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I already expanded on my reasoning at length. Which you'd know, if you read the thread first. But in short, the sort of ham-handed adversarial railroading you describe is exactly what a DM shouldn't do. And there's a middle ground between that and "the party always wins" that's wide enough to...

Specifically for Celestial Warlock's Radiant Soul, Pact of the Blade doesn't work at all. Radiant Soul only works with spells that deal Fire or Radiant damage. Dealing Radiant damage via Pact of the Blade doesn't qualify. It has to be True Strike while at 5th level or higher so that it has a die...

It's funny. This version of the Hexblade is pushing the "bonded with a cursed runeblade" style of character flavor, which has shown up all over fiction thanks to Elric and his influence, but mechanically it's fairly neutral. Scrub the ability names and all that's left is a couple instances of...

Long, long ago I ran into the concept of the Grudge Monster. Something that's entirely out of place and perfectly counters one or more of the PCs, that was put there by the DM specifically to ruin the player's day. It was probably in the collection of AD&D 1e era Dragon magazines I inherited...

Yeah, playing the "untouchably high level NPC comes in and steals the party's stuff" card might as well be the direct hand of the DM reaching into the game world and forcing things on the PCs. And that never goes well. It's the worst sort of railroading and DM fiat, where instead of being open...

"Too many magic items" is a DM problem. It's a problem the DM decides exists when the party reaches a certain level of bling, and it's a problem the DM created by giving the party those items in the first place. And then it becomes a player problem when the DM tries to walk back their previous...

Good news! No special feature is needed, unlike the other weapon cantrips True Strike already works with ranged weapons. So all that's needed is proficiency, and if Arcane Firearm specifically allows ranged martial weapons it's a safe bet that Artillerists will get some selection of them. My...

A lot of it, yes. Some of it, no. Like, the Bastion stuff has to be brand new, as is much of the campaign genre and theme advice. And while the Artificer updates seem pretty direct, they're completely redoing Dragonmarks. Look, I'm used to having to completely rebuy the product line when a new...

That's interesting. Thus far, they've really avoiding doing dependency books. That is to say, a book that directly follows another book, such that it's of very limited value if you don't have the first. It's been a major design thrust for keeping every book appealing to the largest swath of...

My long standing opinion on pet subclass design is that they need to go all-in on it. Nothing's worse than an orphan pet feature that doesn't scale, so it's too strong when you first get it and worthlessly clogging up the initiative order a few levels later. Even the improved Chain Pact...

Depends if the other four are the ECS originals (Changeling, Kalashtar, Shifter, Warforged) yet again, or if they feel the versions of some of those that last appeared in Rising from the Last War or Monsters of the Multiverse still hold up. I could see a world where one or two of those get left...

Apologies for the reading comprehension fail. That happens sometimes when my morning caffeine hasn't kicked in yet and I hit a sore spot that sends me on a rant.

I'm not. I played a Hexblade in a couple year campaign that went to 14th level. Can you guess how many times I activated Accursed Spectrer in that time? Zero. Zero times. It only triggered off personal killing blows on humanoids. The DM didn't throw us up against many humanoids that campaign...

I roughed out a Hexblade Warlock using the new release. It's interesting for me because I played a 2014 Hexblade in a long campaign, and the new Hexblade is similar thematically while being almost entirely different mechanically. Some thoughts after going through the character creation process...

Personally, I'd assume the opposite. If he talked about it when it was in an early stage but it never even made it to UA release, it means it had serious problems and was discarded. Not that it somehow got completely finished without any playtest stage.

I've been churning over how a Reanimator Artificer would look in play, and here's what I've got so far. The subclass is built around the Reanimated Companion, and the Companion is built around modular enhancements that you can swap out every time you resummon it. This is important because it...

It does seem to be the stand out new addition to the list. It's a theme that so obviously fits the Artificer I can't believe I've never seen it suggested before. And I'm already picturing a Dwarven Reanimator who rants "Flesh is a machine! One to be crafted and mended and recycled by my hand, as...

D&D has often struggled to balance the competing demands of fiction and game, and all the Artificer "spontaneously generate your minions and magic items" clauses are absolutely prioritizing game over fiction. From a fiction stand point, conjuring these things out of nothing is less cool. From a...

That strikes me as incredibly unlikely and completely baseless.

Hmm, true that. Forge of the Artificer is a bit borderline because Eberron always needs a lot of custom options, but you're absolutely right that the Forgotten Realms book has a whole roster of subclasses. So I suppose a setting book isn't off the table. If it is a setting book, I have to also...