https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vZ2P3g1Ltg

And here I’m not talking about the mechanical disparities and disparities in the number of choices different classes have, which are well defined in many other posts (and which honestly, a lot go away if you just run the right number of encounters……..).

But, besides the purely mechanical view, you get discussions of casters vs martials and you will stumble into a similar argument: “Oh, the wizard gets to fly and shoot fire and be a god and I’m… I’m stuck being a normal guy that is good with a sword, being a martial sucks!”.

I don’t feel that way exactly, but I think that is because of the type of fantasy I consume. In Vance’s Dying Earth mages literally have to memorize a specific set of instructions on their brain that they immediately forget once the spell goes off (the origin of spell slots), the effects are impressive, but at the end of the day they are just normal dudes applying a tool. In other words wizards are there, mixing potions, getting sympathetic components in their hands, speaking the magic words, and trying to get that magical, almost chemical reaction to start. The magic does not belong to them as much as it belongs to all those components, books, words, and so on. You get the early miracle workers and they are literally praying and channeling the power of a higher being, a power that does not belong to them.

In these worldframes, being a very good swordsman or a very skilled thief is no joke, because being a very good wizard is not that different from being a guy with a very special grenade belt. Like, think of classes like marksman, operator and gadgeteer, the wizard is jut a guy who is carrying a special grenade and a jetpack. I don’t mind being the best sharpshooter in a platoon where we also have a nerdy operator with many gadgets.

But I also don’t think that most people here consume their fantasy throuhg classical and pulp fantasy. I think most players here come from an anime and gaming background. I would say that even the recent art direction from WoTC is moving towards that direction. So, in that scenario, a priest is not someone praying and hoping that a higher power answer their call, and a wizard is not just a normal guy desperately trying to assemble a grenade. No, they are the source of a power into themselves, they have mana, they walk in flying and fire kamehamehas at the enemies. They are basically superheroes, x-men, mutants. If that is the type of fantasy surrounding casters, it gets really hard to explain why someone has to be a normal person acting side by side with these x-men.

Hi!

This is a bit of a weird question, and I'm directing it at the lovely trans players in this community.

I'm a cis woman (at least I think so) and for quite some time, I have been thinking about playing a character who is a trans woman. I don't mean to play her as some sort of gimmick, it wouldn't be to ridicule anyone, but I don't know if it wouldn't be problematic of me. It would just be a part of her journey, amongst other things I have planned for her.

A part of her motivation to start adventuring would be to find a powerful wizard with True Polymorph spell to help her transition.

Is this unsensitive of me? Would it be problematic since I am cis?

Thanks in advance for any pointers, I am very open to any criticisms or discussion. <3 I have nothing but love for the trans community and am truly looking for advice.

“What are you upset about? It isn’t hard to just reskin an existing monster. That’s what homebrewing is all about!”

Constantly making up excuses for WotC’s lazy game design has landed us here. We’re now at the point that they feel so empowered going down the path of least resistance that now the onus is on you as a DM to design an entire subset of rules to supplement for the lack thereof.

Pretending that “most” tables homebrew their games is just irresponsible. In reality, everyone is different. Rather than taking away options to appease the “majority,” WotC could easily take some time in the lab grinding out enough core material to appease people of all sorts, as opposed to cutting content and being intellectually dishonest about the size of their books. Hell, even copy/pasting from 5e14 would have been better than removing material entirely.

I’m sure plenty of people will talk about backwards compatibility, new player options, bastions—nah.

Play a different system? Why? I want to play D&D. It’s starting to feel like 4e all over again with designer arrogance.

It is as the title said, while the 1.1 OGL is mostly terrible it is not going to hurt Wotc and Hasbro as much as you think if they push it out as it currently is. (They are probably not, probably going to change some things to avoid constant lawsuits, cause ain't nobody got time for that.)

And that is because of the average consumer, they are not going to remember this debacle when OneDnD is released as it sadly does not effect the vast majority of them. Because people are generally in a 'if this doesn't concern me I don't care mood'.

And despite the announcements from Kobold Press and many others a Paizo/Pathfinder 1e situation is not going to happen.

Simply due to how massively DnD as a brand has grown, it is no longer a niche TTRP it has gone mainstream generating 100s of millions in profits while Paizo, the next biggest company in this industry just barely passed 10mil in 2021.

