How Does Everyone Feel About the Rampant Teleportation in 2024?

I am not anti-Misty Step/Temp HP, but I do think that there are enough sources for those abilities already and would like to see something new in any future UA's. 

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

I find it hard to pity warlocks given they are so OP.

pity the ranger. Pity the 2024 druid.

But WARLOCKS??? 

Warlocks might be better off than rogues but they are far from OP. They are weaker than the druid. 

Quote from Davyd >>

Teleportation has always been fairly common place in 5th edition, it's not new to the 2024 rules. Imo it's neither boring (teleportation encourages interesting movement) nor excessive

 
The only reason I agree is that opportunity attacks ruined mobility to start with, on top of slowing down the game. If 2024 dropped ubiquitous opportunity attacks, you wouldn't need teleportation to encourage interesting movement. It's a clumsy bandage. The 2024 solution requires all characters to be either martial/stationary or rogues/magical/mobile. The side effect is that if you want to make a non-rogue character mobile, you must also make it possible for that character to violate physics. Plenty of us argued this in 2013-14, when the devs could have elected to make opportunity attacks more rare or locked them to certain archetypes. We were arguing from the experience in 3e, where the issue was even worse.

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from Davyd >>

Teleportation has always been fairly common place in 5th edition, it's not new to the 2024 rules. Imo it's neither boring (teleportation encourages interesting movement) nor excessive

 
The only reason I agree is that opportunity attacks ruined mobility to start with, on top of slowing down the game. If 2024 dropped ubiquitous opportunity attacks, you wouldn't need teleportation to encourage interesting movement. It's a clumsy bandage. The 2024 solution requires all characters to be either martial/stationary or rogues/magical/mobile. The side effect is that if you want to make a non-rogue character mobile, you must also make it possible for that character to violate physics. Plenty of us argued this in 2013-14, when the devs could have elected to make opportunity attacks more rare or locked them to certain archetypes. We were arguing from the experience in 3e, where the issue was even worse.

 One idea I had to make opportunity attacks less brutal is making monsters not add their ability modifier to the damage of them.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

I find it hard to pity warlocks given they are so OP.

pity the ranger. Pity the 2024 druid.

But WARLOCKS??? 

 I love Warlocks but a caster with only two spell slots and a decent cantrip they spam is far from over powered 

Quote from Maruntoryx >>

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from Davyd >>

Teleportation has always been fairly common place in 5th edition, it's not new to the 2024 rules. Imo it's neither boring (teleportation encourages interesting movement) nor excessive

 
The only reason I agree is that opportunity attacks ruined mobility to start with, on top of slowing down the game. If 2024 dropped ubiquitous opportunity attacks, you wouldn't need teleportation to encourage interesting movement. It's a clumsy bandage. The 2024 solution requires all characters to be either martial/stationary or rogues/magical/mobile. The side effect is that if you want to make a non-rogue character mobile, you must also make it possible for that character to violate physics. Plenty of us argued this in 2013-14, when the devs could have elected to make opportunity attacks more rare or locked them to certain archetypes. We were arguing from the experience in 3e, where the issue was even worse.

 One idea I had to make opportunity attacks less brutal is making monsters not add their ability modifier to the damage of them.

My gripe isn’t how much damage opportunity attacks deal—it’s that their very existence drags the game out and makes it less fun for me.

Close‑combat in D&D is already a tough nut to crack. You’re constantly juggling high damage risk, aura effects, melee traps, and “death‑throes”‑style abilities. Melee fighters in 5e have already been suffering with a baseline level of boring—they often end up doing the same vanilla attack over and over with little else to spice things up.

On top of that, opportunity attacks pile on extra mental overhead. Every time you want to move while engaged in melee, you have to consider whether it will provoke, and whether the movement is then worthwhile at all. That creates a no‑win situation. You can either stay put, making combat feel static and boring, or you can move, which risks triggering one or more opportunity attacks, each of which adds another round of dice‑rolling. This slows down encounters, which are already too long in 5e. Opportunity attacks can be interesting in limited doses, but when every monster gets to use it, the mechanic loses its value.

It doesn’t matter how much damage the attacks actually do; the slowdown alone is enough to kill the momentum. There is a simple fix.

