D&D 5E 2020 Release Speculation Thread

[Paul Farquhar]

I think that they're sure about moving forward with it. It is the easiest old D&D setting that has new content and themes.

Nope, it has lots of hurdles beyond psionics. How to do defiler magic, what to do with clerics when there are no gods, absent core races are all major hurdles. And there is a rabid fan base who will become hysterical if WotC get anything "wrong".

"Easy" is a clean new setting. Does MtG have a post-apocalypse world by any chance?

And the polls suggest that, whilst Dark Sun is quite popular, Planescape is far more so.

I think that they'll keep playtesting psioinics until they get it right, instead of abandoning it. If they actually want to make a Dark Sun book, they wouldn't wait to write the book until they had the mechanics 100% down. They didn't wait to write Eberron: Rising from the Last War until they had the Artificer 100% of the way completed.

If they had better ideas they would have put them out first. WotC are not sitting on a bunch of alternative psionics. But even if they did then it's at least 3 months to put it through the UA process, and a 3 month delay, with no guarantee of success after that time, is very expensive for a project that is already underway.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Druids, shamans and primal spellcasters don't need gods, and nor elementalist clerics.

* My opinion is some lines may come back when a videogame to be published. To produce a AAA videogame needs 3 years or more, but a game for mobiles only some months. Baldur's Gate and Newerwinter Nights are very famous titles, but most of D&D videogames are practically almost forgotten, and this is a industry where the product gets old very fast.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

5e does not have shamans, primal spell casters and elementalist clerics.

You could add them, but that is where the "very large amount of work" comes in. And the controversial decision over whether or not to ban core rules features.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If I say druid and rangers are primal spellcasters, then in my game primal is an official power source. I don't worry about the canon when I create my own stories. If I want there are fraals and blueskin goblins in Dark Sun, or a crossover Jakandor-Dark Sun, or Autobots vs Decepticons in Kaladesh, or a Kara-Tur vs Rokugan.

I advice WotC to allow the idea of time spheres and parallel earths, and even to publish in DM Guild the ideas by the fandom about how those time spheres could be (for example one where lord Soth avoided the cataclym but the order of the seekers have got psionic powers).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

We don't actually know what 100% down looks like... for example, the Theros material got one UA before publishing, and the Leonine/Satyr races didn't get any UA material. For all we know, the last psionics hit the metric WotC is happy with and they're now fast-tracking whatever it is going into (DS or PS).

Okay, a few points here that I want to point out:

1. It's been awhile since we got races/subraces playtested. They don't need to playtest them, they're fairly easy to make and balance. I'm not surprised we didn't get the Leonin or Satyr in a UA, because if WotC doesn't know how to balance races yet, that's evidence that they don't know how to do their jobs. Also, I know a main part of UA is to introduce the idea to the community, but they probably didn't want to spoil the identity of the book beforehand, and already knew how people would react.
2. Next, the Theros subclasses only needed small revisions. That's how WotC does UA. Anything that needs a small change doesn't go into another UA article, but the ones that need serious changes, like the Noble Genie Warlock, goes into a UA later with the changes.
3. Psionics in its current state is not at a stage WotC is happy with. I am 99% sure this UA will not get the 70% approval rating, and even surer that WotC will keep working on developing UA until it's at a stage the community is overall happy with.

I don't think they'd fast-track something as controversial or complicated as Psionics. WotC has to understand that if they don't get this right, people will get angry.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Nope, it has lots of hurdles beyond psionics. How to do defiler magic, what to do with clerics when there are no gods, absent core races are all major hurdles. And there is a rabid fan base who will become hysterical if WotC get anything "wrong".

No! These are not problems. Ravnica had a text block explaining how Clerics work without worshiping gods. They can just copy and paste that with some revisions to get rid of any Ravnica-themed words.
Also, remember when they had the list of subclasses and what guilds they'd fit into in GGR? They could easily do something like that for defining what subclasses/classes count as defilers. Also, Ravnica has limited races. Theros has limited races. It's not really a problem. They can just list the races that exist in that world, the changes to them, and the additional races that are Dark Sun specific, like they did in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. None of those are problems. They've gotten similar problems right before, so why don't you think they can do it with Dark Sun?

"Easy" is a clean new setting. Does MtG have a post-apocalypse world by any chance?

You think it's easier to make a whole new setting than translate an older setting to 5e? No. It would be way easier to adapt Dark Sun to 5e than to create a new setting. Also, no, MtG doesn't have any viable post-apocalyptic worlds that could replace Dark Sun. The closest ones are New Phyrexia, which straight up would not work as a setting, most likely, and certainly wouldn't replace Dark Sun. Amonkhet could possibly work, but the only thing it has in common are that the Gods are dead, and the world's a desert.

