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I think a lot of the question becomes... what are the fundamental physics of your D&D world. Like when I run the game, the elements are Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Positive Energy, and Negative Energy because those are the indivisible elements in the D&D world, and magic is basically an additional...

I'll also say that 3 is not a bucketful. But I also remember us playing ShadowRun, and everybody had one of those cases of thirty-six 12mm d6s. The joke was, "roll 1dBrick". I also remember playing Vampire and became clear that the dice pool system didn't really work very well. Overall I think...

I'm still a little dumbstruck that after doing Fizban's Treasury of Dragons in 2021 that they're doing The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons in 2023.

I guess that's fair. It is odd that the game jumps into character creation immediately. It's mostly a relic of AD&D's PHB, which told you to look in the DMG if you wanted to know how to play... but only if you were the DM! Really a bizarre choice, looking back. 144? That feels like saying...

When I was younger, I would've voted, "Balance is the most important. Fun has to be done within that balanced window." I still think this is probably true for new players to a game or new players to a table. I didn't have confidence in the game and didn't have experience running it, and I bought...

I would probably just adapt the 4e rule for first level hit points: Max hit die plus Con score.

Except the FKR as presented in OP still relies on negotiation. If negotiation doesn't work, why wouldn't you eliminate it entirely? If you're using it and it works, what's the die for?

I agree they're convenient. I'm not sure I agree they're all that useful if they're just acting as a coin flip where sometimes you have a discussion. I'd rather start with the discussion, and only if you can't reach concord use randomness as your watershed. To be fair, I think that's sort of...

It doesn't matter. You only have to agree upon the mechanism before you need it. Nothing requires that mechanism to be random. That's simply common convention, with all the assumptions and preconceptions we have trapped within. That's why I mentioned Amber Diceless as a "more pure form of FKR."...

Right, and I'm saying even dice aren't necessary. Not because you don't run into a situation where you can't reach concord without some mechanism, just that random chance does not need to be involved in the mechanism at all.

This feels like it's driving back towards, "What is the purpose of the rules?" I think TTRPGs are one of the most complex games that has been developed. I don't think that's a good thing; I just think that many TTRPGs are games that have developed so many disparate modes of play that complexity...

You pull the stopper on the decanter, and a few moments later you hear a wavering voice: "Water is composed of two parts hydrogen, and one part oxygen." A few moments later, the mysterious voice again can be heard. This time it says: "When water is cooled below it's freezing point, it...

Sure Forcecage is powerful, but it's nothing compared to Raise Thread.

Baseball bats aren't clubs. They're (shudder) quarterstaves. We know that because they're specifically designed to be used two-handed. They're no less than versatile. I really don't like the terminology 5e uses for various lengths of wooden sticks intended for bludgeoning things.

Right, I understood that. I just think it's the worst of both worlds. You're going through all the effort to change the term, but you're not actually disassociating from the old term. I mean, do you think "Indianistic" is an improvement that would satisfy Native Americans?

Actually, that's a pretty good point. That makes me somewhat more hopeful than I was previously. No, I don't think it's reasonable to ask players to evaluate designs and then also expect them not to evaluate them from a power-level perspective too. Like it's a player survey (including DMs as...

Academia is rife with examples of terminology long abandoned when they developed pejorative or distasteful meanings in plain language. Psychology, anthropology, and sociology have many examples of that happening. It's a natural result of plain language taking precedence over jargon. It's simply...

I generally agree with the survey results. Paladin's divine smite's low rating I assume is related to the fact that it's limited to once per turn now. There's always extremely vocal people insisting that nothing ever be nerfed, but it's really not how anything works. I still maintain that...

No, it's mostly because "Druid" is what the Druids called themselves. Well, except in Celtic or Gaelic. "Shaman" is a categorical term used by Christian European scholars to describe a wide array of disparate and unrelated religions from across the globe. They're typically the ethnic religions...

As it happens, I played a Duergar Champion Fighter that contracted Werebear Lycanthropy during Out of the Abyss. I had Str 20 at the time it happened, and essentially all of our enemies were Drow or Demons... and between all the demon magic and drowcraft weapons the damage immunity essentially...