D&D 5E Musings on the likelihood of future products

Mercurius

Legend
I think that rather than a Planescape or Spelljammer book, as such, they will make a book that simply explores planar and world-hopping adventure, will have spelljammers, sigil, and other elements of those two properties, but the work will put the current 5e dnd multi-verse first, and any consideration of the canon of those settings a distant 5th place after fun, expansion of the ruleset, and whatever pet widgets they want to play with that work out in UA.

What I would want them to do with such a product is use much of the book to explore worlds they aren't sure they want to make a whole book for, and use them as examples of how to build a setting to emulate a theme or tone for a campaign, and the sort of player and DM options that will support that type of world and campaign. ie, a chapter on DL, with a couple races and subclasses, and advice using DL as an example to show how to build a romantic fantasy world where heroes have to stand up even to gods in order to save the world.

I like this, and it is along the lines with what I had in mind for a 5E Manual of the Planes. It would be a guidebook for planar adventuring in general, with an overview of different ways to approach it (Planescape, Spelljammer, planeswalking, possibly others). I would love to see an emphasis on build-your-own cosmologies, with the Great Wheel and World Tree offered as two examples.

Then, if they find that people are clamoring for more Sigil or more Spelljammer, they can offer that.
 

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doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I like this, and it is along the lines with what I had in mind for a 5E Manual of the Planes. It would be a guidebook for planar adventuring in general, with an overview of different ways to approach it (Planescape, Spelljammer, planeswalking, possibly others). I would love to see an emphasis on build-your-own cosmologies, with the Great Wheel and World Tree offered as two examples.

Then, if they find that people are clamoring for more Sigil or more Spelljammer, they can offer that.
Exactly.
 

I'd prefer Greyhawk, but I would buy a Book of the planes or Spelljammer type book without hesitations. But a Book of the Planes would be best, I must admit it. The planes lacks a proper treatment in 5ed. MToF did a small treatment of Hell and the Abyss, but what about the other planes? We do have the lore from earlier editions but I think that a 5ed update is in order.
 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
But if they make the game (even) better? And offer a few new bells and whistles? And still be backwards compatible? And doesn't require people to buy new books to play future products?

While everyone is entitled to their outrage, should Wizards really let themselves be held hostage by a small minority who are adverse to any change, even if isn't really substantial change?

Either it's a rules revision, in which case it doesn't meet your criteria of not requiring new books, or it's an errata which will be put into the errata document as all changes are and are already echoed in new printings of the books, which I've already addressed as fine. That's business-as-usual.

Do I think they are going to make revisions and package them as errata? I'd like to turn your attention to the point that historically when they did this with 4e there was a huge backlash. I'm sorry to say but "small minority" cannot be accurately used to describe it the last time this happened.
 

@Ruin Explorer i do think you have a point.
Like a Full caster with mor flexibility and fewer constraints.

Both of those are relative to other classes. More flexibility I think you could reasonably argue. They had too many approaches they could use too early on compared to some classes. I don't think they were as flexible as a well-played Wizard, but they were certainly flexible. Less constraints? That's not even arguable. They had a bigger constraint than any full caster, that being their power pool, which given it was daily, wasn't huge, wasn't anywhere near as deep as a full caster. And that's where most claims of "overpoweredness" completely collapsed. Because they all relied on the power pool being infinite. People would say "Oh they can do X damage for Y rounds, every day!" and then also claim they were flexible and had utility, and it just mathematically, factually, unarguable was flatly false. They literally couldn't be both - they could do damage, or the they could have utility. Using one reduced the other. It's like claiming a Wizard is overpowered by having them spend every spell slot on the biggest-number damage spells AND also claiming they were overpowered because they could cast all these non-ritual utility spells.

Also as an aside, the funniest thing re: claims of "overpowered" is that everyone spent the power points incredibly inefficiently, just trying to show they were "OP" with "big numbers", rather than looking at how much damage and utility they could do over a 6-8 encounter adventuring day. If you actually did burn power like the "overpowered" analyses suggested, not only would you be out of power on like, the 1st, 2nd or 3rd encounter of the day (depending on how much HP the monsters had, and how much damage the rest of the party was doing), and have the same damage and utility as Wizard out of spells slots for the rest of the day, but your overall damage would actually be significantly lower than a Fighter or Rogue (even without subclasses, and yes fully accounting for misses etc.), let alone a full caster who got off some AOE spells. If you played it a very different way, and used your power ultra-efficiently, and had zero utility, you could catch up to a Fighter, but as soon as a full caster landed some AoEs, you'd be way behind, and if the fights lasted more than three rounds, or there were more than 6 encounters in a day, the Fighter and Rogue would pull well ahead again.

I think it was all pretty easy to fix even if you did see a problem. Drop the power pool by a fair bit, but of it back on a short rest. Limit the amount spent on any given power a bit more tightly. Give them fewer powers early on. Nerf/remove literally a handful of powers (including the single, specific power everyone used to "prove" it was OP). And that wouldn't even really be necessary, but it could have been proven to be balanced in a way no-one could have argued with (it would have actually be a fair bit weaker than full casters at that point).

Back on main topic:

I think that rather than a Planescape or Spelljammer book, as such, they will make a book that simply explores planar and world-hopping adventure, will have spelljammers, sigil, and other elements of those two properties, but the work will put the current 5e dnd multi-verse first, and any consideration of the canon of those settings a distant 5th place after fun, expansion of the ruleset, and whatever pet widgets they want to play with that work out in UA.

