Aarakocra were initially given longer lifespans in AD&D. Wasn't consistent across editions, either being comparable to humans (Fighters/Rogues starting at 14-15, Fighter/Rogues starting at 21, and Clerics starting at 30+5d6 years old), or similar to humans but with a younger adult state and earlier-but-longer venerable/old state into 160ish. It's funny how it's gone from that to "dead before they can become clerics."
To quote ancient words of wisdom: "Everybody's sayin' that the Scatman stutters but doesn't ever stutter when he sings. But what you don't know, I'm gonna tell you right now that the stutter and the scat is the same thing, yo, I'm the Scatman."
Having played a playtest Phoenix Sorcerer, the Control Flames spell is surprisingly useful with a hooded lantern. It's basically Daylight as a 1sp consumed component cantrip.
Nice job assuming that I as a person am bigoted just because I prefer details that contribute to the story. I'm fine with people being different, that's a fact of life, and any self-respecting person should figure out how to accept that as soon as possible. What I look for in a roleplaying game, however, is narrative cohesion, where the characters are characters instead of tokens, and their actions have consequences that make sense. Mechanically, this means that I would prefer to not be held back by my fellows, be it the guy playing a Wild Magic Sorcerer who insists on triggering a Surge via Feywild shard whenever possible and gets sad when it doesn't go off, or the guy playing a Wizard that insists on hobbling up the stairs on their crutch instead of letting the Barbarian carry them. This doesn't mean it can't be done well ever, I've had an old man NPC with a halved movement speed use that as a way to get the party to pay attention to their surroundings instead of rushing headlong into a hallway just because it's empty. It should be in a way that doesn't impact gameplay; a one-armed Fighter wouldn't insist on one-handing a Halberd under normal circumstances and would usually go for a one-handed weapon, nor would a character that's been mute their whole life have a very good way to cast spells with verbal components without a kind DM or an addiction to Subtle Spell. Narratively, it means that things feel strange when someone opts to "have a disability" but then avoids playing into that angle at all by having a proverbial "all-terrain wheelchair" work-around with few downsides, possibly some benefits. Again, not that they can't ever be well-represented. The trick is that you need to make up for the character's weaknesses in a way that doesn't make them "speshul" by being the only one allowed to have that thing.
"Why would you guys want a cane-sword that doubles your movement speed? You don't have gammy legs halving your movement speed!" A cane-sword that doubles movement speed is still a weapon that doubles your god-damn movement speed. Don't "gatekeep" my characters from your cool idea without at least giving me a story as to why I can't have it (my character didn't make it and I don't know where the creator went) and how I could get to the point where I can if I wanted it (have to find the creator and convince them to make one for me even though I don't really need it like the first character does). Now, if they play a disabled character straight, taking efforts to minimize the mechanical detriments through tactical assessment of one's abilities and rely on the party to help make up for their weaknesses, congratulations! A character was made and I have no beef, you've won me over. If they miss some points, either expecting people to play around the character detriments they chose or playing Oppression Olympics™ as to why their character needs something your character can't have, because they decided the character would suck otherwise, that's just disingenuous to the multiplayer experience, and frankly kind of fucked up to hold one's own character hostage with disability to get preferential treatment. If your character is a Polearm Master Fighter that lost his arm in the war and is questing for a Regenerate spell as he goes through life with a spear and a dream, maybe even giving up on it as he realizes he can adapt to a different style of fighting bit by bit as he levels up, I welcome and endorse it.
Now, the character can hiss and spit about the unfairness of their situation until they're blue in the face, that's roleplay and I wholly support that in a roleplaying game. What's bad is, in the scenario the (N)PCs wise up to an item's necessity, any item, and in some way negate it, putting the player in a position where they need to play the character they made in a weaker position (in this case the weakness they built into it), the player shouldn't get upset over it. When the player insists that "their character's agency" shouldn't be lost because of losing one item, or "why did you approve it just to take it away?", broseph, you made the character. Did they genuinely think the party would thank them for being graced with the blast radius of a Wild Magic Surge, or are they just a gambling addict that couldn't foresee other people not wanting to be hit by the rebounding Chaos Bolt when there's only one enemy target? Is that sort of player incapable of realizing that the game system with mechanics to ensure it's not a make-pretend battle of "nuh-uh, I have [excuse] to protect me" could possibly allow for the other side to have counterplay in the same way they can make a magic chair that can climb a wall?
