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So here's one of the racial abilities for the Changeling race in the new Unearthed Arcana article: Now, at first this seemed kind of nice and elegant to me. Good for disguises, etc. Then I thought of the "onion druid" problem. RAW, you might think the term "polymorph" suggests this works like...

In various other threads on this forum, people are concerned about fighters and other melee characters being left behind when it comes to non-combat "utility" and even combat itself beyond simple damage-dealing. It's my belief that the 5e fighter can stand up quite well when it comes to combat...

There have been various discussions floating around about individual spells or spell combinations that are inordinately powerful in 5e. I'm not talking about stuff like Metwor Swarm or Power Word: Kill, which do a bunch of damage but are obviously intended to do so; I'm looking for spells that...

During the playtest process, Mike Mearls and the rest of the team often offered clarifications on the intent of various rules. They've been much more quiet on that front since the official PHB release. This is probably partly because they've been busy as hell, and maybe partly because they don't...

So now that we've gotten some hot EXCLUSIVE peeks into the PHB, with numerous and heartfelt thanks to Palladion and everyone else braving the forums to answer questions with their shiny new before-street-date PHBs in hand, who else is interested in using all the various (legitimate) leaks and...

(Cross-posted from the WOTC forums.) First, a disclaimer: I really like Next so far. Even if WOTC ignored everything I suggest in this thread, I still expect Next to be my favorite edition of D&D. That said, I worry it's falling short of its potential in certain ways. The biggest problem I see...

As the title suggests, this is an idea for differentiating rogues a bit more from fighters. One of my favorite things from the 2nd packet was how a fighter and rogue could wear the same armor and wield the same weapon and still play differently but about equally effectively in combat. A bit of...

Reading the latest playtest packet, it looks like they've made some changes to the way expertise dice (XD) work. Now, instead of them refreshing every ROUND at the end of your turn, they refresh every TURN. (At least I think? Mike Mearls and Trevor "clarified" it on Twitter, and after Mike said...

There's a new Q&A up. First question: Will there be racial penalties to ability scores? (Answer: no. Carrot is more fun than stick.) Second question: Will there be room for "white mage" style cloth-wearing clerics? (Answer: yes. In response to feedback they're putting more stuff like armor...

In the latest L&L column, Mike Mearls discusses the current iteration of class design, where there look to be three core systems (expertise dice, spells, and a new skill-related system), and "hybrid" classes like the paladin dip into more than one of them. (So the paladin would have a...

There's a new Q&A up. The first two questions are on the "legacy" system. Basically it will be a module that covers a lot of the RP aspects of high-level advancement, separate from the new spells and maneuvers and stuff you ALSO get at higher levels. The last answer is interesting: he says...

I've been thinking a bit about healing in 5e, and I've noticed that there's a tendency (especially, it seems, among 4e fans) to treat it like a side of vegetables you're served with dinner. Nobody likes it, the theme goes, but it's part of a balanced meal, so they try to mix our peas in with our...

So here's a technical question: can wizards prep their signature spells at higher levels? Specifically, can a level 10 battle mage prep Thunderwave as a 5th-level spell (doing 6d6 damage and tossing enemies back 35 feet) and have it refresh every short rest? If so, this would be a big benefit...

So the more I look at the specialties from the new playtest, the more I'm vaguely disappointed. Sure, a lot of it is that they cut some of my favorite specialties, like Necromancer and Defender - hopefully just for this playtest. But when I looked through the new feats, I noticed another...

Since they've mentioned that the skill list is still under heavy revision, how do you guys think it should look? I'd start with the 4e list as a basis: Versus the last playtest list (additions italicized): First big change: they've unpacked Thievery back into its 3e constituent skills. This...

One of the cool things about 5e is the refocusing they've done with feats. Feats were a mess in 3e, varying all over the board in relative power, purpose, and complexity; 4e feats may have been improved in some ways, but there were still "feat penalties" and lots of boring +1s and minor effects...

I just listened to the various Penny Arcade D&D podcasts and found them surprisingly entertaining. I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for similar but ideally longer-running podcasts of D&D campaigns? I've tried two - "Critical Hit" and "Death d4 Dishonor" - but in both cases the DM's...

EDIT: See this post a few pages in for a bit of a redesign. I was thinking about the warlord and how it might work in 5e. There are some big hurdles to consider: 1. A lot of people don't buy into "nonmagical healing." 2. Warlord is the only class from the 4e PHB1 not carried over from an...

I may be the only one interesting in these theoretical class designs (based solely on what I think would be cool with little or no playtesting), and I'll be glad to let this thread fade into oblivion if that's the case. But I was watching some Hong Kong kung-fu movies after reading this forum...

I know I'm late to the game on this one, but man, gotta love that new Thug Rogue Sneak Attack option. Mechanically, you can see how they got here. They want to allow for a rogue that relies on positioning and teamwork rather than hiding to get in his high-damage attacks. But 3e-style flanking...