Kibbles Tasty posted this over on Reddit but I thought it'd be great to have a copy over here on EN World.
These are all their words and comments, not mine:
Some of these are balancing issues. Some of these mistakes in the rules. Some of these exploits or loopholes. Some of these are just obnoxious. This is just a summary of the things I’ve noticed from reading the rules, either directly or pointed out to by others. I have seen the actual rules for all things involved. This least isn’t exhaustive (just exhausting).
One Handed Dual Wielding. You can do dual wielding or two-weapon-fighting with one hand, as they removed the wording that requires you to hold the second weapon with your other hand. You can do TWF with a shield.
Multiple Weapon “Dueling”. Due to the aforementioned rule above, Dueling is just a directly better Fighting Style for TWF than Two Weapon Fighting, unless you are using the Nick + Dual Wielder combo to get 4 attacks at level 5. This suggests the one handed TWF was not intended.
Opportunity Shoves. You can now make opportunity attacks against your allies, which can be replaced by the shove action. This means you can shove an ally as they leave reach, essentially gifting them 5 feet of movement and sometimes making them avoid opportunity attacks. This is almost cool, but if this was the intention they really should have spelled it out in the opportunity attacks to avoid this being a ‘hidden’ feature. This starts to get out of hand with other interactions though (using allies bowling balls, using spirit guardians as a cheese grater, etc).
Buff Slap. The above combined with War Caster means that you can now cast a buff on your ally as an opportunity attack. This is again a thing where that is ‘almost cool’ but between it not being spelled out by the feature that raw power of getting a free action to cast a fully leveled spell such as Haste or Polymorph with no action economy is extremely overwhelming for a feat that was already one of the best, and that has been buffed by making it half feat.
Allied Bowling Balls. If you shove your friend into an enemy's space, you can force them to end ‘a turn’ in their space, which causes both creatures to fall down, or the smaller creature to fall down if one is larger. This means you can always knock down a creature smaller than one of your allies (like your summoned horse), without giving them a save/check or with any drawback; you can even knock down whole groups of enemies this way.
Shield Toggling. You can equip a shield every other turn when using a two-handed weapon, due to removing the action to equip a shield.
Just So Much. You can end up in a case where a character is attacking 4 times and using a shield, all on the same turn, by tier 2. Stacking multiple effects that need to be tracked, triggering multiple saves off their attacks. Every turn.
Light Hammer Taps. Despite being literally less than a centimeter from Hand Axe on the page, they are still for some reason 1d4 to a Hand Axe 1d6. They changed Trident… Why did they leave this one?
Irrelevant Reloading. Due to the new weapon swapping rules (you can draw a weapon as part of each attack), the loading property is mostly irrelevant, since you can just draw a new crossbow for each attack (shoot, sheath, draw shoot, object interaction to sheath, draw shoot). Works up to 3 attacks, breaks down after that with a heavy crossbow/musket, but most people don’t have more than 3. Hand crossbow/pistols are easier if you use both hands with them. This just seems to be a mistake between the interactions.
Stunned Movement. You can now move normally while stunned.
Toppling Tedium. Topple triggers a saving throw on every hit. This isn’t a game breaking bug, but is extremely obnoxious. This means that with PAM + Shield Master at level 8 (using quarterstaff), you trigger no less than 4 saves per turn, every turn (or 6 with action surge). And you have to wait for the save after every hit, because you get advantage if they fail. Just extremely tedious in actual testing (where I discovered quarterstaffs are a 1-handed topple weapon and shield master shield slam doesn’t take a bonus action).
Poisoned Misses. The poisoner feat triggers the poison “they take damage from the poisoned item” and lasts “until you hit”. This means the most optimal way to use it is with a Graze weapon, and then give yourself disadvantage to spam miss the target while dealing damage with the weapon. This is not actually a good tactic in most cases, just an error in how it is written that leads to something silly.
Magic Action Clarity. How certain effects work with the Magic Action is very unclear. It seems like you can cast Hallow as an action using Divine Intervention (which automatically works); if this works, this is completely broken, but it's mostly just unclear if it works.
See Hidden Creatures. See Invisible can automatically see hidden creatures, as being the rules for being Hidden just make you Invisible… Maybe, the rules here are somehow more complicated and less clear than they were in 5e 2014; they tried to clarify being Hidden as being Invisible, but in almost all cases it is not actually Invisible.
