D&D (2024) New Jeremy Crawford Interviews

[Argyle King]

No! The entire point of 2024, right from the first announcement, was that WotC are happy with 5e and just wanted to do some tweaks, while keeping it backwards compatible! And they've repeated that point ad nauseam ever since.

Anyone who was expecting an engine rebuild wasn't listening.

Completely changing how backgrounds work; feats going from "optional" to baked in to character creation; an overhaul of class & species...

That's 3 out of 3 building blocks for character creation. I'm not so sure I would categorize that as "tweaks."

Perhaps it isn't a full engine rebuild, but it's at least an insurance claim.

 

[Hatmatter]

Some people seem to think new art and layout are improvements worth paying for.

Game designers have a different set of goals than those directly employed to market the game. Of course, everyone wants the game to do well.

A new layout in the books is not aimed at current players, but it has been created to help introduce the game to new players. Some designers, -- I am thinking of former D&D designer Kate Welch -- have been very critical of how difficult it is for curious potential new players to learn the game from the core rulebooks.

Micah, your posts are surprising to me. As Oofta has pointed out, you seem to think that others here are not aware that Wizards of the Coast is a division of a moneymaking enterprise, just as Paizo, Chaosium, FASA, and so forth are moneymaking enterprises. We are all well aware.

Yet, the game designers are trying to create the best game. Jeremy Crawford, for example, has mentioned in interviews in the Dragon Talk podcast going back for years (at least until 2017) that he has kept a running document of changes he would implement to both presentation of D&D and the rules if he were to get a shot at revising the game.

So, a 50th anniversary approaches, Hasbro wants to capitalize on it, the game designers have ideas they would like to implement and revisions and options already present in Xanathar's and Tasha's that they would want to incorporate, the graphic designers feel like they could improve the art, it all comes together. One set of ambitions (e.g. corporate) does not invalidate another set of goals (e.g. game designers or graphic designers).

In the meantime, the books and adventures published since 2014 were presented in a way that a change to a class or subclass or imposed condition (stunned, poisoned, etc.) really does not affect the adventure because the adventures already refer to the PHB, DMG, and MM in their text. So, the game design team decided to not alter the fundamental design principles of D&D fifth edition so as to make it unnecessary to reprint the adventures and setting books. That is, I would think, considerate of them since I grow weary of repurchasing the same or similar books with each new D&D edition.

There really is no need to endlessly litigate dissatisfaction here. People play these games to escape from reality for a time and to express themselves. Speaking for myself, coming to a forum to read about a hobby I have had a longtime interest in, it is a bit of a drag to endlessly read fairly facile and obvious critiques of the company. Not that you don't have the right to do so, but I thought I would share with you my reaction in case you are interested or care.

In any event, happy roleplaying everyone!

 

[Argyle King]

You don't see how taking Divine Smite, changing nothing of its effect, and stapling on the standard rules text for the other smite spells is not less effort than: taking every single smite ability and spell, rewriting the class ability to make a point based sub-system, figuring out how to use that system to upcast abilities without using spell language, figuring out when to recharge the points in that subsystem, figuring out the new balance of spells no longer taking spell slots and how that affects things for the classes power, deciding if they want to have these abilities prevent bonus action spellcasting, figuring out which action these take if any, figuring out how to integrate them into attack actions, deciding if using them on opportunity attacks is something they want to allow, and how to prevent that if they do not, then additionally figuring out how to write the damage of these abilities so that it is consistent, but you can drop damage to use effects, but you can't stack dropping damage to use effects, and the effects are going to be quite complex, some of which will require concentration but won't be spells.

That doesn't seem to be a lot more effort, time and consideration to you?

No, because there are already examples of how to do that within the framework of 5e.

None of the upcasting concerns or much of anything you mentioned applies. There are essentially 3 questions:

- What amount of points can be spent in one turn?
-On what can those points be spent?
-What are the conditions for refreshing your points?


