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.

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.

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.”