If you're playing a single-player experience, do what you please. It's your game, your time, your play - if you have more fun by way of event manipulation or genning Pokemon for your own personal experience, go for it.

If you're dishing those Pokemon out to others, then it's a matter of consent. Make sure the other person knows the Pokemon was generated through non-official means first. If they don't care, then it's fine. But don't just toss hacked Pokemon out into the aether on open trades without discretion. Whenever I got an obviously genned Pokemon in Wonder Trade - especially if it was being used to advertise a website or YouTuber - I'd always release it to keep it out of circulation.

If you're battling another player, again, go for full disclosure. Let them know you're using genned Pokemon - so long as they're not sporting hacked abilities that give you an unfair advantage and are identical to what can be found through standard gamplay, it really shouldn't be an issue. But always let your opponent know ahead of time and respect their feelings on the matter, however that may end up being. Also, don't enter competitive events unless the event is specifically fine with genned Pokemon that operate within legitimate parameters.

ORAS is one I always love going back to every few years. I also really enjoy the Kalos region - I don't know why everyone around here always seems to dump on Kalos - and have replayed XY a few times over just for fun.

Dungeon Meshi, translated as "Delicious in Dungeon". The manga series is complete and there's actually a really good anime adaptation currently airing on Netflix, if you were interested. It's an excellent series that I can't recommend highly enough.

Amusingly enough, that's literally what ends up happening when this specific Wizard goes toe-to-toe with the Party's Fighter in the manga. "Welcome to melee range!"

You're directly missing the point of u/akkristor 's differentiating between "evil" and "Evil".

In settings like the Forgotten Realms, Evil is a quantifiable, tangible energy and facet of reality. It is not an abstract concept derived from perception and societal standards. It is an actual physical element the same way Fire and Earth are, and is derived from an endless Elemental Plane made of itself. The same goes for Good, Chaos, and so forth. It is a place you can go, a thing you can touch, and it not only can but actively wants to hurt you. Mortals can squabble over matters of right and wrong in their own actions, but that has nothing to do with the literal manifestations of actual Evil. Evil is its own thing, existing apropos of all else other than Good.

So one can argue the ethics of Undead reanimation as a practice, and whether or not it is lower-case "evil" by society's standards. But that doesn't change the fact that, in order to animate the Undead at all, it requires pulling Negative Energy from Captial-E "EVIL" Planes, and that Evil energy is anathema to life thriving.

More than likely it's AI. I did a reverse search trying to pull up anything and all instances that appear are either reposts of this meme across Russian boards, or pulling the art directly for D&D Amino app usage. There doesn't appear to be any conclusive source.

Also, look at the smaller details and lack of logic as to where they're placed and what they do. How many buttons, pockets, and zippers on the side of that jacket are just kind of floating around for no purpose. There's a buttoned strap that leads directly into a pull zip pocket, which is itself directly beside another long zipper that doesn't match the line/seam style of the rest of the coat. There's two random pockets on the hem of the coat. The interior zipper on the lapel doesn't follow all the way down to the hem and there's no zipper tag present. Why is there a zipper on the sleeve that just kind of floats up on the wrist and away from the cuff?

Look at the ear. Highly detailed interior structure, but the gauge piercing just kind of pops out of the bottom with no anatomical logic. Look at the line-up of the neck, collarbone, and cleavage - they're all off-center to one another and have no connecting sense of anatomy.

I've always felt that both Players and DMs go through a sort of puberty phase where they get caught up in always wanting to be right, getting the last word, making "badass" characters, being "the main character", and such. We've all been there. It's something the majority of us grow out of and look back on with a bit of a cringe and a chuckle at our own expense. But there are some folk who never grow out of it and they tend to be the Nightmare Player or Nightmare DM types you hear horror stories about for their bad behavior.

Hard to say where OP's DM may be along in that developmental stage without more information or context. But I like to at least give people the benefit of the doubt and hope they'll learn better as time goes by. Figuring out the value of playing with your Party and not against them is part of that process.

