D&D (2024) D&D 2024 Rules Oddities (Kibbles’ Collected Complaints)

[Oofta]

The point, however, is not that you can and will say no; it's that you shouldn't have to.

Why? Because these sort of broken exploits should have been flagged and dealt with at the design level.

Nothing is perfect and while this particular issue should have been worded better, I'm just not overly concerned. If you want to look at truly horrendous rules look at any of the versions Gygax wrote.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

A rules oddity that I'm not a fan of, is that it now makes sense for the two-handed warriors to walk around with a shield out, and then object interaction it to their back while they draw their two-hander during the attack action...

Because hey, especially if you're a low-Dex heavy armor user, that +2 AC until your turn comes around seems pretty sweet, and at no cost (provided the campaign isn't all about opening doors).

 

[pukunui]

Yeah, I really don’t like that (un)equipping a shield went from requiring an action to essentially being free. At the very least it should be a bonus action.

 

[tetrasodium]

The sad thing is that it’s cool that 5.5 let’s a knife thrower throw multiple knives in their round, or someone who has taken time to set multiple crossbows in place ready to shoot a few. Instead it gets abused into two weapon fighting + a shield.

Well there is the way that problems are largely the completely foreseeable result of choosing to bake a "fix" for thrown weapons with multiple attacks into the attack action rather than thrown weapons themselves. Having that misapplied "fix" go a step or two further than needed to make it extra rife for abuse just calls into question the intent of the "fix".

People act like it’s something that is done to them, rather than just setting ground rules with players.

As to this & your "multiple crossbows in place ready to shoot a few" scenario and what I'll charitably call a "solution" to all of these kinds of problems...

If "people" are posting from the PoV of a GM, there is very much something done to them by all of these obvious design problems. It's the difference between a system that allows the gm to collaboratively choose to use fiat so players can be awesome and a system where the gm who must use fiat in an adversarial manner to lock down a barn with no door and a high speed people mover belt exacerbating things. That right there is a pretty significant slight against GMs when we are talking about players using basic rules as designed.
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[TheSword]

Well there is the way that problems are largely the completely foreseeable result of choosing to bake a "fix" for thrown weapons with multiple attacks into the attack action rather than thrown weapons themselves. Having that misapplied "fix" go a step or two further than needed to make it extra rife for abuse just calls into question the intent of the "fix".
As to this & your "multiple crossbows in place ready to shoot a few" scenario and what I'll charitably call a "solution" to all of these kinds of problems...

If "people" are posting from the PoV of a GM, there is very much something done to them by all of these obvious design problems. It's the difference between a system that allows the gm to collaboratively choose to use fiat so players can be awesome and a system where the gm who must use fiat in an adversarial manner to lock down a barn with no door and a high speed people mover belt exacerbating things. That right there is a pretty significant slight against GMs when we are talking about players using basic rules as designed.
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I don’t seek or expect perfection. Good enough is fine by me.

I prefer the designers focus on making the game better for the 95% of players not the 5% that get a kick out of dragging a grappled person back and forth over spike stones… or using attacks of opportunity to get free buffs.

I don’t want the designers expending mental energy trying to come up with ways to hedge in the folks that try and do this stuff in a real game (rather than as a thought exercise). Mainly folks like that have always been there, they have always been looking for ways to twist the rules into a corkscrew and it’s better not to play games with them.

It’s a game. Don’t go trawling the internet for ways to break it, and it won’t be broken.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don’t seek or expect perfection. Good enough is fine by me.

These are far from "enough" in the evergreen never issue errata edition.

I prefer the designers focus on making the game better for the 95% of players not the 5% that get a kick out of dragging a grappled person back and forth over spike stones… or using attacks of opportunity to get free buffs.

• DMs are 20% of the audience but lions share of purchases.

I don’t want the designers expending mental energy trying to come up with ways to hedge in the folks that try and do this stuff in a real game (rather than as a thought exercise). Mainly folks like that have always been there, they have always been looking for ways to twist the rules into a corkscrew and it’s better not to play games with them.

It’s a game. Don’t go trawling the internet for ways to break it, and it won’t be broken.

You are misrepresenting the situation to give this defense. A lot of these problems are so obvious that they are immediately realized just from considering the rule and/or reported loudly during the playtest. Then you have the ones encountered just by players using them as designed.

 

[Lanefan]

I don’t seek or expect perfection. Good enough is fine by me.

I prefer the designers focus on making the game better for the 95% of players not the 5% that get a kick out of dragging a grappled person back and forth over spike stones… or using attacks of opportunity to get free buffs.

