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Personally, I love 5e 2024 TWF. Granted, it's because it's hilarious that it's an example of exactly what I said would happen when they "switched to keywords" that somehow "make everything very easy" so the game never has any rules confusion that is "obviously caused by natural language". It's...

Yellow to red. It reads like a Bard or Sorcerer subclass. Psionic Power Dice have the same mechanical problem as so many of WotCs designs. They give you a limited resource and then everything else that class gets is yet another way to burn that one limited resource. So you're just a full...

I'm discounting my technical first session of Basic D&D because I didn't really play. Me and my friend rolled the attacks of the hireling archers in my friends older brothers campaign during a fight on a ship against a green dragon. I think I was 7, and I didn't even know what I was playing...

I thought those were Barbarian character sheets.

I think when one of our DMs ran a Nentir Vale adventure in FR, he placed it near the Dragon Coast. I don't know if that means the Giant's Plain, the Shining Plains, somewhere near Cormyr. He might've replaced part of Turmish or the mountains there? That is a different climate, I believe, but...

"Magic items are not necessary," is kind of a confused idea in the community. Somehow it got interpreted my some people as "you should not give out magic items." Magic items are necessary. They're one of the most important player rewards in the game. They're in-universe, tangible, often unique...

We see a similar exodus after every major edition. It's how WotC has chosen to operate since 3e. They staff up to get the game produced, then staff down once everything is done. It's crappy and abusive, but it's business as usual for WotC and Hasbro.

I've always preferred read-aloud text simply because it makes it explicit what the module designer expects the PCs to immediately know (or not know). I remember playing a few adventures for AD&D or BD&D that did not have read-aloud text, and module authors were infuriatingly obtuse about the...

I do think it's important to note that Matt goes out of his way to say that what you describe here is not what he means by a "forever DM". DMing is a lot more intense than playing, and if that's your jam that's great. To Matt, the "forever DM" he's talking about is someone who is, specifically...

Even then, only sometimes do those gems end up in a vid. Like this Forever DM video has clearly been bouncing around Matt's head for a couple years. Most of the things in this video are things he's had discussions about before. This is entirely alien to me. While it does read that he's...

I think the problem people are having is that if "situational" automatically caps the rating at C tier, then well over 90% of the spells in the game are automatically C tier or worse, and that's very optimistic. The number of B, A or potential higher tier spells is effectively zero. In that...

As a world-building and thematic exercise, I find languages great. They're interesting and flavorful, and add a lot of depth and mystery in the game world. I can hardly imagine a fantasy book that isn't enhanced by the inclusion of cultural factors like multiple languages. As a game element of...

Yeah, feats and multiclassing are player options. Magic items are character rewards, plot MacGuffins, and an essential aspect of the fantasy genre. It's a completely different category than pure mechanics like feats and multiclassing. It would be easier to eliminate spellcasters from the game...

Huh. It hadn't been going well, and the press around it was almost non-existent. I think I only saw discussion about it here. But it's still in a public beta. And WotC has always had a hard time with software products. Surely 10% of the team is unable to finish it. I wonder if they have...

"Compatible" does not mean "balanced". Those words have never meant the same thing. Elven Accuracy is an example of something that has always been busted. No surprises that it's busted in 2024. It's a bad design. They should not have made it that way in the first place. The fact that it's had...

If this were Magic: The Gathering, then "would" or "instead" indicates that it's a replacement effect that happens as an effect resolves and can prevent normal triggers from firing, while effects that say "when" alone are normal-triggered effects. The problem is that D&D doesn't have codified...

No, I don't agree. I don't even agree that that's the formal intent of errata or rules changes. I think those kinds of changes happen for people that specifically demand them. I think WotC only does it to shut up that very small, extremely vocal minority of people. I don't think most DMs bother...

I would imagine they simply didn't remember why it was errata'ed. I wouldn't have. It's a narrow and rare interaction, and it's kind of exactly the sort of thing that the DM should resolve in the moment. I can appreciate that people want an official answer. However, I feel like having easy...

This is basically my reaction. People on Reddit in particular get so bent out of shape about these kind of things when in reality they're pretty easily solved by going, "Oh, this doesn't make sense... it's got to be an error. We'll do this instead." Like the problem with Contagion in 2014...

5e is nothing if not consistent in the "Jesus, just start the game at level 3" messaging.