There's a common misconception when it comes to Lawfulness that assumes it demands adherence to law, rules, and regulations. It doesn't, despite how contradictory that may sound on its face. "Lawful" would be bettered labeled as "Orderly" - as in, you're acting against chaos. Similarly, it can also be narrowly focused onto one's personal code of ethics and behavior while still in defiance of larger scale "lawfulness". A character who breaks the law of the city they're in, but maintains a strict code of conduct that focuses on aiding others, could accurately be defined as Lawful Good so long as their actions don't intentionally cause chaos for chaos' sake. Batman and Superman, for example, are both very much a Lawful Good characters despite their differences in presentation and the fact that they are both vigilantes who act outside the purview of the law. They have clearly defined codes they adhere to without fail, and they both hold an enormous level of personal accountability to their actions and those who they influence.

Bread Thief Example
Both turning a blind eye to the thief and smiting/punishing them would be chaotic actions. By allowing the thief to continue stealing, you're not making the situation more orderly - the thief will continue to commit crimes, which may eventually escalate into worse behavior or consequences for them. Their family is still starving and potentially in a worse-off state if their thieving relative gets got, either by you or by other authorities. And by participating in the system by punishing the thief for their stealing, you're furthering an environment that requires people to commit disruptive acts just to survive and protecting a system that creates instability.

The Orderly/Good course of action would be to stop the thief and give them food and/or money, then return the stolen goods if possible. This may not solve the larger-scale problems but, in that single instance, you're working to prevent chaos and giving the thief an opportunity to improve their condition in a more orderly direction.

Goblin Children Example
This depends entirely on the nature of the Goblins, both in terms of their manner as creatures within the setting and the behavior of the specific population at hand. Are they Tolkien Goblins that are objectively evil and will always cause harm/chaos, apropos of nothing? Then killing them would be the lawful/orderly course of action - you're preventing chaos from spreading and harming others in the future. The fact that they are children is of no consequence if they're guaranteed to become a danger as a result of their inherent nature. Prolonging the inevitable until they're grown up and capable of more destruction would be akin to refusing to put down a rabid dog simply because it hasn't attacked anyone yet, despite its fate being a forgone conclusion of suffering and destruction.

If the Goblins are not innately evil and their destructive habits are the result of the environment they're raised in, then simply letting them go is a chaotic action. That does nothing to help them avoid falling prey to others or becoming dangerous monsters purely out of necessity for survival. The lawful/orderly route would be to take responsibility and attempt to nurture the Goblin children into a stable situation for their sake, or at least place them into the care of someone else who will genuinely look after their better interests. You and your Party are responsible for the children not having their fellow Goblins around to care for them, after all, thus it falls on you to pick up the reins. This may not be a plausible course to follow, but nobody ever said doing the right thing was easy.

Speaking anecdotally, it's the sort of response an immature/inexperienced DM has. Completely incapacitating an enemy removes any failure chance for the Player, and the DM reacts in a negative manner because they feel as though they're either being undermined, or have a Player vs. DM mentality and thus need to maintain the upper hand.

A better adjusted and experienced DM would rely on the sort of tactics you mentioned or simply roll with the turn of events. But that same seasoned DM also wouldn't put the Party in this sort of position in the first place by being so unreasonable, nor rely on abstract elements of the system that don't have any genuine mechanical relevancy to try and dissuade the Players from their course of action.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that if OP presents the counter-arguments folk in this thread are discussing, the DM would move the goalposts over to some other hangup to prevent the Party from killing the Redbrands in their sleep. Same if OP moves from the Sleep spell to some other magic that renders the target incapacitated.

Your DM is intentionally mincing words to avoid you having an easy victory against incapacitated enemies.

They apparently have absolutely no qualms making the Redbrands as cartoonishly and bullheadedly evil as possible while not minding if you kill them in a fight. But shift the scales to your favor by putting a bunch of them to Sleep for a quick series of coup de graces, and suddenly it's a problem worthy of revoking the Paladin's class abilities over?

Further, the Redbrands are not helpless or defenseless, even if under Sleep or some other control effect. Are they momentarily incapacitated and vulnerable to attack? Yes. Are they still a very much active and overt threat that will immediately resume, and intensify, aggression the instant they can? Also yes. When the enemies have made it abundantly, repeatedly, and intentionally clear that they will not stop being murderous bastards under any circumstance and will purposefully come after you on their own, then there's no other recourse. Killing them while they're under a Sleep spell is no different than killing one while you've got them momentarily off-guard in the heat of battle and land an attack past their AC.

