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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[Oofta]

If in the estimation of a DM, it is ok to use the Wish spell to cleave a mountain, then it is probably ok to let a Fighter cleave a mountain at the Legend tier, levels 17 thru 20.

In any case, Epic levels 21 up exist in the 5e 2014 DMs Guide. Instead of a class level, each Epic level gains a feat.

A crazy Strength test such including cleave mountain is probably ok as a new Epic feat with say 21 or higher Strength score.

If you look at the examples of what a wish can do in 5E, it's nowhere near powerful enough to split a mountain in two. Even if it is possible in a specific campaign, you can do it maybe a few times in your life. After the first time you do it, it's pretty debilitating and includes a 33% chance you can never cast the spell again.

I still wouldn't want it at epic levels because splitting a mountain in two is something that is impressive even for Thor in Norse mythology that I base my campaign on. Power level is, of course, up to the group to decide.

 

[Parmandur]

A Master only has a 10% chance of being better than I am at their job...unless they happen to be a Rogue...then it can be 30%.

Not a problem with Proficiency gated checks.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

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

The problem often lies in the kind of challenges. Or the recovery rate of spells.

In other games, spells are less game changers than in D&D. Which for spellcasters does not feel satisfactory. If spells can't do more than mundane things, what is magic about that?

I really hope there are more guidelines to use alternate recovery rates for more gritty games. Right now they are hidden in the DMG, without much explanation, so it is often forgotten.

Set recovery rates to a long rest is a whole day of downtime in a halfway secure enviroment and you get a much less superheroic game where magic solves any problem.

I am currently in a campaign where my artificer can get around challenges with low level spells. But at the end of the day, I could not do it anymore, as I was out of spell slots... So next day I changed my invocation to ring of spell storing and plan to be a bit more conservative.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

5e is terrible at this.

Superman only has a 20% greater chance than I do...because he only gets a +4 more on his legendary than anyone else.

Unless, of course, they decide to change this someway in the republished 5e.

A Master only has a 10% chance of being better than I am at their job...unless they happen to be a Rogue...then it can be 30%.

5e math is incredibly small in relation to how different people are in certain arenas.

Gandalf could easily be level 20 with what he does. He'd have more spells and such already, and we've seen him do things that could technically be equal to a teleport or even a wish, or if we classify him as a druid or cleric (how else does one turn Sauron or other great evils?) he still has high level manifestations of his power.

As for everything else...in 5e...it's a mere +4 better than the "apprentices"...so why not?

All this is only correct if there is just a single roll involved. Ask for 3 successes before 3 failures and suddenly those 5 to 20% turn into 90% higher success rates.

So my proposal: scale difficulty by the number of checks as well as increased difficulty.

 

[Steampunkette]

I think that was @Steampunkette 's point. It isn't hard to balance, but hard to do in a satisfactory way that would still feel like D&D.

I'm with you, I like different roles where each have strengths and weaknesses, so that the party has to work together to accomplish their goals. So that if one member goes down, the other feel that loss.

The problem that I have with Wizards in 5e, is even at lower levels, they start feeling like they are stealing the spotlight from other classes.

I'm feeling this about D&D more than ever now that I'm running Warhammer Fantasy 4e. In Warhammer, Wizards can have various utility spells that step on the turf of other careers. They have cast incredibly powerful spells that will devestate an enemy, but there is real risk in casting magic and real costs to mitigate those risks. This has the laudatory effect of being cautious with magic. Why take any risk to bypass a locked door when you have someone who can pick it? The miscast and chaos rules in Warhammer mitigate the "magic can solve anything" issue far better than spell-slot resource management.

Inject some risk, through possible miscasts, casting times, etc. The more powerful the magic the steeper the cost. Keep cantrips so their are some safe attacks the power up as wizards level up so they can always contribute, but make levels spells have some risk in the casting.

No. My point was that having a game based on roles that are mechanical rather than exclusively narrative requires those roles to be good at some things and bad at others.

Like how Fighters should be comparatively worse at Exploration than Wizards should. Not -incapable-, but not as good.

