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This sort of clause may be common, but being common doesn't preclude being unjust or objectionable. The underlying goal of such language is for corporations to limit possible constraints on their future business decisions. Which seems an understandable goal, until you realize that the...

Ranged Fighters and Rogues who focus their proficiencies on social skills (for instance) are entirely valid character concepts. And a party with no dedicated healer, lockpicker or front line fighter can succeed at most challenges, so long as they plan according to the skills they do have. If a...

Wizards' core demand is the ability to unilaterally alter the terms of their existing deals. So long as this remains the case, any other concession they make is intrinsically worthless.

What WotC wants is to take from the community something that they have no moral right and probably no legal right to take. What the community wants is simply not to have something unjustly taken from them. Those positions are not equivalent and should not be treated as if they are.

Only to the degree that electronic play requires a platform with integrated rules. If you're willing to use a virtual tabletop that merely aims to replicate the capabilities of a physical tabletop, that doesn't need licensing from Wizards in the first place.

If Wizards wanted their digital tools to be the only ones available, all they needed to do was not renew their contracts with Roll20 and other companies in that space. Maybe someone would try to make compatible tools anyway, but I suspect WotC would be on much stronger legal and PR footing...

Companies are indeed subject to the vagaries of life and business. Sometimes, the vagary that they're subject to is that prior leadership has made a perpetual agreement allowing third parties access to the content the company would now like to monopolize. It's also worth noting that if 3rd...

Professional, generously compensated, stock traders not doing enough research on the company they're trading to notice this? How could that possibly happen if the financial industry exists to make markets run rationally and efficiently? Next you'll be telling be me that a board of directors...

I like this idea in that it gives a way to decouple armor quality from strength vs. dexterity focus. As things currently stand, DEX-based characters gain little benefit from armor training, and characters without armor training severely handicap themselves by prioritizing STR over DEX. Whereas...

It seems to me like there's another level of ambiguity. "On or after January 13" could be read as modifying "D&D content you create", but it could alternatively be read as modifying "You cannot earn income". I'm not sure the distinction actually matters much, given WotC's underlying assertion...

I'm not speculating about what the document itself says, just the context and intent with which it was presented to recipients. My understanding is that the large 3rd party publishers sent the 1.1 document under NDA were also sent custom licensing agreements. I don't know if this has been...

My understanding is that the attached contracts (which we haven't seen) are individual licensing agreements. The proposed OGL 1.1 is essentially a threat describing the terms WotC will attempt to force on those who don't sign individual agreements. It doesn't need to be in its fully polished...

The OGL is very generous, and if we were starting from scratch, no one could reasonably demand that WotC (or any other publisher) issue a license like it. Nor do they have any obligation to place new content under that license. But even if a you look at the OGL as gift didn't have to be given...

Non-standard ability-skill pairings can work against PCs just as easily as it can work for them. If identifying a rare disease requires an Intelligence (Medicine) check, the Cleric may suddenly find themself feeling a lot less confident. I also find that getting into the habit of thinking of...

If the goal is for one class to have weaker spellcasting, then that class should have fewer and/or lower level spell slots. Describing intentionally stronger/weaker spells as being the same level is confusing, and it complicates within-class spell balance if some spells appear on multiple lists.

I definitely like the idea of tweaking the ASI rules to make primary vs. non-primary ability increases more competitive. An alternative framing would be to create multiple competing versions of the ASI feat. For instance: Add a total of 4 points to your ability scores. You may not raise any...

To me, published lore is valuable when it serves as a non-exclusive source of inspiration. It becomes a stumbling block when it comes to be assumed as an intrinsic part of D&D, rather than a feature of one or more specific D&D settings.

The relevant paragraph in the playtest reads: "Thanks to the magical workings of the multiverse, Humanoids of different kinds sometimes have children together. For example, folk who have a human parent and an orc or an elf parent are particularly common. Many other combinations are possible."...

Yes, the issue with dump stats is that some ability scores isn't what the minimum score is. It's that some scores can be set to that minimum level with negligible consequences. This makes it hard to allow low scores in a point buy system, as whatever score is set as the minimum quickly becomes...

The Articficer is the only full class thats been added since 2014. It's distinctive in terms of both mechanics and flavor (more so, I'd argue than a number of the PHB classes) and it expresses a flexible enough concept to work in a broad range of settings and support plenty of subclasses. I...