D&D 5E (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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[Kobold Stew]

Here's a list of changes, that I'm copying from here (I pulled it together when MotM came out).

Size Difference for PCs.
Small

• Can ride a medium mount (and so effective as a beastmaster ranger or battlesmith artificer).
• Using heavy weapons gives disadvantage.
• Can grapple/push Medium creatures (or smaller)
• Can squeeze in tiny spaces.
• You are eligible to take the Squat Nimbleness feat (+5 move, +1 Dex or Str, proficiency in acrobatics or athletics, advantage to escape grapples).
• With Reduce spell, becomes Tiny (on the Sorcerer and Wizard lists, level 2)
• Can’t take Medium creatures through a Dimension Door (on the Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard lists, level 4).
• Probably easier to find defensive cover and hide – that’ s a DM’s call.

Medium

• No disadvantage with heavy weapons (all of which are martial; these include polearms, longbow, heavy crossbow, and most weapons that have an average damage of 5.5 or higher [lance is the exception]).
• Associated with that is access to Polearm Master and Great Weapon Master feats, and the Great Weapon Fighting fighting style.
• Can grapple/push Large creatures (or smaller)
• With Enlarge spell, becomes Huge (on the Sorcerer and Wizard lists, level 2)

So if your build depends on weapon damage dice, using as polearm or longbow, or grappling, you should choose medium. Choose small if your build is giving you a pet that you can use as a mount, if that’s what you want.

It’s not that there is no difference, but the difference is, um, small.

 

[Remathilis]

Heh. In any case, the point being, people regularly don't really conceptualize just how small Small is. Just to use a good example, an Eagle is a small animal. Now, sure, an eagle is a bloody big bird, but, it's really not very big compared to a fully grown human. I think people picture Gimli as small. He's really, really not. See, even the Hobbits in the movies:

are WAYYY bigger than a D&D halfling. Look at Bilbo there. ((This was what I found after a 30 second Google image search - I'm sure there are better examples). But Sir Ian here is 6 feet tall. That hobbit is over four feet. Bilbo is a freaking GIANT halfling. He should be, by D&D stats, about a foot shorter. The top of his head should be below Gandalf's belt line. In D&D terms, Beorn is medium, and that would make Bilbo about the right relative size.

Actually, this image from Wikipedia:

Shows it even better. All the Hobbits, in D&D terms, are medium. Note, they're barely shorter than Gimli who's supposed to be 5 feet in D&D terms. The Hobbits, again, in D&D, are about a foot shorter than they are pictured here. Small is REALLY small.

Back in the day, I recall a DM explaining racial height to me thusly:

Halfling: 3 ft
Gnome: 3.5 ft
Dwarf: 4 ft
Elf: 5 ft
Half-elf: 5.5 ft
Human: 6 ft
Half-orc: 6.5 ft.

Later, Halflings in 4e were closer to 4ft, Elves closer to 6 ft, and dwarves closer to 5 ft. That seemed to have been rolled back (mostly) in 5e in some ways: halflings (and gnomes) are 3-4 feet, dwarves 4-5 ft, and elves, humans, half-elfs and half-orcs 5-6 ft. I prefer the 4e numbers, to be honest.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Back in the day, I recall a DM explaining racial height to me thusly:

Halfling: 3 ft
Gnome: 3.5 ft
Dwarf: 4 ft
Elf: 5 ft
Half-elf: 5.5 ft
Human: 6 ft
Half-orc: 6.5 ft.

Later, Halflings in 4e were closer to 4ft, Elves closer to 6 ft, and dwarves closer to 5 ft. That seemed to have been rolled back (mostly) in 5e in some ways: halflings (and gnomes) are 3-4 feet, dwarves 4-5 ft, and elves, humans, half-elfs and half-orcs 5-6 ft. I prefer the 4e numbers, to be honest.

Yeah. 4e had some good things. I especially liked the take on species. Including the special encounter power.

Especially essentials nailed it with humans and dwarves.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah. 4e had some good things. I especially liked the take on species. Including the special encounter power.

Especially essentials nailed it with humans and dwarves.

I'm not overly fond of 4e's racial mechanical design (essentially, it was two +2 ASI, two +2 skills, one or two ribbon features and an encounter power, and sometimes a +1 to a defense if the ASI affected the same defense). But lore-wise, it was on-pointe. That was the beauty of only supporting a single nebulous setting like Nerath and not trying to make them fit every D&D setting ever published.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not overly fond of 4e's racial mechanical design (essentially, it was two +2 ASI, two +2 skills, one or two ribbon features and an encounter power, and sometimes a +1 to a defense if the ASI affected the same defense). But lore-wise, it was on-pointe. That was the beauty of only supporting a single nebulous setting like Nerath and not trying to make them fit every D&D setting ever published.

Provided you're happy with 4e's single flavor of worldbuilding and heritage lore.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I'm not overly fond of 4e's racial mechanical design (essentially, it was two +2 ASI, two +2 skills, one or two ribbon features and an encounter power, and sometimes a +1 to a defense if the ASI affected the same defense). But lore-wise, it was on-pointe. That was the beauty of only supporting a single nebulous setting like Nerath and not trying to make them fit every D&D setting ever published.

Still 5e was a step backwards. Encounter powers were lost.

 

[Charlaquin]

Currently, it has very corner case applications like weapon size (can't use weapons with the heavy property) and some rules about squeezing into tight spaces.

In the UA playtests it doesn’t even have the weapon size restrictions - Heavy weapons had a Strength requirement instead (or a Dex requirement for Heavy ranged weapons). So, unless they go back on that, the only effects of Small vs Medium size will be what size creatures you can mount, what size creatures you can shove or grapple, and what size spaces you can squeeze through.

I think it also has some application in nonmagical armor.

That’s an optional rule in a sidebar. By default it doesn’t even affect that.

On the one hand, I don't mind that. Tracking every change for a size S race was notoriously a hassle. (Especially on encumbrance, where you had to do math on every item you got and on what your limit was) On the other, it really is just a relic of when it did matter with no practical purpose.

Yeah, at this point you could probably just delete Small size and expand what range Medium size covers.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I agree in theory. In practice, Powerful Build wouldn’t do anything on a Small character in 5e, since Powerful Build just allows you to carry as much as a creature one size larger, and Small characters have the same carry limits as Medium characters do.

I always halve the carrying capacity of small creatures - mostly because I assumed that was the rule and only found out that I was wrong when someone here pointed it out! But I'm sticking to it because I like it and it makes sense. So, yeah - for me, Dwarves could be Small with Powerful Build. It would work. (Also, I think Small is fine for the Hobbits in the LotR pictures above. I don't think halflings have to be Smaller than that.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You're welcome to not see a more elaborate skill system as valuable, of course, but others do and you're not going to change my mind.

Could you at least admit that it is a system that CAN have downsides? I'm not exactly enamored with the concept of changing your mind in particular, but there ARE cons to the idea.

 

[Remathilis]

Provided you're happy with 4e's single flavor of worldbuilding and heritage lore.

Granted, that's the trade-off. I'd personally rather have a single, strong flavor (cf Golarion in Pathfinder) than a bland flavorless porridge you have to turn into something flavorful. IMHO.