D&D 5E 50th Anniversary and beyond

[HammerMan]

These are not the 2024 release - we already have all of these. They aren't worth talking about for the 2024 release. Continuing what we already have is sort of the assumed default. It would only be worth talking about if you thought one of the new trends wouldn't be there.

What we actually suspect for the 50th Anniversary Release is that with an in-depth class-feature survey and an individual spell survey they are likely to be redoing a number of things from the PHB, while "maintaining compatibility". If ti was just class features they could maintain full compatibility by just having new features you could sub in for problematic ones like they did with the ranger, but the spells also being investigated they may do more than that.

Yeah I wonder if every spell is on the table, every subclass... anything can change?

if so I am all for it, bring it all in line and work it out.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

And you are entitled to yours, but honestly it should not become such a sensitive subject that it totally deprives you of any sense of humour. That was obviously only a joke, and a deserved one since these modifications are utterly idiotic.

I kinda think they were joking/being sarcastic...

Apologies, then. I'm autistic (as noted in my profile description), which means that I sometimes miss sarcasm/jokes in general, especially online, especially if it's not explicitly clear that it was a joke (when not using /s or a winking emoji). It doesn't help that I've seen people on both this site and others say basically exactly what @Geoff Thirlwell was saying, but non-sarcastically.

Sorry for missing the joke. Poe's Law strikes again

 

[SkidAce]

Apologies, then. I'm autistic (as noted in my profile description), which means that I sometimes miss sarcasm/jokes in general, especially online, especially if it's not explicitly clear that it was a joke (when not using /s or a winking emoji). It doesn't help that I've seen people on both this site and others say basically exactly what @Geoff Thirlwell was saying, but non-sarcastically.

Sorry for missing the joke. Poe's Law strikes again

No worries.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

(I don't know why people got so up in arms about Tasha's and eschewing fixed racial ability scores. If adventurers truly are outliers in basically every respect I don't see why they have to be burdened by whatever the average is for their race)

I am hoping that there will be significantly more character options. Given the brilliance of D&D's designers I know that if they wanted to they could present more character customization options in a way that doesn't paralyze people with indecision or over-complicate the game.

Also, though I doubt this very much, I hope and pray that they do something to make combat just a little bit crunchier - even going the route of PF2e's 3 action economy would be amazing.

I would LOVE to come home to D&D :/

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

And it's the only place where they exist officially, and they no longer appear in any subsequent publication, and they are not in the SAC on Creature Evolutions where races are. So my guess is that they will disappear, which would be a good thing because it's silly to call a "lineage" something that does not come from your ancestry.

SAC Creature Evolutions? I'm not familiar with either of those D&D terms.

My point is that WotC have been trying things out, and that some things will make it in the revision and others won't. Same thing with alignment, which disappeared from a time and is now back with some changes.

. . . That is how change in stuff like this works. They test it out. If it's overall popular, it's mostly kept the same. If not, they change it into a form that more of the fanbase is positive towards. I haven't seen anyone upset/angry about the Gothic Lineages and how they work, or their distinction from normal 5e races, so there would be no reason to attempt to undo that "change" (it's not even a change, it's just an introduction of a new, but fairly familiar, mechanical system).

And the same thing with the totally stupid thing on races size and weight. And after seeing stupid things like this, there are still people around here believing that these idiocies are not linked to things happening totally outside of the game ?

Well, no one asked for race Sizes and Weight to be removed in the first place, and most of the non-PHB races didn't include them in the first place, so WotC doing that is completely unconnected from this issue. No one believes that the broader causes of size and weight are at all unconnected from genetics/lineage, so the people that like to complain about the racial height/weight changes as being some "slippery slope" from removing racial alignment/ASIs don't really have any ground to stand on with that argument. My guess is that WotC wanted to get rid of it to just simplify things into "as a base guideline, new races are roughly the same size and weight as humans unless specifically stated otherwise" to fit 5e's base design philosophy of "follow this rule unless stated otherwise", but since WotC has not stated their reasons for this new change explicitly, there's really no way to know right now.

 

[JEB]

If I recall correctly, the current monster manual has guidelines for how to adjust an NPC’s stats to apply a race to it, including ability score adjustments and some features.

That information is in the DMG, in the back of the book. There's some vague guidelines in the MM but it basically boils down to "refer to the PHB"... which won't be helpful if the 2024 PHB no longer provides default adjustments.

Also, either source won't be of much use to casual players who want a convenient default ASI that isn't "optimize for your class". (Casual players, in my experience, don't usually buy DM-facing books like the MM or DMG.)

(I don't know why people got so up in arms about Tasha's and eschewing fixed racial ability scores. If adventurers truly are outliers in basically every respect I don't see why they have to be burdened by whatever the average is for their race)

Some folks like their characters to start off as an "average" member of a species, which fixed ASIs supported. I don't think many folks have a problem with floating ASI as an option, it's the disappearance of fixed ASIs entirely that concerns them. (Which is why a mixed approach - floating default, but suggestions for fixed - seems like the friendliest way.)

 

[Charlaquin]

That information is in the DMG, in the back of the book. There's some vague guidelines in the MM but it basically boils down to "refer to the PHB"... which won't be helpful if the 2024 PHB no longer provides default adjustments.

Right! Got those two sections mixed up.

Also, either source won't be of much use to casual players who want a convenient default ASI that isn't "optimize for your class". (Casual players, in my experience, don't usually buy DM-facing books like the MM or DMG.)

Again I’m just speculating about what I think they might do, not what I think they should do. Your guess is as good as mine.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Well, the thing that would concern me is if they release 5.5/6E versions of the PHB & MM. If that would then make the originals unavailable in Beyond, I'd be mighty unhappy. From past experience, I haven't seen D&D's electronic fare continue to support retired product (other than PDF).

I would expect them to treat updates to the PHB just like they already do with errata. I don't remember which printing the book was on when DDB first came out, but there have been several new printings with new errata in them since then, so you may have bought the 2nd or 3rd printing, but what you have in your account there is the 7th or 8th printing. So you would still have the PHB, but it would match all the new changes to it in 2024, I would think. When 5E first came out, WotC swore there would never be enough changes to force people to buy new copies of the core books, so we will see if they stick to that.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Why worry? With the central idea of "DM Empowerment" you can simply ignore/house rule any changes you don't like!

 

[teitan]

The only thing stopping me is... I just can't at this point. I'm too old to learn a new game and fine with 5e out of the box. I hope it works out and everyone loves it though. My only regret is they didn't get around to an Undead book and they were reprint heavy with the new Mordenkainen's book being updates of races and monsters from books I have instead of all new material for current campaigns.