I don’t want the designers expending mental energy trying to come up with ways to hedge in the folks that try and do this stuff in a real game (rather than as a thought exercise). Mainly folks like that have always been there, they have always been looking for ways to twist the rules into a corkscrew and it’s better not to play games with them.

It’s a game. Don’t go trawling the internet for ways to break it, and it won’t be broken.

Where I want the designers to do exactly this - to find and fix the broken bits - and then hand it over to playtesters* whose specific mandate is "Break this game if you can". Lather rinse repeat until the playtesters can't find anything more to break.

Why? Because it's a game; which means (if they're doing it right) players will always be looking for an edge.

* - ideally selected from the hard-core char-op crowd.

 

[KibblesTasty]

I don't demand perfection from the rules (and god knows I've yet to write perfection so it would be hypocritical of me to ask it), but I think that is just no reason to have these mistakes. All of the things they were trying to do, like making it so you can draw and throw a bunch of javelins or daggers could have been done without breaking other things if they'd been more careful.

It would have taken more playtesting and editing, but the budget on that is trivial compared to the budget they spent on art or god knows what else. They could have gotten it for free if they just had not insisted on playing their cards close to their chest and actually used UA... and then actually read the comments for the UA instead of just looking at the total votes.

I don't think think the rules should be written for optimizers, but I don't think making them optimization proof has any cost besides straight up quality control. Most of the more problematic things were almost certainly not intentional changes, they were just makes.

There is just no benefit to me, as a player that doesn't want to exploit the rules, as a DM that doesn't want the rules exploited, or a homebrewer trying to write content for the game, in the rules being sloppy, and there's no good reason for them to be sloppy when are talking about a book that will probably sell a million copies and had a massive budget behind it.

The only ways I can see it ending up there are that they did not care, they ran out of time, or they don't understand the crunchy interactions of the rules. I would bet on them running out of time... but that's not a great place to be for was supposed to be the clean up edition of the rules that was going to be the last edition of D&D we'd ever need. Maybe that's not something you rush out the door unfinished.

I fully appreciate that many of the mistakes don't matter to many people. The same is true for 5e 2014. I don't really care that Conjure Animals is broken, because I just banned it and moved on with my life long ago. But it's also fair to say that if they are expecting people to upgrade from 5e 2014 to D&D 2024, it should probably strive to not have the same argument applied to it (that the DM can fix the jank).

And I really think people overstating how much of the problems are 'exploiting' the rules. Giant Insect reducing a creatures speed to 0 with no save or size limit and stopping everything from ghosts to dragons in place... and 70 hit points (more than double what it is supposed to have)... none of that is an exploit, it's just literally casting the spell as someone reading it would think it works. Sure, at least some of that might get errata'd but the book is already printed, and that's the version that will be in a lot of people's books. If they'd published that spell and actually listened to public comment, this would have been noticed immediately.

I don't think public feedback is good for finding the direction of the game, but it is extremely good at identifying the rough edges and sanding them down (as someone with a decent amount of public feedback on my content over the years... I can attest to that!); its a sandblaster that will tell you all the ways your rules fail and smooths things out. Too much can render your content boring and unoriginal, but too little can leave in obvious mistakes, exploits, and unintended combinations of rules. And these rules good have used a solid sandblasting.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Where I want the designers to do exactly this - to find and fix the broken bits - and then hand it over to playtesters* whose specific mandate is "Break this game if you can". Lather rinse repeat until the playtesters can't find anything more to break.

Why? Because it's a game; which means (if they're doing it right) players will always be looking for an edge.

* - ideally selected from the hard-core char-op crowd.

No matter how many times you lather and repeat, 20 people won't find the errors that 50 people will. And 50 people won't find the errors that 100 people will. And when you release a product to tens of thousands of people.... A new error will always pop up.

Half the big things people complaining about either require tortured readings of RAW that are non-obvious if you are working from a reasonable RAI, or likely are not errors in the first place. A big thing right now is that Giant Insect allows for a web shot that reduces a creature's speed to zero. Many people are declaring this broken, unintended, sloppy and terrible! But... It sounds pretty much exactly like what a ranged spider-web attack SHOULD do. And yes, it could have had a saving throw, but then you need to hit and save, which is more dice rolling and just makes it less effective in the 90% of use cases.

