D&D (2024) Classes: What changes do you predict?

[Parmandur]

I'm actually wondering if they will shuffle around subclass levels. I recall Mike Mearls saying something about how a subclass shouldn't make a big change to the way you play your class and cited the college of valour with its bonus proficiencies. He also mentioned things like how a wizard could probably have gained its subclass at 1st level and have arcane recovery shunted to 2nd. I sort of wonder if any of these comments are held by the current design team. They did have the cool idea of the strixhaven subclasses, if they want something like that to work, then standardising subclasses would be the way to do it.

Yup, the designers have said for a long time that waiting to choose Subclass was a design that failed to work as intended, and only causes headaches at the table and for designing new options.

 

[James Gasik]

It always felt strange that only Thieves (and Rogues) could learn Thieve's Cant, since any criminal organization is going to have non-Thieves as part of it. I understood the reason for trying to keep people from randomly learning Cant or Druidic, of course, but it felt strange being a class feature and moving it to Background makes a lot more sense to me.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I haven't seen a lot of mention of Barbarians, and although I agree with what seems to be the consensus that they basically work pretty well as written, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some tweaking of the rage mechanic. Specifically while the rules about maintaining rage have been very effective in corralling Barbarians into acting like we want an raging Barbarian to while raging in a simple combat, they could certainly use some sort of tweak to avoid a lot of edge cases that cause ludonarrative dissonance. Spending a extra turn dashing to get to my opponent shouldn't make me less angry when I get there, it should make me more angry! I suspect WotC is aware of these sorts of edge cases and might experiment with some tweaks.

They also might change number of rages per day and/or rage damage to equal proficiency bonus, because of course they would.

Of course what I'd really like to see on the Barbarian front is more non-magical subclass options, but fat chance of that.

 

[cbwjm]

They also might change number of rages per day and/or rage damage to equal proficiency bonus, because of course they would.

I wouldn't be surprised regarding the damage bonus, I actually thought this was already the case until someone pointed the actual scaling of the ability

 

[James Gasik]

I wouldn't be surprised regarding the damage bonus, I actually thought this was already the case until someone pointed the actual scaling of the ability

What always surprised me about Rage was that it was a static number at all; WotC seems to vastly prefer making players roll more dice. I'd have made it something like +1d4 on attacks per upgrade level.

Although per tier would make more sense. And actually, given that it's a daily resource after all, probably at least d6's instead.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Do you think your Wu-Tang guitar can defeat me?

Love the movie!

 

[BlackSeed_Vash]

I predict paladin Divine Smites will either be scaled back damage wise or limited to PB uses per long rest so that paladins will actually cast spells instead of using all their spell slots to power Divine Smites.

With the current rules for critting, there is less reason to hold onto spell slots.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

If Subclass become standardized we could finally get some class-less subclass!

That won't happen, it's the one thing they can't change because it'd render Tasha's and Xanathar's subclasses useless.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The D&D Beyond data I recall showed the three most popular single-classed Sorcerer subclasses as (1) Draconic (28%); (2) Divine Soul (22%); and (3) Shadow (20%) for those who had everything unlocked.

The Wild Mage was the second most popular Sorcerer subclass in single-class characters who didn't have everything unlocked (i.e., more than the SRD or PHB), but that changes when looking at the bigger picture. Then it's as above.


I'm not sure what they will end up doing to the monk. I do agree that I wish the monk was less orientalist and maybe more neutral, such as gaining their powers from their vows or oaths, but that is more wish than prediction.

I don’t think that gaining thier power from rigorous training in a particular tradition is especially orientalist, so I’d say that should stay.

The name is odd once you get away from orientalism, and ki is just a bad name, however.

I like Mystic, and Focus, but I’m not married to either.

Tbh the subclasses are fine (other than 4elements), and the base class only needs tweaks beyond the problematic theming.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

monk just need some minor improvement in few areas:

HD: raised to d10, maybe even d12

Armor: proficiency in light armor, can use wis instead of dex in light armor.
then it's 3 options for AC: armor+dex, armor+wis or dex+wis

wis bonus to amount of ki points

whenever you crit or enemy crits you with an attack you regain 1 ki point

martial arts damage form d4->10 increased to d6->d12

+1 skill point at 1st level

I’d accept that. I’d prefer PB/LR recover half your ki as an action, over +Wis mod ki.