D&D (2024) WotC Fireside Chat: Revised 2024 Player’s Handbook

In this video about the upcoming revised Player’s Handnook, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins reveal a few new tidbits.

• The books are near final and almost ready to go to print
• Psionic subclasses such as the Soulknife and Psi Warrior will appear in the core books
• Named spells have art depicting their creators.
• There are new species in the PHB.

​

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know about no differentiation at all, but there are certainly games where said differentiation is more fluid – generally ones where character stats are more fluid to begin with. In FATE, for example, your heritage would be an aspect which you could invoke for a bonus when doing something related to it (as long as you have the fate points to spend of course). Cortex has a similar mechanic, except you don't have to pay anything to use it.

Ah, fair enough. I must have blocked those out (I hate aspects).

 

[Faolyn]

What are these "many games" where they have different heritages but no mechanical differentiation?

Off the top of my head, I can think of Cypher System, Fabula Ultima, and Fate, where species can be either handwaved away completely or is treated as optional. I've got a couple of FitD/PbtA games where it makes no difference at all, such as (but not limited to) Root or Wicked Ones, or where your heritage abilities change from playbook to playbook, meaning there's no set mechanics (in DungeonWorld, an elf ranger gets a different racial ability than an elf druid), or where there are nonhuman playbooks but absolutely nothing stopping you from playing a nonhuman with a human playbook (such as Monster of the Week).

And, of course, you have games like GURPS or Savage Worlds, which have races, but they're templates and you can build your own, meaning your elf may be mechanically very different than mine.

 

[Staffan]

In the other direction, you have Pathfinder 2 where an ancestry has very few fixed abilities, and in the revised version I think they did away with ancestry stat bonuses (they might have kept it as an option though). What ancestries do is provide access to a number of ancestry feats. So my elf might be very different from your elf, but they still have abilities that feel elven.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I admit, I kind of liked the Tasha's tools, because it felt right to me.

I hated that.

The two races it affected the most were the Elves and the Dwarves, and this meant that these incredibly long-lived races had a hugely diverse set of skills. The Elf Ranger was also a chef, a tanner, a painter, and a blacksmith... because they are three hundred years old and they picked up some other skills along the way.

It was too much. Aso, what about long lived gnomes?

The mountain dwarf clearly get their armor proficiency and +1 extra strength bonus together, so that always one or the other is useful.
The swap out system needed to be a bit more elaborated.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I hated that.

It was too much. Aso, what about long lived gnomes?

Gnomes are more likely to flit between a dozen different interests, never mastering any one long enough to gain tool proficiency. Or they are just far more likely to hyper-fixate on a few things.

Either or.

The mountain dwarf clearly get their armor proficiency and +1 extra strength bonus together, so that always one or the other is useful.
The swap out system needed to be a bit more elaborated.

Sure, I wouldn't have minded the system being a little more robust. But let's not try and pretend a +1 extra strength or con was some great feature. It gets lost immediately in the noise of character creation, unless you are particularly fixated on it.

 

[Kurotowa]

Sure, I wouldn't have minded the system being a little more robust. But let's not try and pretend a +1 extra strength or con was some great feature. It gets lost immediately in the noise of character creation, unless you are particularly fixated on it.

I feel like the argument in favor of racial ASI fails either way you cut it. If racial ASI are mechanically powerful features that help define the character, they're incredibly limiting to what classes a PC of a given race can effectively play and should be removed to give players more freedom. If racial ASI are minor traits that are drowned out by assigning/rolling your ability scores, then all they are is a nuisance for bookkeeping and it doesn't matter if they're removed because it's the other traits that are what matters.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Gnomes are more likely to flit between a dozen different interests, never mastering any one long enough to gain tool proficiency. Or they are just far more likely to hyper-fixate on a few things.

Nice rationalization for a bad feature.

Either or.

Or lets not try and pretend that this swapping out was a good idea.

Sure, I wouldn't have minded the system being a little more robust. But let's not try and pretend a +1 extra strength or con was some great feature.

Not great. But very useful. Often more useful than many other features.
It certainly balanced out the extra armor proficiency lost.
It also allowed mountain dwarves to start with 1 more point of strength (17 if you want) and then take heavy armor mastery at level 4 and still have 18 str then.

It gets lost immediately in the noise of character creation, unless you are particularly fixated on it.

Wrong.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now in PH2 the racial traits can be replaced with racial feats, allowing more options and flexibility for creation.

 

[Hussar]

Now in PH2 the racial traits can be replaced with racial feats, allowing more options and flexibility for creation.

But that’s just more ways other people can play wrong.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

But that’s just more ways other people can play wrong.

How can someone play wrong? Care to elaborate? If they like it, it is totally ok.

Does not mean, others also have to like it.