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Personally, I am less afraid of ranged weapons than others might be. So I think that change is absolutely fine. I'd be legitimately surprised if that change caused anything to blow up at your table.

I think there might be an interesting design space for 'Regal' or 'Majestic' or 'Legendary' beasts. Think Shadowfax from LotR. They wouldn't need to be swole (and boy does D&D and, in particular, Pathfinder, love to make stuff really big), but would nicely fit into that growth curve for beasts.

I really want to have a stern talk with whoever first introduced the hand crossbow to the D&D and D&D adjacent canon. They have much to answer for.

For me, the key would be to make it a toolkit more than a gazette. I mean, gazette is fine, but, as many people have mentioned, they have their own home table settings. Also, there's a tendency for gazette content to be quite euro-centric, either in placement or perspective. A toolkit would...

Maneuvers are limited by the actions that they require. So if you've used an action for a Maneuver, you can't use another Maneuver that also requires an action (though there's at least one Maneuver that lets you play around with this a little). You could, however, have a Bonus action/Stance...

Absolutely agree with regards to Forgotten Folx and similar fun with Help. It's not at all abusive and creates a fun niche to occupy. With regards to Rapid Current, yes, I felt it was a good candidate for being weapon agnostic, since it's more concerned with movement. I haven't looked at it...

People have brought up a really good point that's inherent to the current Ranger design ethos, which is that the way they approach Ranger + Exploration is to allow the Ranger to counter their environment. ie. They tend to eliminate from play the thing that they're best at. And a more...

I'm thinking of toying with Rapid Current next.

That sounds about right to me. Adamant Mountain is very clear on what it's about, and executes on that in a straight forward and useful way. Unending Wheel is admittedly a more difficult Tradition to get right. It appears to be about supporting a signature weapon style of play, and maybe some...

I don't disagree. I started out with the ambition of writing new traditions and content to cover these gaps (in what I agree is overall a fantastic game). But then I thought it might be a helpful exercise to revisit some existing traditions and see where small tweaks might do the job, as an...

With all the discussion around Maneuvers, and particularly the dearth of ranged options, I was inspired to look at the existing traditions to see how they might be tweaked to allow for a broader set of options. For a first pass, I'm not even thinking of new maneuvers, but rather looking at...

I'm in. Let's get that sample size up. I'm not sure the two of us are enough. Though definitely take our word as gospel! :D

I agree with basically everything written here. The goal is to give ranged characters more traditions to play with, rather than more options in the one tradition they are all forced to take. More maneuvers that are mobility/battlefield control based and are actually useful would also help...

I know many contributors to these forums and the Level Up games have been traumatized by archers and fights in huge 300 yard fields, but the skew towards melee combatants, particularly in maneuvers, is really intense. I did a quick count and there are 67 maneuvers that require a melee weapon...

Love the work on this - thank you! Is there anywhere I can get a document with the variables that can be called like @MOD?

Yeah, I think that works well! One reason I put in the medicinals bit in was that one of the advantages of the ability is that you could get, say, a healing potion or antitoxin to use immediately (Here, eat this magical liver, it will totally help, honest) without having to craft. That said, I...

Good points, and I agree that there are house rules that can fix these. I did want to call attention to these, however. I quite like A5e. I think its guiding philosophy is strong and it brings innovations to the system. But there are areas that could use another pass, particularly around...

The A5E Ranger is, to my mind, superior to the O5E Ranger (admittedly a low bar to cross) but still has some weird oddities. Rangers seem to be a particularly difficult class to design for some reason. And the most illustrative example of this is their level 12 class ability: Wilderness Lore...

I have played every edition of D&D ever made, physically and virtually, and I think in 40 years of playing I have had maybe one or two fights that involved 300+ feet of open field to do this kind of optimization. The Sharpshooter tuning honestly feels like a response to white room pontificating...

Fighters and Rogues both lost their extra ASI(s) as well, I believe.