Clint_L
Legend
5e is about at my crunch limit, and I agree with Snarff that WotC has been smart to approach 5e as a kind of modular system, where you can bolt on new pieces through 3PP or their own setting expansions while leaving the core game more or less intact.
That's why I am a bit trepidatious about a few of the 2024 features. Weapons mastery, for example, adds another aspect of complexity - and thus time - to the area of the game that I already sometimes find tedious, combat. I get that it adds more options to allow martial classes to make a few new strategic choices in combat, and that's a good thing from some perspectives. But not all. Generally, if I'm playing a barbarian I've intentionally chosen a very basic class.
It's easy to say that more is good, but it's not without cost. As the game accrues more moving parts, it becomes less accessible to new players and more exploitable by experts. And that can become a real problem.
Edit: I played World of Warcraft for many years, right from Vanilla. And you could see this happening. As the game added expansions, it also added new abilities and power-ups, generally to the delight of harcore fans. Who doesn't like new stuff? But it also inevitably became more elitist and arcane, so that there was no way a new player could really wander into the game and expect to be in a raiding guild any time soon. To keep active in a strong guild, you had to stay on the cutting edge of tactics, add-ons, class builds, etc.
I'm not saying that D&D is anything like the grind of playing in a game like that. But making the game more complicated inevitably makes it more for the elite. And I don't think that is good for a game like D&D. The greatest strength 5e has is its wide accessibility.
That's why I am a bit trepidatious about a few of the 2024 features. Weapons mastery, for example, adds another aspect of complexity - and thus time - to the area of the game that I already sometimes find tedious, combat. I get that it adds more options to allow martial classes to make a few new strategic choices in combat, and that's a good thing from some perspectives. But not all. Generally, if I'm playing a barbarian I've intentionally chosen a very basic class.
It's easy to say that more is good, but it's not without cost. As the game accrues more moving parts, it becomes less accessible to new players and more exploitable by experts. And that can become a real problem.
Edit: I played World of Warcraft for many years, right from Vanilla. And you could see this happening. As the game added expansions, it also added new abilities and power-ups, generally to the delight of harcore fans. Who doesn't like new stuff? But it also inevitably became more elitist and arcane, so that there was no way a new player could really wander into the game and expect to be in a raiding guild any time soon. To keep active in a strong guild, you had to stay on the cutting edge of tactics, add-ons, class builds, etc.
I'm not saying that D&D is anything like the grind of playing in a game like that. But making the game more complicated inevitably makes it more for the elite. And I don't think that is good for a game like D&D. The greatest strength 5e has is its wide accessibility.
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