D&D 5E (2024) New Campaign: Should I make the switch to 5.5?

[Clint_L]

You need a poll, but not here. Ask your group to vote.

Eh...depends on the group. In my home game, I'm the only one who really knows the rules, and I do all the work. So I didn't ask. If it was a more significant change, or to another game, I might ask, but going from 5 to 5.5 is mostly invisible.

 

[Clint_L]

I appreciate that WotC is a corporation and they need to make money, but I don't really see a strong need for 5.5 to exist other than the financial one. There I things I like about 5.5 and things I don't, but really no silver bullet in it that makes me say "Ah! See, THIS right here is why we, as players and DMs, needed 5.5!"

Counterpoint: I play a monk.

 

[Burnside]

Counterpoint: I play a monk.

Yeah fair enough - the monk is inarguably improved and I haven't played the new one yet. Maybe the monk is the killer app of 5.5.

 

[Burnside]

FWIW, If I was WotC, I would strongly consider testing the market for a streamlined/less mechanically complex variant of D&D covering levels 1-10. Doesn't need to be a huge product; maybe even digital-only at first. But it could be a profitable small product line alongside the main one.

 

[AlViking]

Yeah, hard disagree on everything there, because all the things you seem to have considered bugs in the 2014 version are to me either the selling features or non-issues. I knew how it worked, I never had trouble explaining to people how it worked, and because it worked differently than other spells it was actually tactically interesting. Sometimes it was clutch, other times it was useless. That's what made it interesting.

If everything is going to be so standardized they should just cut out half the spells, because they're just endless boring versions of the same things. 2024 5e seems to be basically all the complexity of 2014 5e just with less actual flavor to be found in that complexity.

Which to me sounds like "I didn't want any changes to anything existing". That's perfectly fine, I just don't see why you can't simply say that. I don't see any more standardization in 5.5 than in 5 and I really don't see how 5.5 is any less complex - they've just shifted some of the complexity around. As @Tigris just said, the sleep spell is less complex but it's in a good way. The old game made assumptions about how the game was played, that all creatures in combat had a glowing HP number above their heads in order for it to be useful. I dislike that kind of metagaming and other than occasionally allowing it for healing like the life cleric's preserve life which heals up to 1/2 HP I ban discussion of actual HP numbers.

But there are other spells like counterspell that were just ... boring. It also lead to nerf escalation for the DM. I played in a group where we had multiple players that could counterspell so an enemy would cast a spell, player A would counterspell, enemy would counterspell A's counterspell and then player B would counterspell the enemy's counterspell of the counterspell of the counterspell. Which then of course lead to another caster added to the enemy list which just added to the counterspell conga line. If you were a mean DM, all you needed was a relatively low level wizard with improved invisibility that did nothing but counterspell because we ruled that since there were no somatic components to counterspell there would be no way to know it was being cast. I hate that kind of escalation and I'm glad it's gone, it's also why I banned the spell in my home game.

Meanwhile there are several changes, primarily weapon mastery, that do add complexity and flavor that the 2014 rules lacked.

In any case if you don't like the changes, stick with the 5e version. Some people are still playing 2e and OD&D (or variants) so if it . But if you do stick with 5e you also have to acknowledge that the pool of players willing to play an old version will slowly shrink over time and that there will never be another new official book of player options that is guaranteed to be compatible.

 

[AlViking]

FWIW, If I was WotC, I would strongly consider testing the market for a streamlined/less mechanically complex variant of D&D covering levels 1-10. Doesn't need to be a huge product; maybe even digital-only at first. But it could be a profitable small product line alongside the main one.

They did kind of do that with one of the latest starter set "Heroes of the Borderlands", didn't they? It's only up to level 3, but that's high enough to get feedback on whether people like the idea or not. Personally I don't think it's necessary, that's what the basic rules are for.

 

[Lazybones]

FWIW, If I was WotC, I would strongly consider testing the market for a streamlined/less mechanically complex variant of D&D covering levels 1-10. Doesn't need to be a huge product; maybe even digital-only at first. But it could be a profitable small product line alongside the main one.

So back to Basic/Expert and AD&D? No thanks. And in a sense it already exists in the form of the Starter Set/Basic Rules, as AlViking noted.

 

[TheSword]

This was my list of reasons to switch. Things I see as straight upgrades

• Weapon Masteries
• Starter Feats
• Adjustments to spells - like Counterspell and sleep.
• The Bloodied condition
• Change to inspiration
• More use of Proficiency bonus in feats and class abilities. Fixing GWM and SS
• Decoupling stats to race and in general making race more flexible
• Making background more important.
• Changes to illusionist
• Changes to Monk
• Changes to unarmed combat and grapple/moving away from opposed Athletics checks.

I would also add from the Eberron and Forgotten Realms books

• Organization feat chains
• Interesting subclasses
• Abilities that use HD as a resource

Full disclosure. I think the only thing that I don’t like about 2024 so far is the Path of the World Tree barbarian. I found it quite frustrating because of its ability to move enemies around. That was quite confounding as a DM. Though I don’t think it was OP, just disruptive.

 

[Lazybones]

RE the 2024 ruleset, I've switched for two of my three groups and it's going fairly well. We're still learning the changes, but I haven't encountered anything game-breaking. It's still D&D, either way. I find it amusing that people are critiquing the new rules for being both more and less complex than 2014. I am finding the 2024 games to be a bit easier to run right now since we're only using the PHB; I think that the 2024 writers did a better job ensuring that the classes/subclasses are better balanced against each other (especially when you include the options in Tasha's).

 

[Professor Murder]

It comes down to if you want to keep getting new materials WotC will release and that most 3rd party sources will release going forward. If you do, then yes.