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Even if we aren't going with the 4e cosmology, where the gods and elemental powers are explicitly at odds, I feel like the delineation still exists. Divine domains are conceptual and based around the lives of their worshipers, while the elements are more of an abstract building block.. Fire is...

Classically Robin uses a longbow. But the Errol Flynn movies created an entire sub-genre of swashbuckling swordfighting Robin Hood depictions that continues to trickle out occasional entries to this day. Really, what we think of as "swashbuckling" is just stage combat. A light sword for actors...

Some might, but a lot wouldn't. You're completely leaving out the pirate swashbucklers, and they're actually the dominant ones these days. I bet you the top two picks right now would be Jack Sparrow and Inigo Montoya. Which is exactly my point. It's such a broad genre, and the difference...

I always end up having the same problem with Swashbuckler classes as I do Witches. Both are incredibly broad narrative categories, and not only does a self-labeled class have to narrow it down to an unsatisfying limited offering, but I could probably build six different PCs using existing...

Mystic was saying give it to them and decouple the features from requiring Hex. Which is the scenario I was mathing out. Also any trade between utility and damage is a false choice, because death is the best debuff and damage is always better.

Spiritual Weapon is flavorful, but you're right that it scales. Scales too well, especially with Pact Magic spell slots. Consider a 9th level Hexblade with two attacks (EB or Blade Pact, doesn't matter). Hex adds +2d6 if both attacks hit. The automatically upcast Spiritual Weapon is doing 4d8+5...

I wouldn't. D&D is a different genre in a different medium. And even on the RPG scale, D&D classes are a lot more specific and locked in than a more freeform point based system like GURPS. Trying to make a 1:1 reproduction is a fool's errand. What I would do is what I suggest any time people...

I already expanded on my reasoning at length. Which you'd know, if you read the thread first. But in short, the sort of ham-handed adversarial railroading you describe is exactly what a DM shouldn't do. And there's a middle ground between that and "the party always wins" that's wide enough to...

Specifically for Celestial Warlock's Radiant Soul, Pact of the Blade doesn't work at all. Radiant Soul only works with spells that deal Fire or Radiant damage. Dealing Radiant damage via Pact of the Blade doesn't qualify. It has to be True Strike while at 5th level or higher so that it has a die...

It's funny. This version of the Hexblade is pushing the "bonded with a cursed runeblade" style of character flavor, which has shown up all over fiction thanks to Elric and his influence, but mechanically it's fairly neutral. Scrub the ability names and all that's left is a couple instances of...

Long, long ago I ran into the concept of the Grudge Monster. Something that's entirely out of place and perfectly counters one or more of the PCs, that was put there by the DM specifically to ruin the player's day. It was probably in the collection of AD&D 1e era Dragon magazines I inherited...

Yeah, playing the "untouchably high level NPC comes in and steals the party's stuff" card might as well be the direct hand of the DM reaching into the game world and forcing things on the PCs. And that never goes well. It's the worst sort of railroading and DM fiat, where instead of being open...

"Too many magic items" is a DM problem. It's a problem the DM decides exists when the party reaches a certain level of bling, and it's a problem the DM created by giving the party those items in the first place. And then it becomes a player problem when the DM tries to walk back their previous...

Good news! No special feature is needed, unlike the other weapon cantrips True Strike already works with ranged weapons. So all that's needed is proficiency, and if Arcane Firearm specifically allows ranged martial weapons it's a safe bet that Artillerists will get some selection of them. My...

A lot of it, yes. Some of it, no. Like, the Bastion stuff has to be brand new, as is much of the campaign genre and theme advice. And while the Artificer updates seem pretty direct, they're completely redoing Dragonmarks. Look, I'm used to having to completely rebuy the product line when a new...

That's interesting. Thus far, they've really avoiding doing dependency books. That is to say, a book that directly follows another book, such that it's of very limited value if you don't have the first. It's been a major design thrust for keeping every book appealing to the largest swath of...

My long standing opinion on pet subclass design is that they need to go all-in on it. Nothing's worse than an orphan pet feature that doesn't scale, so it's too strong when you first get it and worthlessly clogging up the initiative order a few levels later. Even the improved Chain Pact...

Depends if the other four are the ECS originals (Changeling, Kalashtar, Shifter, Warforged) yet again, or if they feel the versions of some of those that last appeared in Rising from the Last War or Monsters of the Multiverse still hold up. I could see a world where one or two of those get left...

Apologies for the reading comprehension fail. That happens sometimes when my morning caffeine hasn't kicked in yet and I hit a sore spot that sends me on a rant.

I'm not. I played a Hexblade in a couple year campaign that went to 14th level. Can you guess how many times I activated Accursed Spectrer in that time? Zero. Zero times. It only triggered off personal killing blows on humanoids. The DM didn't throw us up against many humanoids that campaign...