As for NPCs. Man, if these guys can't handle a one-eyed veteran in a fictional country, I fear for them ever seeing a homeless shelter. They need to sort their shit out. You can have a beggar in a D&D game, they might even be a good source of information or a powerful NPC that has problems, same with a person with a crutch or a leper on a wheeled board. Sorry we forgot to put "trigger warning: semi-accurate depictions of squalor" in Session 0's notes, if the existence in fantasy is what sets them off, I'd hate to see how they react to reality.
TL;DR: sometimes you can hate the player instead of the game. My beef is not with the existence of the differently abled, but with people that use them as a shield for their lack of originality, thought, or care for their fellow players.
It depends on the tone of the setting. Someone who gets their leg broken in a Forgotten Realms game can usually find a small-time priest to cast Cure Wounds on them, preventing most disabilities that aren't from birth. Someone who gets their leg broken in Warhammer Fantasy has to hope within their gimped traveling distance that there's a priest of the correct faith capable of appeasing the gods for the healing to happen, before their detriments become permanent. As such, having a disabled character in a game with more accessible healthcare requires an extra degree of explanation, on top of the PCs' and players' emotional response to someone being so downtrodden. The circumstances of their ailment, who or what was responsible, how they see their ailment and work around it, all are weights on the players' suspension of disbelief that a GM has to take into account that they generally otherwise wouldn't with John Miller, the able-bodied dude who runs the mill with a wife, three kids, and a problem with rats stealing the grain that he mills. It's like a Chekov's Gun in that sort of way, the GM as a storyteller surely wouldn't spend the effort to decide that an NPC has a trait that is notably separate from the default without it being somehow relevant to the plot. The mage asks the party to do a quest for their magical research, a general asks the party to do a quest for national security, and a person in a wheelchair... what desire do you give them that wouldn't be misconstrued as able-ist or a waste of that character trait? It's very difficult, often comes with an air of making some kind of a statement, either that they're a writer capable enough to wear disabled-face without it being offensive, or taking a preachy high-ground telling people a message about human sympathy, determination, and adaptability that they've already been made well aware of by the existence of popular culture.
Imagine not getting to roleplay shopping because you're a wizard and spent all your money on scribing spells. Imagine thinking that keeps you from roleplaying during anyone else's shopping, assuming that you are also present for the shopping instead of doing something else.
I can't exactly talk though, last session in Curse of Strahd, my character basically turned the session into a heist because he had the best Stealth score and there wasn't enough Invisibility spell for the rest of the party. It's a CoS game, being seen by half the encounters is basically a TPK in and of itself. But he was able to turn what was supposed to be a scouting mission into a successful rescue and robbery, so it was kind of worth it.
DMG Encumbrance Fighters: Please DM, I can't carry my armor and my weapon without having a -15ft penalty to my movement. I don't even have room for a backpack! PHB Encumbrance Fighters: As long as I can justify it, I can carry three times my body weight in miscellaneous items. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay characters: I'm not a dwarf, so I literally need a horse to carry my food for me if I want to move in mail armor while holding a shield and basic hand weapon. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay dwarves: I can wear whatever I want and still carry whatever I want.
It still amazes me that it's art for the WoW card game considering how often the art was used for various 3.pf homebrew pages, especially considering how much Wayne did in the industry at that time.
I more meant the layers of their concentric orbits as distanced from their center (the Sun or the Earth). Considering how quickly Mercury orbits the Sun while being the closest planet to it, it makes sense it'd be at perigee more frequently and with less variable distance than other planets that have a wider orbit.
