Recent content by Parmandur

Maybe: gotta be honest, just disliked them.

Responded to the survey, gave the Subclasses Green and the Feat Paths Red. Let them know in the comments that explicitly super evil options were a bad place to start with the design.

For player characters, I think D&D strikes a pretty solid medium: there are like 4 nice big choices (Species, Class, Subclass, Background) and some small knobs (Attributes, Feats, Skills) for individuation.

It is certainly a limitation, but limitations can be opportunities to build something creatively just as much as they are barriers.

That's why they didn't announce Warlock for most of the time they were working on it.

Right, as I said, modern D&D is unconcerned with it.

Sure, the PHB has firearms artificially frozen there, and doesn't address how they would impact armor.

Right, by having firearms frozen at a particular low point and by underemphasjzinf how they would impact combat. But modern D&D combat is about vibes, not war game simulation.

Right, that is why magic was handled the way it was in OD&D and AD&D: lots of difficulties and limitations. Like large artillery pieces in late Medieval times. That's part of why I say it probably does not matter for modern D&D much, with how much easier magic is to access and use.

No, they aren't meat points, though in the naval war game Gygax cribbed fit the rules they are the meat points of a ship. It's an abstraction to allow for quick resolution of combat. Thing is, it is a mathematical abstraction thst breaks down at a certain point...that point is gunpowder. But...

Fair point, but firearms do change the way warfare and fighting are conducted on a fundamental level: it is a singularity event, and it isn't possible to have a quick and dirty system that keeps sword and plate on the same plane as musketeers.

Thing is, and Gygax the historical warfare wink and hardcore war gamer knew this, even early firearms are a mathematical singularity that wrecks the HP/ACrough and ready abstraction. I don't know if that really matters so much in current D&D, which is more of a balanced game situation aiming at...

Guns did not fit in OD&D or AD&D because even though the rules, for a war game, are fast and loose and abstract...they work on a mathematical curve that worked for a certain range of possibilities. Firearms change the math too much to work as a Gygax Ian fast and loose war game, and the AC/HP...

72,000 people we to GenCon last year, which is a small drop in the bucket of people involved with RPGs (upwards of 13 million D&D Beyond users, last I checked), and being a for-pay convention by definition self-selected and skewed as a sample. I seriously doubt anyone has better information on...

Yeah, WotC has probably the best idea.