D&D 5E D&D New Edition Design Looks Soon?

WotC’s Ray Winninger has hinted on Twitter that we may be seeing something of the 2024 next edition of D&D soon — “you’ll get a first look at some of the new design work soon.”.

 

[Mind of tempest]

It's pretty cool. Has a lot of teleportation and trickery powers--some of the best stuff you could do as a Swordmage was, ironically, to mark a target and then run away from them. Because, given the right choice of feature (what 5e would call "subclass") and powers, if you "run away" then the target would have to choose between accepting your mark punishment because they attack one of yor friends, or potentially waste its turn chasing after you (potentially eating OAs from your friends) and maybe not even being able to hit you because of your high defenses.

It's not my favorite Defender in 4e (that would be Paladin), but it's definitely got some interesting mechanics in it.


4e doesn't have grindy combats. It just has long combats. It was specifically designed to try to make having those long combats be actually fun to play through.

Now, obviously, there are some people who just think ALL fights are grinds, no matter what's involved in them. But 4e wasn't nearly as grindy as 3.X, especially at high levels. (I've tried to play high-level PF. Single turns can take half an hour sometimes. It's ridiculous.)

it always sounds cool but it needed more than a mechanical identity.

 

[teitan]

I loved 3E so much, it's the Edition I started with. But I just couldn't play it as written after 5E.

I had to stop before 4e even came out. I got so burnt out on the complexities of it. 3.5 to me felt even more complex than 3e itself. 3e felt like 2e cleaned up in approach and 3.5 seemed to metagame and really bring out the munchkin of "character builds" that now permeate D&Dspace. When a guy came into my group with a character that need 5 books and he had forgotten a book for a session and couldn't run his character right because he didn't have his stuff written down right I closed my 3.5 DMG and MM at the end of the session and never played again until 5e came out.

 

[Greg K]

I just not understand people wanting Xanathar and Tasha material in the new PHB. It is obvious they are still going to sell those book, so no freebies. The only thing I can see backported from Tasha are the "optional class feature", as they are patches on main game.

I want very little added from either Xanathar or Tasha and what I want included from Tashas does not include most of the optional class features other than the Fighter styles (and, maybe, one or two others).

 

[Minigiant]

MotM is major errata. The last couple years has been patches to fix "issues" with the game as new people came in and the tinkerers became the minority and we started seeing a move towards "D&D is broken and why does every table have their own rules" in social media. For a little while I have been seeing comments to the effect of "We are tired of fixing your game WOTC" in the Twitter and Youtube sphere because a lot of new players weren't in on the ground floor of 5e where one of the design goals was to make 5e the DM's game where the DM could tweak the game to play how they wanted but with the rise of "you don't need the DMG to run D&D" and ignoring that things are called out as optional rules and are just... rules.

A friend had some players insist on using the flanking rules in one of his games and he said you so sure about that? They were very excited about it. They loved the first session with them, then he used the same tactics with monsters... they decided at the end of the session they didn't like the flanking rules anymore.

Players need options, but DMs also need options and to carry the table. There needs to be a balance as was learned from the weight of the 3.x and 4e era. Being able to house rule for things that aren't working isn't "a broken game" or a game that "needs fixed". What needs fixed in D&D is hit point bloat.

The no errata policy was on PHB, DMG, and MM. WOTC wanted these books to be evergreen. They wanted you to not have to download a pdf of fixes.

This meant everythng they messed up on in the Corebooks and everything they didn't explain in them were never redone. So bad subclasses, feats, optional rules, bad advice, unfollowed rules,... we were stuck with them.


MOTM was errata of Volos. This was done partially because Volos and the MM didn't even follow WOTC's own advice. It's not tht the tinkerers became the minority. It's the WOTC forgot to tinker in the base books.

5.5e will be a chance for them to fix their own errors.

 

[teitan]

I just not understand people wanting Xanathar and Tasha material in the new PHB. It is obvious they are still going to sell those book, so no freebies. The only thing I can see backported from Tasha are the "optional class feature", as they are patches on main game.

They have to release a game that's still mechanically compatible with adventures and such: letting people being more powerful just because they builded against 5.5E would invalidate adventure books and DDALs.

They'll revise the classes, reorganize feats and spells. And no more.
The MM will receive the MPMM treatment.
The only book I expect a reorganization and rewrite of good chucks is the DMG. Is the most "panned" book of the core trio, people calling almost useless. It's a good book, but no newbie friendly.

And yes, we will see 5.5E changes in the new starter set. I'm waiting to see it!

WHat I see is races being modified to work like MotM with Tasha's optional character creation rules as a sidebar and the original 5e version of the races with their ASI's being the "quick build" versions and the "free feat" being something stereotypical for the race like an archery feat for elves or something.

