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Yeah, I'm on board with this. I especially like how you framed the transition from tool to target, since I think that gets at how this keeps happening. Because in D&D, combat encounter design is not really the goal, and yet....there's quantification there....and many designers are going to...

The first hiccup here is that being a hobgoblin with a longsword matters to the DM, too, in as much as the DM is pretending to be a hobgoblin with a longsword and not merely facilitating a mathematically determined outcome between two buckets of numbers. That consistency isn't JUST important for...

One of the points I'm advocating for is that it is substance. Not just presentation and preference. That being worth doing means it is doing some work in the play of the game. It is pretense, but so are many things of substance in the game. Monster stats themselves are a pretense. It takes...

One of the things that seems to be a little...slid over...in conversations like this is how "reifying" game elements helps in game play. Like, treating a hobgoblin statblock in a baldly mechanical way is like pointing out that Romeo never really drinks poison and doesn't really die on stage and...

Hmm...let's see... If the team is using rules similar to the 2014 rules (and it seems that they are), they're averaging Defensive CR and Offensive CR (which is another thing the "average"-focused analysis can't take into account). This lines up with the "average" analysis noting that the...

"Playing D&D" is probably going to be a pretty small slice of what this project is meant to cover. Movies. Video games. Novels. Probably some adventures or setting material, too, no doubt, but those are only a part of this. Remember when Eberron was tapped as the setting for the D&D MMO? This...

A book on how to create new things for the game that serves as a kind of "director's commentary." I want monster building, class building, subclass building, I want a design advice and dpr charts, I want the game-makers to show me how to bend this system over my knee and make it what I want. I...

This is the way. I like that this makes the poison VERY potent, and encourages the party to stick to ranged attacks, knowing that an unlucky die roll could quickly result in a dead melee fighter. The other way would be to have it as a rider on a tentacle attack, but not require the initial...

It's easy to have expectations of CR that the CR presented in the game can't possibly meet. True "Difficulty" or "Challenge" is such a squirrelly target in a TTRPG. The mechanic of CR in 5e really just compares 2 things: HP vs. Damage. For each side. That's all CR is really made to do: this...

I've used the monster creation rules extensively in combination with Xanathar's encounter-building rules to tune encounters very tightly to create an atmosphere of difficult and impending failure for fights in my Dark Souls-inspired setting, without creating a hopeless scenario or risking much...

One of the things rather ill-explained in the 2014 rules is that CR is mostly made up of two numbers: HP, and DPR. AC and attack bonus/DC can modify this (a creature harder to hit has more longevity; a creature who hits better will drain the characters quicker), but those two numbers mostly...

I do think it's not an easy road to walk, because publishing something that's just going to annoy a loud section of the fanbase (which is kind of inevitable here) is never, like, a great idea. So they need something else to sell it, too, some way to say that even if you don't like the psion, you...

I think WotC was planning on putting out a psion when they released Dark Sun, but then Dark Sun fell through, and now... The psion faces some big obstacles, but nothing deal-breaking. Certainly not more than the artificer faced.

The Blood War is a Cool and Interesting Bit of Lore, but what I like about yugoloths being selfish, scheming, suffering-seekers is that it doesn't rely on the Blood War. "Mercenaries in a conflict that has nothing to do with my campaign" doesn't get me using them, but "operatives for a vast and...

Obyriths have strong aberration vibes, I'd figure if you want to give your fiends wriggling tentacles and alien geometries, that's where they'd go. FWIW, I think it'd be pretty neat to see obyriths back in some adventures. I'm definitely into a D&D whose fiends are more than just demons and...

5e. Every version before 4e is way too fiddly. The 3e version was the best iteration of the "turning damage" roll, and even that was very fiddly. The 4e version just misses the point of why turning undead is a fun alternative to attacking or casting a spell. Another "damage + condition" result...

To a certain degree, I like the idea that the reason that nobody knows quite what defines a yugoloth is because the yugoloths want it that way, and are broadly successful at it. Like, 3rd level fiend warlock, finding out that their patron is a yugoloth for the first time: "A whatoloth? Who are...

I feel, given the Fiends video, that the current team doesn't understand what makes yugoloths interesting aside from "they're not demons or devils." To me, yugoloths are a few things. Dangerously Secretive. Yugoloths are creatures of conspiracy. Not many people know much about yugoloths...

Yeah, aarakocra have been sunset/sunrise colors since 2e at least. Parrot-people more than generic bird-people. Though given that we've got Athasian aarakocra as vulture-people, the precedent is there.

They aren't calibrated for a 2024 character's power level, so they aren't going to work as well. I mean, if you're trying to convince me that this isn't important to me, you're doomed to failure. It is important to me. That isn't really up for debate. Which is why the most effective reasoning...