D&D (2024) You're not planning on getting 2024 D&D? Why is that?

[clearstream]

It's not hard at all to form a view, since the situation is really not so mysterious. Sly Flourish and Jorphdan were sent physical copies of the PHB, with no requirements, except not to discuss the contents before August the 1st. The both put videos in which they flipped through the book, as it is very common in RPG reviews. Sly Flourish was asked to blur the pages while Jorphdan got a copyright strike. After a few days, WotC apologized and the videos were once again available without the blurring.

Jorphdan's case sounds like company counsel didn't get marketing's memo. AKA a f***up.

 

[Nikosandros]

Jorphdan's case sounds like company counsel didn't get marketing's memo. AKA a f***up.

That's quite likely.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Holy @Micah Sweet sock puppet!!!!!!

Mod Note:

Why are you publicly accusing a veteran ENWorlder of being a sock puppet of another?

If it’s a legit question, report it, don’t blast it in a thread. If it’s a joke, it isn’t funny.

 

[mamba]

not too late, they're still selling it

I know, I meant the poster moved on from 5e

 

[Daztur]

My Other: Classes are still wildly unbalanced against each other in a common 1-3 encounter long adventuring day in all tiers of play beyond the first.

Seriously, this has been my largest issue for years. The game isn't designed how most people run.

(I hope by this point that's obvious, but I saved something I've written before if you want details. Otherwise feel free to skip)

Spoiler

That 6-8 encounters per day is real, and frankly it's one of the biggest mis-calibrations by the design team. The classes are balanced if you have that number of encounters, but very few tables actually run that many encounters per day.

There are two very different aspects that need to be met by number of encounters per day.

One of them is challenge. And yes, you can have fewer, deadlier encounters and reach your goals for this. This isn't really debated, and it's the primary - or only - aspect that most DMs think about.

The other one is balance between the at-will classes like rogue or the EB-focused warlock vs. the long-rest recovery classes like full casters plus hybrids like the barbarian or the paladin.

If you took your average full caster and took away all slots, they would be less effective on average than at-will classes like the rogue. Simply, an At-will > cantrip. (This doesn't include EB boosted with invocations.)

On the other hand, if you gave casters unlimited of their highest level slots, they would do more than at-will characters. A fireball with multiple opponents, etc. Slots of the highest few levels > at-will.

No one debates that.

Putting them together, we get, in generic terms for the average character:

Slots of the highest few levels > at-will > cantrip

So in order to balance these, we need some number of spells cast using highest level slots plus some cantrips or low-impact spells (like 1st level offensive spells in T2+). Some above and some below will average out to the same as an at-will.

Let's examine that. If you run a few encounters and run the party's casters all the way out of spells - you are STILL not balancing the classes unless you also are forcing them to have a good number of rounds casting cantrips - it needs that "less than at-will effectiveness" to balance out.

An easy way to work this out is average effectiveness per action, over the course of the adventuring day.

Ah, so if you have fewer encounters, as long as the last as long as more encounters we're good, right?

Well, no. It's moving in the right direction, but durations are a thing. If an encounter is 3-4 rounds and you can a spell lasting 1 minute, you only get 3-4 rounds of effect from it at most. But if the combat lasts 9 rounds, then you are getting 2-3 times the effect from the same slot and the same action. It's more powerful. So you need to offset it with even MORE rounds of lower than at-will efficiency than if you were just doing more encounters.

A easy way to see this is the barbarian. Say you've got 3 rages per day. Assuming the encounters total to the same deadliness, is there any case where you are worse off if you can rage for every encounter instead of half of them? That's one of the things that decreasing the number of encounters does - allows duration effects to be even more powerful.

To sum up:
1. Can balance danger and challenge in fewer encounters by having tougher encounters.
2. Need to have more total rounds fighting in fewer encounters that all of the more encounters in order to maintain balance between classes.

And that second one does not often get met. Fewer encounters per day is usually fewer total rounds then if we did all of the encounters per day, and that definitely is mathematically biased in terms of the long-rest-recovery classes like casters as well as a big boost for hybrids like the barbarian and the paladin.

Yup this is the single biggest issue with 5e: it's a pain in the ass to run a traditional dungeon crawl with 5e and 5.5e does sweet naughty word-all to fix this.

Unless you have a long and focused session (and mine have plenty of pizza munching and side chatter and I wouldn't have it any other way since it's my chance to meet my friends) one session is simply not enough time to attrit down a 5e party.

That means you either have to have very truncated expeditions to the dungeon or you have to break up a single delve among multiple sessions.

And that means you either have the exact same people showing up for every session (ha!) or you get fresh PCs popping up mid-dungeon crawl which throws everything off.

And then tracking resource expenditure between sessions is hardly impossible but it's a pain logistically to get everyone back in the saddle and remembering how many spell slots they used last session when it's just easier to wipe the slate clean with a long rest.

At the end of the day I think the way a lot of people play 5e just doesn't fit the rules all that well. It reminds me of the 90's when a lot of people (including me) were trying to hammer rules that are much better suited for swords and sorcery/Dying Earth into Epic Fantasy campaigns in a way that TSR-D&D rules just weren't that good at supporting.

