Disclaimer


**Disclaimer** The following blog is a parody. For avoidance of doubt, Otto von Quarzis is NOT a prophet and his former Rules Firm is NOT a law firm, does not provide legal advice, and, you know... isn't real. Carry on.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Announcing the Grand Opening of the Rules Firm of Otto von Quarzis

 The Rules Firm of Otto von Quarzis, S.G.E.

Welcome to the new blog and home of Otto von Quarzis, S.G.E., ruleslawyer.  For those of you following this blog, you have probably notice the purpose waver and change over the past couple years.  After a couple of good rules discussions with my good friend, Mark, over at Dust Pan Games (a fantastic blog, which you really should sign-up to read), I realized that I love to argue - and, more importantly, I love to argue about rules.

So, that is what this blog is going to be about. I will take various rules and provide my reasoned and researched interpretation.  I will try and scour the Net for other's takes and thoughts and bring it together in a collection that I hope will be helpful to fellow game masters. As I do so, I welcome everyone's comments, feedback and thoughts.  If you have a rule you have been struggling with, please share it.  If you have your own rules interpretation you think is the bees' knees, please share that as well.   

Rules Lawyers - Fight - The Alertness Feat

Welcome to a new segment on the Quarzis Games' blog.  This segment, I am tentatively titling "Rules Lawyers - Fight"; at least until my counterparty disagrees with me and thinks of something more clever to title it.  The gist of this segment is that I and my good friend, Mark, at Dustpan Games will take a topic of contention in the D&D (and possibly other games) universe and battle it out. The Dustpan Games cross-post can be found here.

This episode - the "alertness feat" in 5th Edition D&D. A player in my 5e campaign took this feat... and it has made my life a living hell, as a DM, ever since.  Now, let me take a step back - it really isn't that bad.  I just kept forgetting he had it - and so my carefully planned ambushes... well, they didn't work out so well.  The question arose - how can anything ever allow a character to "never be surprised"?  The answer that I hope to argue is - this isn't the right question to ask.  As I will illustrate - I f''ed up.  I didn't adjudicate the situation correctly.  I'll explain why below the jump.