u/Brother-Cane

So, the description for Bag of Tricks says:

You can take a Bonus Action to command how the creature moves and what action it takes on its next turn, such as attacking an enemy.

The rules refer to them as creatures, not spirits in animal form such as familiar or the animals called up by Conjure Animals. Given this, the animals would have limited ability to understand any orders given. Nevertheless, one could rely on any of these animals to perform simple tricks first outlined in 1E, such as having a rat or weasel bring to you the cell keys from a peg on the wall or commanding a dire wolf or brown bear track a scent.

Returning to the rulebooks, it was indicated that an animal could be trained to perform up to three tasks/tricks per point of intelligence the creature possesses. If one is not going to have them to simply provide extra bodies on the battlefield, would you state that the animals already know how to follow the simple commands or that they automatically know how to perform 1-9 of the tricks outlined in the rules?

So, the description for Bag of Tricks says:

You can take a Bonus Action to command how the creature moves and what action it takes on its next turn, such as attacking an enemy.

The rules refer to them as creatures, not spirits in animal form such as familiar or the animals called up by Conjure Animals. Given this, the animals would have limited ability to understand any orders given. Nevertheless, one could rely on any of these animals to perform simple tricks first outlined in 1E, such as having a rat or weasel bring to you the cell keys from a peg on the wall or commanding a dire wolf or brown bear track a scent.

Returning to the rulebooks, it was indicated that an animal could be trained to perform up to three tasks/tricks per point of intelligence the creature possesses. If one is not going to have them to simply provide extra bodies on the battlefield, would you state that the animals already know how to follow the simple commands or that they automatically know how to perform 1-9 of the tricks outlined in the rules?

In the 2014 rules, a Vicious Weapon dealt a straight 7 extra points of damage of the weapon's type, which as a flat number, would not be doubled when one makes a critical strike as it only doubles the number of dice rolled.

The rules for 5.5E change the Vicious Weapon's extra damage to 2d6, and thus a critical strike would result in an extra 4d6 damage. So, a fighter with an 18 strength, wielding a Vicious Long Sword with the Dueling fighting style, would do 1d8+2d6+4+2 or 9 to 26 total damage, averaging to 17.5. A critical strike from the same person would do 2d8+4d6+4+2, coming to 12 to 46, averaging 29 points of damage for a single strike.

While critical strikes are rare, the Vicious Weapon has the potential for dealing more damage than weapons of Very Rare or even Legendary rarity while not requiring attunement as most of these require a natural roll of 20 (which is technically less common than a critical strike, given rules such as the Champion's Improved Critical ability) to score their extra damage. For example, the above fighter, scoring a critical strike while wielding a Long Sword of Sharpness on rolling a 20 on D20 would do 2d8+14+4+2 damage, for a range of 22 to 36, averaging to 27 points of damage.

So, I was thinking of adding a Six-Demon Bag as a homebrew nod to "Big Trouble in Little China".

Six-Demon Bag (Rarity varies) requires attunement by a spellcaster

Although originally created by the mad, Great Old One Warlock, Egg Shen, the secret of Six-Demon Bags have leaked to the wider world of spellcasters. All varieties can be used as a spellcasting focus.

Uncommon: +1 to Spell Attack rolls. The attuned user can cast one of the following spells without expending a spell slot, after which, it cannot be used in such a manner until after a long rest: Aganazzar's Scorcher, Fog Cloud, and Gust of Wind.

Rare: +1 to Spell Attack rolls. The rare variety has the same powers as the Uncommon variety. In addition, it grants its owner to cast each of the following spells once per long rest: Flaming Sphere, Water Walk and Wind Wall.

Very Rare: +1 to Spell Attack rolls. In addition to the powers of the Uncommon and Rare varieties, the Very Rare version empowers the attuned user to cast Summon Elemental once per week, choosing the elemental's plane of origin at the time of the casting.

Is it too powerful?

So, it's occurred to me that certain magic items, e.g. Wand of Webs, only require that the character wielding it be a spellcaster. As it does not specifically require them to actually be a member of a spellcasting class, RAW, a human fighter who took Magic Initiate as his second origin feat could use that Wand of Webs (or whatever) with full effect.

Assuming I have not missed something in the 2024 rules, what are your favorite combinations of this?

Nearly every cleric casts Aid to boost party members for hours out of the adventuring day, but what else do you do?

When I played a Twilight Cleric, I always used my Twilight Sanctuary to grant everyone in the party temporary hit points at the start of the day. Whenever I ran a wizard who had access to it, I cast Water Breathing on the whole party as a ritual in the morning. It came in handy only once, but it cost me nothing and lasted 24 hours.

Our Elven ranger used the extra time available through only needing four hours of trance to scout the area around us while the team was making and breaking camp to search for potential ambushers. Our bard with the Musician origin feat would use his Encouraging Song as we began our day.

The actual text of the Shilelagh spell states that, "For the duration, you can use your spellcasting ability instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls ..."

It does not say that you must, but rather that you can. Nevertheless, on reddit and elsewhere, people assume that you are required to use said spellcasting ability. This makes no sense given the dissection of wording devoted to other spells.

Can anyone offer an explanation for this?

I've noticed that a lot of DMs just aren't aware of cheap and free ways to improve immersion, especially in the days of the internet:

• Some shot bottles have shapes that make for perfect potion stand-ins.
• There are online apps which can create the fonts and borders useful in making your letters of recommendation and decrees look close enough to the official things for gameplay.
• Giving maps and old messages the look of being older is simple with putting the finished product in wet coffee grounds for a while before drying and cleaning it off. A lit and blown out match can be used to give a paper the look that it was salvaged from a fire.
• If one is willing to put in the time, libraries offer all sorts of music that one can use for mood.
• One can buy or download pictures from a National Geographic with articles about ruins, tombs and treasure hoards for an effective visual impact.
• Tattered old books acquired for pennies at a Book Fair can stand in for old tomes, especially when the title has been worn off.
• Occult symbols for what the characters see upon breaking into the cult's headquarters can be found online with ease.

Both versions of Simulacrum state that it "... uses the statistics of the creature it duplicates."

As the rules make it impossible for the creature to restore spell slots, how do you rule a Wizard's simulacrum? Does it have the same prepared spells as already prepared by the wizard being replicated or do you give the player a one-time chance to prepare a selection of spells?