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Wouldn't the ultimate outcome be less reskinning and more new monster creation? I don't know that's necessarily a problem, especially if the game features reasonable monster design tools. Personally, I'd actually love to see more guided reskinning guidelines in general, laying out more clearly...

I'd argue that's more of an aesthetic constraint than a design one. 3.x's was a game with, effectively, 12(ish, humanoids worked differently) monster classes and lots of power offloaded into species, plus sideways progression either via templates or traditional classes. The design constraint was...

I think it's actually possible to have the cake and eat it here, particularly in a world of digital tools. The key is just expressing your NPC/monster archetypes (skirmisher, brute, etc.) in the same mechanical terms that PCs use, adjusted appropriately for level. I imagine the approach would be...

Oh, that's also not the case. 3.x was all about derived monster stats from fixed type norms; you were absolutely supposed to add 3 Fighter levels to that orc, pick an appropriate set of feats and have a skirmishing archer. The criticism was not that the PC/NPC transparency or "naturalistic"...

If you don't set PC/NPC design transparency as a design goal from the outset, then 4e's choices are sort of an inevitable outcome, assuming you do the design work well and don't intentionally shoot for minimalism. Monsters exist to show off a few abilities, you want a variety of different...

I tried another round of shrubs. Doing a 2:1 fruit to sugar maceration, left for 2 days, then filtered through cheesecloth and mixed 2:1 syrup to vinegar. I'm very happy with this process, they've come out much cleaner and balanced then some other methods I've tried. Blueberry, kiwi and...

That is the crux of the issue. Really feels like it needs to be an neither or both situations for TH/MM.

Pulling this quote out because it keeps coming up in OSR discussions and is a consistent point of frustration for me looking in from the outside; this sounds great, I want play to revolve around getting information, building out a strategy and trying to advance it to most effectively overcome...

My test is usually just repeatability, not plausibility. It's fine if the ultimate explanation is "creatures with fly speeds can fly" so long as there is then a model of how flying works, and heuristics can still be developed, like "wings generally indicate flying ability." Eventually you tend...

Science isn't a power source, it's a method for understanding things. You can make an argument for like "mad scientist super tech" but that's just artificers barely rethemed. Magical thinking is only not scientific thinking because it doesn't work. As soon as sympathy manifests real effects...

It definitely is impressionistic, but I think the most useful way to understand that is to look for how it breaks. What causes players concerned with "realism" to find pieces of the fiction dissonant or to reject them? You're not going to get to a universal principle that way, but I think you...

I'd argue it's largely because there's a lot of mechanical interactions you might have with monsters that aren't trying to kill each other? Silver dragons give quests, blink dogs will help you navigate a hostile portion of the ethereal, flumphs will let you rest and heal in their burrows, all...

I've just finished preparing my family's traditional Christmas breakfast food, which for reasons I've never actually understood is an oven apple pancake. It has only just now occurred to me, 6 sliced apples in, that my roommate is leaving for breakfast with his mother and I have made enough to...

It's an interesting take! I think I'd go a little less D&D specific and maybe make a more general Sin-Eater. Harvesting or accepting the karmic/cosmic evil of others is a pretty reasonable power source, and you can play on different ways of approaching the concept, just slightly broader than...

Oh, I'm less familiar with 6 year old Pedantic. Pretty sure he was still figuring out how to hyperfocus on reading.

Yeah. We're talking about D&D, you don't enter the room if you're not cool with sanctified fantastic violence, that's basic price of admission stuff that's so fundamental to the activity you can't do it without that.

I certainly wouldn't want to hang out with 20 year old me. He was kind of a dick, and it's really only by having been him that I understand how confused, angry and scared he was.

Generally I think specificity is better for classes. If we have to live in a subclass world, differentiation like Warlocks have where you're some flavor of X specific thing is more consistently compelling.