Almost happened in the last Warhammer session I was in. DM made a door that had three locks depending on knowing alchemical symbols, formulae, and the geocentric model. Because the GM forgot that Warhammer doesn't have a flat "magic knowledge" roll like Arcana in D&D 5e, the party mage doesn't know anything, the rest of the party was illiterate, and everyone got so frustrated that everyone except my character tried either breaking the door or entering through the window while the wizard was still home and foiling their attempts. To our credit, we were able to figure out the first two locks with trial and error, with the first being a very simple balancing of the four elemental triangles around a plus sign in a plus shape, and the other being three symbols in a vertical line, the problem was seven symbols to be arranged in a circle. After my party face character shook herself from her puzzle frustration and realized that the wizard is actually home, she just asked him for what we came here for, he was cordial about it, and we left when we got it. During that time, the GM gave the solution (because Wizards are assholes that love to brag about their genius to the stupids) which taught us that in geocentricity, neither Venus nor Mars are closer to Earth than Mercury is, and the sun is between Venus and Mars because of course it is.
I had a pair of DMPCs for the party to fight in a tournament arc: Saul Carolina Jack and Sir David Pent. The first is a Barbarogue build, the other a ranged Monk that is also speced towards close-combat grappling.
spoiler
They're Snake and Raiden from MGS. Their names are wordplay on David + Serpent/Snake and Saul C. "Saucy" Jack.
I want WotC to just finally admit that Barbarian and Monk need more ASIs. The capstone works for Barbarian because it fits the theme (bring back infinite rages btw), but for Monk it just stinks of having no ideas. They already know that Barbarian needs a shield for their AC because they have to invest in STR instead of DEX, they already know Barbarian needs advantage/bonuses to DEX saves, Acrobatics, Stealth, and Initiative. They know that Monk needs to use DEX for their weapon attacks because they have to invest in DEX instead of STR, they already know Monk needs BA Dash/Disengage, the ability to Deflect and apply Evasion to not just ranged but also melee and AoE damage, spending Ki/Discipline points to get Temporary HP/heal, have proficiency in all saves and resistance to all non-Force damage, all just to mitigate the fact their d8 Hit Dice won't have CON investment due to needing WIS focus for AC/DC. All of that being said: I like a lot of these changes.
Barbarian: Regaining 1 Rage on SR really helps this martial class, it was super weird that their core class feature was tied to LR. Brutal Critical no longer being tied to 5% crits is great, and having pseudo maneuvers is nice too, though I'd honestly prefer it not require forgoing Reckless Attack's Advantage to get the damage. On paper it effectively translates to: "Reckless Attack has a new option, instead of advantage, you get +1d10 damage for the same downside," and I'm not sure that feels like a good trade. If they're scared of GWM (which is surprising since lmao caster ASI progression) just have it apply 1/turn or as additional damage when you crit. Aside from that, while calling each effect "X blow" hurts my soul, I like all of the options. Persistent Rage, as mentioned, smells like they didn't like infinite Rage and wanted to nerf it for squeezing it into a Level 15 feature that was already pretty good. Primal Champion buff to 24 to 26 is just silly. They only get one Level 19 ASI that lets them go up to 22, so it's only going to apply to one of them. I've already made my statement on ASIs. World Tree subclass never gelled with me as while it doesn't seem to have a strategy like other Barbs do. Still, new Branches as a single-target denial tool now sounds nuts to me, just STR save or you have no movement for the turn as you're Mortal Kombat Scorpion'd right to the Barbarian. But then you have Battering Roots for... I guess when the STR save fails and your 40ft+ speed Barbarian is having trouble reaching the target, and then the ability to teleport to be EXTRA sure?
Druid: There's not really much to touch on for the core class changes; Wild Shape is worded in a way that's understandable. Moon Druid though, they not only get rules clarification, they get new spells!
Starry Wisp Faerie Fire as a cantrip that doesn't grant advantage, Bards can do it too. I like it. Fount of Moonlight I guess this is like anti-Shadow of Moil? You get a smaller Daylight (not Sunlight), Radiant resistance and damage, and can Blind as a reaction. Also usable by Bards... most of these spell can be used by Bards actually. I think WotC has been tapping my friend's Discord server. Biggest change besides that is Max CR is back down to Level 3, fine, and Lunar Form does extra damage instead of scooting Moonbeam around. Pretty okay.