Opportunity attacks shouldn’t be a default ability for every PC or monster. Instead, treat them as an uncommon special feature reserved for characters who truly excel at close‑quarters combat and whose fantasy concept supports it—think dedicated duelists, berserkers, or monsters built around melee dominance. This would also provide the benefit of allowing melee tanks to feel more like tanks.

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from Maruntoryx >>

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from Davyd >>

Teleportation has always been fairly common place in 5th edition, it's not new to the 2024 rules. Imo it's neither boring (teleportation encourages interesting movement) nor excessive

 
The only reason I agree is that opportunity attacks ruined mobility to start with, on top of slowing down the game. If 2024 dropped ubiquitous opportunity attacks, you wouldn't need teleportation to encourage interesting movement. It's a clumsy bandage. The 2024 solution requires all characters to be either martial/stationary or rogues/magical/mobile. The side effect is that if you want to make a non-rogue character mobile, you must also make it possible for that character to violate physics. Plenty of us argued this in 2013-14, when the devs could have elected to make opportunity attacks more rare or locked them to certain archetypes. We were arguing from the experience in 3e, where the issue was even worse.

 One idea I had to make opportunity attacks less brutal is making monsters not add their ability modifier to the damage of them.

My gripe isn’t how much damage opportunity attacks deal—it’s that their very existence drags the game out and makes it less fun for me.

Close‑combat in D&D is already a tough nut to crack. You’re constantly juggling high damage risk, aura effects, melee traps, and “death‑throes”‑style abilities. Melee fighters in 5e have already been suffering with a baseline level of boring—they often end up doing the same vanilla attack over and over with little else to spice things up.

On top of that, opportunity attacks pile on extra mental overhead. Every time you want to move while engaged in melee, you have to consider whether it will provoke, and whether the movement is then worthwhile at all. That creates a no‑win situation. You can either stay put, making combat feel static and boring, or you can move, which risks triggering one or more opportunity attacks, each of which adds another round of dice‑rolling. This slowes down encounters, which are already too long in 5e. Opportunity attacks can be interesting in limited doses, but when every monster gets to use it, the mechanic loses its value.

It doesn’t matter how much damage the attacks actually do; the slowdown alone is enough to kill the momentum. There is a simple fix.

Opportunity attacks shouldn’t be a default ability for every PC or monster. Instead, treat them as an uncommon special feature reserved for characters who truly excel at close‑quarters combat and whose fantasy concept supports it—think dedicated duelists, berserkers, or monsters built around melee dominance. This would also provide the benefit of allowing melee tanks to feel more like tanks.

 You complained about melee combat having no decision making (just attack every turn), and about having to make a decision when you want to move out of melee range. Which one do you not like? Decision making, or no decision making?

Quote from Maruntoryx >>

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from Maruntoryx >>

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from Davyd >>

Teleportation has always been fairly common place in 5th edition, it's not new to the 2024 rules. Imo it's neither boring (teleportation encourages interesting movement) nor excessive

 
The only reason I agree is that opportunity attacks ruined mobility to start with, on top of slowing down the game. If 2024 dropped ubiquitous opportunity attacks, you wouldn't need teleportation to encourage interesting movement. It's a clumsy bandage. The 2024 solution requires all characters to be either martial/stationary or rogues/magical/mobile. The side effect is that if you want to make a non-rogue character mobile, you must also make it possible for that character to violate physics. Plenty of us argued this in 2013-14, when the devs could have elected to make opportunity attacks more rare or locked them to certain archetypes. We were arguing from the experience in 3e, where the issue was even worse.

 One idea I had to make opportunity attacks less brutal is making monsters not add their ability modifier to the damage of them.

My gripe isn’t how much damage opportunity attacks deal—it’s that their very existence drags the game out and makes it less fun for me.

Close‑combat in D&D is already a tough nut to crack. You’re constantly juggling high damage risk, aura effects, melee traps, and “death‑throes”‑style abilities. Melee fighters in 5e have already been suffering with a baseline level of boring—they often end up doing the same vanilla attack over and over with little else to spice things up.