And the polls suggest that, whilst Dark Sun is quite popular, Planescape is far more so.

Did you read my first post on this thread? (Which was also my first post ever on enworld, iirc). I said that I am expecting Planescape to come out this year, probably delayed due the pandemic. Planescape is easier to translate to 5e, because you just need to develop information on the planes of existence. Dark Sun is harder, you need psionics. 100%, Planescape is coming before Dark Sun, just because it's easier.

If they had better ideas they would have put them out first. WotC are not sitting on a bunch of alternative psionics. But even if they did then it's at least 3 months to put it through the UA process, and a 3 month delay, with no guarantee of success after that time, is very expensive for a project that is already underway.

If they are currently making a Dark Sun book, I don't think they'd be stupid with how they time the UA. They've been on this path before with the Artificer, the Xanathar's subclasses, and most of their UA content that made it into books. They know what they're doing, so they'd schedule around it. Sure, delays can happen, and are likely due to the pandemic, but they are necessary if they want to get Psionics to a point of community acceptance, which they are trying to do. It is obvious that they're trying to do this, because they've had 2 surveys on it and have revised it. They wouldn't ask for community feedback if they didn't want it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

5e does not have shamans, primal spell casters and elementalist clerics.

You could add them, but that is where the "very large amount of work" comes in. And the controversial decision over whether or not to ban core rules features.

They wouldn't ban any of the core features, besides races that aren't present in Dark Sun. Shamans can easily be replicated as a druid subclass, or as any nature-based class or subclass ever. Primal spellcasters are druids and rangers, right? Elementalist clerics can easily be Tempest Clerics, Light Clerics, and reflavoring other subclasses, like Arcana clerics. It's not a lot of work to reflavor things, which WotC has done in the past of 5e.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Okay, a few points here that I want to point out:

1. It's been awhile since we got races/subraces playtested. They don't need to playtest them, they're fairly easy to make and balance. I'm not surprised we didn't get the Leonin or Satyr in a UA, because if WotC doesn't know how to balance races yet, that's evidence that they don't know how to do their jobs. Also, I know a main part of UA is to introduce the idea to the community, but they probably didn't want to spoil the identity of the book beforehand, and already knew how people would react.
2. Next, the Theros subclasses only needed small revisions. That's how WotC does UA. Anything that needs a small change doesn't go into another UA article, but the ones that need serious changes, like the Noble Genie Warlock, goes into a UA later with the changes.
3. Psionics in its current state is not at a stage WotC is happy with. I am 99% sure this UA will not get the 70% approval rating, and even surer that WotC will keep working on developing UA until it's at a stage the community is overall happy with.

I don't think they'd fast-track something as controversial or complicated as Psionics. WotC has to understand that if they don't get this right, people will get angry.

I mean, I don't think that WotC knows the difference between a subclass that needs to be tweaked or needs serious changes until they get feedback.

There have also been 6 UA articles on psionics, so I don't think it's being "fastracked." Also, I find it interesting that they tried in December, and again in April. That timeline makes me think they want this released soon, and I think it is likely that if they need this released for a book in Q4, they'll use whatever material gets closest to 70%.

Also the April feedback seemed quite good to me, except for the same group that roar "Where psion class???"

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I mean, I don't think that WotC knows the difference between a subclass that needs to be tweaked or needs serious changes until they get feedback.

There have also been 6 UA articles on psionics, so I don't think it's being "fastracked." Also, I find it interesting that they tried in December, and again in April. That timeline makes me think they want this released soon, and I think it is likely that if they need this released for a book in Q4, they'll use whatever material gets closest to 70%.

Also the April feedback seemed quite good to me, except for the same group that roar "Where psion class???"

I'm in the group that wants a psionic class. There's quite a few of us. They also now have the feedback, so they know what needs to be tweaked and what needs serious changes. All of the subclasses in that UA need serious changes, in my opinion, at least. That's the feedback I gave them.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I'm in the group that wants a psionic class. There's quite a few of us. They also now have the feedback, so they know what needs to be tweaked and what needs serious changes. All of the subclasses in that UA need serious changes, in my opinion, at least. That's the feedback I gave them.

I think they've said a couple times now on their streams that a psion-specific class is at best on stasis... if we are truly getting a planes/dark sun book soon-ish, it doesn't look like the class will be in it.

I think part of the issue here is that their attempt at a class, Mystic, was likely worse reviewed than these subclasses are, and I'm sensing that each iteration of the subclasses is getting better support, so they're moving farther from revisiting a class.