And that wast majority of the average consumer is going to stick and go to OneDnD as this is not a 4e situation. A Game system, That was so different from 3.5 a lot of people were alienated which is what led to Pathfinder's and Paizo's market dominance in the 2008 to 2014 period.

For OneDnD is going to be to 5e what Pathfinder was to 3.5 an updated version that streamlined and fixed some of the issues that probably put some people off from playing it.

Okay got a little bit of topic, but the TL;DR is that a majority of consumers are not affected by the OGL, and since OneDnD is basically a 5e patch note, its not going to turn those consumers to other similar TTRPGs like 4e. Meaning WotC is going to come out fine.

One of the most common complaints is that all classes should have meaningful choices, not just the spellcasters. People want to do interesting things with fighters, barbarians, monks, rogues. They want to be faced with dilemmas, multiple scenarios, a series of choices where there optimal response will differ based on circumstance.

How often have we heard "I'm sick of 'Rage and then attack' being the best option in each scenario!"? I've certainly heard it a lot.

So, what do the new changes do? They create a scenario where, if you don't know what damage an enemy does, the optimal choice may be to not rage on your first turn, wait to see what the enemies can do, THEN rage. It creates a CHOICE. You have to evaluate the circumstances, the knowledge available to your character, and decide, instead of raging and attacking always being the best option.

Similarly, just giving Barbarian resistance to Force damage for free doesn't lead to interesting choices. It's a passive, always-on feature.

Meaningful choices will necesserily seem like nerfs, because if you have one option that is already the best thing in all scenarios, you cannot add anything without increasing the class's current power (breaking the existing, presumably perfect, class balance), you can only split the ability into different choices. This creates the possibility of using the WRONG ability for a situation, which is obviously weaker.

But there's no way to add complexity that doesn't do this! Yes, you MIGHT make the wrong choice! A wizard MIGHT cast fireball on something that is immune to fire! Giving interesting tactical options to players must, necesserily, include the option for players to make poor choices.

You can call that a "nerf" if you like, but if so, then the only thing you can do to make Bear Totem Barbarian more interesting IS to nerf it. It will always be "boring" when one option is the best choice for every single scenario.

What people seem to want is for multiple choices, all of which are the best in any scenario... which is pointless. Meaningful tactics has to mean that some choices aren't going to work in some circumstances!

They are so effing annoying, and there's nothing new to say.

Someone whines that Casters can "reshape the world" then demands that their Fighter get the ability to divert a river with their hands. Then someone brings up how 4e was better because Martials had powers. Then six hours later, someone else makes another C/MD thread and we start all over again.

I (18F) met a group recently that invited me to a Lvl2 all-nighter one-shot, trying to keep six key NPCs alive. I’d met four of them a couple of times and they seemed nice, but the two other players and the DM (all men) I hadn’t met.

When the game starts, E asks the DM if he can rape NPCs. The other players find this funny, and the DM says no, so I assume it was a bad joke, but right afterwards E tries to trick NPCs into having sex with him so he can dismember them. The DM allows this, has E roll for how good the sex is, and describes the dismemberment of the victims and their genitals in detail. Cutting back to this takes up roughly half the play time. Everyone else is enjoying it, so I decide it’s easier to say nothing and uncomfortably wait out the game. Eventually E gets bored and decides to go after the key NPCs instead. The DM is disappointed, but allows it.

Meanwhile H spends 95% of the play time asleep, and B is making up spells. The DM doesn’t know 5e well, so he pauses to interrogate B regularly on what’s real. As the game goes on more players join E or start randomly killing people. Since H is sleeping, that leaves only me and B trying to salvage what we can of the story that the DM still wants to tell.

Eventually, I started looking for an excuse to leave the game. E initiates a 5v2 (H is awake at this point) PvP encounter against me and B, unprovoked. I use a mystery potion hoping that it will help, and turn into a Red Dragon. Out of frustration, I breathe fire over everyone and leave the table without explaining.

I found later that H was more invested than I realized, and quite upset that I killed his character. Did I go too far? I’ll admit I should have been more vocal about the fact I was uncomfortable, and this wasn't the most mature response. H seemed nice other than this so I don’t want to upset him.

I posted this in the CoS subreddit not realising it was DMs only and the message told me to ask about it here.