On top of that, opportunity attacks pile on extra mental overhead. Every time you want to move while engaged in melee, you have to consider whether it will provoke, and whether the movement is then worthwhile at all. That creates a no‑win situation. You can either stay put, making combat feel static and boring, or you can move, which risks triggering one or more opportunity attacks, each of which adds another round of dice‑rolling. This slowes down encounters, which are already too long in 5e. Opportunity attacks can be interesting in limited doses, but when every monster gets to use it, the mechanic loses its value.

It doesn’t matter how much damage the attacks actually do; the slowdown alone is enough to kill the momentum. There is a simple fix.

Opportunity attacks shouldn’t be a default ability for every PC or monster. Instead, treat them as an uncommon special feature reserved for characters who truly excel at close‑quarters combat and whose fantasy concept supports it—think dedicated duelists, berserkers, or monsters built around melee dominance. This would also provide the benefit of allowing melee tanks to feel more like tanks.

 You complained about melee combat having no decision making (just attack every turn), and about having to make a decision when you want to move out of melee range. Which one do you not like? Decision making, or no decision making?

 
I genuinely have no idea what argument you're trying to make. Do you disagree with my opinion that opportunity attacks are a drag, or no? Kindly say so plainly.

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

On top of that, opportunity attacks pile on extra mental overhead. Every time you want to move while engaged in melee, you have to consider whether it will provoke, and whether the movement is then worthwhile at all. That creates a no‑win situation. You can either stay put, making combat feel static and boring, or you can move, which risks triggering one or more opportunity attacks, each of which adds another round of dice‑rolling.

Gosh, if only there was some way within the rules to move without taking Opportunity Attacks, if it's that important for you to do it

You're also ignoring situations where it's a strategic advantage to get a creature to burn its reaction with an OA, and that sort of thing. That's not "extra mental overhead", it's the kind of thing that makes combat more interesting

This complaint makes absolutely no sense to me, sorry

As for the actual subject of the thread, I suspect the increase in teleportation features in 5e24 is a response to players choices in 5e14. Fey Touched was viewed as a top-tier feat choice for a reason. I do agree that they may have gone overboard in some cases (i.e. Archfey warlock), but the new Cartographer artificer shows they're at least trying to find new twists on Misty Step-like abilities. And if you don't like it, don't play one of those subclasses

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Quote from Davyd >>

Teleportation has always been fairly common place in 5th edition, it's not new to the 2024 rules. Imo it's neither boring (teleportation encourages interesting movement) nor excessive

 
The only reason I agree is that opportunity attacks ruined mobility to start with, on top of slowing down the game. If 2024 dropped ubiquitous opportunity attacks, you wouldn't need teleportation to encourage interesting movement. It's a clumsy bandage. The 2024 solution requires all characters to be either martial/stationary or rogues/magical/mobile. The side effect is that if you want to make a non-rogue character mobile, you must also make it possible for that character to violate physics. Plenty of us argued this in 2013-14, when the devs could have elected to make opportunity attacks more rare or locked them to certain archetypes. We were arguing from the experience in 3e, where the issue was even worse.

 In my experience, opportunity attacks are feared more than they deserve. Unless I'm trying to dash through several lines of enemies, or the enemies are particularly hard-hitting, I don't worry about them. If you're moving away, either there's an important tactical reason, or you're trying to escape an enemy who will presumably be hitting you with their full attack next round anyway, so you're better off risking the opportunity attack.

If they were unusual, while it would perhaps encourage more movement in combat (maybe -- a lot of times there's no good reason to move), it would also reduce the tactical interest of combat. Not only does it reduce the value of positioning, and of the abilities that let monks and rogues maneuver in combat, but there are also times when you want to bait the opportunity to take away the enemy's other reactions. (And if they let you go freely, that's also a disadvantage for them.)

As it is, 5e24 has more ways to make the battlefield more dynamic. Not just teleports, but there's also more push-pull abilities, such as weapon masteries. And knockdown abilities, while they don't negate OAs, certainly make them less effective.

Quote from AntonSirius >>

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

On top of that, opportunity attacks pile on extra mental overhead. Every time you want to move while engaged in melee, you have to consider whether it will provoke, and whether the movement is then worthwhile at all. That creates a no‑win situation. You can either stay put, making combat feel static and boring, or you can move, which risks triggering one or more opportunity attacks, each of which adds another round of dice‑rolling.

