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

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not sure that's really accurate. We think of it that was now, in retrospect, and with the significant changes of 4e looming large thereafter, and to some degree with PF1's explicit "don't change the game much" mandate making the differences feel even smaller. If we could peer into the mind of a 2003-2005 D&D player directly, they might feel significantly more strongly. I imagine Sword & Fist sales dropped significantly in there.

Alright? All this tells me is that folks took time to come around to seeing that they really were fundamentally the same game, just with the dials turned a little.

3.5e is closer to 3e than to any other edition by a country mile. Nearly anything you might want to run from 5.0 can be run in 5.5e with very little, if any, modification. Just about the only thing that truly requires adjustment is races/species and backgrounds, since 5.0 and 5.5 locate stats in the former and latter respectively. There are little changes here and there where you can see that 5.5e was a clear step up in some regards--usually fixing places where a class was weak, e.g. Warlock--and others I would argue are a clear step down. It's certainly got differences, most of them are just...pretty small.

I guess my litmus test for an edition jump vs an iterative update is as follows.

1. If I were to pick a randomly-chosen but well-made character in X, could I expect (say, 90% chance) to play it in Y with less than five minutes' work changing things?
2. If I were to pick a random, but well-liked, adventure written for X, could I expect (say, 90% chance) to play it in Y with less than one hour's work adjusting it?
3. If I were actually running a game of Y, but had only a book of X monsters on hand, could I run a combat with those monsters at the table with, at most, a 10-minute break beforehand to address edge cases?

If the answer to all three is "yes", then it's unquestionably the same edition of the game, just more options. If the answer is "no" or "maybe" to just one of them, then it's more ambiguous--that's where I would put some, but not all, "half-edition" changes. If the answer is "no" to all of them, then it is definitely a different edition.

By these lights, Essentials is 4e. There is no difference between them. 3.5e is extremely close to 3.0, but likely gets a "maybe" on at least one of the above questions (most likely the first)--I think the answer is closer to like a 2/3 chance that you could play a 3.0 character in 3.5e with less than five minutes' work tweaking it, just because very high-level characters can be complex, depend on parts from books that may be forbidden, or otherwise have many small changes that require laborious correction.

5.5e looks, feels, and smells much more like 5e than it does like anything else. "Conversion" is still required for some character options--I would know, I've had to deal with the gap between the two rulesets with actual characters I've created!--but a finished character probably doesn't need much, if any, change. Monsters are damn-near completely interchangeable. And the whole point was that you could run those classic, beloved 5e adventures with no change, or rare, tiny changes.

I don't personally much care for a standard that, implicitly, changes whether or not a structure is "same" or "different" primarily on the basis of whether people talk about it as being "same" or "different". Sameness reads as an innate characteristic to me, not as a property defined exclusively by our perceptions thereof.

 

[Corinnguard]

I guess my litmus test for an edition jump vs an iterative update is as follows.

While I know that the topic of this thread is for 5e and 5.5e, I am curious about whether or not any of the 5e-adjacent RPGs such as Level Up or Tales of the Valiant can pass your litmus test. Especially since some of them came before 5.5e by a couple of years.

 

[mamba]

I don't personally much care for a standard that, implicitly, changes whether or not a structure is "same" or "different" primarily on the basis of whether people talk about it as being "same" or "different". Sameness reads as an innate characteristic to me, not as a property defined exclusively by our perceptions thereof.

well, you can argue they are the same edition, but if people do not treat them as the same edition by not buying books from the ‘other’ edition, then for all intents and purposes it does not matter what your criteria say on the subject

 

[bsss]

Again it doesn't really matter what the detailed criteria for "new edition" is, the problem is the consumer perception that D&D 5.5 is "D&D 5.0 But Better in Every Way". For most people I suspect it's just plainly not different enough to shake off the feeling of 5.0 being the "old pre-patch game" nor to keep them sticking with the game they liked in 2023.

Honestly, I think @Morrus should just slap a "5.5e!" sticker on old stock and stick to the compatibility guns, if you truly believe it is compatible, and avoid the technically correct answer. It doesn't seem dishonest to me (as you frame it anyway).

 

[Retreater]

Out of interest, when you say your players are not ok with "just winging it" do you mean that they would object to you winging it or making a ruling on the fly at a point where the rules were chafing?
I never meant that the players would be winging anything.

Rules applied inconsistently or "rule of cool."
I have one player that gets legit angry when he interprets that I'm "out to get him." Like, if he made a character from a warm climate who was crossing a tundra and I had him roll a save with disadvantage to not get exhaustion from the cold. "No one else is getting disadvantage!"
Then I have another player who gets upset if I shave off hit points or make monsters easier. "You're denying us the challenge! We want to beat this fairly."
Another one finds it noble for me to have the campaign scripted out in advance. "It's really cool you put so much thought into this." And she doesn't like what is perceived as inconsistency in the rules. ("Two sessions ago I was able to back flip over the enemy and do extra damage. I want to keep doing that.")

