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There is no such thing as a necessary class. There are useful classes for various things. The Ranger is a useful class. There's an argument for including it. "Niche" is not a reason for a class.

I'd actually go the opposite route. When an aasimar or tiefling disguises themselves and passes as human, it's the "normal world." The assumption is that this character isn't treated as anything more remarkable than an elf or a dwarf. "This is a human" is something that people assume...

Part of what I like about the lore I favor for aasimar is that they are mostly human. They come from human families, they have normal human upbringings, and most of them, probably, in the right outfit, could mostly pass for human. In fact, making a "human disguise" is probably an important skill...

My favorite lore for aasimar is the big question of "What do you do when the world expects you to be perfect?" It goes like this: Mortals were never meant to go to the outer planes. They're beings of flesh, bone, blood, substance, elements. The outer planes aren't good places for things of...

The Henriad would like a word.

I kind of love the janky weirdness of Greyhawk's names. Wee Jass, Flanaess, Nyr Dyv, Baklunish, Oerik, Aerdy... They ain't easy on the spellcheck or the pronunciation, I think, but they're pretty memorable in their own way.

Here's their blurb from Saltmarsh:

Sometimes putting racists in your magical elf escapist fantasy is not the way. It's something a lot of folks deal with in real life, and isn't always fun times to put that in your game. Y'know, like how if you lost a parents as a kid it might be kind of not fun to face an enemy called the...

In the game as it currently exists, that line is crossed at about level 1 and it only gets wilder from there. A "regular person in real life" in D&D is a commoner with straight 10's. Maybe you can beat a scrappy kobold or something, but even having a 15 in a stat is beyond what a regular person...

It's a relative perspective. :) Like, using facing is more tactical, but not using facing allows for things in the description of an effect like a sudden turn, a pivot, something out of the corner of your eye. I mean, it's not true of me (someone who would be glad to see an official 5e...

It's a genre limitation, sure. The genre D&D trucks in includes heroes who can sustain life-threatening injuries and then mostly sleep them off or shrug off long-term effects (even if your HP isn't meat, you can still nearly die from losing it, and then be fine after a night's sleep - there's no...

To say it's always meat is as wrong as to say that it's never meat. To say that it's "almost always" injuries is as wrong as to say that it is "almost always" not injuries. And "injuries" can run the gamut between bruises, nicks, cuts, etc. And natural healing in D&D has traditionally been very...

I mean, I can't prove it, since I'm not there, but I'm quite confident that they do. They've shown a very good ability to listen to multiple channels of feedback. I'm sure they're quite aware that warlord fans aren't all happy with the current options, just like they're aware that psion fans...

This theorycraft isn't born out in actual play. Most 1st-tier monks I've seen blast through an average monster by spending a single ki point on flurry when they decide to nova. d8 hp doesn't mean you get one-shotted, so you can take a round or two of hits (and a round or two is all you need)...

The corollary here is that if commander's strike (or other options) wasn't enough for most people then we would have an official version of the warlord by now when WotC responded to the outcry of excluding it by now. Heck, we probably would've had one in 2014 - these dudes have been...

It's pretty clear in play what a Monk is meant to do, because every monk I've ever actually seen in play is a focused damage-dealer who mostly piles multiple attacks into the enemy. Spending ki is an expected part of their play (spending resources is an expected part of any class's play, no?)...

No, it's strictly nonmagical. See, it says so: It's Not Magic. Right there in The Rules (as proposed). I can't believe I'm bringing this up for the SECOND time in as many weeks, but it's a very good way to parse the talking points here: Saitama. One Punch Man. His origin story is doing a lot...

The Warlord in 4e was a full caster, 'cuz everyone in 4e was a full caster, and if you want to make a Warlord in 5e, we should use a Wizard chassis, and in this essay I will.... ;)

I've got zero problem with a level 20 warlord calling up supernatural help with their (entirely nonmagical) ability to call in an oath, be they angle or debil or zombo or dragin or whatever. It's a magical world, there's magical armies, this person knows how best to use them, even if they don't...

Like any other 5e class, that this hypothetical warlord could also serve in some minimal capacity in any combat or adventuring role. That it has a way to burst damage, that it has ribbons that reinforce its out of combat identity, that it doesn't have to rely on its allies to carry it. And 4e...