D&D 5E D&D Head Talks Future Plans (Sort Of)

WotC has launched a new design blog. The first edition is written by D&D head Ray Winninger, and he talks a little about future plans.

"Later in the year, Chris will return with our big summer adventure, James Wyatt will deliver a substantially improved version of a concept that I initiated myself, and Amanda Hamon will close us out with a project that was jointly conceived by herself and several other studio members. As usual, Jeremy Crawford is working with all of our leads, overseeing mechanical content and rules development.

In addition to these five major products, look for a couple of additional surprises we’ll unveil in the months ahead."

You can read the full blog here:

Who We Are & What We Do | D&D Studio Blog | Dungeons & Dragons

The first of many design blogs, direct from your friends at the Dungeons & Dragons Studio!

dnd.wizards.com

He also mentions that a D&D book takes 12-14 months to make, and half the projects developed don't make it to market. Winninger describes the structure of WotC's 'D&D Studio':

"The D&D Studio itself is organized into four departments: Game Design, Art, Production, and Product Management, each led by a department head. Game Design is responsible for the developing game mechanics and stories. Art establishes the “look and feel” of Dungeons & Dragons by creating visual concepts, directing our freelance illustrators, and creating innovative graphic designs. The Production department manages our project schedules, interfaces with manufacturing experts, and generally handles administrative matters for the studio. The Product Management department interfaces with sales, marketing, and market research. They also own our long-term product roadmap and look after the D&D business."

The studio has five Product Leads: Jeremy Crawford, Amanda Hamon, Chris Perkins, Wes Schneider, and James Wyatt.

 

[dave2008]

Why can’t they just say what is coming out?

Probably because the current strategy is working better than any other one they have tried (including just telling us what is coming out).

 

[dave2008]

The open playtest didn't apply the 70% approval threshold IIRC. They pre-decided that certainly classes were in come hell or high water, and other classes were never tried. I could be misremembering of course, but I think not.

I recall the stated they wanted to have the 5e PHB have every class that appeared in an initial PHB of any edition. The only one that didn't make it was the warlord I think.

 

[dave2008]

I could rant forever on their terrible failure of incorporating psionics into D&D side-by-side with magic. It's not a difficult thing to do, it's been in every single editon, if people can't accept it now, they never will so just force it to happen. Who's really going to quit the game because they chose to put a Psionic class as core? Sure some will ignore it out of spite and tell their players don't even bother, but eventually it's going to be accepted over time and soon everyone's using it. No player should accept a DM saying no to Psionics just because of misguided feelings of Psionics from previous editions.

Of course everyone is different. A lot of people seem to like how it has been implemented now. It is definitely my preference, though I wouldn't care if they decided to make a dedicated psion class.

 

[dave2008]

The tell-all book I want to read would be all about the rise and fall of 4e.

Especially the juicy bits about the internal reaction and fallout when pathfinder started to outsell 4e. Then we can read about all the internal politicking that lead up to who got to be in charge of 5e.

That would be a sweet and juicy tale indeed!



Functionally the ‘spell slot’ is a spell point system on a 1:1 spend per spell. By level of course. And that’s spell level which has no correlation with your characters level; because D&D.

Whereas any other game not trying to pretend that they are still doing some kind of Vancian casting would have the spell level be the same as your casters character level.

You would get “magic points” similarly to how you get hit points, and higher level spells would cost more magic points to cast than lower level ones. And of course you can fiddle around how they refresh through rests or hit dice expenditure.

With some spells being able to be “powered up” by spending more magic points or even hit points for certain spells.

A more straightforward way of doing magic.

But it will never happen.

Because people will complain: “That’s not D&D!”

We already have that for 5e, it is the Spell Point Variant in the DMG:

Variant: Spell Points​

Spoiler

One way to modify how a class feels is to change how it uses its spells. With this variant system, a character who has the Spellcasting feature uses spell points instead of spell slots to fuel spells. Spell points give a caster more flexibility, at the cost of greater complexity.

In this variant, each spell has a point cost based on its level. The Spell Point Cost table summarizes the cost in spell points of slots from 1st to 9th level. Cantrips don’t require slots and therefore don’t require spell points.

Instead of gaining a number of spell slots to cast your spells from the Spellcasting feature, you gain a pool of spell points instead. You expend a number of spell points to create a spell slot of a given level, and then use that slot to cast a spell. You can’t reduce your spell point total to less than 0, and you regain all spent spell points when you finish a long rest.

Spells of 6th level and higher are particularly taxing to cast. You can use spell points to create one slot of each level of 6th or higher. You can’t create another slot of the same level until you finish a long rest.

The number of spell points you have to spend is based on your level as a spellcaster, as shown in the Spell Points by Level table. Your level also determines the maximum-level spell slot you can create. Even though you might have enough points to create a slot above this maximum, you can’t do so.

