Eh... I'd need to look into this specific one more, and it's a bit weirder than 'normal' given this is a drug for a common physiological symptom, but there was a lot of bad medical science done from roughly WWI to the turn of the millennium that nonetheless still underpins some of our commonly available medicines. Clinical psych has it especially bad, but the replication crisis is a problem everywhere.

Dang, I wish I knew this. Be nice if they tweak this trigger to happen later as well, not sure how many people are resting before recruiting at least 2-3 companions.

I suspect it's been cut. Either that, or it's just meant to be a sort of "yeah, Moonhaven was always kinda fucked, between the swamp hag, incognito Red Wizard and Underdark entrance right next to the water source, not exactly safe for children." :P

Maybe once upon a time they were part of some sidequest connected to Ethel, the Red Wizard or the invading Sharrans, or maybe it was just atmosphere, who knows. /shurg

What do you mean? If you enter Act 2 from the mountain pass, that probably breaks some Grymforge quests, but the underdark is very much still accessible.

There's a lot of griping about the third act, and yeah, I get it, it's incomplete and comparatively poorly optimized. But it's still really good. :P They clearly bit off more than they could chew with the City, that maybe they could've solved with another year or two of dev time. (Hopefully, will be solved in a Def Ed a year or two down the line.) That isn't necessarily dev time they had, though. Not without taking out a ton of loans (do you really want tencent to own more than 30%?) and risking ill-will with consumers and WotC. (The game was meant to come out over a year ago.)

Sometimes you might want to (there are areas where you can't return to camp without leaving, and some of those areas you might not want/be able to leave before completing them), and you can be attacked in your camp, depending on decisions you make.

Generally though, yeah. If you feel like a scroll/potion/spell/resource/etc will help you in this fight, don't be shy about spending it. Just maybe don't go wandering too much, if you find yourself low on resources. :P

Other thing to note, is that combat will feel clunky before you hit level five. That's where you start getting your heavy hitting spells, buffs and abilities, making additional attacks per round, etc. It's hard to screw up a character in 5e (unless you're multiclassing, then there are some trap choices), but everyone will feel a little weak early on.

Wizard; better than you think, probably want to take it early. You'll end up with fourth level spell slots available to you, so you'll be able to spend gold to learn spells up to that level. Also rituals offer a ton of utility.

Realistically, you're building it as a martial right now, when in general I think it scales much better as a caster. Take wizard and warlock early, lean on Eldritch Blast (since it scales well with char level), pick up Fighter or Paladin relatively early for armour profs, then ignore martials to the very end (save maybe Rogue), because they really give you nothing but HP.

I think she's technically a lesser power/quasi-divinity at this point, on similar to or slightly below the rank of one of the (post-Second Sundering) Dead Three. The fanatical worship of (some of) the Githyanki over her long (un)life have taken her already exceptional arcane power and brought it to the edge of godhood, where the rules that should apply to mortal spellcasters no longer hold. IIRC, she's actively trying to achieve full godhood by enforcing her worship through her Inquisitors, with mixed results.

Yeah that was a fun scene. I liked that she will only do it if you insult her; as a (minor) god she's not really supposed to do shit like that directly (there are consequences), and so won't do it if you just say no (just tells the gith to kill you, instead). But, Vlaakith being Vlaakith, her ego is too fragile to let you talk shit, even though she'll almost certainly regret it later. :P

I have yet to be mutilated in any way (aside from snorting tadpoles like it's going out of style :P). Perhaps, making deals with malevolent fey and letting Volo of all people perform surgery are... questionable choices for your health. :P

Multi into Trickster Cleric, so you can Invoke Duplicity for shadow clones. :P

I told myself I wouldn't read unrelated papers at work, but here we are. :P Yeah, as expected, the actual paper is way more informative about the structural properties, and about the limitations. (Difficulty fabricating larger samples without voids, said voids resulting in much lower strengths and much less plasticity, uncertain tensile strength, etc.) Fascinatingly though, (at least to me, not having known the details about DNA based metamaterials :P) the details of the properties should be tunable by way of changing the DNA lattice structure. Which makes it a two-part engineering problem, figuring out how to manufacture it at scale, and determining optimal lattice structures for different applications. Definitely exciting, and will be big once we figure these things out.

But that's not really what I was talking about. While I get that this is an article geared to laymen/the general public, I do think we should be holding science communication to a higher standard. What was discovered is exciting, but we don't know how it can be used yet, or if it will ever be practical to do so. Overview is fine, I'd just like some more qualifiers and less speculation. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like some more care would do a lot to improve overall scientific literacy and trust in the scientific community. /shurg