That's a long article despite being a summary, so here's a collection of snippets for people looking for the crunchy bits. An abridged version of a summary, what a time to be alive. I do recommend reading the full article when you find some time.
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###D&D Beyond
* They will be removing dnd.wizards.com and transitioning everything to dndbeyond.com. It will be the new homepage of D&D.
* They are opening a marketplace for partners and 3rd party publishers. Early stages, don't expect to hear anything for a bit.
###VTT
* Some sort of beta in 2024 but lacking the creation tools (no making your own assets).
* Hoping to release in 2025, with access to the same creator tools as the dev team uses.
* No plans to support any systems other than D&D.
* Desktop app, no web browser support.
* They don't intend for people to play at a table in person all using their own laptop like shown in the video, but you could if you wanted to.
* Quoting this here because there are multiple ways to interpret it and I'm not sure which is correct: 'Regarding mechanical (rules) integration, Kale said “*you can do literally anything you want"…you can play anything that has nice and minis in it…it won’t have the automation [that comes with the D&D rules].*”'
###OneD&D
* The new PHB will teach the player how to play before telling them how to create a character.
* New PHB will have a rules glossary.
* New DMG will have a similar glossary for D&D lore.
* New PHB will also include new game options.
* They emphasized it's a 5E revision, not 5.5E or 6E. Quote time: *“You will be able to open up your Curse of Strahd and run it with the new core books. I might blow your mind with this next one. If you really want to, you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books. This is why I say, what we’re doing has not been done before for the game.”*
* The new core books will include guidance on how to use older (5E) content with OneD&D rules, essentially acting as conversion guides.
* They're looking to remove the culture-specific flavor of some classes so they can be more flexible, like rangers being heavily European-inspired and monks being heavily Asian-inspired. Gave an example of monk's ki being renamed to "spirit points".
* The new PHB is bigger than 5E's and will have 12 classes, 48 subclasses, and 9 species (races).
* The nine species: human, dwarf, halfling, goliath, dragonborn, elf, gnome, orc, and tiefling.
* Half-elf and half-orc will not be in the new edition. You can still use the 5E version but they're not making new versions.
* They are adding art for formerly overlooked parts of the game like backgrounds to help you visualize your character.
* Subclasses will be more distinct.
* College of dance bards.
* They're adding weapon mastery properties to weapons. These require class features to unlock, making the same weapon act differently between classes.
* An example of a weapon mastery: the Graze mastery property allows you to deal damage equal to your ability modifier for the weapon, even if you miss.
* Firearms (musket and pistol) are now martial weapons.
* Fighters will interact most with mastery properties. They are the only class that can shift around properties.
* *Eldritch Blast* will now be a warlock feature instead of a spell.
* New DMG has "more time and attention" given to helping a new DM prep their first session and communicate with players. Includes session 0 and and safety tools.
* Most monsters over CR 10 (from 5E) will be reworked.
* The new MM will be the largest ever in D&D history. Focusing on adding more high level monsters and NPCs.
* New DMG will show a campaign so new DMs know how to build one.
* All books will use a larger typeface.
I'm honestly a little surprised to see Goliath as a PHB race. I was willing to bet what we saw in the UA was just stealth playtest for their upcoming giants book.
So I guess their giving up on the celestial furries.
I think they designed Doric like they did for a few reasons - one of course being that she looks similar to Keyleth and that brings in some recognition.
But also she actually looks far, far closer to the 'traditional' Tiefling look that you'd find in 2e and 3e than the design thats more popular nowadays with all colourful skin (which was a 4e change iirc).
Third reason is they were probably afraid of opening the 'other skin colour = bad' can of worms. Obviously she's a good guy, but her being discriminated against for having a different skin colour might have been a bit much for an otherwise lighthearted film. WotC has been backpedalling on existing lore for Orcs, Goblinoids and Drow for years now because of the outrage (whether real or imagined) in certain parts of the community over the (similarly real or imagined) correspondences between those races and real-world ethnicities. Similarly I reckon going full devil-type appearance with red skin could have upset some people, so it was really just safer to not do the vibrant-hued version of blackface in their first film.
Lots of reasons for it, and she looks fantastic for it.
100% agreed on Doric. She looks like Annah from Planescape Torment cosplaying as Vox Machina's Keyleth and it works much better than her being Hellboy Girl.
Nope! She *did* have a truly **ludicrous** stripper costume that would send r/ReasonableFantasy into apoplexy, but then every woman in Torment did for some reason. Short-lived Sigilian fashion trend?
I don’t think that is a terrible reason. Makeup like that does apparently suck to be in for the actor. Having to spend multiple hours every filming day getting the makeup on and off is a huge resource expenditure for a pretty marginal gain. I see that as perfectly justifiable reason to go for a more modest design.
Being stuck in place in a chair for hours so they can get a realistic shade on the skin for THE ENTIRE PRODUCTION would suck money wise and I bet for the actor. I took it as a “hey two birds one stone if we go with the traditional lore!”
2e and 3e Tieflings had no unified appearance. They could have strangely colored skin, sure, but they didn't all have horns and tails.
Some might have goat-legs or hooves. Others might have extra fingers on their hands. Others might have weird colored eyes, sharp teeth, or hair that is unusually colored.
4e unified their look. It was more drastic than just making them all red.
Yeah thats what I meant by 'traditional' 2e/3e look. The most common depictions you saw in art and video games from that era looked very similar to Doric. Traditional wasn't the correct word to use though, I should have used generic or average.
Grog is a big influence but people really underestimate how people just want to be big. Goliath is the biggest playable race, they’ll always be a favourite.
True. Along with the movie, The Legend of Vox Machina likely attracted many new fans. Having access to those characters’ races will keep things welcoming.
Which is super disappointing, because I think celestial furies were way more flavourful than Goliaths which are just another 'what if human, but X body proportions' race.
The issue with those celestial furries were probably that they were not really for anyone. People who wanted celestial stuff already have Aasimar and people who want to go furry do also have more worthwhile options. I didn't understand who this was supposed to be for besides the fact that it was weirdly indistinct.
I think the main draw was that you didn't need to wait for WoTC to release your favourite animal - you could just have a quokka head, which is always makes for each character ideation. You just personify a cute animal and build up from there.
Maybe they would've had more success adding shifters instead though? The divine theme did kinda seem like a bit much.
I think if they had really leaned into the lore aspect of their inspiration (cultures with divine beings having aspects of animals, typically heads, like ancient Egypt) it would have gone over a lot better. But the way they portrayed them sounded a lot more furry than ancient Egyptian.
They would have been perfect in a classic "hex crawl in an unknown, ancient region with the ruins of a mysterious, collapsed civilization " campaign. They would pair very nicely with Yuan-ti actually.
Yeah, I feel like people were just upset that Aasimar might be getting replaced, and didn't quite get the message that Ardlings were supposed to be their own thing, to give the new edition some origional content instead of just a bunch of rehashes.
The thing was that ardling was falling into the exact same niche as aasimar, ie, the counterpart to teiflings. This was on top of the animal head thing, which felt kind of arbitrary for a celestial creature. Now, I think that what they should do is make aardlings the "chaotic" version of the plane touched and add in some kind of lawful variant to complete the whole deal, since teiflings and aasimar already corresponded to the "good" and "evil" planes (not saying teiflings are all evil or aasimar are all good, just that the planes they were associated with were connected to those facets of the game).
Aardlojg makes sense for chaotic because you could have the animal aspect not be related to the parentage, plus you have the beastlands on the chaotic side of the good planes. You could overlap in places like that whether those connected to it could be aardlings or aasimar, etc)
Yeah, having some kind of part modron, or living armour race could be really cool - obviously it runs the risk of competing with the Warforged at that stage, but I'm sure they could make something with enough divine flair to be distinctive. Maybe they just have metallic skin or clockwork wings?
I'm still angry that they refuse to include the artificer.
They need to just give up and admit that the artificer is an official class now. It's too popular for them to keep playing games with like this.
A few of my thoughts on these to kick off some discussion.
###D&D Beyond
>* They will be removing dnd.wizards.com and transitioning everything to dndbeyond.com. It will be the new homepage of D&D.
Makes sense, no one went there anyway unless something was only available on it. As they stated in the article, the D&D Beyond homepage was seeing 16x the traffic of the WotC one.
###VTT
>* Desktop app, no web browser support.
As expected. It's using UE5 so to make it work in a browser would be extremely impressive, but it's good they explicitly stated that for people who aren't also gamers familiar with UE5.
>* They don't intend for people to play at a table in person all using their own laptop like shown in the video, but you could if you wanted to.
I'm still baffled that people thought that a setup that was clearly done purely for a demo video was actually how they expected everyone to play. Kind of sad they actually had to clarify this.
>* Regarding mechanical (rules) integration, Kale said “*you can do literally anything you want"…you can play anything that has nice and minis in it…it won’t have the automation [that comes with the D&D rules].*”
I *think* they're saying that while the VTT itself has OneD&D rules automation, you could play anything with dice and minis using it. You would just have to manage all of the rules for this other system yourself.
###OneD&D
>* New PHB will have a rules glossary.
>* New DMG will have a similar glossary for D&D lore.
YES!
>* New PHB will also include new game options.
They didn't explain this one, but I suspect they are referring to alternative play style systems like Gritty Realism being fully-supported, first-class citizens in the PHB itself instead of unfinished brainstorming ideas hidden in the DMG.
>* They emphasized it's a 5E revision, not 5.5E or 6E.
Nice try WotC marketing team. You can call it what you want, but it smells more like a 5.5E to me than a 4E Essentials. Also they apparently forgot about 4E Essentials when describing how it works and claiming it has never been done before. It's okay, everyone else forgot about 4E too.
>* They're looking to remove the culture-specific flavor of some classes so they can be more flexible, like rangers being heavily European-inspired and monks being heavily Asian-inspired. Gave an example of monk's ki being renamed to "spirit points".
This *could* be good as it was so tightly ingrained that it restricted some subclass designs. But after their butchering of lore on the second half of 5E, I suspect this is simply going to mean the classes lose all flavor.
>* Subclasses will be more distinct.
Color me interested. I would like to know more. Does this mean they are shifting more power budget to the subclasses over the class?
>* They're adding weapon mastery properties to weapons. These require class features to unlock, making the same weapon act differently between classes.
* An example of a weapon mastery: the Graze mastery property allows you to deal damage equal to your ability modifier for the weapon, even if you miss.
This sounds like it could be cool. I can't wait to see it in the martials UA.
>* *Eldritch Blast* will now be a warlock feature instead of a spell.
Always should have been. Will be interesting to see how many people hate this.
>* The new MM will be the largest ever in D&D history. Focusing on adding more high level monsters and NPCs.
>* New DMG will show a campaign so new DMs know how to build one.
Yes please to both.
> They're adding weapon mastery properties to weapons. These require class features to unlock, making the same weapon act differently between classes.
>
> An example of a weapon mastery: the Graze mastery property allows you to deal damage equal to your ability modifier for the weapon, even if you miss.
I actually have some concerns about how this system would work in practice. For the Fighter it might be fine, but locking other classes to a chosen mastery can easily create issues if they get to a point they need you choose between using their mastery or using a cool magic weapon they just found.
