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.

​

 

[fuindordm]

Old Shadowrun had you pick an A, B, C, D, and E for magical ability, species, gear, skills, and stats. Full casters would be an A, half casters a B, and non-casteres an E. Certain powerful species were B's, others lower tier. So an elf full caster used their A and B, and had less stats, skillls, and gear than say an orc non-caster. Cybernetics reduced your magic as well.

D&D half assed it with fighters getting a whopping ONE extra stat bump/feat for almost all games) and rogues a piddly skill bonus with expertise, but it could be done. Attunement could also interfere with magic for whatever flim flam reason you want.

The tier system was one of Shadowrun's nicer innovations. I ran a short D&D game using a tier system for character creation (point buy, starting level, starting wealth and a couple of other categories I forget). That wouldn't work for a long campaign though.
I'm not sure it could be adapted as a tool for balancing the classes, but I agree that full spellcasters aren't giving up very much right now.

 

[Hussar]

That sounds dull by way of eliminating potential different roles.

True, but, that doesn't make it wrong.

 

[Minigiant]

On Psionics

WOTC and most publishers try to stuff everything in one class.

I'd do it in 3 classes.

The Psion, the mind Wizard
The Mystic, the spontaneous power user
The Devisnt, the abbreration and Far Realmer

Each made for the different aspects of Psionics.

90% of the time, the best solution is more spells classes.

A book with 3 different types of Psionics? One giving DMs 3 options to allow or ban to match their setting. EASY money

 

[Neonchameleon]

You can't both have "martials" and "casters" on equal footing and have a grounded aesthetic without saddling your casters with a bunch of fiddly bits. Those bits don't necessarily have to be what D&D did in the old days, but something needs to be there.

Strictly false. Fiddly bits don't matter other than to make the game less fun for most players that have to use them. There are three things that matter:

1. Power scaling - either the power of wizards needs to be capped or martials don't and need to go non-mundane eventually
2. Significant magical drawbacks ... such as accidentally summoning a demon.

WFRP magic can easily take you out of the frying pan into the fire.

You have to pick. If you want a high flying awesome game, you can't have a purely mundane fighter alongside all the superheroes. And if you want something grounded and dangerous, you can't let your casters avoid the limits, difficulties and costs of their power.

And there's no reason you can't have both in D&D; high flying and awesome at level 11 and grounded and dangerous at level 3.

Still the rules for spell casters still frustrate psionic fans. Things like spell components − especially costly gp components interfere with the feel psionics.

Similarly, spell points feels better − like an amount of energy that gets spent.

And Aberrant Minds have both a lack of material components and have soell points. And sorcerers literally build their own spell lists from the sorcerer spells (plus Aberrant Mind add ons). If you don't want costly material components don't pick those spells. (Personally I think the OneD&D GOOlock feels better - limited extra exertion then things you can do)

Other than the merest splash of Far Realm flavour Aberrant Minds have everything asked for - while Soulknives do something different from spells-with-serial-numbers-filed-off of 3.x while not being terrible the way the 3.5 Soulknife was. Which is part of why a lot of psionic fans, like me, see psionics as being in a better place mechanically in 5e than in any previous edition. And it's just a small but vocal group of hold outs that yell about them not being included.

 

[Neonchameleon]

On Psionics

WOTC and most publishers try to stuff everything in one class.

Yes, that's why Sorcerer, Warlock, Rogue, Fighter, and arguably bard and monk are one class...

I'd do it in 3 classes.

The Psion, the mind Wizard
The Mystic, the spontaneous power user
The Devisnt, the abbreration and Far Realmer

The Psion needs to be a sorcerer or bard not a wizard. No spellbooks to be seen. Which completely neuters the Mystic unless you use an Invocation-style At Will system

And where are the psychic warriors? For that matter the 5e soulknives who aren't just oversized brains but use psionics to support everything. Your way even on paper strikes me as far worse than what we have now.

90% of the time, the best solution is more spells

In general doing nothing at all is a better solution than more spells. Every spell makes the game worse by adding fiddly rules.

A book with 3 different types of Psionics? One giving DMs 3 options to allow or ban to match their setting. EASY money

Only if you are moving into shovelware territory.

• A substantial number of people don't want psionics in their games
• Of those that do a number (like me) prefer 5e psionics to earlier ones
• There are reasons WotC has only added one class to 5e since launch - and don't want to bring D&D down under its own mechanical weight the way they did 3.0, 3.5, and 4e

Adding three classes for a narrow group and then adding reams of spells to go with it is stepping back onto the shovelware path. Easy short term money at the cost of torching the game long term.

 

[Minigiant]

In general doing nothing at all is a better solution than more spells. Every spell makes the game worse by adding fiddly rules

I meant classes.

90% of the time, the best solution is more classes.

My coffee was brewing as I posted.

Only if you are moving into shovelware territory.

A substantial number of people don't want psionics in their games
Of those that do a number (like me) prefer 5e psionics to earlier ones
There are reasons WotC has only added one class to 5e since launch - and don't want to bring D&D down under its own mechanical weight the way they did 3.0, 3.5, and 4e
Adding three classes for a narrow group and then adding reams of spells to go with it is stepping back onto the shovelware path. Easy short term money at the cost of torching the game long term.

One book doesn't torch a game.

The D&D community has to come to grips that it's WAY TOO DIVERSE for one size fits all.

The D&D spell system works because there are tons of spells that many different fans can latch on to. That mentality has to spread across the whole game understanding that what one person likes one thing, another person like another thing.

 

[Hussar]

One book doesn't torch a game.

True. But, it does open the door. Because if you get your "one book of psionics" why can't I have my "one book of tactical classes" and why can't he get his "one book of whatever"?

I'm quite happy that the WotC version of the game is limited to it's 11 classes. It has meant that as a DM, I'm not constantly being surprised by this or that new class. I have zero interest in a version of psionics that isn't fully integrated into the game, anymore than I'm interested a spell system that isn't fully integrated - like a point casting system.

The game has far, far too many moving parts to start adding stuff to the base elements. There are just far too many ways for it to go wrong. And three classes, a couple of hundred new effects and a hundred or so monsters, none of which are actually part of any published setting but rather need me to shoehorn them in, is something I have zero interest in.

 

[Minigiant]

True. But, it does open the door. Because if you get your "one book of psionics" why can't I have my "one book of tactical classes" and why can't he get his "one book of whatever"?

Thats a lack of discipline problem

There is a huge demand for psionics but the community is divided.

I work in sales. Every work I sell multiple variants of the same things that have different applications. I can choose to not offer one variety and my customers will get that somewhere else. Probably for higher cost or lower quality. That happens for the things I don't sell

There isn't a desire for 3 tactical classes. The community who wants it only want one core idea.

We literally know that the Psionics community is sizable, loud, but fractured. We see it. WOTC sees it.

The smart play was to split it up.

We split up the fighting man, cleric, and magic user due to demand.

Why not the psionicist? You just have to do it early like how the artificer was done.

 

[mamba]

True, but, that doesn't make it wrong.

it doesn’t make the statement that this is the easiest way to accomplish absolute balance wrong, it makes it the wrong ‘solution’ however

 

[mamba]

And there's no reason you can't have both in D&D; high flying and awesome at level 11 and grounded and dangerous at level 3.

if grounded ends around level 5, it is too few levels to use D&D for this…