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

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

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

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[Aldarc]

I thought we already did that once. Or was that in the other thread?

We may have done so already. If so, I likely channeled the Edition Warriors out.

 

[Maxperson]

I believe they have said in the past that all of the named Spells are getting their named iconic depicted.

Yeah, but watch them include and then provide art for Evard's All-Seeing Worm.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, but watch them include and then provide art for Evard's All-Seeing Worm.

At any rate, we will see official art of Evard in a couple months, along with Melf, Leomund, etc.

 

[Maxperson]

Many more feats, better/improved approach to backgrounds and more species = better opportunity to create the PC you want than in any other version of the game. (I'll believe this when I see it)

Yeah, the sheer number of feats, classes, prestige classes and skills in 3e pretty much disprove that claim before it even gets here. It's impossible for them to include enough stuff in the PHB to equal the sheer ability of 3e to create pretty much any character concept you can envision.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, the sheer number of feats, classes, prestige classes and skills in 3e pretty much disprove that claim before it even gets here. It's impossible for them to include enough stuff in the PHB to equal the sheer ability of 3e to create pretty much any character concept you can envision.

In 3E, or the 3E PHB?

 

[Maxperson]

In 3E, or the 3E PHB?

The quote said version of the game, which I take to include the whole game. Even if it's just the PHB, though, 3e still comes out ahead.

45 skills in 3e PHB vs. 18 skills in 5e. In 3e I can make someone who can swim, but can't climb. In 5e I can't. In 3e I can make someone who has both skills but is better at one than the other. In 5e I can't.

109 feats in 3e PHB vs. less in the 5.5e PHB. I'm not sure there are even 109 feats in all of 5e at this point. 3e includes the magic item creation feats and 5e has very little in magic item creation rules, none of which are in the 5e PHB.

I'm not saying 5e is bad, just that it can't(as long as they hold to limited release rates for crunch) hold a candle to 3e for achieving character concepts.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I don’t understand the problem. You can still play a Dwarven sorcerer and give them suboptimal charisma if you want. You’re just not forced to. You have more options, not less.

You can. You could previously also play a halfling with a 20 strength if you wait a while.

In the latter case most people won’t make that investment so it is rarer and hence not expected.

This is all taste. There is no right or wrong to it. But I am with Oofta that the playing against type is changed when the modifiers don’t reinforce any type. We can still play against fiction of course and townsfolk can still be shocked by Bilbo Schwarzenegger

 

[Parmandur]

You can. You could previously also play a halfling with a 20 strength if you wait a while.

In the latter case most people won’t make that investment so it is rarer and hence not expected.

This is all taste. There is no right or wrong to it. But I am with Oofta that the playing against type is changed when the modifiers don’t reinforce any type. We can still play against fiction of course and townsfolk can still be shocked by Bilbo Schwarzenegger

Changed, yes, but in my experience since 2020...probably for the better.

 

[Parmandur]

The quote said version of the game, which I take to include the whole game. Even if it's just the PHB, though, 3e still comes out ahead.

I believe the original comparison that the designers were making was just PHB to PHB.

45 skills in 3e PHB vs. 18 skills in 5e. In 3e I can make someone who can swim, but can't climb. In 5e I can't. In 3e I can make someone who has both skills but is better at one than the other. In 5e I can't.

I would honestly point to this as somewhere that 5E excels at: while there are technically fewer mathematical combinations, none of thst complexity added much to covering character concepts IMO, just added on bureaucratic overhead. And the Skill resolution system is different enough to make it less of an apples to apples comparison than it might seem ar first.

109 feats in 3e PHB vs. less in the 5.5e PHB. I'm not sure there are even 109 feats in all of 5e at this point. 3e includes the magic item creation feats and 5e has very little in magic item creation rules, none of which are in the 5e PHB.

5E Feats are, by design, meant to be worth 3 or more 3E Feats, so this is not apples to apples.

A more apples to apples comparison is the number of Class options, of which the 2024 PHB will have 24 options, or Spwcies, where we will have at least 26 options (9 Species, with Lineages expanding it to 26) in the new PHB with rumors suggesting they may have added some beyond the UA test. Those are both far more central to any character concept, and the 3E PHB had 12 Classes without really having an equivalent to Subclass, and 7 Rave options. Being able to play a Tiefling Pau Warrior or a Goliath Elemetns Monk right out of the Gaye is more important than distinguishing climbing and swimming.

I'm not saying 5e is bad, just that it can't(as long as they hold to limited release rates for crunch) hold a candle to 3e for achieving character concepts.

Less fiddley differences, sure, but that doesn't mean that more character concepts are necessarily going to be represented in the 3E PHB.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Changed, yes, but in my experience since 2020...probably for the better.

I am not sure!

On the one hand I like the old fashioned way. On the other hand I rolled a character for the first time ages and rolled well and was excited about all the options open to higher scores.

Let’s say I can feel the dynamic tension where the larger community seems? to feel more settled about it. I am ok with being seen as a fossil