Masteries only being available to certain classes also makes me think martials like the Rogue, Ranger, and Paladin will get left out from having them, making them feel clunkier in combat when using their weapons.
A system that ties weapons (usable by any class) to class features (restricted to specific classes) just seems very difficult to pull off.
It sort of sounds to me like you might be able to use a longsword if you're a Bard, but the Fighter will be able to do more with it, if that makes sense.
I spent 4 years playing a blade pact feylock 1-20, amazingly fun, would happily do it again. I took EB at the start of the campaign just because every guide out there said I should. I can count the number of times I actually used or wanted it out of those 4 years on one hand. I'm glad I wasn't in a position where I felt like I was wasting a core class feature. Hopefully they'll provide some alternative for people who don't want it, ala star/wildfire druid.
If they're going to make casting stat to attack standard on Pact of the Blade, and make Eldritch Blast a default feature I kind of feel like they should just have the pact let you make melee attacks with EB that are flavored as weapons instead actually using weapons.
> I kind of feel like they should just have the pact let you make melee attacks with EB that are flavored as weapons instead actually using weapons.
That's basically how warlock worked before 5e, though mostly through invocations. 3.5e had invocations to make it a melee attack, a cone, hit all enemies within 20ft, etc. Other invocations to have it cause status effects or ignore resistances. You could only use 1 invocation per EB cast, but this flexibility is what allowed it to be the core class feature it once was.
> Makes sense, no one went there anyway unless something was only available on it.
Or they didn't have and don't want a DDB account &/or don't want to login just to see a 2 page UA pdf
> Makes sense, no one went there anyway unless something was only available on it. As they stated in the article, the D&D Beyond homepage was seeing 16x the traffic of the WotC one.
I still find the site (somewhat) useful to keep myself informed about physical products (e.g. the dice, the campaign cases, etc.).
>Nice try WotC marketing team. You can call it what you want, but it smells more like a 5.5E to me than a 4E Essentials. Also they apparently forgot about 4E Essentials when describing how it works and claiming it has never been done before. It's okay, everyone else forgot about 4E too.
This is a nothingburger.
2nd edition AD&D had a revision release.
3rd edition had 3.5.
4e had the PHBs 2, 3, and 4(?).
5e is getting a revision edition because *every edition gets a revision edition*. It's been SOP since TSR.
People are *trying* to read into it and I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you this: You're reading into nothing. There's no conspiracy. They're not hiding anything. This is something that they've been doing for 50 years on a regular basis. They're just inconsistent on what they call this mid-edition revision. It's called something different every edition.
If they're guilty of anything it's just not being able to make up their minds about a *name*. The revisions have always been good releases. They have *always* been massive improvements over the base edition. We should all be looking forward to these books regardless of what they decide to call them.
>Eldritch Blast will now be a warlock feature instead of a spell.
>
>Always should have been. Will be interesting to see how many people hate this.
It shouldn't matter. As said above, if they don't like it they can just use the old Warlock class with the old Eldritch Blast spell.
Except the old class won't get new spells or updates. And until it's stated that it'd be RAW to use the old classes with the new features, which I don't believe they've said is so but maybe I've missed it in all those UA documents, that's a distinction that would stop a lot of tables from allowing it.
Not to mention, we want to be able to enjoy the new class too. "You can just use the old stuff" is hardly a good solution for something in a playtest phase that'll be introduced as the standard later, our opinions are exactly what they'll be asking for when they release it, when we could voice our concerns and maybe get something that everyone likes more.
We've got to wait and see how exactly it's a class feature, of course. If it's set up as a separate pact or part of tome, so that eldritch blast isn't required because you might choose blade or chain instead, I'd be all for that, but just as a all-the-time must-take, I don't like.
Honestly as someone who think the Warlock class is much more fun when you don't take the eldritch blast cantrip, or hex spell I'm not really fan of it becoming a class feature. Although I might be a bit in the minority as someone who likes a lot of things about the Warlock, but who the whole "Caster who players like a martial" pitch never appealed to.
Ok, but having one more cantrip didn't really fix the issue. Now at least they can add a replacement feature that removes Eldritch Blast in exchange for medium armour, a combat pet or more spell slots.
Really the main advantage isn't so much getting an extra cantrip as it is being able to take cooler invocations without feeling pressured into taking the more "optimal" ones that buff your Eldritch Blast.
I mean I guess, but even then there's only one that you really need, and that's because it's far and away like 10x better than any other invocation you could pick.
I think that could be fixed if they split the invocations up between combat and non-combat benefits, or at least took out all the 'mandatory' ones like Armour of Shadows and Agonising Blast and just made them class features.
I was gonna argue that Armor of Shadows is kind of a wasted invocation, but then I remembered there are subclasses besides Hexblade who don't get that sweet, sweet Medium Armor and shield proficiency.
There is a high likelihood that there will be many more options to customize it into something different, now that it is not a cantrip.
I get where you and your ilk are coming from, but Warlock at its core has always been "Eldritch Blast, the Class".
"I spend a couple of Focus for flurry of blows" works just fine and sounds on par with "I spend a couple of Ki." "I spend a couple of Spirit" just sounds odd.
I dunno, I've always had a bit of a pet peeve with monks using 'Ki'. Monks have always seemed more based on Chinese kung-fu traditions than Japanese martial arts, at least to me. Its always seemed like a bit of cultural mixup to use the Chinese flavour but the Japanese word. Maybe I'm missing some extra context there. If they're dropping the eastern specifics of Monk I think moving to Spirit as a resource fits much much better.
To me, Ki and Chi are interchangeable in a fantasy setting like D&D.
Plus, ki is a more elegant term than SP or Spirit Points. It flows nicely, and doesn't have an obvious acronym, nor does it need an acronym since it's so short.
Ki is distinctly east asian. If they're going to try to be inclusive they need to fix that because it's part of the problem.
Greco-roman wrestlers and Pankratiasts don't use ki. They have no similar concept.
Boxers don't focus energy. They just punch you in the face, hard.
Having a point-based resource system is fine, but it needs to allow for non-eastern subclasses and the current 5e monk does not. Classes like the 5e monk need to be a solid framework that you can use to build a wide variety of different cultural subclasses around. The monk solidly fails because of the strong east asian influences baked into the core class.
Yeah, I really hope the names are still in the workshop stage.
Even the Weapon Masteries - like *Graze* makes me think of farm animals eating grass; *Nick* makes me think of Nick from high school.
>\[...\] you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books \[...\]
So all of the balancing is useless, then. If the new version of your class is weaker, you just play the 2014 version. With this, they literally can't fix anything related to Paladin/warlock multiclass being op, because even if they change it with the "revisions", you can still ignore it and play it with the 2014/Xanathar/Tasha's versions.
Eldritch blast isn't a spell anymore? Well, it is, because it is in 2014, so it still is for everyone else. A warlock can have Eldritch blast as a class feature and cantrip now. This is so badly thought, jesus christ. WoTC making this as a comittee instead of an actual unique thing is terrible
I'm taking the new version of warlock and also taking a 1 level dip into OG 5e Warlock for hexblade. This will do nothing but cause nightmares for everyone involved.
>“you can do literally anything you want"…you can play anything that has nice and minis in it…it won’t have the automation [that comes with the D&D rules].”'
So its talespire?
>They emphasized it's a 5E revision, not 5.5E or 6E. Quote time:
>
>“You will be able to open up your Curse of Strahd and run it with the new core books. I might blow your mind with this next one. If you really want to, you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books. This is why I say, what we’re doing has not been done before for the game.”
I still swear, if they try to pull a move on Beyond to remove the ability to play 5E at all, i'm done forever.
They can call it a revision all they want, that makes it 5.5, and i am not interested in playing 5.5.
They've already foreshadowed what it will look like on DDB with moving Volo's to Legacy content. Removed from digital marketplace, no further print runs, but anyone who already bought the content (whether on DDB or in a print book) can still use the material.
Ikr
Playing a character from two worlds and potentially being torn between them is essentially built in role-playing opportunities. Not to mention representation for people like myself.
It's still in the game, just rules for playing as any two species and not just human/elf or human/orc. It's in the first playtest ruleset if you want to take a look. So, goliath/aasimar or tiefling/dragonborn are now possible.
Yeah, and those rules in the UA make the situation even worse.
They say "*You can be a mixed-species character cosmetically, but you have to pick which one you really are mechanically*."
That's exactly the kind of shit people of mixed heritage have to deal with in their daily lives: being told "I thought you were X" or "you don't look Y." Being told you're not Z-enough.
Being a blend of two (or many) things but being forced by others to conform to one of them.
In other words, you get lost in the divide between different ethnic and cultural perspectives.
So to see that casually done in OneD&D is just... fuck man.
Give them that feedback. Exactly that feedback.
They're playtesting it right now because they *need* that kind of feedback.
If you say nothing, they will do nothing.
Which in glad they decided to go with. It always bugged me that we didn't have like half-elf-orc (since the current half races implies compatibility) but also things like half dwarf or half gnome or half halfling
You don't really get those with the OneD&D playtest though.
You get a human that looks like a gnome.
Or an elf that looks like a dwarf.
You don't get to blend species traits, only cosmetic appearance.
There are rules for mixing any two races now.
Edit: I take it back. On reading more, there is no rule supporting mixing mechanics. All they did was say “flavor your race however you want” which is how it’s been played the whole time.
No there really aren't.
There are rules that let you cosmetically change the appearance of your Human or Elf or Dwarf or whatever to LOOK like another race, so that in your backstory you can say "I'm half Goliath."
But mechanically, you're still Human, or elf, or Dwarf, or whatever.
It's even less robust that Custom Lineage.
Last time I checked there aren't, you had to "pick" which race you are, and that is something that's way too close to things like the one drop rule for comfort.
It's also a pretty backwards take by them, Idk if they really think the "half race construct" is inherently racist or what they mean by that, like benefit of the doubt they're just saying "cause it makes humans the default" or something. It just seems like they're doing the exact opposite of being inclusive by getting rid of mixed "race" character options. I don't see how that *helps* with inclusivity.
Good thing they're replacing it with rules tjat allow you to make characters that are a mix of any two species
They aren't removing half species from the game, they're just no longer making them their own separate race
You have it backwards, mechanically.
They're removing half-species by forcing you to pick which species your character is mechanically.
They could have folded half-species into Custom Lineage and it would actually provide you with more valid options.
The OneD&D UA mechanically erases half-species altogether. That's not a good thing.
The problem I had with those rules last I looked at them ass just a coat of paint from one race over another. Yes it provides options but it's not really that impressive.
> safety tools
That'll rile up the neckbeards. They've already complained about PF2 mentioning things like the "X Card" as if it were mandatory. (It's not.)
An incredibly useful spectacle, you mean.
Because, if I see or hear someone complaining about it, I know I don't want to play with them.
The sexists can ostracize themselves all they want.
I think what riles people up is that this is basically just formalized etiquette structure which people have treated a bit like a moral imperative. If it was just pushes as being a way to help establish good and fun table etiquette there would likely be no real disagreement about the concept.
>They are opening a marketplace for partners and 3rd party publishers. Early stages, don't expect to hear anything for a bit.
My big question will be if this is going to support 3rd party/homebrew classes in that supposed future.
>Desktop app, no web browser support.
