again, not really the argument that this one bonus defines them. But bonuses like these in my experience, make playing an elf feel different from playing a human, or a halfling different from an elf, etc and that adds something important to the game for me
They were much more meaningful in 3e where ACs paced the PCs increases and you needed that +2 to stay even. 5e doesn't do that. There isn't the same treadmill. ACs do increase, but at a very minor rate and the increase in proficiency bonus compensates just fine.
Even a few years ago, I would have paid Wizards for mechanical updates to a bunch of setting-specific material from earlier editions. Now, I can't think of anything.
So there's a reason why the beasts are included in the PHB in Appendix D. The familiars are also included so that the arcane casters don't need to use the MM.
No. The reason people don't play druids is because it's a bloody pain in the arse to use a ton of different stat blocks no matter which book they are in. The design flaw, though, isn't in where the beasts are, because they are in the player book.
For you it isn't D&D. For them it might be. Their context in this regard isn't your context. All you can say is that it wouldn't be D&D to you, which is true.
6e is already non-starting, it's just a new revision of 5e that's coming out next year. Backwards compatible. Keep playing your 5e.2014 characters.
Right. Going back to the Vulcan example, no strength is not the most defining trait of being Vulcan. The ears, intellect and logic are. However, if I were in a game and we beamed a Vulcan up from planet Vulcan and he was human strength or weaker, and there was no medical reason for that to be the case, my PC would suspect that this was not a Vulcan. They had the tech(we see it in the various series) to alter physical appearance to look like other races. The increased strength is part of the Vulcan identity, just as high dex is part of the elven identity.
No. Not yet. But you should. It’s fun.
lol, yeah. It's DM Empowerment. I didn't realize I'd been missing it for the preceding 14 years until I switched out of playtest mode and started running 5e with premeditated intent to make it fun.
I suppose at the same point that D&D, itself, became arguably no longer D&D? When the classes balance, meaning even the martials aren't underpowered and even the wizard isn't OP, when magic items don't re-define the character who claims them, when magic just doesn't feel magical anymore.