I even found some character sheets for them
Spell Point Variant Rule Character Sheet.
Spellcasting Sheet - Point Variant

 

[Parmandur]

I’m a fan of psionics and I want them to be handled basically exactly the same as they are so far. A few feats, a few subclasses, and a few spells. I don’t want a whole new system of casting just for psionics. I’m fairly certain I’m in the minority on that.

Nope, per Crawford that's the solid majority opinion. That's why no Psionics system separate from Spells is incoming.

 

[overgeeked]

Maybe the minority on these forums, but I'm not sure your preference is different than the one of a lot of new players.

I’ve been around a bit. Started in 1984.

I have access to a great number of new players (West Marches campaign, mostly young players that started with 5e), and this is also their wish. In fact, sometimes as the boomer I am I mention the good old days of Dark Sun, as I long for the "psionicist" class, and they tell me "wasn't that a sorcerer subclass or something?"

One of my favorite settings.

Which makes me cringe a bit, but in the end, it's probably our best shot. I could live with a psionicist class that uses existing spells, maybe a few more added to fill in some gaps.

Do we need one though? Yet another full caster? We have the aberrant mind sorcerer that explicitly psychic in nature. Any of the others could be reskinned as a psion, though some are closer / easier than the others.

The tell-all book I want to read would be all about the rise and fall of 4e.

Especially the juicy bits about the internal reaction and fallout when pathfinder started to outsell 4e. Then we can read about all the internal politicking that lead up to who got to be in charge of 5e.

That would be a sweet and juicy tale indeed!

Damn. I know, right? Would love to know what was going on.

Functionally the ‘spell slot’ is a spell point system on a 1:1 spend per spell. By level of course. And that’s spell level which has no correlation with your characters level; because D&D.

Whereas any other game not trying to pretend that they are still doing some kind of Vancian casting would have the spell level be the same as your casters character level.

You would get “magic points” similarly to how you get hit points, and higher level spells would cost more magic points to cast than lower level ones. And of course you can fiddle around how they refresh through rests or hit dice expenditure.

With some spells being able to be “powered up” by spending more magic points or even hit points for certain spells.

A more straightforward way of doing magic.

But it will never happen.

Because people will complain: “That’s not D&D!”

It can be unbalanced easily, especially if you allow burning all your points on you highest level spells. Seven 1st-level spells are not equivalent to one 7th-level spell.

 

[Parmandur]

Why can’t they just say what is coming out?

Because ~2-3 months notice maximizes customer engagement and sales. Nate Stewart went into that a while back, and nothing has changed so it's working for them. That's becoming more the norm in the video game industry, too, nobody knows what Nintendo has coming out past this July.

 

[Rikka66]

You could be right but I suspect people are only going to buy what they are interested in, unless they are a collector or feel they can repurpose the products content.

That's the reason they've pursued their strategy of a small number of yearly releases that follow a buffet approach with DM and player material mixed into each book, always attempting to make anything in it easily ported to any campaign. They've created a situation where there's so few releases (comparitively to 3e or 4e) that anything will at least catch the eye of any potential consumer.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Nope, per Crawford that's the solid majority opinion. That's why no Psionics system separate from Spells is incoming.

I would say that it goes deeper than that.

Going back to OD&D and 1e, a fundamental problem with psionics was this- if the system was "tacked on" and not part of the core mechanics, it became difficult to adjudicate how it interacted with everything else. The modules weren't written with psionics in mind. The monsters, largely, weren't written with psionics in mind (with a few exceptions). The classes and magic items weren't written with psionics in mind. A psionic character could often be either overly powerful (because that character wasn't considered) or overly weak (because, again, that character wasn't considered).

The 5e system, moreso than any other version of D&D that I can think of, is largely built on spell-equivalency. Magic items are expressed, often, in terms of spells. Abilities for classes are often expressed in terms of spells (or can be traded, such as smite). Most of the classes are either spell-casters or have a spell-casting subclass.

While I think that having a psionics system completely separate from spells would be awesome, and that the original Mystic was a mighty fine class (maybe too fine- it needed some tinkering), I can understand why they would choose to make psionics into, well, pretty much more spells.

 

[Parmandur]

You could be right but I suspect people are only going to buy what they are interested in, unless they are a collector or feel they can repurpose the products content. I don't think someone's going to buy a Ravenloft or Dragonlance book if its no use to them regardless what's coming out next, or later in the year. Personally I really liked when they came out with their annual product catalogs and even planned my games around it sometimes.

One can suspect, but from what WotC people have said, such as Nate Stewart, this approach does make people more willing to buy.

For myself, prior to 5E I bought two D&D books: the 3E PHB, and the 4E PHB. I haven't bought Acquisitions Incorporated for 5E, but that's it. Indeed, whenever I have thought "you know, I'm not that interested in Concept X, I'll probably pass on that" I have slowly talked myself into it after a couple months. It's an effective approach.