Roadkill Ragdoll. The Grappler feat now removes the half speed while grappling a creature, which leads to a lot of problematic interactions. Since initiating a grapple just requires hitting a creature (rather than winning a contested check), if a Monk hits a creature near a spiked growth spell it can deal 32d4 (at level 5, scaling up to 48d4 by tier 4) by dragging that creature back and forth along the edge of it. There’s other ways to break this, any character even without a speed boost can use it do 12d4. Flying, running up walls, or any other number of ways this can be used have this drag a creature extreme distances, often doing massive damage.
Putrid Paralysis. The Undead Spirit Putrid form automatically paralyzes poisoned creatures on hit with no save. This was already a problem in 5e, since the putrid spirit has a high DC AoE con save vs. poison every turn, but at least they needed to fail that, and fail another save on hit. Now you can poison with Ray of Sickness with no save, hit them with a Putrid Spirit, and Paralyze any boss not immune to poison (or paralysis) indefinitely with no save bypassing legendary resistance. Over and over.
Double Dipping. Some ongoing areas of effect spells work when you enter them and at the start of your turn, this means characters shoved into the effect are subject to its effects twice before they go. This means it can be better to ‘miss’ them if another creature can knock them into the effect, as now they’d have to save twice.
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Spirit Grater. Spirit Guardians now works like it does in BG3, where moving it into someone damages them immediately (rather than waiting for them to start their turn in it). This isn’t necessarily a bad change in principle, but means that Cleric is now incentivized to run around hitting as many creatures as possible. Where this becomes problematic is the new allied shoving rules, as now you get a lot of value from moving the Cleric in and out of effects on turns other than the Cleric’s turn, leading to very cheesy behavior with mounts, shoves, etc. It is ‘once per turn’, but that can be ‘once per each player’s turn’ when combined with a mount that carries two people or shove mechanics.
Infinite Armor of Agathys. Armor of Agathys now works with temporary hit points it didn’t create. This breaks at several points; Fiendish Vigor (+False Life changes) makes this extremely powerful at level 2, Polymorph being >100 temp hp at level 7+ makes this extremely strong, Dark One’s Gift at higher levels means you can kill an unlimited number of weak creatures with reflect (the only actual ‘infinite’ situation I can think of, though in a specific niche).
Giant Insect Boss. The web bolt of the Giant Insect summoned creature is a spell attack that reduces the speed of the target to 0; with no save, no size limit, and multiattack.
Double Cast. D&D 2024 attempts to clarify that you can only cast 1 spell per turn (preventing a bonus action leveled spell + action spell leveled) but did so by defining if you spend a spell slot (likely to avoid screwing all the elves they keep giving misty step as race bonus), but this unlocks the door for Spell Scrolls and Mystic Arcanum and other effects that don’t technically cost a spell slot to bypass it.
Martial Exhaustion. Exhaustion mostly affects martial characters still. The obnoxious part is that this was fixed in the UA, and one of the few changes I adopted into my 5e games, but that was removed from print, as it no longer affects spell save DC. They could have wanted to avoid a floating modifier to spell save DC… but they add one of those into the game that gives them a +1 to it on Sorcerer, so that’s not it.
Find Point. Find Traps is somehow very slightly worse. It still doesn’t find traps.
Unbreakable Magical Forces. Wall of Force and Forcecage can both still not be dealt with by anything besides certain powerful magic or specific abilities.
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Math Breaks. The math on some spells just break down. In general, spells should not scale with multiple dice when you cast them at higher levels. The most obvious example is Conjure Minor Elemental (with Scorching Ray); it’s a high level somewhat specific issue, but there is just no reason math should get that broken.
Somatic Components. It is no longer clear if you need a free hand to cast a somatic component. They removed the word ‘free’ from ‘free hand’ in the previous wording. This was a very weird interaction previously where you needed a free hand if the spell had no material component, but did not if it did, since you could use your arcane focus hand for somatic components only in that case. It’s not clear if they fixed that or not, and if they did they made it meaning you never need a free hand for them, which is probably not the intended due to the wording of War Caster.
Minor Nitpicking.
These are all their words and comments, not mine:
Some of these are balancing issues. Some of these mistakes in the rules. Some of these exploits or loopholes. Some of these are just obnoxious. This is just a summary of the things I’ve noticed from reading the rules, either directly or pointed out to by others. I have seen the actual rules for all things involved. This least isn’t exhaustive (just exhausting).
One Handed Dual Wielding. You can do dual wielding or two-weapon-fighting with one hand, as they removed the wording that requires you to hold the second weapon with your other hand. You can do TWF with a shield.
