Using a d12 as a d10 with extra bits is absolutely genius for me. I’m working on a dice-pool based TTRPG system that is based on d10, but I may incorporate this fun tidbit to get some extra juice out of dice rolls.

Yes, but if you don’t offer the same accommodations for the person who goes into excruciating detail about how they lift up an iron grate, there’s a bit of an unfair imbalance there. Same goes for someone who can’t necessarily verbalize an entire conversation on the subject, but can say, “I’d like to try and persuade the Governor that we’re perfectly capable individuals, and specifically bring up how we took care of the rats in the tavern cellar, as well as how we turned away the bandits attempting to burgle Mrs. Henderson’s store.”

If you don’t allow for either of those types of situations, you’re just promoting people who have a real-life charisma over those that don’t.

I believe Shkipin confirmed in a tweet that the illustrations would be reworked. No idea if this was caught in time to change the first printing, or if it will only be changed for the second run forward. Also no word as to whether or not they will be reworked with/without AI. I suspect they will, given how prolific Shkipin is in the AI/NFT front, but I hope WotC will take a closer look at things to prevent that from happening.

DiceCloud is a fantastic character sheet website. Fully customizable in terms of homebrew items and subclasses and the like, and the discord community is super friendly and willing to help you with whatever. It looks really intimidating, but there are guides and pre-made libraries that will help you with whatever you need.

The cat idea came from this post, and I typed up an expanded version there.

As far as the Dwarven STRanger goes, yeah it’s a bit rough that Core5e doesn’t have any major support for mundane returning weapons. Although in the main campaign I’m playing in, my DM is very generous and allows me to use the Spheres of Power/Might 3pp, which does have options for that. And really just expanded options for Martials across the board. But the initial version of this guy had him primarily wielding a Greataxe and a Battleaxe, switching to throwing axes if he needed the range.

A Dwarven STRanger. Classic Hunter, uses exclusively axes.

An Elven Fey Wanderer Ranger/Echo Knight Fighter who is basically “pretty boy in plate punches things”.

A blind Human Divine Soul Sorc/Celestial Warlock who can go in one of two directions:

1. An individual who believes themselves to be the Herald of a LG god, but is unknowingly in service to an evil deity.

2. A man who lost everything, and believes he was spurned by the gods. So, he sets upon a warpath to kill the gods in revenge.

EDIT: Can’t believe I forgot about CAT. The Tabaxi Genie Warlock who was a normal cat that wandered into an antique shop and was rubbing against a bunch of random things, and eventually rubbed up against a magic lamp. A Djinni came out, and asked him what he desired. After some confused meows, the Djinni couldn’t understand him, so he turned him into a Tabaxi so they could talk to each other. The Djinni then realized his mistake, and helps the poor Tabaxi navigate life as a new humanoid.

It may be worth it for you to see if your FLGS has a regular TTRPG night, or if there's any "nerd bars" nearby that offer something like that.

As counter-intuitive as it sounds; Take a Break.

Take an intentional couple or three sessions off from the campaign where you're not even actively thinking about it. During that time, maybe try to consume media that reflects what you're trying to achieve in your campaigns.

Also, have a heart-to-heart with your players about scheduling issues and how you feel about them. I feel you with this problem. My table just recently ran into a 10-week stint where we only played two sessions; we're normally an every-week digital meet-up. Ignoring the two-week vacation that I took in there, that everyone was made aware of months in advance, most of the cancellations were from players cancelling the day of or day before with something that wasn't last-minute. Even though I have a staunch "Real Life Comes First" approach to the table and cancellations, it's intensely frustrating having players constantly cancel on you like that. I haven't had "The Talk" with them yet about this, we're back into the swing of playing regularly now, and I don't think I'm going to since we're rapidly approaching the end of my campaign, but it's in my back pocket, and it's slightly making me reconsider my next campaign.

Best of luck to you!

Yeah, we do something similar in one of the campaigns I play in, and it's a shitload of fun, and kinda takes the sting out of what is likely to be an inevitable death. We don't grant inspiration for it, we just use it as a fun RP moment. Definitely helps flesh out characters and things that wouldn't normally come to light during a campaign.