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.

​

 

[Kurotowa]

The issue D&D has is LEGACY. Gygax and the others weren't huge on balance and wanted low level wizards to suck and high level wizards to pay off that low level suck by becoming gods.

I'll say it again. Early D&D filled a very different niche, one mostly taken over by video games these days. While I don't play MOBA games much, I move in adjacent enough circles to have picked up some of the terminology. And one of the major character niches in a MOBA is the "Carry".

A Carry starts off very weak but they have the best power advancement in the game. So if the rest of the team feeds them XP and loot in the early game, by the late game they've become the strongest member of the team. Initially the Carry is carried by their teammates, and when they're strong enough they carry the rest of their team to victory.

That's early edition Wizards in a nutshell. Early on they were super weak, with few HP and fewer spells. They also had the highest XP requirements to level, back when different classes had different level progression charts. But if the party carried one to high level they'd become like unto a demigod, the backbone of the team.

It's a model that worked when "Can I make a character that survives to high level?" was a major goal of the game. You ever notice how many mechanics there were that involve effectively resetting yourself to 1st level? That was so people could play again with the same character they were attached to after they'd "won" the game.

So much has changed since back then. People play in different ways and for different goals. But as you say, the legacy elements are a heavy weight that linger and distort the game. Would D&D be better if Wizards didn't have those lingering elements of exponential growth from when they were the Carry class? Almost certainly. But removing them is very hard, with how tradition bound so many players are.

 

[Steampunkette]

With the exception of the grappling hook, these all basically say "treat the martial with kid gloves and make sure you design to what they can handle rather than to what the world/story asks. No big gaps, that's unfun for the fighter! Only flat surfaces from now on!

The world/story asks for nothing except what the writer chooses. If you want a world where the fighter doesn't get left behind, write a story where the fighter doesn't have to get left behind.

Or, y'know... make a new game. Or strip attack magic out of the game. Or whatever path you wanna take.

Ranger and paladins get magic. Barbarian and monk have supernatural powers. It's easy to justify them having some way of getting over that gap by ignoring the laws of physics. Only rogues are stuck with the fighter on the "pick a supernatural subclass or suck" boat.

The baseline class does not have a way to do it. You have to pick a supernatural subclass, or a subclass that "Isn't Supernatural but totally does stuff normal people can't while pretending it isn't magical" to do it.

Paladins and Rangers don't fly, either. And don't get spells that let them fly, baseline. Again, gotta get a subclass.

Because even though they have Magic they don't have THAT magic. Which is important to consider in game design.

I'll give you that when 90% of your attack magic in D&D is gone. But I don't see fireball getting removed any time soon.

No. They won't. I said as much when I mentioned the Legacy issue. Your point, here, is no point at all. D&D is going to be perpetually broken in this regard. essentially forever.

It's why I said "Make a new Game" with stipulations. Or, y'know, nerf combat spells significantly.

What's the point of having different classes, if they can all do the exact same thing? Is the flavour text all that matters?

IMO, the classes having different abilities, strengths and weaknesses makes the game better. It adds tactical and cooperative elements that you can't get from every character having the same ability. This immediately makes balance harder, so that's the challenge. Very much worth it, I think.

That post was a setup to a different post just a couple posts later. You can read it here:

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...

www.enworld.org

 

[Clint_L]

With the exception of the grappling hook, these all basically say "treat the martial with kid gloves and make sure you design to what they can handle rather than to what the world/story asks. No big gaps, that's unfun for the fighter! Only flat surfaces from now on!

I don't see this. When you play a fighter, you are choosing to have some strengths (particularly damage dealing and soaking) and some limitations, which you can choose to address via sub-class if they are a big deal to you. Like, if you wanna play a fighter and are really, really worried about "big gaps," play an Echo Knight. Choices make the game interesting.

Ranger and paladins get magic. Barbarian and monk have supernatural powers. It's easy to justify them having some way of getting over that gap by ignoring the laws of physics. Only rogues are stuck with the fighter on the "pick a supernatural subclass or suck" boat.

I'm not finding that fighters and rogues who don't pick a supernatural sub-class suck. And I note that Battlemasters are widely considered the best fighter subclass (Echo Knight aside, probably), and fighters themselves are generally considered one of the stronger classes. As well as being by far the most popular. To you, they might suck, but that certainly does not appear to be the widespread opinion.

I'll give you that when 90% of your attack magic in D&D is gone. But I don't see fireball getting removed any time soon.

Fireball is fantastic when you have lots of low level enemies clumped together, no doubt. It generally does't do much for you against a typical BBEG, but it'll often be great against the guards. Against the BBEG, it will usually be much handier to have a pure damage dealer. Like a fighter.

As far as battles go, spell casters, in my experience, are a good choice for when you are into gambling a bit more. You'll have some fights where you absolutely kick butt - you chose just the right spells for the right situation, a key saving throw was failed, and so on. And you will also have some fights where you absolutely suck. You're out of your best spells, or you chose the wrong one for the situation, or the DM keeps rolling their saves (c.f. the recent Critical Role episode 91). Martial classes tend to be much more reliable. There are still occasions where a "big gap" etc. is a serious problem, but mostly you have a pretty reliable impact on combat.

