Jeremy Crawford: “We are releasing new editions of the books”

[Micah Sweet]

If you had only played 1 of those 3 editions and had no idea how the others worked, there is no way you would just figure it out.
Look at casting a fireball in the 3 editions.

In 3.5 creatures are making a reflex saving throw against you spell DC(Scaling with the level of the spell slot used).

In 4 you make an attack roll vs a creatures reflex save.

In 5 creatures make a dexterity saving throw vs your spell DC(Scaling with your total casting level)

There is no way players are just going to intuitive understand the difference between the editions.

3e and 5e are pretty similar here, with 4e (as usual) being the odd one out.

 

[codo]

Those two groups (those who don't see this as any sort of edition change and those who are generally positive about the changes we've seen and are seeing) do seem to have a lot of overlap.

Is there? Or is it that it really doesn't matter, and most people don't really care, and are just going to call it what WotC does. The only people who really seam to care are people who are already angry with WotC, and are looking for reasons to call them liars.

 

[SteveC]

3e and 5e are pretty similar here, with 4e (as usual) being the odd one out.

Right: 4E Essentials is what WotC seems to want but they also aren't using the same ideas. You could have a Rogue core character from 4E and a Thief, from Essentials in the same party. I know this because we did it with a player who wanted a rogue character but didn't want AEDU powers.

I think that's what they want to do, have a classic 4E fighter and a new ... fighter both be available. I think it will just be confusing and one will likely be just better.

 

[Faolyn]

No, I really wouldn't.

Now I'm kind of interested in find out what you would consider to be a half-edition. I mean, was 3.5e really a half-edition from 3e, by your standards?

I admit that I haven't really looked through all the playtest packets, since I stopped getting them, but what I've seen talked about here and elsewhere looks to be as much of a change as 3.5 was from 3. And while I never played 3.5 or read that edition's core books, I did buy the Ravenloft Gazetteers and was somewhat confused by the changes made to the statblocks when they switched from 3 to 3.5.

 

[mamba]

My logic is that if you took everything being changed out of the game entirely, no replacements or return to 2014, you don't have a game. 5e without all these things that are changing isn't playable in any meaningful fashion.

I can change the descriptions for Str, Dex, etc. If you then take out the attributes, nothing is playable any more. That does not mean the change itself warrants a new edition, so to me this does not really work as a metric.

 

[Pedantic]

Right: 4E Essentials is what WotC seems to want but they also aren't using the same ideas. You could have a Rogue core character from 4E and a Thief, from Essentials in the same party. I know this because we did it with a player who wanted a rogue character but didn't want AEDU powers.

I think that's what they want to do, have a classic 4E fighter and a new ... fighter both be available. I think it will just be confusing and one will likely be just better.

Personally, I think this goes out the window as soon as you make changes to the basic class structure. If they'd released a new class under a different name, or released a "PHB 2" with an reworked set of subclasses, I'd buy that as the level of change. But they're selling core books again, and they're saying the Fighter works differently now, and there's a conversion guide for older fighter material, which slides this solidly into the 3e->3.5 camp, instead of the 4e+essential situation. It's non-errata replacement changes, instead of "additional material that's also a viable starting point."

Essentials remains a really interesting point in D&D publishing history. The content had an audience problem (the 4e core fans hated it, the target audience hated 4e too much to look at it) which meant the underlying strategy, "here's some slim books that you can use instead of the core books to play D&D, and it's a little different/simpler" didn't really get a fair shake. We're not talking about groups that bought the Monster Vault, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, and threw together a campaign now, we're talking about how essentials and core PHB classes played at the same table.

I think the 5e version of that is probably something like releasing a small book that has a new "Warrior, Thief, Magic-User" base classes, that are almost, but not quite, like fighters/rogues/wizards. Probably with rules that let you use wizard spells as an MU and vice-versa, maybe with subclass parity across the two, or a conversion process that's like "you can add this generic ability at X level to every rogue subclass to make it a thief subclass" or "this level 2 warrior feature can be replaced with the first subclass ability of a fighter if you take a fighter subclass on a warrior." Then you take some late stage 5e optional rules and present them in that booklet as normative, casually rename race to species with a sidebar saying it's the same thing and so on.

Honestly, I could see an interesting publishing model for D&D where you have multiple "expandalone" style books that could all function as a core set of classes, and could be enough for a group to play from.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is there? Or is it that it really doesn't matter, and most people don't really care, and are just going to call it what WotC does. The only people who really seam to care are people who are already angry with WotC, and are looking for reasons to call them liars.

People who don't see any edition change usually frame it as, "it really doesn't matter, and most people don't really care, and are just going to call it what WotC does".

 

[mamba]

By this logic, 3.5 isn't sufficiently distinct from 3e to deserve calling out, and it really was the book of errata and minor updates it was originally announced as being.

so? Because back then they decided to call it a new edition means they need to now? At most that makes their use inconsistent, which is not exactly news…

 

[Micah Sweet]

Personally, I think this goes out the window as soon as you make changes to the basic class structure. If they'd released a new class under a different name, or released a "PHB 2" with an reworked set of subclasses, I'd buy that as the level of change. But they're selling core books again, and they're saying the Fighter works differently now, and there's a conversion guide for older fighter material, which slides this solidly into the 3e->3.5 camp, instead of the 4e+essential situation. It's non-errata replacement changes, instead of "additional material that's also a viable starting point."

Essentials remains a really interesting point in D&D publishing history. The content had an audience problem (the 4e core fans hated it, the target audience hated 4e too much to look at it) which meant the underlying strategy, "here's some slim books that you can use instead of the core books to play D&D, and it's a little different/simpler" didn't really get a fair shake. We're not talking about groups that bought the Monster Vault, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, and threw together a campaign now, we're talking about how essentials and core PHB classes played at the same table.

I think the 5e version of that is probably something like releasing a small book that has a new "Warrior, Thief, Magic-User" base classes, that are almost, but not quite, like fighters/rogues/wizards. Probably with rules that let you use wizard spells as an MU and vice-versa, maybe with subclass parity across the two, or a conversion process that's like "you can add this generic ability at X level to every rogue subclass to make it a thief subclass" or "this level 2 warrior feature can be replaced with the first subclass ability of a fighter if you take a fighter subclass on a warrior." Then you take some late stage 5e optional rules and present them in that booklet as normative, casually rename race to species with a sidebar saying it's the same thing and so on.

Honestly, I could see an interesting publishing model for D&D where you have multiple "expandalone" style books that could all function as a core set of classes, and could be enough for a group to play from.

Yeah, I actually really liked Essentials. If 4e had started there I probably wouldn't have given up on it.

 

[Emberashh]

I can change the descriptions for Str, Dex, etc. If you then take out the attributes, nothing is playable any more. That does not mean the change itself warrants a new edition, so to me this does not really work as a metric.

You missed the point that what remains aside from whats actually being changed doesn't make for a game in of itself, so it isn't worthwhile information to base a conclusion on, which is what you and others have been doing by asserting those unchanged aspects as indicators that 1DND is not a new edition.

If the parts of the game that actually make it playable are being significantly changed, well beyond the changes representative of mere errata, then it is in fact a new edition.