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You're cross cutting heavily. A lot of your factors have a loose correlation at best. Take that extremely deadly "heroic" style campaign I mentioned earlier. That was: "If the characters are frequently fighting for survival, Bad Things happening to party members is an accepted fact of life...

Yeah, when my aunt asks me about my gaming, we always refer to any game I'm playing as "Dungeons and Dumplings", a long running joke from when I was 8 (for context, I'm now 41).

The choice of polar opposites was intentional, as that allows for a scale, as opposed to strategic and tactical which are more of a Venn diagram. Strategy and tactics can exist at any table to various degrees. Whereas symmetric and asymmetric are trying to convey two distinct approaches. They...

Right, but I feel like on a D&D message board we can hold ourselves to a slightly more precise standard than that.

You could use the terms symmetrical and asymmetric.

Yeah, if we assume that D&D is to be a term meaning ~70% of the RPGs out there, then it's more or less become functionally synonymous with RPG. I'm not sure why anyone would consider that a useful evolution of the term, as opposed to referring to TSR/WOTC D&D (which is already quite broad, but...

If they mean the "D&D family" then they should say that. Advanced Labyrinth Lord shares a lot of DNA with Rules Cyclopedia D&D. If we're discussing RC D&D and you start talking about ability scores of 19, then I'm going to ask what you're talking about. Because ALL has them but RC didn't. If...

IIRC they also did a Mom class for one of the April issues.

Things have names for a reason. If you say D&D, but your intended meaning is Torg or SWN, any misunderstandings arising thereof are on you. When my aunt, who knows relatively nothing about RPGs, refers to every RPG as D&D, I follow her meaning because I know that she understands nothing about...

Because it's like calling every guy Steve just because they share some basic physical similarities. John is Steve, Tim is Steve, Joe is Steve, etc. It would be confusing and nonsensical. D&D is the stuff that says D&D on the cover. Other works may be D&D derived (True 20, Level Up) or D&D...

That simply isn't true. I played in a campaign that focused on heroic combat but was extremely deadly (averaging one or two deaths every game session). I've played in a few other campaigns that involved heroic combat but were quite deadly nonetheless (not quite as deadly as the aforementioned...

Honestly, I think something like Combat as Heroes (CaH) and Combat as Anti-Heroes (CaA) is more descriptively accurate of these play styles. Heroes typically face dangerous challenges head on. They normally fight the BBEG directly. They might occasionally cleverly deal with a dangerous or...

"Combat as..." describes a play style rather than a type of system design. The design might encourage certain play styles over others, but the reality is that you can play any system in any style. When I was a kid (Basic/2e) I had no one to teach me how to run D&D. So I designed my encounters...

I wasn't suggesting that you were casting stones. I just think that it was bad advice for this person and situation (as well as in general) and responded as such. There's nothing wrong with killing characters per se. But I don't think that making passive aggressive commentary after the fact...

I disagree. Killing their characters and then commenting how much fun it is to "actually play" seems quite disfunctional and passive aggressive to me. I think that having a conversation with the players is a much healthier and more mature approach.

Having a discussion sounds like a good idea. My impression is that this player may perceive it as though you are trying to violate their agency, despite that you aren't intending to force a specific outcome. Which may be related to your earlier statement that you like to make combats difficult...

The PHB only covers the playable options. It isn't meant to cover every possible person or creature in the world, as evidenced by the MM which contains plenty of abilities unavailable to players. If you need an in-game explanation, there are plenty available. For the example you gave, perhaps...

@p_johnston What were the circumstances surrounding this "your potion ingredients or your life" scenario? I ask because one of the reasons I've seen players behave this way is due to the DM trying to subvert their agency. From one of my own experiences, the DM contrived an encounter where he...

I would probably go with something like: Barbarian (STR / CON) DEX Bard (DEX / CHA) INT Cleric (WIS / CHA) STR Druid (INT / WIS) CHA Fighter (STR / CON) WIS Monk (STR / DEX) WIS Paladin (WIS / CHA) STR Ranger (STR / DEX) CON Rogue (DEX / INT) CON (would be WIS, but that would require altering...

Reread my original post. I mentioned the spiritual bond there too. I don't ascribe to the notion that martial == mundane. IMO, that kind of thinking is at the heart of martial/caster disparity. Just look at the source that the Beastmaster draws upon. It's arguably inspired by the Beastmaster...