D&D (2024) 2024 Players Handbook reveal: "New Crafting Rules"

[Ruin Explorer]

Some fun new art, looks like the Eberron key at will have the Gnome Artificer Vi as well as some Warforged?

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Like the Eberron picture but like for the second picture, why not draw some armour that looks:

A) Functional yet stylish, instead of dumb and generic-fantasy.

B) Like has some relationship to reality rather than being pure fantasy?

There's literally nothing gained from having armour illustrations be pure fantasy in this way. All you have to do is take historic armours and put a light-to-medium fantasy spin on them, and they can look incredible! Instead we've got stuff that looks like rejected concept art from a low-budget videogame RPG. What's funny is plenty of videogames do take an approach which is better than this. I'm genuinely surprised D&D, who have no shortage of money, went with something this painfully bland and unreal. We see better armour in actual D&D and MtG art fairly regularly.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There's literally nothing gained from having armour illustrations be pure fantasy in this way.

Emphasizing the fantastical nature the game advertises?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Emphasizing the fantastical nature the game advertises?

Fair concept but ironically I don't think it's fantastical enough for that - that would be a valid, I've seen it work in videogames (particularly K-MMOs and some JRPGs), but this is in a weird shoddy "between two stools" zone, where it doesn't seem like anything that makes any real sense, isn't novel or cool or new and indeed seems a little outdated, style-wise, but also isn't so fantastical and wild and energetic as to be awesome.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

It's an example of using a Pistol as a focus to cast Magic Missile

Ha! I might allow that, and only ban black powder.

 

[Chaosmancer]

-Like the new picture of the Wizard and her cat familiar

One of the single greatest art pieces of the entire book.

 

[tetrasodium]

Like the Eberron picture but like, why not draw some armour that looks:

A) Functional yet stylish, instead of dumb (so many obvious ways around it, yet it still limits movement etc.) and generic-fantasy.

B) Like has some relationship to reality rather than being pure fantasy?

There's literally nothing gained from having armour illustrations be pure fantasy in this way. All you have to do is take historic armours and put a light-to-medium fantasy spin on them, and they can look incredible! Instead we've got stuff that looks like rejected concept art from a low-budget videogame RPG. What's funny is plenty of videogames do take an approach which is better than this. I'm genuinely surprised D&D, who have no shortage of money, went with something this painfully bland and unreal. We see better armour in actual D&D and MtG art fairly regularly.

The "eberron picture" is probably more enchanted clothing than armor, there were a few unique forms of clothing in the old eberron books like shiftweave, Glammerweave, & (I think) one for adventuring or travel that I forget. The more interesting detail is those lord of blades inspired wings that Vi's Turret(?) is sporting... Hard to tell but that even looks rather distinctly like his left leg & staff behind the... xenomorph construct/warforge(druid?). That picture is doing a lot of lifting WRT lore & the fact that the passengers are not armored is in some ways probably part of it

Given the airship I'd wager that Vi & the tiefling were not expecting to suddenly have their ride hijacked by a particularly hostile cult.... Especially given that they seem to be running away from the unhealthy looking green miasma that may or may not even mildly inconvenience the raiders

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The "eberron picture" is probably more enchanted clothing than armor, there were a few unique forms of clothing in the old eberron books like shiftweave, Glammerweave, & (I think) one for adventuring or travel that I forget. The more interesting detail is those lord of blades inspired wings that Vi's Turret(?) is sporting... Hard to tell but that even looks rather distinctly like his left leg & staff behind the... xenomorph construct/warforge(druid?). That picture is doing a lot of lifting WRT lore & the fact that the passengers are not armored is in some ways probably part of it

Given the airship I'd wager that Vi & the tiefling were not expecting to suddenly have their ride hijacked by a particularly hostile cult.... Especially given that they seem to be running away from the unhealthy looking green miasma that may or may not even mildly inconvenience the raiders

Sorry if I was unclear, I was talking about the second picture, the picture of armour types.

I'm fine with everything in the Eberron picture - I'm fine with some armour being fantastical too - I just don't think the "example equipment" armour pics should be more than mildly to moderately fantastical and particularly not the "dumb, bland, generic" kind.

 

[Chaosmancer]

"...and it will also let players stretch their gold further assuming they have enough time between adventures to actually spend on crafting"

man i hope crafting doesn't turn out to be primarily a downtime activity system, being able to craft a basic longsword over a three weeks downtime with smith's tools is not something useful or engaging to do with tools.

Agreed. This is my single biggest worry, and the part that they really needed to focus on, IMO. The amount of time needed to craft something is a major roadblock in anything being crafted.

I did the math once, and figured out that if you got a week of downtime between every adventure, and used that entire week to craft, starting at level 1, you could probably end up making a suit of platemail... by level 7. By which point, most groups have already gotten at least one suit of platemail.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

-Like the new picture of the Wizard and her cat familiar

Yeah I like it though it is a bit weird that if that's a familiar, it has a prosthetic. How would that work? Familiars are spirits that reform, even after death. Aren't they? I'm fairly sure 5E established that. They can't be like, maimed, otherwise they could equally be prevented from coming back - anything that can permanently remove a limb can permanently remove a head.

They're not physical animals. A physical animal could have a prosthetic, obviously but... a familiar? Nah. Not by 5E lore. Presumably the artist was thinking in more 3E or earlier terms.

Maybe it's not a familiar but like, cat that's a wizard or something.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

Most likely if they do have rules for creating higher-end magic items (which is pretty much all the "breaky" ones that I can think of), part of what will be needed materials-wise will be [DM's fiat items], which would let you control that.

The issue is any ability of players to arbitrarily, and through their own descretion, raise their own power level massively complicates pacing. And if anything but the weakest magic items are involved here, this becomes a nightmare for DMs.

Even just +1 magic items can be deeply problematic in mass. No longer would DMs have control over the number of magic items the players have or the timing of their acqusition. As players can wholesale upgrade equipment to whatever the highest tier listed is, and do so, largely, at the time of their choosing.

This needs to be done in a form where the entire system is, more or less, DM discretion. If that means making the ingredients such that they can be reasonably restricted or simply making the entire "system" vague. But specific recipes for specific magic items, with common items as ingredients, will cause headaches for DMs.

Not that WotC cares about DMs or pacing. The Maul weapon mastery is proof of that.