D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

FitzTheRuke said:

The monk isn't going to go from the UA into the PHB without a balance pass. I don't think it needs a crowd of commoners with pitchforks and torches.

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Yes, that has been the MO in such cases for quite some time. Over-tune the options so as to give a strong sense of what they are proposing. Then, if the idea is liked well enough, balance through internal testing.

tetrasodium said:

You are basing pretty much this entire post on a misinterpretation of something I wrote about a specific problem caused by time and presentation.

Players should absolutely be expected to read the book and I never said otherwise. However that does not change the fact that "read" is not the same as "study every word of it as if preparing for their doctoral degree in phb" or something and players will often come away with bad expectations... They will especially be likely to if they already thought or even hoped that those expectations would be what they see because through page count and misleading passive/active voice the phb reinforces those expectations.

The phb actively makes it difficult for those bad expectations to be corrected by the gm and "read the entire book for deeeper meaning" is not a thing capable of being done within the time a group allocates to things like session zero or a chargen interaction. That's an especially unreasonable thing for the GM to be expected to fix now when the problem is created by the 2014phb making efforts to shift PC backgrounds out of the background where they were once omitted or clearly and explicitly explained as a secondary thing to more important stuff and into the foreground.

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No one is asking a player to study the PHB. That is not what I said. All they need to do is read the four-page introduction, and they will clearly understand the DM and player roles. And, again, session zero (whether the player has read the PHB or not) also eliminates all the problematic background feature options for a table if the DM (or player) needs it eliminated. I don't get it. Why do you act like people don't or can't communicate in a game based around communication?

Let me put it like this: If you plan to play a game for a year, meeting each week or bi-weekly with the same people, and it was a game based around communication - you had better be able to communicate during session zero.

Scott Christian said:

No one is asking a player to study the PHB. That is not what I said. All they need to do is read the four-page introduction, and they will clearly understand the DM and player roles. And, again, session zero (whether the player has read the PHB or not) also eliminates all the problematic background feature options for a table if the DM (or player) needs it eliminated. I don't get it. Why do you act like people don't or can't communicate in a game based around communication?

Let me put it like this: If you plan to play a game for a year, meeting each week or bi-weekly with the same people, and it was a game based around communication - you had better be able to communicate during session zero.

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Without opening the book cite the page number and quote the relevant section that you feel makes an ironclad case supporting a gm pushing back against a player who read the background section and came away certain of the bad expectations it reinforces. Since that's not a reasonable ask for the gm to accomplish in the middle of session zero just time how long it takes you to find and accomplish that while the player is making their case to the other players for what they feel are unreasonable boundaries being set by the gm.

At best you are stretching beyond any reasonable level to tiptoe around the impact of changes to how backgrounds are presented

Looking at what the PHB says about Backgrounds, it's easy to see that these features were intended to be used most of the time players wished to employ them. First, the PHB says that features provide concrete (ie, not abstract) benefits:

Next, the language for features include things like "you may expect to" or "will support you" or "even across great distances". What's not said is "ask your DM", "at the DM's discretion", or "the DM may".



Certainly, everything in the game is subject to the DM's discretion! But if something was intended to be a negotiation or requiring specific permission or rulings every time it was used, the books usually state as much, for example:

Background features are presented in the same way a character's racial and class features are- abilities that you have, can rely on working when you need to as written, and not requiring much in the way DM oversight or discretion to be used.

Now as has been noted, if a Background feature isn't going to be useful, or requires negotiation with the DM to use, then that should be done in a Session Zero. Or, as the DMG says on page 26:


Before the game even begins, the DM should know what the backgrounds of the characters are, and how to incorporate them into the game. The players should know what they can expect out of their backgrounds and features.

The reasons Backgrounds are changing is simply because this vital step was not being taken in enough campaigns that WotC was obviously not receiving positive feedback about features. What was meant to be a "cool thing" for players (and certainly not vestigial, as the text bears out) was simply not being that, for various reasons. So, the playtest seeks to fix this by replacing features with Feats- the idea being, the benefit of Feats will come up much more often, and hopefully without the DM having to make too many allowances for them in their worldbuilding.

What this does not mean is that backgrounds are becoming less of a tool for DM's- you can still do everything 2014 wants you to do with backgrounds if you want to- but enough people weren't doing this, again, for various reasons, that it's gone from a core aspect of the game to something optional.

James Gasik said:

Looking at what the PHB says about Backgrounds, it's easy to see that these features were intended to be used most of the time players wished to employ them. First, the PHB says that features provide concrete (ie, not abstract) benefits:
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Next, the language for features include things like "you may expect to" or "will support you" or "even across great distances". What's not said is "ask your DM", "at the DM's discretion", or "the DM may".
View attachment 350379
View attachment 350380
View attachment 350381
Certainly, everything in the game is subject to the DM's discretion! But if something was intended to be a negotiation or requiring specific permission or rulings every time it was used, the books usually state as much, for example:
View attachment 350382
Background features are presented in the same way a character's racial and class features are- abilities that you have, can rely on working when you need to as written, and not requiring much in the way DM oversight or discretion to be used.

Now as has been noted, if a Background feature isn't going to be useful, or requires negotiation with the DM to use, then that should be done in a Session Zero. Or, as the DMG says on page 26:
View attachment 350383
View attachment 350384
Before the game even begins, the DM should know what the backgrounds of the characters are, and how to incorporate them into the game. The players should know what they can expect out of their backgrounds and features.

