stealth class when ranger with Pass Without Trace is right there since day 1.

Also in terms of burst damage, assassin rouge was never that good considering at level 10 with rouge with a crit does around 47 damage on average while level 10 ranger (with SS CBE and Hand Crossbow of course) does that on a good turn. (Less than a 5% chance to crit)

@@mosesferney1722 pass without trace, just like shield, is a pretty busted spell so any singular character who picks up pass without trace becomes a good stealth character. arguably the strongest stealth character in the game is a druid who casts pwot and then wildshapes into bug or a creature with a burrow speed. i have played an SS + CE build but I played it on a fighter. i absolutely recognize the damage of that feat combo. however, even if a rogue can't get an AOO (which i dont know why you brought casters up, almost every spell except dissonant whispers is forced movement which doesnt trigger aoo) it's still kind of a good baseline for DPR. which, you didn't really tell me what you're doing for a ranger's dpr. are you taking into account magic items, what spells youre casting (hunter's mark, i'm assuming??). because iirc monsters at cr10 have a bit of an AC jump

Or "Explosions?" Like mister torgue

@@hoxton4068 It was a Konosuba reference.

It honestly kinda hurt to see his name after all this time. I genuinely loved his campaign and all of his players, how interesting and in depth the campaign was and his campaign was the only D&D actual play content that I could watch all the way through. I was so heartbroken when I found out about the drama

Came here to say this. Good and evil were added only as a concession to players consistently misinterpreting lawful AS good and chaotic AS evil.

Correction 2: Critical Role cast moved from Pathfinder to 5e when they started the video's on youtube.