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I'd view it as more or less a coincidence. The races in the PHB are there for historic, narrative and aesthetic reasons, not because of their assoiated ability scores. And if we look at ability score associations as random (this isn't strictly accurate, but it's an informative baseline), a given...

I'd actually see manipulation of the law for personal advantage as a relatively weak manifestation of lawful evil. A purer form would be dedication to a worldview built around morally repugnant rules and structures. Belief that the strong deserve to rule over the weak. Commitment to social and...

I would say the platonic ideal of a lawful character would do both. While all characters will break rules at times (not least because rules will often contradict one another), I would describe a character as lawful if they have a strong tendency towards following rules and require a compelling...

People can absolutely be a heroes or leaders and also be in love. And people can absolutely live happy, fulfilling lives without being romantically attached. Both are important messages, though I think the second is the one that society more frequently misses out on. Also important is that...

How common spellcasters are will (and should) vary dramatically from setting to setting. It strikes me, though, that the PHB and DMG suggest a lower baseline than is often assumed. These books make a point of emphasizing that not every priest is a Cleric, nor every travelling musician a Bard...

I feel like this question is putting the cart before the horse. How would this hypothetical game be different from D&D? What, from the perspective of its creators and target audience, would be its advantages? Personal/professional loyalty on the part of prospective developers, and inertia on the...

Yes, but even a small kingdom is far to large for the king to do all the murder/threat of murder personally. Or even to directly supervise all the people doing it on their behalf. Any king, therefore, is going to need some way of securing and keeping the loyalty of subordinate commanders...

I think this makes sense if you want the nature of divinity to be the main focus of a seting or campaign narative. If that's not the case, though, I'd argue that the sociological questions are a lot more important. Plenty of campaigns will never feature direct contact with gods, but almost all...

I'd say the magic in the show is limited in frequency and versatility rather than power. (though healing's hard to judge given the ambiguity about what hit points represent). This definitely has advantages for the show, as combat with more spells would be hard to follow in real-time animation...

Extra tool proficiencies for fighters and potentially other martial classes would make sense, but I'm not sure of how much effect this change would have, given that tool proficiencies tend to be a very niche feature. I might actually go further and tweak the number of skill proficiencies that...

To be fair, the protagonists have plenty of their own clueless combat moments- when someone's animating sits of armor and mind controlling your friends, attacking that person seem like it should be a pretty obvious choice. I think pacing may be at least part of the issue. It seems like there's...

Jacksonian slander! The real Faramir did nothing but support and counsel Sam and Frodo.

For me, the default answer is that nothing happens, though I'd be happy to explore any of the other possibilities, depending on out of game conversations and on what fits with the relationships established in character's backgrounds (and that applies to any class, not just Clerics, Warlocks and...

I feel like the poll should have "Nothing" as one of the options. Starting from the perspective that there must be some penalty may be a common approach, but it's not the only one, and assuming it to be so will bias the results.

I'm going by the book version, since it's the literature tier list, and since I've only seen fragments of the show. My understanding, though, is that the show expands Bronn's role and hypes him up more, so book Bronn in tier 1 and show Bronn in tier 2 might be a reasonable assessment.

Tier 4 - Masters of the World Fingolfin (Tolkien) Ecthelion (Tolkien) Gil-Galad (Tolkien) Glorfindel (Tolkien) John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom (Burroughs) Icarium (Erikson) Elric of Melnibone (Moorcock) Tier 3 - Masters of the Realm Corwin of Amber (Zelazny) <-- Moved up Hurin (Tolkien) Conan...

This is the approach I generally take, but it does come with some limitations. With only fewer levels, all of a character's intrinsic power growth has to be condensed into a small number of discrete events, rather than occurring more gradually. You also miss out on a lot of customization...

If we're holding the power level of spellcasters constant, I think the answer needs to be somewhere in the Hulk/Thanos/Captain Marvel range (since power levels vary depending on both in-universe conditions and out-of-universe plot needs, I don't think trying to be more granular than that is a...

For me, it really depends on what it means to "use alignment". Do characters make moral and ethical decisions? Absolutely. Can positions on good-evil and law-chaos axes* describe a portion of the variation in how different characters make those decisions? Sure. Do I use alignment...

The general point stands, but WotC can't actually be trying to claim "goliath" as exclusive IP can they? If CR could use Wizards' specific portrayal of goliaths but couldn't describe them with a word that's been around longer than the English language, that would seem like the exact opposite of...