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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[Micah Sweet]

But no matter how granular you make it, there will always be things that aren't covered. No game can predict every possibility, there will always be some cases wher the DM decides training should apply but there's not a specific skill for it.

So you're not really solving anything, it just adds to the list of numbers you need to track and adding complexity. It's the same for ability scores, you could add dozens of new abilities and still not accurately model all the variations.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Not being able to get it all right isn't a good excuse to do nothing IMO.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Consolidate the skills. 5e needs fewer skills, not more.

If WotC can track skill checks made on DnDBeyond, they should be able to get a rough sense of how useful each skill is, in terms of how frequently it gets used In games. Then bundle skills as needed so that they are of roughly equal value. Or at least somewhat close than they are right now.

For example, bundling history, religion and arcana into one skill, "lore," would make for a skill worth considering, instead of just taking perception or insight.

What is the difference between insight and perception?

Maybe the option to just use attribute skills should be considered:

Athletics(str)
Agility(dex)
Survival(con)
Lore(int)
Perception(wis)
Influence(cha)

That should be sufficient. Your background might give advantage on certain checks related to those skills.

 

[OB1]

Consolidate the skills. 5e needs fewer skills, not more.

If WotC can track skill checks made on DnDBeyond, they should be able to get a rough sense of how useful each skill is, in terms of how frequently it gets used In games. Then bundle skills as needed so that they are of roughly equal value. Or at least somewhat close than they are right now.

For example, bundling history, religion and arcana into one skill, "lore," would make for a skill worth considering, instead of just taking perception or insight.

For that matter, combine perception and insight into 'awareness', and deception and persuasion into 'communication', drop acrobatics and merge it into athletics (apply to str and dex checks) and slight of hand and stealth into 'sneak'. Finally I'd make class choice give you your prof bonus to all checks in 1 ability score, and save skills for backgrounds allowing prof bonus to stack (ie your class gives you Dex and you take sneak, giving you 2xprof in sneak) and then expertise gives you advantage.

 

[mamba]

What is the difference between insight and perception?

perception is you noticing things, insight is you understanding why the creature is doing what you noticed (for objects it would be investigation)

Maybe the option to just use attribute skills should be considered

if you reduce the number of skills further, you definitely should go all the way back to just using the attributes, the skill system is pretty minimal as is, not that I consider that a bad thing, I am much more averse to skill overkill than skill minimalism

 

[Hussar]

That's a False Dichotomy. You don't need to be able to do every single thing athletic just as good as every other thing or else have every possible athletic skill be individualized.

There were no holes in 3e physical skills. You had climbing, which left no holes in climbing ability. You had swimming, which left no holes in swimming ability. And you had jumping, which left no holes in jumping ability. There was no general athletics skill that applied to some and not other skills and would therefore have holes in it.

If you prefer to have gaping character flaws in a PC that is supposed to be good at one aspect(climbing), but not another aspect(swimming), yet is great at both, then the 5e skill system is for you. Or maybe you just avoid making characters that aren't good at everything in broad categories, which itself is a character flaw. People aren't good at everything in a related skill.

I was an amazingly fast sprinter and at one point was training for the Olympics. I was also a fairly good climber. Thing is, I sucked at long distance running and jumping, and was an average at best swimmer.

The funny thing is though in 3e your fighter couldn’t actually be good at jumping, climbing and swimming because they only got two skill points per level.

I see it as a wash. In 3e you could make restricted characters that were bad at things. That’s hard to do in 5e.

But in 5e I can make characters that are broadly good at things, which you can’t in 3e. If I can swim and jump, my fighter can’t climb. And he certainly can’t do anything else.

In 3e, my fighter can’t be a pirate captain because I just don’t get enough skill points.

 

[OB1]

Building out from my previous post. Class makes you generally good in a lot of things, background makes you better in specific things.

Class - Provides blanket Prof bonus to all checks with one ability Score

Background - Choose 2. Provides Prof bonus to specific checks (add bonus to Class bonus when overlapping)

Athletics (Str/Dex) - Athletics/Acrobatics
Animal Handling - Covered by Class
Lore (Int) - Arcana/History/Religion
Communication (Cha) - Deception/Persuasion
Awareness (Wis) - Insight/Perception
Intimidation - Covered by Class
Investigation (Int) - Investigation
Survival (Wis) - Survival/Medicine
Performance (Cha) - Performance
Sneak (Dex) - Slight of Hand/ Stealth

 

[Oofta]

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Not being able to get it all right isn't a good excuse to do nothing IMO.

There's another saying that's appropriate: you can't please everyone. I see no real benefit to more skills and some drawbacks.

In any case, it's not going to happen.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There's another saying that's appropriate: you can't please everyone. I see no real benefit to more skills and some drawbacks.

In any case, it's not going to happen.

I see no significant drawbacks to more skills and some real benefits, so we're at an impasse there. And the fact that it isn't going to happen in a WotC product doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

 

[Parmandur]

Agreed. That was a points issue, though, not a skill issue. And one that is easily solved by simply giving a 4 point minimum per level, and further solved by getting rid of the bogus notion of class and cross class skills.

And yet Class and cross Class Skills were there in the PHB, and along with the point buy system really got in the way of achieving character concepts in my experience. Generalizing Skills slightly (like a third of the 3E Skills are Tool Proficiencies in 5E instead, so it is not one to one there even) hasn't gotten in the way of anything in a decade.

A divine Nexromancer is easy, since Divine and Arcane are flavor and not rules in D&D now: make a Necromancer Wizard, take Acolyte as the Background. In the new rules, that gives a free Feat, so Magic Initaye Divine for some Cleric flavoring.

 

[Clint_L]

What is the difference between insight and perception?

Maybe the option to just use attribute skills should be considered:

Athletics(str)
Agility(dex)
Survival(con)
Lore(int)
Perception(wis)
Influence(cha)

That should be sufficient. Your background might give advantage on certain checks related to those skills.

I would go the opposite way. I don't like that skill checks are attached to attributes. It leads to weird narrative situations. Like in one of my current campaigns, where they are trekking through the wilderness and relying on the city-raised cleric for perception and survival checks, rather than the barbarian who grew up in that terrain but took wisdom as a dump stat, because of course they did.