Multiple Weapon “Dueling”. Due to the aforementioned rule above, Dueling is just a directly better Fighting Style for TWF than Two Weapon Fighting, unless you are using the Nick + Dual Wielder combo to get 4 attacks at level 5. This suggests the one handed TWF was not intended.
Opportunity Shoves. You can now make opportunity attacks against your allies, which can be replaced by the shove action. This means you can shove an ally as they leave reach, essentially gifting them 5 feet of movement and sometimes making them avoid opportunity attacks. This is almost cool, but if this was the intention they really should have spelled it out in the opportunity attacks to avoid this being a ‘hidden’ feature. This starts to get out of hand with other interactions though (using allies bowling balls, using spirit guardians as a cheese grater, etc).
Buff Slap. The above combined with War Caster means that you can now cast a buff on your ally as an opportunity attack. This is again a thing where that is ‘almost cool’ but between it not being spelled out by the feature that raw power of getting a free action to cast a fully leveled spell such as Haste or Polymorph with no action economy is extremely overwhelming for a feat that was already one of the best, and that has been buffed by making it half feat.
Allied Bowling Balls. If you shove your friend into an enemy's space, you can force them to end ‘a turn’ in their space, which causes both creatures to fall down, or the smaller creature to fall down if one is larger. This means you can always knock down a creature smaller than one of your allies (like your summoned horse), without giving them a save/check or with any drawback; you can even knock down whole groups of enemies this way.
Shield Toggling. You can equip a shield every other turn when using a two-handed weapon, due to removing the action to equip a shield.
Just So Much. You can end up in a case where a character is attacking 4 times and using a shield, all on the same turn, by tier 2. Stacking multiple effects that need to be tracked, triggering multiple saves off their attacks. Every turn.
Light Hammer Taps. Despite being literally less than a centimeter from Hand Axe on the page, they are still for some reason 1d4 to a Hand Axe 1d6. They changed Trident… Why did they leave this one?
Irrelevant Reloading. Due to the new weapon swapping rules (you can draw a weapon as part of each attack), the loading property is mostly irrelevant, since you can just draw a new crossbow for each attack (shoot, sheath, draw shoot, object interaction to sheath, draw shoot). Works up to 3 attacks, breaks down after that with a heavy crossbow/musket, but most people don’t have more than 3. Hand crossbow/pistols are easier if you use both hands with them. This just seems to be a mistake between the interactions.
Stunned Movement. You can now move normally while stunned.
Toppling Tedium. Topple triggers a saving throw on every hit. This isn’t a game breaking bug, but is extremely obnoxious. This means that with PAM + Shield Master at level 8 (using quarterstaff), you trigger no less than 4 saves per turn, every turn (or 6 with action surge). And you have to wait for the save after every hit, because you get advantage if they fail. Just extremely tedious in actual testing (where I discovered quarterstaffs are a 1-handed topple weapon and shield master shield slam doesn’t take a bonus action).
Poisoned Misses. The poisoner feat triggers the poison “they take damage from the poisoned item” and lasts “until you hit”. This means the most optimal way to use it is with a Graze weapon, and then give yourself disadvantage to spam miss the target while dealing damage with the weapon. This is not actually a good tactic in most cases, just an error in how it is written that leads to something silly.
Magic Action Clarity. How certain effects work with the Magic Action is very unclear. It seems like you can cast Hallow as an action using Divine Intervention (which automatically works); if this works, this is completely broken, but it's mostly just unclear if it works.
See Hidden Creatures. See Invisible can automatically see hidden creatures, as being the rules for being Hidden just make you Invisible… Maybe, the rules here are somehow more complicated and less clear than they were in 5e 2014; they tried to clarify being Hidden as being Invisible, but in almost all cases it is not actually Invisible.
Roadkill Ragdoll. The Grappler feat now removes the half speed while grappling a creature, which leads to a lot of problematic interactions. Since initiating a grapple just requires hitting a creature (rather than winning a contested check), if a Monk hits a creature near a spiked growth spell it can deal 32d4 (at level 5, scaling up to 48d4 by tier 4) by dragging that creature back and forth along the edge of it. There’s other ways to break this, any character even without a speed boost can use it do 12d4. Flying, running up walls, or any other number of ways this can be used have this drag a creature extreme distances, often doing massive damage.
