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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[Alzrius]

The balance was often a mess and some seemed really arbitrary, but I loved the plethora of archetypes, hybrids, and classes in PF 1e. If you couldn't find what you wanted, swapping a few things probably got you really close. (Even without multiclassing).

Very much so, particularly when you started looking at the incredible number of third-party offerings. It's really helped drive home (for me, I mean) that while balance isn't unimportant, it's far from being the most salient aspect to having a fun and engaging session of play.

 

[mamba]

Level 5 is literally when the casters become ungrounded because they can fly. And fireball. D&D has never been my pick for gritty games.

I am not looking for absolutely gritty, I am looking for somewhat more down to earth, Fireball is no problem, Fly acceptable

(Level 4 was when the oD&D fighter became a Hero).

titles do not matter to me, I always found them silly. The characters are the heroes starting at level 1

Possibly you do want a game other than D&D. It's not a generic game.

not sure what you mean by D&D is not a generic game, it pretty much is that to me. Of course it is Fantasy focused, but other than that it seems to aim for generic

If you had said ‘you might want another game that is less generic’, it would have made more sense to me…

I am looking at alternatives as the playtest left me pretty disappointed, but I am not looking for overly gritty either, just more grounded. D&D leans too far into trivializing everything with a spell and being superheroic for my taste

 

[Parmandur]

I don't that we want them to suck, but I do share the feeling that playing a fighter is basically playing in "Hard Mode" without all the cheats available to magic characters. I would be happy to see the class split into two with one class being the "Hard Mode" character and the other class being the martial superhero that so many other players really want. I don't really care which one is called the "Fighter" as long as there is an option available for the type of player who wants a simple warrior with no bells or whistles.... even stuff like Action Surge feels a bit too much... I would prefer simple numerical bonuses for hitting, damage, saves and skills to bring it up to baseline competency.

Fighters in the game as it is are amazing. Champions are unstoppable death machines.

 

[Charlaquin]

What I consider mundane is based on my perspective as a real life human: things real life humans can't do.

Poor phrasing on my part, I should have said it depends what you consider magic. Not everything that exceeds mundanity must necessarily be magical in a fantasy setting.

 

[mamba]

The magic of a Human mind is also the magic of any mind, even the "minds" features of nature, like mountains, rivers, storms, and so on. Psionic is the closest D&D has to animism.

I don’t know, that is not how I see psionics at all, that is more cleric / druid / warlock to me. To each their own I guess

 

[Charlaquin]

This ends up being the versimilitude argument. In fiction, we assume things work the way we know about on Earth unless we are explicitly told how and often why they are different. D&D doesn't explain how the world works except in the vaguest terms. So in lieu of world building, you have to assume the worlds of D&D works like ours does.

I think it would be interesting if the World assumed magic and supernatural abilities were commonplace: a world where bakers use a bit of magic to keep their bread fresh or the royal knights can jump hundreds of feet and resist weapon blows with skin hard as iron, but D&D doesn't put the effort in. So we are left to assume bakers make bread the way they do on Earth and the royal knights are just ordinary soldiers in regular armor until the game goes out of the way to tell us otherwise.

Maybe the 24 core will make explicit that the Worlds of D&D are innately fantastical and magical and that the laws of physics don't work that way naturally. There are certainly hints of it. But as long as D&D tiptoes around that, the "the ordinary is extraordinary" defense is not viable. And that's a problem that is easily solved if D&D would commit to the bit and define the world.

I don’t think there’s any self-consistent way to interpret all the stuff that exists in D&D other than that supernatural abilities are commonplace, and that magic is a specific subset of supernatural abilities. Heck, Jeremy Crawford had to explicitly state as much in a Sage Advice tweet to clarify what dispel magic does and doesn’t affect.

 

[Hussar]

Why is the fighter there?

Seriously, eliminate the class.

Good luck with that.

Just like we're never going to see fighters gain any sort of parity with casters (including half casters), we're most certainly never going to get a D&D that doesn't have a fighter class. Good grief. People lost their freaking minds because 4e didn't have a druid in the PHB and that's the least played class in the game. You want to cut the most played class in the game?

5e did help quite a bit to get fighters back in the ballpark. They clawed casters WAYYYY back from their lofty heights. Now, they just need to nudge the fighter up a bit.

 

[Cadence]

I don’t think there’s any self-consistent way to interpret all the stuff that exists in D&D other than that supernatural abilities are commonplace, and that magic is a specific subset of supernatural abilities. Heck, Jeremy Crawford had to explicitly state as much in a Sage Advice tweet to clarify what dispel magic does and doesn’t affect.

< Insert love of 3.5/PF having extraordinary, supernatural, and spell-lile to explicitly set the baseline...>

 

[Reynard]

Good luck with that.

Just like we're never going to see fighters gain any sort of parity with casters (including half casters), we're most certainly never going to get a D&D that doesn't have a fighter class. Good grief. People lost their freaking minds because 4e didn't have a druid in the PHB and that's the least played class in the game. You want to cut the most played class in the game?

5e did help quite a bit to get fighters back in the ballpark. They clawed casters WAYYYY back from their lofty heights. Now, they just need to nudge the fighter up a bit.

But why? What archetype is the fighter that isn't filled by rangers, paladins, barbarians, monks and even rogues (for that swashbuckler type)? Just calling something the "fighter" is meaningless. What does it represent that isn't covered by other martial classes that is so essential?

Or, to phrase it a better way: why aren't rangers, paladins, barbarians and monks just fighter subclasses?

 

[Yaarel]

I don’t know, that is not how I see psionics at all, that is more cleric / druid / warlock to me. To each their own I guess

Divine magic is the magic words − language, meanings and meaningfulness, symbols, paradigms, archetypes, ideals, ethics − in other words the Astral Plane. The multiverse was created by means of words.

Arcane magic is the magic of science, observation and discovering the peculiar and often subtle properties of ordinary objects. Arcane magic looks like chemistry, math, and occasionally astronomy.

Psionic magic is the magic of ones own soul − the influence of intention and visualization, will and interconnectedness of minds.

Primal and Psionic can easily be the same thing: the magic of a soul. When one looks at reallife animism, each person is a presence and an influence. These minds sense each other and interact with each other via dreams and intuitions, and influence each other psychically. A specific mountain has a mindful presence − psionic. During the 1900s, scientists tried to quantify animistic beliefs, via "paranormal" research while inventing new technical jargon often with ubiquitous electronic equipment to record and measure. But what these researchers were studying were concepts that are part of the human species since ancient − even prehistoric − times.

Importantly, reallife shamans dont depend on nature beings for magic. Rather each shaman is understood to be personally a mindful presence with various powers. At the same time, each nature being is likewise a mindful presence. They are neighbors. The job of a shaman is to keep the peace, and to mediate and to negotiate any conflicts that arise within the shared community that includes humans and nonhumans.