D&D (2024) New Jeremy Crawford Interviews

[Oofta]

Fair enough, but you know I value in-setting logic and verisimilitude over gamist simplification, no matter what the "vast majority" of players think (assuming you have the right to even speak for them).

Since I, and my players, also disagree I feel fairly comfortable saying that most people prefer a simpler approach and that D&D is already complex enough.

I guess I also don't see any in-setting logic that requires a redesign of the paladin. Unless each class is going to have a unique set of spell-like powers and power sources kind of like they did with 4E or to a lesser extent TSR era D&D with it's separate spell lists, which often duplicated spells, I just don't see much justification. I don't see much justification for every class never sharing spells, especially at this point.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Since I, and my players, also disagree I feel fairly comfortable saying that most people prefer a simpler approach and that D&D is already complex enough.

I guess I also don't see any in-setting logic that requires a redesign of the paladin. Unless each class is going to have a unique set of spell-like powers and power sources kind of like they did with 4E or to a lesser extent TSR era D&D with it's separate spell lists, which often duplicated spells, I just don't see much justification. I don't see much justification for every class never sharing spells, especially at this point.

I preferred TSR's systems actually, which I'm sure is not surprising to you.

And you and your players are not necessarily more representative or valid a point of view than me and mine, so I don't see how you can extrapolate your experience to the community at large legitimately.

 

[TiQuinn]

Complexity has to be justified. A smite currently uses a spell slot, making it a spell is a minor change that lowers complexity. Rewriting the class to use a different power source adds a ton of complexity for little reason.

Not to mention any game where one rule book alone is 384 pages is not going to considered simple by the majority of people. It is a complex game already. It doesn’t need to be made more complex to satisfy a few hardcore gamers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not to mention any game where one rule book alone is 384 pages is not going to considered simple by the majority of people. It is a complex game already. It doesn’t need to be made more complex to satisfy a few hardcore gamers.

Never said it needed to be, just that I would have preferred more granularity than WotC is willing to design currently. I understand their reasons for going a different way, but it doesn't do anything for me and mine, and I don't believe their way is "better" than mine for any metric that matters to me. The only thing WotC 5e has over Level Up that I care about, for example, is some legally owned IP (I like beholders and mind flayers, and a lot of the old TSR-era settings.

 

[mamba]

I don't believe their way is "better" than mine for any metric that matters to me

the bolded part being the operative one, WotC has different metrics, and so do other people. I am not really aligned with WotC's either, but that does not mean theirs are necessarily wrong

 

[Micah Sweet]

the bolded part being the operative one, WotC has different metrics, and so do other people. I am not really aligned with WotC's either, but that does not mean theirs are necessarily wrong

Quite agree, and I never said anything different. All my comments, just like everyone else's, are filtered through my perspective.

 

[Chaosmancer]

How does it work with multiclassing? No change. It would count as 1/3 of a class for determining how many spell slots it counts toward when multiclassing.

So if you are a sorcerer and multiclass into Paladin for two levels (because it is 1/2) then you get additional spell slots even though paladins do not get spell slots, in addition to the piety points that you get that replaced the paladin's spell slots? And if you are a paladin who multiclasses into sorcerer and get spell slots, those no longer work with any of your "spells" since all your spell casting is uniquely tied to this piety point system?

Figuring out how something like Glimmering Smite might work isn't much different than figuring out where it fits within spellcasting. The action cost is that it has to be used with an attack; in theory it is limited by availability of points, attack range, and having a smaller list of Smite modifications (similar to a warlock adding things to Eldritch Blast).

So, you attack, deal damage, deal extra damage, cancel invisibility, grant advantage, and gain concentration... with it only costing some points? Sure, you CAN do that, but now it is quite a lot more powerful, because it doesn't take your bonus action to use. That isn't a minor power boost either.

I would agree that the smite spells were "useless" due to typically not being as good as Divine Smite. I disagree that the way to improve them is by making them a bigger assumed part of the paladin.

Why not? Why not make all smiting even and equally important to the paladin?

I would also agree that the 4 Elements monk has issues. Though, I would say that the concept of how it isn't work isn't necessarily bad. Instead, I would say that the issue is work how the Cicero is executed.

Again, I understand that you don't like it. I can understand that, from your point of view, there are deep concerns. That's fine. For me, I'm not seeing it as some sisyphean challenge.

Sisyphean? No. Again, it is POSSIBLE, but just like it is possible to build an entire house by yourself from scratch, doing so just so you don't need to bunk with your brother-in-law doesn't make sense when you could also just sleep on the couch in the living room. You are proposing a massive amount of change, for very little reason, except that you don't like that Divine Smite was made into a spell

 

[Chaosmancer]

Different steps. Rather than the same thing every other class does.

A major complaint about 4e was that every class had the same AEDU mechanics.

5e, half the classes use the same spell mechanics.

Okay. But is "be different for the sake of being different" a design goal of WoTC? This isn't proposing to improve anything. It isn't proposing to use a new system because the new system would work in a way that allows for something the current system doesn't. This is "I want it to look different while doing the same thing" and that just is not a design goal for the team.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They "solved" the problem by completely changing how it works -and that's apparently acceptable.

However, any suggestion that there may have been other ways to approach the issue = "holy moly, the entire game is breaking!" Wtf?

•complete overhaul of race/species - fine
•complete overhaul of backgrounds - fine
•redesigning and rebalancing feats - fine

"Hey, maybe there are ways to have the 5e paladin continue to do the things people liked about it without needing to use more spell slots."

"No way, man! You're breaking the game. Do you have any idea how hard using something other than spell slots would be?"

Probably about as hard as the multiples other options within 5e that already accomplish that.

Except those things are not system changes. Yeah, they moved ASIs from species to background. But they had already had them floating, and as long as it is either +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 it is balanced and does not actually matter long term. Giving Backgrounds feats is something they've been doing, and replacing a feature with a feat is a 1 to 1 change that doesn't effect anything beyond it.

Even taking a feat and rebalancing it is limited.

Redesigning an entire subsystem within a class structure is a much bigger undertaking. It is not as simply as some of these other changes, which may feel like they are big changes to you, but are functionally isolated.

 

[Maxperson]

To be fair, many paladin players ignore the spells the paladin has.

I played an Oath of the Ancients paladin and sometimes I used Misty Step. Sometimes. That was it.