Why the lash out at her? The idea of the card is a good one. Especially when you play with stranger and that session zero did not happen for some reason. I/we use a raised hand when we do exhibit games. But a card to answer question might actually be a good addition to our exhibit games. It is not because a solution does not suit you that it is automatically a bad one. It might not be for you, but it might be good for a lot of other people.
Like, say, a PHB2 and DMG2.
Can't sell that to every player though.
Yup, it just makes sense. They did a PHB2 and DMG2 combined in one book (Xanathar's), and a PHB3+DMG3 to boot (Tasha's).
WotC has different tools they use for published work, it involves spreadsheets that are trade secrets.
But they changed the spellcasters.
The CR guidelines allow you to make glass-canons, regardless of spellcasting. There is not a required "rate" to define CR in a monster. I like to mostly balance defensive and offensive CR, but it is not required. In fact, it is sometimes quite interesting to take on or the other to an extreme. And it is possible to make spellcasting monsters that are balanced offensively and defensively. In fact, in my updated Vecna (which includes slot based spellcasting) my initial design was a defensive CR of 23 and offensive CR of 23.
I would go further, give the default rules for Gygaxian exploration with optional rules to make it grittier and then consider what optional rules would be best for exploration and social for other play styles. For a least 2 or 3 styles.
