D&D 5E Lots Of Art (and some Warlock stuff)

Ruin Explorer · Jul 22, 2014

wwanno said:
Lockwood would be good for me, I loved the details of his art back in the 3.x era.

For me, his stuff was initially really good but quickly became same-y and seemed to decline in power as the edition went on. YMMV and all that.

I really think they want to look at younger, up-and-coming artists, rather than late-50s, or 60+ artists, both in terms of cost and in terms of getting great new art.

doctorhook · Jul 22, 2014

Zarithar said:
My D&D journey has been an odd one filled with detours. It started with the Holmes Basic Set > AD&D > AD&D 2nd Edition/Red Box Basic Set (all the way through the "Companion" set) > Long hiatus in which I played lots of PC games such as EverCrack, World of Warcrack, etc > 4e > Pathfinder > 5e!

With the exception of picking up (but never playing) the 3 core books for 3.0, I had no experience with 3.0 or 3.5. Long story short... that is why I missed the Wayne Reynolds WoTC art, and have therefore always associated him strongly with Pathfinder!

Fair enough! Anyway, now you know.

Li Shenron said:
I am a little bit confused at reading these again...

Sounds like the Warlock gets cantrips, spells and invocations.

Cantrips are at will, as usual.
Spells normally would be daily, but for the Warlock they refresh on a short rest.
Invocations are at will, but one of the article mentions them as "rituals", does that mean they take 1 hour to cast? I doubt.

Furthermore there's that "Mystic Arcanum" that some says are heightened spells, but from the Q&A it seems to me that this is the mentioned "some high-level spells that they can cast only once per day", so e.g. one additional 6th level spell 1/day, then one additional 7th level spell 1/day, then 8th and 9th, completely separate from the known 1-5th level spells.

I don't know what to think, but these sound like a lot of stuff. Four separate spellcasting mechanics (as clerics) don't exactly make for a low-complexity game, and overall the amount of cantrips+spells+invocations known is not that limited.

I mentioned in a different thread that the warlock will apparently either be the most complicated spellcaster in 5E, or the least. As you pointed out, there's a ton of complexity built into a class that makes its spell choices from three or four different types of powers (cantrips, spells, invocations, and mystic arcana*). On the other hand, it seems like most of those abilities will be either at-will or once-per-encounter, which will definitely simplify resource management; a warlock who's selected her powers will probably not have to worry about running out of them! This fits nicely with the totally-at-will-magic nature that 3.5E warlocks had.

Side note: So this is where 5E's AEDU class was hiding!

wwanno said:
Lockwood would be good for me, I loved the details of his art back in the 3.x era.

Lockwood made that 3E/3.5E Monster Manual, no doubt about that!

doctorhook · Jul 22, 2014

Iosue said:
Cite? Because I've looked over all his posts on Boing Boing as well as his personal blog and some other articles and the most edition warry thing I've found is this.

Everything else I've seen just seems to indicate that he's a guy who used to play D&D back in the 1e days and his main interest is playing those editions again for the nostalgias. In his articles on 5e he's noted that 4e was contentious, and some D&D fans went to Pathfinder, which, while negative of 4e, doesn't seem to me like a misrepresentation of the facts. At the least, I've seen nothing indicating that he "loathed 4e and thought it was terrible."

I feel validated by your comment describing the author as exactly the way I expected him.

Sword of Spirit · Jul 22, 2014

Li Shenron said:
I am a little bit confused at reading these again...

Sounds like the Warlock gets cantrips, spells and invocations.

Cantrips are at will, as usual.
Spells normally would be daily, but for the Warlock they refresh on a short rest.
Invocations are at will, but one of the article mentions them as "rituals", does that mean they take 1 hour to cast? I doubt.

Furthermore there's that "Mystic Arcanum" that some says are heightened spells, but from the Q&A it seems to me that this is the mentioned "some high-level spells that they can cast only once per day", so e.g. one additional 6th level spell 1/day, then one additional 7th level spell 1/day, then 8th and 9th, completely separate from the known 1-5th level spells.

I don't know what to think, but these sound like a lot of stuff. Four separate spellcasting mechanics (as clerics) don't exactly make for a low-complexity game, and overall the amount of cantrips+spells+invocations known is not that limited.

Yep, I share the confusion. I think the ritual aspect meant that if they had that invocation they were able to cast spells as rituals that they otherwise wouldn't be able to, possibly because ritual caster may not be a class feature for them, and they need that invocation to do it.

Yeah, it sure does sound like an awful lot of stuff. It's looked that way too me for a long time. A "small number of spells" but they auto-scale, and refresh on short rest? Sounds rather formidable.

Scorpio616 · Jul 24, 2014

TerraDave said:
But they seem to really be trying to show what the game is about, and not just illustrate some stuff that happens to be connected to the game (if that makes sense).

Perfect sense. Like how wotc screwed up and put "two PC races" on the 4e PHB but put "D&D party in Dungeon fighting a Dragon" on the character sheet book.

Vs.

Sword of Spirit · Jul 24, 2014

Scorpio616 said:
Perfect sense. Like how wotc screwed up and put "two PC races" on the 4e PHB but put "D&D party in Dungeon fighting a Dragon" on the character sheet book.

View attachment 62963 Vs. View attachment 62964

I think what he was referring to was internal art. In some editions of D&D and other games there is a lot of interior art that shows stuff in the game world, but isn't really related to the surrounding text. In 5e, they seem to be focusing more on making sure that the art is relevant to the context of its location in the tome itself, rather than just being scattered mood art.

Or at least that is what I feel like they are doing. And I'll admit, when I started seeing RPG books doing that for the first time, it really made a positive impression on me. There is nothing wrong with non-contextual art, but there is definitely something right with contextual presentation.

(I'm not talking about necessary illustrations like weapons, armor, or racial illustrations, but to the non-essential art in the books.)

D&D 5E Lots Of Art (and some Warlock stuff)

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