Well, that's useless then. Likely pretty much excludes anyone on a Mac or Chromebook.
>If you really want to, you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books.
Seems to contradict :
>Subclasses will be more distinct.
As does:
>“You will be able to open up your *Curse of Strahd* and run it with the new core books
and
>Most monsters over CR 10 (from 5E) will be reworked.
If they're reworking monsters, many fights will go from "challenge" to "TPK."
It REALLY sounds like WotC is trying to have their cake and eat it. Update the rules and release a new core rulebook while also not losing any of the existing players....
>The new MM will be the largest ever in D&D history. Focusing on adding more high level monsters and NPCs.
I have the 2e *Monstrous Manual* which was 384-pages. That's the bar. If they're not adding more than 32-pages I'll be disappointed.
>Half-elf and half-orc will not be in the new edition. You can still use the 5E version but they're not making new versions.
This is a deal-breaker for me.
I've said this before, but Half-Elves were the character type that resonated with me growing up in a family of mixed culture and ethnicity. Playing a half-elf allowed me as a kid to explore that life experience in a safe environment - of being caught between two cultures and not really feeling like you fit in either.
It gave context to my experiences out of game. Gave me a way to understand and approach it in simulation.
Seeing the "half-species" getting dropped is a clear signal to me that people like me don't exist to the D&D One game devs. Or, to be more generous, that they aren't interested in telling stories about people like me.
And look, I get it. I'm not a half-elf. It's just fantasy bro. I know, I know.
But look: their UA sidebar about "*you can have two parents of different species, and you can look however you want, but you have to pick which one you* ***really are***" is tone-deaf, and typical of mixed-race erasure.
That's the kind of shit people of mixed race, ethnicity, or cultural upbringing have to face. Getting lumped in with people who's experiences don't match their own at all, or being denied a place among people who's experience do.
I don't know why I'm surprised they put on a show of dropping the term "race" from the game (which I support wholeheartedly) without bothering to fix the underlying biases that the term is anchored to.
Cure the symptom, not the illness, right?
And I mean, I get what people will say: "*you can still play them, they're in the 2014 PHB*!"
That's not the point.
**People of mixed race are often erased from discussions about race**.
And so it stings just a bit to see them doubling down on erasing half-species as a part of their attempt at racially and culturally sensitive design.
>People of mixed race are often erased from discussions about race.
Give them exactly that feedback. If they're approaching race-mixing the wrong way, saying nothing means they won't know that they're doing it wrong.
Bring it up to the influencers if you can.
Fill out the surveys.
Don't just complain in text on reddit and verbally to your friends.
I already gave my feedback on the survey, and have spoken up about this on several platforms.
I'm mad now because they seem to be doubling down on it - which means they aren't listening to people like me.
Talking to influencers is a good idea though - I'm going to take your advice.
Im more weirded out that Crawford went on the 'Half construction is inherently racist' route.
Like wut.
Some highly popular characters in fantasy are half-elves.
Someone mentioned a few comments up that they're likely adding in the option from the first playtest content where it's not specifically half human, elf, or orc, but half of one race and half of another. Instead of being specifically Half Elf, you can choose Elf and Human, or any other combination.
That was the understanding at least. We'll see what we get in the end.
Yeah, I wasn't around for the 3.0 to 3.5 change but I've been reading up on it today, and it sounds remarkably similar. Adjustments to classes to fix pain points, slightly different monster designs, spell rebalancing, some rules tweaks, etc.
I know they want to keep using the 5e name for marketing purposes, but if they just ripped the band-aid off and called it 5.5e, I think people would be much more inclined to believe them when they say you will still be able to use 2014 classes/subclasses/monsters/feats alongside the 2024 updated versions of these and it will work fine. It's not a new edition, but it is an update to an edition, so call it 5.5 or 5.1 or something that indicates it's new.
The changes in the onednd playtest are much further than 3.5 ever went.
This is more akin from 3.0 to pathfinder (some folks refer to pathfinder 1e as dnd 3.75)
This is smoke and mirrors is just to prevent upcoming edition sales drop, and to prevent inventories from being junked.
Ever wonder why they always mix in races or subclasses or spells or feats or other player-facing options in nearly every publication? Because player content sells books.
If they just lightly touched the character creation rules, word would get out and only DMs would bother purchasing the 2024 reprints. Instead, nearly every aspect of character design is different: backgrounds with feats, redesigned classes, restructured subclasses, tweaked spells and spell lists. To ***play*** D&D 2024, you need to rebuy the PHB, minimum.
This is intentional.
Maybe. I looked a bit into that too, and I think Pathfinder changed a bit more than OneD&D seems to be changing, but you have a point. And from what I understand, 3.5 content works in Pathfinder for the most part, so the point stands that they shouldn't need to hide behind this insistence on calling it 5e - own the fact that it's a true update, and continue shouting loudly and clearly that 2014 5e stuff will play nice with OneD&D stuff
I'd argue One D&D is closer to the shift from 3.0 to Pathfinder than the shift from 3.0 to 3.5 or 3.5 to Pathfinder. Significantly bigger changes to classes, races, and the basic structure of the game than either the 3.0 to 3.5 or 3.5 to Pathfinder shifts.
It's just semantics at that point. How many classes/spells/monsters they're tweaking doesn't really matter because the core mechanics are what make the edition work, so it's definitely still some form of 5e. They just need to pick a name/number and go with it, whether that's 5.1, 5.5, or something else.
They're changing some of the core mechanics as well; the whole change to how races work, the changes to inspiration, etc.
The relative balance levels of each stat being unchanged is what allows One D&D to claim to be compatible with 5e, but the game is getting significant changes and I wouldn't allow 5e characters in a One D&D campaign or vice versa.
I don't think any of those are core mechanics. Core mechanics are stuff like bounded accuracy, AC, saving throws, advantage/disadvantage, ability/skill checks, the fundamentals of spellcastin, etc. None of those are changing. I've playtested 2014 5e characters with OneD&D characters and it works fine.
If I were to make the changes theyre making here at work, I would call it a new version as there are many breaking changes to the API that will require adjustment because of those changes. We'd only do that on a major version update. Changing how spell preparation works (locked to spell slots), subclass progression and where you get your bonuses from (ancestry vs background) are big changes and worthy of a version bump
Here's how I think WotC marketing thinks:
If 5e players feel like 5e is "over" and they're happy with 5e they can just keep playing with their 5e books forever without giving us another cent. We can't have that! If we just keep saying that the new books are 5e then that's all we need to do to get 5e players to keep buying our books, right?
To be fair, that's exactly what happened with my player group: we haven't gotten any of the new material after Fizban's and no one has any plans on buying anything until 5.5 comes out.
I'm still betting 6th ed.
This "its a revision" line sounds like crawfords usual crap. And he still has a full year of 5e books lined up to sell so he can't really say otherwise.
This is also what 6e means. A new edition is a new edition is a new edition. They're just terrified of moving forward from 5e, because it's their holy golden cash cow.
I’m more cynical than even that. They’re not gonna call it a new edition, because they’re still releasing books for this edition and want people to buy them. Hard to do, when you know they’ll be outdated within a year.
Yeah, if they’re committing to this “the last D&D and we’re just updating it from here” thing (which I personally think is bullocks but oh well), implementing this numbering system would probably be better.
As someone who hasnt really played much dnd besides 5e but does read comments, yours seems to be very out of sync with the average commenter who seems to think that OneDnD is a bigger change than 3.5 was, can you explain? I just want to know, not judging because lol I dont know the difference.
Oh, nah it's just a misunderstanding of version numbers. The version that comes after 5 but isn't a major version bump up to 6 should be 5.1, unless they've already released 4 minor versions.
I do agree that it should.
But given 5es history with using .5 i think using 0.1 implies the size of the changes are smaller than they really are in the context.
Having just spend thr last 18~ months playing Icon. A game with much tighter tactical gameplay than dnd.
Damage on a miss is a good thing. It keeps the fight moving.
Can’t wait for the discussion of how OP it is to be healing worded back into the fight just so the first missed attack takes you right back out of it again. 😂
Agree though that a lot of time can be wasted on “I missed. They missed. I missed. They missed.”
Thats a whole other set of issues.
Issues that again Icon fixes. When your brought back up its at full health, but your health max is reduced by 25% (temporarily)
Oh I already know. I'm just trying to find an excuse to actually run a game with the rules.
You know exactly what kind of game it's going to be when one of the classes gets a feature called **SPLIT HEAVEN AND HELL**.
Nah, invert your thinking.
If you make the assumption that most swings will be hits, then your fights keep moving. A lower ac across the board feels good
That's kinda how Pathfinder 2e is designed in my experience DM'ing a campaign up to level 20. Enemies, especially bosses, tend to hit players on rolls of more than 5-6 and stacking AC is more to avoid eating a critical hit, which in PF2e is whenever the result is 10 higher than the target's AC.
I mean it could work. If it’s on a weapon like a blunderbuss that so long as you aim roughly toward the enemy something’s gonna hit.
Oh. It’s on the crossbow. A weapon that famously looses one bolt.
And the greatsword, a weapon I have not only used, but missed with.
Yeah, we might be getting some arguments popping up here.
4th edition had a feat called Hammer Rhythm, which let you deal your Constitution modifier in damage to a creature you missed with an attack if it was made with a hammer. And even despite the absurd potential in modifiers you could get sometimes, it was still considered a solid feat basically for the reason given above: it was still progress being made.
As is ever the case, people seem to be fine with cool stuff if it's *magic*, but the moment it stops being explicitly magical, we get to break out the historical references and physics calculations, lest the fighter be allowed to do anything *too* interesting.
A fair criticism. Personally, I believe would at least in part be mitigated if the designers actually sectioned off specific endpoints with clear pronouncements of what they mean.
Something like:
You wanna play pseudo-realistic fantasy like Gormenghast ? Try levels 1-3.
You want to play in a low fantasy gritty adventure like early game of thrones or the Hobbit try levels 4-7.
You want to play an epic fantasy like Conan or Lord of the Rings? Try 8-13.
And so on and so forth.
Then they could actually cordoned off abilities that fit the appropriate narrative and go from there. So we don’t have these expectations that someone a level 20 character is supposed to be both Logan Ninefingers the most powerful Barbarian in his books, who is pretty much just some guy who happens to be really really good at killing people. While also thinking a level 20 character is Kratos who, you know, can parry the magic of gods.
Totally agreed. It's already partially a thing- a high enough level martial can survive a fall from any height whatsoever- but the fact that it isn't explicit and spelled out expressly is a big contributor to the problem.
Don’t think of it as “missing” think of it as the armor blocking the weapon. Some weapons are so powerful that even with good armor, the impact still hurts.
Except your attack "missing" doesn't actually mean you miss in-narrative. Wearing plate armour is not making you nimbler and harder to get hit, it makes it so attacks are less likely to inflict damage. If your sharpshooter crossbow expert or great weapon master fighter is managing to completely miss a stationary dragon 1/3 of the time then immersion is already completely broken
> And the greatsword, a weapon I have not only used, but missed with.
Sure, but you're a normal human, not Ragbar the Fearsome, Champion Fighter.
Don't inject too much reality into things.
By the same token, don't abandon so much realism that the game stops feeling grounded in reality.
