D&D (2024) New Jeremy Crawford Interviews

[Scott Christian]

All of it doesn't matter. The only time it will matter is when somebody does the math, and the paladin will be behind warrior at 2.3 points per round. That is when all hell breaks loose.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Since they tried all classes being identical, yes.

A big reason the attacker rolls for weapons, and the defense rolls for spells, is to make them feel different.

Um... if you say so. Except there are attack rolls for spells. And a lot of non-spell abilities use saving throws as well.

And, just because you feel like they once tried all classes being identical (which they didn't) that doesn't mean "different for the sake of being different" is a design goal.

 

[Argyle King]

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.

How is it that pieces of the game used to create every character are "isolated," but suggesting that there might be different ways to build 1 class somehow impacts more of the system?

Again, if you don't like the proposed idea, fine. It was an idea about a different way of looking at a class (and a different way that uses things already used in 5e).

However, from my own personal perspective, the idea that this somehow is a massive design undertaking is ridiculous. (Especially given that, as I read more of the 5e24 previews, it appears that similar changes are being built into how monsters work by changing spells to special abilities.)

The one criticism I saw a few pages ago that I could understand is that someone said that this change would make the paladin too much like the monk and be an armored monk. I get that criticism, and it makes sense because the monk structure was part of the inspiration. I can't remember who had that criticism, but I get it.

Even with that, I would like to better understand the viewpoint that taking inspiration from one class (monk or warlock) is seen as less desirable than being redesigned to be more similar to other classes (wizard and cleric).

 

[Argyle King]

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?



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.



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



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

If you were to multiclass into sorcerer, it still works. You could gain sorcerer slots just like you would before - no change.

It's true that the piety points wouldn't work with sorcerer spells. Similarly, a paladin/barbarian doesn't get to benefit from unarmored defense while wearing heavy armor. I suppose you could lament that stacking Charisma casters on top of each other loses some power.

The glittering triple lindy would cost more points, as that's putting multiple effects onto one attack. (Though, even that assumes one particular way that the points would work. There are a few options for how it actually would.) Where a points-based-Smite paladin differs from a ki-based monk is in role and implementation; the monk is about mobility and striking multiple times, whereas the paladin tends to be geared more toward "stickiness" and hitting one foe hard.

Making all smiting one system would be part of how I would approach it. That's been covered.

It's more than just Divine Smite. The 5th Edition paladin has a role that could be met in other ways than making the class more like a typical caster. As mentioned multiple times, things like Lay On Hands, Divine Sense, Channel Divinity, and more function in ways that are not spells. Why not embrace more of that identity?

Additionally, it should again be noted that I'm not claiming that my way is the one way. It was a proposed alternative idea (which is such a massive design undertaking that the core idea was hashed out within a few posts).

 

[Chaosmancer]

How is it that pieces of the game used to create every character are "isolated," but suggesting that there might be different ways to build 1 class somehow impacts more of the system?

Because whether you increase your Wisdom by +2 because of your species, your background, or your class, as long as you only increase it by +2 once... it doesn't actually change anything about how the system functions. The angle of which option gives you the bonus doesn't change what the bonus is, or how the system works with it.

Whether or not you gain expertise from a feat, a background feature, a species, or a class it doesn't change how expertise works, or how it functions within the class. Backgrounds already got a feature as part of them. Changing that to a feat isn't actually changing things structurally, and they very clearly considered WHICH feats could be allowed at level one, giving rise to the new origin feat designation. They DID playtest that and DID consider the balance implications.

But you are talking about changing a classes structure, and not in the simple way of giving them a new ability, or replacing an old ability, but in taking out a complex system like spellcasting, which has multiple parts attached to it and contains a great deal of nuance. You then want to implement a completely new casting system. At best, you would just have spell slots by another name and everything would remain spells. At worst, this is developing a fundamentally new system of power balance.

Again, if you don't like the proposed idea, fine. It was an idea about a different way of looking at a class (and a different way that uses things already used in 5e).

However, from my own personal perspective, the idea that this somehow is a massive design undertaking is ridiculous. (Especially given that, as I read more of the 5e24 previews, it appears that similar changes are being built into how monsters work by changing spells to special abilities.)

