D&D 5E (2024) More D&D 2024 Tidbits: Aasimar, Goliaths, Town-Eating Gelatinous Cubes

Here are a few more tidbits from Game Informer's magazine coverage of the new edition's rulebooks.

• Iconic characters like Bobby the Barbarian, or Raistlin and Caramon Majere feature in the art.
• Each class and each subclass has its own piece of art.
• Species now include Aasimar, Goliath, and Orc.
• Bastions are in--player built bases.
• Greyhawk is the sample setting in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
• Each book is 384 pages.

Monster Manual

• 75 new monsters in the Monster Manual; over 500 in total.
• Challenge rating remains the same.
• There are some new lower challenge vampires, and a higher challenge one called the Nightbringer.
• Blob of Annihilation is a gelatinous cube that can eat towns.
• Elemental Juggernaut, Archhag.

 

[bedir than]

Blob of Annihilation is a gelatinous cube that can eat towns.

Good gods.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Bastion in the PHB?

 

[Meech17]

It's interesting that each book is the same length. Aesthetically it'll look nice on the shelf, sure..

But I wonder how much content was cut, or conversely fluffed up so that they all hit the same page count?

 

[Kurotowa]

It's interesting that each book is the same length. Aesthetically it'll look nice on the shelf, sure..

But I wonder how much content was cut, or conversely fluffed up so that they all hit the same page count?

I wouldn't worry too much about it. There's always a cutoff, be it based on physical printing limitations or budget or whatever. Editors edit, layout specialists tweak things, and you get there in the end. I think it was in this same article, they drop mention of how the Revised PHB makes sure each class starts with the splash art page on the left side and the class intro on the right, so it's a clear welcoming spread in the physical book.

This is the sort of nitty gritty for publishing and book design that's mostly invisible to people, but absolutely has an impact.

 

[sevenbastard]

Archhag

Perfect the game needs a higher CR hag. I had to use a reskined mummy lord whe. I needed one.

 

[kenmarable]

It's interesting that each book is the same length. Aesthetically it'll look nice on the shelf, sure..

But I wonder how much content was cut, or conversely fluffed up so that they all hit the same page count?

If they were planning them to be the same length from the start and had some general concepts for layout early on, then likely very little was cut or fluffed.

I find it very unlikely on such prominent releases that pretty much the entire team have been working on for quite a while that they finished first drafts and realized they, for example, needed to cut 20 pages from the MM and add 15 pages to the DMG, or some such. If you plan it from the start, then that plan includes the proper amount of content for that length of a book, especially if the layout is looking to be things like "each subclass is 1/2 page, each monster if 1 or 2 full pages, etc.". Then the edits are more on the scale of sentences or maybe paragraphs to get them to fit rather than "uh oh, we need 3 more subclasses, any ideas?"

 

[Kobold Stew]

• Species now include Aasimar, Goliath, and Orc.

The inclusion of Aasimar leaves me hoping that there will be some non-innately spellcasting species from MotM included as well.

 

[Yaarel]

Bastion in the PHB?

Heh. Evil DM.

I thought you meant the giant Gelatinous Cube will eat the player Bastions!

 

[Burnside]

​

• Challenge rating remains the same.

I'm sure Crawford said they were gonna fix this?