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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[Clint_L]

If you want that Lord of the Rings style you're talking about then hard cap wizards at level 5.

I think that's silly. I think that article is silly. I'm not going to bother deconstructing why someone who could go toe-to-toe with a Balrog is not a 5th level magic-user.

Edit: I'm not saying you are silly, just that I think reducing this argument to what level magic-user Gandalf is because fireball or whatever is so reductionist that it becomes absurd, like a parody of nerd arguments. I think that article must have been tongue in cheek. I vaguely remember it from back in the day when we lived for new issues of Dragon, and it's the kind of argument that animated us.

 

[Scribe]

If the game is going to have any semblance of balance, high level fighters need Goku levels of power to keep up with high-level casters. If you want a more grounded setting, you need to cap caster’s’ capabilea as well as martials. Something like E6 works well for that.

No, Goku is a different class. He's clearly not a Fighter. Casters can certainly do with some limitations, but this analogy is beyond tortured.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, it isn't. But it -tries- in the most disturbing ways possible. Still the only system I know of where you can die in character creation.

You could die in classic Traveler too.

 

[Steampunkette]

You could die in classic Traveler too.

Cadence just mentioned that, too!

Thank you, Micah! It's good information to know!

 

[Faolyn]

But supernatural should imply beyond natural.

A human cannot fly on his own. You can use all sorts of reasons to justify it: magic science, technology, psionics, alien species, divine birth, etc. But all of those aren't natural for humans. I detest the idea that with enough training, you can learn to do supernatural things as a natural human. Welcome to 10th level, gravity no longer applies to you, normal mundane person!

True, but... it's a magical world. Whose to say what's actually normal and mundane in such a world?

 

[Staffan]

What other class does that? Every other class gives a discernable source of power: primal spirits, words of creation, faith, oaths, pacts, bloodlines, the Weave, deities or ki/spirit. Every class that asks you to suspend disbelief provides a handwavium reason. Except fighters and rogues.

Power source: badass.

I'm only joking a little bit. I can totally get behind a setting where medium-to-high-level "mundanes" absorb enough ambient magic to be able to perform feats that to us seem preposterous.

No, it isn't. But it -tries- in the most disturbing ways possible. Still the only system I know of where you can die in character creation.

Well, Traveller is kind of famous for it. There's also Infinity, but there it mostly means you need to spend a Life Point (a character creation metacurrency you can use to have some influence over the otherwise rather random character generation system) in order to have your mind uploaded into one of the good LHOSTs (think Westworld robots) with the same stats as you had originally. If you don't, you get an old model that gives you -1 to everything.

 

[DarkCrisis]

No, just the ones of like… 12th level or so and up.

That's uh, not how you become a demigod.

But hey your table your rules.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think that's silly. I think that article is silly. I'm not going to bother deconstructing why someone who could go toe-to-toe with a Balrog is not a 5th level magic-user.

Edit: I'm not saying you are silly, just that I think reducing this argument to what level magic-user Gandalf is because fireball or whatever is so reductionist that it becomes absurd, like a parody of nerd arguments. I think that article must have been tongue in cheek. I vaguely remember it from back in the day when we lived for new issues of Dragon, and it's the kind of argument that animated us.

Oh, it absolutely is silly. For one thing Gandalf wields a sword and magic users didn't

But the underlying point is a serious one. Even back pre-1e D&D had much much more magic from its casters than Lord of the Rings did. D&D is not a generic game, and the primary casters are incompatible with a LotR aesthetic because they are overflowing with spells. I'm not joking when I suggest banning all primary casters if you want a low magic game and making rangers, paladins, and possibly warlocks your biggest casters.

 

[tetrasodium]

No, Goku is a different class. He's clearly not a Fighter. Casters can certainly do with some limitations, but this analogy is beyond tortured.

I wanted to underscore just how true this is.

"The character Goku is based on Sun Wukong (Son Goku in Japanese), the central character of the Chinese novel Journey to the West." Journey to the west is pretty much the wuxia novel of 1592.

 

[Charlaquin]

That's uh, not how you become a demigod.

But hey your table your rules.

It certainly could be. That’s the thing about fiction, you can write it however you want.