D&D Errata Nerfs Conjuring Spells, Makes Other Changes

A new errata for Dungeons & Dragons' revised 5th Edition has provided a significant nerf to conjuring spells and provided some clarity on how the Hide action works within the game. Wizards of the Coast released a new errata for its various D&D Core Rulebooks today, with a host of mostly minor changes to the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. Two of the biggest changes came to the Player's Handbook, with various conjuring spells receiving a notable debuff to upcasting, and the Hidden rules receiving a round of clarifications.

The Conjure Elemental, Conjure Fey, Conjure Minor Elementals, and Conjure Woodland Beings spells all received debuffs to their "Using a Higher-Level Spell Slot" sections, with the amount of increased damage decreasing from 2 attack die of a certain size to 1 attack die of a certain size. Several shapeshifting spells that granted temporary hit points now clarify that those temporary hit points go away once a spell is cast.

Additionally, the Hidden rules now explicitly state that the Hide action grants the Invisible condition "while hidden" and states what ends a player character hiding, which includes an enemy finding you via a Perception check. The Hide action received some notice during the initial Player's Handbook release for some alleged loopholes in the rules.

A full list of errata can be found on D&D Beyond.

 

[aco175]

I read the 'level above 5' to mean level 6 and up, but I can also see where people would think/argue that it means level 5 and up. Am I reading it wrong?

 

[Reynard]

The same reason they play any game with character builds?

Optimizers are people, with complex sets of desires and priorities. Building an optimized character might be something they are interested in doing, without ability to optimize being the primary deciding factor in what ruleset they choose to use.

Not sure what you mean by that, why wouldn't we play 5e? It's not like 5e is some simplistic game without any parameters to optimize

Optimisers play everything. Everything can be optimised and optimising the difficult to optimise is often more fun than the broken or easy to optimise.

Optimizers are people too.

I was mostly being snarky about 5E. After all, it is hard to optimize in a game with a) terrible balance and b) a lot of DM adjudication.

But carry on.

 

[KYRON45]

I was mostly being snarky about 5E. After all, it is hard to optimize in a game with a) terrible balance and b) a lot of DM adjudication.

But carry on.

I’ve never met a game that you couldn’t optimize the joy out of. Balance is a myth and one the DMs main functions is to adjudicate.

But we all know that the main function of the DM is collecting hit points from PCs. Mwah ha ha!!! It’s the tax they pay for making the DMs life difficult.

 

[Remathilis]

I was mostly being snarky about 5E. After all, it is hard to optimize in a game with a) terrible balance and b) a lot of DM adjudication.

But carry on.

People used to min/max AD&D, using all sorts of dual-classing and kit shenanigans. It's that D&D IS so terribly balanced and subjective that you can optimize it so easily.

 

[Reynard]

People used to min/max AD&D, using all sorts of dual-classing and kit shenanigans. It's that D&D IS so terribly balanced and subjective that you can optimize it so easily.

Maybe I am not familiar with current trends, but I understand exploits to be different than optimization, culturally. The latter is more like engineering, while the former is more like cheating.

 

[KYRON45]

Maybe I am not familiar with current trends, but I understand exploits to be different than optimization, culturally. The latter is more like engineering, while the former is more like cheating.

I think multi-classing is cheating…but what do I know?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I find it interesting that for 5.5 there's extensive errata to fix balance issues, while for 5e they explicitly avoided that and instead almost only published errata to fix actual errors in the text.

Are we heading back to the times of 4e, and in 3 years there will have been so many rules updates that the first printing 5.5 rulebooks will be tricky to use if your characters are on D&D beyond?

I think we should hold off on getting concerned about this until we have evidence that it actually is happening. One errata document does not a trend make.

 

[Remathilis]

Maybe I am not familiar with current trends, but I understand exploits to be different than optimization, culturally. The latter is more like engineering, while the former is more like cheating.

The line is blurry to say the least. To me, the difference is scale. An optimizer will tell you to take a level of hexblade as a paladin despite the tonal mismatch because the two mechanics synergize so well and the mechanical synergy is more important than the story implications of paladin/warlock. The exploiter reads the letter of the law, not the spirit and decides that warlock and sorcerer can be mixed so that a warlock takes nothing but short rests (including 8 short rests per night because the rules don't say I can't) and keep converting them into spell points for infinite low level magic. Both are abusing the mechanics of the warlock, but one is to a far greater at the amount of abuse it's inflicting. Both are keeping it rules legal though, by because there is no challenge in cheating.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I was mostly being snarky about 5E. After all, it is hard to optimize in a game with a) terrible balance and b) a lot of DM adjudication.

But carry on.

Unless you are using a very different meaning of optimization than I am, this is nonsense. Balance nothing to do with optimization and DM fiat does not prevent it. At most DM fiat just restricts the available tools and scope of optimization. One can build the most effective character one can that does not get one thrown out of the table.

 

[Reynard]

Unless you are using a very different meaning of optimization than I am, this is nonsense. Balance nothing to do with optimization and DM fiat does not prevent it. At most DM fiat just restricts the available tools and scope of optimization. One can build the most effective character one can that does not get one thrown out of the table.

See, that's what I call power gaming, and that's a different think. Optimizers still try and work within.the social contract as well as the rules, and therefore well balanced systems with defined rules are much better for that style of play. The key difference is that those systems accommodate both optimizers and non optimizers at the same table. Systems like 5E that half-ass it end up creating problems if not everyone is a power gamer.