As for the Paladin, emphasis mine:

Oath of Ancients
The Oath of the Ancients is as old as the race of elves and the rituals of the druids. Sometimes called fey knights, green knights, or horned knights, paladins who swear this oath cast their lot with the side of the light in the cosmic struggle against darkness because they love the beautiful and life-giving things of the world, not necessarily because they believe in principles of honor, courage, and justice. They adorn their armor and clothing with images of growing things—leaves, antlers, or flowers—to reflect their commitment to preserving life and light in the world.

Shelter the Light
Where there is good, beauty, love, and laughter in the world, stand against the wickedness that would swallow it. Where life flourishes, stand against the forces that would render it barren.

Be the Light
Be a glorious beacon for all who live in despair. Let the light of your joy and courage shine forth in all your deeds.

Your DM is intentionally ignoring the standards of a Paladin to oppose evil and harmful foes that threaten the greater community. Specifically for the Oath of Ancients, which 100% is on board with getting rid of these Redbrands by any means necessary once those bandits made it so overwhelmingly clear they have no qualm or remorse with their wicked ways.

Mostly laughter. The campaign was closing down anyway since we'd finished that module and a lot of us were already planning on different characters for the next run, so not continuing on in the adventure wasn't all that surprising. But I was the only one with a concrete "no, I'm going home" bookend to the story.

Not much information to be had, but I'm frankly more taken with the Cyborg Wizard Cat at timestamp 2:50.

That said, this and other updates do seem to have the same "video gamey" feel to their design intent. Everything is being tuned to be accessible as click-and-go options in a VTT UI, and assigning a list of craftable items to every tool kit that each have specific predetermined perks is just another part of that. I worry for the direction this can go since it can very easily be manipulated for monetization schemes. Like charging real world money for a Masterwork version of every tool kit that has an expanded crafting list, or a chance to produce an extra item,.

Of all the changes made to the various classes, Barbarian feels the best to me. The shift on Rage usage especially is very much appreciated. Having the safety net of being able to burn a BA to maintain Rage and the ability to do a partial move when first activating Rage makes up for one of the Barbarian's biggest, most consistent weaknesses; closing the melee gap before Rage expires.

Still not going to buy into the system update, but I appreciate the improvements all the same and will be houseruling some of them into my own games. No walled garden, pay-in-perpetuity scams for me, thanks.

I have a Wizard with the Urchin background, who operated primarily as a Zhentarim goon all her life. Not a nice person overall - very selfish and survival driven, had no issue with victimizing others if it meant she made it through okay. But it all stemmed from her lack of safety and sustenance as a child. She eventually got powerful enough to cast "Magnificent Mansion", spent the first night of her entire life in genuine comfort, security, and plenty the likes of which she'd never known, and immediately retired from adventuring the very next morning. It had been the first and only time she'd actually felt true happiness and she wasn't about to give that up for anything. Faked her own death and bailed on the Zhentarim, then spent spent the rest of her days enjoying that mansion. She eventually began hosting other unfortunates in it as a halfway house, so she at least got a little personal growth in the end.

For the "Lost Mines of Phandelver" starter box, I played a young woman who grew up as a goat farmer and was off on her first trip into "the big city". Which was just the little frontier town a day's wagon travel down the main highway, but she'd never really left home and this was a big deal for her. She joined up on the Party's wagon, promising to do chores and cooking for them in return for the trip there and back. The Plot happened and she got swept up into this big adventure, proved her worth, fought and defeated evil alongside the Party, overall had your typical Hero's Journey/Coming of Age experience.

At the end of it all, it was expected that her eyes had been opened to the wider world and the adventuring spirit had gotten a good hold on her. The Party asked what she planned to do next and if she wanted to continue on to parts unknown, her immediate reply was "HELL NO" and she walked back home. The whole experience was absolutely terrifying for her and while she successfully rose to the challenge, she was all too happy to scurry back to her little farm, family, and simple life in the countryside. She's got great stories to tell at the local watering hole but has absolutely no interest whatsoever in leveling up past Level 5.

I'd like to help more, but unfortunately I've hit a bit of a dead end. There's a lot of different types of candy from multiple different companies that could be, though it's hard to figure out one that fits all of those criteria simultaneously.