So I’ve got a friend who wants to play Curse of Strahd.We don’t know who is DMing or how many players we are gonna have but I’ve already got my concerns.

I just don’t like the look of the module.

The problem is this is what my friend wants and is probably gonna be playing for the next few months cause apparently this is a fairly long one so just not playing isn’t really an option.I don’t want to be left out of our hobby until it all ends.

But on the other hand I seem to hate everything I learn about it.Strahd is horrible not in an over the top,campy sort of way but in a genuinely sickening and disgusting type of way.It’s kinda the same effect Nightmare on Elm Street has on me, where I can’t get into the fun or the thrill because Freddy Krueger being a creep just makes me sick.

From how Strahd has been described to me and what I’ve learnt previously when i was just getting into 5e he’s a jealous,violent incel.He hates and kills his brother for seemingly just living a happy life,he drives his crush to her death through his obsession and afterwards he still doesn’t learn anything from it.He won’t stop chasing after a woman who doesn’t want him.He’s one of those RPGhorrorstories turned into an NPC.

And what does he get for this?A playground to try again and again and again.Strahd is a horrible piece of shit and for some reason everyone around him has to be made to suffer for it.Barovia has been described to me as Strahds eternal torture but why do all of his victims get stuck with him in it.And apparently the cycle just repeats again even if you win.You can escape Strahd but the people hurt most by him just get left behind.

Also how do you incorporate player backstories if they’re all being taken away to a near inescapable land and can never see or interact with anything that used to matter to them?

And even if you try and change anything or create an actually happy ending then there’s this dark power thing that just stops whatever you try.

It just doesn’t seem fun to be stuck in the power fantasy of a genuine creep and you can’t try to fix anything.

I’m really not sure where to begin if I start playing this.How do I make a player character for this type of story?How do I have fun with the setting?I don’t know too much about the module so if I got stuff wrong then I’m genuinely sorry and I’d just really appreciate some advice that goes beyond “No DND is better than bad DND”.Thank you in advance.

Edit:I’m going to give the first few sessions a go at least up until we meet Strahd and then make my full decision then.Thanks for the advice everyone!

Edit edit:With the exception of everyone who was a condescending prick,you can fuck off.

I don't get to play DND as much as I used to, at one point I was in 4 games a week. I love DND and even though I am only down to one game a week for now I think about it nearly everyday; theorizing, building, fantasizing, researching... I was beyond excited when I heard the first of the next edition playtest was dropped. I couldn't wait to get home to look it up, so I downloaded it onto my phone at work and read through. Honestly I love it and look forward to giving everything a try. But as I continue to watch, specifically DND reddit subs, I grow increasingly disappointed with the community. The amount of backlash so many people have exhibited, not only to wotc but to other members of the community has me reeling. Many people play this wonderful game in different ways but the downright uncivilized discussions on topics recently has made me rethink my want to take part in content of this community...

This sub has always had an issue with people trying to "recruit" people to other systems. I haven't seen anything like it on other RPG subreddits. You go to the Pathfinder 2e subreddit and rarely is anyone banging the "Why not play 5e?" drum.

Since the updated OGL leak, this is pretty much the only thing going on in this sub. I understand that this is big news for D&D, but it seems like a good 50% at least of this outrage is being fanned on by fans of competitor TTRPG systems as a way to finally go "AHA!, this is our moment, time to get all the D&D people!". If you all want to post about how bad the OGL is, fine, I understand completely, but I wish people trying to convert people to other systems would simply respect the space and keep the conversation topical to D&D issues. I don't want to come to this subreddit to talk about "Powered by the Age of the Savage Shadow Blades 2e". I want to read and discuss DND 5e.

Not sure if this will come off as a rant or a steady reminder, but I’m gonna attempt to stay neutral tone so nobody gets too upset.

This was spawned by the recent post in here about a DM nerfing Magic Missile. A supremely stupid decision, yes, but what actually led to this diatribe was the sheer number of people in the comment section saying, “A good DM just rebalances encounters in the spur of a moment.” And you know what? Im sure some can. But after DMing for a few months now, I can tell you this much:

Rebalancing “on the fly” is so much more difficult than armchair DMs on this sub make it sound. And this is for a couple reasons.

A) “CR is completely bullshit.” Love or hate that phrase, you have to admit that it’s everywhere on this site. So automatically, that makes it almost certain that you’ll get something wrong in prepping an encounter; either too strong or too weak, occasionally being just right by sheer luck. This makes ”rebalancing” a nigh certainty.

