D&D General 5.5E--new edition or not?

[Thierry-Advent]

There was a "Rules Cyclopedia" for BECMI D&D, but I do not remember one for AD&D 2E. Couldn't find such a beast with a quick google search either, are you sure?

AD&D 2e had blue interior printings, then it had the black covers with red titles and bad art inside. That was the errata. No one called it 2.5. More like 2.1 or 2e version #2. I'm sure they made discrete corrections in the text with each new printing.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

They started work on Ravenloft about 2 years ago, I doubt they had much to go on wrt the customers dropping 5e for 5.5 at that time.

Hmm. Yeah, it was probably just more pressure (both internal and external) to do more Ravenloft, what with Curse of Strahd being such a good seller.

I agree that WotC should see that trend now as well and that it means the 5.5 backwards compatibility mantra has failed

Personally, I hope that word keeps getting out that it's not that hard to combine them, but I won't hold my breath. It'll amount to much the same thing when there's just enough new books to make the difference. I just hope that they don't spam us with too many books! That's always been a big mistake.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

yet at no point did anyone claim it was a new version of 4e or a new edition.

Not until Essentials, anyway, at which point tons of people cried that it was "Four Point Five". Shudder.

 

[Clint_L]

This is ultimately a branding issue, not a rules issue. I can argue all day long (and will) that by the standards of previous D&D, 5e is all the same edition. Certainly I use the all the books together without any significant challenges.

But that doesn't matter if the perception is that the "old" stuff is outdated and no one wants to buy it. "New" has always been a powerful concept in advertising. Mostly, it's a sales feature, but WotC's strategy around 2024 muddled the issue by trying to claim the updated rules as both new and old at the same time. Consumers are opting for "new" over "old," as they usually will.

However, immediate sales are only part of the issue. WotC, likely scarred by what happened between 3e-4e, is also trying to avoid another schism within their fanbase. In that, the jury is still out, and I am interested to see how many groups remain 5e "purists," how many, like mine, just use both, and how many become 5.5e purists, as Morrus's anecdote suggests might be happening. Obviously, WotC will really want to minimize the former.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The math is different, the balance is different. Sure, you can mix and match a lot at the table, but 5 is not 5.5, fundamentally.

It seems to me that the balance of 5.5 is just more balanced, while weighted a little higher. If a 5e character could swing between 1 and 10 (with 1 being totally unoptimized & 10 being fully jacked) then 5.5 is the same, just going from 5 to 8. If you're used to playing all 3's and 4's, then 5.5 seems "OMG OP". But for those who saw a lot of 6's and 7's... well, it looks pretty much the same.

And I am very happy to have not seen any 9s or 10s since I started playing 5.5. YMMV.

 

[Remathilis]

IMHO, 5.5 is a much larger change from 5.0 than 3.5e was from 3.0, or than Essentials was from baseline 4e. I would say that 3.5 material was far more backwards compatible with 3.0 stuff than 5.5 is with 5.0, and it was definitely a new game. (Essentials ran fine alongside 4e base material, on the other hand, and was much more an expansion on 4e rather than a rewrite.)

I think you seriously are underselling 3.0 to 3.5. There was A LOT of changes, from the wholesale re-write of the ranger and bard, to the consolidation/removal of several skills (like read lips and Animal Empathy), the changes to Power Attack and other combat feats, the changes to Bull's Strength (etc) from a metamagicable-dice roll to a flat bonus, the absolute rewriting of damage reduciton (both in terms of numbers and bypassing, going from 30/+5 to 15/Magic) a completely redone psionics system, and the standardization of monster math (skills, feats, HD) by creature type. MUCH of 3.0's play loop got changed in 3.5, and that was before the glut of new classes, prestige classes, feats, spells, etc. Due to those changes, almost anything designed for play past 8th-10th level was functionally useless unless your rebuilt in from the ground up. And much of 3.5 didn't work in 3.0 very well due to changes to skills, classes and feats.

I would say 3.5 changes are AT LEAST as big as 5.5, if not bigger.

 

[Tigris]

The problem I have with this logic is that the only difference between what you are describing here in 4th edition vs 5th edition is that instead of giving us a clean set of revised corebooks, 4e did it through erratta and stealth updates and wasn't considered a new version of the game.
4e changed... the monster math, the math around skill challenges, how stealth as a whole worked, as well as numerous individual powers and feats...yet at no point did anyone claim it was a new version of 4e or a new edition.

Well I agree that patches like this does not make a new edition, but to be fair, the math changes in 5.5 are just WAY bigger than what 4e had even with essentials. (Just because the original 5E math was sooo much broken).


People talk all the time about how "monster math in 4E was broken before MM3" well the changes were A LOT smaller than what 5.5 did.