 

[Willie the Duck]

I don't personally much care for a standard that, implicitly, changes whether or not a structure is "same" or "different" primarily on the basis of whether people talk about it as being "same" or "different". Sameness reads as an innate characteristic to me, not as a property defined exclusively by our perceptions thereof.

well, you can argue they are the same edition, but if people do not treat them as the same edition by not buying books from the ‘other’ edition, then for all intents and purposes it does not matter what your criteria say on the subject

I understand EzekielRaiden's position, but before I even agree or disagree, I think there are (at least) two intervening considerations:
We're not really talking about (exactly) the same: I don't even mean at the molecular level or something pedantic like that. For the purposes I mean, two copies* of the 2014 PHB are "the same." We know that the 2024 PHB is not the same as that (if it were, it would just be the 2014 PHB and there would be no controversy) -- to say nothing about the whole selection of books published 2014-23 compared to those 2024 and after. What we're really discussing is if they are "same enough" to count as "the same" for some ill-defined measure of acceptability. That's inherently subjective and predicated on what individuals or groups consider important rather than any inarguable objective measures. *let's say same printing, although again this is outside the granularity of the measure.
Exactly what we're measuring the sameness of isn't well-defined: I used the physical books in the last point, but that was a deliberate choice. Throughout the debate (here and elsewhere), it isn't clear that that's specifically what is being discussed (and compared for sameness). What is? Hard to say/it varies. For some, it is the books. For others, the rules contained in the books (so issues related to layout, ease of use, binding quality don't factor in). For others, the game they support. Or the play pattern that results. Or the experience of playing in the resultant play pattern. Half of these are experiential or social constructs. We're not going to be able to separate that from the perceptions of the experiencers thereof.

 

[Tigris]

Again it doesn't really matter what the detailed criteria for "new edition" is, the problem is the consumer perception that D&D 5.5 is "D&D 5.0 But Better in Every Way". For most people I suspect it's just plainly not different enough to shake off the feeling of 5.0 being the "old pre-patch game" nor to keep them sticking with the game they liked in 2023.

But this is also just what it is, both in narrative and from a game design standpoint. 5.0 is old "prepatch" broken game which is now improved.

 

[bsss]

But this is also just what it is, both in narrative and from a game design standpoint. 5.0 is old "prepatch" broken game which is now improved.

I won't wade into that debate (because I bounced hard off of 5.0 and didn't come back, so who am I to say), but sure, my point is more that even if those improvements don't really affect Morrus's products (again, I don't know specifically), the stink of "old pre-patch game" sours his sales opportunity.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Rules applied inconsistently or "rule of cool."

That is not really what I was talking about, more about places where the rules are genuinely inconsistent or ambiguous.

I have one player that gets legit angry when he interprets that I'm "out to get him." Like, if he made a character from a warm climate who was crossing a tundra and I had him roll a save with disadvantage to not get exhaustion from the cold. "No one else is getting disadvantage!"
Then I have another player who gets upset if I shave off hit points or make monsters easier. "You're denying us the challenge! We want to beat this fairly."
Another one finds it noble for me to have the campaign scripted out in advance. "It's really cool you put so much thought into this." And she doesn't like what is perceived as inconsistency in the rules. ("Two sessions ago I was able to back flip over the enemy and do extra damage. I want to keep doing that.")

Really! are these people adults? This would be where I would pull out the "I am not picking on anyone, I am trying my best to make this fun for everyone. Would you prefer to DM?"

In the specific instances, I would not make anyone roll differently for cold exhaustion due to background and I would warn beforehand (above table if necessary) that they need to prepare for the cold and that pushing too hard could lead to exhaustion)
the hit point guy I would tell to eff off, they are my monsters and have to hit points I say so.
The stunting player, I would be inclined to say I will allow this this time only or set and athletics or acrobatics DC and ask if they still want to risk it. I probably would not allow extra damage, perhaps advantage.

And it is cool that you have put a lot of thought into the campaign and its planning.

 

[Retreater]

That is not really what I was talking about, more about places where the rules are genuinely inconsistent or ambiguous.

More where there aren't rules. When to award magic items. What to spend gold on (if you can't buy magic items). Encounter guidelines flat out don't work. Encounters per day guidelines aren't functional for many tables. No minions or solo monsters. Some styles of play kill the fun for everyone at the table, but they're still presented as viable options (summoning). Travel.

Would you prefer to DM?"

Oh no. No.
I hate being a player. It's so boring.