 

[Remathilis]

Your thoughts make sense, but that would move 5e and D&D away from the tool kit philosophy that some of us have.

And that's a different problem. D&D is both exceptionally inflexible and yet maddeningly vague when it comes to lore. It's like this because it has no one setting that is allowed to grow and develop. Instead, it supports a half-dozen settings with similar concepts and different executions so that you get a game that tries to be everything to everyone and has to make sacrifices for it. No other RPG does this. Pathfinder supports one setting. GURPs is intentionally lore neutral. D&D tries to have it both ways and you end up with a fighter who is supposed to support Boromir and Hercules at the same time.

 

[Faolyn]

Yes. The answer to all those questions is yes.

On a serious note, to clarify... Magic (arcane) does all those thing in the form of different class packages or abilities. Psionics could also.

Heh--true, although one could say that arcane magic is still split into wizards, bards, sorcerers, and (arguably) warlocks, each of which is supposed to have a different focus (although there's so much spell overlap it's fuzzy). Maybe that's the problem--we have "psionic caster" and "psionic martial" class, when we actually need three different psionic casters.

Hmm. Now I want to make it so that warlocks don't have their own spell list, and they get access to another class's spell list--or psionics list--depending on their patron.

 

[Oofta]

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.

Not in my games. Magic rarely matters all that much unless it's a utility spell that can aid the entire party.

Wizard casts fly to get across the chasm without the fighter? Awesome! Split the party so I can attack the squishy wizard. Want to teleport away? Too bad, Inner Sanctum was cast here a thousand years ago and it's still active because it's permanent. Charm someone? They know you charmed them and you've made an enemy for life and possibly turned an important faction against you depending on circumstances.

Of course sometimes magic does cool things as well. In no way do I totally nerf them. But I also throw in cool things for the non-casters as well. If the story calls for opening a teleportation circle to the other side of the world, I see that as a spell tax, not the wizard controlling the narrative. After all the DM is the one that set up the situation so that there was a need for the teleportation circle.

The truly important campaign changing things in my games are the choices the PCs make and the interactions with NPCs. The fighter is more combat focused. It doesn't mean they're sitting on the sidelines while the adults do all the important stuff. It's a team game, different players have different roles. Thank goodness.

 

[Oofta]

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).

If casters are running roughshod over your campaign on a regular basis, I don't know how else to say it. It's the DM's fault. PCs of all classes sometimes come up with options that make overcoming an obstacle or changing direction of the game. Celebrate the win with the players and adjust your plans.

I have never had casters consistently dominate play whether I was playing or DMing.

EDIT: maybe what I just said was a bit harsh. I've just never seen the types of issues that people seem to have in a decade of play. You do have to be more flexible for higher level play because the PCs are more capable, but the DM always has options. Even if it means discussing the issues with the players and adding some house rules or banning a handful of problematic spells.

 

[Shardstone]

The world/story asks for nothing except what the writer chooses. If you want a world where the fighter doesn't get left behind, write a story where the fighter doesn't have to get left behind.

Or, y'know... make a new game. Or strip attack magic out of the game. Or whatever path you wanna take.

The baseline class does not have a way to do it. You have to pick a supernatural subclass, or a subclass that "Isn't Supernatural but totally does stuff normal people can't while pretending it isn't magical" to do it.

Paladins and Rangers don't fly, either. And don't get spells that let them fly, baseline. Again, gotta get a subclass.

Because even though they have Magic they don't have THAT magic. Which is important to consider in game design.

No. They won't. I said as much when I mentioned the Legacy issue. Your point, here, is no point at all. D&D is going to be perpetually broken in this regard. essentially forever.

It's why I said "Make a new Game" with stipulations. Or, y'know, nerf combat spells significantly.


That post was a setup to a different post just a couple posts later. You can read it here:

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...

www.enworld.org

Agreed on all fronts. When you view the game through the lens of an actual designer, you see that concessions are made for flavor and taste, and out of the hope of producing some kind of effect on the reader + player. We have to accept some kind of vision from WotC as the baseline, and then modify from there to suit our own tastes.

In other words, accept the game as it is or accept the fact that you have to build your own specific game off WotC's established baseline.

 

[Remathilis]

If casters are running roughshod over your campaign on a regular basis, I don't know how else to say it. It's the DM's fault. PCs of all classes sometimes come up with options that make overcoming an obstacle or changing direction of the game. Celebrate the win with the players and adjust your plans.

I have never had casters consistently dominate play whether I was playing or DMing.

EDIT: maybe what I just said was a bit harsh. I've just never seen the types of issues that people seem to have in a decade of play. You do have to be more flexible for higher level play because the PCs are more capable, but the DM always has options. Even if it means discussing the issues with the players and adding some house rules or banning a handful of problematic spells.

Sorry, not accepting "skill issue" as the reason.

 

[Charlaquin]

Cutting a mountain in half with a sword (like, in one slice like a giant birthday cake?) is equally ludicrous and needs a beyond natural explanation the same as flight. You don't train and one day wake up and split K2 in twain. Not unless you already got some supernatural backstory explaining where that potential came from.

Of course it needs a beyond natural explanation. But that explanation need not be “magic.” It’s the sort of thing a powerful figure in a fantastical world could be capable of, through intensive training or what have you.