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?"

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

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

This is NOT for them to decide.

. . . They . . . they own the game. Of course it's up to them to decide what's worth printing in the books and what's not based purely off of how many DMs use any specific aspect of it.

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.

No "works of art" are being "destroyed". The previous versions of these monsters and races still exist. You can still buy Volo's and Mordenkainen's and get access to the previous versions of them. They're out there for you to use if you want. The original standard for 5e rules are still out there, and will continue to be after the 2024 updates to them come out.

You can't "destroy" something by letting it continue to exist. That's like saying that D&D 3.5e was destroyed by 4e, or that 4e was destroyed by 5e. If you can still play it, it's not "destroyed".

Something no longer being the status quo and something being destroyed are entirely different situations. It's ridiculous to claim that anything is being "destroyed" now. Can we please stop with this overblown hyperbolic doomsaying?

 

[Krachek]

DELETE COUNTERSPELL YOU COWARDS!!!

That's really my main input here.

Counterspell is good tactically,
but makes a lame show!

 

[pauldanieljohnson]

Can we please stop with this overblown hyperbolic doomsaying?

Absolutely not. We are morally obligated to vilify a for-profit, publicly traded corporation for being involved in "capitalism and commercialism".

 

[beancounter]

Given enough time, they'll streamline D&D into a card game.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

Given enough time, they'll streamline D&D into a card game.

oops I dropped this ;-)

Dragonfire

Assemble your party, and begin the adventure along the famed Sword Coast.

boardgamegeek.com

 

[beancounter]

oops I dropped this ;-)

Dragonfire

Assemble your party, and begin the adventure along the famed Sword Coast.

boardgamegeek.com

Nice! Much better than the one I played as a kid.

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[CM]

I tell you, it all started going downhill when you didn't need bat guano to cast fireball anymore. (j/k)

 

[Vaalingrade]

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.

Like the stat block for a spellcasting monster?

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Like the stat block for a spellcasting monster?

No, in needing 50 splatbooks to make a viable character that was not left behind by everyone else, especially in Pathfinder Society. There was a good reason that Adventurer's League had the +1 rule.

 

[Demetrios1453]

• 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.

I mean, they're the designers. It's 100% for them to decide. You can agree or not, but as they create and publish the material, there isn't a way for you to forbid them from making that decision...