True. I'm just curious whether the designers made a balance mistake, or whether they felt that a section of the player base was unhappy with the amount of damage mitigation available to clerics. But we never get much in the way of design theory explanations, it seems.
That's not what he means - it's that Twilight is less effective at damage-mitigation-per-round if only one PC - any single PC - is taking damage each round.
I use it for sorcerers only, and it seems to be popular with players - but I've never had a game with both a wizard and a sorcerer for direct comparison of play experience.
I think it's a bit more powerful, but I haven't found it game-breaking.
Don't use White Plume Mountain - I recently ran a group of completely inexperienced players with 8th level pregens through it, and they slaughtered everything present with ease. You'd want to test with something slightly dangerous, or use lower level pregens.
Kind of says something about the monsters available in 5e that there's that big gap in the CR numbers there - 10 monsters from CR 1-6, and then 7 more for CR 12+ with nothing in between.
Agree. Maybe they were trying to get away from the original issue with Lamordia - whether Mordenheim or Adam are truly the darklord, and which is the more monstrous? OTOH, they did keep the "two darklords" thing with Borca.
I have a suspicion that the secret of high-level Ravenloft is to make the primary dilemma for the PCs not a particular fight, but a choice between two terrible options with large-scale consequences.
I plan on asking my players - if they show interest in Ravenloft - what kind of campaign they'd like to do. The book has enough ideas for that. Maybe they all want to take Strahd as a patron.