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

 

[Charlaquin]

Short or long sightedness is often considered a disease but where to draw the line is complicated (e.g., Is Myopia A Disease or Not?).

It’s complicated to determine if myopia should be considered a disease, but myopia is not synonymous with nearsightedness and farsightedness. Nearsightedness is a disability that can be caused by a variety of different things, myopia being one of them. Calling it a disease would be like calling chest congestion a disease. Chest congestion is not a disease, it’s a symptom that many diseases can cause, and some things that are not diseases (like allergies) can also cause.

I suppose it is up to the DMs judgement on whether a character's sight issues are a disease (and therefore cured by a 2d level lesser restoration) or a variation from normal. I think most DMs trying to interpret RAW would not say that any restoration can be used to better a characters vision if their vision is within normal range. Not that it would matter. The RAW are not that granular. In my games, I rule a lesser/greator restoration spell, RESTORES. It isn't going to cure a preternatural condition. It also won't reverse the effects of aging. But if sight has declined due to an injury or disease, it would seem that some fairly low level magic could cure it.

I think that’s a reasonable take, but also, just because magical corrections are possible doesn’t mean technological corrections wouldn’t be used. Assuming this wizard does have vision impairment, maybe she just finds glasses to be an acceptable enough solution and is content to use them rather than correcting it magically.

But why are we assuming these are vision correcting lenses. They could be magic lenses of some sort. She could be wearing them for some protection from all the stuff flying around. It could just be more comfortable reading with reading glasses to reduce eye strain and fatique from poring over tomes with intricate magic script and diagrams.

It is an interesting thing to notice and discuss, but seems a weird thing to find objectionable.

Agreed!

 

[Parmandur]

It’s complicated to determine if myopia should be considered a disease, but myopia is not synonymous with nearsightedness and farsightedness. Nearsightedness is a disability that can be caused by a variety of different things, myopia being one of them. Calling it a disease would be like calling chest congestion a disease. Chest congestion is not a disease, it’s a symptom that many diseases can cause, and some things that are not diseases (like allergies) can also cause.

I think that’s a reasonable take, but also, just because magical corrections are possible doesn’t mean technological corrections wouldn’t be used. Assuming this wizard does have vision impairment, maybe she just finds glasses to be an acceptable enough solution and is content to use them rather than correcting it magically.

Agreed!

They also might not be "glasses" for corrective vision, could be Glasses of True Sight or some other magical device.

 

[Hussar]

There's also the presumption that she's human. After all, glowing eyes isn't all that rare in a number of races.

After all, this is an Aasimar (isn't she?):

Take off the halo (which Aasimar don't have to have) give her white hair (which aasimar often do have) and poof, that's our wizard.

 

[Charlaquin]

They also might not be "glasses" for corrective vision, could be Glasses of True Sight or some other magical device.

Yeah, which MNBlockhead noted am I agreed with.

 

[Charlaquin]

Maybe the glowing of her own eyes damaged her retinas and that’s why she needs glasses!

 

[Tonguez]

I don’t like things that seem—SEEM—anachronistic. Yes it’s fantasy and not our timeline/world, but still.

otherwise it’s OK.

corrective lenses were first used in 13th century Italy, so not anachronistic at all really.
And DnD has Googles of Night Vision, so maybe thats what she's wearing. I agree it looks too MtG for my taste but it is a nice piece of digital art.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

corrective lenses were first used in 13th century Italy, so not anachronistic at all really.

I suspect what does and does not SEEM anachronistic depends on how much history you know!

Gunpowder weapons - 10th century.

Rails in mines - 16th century.

 

[Autumnal]

It seems the anime-fantasy style art is here to stay…

I just wanted to note that there was a decade in which American artists who were familiar with manga and anime made their debuts in various science fiction & fantasy fields. That decade was the 1970s. Frank Miller and Wendy Pini are the most famous of that generation; like the others, they hung around Asian grocery stores and scooped up imported manga and pirated videotapes, well before most of us had done more than heard about manga or seen anything anime more sophisticated than Kimba the White Lion and Soeed Racer. Pini’s Wlfquest series debuted in 1978, Miller’s run on Daredevil (his first work where he put manga influence to work) in 1979.

Which is to say that successful American commercial fantasy art is not older than D&D. But it is older than Moldvay/Cook Basic, and the same age as the AD&D1 Player’s Handbook (in the case of Pini) and DM’s Guide (in the case of Miller). In effectiv terms, it’s as old as D&D, and if D&D can have ancient well-established conventions, then so can American fantasy art with manga and anime influences. They aren’t news.

(Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials is also a 1979 release, and Barlowe was another American influenced early by Asian commercial art along with his Western influences.)

I'm going to say, it is vaguely Anime, but that is a huge plus for me. The aesthetics, magical systems, and overall fantasy (not just high fantasy) depictions in Anime are far more advanced and innovative than what we typically see in the West.

I could sit here and go on about Barlowe, P. Craig Russell, Donna Barr, Colleen Doran…but those are standouts. I’m inclined to agree. We were watching some of the Korean series Alchemy of Souls this week, and I kept thinking, “Now this is a way I love magic to look like.”

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I really like the wizard art in the 2014 PHB. Something about the character and the color saturation just really works for me.

This one is okay too as an action piece (maybe casting a wish or something?)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To me, I just see a regular casting animation, as you would expect to see in most depictions of magic use in the 2020s. These days, magic is flashy, even if it's only a first level spell I float into the air, my eyes glow, and power swirls about me.

The age of Tolkien's subtle magic has long since passed.

D&D has always drawn heavily on the pop culture of it's time. It what has kept it from fading into obscurity.