Quote Originally Posted by Skrum View Post
This is 100% coming from someone who favors and plays rules-heavy, "combat simulator" hi-op games, but I heartily dislike illusion spells and their ilk. It's the implied control over someone else's actions that bugs me. A player casts an illusion of whatever, and the expectation is the NPC will react in a certain way. If I'm the DM, I now face either 1) doing that and giving the PC's unprecedented control over NPC's, probably with no save, or 2) don't listen and the player feels like they wasted a slot, action, and spell selection.

I get that illusions are a legacy spell type, but I would love to see the end them in favor of defined, easy to use (and balance) spells with clear rules.
I don't understand this at all; open-ended rules where we get to apply judgement, like illusions and enchantments (and improvised actions/contests for that matter), are where tabletop shines relative to other gaming media. If all I wanted were clearly defined spells that don't need any subjective adjudication, I'd be playing a video game instead.

Moreover, there is quite a lot of middle ground between "the PC has unprecedented control over NPC actions" and "they wasted their spell slot and action." This isn't to say that one of these two extremes isn't sometimes appropriate, but most of the time you should be striving to land in between them - rewarding clever illusions without them becoming a universal I-Win button or punching way above the power level of their spell slot.

Quote Originally Posted by Beelzebub1111 View Post
I would like some info on monster manual updates. Without them the stuff in the PHB is only being measured against itself which does little outside of white room theory-crafting.
Honestly, we already have a pretty good idea about current monster design because of MPMM, Bigby's etc. There's plenty of modern stuff to compare 2024 classes to at various tiers and get a sense for how a party will perform. You can even run them through some of the anthology encounters like Golden Vault, Radiant Citadel, or the upcoming Infinite Staircase. So I can see why the MM is the book they chose to focus on last (and it will very likely be the book with the most art to boot.)

So long as we get Basic 2024 alongside or around the PHB we'll have plenty of updated monsters to throw at the updated PCs I'd say.