Trying to be a melee gish who focuses on concentration spells without having Resilient Con or Warcaster is going to be difficult, straight up. The reason it works for Bladesinger is because of really high AC and a boost to concentration.

My honest advice for if you want to protect concentration without those feats is to get to Paladin 6 for Aura of Protection ASAP and focus on Charisma over Dex, especially if you plan to dip Hexblade later (or sooner). 14 dex for medium armor is completely fine in that case.

For the Bard/Paladin mix I recommend focusing on the hybrid support/damage playstyle. If in doubt, cast Bless.

Pause for a second. This post is about perspectives on something I found to be vaguely defined in the game and what kind of narrative one can create from game mechanics and their narrative descriptions. It's about trying to find something that works as internally consistent.

When I look at how Force damage is represented across the game, and I see all magical effects, in the context of magic, described as magic, except for one, then of course the one example is going to seem like an egregious outlier. It does matter to me as a storyteller when there is a gap between what is presented and what I've perceived so far. There's any number of ways to go about resolving that, including the conclusion that Force isn't all magic after all and must be something else.

Ultimately the DM decides what parts of the game they keep or throw away or change, everyone makes their own interpretations, and thats fine. Yours is clearly different than mine, and that's okay. Have a wonderful day

I can't find a single other example of nonmagical force damage in the game so its easier for me to believe this was an erroneous design (likely inspired by BG3 which has the same problem with explosives IIRC). But if there are any I'd love to see them.

Force damage is damage from raw magical energy as others have said. The way that manifests on targets that suffer from it is up to interpretation. A spiritual weapon mace may leave an enemy's skull caved in, disintegrate may be ripping their body apart molecule by molecule, blade of disaster may cut their head off by tearing apart dimensions themselves. All are force damage, so there's no need to be too fussed about what it looks like, you can totally make up your own answers.

As a side note, if you look at spells like dimension door and teleport, you can take force damage from teleportation gone wrong, so the rending of space is a common theme with force damage. My personal interpretation is that Force is "reality damage", it's the power of unmaking and the universe trying to fix itself tugging at you from different directions.

I saw someone predict this a while back and I thought it was an amusing but unlikely idea. But holy shit it was actually true the whole time. I feel like I need to reread part 2 now

Which magic katana war crime was your favorite?

Also read the series, it's peak!

/unwiz that's really cool, me or my group's probably wouldn't go that far into changing game mechanics and the post is more of a flavor/narrative thing in the end, but I get your point entirely

/wiz many different mental faculties can be used for controlling magic after all, sometimes you get surprised by what kind of person someone is in contrast to their magic!

Solo leveling has exactly one appeal and that's Jinwoo doing cool shit. The show knows this and plays into it. Tower of God is more engaging in narrative, chatacters, worldbuilding etc. Its just a shame ToG didn't get an anime adaptation of the same quality as SL.

Interesting. You've mentioned there is a specific time that leads to being born with this nature? Sounds like people in this world are quite affected by the motion of cosmic forces. And I am glad to hear these other ways to replenish your magic exist in such cases.

Exactly this! Its a common mistake to think sorcery is genetic, which is not the case on most planes I've been to. If sorcery is inherited it is indeed the mystical connection to magic that is passed down, and a sorcerer's strength does not correlate to the strength of their ancestors but rather their own efforts in cultivating that connection by learning magic.

Thats fascinating, its always interesting to hear how magic practitioners differe from each other across the planes. Those wizards you speak of do sound similar to some sorcerers I've met! And I'm sorry to hear its possible for casters to lose access to their magic reserves, that sounds quite stressful even if you can rely on enchanted objects.

It would be foolish of me to discount the efforts of any type of magic user, no matter how their craft is performed. But does a bird not need to learn how to fly despite being gifted with wings? I think it's good to remember that most people of all magic user types have to put in effort to achieve progress and mastery, and that conversely anyone can be gifted with natural talent for a specific magic. That goes for sorcerers too, not all of us are talented.

Promoting understanding between different magic practitioners is what I'm here for! There's far too much pointless hatred these days in my view so I'd rather bring people together over the one thing we all agree on; magic is cool and interesting!

How strange. I've been to many planes where cultivating magic energy in the soul is all that's required for magic, no magic organs required. This is the case for sorcerers here too; though the magic needs to be channeled through the body (sidestepping the need for materials or foci) the energy is tied to your fundamental essence. Wizardry here is control of magic through the mind instead of the soul.

