Thanks. He seems like a really cool guy.

Who ist this guy?

Ah yes. Good ol’ Volo. Nice to see him from time to time. I should use his books more often.

Fortunes Favor doesn’t seem like the optimal spell to use in a situation like this (even if you could). Unless the games include no social component, enhance ability would be better.

About the house rule: I get why you’d use the rule for simplicity, but especially if your not playing a cleric, but instead a wizard or an artificer, it seems weird to make the PC a chosen one by having those spells.

I usually give NPCs a set selection of spells they use. But this set is only their prepared spell-list, it varies depending on the NPC and most preparation-casters will have access to the other spells on their list, should the need arise (as it most likely won’t, so there is no extra work on my part).

Oh. That sounds very interesting. Thanks.

Who’s Aribeth?

Ah. I see. I think I understand the notion, but if an approach to a map is changing it along with its respective lore, then I prefer just making my own cities alltogether. It’s part of the realms lore that not everything is a gigantic floating city. There are those of Netheril if you want some.

Probably. An author once wrote this piece of conversation:

“Wait? You can transform matter. Thats magic.” “Your people can use metal to fly over buildings.” “Of course they can. It makes perfect sense.”

Having a world, where “magic” actually exist raises a lot of questions about some conventional expressions and cultural aspects.

Yeah. I’ve seen some of it and it looks quite promising. Unfortunately, I’m one of those DMs who, for the love of his life, can’t make a campaign with self-made stuff as it always ends in hyper fixation and over preparing on some parts, but complete lack of direction in others. I’m trying to get better, but modules just take of so much of that pressure, allowing me to fill in the gaps with actually well thought out content.

But if any DM wants to run a campaign in the places I so smugly called the ,forgotten" part of the realms, then I’m always happy to see it.

Where is this city?

I’m afraid I don’t have the time to do so right now, but thanks for the suggestion.

I think its strongly connected to how many of your campaigns use modules, as with the exception of ToA, every module settled in the material plane takes place in the colored region and near it. And as lore for the 15th century DR is only well developed for the sword coast, I personally tend to stage my campaigns there.

Ironically enough, I’ve had campaigns where just doing what the priestess suggested would have been a better solution than what the party ended up deciding to do.

Thats funny, because I’ve seen some DMs where nobody cares wether or not lvl. 10, they still treat you as if you were lvl. one and don’t know sh*t about you. (Mainly in campaigns where the characters travel a lot. I still find it weird. Rumors spread quickly.)

Try this one. As the comments of the post say, it’s not entirely up to date, but it works well enough.

They could also just make different adventures in different parts of the Faerun. But they’d have to actually update they’re lore then.

Clerics have a more elegant way to do that.

Far as I think about it, if one wants to hide a spell, they should pick up the subtle spell-metamagic. Making every caster able to do what is supposed to be a special ability (on par with doubling the range/duration of a spell) cheapens the ability and makes casters even stronger than they already are.

As I said elsewhere, casting a spell and holding it uses visible components the hobgoblin could react to.

I takes a minute because it’s not meant to be used in combat. I think for the power it has in the situations it applies, its very reasonable that it would be a spell requiring prep time and not one to just be popped of in the middle of combat.

If he doesn’t know what spell you’re casting, that means that he’s even more likely to assume that you are trying to cast an harmful spell, making him attack you. And casting a spell takes an action, basically a third of your turn if you want, so the hobgoblin has at least 2 seconds to react, if not more. And thats plenty of time to stop himself from jumping.