I don't think is quite as likely as you expect, but solely because spelljammers are potentially a huge subject, because of the implications that roll outwards from their existence. Sigil and Planescape stuff in general, by comparison, is extremely contained. The concept of portals is neat, precise, makes immediate sense to most people, and takes up like, three paragraphs, maybe a page if you're feeling luxurious and want to give loads of examples. Whereas just describing the basic functionality of a spelljammer is quite a bit of work, and then you just create a million questions, because do you have crystal spheres? What's between the stars? What about gravity or solar radiation or what-have-you? And then you need a lot of suggestions, and maybe even a default and so on.

I think astral ships (which, iirc, predate spelljammers) are a bit more likely, and potentially could fill a similar role to spelljammers without raising quite so many questions, and could merely be part of a (large) chapter on the Astral plane (which has been underused in recent editions, I feel).
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
But if they make the game (even) better? And offer a few new bells and whistles? And still be backwards compatible? And doesn't require people to buy new books to play future products?

While everyone is entitled to their outrage, should Wizards really let themselves be held hostage by a small minority who are adverse to any change, even if isn't really substantial change?



I don't think they had a specific plan back then, because it was pending how 5E would be received. They left it open-ended, although wanted to acknowledge the range of D&D worlds. Meaning, mentioning Mystara didn't mean they had plans for Mystara. It was a nod in that direction; a micro-homage.

WotC has been pretty clear that they won't do much as redo the Index, since they don't want to make anyone feel that they need to buy a new book. I wouldn't count on any sort of revision without it being straight up 6E. And I wouldn't expect 6E to be very radical, either.
 

Undrave

Legend
WotC has been pretty clear that they won't do much as redo the Index, since they don't want to make anyone feel that they need to buy a new book. I wouldn't count on any sort of revision without it being straight up 6E. And I wouldn't expect 6E to be very radical, either.

See, I suggested the 'call back version' of the PHB because if all you change are some new subclasses and maybe reprint the Elemental Evil spells (get more room in the book by not giving Wizards EIGHT friggin' subclasses), you don't NEED it any more than you need Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but if you WANT to buy the classy call back version with special artwork or whatever, then you at least get some new stuff in there instead of just a fancy reprint.

But I don't actually think they'll do that. It's just what I wish they would do.
 

Mercurius

Legend
Either it's a rules revision, in which case it doesn't meet your criteria of not requiring new books, or it's an errata which will be put into the errata document as all changes are and are already echoed in new printings of the books, which I've already addressed as fine. That's business-as-usual.

Do I think they are going to make revisions and package them as errata? I'd like to turn your attention to the point that historically when they did this with 4e there was a huge backlash. I'm sorry to say but "small minority" cannot be accurately used to describe it the last time this happened.

Are you talking about Essentials? That was two years after the core rulebooks were released, not ten.

Anyhow, it is a spectrum--with degrees of alteration from errata to a new edition. I don't agree with the idea that anything beyond errata is a significant enough revision to create backlash. There will be a small minority that are upset about any changes--there always are--and people who feel that WotC is "forcing" them to buy new books, no matter what they do beyond reprints, but I just don't agree with the notion that minor revisions and added parts is such a bad idea 10 years in.

Or something like so:

5.0 reprints with errata
5.1 as above, plus new art, index, minor additons (e.g. a sub-class here or there), no rules changes beyond clarifying language.
5.2. as above, plus minor tweaks to things like monster stats, maybe a new class or two, or new version of old class (e.g. ranger, sorcerer).
5.3 as above, but more.
5.4 as above, but more significant adjustments.
5.5. significant revision.

Or something like that. My guess is that Wizards settles on 5.1, but I think 5.2 is possible - and doesn't "require" anyone to buy new books for forward compatibility.

So to @Parmandur , I agree that they don't want to "make anyone feel that they need to buy a new book," but I do think they would want to make people feel that the want to buy new books, but don't need to. To me that would be 5.1 to 5.2.
 

TwoSix

Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
Either it's a rules revision, in which case it doesn't meet your criteria of not requiring new books, or it's an errata which will be put into the errata document as all changes are and are already echoed in new printings of the books, which I've already addressed as fine. That's business-as-usual.

Do I think they are going to make revisions and package them as errata? I'd like to turn your attention to the point that historically when they did this with 4e there was a huge backlash. I'm sorry to say but "small minority" cannot be accurately used to describe it the last time this happened.
I don't think new rules that sit on top of old rules is impossible if they're offered as an addendum, not as a replacement. Like if they put out a new fighter in a hypothetical "50th Anniversary PHB", with 3 new subclasses instead of Champion, Battle Master and Eldritch Knight, and with 5 different fighting styles. It comes with a spelled out caveat that this is NOT a replacement for the PHB fighter, but just a different, fully compatible fighter.

To me, that's the best of both worlds, it's new content for those looking for it but nothing is invalidated. I mean, I have several revised versions of PHB classes I use in my own games, that doesn't mean I don't also allow the PHB version if the player prefers it.
 

Undrave

Legend
I don't think new rules that sit on top of old rules is impossible if they're offered as an addendum, not as a replacement. Like if they put out a new fighter in a hypothetical "50th Anniversary PHB", with 3 new subclasses instead of Champion, Battle Master and Eldritch Knight, and with 5 different fighting styles. It comes with a spelled out caveat that this is NOT a replacement for the PHB fighter, but just a different, fully compatible fighter.

To me, that's the best of both worlds, it's new content for those looking for it but nothing is invalidated. I mean, I have several revised versions of PHB classes I use in my own games, that doesn't mean I don't also allow the PHB version if the player prefers it.

It would make the book way more attractive to people who already have the PHB.
 

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