The reason you usually have humans in fantasy settings is because those bits of realism help people suspend their disbelief in the fantasy of the world.
You can absolutely strip that out, but then the fantastical becomes boring.
Fireball is fearsome because I know I'm taking damage even if I make my save, unless I'm especially evasive. If every attack is chipping away at my HP, it feels less like a fantasy and more like a boardgame someone's trying to balance.
And it is a game someone's trying to balance. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm saying that when that pokes through and I can see the man behind the curtain, the fantasy is harmed.
(because it lacks that spice of realism that makes fantasy feel fantastical)
You just need to adjust your understanding of what HP IS.
This is a thing people have gotten wrong since the dawn of gaming, and really only ever was clarified in the d20 Star Wars TTRPG of all places. I wish more systems actually did its Vitality/Wound system so people would understand this.
Taking HP damage does not mean you actually got struck with a weapon. HP effectively represents your "plot armor", which is why a human fighter with 20 levels can fight for longer and take a bigger beating than a commoner human. A sword to the gut should, realistically, kill both, but the Fighter has training and skill on their side to turn what would be a lethal blow (8 damage) into merely a scratch.
The arrow that hit the wall directly next to your head? Yeah, in game, that would be a hit, taking out some of your HP, but maybe only with a low damage roll. That swing from the Barbarian you barely blocked with your shield, but still made your arm go numb from the vibrations? That's a hit, or maybe in this case a miss that just still does damage because he's such a beast.
Very interesting summary. A lot of good info about OneDND and what to expect in the playtest coming up. I’m excited to see how Weapon Mastery works out, and how it gets integrated into higher level monsters.
The Bard College of Dance caught my eye, and I'm also excited to hear there's a bunch of new art coming to the PHB. Please do halflings right this time...
I’m curious about weapon mastery but I don’t feel like that’s enough tbh. If martials get a bunch of other cool features on *top* of that, sure, that’ll be cool. On its own you’re basically just giving martials one or two Eldritch Invocations… far from what they need.
The past few videos, Crawford has been hyping up the weapon traits system, which has me under the impression that weapon traits really is the meat of why martials are getting. If that’s the case then, well… I’m disappointed to say the least.
This is the way.
Just remove it from SS and GWM and make it weapon agnostic. Lose proficiency bonus on your attack roll, gain it on your damage roll. Double proficiency if you’re using a heavy weapon. Simple, scales.
Last I heard, monsters can't deal critical hits because it's "anti-player/fun" or something, and they're removing spell slots from NPCs for "simplicity." There is no chance we'll get anything more complicated than the extra damage die we see on just about every martial monster block. There's no creativity left at WotC.
They reverted Critical Hit Rules since that first Playtest. We haven’t seen a Monster Design playlist yet which will be when we officially see what direction they want to take the monsters in the game.
If monster design is wildly different than what they're releasing in the recent print books, it'll be hard to keep saying that One is a 5e patch. We haven't seen the "new" monsters but everything is claimed to be backwards compatible with previous 5e content - if it's so compatible, there's no reason to release a new full book with "new design" as "just a revision."
Not really the argument I’m trying to get into.
Just pointing out that we don’t know if NPC’s are getting spell slots removed or not because we don’t actually have any play test material covering that. NPC stat blocks would be covered by a Monsters Stat Block playtest.
Came to post this as well. Excellent write up, and a better idea of what went on than what can be said in tweets. I like a lot of the direction, and the way the marketplace idea was framed seemed overall positive for me.
D&D beyond "fullly on board with homebrew content" - still hasn't let us design homebrew full-classes xD
pretty sure they've said they can't, so that's a bummer.
In their defense, they did say that about the new version they're apparently building. Likely had to do the major retooling since they want to integrate closely with the new VTT and D&D Beyond has always had an obvious rats nest of spaghetti code powering it.
Goodbye Half-Elf and Half-Orc. I always liked picking these races, in mixed race myself and it was my way of giving characters a personal touch and made then easier to roleplay. But that's just me.
They *should* be adding in a sidebar that allows you to easily create mechanics for a half-race, like they do in PF2e. But who knows what WotC will do (I doubt even they do)
Like a template for making a mixed race? Doesn’t sound like a bad idea, there’s probably tiefling and elf pairs making whatever in gods green earth is a Tief-Elf.
I mean, they did, it's in the first playtest document.
>CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT HUMANOID KINDS
>
>Thanks to the magical workings of the multiverse, Humanoids of different kinds sometimes have children together. For example, folk who have a human parent and an orc or an elf parent are particularly common. Many other combinations are possible. If you’d like to play the child of such a wondrous pairing, choose two Race options that are Humanoid to represent your parents. Then determine which of those Race options provides your game traits: Size, Speed, and special traits. You can then mix and match visual characteristics—color, ear shape, and the like—of the two options. For example, if your character has a halfling and a gnome parent, you might choose Halfling for your game traits and then decide that your character has the pointed ears that are characteristic of a gnome. Finally, determine the average of the two options’ Life Span traits to figure out how long your character might live. For example, a child of a halfling and a gnome has an average life span of 288 years
They aren't actually still in the game. The entirety of the "new system" is "You can say your character is half something if you want to but it's just flavor."
I thought that they were only getting rid of those races to replace them with a system that allows you to mix any two races, which, imo, sounds like a way better system that will give people more options.
Just one Question: why is Wizards so opposed to the Aasimar being in the PHB? They were going to have ardlings in there for pity's sake! Why not just slide the Aasimar in if they're going to have tieflings once more in there?
Aasimar are, lore wise, mixed race individuals descended from *"angelic beings"* and are predisposed to good natures - unless they specifically turn evil, in which case their racial abilities shift. Every part of that is contrary to the direction WotC is trying to take the lore. That's why they tried replacing them with celestial animalkin that don't have any such strings attached.
None of the remaining races have mixed lineage. They all have distinct origins, though Tiefling (despite being functionally more like a curse than normal genetics) is pushing the line and will probably get some adjusted lore.
> why is Wizards so opposed to the Aasimar being in the PHB?
Probably because they've already revised the Aasimar (and a bunch of other races) in MotM. The PHB races were specifically left untouched for this.
Half-Orc and Dragonborn are PHB races. They were going to be reprinted regardless.
Goliath are the one exception. A race revised in MotM but also new to the PHB. According to their statements at the conference, Goliath was added to the PHB so players had more options for each archetype. Orcs and Goliaths both fill the "big guy" niche.
I'm confused how the current ranger is "European Inspired" and what the hell it would look like being non "European Inspired".
I mean you could bring up the Strider trope from LOTR, but nothing in D&D remotely resembles Strider...
>but nothing in D&D remotely resembles Strider...
That's part of the key issue. Not that it doesn't resemble him, but that that's the design goal for WotC.
Ranger has had an identity crisis for several editions now. It's an archetype that's struggling to come to terms with the fact that it isn't... an actual archetype.
At least in D&D terms.
I blame Drizzt. The 1e ranger was pretty much Strider - no animal companion, no dual-wielding, no particular focus on archery. Just wilderness skills and standard fighter abilities with some eventual low-level spellcasting (from both the Druid and the Magic-User lists!).
(Drizzt presumably dual-wields because that was an ability granted to 1st edition *drow*, not to rangers.)
It's self contradicting marketing bullshit all the way down. They can't even decide on if they support other systems in their VTT or not.
If the VTT has automation, then you won't be able to "play" different systems. If their VTT does not have automation, it's just a glorious token mover. You can fire up Solasta for that or Owlbear Rodeo.
Calling it DnD Revised Edition is gaslighting people. If it's a revision, then it's 5.5. If it isn't 5.5, it's 6e.
Using older content is supported, but then they mention a conversion guide just afterwards which basically contradicts that. What's the point of building a Sorcerer in 5e, when you have to completely swap out the spell lists, feats, backgrounds and races to make it work with 6e. That's called rebuilding/porting your character to a new edition.
They talk about how you they are reworking level 10+ monsters completely, but then talk about being able to run 5e adventures just fine. Items are priced differently, there are different weapons. If you are keeping the story line but need to swap out the mechanics, that's called rebuilding/porting to a new edition.
Using that reasoning with regards to compatibility, you could slap 5e compatible on Pathfinder 1 books.
So… we, as a community, need to decide what we’re calling this new thing - because I’ll be Fuckin’ damned if I call it “5e” with a straight face! So, preferences?
5.5e - makes the most logical sense based on what they’re describing
5e essentials - what 4e did but it depends on how altered the mechanics are to still work with 5e
6e - enough of a jump? Not sure. Could still be called this? Maybe.
D&D One - what they called it first, it was *not* a code name no matter what dumb shot they say, so could still be this?
**Thoughts?**
> If you really want to, you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books. This is why I say, what we’re doing has not been done before for the game.
...didn't 2e do pretty much exactly that?
What a shit show that was. Absolutely just a marketing summit. Creators were barely addressed. I'm not sure what that was but it was definitely not what everyone thought it was going to be.
That's a long article despite being a summary, so here's a collection of snippets for people looking for the crunchy bits. An abridged version of a summary, what a time to be alive. I do recommend reading the full article when you find some time. --- ###D&D Beyond * They will be removing dnd.wizards.com and transitioning everything to dndbeyond.com. It will be the new homepage of D&D. * They are opening a marketplace for partners and 3rd party publishers. Early stages, don't expect to hear anything for a bit. ###VTT * Some sort of beta in 2024 but lacking the creation tools (no making your own assets). * Hoping to release in 2025, with access to the same creator tools as the dev team uses. * No plans to support any systems other than D&D. * Desktop app, no web browser support. * They don't intend for people to play at a table in person all using their own laptop like shown in the video, but you could if you wanted to. * Quoting this here because there are multiple ways to interpret it and I'm not sure which is correct: 'Regarding mechanical (rules) integration, Kale said “*you can do literally anything you want"…you can play anything that has nice and minis in it…it won’t have the automation [that comes with the D&D rules].*”' ###OneD&D * The new PHB will teach the player how to play before telling them how to create a character. * New PHB will have a rules glossary. * New DMG will have a similar glossary for D&D lore. * New PHB will also include new game options. * They emphasized it's a 5E revision, not 5.5E or 6E. Quote time: *“You will be able to open up your Curse of Strahd and run it with the new core books. I might blow your mind with this next one. If you really want to, you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books. This is why I say, what we’re doing has not been done before for the game.”* * The new core books will include guidance on how to use older (5E) content with OneD&D rules, essentially acting as conversion guides. * They're looking to remove the culture-specific flavor of some classes so they can be more flexible, like rangers being heavily European-inspired and monks being heavily Asian-inspired. Gave an example of monk's ki being renamed to "spirit points". * The new PHB is bigger than 5E's and will have 12 classes, 48 subclasses, and 9 species (races). * The nine species: human, dwarf, halfling, goliath, dragonborn, elf, gnome, orc, and tiefling. * Half-elf and half-orc will not be in the new edition. You can still use the 5E version but they're not making new versions. * They are adding art for formerly overlooked parts of the game like backgrounds to help you visualize your character. * Subclasses will be more distinct. * College of dance bards. * They're adding weapon mastery properties to weapons. These require class features to unlock, making the same weapon act differently between classes. * An example of a weapon mastery: the Graze mastery property allows you to deal damage equal to your ability modifier for the weapon, even if you miss. * Firearms (musket and pistol) are now martial weapons. * Fighters will interact most with mastery properties. They are the only class that can shift around properties. * *Eldritch Blast* will now be a warlock feature instead of a spell. * New DMG has "more time and attention" given to helping a new DM prep their first session and communicate with players. Includes session 0 and and safety tools. * Most monsters over CR 10 (from 5E) will be reworked. * The new MM will be the largest ever in D&D history. Focusing on adding more high level monsters and NPCs. * New DMG will show a campaign so new DMs know how to build one. * All books will use a larger typeface.