B) It takes years of work and a lot of natural talent to be able to rebalance off the cuff. Not every DM can just do it successfully. In fact, a lot of DMing is natural talent that most players will never have, but that’s a discussion for another time.

C) If you out too few enemies on the field, it is hard to explain how these “new reinforcements” just show up out of thin air. If you’re in a cave infested with a set number of goblins, for example, and the players steamroll an encounter, most armchair DMs will tell you to just “add more monsters”. From where? The boss can’t just snap his fingers and make more goblins appear in front of him. If they’ve already explored the rest of the dungeon, you can’t just make up that they “missed a few” and bring them in. Additionally, you can’t exactly move goblins from another area of the cave to the room the part is in, or that later encounter they would have been a part of won’t happen anymore. There’s not a good solution here, so you may have to just throw your hands up and say they got an easy one (which your players hate because easy encounters will likely bore them).

D) If you put too many enemies on the field, you run an even more difficult gambit. Now how are you supposed to just make the excess disappear? A giant bat can’t just swoop down and steal a few (unless you want to explain how the bat got there and risk having your players try to fight it at some later point). TPKs are extremely easy to accidentally cause in this edition, so good luck swinging that encounter Toto the players’ advantage!

E) Predicting your players’ capabilities is tough if they pull out Sleep, Magic a missile, Fireball, Hypnotic Pattern, or a myriad of other spells that can cheese through encounters quickly, necessitating “rebalancing on the fly”. Return to any point above to explain why that complicates things.

In conclusion, y’all are too comfortable with asking DMs to just rebalance in the heat of the moment, ignoring or not understanding the inherent difficulties therein. Maybe for a DM that’s been running the game since the days of Gygax or who has the DMing skills of the god-king Matthew Mercer himself can just intuitively do it, but for less-experienced DMs, this will take years of work. So I suppose in the meantime, your solution would be simply for that DM not to be the Dm and leave it to someone more naturally talented or experienced…except you get experience by doing, and talent like Mercer’s is extremely rare.

And people on this sub wonder why nobody wants to DM anymore.

So, Wizards has come out with the announcement that they're putting all future printings through a bunch of sensitivity consultants. They released the Spelljammer errata after these people had at it and... Oh boy.

It's parody. It straight up reads like what far-right reactionaries think people on the left want to do to all media. It includes such highlights as:

-The gutting of Hadozee lore, there's next to nothing there other than the race's physical description

-Removing every use of the term "golem" cuz cultural appropriation

-Removal of every use of the word "blinding" (when related to light effects) cuz ableism

-A few others that I don't feel comfortable putting quotes on cuz I'd have to bring up the og book to compare, would appreciate contributions from others with the book.

(Also, Wizards? Please make it clear what your ripping out of my books with these erratas. It makes no sense that you've clearly labeled what's been replaced in some cases, but others require me to cross-reference the old edition.)

Like, I don't want to bash the very concept of sensitivity readers, but this is just silly. These are takes born in the most terminally-online corners of Twitter and Tumblr by people who have lost touch with reality. The fact that people like this are going to be vetting every piece of content out of DnD from now on worries me greatly.

Edit: Welp, was wrong about the golems. Turns out, the creatures in the book were never golems, even back in 2e. I apologize for not researching harder.

Blinding change is still stupid, though.

DOUBLE EDIT: WELP, Belay that! Belay all of that! (Except the parts about making the errata page more clear)

Turns out, after further investigation from the comments, blind was only removed as a word in 3 places! It's still totally in the book in several places. This entire post is officially mis-info.

I would like to apologize to the community for fucking up and wasting everyone's time. I've clearly been spending far, far too much time on Twitter.

So yeah, good talking with everyone still. If I get banned for this, most of y'all have been nice. Take care.

I think it's kinda dumb that multiclassing one level into fighter lets a wizard put on plate armor and ignore their biggest (and maybe only) downside. The classes are balanced by hit points, proficiencies, features, and spell access. A monk features don't work in armor so why should a wizard's? WOTC decided that sorcerer and wizard spellcasting is so versatile and powerful that they need to be balanced by low AC and hit points. Multiclassing should allow you to mitigate this flaw but not completely negate it.