The current 5e monk is an example of how that can work.
4th Edition Psionic Classes are a worked example of how that might work.
The 5e Warlock being able to modify Eldritch Blast provides examples of how a basic ability can be altered to produce different effects.
The 5e Sorcerer being able to use metamagic is a possible example of how points can be used to modify an ability (spellcasting in that case).

Those things already exist as worked examples.

 

[MarkB]

This video nicely encapsulates the information on backwards-compatibility that was released in the recent interviews.

 

[MichaelSomething]

What do people want out of backwards compatibility??? Do you just want to ignore the 2024 versions of stuff and keep playing the 2014 forever???
Edit: typo

 

[Hatmatter]

What do people want out of backwards compatibility??? Do you just want to ignore the 2024 versions of stuff and keep playing the 2024 forever???

The ability to use the adventure path books and setting books (subclasses excepted) smoothly along with the 2024 core rulebooks with no need for a reprinting or new edition of those books.

I have presumed all along that there will be a subsequent book due out in 2025 or 2026 that will (hopefully) gather the artificer and all of the subclasses and spells not included in the Player's Handbook that will implement (however minimal or maximal) revisions so that the artificer and the subclasses keep up with the design concepts implemented in the new books.

That's about it. Mostly, I would like Wizards of the Coast to direct their creative attention to carrying on with storylines going forward in a creative direction and not get bogged down too much redoing what has already been published.

 

[Clint_L]

Completely changing how backgrounds work; feats going from "optional" to baked in to character creation; an overhaul of class & species...

That's 3 out of 3 building blocks for character creation. I'm not so sure I would categorize that as "tweaks."

Perhaps it isn't a full engine rebuild, but it's at least an insurance claim.

I've been play testing the UA rules for a year. It's pretty seamless. There are some new systems that get added on (e.g. weapon masteries) but nothing like what you suggested for paladins, which is an entire rebuild of how the class works and would be incompatible with the current rules. Even nu monk, which got the heftiest changes, still uses the same chassis.

The 2024 rules easily handle 2014 characters and adventures. Which was always the point.

I'm not criticizing your suggestion - they are interesting ideas. But the claim that an engine rebuild was the point of 2024 is dead wrong. They made all the changes very much within the existing engine. Which is why your interesting ideas were never going to happen in the updated rules, though they'd probably be pretty cool as house rules.

 

[Remathilis]

What do people want out of backwards compatibility??? Do you just want to ignore the 2024 versions of stuff and keep playing the 2024 forever???

I assume you meant 2014.

And I think it depends. For me, I wanted a lot of the updates in post-Tasha design to incorporate back into the PHB, and I mostly got what I wanted (though I am not 100% happy with some of the changes and I think they could have done more in other areas). I can still use 2014 options and modules (with minor conversions). From what I've heard, only one subclass no longer works (Shepherd druid: due to the change in conjuration magic) and a few options are over/under-powered, but I suspect they will be updated in time. I don't demand 100% perfect compatibility nor do I worry about hiccups (I already run 3pp, minor incompatibilities are expected. )

 

[mamba]

What do people want out of backwards compatibility??? Do you just want to ignore the 2024 versions of stuff and keep playing the 2014 forever???

to be able to use the same supplements as with the 2014 books, I could not care less about compatibility of subclasses, races, feats, etc. between 2014 and 2024.

All the decisions made in the name of that compatibility, like sacrificing unified subclass progression, I consider the main reason why lost interest in the 2024 books / playtest

 

[Parmandur]

According to Treantmonk and Colby of D4 Deep Dive, who do a general discussion of the new PHB in videos on each of the other's channel, the floor has been raised, but the ceiling lowered ... slightly. They come at it from an optimizer's perspective and some of the main ways to get high burst damage, like Divine Smite, the -5 for +10 damage feats, etc. have been limited or outright nerfed. OTOH, some of the more abuseable spells haven't been touched, apparently. But classes that were previously considered weak are now much better, they sounded particularly happy with the new Monk.

Which matches everything we saw from the playtest.

Some options that were on tje weaker end have been raised up, some things that were a bit too powerful have been brought down. It's a balance shift, not powercreep.