I think we will see new subclasses with the old subclasses having slight tweaks to them. The optional rules will be called out better as optional, they will be made to stand out because a lot of the things people call "broken" in 5e are optional rules like the way flanking works.

 

[Horwath]

The no errata policy was on PHB, DMG, and MM. WOTC wanted these books to be evergreen. They wanted you to not have to download a pdf of fixes.

This meant everythng they messed up on in the Corebooks and everything they didn't explain in them were never redone. So bad subclasses, feats, optional rules, bad advice, unfollowed rules,... we were stuck with them.


MOTM was errata of Volos. This was done partially because Volos and the MM didn't even follow WOTC's own advice. It's not tht the tinkerers became the minority. It's the WOTC forgot to tinker in the base books.

5.5e will be a chance for them to fix their own errors.

Tasha is kind of errata on PHB.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The no errata policy was on PHB, DMG, and MM. WOTC wanted these books to be evergreen. They wanted you to not have to download a pdf of fixes.

This meant everythng they messed up on in the Corebooks and everything they didn't explain in them were never redone. So bad subclasses, feats, optional rules, bad advice, unfollowed rules,... we were stuck with them.


MOTM was errata of Volos. This was done partially because Volos and the MM didn't even follow WOTC's own advice. It's not tht the tinkerers became the minority. It's the WOTC forgot to tinker in the base books.

5.5e will be a chance for them to fix their own errors.

let us hope they do.

 

[Minigiant]

Tasha is kind of errata on PHB.

Yeah, but it was kinda weak errata as it didn't fix much of the "hard stuff".

Tasha "errataed" stuff that DM easily could have easily done themselves and gave the easy solutions..

MOTM was a hard errata of Volo because it dealt with the complicated numbers within.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I feel like some people are really self-deluding about the level of backwards-compatibility here, and also self-deluding about how willing WotC are to replace books (which is pretty funny given MotM replacing two books).

WotC have not promised "100% backwards compatibility", contrary to what some people have claimed. They've never said anything of the sort. They've strongly implied that they want the books to be basically backwards-compatible, but let's be real, 2E was basically backwards-compatible with 1E. Whilst I don't think the structure of the game will change as much as 1E to 2E, I do think that's more the kind of change we're looking at. They key is that adventures/setting material still works/makes sense, and it should do, for the most part.

There's no way stuff that's in Tasha's or Xanathars will be "a sidebar". That's laughable. Changes will get made, and they're not going to segregate off stuff on the basis of it appearing in older books, which would only confuse and frustrate players, especially newer ones.

It is obvious they are still going to sell those book, so no freebies.

No, that's not obvious and indeed it doesn't make any sense at all. MotM replaced and severely changed two existing books just recently. Tasha's and Xanathar's will largely suffer the same fate. Sure, some stuff won't make the PHB/DMG, but that'll probably go into a new book which contains material from both and likely other sources as well.

I think one of the major reasons they might be talking about 5.5/6E now, before many people are, is to manage expectations. 5.5/6E has the potential to piss off people in both directions. Some people are irrationally expecting 100% backwards compatibility for everything, and absolutely minimal changes, and that's very unlikely to be the case, for the simple fact that it won't sell books, and it won't "refresh" the game. Other people are apparently expecting some pretty wild redesigns, including entire new classes, or fundamentally different math. I suspect they will also be disappointed. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new class or two in the first couple of years of 5.5/6E, but I would be extremely surprised if there was on in the PHB.

The main thing I hope about WotC showing people stuff early is that we don't see the same sort of weird design conservatism they had with DNDNext, where every time they had a good or clever idea, they did take-backsies immediately (except advantage/disadvantage), not even seemingly responding to criticism (often all visible discussion was largely positive, as per the Next Sorcerer, for example). The people who irrationally expecting few changes and 100% backwards-compatibility will freak out and be very noisy if WotC show any actual changes at all - this will include a whole bunch of people new to TTRPGs with 5E, note, who have never seen an edition change and will be outraged by it - I just hope WotC is anticipating that, and has enough spine to realize that just because some people are being loud, doesn't mean they have good ideas re: design or the long-term health of D&D.

 

[Horwath]

Yeah, but it was kinda weak errata as it didn't fix much of the "hard stuff".

Tasha "errataed" stuff that DM easily could have easily done themselves and gave the easy solutions..

MOTM was a hard errata of Volo because it dealt with the complicated numbers within.

Tasha added lots of feats with +1 int, wis or cha ASI, that were lacking in PHB or were just horrible.
Crusher, piercer, slasher are kind of new take on combat bonuses instead of dreadful Savage attacker.
Skill expert is clear upgrade of Skilled and even Prodigy feat from XGtE.

now, if they only added that Dungeon delver&skulker are one feat and same with Linguist&Keen mind...