Monk: Ah, the big one that everyone's been gushing about. BA Unarmed Strike being untethered from Ki or Attack actions is QoL that many have asked for. RIP Weapon Mastery, but with all the new stuff they get, they had to cut something to let Fighter not get power-crept. DEX on Grapple/Shoves appeals to my inner Rey Mysterio fanboy. Patient Defense and Step of the Wind buffs, watch out Rogues! Now Monk doesn't need to spend Ki to Dash or Disengage, and if they do they get both! Or at least Disengage + Dodge. Level 10 also buffs these further: Flurry gets 3 attacks instead of 2; Patient Defense gives you Temp HP; Step of the Wind lets you carry someone! I love all of these. Free Ki Points at level 2! It's 1/LR and honestly that's plenty. Deflect Missiles is now Deflect Rage Damage Types! Also adds your DEX to damage on top of 2Dkarate. Level 13 lets you smack away non-weapons too, pretty spicy. Stunning Strike gets a buff, on a success they still take Force damage. I think this is a very fair compromise. The anti-Charm/nonsense effect being free at the end of your turn is also a good compromise for making Stillness of Mind a Level 10 feature, and helps wave away how people are willingly ending things like Charm effects. No more Poison Damage immunity, but it's only a big loss if you keep running into poison. Perfect Discipline being 3 or lower instead of 0 is good, prevents people from feeling like they need to Step of the Wind a few times before the next fight just to go from 2 to 0 to 4. The anime-tier, yet admittedly cool Defy Death capstone is now replaced with more Barbarian plagiarism, Primal Champion for DEX/WIS instead of STR/CON, see above. Subclass time~ Only removing Opportunity Attacks instead of Reactions is fine since Counterspell isn't ass-busted anymore. I still wish Shield would be nerfed to +2 until your turn (you know, like a shield, maybe upcast scaling if you miss Tarrasque HP Wizards that much), but fight is as fight does. Fleet Step with the buffs to Step of the Wind makes Monk into a god damned rocket at Level 11 that only gets faster. It does NOT say when you spend a point, this works on any BA. This'll work on BA self-applied potions, BA unarmed strikes/Flurry of Blows, just Dash + Disengage + carrying a friend, forever. Why is no one talking about this? Even if you still have to pay the 1 point for it again, it's still a huge shot in the arm for mobility. Quivering Palm is "nerfed" back down to 4 points for a flat 10d12 damage, no monk level. Upside, it only uses one attack to end the effect instead of a full action, so you can apply it in a brawl without having to spend a whole turn standing still saying the Kenshiro line.
Other spells: Conjure spells are a single body that's a swarm via flavor. DMs, rejoice! (Mass) Cure Wounds is buffed, hooray! I sure appreciate WotC recognizing that the melee healing needs something to give it an edge agai- WHY DID THEY BUFF HEALING WORD?! Who asked for this? By what means has WotC come to the idea that Healing Word is somehow not horribly problematic in regards to nigh-effortlessly preventing 0HP from happening? I'd understand it if they stole my idea for having HW only apply to creatures that can hear you (ergo, not Unconscious), but this is just a flat buff to make it almost objectively better than pre-buff Cure Wounds. Power Word: Fortify is nice I guess. 20-120 Temp HP/target is enough to last at least a turn, hopefully?
All in all, this one is getting a bookmark in my "has lots of good ideas to work on" folder. Very satisfied with the changes, and I can fit them into how to solve my remaining gripes very easily.
This is why I like the idea of monster languages. All the changelings can speak changeling, which while it isn't used for full conversations, they might go "y'know, the... er-uh, boss?" and it's slipping in a codeword like "trust?"