And similarly that Wizards should be good at some aspects of combat, but not all aspects, so they're not incapable but not as good as fighters.

I went on to explain it in a later post, which was pre-written and ready to be dropped as soon as someone touched on how boring it would be to only have narrative roles instead of mechanical roles.

I've linked it, twice, since.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Drow wouldn’t be new, they’re in the 2014 PHB. Also, we already know it’s orcs and goliaths.

Orcs are quasi new at best given Half Orcs were in 2014, but you could be right, it still bugs me Aasimar and Genasi did not get the PHB treatment in the past so I'm hoping they see reason and change it for 5.75e.

 

[Charlaquin]

Orcs are quasi new at best given Half Orcs were in 2014, but you could be right, it still bugs me Aasimar and Genasi did not get the PHB treatment in the past so I'm hoping they see reason and change it for 5.75e.

I’m not counting on any species being in the PHB that weren’t in the playtest. If I’m wrong it’ll be a nice surprise, and if I’m right I won’t be disappointed.

 

[Corinnguard]

it still bugs me Aasimar and Genasi did not get the PHB treatment in the past so I'm hoping they see reason and change it for 5.75e.

The Aasimar and Tieflings are members of a single heritage in Level Up's Adventurer's Guide, the Planetouched Heritage. There is a Genasi-equivalent in Level Up too, the Elementaari. They're a late add-on to the Planetouched Heritage.

 

[Yaarel]

There is absolutely no reason this needs to be the case. If it’s your preference, fine, but it’s no more or less valid a choice than a fantastical setting where things that would be extraordinary in real life are in fact ordinary. And it’s most certainly not the default assumption of D&D. Dragonborn would be extraordinary in real life, but they’re quite ordinary in D&D. I would argue that many, many players like D&D specifically because things that would be extraordinary in real life are ordinary in the game. That’s a huge part of the appeal of high fantasy as a genre.

I agree that the setting you describe is possible, even fun.

My feeling is, if the setting theme, tropes, and tone are too extraordinary, then the setting can no longer sustain a "medievalesque" feel, thus is probably unsuitable for the default setting that the 5e core rules gently encourage.

The extraordinary-everywhere setting would still be an awesome setting. Possibly it is utopian or dystopian. It can be a regional setting. Since 4e, I make the Feywild Eladrin cities overtly magical in this way. Powerful magic is everywhere but unattunable until higher tiers for game balance. There are locations where long-lived Eladrin are higher tiers on average. Even so, the default "ordainary" Humanoid world that prevails across the Material world retains a lower-magic medievalesque feel.

Regarding the Dragonborn, they are an example of "ordinary magic". Yes, they are literally created by means of magic (shapeshifted Dragon egg) and are remarkable, but overall are comparable to ordinary reallife humans, hence merit the Humanoid creature type. Most Dragonborn people in a default setting would be tiers 1−4 and 5−8.

 

[Yaarel]

5e is terrible at this.

Superman only has a 20% greater chance than I do...because he only gets a +4 more on his legendary than anyone else.

Unless, of course, they decide to change this someway in the republished 5e.

A Master only has a 10% chance of being better than I am at their job...unless they happen to be a Rogue...then it can be 30%.

5e math is incredibly small in relation to how different people are in certain arenas.

In 5e, higher tiers are about super powers − but not bigger math.

Bounded accuracy limits the dice. But higher tiers come with extraordinary abilities. For example, Superman can reverse time (something like the magnitude of a Wish spell, wishing that something never happened) − a do-over. But he normally doesnt do it, and presumably cant do this power frequently. So it is essentially a spell that Superman casts once in a while ... without material components, of course.

Gandalf could easily be level 20 with what he does. He'd have more spells and such already, and we've seen him do things that could technically be equal to a teleport or even a wish, or if we classify him as a druid or cleric (how else does one turn Sauron or other great evils?) he still has high level manifestations of his power.

As for everything else...in 5e...it's a mere +4 better than the "apprentices"...so why not?

Paladins can turn undead, dispel magic, summon a steed − there are no spellbooks − and similar things that Gandalf does.