Saturday Q&A (jun 29)

Bob in Ohio writes,

I started playing D&D in the late 70's but got out before 2.0. So I missed 3.5 and 4 as well, then came back to 5 in 2018 or so. Didn't like some of it so at my table I use 5e as the base with a LOT of cuts and homebrew. The Hasbro/WotC conglomerate is rolling out 5.5/6/One soon. And the PHB and DMG have hit. And it's ..... woke?

Start with Orcs. Remember those little pig snouted things that were the go-to foe back in the day? They're now humans. And either Hispanic or perhaps Romani. The dwarves are depicted as gay barristas - they've tattooed each others beards on their arms! You want human orcs and gay dwarves in your game? You go! You do you. To oversimplify "This ain't your father's D&D."

IMHO It's a move even further away from the game "as intended." Does this make me a "gatekeeper?" I don't think so. As I said above — you do you. Bottom line — after giving it some thought this afternoon — those that own D&D have decided they will no longer be designing/providing the game I want to play. Michael Shea has long espoused that we don't need their books to play. And you long ago embraced that philosophy. But this has been my wakeup call.

Answer: I hate to ever think that Michael Shea and I have anything in common.

Maxwell in California writes,

The range on the fireball spell looks wrong.  Should it be 100 ft. per level?

Answer:  GAWD no. Figure. You can't have the spell until you're 5th, which means the minimum range it's ever going to have is 60 ft. It means that yes, you have to get close and personal. The radius is 20 ft., so you're easily 40 ft. from the blast; gives you lots of room if you don't want to include yourself in the fun.

Maxwell: Gotcha. I happened to have the AD&D PHB open and it led me astray. So much for mages as artillery :) Regarding "Gives you lots of room..." OK. Plus IIRC you allow a mage to reduce the size of a spell if they want (i.e. 20 ft radius is a maximum; it could be lessened to 10 or 15.)

Answer: "Mage as artillery" is broken game design. Just thinking ... suppose you don't use the "reduce the size" feature, and a 1st level has a "fireball" scroll. That's a range of 20 feet. And the radius would be 20 feet. Technically, it would mean the mage could kiss the fireball, but I'd rule that it wouldn't scorch.

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