Putrid Paralysis. The Undead Spirit Putrid form automatically paralyzes poisoned creatures on hit with no save. This was already a problem in 5e, since the putrid spirit has a high DC AoE con save vs. poison every turn, but at least they needed to fail that, and fail another save on hit. Now you can poison with Ray of Sickness with no save, hit them with a Putrid Spirit, and Paralyze any boss not immune to poison (or paralysis) indefinitely with no save bypassing legendary resistance. Over and over.
Double Dipping. Some ongoing areas of effect spells work when you enter them and at the start of your turn, this means characters shoved into the effect are subject to its effects twice before they go. This means it can be better to ‘miss’ them if another creature can knock them into the effect, as now they’d have to save twice.
-
Spirit Grater. Spirit Guardians now works like it does in BG3, where moving it into someone damages them immediately (rather than waiting for them to start their turn in it). This isn’t necessarily a bad change in principle, but means that Cleric is now incentivized to run around hitting as many creatures as possible. Where this becomes problematic is the new allied shoving rules, as now you get a lot of value from moving the Cleric in and out of effects on turns other than the Cleric’s turn, leading to very cheesy behavior with mounts, shoves, etc. It is ‘once per turn’, but that can be ‘once per each player’s turn’ when combined with a mount that carries two people or shove mechanics.
Infinite Armor of Agathys. Armor of Agathys now works with temporary hit points it didn’t create. This breaks at several points; Fiendish Vigor (+False Life changes) makes this extremely powerful at level 2, Polymorph being >100 temp hp at level 7+ makes this extremely strong, Dark One’s Gift at higher levels means you can kill an unlimited number of weak creatures with reflect (the only actual ‘infinite’ situation I can think of, though in a specific niche).
Giant Insect Boss. The web bolt of the Giant Insect summoned creature is a spell attack that reduces the speed of the target to 0; with no save, no size limit, and multiattack.
Double Cast. D&D 2024 attempts to clarify that you can only cast 1 spell per turn (preventing a bonus action leveled spell + action spell leveled) but did so by defining if you spend a spell slot (likely to avoid screwing all the elves they keep giving misty step as race bonus), but this unlocks the door for Spell Scrolls and Mystic Arcanum and other effects that don’t technically cost a spell slot to bypass it.
Martial Exhaustion. Exhaustion mostly affects martial characters still. The obnoxious part is that this was fixed in the UA, and one of the few changes I adopted into my 5e games, but that was removed from print, as it no longer affects spell save DC. They could have wanted to avoid a floating modifier to spell save DC… but they add one of those into the game that gives them a +1 to it on Sorcerer, so that’s not it.
Find Point. Find Traps is somehow very slightly worse. It still doesn’t find traps.
Unbreakable Magical Forces. Wall of Force and Forcecage can both still not be dealt with by anything besides certain powerful magic or specific abilities.
-
Math Breaks. The math on some spells just break down. In general, spells should not scale with multiple dice when you cast them at higher levels. The most obvious example is Conjure Minor Elemental (with Scorching Ray); it’s a high level somewhat specific issue, but there is just no reason math should get that broken.
Somatic Components. It is no longer clear if you need a free hand to cast a somatic component. They removed the word ‘free’ from ‘free hand’ in the previous wording. This was a very weird interaction previously where you needed a free hand if the spell had no material component, but did not if it did, since you could use your arcane focus hand for somatic components only in that case. It’s not clear if they fixed that or not, and if they did they made it meaning you never need a free hand for them, which is probably not the intended due to the wording of War Caster.
Minor Nitpicking.
- Illusion Wizard with Minor Illusion as a bonus action effectively makes you unseen every turn by putting up fake total cover you can see through.
- The Defensive Duelist is very powerful.
- Getting Weapon Mastery as a feat sort of invalidates niche protection of martials.
- Stacking different slows is too easy (ray of frost + slow weapon mastery, etc) making keeping enemies range indefinitely.
- True polymorph no longer ‘works’ since you transform back when you take a long rest (since you use temporary hit points, makes the permanent part pointless),
- True strike is pointlessly good (doing more damage than any other damage cantrip. With Bladesinger or Valor Bard, this is also just extremely good.
- Suggestion removing the ‘reasonable’ requirement just makes a silly spell sillier.
- Animate Dead is still there and still weird. Either make it more usable or remove it.
- Repelling Blast still has no size limit or 1/turn limit.
- Heat Metal is somehow the same (removes the infinite range, but not the save-less disadvantage).
- Mirror Image is now ridiculous on high AC casters (since the mirror images share your AC)
- Divine favor not being concentration while hunter’s mark is objectively funny but terrible design.
