How can I ask a good homebrew review question?

Question

I'd like to post some homebrew material I've made, and I want people to review it so I can ensure it will work well. How can I ask a good question like this? What are our guidelines for handling these questions well as an asker?

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See also:

• dnd-5e How should I ask about my D&D 5e Homebrew being balanced?
• dnd-5e How do I evaluate whether my homebrew race is balanced?

Answer 1

1. State what you want to achieve, and why you want a review.

In order to give you feedback on whether your material is functioning well at its purpose, we need to know what that purpose is. Please also tell us if there's anything you're particularly worried about or looking to improve or fix.

As you share your homebrew, tell us:

• What it should accomplish, or what your aims for it are.
• If it's an item or class, what kind of power level you're going for, if such a concept applies to your game.
• If you're sharing a monster or challenge or obstacle, include who is supposed to be challenged by it, which might mean briefly informing us about the player characters if you're a GM. (Feel free to be specific to your situation.)
• To help others (and yourself) keep track of and differentiate the questions, please put the name and any key information (such as what option type it is) in the question title.

2. Iterate in follow-up questions, not by editing the same question.

If you want to incorporate feedback, but still want review on your material, then post a new follow-up question with the updates. Please wait a few days first so you can get multiple sources of feedback on this version, and so you have time to think on it. Follow-ups should be substantial.

Specifically, we ask that you wait for 72 hours (3 days) as a minimum before asking about a follow-up iteration. We'll close iterations asked sooner than that as duplicates.

To post a good follow-up:

• Say which question you're following up. Link to it.
• Say what changes have been made since the last version.
• Still make sure this is an independent question being clear what you want and why you still want review.

As a ground rule, do not revise your question with feedback from answers, unless it's just fixing a typo, or clarifying things that already exist in your homebrew. This includes by appending those revisions to your post. Instead, ask a follow-up later.

The concern here is that revising inside your question makes answers obsolete, which requires cleanup and create a mess. We would prefer to keep the advice present for future visitors.

3. Try playtesting, and share the results if you have.

If it's possible, do some theoretical playtesting of your material yourself to see how it works out in practice. For example, if you're brewing a D&D monster, you can run a short battle using your player characters to see how they might fare against it. This might give you some immediate things to do before you even ask us, but it might also give you some concerns to bring up as you ask us about the material.