Greyhawk's LG god of war (that the Fighter follows) is Heironeous, who has a rivalry with his LE god of war brother Hextor. One of the cruxes of their schism is that Heironeous was chosen to have aforementioned oil called "meersalm" which effectively gave him mythos-Achilles damage immunity (per AD&D rules, can't be hurt by anything less than +5 weaponry). There's not really rules for the item itself, so I figure 1. it's designed for gods and is only permanent when applied to someone of divinity, and 2. it's incredibly secret knowledge. Heironeous also has a super-secret daughter that was kidnapped by Hextor and given to Dispater to imprison, and there's an order of Heironean paladins whose task is to (in addition to being specialized fiend-killers) find information on how to locate and ultimately free her.
The party had gotten involved with said order of knights, who had been nearby supporting a group of archeologists that had come under pressure by a guild of sorcerers that try to keep all knowledge of Vecna secret so no one abuses his dark power. The knights had lost some of their number on a scouting expedition, in which they had intercepted some travelers that a nearby tribe of Lizardfolk had kidnapped for a Vecnan cult, followed the trail to the cult, and managed to beat MOST of the bad guys but not everyone. The cult's lair is one of few entrances to the underground pathways that lead to Ykrath, Vecna's capital city, long since sunk into the swampy Rushmoors almost immediately after his disappearance following his conflict with Kas (an event which the Ykrathians call "The Downfall"). Legend says that the Ykrathian king (Vecna) was such a feared politician and military commander that it was theorized he somehow had knowledge of all secrets in a mythical dark library. Brief aside, a favorite anecdote of Vecna's cruelty is that when a town's leaders left to offer their own lives be taken to have their citizens spared, Vecna had them strung them up on poles to watch his army murder everyone else.
The endgame is that, after several unrelated cells of his cult set various groups into motion (corrupting a baron in the Fighter's backstory, setting ghouls on the Cleric's monastery home, inspiring a Spirit Naga to enslave a town, etc.), the party starts adventuring, comes into contact with the cult to find the magic mirror he bestowed on them (it individually insta-kills the generals that remain in the city and uses their souls to create an avatar, but the party gave it up to one of the generals and upset the balance of power in Ykrath instead) and informs the order of secret evils deeper in the swamp's underground. The order, having interacted with the archeologists and having the longshot idea that they and the party can find this library through this. The two groups team up, find proof in his library that Hextor allied with Dispater (anything else taken is a pittance of payment, and if Heironean powers suggest taking the legendary ointment for their god's choice of use then even better), and eventually free the daughter (bestowing the oil upon her if they still have it), vastly upending the balance between the two gods of war. As Hextor's might dwindles over the coming years of battle across the region, Vecna (who already has another cult practicing heresy that Hextor and himself are actually the same god) will take some of his evil divine portfolios and domains. A relatively immediate victory for the forces of good, but with a different adversary on the horizon that's become more powerful and has already proven capable of out-maneuvering them.
The only ways out of the plan at this point are if the party either uncharacteristically gives up on the mission entirely/TPKs (in which case the knights at this point still roughly know where they need to crusade to; delaying the inevitable), or somehow convince the god of justice and war to look over giving his own daughter the immunity oil, to instead try to bury the centuries-old hatchet with his brother who had caused so much suffering to the people of the world, but avoiding the power loss entirely. Additionally, even though the mirror likely won't be making him an avatar anytime soon, it's still imprisoning a powerful druid that his cult trapped earlier. Also, the High Magistrate of The Gran March that the party had been knighted by is also the local high priestess of the notoriously-zealous Church of Pholtus (LG god of light and the last organization to fight Vecna's empire in recorded history), who will take the continued existence of Vecna's empire rather poorly and will rile the clergy into a fearmongering frenzy, especially with the knowledge that knights of the realm (party) had willingly agreed to not only pass over having a Pholtan priestess accompany them (they had asked for help earlier, proven useful, and was offered services again if necessary), suffer the great Satan's generals to live, but agreed to export resources to said generals under penalty of subservience (the party saw the subterranean populace that'd turned Gollum-esque over the years underground and took pity). He doesn't have to lift any more fingers at this point, this plan is effectively complete as far as Vecna is concerned, grudges .
