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The Cartographer confuses me. I'm not sure what it's supposed to do. It's got mobility, but no additional weapon skills to use with it. Only if it's supposed to be using cantrips, it's got no extra damage bumps like Alchemist and Artillerist. Instead it mostly seems to be about group buffs...

A few tweaks to the base class, to go with the new subclass. Wands and weapons made with Replicate Magic Item now work as a Spellcasting Focus, which partially fixes the issues with Battle Smith. Still doesn't help if you find a powerful magic weapon you want to use instead of your weak...

That's one meaning of "authority". Merriam-Webster lists four, two others of which fit here. You are not being particularly clever.

Invoking the name of a (mostly) beloved founder is an Appeal to Authority. Citing the legacy of the early days is an Appeal to Tradition. Both are well known logical fallacies. So yeah, using the name of Gygax as a weapon in a debate is not a cool move. No contest from me. It's the same as when...

Everything I know about Lorwyn-Shadowmoor I learned this week. But it does strike me that the dual aspected plane hits themes that D&D has already been exploring. Lorwyn is somewhat similar to Witchlight's fey whimsy, and Shadowmoor wouldn't be at all out of place in Ravenloft. If they're doing...

You joke, but that's a valid path. Just, you know, dress it up right. Hanging out at the local tavern waiting for someone to wander in looking for help? Only the really penny ante jobs show up there. For the big ticket ones, you gotta go through the middlemen. The ones who vet both the quest...

Pretty much. The one gameplay type that does suffer from this is "Murderhobos wandering the countryside performing home invasions", because it cuts away at the moral justification for blanket designating certain populations as acceptable targets. Which yes, okay, if that's really the core...

All it really leads to is a bit less Kill On Sight gameplay. At least, Kill On Sight based on creature type. If you're storming the Evil Darklord's Fortress of Evil, then anyone wearing the Darklord's colors is legitimately Kill On Sight. If you're raiding a bandit camp, anyone walking around...

Species alignment is dumb if they're actually a species. If they're a Celestial, or a Fiend, or a Fey manifestation of a particular emotion, an innate (but not absolute) alignment tendency is okay. Which is more or less the direction WotC is moving in, so I'm happy as a clam with these changes...

Indeed. But it's saying "This evil genie is evil because they personally are a jerk, not because Efreet or Dao are culturally evil". And I think that's an improvement. They're a lot more useful, this way. More genie bargains, more genies as patrons or suppliers, that sort of thing.

I like the new alignments. Goblins being chaos gremlins is more interesting, more in line with current popular culture depictions, and moving away from tropes with dark histories. While we're on the topic, I like that genies aren't polarized into good and evil variants anymore. In the new book...

This does, in fact, exist. The ever lovable Flumph is a Lawful Good Aberration in the Revised MM.

There's basically three options, as I see it, for determining that from the player side. Blind trial and error, picking up on context clues from the DM's narration, and the Study action. Trial and error is obvious, you do it and see if it works. Context clues are listening to how the DM...

Or, it turns out, very often entirely real and well known animals. Just with the descriptions filtered through an international game of Telephone in an era without photographs or detailed zoological understanding. The kirin was a giraffe. Unicorns were, duh, rhinoceroses. Behemoth was a...

Even odds that they don't force themselves to cover every class because it's a setting book and not a player options book, and that those four get covered in a second later UA because they need a little more time to cook before they ask for feedback.

On the one hand, fair point. On the other hand, I try not to do test builds with the assumption of any specific magic items if I can help it, and a Dex primary Scion Rogue with a Headband is just a bog standard Rogue. There's nothing new from the subclass besides some minor features and cool...

Today's test character was a Scion Rogue. Rogues are another class where the subclasses usually aren't transformative. That said, there's two things consider here. One is that Scion Rogues are MAD for Dex and Int, so that encourages a build that goes light on feats so you can raise them both...

Exactly. D&D defines "Giants" as being related to a specific family of entities, and usually with an elemental alignment of some sort. It isn't a catch-all for "anything big". I can see the reasoning for the choice they made. If you want to define large sapient animals as paragon spirits of...

It may just be the latest attempt to solve the "How much Monster Manual page count do you devote to creatures the PCs won't actually be fighting?" quandary. IIRC the 4e MM just left out all the Good aligned creatures, which caused much complaints at the time. The 2014 5e MM put them back in, and...

Alternatively: NPC elven Bladesingers spent centuries mastering the full style and get NPC stats based on the overpowered 2e version. PC Bladesingers use a simplified version of just the basics that's taught to outsiders and can be learned in only a few years, which gives the 5e subclass package.