D&D 5E (2024) Is 5E better because of Crawford and Perkins leaving?

[Lanefan]

There is no "power creep". It is bringing the weaker options to be more comparable to the stronger options.

These two statements are in direct contradiction to each other.

Strengthening the weaker options while at the same time not weakening the stronger options is power creep, all day long: the average has become more powerful.

Put in numbers terms, where higher = stronger:

Let's say you've got a series of options whose power levels grade out as 8-3-6-2-7-4 for an average of 5.

Flattening this to 6-4-6-4-6-4 gives the same average - 5 - but equalizes the options considerably. No net power creep.

Raising the lower ones to give 8-5-6-5-7-5 also somewhat equalizes the options but at the same time raises the overall average to 6. That's power creep: the average of the options is more powerful than it was.

 

[Lanefan]

I would disagree with this. I know it is unpopular on this board but I do not think "balance" for the sake of balance brings anything of value to the table.

IMO there should be a best of everything and then players can decide if they want the best or something else.

I think that is the best way to cater to the most players.

Most players want to play something cool and fun and usually simple, they don't really care about being the best as long as they are useful and what they are playing is fun.

A significant minority of players want to be the best or most powerful character at the table. For them the fun is being better then everyone else.

Indeed, but there's no need to hand them those obvious "best" options on a plate. At least make them work for it.

A third and even smaller percentage want to play off the wall character ideas, characters with big disadvantages due to combining classes/features that were not intended to go together (a Dwarf Bladesinger in heavy armor for example). These players need powerful options to keep them in the useful range.

Not so sure here - I suspect many of these players don't necessarily care about being in the "useful range"; if they did, they wouldn't intentionally play against type like this.

Another factor is that the same player could well drift between these types from one character to the next (said while raising hand as guilty).

 

[Charlaquin]

D&D 2024 is the result of the work that the designers Crawford, Perkins, and others did. Similarly, D&D 2014 is the result of the work that Mearls and others did.

Those others being… Crawford and Perkins. And briefly Cook, but he left when he realized WotC was still just as corporate as it had been when he left the first time.

 

[Charlaquin]

The Faerun books are a likely consequence of the previous leads leaving.

Crawford/Perkins clearly embraced the "power creep is good design!" philosophy, to the point that UAs released after the PHB were already more power-creeped than the already-power-creeped PHB content.

Meanwhile, after the new folks took the helm, UAs took a distinct shift into bland, mediocre power-wise. As if the new folks are reluctant to push the power envelope in the way Crawford/Perkins embraced it, or perhaps had higher-ups tell them that the power-creep was a turn-off for many players.

The end result is that Heroes of Faerun is wildly unbalanced. You have extremely strong faction feat lines (the Spellfire and Zhentarium lines, for instance), ones that are overly situational or needlessly restrictive (the Harper or Dragon Cult lines), and ones that are complete garbage (the Flaming Fist or Emerald Enclave lines). You have circle casting, which is a mechanic that lets casters completely break the game while martials sit by and get scorned by their allies for not having spell slots. You have the Banneret and the Oath of Nobly Not Caring About Thematic Conventions in the same sourcebook.

Then you have Astarion's Book of Homophobic Tropes Hungers, where the designers didn't think a feat focused on throwing weapons would be something a Strength-focused character could possibly want. You have Lorwyn: First Light, where one of the new species gets a feature that doesn't actually work because the designers seem to have forgotten how features of the intended nature are worded and why.

And all throughout, we have species, classes, subclasses, feats, items, that all think the most interesting thing the game can give a player is "cast this spell".

So no, at best the design direction is merely shifting course from "blind power-creep" to "mediocrity and generifying existing content". Which, I suppose is nice for the type of player who wants tanking-focused subclasses to be made better for meta DPR builds and worse for sword-and-board PCs.

This is maybe more harsh than I’d have characterized the situation, but I do agree that so far the quality post-2024 has been very inconsistent. Which I imagine will be rough for WotC, since consistency was the main draw of 1st party content compared to the 3rd party firehose.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's people pushing that general overrides specific, despite the rules saying that the specific overrules general.
In this case a species gets an ability to use a reaction to Dash immediately after initiative is rolled.

Dash starts with

Since the turn is an ad hoc immediacy due to the ability granted, it is immediately granted, not something broken at all.

This has nothing to do with specific vs. general. The issue is that the Dash Action doesn’t do what you intuitively expect it to do. Dash doesn’t move your character, it gives them more of a resource, called movement, that you expend on your turn to move your character. The feature is trying to let you move when you roll initiative, but whoever wrote it seems to have forgotten how 5e’s movement mechanic works. And, in fairness to them, it works in an extremely unintuitive way. Usually I don’t blame people, even 3rd party content creators, for making this very understandable mistake. But coming from WotC themselves it’s deeply embarrassing and clearly demonstrates that the design team has lost important legacy knowledge.

 

[mamba]

If you have a problem with 2024 D&D then them leaving might be a good thing, for you.

Otherwise its still probably too early to say.

not a fan of 2024, whether them leaving was a good thing will depend on what the new guys create though. Probably will have to wait for 6e though, 2024 has set an example for the next years / supplements, unfortunately

Overall I am much more in line with what Mearls is working on than what 2024 delivered

 

[Zardnaar]

This has nothing to do with specific vs. general. The issue is that the Dash Action doesn’t do what you intuitively expect it to do. Dash doesn’t move your character, it gives them more of a resource, called movement, that you expend on your turn to move your character. The feature is trying to let you move when you roll initiative, but whoever wrote it seems to have forgotten how 5e’s movement mechanic works. And, in fairness to them, it works in an extremely unintuitive way. Usually I don’t blame people, even 3rd party content creators, for making this very understandable mistake. But coming from WotC themselves it’s deeply embarrassing and clearly demonstrates that the design team has lost important legacy knowledge.

I think people over looked it early 2014.

2016-19 was kind of the peak quality wise. They were never good at APs pretty art, enthusiasm and good other product hid it.