D&D 5E General PHB Speculation Thread [+]

[doctorbadwolf]

The time draws near! Sometime this year, we will have new PHBs for 5e D&D, and we likely know at least 60% of what it will look like, from the UA.

The question is, what do you think the biggest unanswered questions, annd thier answers, are?

What (if anything) will be included with no hints ahead of time?

What will be noticeably changed from the most recent UA version?

What sections of the PHB will be most changed and most unchanged?

Grasp at straws, cast divinations, calculate the probabilities, whatever method you please, as long as it fuels speculation and does not threadcrap or crap on anyone’s posts.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

Optimistic Prediction: PHB classes will all look radically different from what they were in their most recent playtest forms (except the Monk), but all will have a ton more polish, thought and balance to them than anything we have seen so far. The playtest really was just mining reactions to general forms and the real design is happening out of view with internal and NDA-ed playtesters. The Monk was the only thing not hitting anywhere near their targets for meaningful feedback so the most recent version is a rewritten version of what they have been working with behind the scenes for a good year. But people in general are going to get much bigger, bolder and exciting changes than we would guess from just looking at what was presented in the playtests.

Now do it, WOTC!

 

[MNblockhead]

My only prediction is that I'll enjoy it, but will spend more time reading arguments about it on these forums than reading or playing it.

In the spirit of the forum I expect (at least hope) it will be better organized with more modern rules display, cross referencing, and better use of layout. They have more time and money to invest in presentation and they will have to think about the presentation and use of the rules in D&D Beyond and their VTT which I think will IMPROVE the organization and layout of the book.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think that we'll see more revised feats and more revised spells than we playtested. I'm not sure that they'll keep the L1 & L4 feat distinction. I think that the BIG thing that will make this "edition" feel different than what came before is going to be in layout and art. They've shown how they plan to give every class and subclass example art, but I think we will see similar things when it comes to spells, feats, and equipment. Not ALL of those things will have art, but many more of them than ever did before. And they will be laid out to include the artwork in such a way as to fill pages so that text doesn't page-wrap the way it usually does. I think this will make the organization of these books infinitely better than they've ever been. Perhaps game-changingly so.

 

[Shardstone]

I think, looking at the 2014 playtest, we will get a lot of strange changes in design or more things will be reverted then we expect. I expect some classes to be better for it, and other classes to be just as lackluster.

My only real interest in the new PHB is that the layout is improved. I really, really hate the layout of the original PHB and have never once enjoyed reading through it or exploring it. This is unique to the 5E PHB; many other RPGs I enjoy reading and exploring in this manner. However, I think this is the one thing I'm pretty certain will 100% happen and is, imo, a good enough reason to print a new PHB by itself.

 

[Amrûnril]

I'd say the biggest unanswered question is how much spells will change. Spells make up a significant fraction of the PHB by page count, and constitute the overwhelming majority of class features for many classes. But whereas we've seen playtest versions of almost every non-spell class feature, only a handful of leveled spells have appeared. It's not clear to what extent this is because the developers are avoiding changes to spells vs. to what extent they're relying on the internal playtesting process.

 

[Remathilis]

I think there are going to be some spell nerfs that the fan base will have to swallow because WotC felt they are over tuned and knows they won't get 70% approval, so they are just going to fix them for the health of the game.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The few things I'm most curious about will be how they decide to present Backgrounds, and what the mechanical format will be for members of mixed species.

For the Backgrounds they can present them several ways-- the current 5E14 way of giving us a chapter of pre-made Backgrounds and then additional rules to create our own... the UA way of making the create-your-own be the default method and then give a couple examples of pre-made ones... or perhaps a new version that highlights both sides, or even changing up how Backgrounds are made and presented altogether.

And for the mixed species... the last time it was ever brought up they said that every species could breed with every other and you could create your own in whatever pairing you wanted-- with the game mechanics being you just choose one of the species or the other. As that has received a lot of pushback over the past year about that... there's still a possibility of that being changed. Either Half-Elf and Half-Orc remain as their own distinct entries along with all the other species, or Mixed Ancestry becomes its own entry in the species section and allows you to combine two species together either narratively and/or mechanically, or mixed ancestry gets removed as a default option altogether (and there's only a sidebar that says if you really want to keep it you can use the rules for 5E14 as needed but that's with DM permission.)

I have no idea which ways these two things will go, but I'll but curious to see what happens regardless.

 

[Shardstone]

The few things I'm most curious about will be how they decide to present Backgrounds, and what the mechanical format will be for members of mixed species.

For the Backgrounds they can present them several ways-- the current 5E14 way of giving us a chapter of pre-made Backgrounds and then additional rules to create our own... the UA way of making the create-your-own be the default method and then give a couple examples of pre-made ones... or perhaps a new version that highlights both sides, or even changing up how Backgrounds are made and presented altogether.

And for the mixed species... the last time it was ever brought up they said that every species could breed with every other and you could create your own in whatever pairing you wanted-- with the game mechanics being you just choose one of the species or the other. As that has received a lot of pushback over the past year about that... there's still a possibility of that being changed. Either Half-Elf and Half-Orc remain as their own distinct entries along with all the other species, or Mixed Ancestry becomes its own entry in the species section and allows you to combine two species together either narratively and/or mechanically, or mixed ancestry gets removed as a default option altogether (and there's only a sidebar that says if you really want to keep it you can use the rules for 5E14 as needed but that's with DM permission.)

I have no idea which ways these two things will go, but I'll but curious to see what happens regardless.

I'd looooove a Mixed Ancestry lineage.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'd looooove a Mixed Ancestry lineage.

That would ultimately be my preference too. I hate the idea of they once again only printing the Half-Elf and the Half-Orc as the only mixed ancestries, and I also don't like the idea of basically removing mixed ancestries as options altogether (as too many people care about it too much to just ditch it.) So for me, a Mixed Ancestry entry amongst all the other species entries would be my preferred way to go as well.

(And given how inconsequential I feel each species mechanical features are, I see no reason why WotC shouldn't just give us a list of those features that are mixable so that your Mixed Ancestry character can have mechanical features from both parents rather than just taking all from one. If WotC is just selective on which features they allow us to mix and match in order to retain slight species balance... give the players what they want.)