So, magic on your plane works is extremely convenient for wizard style spell learning and creation, and basically all magic skills were invented by wizards millions of years before anyone else came into the picture? Yup, sounds like a reality created by wizards for wizards. Nothing wrong with that mind you, but you're going to have limited examples of how other traditions work in realities that *aren't* hamstrung to make things inconvenient for them.

Copyright infringement? Setting aside the fact that verbal components are personalized on my plane, I'm not sure you wanna use that argument since in the first place wizards got the idea of chanting from divine magic users doing prayers for their spells. All spellcasting traditions grow from studying each other, it's called learning.

Besides, silent casting is literally one of the most common sorcerous arts 🤦

Aye, I agree with your points. Perhaps the difference of opinion comes from differing experiences of what kinds of sorcerers we have met and who they tend to associate themselves with.

I do also agree that arcane study benefits sorcerers, I myself teach the art of ritual casting to many sorcerers to supplement the variety of their spells. And as always, understanding the ways of other magic practitioners promotes empathy and cooperation!

The energy is not the same, this much is true. But many sorcerous practises are similar to those practised by monks. Meditation to gain control and awareness of the energy, as well as practising the channeling of that energy throughout the body are both key skills in sorcery.

But the main reason for the comparison is the mindset of skilled sorcerers. Just like monks, sorcerers strive to master the self, it just so happens that the self of sorcerers is magic. I see far too often sorcerers derided as inferior wizards who rely on talent instead of study when the truth is wizardry and sorcery are entirely different disciplines that both require practise and training, and are not more directly comparable than wizards and any other types of casters.

Other comments already pointed out things like posing and colors so I'll mention something else from my own experience. If you ever look at creations in this sub and find that they have some "coolness" factor you can't seem to replicate, as was my experience for a long time, know that a good portion of that is probably due to good lighting in the portrait mode that Pro users have access to. Any mini will look much better with a nice background and good lighting.

So you don't suck at making minis, you just don't have access to the same tools as some other people here. This goes for Kitbashing too, which is a huge game changer for those who master it.

Deciding to have that as part of your worldbuilding says more about the author than it does about the validity of that line of logic. And again, that just isn't how sorcery is presented in D&D.

I don't understand how people keep harping about this as if it were true, the sorcerer class description itself says that in the case of inherited power a family might produce one sorcerer every generation or the powers might manifest as a fluke, absolutely nothing to do with "bloodline potency". Is it just to be gross?

It should be pretty obvious a sorcerer's power grows with their own mastery and is not predetermined by how closely related they are to other powerful sorcerers. That's like saying someone who works out and is muscular will have muscular children.

Sunbeam personally. The appeal to me is saving resources in longer fights. Or if having access to quickened spell, supercharging AoE damage potential by blasting Sunbeam + another spell on the same turn.

It's not exactly the same as Fireball because of different AoE shape but the blindness effect makes up for it in my view. The spell basically becomes "cast fireball every turn for a minute". I really just wish its damage increased when upcasting, its the only change I'd want from it

D&D feels kind of perfect for this

- Weather Manipulation is a standard power for higher tier dragons which can be fought consistently by adventurers of the same tier and is possible for some high level casters to perform on their own

- There is plenty of magic that can undo or resist transformation effects, as well as transformations of their own such as Polymorph. Also ample Healing magic.

- Travel between different dimensions is not only possible but pretty normal for high tier play, and high level adventures contend even with beings from mental and abstract dimensions. Time travel is pretty rare and only Time Dragons and Gods can do it from what I recall, but local chronomancy such as reading the future and then changing it by forcing small timeline shifts are very possible. As for the example of Fatalis example existing in multiple timelines is sort how Greatwyrms operate; When an ancient dragon starts to sense their other selves or "echoes" in other material plane worlds, they can start to fuse their senses across dimensions which lets them grow even stronger physically.

- Continental destruction for a single character/party is beyond their reach but they do have the AP to hurt such beings, such as the Demon Lord Demogorgon.

- Terraforming powers are also within the domain of higher dragons and also elder elementals, which higher level adventurers can content with.

Basically, no singular adventurer gets past the verse IMO, but mid level characters would feel right at home in the setting and possibly a level 20 party clears also thanks to hax. Gods neg diff but that's boring so I don't count them plus the focus is always on the adventurers and who they fight directly, which they are neither.