D&D (2024) Jeremy Crawford: “We are releasing new editions of the books”

[mamba]

They can actually. You can mix and match literally anything from any system.

The issues that causes, of course, are not insignificant

and the ‘not insignificant’ part is why you cannot really bring a 4e class into a 5e game but will have no problem with a 5e class in a 1D&D game

Of course I can add anything to anything, if I am willing to spend the effort. The point is that the amount of effort is drastically different between adding 4e to 5e vs 5e to
1DD

 

[Justice and Rule]

People playing separate games is not equivalent to people playing one game thats two bolted together.

Future adventures can also be written system agnostic, which would make them more money especially if they're actually good.

And barring that, its not like the adventures can't be written for both editions. All you'd be doing in the aggregate is changing the details of the encounters and marking which system they go to. Ez.

Yeah, I don't get why this isn't obvious: you can write adventures to be largely system agnostic "5.X" or whatever. Any monster you need specific stats for you can just put in the back and they'll largely work the same. What needs to be separated are the player-facing class changes.

except that those cannot play in a 5e party, while a 2014 warlock can play in a 2024 party.

You are trying to turn this into two editions of warlocks when it is a continuation of one Warlock class with tweaks.
If someone wants to play a Warlock, they can choose from the 2014 subclasses and the 2024 subclasses. The 2014 version does not suddenly disappear the way a 4e one did - unless the table decides to move to 2024 and abandon 2014

No no no... it's not a continuation, it's a divergence. It is a fork from which you can choose 2014 or 2024. That's the point: it's not a continuation, where something is being rebalanced and changed, it's that you're putting out a second version of the class that exists concurrent with the old version. And that's also the problem.

yeah, instead you confuse them elsewhere (‘this is a 5e adventure, I don’t think we can play that with 5.5’)

I think the confusion this may cause is vastly overrated.

I think you honestly underrate it, but we'll see. I just don't understand how people think differentiating between two editions will cause more confusion compared to having two versions of the same class two books with the same name existing concurrently with one another in the same system.

balance is not that different between 5e and 1DD that this will actually matter.

I would disagree, especially given that you can see them trying to rebalance things like the Druid's Wildshape powers. If you allow the old Druid, how does that fix actually work? Who adopts a nerfed class?

And they're claiming here that both versions will be roughly equal. You can't nerf an overpowerful class or raise up an underpowered class and have all the versions be on par with one another.

Yeah, I have no clue how that will work. Sometimes classes need nerfs. It happens.

What's more, in my experience people generally don't like to mix different rule sets together. In the past I've tried to bring in things from other editions, but even if I modify them for the new edition, DMs hem and haw at allowing it, usually just saying no. It was worse with 3e and 3.5e where you could bring in a 3e subclass or class without much or any change, because the older one was automatically met with suspicion. Why did they change things? What could this class have that would break or not fit with the new rules.

That's not going to change just because they label the rules 2014 and 2024. People are still going to see a myriad of changes made in the 2024 rules and be leery of allowing 2014 rules into the game that they run.

And you're going to get players who just don't want to abandon certain classes because of the changes made. We've already seen a bunch of contentious changes be debated in this forum. What happens when some people are like "No, I don't want my Warlock to be a bland half-caster, I want the old version!" and bring that to a table playing the 2024 version? They're technically the same version and compatible!

It's just... ill-conceived. I understand the worry of splitting the base with an edition change, but let's be honest with the problems it will cause. There's way more confusion with having a bunch of duplicate classes that are balanced around different ideas in the same ecosystem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Speaking of Essentials.

I never realized it was a .5 style upgrade.

The name made me think it was just more extra stuff like a DM screen and an adventure etc.

If they had called it 4.5, I might have bought it.

Spoiler: Off-topic for the thread, but relevant to your statements

Others have already said: it wasn't. It really, well and truly, wasn't. 4e Essentials is exactly the same game, it just has additional classes, that have an unnecessarily complicated relationship existing classes" (the whole "subclasses" dealio.) No meaningful changes to the actual rules of 4e occurred with Essentials.