The reasons Backgrounds are changing is simply because this vital step was not being taken in enough campaigns that WotC was obviously not receiving positive feedback about features. What was meant to be a "cool thing" for players (and certainly not vestigial, as the text bears out) was simply not being that, for various reasons. So, the playtest seeks to fix this by replacing features with Feats- the idea being, the benefit of Feats will come up much more often, and hopefully without the DM having to make too many allowances for them in their worldbuilding.

What this does not mean is that backgrounds are becoming less of a tool for DM's- you can still do everything 2014 wants you to do with backgrounds if you want to- but enough people weren't doing this, again, for various reasons, that it's gone from a core aspect of the game to something optional.

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What you've done is demonstrate how 5e backgrounds encourage players to think of them as something far more important and supported than they should be. The fact that you had to cite the dmg to find any meaningful text about collaboration and that text is almost exclusively written as if one were writing a service industry job role with nothing meaningful directed at the other side of the screen actually working with that process or even accepting the results speaks volumes about how far off the rails 5e backgrounds are as presented to a player going into session zero & beyond with bad expectations.

A background can't exist without a setting for it to fit and a poorly fitting background or background feature can be incredibly disruptive to a the world and themes of a campaign world.

I mean, I mostly play B/X D&D when playing D&D, but I'll be keeping up for my one 5e game because this is the game my employers make.

tetrasodium said:

What you've done is demonstrate how 5e backgrounds encourage players to think of them as something far more important and supported than they should be. The fact that you had to cite the dmg to find any meaningful text about collaboration and that text is almost exclusively written as if one were writing a service industry job role with nothing meaningful directed at the other side of the screen actually working with that process or even accepting the results speaks volumes about how far off the rails 5e backgrounds are as presented to a player going into session zero & beyond with bad expectations.

A background can't exist without a setting for it to fit and a poorly fitting background or background feature can be incredibly disruptive to a the world and themes of a campaign world.

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Ok hold up. Are you saying that backgrounds are not intended to be important and supported by the game? Because all the text I cut and pasted states that they very clearly are intended to be important and supported; the very first part where it says that backgrounds provide concrete benefits very clearly states that features are at least as meaningful as skill proficiencies and languages.

5e DM's were clearly intended to treat backgrounds as just as important as a character's choice of race or class. The section in the DMG supports this- the DM is intended to make the player's backgrounds important in th game. If a chosen background won't fit, this is where the DM can say "yeah, I don't see that working" and you go from there, but you were never supposed to have a moment where a player goes "Oh hey, I'm a noble, does that mean I can do X?" and have the DM say "yeah, uh, no, that makes no sense".

All of this was supposed to have been hashed out before play ever began.

Look at that first sentence of "Involving the Characters" again. The whole reason backgrounds are changing is because DM's either don't want to let players "help tell the story" or don't know how (especially problematic with canned adventures). In short, backgrounds weren't important because DM's didn't want them to be.

Thus now we will have backgrounds, but it's ok if the DM doesn't want them to do anything, the benefits they grant will be purely mechanical rather than giving players influence on the story.

James Gasik said:

the very first part where it says that backgrounds provide concrete benefits very clearly states that features are at least as meaningful as skill proficiencies and languages.

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I think you are reading too much into some specific word choices: the way these benefits worked in practice since basically day one is how they are presented in the newer rules. These aren't trump cards that overrule everything else, but thst isn't how people use them in practice in my experience. So is this an evolution of presentation? Yes, but one that makes the rules align more with real gameplay.

James Gasik said:

Ok hold up. Are you saying that backgrounds are not intended to be important and supported by the game? Because all the text I cut and pasted states that they very clearly are intended to be important and supported; the very first part where it says that backgrounds provide concrete benefits very clearly states that features are at least as meaningful as skill proficiencies and languages.

5e DM's were clearly intended to treat backgrounds as just as important as a character's choice of race or class. The section in the DMG supports this- the DM is intended to make the player's backgrounds important in th game. If a chosen background won't fit, this is where the DM can say "yeah, I don't see that working" and you go from there, but you were never supposed to have a moment where a player goes "Oh hey, I'm a noble, does that mean I can do X?" and have the DM say "yeah, uh, no, that makes no sense".

All of this was supposed to have been hashed out before play ever began.

Look at that first sentence of "Involving the Characters" again. The whole reason backgrounds are changing is because DM's either don't want to let players "help tell the story" or don't know how (especially problematic with canned adventures). In short, backgrounds weren't important because DM's didn't want them to be.

Thus now we will have backgrounds, but it's ok if the DM doesn't want them to do anything, the benefits they grant will be purely mechanical rather than giving players influence on the story.

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I feel like I've been incredibly clear and consistent if you go back through my posts on the subject. 5e shifted backgrounds in that way and I've made no obfuscations to the contrary. In making that shift wotc presented them in a way that encourages players with a bad expectation to dig in and double down when unreasonable expectations are challenged by a gm attempting to push back. There's no reason to go into it again because I feel like my previous posts in this exchange do a good enough job covering the bad expectations and how the presentation reinforces them with little value other than raising the bar to push back against a player holding bad expectations.

Parmandur said:

I think you are reading too much into some specific word choices: the way these benefits worked in practice since basically day one is how they are presented in the newer rules. These aren't trump cards that overrule everything else, but thst isn't how people use them in practice in my experience. So is this an evolution of presentation? Yes, but one that makes the rules align more with real gameplay.

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So when they say:

Your contention is that features are not equal to proficiencies and languages, and are not intended to be a concrete benefit? Why even use the word concrete instead of simply "benefit"?

Why give features such definitive language that say "you can expect this" "you can do this thing" "people will support you" if this wasn't intended to be a method you can (more or less reliably) use to influence the story?

Why not instead say "you may suggest to your DM that your background could possibly grant you an advantage" if that's what they intended?