 

Gosh, if only there was some way within the rules to move without taking Opportunity Attacks, if it's that important for you to do it

You're also ignoring situations where it's a strategic advantage to get a creature to burn its reaction with an OA, and that sort of thing. That's not "extra mental overhead", it's the kind of thing that makes combat more interesting

This complaint makes absolutely no sense to me, sorry

As for the actual subject of the thread, I suspect the increase in teleportation features in 5e24 is a response to players choices in 5e14. Fey Touched was viewed as a top-tier feat choice for a reason. I do agree that they may have gone overboard in some cases (i.e. Archfey warlock), but the new Cartographer artificer shows they're at least trying to find new twists on Misty Step-like abilities. And if you don't like it, don't play one of those subclasses

 
I may be reading your post and the post of the other fellow in the wrong light. I see that you disagree with my personal opinion. That's fine. Why the aggro?

Of course you can use the disengage action. But I personally find it a bit of a letdown when I have to blow an entire action to avoid a situation that I find boring to start with. I'll try to rephrase my opinion. Being locked down can be strategically stimulating. In 5e, I've more often found that the ubiquity of being locked down in melee leads to me being pulled out of the narrative and bored. And the benefits you see to having opportunity attacks are preserved under my solution. You'd still have opportunity attacks where they make sense. More punchy, less overall friction.

This is very similar to arguments that people make when they quibble with counterspelling. It is too easy to use, and it operates by slowing down the game and interrupting the flow.

But again, we disagree and that's cool.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

"opportunity attacks are a drag"

Two people fighting each other with swords. One decides to turn and run. The one who remains rolls one attack roll and damage. OA complete.

Juat how are you making a single melee attack so complicated that it drags down combat, when every martial is making 2 to 4 attacks every turn?

 
Combat in 5e already drags on too long for my taste. This is a commonly cited problem with the chassis of 5e. A single encounter of three rounds can go on for over half an hour, and that's not even an outlying event. It doesn't have to be that way.

I am operating from this foundation. And so I have reason to consider changes that speed up combat without sacrificing fun. I see limiting opportunity attacks as a useful compromise. Maybe you don't. That's fine.

I think that there's a difference between a high-level fighter making 2-4 attacks and 2-4 mooks executing OAs. The martial is using the ability that is fundmental to the identity of their archetype. The mook is typically not. We can argue whether I think it's fun that fighters' advancement amounts to just making more attacks (I don't, and so I don't play fighters)--that's separate. But I find the first scenario more fun than the second.

My original point in this conversation was that I see the pervasiveness of teleportation as a bandage to fix the drag caused by opportunity attacks. Perhaps you do not feel this way. That's fine.

I think there's a useful thought experiment to be conducted here. In 2014, we were starting a new system. Suppose the 2014 core rules did not grant all PCs and monsters the ability to execute opportunity attacks every round. Would you argue that this was a mistake, and why? 

Quote from jl8e >>

In my experience, opportunity attacks are feared more than they deserve. Unless I'm trying to dash through several lines of enemies, or the enemies are particularly hard-hitting, I don't worry about them. If you're moving away, either there's an important tactical reason, or you're trying to escape an enemy who will presumably be hitting you with their full attack next round anyway, so you're better off risking the opportunity attack.

If they were unusual, while it would perhaps encourage more movement in combat (maybe -- a lot of times there's no good reason to move), it would also reduce the tactical interest of combat. Not only does it reduce the value of positioning, and of the abilities that let monks and rogues maneuver in combat, but there are also times when you want to bait the opportunity to take away the enemy's other reactions. (And if they let you go freely, that's also a disadvantage for them.)

As it is, 5e24 has more ways to make the battlefield more dynamic. Not just teleports, but there's also more push-pull abilities, such as weapon masteries. And knockdown abilities, while they don't negate OAs, certainly make them less effective.

 
That's totally valid. My feeling is not so much that OAs can be an in-game penalty as much as a friction to the meta-game. 

