My setting has technology more-or-less equivalent to Earth's 17th century, and a big chunk of my inspiration is Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. The books detail the steps that led to the industrial revolution so my setting also has similar early tech, aided by magic of course.

(Airships, for example, use magic derived from Resilient Sphere to make their balloons supernaturally rigid and impermeable, then instead of filling it with a lifting gas they just evacuate all air from it. Their hulls look like solid wood but they are instead a honeycomb structure made of giant spider silk sandwiched between thin wooden veneers to keep the cold air out, and reinforced with the occasional mithral spar. The propulsion is purely magic though, the props are powered by aetherosiphon engines. There are some secret military projects aimed at creating a fully-pressurized heavier-than-air skyship that can actually fly over the taller mountain ranges; since their passenger compartment is not pressurized, a standard skyship's maximal cruising altitude is 3-3.5 kilometers while a trained military crew can maybe get up to 4.5 km.)

The Forgotten Realms setting is the "default" D&D setting. Most published adventures take place in it, specifically a small part of it (planet: Toril, continent: Faerun, region: Sword Coast, the west coast of Faerun; this region has a number of famous cities like Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Candlekeep, Neverwinter, etc...). The vast majority of lore that you can find in books like the Monster Manual specifically relate to this setting (Volo, Mordenkainen, Tasha, Xanathar, etc... all live there anyway). It also has many famous characters and deities (e.g. Corellon, Gruumsh, Moradin...), countries, cultures, even some languages. And it also includes things like the Kenku curse.

But of course if you're running a homebrew setting like I do, you can feel free to cherry-pick it or just straight-up ignore it.

That was pre-MotM, and also Forgotten Realms lore which holds no water in a homebrew setting.

Because I don't speak Quenya. (I wrote the signature of an Elvish character in Tengwar, but that's about it.)

I have my own language mappings in my homebrew. Most of them only appear as names since most people speak Common, but I did include some people in my game who don't. (I make sure that they are some who speak a language that I speak too.) So the mappings are:

1. Common - English. We're playing in English, duh. (Before contact with Elves, humans spoke "proto-Common" which would be mapped to German if I had to use it. Many humans still have German names.)
2. (High) Elvish - French. Yes, in-universe the Common language has plenty of Elvish influence. (Classical Elvish is Latin.)
3. (Wood) Elvish - Greek. Most Wood Elves speak High Elvish, but their names are Greek and many of them still speak their own language as well. The continents and seas are often named in Ancient Wood-Elvish (i.e., classical Greek) because they used to be the primary explorers before the rise of the High Elves.
4. Dwarvish - modern Dwarvish is Norwegian, old Dwarvish is Icelandic.
5. Halfling - Frisian. (Fortunately I haven't had to say anything in Halfling so far.)
6. Gnomish - Welsh. (Again, fortunately I haven't had to say anything in Gnomish yet.)
7. Orc - Russian.
8. Goblin - Mongolian.
9. Tellurian (not a species, but an influential country) - Spanish. Many people alongside the Bay of Luria speak Tellurian as their native language instead of Common or their racial language.
10. Sylvan - Finnish. (My go-to for weirder names as well. Many Fey-related creatures have Finnish names, as well as those who live near Fey portals.)
11. Giant - Hungarian. (They feature a lot in Hungarian folk tales.)
12. Draconic - Hindi.
13. Hashiman (not a species, but a group of eight islands - though they are also the Kenku homeland so most Kenku speak this as their native language) - Japanese-ish. The language comes in two dialects, Hanego which is used primarily by Kenku but also Aaracokra, Owlin, Tortles, and other creatures with hard beaks that have difficulty pronouncing M and N, and Hadago which is used by the rest. They are identical in writing, differ mostly in pronouncing those sounds.

Magic missile can become a lot more potent than that (on average):

1. Make a Scribes wizard
2. Take the Elemental Adept feat and pick something that very few creatures are immune to, e.g. thunder.
3. Change the MM's damage to thunder.

Now you can pew-pew to your heart's content with each pew doing a guaranteed 3 damage instead of 2, and puming the average damage of the pews from 3.5 to 3.75. Not a huge jump, but if you upcast it to level 5 with 7 pews, that's 26.25 on average instead of 24.5 with a minimum of 21 instead of 14.

Hiring monodrones is usually cheaper. They are the simplest Modrons, and they would be perfectly willing to work for a Lawful king (the evil-good axis doesn't come into play) because it increases the amount of order in the multiverse. But every modron has Truesight.

Hell, maybe hire a whole team of modrons. Monodrones to stand watch at all ingresses, with orders of "raise an alarm if you see any disguised shapeshifter enter through that window / door / arrowslit / whatever", and duodrones with orders of "patrol the castle and raise an alarm if you see any disguised shapeshifter".

And that's why you as the DM can do passive skill checks (neé "taking a 10") for non-stressful situations. A routine landing is just 10 + ability mod (probably INT on a big plane with full FBW) + PB. It's only with 3 of the 4 engines down, the 4th on fire, the computers are fucked, you're trying to land the 747 on a dirt strip, and oh, there's a hurricane when you need to actually roll for it.

Though I'm also down with Esper's idea of every class having a limited reliable talent. So every character could pick one class skill at level 7 and one at level 14 in which they couldn't roll under a 10. The "expert" classes (rangers, rogues, bards, and artificers) would have additional picks at levels 3, 10, and 17 with full reliable talent being their capstone feature.

Yeah, the story setup makes it seem like your mission is actually urgent, so I also only long rest when it's absolutely necessary.

That will just turn the same dead commoners in that r=20' sphere extra crispy. I don't think there are any spells in 5e that increase their AoE when upcast and not the damage, duration, or number of targets.

(Either way, if the street is significantly narrower than 20' then a lightning bolt is going to maximize the carnage.)

If it's a common item with a listed price, and you're in a city big enough to reasonably have that item in stock, just do your shopping "offline". Sometimes I even include a low-level Forge cleric in small towns so the party could do their sub-100gp item shopping. (In that case the cleric charges an extra 10% donation for the Forgetemple, which they will use to feed orphans, create farming equipment, etc...)

That being said, I straight-up stole Dr. T'Ana from Lower Decks as a ship surgeon.

Exactly. The duration is one round, the distance is "any distance", and the target can reply immediately. If it had lightspeed delay then the distance would be limited to 3 lightseconds.

Sending already allows FTL communication.

If we're about to simulate physics, the wooden stick would turn into an expanding cloud of plasma about halfway through the "railgun" anyway.

Evil DM: the bookcase is also a mimic.

A recurring villain was introduced on the first session. She was a human pirate captain with very pale skin. One of my players immediately thought that she was a vampire.

...

So she is a dhamphir now. (Couldn't make her a full vampire, they met her in daylight.) Not like it gave her much of a boost except for a climbing speed and spider climb anyway.

Greek is also Indo-European though.

If 1-2 players are missing then their characters receive the Talisman of Protection from DM Stupidity and I take them over in combat.

Clone. Doesn't work post-mortem, but if they can last for ~120 days... and if they can't, there's always Imprisonment or True Polymorph to keep them alive until the clone body matures.