Monster design is completely different. A paladin is going to be played and exist, ideally, for dozens of sessions for hundreds of hours. A monster taking Burning Hands 3/day and turning into "Flaming Hands" that does the exact same thing at will, doesn't actually change anything if the monster is only expected to survive for three rounds of combat.

The reason behind the change is, largely, to simply find a way to include the relevant text into the statblock, so the DM does not need to reference the spell list when they use a key ability. A single monster getting an extra use of an ability, in one combat, during one session, is far less impactful than a Paladin with effectively six extra spell slots every long rest.

The one criticism I saw a few pages ago that I could understand is that someone said that this change would make the paladin too much like the monk and be an armored monk. I get that criticism, and it makes sense because the monk structure was part of the inspiration. I can't remember who had that criticism, but I get it.

Even with that, I would like to better understand the viewpoint that taking inspiration from one class (monk or warlock) is seen as less desirable than being redesigned to be more similar to other classes (wizard and cleric).

It isn't about being more or less desirable. The paladin ALREADY was designed to be like the cleric, and ALREADY has spell slots and a spell list and ALREADY uses spellcasting mechanics and ALREADY has features designed to work with those mechanics. It is far easier and far less work to add a spell to the spellcasting chassis, than it is to make an entirely new chassis and convert multiple spells into it.

Heck, there even is a spellcasting system that uses points (spell points) and it is largely regarded has having some fundamental balance issues that have yet to be resolved. And if you just converted the paladin to that, which would be a lot easier.... then you would still need to make Divine Smite a spell to balance it with the other smite spells, which was the entire origin of this discussion. It is still spellcasting, just with something other than spell slots. And it has a lot of balance issues, which is why WoTC isn't using it in the base classes, and is just offering it as an optional rule.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you were to multiclass into sorcerer, it still works. You could gain sorcerer slots just like you would before - no change.

It's true that the piety points wouldn't work with sorcerer spells. Similarly, a paladin/barbarian doesn't get to benefit from unarmored defense while wearing heavy armor. I suppose you could lament that stacking Charisma casters on top of each other loses some power.

So, you are taking something that does currently work [multiple classes with spellcasting features] and making it not work. While likely also taking the paladin "not a spell" abilities and making them not function with the spelll slots, which they currently do.

AGain, you can do that, but is it any surprise that WoTC chose NOT to do that, and make things more complex for the sake of just being different?

The glittering triple lindy would cost more points, as that's putting multiple effects onto one attack. (Though, even that assumes one particular way that the points would work. There are a few options for how it actually would.) Where a points-based-Smite paladin differs from a ki-based monk is in role and implementation; the monk is about mobility and striking multiple times, whereas the paladin tends to be geared more toward "stickiness" and hitting one foe hard.

Making all smiting one system would be part of how I would approach it. That's been covered.

Cool... how many more points does it need to be to justify being a bonus action compared to a free action? Let's say Divine Smite costs 2 points, no action, for 2d8 damage. That's 1d8 per point. Glimmering smite does 2d6, and costs your bonus action, and takes your concentration, and grants advantage to every future hit with no save. The baseline system would have that cost 3 points, but is that going to be worth it for someone?

And of course, what happens when, by using this point system, a paladin at level 2 has say 6 points? In a spell slot system, they don't have access to Glimmering Smite yet, but they have enough points to cast it twice now. And what about upcasting? If the Divine Smite can be upcast freely, then even though in a slot system it can't currently be upcast, they could potentially take a critical hit, and deal +10d8 damage on a single blow at level 2.

All of these things CAN be addressed, the design CAN work. But is it worth the effort? Is it worth the page space to have 10 or 11 pages solely for the paladins unique system and unique abilities that are not spells, and therefore can't be moved to the spell section?

It's more than just Divine Smite. The 5th Edition paladin has a role that could be met in other ways than making the class more like a typical caster. As mentioned multiple times, things like Lay On Hands, Divine Sense, Channel Divinity, and more function in ways that are not spells. Why not embrace more of that identity?

Additionally, it should again be noted that I'm not claiming that my way is the one way. It was a proposed alternative idea (which is such a massive design undertaking that the core idea was hashed out within a few posts).

Core ideas are easy. Details are hard. Details are where systems break.

Again, is it supposed to be shocking to us that the designers decided to stick with the current design and make a few small tune-ups, as compared to ripping everything out and rebalancing an entirely new system that breaks a lot of the current ways the paladin functions, solely for the point of being different?

