D&D (2024) DMs what do you think of the new PHB?

[tetrasodium]

To be fair, this is a player's handbook. So it being aimed at players over DMs makes sense.

Now, if the new DMG doesn't do for DMs what this book does for players, and therefore the PHB winds up having to also do the heavy lifting for DM support, then we'd have a problem. But we haven't seen the new DMG yet.

That's a bonkers way of looking at it because the gm uses more of that book than any one player at their table & needs to use the rules and challenges the PCs that come from that PHB. Your point would only be true if d&d were some kind of extreme asymmetrical game where the gm was playing a totally different game with totally different rules that the players somehow never interacted with.

What I don't understand are complaints about power creep. Feels like antagonistic "DM vs PCs" mentality to me. It doesn't matter how much power creep the PCs get, the DM can ALWAYS win without even trying. The real question for DMs is whether combats are easier or harder to balance now, and they are objectively easier to balance now that sustained damage is buffed but nova damage has been nerfed (notable exception of Conjure Minor Elementals needing each DM to determine their homebrew nerf)

It matters because we don't have the books to fill in the other side of that equation and the phb didn't really redo rest or the mechanics that make PC's far more durable than stuff like trolls. Toss in the your going to love this but your gm is going to hate it style statements from wotc or "it's a player's book" from the community and it becomes even more reasonable to bring them up.

I also can't comprehend all the complaints about increased complexity for Martial classes. For decades everyone has complained about the Martial/Caster divide, then WotC actually tries to do something about it and people complain about it. Increased complexity for martial classes is an awesome thing for the game.

Those complaints can be summed up in what one of my players said a couple fights into the condition lock weapon juggling clown show most of a 5 player group was putting on when they admitted "I'm bored to tears here, it's like using too many cheat codes in a video game and losing the fun...".


My personal thoughts on the new phb? Dunno yet for reasons stated above and by others. I can't really form an opinion for a year or two when the other core books are out because none of them function in isolation. By then I expect that the bar of expectations will be raised by upcoming Alternatives and the phb alone seems to have come with a shovel that starts it in a hole.

 

[NaturalZero]

I've seen the "supers" complaint on social media and it's always pretty funny to me as someone who really started playing the running the game when 3.5 came out. Nothing in 4e, 5e, or 5.24e can hold a candle to the over-the-top broken power level of 3.5.

 

[Larnievc]

Reading reviews and it's a lot of gushing over how many new options and powers the PCs have. Which is grand from a player perspective.

What do my fellow Forever DMs think?

It's fine. Easier to read.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the organization and layout is better but overall the changes are worse. And I think they are worse if only because it made already powerful PCs even more powerful. I guess we'll have to see how the DMG and MM handle things but I worked in 5e games I ran to make PCs less powerful (mostly by changing rest rules).

I have purchased Tales of the Valiant and Level Up. Tales of the Valiant, though I haven't played it, adds cool things and, from what I can see, lots of power creep. Level Up, which I have played, adds cool things but no (or very little) power creep. And that's because a lot of what Level Up adds is cool things to do in the Social and Exploration pillars.

I don't see the "cool things in Exploration and Social pillars" from 5e24 yet.

If it has such things, they certainly aren't integrated with the player options like Level Up is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've seen the "supers" complaint on social media and it's always pretty funny to me as someone who really started playing the running the game when 3.5 came out. Nothing in 4e, 5e, or 5.24e can hold a candle to the over-the-top broken power level of 3.5.

I won't disagree with you; it was pretty super in the 3e era too, but the presentation and assumed playstyle was much less so, more like the TSR editions.

 

[mamba]

Is it just assumed that, so long as it is a good jumping-off point for new players (which is what most seem to be saying), and it has fancy art and a good layout, no other metric by which one might judge the most-used (by everyone), most central book of a game matters nearly as much? Do we really only care about new players now?

in which way is the book being well organized and easy to learn for new players a detriment for other players?

 

[Micah Sweet]

in which way is the book being well organized and easy to learn for new players a detriment for other players?

Never said it was, but they seemed to be the main things people cared about in the book as a whole at the time I posted in the thread, so I was wondering if "good for new players" somehow now means "good book overall". Since then a more broad look at the product has occurred.

 

[g00se99994]

I'm not a forever DM, I do get to play quite a bit. But I do DM the vast majority of the time, and do so for randoms off the internet quite often.

I think the new PHB adds a lot of unneeded stuff, and is kind of a wash. They cleaned up a lot of rules, such as exhaustion, but they also added a bunch of "crunch" to the system. Whether this is a net positive will be up to each group.

But in my opinion 5e didn't need more crunch or more rules. It needed it's janky edges cleaned up. So I don't know that any meaningful improvement happened. And so I think the choice between 2014 and 2024 will just be about which jankiness you prefer instead of a clear upgrade.

But that's just my opinion, obviously.

There is crunch in ways that isn't obvious too. I'll give you a decent example based on a character I'm using.
Level 4 Barbarian Zealot with a greataxe using the cleave mastery and GWM feat. 18 STR. Raging.

When I attack, while raging I do 4 (str) + 2 (rage) + 2 (GWM) = 8 slashing
Once a round when I hit 2 + D6 for zealot damage
Cleave +2 (rage) + 2 (GWM) = 4 slashing
GWM bonus action +4 (STR)+2 (rage) = 6 slashing
Reaction Attack +4 (STR) +2 (rage) = 6 slashing
Reaction Attack Cleave +2 (rage) slashing

I need a cheat sheet just to keep this all straight in my head and not slow down combat as I work this out LOL. Maybe its just me.

 

[mamba]

Which is a problem how? If damage doubles and HP doubles, this impacts nothing.

except for compatibility between 2014 and 2024

 

[DEFCON 1]

Haven't read it yet. Expect it to be like every other D&D handbook... a bunch of board game rules to play in and around the roleplaying. And as every version of D&D has a completely slightly adequate board game inside of it, DMing this will be no different than DMing any other version.

The only thing that ever matters to me in a new D&D game is whether the narrative setting and lore of the game stays relatively middle-ages fantasy-esque so that every previous module or adventure I've bought and own for the game still can be inserted into my campaigns and have them make relative sense (or require only slight tweaking). And that's something I've never had to worry about thus far, because D&D has remained D&D these past 50 years in that regard. The mechanics? I can work around the mechanics no matter what they are. They're just there to vary up the direction the story goes.