D&D (2024) Here's The New 2024 Player's Handbook Wizard Art

 

[ezo]

Okay. Then does it really make sense to complain that about half of the art is going to be about the parts of DnD you don't like?

If I don't like it, I'm just saying I don't like it, and I have my reasons for it.

Semantics. Heal ends the “blind” condition. If you don’t have the blind condition it does nothing.

No, lesser restoration heals the blind condition. Heal cures actual blindness. That's the difference.

You shouldn't have to, but this has been an affliction of posting online for a long time. I've gotten half into the habit of stating things as my opinion in some conversations just because of this situation.

I'm sorry you feel you have to do that. You shouldn't have to.

How about I leave it there and I will pretend I like the glasses?

No, don't give in! Stand your ground, man.

Okay. You don't need to understand it though to recognize that it is true.

Recognize what is true? That you have a choice? If so, I never doubted or argued you didn't....

Um... color, size and shape?

It depends a lot on how impaired your vision is, or someone else's.

Like, if your paladin ally is wearing mithril platemail and you are fighting a 9 foot blue-ice devil... even at a distance I can tell the shiny person from big blue person. It could be a problem, and if it is a problem to that degree where you can't tell friend from ally... you can have multiple pairs of glasses? Like, I carry spare glasses in my bag.

In some cases, such as this, sure. What about your ranger or rogue in light armor fighting a bunch of orcs in hide armor and you're 100 feet away tossing in a fireball?

Anyway, this entire discussion was about you not having glasses to help you see... so I don't see how having multiple pairs of glasses relates at all.

It truly would not be difficult to deal with.

Then your vision is not as bad as you suggested when you wrote "I'd have a hard time seeing people's faces".

 

[Chaosmancer]

What I would say is that it was a statement of preference with some explanation as to why. I was very clear about how it felt was not a factual thing. I said “SEEMS” in all caps to clarify the point it may not be anachronistic. How can it be?

As to “you probably don’t like enough of what has been published so sit down and be quiet,” my answer is simple.

Why are you answering something I didn't ask? I never said "sit down and be quiet". But if I don't like romances (I don't, I tend to find most stories that focus on romance to be full of too much pointless drama) then it seems rather silly of me to get into a discussion about a long-running romance plot doing something I don't like. Then getting increasingly upset that my anti-romance views are being challenged.

Express your preference, sure, but if you want a conversation to be fruitful, you need to engage in a way that understands the material you are discussing. Glasses don't even SEEM anachronistic to most DnD players, Sure, they do to you, but you need to recognize that the majority of DnD settings aren't the gritty and dirty Greyhawk setting. Most of the settings are using far different aesthetics. And "I would prefer if this was a grittier art piece featuring this narrow part of the game I prefer" is fine... but also clearly not a PROBLEM with the art as it was meant to be created and seen.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I already pointed that out - Isekai doesn't have to be a bunch of sexist power-fantasy drivel about nothing - but just like most Urban Fantasy is sexist, toxic-relationship stuff or just creepy in a bad way, most Isekai is drivel.

And the same exact problem exists with Urban Fantasy recommendations - if you see an Urban Fantasy novel on a list of "good fantasy novels" (or equally, any fantasy novel which involves a female assassin in her teens through early twenties - they have a similar thing going on*), if you're an experienced fantasy reader, alarm bells, even sirens and flashing lights, should be going off for you, because there's an approximately 10% chance that is actually a good, genuinely interesting book with something to say, which is worth your time, and a 90% chance it's awful drivel that just happens to fit someone's fetish, and makes the porn-iest horn-iest Anne Rice novels look super-classy and cool..

Likewise with Isekai - if you see one on a list of good anime, there's a 5-10% chance it is good (towards the higher end if the main character is not a teen/twenties boy), and 90% chance it's awful pap/pablum/drivel that just happens to allow certain to turn off their brains and lather themselves in the gross, unoriginal and frankly interesting power fantasy it represents - and again I still haven't seen a single Isekai that had good fight scenes or animation even - that's like the minimum you could ask if you're going to make a power-fantasy-centric anime.

* = There are good novels which fit this description, but they are certainly outnumbered strongly by bad ones which lean hard into a few gross tropes, and so-called "BookTok" has made sure the terrible ones are successful and well-rated. BookTok in general has succeeded in promoting way more completely terrible writers who basically should have stuck to fan-fiction than it has in bringing forwards hidden gems.

And if a Sci-fi story shows a guy with a gun, a large percentage of the time it is pointless drivel about how war is good. And if a show is listed as a comedy, a large percentage of the time the humor is for the lowest common denomitor, if not outright offensive and poorly written.

What you are talking about isn't a problem with the GENRE it is a known phenomena called Sturgeon's law, the vast majority of media is crap. But you keep presenting it as though it is somehow unique to Isekai. Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, Ascendance of the Bookworm, Digimon, I've heard good things about Jobless Reincarnation but haven't checked it out yet, Campfire Cooking in Another world... sure some of these are power fantasies, but actually three of them are very decidely NOT power fantasies.