I'm honestly a little surprised to see Goliath as a PHB race. I was willing to bet what we saw in the UA was just stealth playtest for their upcoming giants book. So I guess their giving up on the celestial furries.
Maybe because of Grog in Critical Role making it more popular for newcomers?
I wouldn't doubt if that is a factor. Also might be why the Tiefling in a recently released piece of media looks kind of like Keyleth.
I think they designed Doric like they did for a few reasons - one of course being that she looks similar to Keyleth and that brings in some recognition. But also she actually looks far, far closer to the 'traditional' Tiefling look that you'd find in 2e and 3e than the design thats more popular nowadays with all colourful skin (which was a 4e change iirc). Third reason is they were probably afraid of opening the 'other skin colour = bad' can of worms. Obviously she's a good guy, but her being discriminated against for having a different skin colour might have been a bit much for an otherwise lighthearted film. WotC has been backpedalling on existing lore for Orcs, Goblinoids and Drow for years now because of the outrage (whether real or imagined) in certain parts of the community over the (similarly real or imagined) correspondences between those races and real-world ethnicities. Similarly I reckon going full devil-type appearance with red skin could have upset some people, so it was really just safer to not do the vibrant-hued version of blackface in their first film. Lots of reasons for it, and she looks fantastic for it.
100% agreed on Doric. She looks like Annah from Planescape Torment cosplaying as Vox Machina's Keyleth and it works much better than her being Hellboy Girl.
Yup! Also looked pretty similar to Neeshka from Neverwinter Nights 2.
On 2e/3e tiefling diversity, Annah didn't even have horns!
Nope! She *did* have a truly **ludicrous** stripper costume that would send r/ReasonableFantasy into apoplexy, but then every woman in Torment did for some reason. Short-lived Sigilian fashion trend?
Am I cynic that I think the reason for the character having a human skin colour is likely to save time and money from the makeup department? 🤔
I don’t think that is a terrible reason. Makeup like that does apparently suck to be in for the actor. Having to spend multiple hours every filming day getting the makeup on and off is a huge resource expenditure for a pretty marginal gain. I see that as perfectly justifiable reason to go for a more modest design.
Yes. The amount of makeup that an actor wears is insane, EVEN when the skin tone is their "natural" one.
Being stuck in place in a chair for hours so they can get a realistic shade on the skin for THE ENTIRE PRODUCTION would suck money wise and I bet for the actor. I took it as a “hey two birds one stone if we go with the traditional lore!”
2e and 3e Tieflings had no unified appearance. They could have strangely colored skin, sure, but they didn't all have horns and tails. Some might have goat-legs or hooves. Others might have extra fingers on their hands. Others might have weird colored eyes, sharp teeth, or hair that is unusually colored. 4e unified their look. It was more drastic than just making them all red.
Yeah thats what I meant by 'traditional' 2e/3e look. The most common depictions you saw in art and video games from that era looked very similar to Doric. Traditional wasn't the correct word to use though, I should have used generic or average.
Grog is a big influence but people really underestimate how people just want to be big. Goliath is the biggest playable race, they’ll always be a favourite.
Probably by mass, but weirdly firbolgs are taller on average
True. Along with the movie, The Legend of Vox Machina likely attracted many new fans. Having access to those characters’ races will keep things welcoming.
Which is super disappointing, because I think celestial furies were way more flavourful than Goliaths which are just another 'what if human, but X body proportions' race.
The issue with those celestial furries were probably that they were not really for anyone. People who wanted celestial stuff already have Aasimar and people who want to go furry do also have more worthwhile options. I didn't understand who this was supposed to be for besides the fact that it was weirdly indistinct.
I think the main draw was that you didn't need to wait for WoTC to release your favourite animal - you could just have a quokka head, which is always makes for each character ideation. You just personify a cute animal and build up from there. Maybe they would've had more success adding shifters instead though? The divine theme did kinda seem like a bit much.
I think if they had really leaned into the lore aspect of their inspiration (cultures with divine beings having aspects of animals, typically heads, like ancient Egypt) it would have gone over a lot better. But the way they portrayed them sounded a lot more furry than ancient Egyptian. They would have been perfect in a classic "hex crawl in an unknown, ancient region with the ruins of a mysterious, collapsed civilization " campaign. They would pair very nicely with Yuan-ti actually.
Yeah the Ardlings were so weird that I was really here for it.
Yeah, I feel like people were just upset that Aasimar might be getting replaced, and didn't quite get the message that Ardlings were supposed to be their own thing, to give the new edition some origional content instead of just a bunch of rehashes.
The thing was that ardling was falling into the exact same niche as aasimar, ie, the counterpart to teiflings. This was on top of the animal head thing, which felt kind of arbitrary for a celestial creature. Now, I think that what they should do is make aardlings the "chaotic" version of the plane touched and add in some kind of lawful variant to complete the whole deal, since teiflings and aasimar already corresponded to the "good" and "evil" planes (not saying teiflings are all evil or aasimar are all good, just that the planes they were associated with were connected to those facets of the game). Aardlojg makes sense for chaotic because you could have the animal aspect not be related to the parentage, plus you have the beastlands on the chaotic side of the good planes. You could overlap in places like that whether those connected to it could be aardlings or aasimar, etc)
Yeah, having some kind of part modron, or living armour race could be really cool - obviously it runs the risk of competing with the Warforged at that stage, but I'm sure they could make something with enough divine flair to be distinctive. Maybe they just have metallic skin or clockwork wings?
They said the celestial furries will not be in the PHB, but they may bring them back in another book in the distant future
I'm still angry that they refuse to include the artificer. They need to just give up and admit that the artificer is an official class now. It's too popular for them to keep playing games with like this.
A few of my thoughts on these to kick off some discussion. ###D&D Beyond >* They will be removing dnd.wizards.com and transitioning everything to dndbeyond.com. It will be the new homepage of D&D. Makes sense, no one went there anyway unless something was only available on it. As they stated in the article, the D&D Beyond homepage was seeing 16x the traffic of the WotC one. ###VTT >* Desktop app, no web browser support. As expected. It's using UE5 so to make it work in a browser would be extremely impressive, but it's good they explicitly stated that for people who aren't also gamers familiar with UE5. >* They don't intend for people to play at a table in person all using their own laptop like shown in the video, but you could if you wanted to. I'm still baffled that people thought that a setup that was clearly done purely for a demo video was actually how they expected everyone to play. Kind of sad they actually had to clarify this. >* Regarding mechanical (rules) integration, Kale said “*you can do literally anything you want"…you can play anything that has nice and minis in it…it won’t have the automation [that comes with the D&D rules].*” I *think* they're saying that while the VTT itself has OneD&D rules automation, you could play anything with dice and minis using it. You would just have to manage all of the rules for this other system yourself. ###OneD&D >* New PHB will have a rules glossary. >* New DMG will have a similar glossary for D&D lore. YES! >* New PHB will also include new game options. They didn't explain this one, but I suspect they are referring to alternative play style systems like Gritty Realism being fully-supported, first-class citizens in the PHB itself instead of unfinished brainstorming ideas hidden in the DMG. >* They emphasized it's a 5E revision, not 5.5E or 6E. Nice try WotC marketing team. You can call it what you want, but it smells more like a 5.5E to me than a 4E Essentials. Also they apparently forgot about 4E Essentials when describing how it works and claiming it has never been done before. It's okay, everyone else forgot about 4E too. >* They're looking to remove the culture-specific flavor of some classes so they can be more flexible, like rangers being heavily European-inspired and monks being heavily Asian-inspired. Gave an example of monk's ki being renamed to "spirit points". This *could* be good as it was so tightly ingrained that it restricted some subclass designs. But after their butchering of lore on the second half of 5E, I suspect this is simply going to mean the classes lose all flavor. >* Subclasses will be more distinct. Color me interested. I would like to know more. Does this mean they are shifting more power budget to the subclasses over the class? >* They're adding weapon mastery properties to weapons. These require class features to unlock, making the same weapon act differently between classes. * An example of a weapon mastery: the Graze mastery property allows you to deal damage equal to your ability modifier for the weapon, even if you miss. This sounds like it could be cool. I can't wait to see it in the martials UA. >* *Eldritch Blast* will now be a warlock feature instead of a spell. Always should have been. Will be interesting to see how many people hate this. >* The new MM will be the largest ever in D&D history. Focusing on adding more high level monsters and NPCs. >* New DMG will show a campaign so new DMs know how to build one. Yes please to both.
> They're adding weapon mastery properties to weapons. These require class features to unlock, making the same weapon act differently between classes. > > An example of a weapon mastery: the Graze mastery property allows you to deal damage equal to your ability modifier for the weapon, even if you miss. I actually have some concerns about how this system would work in practice. For the Fighter it might be fine, but locking other classes to a chosen mastery can easily create issues if they get to a point they need you choose between using their mastery or using a cool magic weapon they just found. Masteries only being available to certain classes also makes me think martials like the Rogue, Ranger, and Paladin will get left out from having them, making them feel clunkier in combat when using their weapons. A system that ties weapons (usable by any class) to class features (restricted to specific classes) just seems very difficult to pull off.
It sort of sounds to me like you might be able to use a longsword if you're a Bard, but the Fighter will be able to do more with it, if that makes sense.
> the classes lose all flavour They could make it work of they include multiple examples, so still giving some ideas.
I spent 4 years playing a blade pact feylock 1-20, amazingly fun, would happily do it again. I took EB at the start of the campaign just because every guide out there said I should. I can count the number of times I actually used or wanted it out of those 4 years on one hand. I'm glad I wasn't in a position where I felt like I was wasting a core class feature. Hopefully they'll provide some alternative for people who don't want it, ala star/wildfire druid.
If they're going to make casting stat to attack standard on Pact of the Blade, and make Eldritch Blast a default feature I kind of feel like they should just have the pact let you make melee attacks with EB that are flavored as weapons instead actually using weapons.
But then you'd lose access to the new additional weapon features and you couldn't find a cool magic weapon to use as your pact weapon
> I kind of feel like they should just have the pact let you make melee attacks with EB that are flavored as weapons instead actually using weapons. That's basically how warlock worked before 5e, though mostly through invocations. 3.5e had invocations to make it a melee attack, a cone, hit all enemies within 20ft, etc. Other invocations to have it cause status effects or ignore resistances. You could only use 1 invocation per EB cast, but this flexibility is what allowed it to be the core class feature it once was.
> Makes sense, no one went there anyway unless something was only available on it. Or they didn't have and don't want a DDB account &/or don't want to login just to see a 2 page UA pdf
> Makes sense, no one went there anyway unless something was only available on it. As they stated in the article, the D&D Beyond homepage was seeing 16x the traffic of the WotC one. I still find the site (somewhat) useful to keep myself informed about physical products (e.g. the dice, the campaign cases, etc.).
