Going through the spell list, there's an awful lot of spells that are incredibly funny in the context of bedroom pastimes, here, let's assume it's heroism and Bear's Endurance.
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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I have been thinking about exactly this, because the more I think about it the more I wonder why all the DMs I've played with have come to the exact same conclusions when they have to improvise something that doesn't follow a monster stat block or a spell description. I think it comes down to how in Planescape when you are astral projecting, you substitute your Str for Int, Dex for Wis, and Con for Cha.
For the record, I had no idea that this was a 2nd edition thing. I thought that this was just how Astral Projection worked! So, it seems that the DMs and who showed me how DnD is done were old-school players who internalized this into a broader design philosophy, which became a teaching I learned as obvious fact.
I had to do a lot of googling to try and find where this came from, and I'm not 100% sure I am right, but it is pretty frustrating that the only design guidance I had for this doesn't even come from the text itself.
Throughout all of DnD (although 4e is a bit of an exception to this) - the creators have very much relied on something termed the "Friendly Uncle" method of teaching the game.
That is, you don't really learn to play DnD by opening the rulebooks and reading them end-to-end, you join a campaign with someone experienced (the "friendly uncle"), and they teach you the game as you go. The books serve as a sort of "reference" for common rules and making ideas, but most of your roleplaying experience comes from others.
As such, most groups and players of DnD have lots of conventions and house rules that they may not even realize are house rules. They have explanations for things that aren't in the core books, and they have rules and explanations from older editions - which often defined things in more detail. So much of the game is received wisdom from other players, and derives from someone "making it up" a decade ago when they couldn't find or didn't know an answer.
In one regard this is pretty good, the game is a living entity, constantly evolving, and allowing players with vastly different preferences to enjoy what is (ostensibly) the "same" game.
In the other regard, it's really frustrating when it comes to actually pinning down the mechanics or understanding of anything.
@ahdok @ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling this is a really smart observation.