With the sole exception of the aforementioned "unnecessarily complicated relationship with existing classes" thing, you can perfectly mix and match all Essentials content with anything that came before and it will work just fine, no conversion needed. You might not want to in all cases. E.g., the new monster math that debuted in MM3 (technically before Essentials proper) is generally agreed to be superior, because it produces combats that are faster-paced and more dangerous, albeit with a resultant reduction in potential tactical depth. But you absolutely can mix them together as you like. You can have a Cavalier and Elementalist (Essentials subclasses for Paladin and Sorcerer) alongside a Warlord (never got an Essentials subclass), a Templar Cleric, and an Arcanist Wizard (official names for PHB1 Cleric and Wizard subclasses.)

The "unnecessarily complicated relationship" is that you can't directly multiclass between subclasses of the same class, but don't necessarily qualify for all the things a subclass gets, unless you spend some feats or other such things. E.g., a Cavalier is a (type of) Paladin, so they cannot take any Paladin multiclass feats, but they can pick up certain Paladin powers as alternatives for their baseline ones.

Now, Essentials did represent a partial paradigm shift in terms of class design, with some of its classes really pushing on some of the concepts of baseline 4e. Some of those experiments were not well-received, like the Binder (almost universally panned) and Bladesinger (getting regular Wizard encounter powers as daily powers is a pretty objectively bad deal), but some were quirky but interesting like Vampire and Berserker, and others were quite well-received, AIUI the Knight and Elementalist.

More or less, Essentials is the Book of Nine Swords of 4e. Nothing about the game itself changed. The BO9S classes were pretty clearly alternate substitutions for the Fighter (Warblade), Monk (Swordsage), and Paladin (Crusader), without actually preventing you from using the original versions. Same thing with Essentials subclasses. They don't prevent the usage of any "original" 4e content; indeed, Essentials stuff often continued to support "original" 4e content right alongside the Essentials stuff. Instead, it's an alternate slate of possibilities.

 

[mamba]

It literally can't cut both ways. Either you are going to be right and it's backwards compatible or we are going to be right and it's not. It's not going to be both backwards compatible and not backwards compatible simultaneously.

that is not what I meant. I meant that either side can turn out to be wrong and not acknowledge it, as the OP implied, but under the assumption that they cannot be wrong and were just curious what the other side would do once they are proven wrong

 

[Emberashh]

but will have no problem with a 5e class in a 1D&D game

At this point you're just deliberately refusing to acknowlege the problem, even when its given to you in concise terms.

The point is that the amount of effort is drastically different between adding 4e to 5e vs 5e to
1DD

And our point is that this difference doesn't mean there isn't still a huge problem (many of them actually) being created.

None of us care about the rigmarole of making class mechanics work. That isn't our problem and not what we're expecting issues with. You're literally not even talking about the same things we (or at least me anyway) are talking about.

 

[mamba]

"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." - Jean de la Fontaine/Master Oogway

yes, doesn’t change what they are doing or why.

We will know more in two years, until then I’d say working towards a goal is much more likely to accomplish it than not doing so

Maybe it will turn out that the better option would have been to release a ‘Bigby’s Hand helps with Everything’ than to revise the core. I doubt it, but it is not impossible.

 

[Remathilis]

And they're claiming here that both versions will be roughly equal. You can't nerf an overpowerful class or raise up an underpowered class and have all the versions be on par with one another..

Do you have a citation on "... Will be roughly equal"? They have said they will be compatible, but they explicitly stated they are fixing broken elements (twin spell) and powering up weak ones. They have never claimed a 14 Sorc and a 24 Sorc will be equal, only that if you prefer the 14 Sorc you could still use them, 15 spells and all.

 

[Maxperson]

that is not what I meant. I meant that either side can turn out to be wrong and not acknowledge it, as the OP implied, but under the assumption that they cannot be wrong and were just curious what the other side would do once they are proven wrong

I didn't read it that way. I read it as him saying that he was tempted to bookmark the posts to remind the posters arguing so hard for pro-compatibility that they got it wrong, not that they wouldn't acknowledge being wrong(if they are).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

yes more then anythign

I would except that as a better answer

Urgh... I hate rules fixes in sourcebooks.

no thanks.

 

[Emberashh]

yes, doesn’t change what they are doing or why.

We will know more in two years, until then I’d say working towards a goal is much more likely to accomplish it than not doing so

Its like you believe one should continue following a recipie for a cake when all you have in front of you is squid ink and raw chicken.

You do know that foresight is a genuine thing and that it is, in fact, possible to assess a situation and make an educated guess at how things are going to turn out, right?

And you can miss me with the predictable "but its just a guess!!" response.