D&D 5E (2024) New Jeremy Crawford Interviews

[TiQuinn]

Can we not ruin this thread with talk about species? There’s some actual fun stuff in these interviews…

Agreed, given there's other threads already discussing them.

 

[Corinnguard]

Yes, exactly like that.

Okay. The 5e Dragonborn have the most subspecies anyway.

 

[OB1]

Got another one from Dungeon Dudes, really appreciate that this round of PR has helped me find some gamer channels that are not toxic weirdos:

@Parmandur thank you for introducing me to the Dungeon Dudes! Had never checked them out and after a 6 hour rabbit hole journey into their content yesterday, am hooked.

 

[Parmandur]

@Parmandur thank you for introducing me to the Dungeon Dudes! Had never checked them out and after a 6 hour rabbit hole journey into their content yesterday, am hooked.

New to me, too!

 

[tetrasodium]

Okay

So We have starvation suffocation and dehydration but no exhaustion from lack of sleep?

"You guys have done a lot of $@%# since you woke up in that ditch you most recently 'slept' in & have been going like that nonstop for a long time" would be a nice condition to have in the quiver ready to deploy when needed. a rule for "no you slept in a @$%^ ditch in february while it was raining, all you get is $PoorRest, see page ### of YYY" would be a nice companion

 

[Minigiant]

"You guys have done a lot of $@%# since you woke up in that ditch you most recently 'slept' in & have been going like that nonstop for a long time" would be a nice condition to have in the quiver ready to deploy when needed. a rule for "no you slept in a @$%^ ditch in february while it was raining, all you get is $PoorRest, see page ### of YYY" would be a nice companion

Tiny hut with no fire and no blanket?

Here's your penalty suckas.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What mechanical mess...? Paladins were half-casters already, they are half-casters now. Why make a special rule that an ability that uses Spell Slots acts juat like a Spell, but not make it a Spell...?

The mechanical mess of turning something that should be "on-hit" but probably limited to 1/turn, like Sneak Attack, into a Bonus Action. I'm not going to pretend with you that you don't know the problems that causes and re-explain them again, they've been discussed at extreme length in other threads, which you posted in.

Also, both classes have been made significantly more caster-ish, and more reliant on spells for their stuff to work. That's a general blandification, for better or ill, as I said. The post you were misunderstanding was suggesting that they should have leaned the other way, and stopped Smite from being a spell - probably removed all the Smites from being spells, and turned them into effects you could choose to apply with a Smite, perhaps at some cost in number of size of dice or the like.

I think making smite a spell is more logical and consistent.

It's not "more logical and consistent". It would be equally "logical and consistent" to go the other way (removing the Smite spells and making them into options to use with Smites at some kind of cost), and further, every single class contains numerous elements which aren't "logical and consistent" by that odd standard (even Fighter - perhaps especially Fighter!), so should they all be brought into line that way?

It's been done before. 4E's initial design did precisely that! That's part of why I say blandification isn't always bad. But I suspect this is a special double-standard specifically for Paladin Smite, and not for other inconsistencies of D&D classes, spells, etc. There's nothing inherently good about changing it into a spell, and pretending there is, is frankly illogical, no matter how much you call it logical lol (if you have a specific argument for why it's better, you haven't expressed it here).

Rangers being "Hunter's Mark: The Class" is considerable most ghastly/gross though I will admit.

 

[Oofta]

The mechanical mess of turning something that should be "on-hit" but probably limited to 1/turn, like Sneak Attack, into a Bonus Action. I'm not going to pretend with you that you don't know the problems that causes and re-explain them again, they've been discussed at extreme length in other threads, which you posted in.

Also, both classes have been made significantly more caster-ish, and more reliant on spells for their stuff to work. That's a general blandification, for better or ill, as I said. The post you were misunderstanding was suggesting that they should have leaned the other way, and stopped Smite from being a spell - probably removed all the Smites from being spells, and turned them into effects you could choose to apply with a Smite, perhaps at some cost in number of size of dice or the like.