TL;DR: Vecna is a manipulative bastard and the majority of the campaign up to this point was completely by his design. That design being I wanted a 1-20 campaign and found a great way to use late-tier-2/early-tier-3 to motivate the party to get roped into extra-evil things later down the line. They find one evil, notice a bigger evil behind it, and in their drive for goodness make enough of a mess for the lesser evil to slink away while they're all distracted.
As someone playing a non-dwarf in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e, I very much enjoy the finagling of inventory encumbrance between my own character and something/one else, like the dwarf in the party, or the horse I RAW need to own in order to progress into the career that my character is best suited for.
Had something similar a few sessions ago; party was raiding Vecna's ancient submerged capital castle to find his Dark Library, and each one got to have one "secret" of their choice. Wizard took a diabolic contract, the quest item; Cleric took an amulet that can exorcise demons; Fighter got a divine message and took some oil of invulnerability, but he also got greedy and took a belt of storm giant's strength.
Of course, the trick is that Vecna wanted them to get those items because he'd been orchestrating the entire campaign for a payoff centuries in the future. He's not even going to show up in the campaign, all he has to do is send his AD&D minions that have nonsense like STR-draining grapple attacks and the demilich "devour soul" variant action as a gaze attack to gatekeep the library after the fact, because old-school D&D monsters don't care if you were born in 5e.
I see them recommend "six to eight" Bastion turns for each character level and it gives me 'Nam flashbacks to every argument over why random combat is broken because modern tables don't have the time to run a full adventuring day of combats anymore. This is in the same breath that they're saying that character levels, going off of exponential XP requirements, should take roughly the same amount of in-game time to accomplish? Nay says I. Let's see, free magic items if the DM says yes, how incredibly Monty Haul of WotC. 100 Points for a free revive, how incredibly mobile game of WotC! I can smell the "under-monetized" quotes hovering around the VTT already. All in all, how I feel about the Bastion system is how I feel about all of the UA playtests: a good springboard for better ideas, a neat guide for a DM that doesn't have the better mechanics converted from a previous edition, and a whole lot of bad ideas that smell like they read too many Reddit posts instead of playtesting any of the mechanics. I still remember Jump Action stuck around for way too long.
As for the cantrips, they're hit and miss. Generally speaking: approve of Acid Splash, Blade Ward, Friends, and Produce Flame; disapprove of Shillelagh and True Strike; don't entirely understand the changes to the rest. Why is Poison Spray suddenly a Necromancy cantrip besides "poison bad?" I can see removing Chill Touch's range or anti-undead capabilities, but not both (also, normalize Necromancy spells being disruptive to undead). Shillelagh scaling better than Monk's Martial Arts Die on top of using a spell mod for hit/dmg is mean. I liked using Shocking Grasp to preemptively stop reactions, since it was one of the few non-Counterspell outs to Counterspell/Shield/Silvery Barbs, and taking away metal advantage makes it feel so plain and makes it worse at hitting exactly what it wants to hit: metal-plated martials that are good at Opportunity Attacks. Spare the Dying, as most cheap healing, was balanced by the fact it's at touch-range, so having it increase in range when Healing Word still exists is just... grasping for QoL I guess? True Strike just isn't True Strike anymore, and it's weird that it's giving every full-caster besides Cleric and redundant Druid a radiant-damage melee attack. It could have so easily been anything remotely similar to the original idea: a Bonus Action that made a target's AC 10 + DEX for your next melee weapon attack as you go right for the part with no armor (Verbal component so no Stealth abuse); Reaction on a missed melee attack against you gives you a single auto-hit with a weapon on your next turn as you see the opening; an Action that a la SCAG attack cantrips includes a weapon attack but with magically-guided advantage. Literally anything more original than "Shillelagh but Radiant."
Being a mage kind of makes you a murderhobo by necessity. Shooting/stabbing goblins to death with a weapon is a reasonable degree of force, summoning a swarm of insects to eat them alive is visibly excessive.
Now I can pass down BOTH axes for generations!