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The problem with leaving the champion subclass as is, is that then the rest of the fighter base class has to be designed to accommodate both it and the subclasses that give players interesting knobs/dials/buttons/what-have-you. And as we have already seen that is awkward. What is more, most...

Illithid mind blast fails spectacularly.

As a bit of preamble, I think it's purist nonsense to use pejorative language like "button-mashing" when referring to engaging with mechanics and all that. After all, the whole point of playing a game is to have mechanics; otherwise we're just playing make-believe where one of the people playing...

I would recommend tailoring the amount of effort put into the commerce/trade aspects of your setting to take into account two considerations: First, what kind of campaign are you playing? If you're playing a sandbox-y style game where the players have wide latitude to decide what the game is...

That looks amazing!

Aaaaaand this is how nerds get a reputation for being insufferable and argumentative. As if there's something "inhumane" about a measurement system that literally works just fine as long as you can count and multiply by tens - aka use your fingers (if you have all of 'em).

There is a Vecna adventure coming up in 2024, as well as the Phandelver book in Q3 this year, so the obelisks could be getting highlighted in a big way soon.

I am 100% confident that framing an ordinary and unremarkable player preference as "indoctrination" is an epitome of bad faith argument.

Here I should point out that (a) this requires the table writ large valuing immersion in a world they reckon to be believable as an end of their gameplay, and even if they do, (b) in the real world (which I hope qualifies as "believable"), actions that might be or are usually reckoned as evil...

I usually just use DC 15.

This conception more or less only makes sense in the context of Dungeons & Dragons and games that ape its style. Most conceptions of magic in fantasy-themed media, especially so far in the 21st century, go the other way 'round. If anything, it's sorcerers and warlocks that best fit the...

Since the game has for 50 years mostly centered on one of (1) stealing loot from monsters you didn't want to fight, (2) killing monsters in order to get their loot, or (3) heroically defeating monsters and consequently getting whatever loot they happened to have (because it was there), I concur...

So, I do wonder, by "need" do you mean "enjoy"? (And sorry if this has come up in the thread already.) Because to my mind, how many rules I would need to feel like I am playing an RPG depends on what kind of gameplay experience the RPG is trying to engender. If I'm sitting down to play 4e D&D...

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Baker's logic. (Also, Baker doesn't say rules are unwelcome; it's the fiction they create that is unwelcome - or, at least, unlooked-for.) I don't know if there's a better word to use: unwelcome has connotations of unenjoyable, which to my mind runs contrary to...

I'd like to have the certainty that any IP I generate is on part with Star Wars! Talk about confidence. However, the post runs pretty deep with a strain of what comes across as conspiratorial ideation. While I am sure McCracken believes every word he's writing, I think there'd need to be more...

Yeah, I'd think you want extensible swarm rules as well as minions (or maybe even instead of minions!) - that way you have fewer stat blocks to run as DM, and you can butter up the players by describing how the PCs are carving their way through hosts of foes.

4e's "clock" for adventuring day attrition is healing surges; once you're out of those (or almost out) that's the end of your adventuring day.

@pemerton refers to editions, so in my reply I simply responded using the same terminology. (As I understand it, @pemerton was also referring to how the mechanics of 2e tend to encourage trad play because they are unforgiving compared to 5e when it comes player character survivability and the...

@pemerton I would say @AbdulAlhazred is pretty on point as regards published adventures for 5e. They run pretty trad, in the sense that who the characters are isn't very important for the scenario. For instance, I'm running Rise of Tiamat and unless I add content that's curated to pertain to the...

There's also a pretty big difference in feel from your magic-user having a single spell slot for an entire adventuring day at 1st level versus your wizard having two such slots, the ability to recover one of those slots once during the day, and a handful of spells castable at will, along with a...