D&D Errata Nerfs Conjuring Spells, Makes Other Changes

A new errata for Dungeons & Dragons' revised 5th Edition has provided a significant nerf to conjuring spells and provided some clarity on how the Hide action works within the game. Wizards of the Coast released a new errata for its various D&D Core Rulebooks today, with a host of mostly minor changes to the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. Two of the biggest changes came to the Player's Handbook, with various conjuring spells receiving a notable debuff to upcasting, and the Hidden rules receiving a round of clarifications.

The Conjure Elemental, Conjure Fey, Conjure Minor Elementals, and Conjure Woodland Beings spells all received debuffs to their "Using a Higher-Level Spell Slot" sections, with the amount of increased damage decreasing from 2 attack die of a certain size to 1 attack die of a certain size. Several shapeshifting spells that granted temporary hit points now clarify that those temporary hit points go away once a spell is cast.

Additionally, the Hidden rules now explicitly state that the Hide action grants the Invisible condition "while hidden" and states what ends a player character hiding, which includes an enemy finding you via a Perception check. The Hide action received some notice during the initial Player's Handbook release for some alleged loopholes in the rules.

A full list of errata can be found on D&D Beyond.

 

[Nightfly]

It's just no longer so subject to an extended litigation about what's "reasonable".

But the word "reasonable" is what makes the spell fun! It was all about convincing the target to do whatever absurd thing you're asking. Saying "hand me your weapon!" is boring. So much better if you have to come up with "Wow, that's the coolest sword I've ever seen. Could I hold it for a second?"

Now the spell is just Command with more than one word. That's not chopped liver, because Command is a cool spell. But not as cool as Suggestion used to be.

 

[Nightfly]

Suggestion: "Stop fighting. Hand over all your items. Tell me all your plans. Run around in circles until you are totally exhausted."

Personally, I would not allow this as a DM since it's four different commands which are unrelated. It's touchy, because the two examples given in the 2024 version of the spell both have multiple parts, just like your example. But they're at least related parts, and thus arguably a single course of action. Your example isn't. That said, the fact that one could make a case that this suggestion must be accepted by a DM shows how problematic the new wording is.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I find it interesting that for 5.5 there's extensive errata to fix balance issues, while for 5e they explicitly avoided that and instead almost only published errata to fix actual errors in the text.

Are we heading back to the times of 4e, and in 3 years there will have been so many rules updates that the first printing 5.5 rulebooks will be tricky to use if your characters are on D&D beyond?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

See, that doesn't feel "fixed" to me, because sometimes you don't want to get free from a grapple (like when you are about to get thrown off a cliff). As a former wrestler, I can say for sure that there are ways to NOT end a grapple even as the grappled party.

You can actually grapple someone who grappled you. This is how you stop them throwing you from the cliff.

Also throwing you from the cliff also requires a shove on top of a grapple. So at least you get another saving throw.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Personally, I would not allow this as a DM since it's four different commands which are unrelated. It's touchy, because the two examples given in the 2024 version of the spell both have multiple parts, just like your example. But they're at least related parts, and thus arguably a single course of action. Your example isn't. That said, the fact that one could make a case that this suggestion must be accepted by a DM shows how problematic the new wording is.

I wouldn't either. This is why I think the new version is terrible.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I find it interesting that for 5.5 there's extensive errata to fix balance issues, while for 5e they explicitly avoided that and instead almost only published errata to fix actual errors in the text.

Are we heading back to the times of 4e, and in 3 years there will have been so many rules updates that the first printing 5.5 rulebooks will be tricky to use if your characters are on D&D beyond?

5.0 also has quite a lot of errata. More than we have now for 5.5.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Why would optimizers play 5E?

Not sure what you mean by that, why wouldn't we play 5e? It's not like 5e is some simplistic game without any parameters to optimize

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Why would optimizers play 5E?

Optimisers play everything. Everything can be optimised and optimising the difficult to optimise is often more fun than the broken or easy to optimise.

 

[KYRON45]

Why would optimizers play 5E?

Optimizers are people too.

 

[KYRON45]

Blizzard?

34 and sunny.