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.”.

 

[Ancalagon]

Maybe for you 5 Ed was published a decade ago, but for some no-English-speaker markets 5 Ed arrived later, and then a 5.5 or 6 Ed is relatively "soon". Lots of players don't want an updated player handbook, but the return of their favorite lines, or certain monsters, or crunch as classes and PC races. D&D is not like the most of TTRPGs where a corebook is enough for a new edition, but D&D are three corebooks, the PH, the DMG and the MM. It is a lot of money to be spent by teenages or young adults at university or in their first job.

My suggestion is a no D&D d20 system new game, for example Gamma World.

Even in the english speaking world, some started later. I started running 5e in late 2016 for example, and I only got to play (as a PC) in early 2021 (if you don't count PBP)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I had a player make a 3rd level arcane trickster take friend and true strike as his 2 cantrips...

My laugh is for this line, though I actually sympathize. Those two spells out to be made good, or just gotten rid of.

 

[Ancalagon]

I don't think we'll see any changes to Barbarian. My feeling is WotC have decided they can brass balls that one out. As long as Pathfinder (which is a bit more "right on" than WotC's D&D) has a Barbarian class, I don't think this will be an issue. There's also the fact that the people primarily impacted by it as racist are people from indigenous ethnicities, who, and I'm going to be blunt, are treated as lower-down on the US-centric list of "valid racism concerns". Despite the US' (and Canada's) grotesque history of anti-Native American horrors, issues involving racism involving Native Americans are broadly seen as "less important" on the left in the US - anti-Black and anti-Asian racism is seen as far more important. At extremes, sometimes it's even suggested that mentioning anti-Native American racism is an attempt by White people to divert attention away from other forms of racism. It's a complex issue but the sum total is that this sort of racism is just pushed to the bottom of the in-tray, issues-wise.

Monk is both a weird ultra-specific racial stereotype (Chinese Shaolin Monk, specifically, and absolutely nothing else), and is very badly designed mechanically, because it incorporates literally everything needed to make a Boomer/1970s stereotype of a Shaolin Monk into the basic class chassis, which is utterly demented and totally unlike any other class design in 5E. So every Monk subclass is "Shaolin Monk BUT ALSO..." which is weird as hell. It also means Monks cannot be "Magic Martial Artist", because they're too hyperspecific, despite that being a fantasy archetype that is wildly popular, and far more popular than "Shaolin Monk" (which again, was last a popular archetype in the 1970s and early 1980s). Again too we come back to the "Apology Edition" factor, as I suspect otherwise Monk might have not made the cut as a PHB class (and thus been possible to bring back cooler, later), and wouldn't have been rushed into this weird 1970s shape it is.

Re anti-indigenous racism - the history in Canada is terrible, but awareness is growing fast at least.

Re Monk: The flavor is, as you say, kind of wild and not in a good way. However, the chasis has some validity. It's clearly not for everyone, and it suffers from the ranger's problem of "can't be better at fighting than a fighter, otherwise what's the point of playing a fighter". But it is fun and it suits some players well, and it can be reflavored quite easily . My last monk was a kensei wild elf, and his monk powers were just "elven ways". What better way to show the supernatural speed and reflex of an elf than with a monk?

 

[Ancalagon]

My laugh is for this line, though I actually sympathize. Those two spells out to be made good, or just gotten rid of.

I mean, if all you know about the spells are their names, friend and true strike sound like great choices, esp for an AK with the entertainer background.

True strike has some pretty marginal uses, but it's just... way too circumstantial to be of use. It needs to be fixed.

Friends has some uses (combine it with mask of many faces...) , it's just not named properly

 

[GreyLord]

I think 3E held together fairly well until somewhere around 15th level and honestly we never played higher than that. For 4E it was probably more like 10th; at 20+ it was painful.

You know, that reflects what I noticed in 4e at times as well. When I get the gumption up to play 4e all the way up, I can...and I can have fun. But, if I can just have a game that goes to level 10 and end it, I think that may be my preference as 4e is actually a dream of fun up until that point. After that point, I still have fun with it, but it starts to get more and more work the higher levels players go...especially for the DM trying to make sure that everyone is telling you their powers correctly and using them the right way.

 

[overgeeked]

We’re likely to see more tweaks than entirely reworked systems. We already know about the race and class changes from Xanathar’s and Tasha’s. Background feats and crummy fear chains from the UAs. Short rests going bye bye.

We can assume short rest classes are getting some kind of feature that lets them recharge X times per long rest. I can’t see WotC giving monks and warlocks roughly double the ki and spell slots they have now. Maybe scale them down a bit and rebalance based on recharging prof bonus times per long rest.

The bigger the changes the more likely they are to split the fan base. I doubt they’d make that mistake. Again.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Part of the problem is WotC doesn't explore ideas outside of the designers personal range of media until get late into an edition and they have to.

If it were me.
I would have taken a popular or most popular example of a monk from every decade

The 70s Monk
The 80s Monk
The 90s Monk
The 00s Monk
The 10s Monk

...and made them the first 5 monk subclasses.

But it's sorta too late for that for 5e.

The problem is there hasn't been a popular Monk stereotype since the 1970s. It was replaced with Martial Artist in the public consciousness. You might bring in Avatar for the '00s, but Aang is one character among a vast array of supernatural martial artists in that, and probably the least interesting/engaging one (he's almost the "straight-man" for the whole show). D&D only has Monk, not Martial Artist, because of the very peculiar and specific time it was developed.

I definitely agree with your point re: personal range of media though.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The problem is there hasn't been a popular Monk stereotype since the 1970s. It was replaced with Martial Artist in the public consciousness. You might bring in Avatar for the '00s, but Aang is one character among a vast array of supernatural martial artists in that, and probably the least interesting/engaging one (he's almost the "straight-man" for the whole show). D&D only has Monk, not Martial Artist, because of the very peculiar and specific time it was developed.

I definitely agree with your point re: personal range of media though.

given we rarely use monks as honest to gods monks, just changing the name would not end the world.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think 3E held together fairly well until somewhere around 15th level and honestly we never played higher than that. For 4E it was probably more like 10th; at 20+ it was painful.

Both gradually fell apart at around 10th, just in different ways. 4E it was more specifically 11-13, as you just got so many Reaction, Interrupt, Immediate and so on abilities on PCs and monsters that things slowed to a crawl, and there was, frankly, too much in the way of move-countermove. 3E LFQW had become so extreme by 10 that you might as well forget non-casters or bad casters. Other factors caused 3E problems as well - the CR system completely broke down at that point, and became actively disingenuous, the magic item reliance got much larger, mechanically (without ever being as honestly explained as 4E), the 5-minute workday and "scry and fry" started becoming increasing issues (even if players resist them, at that sort of level they become obviously reasonable approaches).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

given we rarely use monks as honest to gods monks, just changing the name would not end the world.

Sure but changing the chassis is absolutely vital too, because the chassis is "A 1970s stereotype of a Chinese Shaolin Monk" in terms of the built-in abilities and so on.