PeriodicallyPedantic

That is correct, and their imp is supposed to be quite powerful. But the resulting gameplay is kinda like stealth archer to the nth degree lol. I'm still trying figure out how to make it fun for both them while also giving the other players a fun experience and provide meaningful interesting challenges to the whole party

I don't want my encounters to be lethal, I don't like killing off PCs... But I do want the encounters to be a challenge.

I like your idea, but idk if I'm experienced enough to pull it off. Also I'm running a premade campaign right now so a lot of the encounters are pre-defined, at least in nature; I can tip the scales but I don't think I'm comfortable yet with changing how the encounters work.

Their familiar is an imp, so it gets invisibility as an action, so it doesn't cost them a spell slot or any spell uses. The familiar is basically always invisible and flying. I do need to pay more attention to how it's flying, though - it needs to be shape shifted into a raven, so polymorphing would break concentration, and raven flight isn't silent and cannot hover. Thanks for making me take a deeper look here. Edit: oh wait, imps can fly without shapeshifting

Unfortunately they're thinking so far outside the box that I'm having difficulty balancing encounters 😭

One player can two shot a fire giant from a safe distance, yet a decent sized pack of giant rats would probably fuck up the whole party.

That's a lot of words to write for either not reading what I wrote, or not even attempting to understand it.

It's wild that I very explicitly said they're both bad and then you go on to imply that I, or people like me, think that one of these is "ok".

And that you chose to use those straw men instead of engaging with the concept of relativity of wrongness, tells me that you probably don't even really believe in that novella you wrote.

It wasn't actually attacking an enemy, it was setting their weapon rack on fire so that they couldn't get to their ranged weapons.

Very clever, I like it!

But this familiar is becoming OP through rules lawyering. I don't wanna rain on my player's parade, but I'm not an experienced DM and it's becoming difficult to make encounters that can't just be circumvented by this damn familiar lol.

Interesting!

Outside of combat, when a character is diligently working towards a thing that they're able to do, I wouldn't typically expect them to roll for it beyond adding flavor of how long it takes them.
In that light I could see using the tinderbox as an attack but the player doesn't usually need to roll it. But that's a stretch, I admit.

I'm gonna have to think on this a bit more. I'm shocked that burning hands or acid splash isn't considered an attack.

I don't wanna rain on my players parade for having a clever idea, but this to me seems like getting away on a technicality - like that scene in the Simpsons when Bart and Lisa are kicking and punching the air with their eyes closed and if the other just happens to get in their way then it's the other's fault lol.

Through some clever rules lawyering, this little flying familiar is becoming dangerously OP lol. In another encounter it basically two-shotted a fire giant.

I might consider lighting the oil with tinder as an attack against an object (oil) for the purposes of this spell.

Well put.

I guess I also don't really know the average users behavior, or more specifically typical fedi behavior of users who would use a matchmaking service.

I'm just highly skeptical of compatibility quizzes, it feels like there must be a better solution.

That sounds like they'd ban content promoting the eating of the rich, too.

I'm all for banning fascist content, but I don't wanna lose the French revolution vibes.

I actually think observing your actual behaviour would be a better more honest way of matching.
And technically it's all public info so it's not technically a privacy issue; they'd get it over activitypub the same as all fediverse platforms already do.

But it feels wrong to do.

What would the matching mechanism do? Look at your fediverse activity and match people who like the same things as you?

Could be interesting but creepy