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I have a hard time justifying taking spells like those, though, when for the most part they're replicating (or in some cases even falling short of) what martial characters can do at lower resource cost. Even with Heighten, Disintegrate is likely doing less on average than a fighter archer using...

because of the slightly smaller AoE? Slow is completely party-friendly, and HP is a stronger debuff. I guess if the foe you really care about disabling has scrub allies who will use actions to shake them out of HP then maybe confusion has a place, but it's tough for me to see it coming up often...

There are depressingly few AoE spells that give a single save on the turn you cast it and don't do anything on a successful save. It's Hypnotic Pattern and Fear, and then ... Confusion, but that's just a worse HP, and Reverse Gravity, but that's too high level for this campaign. I think that's...

1. Half-elf or variant human would be the strongest races mechanically. With standard array you I'd probably lean toward half-elf in this case, since that lets you start with 16 in CHA, DEX, and CON, and an extra skill (darkvision is nice too). If you go human I'd get 16 CHA and 14 DEX and CON...

Oh, and there's the book series by Jim Zub. We have all three that are out so far, and they're great. James Haeck at D&D Beyond did an article awhile back with a suggested simplified rule set to go along with those books. Haven't tried it yet, but sounded fun.

There is also the Stranger Things module. I played through that and thought it'd be great for a kid that age (I also have a 7-year-old who is interested in D&D, but we've only done pseudo-D&D with very few rules so far)

Actually, you know what, I even understated the case for variant human over half-elf with point buy. Variant human can buy 15,15,15,8,8,8 and take Resilient CON to start with 16s in all three of their main stats, same as the half-elf. So they they have proficiency in CON saves (which all CHA...

Let's assume point buy, because forcing standard array is dumb -- I guess some people use it because they think it reins in power-gaming, but IME it just pigeonholes optimizers into more samey race/class combinations even more than fixed racial ability bonuses already do -- and if you're rolling...

I'm not sure I see how this connects to the 'four archetypes' question? Can you clarify for me?

Trying to figure out where monk fits in. It upholds the symmetry if you call them "trickster" and bards "trickster/mage", but monks don't strike me as trickstery for the most part. I take it both paladin and ranger are "warrior/priest", since paladin:cleric::ranger:druid? And if you put monk in...

This is an important point, I think: it's a much bigger investment for the DM to keep a campaign going than it is for the players. When I have seen campaigns end before everyone would prefer to end them, it's nearly aways because the DM gets too busy to continue. But if at least one other person...

Currently playing a 13th level character who started at level 3 about 18 months ago (with a few months off at one point to give the DM a break, during which I DMed an 8 session or so mini-campaign). I expect that campaign to continue for awhile yet. Maybe not all the way to 20th, but probably a...

Another consideration that occurs to me is that with a swashbuckler in the party, they may have the primary face role covered. It'd be worth checking with them what skills they're planning to take expertise in so you don't wind up stepping on each other. The paladin may want to take persuasion...

I think your spell selection approach is solid. With that party, control spells will be very effective; much more so than focusing on melee. And as a control caster, keeping up with spell progression is that much more important: you're not going to be using all your slots upcasting shadow blade...

I thought about the half-elf route, but it didn't seem like a good tradeoff to me. Assuming Prodigy Half-Elf vs Skilled High Elf, half-elf gives: expertise in one skill slightly better social skills two languages one tool and loses: a point of INT or DEX a cantrip one skill proficiency (up...

If you stay pure bladesinger, you could take arcana and investigation from wizard, deception and persuasion from your background, and still have +4 with advantage on acrobatics in bladesong, which will usually be good enough to get out of grapples. You also get performance from bladesinger --...

The biggest cost to multiclassing isn't what you lose at level 19 or 20 -- if you do get there it's a small part of the campaign -- but being behind in spell levels. A two level dip means your biggest guns will be one spell level behind what they'd be otherwise for the entire campaign. Make sure...

Yep, too strong. Make it an action, CON save (like the Blindness spell), and I'd still use it as my go-to at-will option over anything else.

Yeah, I like it on customization grounds, but the subclass features tend to be somewhat front-loaded -- or, at least, enough of them are that this poses balance issues. If I'm a wizard and I can take the level two features from bladesinger, diviner, and war mage, that's a considerably more...

To be fair, the OP was posted, what, 18 hours ago? Not everyone hangs around here all day like us junkies. Give them a day or two before flinging accusations around, geez!