D&D 5E Changes to D&D's Spellcasting Monsters: Streamlining Your Way To Bliss

WotC's Jeremy Crawford talks about the way they are changing spellcasting monsters in D&D.

• Making the game more fun, easier to learn, shorting "the pathway to getting to your bliss".
• Making monsters easier to run.
• "Rumors of the death of spellcasting [in monsters] are not true". Innate spellcasting has been streamlined with spellcasting into a single trait.
• Spellcasting options are consolidated whenever possible.
• Removing options that a DM is unlikely ever to use.
• In some cases, new magical abilities in the monster statblock which exist alongside a list of spells they can cast.
• For example, the mind flayer's mind blast is not a spell, and other abilities are magical but not spells and aren't as easy to interact with with things like counterspell.
• Things which make archmages say "How is this functioning, and why can't I stop it?"

 

[dave2008]

This is true for the casters in Monsters of the Multiverse, since they're all revised versions of existing NPCs, but it won't be the case for new spellcasters going forward (e.g. Kelek and Iggwilv/Tasha from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight).

True, fortunately I already have two stat blocks for Iggy (that I made myself) so I don't need to worry about that!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Henceforth, I'll thank other posters on this board, when they post something I like, with the immortal words "Thank you for opening my pathway to bliss".

 

[dave2008]

I try to purge from my mind the memory of that edition ever existing. It's existence made me one of the many who switched to Pathfinder.

It was the edition that brought my back to D&D. A lot of good things in that edition. Pretty close to my ideal. If I had the time I would mix 4e & 5e to make my perfect edition.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So basically, the way 4e did it? Kinda.

Everything old is new again.

No, that would be a smart, complete choice.

These monsters still have spell lists you have to do use a different book to look them up from

 

[TerraDave]

This seems pretty practical. Combining two blocks of spells into one, and implying instead of calling out slots.

You can always do some reverse engineering on the fly. If there is fireball, and there is a 4th level spell(s), you can always burn that to upcast the fireball.

 

[Erdric Dragin]

• Removing options that a DM is unlikely ever to use.

This is NOT for them to decide. One of the reasons D&D falls short from earlier editions, they cater to the casual far, far too much. But casuals make them more money so...yeah...another work of art from the beginning destroyed by capitalism and commercialism.

 

[Erdric Dragin]

Yeah, no.

The more I hear about this book, the less I like the direction.

Every edition change and shake up in the middle of an edition does this. This problem with extreme divisiveness between all D&D gamers can end if WotC allowed support for ALL editions. Personally, if I owned this company, I would create departments to supplement the older editions on the side. Everyone's happy, and you get x5 the cash since you're making money from making more material for every edition.

But we don't live in a perfect world so the best thing they need to do is open up the DMs Guild to allow content creators to publish PDFs for older editions and not just 5e (like how PF Infinite allows publishers to do 1e and 2e content).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

DELETE COUNTERSPELL YOU COWARDS!!!

That's really my main input here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is NOT for them to decide. One of the reasons D&D falls short from earlier editions, they cater to the casual far, far too much. But casuals make them more money so...yeah...another work of art from the beginning destroyed by capitalism and commercialism.

Good grief, really?

If that's your logic, things went south in the 1970s (early 1980s at the latest), and pretending they only just went wrong in 2014 or later is shenanigans, frankly. D&D has been "catering to casuals" since what, the Red Box or earlier?

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It was the edition that brought my back to D&D. A lot of good things in that edition. Pretty close to my ideal. If I had the time I would mix 4e & 5e to make my perfect edition.

Heh, and mine would be a combination of 2E AD&D and 5E. I played a lot of AD&D, did not switch editions until 3.5 was released, and then skipped 4E for Pathfinder 1E. Came back to D&D with 5E because Pathfinder grew too complicated and convoluted and their 2E was awful too.