The type of bag and wrapping is commonplace among all candy producers, so we'd need more information - specific colors, iconography, the presence of a mascot character, etc - to narrow it down further. The candy shape you mention makes me think it might've been a gum since the majority of chew candies aren't enclosed, due to how they're produced (extruded in long strips or tubes, then cut into pieces). A Japanese candy with fruit flavors that also doesn't have bright colors and isn't milk/yogurt flavored is hard to pin down.

For the time being, I'd suggest trying to find some of the wrappers, or even the mug they were carried in if it was a novelty/branded mug. Also, ask your fiance if they might know anything about the candies. If those fail, it's easy enough to look up major Japanese candy companies like Calpis, Lotte, Meiji, and so forth to see what kind of international distribution they have. At least that way you can skim their catalogues and see if something leaps out at you as familiar.

Hawlucha is prime naming style to me. Not only because it suits the theme of the Pokemon, but also because it feels better as something a Luchadore Pokemon would scream out as it hurls itself from the turnbuckle in an aerial tackle. It's got all these easily stretched, peak sounds that lend themselves well to volume and enthusiasm, more so than the Japanese "Luchabull". The phonetics are too low and that interrupting "buh" sound really breaks up the flow.

Some kinds of Hi-Chew have all-white exteriors with colored cores based on the flavor , but those often fade and can look very pale, or get covered up if the candy melts and re-solidifies during transport. There's actually a bunch of different types of Hi-Chew with different interior and exterior color variations, so it's hard to say for certain which one you might have tried.

I thought maybe Puchao candy might be an option, but those are pretty colorful, so it's unlikely. There's also Calpis Soft Candy , which are generally white. Do you happen to remember the candy's shape, or if it had any other flavor to it besides just fruit? Like, was it a creamy or juicy? Did it melt away as you chewed or did it remain mostly intact like gum?

That actually works well as an in-universe explanation for the mechanics behind Weave-based casting for Bards and seems like the kind of thing a Bard would speculate about over a meal with their Party.

Manipulating the Weave to cast spells is achieved through a variety of methods, but it's pointed out in descriptions of Spellcasting that it's the particular resonance of sounds and gestures that prompt reactions in the Weave, which result in spellcasting. Wizards learn and teach each other a specific set of known patterns that produce a reliable result, but that doesn't mean their way is the only way to cast. A Bard finds the same kind of resonance through emotion and action - the Class Description doesn't specifically mention the Weave by name, but it does state that a Bard's magic is "untangling and reshaping the fabric of reality in harmony with your wishes and music" and it "comes from the heart and soul you pour into the performance of your music or oration".

Since there's technically no difference between a Wizard spell and a Bard spell - they're both Arcane - a Wizard could presumably study and reverse-engineer the vibes-based "you get back the energy you give to the audience" method and use it to cast a spell themselves. So a Wizard could rock out on a lute and shoot a Fireball, albeit not with the instrument as their foci. A Bard could also deconstruct the exact tempo and pitch of a Wizard's verbal components while casting and play it back at them, producing the spell themselves. But that same Wizard would end up stumped in trying to puzzle out the resonance of that same Bard casting Healing Word, because that's a Divine spell. There would just be that little something more, that creative X factor that performers all seem to feel inherently, that can't be so easily dissected and analyzed.

The Illusionist Player totally Scooby-Doo'd that whole thing. It was a six-man Battle Royale scenario with environmental hazards as well, so nobody was sitting still at any time. But the Illusionist's trickery kept everyone very far away from her, trying to avoid what they thought were dangerous monsters roaming around or ritual casting strange magics. While also contending with each other - especially the opportunist Wizard Player of the battle, who'd popped Greater Invisibility at the first opportunity and was taking advantage of the Illusionist's diversions.

I DM'd an epic-level Battle Royale for my local group of yahoos and one of them lasted into the final three by literally doing just that. She had a Deck of Illusions and focused on Illusion spells to project really powerful and unusual enemies the others didn't recognize - and thus didn't know how to contend with - which kept the entire opposing force at bay for the majority of the battle. Pure decoy bullshit, and it worked like a dream. She only lost because she got caught in an AOE.