I share some of your frustrations, there are tropes I don't like in Isekai's as well. Other tropes that I'm actually fine with. But from your earlier post you seemed to start from the basis that Isekai MUST contain sexist power fantasies involving slave girls... and they don't. That isn't a requirement to be an Isekai, it is just a bunch of tropes that people are using. But the good shows in the genre won't be able to rise above the slop if you constantly tell everyone that there is no point in engaging with the genre because it is all toxic drivel with no value. Especially when you paint with the brush in such a way to imply that it is nearly impossible to write a story in the genre without engaging with the bad tropes, which is absurdly false.

Again, Isekai means "transported to another world", Narnia counts. If you think Narnia contains toxic sex harems of slave girls, maybe you need to re-read it. It doesn't matter if you can find a dozen Isekai that do have that, the point is that it isn't an inherent feature of the genre. Just like the ditzy friend isn't an inherent feature of romances.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Why are you answering something I didn't ask? I never said "sit down and be quiet". But if I don't like romances (I don't, I tend to find most stories that focus on romance to be full of too much pointless drama) then it seems rather silly of me to get into a discussion about a long-running romance plot doing something I don't like. Then getting increasingly upset that my anti-romance views are being challenged.

Express your preference, sure, but if you want a conversation to be fruitful, you need to engage in a way that understands the material you are discussing. Glasses don't even SEEM anachronistic to most DnD players, Sure, they do to you, but you need to recognize that the majority of DnD settings aren't the gritty and dirty Greyhawk setting. Most of the settings are using far different aesthetics. And "I would prefer if this was a grittier art piece featuring this narrow part of the game I prefer" is fine... but also clearly not a PROBLEM with the art as it was meant to be created and seen.

I said it was “good” but not to my preference and why.

For that alone it has been suggested I don’t know history (I know more than most but OK…I don’t have a Ph.D. In it—fair) and that I do not “understand” the piece in an artistic or marketing sense. Or that I know less about what D&D should be or how it should be represented or something.

This is becoming bizarre and no longer entertaining.

 

[Scribe]

That truly is horrible − and criminal. I want to see more school officials who turn a blind eye to bullying be prosecuted for child abuse, wanton disregard, negligence, and similar.

Don't hold your breath, schools went 100% the other direction and do not perform any kind of action to protect kids in my son's experience.

 

[Hussar]

Life for an adventurer would be much easier if they wore full face helmets too, but they rarely do when they have their portrait painted.

Meanwhile, wizards have mending (and prestidigitation to keep fancy white dresses clean and neat).

And fix broken glasses.

 

[Parmandur]

Also, frankly, I don't think the D&D team would be keen, because it weakens D&D's brand identity, and sort of suggests it's just a subset of MtG. It also reminds people that D&D is a "WotC brand", rather than a beloved game - that's a mistake, right now. Remember the survey? Remember how WotC got significantly more negativity than D&D did? People who said they like D&D, mostly said they were neutral or negative on WotC as a company.

So why in god's holy name would you possible want to reinforce the connection between the somewhat negatively regarded WotC brand (further damaged recently by Larian abandoning them, no matter how diplomatic Swen was), with the D&D brand? It's just a straight-up Bad Idea.

Uh-oh, now it seems more likely that WotC will do this.

Though seriously, I think it's highly likely they will push the nostalgia button with basic Greyhawk in the DMG, for multiple reasons that are extremely off topic.

 

[Autumnal]

Scattered thoughts:

In good humor: The Eternal Champion, Lord Kalvan and Paratime, the Incompleat Enchanter, and Star Ttrek are isekai and it’s funny to imagine them with the cliches.

In not at all good humor, with a significant amount of bitterness I have tried and failed to get past more fully, to all my fellow grognard-venerability gamers arguing that eyesight should be routinely perfect: Where the heck were all of you this last decades when so many of our peers were arguing that characters needing wheelchairs were just screwed unless they found someone willing to use a wish or something, as well as that no level of magic sufficient to give them useful devices was feasible or maybe even possible in typical adventuring worlds, and on and on? Some of this smells really badly of of “I want to see physical perfection of health or I want to see the icky thing go away”.

(Side note: a lot of us grew accustomed to the idea that temporary and especially magically imposed conditions are ontologically distinct from permanent debilities because that’s been for decades the rationale for medieval-ish health conditions. It’s a dramatic reversal of rulings to now wave away any needed for glasses.)

One of my favorite things about younger players overall is how much more likely to take moderate and serious impairments as challenges to have fun folding in than disturbing unsightly blemishes to wish away.

 

[Gradine]

Honestly, some people just don't want to see certain types of people in their D&D because they'd rather be able to pretend that those people don't exist.

 

[Scribe]

I continue to choose to disbelieve that 'glasses' are a concern, especially for a scholarly class like Wizard. Thats the Alpha version, for my fellow nerds. Released in '93.