not sure how I feel about this … have to think about it 
but good that you brought it up
2024 Rules
You can either equip or unequip one weapon when you make an attack as part of the attack action on your turn. You do so either before or after the attack. If you equip a weapon before an attack you don’t need to use it for that attack. Equipping a weapon includes drawing it from a sheath or picking it up. Unequipping a weapon includes sheathing, stowing, or dropping it.
for reference
edit: emphasis mine
edit2: DNDBeyond Link
Another issue I noticed is that grappling with the 2024 rules felt incredibly bland and bad - so much so that for my private games I’ll go back to the 2014 rules. It’s just a personal opinion though, not something we’d need to adress in VALUE rules.
In 2014 grappling was a roll-off - and roll-offs are among the most tense situations in my experience. Few moments in combats were as exciting as a martial - aided by their build with features like Rage, Giant’s Might, Athletics expertise… and by teammates with Bardic Inspiration, Enlarge/Reduce and Hex (disadvantage on Str or Dex checks) managing to wrestle down an enemy far stronger than them. And grappling was one of the very few ways to apply at least some “crowd control” to monsters with legendary resistances, a unique way for martials to shine.
Now grappling just procs a Dex or Str saving throw against a fixed DC - there is no way to buff that DC, and all the tension that comes with a roll-off, the efforts and investments of a grappling build and support by teammates coming to fruition, all that is gone. And it is rather unlikely for a grapple (or shove) attempt to succeed considering most enemies are decent at least one of these saves: In a six-hour session with five major fights, a monk/barbarian with the Grappler feat only succeeded at like three grapples.
Considering the Monster Manual comes out 17th of February, we should start planning when we want to meet to discuss the wording and questions we wish to use.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a vote, this is not a big discussion on what rules we use. Rather how do we phrase the questions and how and who will do the poll.
This is mostly for DMs and the DMs who ran a certain amount of games (around 3-5) are allowed to vote in the end. The poll and vote will later be sent to you.
When would you guys prefer it?
- On a weekend? Saturday or Sunday? Possible dates: 22.2, 23.2; 1.3, 2.3
- On a Friday? Possible Dates: 21.2; 28.2; 7.3
- During a weekday in the afternoon?
Edit: Made a when2meet to make finding a date easier.
2 Likes
Ban 2024 Suggestion spell since it has not limits…
to clarify the change is
2014:
- The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable.
2024:
- The suggestion must sound achievable and not involve anything that would obviously deal damage to the target or it allies.
the spell is very DM fiat dependant
2 Likes
Yeah it should be on Dms decision at the end, because it sounds pretty easy with suggestion to pet dragon at least it seems like that to me.
1st of March would be difficult and 2nd of March would be basically impossible
22.2 & 23.2 
21.2, 28.2, & 7.3
I thought I’d put it here, but also not sure it needs to be a part of this… bastions. we haven’t talked about it yet. I suppose for the most part they’re not value-relevant, but we could make a ruling about bastions, with their turns costing downtime days or something.
The thing is, having an official home-base isn’t the worst of ideas, especially with item carry limits and some of us currently storing our items in a hole in the ground when we can’T carry them on adventure. … but also, bastion turns and bastions being attacked doesn’t work that well in one-shots.
1 Like
bastions are really nice in some campaigns,
they are basically a system for downtimes most useful for home campaigns that play in only one region
or when the players have a base that supports them with equipment and intel (like Q in the James Bond movies)
what we could do is to take the Bastion Actions as inspiration for Downtime Day costs
1 Like
p.s.: speaking from experience we likely will need two polls to cover all topics
21st and 22nd don’t work for me, but 23rd should.
Bastions! (sorry, I love them and I guess my last post also got lost in the internet)
And I was wondering in general if we could add Downtime Days as a DM reward. I can level up or gain the item, but what if my PCs just love spending their time in between adventures brewing potions?