Making a new iteration of the game, be it as point-five update or as a full new edition, whether it makes the game better or worse from a mechanics balancing standpoint, is perfectly fine. The cashgrab issue comes with the fact that Hasbro/WoTC is building this new version entirely around the effort to funnel everyone into their subscription and micro-transaction based private digital garden. The changes being made to the 5e system are not being made to specifically improve the game or for the sake of meeting player/customer expectations; they're being made to secure the audience into a monetization scheme from here on out.

Control Flame has a good variety of uses in any industry that utilizes fire or heat, and certainly has plenty of uses for theatrics. That said, the go-to direction my brain went to was actually sabotage, such as absolutely ruining the local blacksmith's business by extinguishing their forge.

Are you a local hedge wizard in a small farming community? Congrats - Mold Earth has made you every farmer's best friend. You can single-handedly till and irrigate a vastly larger amount of crop soil, dig ditches, uproot brush trees/old trunks/obstructing rocks far faster and easier than a team of mundane laborers could. Depending on the crops, you might even be able to harvest them yourself, such as using the ability to shift the earth to draw up root vegetables en masse. You don't even have to do it all by yourself - just assisting the farmers would make their entire workload far lighter and guarantee you're never without a friendly neighbor happy to share their gratefulness.

Are bug infestations a problem? Lots of mosquitos or flies? A puff of Poison Spray keeps the pests away. Sword Burst also works, but might be a bit of overkill. Unless you REALLY don't like mosquitos.

A local noble is throwing a party and you want to make some extra coin. Help them impress their fancy-pants socialite buddies by using Shape Water to make THE BEST custom ice sculptures for their grand banquet display. Delight the guests as you serve them drinks from the punch bowl by making tiny liquid dolphins that leap from the bowl into their glasses.

True Strike is often mocked for its uselessness in battle. But it's a damn useful trick to have when playing (read: cheating) at carnival games at your local festival or darts at the tavern. It specifies that you only need to designate a "target", not a creature, to gain advantage against with your next attack. So a stack of cans to knock over with a thrown ball, or a bullseye on the dart board are valid options with no real action economy pressure to worry about. It could presumably also work in sports like baseball, where the timing of pitching-and-hitting are clearly designated and predictable. Pair with Guidance and potentially even Magic Stone for extra bullshit to ensure nobody wants to play with you anymore.

I remember first seeing that effect in anime back in the early 2000s with Gankutsuou, which was basically "The Count of Monte Cristo as a hyper-surrealistic vampire space opera". It leaned hard into the texture masking throughout its entire visual style and has always stuck in my brain.

It's a very neat visual effect, but if Molly's coat was the only thing to have it in the whole show, it'd stand out as a bit of a design eyesore. They'll probably go with a greatly simplified coat design and/or 2d texture projection. I actually think the masking technique would be a cool effect to put in place near the end of the show, when Spoiler

Any time I play a character with innate Fire Resistance - usually Tieflings - they always do absentminded things like drinking their coffee at near-boiling temperatures, or stoking a fire by just reaching in and adjusting the logs bare-handed, or extinguishing a torch by smothering it with their palms like one might snuff a candle with their fingertips. They don't do it to show off, but just because it never occurs to them to use utensils because they've literally never had a need to since childhood.

Any time I play a Kobold, I always make sure to tailor their manner of speaking and vocabulary to avoid words and sounds that require a lot of lip motion. So they always speak in the back of their throat and with a lot of tongue motion for enunciation. My reasoning is that, as a sort of pseudo-reptilian species, Kobolds probably don't have a lot of facial muscles or particularly mobile (if mobile at all) lips. Similarly, I always make sure to focus on their manner of emoting with lots of subtle head, hand, and tail motions blended into their behavior - they physically gesticulate because that aforementioned lack of facial dexterity would mean they don't rely facial expressions to emote. So when non-Draconids are speaking Draconic, they have to make a lot of overt motions they're not familiar with and tend to look silly to Draconids for "having an outrageous accent" of sorts.

Swashbuckler Rogue Gnoll with an outrageous Spanish accent who commanded a magical pirate ship and crew of lackwit Gnoll minions.

This character was genuinely intended as original - I had no idea what I'd done until my friends started laughing at the game table and pointed it out to me. Once they had, I could only shake my head in shame over having been so blind as to not see it immediately.