Recent content by DEFCON 1

Presumably it's because that's what the design team as a whole decided was the best option at the time, despite what any individual designer may have preferred. That's compromise. That's what groups have to do. If someone doesn't wish to compromise, they need to design on their own and not...

Good additions that you like. But there are things in 5E that you probably like that didn't come from 4E. And there are probably things you didn't like in 4E that are representative in 5E. There's no rhyme nor reason to what things that were adapted in some form from 4E to 5E that some of...

Yup. Unless (like you said) the DM is fine with creating their own encounters that run alongside the adventure and is good at "re-introducing" plot hooks in those side encounters that get the players to choose to return to the story arcs the adventure has. Even if it's like several levels down...

No. You are absolutely correct. The phrase is "ExekielRaiden's playstyle doesn't matter, so WotC isn't going to include it among the ones it caters to." Because they can't. It is numerically IMPOSSIBLE. They cannot cater to YOU. To you, specifically. What YOU need is idiosyncratic. What...

Because I do not believe you. Your definition of "balance" is not my definition. And it is not the definition of tens of thousands of other players out there. From everything I've seen of your posts here over the years... you think 4E is the best D&D game-- part of which is presumably because...

Human are 'Void'. (If @Scribe was to put their character into Rokugan and the Legend of the Five Rings world, LOL!) ;)

This is another one of those things that for me the answer is "If you are a DM who wants it, then house rule your game so that you can have it. It is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. House ruling is great! But you don't need the actual printed rules to say it because your preferences are...

My own opinion is that the previous designers knew when their time was ending at WotC and wrapped up all the campaign adventure books they wanted to produce. And the people who were assuming the helm (Bilsland, Arman, Schneider, Wyatt etc.) were getting to start from a clean slate on their own...

With all the comments I've made thus far, I feel like I should clarify something that I hadn't bothered to bring up since the discussion was purely about half-elves and elves. My distaste for the half-elf and the half-orc as fully written-up PHB species are two-fold... first of course is the...

Oh, of course. I personally couldn't care less what tag got put on them (or any monster for that matter). I was coming at my comments from others perspective who got so bent out of shape about it. :)

They aren't of the 'elemental' type because the printed books do not have that printed in their stats. And that appears to be the most important thing to most players-- what is printed in black and white in the books. Even if they could change it to something else they'd prefer or add a new...

Very good point. Which is really part of the problem when it comes to trying to make all these other non-human species make sense. We have had elves in D&D games for decades, with almost everyone playing these creatures exactly the same as we play humans, which is almost entirely incorrect...

Then I presume you have purchased Forge of the Artificer then?

And there's 48 years of paper spent on half-elves. So you are not hurting for information about them even though they don't get a statblock in the 5E24 Player's Handbook.

If it's just a mix of the two, then why does WotC need to bother printing it in a book? Why can't the DM just give two human traits and two elf traits to the player to make their "half-elf" and call it a day? Resourceful Skillful Fey Ancestry Trance Boom. Done. There's your "half-elf". And...