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The level playing field ends the moment the first dice are rolled. It also depends, though, on how lethal the game is likely to be particularly at low levels. In a reasonably lethal game the odds are you're going to get to repeat the rolling-up process, maybe several times, and try out a...

I don't think this matters. Whatever codification this all leads to is probably going to turn Appendix E on its head anyway by boosting the xp value for some creatures and reducing it for others, so if something leads to numbers different than what App-E shows, don't sweat it. Alien physiology...

The answer, of course, is to have levels that give nothing but added hit points and maybe an incremental save bonus. Yes, the dreaded "dead level". Feature, not bug. Or, failing that, make it a ten-level game instead of twenty and abandon the high-level super-hero end of it. The problem is...

Forever or permanent imbalance caused by factors other than luck is generally bad. Temporary pendulum-style imbalance, or long-term imbalance caused by sheer luck, is generally fine.

Given some of the things Crawford posted as Sage Advice over time, I've no idea how he sees/plays the game. Silly them.

Could they be assuming initiative is rerolled every round? 'Cause yes, without that this does seem somewhat underwhelming. The one use I can see for it is that it gives you the opportunity to flee before combat even begins, without provoking any of the bad stuff fleeing otherwise causes.

Quotes often heard at the game table, from both movie and TV: "Why do I feel like we've picked up another pathetic lifeform?" - originally from Phantom Menace (Obi-Wan), now heard whenever the party rescues a prisoner or acquires another NPC. "Wipe them out. All of them." - Phantom Menace...

New Year's Day seems pretty inoffensive...

Perhaps, but only to a point. Ideally they've all got enough to contribute that they're fun to play. Where they mess it up, I think, is in trying to make the classes balanced at every moment all the time; where instead a more macro balance where a class is the best sometimes and the worst at...

Were it me, after 16+ levels* of getting blown up on a regular basis I'd probably decide Gunslinger is not the trade for me and pick up a bow instead. :) And no, it's not realistic; it's a gamist construct put in to limit the effectiveness and-or appeal of firearms, which - as real-world...

Nitpick: there's a fairly big difference between being "the most powerful person at the table" and "the most powerful character in the party". One can want the latter without caring about the former.

Except it is still in the equation. Not everyone is going to realize right away that the 2-3-5-4 bits are weaker, particularly if they're well-presented as being cool and-or fun and-or useful options, which means between that and players intentionally choosing a weaker option anyway those...

I'm not trying to stick with the idea of cantrips being blasted all the time. Quite the opposite, in fact. :)

The user can be as skilled as you like but if the gun itself is unreliable all that skill ain't gonna help. :)

Sorry, but this makes no sense. I'm coming at this from the basis of there being no upcasting; if they've got any 1st-level slots left then they can cast Magic Missile but if they're out of 1sts then no MM's for them. Flip side: the spells auto-scale with level. So in effect their low-level...

If 5e had scrapped basic + magic weapons, every DM and their little dog would have immediately added them back in. Net result: the same as current. I suspect the bigger flaws might have been a combination of over-reliance on bounded accuracy (5e-specific) and trying to tighten down the math...

Yes, exactly. The other things that can (but for any given spell don't have to) scale by level are range and duration. For Hold Person it could probably be locked in at two targets and left there.

Maybe that's what this new ability is intended to do - give you the ability to 'dash' whenever you want within the round plus make whatever move you'd get normally on your turn. Otherwise, what's the point?

Man, Shadows must have been nerfed along the editions somewhere. In games I'm used to, 5 Shadows would annihilate any party averaging less than 3rd level without any effort at all and would/could be a significant threat to 4th or even 5th level parties. I DMed a party of 1st-levels who decided...

Indeed, but there's no need to hand them those obvious "best" options on a plate. At least make them work for it. :) Not so sure here - I suspect many of these players don't necessarily care about being in the "useful range"; if they did, they wouldn't intentionally play against type like...