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I wonder if this idea has so much internal momentum that they're refusing to course-correct because of a sunk cost. Pre-survey: "Riding amethyst dragons is a clear win and folks are going to love this new vision of the PDK. We might have some tweaks, but this is obviously better. Order the...

Good pets are really hard to do in a TTRPG. Lots of difficult design bridges to cross, all at once, and really hard to do many of them elegantly. The pets that already exist in 5e (familiars, artificer pets, beast master pets, certain conjuration spells, etc) are already really problematic in...

Yeah, it's not a great analogy. :) Judging something based on how dumb or awesome its archetype might be is pretty shallow analysis. I could say it's (objectively?) awesome to ride dragons. It's also awesome to lead an army of allies into a desperate combat and inspire them to fight on in the...

My position on the subclass's thematic design is that a "battlefield commander" style fighter is the heroic fantasy of a Purple Dragon Knight, and that if you're going to make a set of mechanics with the label "Purple Dragon Knight," it should fulfill that heroic fantasy. If it was a...

Good! The space of "knightly fighter who is a good battlefield commander and healer" is a pretty key D&D archetype that FR's Purple Dragon Knights have filled through multiple edition changes, and the 2014 model wasn't great. Looking forward to seeing it, and nervous that they're gonna do it...

Mike's post resonated with me; I think we come from similar traditions. :) FWIW, I'm excited about the "fifth generation" he's referring to here. Especially the focus on what he called "UX/UI," but what I might more broadly call user-focused design. I like the migration away from character...

I think assuming more than 6 levels for a typical D&D campaign is wildly optimistic, though some might make it to the 7-12 range (especially if they start at 3 or something). It boils down to table time. Time spent actually playing the game. Some assumptions: The typical game is 2-4 hours...

Okay, let's dig in. Arcana Cleric My estimation of the SCAG subclass was that it was fine, but a little underwhelming. The revision is overall good, with one fairly glaring exception. An interesting choice here in the revision is to focus the subclass less around "otherworldly creatures" -...

Usually about 3 rounds. My PC's in this group aren't really optimizers, and don't play D&D to make number go up big, so "challenge" can be defined as "one PC dropped to 0 hp!" and it's fine. They're there for narrative, and fights here are like musical numbers - moments of feelings so dramatic...

It's kind of my default setup. Moment-to-moment, it's mostly just reacting to the players' actions. I'll usually have some sense of a big threat I want them to face, and three-act-structure it into place from wherever the PC's are. One big monster (CR = PC level, +1 or 2) works best. Works...

Heck. Yes.

Not exactly. At least, not within one combat. Combat before 4e was a very fast thing. 3e had its infamous rocket tag, but even 2e and 1e had fragile characters and big, swingy effects (often spells) that could make or break a fight in a single round. And healing happened between fights, not...

Like Flesh to Stone. One of the things I'm fond of in 5e's sabateur design is that they do use a diversity of approaches. But, really, the trouble here is that you want your encounters to have a certain kind of narrative punch that D&D is OK with encounters NOT having. Fundamentally, that is a...

There's an interesting design methodology worth exploring here. D&D is a game that blends narrative and gameplay. You can roll a 1 on a death save, you can get hit with a bunch of crits, you can whiff for a whole night, you can fall off a cliff and die, you can get mind controlled or...

I think there's a difference in design philosophy that can lead to different results here. Is the method to look at a spell, imagine if it makes sense for a psion, and if so, add it? Or is the method to curate a specific list of evocative spells that might be a bit more narrow, but that...

It'll be interesting to see where they put this. Dark Sun is a possibility, but also not a requirement. I don't imagine it'll be part of FR or Eberron, but it could just be an independent product (here's a book with the psion and a bunch of psionics). Could also be something a little fresh...

I could see it being an alternate species trait. Maybe swapping out Luck or Brave, though you might need a bit more oomph than just telepathy... (psychic resistance? maybe the 'telepathic' wilder feat from the new psion?). Maybe you just say "ghostwise halflings can select telepathy in place of...

Kill the Fighter. Distribute its remains to the classes that are left.

It's definitely a cool aesthetic. The subclass features revolve around illumination, natch. Your lantern reveals invisible creatures. You get free castings of Spiritual Weapon and Clairvoyance. You can make your lantern flare to deal some radiant damage & blind. Pact spells revolve around...