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I need to contest this, for the record. I disagree that True Strike counts as dealing damage before it adds the 1d6 at 5th level. Until that point it's a spell that lets you make a modified weapon attack, and the spell itself isn't dealing any damage. But I admit I'm often on the more...

That is really clever and something I'll happily steal. An uncontested grapple on the carried target, meaning the flier moves at half Speed (unless they have the Grappler feat) and the carried PC has Disadvantage when attacking. That seems reasonably balanced to me, and works well with the...

Okay, so disclaimer. TTRPGs move at a slow pace. Most groups only meet once a week at most, and very often less than that. So we don't have a lot of actual play reports of people trying out the various permutations yet. This is still the early days of Revised 5e. That means most of what follows...

I was taught in a different context that dealing damage is just mitigating future damage received. Killing an enemy a round sooner means you've denied them a turn's worth of attacks against the PCs. So yes, that's effectively the same thing as denying them a turn's worth of attacks now. But the...

I don't think that's specifically it. They're all similar because Elric was one of the major foundational influences of D&D, and everyone wanted their own Stormbringer. Ebonbane is a Stormbringer, Blackrazor is a Stormbringer, Hexblade is a "Your Patron is Stormbringer" subclass. So...

Still turning over mechanical implications, but I'm looking over the Disciplines and zeroing in on Swift Precognition. The cost scales quickly with spell level, but you should be able to quicken a cantrip for only one Psionic Energy Die. And what're the Abjuration and Divination cantrips on the...

The Metamorph certainly makes my gish senses tingle with interest. It's a different direction than Bladesinger; rather than try to boost the AC to melee levels, you've got options for Reach or a ranged weapon. And the innate weapons and cantrip Extra Attack should all work with True Strike...

Even if we aren't going with the 4e cosmology, where the gods and elemental powers are explicitly at odds, I feel like the delineation still exists. Divine domains are conceptual and based around the lives of their worshipers, while the elements are more of an abstract building block.. Fire is...

Classically Robin uses a longbow. But the Errol Flynn movies created an entire sub-genre of swashbuckling swordfighting Robin Hood depictions that continues to trickle out occasional entries to this day. Really, what we think of as "swashbuckling" is just stage combat. A light sword for actors...

Some might, but a lot wouldn't. You're completely leaving out the pirate swashbucklers, and they're actually the dominant ones these days. I bet you the top two picks right now would be Jack Sparrow and Inigo Montoya. Which is exactly my point. It's such a broad genre, and the difference...

I always end up having the same problem with Swashbuckler classes as I do Witches. Both are incredibly broad narrative categories, and not only does a self-labeled class have to narrow it down to an unsatisfying limited offering, but I could probably build six different PCs using existing...

Mystic was saying give it to them and decouple the features from requiring Hex. Which is the scenario I was mathing out. Also any trade between utility and damage is a false choice, because death is the best debuff and damage is always better.

Spiritual Weapon is flavorful, but you're right that it scales. Scales too well, especially with Pact Magic spell slots. Consider a 9th level Hexblade with two attacks (EB or Blade Pact, doesn't matter). Hex adds +2d6 if both attacks hit. The automatically upcast Spiritual Weapon is doing 4d8+5...

I wouldn't. D&D is a different genre in a different medium. And even on the RPG scale, D&D classes are a lot more specific and locked in than a more freeform point based system like GURPS. Trying to make a 1:1 reproduction is a fool's errand. What I would do is what I suggest any time people...

I already expanded on my reasoning at length. Which you'd know, if you read the thread first. But in short, the sort of ham-handed adversarial railroading you describe is exactly what a DM shouldn't do. And there's a middle ground between that and "the party always wins" that's wide enough to...

Specifically for Celestial Warlock's Radiant Soul, Pact of the Blade doesn't work at all. Radiant Soul only works with spells that deal Fire or Radiant damage. Dealing Radiant damage via Pact of the Blade doesn't qualify. It has to be True Strike while at 5th level or higher so that it has a die...

It's funny. This version of the Hexblade is pushing the "bonded with a cursed runeblade" style of character flavor, which has shown up all over fiction thanks to Elric and his influence, but mechanically it's fairly neutral. Scrub the ability names and all that's left is a couple instances of...

Long, long ago I ran into the concept of the Grudge Monster. Something that's entirely out of place and perfectly counters one or more of the PCs, that was put there by the DM specifically to ruin the player's day. It was probably in the collection of AD&D 1e era Dragon magazines I inherited...

Yeah, playing the "untouchably high level NPC comes in and steals the party's stuff" card might as well be the direct hand of the DM reaching into the game world and forcing things on the PCs. And that never goes well. It's the worst sort of railroading and DM fiat, where instead of being open...

"Too many magic items" is a DM problem. It's a problem the DM decides exists when the party reaches a certain level of bling, and it's a problem the DM created by giving the party those items in the first place. And then it becomes a player problem when the DM tries to walk back their previous...