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Gods taking away a cleric's powers is kind of the same as paladins losing their powers if they shift alignment. In gameplay, it's basically the DM giving a diegetic reprimand to how a player is playing their character. It's bad for the game design, bad for the play experience, bad for the social...

The thing that a lot of D&D fandom isn't really ready for right now is that the definition many have of "cleric" (Divine caster powered by the gods) should actually apply to a lot of different classes. A lot of folks are pointing out that elemental priest = druid. Along those lines, why do we...

No official explanation AFAIK, but here's my crystal ball... Clerics have too many subclasses. When the design decision was made to base cleric subclasses on domains, this was kind of going to be inevitable, but the expectation is that every God of X has an X domain cleric somewhere out there...

Yeah, judging from this artwork... ...the first one is different; I believe that's the suit of armor that the Armorer artificer uses, along with an Armorer artificer. All the rest of the people in that image are depictions of artificers, and I'd bet that is, too. The third picture has two of...

Man, I love how the pictos system encourages you to play the game to get character advancement options, much like the materia system from FF7 or the equipment-ability system from FF9. D&D's advancement is really stuck in a sort of "character build" approach where all your abilities are just...

I'd allow it, yeah. Though it's weird to me that Frightened requires line of sight, since you can very much be scared of things that you can't see. "You hear the murderer scraping on the door to your closet, almost as if he's testing, daring you to scream."

Depends on what's important to you about them, but if I was going to do it assuming (a) no new rules and (b) focus on Vibes over Strict Accuracy, here's what I might do... Cloud is a Fighter. Use a Greatsword. His most iconic ability, Omnislash, is just a LOT of attacks, so Action Surge ->...

I can definitely see that, and I don't hate the lower price point. I do think there's another edge to that sword, but as long as WotC knows how this cuts, I think it's good. I'd hate to see a flood of $30 character options that mostly appeal to people who read and collect D&D rather than play...

"Somehow, the splatbook survived." I'd pay $50 for Forge of the Artificer + an anthology of 20 shortish adventures set in Eberron. Boats of player options are what we had in 2e/3e/4e, and I think it is an edition ouroboros, content for content's sake that eats its own tail in the end. I like...

I'm cautiously a fan of the new art direction. It's not so dramatic as to be a fundamental reimagining, it's just a little stylistic touch. I think that warforged could stand next to an OG warforged and be the same species just fine.

The choices they made for the phantom don't actually broaden the use of that class feature, and it comes at the expense of the storytelling and design qualities that make it interesting. That is a bad trade-off here. It's OK to have things key off of slightly odd or unique recharge rates like...

I wonder why we're not looking at the Necromancer Wizard, too. Feels like a big omission from this list.... Reanimator Overall, I'm into the idea of a Frankenstein Artificer. Jolt to Life is a cool vibe, but in practice seems very niche. Most of the time, your party members are not going to...

Extraordinarily useful!

I'm really excited to see what happens with Dragon Delves, since I've been a big fan of the anthologies in general, and they're bringing back at least one author I'm very excited to see. The anthologies are so much more useful to me than the bigger adventures. Also psyched to see what they do...

I just want to be more precise about what we're talking about when we say that martials are "weak." Weak is a sloppy term. It's subjective and vibes-based. So I want to know: What is the actual experience a player is having in the moment? What are they missing out on? Then, we can explore why...

The Godsbreath adventure was one of the best ones in the anthology because it had a great sense of place and a wonderful horror tone. I'm excited to see what the author does with it in this context! This is just a wonderful idea for a Godsbreath adventure. Song is already such a key component...

But like...what does magic actually do better than a weapon? In fact, even talking about magic vs. weapons implies that it's really about damage, but that isn't really much of an issue in 5e as I understand. Fighters do good damage. And it's an easy fix, too - just up the damage. But, this...

I'm also a little vague on exactly how martials are meant to be underpowered. Like, is it because they don't do as much damage? Is it because they can't teleport and fly and grant wishes? And is it a problem at 1st level or is it just a problem at like 15th? Is it because they don't have as many...

This is great!

4e's rules weren't perfect, but they might be one of the best in the history of the game. You can make a Stealth check at the end of any movement you do, if you are in concealment, cover, or outside of sight. A "distracted" target is also valid outside of combat. You get a penalty if you move...