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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[Cadence]

They were in 2e. You can solidly blame WotC for that change.

It feels odd to imply they were subclasses in the same sense as we have them today. They had different xp tables, different ability score requirements,...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Precisely. WotC can split definitional hairs as much as they want... but that doesn't actually do anything.

When one runs a monster, how the magical effect is defined doesn't have any impact during the actual fight. Supernatural effect or spell-like effect? Doesn't matter. The effect goes off the same way regardless of what you call it.

The labels are for worldbuilding expectations and, to a lesser degree, how different kinds of abilities interact (dispel effects and the like).

 

[Micah Sweet]

5e 2014 significantly narrowed the gap between Fighter and casters ... in combat. The Fighter is even better at combat than the casters are.

What the Fighter is still missing is the means of narrative control that happens ... out of combat.

Sometimes, this also includes the narrative power to force a combat or escape a combat.

How exactly would you give them narrative control?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Any position referencing material prior to 5e is a niche of a niche in today's landscape. Those of us with any D&D experience prior to 5e are a minority.

So what? I don't see the relevance of this statement.

 

[Remathilis]

Or ... you take magic into account when planning and set up scenarios where casters don't totally control the narrative. Accept that having a different role doesn't mean inferior.

You can't plan for every scenario. And magic is so fundamentally useful it's hard to create scenarios where martial power succeeds and magic characters are useless unless you purposefully gimp magic. (Dead/Anti magic zones, etc).

 

[MoonSong]

I wanted the Divine Soul instead and was NOT happy about its exclusion, because was far more iconic, but they decided by opposites instead of what was more iconic.

Hopefully Divine Soul gets updated in Austriel Silverhand's Trunk of Magical Leftovers.

Divibe Soul is dead. It makes no sense when picked at higher levels. If you are the party healer, you need to be it from the get go. Otherwise, by the time you turn into a healer the party already has a healer. Also, getting access to the extra spell list after you have chosen your cantrips? And you need to wait up to level 16 to switch all cantrips?

 

[Micah Sweet]

But supernatural doesn’t have to be magical, particularly in a setting where magic is defined so specifically as manipulating an energy field called the weave by means of somatic, material, and verbal components.

That isn't the entirety of magic. That is spells, a subset of magic.

And the Weave explanation shouldn't be in the PH. It's the biggest piece of evidence in the game for @Yaarel 's "FR is the assumed setting for 5e" theory, and is referenced in no other setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It feels odd to imply they were subclasses in the same sense as we have them today. They had different xp tables, different ability score requirements,...

Fair enough. They were certainly grouped back in the day though.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The labels are for worldbuilding expectations and, to a lesser degree, how different kinds of abilities interact (dispel effects and the like).

Sure... if Dispel Magic needs a format in determining what monster features can be dispelled and which ones can't, then putting tags on those features is fine. I have no disagreement with that. But it seems like people are seeing many more things for which these things are considered a necessity, and I don't know if that's necessarily true in my opinion.

 

[TwoSix]

So what? I don't see the relevance of this statement.

I was entirely relevant in the context of what Neonchameleon and I were discussing..