It's not "more logical and consistent". It would be equally "logical and consistent" to go the other way (removing the Smite spells and making them into options to use with Smites at some kind of cost), and further, every single class contains numerous elements which aren't "logical and consistent" by that odd standard (even Fighter - perhaps especially Fighter!), so should they all be brought into line that way?

It's been done before. 4E's initial design did precisely that! That's part of why I say blandification isn't always bad. But I suspect this is a special double-standard specifically for Paladin Smite, and not for other inconsistencies of D&D classes, spells, etc. There's nothing inherently good about changing it into a spell, and pretending there is, is frankly illogical, no matter how much you call it logical lol (if you have a specific argument for why it's better, you haven't expressed it here).

Rangers being "Hunter's Mark: The Class" is considerable most ghastly/gross though I will admit.

I just disagree.

• They could have stated it like the rogue's sneak attack but there was no need to complicate matters when making it a bonus action achieves that.
• It limits what other spells you can cast on your turn which helps balance.
• It follows the pattern of other spells which means you don't need a special exception.
• Making it a spell when it was already using a spell slot is more consistent.

All of that makes it better design to me. Whether or not I agree with the ubiquity of spells doesn't matter, this is one case where to me it's more consistent and makes sense.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There’s some actual fun stuff in these interviews…

Has someone got a list somewhere? Here's what I've got:

As far as I can see we've got:

1) Tepid attempt to defend Paladin changes.

2) Reframing and step-back on Half-Races to "They're just too similar" and the apparent removal of the creepy "Pick-a-race" UA rules.

3) Exhaustion rules have been changed but it isn't exactly clear how - possibly similar to UA but with 5 levels then death instead of more? Also dehydration, malnutrition etc. rules of an unspecified nature.

4) Can use 2014 Feats from L4 onwards (I have some questions about this lol).

5) What to do with Sage Advice Compendium?

6) Some other talk about backwards compatibility which doesn't really answer anything (I mean, honestly, it doesn't). Except the level for features thing - that does.

What am I missing?

I can answer them on Sage Advice btw - either burn it to the ground and pretend it never happened, don't do it in future, or actually expend real effort on properly considering and answering questions with more than one person being involved in answering each and more reasoning being given for their answers. Pick a lane. Giving half-arsed, frankly obviously flippant answers which often make problems worse, and rules messier, is just not helpful, and that was an awful lot of the previous Sage Advice answers.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They could have stated it like the rogue's sneak attack but there was no need to complicate matters when making it a bonus action achieves that.

Making it a bonus actions makes it into a complicated and less functional mess. Nothing that's "on-hit" should ever be a bonus action. It's simply bad design (and yeah that does include a couple of existing Feats). Also unless they've made it hit harder, and I haven't seen this discussed yet, the "price" of making a bonus action AND a spell slot means it's considerably worse than it was. The only real nerf it needed was 1/turn. But by making a bonus action, the cost becomes significantly higher than that (because it's removing the possibility of a bonus action attack or the like). I don't think WotC understand the action economy well enough to actually get that though, at this point.

I mean, lest anyone suggest they do, remember what they tried to do to Sneak Attack, and seemed really confident was a cool idea.

It limits what other spells you can cast on your turn which helps balance.

Can you list a couple of the problematic 2014 Paladin combos here? I've literally never heard of this being a balance issue with the 2014 Paladin.

Whether or not I agree with the ubiquity of spells doesn't matter, this is one case where to me it's more consistent and makes sense.

Imho it should matter, because if this and the new Ranger represent the general direction of design for 5E from this point onwards, I'm not feeling very good at 5E.

However, I don't think they do represent that. I think what actually happened here is the same as what caused problems with several classes in 5E 2014, and caused 4E's blandification to be more severe than intended (per the designers, they we working towards something more like the later take on classes, but had to get it out the door). Specifically, WotC ran out of time to do an actually-good job on the class design for these classes, and just rushed them through with something that it thought would be "good enough". I don't think it is, myself, but at least with Paladin people can just use the 2014 version, whereas with Ranger, it's bad either way.