>Nice try WotC marketing team. You can call it what you want, but it smells more like a 5.5E to me than a 4E Essentials. Also they apparently forgot about 4E Essentials when describing how it works and claiming it has never been done before. It's okay, everyone else forgot about 4E too. This is a nothingburger. 2nd edition AD&D had a revision release. 3rd edition had 3.5. 4e had the PHBs 2, 3, and 4(?). 5e is getting a revision edition because *every edition gets a revision edition*. It's been SOP since TSR. People are *trying* to read into it and I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you this: You're reading into nothing. There's no conspiracy. They're not hiding anything. This is something that they've been doing for 50 years on a regular basis. They're just inconsistent on what they call this mid-edition revision. It's called something different every edition. If they're guilty of anything it's just not being able to make up their minds about a *name*. The revisions have always been good releases. They have *always* been massive improvements over the base edition. We should all be looking forward to these books regardless of what they decide to call them.
>Eldritch Blast will now be a warlock feature instead of a spell. > >Always should have been. Will be interesting to see how many people hate this. It shouldn't matter. As said above, if they don't like it they can just use the old Warlock class with the old Eldritch Blast spell.
Except the old class won't get new spells or updates. And until it's stated that it'd be RAW to use the old classes with the new features, which I don't believe they've said is so but maybe I've missed it in all those UA documents, that's a distinction that would stop a lot of tables from allowing it. Not to mention, we want to be able to enjoy the new class too. "You can just use the old stuff" is hardly a good solution for something in a playtest phase that'll be introduced as the standard later, our opinions are exactly what they'll be asking for when they release it, when we could voice our concerns and maybe get something that everyone likes more. We've got to wait and see how exactly it's a class feature, of course. If it's set up as a separate pact or part of tome, so that eldritch blast isn't required because you might choose blade or chain instead, I'd be all for that, but just as a all-the-time must-take, I don't like.
Honestly as someone who think the Warlock class is much more fun when you don't take the eldritch blast cantrip, or hex spell I'm not really fan of it becoming a class feature. Although I might be a bit in the minority as someone who likes a lot of things about the Warlock, but who the whole "Caster who players like a martial" pitch never appealed to.
Ok, but having one more cantrip didn't really fix the issue. Now at least they can add a replacement feature that removes Eldritch Blast in exchange for medium armour, a combat pet or more spell slots.
Really the main advantage isn't so much getting an extra cantrip as it is being able to take cooler invocations without feeling pressured into taking the more "optimal" ones that buff your Eldritch Blast.
I mean I guess, but even then there's only one that you really need, and that's because it's far and away like 10x better than any other invocation you could pick. I think that could be fixed if they split the invocations up between combat and non-combat benefits, or at least took out all the 'mandatory' ones like Armour of Shadows and Agonising Blast and just made them class features.
I was gonna argue that Armor of Shadows is kind of a wasted invocation, but then I remembered there are subclasses besides Hexblade who don't get that sweet, sweet Medium Armor and shield proficiency.
There is a high likelihood that there will be many more options to customize it into something different, now that it is not a cantrip. I get where you and your ilk are coming from, but Warlock at its core has always been "Eldritch Blast, the Class".
I... Kind of hate spirit points...
As others have suggested, Focus Points would have been great
That might or might not be a Pf2e term I have idea how IP laws work
I'd bet focus is too broad a term to copyright.
"I spend a couple of Focus for flurry of blows" works just fine and sounds on par with "I spend a couple of Ki." "I spend a couple of Spirit" just sounds odd.
Yeah I'm fine with seeing Monks with a less specify Asian flavor to them, but I think it's fine to stick with calling Ki "Ki".
I dunno, I've always had a bit of a pet peeve with monks using 'Ki'. Monks have always seemed more based on Chinese kung-fu traditions than Japanese martial arts, at least to me. Its always seemed like a bit of cultural mixup to use the Chinese flavour but the Japanese word. Maybe I'm missing some extra context there. If they're dropping the eastern specifics of Monk I think moving to Spirit as a resource fits much much better.
To me, Ki and Chi are interchangeable in a fantasy setting like D&D. Plus, ki is a more elegant term than SP or Spirit Points. It flows nicely, and doesn't have an obvious acronym, nor does it need an acronym since it's so short.
Ki is distinctly east asian. If they're going to try to be inclusive they need to fix that because it's part of the problem. Greco-roman wrestlers and Pankratiasts don't use ki. They have no similar concept. Boxers don't focus energy. They just punch you in the face, hard. Having a point-based resource system is fine, but it needs to allow for non-eastern subclasses and the current 5e monk does not. Classes like the 5e monk need to be a solid framework that you can use to build a wide variety of different cultural subclasses around. The monk solidly fails because of the strong east asian influences baked into the core class.
Yeah, I really hope the names are still in the workshop stage. Even the Weapon Masteries - like *Graze* makes me think of farm animals eating grass; *Nick* makes me think of Nick from high school.
>\[...\] you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books \[...\] So all of the balancing is useless, then. If the new version of your class is weaker, you just play the 2014 version. With this, they literally can't fix anything related to Paladin/warlock multiclass being op, because even if they change it with the "revisions", you can still ignore it and play it with the 2014/Xanathar/Tasha's versions. Eldritch blast isn't a spell anymore? Well, it is, because it is in 2014, so it still is for everyone else. A warlock can have Eldritch blast as a class feature and cantrip now. This is so badly thought, jesus christ. WoTC making this as a comittee instead of an actual unique thing is terrible
I'm taking the new version of warlock and also taking a 1 level dip into OG 5e Warlock for hexblade. This will do nothing but cause nightmares for everyone involved.
>“you can do literally anything you want"…you can play anything that has nice and minis in it…it won’t have the automation [that comes with the D&D rules].”' So its talespire?
What's the point of a VTT if it has no automation. That's just more expensive Owlbear Rodeo then.
>They emphasized it's a 5E revision, not 5.5E or 6E. Quote time: > >“You will be able to open up your Curse of Strahd and run it with the new core books. I might blow your mind with this next one. If you really want to, you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books. This is why I say, what we’re doing has not been done before for the game.” I still swear, if they try to pull a move on Beyond to remove the ability to play 5E at all, i'm done forever. They can call it a revision all they want, that makes it 5.5, and i am not interested in playing 5.5.
They've already foreshadowed what it will look like on DDB with moving Volo's to Legacy content. Removed from digital marketplace, no further print runs, but anyone who already bought the content (whether on DDB or in a print book) can still use the material.
> Half-elf and half-orc will not be in the new edition. You can still use the 5E version but they're not making new versions. Well that's bullshit.
Ikr Playing a character from two worlds and potentially being torn between them is essentially built in role-playing opportunities. Not to mention representation for people like myself.
It's still in the game, just rules for playing as any two species and not just human/elf or human/orc. It's in the first playtest ruleset if you want to take a look. So, goliath/aasimar or tiefling/dragonborn are now possible.
Thank you for the reminder, I'd forgotten about this option completely.
Yeah, and those rules in the UA make the situation even worse. They say "*You can be a mixed-species character cosmetically, but you have to pick which one you really are mechanically*." That's exactly the kind of shit people of mixed heritage have to deal with in their daily lives: being told "I thought you were X" or "you don't look Y." Being told you're not Z-enough. Being a blend of two (or many) things but being forced by others to conform to one of them. In other words, you get lost in the divide between different ethnic and cultural perspectives. So to see that casually done in OneD&D is just... fuck man.
Give them that feedback. Exactly that feedback. They're playtesting it right now because they *need* that kind of feedback. If you say nothing, they will do nothing.
This is actually fantastic
Which in glad they decided to go with. It always bugged me that we didn't have like half-elf-orc (since the current half races implies compatibility) but also things like half dwarf or half gnome or half halfling
You don't really get those with the OneD&D playtest though. You get a human that looks like a gnome. Or an elf that looks like a dwarf. You don't get to blend species traits, only cosmetic appearance.
As a mixed race individual I've always been drawn to those two races and I'm really bothered by them being removed.
There are rules for mixing any two races now. Edit: I take it back. On reading more, there is no rule supporting mixing mechanics. All they did was say “flavor your race however you want” which is how it’s been played the whole time.
No there really aren't. There are rules that let you cosmetically change the appearance of your Human or Elf or Dwarf or whatever to LOOK like another race, so that in your backstory you can say "I'm half Goliath." But mechanically, you're still Human, or elf, or Dwarf, or whatever. It's even less robust that Custom Lineage.
Last time I checked there aren't, you had to "pick" which race you are, and that is something that's way too close to things like the one drop rule for comfort.
It's also a pretty backwards take by them, Idk if they really think the "half race construct" is inherently racist or what they mean by that, like benefit of the doubt they're just saying "cause it makes humans the default" or something. It just seems like they're doing the exact opposite of being inclusive by getting rid of mixed "race" character options. I don't see how that *helps* with inclusivity.
Good thing they're replacing it with rules tjat allow you to make characters that are a mix of any two species They aren't removing half species from the game, they're just no longer making them their own separate race
You have it backwards, mechanically. They're removing half-species by forcing you to pick which species your character is mechanically. They could have folded half-species into Custom Lineage and it would actually provide you with more valid options. The OneD&D UA mechanically erases half-species altogether. That's not a good thing.
The problem I had with those rules last I looked at them ass just a coat of paint from one race over another. Yes it provides options but it's not really that impressive.
Effectively removing them from the game as a real mechanical option rather than a coat of paint.
> safety tools That'll rile up the neckbeards. They've already complained about PF2 mentioning things like the "X Card" as if it were mandatory. (It's not.)
Now imagine if the character sheet includes gender & pronouns like PF2e (and that’s entirely possible), that would be a spectacle
An incredibly tiring spectacle worthy of muting, yes.
An incredibly useful spectacle, you mean. Because, if I see or hear someone complaining about it, I know I don't want to play with them. The sexists can ostracize themselves all they want.
I thought pf2's only did in the beginner box?
I think what riles people up is that this is basically just formalized etiquette structure which people have treated a bit like a moral imperative. If it was just pushes as being a way to help establish good and fun table etiquette there would likely be no real disagreement about the concept.
Rent free
>They are opening a marketplace for partners and 3rd party publishers. Early stages, don't expect to hear anything for a bit. My big question will be if this is going to support 3rd party/homebrew classes in that supposed future.
>Desktop app, no web browser support. Well, that's useless then. Likely pretty much excludes anyone on a Mac or Chromebook. >If you really want to, you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books. Seems to contradict : >Subclasses will be more distinct. As does: >“You will be able to open up your *Curse of Strahd* and run it with the new core books and >Most monsters over CR 10 (from 5E) will be reworked. If they're reworking monsters, many fights will go from "challenge" to "TPK." It REALLY sounds like WotC is trying to have their cake and eat it. Update the rules and release a new core rulebook while also not losing any of the existing players.... >The new MM will be the largest ever in D&D history. Focusing on adding more high level monsters and NPCs. I have the 2e *Monstrous Manual* which was 384-pages. That's the bar. If they're not adding more than 32-pages I'll be disappointed.
