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Over the course of the One D&D playtest, a pattern has emerged where multiple weeks pass between the closing of one playtest and the opening of the next. Naturally, as someone who's excited to see new playtest content, I find this a bit frustrating. As I think about it more, though, it also...

I'm not sure how generalizable this is. The most visible fans on the internet will tend to be the ones most dedicated to the piece of media they're discussing, but any fan base as large as Critical Role's is going to be fairly multifaceted. Personally, I really enjoy Critical Role, but I see...

In most contexts, I wouldn't find this sort of reasoning particularly compelling. For critical hits, though, generating dice-based excitement is the underlying purpose of the mechanic. Getting to roll extra dice delivers on that goal better than making mathematical adjustments. The more nuanced...

It's also important to consider that some classes, like the Fighter, are designed to emulate broad archetypes, while others, like the Warlock, are designed to emulate more specific ones. If we want to look for classes that need to be improved, we shouldn't focus on classes that are...

Wild Magic and Chaos Bolt are great options to have in the game. Implementing them as core class mechanics, though, would be a huge constraint on possible character designs in a class that otherwise provides a lot of space for creativity. The 2014 Sorcerer's biggest issue was the limited choice...

We don't send soldiers into battle with swords today. But when the available ranged weapons were bows or renaissance era firearms, people absolutely went into battle with melee weapons. The same is true in the fantasy D&D seeks to emulate (albeit with more swords and fewer polearms). To support...

In internet tier lists, Rogues and Rangers are considered not that great. In actual games, multiple people in this thread have said they find long range attacks to problematic. The ability to attack for multiple rounds when your adversaries can't is a game-warping advantage. This doesn't...

In my actual play experience, it's the advantage of ranged weapons that's reality and the weakness of the Rogue and Ranger that's theoretical. Even with deliberate scenario design choices that prevent ranged attacks from being used to anywhere near their full potential, the ranged characters in...

Melee and ranged weapons are reasonably balanced in a dungeon delving context. In a high visibility outdoor encounter, though, a melee-focused combatant is utterly helpless against a range-focused combatant of comparable level or CR. Absent terrain/visibility restrictions, a melee warrior using...

I think the overarching issue with ranged attacks is that, in outdoor encounters with good visibility, a ranged combatant gets many rounds of high quality attacks before a melee combatant can close to effective range. Penalizing ranged weapons in melee will do relatively little to solve this...

If companions are going to be subclass features rather than a class focus, I think it makes sense to have such options available in multiple classes (we've already seen this to some extent with the Battle Smith Artificer and Pact of the Chain Warlock). To me, "nature mage with an animal...

I mostly like this list, but I would prefer to include a summoning/animal companion focused option. Circle of the Primeval from the Giants UA had a good framework for this, albeit with flavor that was more specific than it needed to be. Putting aside the Circle of Stars (which is a good option...

That's definitely a trap the developers could fall into, but I'm not convinced it would be automatic. In Tasha's, for instance, there are two Druid subclasses focused on what are essentially alternate forms of combat wildshaping (Circle of Spores and Circle of Stars), but that didn't stop the...

I voted for the beast only option, though I'll add the caveat that I'd like beast-like monstrosities to be included as well. I suspect that elemental forms were originally part of the Moon Druid because the 2014 Druid only had two subclasses, a wild shape subclass and a spellcasting subclass...

It doesn't even seem to me like there should be more than a trivial difference in programming difficulty. I don't know exactly how WotC/Beyond stores this sort of information, but a reference table with spells as rows and classes as columns would only need a single row added for each new spell...

To me, this sounds like a list of activities that Rangers (and in some cases adventurers more generally) already have the tools to be good at. Natural explorer lets rangers travel in favored terrain without the risk of becoming lost and with significant bonuses to foraging. Horses of various...

WotC has posted a video discussing initial feedback on the One D&D Druid/Paladin playtest, along with survey results from the Expert playtest. Some highlights for discussion: Druid: The developers recognize that the template version of wild shape is contentious. If they retain this approach...

If you don't want to check additional sourcebooks, using a unique spell list published with the class still seems easier than checking source/school combinations in the PHB. As for homebrew, you're free to use existing spell lists in either system, but the class-based system gives you more lists...

I'm still convinced these benefits are mostly illusory. Suppose a Mystic class is released in 2026. Under a class-based spell system, a player who wants to know what spells their Mystic can learn will need to check the list published with the Mystic class, and then the lists of spells in any...

As I see it, compatibility isn't about building a character with the 2014 PHB and then playing the entire game using the 2014 rules. It's about building a character with the 2014 PHB and having the abilities on the character sheet function under the 2024 rules. If a player has 2014 bardic...