D&D 5E Further Future D&D Product Speculation

[Maxperson]

Weird is hip.

On the other hand, they do have Dragonlance coming up this year, and next year would be an opportune time for a Dominaria product for the 30th anniversary of Magic, if they want some Basic Fantasy stuff.

Bring back the Weatherlight!

 

[Parmandur]

Do we actually know that? Serious question. The city state region is fairly small and the Sorcerer-Kings and the Dragon are all in it. Do we know for certain that there aren't any more Sorcerer-Kings or other powerful beings somewhere else on the planet?

Is there still a rest of the planet?

 

[Parmandur]

Bring back the Weatherlight!

I mean, there are two Dominaria card sets coming up, they might.

 

[TheSword]

Sure. But a sorcerer-king is a 20th-level wizard, 20th-level psionicist, and 1-10 levels into becoming a dragon. I know that’s 2E stats, but that’s no reason to make them pushovers in 5E.

PCs we’re fighting Acerack on the bounce from an Atropal at 13th level in Tomb of Annihilation. I think Kalak could be on par with Acerack and not be considered a pushover

 

[Maxperson]

Now, I'm not sure how they would do defiling/preserving magic, because I honestly can't remember how they did it in 2e.

Defilers drew power from life around them, turning plant life in a radius dependent on the level of the spell being cast to ash. I think higher order creatures in the area felt pain as well. Preserver magic was just normal magic. Defilers also had an experience chart where they gained levels faster, which is why so many wizards defiled. It took less effort and you gained power faster.

 

[Maxperson]

Is there still a rest of the planet?

I assume so. Nothing I remember from 2e indicated that the planet broke apart.

 

[Rikka66]

Is there still a rest of the planet?

As far as people in the Tablelands are concerned, no. In practice, there's open space left for the answer to be yes, but from what I can tell official material that touches upon that was unpopular.

 

[see]

If you make the necessary changes to fix it, it'll make FR fans mad

I really don't think so. Very few FR fans care much for Zakhara; the most typical FR-fan viewpoint, in my experience, is that it was the best of the cultural knock-offs attached to the setting, damning with faint praise. And well, FR fans have already had many real-life years to absorb that there's been two metaphysical shakeups and 120 in-game years since we last saw Zakhara. The relatively rarer Al-Qadim fans, in my experience, would largely have no objections to a thoroughly revised version; most are far more attached to the idea of Arabian Nights fantasy than to the specifics of the particular implementation.

Those things go even further for Maztica and Kara-Tur; strong fans were rarer, they were even more fans of the underlying concept than the actual implementation, and FR has even more built-in reasons for those places to have substantially transformed since we last saw them in product (Shou Lung was conquered by the Horde last time we saw it in any major product, and Maztica was shunted to another world before snapping back). Of all the pitfalls involved in revisions to those areas of the Realms, old fans being angry are not really an issue.

The major advantage I could see in revising them rather than just doing new settings from the same cultural background is specifically to purge their problematic elements, so that issues with the old implementations can be answered by WotC with a "Yeah, we fixed that."

But this is all getting far afield from the question of what products WotC is going to make in 2023 and 2024, since I doubt any of FR's Cultural Expylands will be the 2023 classic setting or the 2024 revisit.

 

[Maxperson]

PCs we’re fighting Acerack on the bounce from an Atropal at 13th level in Tomb of Annihilation. I think Kalak could be on par with Acerack and not be considered a pushover

If 14th level PCs were fighting Acererak and didn't die in 2.3 seconds, something was terribly wrong. That guy ate gods for breakfast.

"Around a hundred years ago, Acererak's quest led him to the Forbidden City of Omu in Chult, on the world of Toril, whose priests were routinely killed in a series of death traps to appease their nine trickster gods. Impressed, Acererak killed all nine gods, enslaved the people, and forced them to build a dungeon beneath the cliffs called the Tomb of the Nine Gods."

 

[Parmandur]

I assume so. Nothing I remember from 2e indicated that the planet broke apart.

But is anything outside of the Tablelands actually alive, or in signifnicant numbers?

Looking into it a bit, it seems that the Tablelands are about 100,000 square miles (a fraction of the Sword Coast), and not much is derailed beyond. Though three may be a Thrikreen civilization?