D&D 5E 50th Anniversary and beyond

[Lyxen]

What do you mean by "completely suppressed"?

There is no mention of lineages, we are back to races.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I am going with the opinion that all those changes sound most great and all.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There is no mention of lineages, we are back to races.

I see - so no mechanical difference, just verbiage. I'd honestly be unsurprised if they decided to differentiate race and lineage though, race being for, y'know races and lineages being para-racial things.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My personal preference is to have default values and ranges, perhaps with limits.

The trouble with limits (not with default values) that is that if you set those for humans they'd be ludicrously broad if you didn't want to exclude, like, a lot of actual people who exist. Whenever I've seen games do actual limits to ranges of height/weight for humans, especially by gender, they're laughable, like they'll say human males go up to 7'2" or something, and maybe only down to 5", and like my 4'9" (and ripped AF, also broad-shouldered!) friend from uni might have a thing or two to say about that.

So I think average ranges definitely have some value in helping you picture things, but limits are unnecessary and counter-productive, because if we just went with recorded humans, we'd need to limit height to "between 9' and 1'10" (or thereabouts)". That's so broad as to be meaningless and you just get into weird ableist or hyper-specific stuff if you're saying "Well exclude people with unusual conditions" or something. Plus it just opens a giant can of worms about the conditions other non-human races might have.

Whereas "Humans are typically between 5' and 6' tall" is perfectly useful. Don't want to be typical? Fine. If your DM wants to say "No you can't have a 12' human!", that's really on the DM, and it's incredibly unlikely to come up from any player who isn't being difficult on purpose, in which case the door is that way.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

There is no mention of lineages, we are back to races.

The Dhampir, Hexblood, and Reborn in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and Custom Lineage from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything are called Lineages. It's right there in the books. They also state that lineages are something that you can become, not just something you're born as (which is a race). That's why the Fairy, New Dragonborn, Harengon, and Owlin are called "races" and the Dhampir, Hexblood, Reborn, and Custom Lineage are called "lineages". Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft even mentions "race" in its description of lineages; being something you were before you became this lineage. You can become a Dhampir, Hexblood, and Reborn (sort of like a Sorcerer), but Owlin, Fairies, Harengon, and most Dragonborn are things that you're explicitly born as (unless you happened to roll them on an expanded Reincarnate table).

They haven't abandoned the term "lineage" in 5e, it just hasn't been used in one of the more recent books. I fully expect that we'll see more lineages in future books, perhaps in the Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse book that's coming out next year.

 

[Faolyn]

I see - so no mechanical difference, just verbiage. I'd honestly be unsurprised if they decided to differentiate race and lineage though, race being for, y'know races and lineages being para-racial things.

Lineages are more like templates anyway, so they shouldn't be mixed.

 

[Stormonu]

I think the longest edition we've had was 2nd, and back in the day it really felt as if it had long outlived it's usefulness at the end. There's definitely been a tonal shift if recent products that I perceive as indicators that we'll see an edition shift fairly soon.

I've long ago said that I've gotten tired of edition treadmills. I've already jumped ship on Warhammer 40K, when D&D moves to 5.5E or 6E, I don't envision I will be onboard to follow, unless the product still works with 5E (Xanathar's) level of rules.

And I don't understand height/weight/age being dropped from the game. In what way?

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

And I don't understand height/weight/age being dropped from the game. In what way?

It’s all here Creature Evolutions | Dungeons & Dragons
To me, this is the most inexplicable change. The only vaguely coherent reason I’ve heard is that they aren’t used often in play. It’s a nice detail and a way of fleshing your character out so I’m really confused. Is there something I’m not understanding?

 

[GreyLord]

Well, I don't think any changes will necessarily stop the game from selling.

For me, there are things that I didn't like about 5e (proficiency bonus being the same for combat as experienced Warriors as bookworms, thats a load of bs if I ever saw one, take a trained combat soldier whose seen hours of combat and then compare it to the war reporter who's been imbedded and the combat soldier will beat the reporter any day of the week showing how wrong it is to have the same prof bonus to everyone).

HOWEVER...people have liked the game and it is easy to learn for many. I play 5e and actually do prefer it to some types of the other games out these days.

I have a bunch of 5e books (some of them several times over). That means for my gaming groups I'd probably still encourage others to get their own player materials.

Thus, when changes come about there are only a few items that would actually STOP ME from purchasing new materials.

The #1 item with that is whether it is compatible with what I already have. If they make changes so radically different that those who play with the older materials are unbalanced vs. those who play with the new materials in a drastic way, or the materials cannot even be utilized seamlessly between the old and new materials...then THAT...and probably ONLY those items...are the deal breaker.

That's the biggest thing that I think they'd need to pay attention to. With that in mind..

Stat bonuses will probably STILL be connected to race with the options from Tasha's also included in the book. If one doesn't do this it could make backward compatibility with those using the old PHB's (or those using Tasha's) rather awkward in many ways which would become VERY uncomfortable at the table VERY quickly in some instances.

Age, height and weight I think are negligible things which I don't think are going to affect people as much. Most of the time they come up with what they want in these categories anyways regardless of any other rulings or rules.

I'm not sure changing the nomenclature of addressing an action a Monster can take from Spell to action or vice versa is going to actually cause any difficulties with backward compatibility or compatibility.

I'm not sure how they will do alignment with the new Monster Manual. Presumably just a reprint, but I have no idea. For me, I don't think it would cause such a big difficulty for Backwards compatibility one way or the other, so for those in my boat, I don't think it matters that much.

Incorporating Class abilities from Tasha's could be problematic, depending on which ones for backwards compatible games of PHB only (there is a somewhat power jump there that could be difficult engaging the balance between older material gamers and newer material gamers)...BUT.... I imagine they might not do that because Tasha's is still going to be made available (and in it's own special set with two others option books on top of that soooo....).

I could care less if adventures carry warnings. That doesn't affect my game play. Not sure if that would affect others or not.

That said, that's my commentary on whether I'd stop buying or not in each of the issues listed above. AS I said, as a present 5e gamer, it's really based upon whether it is seamlessly compatible and integrate-able into my 5e game. If not, then that's the death knell. If it is...I don't see the problem.

I may be the minority though, but I think for many present gamers, that's what the real issue. If it is compatible than I think most won't care as much. If it isn't...it then comes to the 3.5 difficulty of trying to convince those who have the older materials to buy the new materials instead.

I think more than likely it's going to be small tweaks (such as integrating errata into the PHB, but otherwise it will be the same, and doing the same to the DMG and MM). Everything that I've heard doesn't sound like they are making any great or major changes to the core three. In addition, remember that they are PROBABLY still going to be selling Tasha's still as well as other supplements. I don't see them including the items in those supplements in the core three if they are continuing to sell those supplements unless they like losing money (unless people think they are going to invalidate the supplements and reprint everything as well)...so overall, wondering or worrying about them including all of Tasha's (or Xanathar's or Monsters of the Multiverse) in the core three is probably an exercise in futility.

 

[Azzy]

None of these changes put me off 5.5/6E personally.

However, the only which kind of offends me, and this is so dumb, is losing age/weight/height, because like, I guess not including that sort of detail just flummoxes me. Like, can't you tell me the typical ranges for a species or whatever? And then we can decide whether to be inside or outside them. Literally never stopped people before. I've never had a DM say "HOLD UP! That Dwarf is two inches too tall!" or "Stop right there, that human is outside the rolled weight range!!!" or the like, and age ranges seem pretty immutable. So anyway I feel like an idiot that this irks me, but it does.

Thoroughly agreed on this.