It's harder these days to get players to wrap their heads around the idea that an encounter might be over their heads, and that running is a perfectly viable option. In my wife's recent campaign, twice we've had to back out an encounter that was more than we could handle - and if I hadn't been...
I cheer for D&D's dragons not being limited to having one fixed appearance - pre 3E, they didn't really have a unified look and Elmore's depiction vs. Parkinson's vs. Easley vs. Sutherland's were often quite different - and I was okay with that. However, that said there are certain dragon...
Same here - the new dragon designs mostly did not appeal to me, but if the actual mini stays close to the render, I might pick this up just for a display piece.
This has been the reason bookmarks have existed for ages.
No organization is going to end up working perfectly as we all have our own organization idiosyncrasies. We can fight about it until the cows come home and still not have a good answer. Some want the book for consultation at the table...
Vaguely sounds like Incarnum magic, might be worth digging through that 3E book if you can get your hands on it. Might be better fitting as a Pact granting a limited form of Alter Self (Pact of the Altered? Pact of the Aspect?) that is interlinked with Invocations, rather than revising the...
Look through many RPG products I own with the like of "page XX" references in them*, I understand why they don't - though it would be really nice if they did.
* And my own troubles getting HomeBrewery & Word to properly paginate references
I've gone back to using the 3E Outsider to handle anything that isn't elemental, fiend or directly celestial. That covers ethereal, astral, slaad from limbo, modrons from Nirvana, etc. Subtypes can be used to differientiate what plane they are from. So, for example a Blue Slaad would be...