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Good news! No special feature is needed, unlike the other weapon cantrips True Strike already works with ranged weapons. So all that's needed is proficiency, and if Arcane Firearm specifically allows ranged martial weapons it's a safe bet that Artillerists will get some selection of them. My...

A lot of it, yes. Some of it, no. Like, the Bastion stuff has to be brand new, as is much of the campaign genre and theme advice. And while the Artificer updates seem pretty direct, they're completely redoing Dragonmarks. Look, I'm used to having to completely rebuy the product line when a new...

That's interesting. Thus far, they've really avoiding doing dependency books. That is to say, a book that directly follows another book, such that it's of very limited value if you don't have the first. It's been a major design thrust for keeping every book appealing to the largest swath of...

My long standing opinion on pet subclass design is that they need to go all-in on it. Nothing's worse than an orphan pet feature that doesn't scale, so it's too strong when you first get it and worthlessly clogging up the initiative order a few levels later. Even the improved Chain Pact...

Depends if the other four are the ECS originals (Changeling, Kalashtar, Shifter, Warforged) yet again, or if they feel the versions of some of those that last appeared in Rising from the Last War or Monsters of the Multiverse still hold up. I could see a world where one or two of those get left...

Apologies for the reading comprehension fail. That happens sometimes when my morning caffeine hasn't kicked in yet and I hit a sore spot that sends me on a rant.

I'm not. I played a Hexblade in a couple year campaign that went to 14th level. Can you guess how many times I activated Accursed Spectrer in that time? Zero. Zero times. It only triggered off personal killing blows on humanoids. The DM didn't throw us up against many humanoids that campaign...

I roughed out a Hexblade Warlock using the new release. It's interesting for me because I played a 2014 Hexblade in a long campaign, and the new Hexblade is similar thematically while being almost entirely different mechanically. Some thoughts after going through the character creation process...

Personally, I'd assume the opposite. If he talked about it when it was in an early stage but it never even made it to UA release, it means it had serious problems and was discarded. Not that it somehow got completely finished without any playtest stage.

I've been churning over how a Reanimator Artificer would look in play, and here's what I've got so far. The subclass is built around the Reanimated Companion, and the Companion is built around modular enhancements that you can swap out every time you resummon it. This is important because it...

It does seem to be the stand out new addition to the list. It's a theme that so obviously fits the Artificer I can't believe I've never seen it suggested before. And I'm already picturing a Dwarven Reanimator who rants "Flesh is a machine! One to be crafted and mended and recycled by my hand, as...

D&D has often struggled to balance the competing demands of fiction and game, and all the Artificer "spontaneously generate your minions and magic items" clauses are absolutely prioritizing game over fiction. From a fiction stand point, conjuring these things out of nothing is less cool. From a...

That strikes me as incredibly unlikely and completely baseless.

Hmm, true that. Forge of the Artificer is a bit borderline because Eberron always needs a lot of custom options, but you're absolutely right that the Forgotten Realms book has a whole roster of subclasses. So I suppose a setting book isn't off the table. If it is a setting book, I have to also...

I'm not so sure. Don't just look at the nature of these subclasses, but the number. Most setting and creature type books have had a small sampling on subclasses, in the two to four range. This is eight subclasses. That's half way to a Xanathar's or Tasha's level of player options focus. If...

Forge of the Artificer is an almost certain buy for me. Eberron has been one of my favorite settings since it first came out, and it'd have to be a really bad book for me to pass on it. With the Forgotten Realms Player Guide, it's not a pre-order but I'm open to being sold on it. I got a bit...

Hard no, for two reasons. One is moral and the other is practical. Morally, these LLM databases are built on stolen works. I'm potentially joining a class action suit against Facebook because they used a pirate book trove that included my parent's works. None of these things works without the...

I think the heavy use of Poisoned and Charmed is brilliant. How do you define what "mental control effects" are for the purposes of resistance or immunity? You piggyback them all on the Charmed condition and point the defensive traits at that. Clear, effective, no room for rules debate. Now...

That was my reasoning as well. If you want to sideline alignment or treat it as the personality quiz of the memetic alignment grid, then 5e is right. If you want alignment to matter, to really be the cosmic faction you've aligned yourself with, then BECMI all the way. None of that squishy...

Depends on what parameters you're trying to optimize around. Both what metrics you focus on and what scenarios you imagine will be most common. Like, Defensive Duelist having an AC boost that applies to all melee attacks until your next turn is really good if you expect to be holding off mobs...