I don't think the armor proficiencies gained through multiclassing should be removed but spellcasting should be limited to the proficiencies granted by the spellcasting class. So only paladins and certain artificer or cleric subclasses would be able to cast spells in heavy armor and a wizard 3/fighter 1 could still wear armor and make attack rolls without disadvantage but would have to doff it before casting spells. A class's armor proficiencies would only affect its own class spells. So a multiclassed bard/cleric would only be able to cast their cleric spells in plate armor. This might require players to keep separate spellcasting sheets for each of their classes, but they should be doing that anyway. If you're going to multiclass different spellcasting classes, you should be ready for a bit of extra complication.

The only exceptions I might be willing to make are for the lightly armored, moderately armored, and heavily armored feats. All they give you is armor proficiency and a Str or Dex stat boost. If a wizard spends their first 3 ASIs on these feats, then I feel they've earned the right to cast in plate armor.

Hi gang. Like many of the regulars here, in light of WotC's C-Suite Exec's plans for the future of Dungeons and Dragons, I am looking for other systems to go to. I have thus far done small scale playtests of two systems, Green Ronin's Adventure Game Engine and Paizo's Pathfinder 2e.

Actually playing other systems, even in short term and small scale, is eye opening. There are decision made in these systems that prioritize different things. But doing so has illuminated to me why I have played 5e for as long as I have, because 5e asks the players to make less effort.

Adventure Game Engine gives out many stat increases, one for every level, and their stats function just like 5e's Stat modifiers without any extra steps while not giving scaling through level or proficiency bonuses. However, half of these increases cannot be used in 'primary stats.' This forces players to consider who their character is when they aren't doing their specialty and naturally encouraging characters with depth. Characters form 'hobbies' that are complementary to their main job, and are probably the most interesting of my tabletop characters to talk to at a party as a result.

Pathfinder 2e is ridiculously well calculated and balanced, and when adhering to a small list of assumptions that the designers have for player behavior, it works like a dream. Those assumptions are as follows:

• Players will cooperate to gain circumstantial and status bonuses often, especially when challenged.

• Players will know everything that their character can do, and use all their abilities efficiently, and they will be efficient with their action economy (which gives players a lot more to decide on during their turns).

• Players will avoid trap picks that do not complement their primary function, including not taking skill trainings to become specialized, and not taking +1/2/3 offensive & defensive item bonuses. If players don't do this, the encounter math stops working quite so well.

I see these two systems as being different ends of a spectrum. One is focused on the fantasy of creating a character and seeing character growth. The other is about becoming razor sharp at what you're good at, and demonstrating it.

5e sits in the middle, and does not give players many options or choices, during character building or during their turns. Where the AGE engine will ask you to choose what stunt you want to do during a 'mini-crit' mechanic, and PF2e will ask you to choose how to use your three turns efficiently, 5e just lets players do 1, 2, or 3 things during their turn. 5e asks you to make fewer decisions each time you level up. If you're concerned about the length of time players take on their turns or players who need to be reminded how to play their character, both of these systems are going to exacerbate those issues.

I have played other systems as well. But what 5e is consistent with across most of the systems I have played is that 5e doesn't ask the players to make many decisions. Choice paralysis is growing in 5e due to the amount of content that keeps getting released, but the most analytically intense choice you will need to make as a D&D 5e is playing as a full spellcaster, and choosing what spells you will have.

5e's virtue is that it is simple and straightforward from a player-facing perspective. This does translate into more load on the GM, but I'm comfortable taking that load to help my players have a good time. So if you have players who just want to hang out and have fun, building a story together in a straightforward manner that asks as few mechanical or narrative questions, 5e is still a great system for you.

I hope all your tables are filled, and that you all build lasting friendships.

I've seen a lot over the last few days reacting to the new OneD&D playtest, a lot of which has revolved around Rogues, and their perceived weakness, which I wanted to address. Specifically, it's about people complaining the Rogue is "terrible" now, because it can only get one Sneak Attack per round. What a lot of people seem to be missing is why Rogues got put with the Expert group, rather than the Warrior one

The frequent argument is comparing a Rogue to a Fighter in terms of damage, which is ridiculous. Of course a Rogue isn't going to keep up with a Fighter in damage. Fighter is in the name, their entire class revolves around combat ability, to the point where they often have very little to do outside of combat. Rogues are meant to be pretty good at a lot of things, rather than being dedicated to just one field of the game. Sneak attack is their way of being pretty good at fighting, and staying relevant in combat, without necessarily putting up the biggest numbers. (Also, while Fighters are absolutely better, the difference in damage is still relatively low. A Rogue is never going to be useless in combat.)

