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I'll add a 4th one: 4. One key thing going wrong that starts a cascade of problems that eventually wipes out the party. The only TPK I've ever DMed was like this: the one key thing that went wrong was the party's main Fighter was first into the room, failed a save, and immediately got...

Except when it only has one hit point, putting it to sleep with a mace kills it in the process. (I flat-out refuse to allow any sort of post-hoc "oh, I meant to make it unconscious" declaration; you have to say before you swing whether you're attacking to subdue or to kill)

@Snarf Zagyg - your disclaimer list is missing one key point: are you talking about the pre-UA 1e Fighter or the post-UA 1e Fighter? Weapon specialization in UA made a pretty big difference between the two. Pre-UA the Fighter was great. Post-UA the Fighter was, at low levels, a bit broken.

facepalm.......

The PCs are adventurers, but not the only ones in the setting; and it's reasonable to expect or even demand that those NPC adventurers are using the same game mechanics etc. as the PCs are. Never mind that an NPC adventurer one minute can become a PC adventurer the next; I've seen this happen...

Exactly! That's the whole bloody point! PCs are (potentially) exceptional because of what they do, not because of what they are.

In my game, death and dying rules work on the same basis for pretty much every living creature.

Were I a player and found the spell in the looted spellbook worked differently than the same spell we'd just had cast at us, I'd raise one hell of a stink. You've got to do that write-up process before the spell ever enters play, be it from an opposition NPC casting it or the PCs finding it in...

IMO the PC rules are for PC-playable species whether they have a player attached or not. A PC Elf is first and foremost an Elf, and the PC rules for Elves thus inform us what makes Elves in general tick in the setting. Monsters, because they're not playable as PCs and thus don't have to adhere...

And? That's a very strong feature, not a bug. So the PCs' foes are never intended (or allowed?) to be another party of adventurers?

Even at the lowest levels the differences in rules-style-tone-intent between a 1e-like game and a 4e-5e-like game are big enough that they likely can't be reconciled under one system. And in most aspects those differences only get wider as levels advance.

Early in the process one of the questions I specifically asked was whether I'd be able to play characters from different previous editions side-by-side in 5e (then called 'Next') and was told that this was indeed the hope. And then....... ----- poof -----

WotC could still do this and without a whole lot of work on their part. All they need to do is track what's on D&DBeyond and each month find a well-written interesting module. Then, make an offer to that module's author of X-amount of money to sell the rights to that module to WotC, who then...

I still maintain, however, that it's possible to get the fanbase to settle for two official versions: very broadly a 1-2e-like (more gritty, harder, war, more sim-based, more detailed) and a 4-5e like (less gritty, easier, sport, more game-based, streamlined).

Well, then, I have to seriously question the quality of the comb they were using. All I remember from the Next process was an initial promise of being able to play in the style of (or, if read differently, even compatible with!) any prior edition - the whole "modularity" piece - which then went...

Yes. Otherwise, why bother? You don't have to have that rule; there's nearly always ways to tweak or re-do it such that it does make in-fiction sense, and if that can't be done then it's probably a bad rule to begin with (which playability might demand that you accept anyway, but that doesn't...

My main objection to minions is that in many cases they're out of play too quickly, e.g. when the minion is a big creature (a Giant, a Dragon, etc.) that would otherwise have lots of hit points, or when the minion is fighting something other than the high-powered PCs and yet still goes down on...

Not for the first time, I wish this site had a facepalm emoji as a 'like' option.

I agree with this, to a point. I think there needs to be some vague macro-level balance, but trying to fine-tune it much further runs aground very quickly. Probably depends on what we'd each define as extraneous as I suspect those definitions might differ somewhat. :) But in principle, you're...

To the bolded: that's a connection I have a hard time seeing no matter how hard I squint. DCCRPG is, if anything, somewhere between a 1e-adjacent and a 1e-parody.