 

[Daztur]

no you are not, they also do not need a 100% conversion rate. 60-70% will do just fine, and I see no reason that they will not get that

They need a high enough conversion that people who don't particularly like 5.5e end up playing it because so many other people end up playing it. 4e very conspicuously failed to hit that point but every other edition of D&D has so I wouldn't bet against 5.5e despite its lukewarm reception.

Speaking personally I'm not going to run 5.5e but of enough other people run it I'll end up playing it whether I like it or not since playing with my friends is more important than playing my favorite system.

We'll see if we hit that point. One thing that's telling is that more resistance to the game seems to be from Forever DMs and 5e already seems to have a problem with having not enough DMs while 5.5e's marketing seems very player-focused...

 

[AnotherGuy]

Speaking personally I'm not going to run 5.5e but of enough other people run it I'll end up playing it whether I like it or not since playing with my friends is more important than playing my favorite system.

This is true for me. One of my friends just started a 5e 7th Sea campaign.

We'll see if we hit that point. One thing that's telling is that more resistance to the game seems to be from Forever DMs and 5e already seems to have a problem with having not enough DMs while 5.5e's marketing seems very player-focused...

Out of interest, and I'm not disagreeing with you - in fact this is true for me, but what do you base your perception that it is Forever DMs that are resistant to 2024 5e?
And
I've seen this mentioned before in the thread, but where did this perception that 5e has a DM shortage issue arise from? Roll20?

 

[Daztur]

This is true for me. One of my friends just started a 5e 7th Sea campaign.


Out of interest, and I'm not disagreeing with you - in fact this is true for me, but what do you base your perception that it is Forever DMs that are resistant to 2024 5e?
And

I'm more sure of the second point (see below) this one is more subjective on my end but my general impressions:
-The more grognardy/hardcore discussion places seem more cranky about 5.5e than the more casual-filled discussions I've seen.
-WotC marketing for 5.5e seems VERY player-focused. I mean what DM-focused pitches have been given for 5.5e? Bastions? A few new monster designs? Compare to the constant communication on class buffs.
-A lot of the pro 5.5e comments have been more focused on "looking forward to play these new classes!" while the negative comments seem more focused on "looks like it adds a lot to the DM's plate."

Again all very subjective except the second point. There are a lot more players than DMs and WotC wants every player to buy a new PHB while there just doesn't seem to have been almost any effort on the part of WotC to pitch 5.5e to DMs.

I mean are we even getting a 5.5e new adventure path? I'm sure we will but I haven't heard anything. Doesn't seem to be a priority..

I've seen this mentioned before in the thread, but where did this perception that 5e has a DM shortage issue arise from? Roll20?

You CONSTANTLY get people complaining about how hard it is to find DMs and DMs complaining about how they can never play since nobody else they know will DM on more casual D&D discussion spaces like Reddit. This is something that I'm pretty confident about.

 

[mamba]

They need a high enough conversion that people who don't particularly like 5.5e end up playing it because so many other people end up playing it. 4e very conspicuously failed to hit that point but every other edition of D&D has so I wouldn't bet against 5.5e despite its lukewarm reception.

60-70% absolutely does that however, assuming much of the rest stays with 5e 2014 instead of jumping ship to PF2. The problem with 4e was that they jumped ship.,

We'll see if we hit that point. One thing that's telling is that more resistance to the game seems to be from Forever DMs and 5e already seems to have a problem with having not enough DMs while 5.5e's marketing seems very player-focused...

we will see, I mostly see the usual suspects talk about how hostile to DMs 5e is, in either version

 

[Daztur]

60-70% absolutely does that however, assuming much of the rest stays with 5e 2014 instead of jumping ship to PF2. The problem with 4e was that they jumped ship.,

In my own personal bubble (which is not representative of the overall hobby but it's what I know) after a couple year hiatus from the hobby during the dying days of TSR and the 3.0 era things went like this:

1. 3.5e was the default, most every campaign was that or at least d20.

2. After people got burned out on 3.5e and didn't like 4e we played a whole slew of different campaigns with no default game. We never played PF 1e as it was seen as just more of the stuff that burned us out about 3.5e.

3. 5e ended becoming the default for us for years and years. Most didn't love it but it was a good enough compromise.

4. People are starting to get burned out on 5e, nobody in my bubble is excited about 5.5e (but none are hostile to it, a gung-ho 5.5e DM could probably put together a campaign) so we're back to playing a different system in every campaign.

Don't see a new default system for my bubble on the horizon. I think there'll be more people like us in the future. 5.5e won't be quite as strong of a default as 5e (how many 5e people 5.5 converts is an open question but have seen literally ZERO people going "I quit 5e but 5.5e is dragging me back" and it's not like 5.5e has much room to grow in terms of RPG market share) and veteran players tend to bounce between games more than newbies.

I think we might have a new age of Fantasy Heartbreakers with a bigger and bigger wave of disgruntled 5e players making their own D&D-inspired games. 90% will probably suck, but the remaining 10% are going to have some glorious naughty word.

I'm looking forward to a new boom in game design like the Indie game boom and the OSR, not sure what it'll be but I'm sure we'll get some fun new games in the next decade if D&D market share falters even a bit.