Or to give a different example. Many people have said that Hunter's Mark requiring concentration was a terrible blow to the Ranger, because who would want such a mediocre spell at high levels? But, now we are starting to get a clearer picture, and the Hunter Ranger who Dual-wields at level 5 could very easily end up in the following scenario:

Cast Hunter's Mark as a Bonus action.
Attack three times with Light Nick weapons for a total of 6d6+1d8+12 or 37.5 damage
Next turn attack four times with same weapons for a total of 8d6+1d8+16 or 48.5 damage.

That could very easily end up as higher damage output than most other martials over that period. I mean, a level 11 Paladin using 1st level Divine Smites with Greatsword and GWM is getting 4d6+2d8+2d8+8+8 or 48. So with 1 turn of set up, a Ranger is dealing the same damage as a smiting paladin double their level.

So.... was it bad design, sloppy and ill-thought out? Or intentional design. Somethings appear to be errors, those are unfortuanate, but it gets increasingly difficult to untangle the lingering disdain for WoTC, disagreements in play style, honest mistakes that stem from expectations, and mistakes that are actually problems.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It would have taken more playtesting and editing, but the budget on that is trivial compared to the budget they spent on art or god knows what else. They could have gotten it for free if they just had not insisted on playing their cards close to their chest and actually used UA... and then actually read the comments for the UA instead of just looking at he total votes.

They did use internal playtesters. They did read the comments in UA's, as they consistently and repeatedly stated. Would more testing have caught some of these things? Maybe. But if the playtesters understood the rule change for throwing javelins was for throwing javelins... would they have even considered drawing and dropping four different weapons on the ground? I mean, unless you are literally carrying 12+ weapons, that strategy isn't one that lasts for the entire fight, so while it is goofy, they likely never bothered with it, because the benefit wasn't worth the cost and didn't fit with how they played.

I don't think think the rules should be written for optimizers, but I don't think making them optimization proof has any cost besides straight up quality control. Most of the more problematic things were almost certainly not intentional changes, they were just makes.

I disagree. People optimize making sandwiches. You will never stop optimizers from optimizing, it is literally impossible. And the harder you lock down "edge cases" so that they cannot happen, the more you restrict creative play. If there is a paragraph describing to me all the ways I can and cannot use weapons, then sure you might prevent Mister Goofs from drawing a mace, Shortsword, flail then greataxe, but you might also prevent Jim from rushing forward, grabbing two mummy urns and smashing them open against the enemies. Because "the rules say" becomes the iron law, so no one does anything that might be problematic.

There is just no benefit to me, as a player that doesn't want to exploit the rules, as a DM that doesn't want the rules exploited, or a homebrewer trying to write content for the game, in the rules being sloppy, and there's no good reason for them to be sloppy when are talking about a book that will probably sell a million copies and had a massive budget behind it.

The only ways I can see it ending up there are that they did not care, they ran out of time, or they don't understand the crunchy interactions of the rules. I would bet on them running out of time... but that's not a great place to be for was supposed to be the clean up edition of the rules that was going to be the last edition of D&D we'd ever need. Maybe that's not something you rush out the door unfinished.

It was likely running out of time. We know the playtest got delayed, we know production got delayed. The Monster Manual certainly wasn't planned to be released in 2025. And yeah, that isn't great. I bet all of them wish they had more time. But they didn't.

I fully appreciate that many of the mistakes don't matter to many people. The same is true for 5e 2014. I don't really care that Conjure Animals is broken, because I just banned it and moved on with my life long ago. But it's also fair to say that if they are expecting people to upgrade from 5e 2014 to D&D 2024, it should probably strive to not have the same argument applied to it (that the DM can fix the jank).

And I really think people overstating how much of the problems are 'exploiting' the rules. Giant Insect reducing a creatures speed to 0 with no save or size limit and stopping everything from ghosts to dragons in place... and 70 hit points (more than double what it is supposed to have)... none of that is an exploit, it's just literally casting the spell as someone reading it would think it works. Sure, at least some of that might get errata'd but the book is already printed, and that's the version that will be in a lot of people's books. If they'd published that spell and actually listened to public comment, this would have been noticed immediately.

Right but... is Giant Insect doing that unintentional? I don't have the book to comment on the HP, that might be an error, but the web shot stopping everything from ghosts to dragons... might be intended. You don't have to like that, but that doesn't mean it was sloppy rules writing. Because honestly, ever since I've heard of this web shot ability, I've been excited. It sounds like it will be a fun, cinematic thing to use. And as a 4th level spell, being able to recreate the effects of a 2nd level spell but with fall damage... doesn't sound terribly out of line actually. Powerful? Certainly, but too powerful for a 7th level character using their most powerful ability? It isn't like reducing an enemies speed to zero is a hard effect to apply, it just normally isn't applied via range.