 

[Argyle King]

So, you are taking something that does currently work [multiple classes with spellcasting features] and making it not work. While likely also taking the paladin "not a spell" abilities and making them not function with the spelll slots, which they currently do.

AGain, you can do that, but is it any surprise that WoTC chose NOT to do that, and make things more complex for the sake of just being different?



Cool... how many more points does it need to be to justify being a bonus action compared to a free action? Let's say Divine Smite costs 2 points, no action, for 2d8 damage. That's 1d8 per point. Glimmering smite does 2d6, and costs your bonus action, and takes your concentration, and grants advantage to every future hit with no save. The baseline system would have that cost 3 points, but is that going to be worth it for someone?

And of course, what happens when, by using this point system, a paladin at level 2 has say 6 points? In a spell slot system, they don't have access to Glimmering Smite yet, but they have enough points to cast it twice now. And what about upcasting? If the Divine Smite can be upcast freely, then even though in a slot system it can't currently be upcast, they could potentially take a critical hit, and deal +10d8 damage on a single blow at level 2.

All of these things CAN be addressed, the design CAN work. But is it worth the effort? Is it worth the page space to have 10 or 11 pages solely for the paladins unique system and unique abilities that are not spells, and therefore can't be moved to the spell section?



Core ideas are easy. Details are hard. Details are where systems break.

Again, is it supposed to be shocking to us that the designers decided to stick with the current design and make a few small tune-ups, as compared to ripping everything out and rebalancing an entirely new system that breaks a lot of the current ways the paladin functions, solely for the point of being different?

As far as the point costs in such a system, creating your own math through which to show how it wouldn't work via math chosen to show that it doesn't work isn't something I find convincing. But that's just my opinion on the matter.

If glittering smite isn't available until a certain level, it's logical to take that into consideration for which abilities would be possible to imbue into a weapon at certain points in a game.

Is it worth the effort? Being that we've discussed this over a few pages of a message board and I have ideas about how to address that while swipe-texting with one hand and eating a burger with the other, I'm inclined to believe that such a thing would be within the wheelhouse of a team of people who do game design for a living.

As it stands, I may write this up for home games and try it out.

You asked if I'm surprised about what WoTC chooses to do or not do. My answer is not particularly.

 

[Chaosmancer]

As far as the point costs in such a system, creating your own math through which to show how it wouldn't work via math chosen to show that it doesn't work isn't something I find convincing. But that's just my opinion on the matter.

I didn't make them up. I used the same system they used for the Monk, that you want to use.

If glittering smite isn't available until a certain level, it's logical to take that into consideration for which abilities would be possible to imbue into a weapon at certain points in a game.

Is it worth the effort? Being that we've discussed this over a few pages of a message board and I have ideas about how to address that while swipe-texting with one hand and eating a burger with the other, I'm inclined to believe that such a thing would be within the wheelhouse of a team of people who do game design for a living.

Dunning–Kruger effect?

As it stands, I may write this up for home games and try it out.

Sure, feel free.

You asked if I'm surprised about what WoTC chooses to do or not do. My answer is not particularly.

Okay, and I'll remind you, earlier the point of the discussion included "why doesn't WoTC just..."

 

[Argyle King]

I didn't make them up. I used the same system they used for the Monk, that you want to use.



Dunning–Kruger effect?



Sure, feel free.



Okay, and I'll remind you, earlier the point of the discussion included "why doesn't WoTC just..."

●Yes, the monk would be used as a worked example to see how a similar idea was implemented within the framework of 5e. Figure out what works, what doesn't, and why; then go from there.

Later, I also cited possible inspiration from the 5e sorcerer, 5e warlock, and 4e psionic classes. More recently, alternative examples of how a 5e24 class might spend resources for effects can be seen in the 5e24 rogue.

● Maybe you do suffer from Dunning-Kruger. That's not the point of this discussion, and I feel it would be uncouth of me to make such an assessment on a public forum.

●I will; thanks for offering your support.

●Not being surprised that did not do something isn't the same as questioning why they did not do something.

 

[Horwath]

Yup. But they probably found that you might as well just die if you have worse than -5 to all d20 rolls!

yeah, but it might just be a buffer before death, sure with -10 to all rolls you are next to completely useless, you could still heal with your spells or teleport, but in direct combat, good luck.