D&D (2024) Here's The New 2024 Player's Handbook Wizard Art

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think you will perhaps at least admit there is a certain level of ironic humour (intended or otherwise) in a man called Jean-Luc Picard having a beautiful Shakespearian English accent and loving a very British style of tea.

Of course we nearly had a very French captain with an American/British name with Geneviève Bujold in VOY.

Perhaps. Though I don't think liking Shakespeare and Earl Grey are particularly rare traits. Both fit me, yet I am not British.

And funnily enough Star Trek had a captain whose actor could speak fluent French, but that was Bill Shatner.

 

[Umbran]

And now I'm wondering if spell casters ever carry a pair of those archivists gloves (with fingers) for when they find a really old spell book.

I looked this up - apparently, those gloves aren't actually used as much as we might think any more. Back in 2013, for example, the British National Archives changed policy - old documents are very brittle, and they found that the loss of dexterity was a risk as great or greater to old documents than the moisture and oils from clean hands.

There are exceptions - photographic materials are especially vulnerable to the oils from hands, for example, and they still call for gloves when handling objects that are themselves toxic.

 

[Umbran]

This is like Picard being bald in the 24th century.

Have you seen the guy with hair?

Spoiler: with a wig for TNG

Spoiler: in I, Claudius

Spoiler: and, well....

The explanation of Picard not fixing his hair loss is that the cultural norm that biases against baldness is garbage we excised by his time, and he actually looks better without hair!

This wizard can't cast cure astigmatism.

Yeah, part of the issue here is that while we broadly say that magic can do anything, it is not true that people in D&D worlds already know magic that does everything. There are a limited number of known spells, and there are things those spells don't do.

 

[Autumnal]

And now I'm wondering if spell casters ever carry a pair of those archivists gloves (with fingers) for when they find a really old spell book.

for example, and they still call for gloves when handling objects that are themselves toxic.

This is the case I was thinking of. There’s a great book called Dark Archives there a history of books bound in human skin and other strange things, and from I learned they many of them are toxic. I think they quite a few spell components would end up in toxic combinations too, so that you’d likely have made provisions that suit you for our own spell book and would definitely want protection for handling anyone else’s until you know it inside and out.

i imagine the possibility of disposable pull-on fingertip covers.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Yeah, part of the issue here is that while we broadly say that magic can do anything, it is not true that people in D&D worlds already know magic that does everything. There are a limited number of known spells, and there are things those spells don't do.

Right. I think the bigger issue is that even if it's not a spell that's denoted mechanically in a book, people assume the spaces in between must exist. Right, like, if high level clerical magic can literally reverse PC death, then one could assume that they can cure paraplegia as an example. This may not be true in the strictest sense, but yeah there is a certain logic there. This is the sort of thing I was referring to that doesn't really make diegetic sense, per se, but is something D&D is rife with. Another example: standing armies and fortifications. With high level magic and all kinds of flying creatures both would pretty much be obviated immediately, yet they exist in the game in spades.

 

[Raiztt]

Another example: standing armies

"Standing army" just means that the army exists all the time, as opposed to being summoned up or put together as needed.

So, in our modern world which very much has arial combatants and powerful "AoE effects" we still have "standing armies".

 

[eyeheartawk]

"Standing army" just means that the army exists all the time, as opposed to being summoned up or put together as needed.

So, in our modern world which very much has arial combatants and powerful "AoE effects" we still have "standing armies".

Fair, I should specified standing medieval style armies. Ranks of pikemen and all that. Not Dragon RAF vs Drake Luftwaffe.

 

[Raiztt]

Fair, I should specified standing medieval style armies. Ranks of pikemen and all that. Not Dragon RAF vs Drake Luftwaffe.

Good world building can make a lot of things more plausible, but D&D has the kitchen sink approach going against it where it has to hold a lot of things together that don't make much sense.

 

[Gradine]

Just a friendly reminder to everyone that people with disabilities are not universally or fundamentally broken and in need of fixing.

Also glasses are aesthetic, sorry I don't make the rules

 

[OB1]

Way late to this thread, but wanted to throw out that what I love about this piece of art as the headliner for the Wizard class is that it feels aspirational. I don't see her as a Tier I just out of the tower adventurer, but a high level master of the art. I'd say the same about the Fighter class art as well, and I'm wondering if that will be consistent throughout the class art, with the subclass art then dialing it back to Tier I or II depictions.

Like, get someone excited about a class by showing how powerful they can be, and then start reading the text.