D&D (2024) WotC Fireside Chat: Revised 2024 Player’s Handbook

In this video about the upcoming revised Player’s Handnook, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins reveal a few new tidbits.

• The books are near final and almost ready to go to print
• Psionic subclasses such as the Soulknife and Psi Warrior will appear in the core books
• Named spells have art depicting their creators.
• There are new species in the PHB.

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[Yaarel]

Or, to be fair, because they don't want to play Zeus.

Gygax wants people to play Zeus.

Look at Mordenkainen, Tasha, Elminster, and many others. Zeus is the goal of D&D.

Fighters are supposed to suck.

Gygax was weirdly elitist − almost a nerds versus jocks vibe.

Strangely enough, many Fighter fans also want the Fighter to suck.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Gygax wants people to play Zeus.

Look at Mordenkainen, Tasha, Elminster, and many others. Zeus is the goal of D&D.

Fighters are supposed to suck.

And without a supernatural edge, a nonmagical character can IMO only do so much.

 

[Yaarel]

And without a supernatural edge, a nonmagical character can IMO only do so much.

People willingly handcuff themselves to Gygaxs elitism. Its weird.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People willingly handcuff themselves to Gygaxs elitism. Its weird.

Maybe they just agree with his philosophy here. Everyone has their own stance.

 

[Yaarel]

Maybe they just agree with his philosophy here. Everyone has their own stance.

But what philosophy? Fighters are supposed to suck? How is that a philosophy? I personally cannot comprehend a game that is designed that way.


In an other thread, there is a decent personality inventory that lists the D&D classes that a person might enjoy.

Different people enjoy different class concepts. It seems unethical to make certain classes inferior, because it interferes with the participation and power dynamics among reallife players.

Every class should roughly balance across every tier at every level.

Gaming balance matters.

 

[MNblockhead]

I personally don't like them being in the core books. I never have. I find them antithetical to my taste in fantasy. Strongly so. So while I like that they are there for those who want them, I would greatly prefer that they were in supplementary books. Putting them in the core makes them harder to ignore and means I have to make a decision about whether to exclude them from character creation, for example.

Welcome! Join the club! Personally, I'm all for more options for different campaign themes be included if, for not other reason, it will break more players out of the "if it is in the PHB, it must be allowed." Maybe there are some psionics haters out there who have been giving me grief since 2014 for limiting race and class options, who will no have an a-ha moment.

5e was always a bit of a kitchen sink game. If you want to run a kitchen sink campaign, having some more thematically incongruous options isn't going to harm one's campaign. But most of my campaigns have species and class limits. I can ignore the psionic class as easily as I can ignore dragonborn or monks. Or use them in my psionic dragonborn monk campaign and ignore other options.

 

[Cadence]

Gygax intended D&D to be a game of superheroes. A famous quote attributed to him is as follows:

"A 20th-level Fighter is Achilles, but a 20th-level Magic-User is Zeus."

Is there a source for that quote? Google is thwarting me.

 

[MNblockhead]

Or, to be fair, because they don't want to play Zeus.

Yeah, Zeus was pretty skeevy. ;-)

 

[Yaarel]

Is there a source for that quote? Google is thwarting me.

I cant find the original source, I have looked. But there are prominent sites that attribute it to Gygax, such as TVTropes Org.

But you know, it looks like something Gygax would say!

 

[Yaarel]

When people talk about the Fighter lacking magic, many end up wanting to the Fighter to be even more powerful in combat.

The Fighter is already extremely powerful in combat. This misses the problem.

What magic offers is a way for the player to control the story. Magic decides if a combat happens or not.

What the Fighter needs is a way to decide how a narrative unfolds.