D&D (2024) What is With Poison?, and Other PHB Conundrums.

[Swarmkeeper]

Fair enough. Obviously it doesn't affect me personally either. But these books aren't for me or you. They are for new DMs who now have fewer and less nuanced tools to work with and more confusing (and less intuitive IMO) lore contradictions to sort through in the books, all done for reason which (again IMO) are creatively dubious.

Regardless of your (blatantly negative and constantly recurring) opinions of the version of a game you will never play, these books are for any DM who wants to play said version. Full stop.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

But yeah, about poison:

My guess is that they want poison to be less accessible/attractive to buy, as a default.

That said, there is precedence for equipment pricing in the game world to be different from what is published in the PHB (Curse of Strahd comes to mind where everything is way more expensive. I’m sure others can come up with other examples). Bottom line: a DM can have a merchant sell any subset of equipment in their game world for any price that makes sense for that locale in the game world. The DM doesn’t have to adhere to strict PHB pricing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Regardless of your (blatantly negative and constantly recurring) opinions of the version of a game you will never play, these books are for any DM who wants to play said version. Full stop.

Sure, but literally everything is that. Doesn't mean they weren't written for a specific group of new players and DMs. I mean, that's what people here have been telling me. If you disagree, take it up with them.

 

[LordEntrails]

The only possible alternative to "this is what the 5.5e MM will actually look like" is that WotC is, for some ungodful reason, lying to their own customers about what the books will contain, and actively putting up unrepresentative, out-of-date monster blocks. Despite the goal of their efforts being to show off what the 5.5e MM will contain, they would have to be actively falsifying that, in a way that makes it look significantly worse than the actual thing.

Eh, it's really that to me it's just not that important. Have I looked at the previews? Nope. It's just not that important. I enjoy D&D but I don't really care what comes from this update/edition. If it works for me sometime in the future, great, if not, I really don't care. It really won't worry me.

I get it, this is the internet and people take things as personal assaults or emotional travesties. But this just isn't one for me and it probably shouldn't be for anyone else either.

But as I said earlier;

well, its the internet. So go to it!

Really, don't feel you need to reply or defend. As long as you are happy arguing this, go for it. But don't do it for my benefit.

 

[SkidAce]

I think the issue with poison is that it spreads so quickly because it's catchy. I mean, it's like...

"It's poisoooooon!
Poison running through my veins!
It's poisoooooon!
I don't wanna break these chains!"

I wish I could "like" an Alice Cooper reference more than once.

 

[Stalker0]

But 2024 goblins aren't fey -- SOME 2024 goblins are fey. If the PCs don's attempt to find out if TEHSE goblins are fey, they are taking a calculated risk in casting the spell. At least they will know after the spell is cast (i do believe in telling them that the spell failed because it was a invalid target).

Think of it this way: imagine that a character cast a object-only spell on a table that turned out to be a mimic. Would you as GM stop them and tell them to choose a different spell so they did not waste it?

Ah I didn't hear that goblins were split between fey and non-fey now. In that case I do agree the issue of confusion is present.

That said, the PC casts charm person on a bugbear lets say (and assuming bugbears are now fey...I don't know which ones so using this purely for the example). If the PC had used charm person on a bugbear before, and the only reason it was changed was the mechanics (aka no plot reason), then yes as the DM I would still say "hey just so you know bugbears are fey now". The player should reasonably expect their tactics that worked before to work again mechanically....unless the dm is intentionally throwing a curve ball because of XYZ story reason.

But in this context, if the party has charmed a regular goblin, and now charmed a bugbear for the first time, then I would not step in, and they would learn that organically that bugbears can't be charmed with charm person.

 

[Reynard]

I was reading my PHB last night, mostly to get a sense of what high level PCs are capable of, when I came across Turn Undead. I don't know if this is a change or not, but I thought it was interesting that turned undead are both Frightened and Incapacitated.

First off, it made me realize that Incapacitated does not mean a creature can't move. That feels weird, but fine, I guess. Another interesting thing is that these conditions are not tied together like some other effects. it does not say if you eliminate one, the other also goes away. Ostensibly, a necromancer or caster undead in command could partially alleviate the effects of turning with a Remove Fear or a Lesser Restoration type ability or spell.

 

[ECMO3]

Not sure if this qualifies, but I am bent out of shape by the changes to Hellish Rebuke.

2014: "You point your finger, and the creature that damaged you is momentarily surrounded by hellish flames ...."

2020: "The creature that damaged you is momentarily surrounded by green flames ...."

Mechanically it is the same, but there are two problems with the new version. First it lacks the flavor because there is no finger pointing, second it specifies the flames are green which is both very restrictive and not really Hellish in Flavor. What if I want blue flames or traditional red-orange fames? Now I need to convince my DM to let me homebrew the spell or I am stuck with green-only rebukes.

 

[Reynard]

Not sure if this qualifies, but I am bent out of shape by the changes to Hellish Rebuke.

2014: "You point your finger, and the creature that damaged you is momentarily surrounded by hellish flames ...."

2020: "The creature that damaged you is momentarily surrounded by green flames ...."

Mechanically it is the same, but there are two problems with the new version. First it lacks the flavor because there is no finger pointing, second it specifies the flames are green which is both very restrictive and not really Hellish in Flavor. What if I want blue flames or traditional red-orange fames? Now I need to convince my DM to let me homebrew the spell or I am stuck with green-only rebukes.

You could have just not posted.

 

[Reynard]

This isn't really a "conundrum" but I did not want to start a whole new thread:

Sleep is REALLY different. We started proper my new campaign and one player is a wizard (all 1st level). He cast sleep on a couple goblins and it was definitely a lot more uncertain and less powerful that old sleep. It worked out fine and I think the spell is actually better (old sleep was OP), but it definitely came as a surprise.

One thing that caught us off guard at first: we thought it was a "sleep zone" because it has a duration of "Concentration" and the way it was written, but we realized spells that are that are "emanations" in 2024 D&D.