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.”.

 

[darjr]

One of my friends occasionally expresses a wish to achieve immortality via upload. I generally respond that he should be careful what he wishes for. We might just have to and be forced to work for eternity as npcs in an MMO.

I call dibs on Xanathar!!!

 

[Sacrosanct]

Considering when 5e began development Marvel was just starting to gain steam and they were still talking about the superhero movie bubble bursting any day now I don’t see it.

X-Men came out 10 years before 5e. And Iron Man came out 4 years prior. I've never heard anything about the "superhero bubble bursting". We had 10 years of it constantly growing in popularity. That's why marvel was able to churn them out after 2008 as a way to print money.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Here's the thing, though: we already have most of the rule changes implemented already. We know it is going to be as conservative as all get out.

I don't really agree but definitions of "conservative" vary here. We know some of the rules changes, but there's a bunch of poorly-handled stuff they could change without having a huge impact, and I suspect we'll see more changes to classes/subclasses than people expect. The last major "rules update" book was Tasha's, and the fundamental rules ideas for that are from late 2019, which will be five years ago by the time 5.5/6E comes out. Already the ideas from Tasha's have seen some fairly significant development/tuning with MotM's races, for example. It'll be very interesting to see what the PHB races look like.

My personal expectation is that there will be significantly more changes than 3.5E, and somewhat fewer changes than 2E, in terms of total change. I'd be unsurprised if we lost Hit Dice or they were altered significantly, for example (equally, they might not be), for example. I'd also be unsurprised to see Counterspell DIAF or get significantly more specialized, as another example.

I don't think we'll see any fundamental changes to player-side mathematics.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

X-Men came out 10 years before 5e. And Iron Man came out 4 years prior. I've never heard anything about the "superhero bubble bursting". We had 10 years of it constantly growing in popularity. That's why marvel was able to churn them out after 2008 as a way to print money.

look up what movies have made over a billion dollars. look at the highest grossing movies of the last 5 years...

if this is a bust I PRAY for a bust like it any day now.

 

[Sacrosanct]

look up what movies have made over a billion dollars. look at the highest grossing movies of the last 5 years...

if this is a bust I PRAY for a bust like it any day now.

Yeah. If there was any serious talk about a bubble bursting, then it wouldn't have made any sense for them to greenlight Avengers and invest in that cast back in 2010.

No, when 5e was announced, the superhero genre was well underway and succeeding above all expectations. It makes total sense why 5e design team would try to capitalize on that and pull from that inspiration. I think the parallels are too obvious to ignore. When compared to early editions (TSR era), 5e definitely feels like the fantasy superhero version, for better or worse, depending on preference.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

My personal expectation is that there will be significantly more changes than 3.5E, and somewhat fewer changes than 2E, in terms of total change

That's my gut feeling as well.

 

[Parmandur]

a dusk blade by name no... a swordmage and a bladesinger yes, and arcane swordsman yes (although it is almost always sword)

A swordman with magic? Like the Eldritch Knight, Bladesinger, Warlo k, or Artificer?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I made my assumption because of the "Rules extension collector's set". It was designed, made and printed, it would be wasted if the idea was to just have those book for 1 year and half until the new revision. Volo's in italian was always postponed until cancelled. Xanathar and Tasha were just translated (Tasha was released just 2 days ago). This is why I think those book are here to stay.

I don't think that's a safe assumption in the longer term at all. Stuff being translated years late doesn't matter to WotC, which is also why it's translated years late.

Both books have plenty of material to justify them continuing to exist even if significant parts of them are taken into 5E or partially or entirely invalidated. Xanathar's has a bunch of subclasses, feats and spells, for example. Tasha's has Artificer (unlikely to make the PHB), various subclasses, feats, and spells. Even if some of those subclasses become unusable due to class changes, I don't think WotC would regard the books as "incompatible".

But this is the largest question yet remaining re: 5.5/6E - how significant will the class/subclass changes be?

It really looks like WotC want to move away from Long and Short rests, and also from stat-mod-based uses of things (to Proficiency-bonus uses). In order to do that, they'd need to make significant changes to a lot of existing classes/subclasses. So I see two potential scenarios as somewhat likely:

1) WotC chickens out, keeps Long and Short rests (maybe clarifying to two short rests being standard or perhaps the limit before a Long Rest and shortening the default length of a short rest to 10 minutes). I expect if so they will still seek to move away from Short Rests and stat-mod-based uses, but will do so less dramatically, just removing those from the PHB subclasses, and from classes where it wouldn't impact the subclasses.

If they do this, I'd expect another half-edition within 4-6 years, tops, which would complete the transition and maybe make some larger changes.

2) WotC goes for it, and because player-side math is the same, just suggests where an updated class is incompatible with a subclass in a non-PHB book, that you use the 5E version of that class, instead of the 5.5/6E version. Short rests as we know them would likely be gone, and HD might well go with them, with some kind of other rule for regaining HP.

If they do this, I think we're looking at a longer period before a new edition/half-edition.

We shall see.

 

[Parmandur]

We don't know enough about the new Core to declare if it's a new edition or not.

Likely that's part of what their meeting was about. There is no objective definition of what justifies the term "Edition," and they could probably do tje same thing and call it either a 6E or revised 5E and get away with it entirely.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

A swordman with magic? Like the Eldritch Knight, Bladesinger, Warlo k, or Artificer?

like a dedicated swordsman with magic. like a swordmage, duskblade, magus, or other similar classes... just like people who don't know D&D don't know the difference between sorcery wizard and warlock and might call all of them 'mage'