D&D (2024) New Jeremy Crawford Interviews

[Parmandur]

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.

I wouldn't expect a big update to old options too quickly: older Subclasses work fine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And those people have every right to feel that way.

Sure. But I never will.

 

[Argyle King]

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.

How would what I suggested be incompatible with the rules?

I'm using building blocks that already exist within the framework of the game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

Well, that is what I'm going to do when I find myself playing WotC 5e (I'm in a campaign with my kids, for example, and we're not switching to 2024 for it).

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

That's probably a big reason why I have no interest in "updating" my WotC 5e books: I don't run or play WotC adventures, just tear them up to use in my own games. Adventure compatibility is meaningless to me.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you read my post closely, you'll notice there is nuance there about the term backwards compatibility. I agree with everything you said. My point is, it might not be backwards compatible because of power and player use. Could you just port your old wheelbarrow from 1980's Monopoly on over to a new modern Monopoly. Sure. You roll the same dice and see the same spaces. But why would you when the new car and dog start with three properties and $2,000 extra in cash. The truth is, you wouldn't. And neither will new players.

I know what you said. "Players won't make the choice" is different than "Players do not have the choice"

WoTC was never making a claim that everyone would CHOOSE to mix-and-match. They were making the claim that you COULD CHOOSE to mix-and-match.

And you can. So their claim is still true and valid. Because it was about the option, not the result.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

Even if you are correct, in contrast there were zero questions about how Divine Smite would work as a spell... because the other smite spells already existed and were designed.

So, again, they would not need to balance the number of points spent a turn. They would not need to consider what those points could be spent on. They would not need to consider how to refresh those points. They also would not need to reformat all the information in the seven existing spells and fit it into this system.

Making Divine Smite a spell was the smoothest and easiest change to bring the smite abilities/spells inline with each other.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I wouldn't expect a big update to old options too quickly: older Subclasses work fine.

Might not expect them quickly... but I do REALLY desperately want a rework of the Storm Sorcerer and the Banneret. I've got homebrews of both that I am mostly satisfied with, but official re-works would just ease that part of my mind that is always frustrated by their issues.

 

[Charlaquin]

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

People don’t believe true backwards compatibility is really possible, and what they want is to prove they’re right about that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Even if you are correct, in contrast there were zero questions about how Divine Smite would work as a spell... because the other smite spells already existed and were designed.

So, again, they would not need to balance the number of points spent a turn. They would not need to consider what those points could be spent on. They would not need to consider how to refresh those points. They also would not need to reformat all the information in the seven existing spells and fit it into this system.

Making Divine Smite a spell was the smoothest and easiest change to bring the smite abilities/spells inline with each other.

And I would never expect a change from WotC that wasn't the easiest they could get away with.

I'm curious: do you think that the 5.5 designers feel the game is better when more abilities are tied to the spell system? By which I mean, do they actually think it improves the game?