Questions for DM

If you have any questions, like getting magic item approval or rules questions, please send them here. Please avoid general conversation, or else questions and their answers might get lost and hard to find again. Have such talks in the Out of Character thread.

Does the rare magic item have to be a weapon?

Alrighty... a few questions.

If I needed a Common magic item, can I simply buy it? Obvious follow up: If yes, how much? (Ruby of the War Mage is what I'm looking at.)

Speaking of magic items... how do we feel about these?

Uncommon: Adamantine Plate Mail
* Assuming I still pay the 2,000gp for the armor, and the "adamantine" part is covered by the magic item entry.

Uncommon: Cloak of Protection

Rare: Crystal Blade

I might have missed it, but how did you want to do HPs each level after the first?

please confirm or fix my assumptions of homebrew rules:
1. wizard casting mage hand armor or other out of combat spells will never get spell slots back
2. wizard can't use arcane recovery since there are no short rest
3. druid who use wild shape out of combat will not get use restored until after any combat

I'm going to quote the questions and answer them in blue text within

Much obliged!

How would you rule find steed in terms of combat? I have seen it different ways with initiative, controlled/independent mount, pc vs Dm control at different points, etc

Was thinking for my magic items:

Molten Bronze half-plate (rare)
+1 glaive (uncommon)
Luckstone (uncommon)

Probably a stupid, minor thing, but... if we have the Find Familiar spell, do we start the game with a familiar summoned? Or will we need to summon once the game starts?

Edit: Also, the Legendary Resistance houserule... is there any limit to that? Like, once per turn? Or can it just auto succeed on each and every save until it's under 50% HPs?

You can have the familiar already out. You're level 13 and the spell is a 1st level spell. Even if you only recently got the spell from multiclassing, you'd probably have casted it before the adventure started.

As for the legendary resistance houserule, I'm playtesting it. It's all saves until under 1/2 max hp.
Pros: You don't have to waste spells just to "burn through it", as you know from the start how it works.
Cons: It isn't susceptible to "burning through it" techniques if you really wanted to, like spamming stunning strike.

Legendary resistance already is a rough system. At least with this, once I say "the monster seems bloodied/staggered/etc." you know "oh, my features work now!" they still get the usual save, of course. If I didn't do this, I'd probably have to give the boss 5 or even more legendary resistances since there are 6 of you and bosses already find it hard to be themselves alone in fights.

Question:
I am seeing a lot of variant human and thought about mixing up my build to diversify the party (I know it isn't required but always nice).

Thinking about changing to Triton, and move to Shield/Spear user. I know the Spear can be used with Polearm master, but would you allow a trident? mechanically they are basically identical other than the this fact.

I was just thinking being a Triton, wielding a trident would be kind of cool and fit a theme for the change of basically being Aquaman. Or I could just "reflavor" the spear to be a trident too, but just wanted to ask

I am fine with the Trident being used with full arm master. I don't see anything unique with that combination that other weapons don't have to worry about . Plus, the Trident does not get enough use in my opinion hahaha

Sweet. I built the character out and submitted.

For mundane purposes...game description and level indicates we are seasoned heroes. Would buying a mirror be too meta-gamey? I mean if Perseus did it...

I'm sure we were all thinking it. I was.

Honestly? A mirror, chalk, and soap are three items I generally consider to be essential adventuring gear that a lot of people seem to skip over. I hope it's not meta game-y, because almost all my characters have that stuff as soon as they have the gold.

Yeah, other things I was thinking:

Silvering a backup weapon
Ball bearings
Manacles

There's no problem in bringing a mirror. Just know that no one becomes queen of a type of monster and fails to account for such weaknesses. "You think you are the first to try that? You will not be the first nore the last..." Kind of thing

In case anyone is curious, unlike mithral and adamantine, silver is not a magical substance so you can use gold on it

Do our characters know anything more about Hythonia's island apart from it being possibly guarded by dragons?

Many people have tried to defeat her, and few if any have returned alive. The island itself is a big mystery, and most of the tales center around how hard it is to get onto it, not what happens once you are there.

Do you want me to put my find steed stats on my character sheet as well? At least basic ones

Yes, probably in the notes section

I see canons on the ship...am I right to assume these are usable? Are there rules on using them?

Sure, why not. This is what the DMG says. Note that shooting at a moving, nimble monster may be harder than a slow moving boat that is a big target.Big thing to note: it takes 3 actions to fire (load, aim, shoot), and the crew knows they will die to any hit from this thing and thus is very unlikely to help, so could be worth it, but only if you feel you can't help otherwise.

So it is more opportunity cost evaluations.

8d10 averages to 55 damage, so basically. Do I think I can deal 55 damage or more in 3 turns doing something else. Or is "loading" "aiming" and "firing" all "attack actions" and if you have two attacks, you could basically load/aim in one turn. Fire, reload turn two. aim, fire turn three...etc?

I know there will be a lot of battlefield development before my turn hits but figured I would ask.

The average is 44, not 55, and as far as I can tell it is an entire action to do one of the three things needed to attack with it. This means two people teaming up. Up could fire more quickly, but you can't a little bit more quickly just because you have the extra attack feature

makes sense. and my math was terribly off...

Do we all have ranged attacks? Omeros is rocking Eldritch Blast. Maybe those without ranged options can man a cannon until the leviathans come in close.

I am trying to determine how Gust of wind would interact with the flying dragon. Assuming he is 40ft up. I would need to be 20ft horizontally to him to hit? Then a push would then get him functionally move him to 75ft and he would just have to move 5ft vertically down to avoid the movement penalty? So basically on a failed throw he is 80ft from me?

It would potentially push the dragon 15 feet away each round, but mostly the dragon would move so that it is not in the gust and still fly at full speed. Assuming you don't lose concentration, the main benefit would be essentially a bonus action push each round on a failed strength save

Make sense. Just trying to think of creative ways to stay alive at this point.

Worth noting, Dragons usually have pretty solid strength scores. Anything can roll a 2, but I feel like the odds of the dragon succeeding on most saves is high.