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That in itself is sad, that everyone's expected to be and remain the same. You wouldn't want to play with a GM who actually made the game challenging and where the threats were real rather than paper tigers? Because 5e run by the book is just that, compared even with 3e, never mind the 0e-1e...

Whether intentionally or not, this take shows a strong bias: that it's OK to add more species but not OK to remove some of what's already there. As in, it's acceptable to add Hill Giants to the PC-playable list but is a less (or not) acceptable thing to remove Aarakocra from that list...

It depends, too, on one's definition of 'awful' and how high one sets the bar. Some might think a DM is awful just because she neutrally and fairly runs a lethal-to-the-characters game and they don't like losing their characters. Some might think a DM is awful just because he won't allow their...

What I've found over time is that the bad DMs and bad players often aren't the same people. I've seen bad players become good DMs and I've seen good players become bad DMs. My off-the-cuff theory is that there's a degree of self-confidence and maybe ego required to be a good DM but too much of...

Though there's been a few PC-invented spells over the years in my games, this hasn't been one of them. Kind of surprising, really, but there it is (or isn't).

For anything purporting or trying to be a big-tent game that covers lots of bases, yes. The more flexible a game system is, and the more open it is to supporting different playstyles and story types, the more useful it'll be to more people. Not a consideration if you're just designing for your...

I agree it's on the DM to try and even out the influence level. Doing it all yourself and presenting it as a fait-accompli for post-hoc discussion (usually during or in place of a session) is a very simple and straightforward means of doing so. I know players who very intentionally ignore...

Story loss is at most a soft-loss condition, in that it doesn't mechanically affect the character's ability to do what it does nor does it mechanically affect the player's ability to play the character as desired. Hard-loss conditions bring about one or both of these effects either temporarily...

Yeah, that's bad DMing in more ways than one.

Sorting out what came with what level has been a headache since 3e; I see that, along with a lot of other character complexity added during the WotC era, as a bug rather than a feature. There's no reason why level drain can't work with milestone levelling: the drained character is simply a...

Fair enough. It's a bit much, though, to expect them both to work at once. :)

More common IME is where players have varying levels of opportunity to weigh in and-or the DM gives more weight to the opinions and preferences of one player than to those of another. The player who sees the DM three times a week over beers outside the game, or is a co-worker with or spouse of...

I can't remember ever intentionally targeting spellbooks, but if they happen to be in the blast zone then so be it. :) That said, usually spellbooks are in a backpack. For things like AoE damage we give the backpack a save first, and if it makes it then everything inside is considered to have...

Hey, Monks gotta have their day in the sun sometime!

I've had players who'd rather see their characters die than lose a level, even though both conditions are reversible in the game (though both do leave permanent aftereffects: death-revival leaves you down a Con point and restoration is never perfect). And yes, the greedier players howl when...

I'm fine with wearing a magic robe-cloak-cape over armour and having them both function. But if you're wearing more than one magic robe-cloak-cape together, the way I rule is that only the outermost one's enchantments work.

To me a robe and a cloak (and a cape) are the same thing - a long garment worn over the shoulders outside all other clothing.

It would certainly winnow out a lot of casuals. Jury's out on whether that's a good or bad thing, but I'd lean toward bad. Were I to try this here I'm 95% sure I know what the result would be. Two of my players would do it. A third might reluctantly do it with some nagging. The...

Modern D&D only has death as a hard-loss condition. TSR-era D&D offered a host of other options. :) Level drain was a good one: a loss condition that didn't end the game (unless you lost more levels than you had, of course, but that's pretty rare). Item destruction is another such.

Changing the PC-playable species options from what's in the PH is a houserule all day long.