• Encounter math stayed in 4E the same. (Ok there was some recommendation for using 5/6 minions instead of 4 for a normal enemy on level 11/21 later)
• Monsters had their damage increased by 10-24% by level 11 to 30. This, however, only did make up for the increased defenses players got (over feats and masterwork armor) because players complaint that monster hit scales faster than player defenses
  • (and monsters below level 10 inconistent and some also had a similar damage increase, but not all, it was overall just made more consistent).
• In the same time Monster HP was DECREASED by 10-24% by level 11 to 30
• Soldiers lost their +2 to hit and brutes lost their -2 to hit

So the change was mostly 10-24% more damage for 10-24% less health. So Monster gained something relative small and lost something relative small.

Now in 5.5 correcting the encounter math of 5:

• Monster multipyer for encounter building was cut, this means that an average encounter (3-5 enemies) has 100% more XP budget. (While many enemy encounters even more)
• Similarily for high level encounters the budget was increased ADDITIONALLY
• Then many Monsters of a bit higher level have often 50% more HP
• And the monsters also have more Damage

This is overall something like a 200% more extreme change than 4E had.


I still think its silly to call a balance patch a new edition/new game, but its definitly a huge difference percentage wise in how much 5.5 had to correct 5E vs how much 4E corrected the monster math. Still its just a balance patch. And computer games which released in a broken state had similar extreme patches. (Gothic 3, Vampire the masqerade and others).

It seems to me that the balance of 5.5 is just more balanced, while weighted a little higher. If a 5e character could swing between 1 and 10 (with 1 being totally unoptimized & 10 being fully jacked) then 5.5 is the same, just going from 5 to 8. If you're used to playing all 3's and 4's, then 5.5 seems "OMG OP". But for those who saw a lot of 6's and 7's... well, it looks pretty much the same.

And I am very happy to have not seen any 9s or 10s since I started playing 5.5. YMMV.

This 100% 5.5 increased the power level of the floor of characters mostly, while also cutting many things of optimized builds (power ceiling). This is also why martials were more buffed, while extreme feats removed and wizard only slightly buffed while many overly strong wizard spells heavily nerfed.


This is also why there is no "balance change" between 5.5 and 5. The balance in 5 was just completly broken and 5.5 tries to fix it and part of this is make the extreme builds less extreme, such that you know the power levels of characters better (being around 6/10) and then you can balance the encounters for this more realistic 6/10 and not have to balance them for the 2/10 which 5.0 did, because in the end most people where not playing them anyway.

 

[Scribe]

It seems to me that the balance of 5.5 is just more balanced, while weighted a little higher. If a 5e character could swing between 1 and 10 (with 1 being totally unoptimized & 10 being fully jacked) then 5.5 is the same, just going from 5 to 8. If you're used to playing all 3's and 4's, then 5.5 seems "OMG OP". But for those who saw a lot of 6's and 7's... well, it looks pretty much the same.

And I am very happy to have not seen any 9s or 10s since I started playing 5.5. YMMV.

Regardless of where the balance sits, it is different. The fact the classes from 5, are also different from 5.5? The monsters?

I mean its clear, its been clear the whole time, its not the same, and the claims at compatibility were a desperate attempt by Wizards, to avoid exactly what has come to pass, with books from 5, being either ignored, or seen as less than, compared to 5.5.

I dont know, I'm shocked this shocks people honestly.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Like, for me there doesn't seem to be enough content for a month of gaming with official 5.5 stuff.

A month? You mean of solid 8 hour days, 5 days a week? Because there's about that, sure.

And that's not including that there's really nothing stopping you from running a 5e Adventure, of which there is more than I can imagine having time for. And that's before you look elsewhere, where there's more than a lifetime's worth.

 

[Morrus]

The problem with the word 'edition' is that there's a difference between a new edition of a book and a new edition of a game system. And we're using the as synonyms when they're not.

In no way is the 2024 Player's Handbook not a new edition of that book. It's entirely rewritten, re-illustrated, different pagecount. It's not the same book. It is a different book. Not a slightly different book, a completely different book. In publishing, 10% difference is generally considered a new edition of a book (as opposed to a reprinting or errated book). This is 100% different. Nobody could argue that it's not a new edition of the Player's Handbook.

A new edition of a GAME SYSTEM, however, is not defined. And that's where the confusion arises. It's a new edition of the book in absolute inarguable terms. Whether it's a new edition of the game system is just up to each person's opinion. WotC says it isn't. The people in this thread are divided on whether it is. I think it is. But... none of that matters. What matters isn't what people say, it's what people do. And in this a particular scenario, what people do is what people buy. It's all marketing, some of us buy into it, some of us stan it, some of us ignore it, some of us yell at it, but it's just marketing. It's not a theoretical question, it's a real-world question. And the output of that marketing is people not buying 5E books. There's no other meaningful answer, unless you value internet points.