D&D (2024) WotC Fireside Chat: Revised 2024 Player’s Handbook

In this video about the upcoming revised Player’s Handnook, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins reveal a few new tidbits.

• The books are near final and almost ready to go to print
• Psionic subclasses such as the Soulknife and Psi Warrior will appear in the core books
• Named spells have art depicting their creators.
• There are new species in the PHB.

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[Kurotowa]

Then forget JC and the weave. Dragons fly despite that making no physical sense. Giants exist and can move around in flagrant defiance of the square-cube law. Trolls regenerate limbs in seconds with no apparent energy expenditure. And all of these things are treated as normal parts of how the material plane works, rather than magical effects created by some will-worker. The fact of the matter is, there exist in D&D’s worlds some beyond-natural things that are magic, and some beyond-natural things that are simply part of the nature of these fantastical worlds. That being the case, we should be able to imagine characters who lack magical ability but can still perform feats that are beyond what is possible in real life. If a giant can exist, there should be no reason Goku can’t.

All spells are magical, but not all magic is spells. In a magical world, it only makes sense that many creatures would develop a way to use magic passively and innately for their own benefit. It's just like how lifeforms on Earth will evolve to exploit any energy source available, be it solar or thermal or radiation.

 

[Yaarel]

Dragons are innately magical, yes. That doesn’t mean their flight is an act of magic. It’s simply a facet of their nature. And I notice no one wants to address giants existing and being able to stand, and walk, and not collapse under their own body weight.

The current fighter is not even supernatural. But it could be, and their supernatural abilities would not need to be defined as magic. Again, if giants exist, why can’t Goku?

Dragons are magic in every sense. I was reviewing the 2014 Monster Manual.

I read this to mean the Dragon breath is explicitly magic. "Dragons are also magical creatures whose innate power fuels their dreaded breath weapons and other preternatural abilities." It can also be understood to mean that its preternatural method of flight is likewise explicitly "magical", because the magical creature does it in a magical way.

Meanwhile, in a Variant textbox: "Dragons are innately magical creatures that can master a few spells as they age, using this variant." Here the magic of a Dragon can extend to casting spells innately, but typically includes nonspell magical traits.

The Lair Actions including features like "magical darkness" and "magic fog".

"The region containing a legendary ... dragon's lair is warped by the dragon's magic." "A legendary white dragon's innate magic deepens the cold in the area around its lair." And so on.


All of these "preternatural" traits are explicitly "magic" according to the rules of D&D 5e.

It seems unsustainable to posit such high tier features except by the means of magic.

 

[Scribe]

Again, if giants exist, why can’t Goku

He could, just not as a human fighter.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is unaided flight a thing anyone has ever asked for fighters to be capable of? I was talking about superhuman feats of physical prowess, the specific example I used being cutting a mountain in half with a sword. I could see a character who could jump high and far enough being practically indistinguishable from flight, I suppose, but I imagine such a leap allowing for far less precise areal maneuvering than actual flight would do.

Ok, but in no way are either of those abilities not supernatural.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As a DM, that sucks. I've got two high-level groups now, and a good chunk of prep is now devoted to, "can a single spell invalidate this encounter that I've spent 15 minutes prepping"?

Spellcasters just get to do what spells say; martials have to play "mother may I".

Do you have a suggestion for how to fix this, specifically?

 

[Yaarel]

The alternative is that everyone has that sort of potential and realizes it in different ways. The fighter might cleave a mountain, the cleric might summon an angel, the thief teleports in shadows, the farmer yields crops three times bigger than an Earth harvest, the king's land withers and blooms based on his mood, etc. All use the same mythic potential in different ways.

That tends to be how I view D&D traditions, generally. Humans are innately magical, but still need to "realize" the "potential", and do so in different ways.

innately magical ≠ level 20

 

[Scribe]

Figure out what 30 feet looks like, it's further than most of you probably imagine.

Now imagine you are watching a movie, that has till this moment, had a Fighter type doing Fighter things.

Then, suddenly he needs to get to a balcony 30 feet vertical, so he squats, and jumps. 30 feet vertical.

That's nonsense and is going to pull you straight out of rhe scene unless everything else in the movie has demonstrated that anything goes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, D&D doesn’t use the jargon that makes the most sense to you then. Never has, as far as I’m aware. I’m pretty sure dragons have always been able to fly inside an antimagic field, Dispel Magic has never caused giants to collapse under their own body weight, and you’ve never been able to Counterspell a troll’s regeneration.

Chris Perkins is on record as saying that dragon flight is a kind of magic, just not the kind that is subject to being dispelled. I would define such magic as "supernatural".

So even the WotC people are on board with me in this case (not that I need them).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Don't worry, the will have changed around enough little details to make it a chore to use the old books, and to ensure most of us switch over.

If only to escape our players whining "but I want the new version of [insert subclass|feat|spell|other class feature]!"...

Another reason not to bother with 5.5e.

 

[Reynard]

Or ... you take magic into account when planning and set up scenarios where casters don't totally control the narrative. Accept that having a different role doesn't mean inferior.

This demands a kind of plotted, structured, and probably linear style of GMing not everyone prefers. Are sandbox or improv GMs supposed to just tell players "avoid mundane martials"? Why can't the game make every character archetype viable for every playstyle?