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Sorry, this is old news, but I was looking at the Unearthed Arcana about Psions and noticed that the "Psion spells" have verbal and/or somatic components now? I thought psionic powers were purely mental, as opposed to magic, which requires gesticulation, shouting and the blood of a virgin ox...

That’s certainly possible. Though one might argue that this is a sign of imbalance… Take the 2nd Figther level, for example. I suspect most people care for Action Surge and fewer people care for Tactical Mind (although it’s not bad either, mind you). Let’s ignore prereqs for now to keep the...

Yes, that’s what I was going to say. I’ve been re-listening to Dan Carlin’s excellent Wrath of the Khans series (behind a paywall these days, but absolutely worth every penny). I love the part where a mongol scouting force exploring Eastern Europe wiped out an entire crusader army that had been...

Thanks for the inputs! Looking at the Staff of Power further, it seems that going from 2014 to 2024, it lost its ability to spend a charge to add 1d6 force damage on a hit. This would be nice for a gish character, and almost certainly useless for a classical mage. Oh well.

Wow, thanks for the thoughtful post. I learned a lot about 4e, which I’ve played briefly but not enough to know all the details you pointed out. Your comparison of 2014 to 2024 also taught me several things I hadn’t noticed yet. Cool stuff! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, that’s a useful reference point. The Staff of Power is like a +2 weapon, +2 WotWM and +2 ring of protection all rolled into one, and it has a bunch of abilities to spend its charges on, all of which adds up to a very rare item (compared to a +3 weapon or +3 WotWM being rated very rare)...

Has anyone seen any examples in any book of a magic weapon which also functions as a wand, and provides a +1 to +3 bonus both to melee attack rolls and damage rolls, as well as spell attack rolls (as a Wand of the War Mage would)? Given that it would act as a wand, it could serve as an Arcane...

I’m imagining a classless system which is based on points and skill trees. Each class can be broken down into 2 or 3 skill trees, and one more tree per subclass. Each level you gain 10 or 12 points (skill points, or ability points, or learning points, something like that, not sure what the...

Wow that is cool. Sounds like a watered down version of the 3.5 gestalt rules. Those were really fun, though they made character builds quite complicated, and forget about balance 😅

Yeah, that’s a decent way to do it. Though if you keep walking down the path of featification you end up with: … which, wow. That’s a fair bit of effort. I think this is overall a good direction, though I think making everything into a "feat" may end up hampering balance. A point-based system...

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. To me, it feels weird that my character cannot be both an Eldritch Knight and a Battle Master. Obviously, this would require diluting experience across distinct endeavors, and there should be a cost associated with that. But I don’t understand why the...

50 subclasses sounds excessive to me 😅 … but if you care to do it, I guess you can knock yourself off! Personally, I find subclasses a bit limiting, and I would prefer seeing more content that many or any character can take: backgrounds, feats (including fighting styles please!), spells, magic...

You are right. Historically, it has included a bunch of things, and since D&D is usually set in medieval settings, it makes sense to tap into these older traditions (main gauche in the off-hand, sword and cloak, etc). My own personal bias, which I shared above, is admittedly modern in nature...

What does "fencer" mean? To me, it conjures the image of a duelist with a rapier in one hand and nothing in the other. Back in the days, bladesingers were essentially fencers that kept one hand free to cast spells. In 5e all that is out of vogue. Bladesingers need no free hand anymore, and...

Ah! Ok I see!

Huh…? But Wizards and Druids have the same two saves… am I missing something?

If you wanted the absolute widest possible spell list, alongside 20 levels of full caster slots, you could be Wiz 17, Cleric 1, Druid 1, and even Bard/Paladin/Ranger 1… Cure Wounds and Healing Word are augmentable so this character is almost as good a healer as a pure Cleric…

That is already counted in the above tally.

BTW, this thread got me thinking… out of all the builds that get 9th level arcane spells, and 20th full caster levels, which are best? Wiz 20 Wiz 17, Sorc 3 Wiz 3, Sorc 17 Sorc 20 etc. The high level Wizard abilities look weak to me… getting metamagic from a Sorcerer multi-class might be...

The spellbook mechanics make the Wizard unique and extremely dependent on campaign and DM-ing style. As you said, the availability of spells to learn in-game is a big factor. If a Wizard gets only the spells from their level ups, then they have the same order of magnitude as sorcerors. While if...