I agree 100% that there is often no reason for a character to move. That's a tough one. Some of that is influence of the 5e system as we've discussed. Some of that is that DMs (myself included) may forget to include elements to an encounter that encourage movement.

However I don't see OAs as a good solution here. The value of positioning can be reinforced by other costs and benefits. We can force a PC to deal with fewer more specialized enemies that have OAs, we can include unique difficult terrain or useful enviornmental features, we can have monsters use interesting grapple options.

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

My original point in this conversation was that I see the pervasiveness of teleportation as a bandage to fix the drag caused by opportunity attacks. Perhaps you do not feel this way. That's fine

My experience with 5e is that OAs happen nowhere near frequently enough to need any kind of "bandage". Of all the things that add to the time 5e combat takes, OAs don't even crack the top 20. And again, if you want to avoid OAs in a specific situation, there were already more than adequate ways to do so

The increase in teleportation options is because players like short-range teleportation. I really doubt there's anything more to it than that

Quote from AntonSirius >>

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

My original point in this conversation was that I see the pervasiveness of teleportation as a bandage to fix the drag caused by opportunity attacks. Perhaps you do not feel this way. That's fine

 

My experience with 5e is that OAs happen nowhere near frequently enough to need any kind of "bandage". Of all the things that add to the time 5e combat takes, OAs don't even crack the top 20. And again, if you want to avoid OAs in a specific situation, there were already more than adequate ways to do so

The increase in teleportation options is because players like short-range teleportation. I really doubt there's anything more to it than that

If OAs took five hours to resolve, you would almost certainly not see OAs triggered in games. That does not mean that the mechanic is not consequential. Players would just be silently optimizing their behavior to avoid triggering OAs, which can carry costs in terms of the excitement of the encounter. In that way, even if the combat isn't slowed by OAs, it may otherwise suffer. That's my experience.

The increase in teleportation options could have been a choice motivated by anything or nothing--I can't read the devs' minds. My original post expressed only that I see the mobility benefit of teleportation only in the context of other forms of mobility in 5e being overly limited.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

My experience is that the biggest thing that slows down combat is a player  who doesnt pay attention during combat until its their turn, and when its their turn, they finally look up from their phone and ask everyone at the table: ok, what happened since i last moved? The next biggest time sink is the player who wants the perfect turn and they collapse into analysys paralysis.

 
I agree. There are many things that slow down combat. OAs are not the main one. I never said they were!

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

I do not feel that way. OAs maybe take 1% of my current combat time.

 
What I was saying in my post above is that the "drag" imposed by OAs is not just the time it takes to resolve. It's also the way it affects behavior in combat. Especially when there are multiple monsters, a melee PC may want to move but choose not to because of the risk of triggering OAs, and if they choose to move, the OA resolution is a boring drag. I think that there are interesting choices that can be made by players. That is not one of them.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

Or look at other clases or feats that have features that allow you to move with any opportunity attack to be at disadvantage, or movement not triggering oa at all. 

The speedy feat make all opportunity attacks against you to be rolled with disadvantage. The dance bard level 6 inspiring movement allows you and an ally to move in certsin situations without triggering opportunity attack.

 
Yeah, these options exist but I think they make me sad. I believe that ubiquitous OAs are not a good mechanic, so it's also pretty lame to have to waste a feat to get around them. It's asking a player to give up a scarce resource to avoid a mechanic that I don't think should even be in the game. Of course, I also think that rogues and other character builds should be given more interesting features instead.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

Well, no, not normally. the idea of "focus fire" says that you are MUCH better off having everyone focus fire on one enemy until its dead and removed from teh initiative list. Because if everyone attacks a different enemy, then at the end of the first turn, its more likely that none of the enemies have been killed. If everyone attacks the same enemy, you might kill it, and reduce the number of enemy attacks that occur on the monsters initiative in the first round fo combat. So, for most combats, you should pick one target and wail on it until its dead.

 
Apologies. I know that focusing fire is a valuable strategy in general. Perhaps because it is very late, I don't see how that relates to our discussion. I'm disussing movement, not the choice of who to attack. 

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

Even if you took away OA's, you're still dealing with grapples. and a lot of monsters grapple. 