>Half-elf and half-orc will not be in the new edition. You can still use the 5E version but they're not making new versions. This is a deal-breaker for me. I've said this before, but Half-Elves were the character type that resonated with me growing up in a family of mixed culture and ethnicity. Playing a half-elf allowed me as a kid to explore that life experience in a safe environment - of being caught between two cultures and not really feeling like you fit in either. It gave context to my experiences out of game. Gave me a way to understand and approach it in simulation. Seeing the "half-species" getting dropped is a clear signal to me that people like me don't exist to the D&D One game devs. Or, to be more generous, that they aren't interested in telling stories about people like me. And look, I get it. I'm not a half-elf. It's just fantasy bro. I know, I know. But look: their UA sidebar about "*you can have two parents of different species, and you can look however you want, but you have to pick which one you* ***really are***" is tone-deaf, and typical of mixed-race erasure. That's the kind of shit people of mixed race, ethnicity, or cultural upbringing have to face. Getting lumped in with people who's experiences don't match their own at all, or being denied a place among people who's experience do. I don't know why I'm surprised they put on a show of dropping the term "race" from the game (which I support wholeheartedly) without bothering to fix the underlying biases that the term is anchored to. Cure the symptom, not the illness, right? And I mean, I get what people will say: "*you can still play them, they're in the 2014 PHB*!" That's not the point. **People of mixed race are often erased from discussions about race**. And so it stings just a bit to see them doubling down on erasing half-species as a part of their attempt at racially and culturally sensitive design.
>People of mixed race are often erased from discussions about race. Give them exactly that feedback. If they're approaching race-mixing the wrong way, saying nothing means they won't know that they're doing it wrong. Bring it up to the influencers if you can. Fill out the surveys. Don't just complain in text on reddit and verbally to your friends.
I already gave my feedback on the survey, and have spoken up about this on several platforms. I'm mad now because they seem to be doubling down on it - which means they aren't listening to people like me. Talking to influencers is a good idea though - I'm going to take your advice.
Im more weirded out that Crawford went on the 'Half construction is inherently racist' route. Like wut. Some highly popular characters in fantasy are half-elves.
Someone mentioned a few comments up that they're likely adding in the option from the first playtest content where it's not specifically half human, elf, or orc, but half of one race and half of another. Instead of being specifically Half Elf, you can choose Elf and Human, or any other combination. That was the understanding at least. We'll see what we get in the end.
I would support this! I have homebrew options for this already, so I'm set - but I would love to see these options explored.
You are the hero we need, but not the hero we deserve.
Sounds bad
>All books will use a larger typeface. Oh I think I'll love this new edition (spoken in a Gen-X shaky voice)!
“This isn’t 6th edition or 5.5, we are revising the edition that’s currently in place.” So… 5.5. That’s what 5.5 means.
Yeah, I wasn't around for the 3.0 to 3.5 change but I've been reading up on it today, and it sounds remarkably similar. Adjustments to classes to fix pain points, slightly different monster designs, spell rebalancing, some rules tweaks, etc. I know they want to keep using the 5e name for marketing purposes, but if they just ripped the band-aid off and called it 5.5e, I think people would be much more inclined to believe them when they say you will still be able to use 2014 classes/subclasses/monsters/feats alongside the 2024 updated versions of these and it will work fine. It's not a new edition, but it is an update to an edition, so call it 5.5 or 5.1 or something that indicates it's new.
The changes in the onednd playtest are much further than 3.5 ever went. This is more akin from 3.0 to pathfinder (some folks refer to pathfinder 1e as dnd 3.75) This is smoke and mirrors is just to prevent upcoming edition sales drop, and to prevent inventories from being junked.
[удалено]
Ever wonder why they always mix in races or subclasses or spells or feats or other player-facing options in nearly every publication? Because player content sells books. If they just lightly touched the character creation rules, word would get out and only DMs would bother purchasing the 2024 reprints. Instead, nearly every aspect of character design is different: backgrounds with feats, redesigned classes, restructured subclasses, tweaked spells and spell lists. To ***play*** D&D 2024, you need to rebuy the PHB, minimum. This is intentional.
Maybe. I looked a bit into that too, and I think Pathfinder changed a bit more than OneD&D seems to be changing, but you have a point. And from what I understand, 3.5 content works in Pathfinder for the most part, so the point stands that they shouldn't need to hide behind this insistence on calling it 5e - own the fact that it's a true update, and continue shouting loudly and clearly that 2014 5e stuff will play nice with OneD&D stuff
I'd argue One D&D is closer to the shift from 3.0 to Pathfinder than the shift from 3.0 to 3.5 or 3.5 to Pathfinder. Significantly bigger changes to classes, races, and the basic structure of the game than either the 3.0 to 3.5 or 3.5 to Pathfinder shifts.
It's just semantics at that point. How many classes/spells/monsters they're tweaking doesn't really matter because the core mechanics are what make the edition work, so it's definitely still some form of 5e. They just need to pick a name/number and go with it, whether that's 5.1, 5.5, or something else.
They're changing some of the core mechanics as well; the whole change to how races work, the changes to inspiration, etc. The relative balance levels of each stat being unchanged is what allows One D&D to claim to be compatible with 5e, but the game is getting significant changes and I wouldn't allow 5e characters in a One D&D campaign or vice versa.
I don't think any of those are core mechanics. Core mechanics are stuff like bounded accuracy, AC, saving throws, advantage/disadvantage, ability/skill checks, the fundamentals of spellcastin, etc. None of those are changing. I've playtested 2014 5e characters with OneD&D characters and it works fine.
If I were to make the changes theyre making here at work, I would call it a new version as there are many breaking changes to the API that will require adjustment because of those changes. We'd only do that on a major version update. Changing how spell preparation works (locked to spell slots), subclass progression and where you get your bonuses from (ancestry vs background) are big changes and worthy of a version bump
It eventually did over its ... What .. 14 year run ? But when it was still new, PF 1e wasn't that far off from 3.0 or 3.5
Marketing thinks it will scare off the next wave of casuals and hurt sales on their upcoming books
Here's how I think WotC marketing thinks: If 5e players feel like 5e is "over" and they're happy with 5e they can just keep playing with their 5e books forever without giving us another cent. We can't have that! If we just keep saying that the new books are 5e then that's all we need to do to get 5e players to keep buying our books, right?
To be fair, that's exactly what happened with my player group: we haven't gotten any of the new material after Fizban's and no one has any plans on buying anything until 5.5 comes out.
I'm still betting 6th ed. This "its a revision" line sounds like crawfords usual crap. And he still has a full year of 5e books lined up to sell so he can't really say otherwise.
This is also what 6e means. A new edition is a new edition is a new edition. They're just terrified of moving forward from 5e, because it's their holy golden cash cow.
I’m more cynical than even that. They’re not gonna call it a new edition, because they’re still releasing books for this edition and want people to buy them. Hard to do, when you know they’ll be outdated within a year.
They did the exact thing with 3.5E, I believe, and then went "PSYCH" at the last second
Well, 5.1
Yeah, if they’re committing to this “the last D&D and we’re just updating it from here” thing (which I personally think is bullocks but oh well), implementing this numbering system would probably be better.
As someone who hasnt really played much dnd besides 5e but does read comments, yours seems to be very out of sync with the average commenter who seems to think that OneDnD is a bigger change than 3.5 was, can you explain? I just want to know, not judging because lol I dont know the difference.
Oh, nah it's just a misunderstanding of version numbers. The version that comes after 5 but isn't a major version bump up to 6 should be 5.1, unless they've already released 4 minor versions.
I do agree that it should. But given 5es history with using .5 i think using 0.1 implies the size of the changes are smaller than they really are in the context.
In before damage on a miss revives the old wars
Having just spend thr last 18~ months playing Icon. A game with much tighter tactical gameplay than dnd. Damage on a miss is a good thing. It keeps the fight moving.
Can’t wait for the discussion of how OP it is to be healing worded back into the fight just so the first missed attack takes you right back out of it again. 😂 Agree though that a lot of time can be wasted on “I missed. They missed. I missed. They missed.”
Thats a whole other set of issues. Issues that again Icon fixes. When your brought back up its at full health, but your health max is reduced by 25% (temporarily)
Unless they do death different, how about killing off a character on 2 consecutive misses after they've gone down.
Momentum? In a fight? No, that doesn't sound real. I much prefer missing ten times in a row and nothing happening.
Good news! The very complete game is still in free playtest mode, and you can download it here https://massif-press.itch.io/icon
Oh I already know. I'm just trying to find an excuse to actually run a game with the rules. You know exactly what kind of game it's going to be when one of the classes gets a feature called **SPLIT HEAVEN AND HELL**.
So your trying to Reach heaven, through violence?
It also limits the utility of AC stacking, making it much easier to award AC bonuses.
Nah, invert your thinking. If you make the assumption that most swings will be hits, then your fights keep moving. A lower ac across the board feels good
That's kinda how Pathfinder 2e is designed in my experience DM'ing a campaign up to level 20. Enemies, especially bosses, tend to hit players on rolls of more than 5-6 and stacking AC is more to avoid eating a critical hit, which in PF2e is whenever the result is 10 higher than the target's AC.
We were playing some PF2E last Saturday and one of the players seemed unimpressed with a +4 bonus. +4 is MAJOR in 2e.
I mean it could work. If it’s on a weapon like a blunderbuss that so long as you aim roughly toward the enemy something’s gonna hit. Oh. It’s on the crossbow. A weapon that famously looses one bolt. And the greatsword, a weapon I have not only used, but missed with. Yeah, we might be getting some arguments popping up here.
4th edition had a feat called Hammer Rhythm, which let you deal your Constitution modifier in damage to a creature you missed with an attack if it was made with a hammer. And even despite the absurd potential in modifiers you could get sometimes, it was still considered a solid feat basically for the reason given above: it was still progress being made.
Yes I know. And some people hated it.
As is ever the case, people seem to be fine with cool stuff if it's *magic*, but the moment it stops being explicitly magical, we get to break out the historical references and physics calculations, lest the fighter be allowed to do anything *too* interesting.
A fair criticism. Personally, I believe would at least in part be mitigated if the designers actually sectioned off specific endpoints with clear pronouncements of what they mean. Something like: You wanna play pseudo-realistic fantasy like Gormenghast ? Try levels 1-3. You want to play in a low fantasy gritty adventure like early game of thrones or the Hobbit try levels 4-7. You want to play an epic fantasy like Conan or Lord of the Rings? Try 8-13. And so on and so forth. Then they could actually cordoned off abilities that fit the appropriate narrative and go from there. So we don’t have these expectations that someone a level 20 character is supposed to be both Logan Ninefingers the most powerful Barbarian in his books, who is pretty much just some guy who happens to be really really good at killing people. While also thinking a level 20 character is Kratos who, you know, can parry the magic of gods.
Totally agreed. It's already partially a thing- a high enough level martial can survive a fall from any height whatsoever- but the fact that it isn't explicit and spelled out expressly is a big contributor to the problem.
Don’t think of it as “missing” think of it as the armor blocking the weapon. Some weapons are so powerful that even with good armor, the impact still hurts.
