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Sure, Tesla's version of the Ranger is clunky out of the box, but it really comes into it's own when you add in the options from Tesla's Cauldron of Everything.

I think the last sentence in the above quote is the most important one. If the group doesn't mind when one player's character is in need of constant protection (or is evil, or is comedic relief, or is a thief pilfering from everyone's backpacks, etc.), then it's all good. Conversely, if the...

Your ranger wants to deal bonus damage with a weapon attack? Cast a spell. Your paladin wants to deal bonus damage with a weapon attack? Cast a spell. Your druid wants to magically transform into an animal? No spell required.

Interesting questions. For background, I’m the sort of DM who believes randomness should occur during play, not during character creation. I don’t like randomly generated ability scores or hit points, because they can have an outsized impact on the game, making in-game rolls less dramatic in...

If you'd like to debate players who are upset about not starting with a 16 Intelligence, please reply to one of those players instead replying to me and putting words in my mouth. As it so happens, I'm a DM. The implication that I'm motivated by some sort of player entitlement is misplaced...

Random tangent: I once played a changeling who had a deep-seated moral objection to impersonating others. When the party was planning a heist and realized I wasn't going to use my shape changing abilities to impersonate any number of people they were expecting I would impersonate along the way...

Potentially? The fact that I'm not going to play revised D&D if it turns out WotC has made too many rules changes I don't like. I already have a PHB. I'm not going to spend good money on a new one just so I can run a game for my players using rules I don't like as much.

Thanks. That was the historical context I was missing.

Just out of curiosity, when did teleportation become a Fey thing? The designers keep pushing teleportation as something with Fey flavor, and I'm not getting why. Blink dog, I guess? That feels a bit tenuous to me. Historically, Fiends have had a lot more teleportation magic than Fey. I've always...

You seem to be making false assumptions about my motivations. My intent is to call out the game designers for adding new, arbitrary restrictions to existing character builds. You have mentioned several times how you would build an intelligent street urchin character. As I said in my last post...

You claim someone of noble birth "has greater learning" than an urchin, then you quote a description of the urchin background which literally says "you learned to provide for yourself." That description of the urchin calls out learning as an important milestone in the life of an urchin. And the...

This example provides a reasonable argument for assigning skills to backgrounds, but it doesn't convince me we should be assigning ability scores to backgrounds. Remember, whenever an ability check is required to recall any type of knowledge, it's an Intelligence check. "Which criminal gangs...

Just to be clear, in the post you quoted, I said I don't if it's true that sensitivity readers had anything to do with renaming the backgrounds. I was using an earlier post which made that hypothesis as a segue, because I wanted to talk about background names. My main point was that I find the...

I have no idea if that's true, but a similar narrative would explain why "urchins" are "wayfarers" now. That's another one that really annoys me, because "wayfarer" just means "someone who travels a lot, usually on foot." There is no connotation of growing up on the streets and learning to use...

What’s in a Name, Part I There are a few design decisions I need to finalize before I can say the text in my sourcebook is nearly finished. Several of those decisions involve names. As mentioned upthread, this book includes descriptions of over one-hundred cultures native to the Realms. For...

I'm guessing the Outer Planes were designed the same way as the Inner Planes: one "pure" plane for each alignment/element, plus one "mixed" plane on each border between "pure" planes. The mixed-alignment Outer Planes are the alignment equivalent of the para-elemental Inner Planes.

I must really be wasting time. I'm world building stuff and I'm not even running a game.

Wanderer and Vagabond would both have been better names for it. But I'm pretty sure the influencers called it Wayfarer, which doesn't make all that much sense.

I'll second that. To me, the map in the alchemical chart style nailed what I want out of the Great Wheel cosmology: a reality that evokes the occult phrase, "As above, so below." I don't want the Great Wheel to feel like a bunch of spaces on a game board or island resorts the PCs can add to...

You raise good points. I do think it would have been cleaner to just say rage last 10 minutes, then add a sentence saying something like, "Your rage ends early if you choose to end it (no action required) or if you gain the Incapacitated condition." But that's just a minor quibble.