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The core problem with the fighter and the barbarian is that they do not scale. A level 1 melee fighter moves at 30' per round and swings a sharpened piece of metal hard and fast at an enemy within reach. A level 20 fighter by contrast moves at 30' per round and swings a sharpened piece of metal...

Level is a huge issue talking about balance, and one that's not talked about enough. And the big problem is that fighters and barbarians do not scale with tier. Up until level 6 or so I don't have a problem with either fighters or barbarians. But both strength-fighters and especially non-bear...

Not after all this time. But 100k subscribers at $70/year (the cheapest package as of 2009) is $7 million income per year with pretty low overheads - and that was the sort of numbers that they were pulling in 2014. So your own estimates make 4e pretty profitable (for comparison Paizo's total...

D&D Psionics have always been one of two things: Bad (have you ever tried using the 1e Psionics rules?) A lazy repaint of magic designed to pad the page count The big thing that people don't mention much is that the 5e Magic system is far closer to the 3.5 Psionic system than it is to the 3.5...

Yeah, no. We have strong evidence of the financial success of 4e. For example how much the D&D Insider subcriptions were raking in (millions even after the launch of 5e) which are easy to estimate due to the fact that the old Gleemax boards had a board for subscribers. 4e was raking in far more...

OK. As you're openly unwilling to admit that using the same spell list makes the Paladin and Cleric more similar than having class based spell lists did there's no point continuing here.

On the other hand variety on the menu is precisely why a class system works. Even you must admit that this makes classes more similar. On the other hand the implementation is obviously bad. And you suggested the approach of organizing the spells by school. They have said what the underlying...

I don't attribute laziness to things I don't understand. I attribute laziness to things that clearly and obviously make the current situation worse, make the current situation easier, and for which the excuse is that they will make the future situation easier. In other words I attribute it to...

It does not future proof anything at all. It merely makes doing some things in the future very slightly easier - while making things significantly worse in the here and now. This is not an investment. It is simply sheer laziness with the excuse that if we don't do more than paint an undercoat...

So what Jeremy Crawford is telling us is that there's no actual design benefit to almost entirely shared spell lists. If Crawford were working on a "core and supplementary" model I might have some time for it. For example about 75 core arcane spells shared by all wizards, warlocks, bards...

Exactly. Look at AD&D... I do not, in play, want to give a damn about what school is 90% of the time. It is just an abstract tag with no direct effect on play. It makes more sense to organise spells by saving throw than it does to organise them by school. Because my game is made meaningfully...

No. First and second level you've signed up to work for an otherworldly employer but HR hasn't given you the full benefits package yet. You've just taken the job and are getting the salary but not the perks. And you might not know whose shell company you've signed up to work for. I mean neither...

Organising by name first is just weird. But there is absolutely no reason to not maintain dynamic lists and links on D&D Beyond and in other places. So the designers have all the advantages here anyway. And you can't organise by lists without duplicating unless you make sure that there are zero...

Your domain is not your deity. Your domain is an aspect you have chosen to focus on - and deities have multiple domains. The idea that you fully focus and set how you develop at first level is the part I find weird. I agree with there being no real reason for the move other than to disguise a...

The only advantage is that it is slightly easier to create a new class. There is precisely nothing that shared spell lists give that can't be solved by a bit of elbow grease on behalf of the single person creating the class. Meanwhile the disadvantages include that all existing classes are made...

The problem with the genasi is the goliaths have kinda taken all their stuff. And which survey?

Four basic things: Openly point out that the barbarian is, both thematically and mechanically, the simple smashy class to free up the fighter to be complex while making it clear that the simple melee smasher as an archetype is covered. Better scaling on two things You might as well leave the...

We've already got that. It's called the barbarian. I would like at least one of the two to be complex and tactical - and think that fighter is the better candidate. Why? Are you proposing making the raging barbarian more complex than the fighter?

There are subclasses in 5e that are bigger than classes were in previous editions and I'm all in favour of it. About the only thing lost from the Psion by making it a sorcerer subclass (other than it gaining a light whiff of tentacles) is the need to include 70 pages of handcrafted psionic...

On the contrary. I think that subsystems have been used since 4e far better than they were quarter of a century ago. Races, classes, and monsters all work by exception based design so they get to have their own subsystems that best exemplify them and how they are distinctive built on top of a...