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

 

[Clint_L]

It is kinda how they were normally depicted, though. The wizards shown in the art were the powerful ones you aspired for your character to eventually develop into...

Do players actually aspire to that, in general? In more than forty years playing this game, I've never once had a player create a wizard who looked anything like Gandalf.

I've actually had more old soldier-type characters created than aged spell casters. Maybe it's just my games, though. Our current campaign does have a druid who started the campaign magically aged, but eventually reversed it, and now she's young and beautiful.

 

[Charlaquin]

Do players actually aspire to that, in general? In more than forty years playing this game, I've never once had a player create a wizard who looked anything like Gandalf.

I've actually had more old soldier-type characters created than aged spell casters. Maybe it's just my games, though. Our current campaign does have a druid who started the campaign magically aged, but eventually reversed it, and now she's young and beautiful.

I mean, you aspire to those characters’ power, and those characters being old in the art is a testament to the difficulty of attaining it, which makes your character all the more special for attaining it in a fraction of the time.

 

[Staffan]

They did, and they were young as I said. They're not class-based - a Human is 15 + 1d4, an Elf is 100 + 5d6, a Halfling is 20+ 3d4 and so on.

Adding to this, 3e reincorporated class-based age to a lesser degree. Each race had a fixed starting age, to which you added a class-based roll. The classes were split into three categories that I'd call "talented", "mixed", and "educated". Talented were classes that rely a lot on inborn talent: rogues, barbarians, sorcerers. Educated would be classes that imply going to school or having a long apprenticeship, such as wizards and clerics. And of course the mixed ones were the rest, that would have some measure of talent but also some amount of training, like fighters. For humans, talented classes added 1d4, mixed 1d6, and educated 1d8. I don't recall what other classes added, except that in Eberron the rolls were reversed for Warforged: they had been building "talented" warforged for a longer time than they had built "educated" ones, so a warforged barbarian was likely to be older than a warforged wizard.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I've never once had a player create a wizard who looked anything like Gandalf.

I had a player create an elderly wizard, but they were a halfling.(the wizard, not the player - edited for clarity)

 

[Reynard]

Also, in 5E anyway, you level so quickly that there are any number of "excuses" you can make up for why you were less impressive two weeks ago. look at Gandalf. He didn't cast anything but light and knock before he is suddenly tussling with a Type X demon.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I haven’t fully read through the book, but there definitely are legitimate criticisms. That’s true for literally every book, D&D or otherwise, that has ever been published. I was talking more about how some people were complaining about it before it was even published when basically the only things we knew about it were the name, some previewed art, and that it was written by a team of BIPOC writers. There were many ridiculous nitpicks on the previewed art, people complaining that adventure compilation books suck, and pretending to be concerned about the “quality of the writing,” which hadn’t happened for discussions of previous 5e adventure compilation books on this site.

Yeah, that was a preview threat where the criticisms were:

• The images were too colorful (especially when shaded with pink or purple. The teletubby colors)
• There was a cute creature in the image. He-Man Manly Men don't like cute creatures, especially not celebrated cat owner, He-Man.
• Mask-off comments about the production staff.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Also, in 5E anyway, you level so quickly that there are any number of "excuses" you can make up for why you were less impressive two weeks ago. look at Gandalf. He didn't cast anything but light and knock before he is suddenly tussling with a Type X demon.

By hitting it with a staff.

 

[MNblockhead]

I will say that just trying to imagine the 2014 Class archetype images as Magic cards really doesn't work, and that is a pretty good test of the quality of a fantasy splash page art.

I love the 2014 art work. It was the first thing that hit me and sucked me in when I cracked open the PHB in my local FLGS, leading me into getting back into TTRPGs after over two decades of not being in the hobby. What they did well, for me, is both hitting the nostalgia button for me as an 80s era gamer while still feeling fresh and diverse. I've like most of the art in most of the 5e books. I am also an Earl Otus fan and love the weird old-school acid-soaked art of Dungeon Crawl Classics. But I think the art team at WotC has done a great job at threading the needle to appeal to modern fantasy tastes, while still feeling like D&D to older folks like me.

 

[Charlaquin]

Adding to this, 3e reincorporated class-based age to a lesser degree. Each race had a fixed starting age, to which you added a class-based roll. The classes were split into three categories that I'd call "talented", "mixed", and "educated". Talented were classes that rely a lot on inborn talent: rogues, barbarians, sorcerers. Educated would be classes that imply going to school or having a long apprenticeship, such as wizards and clerics. And of course the mixed ones were the rest, that would have some measure of talent but also some amount of training, like fighters. For humans, talented classes added 1d4, mixed 1d6, and educated 1d8. I don't recall what other classes added, except that in Eberron the rolls were reversed for Warforged: they had been building "talented" warforged for a longer time than they had built "educated" ones, so a warforged barbarian was likely to be older than a warforged wizard.

Of course, multiclassing made those class-based starting ages seem pretty silly.

 

[billd91]

Notice how in old-school D&D the most important stats are Strength and Intelligence, but in modern D&D the most important stats are Dexterity and Charisma? I won’t go so far as to claim that that’s because the game is played more by theater kids than nerds now. But it is an interesting parallel.

I don't know about Charisma, but the shift toward Dex-based characters being on par in melee with Strength-based ones has been simmering a LONG time. And I think it has far more to do with martial arts, swashbuckler, and superhero (like Daredevil thanks to Frank Miller's run on the series) enthusiasts than theater kids.