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

[Not a Decepticon]

2024 level 20 Monk speed is 75 max, including Goliath and a feat.

Wood Elf Monk 20 with Epic Boon of Speed, Speedy and Charger can, after casting Longstrider, move 365 feet total in a turn

What I find weird is new Monk weapons. You get all simple meele weapons. Including two-handed greatclub. But not including any ranged weapons like shortbow, light crossbow or sling. But you also get all light martial weapons, regardless if meele or not. Which gives you light crossbow, but not a whip. This is very inconsistent, if not outright incoherent.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Wood Elf Monk 20 with Epic Boon of Speed, Speedy and Charger can, after casting Longstrider, move 365 feet total in a turn

Now add in Haste spell - between doubling your speed and giving an extra Dash, it's more than a 2x increase in damage

 

[TheSword]

I think what you and @Chaosmancer upthread are missing is that dragging people while grappling has been significantly buffed in that you used to only be able to move at half speed while dragging grappled people around. This is no longer the case. This doubles how are you can drag people and causes an already powerful tactic to become broken.

So don’t do it. I can’t stress enough how that simple little fix solves it.

 

[Lanefan]

I tend to dislike spells that can only be solved other spells, leaving no counterplay for non-magical characters (no save, nothing they can try to do). My personal 'fix' is that I give Wall of Force hit points, so enough battering breaks it. It is still very good for delaying a powerful creature a couple turns, or splitting off a horde for a turn or two, but it can longer freely partition almost any fight into the optimal configuration.

To me that "fix" defeats one of the most fun purposes of Wall of Force: to be able to stop something really big - such as a ship of the line or a charging elephant or a freight train - dead in its tracks, with accompanying devastation to the thing thus suddenly stopped if it was moving quickly.

A frequent piece of advice in encounter building is to make something a proper challenge include more enemies, but a single spell completely undoes that by letting the players divide up almost any encounter how they like. I think it's one of maybe half a dozen spells that comes up a lot when you hear about people's frustration with high level play.

That said, this is completely a tangent and obviously just a pet peeve of mine. I feel it's unreasonable to ask the DMs to work around it, and extremely obnoxious to any nonmagical PCs if they ever get locked out of a fight with it. Just let them vent their frustration by hitting the wall and maybe breaking it down after a few turns. Makes it feel a lot better IMO.

Problem is, if it's fragile enough that a typical PC can break it down in a few turns then a freight train can plow through it and not even notice.

 

[mellored]

I think what you and @Chaosmancer upthread are missing is that dragging people while grappling has been significantly buffed in that you used to only be able to move at half speed while dragging grappled people around. This is no longer the case. This doubles how are you can drag people and causes an already powerful tactic to become broken.

I think you are missing that a horse doesn't have a speed reduction when the rider is grappling.

Wood Elf Monk 20 with Epic Boon of Speed, Speedy and Charger can, after casting Longstrider, move 365 feet total in a turn

Forgot about the epic boons. But that's level 19.
And with 2 allies.
And with a setup rounds. Giving the enemy a chance to grapple you back, setting your speed to 0.

2014 Pegasus with Longstrider can do 200' at level 10. Flying.
And the Valor Bard can make 2 grapple checks with +8 on the same turn.
Level 12 and you can cast spiked growth, action surge to grapple twice, and go 200' all on the same turn. By himself.

Either way. This isn’t new.

 

[pukunui]

I think what you and @Chaosmancer upthread are missing is that dragging people while grappling has been significantly buffed in that you used to only be able to move at half speed while dragging grappled people around. This is no longer the case. This doubles how are you can drag people and causes an already powerful tactic to become broken.

I would just like to point out that this grappling at full speed thing requires the Grappler feat. It’s not something everyone can do.

 

[TwoSix]

To me that "fix" defeats one of the most fun purposes of Wall of Force: to be able to stop something really big - such as a ship of the line or a charging elephant or a freight train - dead in its tracks, with accompanying devastation to the thing thus suddenly stopped if it was moving quickly.

Problem is, if it's fragile enough that a typical PC can break it down in a few turns then a freight train can plow through it and not even notice.

I think there’s a question of what exactly one wants the narrative of Wall of Force to be.

Is the Wizard conjuring an esoteric break in the laws of physics in a limited area? Or is the wall a manifestation of the caster’s will? (“You shall not pass”)

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Forgot about the epic boons. But that's level 19.
And with 2 allies.
And with a setup rounds. Giving the enemy a chance to grapple you back, setting your speed to 0.

No? You can cast longstrider on yourself before fight, it lasts 10 minutes. Wood Elf gets it for free once. Open Hand Monk can Dash and Flurry in the same bonus action. And you don't eve need an ally to abuse it - you can run 100 feet up the wall, drop the grappled target, make them take 10d6 bludgeoning, no save, then run back and likely grapple them again, if they're still alive.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

To me that "fix" defeats one of the most fun purposes of Wall of Force: to be able to stop something really big - such as a ship of the line or a charging elephant or a freight train - dead in its tracks, with accompanying devastation to the thing thus suddenly stopped if it was moving quickly.

Problem is, if it's fragile enough that a typical PC can break it down in a few turns then a freight train can plow through it and not even notice.

Then I propose another fix to wall of force:
it's now a reaction spell, you can cast when being attacked, subjected to a spell, AoE or on a path of charging creature or monsters. It produces wall that stops it dead but disappears soon after.

 

[mamba]

Okay, maybe they should have put them in one of the playtests. Hindsight is 20/20 after all. But I don't think that would have necessarily been obvious to them at the time.

To me it seems obvious that a public playtest is more effective when it sees everything rather than early versions of some stuff that then gets changed later based on some internal decisions and nothing at all for some others

Sure, but which version would we have seen? If they were releasing new versions of these spells or rules every two weeks, would we have seen this version in the month long playtest we did?

we do not need to see every internal version, but we should see everything that may be considered final by WotC.

To me that is the point of having a playtest. If I only see early versions of 50% of the changes and those get changed further by WotC without asking for additional feedback, then what is the point? Sounds like I might as well not bother participating