1 Like
Just came to mind as I was contemplating about spellcasters: a downtime activity to switch out spells for “spells known” casters - bards, sorcerers, warlocks and rangers - would be cool.
Normally, they can switch out one spell on level-up (in addition to learning one or more new spells), so that you aren’t stuck with a spell that you thought was nice but turned out not so useful - or maybe something happened to the character that inspired them to learn a certain spell.
However, there are situations where you cannot level up, but still want to switch out a spell: when your character already is level 20, or when the level-up would put them above the level cap/tier of the adventure you want to play them in.
Spending downtime to switch out a spell seems like a good way to solve that issue, cost could be 5 downtime days for one spell.
1 Like
We just got a new Unearthed Arcana today: https://media.dndbeyond.com/compendium-images/ua/forgotten-realms-subclasses/OXcW3UjTCurUcQy7/UA2025-RealmsSubclasses.pdf
This document presents eight subclasses: revised subclasses for the Cleric (Knowledge Domain), Fighter (Purple Dragon Knight), and Wizard (Bladesinger) and new subclasses for the Bard (College of the Moon), Paladin (Oath of the Noble Genies), Ranger (Winter Walker), Rogue (Scion of the Three), and Sorcerer (Spellfire Sorcery)
There are some things I noticed which might be relevant to our upcoming VALUE rules discussions, considering these subclasses are going to be released in November this year, thus will be played under the rules for the new season:
- Noble Genie paladin: I really like what they did with this subclass. What’s noteworthy for us is that it gets Conjure Minor Elementals as a subclass spell and that spell just works really well to sell that class’s theme. I don’t think banning the spell will be a good idea, we should instead nerf it (i.e. by reducing its scaling to 1d8 per level). Banning CME would mean we have to come up with house rules for replacing subclass spells, complicating things.
- Winter Walker ranger: Really looking forward to play one. This subclass, at least for me, really emphasizes how important concentration-free Hunter’s Mark would be. It is completely built upon that spell, even moreso than the Hunter. If you want to make use of your subclass abilities, you are completely locked out of your (other) spells. That won’t be fun for the player.
2 Likes
I like the Winter Walker, the 3 Dead Gods Rogue, and the Dragon Knight thematically (although Faerûn lorewise the Dragonrider is … well^^)
- fluffwise the Oath of the Genie is a bit meh … but that can be fixed
- the Dragon Fighter needs more polish
- the knowledge cleric looks really nice
I don’t see a problem with Hunter’s Mark having Concentration to be honest 
I agree however that the level 11 Hunter feature as well as the level 20 Ranger feature are two weak
… but - just my opinion - to balance / homebrew such things is better left for homegames
a pers. theory of mine is, that they made those feature with the Playtest Hunter’'s Mark Spell (who had upcasting scaling damage) and when they removed the later, they did not changed those Hunter/Ranger features
Something else, in regards to magic items: in AL, you can give magic items to companions/pets and they can attune to them (thinking of steel defender, drakewarden’s drake, find steed, zombies, simulacra…) and use them if physically capable of doing so, but they share attunement slots with you. So you can never have more than three attunement items at a time.
For example, my T4 wizard used seven attunement items at once - three for himself, three for his simulacrum and one ring for a zombie (for the dark lord on his dark throne… I know 
).
It could make sense to adapt that rule for VALUE, especially if we increase our magic item limits.
1 Like
yeah that was already suggested that you share attunement slots with hired allies, pets, familiars, etc.
2 Likes
So possible dates after the poll:
- SUN: 23.2 3:30-7:00pm possible 5/6 (Xaoseed missing)
- SAT: 8.3 3:00-6:00pm possible 5/6 (BufoBufo missing)
- SUN: 9.3 4:00-6:00pm possible 5(6)/6 (Maybe BufoBufo missing)
What date would you prefer. I’d prefer 23.2 but that’s because I can do this most likely
2 Likes
we will need 2 dates likely anyway … since there is a high chance of follow up questions
so would think that earlier dates are prolly better (in general)