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Ruining an entire arc is unlikely. The example given was "awesome, my backstory really specifically matters for this scene! This is a great payoff for months/years of development!" -> "...oh. The spellcaster solved the problem in six seconds with a single spell." That's not ruining an entire...

Well, let's look through the list of 3rd level Wizard spells. clairvoyance -- who needs Perception or various means of trickery to listen to conversations when you can just make an invisible sensor that can hear (or see, but not both) anything near a chosen spot? fear (or possibly enemies...

Unfortunately, at least on this axis, you're running into fully intentional aspects of the game design, that we were told about extensively during the "D&D Next" playtest. They straight-up explicitly told us they were going to replace AC/hit scaling with greater HP/damage scaling instead...

Alright. Your position absolutely came across as "anyone who listens to people who really try to test the rules is wrong". That's a position I've been resisting for nigh on 15 years at this point, and I gotta say, I'm not particularly keen on it. It was a bare half-step from throwing around...

Okay...how about, y'know, the whole "we literally licensed out books to others" thing? Because that's a literal actual business thing they did. We have it on record. That's why we got the Acquisitions Inc. book. That's why we have the Humblewood book. That's why there's a whole book full of...

That was not mentioned at any point in the post I quoted, nor the post to which you were replying. Having system mastery ≠ being an "optimizer". Otherwise, the only way you could have someone design a system is to do it blind, because by definition if the designer knows how their system works...

And then flips a second time into painfully bad again when you read up on things like the PrCs and such. BoED is in a similar boat. So over-the-top "we have to make an Inherently Good version of EVERYTHING" that it starts out incredibly cringe-worthy, and then becomes funny, and then the humor...

Maybe I'm just weird, but I don't think this requires years of play. It just requires...writing NPCs that are interesting, fun, likeable people that the party would really rather see happy and healthy? I don't really get why that's that much of a challenge. Sure, you'll probably churn through...

I guess I don't understand why anyone wouldn't choose your option 1 if the players are even remotely interested in that direction. Like...is this a rare thing? I'm having some real "sudden horrifying revelation" feels here if this is somehow rare or unusual...

Seems a perfectly reasonable example to me, even if fabricate is more like middle levels than high level, it's only going to come up once you reach higher levels. That is, when you're only level 7 (first level you get 4th level spells), blowing your one and only 4th level spell for the day on...

Please point to where I said one should only listen to optimizers.

I don't see the relevance of that distinction. It's still a balance issue that has been a bee in people's bonnets for ages and ages. People constantly complain about it, years later, despite it being such a tiny influence. My point was simply that if such a small thing became such a long-term...

Alright. I don't believe people struggled so badly picking their character stuff in something like 4e, 13A, or similar games, to make that so radically different that the "oh, uh, sorry...you've...made a character that sucks at everything" issues that 3e had, and 5e retains, albeit to a lesser...

[Citation needed.] By which I mean: You believe that's what gets people playing. I've experienced, over nearly three decades, that the things that get people playing have nothing whatsoever to do with any of that. It's the idea of a fantastical adventure with friends, of being part of a grand...

Just like silvery barbs was ignored and forgotten in a month or two?

I mean, is anyone really surprised that this is probably at best minimally tested and almost certainly ripe for abuse?

This isn't true. You can have unified design, and also have modular design. Like...modularity can be actually significantly enhanced by having a clear, clean, unified core with consistent interactions/linkages. Having a consistent fundamental system makes it easier to add on local exceptions...

Did you notice that not one of those things is participating? Because I have been very clear about this being about gameplay and participation. Becoming part of the audience is, by definition, not participation. You even used that very phrase in that very line! Your first, allegedly "best"...

This was one of my favorite ideas for how to integrate Dragonborn into Greyhawk. A time-displaced colony ship crashes in a somewhat isolated mountainous area not strongly claimed by any nation. The ship can still generate power and is keeping most of the dragonborn in cryonic suspension pending...

I don't think even attention span is required to be invoked. It's simply true that folks want to feel like they're spontaneously enacting an epic tale of adventure with rising and falling action, decent pacing, and a conclusion that feels at least reasonably solid. The idea that 100% of the...