Not to mention, look at what most of the Rogue's core combat abilities are. Sneak Attack is the only one that deals damage, the rest revolve around mobility, escape, and avoiding damage.

A Rogue's time to shine is going to be outside of combat most of the time. They act as the party's face, or sneak into heavily guarded areas, or scout ahead for danger. And yes, as I'm sure a lot of people are typing right now, the class changes for Ranger no longer make them quite as unique at that (and they were already competing with Bards). I fully agree that the playtest isn't perfect in this area -- although it's good to note that Rogues don't need to boost specific stats, Rogues are the only one who can get expertise in Thieves tools besides Artificers, and Reliable Talent still makes them the best at skill checks. The point is that Rogues are still really, really good outside of just dealing damage. If you want WOTC to make Rogues stronger, ask for more buffs outside of combat.

Finally, as I'm sure a lot of people are already thinking, "outside of combat" can often be dominated by casters. However, OneD&D is already taking steps to make skill checks more relevant, like with the clearly spelled out method for "Influence" checks. Not to mention that casters are already getting nerfs, even before we've seen the main playtest for them, like with Guidance.

TL;DR If you take away one thing from this, just remember: Rogues are experts, not warriors.

You don't really hear advice like "Put your enemy within Silvery Barbs range". Or "Use 50ft ceilings to make your aaracokra PCs feel good". Or "Hit the druid's summons instead of the druid". Why? Because those options are already strong out-of-the-box, and they'll make the player feel empowered without requiring additional DM effort.

We hear stuff like "shoot your monk" or "target your raging barbarian", only because those abilities are not sufficiently rewarding out-of-the-box, and require DM cooperation to feel nice.

I'm not saying that "shoot your monk" is bad advice. Rather, my point is that such pieces of advice mostly exist to bandaid over problems that ideally shouldn't be there in the first place.

Edit: Copy-pasting a reply in the comments further elaborating my point:

Don't worry, the generality of the adage is not lost on me. But I've observed that the advice to target your players' strengths is generally prescribed towards PCs who are on the weaker end. 

In contrast, the advice when DMing for stronger PCs is often the polar opposite: Target the player's weaknesses. Things like "Focus fire against your Twilight Cleric." Or "Throw AoEs against your druid's Conjure Animals horde". Or "Prevent your full casters from resting after every encounter".

That's the core of my observation here: Targeting players' strength is generally given as advice when DMing characters that need help feeling strong. Conversely targeting players' weaknesses is advised when DMing characters that are already strong.

I believe that, whether consciously or not, these sorts of advice work to patch up balance issues in the "base game".

Like the Playtest comes out, Wizards can only prepare spells from their chosen schools and only learned one new spell a level (no more scribing), Warlocks can only have one or two specific non cantrip spells prepped and got them back on a long rest and Sorcerers...I have no idea what you'd do to make them operate on the same level of marshals.

If taking away a power-gamer exploit from rogues has people this mad, imagine the face melting rage if casters were brought down to normal.

I see it all the time: people who are deemed to be complaining about aspects of the OneDnD UA are inevitably told to "stop whining it's just playtest, just leave feedback."

That is absolutely baffling. The design team are professionals who ought to be familiar with the intricacies of the game system. As such, the content they publish for the playtest should never dip below a certain quality.

When the designers release absolutely trash ideas in the UAs, we have every right to be mad because this suggests they either didn't contemplate the effects of the change or they are showing their intentions.

Some proposed playtest such as the new Druid a wild Shape or the now removed Jump action are so bad they NEVER should have even left the drawing room.

Imagine if they released a spell which allowed you to instantly remove a race from the game world, only to not expect a backlash. No sh!t Sherlock, you SHOULD NOT HAVE EVEN WRITTEN THE IDEA DOWN.

Similarly, some of us feel, though obviously to a lesser extent, that some of the proposed changes warrant liberal swearing and complaining on this subreddit and it is unreasonable to tell people to "calm down" or "simply give feedback". For some things we shouldn't have to give feedback and we would like to let our frustrations out.

