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I spent some time going through the lore changes in the first chunk of the 2025 Monster Manual. From what I saw, the biggest losers in terms of lore between it and the previous Monster Manual were the aarakocra, azer, basilisk, bulette, bullywug, and centaur. Of these, all but the basilisk had...

I thought about using the mob rules in the last few sessions of my most recent campaign but decided against it because I felt using rules that weren't as intuitive for me would slow the game down more than just running monsters normally (I preroll damage for monsters, which is a major time...

I want more of the weirder elementals, like the rukarazyll, tojanida, Dark Sun's elemental beasts, and the various hybrid elementals from 4E.

I once had players fight an Aspect of Dagon that was really just a wastrilith. They are thematically appropriate and hit hard for their CR, almost leading to a TPK with four ghoul buddies in tow.

I really like the once per day spell upgrades in the Greater Dragonmark Feats, especially since several modify more niche flavor-based spells into something more broadly useful.

In the last campaign I ran from levels 3 to 12 I ported in a good bit of homebrew items myself, some of which were taken directly from BG3. I think players can handle a little more complexity and choice as long as those new options let them do cool things.

I'm assuming the level of complexity someone prefers is influenced by the edition of D&D they started with. I came into D&D at 3.5 the year before 4E was announced, so a wealth of character choices was always the expectation for me until 5E came along and severely reduced the number of options...

I'm honestly struggling to even guess what Mearls could even be referring to beyond Weapon Masteries, which are welcome but a very minor change overall seeing as only a few classes get them and those that do don't have to use them.

I'm about halfway through the interview. I feel like Mearls is overstating how much more tactical 5.5 is than 5E and how much more people are focusing on builds when in my experience they're about the same. The mention of monsters doing more than one damage type with an attack as a new 5.5...

I used the following in my first 5E campaign: Demons have raged against the Hells for millenia, never having made it past the first layer of the Hells, Avernus. Now, however, an unforeseen anomaly in the very structure of the Hells has made its 5th layer, Stygia, permeable to planar travel...

Maps and minis and tokens all the way! I even have little pieces of cardboard and removable adhesive for elevation changes.

Demogorgon was actually featured in 4E's Monster Manual 2, along with Orcus in the Monster Manual and Lolth in Monster Manual 3.

As for PCs getting too complicated at higher levels, I really think that creating a character sheet more like a monster statblock would help players keep track of what they can do in a turn versus lumping it all in to a features section on the character sheet. I personally format my own...

It's already common knowledge around here that higher levels don't get much use. Instead of asking if we need those higher levels, I'd rather ask what it is about those higher levels than is making them less utilized to see if these are problems that can be remedied to make higher level play...

This is the question I'm more interested in. I've already suggested that the default character sheet itself isn't conducive to organizing the larger number of options available at higher levels, which could be a factor.

As a DM I just like running high levels so the players can fight the big name baddies of D&D. I've had players in my campaigns fighting a kraken, Yeenoghu, Geryon, Doresain, and Orcus so far.

The highest level I've played as a PC outside of a one-shot is probably 14th, I think. In one shots I've played three separate 20th level characters and one 16th level character.

I've long since adopted pre-rolling damage on the DM side to make things go much faster. I go to AnyDice.com to quickly pre-roll damage and then save it to a document to print off and check off in sequence with every hit. For example, say a creature hits for 2d6+4 damage. I type that into...