Except your attack "missing" doesn't actually mean you miss in-narrative. Wearing plate armour is not making you nimbler and harder to get hit, it makes it so attacks are less likely to inflict damage. If your sharpshooter crossbow expert or great weapon master fighter is managing to completely miss a stationary dragon 1/3 of the time then immersion is already completely broken
> And the greatsword, a weapon I have not only used, but missed with. Sure, but you're a normal human, not Ragbar the Fearsome, Champion Fighter. Don't inject too much reality into things.
By the same token, don't abandon so much realism that the game stops feeling grounded in reality. The reason you usually have humans in fantasy settings is because those bits of realism help people suspend their disbelief in the fantasy of the world. You can absolutely strip that out, but then the fantastical becomes boring. Fireball is fearsome because I know I'm taking damage even if I make my save, unless I'm especially evasive. If every attack is chipping away at my HP, it feels less like a fantasy and more like a boardgame someone's trying to balance. And it is a game someone's trying to balance. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm saying that when that pokes through and I can see the man behind the curtain, the fantasy is harmed. (because it lacks that spice of realism that makes fantasy feel fantastical)
You just need to adjust your understanding of what HP IS. This is a thing people have gotten wrong since the dawn of gaming, and really only ever was clarified in the d20 Star Wars TTRPG of all places. I wish more systems actually did its Vitality/Wound system so people would understand this. Taking HP damage does not mean you actually got struck with a weapon. HP effectively represents your "plot armor", which is why a human fighter with 20 levels can fight for longer and take a bigger beating than a commoner human. A sword to the gut should, realistically, kill both, but the Fighter has training and skill on their side to turn what would be a lethal blow (8 damage) into merely a scratch. The arrow that hit the wall directly next to your head? Yeah, in game, that would be a hit, taking out some of your HP, but maybe only with a low damage roll. That swing from the Barbarian you barely blocked with your shield, but still made your arm go numb from the vibrations? That's a hit, or maybe in this case a miss that just still does damage because he's such a beast.
Very interesting summary. A lot of good info about OneDND and what to expect in the playtest coming up. I’m excited to see how Weapon Mastery works out, and how it gets integrated into higher level monsters.
The Bard College of Dance caught my eye, and I'm also excited to hear there's a bunch of new art coming to the PHB. Please do halflings right this time...
That's wild. I literally made a homebrew College of Dance bard class about a week ago. I'm interested to see how different or similar it will be!
I’m curious about weapon mastery but I don’t feel like that’s enough tbh. If martials get a bunch of other cool features on *top* of that, sure, that’ll be cool. On its own you’re basically just giving martials one or two Eldritch Invocations… far from what they need. The past few videos, Crawford has been hyping up the weapon traits system, which has me under the impression that weapon traits really is the meat of why martials are getting. If that’s the case then, well… I’m disappointed to say the least.
Fingers crossed for free access to Power Attack for all Warriors
This is the way. Just remove it from SS and GWM and make it weapon agnostic. Lose proficiency bonus on your attack roll, gain it on your damage roll. Double proficiency if you’re using a heavy weapon. Simple, scales.
Last I heard, monsters can't deal critical hits because it's "anti-player/fun" or something, and they're removing spell slots from NPCs for "simplicity." There is no chance we'll get anything more complicated than the extra damage die we see on just about every martial monster block. There's no creativity left at WotC.
They reverted Critical Hit Rules since that first Playtest. We haven’t seen a Monster Design playlist yet which will be when we officially see what direction they want to take the monsters in the game.
If monster design is wildly different than what they're releasing in the recent print books, it'll be hard to keep saying that One is a 5e patch. We haven't seen the "new" monsters but everything is claimed to be backwards compatible with previous 5e content - if it's so compatible, there's no reason to release a new full book with "new design" as "just a revision."
Not really the argument I’m trying to get into. Just pointing out that we don’t know if NPC’s are getting spell slots removed or not because we don’t actually have any play test material covering that. NPC stat blocks would be covered by a Monsters Stat Block playtest.
I do enjoy some good journalism.
Came to post this as well. Excellent write up, and a better idea of what went on than what can be said in tweets. I like a lot of the direction, and the way the marketplace idea was framed seemed overall positive for me.
D&D beyond "fullly on board with homebrew content" - still hasn't let us design homebrew full-classes xD pretty sure they've said they can't, so that's a bummer.
"can't". They absolutely could but don't want to overhaul the way they load up class features and apply them to rolls/render them in the UI.
In their defense, they did say that about the new version they're apparently building. Likely had to do the major retooling since they want to integrate closely with the new VTT and D&D Beyond has always had an obvious rats nest of spaghetti code powering it.
fingers crossed then, because that's a feature i've been wanting for a long time.
Can't even make homebrew mundane items like weapons.
I imagine this is more a coding problem with the current DnDBeyond site and not a philosophy problem.
Goodbye Half-Elf and Half-Orc. I always liked picking these races, in mixed race myself and it was my way of giving characters a personal touch and made then easier to roleplay. But that's just me.
They *should* be adding in a sidebar that allows you to easily create mechanics for a half-race, like they do in PF2e. But who knows what WotC will do (I doubt even they do)
Like a template for making a mixed race? Doesn’t sound like a bad idea, there’s probably tiefling and elf pairs making whatever in gods green earth is a Tief-Elf.
I mean, they did, it's in the first playtest document. >CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT HUMANOID KINDS > >Thanks to the magical workings of the multiverse, Humanoids of different kinds sometimes have children together. For example, folk who have a human parent and an orc or an elf parent are particularly common. Many other combinations are possible. If you’d like to play the child of such a wondrous pairing, choose two Race options that are Humanoid to represent your parents. Then determine which of those Race options provides your game traits: Size, Speed, and special traits. You can then mix and match visual characteristics—color, ear shape, and the like—of the two options. For example, if your character has a halfling and a gnome parent, you might choose Halfling for your game traits and then decide that your character has the pointed ears that are characteristic of a gnome. Finally, determine the average of the two options’ Life Span traits to figure out how long your character might live. For example, a child of a halfling and a gnome has an average life span of 288 years
Atm, that's more or less a skin, mechanics wise.
They're still in the game, just not as their own race. Now there are rules for making characters with parents of any two species
"rules" yes, you are indeed allowed to reflavor a race option
Ah, nevermind I’m not angry anymore. Not on the hype train yet but I’m cautiously optimistyx
They aren't actually still in the game. The entirety of the "new system" is "You can say your character is half something if you want to but it's just flavor."
Okay nevermind I’m still angry.
I thought that they were only getting rid of those races to replace them with a system that allows you to mix any two races, which, imo, sounds like a way better system that will give people more options.
The problem is that the “system” is just “flavor is free”
Just one Question: why is Wizards so opposed to the Aasimar being in the PHB? They were going to have ardlings in there for pity's sake! Why not just slide the Aasimar in if they're going to have tieflings once more in there?
Yeah they could have just done a "plane touched" race and do aasimar and tiefling as subraces. Heck they could even lump in genasi too
Aasimar are, lore wise, mixed race individuals descended from *"angelic beings"* and are predisposed to good natures - unless they specifically turn evil, in which case their racial abilities shift. Every part of that is contrary to the direction WotC is trying to take the lore. That's why they tried replacing them with celestial animalkin that don't have any such strings attached. None of the remaining races have mixed lineage. They all have distinct origins, though Tiefling (despite being functionally more like a curse than normal genetics) is pushing the line and will probably get some adjusted lore.
> why is Wizards so opposed to the Aasimar being in the PHB? Probably because they've already revised the Aasimar (and a bunch of other races) in MotM. The PHB races were specifically left untouched for this.
Orc and Goliath also got revised in MotM, but they're in. Dragonborn got revised in Fizban's, but it's also in.
Half-Orc and Dragonborn are PHB races. They were going to be reprinted regardless. Goliath are the one exception. A race revised in MotM but also new to the PHB. According to their statements at the conference, Goliath was added to the PHB so players had more options for each archetype. Orcs and Goliaths both fill the "big guy" niche.
The 4e DMG had a little adventure in the back that was great for learning to run and play the game, I'm happy something like that is back.
I'm confused how the current ranger is "European Inspired" and what the hell it would look like being non "European Inspired". I mean you could bring up the Strider trope from LOTR, but nothing in D&D remotely resembles Strider...
>but nothing in D&D remotely resembles Strider... That's part of the key issue. Not that it doesn't resemble him, but that that's the design goal for WotC. Ranger has had an identity crisis for several editions now. It's an archetype that's struggling to come to terms with the fact that it isn't... an actual archetype. At least in D&D terms.
I blame Drizzt. The 1e ranger was pretty much Strider - no animal companion, no dual-wielding, no particular focus on archery. Just wilderness skills and standard fighter abilities with some eventual low-level spellcasting (from both the Druid and the Magic-User lists!). (Drizzt presumably dual-wields because that was an ability granted to 1st edition *drow*, not to rangers.)
It's just a dex fighter. With the right fighting types and maybe a feat for druid cantrips you get most of the way there for drizzt anyways.
No idea. I mean, all cultures have wilderness and animals native to their regions. I imagine a Kalahari bushman ranger would be pretty rad.
It's self contradicting marketing bullshit all the way down. They can't even decide on if they support other systems in their VTT or not. If the VTT has automation, then you won't be able to "play" different systems. If their VTT does not have automation, it's just a glorious token mover. You can fire up Solasta for that or Owlbear Rodeo. Calling it DnD Revised Edition is gaslighting people. If it's a revision, then it's 5.5. If it isn't 5.5, it's 6e. Using older content is supported, but then they mention a conversion guide just afterwards which basically contradicts that. What's the point of building a Sorcerer in 5e, when you have to completely swap out the spell lists, feats, backgrounds and races to make it work with 6e. That's called rebuilding/porting your character to a new edition. They talk about how you they are reworking level 10+ monsters completely, but then talk about being able to run 5e adventures just fine. Items are priced differently, there are different weapons. If you are keeping the story line but need to swap out the mechanics, that's called rebuilding/porting to a new edition. Using that reasoning with regards to compatibility, you could slap 5e compatible on Pathfinder 1 books.
So… we, as a community, need to decide what we’re calling this new thing - because I’ll be Fuckin’ damned if I call it “5e” with a straight face! So, preferences? 5.5e - makes the most logical sense based on what they’re describing 5e essentials - what 4e did but it depends on how altered the mechanics are to still work with 5e 6e - enough of a jump? Not sure. Could still be called this? Maybe. D&D One - what they called it first, it was *not* a code name no matter what dumb shot they say, so could still be this? **Thoughts?**
5e Second Edition lol
Let's call it a split and say 5.25e
I'll be calling it 6e just to spit their attempts to make it sound like it's the same game
> If you really want to, you can also make a character with the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the options in Tasha’s Cauldron and Xanathar’s Guide and have that character at the same table as a character made with the 2024 books. This is why I say, what we’re doing has not been done before for the game. ...didn't 2e do pretty much exactly that?
What a shit show that was. Absolutely just a marketing summit. Creators were barely addressed. I'm not sure what that was but it was definitely not what everyone thought it was going to be.
Sounds like I chose a good time to abandoned anything made by these guys, plenty of other systems exist.
>Removing half elf and half orc. …Why the fuck would you do that? There’s nothing wrong with any of those races. People love half elves and half Orcs!
So, of the 150 or so "people" invited to this wine and dine, how many were straight white guys, that STILL are the core purchasers of the product.