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I voted 7. Since I view the 2024 books as a just a light reorg of the 5e essentials, (it's not transformational in any way from 2014 5e), I have 2024 as the same rating I give to 5e as a whole. It's a solid system for what D&D wants to be, which is a neotrad-leaning game of performative...

Three reasons I can think of. 1) The game is focused on the campaign story, not individual character arcs, and the player (and often DM) don't want the patron to be a distraction from the primary arc. 2) The DM isn't great as presenting the warlock patron as an opportunity for growth, as...

I haven't gotten to run SotWW yet, but when I ran SotDL, I used magic items and special bonuses that gave out d8s, d10s, etc. Made the magic boons feel more odd and special.

If you haven't picked up Weird Ancestries, you definitely should. Not only does it describe 30 new ancestries, it gives a basic path (the first path you pick) for each ancestry that can replace the standard pick of warrior, rogue, priest or mage.

I mean, I have way more trouble shoehorning clerics into my more defined settings than warlocks, but that's because classic D&D henotheism is the worst.

It is, admittedly, a difficult problem to solve. What I feel D&D really needs is two interleaved concepts to be true in its systems. 1) The game play loop should be that "Exploration leads to rewards, those specific rewards lead to specific character growth". 2) Character growth should not...

For 5e, we usually just have the character backgrounded (they're conceptually there, but don't participate and are under no risk outside of a TPK happening) or there's a diegetic rationale for the character to disappear (in my friend's game, they would be sucked into the "Purple Pendant of Plot"...

I think that requires making a decision on whether XP is an attribute of the character, or of the player. We don't treat diegetic rewards like magic items, generally, as something earned by the player; those are attached specifically to a character. No one is giving you the vorpal sword for...

In that case, are you giving out metagame advantages to the player of the weaker concept? There are plenty of superhero systems that do what you're saying here, as an example, but those systems are also oriented towards telling stories (as opposed to overcoming challenges) with resolution...

Yea, that's just not going to happen. People are simply too used to the division, in addition to the extremely obvious questions like "Why CAN'T an Elf be a fighter?"

My Ravnica got pretty wild. Orcus cultists had made inroads into several of the Guild's leaderships, and manipulated the Gruul clans into a war on the city center.

I cribbed a lot of it from SotWW, yes. The difference would be always building your starting character as the sum of two paths. That would be more similar to how Daggerheart characters all have access to two domains of powers, just more freeform. (In Daggerheart, you pick one class, which...

I mean, anecdotal data is anecdotal, but that hasn't been my experience in tables I've joined in the past 15 years or so. "What level are we starting" is always a question asked when someone proposes a new D&D-like game. No one I know assumes the answer is "1", and the answer is actually "1"...

My ideal would be something like this, although I'm not tied to any of the specific details. 1) At character start, there are something like 20 classes, all of which go to level 6. Every character picks 2 of the 20, although there are special rules for characters who want to pick just one...

I'll be honest, I think giving players more tools to realize specific character concepts is a much higher priority than balance. D&D-type games aren't gamist enough for balance to be more than cursory consideration that some archetypes don't completely overshadow others.

Absolutely. I mean, does a pyromancer or a necromancer or an angel summoner or a healer really need more than like 5 (scaling) spells? You can support the "gotta catch 'em all" spell collector trope as a specific class without needing to give every other spellcaster concept access to 100+...

Welcome back to the stage of history!

My general preference for characters in a D&D-type game is to have two high stats (16+), 2-3 medium stats (10-13), and 1-2 low stats (7-). I like characters with texture, and nothing has less texture than a character with all their stats between 12 and 15.

Same. My 5e games I've GMed have started at 1, 1, 5, 7, 8, and 10, and my next one is planned to start somewhere between 17th and 19th level.

See WoW every time they reorganize talents or class abilities.