MistyStep/FeyTouch helps with both OA's and grapples.  

 
I don't have a problem with grapples at all. Grapples inhibit movement, but I'm not against monsters being able to inhibit movement as a general principle. What makes grapples more reasonable is that monsters generally have to expend some of their action economy to engage in a grapple. Unless they're specifically granted an attack that allows them to grapple as part of an attack, they generally have to sacrifice their entire action to do so. This is also generally a bad strategy unless the monster has a really good reason to prevent a character from moving, as a monster will typically only have a couple of actions to throw around before being defeated.

OAs are different. Most monsters do not have any reactions options beyond OAs, meaning that while they may want to be judicious about when to use their OA, they really never have a good reason to forgo making an OA for a given round. And unlike grapples, which can only usually be done as an action or as part of an action on a monster's turn, several OAs may be provoked by the same action, all potentially outside of the attackers' turn. 

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

Well, most of these feats have multiple functions. Speedy increases your speed by 10 feet, which means you can move farther away from enemies, or engage them more quickly. If there's a chase, you're faster than everyone. And if you stack this with monk or barbarian speed increases, you'll be untouchable. FeyTouched helps with grapples, and also comes in handy for a LOT of exploration stuff. I think most feats that help with opportunity attacks, help with a LOT of different things, and OA's are just one of them. 

 
Well sure, but what you're saying, to my ears, is that the Speedy feat is functional despite the fact that half of the feat is used to deal with a lousy mechanic. I'd rather just change the lousy mechanic up front.

Consider this admittedly absurd example. Suppose 5e core had the following rule:

• Every time a player rolls a 1 on a d20, they are punched in the groin and their character is instantly, irrevocably, and embarrasingly killed.

This rule sucks. Now suppose 5e also made available the following feat:

Avoid Instakill

• You gain a +1 bonus to your hp.
• Instead of being instantly killed, your character loses 1d6 hp permanently each time you roll a 1 on a d20.

Yes, this feat is quite useful in the context of my bizarro 5e variant. But that's because it allows you to circumvent a rule that seriously sucks. Sure you always get that +1 hp. But if the dumb rule didn't suck so bad, you'd probably pick another feat. Would it not be better just to amend or remove the dumb rule rather than make people take a feat to avoid it?

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

Of course, I also think that rogues and other character builds should be given more interesting features instead.

I really wonder what "more interesting features" you think would replace an entire playing style, because your proposals would make specialized kiting builds pointless

Anyway, much as you keep trying to tie this to a discussion of the increase in teleporting features in 5e24, it's really a separate subject that you may want to think about taking to a new thread

Quote from Gnomarchy>>

I agree. There are many things that slow down combat. OAs are not the main one. I never said they were!

What I was saying in my post above is that the "drag" imposed by OAs is not just the time it takes to resolve. It's also the way it affects behavior in combat. Especially when there are multiple monsters, a melee PC may want to move but choose not to because of the risk of triggering OAs, and if they choose to move, the OA resolution is a boring drag. I think that there are interesting choices that can be made by players. That is not one of them

  I find the time it takes for opportunity attacks including the decision making process to be so small it is not worth worrying about as  its such a incredibly small % of the combat its virtually non existent. And when it does come up, it is an actual interesting choice, should I move and risk this attack, should I withdraw and give up my attack, just stay here and finish them. All of these choices have positive and negative results. Choices with consequences. 

Not saying they are perfect like It think the withdraw should include movement but in difficult terrain, and I think the opportunity attack should be at advantage for example.  

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

My whole conversation here is related to the OP as it addresses why I feel the way I do about the proliferation of teleportation in 2024

And you've already made that point, repeatedly

If you want to discuss the evils of Opportunity Attacks further, I will again suggest you would be better off starting a fresh thread for it

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

You have made your animus toward me clear. You now have several options. You can continue to reflexively throw snark at me.

What I'm doing is suggesting, quite politely, that if the subject of Opportunity Attacks means so much to you, you would be better off starting a new thread about it, because people aren't going to go looking for that topic in a thread about teleporting features

You might even find folks who agree with you if you do that

Anything else you're reading into my posts is just that -- you reading something into them that isn't there