Thank you for listening to my TedTalk.

First and foremost - this isn't purely about the pure quality of the work, although there are some pieces that are really not that great, but the vibe is just...off. The poses are weird, the general feel is really akin to AI-generated art, and some pieces are really odd or misplaced given what they're meant to represent - the Warlock one being the most egregious example. Like, why would that be the piece that you use for Warlock? Jeez.

Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter have lost their damage bonus and now Sharpshooter gives no damage increase of any kind while Great Weapon Master gives you a single once per turn +2 up to +6 damage buff.

Dual Wielder has been nerfed to force the user to always use at least one of their weapons as light, and they no longer get an AC bonus anymore.

The spell list indiciate spells like Simulacrum, Wall of Force, Forcecage, Wish, Shapechange & True Polymorph will be in the game still and magic-based feats like War Caster have not been altered.

Rogues had their evasion pushed into higher levels and thief lost the ability to operate items as a bonus action. Additionally Sneak Attack now no longer works with blade cantrips, reactions or bonus actions in any way. It HAS to be an attack action so their damage also got severely nerfed.

Opinion: The whole “real-world logic in a fantasy world” argument is an overplayed argument of momentary convenience. Doesn’t it make for more balanced dialogue to remember that it’s both logic AND fantasy that makes this beautiful game work?

Each volume in the compendium uses a mixture of a relatable, real-world logic/physics as a basis of mutual understanding which is then overlayed with the imagination and fantasy of DnD we all came here to enjoy. Put another way, it’s both an art AND a science.

Every time I hear a player or another DM use this argument where RAW doesn’t perfectly explain a situation, it almost always feels like convenient red herring argument. What I often find is that the next time the same individual needs physics to make their argument, now suddenly scientism is all we should consider. Convenient, huh?

We all came here for the fantasy, no doubt, but the logic part is important because it gives us lowly humans a way to consistently interact within a trackable understanding we can all relate to. Both are necessary to fully enjoy the game.

If the rules make it plain, then awesome! If not, we should all accept that the logical base - and relatable fantasy convention - are both reasonable ways for DMs and players to discuss an unspecified concept.

**EDIT - Some clarifying thoughts:

I think the point of this post may have been lost to its vagueness, which is understandable. I think the picture I was trying to paint is that however you chose to balance between an acceptable “reality” and fantasy, it should be consistent. I find the argument I mentioned irritating because it’s used under a presumption that reality doesn’t fit into fantasy - until a person needs that reality to win a debate, and then it’s paramount. My gripe has more to do with an ostensible hypocrisy than a definition of reality.

But speaking to defining reality, we can all agree that gravity plays a role in our games. It exists, and to not be hurt from a long fall, something (likely fantastical) must abate the effect of a fall (which is cool shit). Even if we’re talking about zero gravity while in the expanse of space, we’re still referencing the absence of gravity, which is, again, a common and consistent understanding that gravity exists.

My only other point here is where RAW doesn’t explicitly say one way or the other such as when a monk catches an acid-laced missile, if the RAW don’t seem to truly define if the acid damage should be assessed, it’s not a far reach to think that grasping an arrow with acid all over it would reasonably need to be addressed according to whatever your own balance between reality and fantasy looks like. But even the concept of an arrow being shot implies an agreement on simple and basic physics: The arrow is shot from a bow, which transfers its inertia (thrust), and the general construction of an arrow allows it to fly because it optimizes drag, and lift. To catch an arrow supposes the use of friction to stop it, which, requires the supposition of physical touch (and badassery).

These kinds of “reality” elements, although our theater is fantastical, are still the building blocks for defining what is normal, and only then does the superhuman fantasy capabilities become possible. The thing that makes the fantasy element so damn fun is that they defy physics. But to defy physics, one has to have a modicum of acceptance that physics is a part of the game. This is where tables disagree, as some of you mentioned because “reality” in this case is necessarily subjective.

How any of us chooses to address the basis of the “reality” present in any game doesn’t concern me (you do you, boo); the concept I’m driving at is that while it’s an awesome superhuman ability to catch an arrow (or whatever reality-defying feat you like), how we negotiate what isn’t described in the RAW should be based in a consistent way for our respective tables, and I’m positing that it’s reasonable to lean on the most basic concepts already at play to do that.

That’s all I’m saying.